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TIME
THE WEEKLY NEWSMAGAZINE

May 8, 1972 Vol. 99, No. 19

THE NATION

AMERICAN NOTES

Humphrey? Go Fish

"All right, gents, let's see some
cards."

"Lookin' good. I've got Pat Nixon
hawking pie, Jane of Arc Fonda on the
battlements and Martha Mitchell on the
phone."

"Read 'em and weep. Richard Nixon in an ermine robe, Strom Thurmond in a Confederate flag and Lyndon Johnson serving rockets at a barbecue."

Such are the hands drawn at a new
game of satirical poker played with
"Politicards." The idea was concocted
by a Los Angeles copywriter-artist
team, Lee Livingston and Peter Green,
who turned a standard deck into a rif-
le of 54 political caricatures (including
the two obvious jokers, William F.
Buckley Jr. and Norman Mailer). All
the black cards are Republicans, the
reds Democrats. Deuce of spades is Lit-
tle David Eisenhower in a sailor suit,
clutching a toy boat. Tricia Nixon Cox,
the four of spades, is a Playboy Bunny.
Eugene McCarthy, the three of hearts,
is Hamlet meditating upon a skull. A
constabulary George Wallace is rated
the jack of diamonds. The cards have
been popular enough to go into their
third edition, but they obviously need
some updating. One of the present kings
is Edmund Muskie.

Lincoln's Raiders

Consumer concern is filtering down
ranks. A fifth grader at Lincoln School
in Euclid, Ohio, ten-year-old Billy Han-
ton, blew 35¢ of his allowance on an
eight-ounce package of Nestlé's Quik.
When he got home, he discovered that
his mother had purchased two pounds
for 79¢. Nader-sharp, Billy calculated
and concluded: "Oh-oh, I shouldn't
have bought that."

This precocious consumerism be-
gan after a group of Lincoln School
teachers decided to make the curricu-
lum more, well, relevant by starting les-
sons in comparative shopping. They
found that the children caught on quick-
ly. Now Lincoln has a newspaper called
the Nader News, which features sulfu-
rous exposés like the tale about the
school store, where Mrs. Betty Davis
tried to beat Susan Davidson out of a
penny on her purchase of a paste brush.
(Susan won.)

Even outside companies have been
caught out by Lincoln's Raiders. Best
Foods received a letter from Sixth
Grader Brian Houser noting that "on

the label of a jar of Skippy dry-roasted
mixed nuts I noticed that cashews are
listed first. But I found more peanuts.
Our committee believes that you should
correct the label." (The company re-
plied that Brian's jar was "a poor rep-
resentative of this line" and enclosed a
coupon for another.) Next, some candy
companies may have to recall their Eu-
clid shipments because their product
does not maintain the proper heft for
Saturday-matinee chucking at the kid
in the second row.

De Minimis
Non Curat Lex

A traditional byword of American
bluestockingism is "banned in Boston."
And when it comes to obscenity Elijah
Adlow, chief justice of the Boston Mu-
nicipal Court, is something of a hard-
nose. Yet last week he lodged a rather
curious protest against lewdness: he dis-
missed the case against a stripper who
got carried away.

It seems that Lusia Ferrus, an attraction at Boston's Normandy Lounge, neglected to stop at the required pasties and G string. She was promptly busted. Noting the salacious slaverings in X-rated movies the police are constantly shutting down, Adlow let Lusia go. Said the judge: "This was my personal protest against the protection given by the higher courts to X-rated movies and shows. What this girl was doing at least has redeeming social value. It keeps her off welfare."

Fine for Feathers

Turkey feathers may serve well enough for Boy Scouts in summer-camp loincloth dances, but not for authentic Indians. To Wisconsin's Winnebago tribe, the wingspan of the soaring eagle symbolizes a canopy of protection sent down by a great benefactor in the sky.

Such was the argument advanced by
the attorney for Max Funmaker, an
improbably named Winnebago from
Black River Falls, who was charged by
federal authorities with the illegal pos-
session of two dead bald eagles, a spe-
cies even more endangered than the
buffalo ever was. Funmaker conceded
that he had shot the eagles down—pre-
sumably with spiritual intent. It was a
somehow unlikely collision of the white
man's belated ecological law with an In-
dian lore that for centuries has taken na-
ture to be sacred. The judge let Fun-
maker off with a $100 fine.

ALFRED EISENSTADT

GABA

# Ypsilanti is sending drunk drivers to a couples club.

He's a traffic offender, a man arrested for driving under the influence of liquor. The court asked for an evaluation and found he had a problem-drinking pattern. He accepted probation with a no-drinking clause. For a year he'll take Antabuse pills. For a month he'll take part in group counseling.

She's his wife. For a month she'll also take part in group counseling.

For both, the sessions are often their first look at drinking as a problem. And at the other problems they've been living with. Employment, money management, health needs, friends and relatives, kids, their marriage.

The idea isn't to punish the alcoholic mate. It's to look at the inter-related problems that accompany abusive drinking. And to find strengths and understanding upon which to build.

This is one countermeasure of ASAP, the Alcohol Safety Action Program in Washtenaw County, Michigan.

It's a broad program with many countermeasures—public information, enforcement work, court evaluation, licensing, and probation programs. And it's effective.

In the past year it's kept a lot of problem-drinkers off the road. It's put a lot of problem families back on. Almost half of ASAP's couples keep up the counseling long after the required month is up.

Through such ASAP projects across the country, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is developing recommendations for an effective nation-wide program to stop drunk driving.

