Chicago

# Kissinger saw it through

Henry Kissinger has been rather too busy to worry about his place in history, but he need have no concern.

A special niche must be reserved for this bespectacled academic type who walked a high wire across a Niagara of potential disaster and at last set foot in terra firma with an agreement to end the Vietnam War.

And that tells only a part of it. In October, with peace almost in hand, the unpredictable befell and the crestfallen man from academia had to trudge back to the beginning and commence putting all the pieces together again.

Of the many kinds of courage, this is surely among the rarest — to bear ut-

ter catastrophe without complaint, to pick up the strewn pieces and plod on to eventual triumph.

It is the harsh rule of life that the boss accepts the credit and the lieutenant takes the lumps, and it was fitting enough that when Kissinger brought back the agreement he had wrought with the sweat of his brow the President took the public bows.

But it detracts nothing from Mr. Nixon's ultimate role of leadership to recall that while the policies were his, the minutes and hours and weeks and months of patient striving were Kissinger's, or to speculate that without this man's tenacity and wit and tact, this nation might still be floundering in the dark tunnel.

1/73

FEATURE PAGE

HONGKONG STANDARD Monday, February 19, 1973 Page 7

Henry Kissinger's bodyguards made sure no-one, the Press included, came too close during his Hongkong stopover. At left they surround him as he makes his way along the Central waterfront to Queen's Pier.

Presenting, direct from successful engagements
in the major capitals of the world...

DR K'S
MAGICAL
MYSTERY
TOUR

TYHOON Henry is centred on the Mandarin Hotel, with occasional flashes of lightning at other spots in Hongkong, closely followed by shows of newsmen and enraging parts of anguish. A cold front hangs over the whole situation and the outlook is bleak.

That was the Press Weather Report for two days last week.

Covering the movements of Dr Henry Kissinger on his brief "rest" in the Colony was difficult for the reporters and the camera men of Hongkong. He moved so fast and with such a close bodyguard that any newsmen who actually caught a glimpse of him for

more than 60 seconds was lucky.

A news editor of another newspaper, probably after counting a few white hairs on his head, exclaimed when his reporter called to say that the Peace Envoy had left: "Hallelujah!"

Another newspaper

● LEFT: "Hey, Henry, did you hear the one about ...?" The good doctor was in a jocular mood before a private dinner last Wednesday night at a Mid-Level mansion.

portedly went around town lining up bartenders and waitresses for tip-offs in case The Man came around for a drink and a swing.

Kissinger flew in these hours from Hanoi, as he had accepted a sudden breakfast day with La Due Tho. More than 100 passengers were Kalaik airport to see him arrive and he him they did ... for less than 30 seconds.

Building

At the Mandarin Hotel it was case of starting out a whole building (which had already been well staked-out by security men) in an effort to see and photograph him.

To achieve the hours of freedom that were spent waiting for him, newsmen either phoned or many people as they thought might know of the Kissinger activities in Hongkong, of played the game of Spot-the-Special-Branch.

It's not a very hard game. Their suits are uniformly tailored in regulation plaits (the blue style, and they have the furtive, wandering stare that is shared by reporters).

Detecting the imminent arrival/departure of the Vietnamese peace negotiator at his 23 rooms in the hotel required a mild observation effort.

● ABOVE: Ascremen push the Governor's launch the Lady Maurine away from Queen's Pier, for a cruise around Hongkong harbour. Dr K gives a cheery wave to the newsmen left behind. "You can't follow now," he seemed to be saying. And he was right.

In the hotel lobby, security men would suddenly stand fingers into their ears and lean their heads to one side. This was the sign that their Operations Room was talking to them through their "bearing" aids.

Plain clothed men would slide into strategic positions all around the lobby and stars in motion always managed to be out of the ceiling, while cunningly watching the floor at the same time.

Then, as though trying to beat the stopwatch, a bunch of fast-moving men — Dr K in the middle — would stride through the hallway and vanish out the front door. Hongkong's main always managed to be out of bolling distance at this crucial moment.

Tricky

Finding the Kissinger floor in the hotel was a tricky one, for the hotel staff had been instructed not to say a word to a newman once the magic word "Kissinger" was mentioned.

A quick journey to floor 24 in the lift and a laborous meander under the deserted internal staircase showed that he was on floor 20. At least he was there when he arrived.

But four pieces into the

corridor and the long arm of the law reached out and asked if the man could provide help. The stalker entrance hadn't been blocked off, but the rest of the floor was well and truly sealed, with a concentration of busy men around the lift doors.

Departure from the no-go area was via the lift, accompanied by a man in a black suit.

Silence

Local newsmen working on the story used their own tricks to try and break the wall of silence. Here, the Hongkong Standard reporters were lacking the rent.

A chance telephone call to the previous week's enabled the Standard to name the hotel Dr Kissinger planned to hide out in during his visit.

But a departing Standard reporter heard late on Tuesday night that another newspaper had managed to chase Dr K in a hot-pursuit car to a dining restaurant somewhere in Hongkong.

A source later told the Standard that the venue was the Peak Restaurant and outlined what happened there. Again, but only because the other newspaper was an afternoon one the Standard hit the first.

One news trawk-took to the water in a wall-walls to chase the Kissinger harbour tour ... but the Government launch (fugitive) was in several knots.

That night came a tip-off that Dr Kissinger was at "a private dinner party". Instructions revealed it was with some Hongkong Chinese, but the traffic situation let the Kissinger limousine slide away unperturbed.

In the Standard office, reporters telephoned every major Chinese restaurant they could think of, particularly those supplying Peking food.

One floating restaurant in Aberdeen admitted that it had reserved a room for "some very prominent people" ... but it didn't quite ring true.

Mansion

Another call and a Standard reporter had found the place. Kissinger was eating Peking duck at the home of Mr Lee Min-chal, in a mansion up at Kennedy Road.

Electronic paging devices are a great aid for moving reporters. These are the little pocket radio

"bloopers" that make embarrassing notes whenever the newscast decides to ask the reporters to telephone home.

Worst summmons of the outing was when the gadget went off in the middle of a crowd of police and officials waiting the Kissinger arrival at the steps of the Mandarin on Tuesday.

The "bloop-bloop" noise is switched off (and the reporter) wonders should he perhaps explain that it is wird up to his heart and indicates that it is time to take an anti-stress pill.

Beeper

When the beeper breaks loose, the reporter should press the bar looking for reporter Henry "BATION" Spelling mistakes apart, the great bleep continues.

Gathering information, co- ordination, and the man Henry Kissinger was difficult.

Government information Services referred all equities to the US Consulate, and the US Consulate insisted that the only way to get the man reporters refer to was "A spokesman." Spokesman, Esq., was a pleasant fellow and more than helpful, but when he wasn't available the reporter had to fall back on what editors vary greatly to as initiative.

Visitor

One poor man ... just an ordinary visitor ... chose the wrong hotel to stay at. He was ideal in appearance to Dr Kissinger, right down to the glasses and curly hair ... and quite a few other people staying at the hotel inactook him for the real thing. He was preferred with people asking him "Excuse me, but aren't you ...?"

One Henry Kissinger, the real thing, was a let-down. Where was the manick-m姿med the "secret wingers"? The man who attended late-night parties with beautiful women?

The truth is, ... he was too busy working. Just like the newsmen.

● ABOVE: Left, right, left, right ... At Kelalak, policemen and a canine friend move out to greet Kissinger's special jet.

