Mike Wallace of CBS News Dead at 93. A "One Man Truth Squad" Or...

[Guest Tom Scully]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/tv-column/post/cbs-pays-tribute-to-mike-wallace-plans-special-60-minutes-for-next-sunday/2012/04/09/gIQAo3O35S_blog.html

04/09/2012

CBS pays tribute to Mike Wallace, plans special ‘60 Minutes’ for next Sunday

By Emily Yahr

Face the Nation” and “CBS This Morning” also discussed the legendary broadcaster. ... kind of one-man truth squad, a man with a remarkable gift for getting to the very core of a story,” veteran CBS News correspondent Morley Safer said at ... by Steve Kroft and Safer, discussed the news of Wallace's death.

Look and Listen with Donald Kirkley

‎

The Sun - Jun 30, 1967

Serious Com plaints In Part III, the bias against Jim Garrison, the district attor- ney of New Orleans, was ob- vious. Mike Wallace, losing some of his cool, cross-e\a mined and bullied Mr. (larrison like a prosecuting attorney in a TV melodrama. I hold no brief for Mr. Garrison or his views oi the. behavior of his henchmen, but they have not yet had a chance to air their case in court, and it seemed that the telecast was a case of "verdict first , trial afterward." What was more important, by sincere and respected au- thors. As this column is written 1 have not seen Part IV and will report on it later. But already enough conflicting testimony by eyewitnesses, earwitnesses and reputable scientists has been swept under a very large rug, and makes possible the con- struction of a theory directly opposite to the pronouncements of Mr. Cronkite....

CBS News The Inquiry : 6/27/1967 Begins @ 9:40 -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFaQI_2zmSo

Mike Wallace v. Jim Garrison continues here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBDIIqEgAKw

Jim Garrison cites this "reporting" in response to Mike Wallace's less than journalistic impartiality :

Two Convicts Cite Proposition To Aid Garrison in Plot...

‎

New York Times - Jun 12, 1967

by Gene Roberts

... a one-time heroin addict who is in prison for burglary, said he had been offered his freedom, an ounce of heroin and three months vacation in Florida if ..Continued From Page 1, Col. 5..... The two prisoner made their accusations in recent interviews with ths reporter, who visited them in prison. They also signed statements that outlined the major points in their stories. When told by this reporter to-day that two prioners had made charges against his office, Mr. Garrison said he was not sur-prised that men who had been convicted by his staff would make charges against it..... Mr. Garrison also said he was surprised that charges by Tor-res and Cancler would be given credence in view of their criminal records. However, a large part of Mr. Garrison's investigation has cen-tered on the interrogation of of people who have less than con-vnetional backgrounds...

2 Cons Charge Garrison With Bribe...‎ Miami News

In this section she makes Mike Wallace sound like a socialist:

It seems Wallace was more a mirror of establishment "norms" at any given moment, than he was a "One Man Truth Squad", another in a long line of celebrity journalists who squandered opportunity after opportunity to make the world a better place.

Mike Wallace, he feathered his own nest.

[Glenn Viklund]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/tv-column/post/cbs-pays-tribute-to-mike-wallace-plans-special-60-minutes-for-next-sunday/2012/04/09/gIQAo3O35S_blog.html

04/09/2012

CBS pays tribute to Mike Wallace, plans special ‘60 Minutes’ for next Sunday

By Emily Yahr

Face the Nation” and “CBS This Morning” also discussed the legendary broadcaster. ... kind of one-man truth squad, a man with a remarkable gift for getting to the very core of a story,” veteran CBS News correspondent Morley Safer said at ... by Steve Kroft and Safer, discussed the news of Wallace's death.

Look and Listen with Donald Kirkley

‎

The Sun - Jun 30, 1967

Serious Com plaints In Part III, the bias against Jim Garrison, the district attor- ney of New Orleans, was ob- vious. Mike Wallace, losing some of his cool, cross-e\a mined and bullied Mr. (larrison like a prosecuting attorney in a TV melodrama. I hold no brief for Mr. Garrison or his views oi the. behavior of his henchmen, but they have not yet had a chance to air their case in court, and it seemed that the telecast was a case of "verdict first , trial afterward." What was more important, by sincere and respected au- thors. As this column is written 1 have not seen Part IV and will report on it later. But already enough conflicting testimony by eyewitnesses, earwitnesses and reputable scientists has been swept under a very large rug, and makes possible the con- struction of a theory directly opposite to the pronouncements of Mr. Cronkite....