State Farm endorses this effort because nearly thirty thousand drivers, passengers and pedestrians were killed last year in alcohol-related accidents.

You can help. For information, write the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Department of Transportation, Washington, D.C. 20590.

STATE FARM MUTUAL AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE COMPANY

Home Office: Bloomington, Illinois

THE WAR

Peace Talks Again in Paris

THROUGH the long years of the Viet Nam War, the U.S. has repeatedly been assured that one more turn of the screw, one more push of escalation would bring the enemy to the negotiating table in earnest at last, if not to his knees. Now the enemy is coming once more to the table; top North Vietnamese Negotiator Le Duc Tho returns to Paris this week presumably to resume the secret sessions with the U.S. that were broken off last November. But it is not exactly on the terms that Washington wanted. It is the enemy that has esimated; it is the U.S. that is in need of an agreement. With American ground troops out of action and U.S. options more limited than ever, President Nixon's Vietnamization policies and perhaps his re-election prospects are on severest trial.

The battlefield situation is grave. While the South Vietnamese have

French and then the Americans (see THE WORLD).

Faced with that grim prospect, Nixon went on TV to talk tough. "All that we have risked and all that we have gained over the years now hangs in the balance," he said. "We will not be defeated and we will never surrender our friends to Communist aggression." He repeated the familiar threat that "a bloodbath" would follow if North Viet Nam took over in Saigon. He reiterated a theme employed by every Administration that has been involved in the war: "If one country armed with the most modern weapons can invade another nation and succeed in conquering it, other countries will be encouraged to do the same thing." But he carefully pinned all the prognostications that the South Vietnamese would hold in the present crisis on the evaluation of his commander on the scene,

General Creighton Abrams.

Right or wrong, the words have been played so many times over for a war-weary American public that they seemed emptied of meaning, a kind of litany of the Viet Nam nightmare. But at the same time, Nixon said that he would continue to withdraw troops from South Viet Nam, though at a slower rate. In the next two months, 20,000 will go. Nixon also announced that he was resuming the Paris peace talks, "not simply in order to hear more empty propaganda and bombast from the North Vietnamese, but to get on with the constructive business of making peace." He expected progress to be made "through all available channels."

The President was apparently responding to Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev's offer to Henry Kissinger. The Kissinger mission had been conducted with the usual successful secrecy. Like a contemporary Scarlet Pimpernel, the unpredictable foreign policy adviser had casually sauntered into a Georgetown salon one evening as if he did not have a care in the world. When the party was over, he jumped into a limousine and was driven to Andrews Air Force Base, where he took off for Moscow. Lodged in a spacious villa with an expansive view of the Moscow River and the city beyond, Kissinger spent parts of three days with Brezhnev.

Precisely what the two men agreed on is still secret, but evidently it was enough to encourage the White House to resume the high-level secret talks and refrain from bombing Hanoi and Hai-

phong for a time. But not enough to discourage Moscow from doubling arms shipments through Haiphong.

One negotiating possibility is that the North Vietnamese will accept an offer made earlier by the President and rejected by them: the withdrawal of all U.S. forces by a fixed date in return for a cease-fire and the release of prisoners of war. Now that the North has occupied parts of the South, it has picked up more bargaining chips and may be willing to settle for a cease-fire—a prospect that the Administration views with some anxiety. Kissinger has been led by the Russians to expect, one way or another, some kind of breakthrough by the May 22 Moscow summit.

**Leverage.** Meanwhile Nixon must keep his eye on his other front, at home. So far, domestic criticism has not got out of hand. In his speech, he warned that the Communists might try to win their victory by persuading Congress or the public of the futility of the war. This was also a familiar plea—perhaps calculated to blunt criticism—but it seems to be effective. One of the Senate's formidable doves, Senator George Aiken, even counseled Nixon critics "not to encourage this war to go on, not to take the side of the enemy."

Yet time is surely running out in Viet Nam. Nixon's Vietnamization policy must be one of the most complicated balancing acts in the history of diplomacy. Never in the annals of modern warfare has a nation tried to win a war—or at least stave off defeat—while withdrawing its troops from battle. The President has apparently shown more confidence in public than he has in private. Another batch of classified documents leaked to the press last week reveals that the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon all cast serious doubt on current policies back in 1969. In a forthcoming book, *Catch the Falling Flag*, Richard Whalen, a former Nixon speechwriter, asserted that Nixon had had deeper misgivings about the war than most people knew. After learning of a pessimistic study of the war given to L.B.J., Nixon told advisers in March 1968: "There's no way to win the war. But we can't say that, of course. In fact, we have to say the opposite just to keep some degree of bargaining leverage."

The White House still thinks it has sufficient leverage. Kissinger believes that the North Vietnamese offensive is the prelude to serious negotiations that will finally bring the war to a mutually acceptable conclusion, though what that may consist of is as obscure as ever. There is little evidence that the Communists feel any urgency to accept what they have turned down before. It would obviously be in the interests of the North Vietnamese to make such a hash of the President's policies on the battlefield that he would be defeated for re-election and replaced by a dovish Democrat. The initiative at the moment, as so often in the long war, still rests with the North Vietnamese.

