Operation Tailwind, Ted Turner’s Reckoning, and the Rise of Rick Davis
By: Ken Robinson
By any historical measure, the CNN and Time magazine investigation known as Tailwind remains one of the most consequential journalistic failures in the history of modern American broadcast news. And a perfect examination of Ted Turner, as a leader.
Not because journalists asked difficult questions.
Not because reporters pursued covert military operations.
And not because the U.S. government was somehow above scrutiny.
The real significance of Tailwind is that it forced one of the most ambitious, largest news organizations in the world to confront an uncomfortable institutional truth:
Even elite journalists, operating inside respected organizations with experienced editors, decorated correspondents, and global reputations, can still fall victim to narrative momentum when the evidentiary discipline beneath a story begins to erode.
Active-duty and retired military personnel were consulted extensively by the media during the development of the Tailwind report, including myself, as well as CNN’s own military analyst, retired USAF Major General Perry Smith.
General Smith brought critical operational granularity to the discussion, explaining that reports from the mission appeared consistent with the deployment of an especially potent, non-lethal formulation of CS riot-control gas used during the extraction phase of the operation. He stressed, however, that CS gas should never be confused with sarin nerve agent, a prohibited chemical weapon classified internationally as a weapon of mass destruction.
Smith repeatedly warned producers that the reporting was becoming dangerously overstated and that the evidentiary foundation beneath the story was insufficient to support such extraordinary allegations.
As concerns mounted, he increasingly distanced himself from the project altogether and ultimately advised CNN not to air the episode, believing the report contained too many factual, analytical, and sourcing flaws to withstand serious scrutiny.
At that time, I had recently departed the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where I had been involved in Presidentially directed special investigations involving WMD, Sarin, and Biological weapons on the CIA WMD Working Group, and was then working on the White House Interagency Terrorism Response and Awareness Program (ITRAP) on COG-COOP (continuity of government - continuity of operations planning). TOP SECRET Compartmented - end times, apocalypse issues, nuclear winter, global pandemics, aliens, and zombies, etc.
During that period, we were coordinating closely with both CNN and NBC on their participation as senior media role players in the largest-scale national counter-terrorism exercise ever conducted, simulating a catastrophic terrorist attack on the United States, in three major cities, simultaneously (this planning and threat awareness was in 1998).
Sound Familiar - Attacks on 9/11/2001? The exercise report “TOP OFFICIAL” was classified.
The exercise – TOP OFFICIAL (TOPOFF). Federal, State, and Local - All Hazards, WMD, Counter Terrorism forces, stakeholders involved media participation, including aggressive real-time questioning of the President and cabinet officials under simulated crisis conditions, preparing them to speak to the nation, our alliances, and our adversaries.
Years later, George Bush would review an outline of those public affairs findings when he spoke to the nation from ground zero with a loudspeaker, upon the rubble of the World Trade Center.
In the middle of that classified exercise environment, a senior and highly respected journalist asked for my assessment of the Tailwind allegations.
My reaction was immediate. The central premise - that U.S. Special Operations Forces intentionally exposed their own personnel or others to sarin gas during a covert mission -struck me as deeply dubious, operationally irrational, profoundly illegal, and fundamentally inconsistent with the way Special Operations missions were planned, authorized, and controlled during that era.
But rather than speculate emotionally, I proposed a straightforward solution.
I knew precisely where the answers would likely reside: within the Joint Chiefs records, mission files, operational summaries, aircraft tail numbers, logistics documentation, and command after action reporting associated with the operation itself, deep in the archival rooms in the basement of the Pentagon.
Those systems exist for a reason. Believe it or not, when someone makes an outlandish accusation about a military covert operation, the first response is not denial, the first task is to send a team to the classified, limited access archives and ask the Socratic question “is this true?”
When the underlying records were examined, nothing seen remotely resembled the allegations being advanced publicly in the story.
My recommendation at the time was simple: listen carefully to General Perry Smith.
My personal assessment was that former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during the Nixon administration, Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, then interviewed by Producers at an advanced age, and having overseen countless highly classified Vietnam-era operations during his tenure as Chairman, was likely conflating Tailwind with one of hundreds of other sensitive missions he had been briefed on during the war.
That did not make him dishonest. It made him human. And that distinction matters enormously when journalism attempts to reconstruct covert operations decades after the fact, particularly when memory, secrecy, fragmented records, and extraordinary allegations begin intersecting under the pressure of a major media investigation.
On September 11th, 2001, the 9/11 attacks grounded global civil aviation. I was stranded in Athens with my Hostage Rescue Team on a mission to Egypt, CNN activated my contingency contract, in case of war, I immediately became the Senior Terrorism and National Security Producer, and analyst for Cable News Network – with a global portfolio, and fought my way out of Europe on the first American aircraft heading to NYC, and ground zero of the World Trade Center, where I had previously consulted on COG-COOP and assisted Jerry Hauer, the cities first Director, Office of Emergency Management, in the planning and lead up to the Millennial Y2K, ushering in the year 2000, in Tower 7, WTC.
