national
CBS libel trial
to begin soon
NEW YORK (AP) — The
selection of a jury that will hear
testimony from some of the big
gest names of the 1960s and
view once-secret intelligence
reports on Vietnam begins
today in Gen. William
Westmoreland’s $120 million
libel suit against CBS.
U.S. District Judge Pierre
Leval and lawyers were to ques
tion 100 people to find 12 jurors
and six alternates who will
decide whether CBS libeled the
retired general in a Jan. 23, 1982
documentary titled “The Un
counted Enemy: A Vietnam
Deception” and in promotional
advertising for it.
The panel — twice the size of
the usual jury for civil cases —
will get a chance to dissect the
way military intelligence is in
terpreted and the way CBS put
together the hard-hitting
documentary, viewed by
millions of people, which
charged Westmoreland with a
politically motivated
"conspiracy” to falsify reports
of enemy troop strength during
the Vietnam War.
Westmoreland, former com
mander of U.S. troops in Viet
nam, is suing correspondent
Mike Wallace, producer George
Crile, former CIA analyst and
CBS consultant Sam Adams and
the network.
f
The ‘‘CBS Reports’’
documentary outlined a dispute
during 1967 between military
and CIA analysts who disagreed
on how large an opposing force
Americans faced in Vietnam.
Westmoreland’s staff counted
fewer than 300,000 soldiers; a
CIA analyst who included
enemy guerrillas listed almost
twice as many.
CBS charged that
Westmoreland insisted the
lower figure be used to mislead
the American public, Congress
and Pres. Lyndon Johnson into
believing the war could be won.
The network asserted the decep
tion left U.S. troops unprepared
for the size of the communists’
Tet offensive in January 1968.
CBS said its defense will be to
prove the truth of its documen
tary. Likely witnesses include
former CIA analysts who sup
port the charges.
Westmoreland has lined up
an array of high-ranking of
ficials from the 1960s who
maintain that there was no plot
involving the troop figures and
that Johnson was aware of the
intelligence dispute. He also is
planning to call CBS
employees, including some
defendants, as witnesses to
delve into their state of mind
while planning the broadcast.
In order to win,
Westmoreland must prove both
that the show was false and that
it was broadcast with “reckless
disregard for the truth.”
I
Banks handed
three years
CUSTER, S.D. (AP) — Indian
activist Dennis Banks was
sentenced to three years in
prison on Monday for his role in
a 1973 riot at the Custer County
courthouse.
* Banks, a co-founder of the
American Indian Movement,
was sentenced by Circuit ]udge
Marshal Young to serve three
years on a charge of rioting with
a dangerous weapon and three
years for assault with a weapon
without intent to kill. The
sentences will run
concurrently.
After hearing six hours of
testimony from 26 character
witnesses, Young said he had to
follow the law, which set a
minimum sentence of two years
on the riot conviction.
r
The judge said he found it dif
ficult to set a sentence nine
years after Banks had been con
victed and fled from South
Dakota, but Young said the
sentence he handed down Mon
day was the same he thinks he
would have set in 1975.
Banks’ attorney William
Kunstler said he will appeal the
convictions and sentence to the
South Dakota Supreme Court.
Under state law, Banks could
have received a maximum
sentence of 15 years on the riot
and assault convictions.
In addition to the state con
victions, Banks also faces a
federal charge of flight to avoid
confinement. U.S. Attorney
Phil Hogen said a trial has been
set in federal court for Oct. 29.
He did not say where it will be
held.
Banks said he fled South
Dakota after being convicted in
1975 because he had heard .
statements by prison guards
who said he wouldn’t last 20
minutes at the South Dakota
State Penitentiary in Sioux
Falls.
In a statement that lasted
more than one-half hour Mon
day, Banks told Young that he
pleaded innocent to the charges
in 1975 and still believes he is
innocent. He said he and others
came to Custer in 1973 because
they were concerned about
discrimination against Indians
and wanted authorities to
charge a white man for the stab
bing death of an Indian man.
Banks, 47, said he wants to be
free as soon as possible to con
tinue helping Indians to work
against racism and
discrimination.
“I don’t know if you can feel
discrimination, judge. I don’t
know if you can feel racism,”
Banks told Young. “But I do.”
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ENTERTAINMENT For ,al1 the happenings this
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