CBS News The Inquiry : 6/27/1967 Begins @ 9:40 -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFaQI_2zmSo

Mike Wallace v. Jim Garrison continues here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBDIIqEgAKw

Jim Garrison cites this "reporting" in response to Mike Wallace's less than journalistic impartiality :

Two Convicts Cite Proposition To Aid Garrison in Plot...

‎

New York Times - Jun 12, 1967

by Gene Roberts

... a one-time heroin addict who is in prison for burglary, said he had been offered his freedom, an ounce of heroin and three months vacation in Florida if ..Continued From Page 1, Col. 5..... The two prisoner made their accusations in recent interviews with ths reporter, who visited them in prison. They also signed statements that outlined the major points in their stories. When told by this reporter to-day that two prioners had made charges against his office, Mr. Garrison said he was not sur-prised that men who had been convicted by his staff would make charges against it..... Mr. Garrison also said he was surprised that charges by Tor-res and Cancler would be given credence in view of their criminal records. However, a large part of Mr. Garrison's investigation has cen-tered on the interrogation of of people who have less than con-vnetional backgrounds...

2 Cons Charge Garrison With Bribe...‎ Miami News

In this section she makes Mike Wallace sound like a socialist:

It seems Wallace was more a mirror of establishment "norms" at any given moment, than he was a "One Man Truth Squad", another in a long line of celebrity journalists who squandered opportunity after opportunity to make the world a better place.

Mike Wallace, he feathered his own nest.

Tom,

Ayn Rand and all,

Why would you leave out the more obvious question of the corporate US, vs the Government US? Sometimes I wonder if a lot o true brilliance in research qualities are left squandered in the ruins of the JFK assassination, vs the current, enormously much worse problems that the US faces?

[Guest Tom Scully]

Glenn, "vs" ?

Charles Còlson Memorandum,

16, 1971

MEMORANDUM .

FOR: JOHN EHRLICHMAN

FROM; ' CHARLES coL`soN

SUBJECT: 'Rand Corp/F.B.I./

Frank Stanton, who was on *cheI

board of the Rand Corporation, told me

yesterday that at a recent executive

committeeI meeting it was disclosed

that the F.B.I. 'had made an extensive

investigation at Rand in April of 1970.

The «investigation .centered about an

alìoged leak of documents by Ellsberg.

I am sure this is the incident told

me about over the phone.

Rand executive committee., the F.B.I.

had »a solid «case but .-did nothing with

a matter of great concern to us espe-

cîally Iif there is anyY truth to Rand's

assertion -that there wa_s case

and the F.B.I. elected notto act.

In View of the fáct that Rand- -

viously used this as a way protecting

themselves and shifting responsibility

back on us. I think that the file

very carefully examined and

we should be certain of precisely what

happened internally that caused the

case to be turned

Stanton Denies Seeking a 1971 White House Deal

‎

New York Times - Nov 27, 1975

26 Dr. Frank M. Stanton, former president of CBS Inc., denied today published ... executive at a meeting with Charles W. Colson, then a special counsel to Pr^ ' Nixon. ... J. Ellsberg, said in the interview that Dr. Stanton had repeatedly sought his

Events Leading Up to Libel Suit Began a Decade Ago in...

‎

New York Times - Apr 20, 1979

On Feb. 9, 1973, after what Mike Wallace, the reporter described as a yearlong investigation, CBS segment of its program, "60 Minutes," titled "The Selling of Anthony Herbert"

Blunt Mike Wallace Is A Legend On Tv

‎

Evening Independent - Oct 20, 1979

His trade mark: hard-hitting, well-researched, incredibly blunt interviewing. Who can ever forget his January 1973 interview of Lt. Col. Anthony Herbert? ....You couldn't help but believe Wallace was enjoying the lengthy battle with Herbert...

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22during+the+program%2C+colonel+herbert++secretely+listening&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-nightly#hl=en&client=firefox-nightly&pwst=1&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aunofficial&tbs=ar:1&tbm=nws&sclient=psy-ab&q=investment+%22ross+franklin%22&oq=investment+%22ross+franklin%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=serp.12...6701l16105l5l18661l24l19l1l0l0l7l399l3170l0j14j3j1l18l0.llsin.&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=883c2f46af09538a&biw=1440&bih=717

Miami Herald, The : EX-COLONEL CHARGED IN INVESTMENT …

‎

$2.95 -

Miami Herald - Feb 14, 1990

J. Ross Franklin, 61, now a developer in the nearby Florida Panhandle resort town ... Vietnam War and was later involved in another controversy over atrocities .

