Smith, A n
International
History ofthe Vietnam War (New York: St.
Manufacturing Consent - Chomsky
See also "Why Is the West Covering Up for Agca?
An Exclusive Interview with Claire Sterling," Human Events, April 21, 1984.
35. This quotation and line of thought was presented by Sterling in her speech given at the Conference on Disinformation, in Paris, December 5, 1984, spon- sored by Internationale de la Resistance, a coalition of right-wing resistance/ "liberation" organizations and support groups. We quote from page 2 of the copy of her speech distributed by the sponsor organization. The booklet by Andronov to which she attributes such great influence was, to our knowledge, never mentioned in the U. S. mass media except by Sterling and Henze.
36. Even Michael Dobbs failed to deal with the fact that the Bulgarian defense claimed that no publicly available sources-i. e. , newspapers, or radio and television programs-had ever had details on Antonov's apartment before Agca provided those details to the investigating magistrate. This would seem to imply that Agca got the details by some form of coaching while in prison. Dobbs dismisses coaching as the "Bulgarian view," but never explains what other view could account for Agca's knowledge of places he had never visited. 37? Panorama, May 26, 1985, p. 107.
38. Ugur Mumcu's books, cited earlier, are a running commentary on what Mumcu repeatedly and explicitly calls Henze's "lies. "
39. co? ? ? I believe we are past the point where it serves the interests of any party except the Soviets to adopt the minimalist, legalistic approach which argues that if there is no 'documentary evidence' or some other form of incontroverti- ble proof that the Government of the U. S. S. R. is behind something, we must assume that it is not" (Paul Henze, "The Long Effort to Destabilize Turkey,"
Atlantic Community [Winter 1981-82], p. 468).
40. Ledeen had three Op-Ed articles in the New York Times in the years 1984 -87.
41. New York Times Book Review, May 19, 1985. For an analysis of Ledeen's neoconservative theory of the media, see Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, pp. 166-70.
42. For documentation and sources, see Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, pp. 93-98, 160-61; see also Jonathan Kwitny, "Tale of Intrigue:
368 NOTES TO PAGES 161-169
NOTES TO PAGES 169-173 369
Why an Italian Spy Got Closely Involved in the Billygate Affair," Wall Street Journa~ August 8, 1985.
43. The comprehensiveness of the Times's protection of its disinformation sources was shown amusingly in February 1987 when Charles Babcock, of the Washington Post, revealed that Ledeen had very possibly been dismissed from Washington University in St. Louis in 1972 for plagiarism. On the very same day, an article by Stephen Engelberg in the Times, on Ledeen, describes Ledeen's history as follows: "Mter being denied tenure at Washington Univer- sity in St. Louis in 1972, Mr. Ledeen became. . . . " This was all the news fit to print about a useful asset.
44. "McNeil-Lehrer News Hour," program of May 27, 1985.
45. See our reference earlier to its wholly uncritical presentation in the News- week article of January 3, 1983.
46. For a discussion of the compromised character of the photo identification of the Bulgarians on November 9,1982, as well as the general conduct of the case by Investigating Judge Martella, see Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, chapter 5.
47. On the likelihood that this Antonov photo had been "manufactured" as an instrument of disinformation, see Howard Friel, "The Antonov Photo and the 'Bulgarian Connection,' " Covert Action Information Bulletin 21 (Spring-Sum- mer 1984), pp. 20-21.
48. This was treated outstandingly in the ABC "20120" program of May 12, 1983; and Agca's shifting testimony was also discussed well by Michael Dobbs in the Washington Post, beginning in June 1984. These were exceptional, however, as pointed out in note 26 above.
49. Dobbs is an honorable exception, although he remained very cautious in generalizing about Martella's handling of the case, and, as noted, he failed to
take seriously the obvious alternative model.
50. Initially, Sterling suggested obliquely that any retracted claims had already been "corroborated"-a falsehood. Later, Sterling followed Italian prosecutor Albano's solution to the problem: that Agca really was in Antonov's apartment but was denying it to signal the Bulgarians that they had better break him out of jail.
Chapter 5: The Indochina Wars (I)
1. Among these, the most comprehensive, to our knowledge, are unpublished studies by Howard Elterman: The State, The Mass Media and Ideological He- gemony: United States Policy Decisions in Indochina, 1945-75-Hiscorical Record, Government Pronouncements and Press Coverage (Ph. D. diss. , New York Uni- versity, 1978); and The Circle ofDeception: The United States Government, the National Press and the Indochina War, 1954-1984 (ms. , n. d. ). See also Daniel C. Hallin, The "Uncensored War": The Media and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). The latter is based on a complete coverage of the New York Times from 1961 through mid-1965, and an extensive sample of television network news from August 1965 through January 1973. Elterman's work covers
the New York Times and the newsweeklies, contrasting their coverage with that of the "alternative press. " The most extensive analysis of a particular incident is Peter Braestrup, Big Story, 2 vols. (Boulder: Westview, 1977), on the Tet offensive, published in cooperation with Freedom House. For detailed exami- nation of this highly influential study, to which we return in "The Tet Offen- sive," pp. 2II-228, and appendix 3, see Noam Chomsky, "The U. S. Media and the T et Offensive," Race & Class (London) XX, 1 (1978), and an excerpted version in the journalism review More (June 1978); also Gareth Porter, "Who Lost Vietnam? " Inquiry, February 20, 1978.