● RIGHT: A serious-looking Kissinger driver off in a government limousine, en route to Government House and a cup of tea with Sir Murray MacLachlan.

NEW YORK TIMES
25 February 1973

Step Forward

‘Liaison’
For U.S.
And China

WASHINGTON—Shortly after the signing of the Vietnam cease-fire agreement last month, Henry A. Kissinger told a newsman that he thought the first tangible “peace dividend” would be an improvement in relations with China. Last Thursday, following several days of talks between Mr. Kissinger and Mao Tse-tung and other Chinese officials in Peking, the “dividend” was declared.

It was much larger than Mr. Kissinger had suggested: The United States and China had agreed to a series of steps toward “normalization” of relations, including the establishment of so-called “liaison offices” in Peking and Washington—an action which, in everything but name, amounted to the establishment of diplomatic relations.

The results of this latest China mission—almost a year to the day since President Nixon made his own journey to Peking—thus demonstrated the desire of both China and the United States to move much faster than most people expected away from the strains and tensions of the past two decades, and toward a “normal” relationship such as the United States has with the Soviet Union and other Communist countries.

News of the agreement was relayed in a joint communiqué and amplified by Mr. Kissinger in another one of his standing-room-only White House news conferences. The Presidential adviser, who also visited North Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Japan on this trip, was relaxed and smiling, obviously pleased with the results of his first “post-Vietnam” mission for Mr. Nixon.

"Our contacts with the People's Republic of China have moved from hostility to normalization," he declared. He then ticked off some of the high-points, in addition to the establishment of the "liaison offices":

* As a "goodwill gesture," the Chinese have agreed to release in the next month the two American military prisoners they have acknowledged capturing during the Vietnam war:

Lieut. Cmdr. Robert J. Flynn of Salt Lake City and Maj. Phillip E. Smith of Victorville, Calif. And later in the year, the Chinese will probably release a Central Intelligence Agency man, John T. Downey, who has been a prisoner since 1952.

* As part of an effort to "accelerate relations," talks will begin in Paris next week—while the Paris Vietnam conference is in session—between Secretary of State William P. Rogers and Chinese Foreign Minister Chi Peng-fei. The purpose is to settle the outstanding claims by American citizens on property seized by the Communist Government and to resolve the problem of the blocked Chinese assets in the United States.

* There will be more cultural and scientific exchanges, including visits by American Congressmen, and the first cultural group—the Philadelphia Orchestra—to visit China. American basketball, swimming and diving teams will follow the lead of the Ping-Pong team that made the breakthrough visit to China in the spring of 1971. The Chinese, in turn, will send delegations of experts on water conservation, inject hormones, and high-energy

physics, as well as a gymnastics team.

It was clear that China had lived up to what its leaders had promised Mr. Nixon: Once the Vietnam war was settled, relations would improve more dramatically. To underscore its desire to engage the United States on as wide a peaceful front as possible, China even went back on what had been an unreachable matter of principle: It agreed to send an official mission—the "liaison office"—to a capital in which the Nationalist Chinese have an embassy.

The members of the respective offices will have diplomatic status, and will carry on the usual business of a diplomatic mission—visas, trade discussions, cultural exchanges, and even political talks. They will also be allowed to send messages in code, and will presumably fly their flags. They will not, however, have formal diplomatic accreditation—which means that they will not be invited to certain functions, and their status will cause a problem to protocol-minded officials and hostesses.

But the significance was not in the form but in the substance. Peking, probably because of a desire to counter Soviet pressure on its northern flanks, decided that even though Washington retained ties with Taiwan, it could take steps to underscore its desire for rapprochement with the United States.

NEW YORK TIMES
23 February 1973

—BERNARD GWERTZMAN

Text of the Communique

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 (UPI)—Following is the text of a joint communiqué issued today by the Governments of the United States and China reporting on the visit of Henry A. Kissinger to Peking last Thursday through Monday:

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, assistant to the U.S. President for national security affairs, visited the People's Republic of China from Feb. 15 to Feb. 19, 1973. He was accompanied by Herbert G. Klein, Alfred LeS. Jenkins, Richard T. Kennedy, John W. Holdridge, Winston Lord, Jonathan T. Howe, Richard Solomon and Peter W. Rodman.

Chairman Mao Tse-tung received Dr. Kissinger. Dr. Kissinger and members of his party held wide-ranging conversations with Premier Chou En-lai, Foreign Minister Chi Peng-fei, Vice Foreign Minister Chiao Kuan-hua and other Chinese officials. Mr. Jenkins held parallel talks on technical subjects with Assistant Foreign Minister Chang Wen-chin. All these talks were conducted in an unconstrained atmosphere and were earnest, frank and constructive.

The two sides reviewed the development of relations between the two countries in the year that has passed since President Nixon's visit to the People's Republic of China and other issues of mutual concern. They reaffirmed the principles of the joint communiqué issued at Shanghai in February, 1972, and their joint commitment to bring about a normalization of relations. They held that the progress that has been made during this period is beneficial to the people of their two countries.

The two sides agreed that the time was appropriate for accelerating the normalization of relations. To this end, they undertook to broaden their contacts in all fields. They agreed on a complete program of expanding trade as well as scientific, cultural and other exchanges.

To facilitate this process and to improve communications, it was agreed that in the near future each side will establish a liaison office in the capital of the other. Details will be worked out through existing channels.

The two sides agreed that normalization of relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China will contribute to the relaxation of tension in Asia and in the world.

Dr. Kissinger and his party expressed their deep appreciation for the warm hospitality extended to them.

30

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

24 February 1973

# Nixon tries to pin down elusive Indo-China peace

By Courtney R. Sheldon

Staff correspondent of
The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

The "environment of peace" sought by President Nixon continues to elude him on the Indo-China battlefield. But every long-range hope here is pinned on it.

The U.S. has many sticky decisions ahead, such as the one it made to give limited air support to the Laotian Government of Sou-vanna Phouma after the reported violations of a cease-fire by Communist forces.

To avoid the appearance of great concern, the White House assigned the Pentagon to make the formal announcement.

White House officials expect the international conference on Indo-China in Paris next week to make a modest contribution to pacifying the atmosphere.

Even more, the President leans on his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, to continue his intimate contacts with all parties involved.

It is, in many ways, thus far, a heyday of personal diplomacy and unwritten agreements.

In his personal relations with world leaders, Dr. Kissinger is executing basic policies of President Nixon. As his successes tumble after each other in rapid succession, his style and deportment seem more important than ever in preserving the atmosphere for productive bargaining.

Every word of Dr. Kissinger's press conferences testifies to the delicacy of the continuing negotiations with Communist nations. Dr. Kissinger appears to have the confidence of Communist leaders like no Western man in the history of the cold war.

His press conferences are infrequent. But they provide guidelines for indefinite periods and are studied closely for months.

At his meeting with the press after his Asian visit, Dr. Kissinger looked forward to the day when U.S. relations with Hanoi will have progressed to the point that U.S. contacts with Peking already have.

Officials recognize this to be an extremely difficult task. U.S. and North Vietnamese are only now stopping hurling of explosives at each other. The Korean war with its collision of Chinese and U.S. forces is two decades away.

As he has from the start of negotiations leading to the cease-fire, Dr. Kissinger attempts to focus attention on the gains for all involved in a period of peace and reconstruction.

