Authors: John M. Del Vecchio
It is an unquestionable truth that the body of the people in every country desire sincerely its prosperity; but it is equally unquestionable that they do not possess the discernment and stability necessary for systematic government. To deny that they are frequently led into the grossest errors by misinformation and passion would be a flattery which their own good sense must despise.
“That was 1788. During Viet Nam, public misinformation incited passionate antigovernment movements. Incompetence in reportage led to administrations being overwhelmed and finally forced into an unnecessary, ill-advised, and—unfortunately for millions of Southeast Asian human beings—genocide-producing forfeitures of the allied military victories of 1968 and 1972. This lengthened, not shortened, the war. As someone said, ‘They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.’”
After the recess Gary Sherrick delivered the defense’s final opening argument. His segment was disappointing. He reiterated numerous points covered by Denahee and Mariano, refuted little of Wagner’s attack. Sherrick seemed antsy, anxious to delve into the meat of the exercise, the testimony of the expert witnesses. Tony and the prosecutors sensed he had something up his sleeve.
Session Two—15 October 1981—The air was charged. All week vets from each side concurred in private, speculated what their opponents would do. The prosecution’s plan was to demonstrate that various beliefs or myths about American involvement in Viet Nam were widely held by the American public; that those beliefs—the elements of the story of American involvement—were established by biased information promulgation; that the stories, by commission, omission or reductionism, were skewed or untrue; and finally that these mistaken beliefs had serious social, political and martial consequences. Renneau tagged the prosecution’s witnesses Myth Busters.
Jeremiah Gallagher took the stand. “The story changed drastically after publication of the Pentagon Papers,” he explained. “These documents, or at least the fraction carried by the mass media, about ten percent, seemed to prove that America under Truman and Eisenhower supported French colonialism and opposed Viet Namese nationalism.
“Yet,” Gallagher continued, “as a result of an agreement by the Big Three at Yalta, in the immediate post-World War Two period, France, prodded by the United States, set, if reluctantly, upon a course to grant independence to its colonies. By stages France did grant Cambodia and Laos independence, with full independence being given during the year preceding Dien Bien Phu. One can argue that ‘granting’ and ‘giving’ were not the just rights of the colonial powers—that colonies always had the right to independence. If you feel such, substitute the word
acquiesced
. The reality is the same.
“But in Viet Nam the independence process was thwarted because of a violent anticolonial movement. Ho Chi Minh and the communists needed the antagonism of the French to rise to, and to consolidate, power. Instead of supporting nationalist causes, Ho actually undermined all non-communist, anticolonial, proindependence organizations through various means including the assassination of their leaders. After the Geneva Accords divided Viet Nam into the communist North and the non-communist South, Ho’s party, between ’54 and ’56, consolidated internal control via Stalinesque tactics. In 1956 the peasants of Ho’s home province, Nghe An, revolted. This uprising was crushed by the communists’ 325th Division. At that time the Hungarian Revolution was also being crushed. Media attention was focused on Europe, and the tyranny in Southeast Asia was ignored. Nghe An was one of thousands of incidents of communist oppression that were virtually disregarded by the media. Today those barbarities are continuously left out of the retelling of what happened, and of how America became involved.”
Gary Sherrick cross-examined. “Might not the rise of Ho Chi Minh and the communists be seen as a justifiable reaction, as a backlash, to colonialism?”
“Yeah. Maybe. But they didn’t have to—”
“And might not it be said that Ho Chi Minh was driven by his abhorrence of imperialism?”
“That doesn’t justify—”
“Maybe,” Sherrick said. His expression changed. “There was a navy doctor, Tom Dooley, who wrote several books about this period.” Sherrick smiled. “Did you read them?”
“Yes,” Gallagher answered.
“And you’ve cited other sources for your claims.”
“Yes. You have my bibliography.”
“Um. It was extensive. You found quite a bit of information, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it wasn’t ignored, was it?”
“It was by the mass—” Gallagher began.
Sherrick cut him off. “It’s available to anyone who wishes to look, isn’t it?”
“Come on, Gary. That’s not what this is about. We’re talking general public knowledge.”