2. Inside Story Special Edition: Vietnam Op/ED, Press and the Public Project, Inc. (1985), transcript of the AIM critique with discussion; Robert Elegant, cited from Encounter by narrator Charlton Heston, on camera. Transcripts of the PBS series Vietnam: A Television History are published by WGBH Tran- scripts (Boston: 1983). See also the "companion book" by the chiefcorrespond- ent for the PBS series, Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking, 1983).
3? Samuel Huntington, in M. P. Crozier, S. J. Huntington, and J. Watanuki, The Cn"sis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission (New York: New York University Press, 1975), pp. 98, 102, 106, II3. The final remarks are from the summary of discussion by commis- sion members, appendix I, 4.
4. "Introduction" to Braestrup, Big Story, p. xviii; the latter phrase is the title of a 1967 Freedom House pamphlet inspired in part by Vietnam War coverage; see also p. vii.
5. John P. Roche, Washington Star, October 26,1977, commenting on Braest- rup's study.
6. John Corry, "Is TV Unpatriotic or Simply Unmindful? " New York Times, May 12, 1985. Corry alleges that this is true with regard not only to Vietnam but also to Central America-and, in fact, generally.
7. General Kinnard, now a military historian, was field commander for the 1970 Cambodia invasion. One of the commentators is the French historian Philippe Devillers, elsewhere a critic of the war but appearing here only in endorsement of one element of the AIM critique.
8. In Braestrup, Big Story, I, xix.
9. Bernard Fall, "Vietnam Blitz," New Republic, October 9, 1965. A French military historian and journalist, Fall was one of the few genuine experts on Vietnam writing in the United States at that time. He was also an extreme hawk, although he turned against the war when he saw that it was simply destroying the country and society of Vietnam.
10. Hallin, "Uncensored War," pp. 192ff.
II. Editorial, New York Times, May 7, 1972.
12. "An Irony of History," Newsweek, April 28, 1975; final document in William Appleman Williams, Thomas McCormick, Lloyd Gardner, and Walter LaFeber, America in Vietnam: A Documentary History (New York: Anchor, 1985)?
13? Lewis, New York Times, April 21, 24, 1975; December 27, 1979. For these and similar comments by perhaps the most outspoken critic of the war in the mainstream media, see Noam Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War (New York: Pantheon, 1982), pp. 28, 144f. and 417n.
370 NOTES TO PAGES I73-I79
NOTES TO PAGES I79-I82 37I
14. Karnow, Vietnam, pp. 9, 439, 650.
15. John King Fairbank, "Assignment for the '70'S," American Historical Re- view 74. 3 (February 1969); Irving Howe, Dissent (Fall 1979); Stanley Hoff- mann, International Security (Summer 1981).
16. David Fromkin and James Chace, "What Are the Lessons of Vietnam? " in "Vietnam: The Retrospect," Foreign Affairs (Spring 1985).
17. McGeorge Bundy, Foreign Affairs (January 1967); secret memorandum of
February 7, 1965, in Pentagon Papers, Senator Gravel edition (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1972), III, 309; henceforth PP.
18. The notion that the United States seeks American-style democracy in areas of intervention persists in liberal thought despite obvious and durable U. S. satisfaction with regimes such as those of Somoza, Pinochet, or Mobutu, and despite regular intervention to overthrow or bar democratic regim~s, as in Guatemala in 1954 and since, among many other examples, some discussed earlier. To postulate otherwise would be to acknowledge something other than benevolent ends. This would be intolerable.
19. For extensive references, see Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War, particu- larly chapter 4.
20. Lawrence Lifschultz, Far Eastern Economic Review, January 30, 1981. 21. "Don't Forget Afghanistan," Economist, October 25, 1980.
22. See Noam Chomsky, A t War with Asia (New York: Pantheon, 1970; here- after, A WWA), pp. 213-14, noting also an exception: D. S. Greenway, Life, April 3, 1970. See also pp. 214ff. and Chomsky, For Reasons ofState (New York: Pantheon, 1973; hereafter, FRS), 179, for a review of official data readily available to journalists, had they been interested to ascertain the facts. See also Fred Branfman, "Presidential War in Laos," in Nina S. Adams and Alfred W. McCoy, eds. , Laos: War and Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). 23. See Hallin, "Uncensored War," pp. 39f. , for discussion.
24. Hallin, "Uncensored War," p. 53. In 1962, the USIA announced a contest in Saigon to find a term more effective than "Vietcong" in inspiring "con- tempt," or "disgust," or "ridicule" among the country's illiterate masses (AP, New York Times, June 4, 1962). Apparently, no more effective term of abuse could be devised.
