by April Oliver
The September 30, 1999 front-page Associated Press story about an American military massacre during the Korean War touched off an agonizing debate about possible war crimes committed by U.S. soldiers. After interviewing soldiers who witnessed the deliberate shooting of as many as 300 Korean civilians, including women and children, and confirming it with survivors, the Associated Press made headlines worldwide with its coverage of this long-hidden secret.
I was struck by the Pentagon's initial response to the well-documented disclosure. We've heard this same litany before: "Denial," "Denial," "Denial," "There's no documentary evidence," "The records say the U.S. soldiers were not even in the vicinity," "The Pentagon has looked into this already and there is simply nothing to the story." In this case, the denials sounded implausible, despite the dearth of Pentagon documents.
For me, it was deja vu all over again. I am embroiled in defending a story with some parallels, including similar denials—a story about Operation Tailwind, in which American troops in Vietnam entered Laos from September 11 to September 14, 1970, on a covert mission to attack an encampment of U.S. defectors using the nerve gas, sarin.
At first, after our story aired, my co-producer Jack Smith and I were celebrated for our reporting. However, after enormous political pressure was brought to bear on CNN, the network reversed itself; fired us, the producers, for allegedly having insufficient evidence; intimated that the story was inaccurate; and issued a half-baked report indicting us, rather than the Pentagon. CNN is now facing a flurry of lawsuits growing out of the continuing dispute, including one brought by me.
As the producer of the Tailwind report, I have watched, with some amazement, the stark differences in the press treatment of the No Gun Ri affair (an analogous Korean-war incident, in which U.S. soldiers machine-gunned hundreds of Korean civilians) and the Tailwind story. The Tailwind report was sourced in much the same way: Soldiers who participated in an extraordinary mission stepped forward, on camera, to talk about their actions. Our sourcing was deep: Approximately half a dozen sources appeared on camera. Furthermore, it was buttressed by the testimony of senior command personnel, as well as off-camera testimony by some of the men who participated in the mission. A retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Thomas Moorer, read the script before it aired and affirmed its accuracy. The story was also confidentially confirmed by another key player, a former Special Forces commander named John Singlaub, better known as an Iran-Contra mastermind. [Singlaub, who testified before Congress, was a key player in supplying weapons to the Contras—ed.]. Additional confidential sources attested to the report's accuracy.
Ted Turner, vice chairman of Time Warner Inc., commenting on
CNN's retracted "Tailwind" story during his speech to the
Telvision Critics Association on July 10,1998. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian) |
Nonetheless, CNN caved in to the inevitable pressure-campaign to retract and ran from the Tailwind story. Senior management bought the Pentagon's disinformation, which was shoveled at them from all directions. In an act of sublime sycophancy, CNN managers retracted our Tailwind report because of allegedly insufficient proof or, in the words of Ted Turner, not having "evidence beyond a reasonable doubt." Given that standard, the story of No Gun Ri would never have been published by the Associated Press; after all, the Pentagon's documentary records "prove" the incident did not happen. The Associated Press editors have admitted to The New York Times that the Tailwind episode made them cautious, reluctant to tackle the story. CNN's retreat from the Tailwind story has had a chilling effect on investigative reporting about the military's misdeeds.
The Associated Press should be applauded for its courage in pursuing this story, as well as its excellent reporting. CNN management should take a lesson from them. Inside the AP, it appears, there was no retired general at the elbow of management, campaigning for the Pentagon's interests. In contrast, at CNN, retired Air Force General Perry Smith, the former CNN military-affairs talking head, bad-mouthed the Tailwind story repeatedly. He placed blatantly inaccurate information in front of CNN's senior bosses in an effort to discredit the story. This included wrong data about the science of sarin and the service records of men involved in the Tailwind mission. A retired Air Force general who draws a pension from the Pentagon should never have been allowed this sort of extraordinary editorial access and influence. Smith had far more direct access to CNN's top management than I, the prime Tailwind investigator, did. The only time I talked directly and personally with CNN's top manager, Tom Johnson, was the phone call in which he fired me. CNN was never interested in getting to the truth of the Tailwind story. Their only apparent interest was in quashing the story to make amends with the Pentagon.
Now, however, with the growing litigation surrounding Tailwind, it is possible to put documentary evidence that supports the Tailwind story in front of the public. This is the very information that CNN, in its effort to put the story behind it, was determined to hide from the public. Attached is a transcript made public in a recent court pleading; it comprises my notes taken during an interview with retired general John Singlaub. [See right-column link.] Singlaub was the Pentagon's primary public witness claiming the Tailwind story could not possibly be true. In confidence, however, he confirmed the story.
When Singlaub sued me last year for defamation, he released me from my pledge of confidentiality, allowing me to put this important information on the public record, including his admission at the time. Did I "intimidate him," as he charges? Or, as is more likely, is he now trying to cover the tracks of a candid admission whose implications he didn't realize at the time? The cover-up of Tailwind ended with our report. Now the cover-up of the cover-up is on the verge of being exposed in court. [See right-hand column link for Oliver’s press release about her lawsuit against CNN and breaking news about the status of her the case.]
- April Oliver has worked as a producer and associate producer in public television for 15 years. Ms. Oliver was an associate producer at Internews, where her film "Assignment: Africa" was nominated for a national Emmy award. She worked as an international affairs reporter for PBS's "MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour" for 5 years before going to CNN in 1994, where she produced public affairs programs, among them the CNN-Time "Newsstand" report, "Valley of Death." Ms. Oliver left CNN in June 1998, and is currently pursuing a degree in law at George Mason University.