"The big issue is not whether they will break the cease-fire agreement, because that obviously involves many consequences.

The big problem is whether Indo-China can be moved from a condition of guerrilla war or even open warfare to a condition in which the energies of the peoples of that region are concentrated on constructive purposes."

On the question of whether the Chinese will put a halter on military aid to Hanoi, Dr. Kissinger observes:

"The problem isn't whether any formal arrangements can be made or should be made.

## Opportunity for tranquility

"The problem is whether the major countries now, recognize that the agreement in Vietnam gives everybody an opportunity to return that area for the first time in a generation to a period of tranquility and to permit the peoples of Indo-China an opportunity to work out their own fate without force and without outside pressure.

"And if this is understood by all the major countries, then they can draw their own conclusions and act on the basis of their own considerations, rather than attempt to codify this in a formal agreement."

While declining to speculate publicly on Chinese intentions, Dr. Kissinger seems, encouraged by what he learned of Chinese attitudes while he was in Peking for five days.

He will only comment, "We have made clear to all the countries with which we have talked the importance of tranquility to the peace of the world, and Indo-China was one of the subjects that was discussed in Peking."

Though most of the headlines on the Kissinger journey to Peking and Hanoi have centered on the establishment of China-U.S. liaison offices and a U.S.-North Vietnam economic commission, the fluid situations in Laos and Cambodia were in the forefront of discussions, Dr. Kissinger reports.

"We had extensive discussions on ... a final agreement in Laos and a settlement in Cambodia," he says.

Dr. Kissinger goes about his business outwardly confident that the cease-fire in Vietnam will hold and that Laos and Cambodia will quiet down without further drastic action on the part of the U.S.

## Similar accord sought

Dr. Kissinger told reporters when the Chinese-U.S. communique was released, "The basic purpose of my visit to Hanoi was not to work out an economic-aid program. The basic purpose was to establish contact with the leadership of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in order to see whether it would be possible to establish with it in Indo-China something like the relationship that we might have managed to establish with the People's Republic in Asia in general. ...

"The economic commission will be the first opportunity that the leaders of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam have had to discuss something other than armistices or military arrangements with responsible Americans. ...

"We are asking for support for the idea of such a program, not on economic grounds and not even on humanitarian grounds primarily, but on the ground of the attempt to build peace in Indo-China and therefore to contribute to peace in the world."

He repeated earlier assertions that aid to Hanoi was not a deal in return for a cease-fire. He also emphasized that Hanoi is aware that whatever aid the U.S. ultimately offers for reconstruction will have to have the approval of the U.S. Congress.

NEW YORK TIMES

24 February 1973

## COMMUNISTS CUT CAMBODIAN ROADS

One Route Is Overrun Near Suburb of Phnom Penh

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Feb. 23 (Reuters)—Communist troops attacking outside Phnom Penh advanced today to within three miles of the outer suburbs, military sources reported.

A Communist unit that came closest to the capital occupied a secondary road just outside the industrial suburb at Takhmau, south of here.

Another unit overran the township of Siem Reap nine miles from Phnom Penh's city limits on Route 2, the main highway to the southern region.

The sources said all main roads and secondary highways in the area were cut. Siem Reap, already largely destroyed in fighting several months ago, was abandoned by its garrison this morning.

Another force took control of a section of Route 3, which runs toward the South Vietnamese border, in an area 12 miles directly southwest of the city.

## Close Fighting Reported

Government and Communist troops fought at close quarters on the road during the day, with their lines drawn up only 100 yards apart, according to the sources.

A road to the burned-out town of Saang southeast of here was occupied three miles outside Takhmau.

The strength and origin of the attacking forces were not yet known, but some were believed to belong to a battalion that withdrew from the capital's eastern approaches yesterday under heavy American air strikes. Casualty figures were not available for today's fighting.

The military command reported increased fighting in other regions, including the isolated northern provincial capital of Kompong Thom and around the occupied township of Banam, on the bank of the Mekong River about 30 miles southeast of here.

34

Women's Wear Daily

27. 73

PR

brought Donald Cammel, now that Bertolucci has split for home. Meanwhile, Andy Warhol had a film crew shooting Monique von Vooren talking on Jackie's bedroom phone while New York magazine's Laurie Jones, Luis Martinz, D.D. Ryan, Giorgio di Sant'Angelo and Nino Cerrutti and Esquire's Rae Crespi stood around like extras.

**SHOPPERS:** Those denim pantsuits continue hot at New York's Veneziano ... at the weekend Ethel Kennedy stopped in for a pair in lavender, also bought a matching short-sleeve turtleneck cotton shirt ... Marlo Thomas also picked up one, in beige, plus an assortment of colors and sleeves (long and short) in tops ... Jean Smith got one of those long-sleeve bodyshirts.

**SEA OF WOMEN:** Adele Simpson will present her spring-summer collection to 1500 members of the League of Republican Women in Washington March 15 in the Shoreham Hotel. Since Pat Nixon is guest of honor, she arranged with Adele to do the show, presented in conjunction with Garfinckel's — the only store Adele sells to there.

**SHORT-SIGHTED:** Catching Bobby Short's sellout concert in New York Saturday night were lots of old friends like Ellen Saltzman with her 11-year-old son, David. Eve Orton

layout. The other two dresses, both from Nina Ricci, are midcalf and longer for what Elle calls "The Marienbad look."

**LOUISE J. ESTERHAZY SAYS:** Thank God for Henry Kissinger. He always has the situation well in hand.

Des Moines Register
1/24/73

railroad spokesmen said the tax was so small compared with rail costs that an exemption would not slow abandonments.

The committee has made two recommendations.

It proposed a study of the feasibility of operating an experimental passenger

What are the arguments for shifting part of the subsidy for highway transportation to maintain improved railroad service?

These are questions that need to be addressed in the face of the decline of the railroad in Iowa's transportation picture.

## Something Wrong With the Models?

Henry Kissinger, President Nixon's foreign policy and security adviser, denies that he idealizes Prince Metternich or Prince Bismarck, Austrian and German foreign policy miracle workers of the Nineteenth Century. Kissinger wrote sympathetically about them when he was a student and professor, but he points out that everything is so different now he could not take them for models.

Nevertheless, he does take as a model something that Metternich and Bismarck believed: that international relations is essentially a struggle for power, in which armed strength, prestige, wealth and manipulative skills all count, and the cool operator takes care to balance off his potential enemies against others to reduce the effort he must exert.

The model has resemblances to the real world, though the real world is much more complicated. The main difficulty with the model is that it tends to keep everybody struggling for power, and fighting whenever someone makes a power grab — or objects to a power grab of your own.

Walt Whitman Rostow, the White House foreign policy adviser of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, had a somewhat similar model of world politics, except that he placed more emphasis on economic growth, which he thought would reduce the power struggle within and between nations by providing more economic goodies to divide.

In practice, though, he urged foreign aid to potential allies in the Cold War against the Communist countries to build them up economically to a point of self-sustaining growth. This led him to support the Vietnam war when mere economic aid was not enough.

His balance of power model was even more oversimplified than Kissinger's. He sees it not as modified Bismarck or Metternich, but as modified Lord Castlereagh of Britain — a contemporary of Metternich.

"The geographic position of the United States is, essentially, that of a continental island off the greater land mass of Eurasia" writes Rostow in a new book, as Nineteenth Century Britain was an island off the continent of Europe. Safety

for America now (as for Britain then) "requires that no single power ... try to dominate" the larger land mass.