25. E. W. Kenworthy, New York Times, May 10, 1961; David Halberstam, New York Times, January 20, 1963; New York Times, May 13, 1961; cited in Hallin,
"Uncensored War," 53-54?
26. "Where Washington Reporting Failed," Columbia Journalism Review
(Winter 1970-71), cited by James Aronson, "The Media and the Message," in
Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, eds. , Critical Essays and Index, vol. 5 of
PP.
27. New York Times, September 28, 1987; our emphasis.
28. State Department, "Policy and Information Statement on Indochina"
(July 1947), cited by George C. Herring, America's Longest War (New York:
Wiley, 1979), p. 8.
29. Department of Defense, United States-Vietnam Relations, r945~7 (the
U. S. government version of the Pentagon Papers), bk. 8, pp. 144-4? ; Chom~ky, FRS, pp. 7, 32 (see this book for documentatio~when. not sp~cificallyc~te? below). For general discussion of the war see, mter aha, Herrmg, Amenca s Longest War; Gabriel Kolko, Anatomy ofa War (New York: Pantheon, 1985),
with particular focus on Vietnamese Communist planning; R. B.
Smith, A n International History ofthe Vietnam War (New York: St. Martin's, 1983, 1985), the first two volumes of a projected four-volume history, a somewhat mistitled study focusing on "international Communist strategy. " For the pre-1965 pe- riod, see particularly George M. Kahin, Intervention: How Amen'ca Became Involved in Vietnam (New York: Knopf, 1986). A useful documentary record and commentary appears in Williams et aI. , America in Vietnam.
30. In R. Lindholm, ed. , Vietnam: The First Five Years (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1959), p. 346.
31. Douglas Pike, Viet Cong (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1966), pp. 91-92, 101. For some samples of Pike's rhetoric in this study, see Appendix 3, note 3, below.
32. Douglas Pike, War, Peace and the Vietcong (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1969), p. 6; the estimate was common in the U. S. government and by outside specialists. Pike, Viet Cong, pp. 110, 362. Henry Cabot Lodge, in PP, II, 376. 33. Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). For detailed discussion of this vulgar propaganda exercise disguised as "scholarship," see our review, reprinted in Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War, chapter 5. Lewy tacitly concedes the accuracy of this critique by evasion; compare the review with his response to critics, Washington Quarterly (Au- tumn 1979). For further insight into the commitments and intellectual level of a man taken seriously as a scholar, see his discussion of the need for the state to take stern action to protect the public from "lies" by subversives, and to ensure that the public is not deceived by the "hidden agenda" of such groups as Clergy and Laity Concerned, the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy, NACLA, and others who seek to conceal "their espousal of Cuban- style Communism" and who are engaged in "deception" and "subversion. " As he correctly notes, and inadvertently reveals in his discussion, "to totalitarian- ism, an opponent is by definition subversive" (Lewy, "Does America Need a Verfassungsschutzbericht? " Orbis [Fall 1987]-a respected journal with a dis- tinguished editorial board).
34. Unpublished memorandum on pacification problems circulated within the military in 1965, a copy of which was given by Vann to Professor Alex Carey, University of New South Wales, Australia.
35? Pp, II, 304?
36. Interview in Stern, reprinted in New Advocate (Los Angeles), April 1-15, 1972; Maxwell Taylor, in PP, III, 669.
37. U. S. involvement dates back to the export of Diem from the United States to Vietnam in 1954, and his forcible imposition as a "leader" of the southern part of the country, in a context where U. S. officials readily admitted that the great majority of South Vietnamese supported Ho Chi Minh and that Diem lacked an indigenous base of support.
38. We saw in chapter 3 that in EI Salvador, too, while it was admitted by the media that the population wanted peace above all else, the elections under U. S. auspices-again, held only after the ground had been cleared by mass killing for reasons that the media never confronted or tried to explain-produced governments dedicated to military victory.
39. Walter LaFeber, in Williams et al. , America in Vietnam, p. 236, with the text of the resolution.
372 NOTES TO PAGES 11$3-11$1$
N UT I! ~ TU ('Au I! S lilli-19? 373
40. PP, 715-16, Stevenson's speech before the UN Security Council, May 21, 1964. See FRS, II4f. , for documentation on the U. S. concept of "aggression. " 41. Bernard Fall, "Vietcong-The Unseen Enemy in Vietnam," New Society (London), April 22, 1965, reprinted in Bernard B. Fall and Marcus G. Raskin, eds. , The Viet-Nam Reader (New York: Vintage, 1965). See note 9.
42. Bernard Fall, Last Reflections on a War (New York: Doubleday, 1967). 43. Samuel Huntington, Foreign Affairs (July 1968).
44. Paul Quinn-Judge reports that deaths from 1965 on in Vietnam alone may have passed three million (Far Eastern Economic Review, Oct. II, 1984). A standard Western estimate is about 500,000 killed in the U. S. -backed French war. Hundreds of thousands more were killed in South Vietnam before 1965, in Laos, and in Cambodia.