Too many people I knew were missing or dead.
I arrived at CNN during the aftermath period of Tailwind firings, when the cloud, and institutional shockwaves from Tailwind still moved through the network like an electrical current, and directly impacted the CNN Investigation Unit I joined as its newest member.
CNN was not merely another cable channel.
It was Ted Turner’s insurgent global newsroom – the largest in the world.
A place built on aggressive field reporting, international presence, war coverage, and the belief that journalism mattered enough to place reporters directly into history as it unfolded.
That culture produced extraordinary journalism.
It also created enormous internal pressure to land consequential exclusives.
THE BROADCAST THAT SHOOK CNN
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.” Richard Feynman
On June 7, 1998, CNN aired NewsStand: CNN & Time - Valley of Death, a report examining a covert MACV-SOG mission conducted in Laos during the Vietnam War known as Operation Tailwind. My father flew these MACV-SOG insertions, so I grew up with a keen interest in the covert action.
The report alleged two explosive claims:
That U.S. forces used sarin nerve agent during the operation.
That the mission may have targeted American defectors believed to have crossed over to communist forces.
The story carried enormous institutional weight because of the people attached to it.
The report was produced by experienced investigative journalists April Oliver and Jack Smith and narrated by legendary war correspondent Peter Arnett.
The report also relied heavily on interviews with former military personnel, including Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs during the Nixon administration who agreed that the incident was true.
It does not get much better for sourcing, than that.
“The essence of intelligence work is not merely collecting information. It is the ruthless elimination of error.” Sherman Kent, founding father of modern intelligence analysis
THE COLLAPSE
Almost immediately after broadcast, the story encountered resistance from multiple directions:
Former participants in the mission disputed the claims.
Military officers challenged the sourcing
The Pentagon denied the allegations.
Inside CNN, alarm spread rapidly.
The issue was not that controversial journalism had been attempted.
The issue was that the evidence supporting the accusations did not meet the threshold required for allegations of this magnitude.
TED TURNER’S RECKONING – WHY LEADERSHIP MATTERS
Ted Turner understood something many media executives never fully grasp:
A news organization can survive criticism.
It can survive political attacks.
It can survive bad ratings.
But it cannot indefinitely survive the collapse of public confidence in its verification systems.
Under Turner’s direction, CNN fundamentally and immediately strengthened its Standards and Practices architecture:
Editorial review systems became more disciplined.
Legal review became more integrated into the editorial pipeline.
National security reporting underwent heightened scrutiny.
Anonymous sourcing standards became stricter.
The network did not eliminate aggressive journalism.
It attempted to harden it.
CNN Public Affairs
Public comments from CNN spokesman Matt Furman during the Tailwind controversy largely reflected the network’s institutional position following the internal investigation and retraction.
After CNN commissioned constitutional attorney Floyd Abrams to independently review the reporting, the network concluded that the evidence did not adequately support the central allegations that U.S. forces used sarin nerve agent during Operation Tailwind or intentionally targeted American defectors in Laos.
As part of CNN’s broader public affairs and damage-control response, Furman defended the network’s decision to immediately retract the report, and inwardly institute fundamental change, and emphasized that CNN’s standards process would require the strongest evidence capable of sustaining extraordinary allegations of chemical warfare and war crimes.
The network publicly acknowledged that portions of the sourcing, interview interpretation, and evidentiary conclusions underlying the report were insufficiently supported.
The controversy became a defining institutional crisis for CNN because it exposed tensions between aggressive investigative journalism and the evidentiary burden required in national security reporting.
Furman and other CNN representatives repeatedly stressed that the issue was not whether journalists should investigate covert military activity, but whether the available evidence met the threshold necessary to support such explosive public accusations.
The aftermath directly contributed to CNN strengthening its internal standards-review structure, ultimately leading to the elevation of Rick Davis into a central long-term oversight role designed to institutionalize stricter editorial review procedures following the Tailwind debacle.
And at the center of that transformation stood two men: Rick Davis, Ted Turner.
Rick Davis & Ted Turner
Ted Turner’s decision to place Rick Davis in charge of Standards and Practices after the Tailwind debacle proved to be one of the most important leadership decisions in the history of modern television journalism.
Davis brought not only editorial rigor, but decades of institutional continuity, operational discipline, and calm credibility to a newsroom operating under relentless competitive pressure. Having been present since CNN’s launch day in 1980, he understood the network’s mission, culture, strengths, and vulnerabilities better than anyone alive.
Under his stewardship, assisted by the highly competent, and respected Mariana Spicer, Standards and Practices evolved into far more than a compliance office - it became the network’s internal skeptical filter, challenging assumptions, stress-testing sourcing, and protecting the integrity of the CNN brand itself:
Working closely with President Eason Jordan, Vice President Keith McAllister, Senior Editor on the ROW, Richard Griffiths, & seasoned and capable senior news executive, Nancy Lane, they collectively transformed and elevated global news gathering standards.