Miami Herald, The : WAR HERO SENTENCED TO 5 YEARS

‎

$2.95 -

Miami Herald - Aug 2, 1991

J. Ross Franklin, sentenced Wednesday in Circuit Court, swindled up to 100 people out of ... He had served in World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars .

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/aug/20/nation/na-vietnam20

A Tortured Past

Documents show troops who reported abuse in Vietnam were discredited even as the military was finding evidence of worse.

August 20, 2006|Deborah Nelson and Nick Turse | Special to The Times

Washington — In early 1973, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Creighton Abrams received some bad news from the service's chief of criminal investigations.

An internal inquiry had confirmed an officer's widely publicized charge that members of the 173rd Airborne Brigade had tortured detainees in Vietnam.

But there was a silver lining: Investigators had also compiled a 53-page catalog of alleged discrepancies in retired Lt. Col. Anthony B. Herbert's public accounts of his war experiences.

"This package ... provides sufficient material to impeach this man's credibility; should this need arise, I volunteer for the task," wrote Col. Henry H. Tufts, commander of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division.

Now, declassified records show that while the Army was working energetically to discredit Herbert, military investigators were uncovering torture and mistreatment that went well beyond what he had described.

The abuses were not made public, and few of the wrongdoers were punished.

Tufts' agents found that military interrogators in the 173rd Airborne repeatedly beat prisoners, tortured them with electric shocks and forced water down their throats to simulate the sensation of drowning, the records show.

Soldiers in one unit told investigators that their captain approved of such methods and was sometimes present during torture sessions.

In one case, a detainee who had been beaten by interrogators suffered convulsions, lost consciousness and later died in his confinement cage.

Investigators identified 29 members of the 173rd Airborne as suspects in confirmed cases of torture. Fifteen of them admitted the acts. Yet only three were punished, records show. They received fines or reductions in rank. None served any prison time.

The accounts of torture and the Army's effort to discredit Herbert emerged from a review of a once-secret Pentagon archive.

The collection -- about 9,000 pages -- was compiled in the early 1970s by an Army task force that monitored war crimes investigations. The files, examined recently by the Los Angeles Times, include memos, case summaries, investigative reports and sworn witness statements.

Those and related records detail 141 instances of detainee and prisoner abuse in Vietnam, including 127 involving the 173rd Airborne.

The Army task force, created after journalist Seymour Hersh exposed the 1968 My Lai massacre, served to give military brass and the White House early warning about potentially damaging revelations.

The war crimes records were declassified in 1994 and moved to the National Archives in College Park, Md., where they went largely unnoticed.

The Times examined most of the files before officials removed them from the public shelves, saying they contained personal information that was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Other records were taken by Tufts in the 1970s and donated after his death to the University of Michigan.

The two collections do not provide a complete accounting of prisoner abuse during the Vietnam War. They contain only cases reported to military authorities and flagged for special attention by the Army chief of staff's office or taken home by Tufts. But they represent the largest pool of such records to surface to date.

Retired Brig. Gen. John H. Johns, a Vietnam veteran who served on the task force, said the files provided important lessons for dealing with the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq.

"If we rationalize it as isolated acts, as we did in Vietnam and as we're doing with Abu Ghraib and similar atrocities, we'll never correct the problem," said Johns, 78.

A Supersoldier's Charges

A coal miner's son, Anthony Herbert was one of the most decorated U.S. soldiers of the Korean War. He went on to become an Army Ranger and a Ranger instructor.

In 1968, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and in early 1969 was awarded command of a battalion in the 173rd Airborne.

The brigade was based in Binh Dinh province in the central coastal region when Herbert arrived. Over the next two months, his unit reported more enemy contacts than any other battalion in the 173rd Airborne.

Then on April 4, 1969, Herbert was relieved of his command for allegedly unsatisfactory performance. He later told investigators from the Criminal Investigation Division that, before his removal, he had informed his superior of war crimes that he had witnessed.

Herbert recounted a series of atrocities.

