Westmoreland v. CBS

Westmoreland v. CBS was a $120 million libel suit brought in 1982 by former U.S. Army Chief of Staff General William Westmoreland against CBS, Inc. for broadcasting a documentary entitled The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception. Westmoreland also sued the documentary's narrator, investigative reporter Mike Wallace; the producer, investigative journalist and best-selling author George Crile, and the former CIA analyst, Sam Adams, who originally broke the story on which the broadcast was based.

Westmoreland's claims were governed by the landmark New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision, which held that, in order to recover for defamation, a "public figure" like Westmoreland must prove that the defendant made the statements in question with "actual malice" (essentially, with knowledge, or reckless disregard, of falsity).

The suit was originally filed in state court in South Carolina, but was transferred to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The trial ended in February 1985 when the case was settled out of court just before it would have gone to the jury.

U.S. Army General William C. Westmoreland served four years in Vietnam, from 1964 to 1968, as COMUSMACV—Commander U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam. He was in command during the Tet Offensive, a surprise, country-wide attack on the U.S. forces by the combined forces of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam and the Vietnam People's Army in 1968. The attack is widely viewed as having contributed to a growing perception in the United States that the U.S. had underestimated enemy strength and resolve, and that, in contrast to assurances from Westmoreland and the Johnson administration, there was no "light at the end of the tunnel." Walter Cronkite visited Vietnam in February 1968, in the immediate aftermath of Tet, and returned home and gave his famous "mired in a stalemate" on-air editorial. "To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion." Several weeks later, President Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection.

...
Wikipedia