“Are we?” Sherrick asked. “You’ve accused my clients of fraud, cover-up, malicious skewings and misrepresentations, yet you have used sources produced by my clients to establish that my clients haven’t produced those sources.”
“The information’s only there if you dig for it,” Gallagher snapped.
“Then perhaps you should accuse the public of laziness, not the media of conspiracy.”
Ed Fernandez testified about the early period in the South. “Despite having to deal with a deluge of refugees from the North—the equivalent of the U.S. attempting to resettle nearly eighteen million refugees within a two-year span—the Saigon regime was developing a modicum of political legitimacy, international acceptance and economic growth. In contrast to the severe regimentation in the North, the South, with American economic assistance, was blossoming. Ho Chi Minh’s agents saw that Ngo Dinh Diem not only was not on the verge of collapse, as had been anticipated, but that the South held more promise and more hope than did the North. These observations were reported in May 1959 to the Hanoi politburo at the Fifteenth Plenum. In response, Ho Chi Minh ordered the establishment of a supply trail from the North to the South, and the resuscitation of the guerrilla war—this time against the Saigon government.
“The myths here,” Fernandez said, “are first that the South, because of its chaotic pluralism and observable repression of various sects, was highly unstable; and that Ho Chi Minh was the legitimate leader of the North, while Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic in a Confucian and Buddhist country, was an illegitimate ruler in the South. Without denying any of the South’s significant problems, these conclusions simply are not true. Had the North Viet Namese communists not launched their war against the South, including, by 1962, the assassination of approximately one thousand hamlet, village, district and province officials each month, South Viet Nam today might be the democratic and economic equal of South Korea.”
“Objection,” Sherrick blurted. “Conjecture.”
“Sustained,” Bobby agreed.
Sherrick’s cross-examination again demonstrated that the “myths” the prosecution perceived were mirages the prosecution had created and then dispelled using information from public media reports.
Deeper into the session historical myths about the ’60 to ’67 period, and Tet of ’68, were presented and parried by the defense. Every prosecution witness was followed by a defense witness who reestablished the foundation for the “myths,” and who in turn was cross-examined by either Renneau, the Wagner or Pisano. Like the defense, the prosecution was able to discredit every testimony by showing how each was limited in depth and focus.
After the break the Myth Busters altered their tactics. “Americans were animals at My Lai but that incident was minor in the scope of the war. Yet of a total of 9,447 network evening news stories about the war that aired between 1963 and 1977,” Al Palanzo testified, “473 dealt with the atrocity at My Lai. The media focused and fixated on this single incident which represented three of every one hundred thousand war deaths. The NVA assassinated six thousand Saigon government civilian personnel in 1970. That did not receive one minute of American television air time. Not one minute!
“The ramifications of this reportage are the labeling of allied soldiers as baby killers, and the dissolution of the moral rightness of the cause. By the way,” Al added, “these media figures have never been made public, and are not now in the public record. They have been derived from an internal network report.”
That seemed to catch Sherrick and the defense off balance. He questioned Palanzo at length about his source and how the information had been obtained. Then he requested that the evidence be declared inadmissible. Bobby ruled against him. Sherrick called Derrick Eaton and Steven Smith to the stand for the defense. They spoke of atrocities they’d seen, exclaimed that My Lai itself may have been a drop in the bucket but that it represented all American atrocities, reported and unreported, “which probably numbered in the millions.” Renneau cross-examined Eaton; Pisano took on Smith. The point stalemated.
