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The Mail

To the Editors ofThe Crimson:

This is an addition to the letter to the editor I sent after reading the Friday, March 2 edition of The Crimson.

The book review of Anthony Herbert's Soldier published on Saturday the 3rd, I found even more incredible than the Friday report.

If I may quote, "Holt, Reinhardt and Winston, the publishers, seem to want to help sales a little. Another subsidiary of their owners, CBS, is the television show Sixty Minutes. February 3, they spent 30 of those 60 minutes trying to undermine Herbert's credibility by bringing forth witnesses to deny certain events in Soldier, events irrelevant to the war-crime issue. Time magazine had gone to press the day before, but they wrote up the show, and labelled Herbert's book 'controversial.' Controversy sells books, and four days later, Soldier makes The New York Times best seller list.

"In recent weeks, several facts have turned up to discredit the show. Witnesses against Herbert have told him that they are ready to testify that they were forced to make their statements. Barry Lando, who did most of the "research," turns out to be a writer who asked to co-author Herbert's book, and when rejected swore, before several witnesses, that he would 'get even.'''

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Where the hell does Mr. Lee, who did the review, get that information? Much of it from Col. Herbert. But no where does he indicate that. For Mr. Lee, what Herbert claims is truth. Again, those two paragraphs contain one lie after another. CBS owns Holt Reinhart, true--as we said in introducing the program. Sixty Minutes did the piece to promote the book--absolutely false, a lie. If Mr. Lee had read the transcript of the Sixty Minutes Show--available to any reporter or reviewer who wanted it--he would have seen that the witnesses we brought forth spoke right to the point of Herbert's charges. Has he seen the transcript? Or did he simply take Herbert's word for what was in the show? Where is one single witness who heard me swear to get any kind of revenge for not being able to write a book with Herbert? Where is one single person interviewed on our show who says they were "forced to make their statements?"

I would hope that both The Crimson editors and the reporters responsible for the Herbert pieces might learn something from this whole affair. Barry Lando '61

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