‘Dishonest’ Data Misled Johnson, Ex-CIA Man Testifies : Shame at Agency’s Role Confessed by Former No. 2 Vietnam Expert at Westmoreland Trial

NEW YORK — President Lyndon B. Johnson and his top lieutenants were misled by a “dishonest” intelligence estimate that left them unprepared for the 1968 Tet offensive, a major turning point in the Vietnam War, a former CIA official testified here Wednesday.

The assertion was made by George Allen, an analyst with Vietnam experience going back to the French occupation of the 1950s, as he appeared as a witness for CBS in the $120-million libel suit filed against the network by retired Gen. William C. Westmoreland.

Sacrifice of Integrity In some of the more dramatic moments of the long trial, Allen, once the CIA’s second-ranking expert on Vietnam, confessed his personal shame at what he described as the sacrifice of CIA integrity “on the altar of public relations and political expediency.”

His testimony before a jury in U.S. District Court involved a 1967 intelligence debate over the size of enemy forces facing U.S. combat troops in Vietnam.

Westmoreland’s lawsuit grew out of the 1982 CBS documentary, “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception,” a program that contended that Westmoreland conspired for political reasons to play down the size of the enemy force.

Allen’s testimony seemed to significantly bolster the CBS defense, even though his boss from his CIA days had appeared earlier as a major witness for Westmoreland.

After describing the enemy estimate fashioned in late 1967 as a “prostitution” of the intelligence process, Allen told the jury that he had discussed the development in detail with CIA colleague Sam Adams, who was a paid consultant on the controversial CBS broadcast and is now a co-defendant along with the network.

Allen said that he had told Adams: “Our participation in a dishonest estimate had contributed to a situation in which the policy-makers had not been prepared to anticipate an enemy offensive that would have the impact that the Tet offensive had.”

CBS maintains that Westmoreland imposed a ceiling of 300,000 on the number of enemy troops he would accept in intelligence estimates, although evidence pointed to an enemy force of more than 500,000. The Westmoreland command insisted that the Viet Cong self-defense militia be dropped from the count of enemy armed forces, witnesses on both sides have acknowledged..

In defense of the network program, Allen testified that, off camera, he had been more forthright with program producer George Crile than he was when he was interviewed on camera for the telecast.

When he was interviewed for the program in 1981, Allen said, he still had “some feeling of guilt about our involvement in it. . . . And it was very difficult to confront that in the form of a public interview.

“I was not proud of my own involvement in this process, and I was not proud of the agency,” he said.

But, he added, “I did not feel ready to wash my own and the agency’s dirty linen in public.”

Allen said that he had also been less than forthright during a congressional investigation on the failures of U.S. intelligence. Then-CIA Director William E. Colby, he said, told him to be very careful in his testimony, that he did not wish to have the CIA appear to be attacking the military.

The agency testimony before a House Select Committee on Intelligence, he said, amounted to a “cover-up.”

Because he wanted to “stay on the reservation,” Allen testified Wednesday, he had responded to congressional questions in “very guarded tones.”

“I played my role on that occasion, I regret to say, not breaking ranks,” Allen said. “I (later) told this to Mr. Crile as well.”

After the Tet offensive in January, 1968, Allen said, the CIA did break ranks, and several analysts began writing memoranda describing the situation as they had really seen it.

He described a meeting in Saigon in April, 1967, when Col. Daniel Graham, a member of Westmoreland’s staff, continued to argue that the enemy self-defense militia was composed of old women and pre-teen-agers with no military capability.

Allen said that he had interrupted Graham, telling him: “Danny, you don’t believe that.” He said that Graham replied: “ ‘Of course, I don’t believe it, but it is the command position and I am sticking with it.’

“At that exhibition of intellectual prostitution, I got up and left the meeting and had nothing more to do with it,” Allen told the jury. “It was one of the low points of my career.”

Allen’s testimony was given on the third anniversary of the show’s airing.

Under cross-examination by Westmoreland attorney David Dorsen, Allen denied that he has elevated the importance of the self-defense militia. He insisted that reports from intelligence specialists in the war had said that as many as 40% of the U.S. losses were at times caused by the militia, which he said carried out ambushes and planted mines and booby traps against U.S. troops entering hamlets in the Vietnamese countryside.

The units were considered by Viet Cong leaders to be an important part of their military apparatus, Allen said, and had been counted in intelligence reports going back to the days when French forces fought against the Viet Minh.