He said South Vietnamese troops had executed detainees in the presence of an American military advisor in February 1969. One of the victims had her throat slit as her child clung to her pant leg, Herbert said. (Investigators later concluded that about eight detainees had been slain.)

The following month, U.S. and Vietnamese interrogators tortured a teenager or young woman by electric shock and subjected a male detainee to water torture, Herbert said. He said he also saw interrogators beat two Vietnamese women held in metal storage containers.

(Page 2 of 4)

(Page 3 of 4)

(Page 4 of 4)

About this report

Deborah Nelson, who wrote these articles, is a former staff writer and Washington investigative editor for The Times. Nick Turse is a freelance journalist living in New Jersey.

This report is based in part on records of the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group, on file at the National Archives in College Park, Md. The collection includes 241 case summaries that chronicle more than 300 substantiated atrocities by U.S. forces and 500 unconfirmed allegations.

Turse came across the collection in 2002 while researching his doctoral dissertation for the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University.

Turse and Nelson also reviewed Army inspector general records in the National Archives; FBI and Army Criminal Investigation Division records; documents shared by military veterans; and case files and related records in the Col. Henry Tufts Archive at the University of Michigan.

The reporters and Times photographer Damon Winter traveled to Vietnam in the spring to visit the sites of incidents described in Army records and to interview victims' relatives. Times researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to the report.

A selection of documents used in preparing this report, and previous articles on this topic, can be found at latimes.com/vietnam. Nelson's e-mail address is....

http://www.latimes.com/la-na-vietnam20aug20-sg,0,1877284.storygallery

August 20, 2006

Lasting Pain, Minimal Punishment

BINH DINH PROVINCE, Vietnam — On the morning of Feb. 25, 1969, Platoon Sgt. Roy E. Bumgarner Jr. led a five-man team on a reconnaissance patrol that took them into a rolling landscape of rice fields.

August 6, 2006

Civilian Killings Went Unpunished

The men of B Company were in a dangerous state of mind. They had lost five men in a firefight the day before. The morning of Feb. 8, 1968, brought unwelcome orders to resume their sweep of the countryside, a green patchwork of rice paddies along Vietnam's central coast.

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2007/04/remembering_col.html

First published in the Los Angeles Free Press, 1977.

Remembering 'Herbert's War'

His decade-long personal war against cover-ups by the U.S. Army made Vietnam battalion commander Lt. Col. Anthony Herbert one of the most controversial figures of the Vietnam War.

By JOE BAGEANT

In 1947 U.S. Army recruitment got an apparent bargain when it signed up a 17-year-old Lithuanian kid from Herminie, Pennsylvania named Anthony B. Herbert. The self-described "big dumb kid from a coal-mining town" in the bloody snows of Korea. Herbert earned a couple dozen medals -- including four Silver Stars out of Korea, three Bronze Stars with a V, six battle stars, four Purple Hearts and the highest military award Turkey has (because he was fighting alongside Turks at the time). He was wounded 14 times -- 10 by bullets, 3 by bayonet, and once by white phosphorus. Harry Truman's America rewarded him with a goodwill tour of Europe, a handshake from Eleanor Roosevelt and the bayonet they'd pulled out of him and shined up.

Two decades later, facing middle age and another war, this time in Southeast Asia, he commanded one of the most highly rated combat battalions in the war, leading its brigade in contacts with the enemy, captured weapons and enemy prisoners taken, as well as the highest reenlistment rate and fewest AWOLs. It was an enviable record by any standard.

Then in 1971 about 20 years into his career, the marriage between Lt. Col. Anthony Herbert and the U.S. Army turned bitter, and the subsequent conflict came to be dubbed "Herbert's War." The issue was Herbert's refusal to ignore atrocities he encountered in Vietnam. Tony Herbert's earlier assignment as inspector general at An Khe in the Phu My province of Vietnam's Central Highlands, practically guaranteed him a degree of unpopularity at the outset. But when he filed reports of American personnel administering water to a VC prisoner, he had made himself some hard-core enemies among fellow officers at brigade headquarters whose enmity would linger for years.