Henry Kissinger leaving home in Washington; Le Duc Tho arriving in Paris; a North Vietnamese tank in battle near Quang Tri.

fought bravely in some sectors, they have caved in elsewhere. The North Vietnamese, heavily supplied by the Soviet Union, are driving hard for Kontum in the Central Highlands, toward Quang Tri near the coast, and are menacing Hué. As the Communists approach urban centers, the U.S. faces another painful decision: whether to continue its air and artillery support at the cost of civilian lives in the cities. The open aggression has signaled a third Indochina war, and it could drag on as inconclusively, as destructively, as hopelessly as the earlier two wars that engaged first the

TIME, MAY 8, 1972

15

POLITICS/COVER STORY

# Front and Center for George McGovern

SUDDENLY, in what once had seemed a cut-and-dried contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, all bets were off. On the morrow of the Massachusetts and Pennsylvania primaries last week, it was a new race. In Pennsylvania, Hubert Humphrey won the first state primary of his career. George McGovern swept to a lopsided victory in Massachusetts and finished close behind George Wallace in Pennsylvania, where Edmund Muskie ended up an embarrassing fourth—and quite literally out of the money. As the candidates went into Ohio and Indiana this week, the committed delegate count stood: McGovern, 231½; Muskie, 124½; Wallace, 77; Humphrey, 76; Shirley Chisholm, 5; Wilbur Mills, 1. *A Who's Where* of the principal candidates:

**MUSKIE** took himself out of active contention with considerable dignity. The fault, he said, was that he had spread himself too thin, entering every primary, draining his resources. But he had also seemed fuzzy on the issues as he tried to be a consensus candidate, and he was disorganized and indecisive. Most important of all, perhaps, was that the unpredictable 1972 electorate was unmoved, even dissuaded, by Muskie's reliance on the endorsements and the organizations of the regular politicians. So, he said, he would no longer run, but would remain available if a deadlocked convention wanted him.

**HUMPHREY** may well benefit more than McGovern from Muskie's abdication, since they were both fighting for what Humphrey likes to call "the vital progressive center" of the Democratic Party—including organized labor and the border South. A TIME/Yankelovich survey of Pennsylvania voters, interviewed as they left the polls, found that

Humphrey's victory was built on a "somewhat frail reproduction" of the traditional Democratic coalition—the poor, the minorities, the aged and the ethnic blue-collar workers. Of Muskie's supporters, 55% named Humphrey their second choice v. only 29% for McGovern. For the Ohio primary this week, the polls had Humphrey about a 10% favorite over McGovern.

**WALLACE** will meet Humphrey head-on in Indiana this week, and again in one-to-one primaries in Maryland and West Virginia. Wallace remains a force to be reckoned with, though some observers think that he merely wants to be the Democrats' Strom Thurmond—without real power, but able to boast of his influence in high places. Feeling his oats, he joked with reporters last week about his plans as President: "We just may have a lot of press censorship—but maybe I can get you boys a job in the basement or something. That be all right with you?"

**McGOVERN** plans to do well where he thinks he can—Ohio, Michigan, Nebraska—and play a dramatic end game with victories in Oregon, California and New York. "It's the classic underdog strategy," says Ted Van Dyk, a former Humphrey aide who is now a McGovern adviser. "It's also General Giap's battle plan. You concentrate your forces at the point of the enemy's weakness. You pick your battlegrounds." That has led him, wisely and conveniently, to stay out of Southern contests that could have set him back.

For McGovern, that strategy has not only been shrewd; it has been necessary. When he announced for the presidency more than a year ago, there was skepticism, irreverence, even downright disbelief. But George Stanley McGovern, 49, once an obscure prairie politician, has somehow struck a responsive chord in the voters; he is now ahead in the extraordinary testing of Democratic presidential postulants in 1972. With Muskie out of the race, McGovern's chief rival is Humphrey, the everebullient 1968 nominee, a hardy perennial compared to the burgeoning McGovern. If his momentum holds, McGovern could well take the Democratic nomination; if it does not, and Humphrey becomes the candidate, the fiercest of McGovern's supporters could well mean a Democratic Party sundered more deeply than it was even in 1968. And should McGovern win at Miami Beach, the campaign could be the most spirited and sharply drawn since John Kennedy and Richard Nixon faced off in 1960.

Unlike Humphrey, say, or Wallace, whose persons and prejudices are clear and familiar, McGovern remains a paradoxical figure. He is a very liberal

MICHAEL LOYD CARLEBACH

TRIUMPHANT IN BOSTON

WRITING A SPEECH IN MIAMI HOTEL ROOM AFTER THE FLORIDA PRIMARY

CARLEBACH

TIME, MAY 8, 1972

ONAL

THE GUARDIAN April 29 1972

Secret talks save Moscow summit

A secret four-day visit by Dr Henry Kissinger to meet Soviet leaders was disclosed on Tuesday, confirming that President Nixon's summit in Moscow next month is still on in spite of North Vietnam's escalating offensive and the American reply.

Dr Kissinger, who surfaced smilingly at the White House to tell of his meetings over the weekend in Moscow with Soviet party leader Mr Brezhnev and the Foreign Minister, Mr Gromyko, declined to disclose the substance of his discussions, but confirmed that the renewed fighting in Vietnam had been high on the agenda.

Asked what was the principal reason for his surprise visit, the President's national security adviser refused to reply directly, saying that "the whole range of Soviet-American relations was discussed," including the most important issue. Contradicting published reports, he noted that at no point had either nation considered calling off the summit, in spite of US charges that Soviet military equipment was a major factor in the increased fighting in Vietnam.

Dr Kissinger described his reception in Moscow as "extremely courteous" and his meetings with Mr Brezhnev and Mr Gromyko as "frank and useful," adding that while in Moscow he had been in direct communication with the

President at Camp David.

