Oliver sues source, CNN

By: Allan Wolper Producer, fired over Vietnam story, seeks retribution

April Oliver, a former CNN producer, is suing a confidential source she used in a broadcast alleging the U.S. dropped nerve gas on American defectors during the Vietnam war.
"What do you do when a source who confirms your story requests confidentiality and then states publicly that you never contacted him," Oliver tells E&P. "I promised to go to jail to protect him. Then he sued me."
Retired Major General John Singlaub, the commander of an elite unit in Vietnam, named Oliver as a co-defendant in a defamation suit he filed against Time-Warner, the parent company of CNN.
Oliver's investigation, which aired June 7, 1998, and was entitled "Valley of Death," was the premiere episode of NewsStand: CNN & Time, a Sunday night magazine program that was a joint project of CNN and Time magazine.
The program alleged that in September 1970, U.S. forces in Laos involved in a CIA-approved mission called Operation Tailwind, dropped Sarin, a deadly nerve gas, on American defectors and Vietnamese women and children.
"I am not doing this for money," says Oliver, who was fired after her investigation was criticized by First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams.
CNN retained Abrams to conduct a post mortem probe of the program after the Pentagon, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and a coalition of veterans groups complained about the broadcast.
CNN then retracted the story, saying that Abrams found the broadcast did not support its conclusions, and CNN apologized. Time Magazine later retracted the story as well.
Oliver also is suing CNN, claiming she was made a scapegoat by network executives who approved every aspect of the original broadcast. "I was at the bottom of the food chain in this," she says.
Oliver says that Frank Cesno, the CNN bureau chief, vetted the broadcast at the urging of Tom Johnson, CEO of CNN. The program, she says, also was approved by Rick Kaplan, the CNN president, David Kohler, the network chief counsel.
"CNN uses the same code of ethics as the United States military command," says Oliver. "It says that the Pentagon will decide not only what we cover, but who does the reporting."
"I always felt that the most important thing I could do is to get the story out there," Oliver says. "This is the best way for me to do it. CNN's behavior has had a positively chilling effect on investigative reporting. They didn't retract the story because it was inaccurate, but because Abrams said it was insufficiently proven."
Oliver also is upset because she says Abrams turned over the names of her confidential sources to Kroll Associates, a division of Kroll-O'Gara, a private investigative agency.
"If I knew that Abrams was handing over all my sources to Kroll, I would have taken a black pen to them," she says. "In fact, I did not know that Kroll was involved until after I was fired."
E&P disclosed last July that Kroll used four former CIA officials and a special forces officer to analyze the CIA-sponsored mission.
"We didn't know that they used CIA officials," Oliver told E&P then. "Those officials would have a vested interest in not confirming what we found."
Abrams, however, insisted that he had been hopeful that the former CIA officials would uncover "information that might support the broadcast."
Oliver's countersuit against Singlaub will include a lengthy report that she and Jack Smith, her co-producer in the "Valley of Death" project, wrote to counter the conclusions by Abrams.
Singlaub is described in that report "as a confidential source ? a former senior military official intimately familiar with SOG operations and Tailwind. His intimate knowledge is confirmed by multiple other sources."
Dennis McDougal, who with Mary Murphy, wrote a four part, 20,000-word investigation of the Tailwind controversy for TV Guide says he is bitterly disappointed by Abrams' role.
"Abrams lost his credibility the moment he agreed to co-author the report with David Kohler," says McDougal, referring to the CNN attorney who originally vetted the investigation. "Kohler has no business investigating himself.
He placed the blame on two reporters whose work he sanctioned."
"I had believed in Floyd Abrams as the savior of the First Amendment since I was in graduate school in journalism," says McDougal, who worked for the Los Angeles Times for 12 years before he began a career authoring non-fiction books.
"Now he is establishing a track record for making things nice for the corporate overlords of establishment journalism."
Abrams denies that he shared any privileged information with Kroll
investigators.
"It is not true that I provided the name of any confidential sources to Kroll," Abrams says. "April Oliver has no basis for thinking that I did or saying that I did."
Abrams says that he asked Oliver on one occasion if she would allow one of her confidential sources to work with Kroll investigators to help confirm some elements of her story.
"I felt the source might feel comfortable working with someone with the same background.
Abrams says he wrote a private letter to McDougal to complain about the way his role was characterized in the Tailwind Investigation.
"Mr. McDougal misstated my role, misstated Kroll's role, and mischaracterized my interviews with April Oliver and Jack Smith," says Abrams. "The price tag of writing a letter to him privately telling him of the factual errors is to be accused of selling out. That is what comes with a robust First Amendment."
Singlaub also is suing Peter Arnett, the CNN correspondent who narrated the broadcast, and Time magazine, for alleging the troops he commanded killed their own men.
Arnett and Oliver published the "Valley of Death" report in Time magazine the week after it was broadcast on CNN.
Jack Smith, her co-producer in the "Valley of Death" project, was fired. Pamela Small, the executive producer of the program, resigned. Arnett was reprimanded, but fought to keep his job, claiming that he played only a minor role in the broadcast. He recently announced he was leaving CNN because his air time had been cut back, and he was not sent to cover the war in Yugoslavia.
McDougal, meanwhile, says he believes that the CNN broadcast came close to breaking open an important story on Vietnam.
"Mary and I crisscrossed the country for four months," says McDougal, author of a recent investigative best seller, "The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA and The Hidden History of Hollywood."
"I think we both concur that there is the possibility that some kind of a gas, perhaps lethal, was used during Operation Tailwind. That was the impression I got from speaking to survivors of Operation Tailwind."
McDougal says that the Floyd Abrams report was flawed.
"Abrams and Kohler selected the most damning piece of evidence to railroad Jack Smith and April Oliver out of CNN and turn them into journalism pariahs, making them scapegoats for overpaid corporate toddies like Rick Kaplan and Tom Johnson."

?(Editor & Publisher Web Site:http:www.mediainfo.com) [Caption]
?(copyright: Editor & Publisher May 8, 1999) [Caption & Photo]