Gareth Porter

Porter wrote a series of articles and academic papers challenging President Richard Nixon's statement that there would be a communist "bloodbath" in South Vietnam if the U.S. withdrew its forces. In his 1973 monograph The Myth of the Bloodbath: North Vietnam’s Land Reform Reconsidered,[26] he challenges the assertion by Indochina expert Bernard Fall that 50,000 may have died in North Vietnam's land reform program and the estimates of others alleging the mass execution of hundreds of thousands of people. His analysis concluded that the real number of casualties was much lower. Scholar Edwin Moise later estimated a death toll of 13,500.[27] but has been challenged by several writers, including Daniel Teoduru,[28][29] Robert Turner,[30] and Hoang Van Chi.[31]

In 1974, Porter wrote a detailed criticism of U.S. Information Agency official Douglas Pike's account of the "Massacre at Huế during the Tet Offensive."[32] A 1970 report by Stephen T. Hosmer utilizing Viet Cong documents suggested that at least 2,800 persons were killed.[33] Porter stated that Pike manipulated official figures to make it appear that over 4,700 civilians were murdered by the Viet Cong, and the numbers and causes of death were different.[32]

In 1976, George C. Hildebrand and Porter published a book titled Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, which compared the ways the U.S.-backed Khmer Republic and Communist Party of Kampuchea administrations each dealt with the problem of starvation in Cambodia. It challenged the prevailing media accounts of ideological fanatacism and cruelty by the latter,[34] and argued instead that the Democratic Kampuchea program constituted a rational response to the serious problems confronting the Cambodian nation: disease, starvation, economic devastation, and cities swollen with millions of refugees after years of American bombing.

Testifying before Congress in May 1977, Porter read a prepared statement which began:

The situation in postwar Cambodia has generated an unprecedented wave of emotional—and at times even hysterical—comment in the United States and Western Europe. The closing off of Cambodia to the foreign press, making the refugees the only source of information used by the media, and the tendency of many refugees to offer the darkest possible picture of the country they fled have combined to provide a fertile ground for wild exaggeration and wholesale falsehood about the government and its policies. The result is the suggestion, now rapidly hardening into conviction, that 1 to 2 million Cambodians have been the victims of a regime led by genocidal maniacs....the notion that the leadership of Democratic Kampuchea adopted a policy of physically eliminating whole classes of people, of purging anyone who was connected with the Lon Nol government, or punishing the entire urban population by putting them to work in the countryside after the "death march" from the cities, is a myth."

He criticized the work of other writers with different views of the character of the Khmer Rouge, stating: "Both Ponchaud's and Barron and Paul's books fail to measure up to even the minimum standards of journalism or scholarship, and their overall conclusions and general tone must be regarded as the product of overheated emotions and lack of caution. Moreover, there is enough evidence available from various sources, including material published by Ponchaud himself, to discredit the extreme thesis propounded by both books."[35] When congressman Stephen J. Solarz asked if any of the experts could "explain why what happened in Cambodia actually happened", Porter responded, "I cannot accept the premise of your question, which is that...1 million people have been murdered systematically or that the Government of Cambodia is systematically slaughtering its people." In response, Solarz characterized the scholars defending the Khmer Rouge, including Porter, as "cowardly and contemptible." Solarz called the actions of the Khmer Rouge government "monstrous."[36]

Hildebrand and Porter were criticized in 1978 by British author William Shawcross for using Khmer Rouge sources in their research.[34] Shawcross commented that their "apparent faith in Khmer Rouge assertions and statistics is surprising in two men who have spent so long analyzing the lies that governments tell." In response to Shawcross, Porter responded, "As anyone who has seen the book will know, nothing could be further from the truth. We document the conditions under which the evacuation took place from Khmer refugee reports, as well as European and American eyewitness accounts." Porter further commented: "It is true, as Shawcross notes from my May 1977 Congressional testimony, that I have changed my view on a number of aspects of the Cambodian situation. I have no interest in defending everything the Khmer government does, and I believe that the policy of self-reliance has been carried so far that it has imposed unnecessary costs on the population of Cambodia. Shawcross, however, clearly does have an interest in rejecting our conclusions. It is time, I suggest, for him to examine it carefully, because it does not make for intellectual honesty." Shawcross responded caustically, "it is a tribute to his own integrity that he now agrees that the Khmer Rouge have imposed 'unnecessary costs' on the Cambodian people. He should, however, be a little more careful before he accuses others of deliberately falsifying evidence and of intellectual dishonesty."[34]

In 2010, Porter said he had been waiting many years for someone to ask him about his earlier views of the Khmer Rouge. He described how the climate of distrust of the government generated during the Vietnam war carried over to Cambodia. "I uncovered a series of instances when government officials were propagandizing [about the Vietnam war]. They were lying," he explained. "I've been well aware for many years that I was guilty of intellectual arrogance. I was right about the bloodbath in Vietnam, so I assumed I would be right about Cambodia."[37]

Porter has reported extensively on Middle East conflicts, and he has written on the Ghouta chemical attack which occurred during the Syrian Civil War.[38] Porter wrote in September 2013 about the origins and content of the White House intelligence report entitled U.S. Government Assessment of the Syrian Government's Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013, commenting that analysis by Inter Press Service (IPS) and interviews with former intelligence officials indicated the report only consisted of White House-selected information, and failed to accurately reflect the opinions of intelligence analysts.[39] He queried the "assumption that it was a Syrian government-sponsored attack" by asserting that "significant new information has become available that makes an attack by opposition forces far more plausible than appeared to be the case in the first weeks after the event."[40]

In response to Porter's statements questioning the use of chemical weapons in Syria by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, the British organization Bellingcat stated that Porter "relies heavily on ignoring the tests by the OPCW that detected Sarin in samples" and that "Porter relies on the usual chemical weapon truther claims that these results were from samples being tampered with in someway, without presenting any actual evidence it took place".[41]

Gareth Porter argues that "the analysis of Khamenei’s fatwa has been flawed" not only because the role of the "guardian jurist" in the Iranian political-legal system is not understood completely, but also because the history of Khamenei's fatwa is ignored. He also says that to understand Iranian policy toward nuclear weapons, one should refer to the "historical episode during its eight-year war with Iraq" which explains why Iran never used chemical weapons against Iraq when seeking revenge for Iraqis attacks which killed 20,000 Iranians and severely injured 100,000 more. Porter argues that this fact strongly suggests that Iran has sincerely banned developing chemical and nuclear weapons and it is "deep-rooted".[42]