Under this theory, Britain fought Spain or France or Germany whenever these countries seemed to be trying to dominate Europe, and America must fight any country that seems to be trying to dominate either end of Eurasia — the Asian end or the European end.

The trouble with this model is that it requires the United States to fight every time the balance seems to be shifting, which is likely to be often.

Metternich at least tried to avoid fighting and Bismarck tried to avoid any war he could not win easily and quickly. Castlereagh of Britain helped overthrow Napoleon (who had overthrown the balance of power) and then tried to keep things quiet by agreement among the big powers.

Rostow helped get his country deeper and deeper into the pointless Vietnam war, and Kissinger in trying to get her out took four years and still no end.

—NOH—

Oldtimers who like to talk about the good life of yesterday had some moments of doubt when a thunderstorm knocked out both the air conditioning and the television. — Champaign-Urban (Ill.) Courier.

Money does make a lot of difference. If you have two jobs and you are rich, you have diversified interests. If you have two jobs and you are poor, you're moonlighting. — Tulsa World.

The union of Egypt and Libya is enough to make a contractor's mouth water. It looks like the biggest sand and gravel merger in history. — Boston Globe.

Latest Intelligence from "Pete the Printer" concerns his discovery that neophytes are not the same as amateur boxing matches. — Minneapolis Star.

After some 5,000 years of recorded history it appears that as society advances, the standard of poverty rises. — Marshalltown Times-Republican.

that its editors supported the re-election of Mr. Nixon and thus, they are in part responsible for this bombing. — Ralph C. Wilcox, 1822 Ninth St. SW, Cedar Rapids, Ia. 52404.

## Objects to Comic

To the Editor:

I strongly object to the Steve Canyon comic strip that was in The Register on Christmas Day. The artist, Milton Caniff, first treated in a whimsical way the desire for peace. ... He then belittled those who want to reduce our bloated defense budget. ... — Robert L. Walton, 4520 Sixty-eighth St., Des Moines 50310.

## Poor Service

To the Editor:

I read recently about a Soviet woman who had waited over two months for a part for her car and still hadn't received it. In case someone still counts that as proof of the advantages of the American industrial system, let me cite another case.

We sent an amplifier back to the factory Sept. 12. ... They are waiting on a part they had evidently forgotten to put on it originally. It is still missing.

Seems to me that the interest rate which should accrue from lack of enjoyment of one's own property should cancel out whatever the bill was for the non-service we received. But knowing the American system as I do, they'll probably charge us storage, in addition to a bill for labor and parts. — Susan Scheid, 632 Kimball, Iowa City, Ia.

## Prefers Small Nursing Homes

To the Editor:

... I think this mess of trying to close all the small nursing homes for the aged is terrible. I've worked in both kinds of nursing homes, large hospital types and the small, homey types, and nine out of 10 residents are happier and better off in the small homes.

The large hospital-type homes are always too under-staffed to have much time for the people. ...

I'm a grandmother with nine grandchildren, and should the time come for me to go to a home, I would much rather my children hunt a small nursing home. I believe in the safety rules and all, but some of these rules the state [is requiring] are clear out of reason. ... —Mrs. Mary Kiger, 741 S. Ransom, Ottumwa, Ia. 52501.

UPI071

(KISSINGER)

WASHINGTON (UPI) -- HENRY A. KISSINGER WILL MEET WITH REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEN FRIDAY TO DISCUSS THE VIETNAM PEACE PROSPECTS AND THE RECENT HEAVY BOMBING OF NORTH VIETNAM, HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADERS SAID TODAY.

KISSINGER, WHO REFUSED TO TESTIFY BEFORE THE DEMOCRATIC-CONTROLLED SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE AND HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE, WILL ADDRESS A SEMINAR OF FRESHMAN GOP CONGRESSMEN ALONG WITH OTHER ADMINISTRATION SPOKESMAN, REP. GERALD R. FORD, R-MICH., SAID.

FORD SAID KISSINGER'S APPEARANCE HAS BEEN SCHEDULED FOR SOME TIME, AND KISSINGER HAD ASSURED HIM PERSONALLY WITHIN THE PAST FEW DAYS THAT HE WOULD DEFINITELY APPEAR TO EXPLAIN THE ADMINISTRATION'S POLICY.

UPI 01-03 12:09 PES

UPI072

ADD 2 CONGRESS, WASHINGTON

IN THIS CONNECTION, THE WHITE HOUSE DECIDED TO ALLOW HENRY A. KISSINGER, THE CHIEF U.S. NEGOTIATOR ON VIETNAM, TO APPEAR BEFORE SOME REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEN FRIDAY TO DISCUSS THE PROSPECTS FOR PEACE.

THIS DISCLOSURE CAME AS SEN. LOWELL P. WEICKER, R-CONN., SAID HE WAS WITHDRAWING HIS SUPPORT FOR THE BOMBING POLICY. SEN. HENRY M. JACKSON, D-WASH., ALSO A BACKER OF HOST ADMINISTRATION WAR POLICY, CAUTIONED AGAINST ABRUPT LEGISLATIVE ACTION BUT CRITICIZED PRESIDENT NIXON FOR NOT EXPLAINING THE BOMBING PUBLICLY.

UPI 01-03 12:11 PES

SPECTRUM

Varying shades of personal opinion on current issues

TOM BRADEN
CBS RADIO NETWORK

JANUARY 3, 1973

I'm Tom Braden and I'm glad my name isn't Richard Nixon.

Because I wouldn't like to have to decide what to do, now that I felt tricked and had and used, and awakened from a dream to the discovery that peace is not at hand.

It must be that way for the President. It can't be any other way. I do not believe for a moment that he would have permitted Henry Kissinger to say that peace was at hand unless he -- Richard Nixon -- believed that peace was at hand. He knew he didn't need that statement to win an election. Even if he had needed it, he might have thought twice about permitting it to be made. But he didn't need it. So, he must have believed it.

Moreover, he must have believed it on the basis of what Henry Kissinger told him. Which makes me glad also that my name isn't Henry Kissinger. I'm not the man who told the President that Le Duc Tho was willing to deal. The knives are not out for me. I do not have to say, "I wish to see the President," and wonder whether the German doorkeeper, H. R. Haldeman, might reply, "I'm sorry. The President has left instructions not to be disturbed." Or those other words, even more sonorous and doom-laden, "He's closeted right now with Bill Rogers. Call me Thursday."

I'm glad -- for once I'm glad not to be holding power or struggling in waters where power seethes. And yet, it is the duty of all of us to ask ourselves the fateful question: "What shall we do?" Ours is not a country which does not ask questions.

Shall we bomb as the President is now bombing? History says that kind of bombing won't work. It has not yet destroyed the will of Hanoi. Nothing indicates it ever will.

Shall we bomb harder -- bomb as the British bombed Hamburg in World War II or as we bombed Hiroshima? History says that would work. If you kill everybody, you win. Would Mr. Nixon do that? Should he?

Shall we get out, and leave that dreadful country in which we have been bogged so long to its own destiny, come what may? What happens then to the 400-odd American prisoners? Shall we leave it to South Vietnam to continue to fight the war, and tie ourselves down to years and millions in supply? What course is easy? What course is right? What ought we do?

This is Tom Braden with Spectrum.