He defended the secrecy of his visit on the grounds that "we are at the moment in a very delicate phase of international relations." It was felt, he said, there should be a minimum of speculation. "That is why the announcement is being made 24 hours after my return to Washington."

The White House had successfully kept Dr Kissinger's absence a secret by announcing that he had gone ahead of President Nixon to Camp David on Thursday even-

ing. Throughout the weekend Administration spokesmen continued to include Dr Kissinger as among the key advisers with whom the President was conferring.

The whole affair bears the hallmark of the Nixon-Kissinger style of behind-the-scenes diplomacy. But, short of informed accounts which have yet to emerge here, it is possible only to speculate on what prompted it. The Vietnam situation is clearly at a crisis point and Administration officials concede that what happens on the ground during the next four to six weeks may well decide the outcome of the war.

But it is hard to see what, if any, assurances Dr Kissinger could hope to gain in Moscow which could affect the current

fighting, except the limited one that Soviet leaders still believe a summit meeting with President Nixon is worth while. More likely, in the view of some observers here, is that the visit was tied to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) on which the Administration is anxious to secure the broadest possible agreement.

A split is reported to exist still on curbing nuclear submarine construction and limitations on underwater strategic missiles, and it is possible that Dr Kissinger

may have gone to Moscow to thrash out the shape of the SALT agreements which President Nixon is apparently determined to bring home.

The brief joint statement released simultaneously in both Moscow and Washington appeared to indicate, however, that the discussions involved both Vietnam and SALT. Mr Ronald Ziegler, the White House press secretary, noted after reading the communique that the discussions dealt with "important international problems as well as bilateral matters preparatory to the talks between President Nixon and Soviet leaders."

Mr Nixon's visit to Moscow is due to start on May 22 and is expected to last a week. Dr Kissinger's

visit over the weekend, when he travelled by military plane, coincided with the journey of the White House advance team in Moscow to make press, security, communications, and logistical arrangements for the summit.

President Nixon meanwhile is considering halting all further United States troop withdrawals from Vietnam because of the increasingly serious threat from the North Vietnamese offensive. With South Vietnamese troops retreating in disorder in the Central Highlands and barely hanging on in Quang Tri province his options appear to be severely limited.

The US military commander in Vietnam, General Creighton Abrams, is said to have told the White House that the military situation is now so serious that it would be inadvisable to make any further cuts in American troop strength which would reduce the total of 69,000 due to be reached on May 1. Only 6,000 of this total are combat troops.

Mr Nixon is understood to have ruled out the reintroduction of new American troops, but Administration officials hedged on whether he would carry out his declared intention and announce a further withdrawal by May 1. Failure to do so would invite the charge that the Vietnamisation policy was a failure, yet the military risks of further withdrawals have increased significantly.

by Adam Raphael in Washington

THE GUARDIAN April 29 1972

reckless'

The photographs exhibited confirm that the soldiers' initial action was to make arrests, and there was no reason why they should have suddenly desisted and begun to shoot unless they had come under fire themselves. If the soldiers are wrong they were parties to a lying conspiracy which must have come to light in the rigorous cross-examination to which they were subjected.

The report next considers the action in Rossville Street, where a barricade in some disrepair traversed the road. A considerable number of rounds was fired from Kells Walk in the direction of the barricade at which at least four of the fatal casualties occurred. As the army vehicles entered the street the crowd ran towards the barricade and on towards Free Derry Corner.

Although the barricade would not hinder an athletic young man it would be a significant obstruction to a crowd fleeing in panic down Rossville Street. Perhaps the most ugly of all allegations made against the army is that soldiers at Kells Walk fired indiscriminately on a large and panic-stricken crowd which was seeking to escape over the barricade.

Mr James Chapman, a former army warrant officer, said on television that the army fired indiscriminately into a fleeing crowd of several thousand marchers, not just a few hundred hooligans. At the tribunal he changed his estimate of the crowd trying to cross the barricade to 200 to 300.

Mr Robert Campbell, Assistant Chief Constable at Renfrew and Bute, gave a very different account of events at the barricade. He saw a group of demonstrators detach

perhaps for firing and the hostile environment is impairing or seri-

1. In 13 is restrictive of the cause or is he killed?

2. In what was held to be a vicinity throwing a nail fire be-

3. What certain objects, such as a gun. And his military Facedown wait on the door.

Many of them that it is rec-
While the soldiers to fire
a break

The
eviden-
identi-

NIXON'S NEW MOVES
TO END THE WAR

Against a background of raging battle, Mr. Nixon set off this chain of events: a revival of talks at Paris . . . an approach to Moscow . . . further U. S. troop withdrawals. Once again it was squarely up to Hanoi.

ALL THE SIGNS at the beginning of May point to this:

President Nixon is just about convinced there is only one way to end the war and get the U. S. completely out of Vietnam: through a political settlement with the Communists.

That conviction—plus confidence that the time may be ripe for another try at serious negotiations—underlies fast-moving events of recent days.

* The White House suddenly reversed signals and reopened the Paris peace talks on April 27. The U. S. had walked out of the sessions on March 23, claiming the Communists were not interested in negotiating. The likelihood also was strong of renewed secret talks with Hanoi. New proposals by both sides were expected, though hidden from public view.

* President Nixon's top national-security adviser, Henry Kissinger, returning from an unannounced four-day visit to Moscow, dropped hints that Russia, Hanoi's chief armorer, had evinced interest in playing a role in a Vietnam settlement.

