CNN reporter stands by nerve gas story

By Tim Wheeler

This article was reprinted from the July 11, 1998 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

April Oliver, the embattled reporter fired by CNN for writing an expose of Pentagon use of nerve gas during the Vietnam war, told the World she stands by her story. She said she supports the demand that the Pentagon open its files on the covert raid, code-named Operation Tailwind.

Since they muzzled me for three weeks and did not allow me to defend my reporting, I'm doing everything I can to restore the integrity of my report," she told the World in a telephone interview from her home in Washington, D.C. "I and my co-producer, Jack Smith, stand by this report and are proud of it. CNN's Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Peter Arnett, also signed the report.

Oliver assailed CNN top executives for retracting the report headlined "Valley of Death" about a Sept. 11, 1970 covert raid into Laos by a U.S. military hit squad assigned to execute U.S. military defectors.

The target was Chavan, a Laotian mountain village near the Vietnam border where the deserters were hiding out. The so- called SOG hit squad consisted of 16 U.S. special forces soldiers reinforced by about 140 Montagnard mercenaries. Nerve gas was used during the raid, killing both defectors and villagers, the report revealed.

The report was buttressed with interviews of the commander, second in command, and several other participants in the operation.

Adm. Thomas Moorer, U.S. Navy (ret.) who was then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Oliver that Sarin nerve case was used in as many as 20 "high risk" search and destroy missions during the Vietnam war.

The 18 minute expose was broadcast over CNN on June 7 and it appeared in Time magazine that same week. The report touched off a firestorm of attacks from powerful circles enraged by the report's explosive revelations.

Oliver charged that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Colin Powell, and former CIA Director Richard Helms were among those who exerted massive pressure on CNN and Time to retract the story.

Asked about demands that Congress investigate, Oliver replied, "We would have welcomed that." She said she participated in a telephone conference call with top CNN executives in Atlanta after the furor erupted.

CNN/USA President Richard Kaplan, told participants in the call, "I do not want to go to a Congressional hearing with 3,000 establishment figures like Gen. Colin Powell on one side of the room and our Special Forces guys on the other. This is not a journalistic problem. This is a public relations problem.

Said Oliver, "That showed a lack of will to stand by the story. The CNN executive suite was inundated by calls from heavy hitters like Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and Richard Helms. CNN simply caved in."

CNN commissioned media attorney Floyd Abrams to assess the accuracy of the report. Predictably, Abrams concluded the story lacked sufficient evidence. "Abrams' report was a rush to judgment," Oliver said, "They were determined to kill the story."

Yet even Abrams report admitted, "The broadcast was prepared after exhaustive research, was rooted in considerable supportive data ... we do not believe it can reasonably be suggested that any of the information on which the broadcast was based was fabricated or nonexistent."

Abrams, who checked with those interviewed by Oliver, conceded that they were quoted accurately and all the documentation was compiled into a 156-page briefing book for senior editors of CNN. All of them signed off on the story even though they have made Oliver and Smith, who was also fired, the scapegoats.

They accumulated enough evidence to fill the hour-long report they had originally planned "But then they made us take things out to shorten the story down. Now they are blaming us for not providing more proof," Oliver said. "We want to talk to anybody who will listen, to get the facts back on the table.

Kissinger may suffer from amnesia but the record of U.S. genocide in Vietnam gives credibility to the "Valley of Death" report. There was the My Lai massacre in which hundreds of Vietnamese women and children were machine- gunned by U.S. troops.

There was the "Phoenix Operation" in which the CIA assassinated an estimated 35,000 members of the National Liberation Front of Vietnam. The country was saturated with the herbicide agent orange.

Defenders of a free press point out that Gary Webb, too, was fired after his series "Dark Alliance" in the San Jose Mercury News blew the lid off the CIA's role in the crack cocaine plague.

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