The diverse opinions expressed on SPECTRUM are those of the commentators themselves and should not be attributed to CBS or any of its affiliates

A B-52 EXPLODING FROM DIRECT HIT BY SAM MISSILE; HANOI'S BACH MAI HOSPITAL DEMOLISHED BY B-52 STRIKES

AP

THE WAR/COVER STORY

Nixon's Blitz Leads Back to the Table

IN its swift swings between lull and violence, hope and despair, the Viet Nam War has often had a manic character to it. Never more so than in the latest extraordinary episode in which, within the space of 40 days, the world moved from a sense of peace at last at hand, to the most brutal U.S. bombing of the war, to Washington's declaration late last week that the secret Paris peace talks would begin again on Jan. 8.

8. Through Deputy Press Secretary Gerald Warren, President Nixon announced that he was halting the massive aerial punishment of North Viet Nam as suddenly—and with as little public explanation—as he had started it two weeks before. His spokesman said only that Nixon was acting because “it was clear that serious negotiations could be resumed.”

Rarely if ever before had a major power so openly used overwhelming force to extract concessions at the conference table, or moved so swiftly from diplomacy to war and back; the episode almost evoked the end of the Thirty Years' War, when fighting and negotiating accompanied each other in a dizzying blur. The news of the bombing halt was as puzzling as it was welcome. Nixon had broken off the peace talks in anger at what he regarded as Hanoi's intransigence. He had sent the bombers north on a scale greater than any in the long war to force the North Vietnamese to bargain on his terms, and apparently it had worked—else why resume talking? Yet it was difficult to imagine Hanoi so obviously knuckling under to the U.S. spasm of bombardment, and a North Vietnamese spokes-

man in Paris put a different face on the event, saying: “Our position has always been that if the U.S. wished to solve the problem through serious negotiations, it should cease the acts of escalation and renounce the threat of force.”

Those acts of escalation, embodied in daily waves of U.S. bombers aimed at Hanoi's heartland over a period of two weeks, had left the capital of North Viet Nam a stricken city, rapidly employing of people, without electricity and in some places water, many of its streets and even whole quarters smashed and cratered by the ferocity of daily U.S. bombing raids. Once neat one-story houses lay flattened or lurched at odd angles, roofless and windowless. On one street, a young worker in a red helmet stared numbly into a pit that was once

his home. In it lay children's shattered copybooks, a dead black hen, and a mosquito net still hanging on one end from an upright beam. On another street, relief crews tugged at the corpse of a dead nurse, buried under her blasted dispensary. An old man stood amid the ruins of his home, mechanically putting on his coat and taking it off as though the simple ritual might restore his past.

Children searched among the debris looking for parents, parents for children. At the Bach Mai hospital, patients were trundled piggyback from the smoldering rubble as the director ran frantically from one victim to another. The Bach Thai hospital for tuberculous patients was razed. The railroad station had been destroyed, the Gia Lam airport runways pocked. Stacks of coffins lay at street corners. Here and there on a wall, someone scrawled, “Nixon, you will pay this blood debt,” and “We will avenge our compatriots massacred by the Americans.”

This montage, assembled from fragmentary reports sent out by foreign diplomats, correspondents and visitors in the two weeks since the bombing began, offered only narrow glimpses of North Viet Nam's agony. So far, Hanoi officials have released no estimate of overall casualties, but there were reports from some areas. In the colorful Kham Thien shopping district of Hanoi, once the home of 5,158 families but partially evacuated before it was struck, city officials have already counted 215 dead and 257 wounded—with many more missing or still buried in the rubble. French observers in North

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Viet Nam claimed that close to 1,000 civilians are dead or wounded in the suburban town of Thai Nguyen.

U.S. officials presented a quite different picture of the bombing. A communiqué released by the U.S. military authorities in Saigon ticked off in businesslike fashion the targets American planes had been after: airfields, shipyards, railyards, warehouses, power plants, communication towers, truck parks, and SAM and antiaircraft installations. The report stated that dozens of these targets were destroyed or heavily damaged—the Phuc Yen airfield was bombed, the Hanoi port facility on the Red River hit hard, “all buildings” in the Haiphong petroleum-product storage area were struck, and the Thai Nguyen thermal power plant was virtually wiped out, and on down the target list.

The split images—one of widespread, indiscriminate destruction in residential areas, the other of selective military targets bombed with cross-hair precision—come together only when maps of the military targets are laid over maps of the cities and towns of North Viet Nam. Then it is at once evident that many of those targets lay smack in the middle of the most populous metropolitan and suburban areas in the North. The Hanoi thermal power plant, for instance, was only 1,000 yds. from the very center of the city. A main petroleum storage area was only

terms of civilian deaths or military targets, the bombing raids of the past two weeks were unprecedented in the history of the Viet Nam War. The usual comparisons with World War II are misleading; the use of fire bombs then caused more casualties and destruction. Still, the sheer tonnage dropped on Viet Nam in the recent raids surpassed virtually all of the famous bombing raids —Dresden, Hamburg, Coventry and London. The U.S. was not trying to do what former SAC Commander Curtis LeMay once suggested—bomb North Viet Nam back into the Stone Age—but to some it almost seemed so. The reaction at home and abroad was swift and almost unanimous (see box, page 14). One of the strongest official protests came from Sweden's premier Olof Palme, who condemned the bombing as a crime against humanity on the moral scale of such Nazi atrocities as the death camp at Treblinka. The equation with the Nazis outraged the Administration, which called in the Swedish ambassador to Washington to protest. Undeterred, Palme himself went to a department store to gather signatures on a nationwide petition to stop the bombing—to be sent to Nixon. On hearing that the bombing had been curtailed, he said: “I’m convinced the world’s public opinion had a great deal to do with it.”

For their part, while the bombing was in progress, most Americans seemed simply baffled or numbed; an-

tiwar groups mounted only scattered, sparsely supported protests. It was partly a matter of shock at the sudden turn of events. After two decades of sustaining South Viet Nam intravenously with aid, and after eleven years of substantial military intervention, first with President Kennedy's advisers and later with Lyndon Johnson's half a million troops, the U.S. had seemed in November and until mid-December about to disengage altogether. Then, with stupefying speed, promises of a negotiated settlement turned into a harshly escalated war. The vision of the American prisoners of war in North Viet Nam coming home at last was replaced by the photographs of hagard men newly recruited to the captured ranks, as an average of three B-52s were shot down every two days. Vignettes of the flyers' fates materialized out of North Viet Nam too. One B-52 pilot was inflating his life raft twelve miles downstream from Hanoi in an attempt to escape, when he was surrounded by ferrymen. His last transmission on his survival radio: “Everything O.K. I am surrounded. I surrender.”

Miles from Hanoi, another flyer tried to steer his parachute away from militiamen on the ground. Landing, he pulled out his pistol, but the North Vietnamese disarmed him, yelling, “Hands up! Hands up!” in English. The pilot, in Vietnamese, replied, “Toi xin hang [I surrender].” A third pilot only man-

U.S. PHANTOM JET SET ABLAZE BY COMMUNIST DEFENDERS OVER A RICE FIELD IN NORTH VIET NAM

GAMMA

200 yds. from the Bach Mai hospital. The town of Thai Nguyen lay right next to one of the key power plants.