Altogether, Herbert had reported eight separate war crimes, including incidents of, looting, execution and murder. He recalled a particular episode involving some Vietnamese girls: "The area was brilliantly lit by floodlights ... Each of them [the girls] was seated with their hands on a table, palms down." Herbert described the instruments used as a "long springy rod of bamboo split into dozens of tight, thin flails on one end. It was a murderous weapon," he said. "I'd seen it take the hide off a buffalo. When it was struck down hard, the flails splayed out like a fan, but an instant after impact they returned to their order, pinching whatever was beneath."

Herbert says, "War crimes are infinitely easier to overlook than to explain to an investigating committee. Nor do they do much for promotion among the 'West Point Protection Society' of the Army's upper-echelon career men. So when I kept bringing up the matter, I kept on making enemies and getting answers such as, "'what the hell did you expect, Herbert? Candy and flowers?' I reported these things and nothing happened."

Maybe nothing happened in terms of prosecution, but Herbert himself was accused of exaggeration and outright lying in his filed reports. The clincher came in April of 1969 when he was relieved of his command of the Second Battalion, despite its outstanding record under his leadership. Herbert said it took a whole year of dead-end legal actions and $8,000 of his own money before even a few facts began to emerge. "I know now it wasn't just the Army," he says. "It was General Westmoreland in particular. He did everything he possibly could to keep my case covered up because of the heat being placed on the Army from the My Lai case."

Meanwhile, Army intelligence reports verified every single crime and supported Herbert's charges. From a Central Intelligence Division (CID) report dated Aug. 23, 1971 reviewing Herbert's allegations comes the following: " ... technique employed included the transmission of electrical shock by means of a field telephone [used to a Vietnamese girl] a water rag treatment which impaired breathing, hitting with sticks and boards, and beating of detainees with fists." And from CID reports marked FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY: "Herbert's S-3 [non-commissioned officer] witnessed a field telephone in use during interrogation, but no objection was raised" In fact, the soldier involved in the electrical admitted to it in the same report, and another soldier admitted witnessing the water rag. Dozens of official CID docouments substantiated Herbert's statements, but the Army, in conflict with its own documents, insisted that Herbert had "a propensity to lie or exaggerate."

Among Herbert's biggest obstacles was that while he was reporting the crimes to his superiors, one of his superiors, Lt. Gen. William Peers, also happened to be supervising Army inquiry into the My Lai cover-up. Worse yet, Peers' right-hand man during the inquiry was J. Ross Franklin, Herbert's main adversary at An Khe, one of those who would be held accountable for the crimes Herbert was reporting.

Herbert felt that the Army's CID seemed paralyzed when it came to investigating his complaints. So he helped them along by filing charges against his former commanding general, John W. Barnes, for dereliction of duty in failing to investigate the alleged atrocities. That same day, March 15, 1971, Herbert also dropped 14 separate charges into Franklin's lap, including corpse mutilation and the electrical of a Vietnamese girl by Army intelligence. Herbert was shuttled off to a mediocre staff position at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where it was hoped he would settle into obscurity. Fat chance. He popped up in Life Magazine, the New York Times and on the Cavett Show. He took voluntary polygraph tests and passed. Herbert says, "Army harassment increased until at last, my family began to show signs of stress from the ordeal." So he chose the warrior's hemlock -- retirement. "On Nov. 7, 1971," he says, I set my own retirement in motion." As the Army watched him transformed into a 41-year-old civilian, it breathed a sigh of relief. Prematurely.

A year after his reluctant retirement Herbert teamed up with New York Times correspondent James Wooten to write the best selling book Soldier (Holt, Reinhart and Winston). It is an autobiographical account documenting his efforts to expose both the incompetence and the atrocities he'd seen in Vietnam. On another level Soldier illustrated dilemmas and asked moral questions about individual rights in an organized professional world—the man versus the self-serving system. Soldier won Herbert a great many admirers both in the media and the public at large.

Then on Feb. 4, 1973, Herbert's reputation was dealt a shattering when CBS's 60 Minutes aired a segment titled "The Selling of Colonel Herbert." CBS correspondent Mike Wallace and producer Barry Lando challenged his credibility, implying that Soldier was fictitious and, most surprising of all, that Herbert himself was guilty of war crimes. Considering that the massive efforts of the Pentagon had failed to discredit any of Herbert's statements, this was baffling indeed. Supporting the CBS allegations against Herbert on the show was Herbert's old nemesis, Lt. Col. J. Ross Franklin who had been relieved of his command Franklin relieved from his command for throwing a Vietnamese body out of chopper (and later went to prison in 1991 to serve a five-year sentence for his role in a securities scam.)