45. According to congressional sources that cite unpublished studies of the Congressional Research Service, which are alleged to give the figure $84. 5 million, in fiscal-year 1987 dollars, from FY 1980 through FY 1986. We return to this matter in the next chapter.
46. See Charles Kadushin, The American Intellectual Elite (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974). This study was based on lengthy interviews taken in May 1970, after the Cambodia invasion, when public opposition to the war reached its highest peak. Virtually all of those interviewed were "doves," some active in opposition to the war. Virtually none opposed the war on the principled grounds of opposition to aggression (called "ideological grounds" by the au- thor) that all would have adopted had they been asked about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
47. Philadelphia Inquirer, August 30, 1987.
48. Charles Mohr, quoting a "South Vietnamese official" (New York Times, Oct. 24, 1966). One of the authors (Herman) published in 1971 a compilation of quotations, many from Saigon generals and other officials, on the need for time because of their lack of indigenous support, which made political compe- tition intolerable. See "Free Choice or Subjugation," American Report, May 7, 1971.
49. Kahin, Intervention, pp. 89, 60-61; on the secret record revealed in the Pentagon Papers, see FRS, pp. 104-5.
50. See FRS, pp. 10of.
51. March 13, 1964; Kahin, Intervention, pp. 91, 208.
52. Elterman, Circle of Deception, reviewing stories from May 1955 through July 1956; Elterman, State-Media-Ideological Hegemony, pp. 182f. .
53. Susan Welch, "The American Press and Indochina," in Richard L. Merritt, ed. , Communications in International Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972). Only the isolationist Chicago Tribune was opposed to U. S. inter- vention and challenged administration assumptions, in her sample.
54. Fall, "Vietcong-The Unseen Enemy," cites as credible the figure 66,000 killed between 1957 and 1961. Gabriel Kolko gives the figure of 12,000 killed as a "conservative" estimate for 1955-57, with 40,000 political prisoners, reach- ing 150,000 by 1961-5? ,000, according to the government (Anatomy ofa War, p. 89)?
55. "Losung fUr Vietnam," Neues Forum (August/September 1969); see our Political Economy ofHuman Rights (Boston: South End Press, 1979; hereafter PEHR), 1,3? 2,422.
56. See, among others, U. S. government specialist Douglas Pike, Viet Cong, and particularly Jeffrey Race, War Comes to Long An (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), the major study of the period preceding the outright U. S. invasion, by a U. S. military adviser with extensive access to U. S. and Saigon intelligence as well as direct evidence.
57? "The Situation and Tasks for 1959," from the Race document collection cited by Gareth Porter, A Peace Denied: The United States, Vietnam, and th; Paris Agreement (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), p. 281.
58. Race, War Comes to Long An. Essentially the same picture is presented- despairingly-in Pike's 1966 study.
59. New York Times, September 15, 1969.
60. Kahin, Intervention, p. 208; chapters 8, 9.
61. Kahin, Intervention, pp. 183f. William Bundy, January 21, 1970, cited by Kahin, p. 183.
62. Lyndon Johnson, March 20, 1964; Maxwell Taylor, November 27, 1964. See FRS, pp. 127f. , for documentation and more extensive discussion based on the Pentagon Papers record.
63? Kahin, Intervention, pp. 238, 241, 245.
64? For references and further discussion, see FRS, pp. 11of. See also Wallace
J. Thies, When Governments Collide: Coercion and Diplomacy in the Vietnam Conflict, 1964-68 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
65? E. W. Kenworthy, New York Times, November 17, 1961, reporting President Kennedy's decisions; Kenworthy, New York Times, May 10, 1961, reporting Lyndon Johnson's mission to Asia; Hallin, "Uncensored War'~ pp. 31, 53. 66. Robert Trumbull, February 18, 1962; Hanson Baldwin, September 16, 1962, May 13, 1961; Tom Wicker, February II, 1965; David Halberstam, January 20,
1963, March II, 1963; Homer Bigart, April I, 15, 1962. Hallin, "Uncensored War," pp. 51-56, 84.
67. Kahin, Intervention, p. 142.
68. James Reston, New York Times, April 25, 1965; Peter Jennings, ABC-TV, March 8, 1966; Jack Perkins, NBC-TV, January II, 1966; Hallin, "Uncensored War," pp. 89, 91, 229, 137, 140, 141.
69. Kahin, Intervention, p. 287.
70. For an extensive collection of press reports, see Seymour Melman, ed. , In the Name ofAmerica (Annandale, Va. : Turnpike Press, 1968). For analysis of the material available at the time, see Edward S. Herman, Atrocities in Vietnam: Myths and Realities (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1970).
71. New York Times, May 6, 1972.
72. Takashi Oka, Christian Science Monitor, December 4,1965; Bernard Fall, "Vietnam Blitz," New Republic, October 9, 1965.
73. Sidney Hook, "Lord Russell and the War Crimes 'Trial,' " New Leader, October 24, 1966.
74. See AWWA, PP. 98f.
75? "Truck versus Dam," Christian Science Monitor, September 5, 1967.