With targets that close to populous or off-limit areas, like hospitals, and with more than 1,400 sorties being flown in the first week alone of the two-week operation by virtually every kind of Air Force and Navy plane in the Indochina arsenal in every kind of weather and through the densest aerial defenses in the world, mistakes were inevitable. Particularly with the massive (100 a day) use of B-52s—each group of three lays its bombs in a row of “boxes” a mile and a half long by half a mile wide—civilian casualties were inescapable regardless of the precision of pilots or particularity of targeting.

Whatever the final tallies show in

CAPTURED U.S. PILOT RICHARD JOHNSON

aged to smear his face with mud before he was captured. All told, the raids added 93 Americans to the list of missing and captured.

**Tantrums.** To some of his critics at home, Nixon seemed to be acting as much out of petulance as out of any thoughtful diplomatic or military stratagems. James Reston of the New York *Times* called it "war by tantrum." But the Administration, as L.B.J. liked to say, simply hunkered down, keeping its own counsel. At the time of the Cambodian invasion and during the resumption of the bombing last spring, Nixon

P.O.W. B-52 CREWMAN LOUIS LEBLANC

porters accompanying the Bob Hope Christmas show to airbases in Thailand were sternly warned not to ask pilots any questions except about Bob Hope, Christmas and home.

If anything, it seemed to be less business than usual in official Washington. The President was in Key Biscayne, Fla., for most of the week. Henry Kissinger, his own game plan in disarray, went to a Washington Redskins football game, then flew to Palm Springs, Calif., for a New Year's vacation. There, at one point, photographers discovered him strolling with Hollywood Executive Bob Evans. Kissinger's deputy, General Alexander Haig, was "on leave," and outgoing Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird was in Hawaii saying farewell to the Pacific Command. Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler was on a week's vacation in California. Behind this all too casual façade was the Administration's determination that once the decision to bomb had been made, there was little to do but keep the line to Hanoi open, probing and pushing for the signal that ultimately came.

The original decision to bomb was an instructive case history of the President's mind and decision-making apparatus at work. The move came after Nixon and Kissinger concluded that it was the proper course, and Kissinger, acting for Nixon, had consulted with and won the approval of Secretary of State William Rogers, Melvin Laird, CIA Director Richard Helms, Vice President Spiro Agnew and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Because the agreement was complete, the National Security Council was not called into formal session to debate the proposition to unleash the full fury of U.S. air power on Hanoi.

ident's major considerations" in resuming the bombing, according to one aide, "was the conditions the North Vietnamese attached to the release of American prisoners of war. They welshed on the deal."

The North Vietnamese version is that the U.S. welshed on other equally vital parts of the agreement. In October the Americans seemed willing to leave certain points dealing with the political future and the sovereignty of South Viet Nam deliberately vague, to be settled not in fine print but in later political—and possibly military—wrangling after the U.S. departure. Later, they claim, Nixon directed Kissinger to spell out the agreement more exactly—in favor of the South. Specifically, the North Vietnamese claimed that the U.S. was not standing by its commitment to withdraw all its troops from South Viet Nam but was instead demanding the right to have civilian advisers on the ground even after the truce. North Vietnamese spokesmen also charged that the International Control Commission envisioned by the U.S.—some 5,000 strong—would be a virtual police force. "This has never been the North Vietnamese nor the Provisional Revolutionary Government's idea of a control commission," said a top-ranking North Vietnamese.

The Administration, on the other hand, claims that the North first stalled on the matter of international controls, then proposed a minuscule force of 250 men so as to ensure its impotence. Fumed one U.S. official: "They knew and they agreed that the international machinery would have to go into effect immediately. But they proposed outrageous protocols, there was no agenda

INTERFOTO MTI—PHOTOREPORTERS

COMMUNIST TROOPS IN QUANG TRACH ON MOVE AFTER HELPING TO DAMAGE U.S. WARSHIPS & AIRCRAFT

had taken his case to the American people over television. This time there was no TV appearance, no explanation or rationale offered. The first news of the attacks came not from the White House but from Radio Hanoi. Nixon imposed a press blackout on all but the skimpiest details of the raids, and ordered everyone from Cabinet officials to bombier pilots to keep silent. Inquiries about civilian casualties were met with the catechism, "We have targeted and continue to target only military targets." Re-

That fury was unleashed because, in Nixon's view, the North had acted in bad faith in the negotiations. In October, the U.S. says, the North agreed to separate the question of American prisoners from the fate of Vietnamese political prisoners being held by the South Vietnamese government of Nguyen Van Thieu. Subsequently, they demanded that the two issues be treated together—no Americans released unless Thieu also opened his jails. This Nixon refused to do. "One of the Pres-

and they refused to compare texts."

The P.O.W. issue proved to be the final blow. Nixon broke off the peace talks, warned the North Vietnamese that the bombing would resume if they did not soften their bargaining stance and, when the North Vietnamese did not respond, launched his blitz. After a week of continuous pounding, the President halted the raids for 36 hours over Christmas, providing a pause in which Hanoi could again respond. It did not, so the raids recommenced, this time

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with effect. Hanoi's response was timely for the Administration, since it did not seem feasible that the raids could have continued very much longer, for several reasons, including the exhaustion of targets, the continuing loss of B-52s and airmen, and public opinion both at home and abroad. Also, Congress convenes this week, and continued bombing would provide a powerful impetus to cut off funds for the war. Already the President has lost the support of Republican Senator William Saxbe of Ohio, who until last week had backed Nixon by voting against almost all of the antiwar proposals in the Senate. He could no longer have done so, said Saxbe, had the bombing gone on: "It worried me as an American that we were doing something that I just couldn't buy and I think most people felt the same way."

**Message.** The question remains why the President embarked on so massive a retaliation, one that he surely knew, and therefore must have chosen with some anguish, would cause heavy casualties both for North Viet Nam and U.S. flyers. The first and soon abandoned Administration rationale was that the bombardment was to halt a North Vietnamese offensive. In fact, by all intelligence estimates, none was in preparation. Now the Administration's argument is that a major show of force was required to bring Hanoi around on the terms of a peace.

According to one top Administration source, the President felt that "there was a massive act of deception" on the part of the North Vietnamese. Nixon believed that a reaction was called for, something that would be dramatic enough to drive the North Vietnamese into a more tractable position in the Paris bargaining. Both he and Kissinger ruled out "picking away with a few Phantoms." Looking back over the record of Johnson's bombing policy, Nixon apparently concluded that his predecessor had not been forceful enough. With the Johnson bombing raids, explained one Administration official during the attacks, "the U.S. sent the wrong message. The U.S. unfortunately communicated that this country was afraid to conduct a sustained, hard, coordinated air and naval operation against the enemy. Now we are sending the right message. The new raids are a signal of this country's determination to increase the level of military impact—war—on North Viet Nam."

The bombing did have military objectives to be sure—mainly to bomb the North Vietnamese back to the weaker supply and staging positions they were in when the bombing was stopped in October. The Communists had been extremely active in building up their supplies during the November and early December hiatus. But the main aim was diplomatic. Nixon wanted to get the North Vietnamese talking again in terms he wanted to hear. There was also the possibility that, in preparing to go

ahead with an imprecise settlement, the bombing was a kind of farewell present to Thieu, a last equalizer to set the stage for his going it alone against the Communists. Explained Kissinger before the halt was declared: "The bombing is not an end in itself, and we are trying very hard to put this thing together again."