The role of the media with regard to the Easter Offensive of 1972 was examined next. Data was presented about the NVA’s 200,000-man, 500-tank, three-pronged attack that included the communist four-division assault on Quang Tri and Thua Thien provinces, their successful capture of Dak To, and their siege of An Loc. Civilian casualty figures were presented along with a picture of the vast uprooting of millions of South Viet Namese. Then John Manfrieda explained how, without this massive, communist conventional-military assault, none of the casualties would have occurred. Manfrieda continued on about how the bombing of Hanoi and the mining of Haiphong were reactions to that NVA assault. “Yet,” Manfrieda said, “the story was skewed away from communist assaults on civilians, away from communist atrocities, and away from Soviet and Chinese collaboration,
to
U.S. military reactions and antiwar demonstrations in the U.S. Even when South Viet Namese ground forces, assisted only by U.S. air power, blunted, countered, and defeated the attacking force—causing the infamous NVA general, Vo Nguyen Giap, victor of Dien Bien Phu, to be relieved of command—the media concentrated its attention on American bomb damage to civilian areas of Hanoi and Haiphong, and on antiwar speeches by members of Congress. Just as Tet ’68 was reported,” Manfrieda continued, “so too was the communist Nguyen Hue Offensive first labeled a communist victory, then, when the counteroffensive crushed the attacks, this real victory was ignored and
never
reported. That is collusion. That is misrepresentation. Four hundred seventy-three stories on the several hundred American-committed murders at My Lai; but only twenty-six stories on the upwards of 25,000 civilian deaths caused by that NVA offensive. That is malicious skewing of available information.
“It is only through military documents of the time, not through public press stories, that I was able to document these assertions,” Manfrieda continued. “In light of communist documents released in 1978, what I have told you is irrefutable. These documents, too, were essentially ignored by all but the most esoteric journals.”
Sherrick and the defense were not deterred. That perhaps the prosecution had established a beachhead to biased reportage was of no concern. The charge was malicious skewing, and the prosecution had yet to present any evidence of malice.
Session Three—22 October 1981—The prosecution directed its attacks away from historical phases myths to ambient myths: the “Viet Cong as a ragtag peasant army of ‘minutemen’ instantly abandoning their paddies when called to arms” myth
versus
the “highly structured proselytizing organization partially directed by Northern cadre, and composed—only one in ten was an armed combatant—primarily of unarmed, impressed peasants, of part-time bureaucrats, and of full-time autocrats” reality; the “unwinnable war” myth
versus
the “allied military victory and political forfeiture” reality; the “no safe place in Viet Nam because there were no ‘front lines’” myth
versus
the “physical distribution of violence, which clearly showed, with the exception of the major offensives of ’68, ’72 and ’75, that there were, albeit vague, ‘front lines,’ and that the populated areas were relatively peaceful” reality; the “war never changed and was a quagmire of meaningless firefights and death” myth
versus
the “phases coupled with their adjunct social, political, economic and martial evolution” reality; the “all GIs were druggies” myth
versus
the “actual figures for different periods, which showed early drug use was virtually unknown and that it did not become epidemic (ten percent users) until the withdrawal phase was well under way, and that overall heroin addiction was less than one percent” reality; and on and on.
After the break Hollywood and literature were examined. “Images are Tinseltown’s business,” Mike Hawley stated. “‘High concept,’” he quoted a trade journal, “that is, a story so simplified it can be reduced to one sentence, ‘is what producers want today. How it is said is more important than what is said.’” Hawley reviewed images from
Apocalypse Now
,
The Deer Hunter
,
Heroes
, and
Coming Home
. He identified “prowar” and “antiwar” themes and gave detailed examples using well-known scenes. “‘The stories,’” he quoted from a
Newsweek
review, “‘tend to be relentlessly downbeat and the protagonists are invariably antiheroic—war-numbed GIs who lop off enemy soldiers’ ears, or unhinged veterans like the character ... in
Heroes
.’ The problem,” Hawley concluded, “is inherent to the nature of this medium—simplicity, drama, and temporocentricism. As one major publisher put it, ‘There has been no counterwave of exculpatory literature to balance these bleak accounts.’”
“Temporocentricism?” Carl Mariano asked on cross-examination.
“The pattern or need of centering on only one’s moment in time,” Mike Hawley explained. “Ethnocentricism and temporocentricism narrow our perceptions and knowledge by ignoring other-culture activities and historical antecedents. For example, if the storytellers relay only what Americans did in a specific and limited circumstance, without relaying the antecedents that placed a faceless enemy in the sights of the home-boys, the viewer can only judge the American action in the snapshot of presented time. Meanings, motives, and reasons are lost. Gary himself talked about shallow conclusions being drawn from shallow presentations.”