by Erin E. Thompson, USAICoE Staff Historian

ARCHIVE DIVE: Gains B. Hawkins Collection

The U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence (USAICoE) Command History Office houses a number of collections representing a wide variety of Army intelligence history. The Gains B. Hawkins Special Collection was donated to USAICoE in 2013 and primarily focuses on the 1982 Columbia Broadcasting Company (CBS) documentary, “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception,” and the resulting lawsuit put forth by General William Westmoreland.

Col. Gains Hawkins was born in Mississippi in 1919. He was drafted into the U.S. Army during the Second World War and was assigned to the Third Army intelligence section in Europe. He then served during the Korean War, after which he worked in various intelligence roles, including as the Order of Battle officer for the U.S. Army Pacific. In 1966, Hawkins volunteered for service with the Military Assistance Command-Vietnam (MACV), where he served as chief of the Order of Battle Section through the late 1960s. He retired from the Army in 1970.

In January 1982, Colonel Hawkins appeared in the CBS documentary, “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception.” The program detailed the controversial situation surrounding the Viet Cong order of battle estimates in the latter half of the 1960s. On one side was General Westmoreland, MACV commander from 1964–1968, whose assurances to President Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the American public painted a picture of inevitable victory in Vietnam. On the other side were civilian and military intelligence analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and MACV pointing toward a significantly higher number of enemy combatants active in Vietnam than originally estimated. The documentary centered on Westmoreland’s alleged mishandling of these intelligence estimates and asserted he misled Americans about the unfolding situation in Vietnam.

General Westmoreland denounced the program as a “vicious, scurrilous and premediated attack,” while other journalists questioned CBS’s “questionable journalistic procedures.” Westmoreland filed a $120 million libel suit against the company in September 1982, and after two and a half years of litigation, court proceedings began in 1985. Author Grace Ferrari Levine, who examined the case in a 1990 study, stated the suit hinged on Westmoreland’s assertion “that the major premise of the CBS broadcast was false because…there had been no conspiracy to falsify and suppress intelligence data.” Rather, Westmoreland argued, he had disagreed with the intelligence estimates produced by the CIA and his MACV Order of Battle Section. Colonel Hawkins’ testimony was cut short when Westmoreland dropped the suit one week before it went before a jury.

Within Hawkins’ collection is a wealth of information regarding the documentary and the resulting court proceedings. The collection includes a complete transcript of the original CBS broadcast; transcripts of witness depositions from CIA analyst George Allen and MACV intelligence officers like Col. John Barrie Williams and Maj. Gen. Joseph McChristian; and affidavits for several more witnesses. The collection also includes copies of the intelligence estimates and communications between the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and MACV intelligence analysts showing longstanding disagreement over the number of enemy combatants active in Vietnam in the late 1960s.

The Hawkins collection also contains news articles and editorials that followed the broadcast, some reviewing the documentary as a manipulation of facts, while others debated the standard of journalistic ethics when dealing with controversial topics. Numerous letters between individuals involved in the production of the documentary are also included in the collection. Finally, the collection contains various articles on the Vietnam War as a whole and its effect on American military history.

“The Uncounted Enemy” remains controversial, both for its implications on intelligence gathering during the Vietnam War and its lasting impact on broadcast journalism. The Gains B. Hawkins Special Collection, in particular, offers some key insights into the larger questions about American intelligence estimates during the war and their influence on its progression. Hawkins passed away in 1987 at the age of sixty-seven.

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