Ultimately the pragmatic, if not the moral test will be, of course, whether the bombing really helped to put "this thing" together again. Much of that previous hope—and the controversy about the blitz—rode on the huge wings of the B-52. The planes usually fly in groups of three, bombing in patterns. In the South, the planes lay down those patterns with precision because they can zero in on a grid of numerous American radar beacons. In the North, there are no such guides—and not quite such accuracy. Certainly the B-52 seems a cruel weapon to use against pinpoint targets in crowded metropolitan and suburban areas. The Administration argued, somewhat lamely, that B-52s were needed because they could bomb in the seasonal bad weather. Yet the fact that Nixon chose to use them is proof to some of his critics that he was trying to terrorize the North Vietnamese into new concessions.

Until the current bombing cam-

KISSINGER & EVANS IN PALM SPRINGS

"More Excitement Than We Need"

Guam's Andersen Air Force Base was the chief jumping-off point for U.S. bombers during the days between the sudden U.S. resumption of the bombing and its equally sudden cessation last week. When TIME Correspondent Herman Nickel visited the huge B-52 fleet there last April, the mood was mild and the pilots easygoing. Last week Nickel found a far grimmer spirit—at least until the bombing runs over the North were halted once again. His report:

FOR three full hours a seemingly endless stream of the huge war machines thundered past Charlie Tower, at the end of Andersen's 12,000-ft. runway, to get final takeoff clearance. Then they roared mightily down the gentle decline of the salad-bowl-shaped runway, howled back up the last stretch before finally lifting their 490,000 lbs. off the ground, jet exhausts trailing thick clouds of black smoke.

First off were more than 30 B-52Gs, recognizable by their light beige underbellies and the absence of bomb racks under their wings; their 20,000 lbs. of bombs are crammed into barn-sized bomb bays. Then came the older Ds, which are probably the world's meanest-looking aircraft, with two dozen 500-lb. bombs clustered on racks under the wings and 42 stubby 750-pounders inside. Painted pitch black, they looked like the birds of death that they

are. Of all the 80 or so aircraft I watched depart, only one of them had to use its "drag bag"—the drag parachute used to abort a takeoff because of a technical difficulty. A reserve craft quickly took its place. That mass departure, timed to the split second, was a feat the Strategic Air Command ought to teach the world's commercial airlines.

The ferocious intensity of the raids stunned even the 11,000 airmen at Andersen and the 90,000 Guamanians for whom the sight of B-52s and bomb-laden trucks has been routine since 1965. Base security measures were tighter than ever: information officers would not comment on operational matters; pilots and crewmen were ordered not to talk to outsiders. Such strictness was understandable—but almost certainly the North Vietnamese knew far in advance that the raiders were on their way. One of the permanent features of life in Guam is a radar-studded Soviet trawler that works just a few miles west of the island.

Perhaps the greatest single reason for the new grimness here was that air and ground crews knew there now was a good chance that not all the planes would return. "We've got a hell of a lot more excitement than we need these days," said a veteran of 238 Viet Nam missions. In fact, the chances of being shot down over the North were slightly greater than was the case in the B-17

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TIME, JANUARY 8, 1973

paign, only one B-52 had been lost in combat in seven years and 100,000 sorties in Indochina. Yet in the past two weeks, 15 were lost—each with a crew of six, most of whom are listed either as missing or captured. Why the high toll? First, as Air Force spokesmen are quick to point out, the B-52s were invading the “most heavily defended antiaircraft area in the world”—at least in conventional-weapons terms. Since the October bombing halt, the Soviet Union has shipped enormous quantities of missiles and improved radar systems into the North, and the North Vietnamese fired them this round with a prodigality never before displayed. U.S. Air Force officials estimate that 50 to 60 SAM “telephone poles” were fired at each three-plane B-52 formation, or “cell.” While a cell’s electronic defenses can cope with a number of incoming missiles, volleys as large as those were difficult to block completely. And because the B-52s lack the agility of the smaller U.S. planes, they cannot dodge missiles that crack the B-52s’ defenses, or, with their huge supply of inflammable fuel, survive a SAM hit as Phantoms sometimes do.

One of the most troubling aspects of the Nixon blitz—quite apart from the death inflicted on its victims—was that his show of overweening force in-

creased the U.S. investment in lives, prisoners and prestige. This happened just at a point when the public mind believed that that investment was about to be liquidated. The President, who surely wants the war over as much as any American, seemed for a time to be raising his own ante, apparently making it more difficult for the U.S. to extricate itself from Southeast Asia. One State Department dissenter from the bombing observed gloomily early last week: “Tomorrow it may be different, but all reason and logic and history are against the North Vietnamese making substantive concessions because of the bombing.”

Hanoi, in fact, called the heavy U.S. air losses “America’s Dien Bien Phu of the skies” and anticipated the halt by suggesting it would be seen by the North Vietnamese as an admission of American weakness. That was doubtless boasting for effect. But what concessions, if any, either side is now prepared to make remains cloaked in the secrecy of the exchanges between the White House and Hanoi that led to the agreement to go back to the table—exchanges that conceivably may have been by cable directly between the President and North Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong, as they were in October. Around the White House there is a

heady sense of having gambled and won. Says one aide: “The North Vietnamese underestimated what Richard Nixon would do. He had given them warning, and once it became clear that they were diddling us, he ordered the bombing. Now they’ve had time to look around and see what he can do. He was completely aware of the mounting pressure, but he stood tall.”

Implicit in the mood is the conviction that should he be “diddled” again in Paris, yet another blitz will be ordered. If Hanoi does not resume the talks in the proper vein, says a source close to the President, “he’ll turn it up full blast again.” The U.S. expects Hanoi in particular to:

1. return to its earlier position of an unconditional release of the American P.O.W.s;

2. agree to a post-cease-fire National Council of Reconciliation that is not a disguised coalition government or an independent governmental structure;

3. accept an international force to supervise the cease-fire with enough men and muscle to be able to carry out its mission;

4. join in some recognition of the Demilitarized Zone as a provisional boundary between two Viet Nams, neither of which will impose its will by force on the other.

All that may now be a very large agenda for North Viet Nam to swallow, and the U.S. thinks it will have some indication of how things will go when talks between technical experts of both sides resume in Paris this week. And, since the full substance of negotiations and the reason for their resumption has not been made fully public, both sides in the end may be able to interpret any agreement as having won points and saved face.

Though the history of the war and North Viet Nam's will to wage it argues against it, it is always possible that Nixon's show of force may pay off, and he will succeed in largely getting what he wants. Other Nixon gambles have paid off in the past. The Cambodian invasion, widely and correctly criticized at the time for spreading the war into yet another country, nevertheless helped speed the withdrawal of U.S. troops. And the mining of Haiphong Harbor and the resumption of the bombing in the North last spring did not bring the U.S. to the edge of World War III as so many feared, or even result in the cancellation of the Moscow summit. Rather, they are now credited with nudging the North Vietnamese toward the bargaining table. Now the new bombing has succeeded in getting the talks scheduled again. Certainly, the Russians and the Chinese took the blitz on Hanoi and Haiphong with a measure of resigned acceptance.

But even if it brings the planned results, the bombing will not soon be forgotten or forgiven by many Americans, by much of the rest of the world, or by North Viet Nam, a country with which

B-52 STRATEGIC BOMBER POISED ON RUNWAY

and B-24 days of World War II. Then the loss rate was one to 64; last week it was closer to one to 50.