* Mr. Nixon in a nationwide speech on April 26 announced that, despite Hanoi's invasion of the South, U. S. troop withdrawals would continue. Twenty thousand more U. S. servicemen are to return home by July 1, leaving only 49,000. That move was interpreted partly as an effort to still antiwar critics in this country, giving the President a freer hand in his dealings with the Communists.

The President made this point

-Wide World Photo

The President and top adviser Kissinger.

clear: Capitulation at Paris is not a price the U. S. will pay for a settlement. He emphasized that in his April 26 speech. White House aides stressed that "realistic negotiations" can take place only if Hanoi meets two key demands—

1. North Vietnam must halt its in-

vasion of the South, withdraw its forces north of the demilitarized zone and prepare to negotiate the return of American prisoners of war.

2. Hanoi must give up its demand that the U. S. abandon the Saigon regime in favor of what would amount to a Communist take-over.

**Tough stance.** The President left no doubt that he intends to be tough if Hanoi wants it that way. The United States will continue to bomb military targets in North Vietnam until the Communist offensive is ended.

And, in some of the bluntest language since he took office more than three years ago, Mr. Nixon declared:

As some experts see it, the President also will move on another track: to continue working on the Russians, trying to convince the Kremlin that it is in the Soviet interest to pressure Hanoi into a settlement.

Many American strategists are convinced that Russian leaders are vitally interested in heading off a blowup over Vietnam that could cancel the May 22 summit meeting with Mr. Nixon in Moscow.

Neither the President nor his top advisers were openly predicting success at the renewed peace talks—but in background meetings with newsmen, the following was being stressed:

North Vietnam was finding a military victory beyond its grasp, after a month of hard fighting. Saigon's forces were not caving in; expected uprisings in the cities did not materialize. Unless the fortunes of war turn, Hanoi's current offensive will have exhausted its force by July 1—and it will be another two years before the Reds could mount an invasion of similar size.

As a result, say White House sources, North Vietnam must now see that it is in its own interest to return to serious peace talks.

*(continued on next page)*

RECORD OF
U.S. TROOP WITHDRAWALS

Note: Current figures do not include 38,000 servicemen aboard offshore vessels, 34,000 in Thailand and 10,000 in Guam.

Source: U.S. Dept. of Defense

Copyright © 1972, U. S. News & World Report, Inc.

U. S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, May 8, 1972

13

LATEST NIXON MOVES

[continued from preceding page]

Presidential adviser Kissinger maintains that, even before the current invasion, a negotiated settlement of the war was the "most probable outcome despite all appearances to the contrary." He told newsmen: "We have always maintained the proposition even when this offensive started that it was probably the prelude to negotiation."

**Why the pullout?** When the President's latest withdrawal is completed two months hence, more than 500,000 men will have been brought home from

majority of the fewer than 50,000 foot soldiers remaining here as of May 1 are not contributing in any direct or meaningful way to helping South Vietnamese forces in combat.

"That is less so with the Air Force and the Navy, of course.

"Many American ground troops, for example, are packing up equipment and vehicles for shipment back to the United States or to U. S. bases elsewhere.

"By the end of July, their job will be virtually finished. They no longer will be needed. Security regulations kept exact numbers secret.

"But American officers have made it very clear that the offensive has caused

force in Vietnam—perhaps 30,000 men—unless there is agreement in Paris for the return of American prisoners of war. As of April 1, the Defense Department listed 489 prisoners of war and 1,146 men missing.

It was considered significant that, for the first time in any withdrawal statement, Mr. Nixon, on April 26 failed to mention a future pullout announcement.

Military men in Vietnam are arguing that there is a definite need to keep a residual force even if there were no POW issue. As they see it, Saigon not only will need air support, but also advisers, instructors and communications experts.

Still in Vietnam are six U. S. infantry battalions and two artillery battalions—about 7,000 combat men, whose primary job is to protect U. S. air bases. There are also 900 helicopters. This is far more than American personnel themselves now require, but any sizable helicopter cut-back probably will be held up until it is certain the Communist offensive has burned itself out.

**What the future holds.** Looking to the months ahead, U. S. military officers see this kind of residual force taking shape, if there is no agreement at Paris:

With fewer and fewer U. S. bases to protect, combat-troop strength probably will run to five or six security companies, each with 150 to 200 men.

U. S. headquarters and staff personnel will be cut to the bone and consolidated for greater efficiency—including Gen. Creighton W. Abrams's headquarters, which now has 1,400 persons assigned to it. The Seventh Air Force presently has about 1,000 on its headquarters staff, the Navy 270, Army components 400.

There are also about 1,700 advisers or liaison personnel attached to the South Vietnamese armed forces. That figure probably will not change.

As one officer explained: "There will still be a requirement for some months for instructors to teach the Vietnamese how to use and maintain equipment Saigon forces are receiving."

The Vietnamese are expected to need assistance for a considerable period to keep in working order the elaborate "long-lines telephone system" now being turned over to them by the U. S. But civilians may take over that job, according to U. S. military sources in Saigon.

On one thing there is unanimous agreement: Whatever the "residual force" turns out to be, it will not have any ground-combat role. No matter what happens at the Paris talks, Mr. Nixon is determined to continue to move Americans out of the line of fire.

A spate of negotiations, page 45; President Nixon's address, 103; size-up of protests in U. S., 106.

-UPI Photo

American negotiator William Porter talks to newsmen after April 27 session of resumed Paris talks. U. S. position: Hanoi must call off its invasion of the South.

