Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [165]
Further candidates for investigation appear in the Pentagon Papers—for example, General Wheeler, who summarized the situation in the following terms to the president on February 27, just as Walter Cronkite was speculating about “stalemate,” arousing Freedom House ire:
The enemy is operating with relative freedom in the countryside, probably recruiting heavily and no doubt infiltrating NVA units and personnel. His recovery is likely to be rapid; his supplies are adequate; and he is trying to maintain the momentum of his winter-spring offensive . . . ARVN is now in a defensive posture around towns and cities and there is concern about how well they will bear up under sustained pressure. The initial attack nearly succeeded in a dozen places, and defeat in these places was only averted by the timely reaction of US forces. In short, it was a very near thing. There is no doubt that the RD Program [pacification] has suffered a severe set back . . . To a large extent the VC now control the countryside . . . MACV estimates that US forces will be required in a number of places to assist and encourage the Vietnamese Army to leave the cities and towns and reenter the country. This is especially true in the Delta.
The media reports that Braestrup derides were rarely as “pessimistic” as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose summary of the situation led the president to order “the initiation of a complete and searching reassessment of the entire U.S. strategy and commitment in South Vietnam,” the Pentagon Papers analyst reports.133
The CIA must also be investigated for contributing to the decline of “free institutions” by its pessimism. A CIA paper of March 1, presumably uninfluenced by Walter Cronkite, expressed grave doubts about the GVN and ARVN and predicted that they might cease “effective functioning in parts of the country,” so that “virtually the entire burden of the war would fall on US forces.” Like Cronkite a few days earlier, they expected “no better than a standoff” in the coming ten months. Pentagon systems analysis concluded that the offensive “appears to have killed the [pacification] program once and for all,” drawing the conclusion that Braestrup falsely attributes to the media (see appendix 3), and estimated that “our control of the countryside and the defense of the urban areas is now at pre-August 1965 levels.” It was because of this serious situation—not perceived American successes, as Braestrup intimates—that they recommended what was later to be called “Vietnamization.”
The civilian analysts in the Pentagon must be charged not only with undue pessimism, but also with some of the other crimes of the press. For example, they referred to the famous statement that we are destroying South Vietnam in order to save it; citation of this statement is the target of much Braestrup scorn. We must also include Colonel Herbert Schandler, on whom Braestrup relies for his account of the Wheeler-Westmoreland request for additional troops. He was, Braestrup says, the anonymous author of the Pentagon Papers section on this material, and here he described as “a startlingly accurate account” a New York Times article by Neil Sheehan and Hedrick Smith which, Braestrup claims, was a major example of “distorted and incomplete” reporting (I, 581, 613). The authors of the “Epilogue” to the Pentagon Papers must also be included in the indictment, given their pessimistic post-Tet assessment of “the price for military victory” and the “illusory” nature of claimed progress.
The category of people who were not threatening “free institutions” by the standards of Freedom House is small indeed, a fact that some may find suggestive.
It is significant that the major criticism of the