-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- http://www.apbnews.com/media/mediawatch/2000/02/14/singlaub_main0214_01.html ?s=syn.daily_singlaub_main0214 Vietnam General: I Am Not a War Criminal Singlaub Sues CNN Over Vietnam Nerve Gas Accusations Feb. 14, 2000 By James Gordon Meek James Gordon Meek/APBnews.com Retired Maj. Gen. John Singlaub ARLINGTON, Va. (APBnews.com) -- Retired Maj. Gen. John Singlaub wants you to know he is not a war criminal. The former special forces commander said he did not use banned chemical weapons during the Vietnam War, nor did he carpet-bomb his own men, as alleged in reports by the Cable News Network (CNN) two years ago. He wants you to appreciate his sincerity, his frustration and humiliation at the hands of the national news media -- and he wants you to understand why he's now suing CNN, Time Inc., Time-Warner and two journalists. His lawsuit claims a 1997 CNN broadcast on the covert missions of America's longest war accused him of committing war crimes. His lawsuit also claims a 1998 follow-up report by CNN implied he had knowledge of alleged atrocities involving the use of nerve gas against American defectors in Laos. With mediation aimed at settling the lawsuits set to begin Feb. 21 -- including a countersuit against Singlaub by fired CNN producer April Oliver -- the career soldier still agonizes over what he regards as a defamatory assessment of his wartime service more than 30 years ago. "I want to make it absolutely clear that Singlaub did not commit war crimes, that the troops under him and those who followed in his command did not commit war crimes," the two-star general -- speaking of himself in the third person -- told APBnews.com in an exclusive interview about the case. He sees his final mission as the restoration of his good name, his honor and the dignity of his men. In collaboration with Time magazine, CNN's Impact program ran a segment on Sept. 14, 1997, called "Secret Warriors" that told the story of a covert unit conducting cross-border "black" operations in Communist-held North Vietnam and the neutral countries of Cambodia and Laos. The Special Forces operators tasked with many of the war's most dangerous missions were volunteers in the Studies and Observations Group under the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACVSOG). Throughout the war, the force dispatched small teams to infiltrate, disrupt and document Communist trade routes and camps in "Indian country" -- hostile territory. Singlaub, a barrel-chested, crew-cut officer who commanded SOG from 1966 to 1968, said on camera that he had requested an "incapacitating agent" for his men to use in dart guns. It was possibly lethal, the CNN report alleged and, if so, was illegal under the Geneva Protocol's rules of warfare. The United States was a signatory, but Congress did not ratify the treaty until 1975, the broadcast said. The CNN-Time report also said the general had agreed that SOG teams understood they might be targeted on these secret missions by American B-52 Stratofortress bombers rather than risk capture by the enemy during battle. All these assertions are now being denied by Singlaub. "We never targeted Americans, as alleged," Singlaub told APBnews.com. "We never dropped B-52 strikes on our own troops. And the idea that I attempted to put in a request for lethal agents is just false." What were these potentially lethal agents? They were not identified in the 1997 "Secret Warriors" segment, except as chemical agents one on-camera expert said were prohibited by international law. "Singlaub knew this and demanded them anyway," correspondent Peter Arnett told viewers. "The Pentagon eventually armed some SOG teams with darts filled with chemicals, gas canisters and full-body protective gear." Incapacitating vs. killing Yet, a review by APBnews.com of the raw footage from the only on-camera interview Singlaub gave to CNN on July 8, 1997, tells a different story. Singlaub repeatedly stated to producer April Oliver that he had requested a nonlethal "incapacitating agent" akin to an animal tranquilizer for the purpose of subduing enemy troops for capture and interrogation. He said the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- the highest level in the military chain of command -- turned down his request, and the chemicals were never used during his SOG tenure. In an exchange excluded from the 18-minute "Secret Warriors" segment, Singlaub said to Oliver: "The incapacitating agents were not lethal, generally speaking, they are not lethal. That's why they are 'incapacitating agents,' as opposed to a 'killing agent.'" Oliver asked Singlaub if SOG ever used killing agents as far as he knew. "I can say that with absolute assurance in all the time that I was there, and in talking to my predecessors, whom I know well, I ....continued CONTINUED to Page 2 of 3: War crime or 'humanitarian innovation'? http://www.apbnews.com/media/mediawatch/2000/02/14/singlaub_main0214_02.html Vietnam General: I Am Not a War Criminal (Continued) AP Peter Arnett War crime or 'humanitarian innovation'? Oliver now says Singlaub flip-flopped during an off-camera follow-up interview. A week before "Secret Warriors" aired, the two met at Washington's Army-Navy Club, where Singlaub allegedly changed his story and said lethal nerve gas was stockpiled in Southeast Asia, according to copies of Oliver's contemporaneous notes -- handwritten notes she later typed into her computer -- which she provided to APBnews.com. Curiously, though Singlaub's comments were on the record, CNN never identified the "incapacitating agent" specifically as nerve gas in "Secret Warriors." That revelation would have to wait for nearly a year when it became the main subject of another Oliver-produced broadcast. In "Secret Warriors," the allegation that Singlaub wanted a banned weapon in his SOG arsenal was followed by a statement from Harvard biochemist Matthew Meselson, who said the dart guns constituted "a war crime" if used, because the United States claimed to abide by the Geneva Protocol. Singlaub said this in effect fingered him. Interviewed by APBnews.com, Oliver said that "Singlaub is beefing things up in the sense that he is trying to make it that I've accused him of being a war criminal when that was never said. ... We went to great lengths to give him the opportunity to present this as humanitarian innovation." In the same 1997 broadcast, Singlaub admitted that SOG teams were used to bait the enemy, to draw them out into the open where they could be attacked by U.S. Air Force flights. Rather than be captured during cross-border operations in neutral countries, Arnett intoned, "Sometimes SOG teams got hammered as well." 