More baffling was the fact that originally CBS producer Barry Lando had originally proposed a pro-Herbert segment. But CBS vice-president for news Bill Leonard shot it down. Lando, who said he totally believed in Herbert, tried again and again was shot down. Then in August of 1972 Lando did an unexplainable about face, suddenly deciding that Herbert had "gone off the deep end," and that his story was now riddled with inconsistencies. Herbert thinks Lando's change of heart came when Herbert turned down Lando's offer to write a book together. Whatever the case, Lando got approval for a CBS story challenging Herbert, rather than supporting him. Herbert said, "Interestingly, at the time CBS was under a lot of heat from the Nixon administration for an earlier broadcast called The Selling of the Pentagon and CBS president Frank Stanton was under subpoena. Around the same time Stanton paid a visit to Nixon White House counsel Charles Colson, who later said in the New York Times that Stanton volunteered to help Nixon and was unusually accommodating. One of the accommodations he made was decreased CBS examination of Nixon speeches." Herbert suspected that he was also discussed at that meeting, especially considering that he had so actively supported George McGovern and had called Nixon a "war criminal."

In January of 1974 Herbert retaliated with a suit against CBS, Mike Wallace and Barry Lando to uncover just how they had decided to run the story. Ultimately, a landmark decision by the Supreme Court in Herbert v. Lando (1979) ruled in Herbert's favor, and he won what had come to be called the "state of mind case." Every major news outlet in the world, joined CBS in an amicus brief on the grounds that it would have a chilling effect on journalism, an effect that has so far failed to manifest itself.

By that time Herbert had earned a doctorate in psychology, and become a police and clinical psychologist. He has since retired from that second career, but the events of "Herbert's War" nevertheless surface from time to time. Writers still come to Herbert with screenplays, producers with movie deals and other offers. "I turn them down," he says. "And if the subject of Vietnam or Korea comes up, I usually change the conversation."

Asked to sum up the whole experience and its meaning, Herbert, now 73 years old, paused, then said: "If you stick by your guns, if you stand by the truth, you win. I feel good about my time in Vietnam and my time in the Army. As my friend, Sgt. Maj. John Bittorie once said, ‘There are two kinds of military reputations. One is official and on paper in Washington DC. The other is the one that goes from bar to bar from the mouths of those who served with you there.' That is the only reputation I ever really cared about."

April 12, 2007

Remembering Colonel Tony Herbert

Dear Friends,

As we now find ourselves engaged in yet another Vietnam, I would like to share a letter I just received regarding an often reprinted story I wrote in the 1970s for the Los Angeles Free Press about Lt. Col. Tony Herbert, an officer in Vietnam whose career and life were ruined because he told the truth about what was going on there long before My Lai and other truths about the Vietnamese war were exposed.

I hope this old soldier's letter helps all of us remember the meatgrinder of terror and courage that every man and woman sent into a war faces, regardless of the nation or government that sent him or her. And especially regardless of our political opinions here on the left. Opinion is merely opinion but death is real, whether it be that of an Iraqi child or a teenager from Wheeling, West Virginia with a private's stripes on his camos.

Lt. Col. Anthony Herbert grew up a poor boy in the coal country of West Virginia, and besides becoming the most decorated soldier of the Korean War, he was one of the very first American officers ever to stand up, drive the spear of moral conscience into the ground and tie his leg to it and fight the good fight of truth in the face of a nation's over-hyped patriotism. He was one of the few colonels who was there with and for his men on the ground. And even though the media, the CBS show 60 Minutes in particular, under pressure from the Nixon administration, ruined his life and career, the men who served under him still write me letters today telling of the tremendous moral influence he had upon their lives during those days of horror in places with names like Khe Sahn, Nam Trang and An Khe, places which still scar the memories of once-young men now grown old, and who find themselves trying once more to grasp the meaning of yet another war declared by the rich elites and fought by the rest of us.

The letter I received is below, .....

Joe

------

Mr. Bageant,

Thank you for responding to my letter and if it isn't a bother, I would like to relay to you a story about Col. Herbert.