76. Henry Kamm, New York Times, November 15, 1969; New York Times, April 6, 1971. See FRS, pp. 225f.
35. This quotation and line of thought was presented by Sterling in her speech given at the Conference on Disinformation, in Paris, December 5, 1984, spon- sored by Internationale de la Resistance, a coalition of right-wing resistance/ "liberation" organizations and support groups. We quote from page 2 of the copy of her speech distributed by the sponsor organization. The booklet by Andronov to which she attributes such great influence was, to our knowledge, never mentioned in the U. S. mass media except by Sterling and Henze.
36. Even Michael Dobbs failed to deal with the fact that the Bulgarian defense claimed that no publicly available sources-i. e. , newspapers, or radio and television programs-had ever had details on Antonov's apartment before Agca provided those details to the investigating magistrate. This would seem to imply that Agca got the details by some form of coaching while in prison. Dobbs dismisses coaching as the "Bulgarian view," but never explains what other view could account for Agca's knowledge of places he had never visited. 37? Panorama, May 26, 1985, p. 107.
38. Ugur Mumcu's books, cited earlier, are a running commentary on what Mumcu repeatedly and explicitly calls Henze's "lies. "
39. co? ? ? I believe we are past the point where it serves the interests of any party except the Soviets to adopt the minimalist, legalistic approach which argues that if there is no 'documentary evidence' or some other form of incontroverti- ble proof that the Government of the U. S. S. R. is behind something, we must assume that it is not" (Paul Henze, "The Long Effort to Destabilize Turkey,"
Atlantic Community [Winter 1981-82], p. 468).
40. Ledeen had three Op-Ed articles in the New York Times in the years 1984 -87.
41. New York Times Book Review, May 19, 1985. For an analysis of Ledeen's neoconservative theory of the media, see Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, pp. 166-70.
42. For documentation and sources, see Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, pp. 93-98, 160-61; see also Jonathan Kwitny, "Tale of Intrigue:
368 NOTES TO PAGES 161-169
NOTES TO PAGES 169-173 369
Why an Italian Spy Got Closely Involved in the Billygate Affair," Wall Street Journa~ August 8, 1985.
43. The comprehensiveness of the Times's protection of its disinformation sources was shown amusingly in February 1987 when Charles Babcock, of the Washington Post, revealed that Ledeen had very possibly been dismissed from Washington University in St. Louis in 1972 for plagiarism. On the very same day, an article by Stephen Engelberg in the Times, on Ledeen, describes Ledeen's history as follows: "Mter being denied tenure at Washington Univer- sity in St. Louis in 1972, Mr. Ledeen became. . . . " This was all the news fit to print about a useful asset.
44. "McNeil-Lehrer News Hour," program of May 27, 1985.
45. See our reference earlier to its wholly uncritical presentation in the News- week article of January 3, 1983.
46. For a discussion of the compromised character of the photo identification of the Bulgarians on November 9,1982, as well as the general conduct of the case by Investigating Judge Martella, see Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, chapter 5.
47. On the likelihood that this Antonov photo had been "manufactured" as an instrument of disinformation, see Howard Friel, "The Antonov Photo and the 'Bulgarian Connection,' " Covert Action Information Bulletin 21 (Spring-Sum- mer 1984), pp. 20-21.
48. This was treated outstandingly in the ABC "20120" program of May 12, 1983; and Agca's shifting testimony was also discussed well by Michael Dobbs in the Washington Post, beginning in June 1984. These were exceptional, however, as pointed out in note 26 above.
49. Dobbs is an honorable exception, although he remained very cautious in generalizing about Martella's handling of the case, and, as noted, he failed to
take seriously the obvious alternative model.
50. Initially, Sterling suggested obliquely that any retracted claims had already been "corroborated"-a falsehood. Later, Sterling followed Italian prosecutor Albano's solution to the problem: that Agca really was in Antonov's apartment but was denying it to signal the Bulgarians that they had better break him out of jail.
Chapter 5: The Indochina Wars (I)
1. Among these, the most comprehensive, to our knowledge, are unpublished studies by Howard Elterman: The State, The Mass Media and Ideological He- gemony: United States Policy Decisions in Indochina, 1945-75-Hiscorical Record, Government Pronouncements and Press Coverage (Ph. D. diss. , New York Uni- versity, 1978); and The Circle ofDeception: The United States Government, the National Press and the Indochina War, 1954-1984 (ms. , n. d. ). See also Daniel C. Hallin, The "Uncensored War": The Media and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). The latter is based on a complete coverage of the New York Times from 1961 through mid-1965, and an extensive sample of television network news from August 1965 through January 1973. Elterman's work covers
the New York Times and the newsweeklies, contrasting their coverage with that of the "alternative press. " The most extensive analysis of a particular incident is Peter Braestrup, Big Story, 2 vols. (Boulder: Westview, 1977), on the Tet offensive, published in cooperation with Freedom House. For detailed exami- nation of this highly influential study, to which we return in "The Tet Offen- sive," pp. 2II-228, and appendix 3, see Noam Chomsky, "The U. S. Media and the T et Offensive," Race & Class (London) XX, 1 (1978), and an excerpted version in the journalism review More (June 1978); also Gareth Porter, "Who Lost Vietnam? " Inquiry, February 20, 1978.