Around the newsroom, “Ask Rick” or “See what Rick thinks” became shorthand for something increasingly rare in modern media: trusted judgment grounded not in ideology or ego, but in experience, discipline, fairness, and an unwavering commitment to factual accuracy.
For an entire generation of CNN journalists, Rick Davis became the institutional conscience of the organization, and his steady leadership helped ensure that the painful lessons of Tailwind were not merely remembered, but permanently operationalized into the DNA of the network.
Rick Davis became the institutional guardian of editorial discipline inside CNN - ultimately retiring as its longest serving executive - with 40 Years.
Davis joined CNN on the day the network launched in 1980 and remained there for more than four decades.
A CNN Original.
Following Tailwind, he became Executive Vice President of News Standards and Practices in 1998, the very year the controversy exploded:
He would remain in that role until his retirement on January 31, 2021.
The longest-serving executive in the history of cable news.
Under Davis, standards review inside CNN evolved into one of the most rigorous editorial systems in television journalism.
Sensitive stories (my lane) involving intelligence matters, covert operations, terrorism, war crimes allegations, foreign interference, or classified information increasingly moved through multiple levels of review before airing.
Inside CNN, generations of journalists absorbed the lessons of Tailwind through Rick Davis
One source is not enough.
Two sources are often not enough.
Anonymous sourcing requires corroboration.
Extraordinary allegations demand extraordinary evidence.
And perhaps most importantly:
Journalists must guard constantly against falling in love with the story they want to be true.
THE LASTING LESSON
Today, Tailwind remains one of the defining case studies in modern journalism.
Not simply because a story failed. But because the institutional response afterward mattered.
CNN learned from it and Took Decisive Action:
Ted Turner forced the organization to confront it.
Rick Davis operationalized the lessons permanently.
Being first means nothing if you are not right.
And in national security journalism, being almost right can still destroy institutional credibility for years.
CONCLUSION - THE NECESSITY OF INDEPENDENT REVIEW
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” Aldous Huxley
Perhaps the most enduring lesson of Tailwind extends far beyond journalism itself.
It is a lesson about human systems.
Any organization - whether a global news network, intelligence service, military command, law enforcement agency, corporate boardroom, or covert operational unit - becomes vulnerable the moment it loses the ability to independently challenge its own assumptions.
That danger increases exponentially when the people reviewing the work are emotionally, professionally, or institutionally invested in the outcome.
Inside any high-performing organization, momentum is powerful:
Teams bond around missions.
Reporters bond around stories.
Analysts bond around assessments.
Operators bond around operational plans.
Over time, internal consensus can slowly become mistaken for objective validation.
That is where catastrophic errors are born:
Not necessarily from malice.
Not from conspiracy.
But from accumulated certainty operating inside closed loops of reinforcement.
In intelligence operations, we understood this danger well. Serious covert operations, special access programs, hostage rescue planning, counterterrorism targeting, and sensitive interagency missions were routinely subjected to outside review, red-teaming, legal oversight, compartmented challenge processes, and independent validation precisely because lives, national credibility, and geopolitical consequences were at stake:
The purpose was never to humiliate the planners.
The purpose was to protect the mission from ourselves.
That same discipline is essential in journalism.
No investigative team, no matter how experienced, should become the sole validator of its own conclusions when the allegations carry enormous institutional, legal, geopolitical, or reputational consequences. The more explosive the story, the greater the obligation for independent review by professionals not emotionally invested in “winning” the argument or broadcasting the exclusive.
Because once human beings become attached to a narrative, objectivity begins quietly degrading:
Contradictory evidence becomes minimized.
Ambiguities become interpreted as confirmation.
Caution begins feeling like obstruction.
And skepticism inside the organization can gradually become viewed as disloyalty rather than discipline.
That is precisely why independent review structures matter.
Ted Turner ultimately understood this after Tailwind.
And Rick Davis institutionalized it:
The lesson was not that aggressive journalism should stop.
The lesson was that extraordinary claims require adversarial verification strong enough to survive internal enthusiasm, competitive pressure, public attention, and institutional ego simultaneously.
The same principle applies in intelligence and military operations:
No operator should be the final authority validating his own mission.
No analyst should be the sole reviewer of his own assessment.
No newsroom should become emotionally captive to its own reporting.
Because history repeatedly demonstrates the same uncomfortable truth:
Organizations rarely collapse from lack of intelligence.
They collapse from lack of disciplined skepticism.
And in both journalism and national security, the most dangerous words in any operational environment are often the simplest:
“We already know.” “We’re good, no need to check further.”
Sources
My time at CNN, in the news rooms of Atlanta, Washington, DC, New York, London, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, Balkans, Haiti, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Intelligence Community beat.
TIME archive - “Did The U.S. Drop Nerve Gas?” (June 14, 1998)
Department of Defense / Air Force Tailwind Historical Review PDF
National Security Archive - Operation Tailwind documents and chronology
Wikipedia overview - Operation Tailwind controversy and reporting history