In late December 1969 and early January 1970 I was an RTO for an FO team attached to 2/503 INF. It might have been Alpha Co. We had moved from LZ English to An Khe and then to an old firebase to the north of An Khe where we stayed for a few days before moving out and up a river valley. This river valley was fairly wide at the bottom and went up into the clouds (it was the rainy season) and the higher we went the denser became the fog. We were supposed to be hunting an NVA battalion which none of us thought was very smart, a company against a battalion. Must have been dreamed up by the REMF's ....

....There was no landing on that riverbed but we had located a meadow just up the hill and so we took the wounded man there and popped smoke and the pilot came to the meadow. This meadow was about 30 feet deep and about three feet too small for that helicopter and the meadow floor was a sloped hill so there would be no landing there either but he could hover low enough, probably, so down through that hole in the trees he did come straight down. The main prop was chopping leaves in front and the tail rotor was chopping leaves in back and there was so much moisture in the air that it was condensing into rain under the main rotor and the tips were trailing brilliant streaks of white vapor corkscrewing down and bits of leaves driven by the wind were sticking to our faces as we passed the wounded man up.

The bird couldn't get any lower and it still wasn't low enough. Col. Herbert was hanging out of the bird below the skids while someone inside held his belt. Finally, after several tries someone managed to push the man's bicep just right and the colonel caught his wrist and hauled him up like a piece of rope and fell back to the deck with him while others inside grabbed on and helped. That bird went straight back up through those trees until it was clear and turned and was gone as though it had never been there. Through the whole thing we all stood there under that bird while it chopped leaves and saw it through and nobody moved until the bird was gone.

We heard later that Lt. Col. Herbert had listened to the earlier radio traffic when the pilot copped out and was waiting at the pad when he got back. Oops. We heard that Colonel Herbert climbed aboard and told the pilot to get his ship in the air and came looking for us and this is the honest truth. It happened just that way. I was on the ground there and I saw it with my own eyes and that is one of the stories about Col. Herbert which has passed out of my mouth in bars. I feel like an honored man to have gotten to see that and to have served under Lt. Col. Herbert.

Thank you for allowing this chance to tell this story. You are the closest I've ever been to getting to tell Col. Herbert himself thanks for what he showed me about being a man.

Steven

Damaging File Dropped Firm Col. Herbert's literal

jfk.hood.edu/Collection/White%20%20Files/.../War%2069.pdf

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View

performance, was filed by Col. J. Ross Franklin, who had been accused by__Colonel Herbert of dereliction of duty by covering up the alleged atrocities.

Col. Herbert Wins A Partial Victory .

John Barnes, the brigade commander, and Col. Ross Franklin. He later filed charges against both men for covering up atrocities. The Army still is investigating ..

[Bernice Moore]

Mike Wallace, ''you and me'b

http://www.npr.org/2...e-of-60-minutes

Edited April 10, 2012 by Bernice Moore

[Guest Tom Scully]

Interesting side note.... yesterday I confirmed with near certainty that Mike Wallace's secretary at the time 60 Minutes begain to air, a woman who went on to work for Don Hewitt as a 60 Minutes produces until at least 2004, has been married for a long number of years to the nephew of the wife of Col. Jose Albert Rivera.

I imagine what might have been accomplished, or triggered as detectable cover up moves, if Adele had been able to light a fire of intense exposure (like a lawsuit with P.R. releases...) under Col. Rivera's butt while Mike and Don were alive. This producer I am posting about might have become aware of accusations against Rivera and marshalled 60 Minutes investigative resources to satisfy her own curiousity. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.......

http://www.legacy.co...y&pid=131032044

Aldunate, Hilda CLIFTON PARK, N.Y. Hilda Aldunate, 103, died Sunday, August 2, 2009. Wife of the late Carlos; devoted mother of Robert (Joanne) and Carlos (Merri); also survived by two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. A memorial service will be held at a later date. Interment will be in Miami, Fla. Arrangements, Emerick Funeral Home, 1550 Route 9, Clifton Park, NY 12065,

....as a man wiser than I, once posted:

Tommie-Tom! Always a pleasure to see and engage you!

(sigh)

On Edit: I am now able to confirm the relationships described above with 100 percent certainty, and also that the 60 Minutes producer married into the family just a few months after the death of Col. Jose A. Rivera. I think Adele Edisen is a very persuausive advocate for her own amazing account of her interaction with Rivera, and I will pass along the contact information of this former 60 Minutes producer to Adele.

Edited July 16, 2012 by Tom Scully