Westmoreland sued producer George Crile III, correspondent Mike Wallace, and others for alleging that Westmoreland participated in a conspiracy to  defraud the American public about progress in  the  Vietnam War. The suit was dropped, however, before  reaching the jury, with CBS merely issuing  a statement  saying the network never meant to impugn the general's patriotism.

     CBS subsequently lost its libel insurance. The controversy also had implications for the debate over repeal of the financial interest and syndication rules. CBS chair Tom Wyman twice admonished his news division in 1984 for hindering broadcast deregulation. In part as a result of the controversies, fewer CBS documentaries were produced than ever before.

     The lawsuit generated an abundance of literature, as well as soul-searching among broadcast journalists regarding ethics, First Amendment protection, libel law, and the politicization of TV news . Unlike the case for a similar, but lesser, controversy over The Selling of the Pentagon, "The Uncounted Enemy" failed to uplift TV news and instead contributed to the documentary's decline.

     The program states that the 1968 Tet Offensive stunned Americans because U.S. military leaders in South Vietnam arbitrarily discounted the size of the enemy that was reflected in Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports. Former intelligence officers testify that field command reports withheld information from Washington and the press, ostensibly under orders from higher military command, and that a 300,000-troop ceiling was imposed on official reports to reflect favorable progress in the war. This manipulation of information was characterized as a "conspiracy" in print ads and at the top of the broadcast.

     The first part of the documentary chronicles the CIA-MACY (Military Assistance Command, Viet­ nam) dispute over intelligence estimates. Part 2 reports that prior to Tet, infiltration down the Ho Chi Minh Trail exceeded 20,000 North Vietnamese per month. Again, the report alleges, these figures were discounted. The last segment charges that intelligence officers purged government databases to hide the deception.

     The most provocative scene features correspondent Mike Wallace interviewing Westmoreland. An extreme close-up captures the general trying to wet his dry mouth as Wallace fires questions. The visual image in conjunction with other program material suggests that Westmoreland engineered a conspiracy, and, as viewers can see, he appears guilty. Westmoreland publicly rebuked these claims and demanded 45 minutes of open airtime to reject "The Uncounted Enemy" assertions. CBS refused the request.

     In the spring of 1982, a CBS News employee disclosed to TV Guide that producer George Crile had violated network standards in making the program. The May 24 story by Sally Bedell and Don Kowet, "Anatomy of a Smear: How CBS News Broke the Rules and 'Got' Gen. Westmoreland," stipulated how the production strayed from accepted practices. Significantly, TV Guide never disputed the premise of the program. The writers attacked the journalistic process, pointing out, for instance, that Crile screened interviews of other participants for one witness and then shot a second interview, that he avoided interviewing witnesses who would counter his thesis, and that answers to various questions were edited into a single response.

     CBS News president Van Gordon Sauter, who was new to his position, appointed veteran documentary producer Burton Benjamin to investigate. His analysis, known as the "Benjamin Report," corroborated TV Guide's claims.

     According to a report in The American Lawyer, several conservative organizations, such as the Richard Mellon Scaife Foundation, the Olin Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation, financed Westmore­ land's suit in September 1982. One goal of the Smith Richardson Foundation was to kill CBS Reports. An­other was to turn back the 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan rule, which required that public officials prove "actual malice" to win a libel judgment. The Westmoreland case went to trial two years later and was discontinued in February 1985.

     One of the significant by-products of the controversy is the "Benjamin Report." Benjamin's effort remains widely respected within the journalistic community for revealing unfair aspects of the program's production. Some observers, however, have criticized the report for having a "prosecutorial tone," for failing to come to terms with the producer's purpose, and for measuring fairness and balance by a mathematical scale. In his conclusion, Benjamin acknowledges the enduring value of the documentary: "To get a group of high-ranking military men and former Central Intelligence Agents to say that this is what happened was an achievement of no small dimension." The production flaws, however, overshadowed the program's positive attributes.

     While the legal controversy raged in the press, there was much debate about whether the libel suit and the internal investigation by CBS News would have a chilling effect on journalism and lead to self-censorship. Most journalists believed that reporting would continue unabated and that the self-scrutiny and review of procedures caused by the event were good for the profession. At corporate-executive levels, however, the impact of the Westmoreland lawsuit was profound.

     In 1993 the General Motors Corporation sued NBC over a report on Dateline, in which a GM truck was rigged to burst into flames upon impact in a demonstration crash. NBC corporate management fired the news director and producer and issued a public apology in exchange for GM dropping the suit. In 1995 Philip Morris sued Capital Cities/ABC for an unprecedented

     $10 billion over a report on the newsmagazine Day One that alleged that the tobacco company manipulated cigarette nicotine levels. The case was settled without trial. And later in 1995, the Brown and Williamson tobacco company threatened to sue CBS if they aired an interview on 60 Minutes in which a former Brown and Williamson employee testified that it was widely known in the industry that cigarettes were a delivery device for nicotine and that smoking was addictive. CBS pulled the segment rather than risk a lawsuit. Eventually, the information became public, which contributed to the landmark settlement between the tobacco industry and various governments. Even though CBS had a scoop that proved to be factual, the network censored itself to avoid a lawsuit. The controversy that enveloped "The Uncounted Enemy" demonstrated that wealthy corporations, political foundations, or individuals can use the threat or action of litigation to chill the press and prevent a full airing of matters of public interest.

     "The Uncounted Enemy" helps explain an aspect of Tet and gives voice to intelligence officers who were silenced during the war. But the program tries unsuccessfully to resolve a complex subject in 90 minutes, and it fails to convey the context of national self-delusion presented in lengthier treatments, such as the 13-hour PBS series, Vietnam: A Television History (1983) or Neil Sheehan's book A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (1988). CIA analyst George Allen, who was interviewed in "The Uncounted Enemy," explained in a letter to Burton Benjamin in June 1982 his belief that the intelligence dispute was "a symptom of a larger and more fundamental problem, i.e., the tendency of every American administration from Eisenhower through Nixon toward self-delusion with respect to Indochina." Allen reasserted his support for "The Uncounted Enemy" as a valid illustration of the larger issue and subsequently used the program as a case study in politicized intelligence.

     Although many works disprove the conspiracy charge, General Westmoreland did subsequently acquire the potential significance of a public disclosure of intelligence information prior to Tet. Appearing on the NBC Today show in May 1993, West­ moreland explained: "It was the surprise element, I think, that did the damage. And if I had to do it over again, I would have called a press conference and made known to the media the intelligence we had."

     Many of the individuals who appeared in or produced the documentary have subsequently died: Col. Gains Hawkins (1987), Sam Adams (1988), Burton Benjamin (1988), Roger Colloff (1992), George Carver Jr. (1994), Lt. Gen. Daniel Graham (1996). George Crile III continues to produce stories for CBS News, including the premiere segment of 60 Minutes II.