South Vietnam since Mr. Nixon took office in 1969.

A number of Pentagon advisers had suggested that, with the Communists making some of their biggest gains in years, Mr. Nixon delay any further withdrawals for psychological reasons. This the President refused to do, after establishing that the pull-back of an additional 20,000 men would not actually hurt South Vietnam's defenses at a critical juncture.

An explanation of that decision came in a cable from Wendell S. Merick of "U. S. News & World Report" in Saigon:

"The simple fact is that there was no military need to drastically change U. S. troop-withdrawal plans because of the Communists' current offensive. A ma-

only a few disruptions in the orderly re-deployment of American personnel here."

The latest withdrawal, the eighth since Mr. Nixon took office, represents a slowdown in the pace of the pullout. Americans had been leaving at a rate of 23,000 a month through April; now they will depart at a rate of 10,000.

**An eye on Paris.** One explanation for the drop: It is necessary to maintain at least some leverage at the Paris talks. If the U. S. had continued to withdraw at the old rate, all Americans would have been out of Vietnam by August 1. The U. S. then would have done on its own just what the Communists have wanted all along: a unilateral U. S. withdrawal, giving nothing in return.

The U. S. intends to leave a residual

14

Newsweek

The President on Vietnam: 'We will not be defeated
and we will never surrender our friends to Communist aggression'

AND THE WAR GOES ON

Nine times Richard Nixon had gone on television to explain his plan to end the war in Indochina. Each time he had vowed that he would extricate the U.S. from that searing conflict without sacrificing the sovereignty of South Vietnam. Last week, the President took his case to the country again, but this time his TV address was made under the shadow of ominous new circumstances. In Vietnam itself, the four-week-old Communist offensive raged ever stronger and threatened to cut the country in half. And at home, the deep but long-dormant hostility that most Americans feel toward the war sputtered sullenly, like coals waiting to be fanned into flames.

Given these pressures, many people expected that Mr. Nixon would unveil some dramatic new turn in U.S. policy toward Vietnam. Instead, he chose to give his audience more of the same. Once again, he proclaimed his determination to defend the regime of South Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu. Sternly, he announced his intention to continue bombing North Vietnam until the Communists "stop their offensive." At the same time, with an eye to domestic opinion, the President revealed that U.S. troop withdrawals would proceed as planned and that U.S. ground strength would be cut to 49,000 men by July 1. Then came the only new element in the speech: apparently on the strength of a secret trip that Henry Kissinger made to Moscow two weeks ago, the President expressed his conviction that meaningful new negotiations would soon be under way in Paris—and he hinted at a resumption of secret talks as well.

All in all, it was a cool and confident performance—which was remarkable in view of the alarming news reports from the battlefield. There, some 120,000 North Vietnamese regulars, backed by

an impressive array of Soviet-made tanks, artillery and missiles, were dealing the Army of South Vietnam (ARVN) one severe setback after another. Three provincial capitals—Quang Tri in the northern part of South Vietnam, Kontum in the central highlands and An Loc northwest of Saigon—were gripped in an ever-tightening ring of Communist troops. As tens of thousands of refugees fled to the uncertain sanctuary of areas under Saigon's control, casualties mounted on both sides. According to the latest weekly casualty report, in fact, more ARVN troops—a total of 4,525—were killed and wounded in the seven days ending April 22 than in any previous week since the war began.

**Gamble:** Despite all this, the President presented an optimistic picture of the military situation. Flourishing a red binder containing a report from Gen. Creighton Abrams, the U.S. commander in Vietnam, Mr. Nixon declared: "The South Vietnamese are fighting courageously and well in their self defense ... General Abrams predicts ... weeks of very hard fighting ... But his conclusion is that if we continue to provide air and sea support, the enemy will fail in its desperate gamble to impose a Communist regime in South Vietnam."

As the President himself implied, the key element in his upbeat assessment was the support being provided the South Vietnamese by an expanded U.S. naval armada and 600 U.S. planes. Clearly, though Mr. Nixon sought to leave the impression that the ARVN was doing all the fighting, the U.S. had mounted a massive effort on the sea and in the air. In addition to the daily strategic bombing of North Vietnam, U.S. planes provided close tactical air support in South Vietnam in a dramatic campaign to stave off an ARVN debacle. During

the month of April, B-52s and jet fighters dropped an estimated total of 98,000 tons of bombs on targets throughout Indochina—a figure that was only slightly below the 1969 monthly average of 100,000 tons.

It was against this background of an escalating conflict—a conflict that threatened to cancel Mr. Nixon's scheduled summit in Moscow later this month—that Henry Kissinger undertook his clandestine rendezvous in Russia. After attending a party at the home of Polly Wisner, a leading Washington hostess, Kissinger

UPI
Land-mine victims near Quang Tri

May 8, 1972

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NATIONAL AFFAIRS

was whisked off to Andrews Air Force Base where he and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin boarded a U.S. Air Force jet for Moscow. Once in the Soviet capital, where he was treated to a VIP sightseeing tour and the customary overabundance of caviar, Kissinger plunged into an extraordinary round of talks with Soviet party chief Leonid Brezhnev that lasted fourteen hours. So intense were the discussions between the two men that Kissinger even extended his planned three-day stay by an extra 24 hours.

Inevitably, Vietnam was a principal point of discussion in the Brezhnev-Kissinger meetings. In effect, Kissinger delivered a professorial lecture on Mr. Nixon's view of how the war is related to the broader sweep of international relations. And he clearly tried to convince Brezhnev that a relaxation of tensions would be as beneficial to the Soviet Union as it would be to the United States.