2. Inside Story Special Edition: Vietnam Op/ED, Press and the Public Project, Inc. (1985), transcript of the AIM critique with discussion; Robert Elegant, cited from Encounter by narrator Charlton Heston, on camera. Transcripts of the PBS series Vietnam: A Television History are published by WGBH Tran- scripts (Boston: 1983). See also the "companion book" by the chiefcorrespond- ent for the PBS series, Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking, 1983).
3? Samuel Huntington, in M. P. Crozier, S. J. Huntington, and J. Watanuki, The Cn"sis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission (New York: New York University Press, 1975), pp. 98, 102, 106, II3. The final remarks are from the summary of discussion by commis- sion members, appendix I, 4.
4. "Introduction" to Braestrup, Big Story, p. xviii; the latter phrase is the title of a 1967 Freedom House pamphlet inspired in part by Vietnam War coverage; see also p. vii.
5. John P. Roche, Washington Star, October 26,1977, commenting on Braest- rup's study.
6. John Corry, "Is TV Unpatriotic or Simply Unmindful? " New York Times, May 12, 1985. Corry alleges that this is true with regard not only to Vietnam but also to Central America-and, in fact, generally.
7. General Kinnard, now a military historian, was field commander for the 1970 Cambodia invasion. One of the commentators is the French historian Philippe Devillers, elsewhere a critic of the war but appearing here only in endorsement of one element of the AIM critique.
8. In Braestrup, Big Story, I, xix.
9. Bernard Fall, "Vietnam Blitz," New Republic, October 9, 1965. A French military historian and journalist, Fall was one of the few genuine experts on Vietnam writing in the United States at that time. He was also an extreme hawk, although he turned against the war when he saw that it was simply destroying the country and society of Vietnam.
10. Hallin, "Uncensored War," pp. 192ff.
II. Editorial, New York Times, May 7, 1972.
12. "An Irony of History," Newsweek, April 28, 1975; final document in William Appleman Williams, Thomas McCormick, Lloyd Gardner, and Walter LaFeber, America in Vietnam: A Documentary History (New York: Anchor, 1985)?
13? Lewis, New York Times, April 21, 24, 1975; December 27, 1979. For these and similar comments by perhaps the most outspoken critic of the war in the mainstream media, see Noam Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War (New York: Pantheon, 1982), pp. 28, 144f. and 417n.
370 NOTES TO PAGES I73-I79
NOTES TO PAGES I79-I82 37I
14. Karnow, Vietnam, pp. 9, 439, 650.
15. John King Fairbank, "Assignment for the '70'S," American Historical Re- view 74. 3 (February 1969); Irving Howe, Dissent (Fall 1979); Stanley Hoff- mann, International Security (Summer 1981).
16. David Fromkin and James Chace, "What Are the Lessons of Vietnam? " in "Vietnam: The Retrospect," Foreign Affairs (Spring 1985).
17. McGeorge Bundy, Foreign Affairs (January 1967); secret memorandum of
February 7, 1965, in Pentagon Papers, Senator Gravel edition (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1972), III, 309; henceforth PP.
18. The notion that the United States seeks American-style democracy in areas of intervention persists in liberal thought despite obvious and durable U. S. satisfaction with regimes such as those of Somoza, Pinochet, or Mobutu, and despite regular intervention to overthrow or bar democratic regim~s, as in Guatemala in 1954 and since, among many other examples, some discussed earlier. To postulate otherwise would be to acknowledge something other than benevolent ends. This would be intolerable.
19. For extensive references, see Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War, particu- larly chapter 4.
20. Lawrence Lifschultz, Far Eastern Economic Review, January 30, 1981. 21. "Don't Forget Afghanistan," Economist, October 25, 1980.
22. See Noam Chomsky, A t War with Asia (New York: Pantheon, 1970; here- after, A WWA), pp. 213-14, noting also an exception: D. S. Greenway, Life, April 3, 1970. See also pp. 214ff. and Chomsky, For Reasons ofState (New York: Pantheon, 1973; hereafter, FRS), 179, for a review of official data readily available to journalists, had they been interested to ascertain the facts. See also Fred Branfman, "Presidential War in Laos," in Nina S. Adams and Alfred W. McCoy, eds. , Laos: War and Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). 23. See Hallin, "Uncensored War," pp. 39f. , for discussion.
24. Hallin, "Uncensored War," p. 53. In 1962, the USIA announced a contest in Saigon to find a term more effective than "Vietcong" in inspiring "con- tempt," or "disgust," or "ridicule" among the country's illiterate masses (AP, New York Times, June 4, 1962). Apparently, no more effective term of abuse could be devised.
25. E. W. Kenworthy, New York Times, May 10, 1961; David Halberstam, New York Times, January 20, 1963; New York Times, May 13, 1961; cited in Hallin,
"Uncensored War," 53-54?
