Last week, the Pentagon issued its report on CNN and Time's ill-fated nerve-gas "scoop." As expected, the search of Vietnam-era military archives turned up no evidence of the tall tale that CNN and Time had already retracted -- namely, that U.S. Special Forces were sent to Laos in 1970 to assassinate defectors, and that while there they launched a nerve-gas attack that killed Laotian women and children.
Not only did the Pentagon find no evidence for the story that got CNN fantasists, er, producers April Oliver and Jack Smith fired, but the report noted that even the North Vietnamese -- who never shied from accusing the U.S. military of atrocities -- had no record of any U.S. nerve-gas use, real or concocted for propaganda purposes. CNN unsurprisingly has reached a monetary settlement with retired admiral Thomas Moorer, who said his interviews were misconstrued by Oliver and Smith. And the commander of the raid into Laos, Eugene McCarley, has now sued CNN for defamation.
CNN's star correspondent Peter Arnett, meanwhile, said that the Pentagon's findings were "good enough for me." THE SCRAPBOOK thinks his acquiescence may be a career first for the famously anti-Pentagon Arnett, who fought successfully to save his CNN job by arguing that he hadn't done any reporting on the nerve-gas story but just read the script. Then again, had Arnett disputed findings with which the North Vietnamese concurred, that too would no doubt have been a career first.