**About-Face:** Precisely what had come out of the talks was, of course, a matter of speculation. But the President himself provided a clue when he announced that the U.S. had decided to return to the Paris negotiating table. This step represented a sharp about-face from the position that the U.S. would continue to boycott the Paris talks until the Communists called off their offensive in South Vietnam—a position the White House had reaffirmed only a day before Mr. Nixon's TV speech. The most plausible explanation for this policy reversal was that Brezhnev and Kissinger had struck some kind of deal in Moscow. And there were signs that that was exactly what had happened. A few days after Kissinger returned from his Soviet sojourn, the Kremlin dispatched two high-ranking officials to Hanoi. At about the same time, Le Duc Tho, a powerful figure in the Hanoi Politburo, flew off to Peking en route to Paris. And in the French capital, the chief Viet Cong negotiator, Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, noted that the Communists had no objections to help from the superpowers in arranging a settlement.

By holding out the hope of a negotiated settlement, the President clearly intended to defuse domestic criticism. And for the time being he apparently had succeeded. True, there were numerous disruptions by radical students—most notably at Cornell, Kent State and Columbia University, where a few hundred undergraduates occupied buildings for five straight days. But most college students seemed more interested in attending classes than demonstrations. And even among Congressional critics of the war, the reaction was restrained. Both Sen. George Aiken of Vermont and Sen. Robert Griffin of Michigan suggested that dissent would only encourage Hanoi to continue fighting. Still, in the primaries so far, pollsters have found the war up

permost in the minds of many voters.

Indeed, President Nixon himself was surely aware that he had never been under quite the same kind of pressure as he was now. In order to make his patiently constructed Vietnam policy work, it was imperative that the South Vietnamese stave off military disaster. It also was clear that if the hope of a negotiated peace with honor was to retain any credibility with U.S. voters, there would have to be visible progress at Paris in the fairly near future. Should Mr. Nixon's hopes be frustrated on the battlefield or at the conference table, it is hard to see how he would ever be able to offer yet another encore of his Vietnam television speech to the American people.

Conrad— © 1972, Los Angeles Times

'Someday, President Thieu, all this will be yours!'

## THE VIEW FROM HANOI

When it comes to an appraisal of the situation in Indochina, both North Vietnam and the U.S. are in agreement on one major point—1972 will be a year of decision. But naturally enough, the view from Hanoi of the potential risks and opportunities this year is far different than the view from the White House. As the North Vietnamese see it, President Nixon is vulnerable in many ways: all but a few of his ground combat troops have been brought home, the South Vietnamese are still an uncertain ally and, most important, Mr. Nixon must face a challenge at the polls this fall. In short, the small band of dedicated revolutionaries who rule North Vietnam decided some time ago that, militarily and psychologically, the time was ripe to strike. "The Communists are now trying to convince everyone that they are going to

win this war,” says a U.S. official. “Clearly, they are going to stay longer and fight harder than at any time since the Tet offensive of 1968.”

Almost from the moment that Hanoi unleashed its ferocious artillery and tank assault on Easter Sunday, U.S. analysts concluded that North Vietnam was seeking a series of quick knockout victories. Last week, for instance, a senior official in the Nixon Administration told *NEWSWEEK* that he had expected the loss of two or three provincial capitals by now and that he had even counseled abandoning the central highlands in order to defend more critical areas. When such dramatic Communist gains did not materialize, however, many in the Administration contended that the offensive

had been stopped. But it soon became clear that that conclusion was premature. For the Communists had planned a campaign of sudden assaults mixed with periods of respite; whenever allied forces breathed a sigh of relief at a sudden lull, Hanoi lashed out again. Presidential adviser Henry Kissinger now estimates that the Communists have enough supplies to keep their conventional warfare offensive going until as late as July. And officials in the Pentagon predict that this summer, as Americans turn their attention to the political conventions, the Communists will be ready to launch phase two—local uprisings sparked by the Viet Cong to shatter government control in populated areas.

**Strategy:** But Hanoi has not put all its chips on a military victory. The North Vietnamese are devout believers in the strategy of talk-talk, fight-fight. Indeed, ever since the spring offensive began, the North Vietnamese have been trumpeting their insistence that

the U.S. return to the negotiating table in Paris. Hanoi's diplomatic strategy is not hard to discern. By bloodying the South Vietnamese Army and undermining Saigon's control of the countryside, the Communists are calculating that they can force the U.S. and South Vietnam into granting concessions at the bargaining table. Presumably, the North Vietnamese hardly expect an outright American capitulation that would hand over Saigon to Communist rule. Instead, Hanoi is gambling that its military victories can be translated into a political deal that would permit it to obtain meaningful power in a neutralist government in Saigon. Thereafter, the total subversion of South Vietnam would be only a matter of time.

Officially, the Nixon Administration holds fast to the belief that the North Vietnamese offensive can and will be stopped. But even Henry Kissinger, the principal architect of Mr. Nixon's Vietnam policy, readily admits that Hanoi may yet achieve its broader diplomatic goals. Echoing Kissinger's thinking, the President said last week: "[The Commu-

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Newsweek

nists'] one remaining hope is to win in the
Congress of the U.S. and among the peo-
ple of the U.S. the victory they cannot
win... in South Vietnam."