26. "Where Washington Reporting Failed," Columbia Journalism Review
(Winter 1970-71), cited by James Aronson, "The Media and the Message," in
Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, eds. , Critical Essays and Index, vol. 5 of
PP.
27. New York Times, September 28, 1987; our emphasis.
28. State Department, "Policy and Information Statement on Indochina"
(July 1947), cited by George C. Herring, America's Longest War (New York:
Wiley, 1979), p. 8.
29. Department of Defense, United States-Vietnam Relations, r945~7 (the
U. S. government version of the Pentagon Papers), bk. 8, pp. 144-4? ; Chom~ky, FRS, pp. 7, 32 (see this book for documentatio~when. not sp~cificallyc~te? below). For general discussion of the war see, mter aha, Herrmg, Amenca s Longest War; Gabriel Kolko, Anatomy ofa War (New York: Pantheon, 1985),
with particular focus on Vietnamese Communist planning; R. B.
Smith, A n International History ofthe Vietnam War (New York: St. Martin's, 1983, 1985), the first two volumes of a projected four-volume history, a somewhat mistitled study focusing on "international Communist strategy. " For the pre-1965 pe- riod, see particularly George M. Kahin, Intervention: How Amen'ca Became Involved in Vietnam (New York: Knopf, 1986). A useful documentary record and commentary appears in Williams et aI. , America in Vietnam.
30. In R. Lindholm, ed. , Vietnam: The First Five Years (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1959), p. 346.
31. Douglas Pike, Viet Cong (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1966), pp. 91-92, 101. For some samples of Pike's rhetoric in this study, see Appendix 3, note 3, below.
32. Douglas Pike, War, Peace and the Vietcong (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1969), p. 6; the estimate was common in the U. S. government and by outside specialists. Pike, Viet Cong, pp. 110, 362. Henry Cabot Lodge, in PP, II, 376. 33. Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). For detailed discussion of this vulgar propaganda exercise disguised as "scholarship," see our review, reprinted in Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War, chapter 5. Lewy tacitly concedes the accuracy of this critique by evasion; compare the review with his response to critics, Washington Quarterly (Au- tumn 1979). For further insight into the commitments and intellectual level of a man taken seriously as a scholar, see his discussion of the need for the state to take stern action to protect the public from "lies" by subversives, and to ensure that the public is not deceived by the "hidden agenda" of such groups as Clergy and Laity Concerned, the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy, NACLA, and others who seek to conceal "their espousal of Cuban- style Communism" and who are engaged in "deception" and "subversion. " As he correctly notes, and inadvertently reveals in his discussion, "to totalitarian- ism, an opponent is by definition subversive" (Lewy, "Does America Need a Verfassungsschutzbericht? " Orbis [Fall 1987]-a respected journal with a dis- tinguished editorial board).
34. Unpublished memorandum on pacification problems circulated within the military in 1965, a copy of which was given by Vann to Professor Alex Carey, University of New South Wales, Australia.
35? Pp, II, 304?
36. Interview in Stern, reprinted in New Advocate (Los Angeles), April 1-15, 1972; Maxwell Taylor, in PP, III, 669.
37. U. S. involvement dates back to the export of Diem from the United States to Vietnam in 1954, and his forcible imposition as a "leader" of the southern part of the country, in a context where U. S. officials readily admitted that the great majority of South Vietnamese supported Ho Chi Minh and that Diem lacked an indigenous base of support.
38. We saw in chapter 3 that in EI Salvador, too, while it was admitted by the media that the population wanted peace above all else, the elections under U. S. auspices-again, held only after the ground had been cleared by mass killing for reasons that the media never confronted or tried to explain-produced governments dedicated to military victory.
39. Walter LaFeber, in Williams et al. , America in Vietnam, p. 236, with the text of the resolution.
372 NOTES TO PAGES 11$3-11$1$
N UT I! ~ TU ('Au I! S lilli-19? 373
40. PP, 715-16, Stevenson's speech before the UN Security Council, May 21, 1964. See FRS, II4f. , for documentation on the U. S. concept of "aggression. " 41. Bernard Fall, "Vietcong-The Unseen Enemy in Vietnam," New Society (London), April 22, 1965, reprinted in Bernard B. Fall and Marcus G. Raskin, eds. , The Viet-Nam Reader (New York: Vintage, 1965). See note 9.
42. Bernard Fall, Last Reflections on a War (New York: Doubleday, 1967). 43. Samuel Huntington, Foreign Affairs (July 1968).
44. Paul Quinn-Judge reports that deaths from 1965 on in Vietnam alone may have passed three million (Far Eastern Economic Review, Oct. II, 1984). A standard Western estimate is about 500,000 killed in the U. S. -backed French war. Hundreds of thousands more were killed in South Vietnam before 1965, in Laos, and in Cambodia.
45. According to congressional sources that cite unpublished studies of the Congressional Research Service, which are alleged to give the figure $84. 5 million, in fiscal-year 1987 dollars, from FY 1980 through FY 1986. We return to this matter in the next chapter.
