Ray with Judge Napolitano, April 10, 2023 (23 min.)
Interviewed by the Judge, Ray drew an analogy from Vietnam to the situation in Ukraine. In late 1967 Gen. Westmoreland cited “progress” in the war by falsifying the count of armed insurgents in South Vietnam. He counted 299,000; the CIA and other intelligence agencies counted 500,000 to 600,000. The White House and CIA Director Richard Helms caved, and went with Westmoreland’s numbers.
Then, during Tet in late Jan./early Feb. 1968 armed insurgents attacked every hamlet, town, city, province in South Vietnam – with between 500,000 and 600,000 men. Despite that, even after Tet, Westmoreland was pressing President Lyndon Johnson to send 206,000 more troops to Vietnam to broaden the war to Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam.
Two leaks to the New York Times – one (March 10, 1968) about the Westmoreland request for 206,000 more troops, and the other (March 19) disclosing Westmoreland’s deceit on the numbers thwarted Westmoreland’s plans. On March 25, LBJ complained privately: “The leaks to the NY Times hurt us … I would have given Westy the 206,000. Now we have no support for the war.”
Did the most recent leaker have something like this in mind? Was s/he trying to prevent wider war in Ukraine?