The trouble with this view, however, is
that it fails to place sufficient emphasis on
the Communists' proven perseverance.
By conservative estimate, the North Viet-
namese have suffered 600,000 casualties
during the past decade of war. And yet,
despite their suffering and reversals,
they have always managed to bounce
back. Thus, even if American resolve does
not break and Hanoi's current offensive
fails in its objectives, it seems likely that
the Communists will simply retreat and
lick their wounds, awaiting yet another
chance to realize their 20-year-old dream
of uniting the two halves of Vietnam.

THE VIEW
FROM MOSCOW

Ever since the United States began re-
ferring with unconcealed annoyance
to the Soviet Union's role as chief armor-
er of the North Vietnamese spring offen-
sive, the Kremlin leadership had become
increasingly fretful. Would President
Nixon cancel his proposed summit trip to
Moscow? Or would the U.S. military re-
sponse to Hanoi's invasion take on such
fierce proportions that Russia itself would
be forced to scrub the meeting as a ges-
ture of loyalty to its North Vietnamese
ally? Either way, cancellation of the
summit would be a grievous blow to the
Russians who have as much, if not more,
to gain from the meeting than the U.S.
And so, an extraordinary invitation was
issued from Moscow by Soviet party
leader Leonid Brezhnev himself. It
might be helpful, Brezhnev wrote Mr.
Nixon, if a trusted aide of the President's
could come to the Soviet Union for con-
sultations. And within days, Mr. Nixon's
envoy par excellence, Henry Kissinger,
was off on another secret mission.

The Russians' deep need for reassurance that the summit would not be scuttled became apparent to Kissinger early in his four-day visit. "When the Soviets treat you with great courtesy," he said afterward, "it is not an accident. You can be sure it reflects a policy." What seems essential to Moscow, as Kissinger put it, is "a visible relaxation of tensions" around the world. And a suddenly escalated war in Vietnam was nothing but a barrier to those hopes. At a time when the Soviet Union not only seeks détente with America's allies in Western Europe but is eager to counter the newly established cordiality between Washington and Peking, it was in Moscow's interests to do some courting of the Nixon Administration. "The Russians are ready to do business with the U.S.," said one American official. "The leadership has a great stake in specific agreements with us and they are not going to let Vietnam stand in the way."

There is no denying that the forth-

coming negotiations with Mr. Nixon hold
the promise of rich benefits for the Soviet
Union—in economic as well as diplomatic
terms. And that is no accident. Since the
early days of his Administration, Mr.
Nixon has sought to create and empha-
size incentives for Moscow to help the
U.S. out of its Vietnam dilemma. In that,
he has succeeded. Moscow is just as
anxious as Washington for an agreement
to limit the production and deployment
of expensive nuclear weapons. And the
prospect of expanded trade with the
U.S. in everything from feed grains to
sophisticated technology appeals to the
Russians almost as much.

Quite obviously, this Soviet attitude
gives the Nixon Administration no small
amount of leverage in its attempts to
convince the Russians to bring their in-
fluence to bear on Hanoi. "There is con-
siderable reason to believe," said one
U.S. official, "that Moscow wants some
things from us strongly enough to take
the heat out of some critical areas, such
as Southeast Asia."

**Attitudes:** It would be a grave mis-
take, however, to assume that Russia is
any more likely to walk out on its friends
in Hanoi than Mr. Nixon is ready to
abandon his allies in Saigon. "Vietnam is
no longer on the front burner for the Rus-
sians," says one American specialist in
Soviet affairs. "But I don't think that
means they will help us directly in any
way. Their attitudes are not any more
benevolent; they will do nothing that
would leave them open to a verifiable
charge of selling out a client." Beyond
that, many people hold to the view that
it is still in Moscow's interest for the war
to drag on. Says Columbia University's
Zbigniew Brzezinski, "The continuing
war exacerbates U.S. difficulties with
China, contributes to domestic discon-
tent and drains the U.S. economy."

Even if the Russians should seek to
temper North Vietnam's enthusiasm for
fighting to the finish in Indochina, more-
over, there is little guarantee that they
would succeed. To be sure, Moscow has
no small amount of influence in North Vi-
etnam. The Soviet Union is Hanoi's prin-
cipal patron—especially in terms of mili-
tary equipment. And Soviet deliveries to
Hanoi, which totaled more than 1 million
tons last year, will be increased in 1972,
according to Soviet officials. Yet, for all its
reliance on outside assistance, North
Vietnam has always remained a fiercely
autonomous state. As Wolfgang Leon-
hard, a top European analyst of Commu-
nist affairs, notes: "North Vietnam has
never been anyone's puppet, and Mos-
cow can only influence Hanoi to a very
limited degree. You can put pressure on
a satellite, but not on an ally."

In a sense, then, both Moscow and
Washington have found themselves en-
snarled in a similar position as the Viet-
namese war has refused to disappear.
Both of these powerful governments
have seen their broader global designs
hobbled by their small but often bellig-
erently independent allies. And surely,
just as the U.S. would like to apply its
energy and resources to more rewarding
and important international matters, so
Moscow must seek the freedom to pur-
sue its larger goals in Asia and the West
without having to bankroll a seemingly
endless Indochinese war. Accordingly,
Henry Kissinger may be right when he
judges that the Soviet Union has almost
as much to gain from dampening the
Vietnamese fires as does the United
States. It is one thing for Moscow to be
jubilant at America's predicament in
Vietnam. But it is quite another for the
Soviets to indulge the North Vietnamese
at the risk of losing their chance for an
historic détente with the West.

Panic at An Loc: ARVN troopers cling desperately to departing helicopter

UPI

May 8, 1972

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