46. See Charles Kadushin, The American Intellectual Elite (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974). This study was based on lengthy interviews taken in May 1970, after the Cambodia invasion, when public opposition to the war reached its highest peak. Virtually all of those interviewed were "doves," some active in opposition to the war. Virtually none opposed the war on the principled grounds of opposition to aggression (called "ideological grounds" by the au- thor) that all would have adopted had they been asked about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
47. Philadelphia Inquirer, August 30, 1987.
48. Charles Mohr, quoting a "South Vietnamese official" (New York Times, Oct. 24, 1966). One of the authors (Herman) published in 1971 a compilation of quotations, many from Saigon generals and other officials, on the need for time because of their lack of indigenous support, which made political compe- tition intolerable. See "Free Choice or Subjugation," American Report, May 7, 1971.
49. Kahin, Intervention, pp. 89, 60-61; on the secret record revealed in the Pentagon Papers, see FRS, pp. 104-5.
50. See FRS, pp. 10of.
51. March 13, 1964; Kahin, Intervention, pp. 91, 208.
52. Elterman, Circle of Deception, reviewing stories from May 1955 through July 1956; Elterman, State-Media-Ideological Hegemony, pp. 182f. .
53. Susan Welch, "The American Press and Indochina," in Richard L. Merritt, ed. , Communications in International Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972). Only the isolationist Chicago Tribune was opposed to U. S. inter- vention and challenged administration assumptions, in her sample.
54. Fall, "Vietcong-The Unseen Enemy," cites as credible the figure 66,000 killed between 1957 and 1961. Gabriel Kolko gives the figure of 12,000 killed as a "conservative" estimate for 1955-57, with 40,000 political prisoners, reach- ing 150,000 by 1961-5? ,000, according to the government (Anatomy ofa War, p. 89)?
55. "Losung fUr Vietnam," Neues Forum (August/September 1969); see our Political Economy ofHuman Rights (Boston: South End Press, 1979; hereafter PEHR), 1,3? 2,422.
56. See, among others, U. S. government specialist Douglas Pike, Viet Cong, and particularly Jeffrey Race, War Comes to Long An (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), the major study of the period preceding the outright U. S. invasion, by a U. S. military adviser with extensive access to U. S. and Saigon intelligence as well as direct evidence.
57? "The Situation and Tasks for 1959," from the Race document collection cited by Gareth Porter, A Peace Denied: The United States, Vietnam, and th; Paris Agreement (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), p. 281.
58. Race, War Comes to Long An. Essentially the same picture is presented- despairingly-in Pike's 1966 study.
59. New York Times, September 15, 1969.
60. Kahin, Intervention, p. 208; chapters 8, 9.
61. Kahin, Intervention, pp. 183f. William Bundy, January 21, 1970, cited by Kahin, p. 183.
62. Lyndon Johnson, March 20, 1964; Maxwell Taylor, November 27, 1964. See FRS, pp. 127f. , for documentation and more extensive discussion based on the Pentagon Papers record.
63? Kahin, Intervention, pp. 238, 241, 245.
64? For references and further discussion, see FRS, pp. 11of. See also Wallace
J. Thies, When Governments Collide: Coercion and Diplomacy in the Vietnam Conflict, 1964-68 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
65? E. W. Kenworthy, New York Times, November 17, 1961, reporting President Kennedy's decisions; Kenworthy, New York Times, May 10, 1961, reporting Lyndon Johnson's mission to Asia; Hallin, "Uncensored War'~ pp. 31, 53. 66. Robert Trumbull, February 18, 1962; Hanson Baldwin, September 16, 1962, May 13, 1961; Tom Wicker, February II, 1965; David Halberstam, January 20,
1963, March II, 1963; Homer Bigart, April I, 15, 1962. Hallin, "Uncensored War," pp. 51-56, 84.
67. Kahin, Intervention, p. 142.
68. James Reston, New York Times, April 25, 1965; Peter Jennings, ABC-TV, March 8, 1966; Jack Perkins, NBC-TV, January II, 1966; Hallin, "Uncensored War," pp. 89, 91, 229, 137, 140, 141.
69. Kahin, Intervention, p. 287.
70. For an extensive collection of press reports, see Seymour Melman, ed. , In the Name ofAmerica (Annandale, Va. : Turnpike Press, 1968). For analysis of the material available at the time, see Edward S. Herman, Atrocities in Vietnam: Myths and Realities (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1970).
71. New York Times, May 6, 1972.
72. Takashi Oka, Christian Science Monitor, December 4,1965; Bernard Fall, "Vietnam Blitz," New Republic, October 9, 1965.
73. Sidney Hook, "Lord Russell and the War Crimes 'Trial,' " New Leader, October 24, 1966.
74. See AWWA, PP. 98f.
75? "Truck versus Dam," Christian Science Monitor, September 5, 1967.
76. Henry Kamm, New York Times, November 15, 1969; New York Times, April 6, 1971. See FRS, pp. 225f.