'B-52 strikes and bombs falling' CNN did not explicitly state that Singlaub or other U.S. commanders ordered high-altitude B-52 sorties to obliterate SOG teams that had been captured or were in immediate danger of capture. The general said it was implied in the juxtaposition of words and pictures, which include his own on-camera statements. "They showed B-52 strikes and the bombs falling. It's quite clear that their intent was to say that I called in these B-52 strikes," Singlaub told APBnews.com. During his on-camera interview with Oliver, Singlaub said individual SOG team leaders may have requested low-level air strikes to prevent being overrun, but calling in immediate B-52 "arclight" attacks to do the job was unlikely. It would be "like killing a fly with a hammer," he said, but those comments were omitted in the broadcast. Oliver rejects the argument, anyway. "These were extreme tactics, and it was a secret war, and they went to great lengths to try to protect the secrecy of this particular war." Singlaub further contends his answers to questions about the B-52 sorties in the "Secret Warriors" broadcast do not match up with the questions he was asked by Oliver during the interview in his home office. But the raw camera footage shows no serious editing discrepancies by CNN. Tied to sarin nerve gas The case gets more complicated. While it's arguable that few will remember the 1997 "Secret Warriors" documentary about MACVSOG -- the central focus of Singlaub's lawsuit -- he also objects to being tied to Newsstand: CNN & Time's June 1998 documentary "Valley of Death." CNN and Time were later compelled to retract allegations that SOG teams participating in a 1970 operation code-named "Tailwind" had killed American defectors in Laos with outlawed sarin nerve gas, the same agent used in the deadly 1995 Tokyo subway terrorist attack. Singlaub's photo was shown in the segment as Arnett said, "Former SOG commander John Singlaub told CNN, 'It may be more important to your survival to kill the defector than to kill a Vietnamese or a Russian.'" The general doesn't remember if he made that statement to April Oliver in an April 1998 phone discussion, but said he may have. Producer countersues In a countersuit against Singlaub, Oliver named him as one of three confidential sources on the Tailwind story -- the other two remain anonymous -- and said her contemporaneous notes prove he not only gave CNN permission to quote him about defectors in the 1998 broadcast on Operation Tailwind, but he also confirmed important details of the mission on a confidential background basis. She said the notes will hold up under scrutiny in court, but she did not tape-record any of the five off-camera interviews she said she had with Singlaub between 1997 and 1998, despite the magnitude of the story she was planning to report and despite alleged death threats made by some if she proceeded. In 15 years in television journalism, Oliver said, she never felt compelled to audiotape a telephone interview. Oliver said she made an unprecedented promise to go to jail to protect Singlaub's anonymity as a source on nerve gas use in Operation Tailwind, but saw no risk in quoting him as an open source in the same TV report because he gave his permission to use the remarks about defectors in the 1998 broadcast. "If he was the exclusive source of this story whose shoulders it stood on, I think that maybe there would be reason for more caution on that," she said. CONTINUED to Page 3 of 3: What did he know, and when? http://www.apbnews.com/media/mediawatch/2000/02/14/singlaub_main0214_03.html Vietnam General: I Am Not a War Criminal (Continued) What did he know, and when? Singlaub admits speaking to Oliver after "Secret Warriors" ran in 1997, but denies he confirmed SOG atrocities. After all, he said, he departed Vietnam's theater of operations in 1968, two years (and two SOG commanders) before Operation Tailwind unfolded in 1970. But Oliver points to interrogatory statements that Singlaub made under oath about his close relationships with his SOG successors. "I think if anybody knows what went down on major operations, Singlaub is SOG for all intents and purposes," Oliver said. Singlaub was so well wired into that stealth community, she argued, that he had access to information about Operation Tailwind. The general denies ever hearing of that mission until Oliver mentioned it to him. As for CNN associating him with its 1998 report, Singlaub said his troops tried to save lives by rescuing prisoners of war, evaders and downed airmen, and would give the "same reward" to American turncoats discovered in the jungle. Not 'the evil commander' Would he have killed traitors if ordered to? "I don't think so," Singlaub said. "I think that would be an illegal order ... to murder one of your own men." Singlaub said the impact of the outright charges and implied allegations was personally devastating and hurt his reputation among those who respected him. "I have a daughter living in Germany, who saw [the Impact program] on CNN International and she thought clearly that they had accused me," he said. "Her friends thought the same thing. And lots of calls that came in after that indicated that we were falsely accused, and they were incensed by that." The general said he is not "the evil commander depicted" and wants CNN to admit that war crimes did not take place on his watch. "I think if this is presented to a jury, they will have the same sense of outrage that we have, and they will award significant punitive damages against CNN." Two views, little common ground Contacted by APBnews.com, CNN spokesman David Bittler declined to comment on the pending litigation. Arnett, who is represented in the lawsuits by CNN, did not return calls to his office. Singlaub's lawyer, Keith Mitnik, said he doesn't want to state any goal for damages just as mediation toward a settlement nears. But he said he hopes to convince a jury in District of Columbia Superior Court to award the general more than $1 million if the case goes to trial. Nothing, he said, can easily restore Singlaub's reputation, which the Florida lawyer argues has suffered "catastrophic damage." Oliver doesn't see it that way, naturally, and said "Secret Warriors" gave due credit to men of great courage. "That piece, in the view of CNN and in my view, was a valentine. I mean, this was not a piece that was negative," Oliver said. "The whole plane, the tenor, the emotion of it was to really celebrate these secret warriors whose stories hadn't been told." <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! 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