The strain showed. More than anyone else, the airmen wanted to believe that peace was indeed at hand. “The letdown was just killing,” said Captain James H.S. Train, a veteran of more than 200 missions who is now on his sixth combat tour. “We’re just hanging on by our fingernails.” Later another flyer warned: “Just don’t pass out any more peace rumors.”

Since the arrival of a second B-52 wing last spring, Andersen has been jampacked. Many ground crewmen were forced to move into hastily assembled prefabs and tents to make room for new flight crews in their comforta-

ble, mostly air-conditioned barracks. If ground crews weren’t being kept so busy, the griping would have been heavy. As it was, however, armorers and mechanics now were putting in 16-hour days and seven-day weeks. Though precise turnaround time to prepare a B-52 for another run is classified, the usual period that is required for regular maintenance and preparation is about 16 hours.

Enough air crewmen were brought in from the U.S. to keep the number of missions per crew to a level of about three per week. Each mission involved a 17-hour workday, including twelve hours in the air as well as pre- and post-flight briefings and debriefings. Meals were taken on board: some flyers preferred the older D models because they have a small stove on which a TV-style dinner can be cooked. On the Gs, cold box lunches are the rule. Crews are rotated home after a maximum of 179 days under a program code-named “Bullet Shot,” but departure notices from U.S. bases are not always so meticulously planned. One pilot, whose wife was out shopping when his orders arrived, was reduced to leaving a note on the kitchen table, telling her he had gone off to 179 days of war.

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the U.S. will eventually have to come to terms.

And what if it does not work? What happens if the talks begin again, without the hoped-for "good will" on the part of the North? Presumably, Nixon will be in an even more uncomfortable position than he was before the bombing. He will have gained nothing but the renewed mistrust of many European statesmen

as well as a large segment of the American public. Having so dramatically expressed his dissatisfaction with the current demands of the North, like their insistence on tying the fate of American prisoners together with that of political prisoners in the South, it would be doubly difficult now to turn around and accede to any more of those demands. If anything, the bombing, far from making

future negotiations easier, could make them even more arduous.

The Administration clearly does not think so, by its own rationale for starting—and stopping—the blitz against North Viet Nam. Says Kissinger, once burned and choosing his words with care: "We expect to have serious negotiations and have some reason to believe we will have serious negotiations."

## Outrage and Relief

The bombing stirred mixed but predominantly critical reactions in the U.S. and round the world. Most of America's European allies were officially silent. The themes of world reaction ranged from outrage, to a more moderate sadness, to a kind of unenthusiastic sympathy for the President's implacable line. Only on Taiwan and in Saigon were the raids greeted with almost unmitigated satisfaction. Then, with the bombing halt, came expressions of relief and hope mixed with recrimination. A sampling of reactions:

### BEFORE THE BOMBING HALT

The *Times* of London: "He [Nixon] ordered the most pulverising saturation bombing against the wretched Vietnamese people which even this war has seen...This is not the conduct of a man who wants peace very badly, but of one whose priorities have significantly altered since last October."

The national executive committee of the British Labor Party: "This continued slaughter of the Vietnamese people is a complete contradiction of the statements made by both Mr. Nixon and Dr. Kissinger."

Three Labor M.P.s from Coventry sent a telegram to President Nixon that read: "As Members of Parliament for Coventry, the first British city to be martyred by mass bombing, we urge you to end the mass bombing in Viet Nam."

France's largest weekly, *L'Express*: "In this poker game of life, Nixon is a master. By means of this nearly blind monster, the B-52, he has discarded forever an assumption. Mr. Nixon is no longer, and will never again be, a respectable man. That is, if he ever was one."

Le Figaro, a centrist French daily not noted for its pro-Americanism, took a more conciliatory tone: "As for throwing the entire responsibility for the failure of the talks solely on the American Government, it is good polemics at most."

Die Zeit, a liberal Hamburg weekly: "Nixon's bombing war taxes the faith of his allies." It is "nothing but terror and torture; torture with a method in order to make the North Vietnamese pliable. The bombs fall on military targets, but they also hit hospitals and schools, women and children...Even allies must call this a crime against humanity...The American credibility has been shattered."

Tass, the Soviet news agency, avoided blaming Nixon and instead said that the Pentagon was responsible: "The list of bloody crimes of the American military has been extended by thousands of new victims. The new monstrous crimes of the American military push further away the possibility of a peaceful settlement."

Indira Gandhi's New Congress Party drafted a resolution condemning the bombing: "It is the most horrible tragedy in man's recorded history. A small country whose valiant people desire nothing more than achieving their national identity are being subjected to indiscriminate bombing of the civilian population in a senseless desire to impose the will of an outside power."

Peking's Foreign Ministry: "Should the U.S. Government disregard the desire of the people of Viet Nam and obducerately persist in its war of aggression, the Chinese people will, as always, resolutely perform their internationalist duty and give all-out support and assistance to the Vietnamese people till complete victory is won." Premier Chou En-lai said

that the renewed bombing could endanger the improved Chinese-American relations.

The Saigon daily newspaper *Tin Song*, regarded as an unofficial government spokesman: "To place Hanoi in a setting of terror and nightmare as to whether [the U.S.] is bombing or not, and when, is indeed the most meritorious reprisal against the equivocal Communist tricks at the [Paris] conference."

The New York Times: "President Nixon has resorted once more to naked force to try to obtain his own larger objectives in Southeast Asia...However much Hanoi may be responsible for disrupting the negotiations—which is a highly disputed point—civilized man will be horrified at the renewed spectacle of the world's mightiest air force mercilessly pounding a small Asian nation in an abuse of national power and disregard of humanitarian principles."

Conservative Columnist William F. Buckley: "Let's get it straight: Richard Nixon's resumption of the bombing is the logical, not the illogical, the honorable not the dishonorable, consequence of the breakdown of the negotiations in Paris as the result of North Vietnamese Mickey Mouse."

The Chicago Tribune: "The decision to resume massive bombing above the 20th parallel may be accounted for the latest in a series of gambles...But it is obvious that the return to massive bombing entails risks, and that if the policy does not produce a change of heart in the enemy soon we are again faced with the disheartening prospect of a lingering war."

The Los Angeles Times: "Of all the errors made in the war, of all the confusions of illusion and reality, of all the willful uses of arbitrary power, this is one of the most shocking, because the means used are so grossly disproportionate to the ends sought."

James Howell, chief economist at the First National Bank of Boston: "There was a new consensus emerging, which of course included getting out of Viet Nam. The President was re-elected by a landslide. But now Nixon is ripping this consensus to pieces. The President is picking and tearing at the most sensitive nerve and the outcome is bound to be an upsurge of the type of dissent that appeared to be dying out."

### AFTER THE BOMBING HALT

British Prime Minister Edward Heath, who had been under strong opposition pressure to speak out against the bombing: "It is easy to demand condemnatory statements, but past experience strongly suggests that they are not always the best way of bringing peace nearer."

Hamilton Fish Armstrong, former editor of *Foreign Affairs*: "The President has a second chance now, but nothing will justify the bombing of the North. Millions of Americans are disgusted by it and feel uneasy about not being given any rationale or explanation."

Historian Theodore Roszak: "The basic line of policy has not changed. Nixon remains in the same league as those who bombed Guernica and he does not get out of that league simply by letting up on the bombing here and there."

French Foreign Minister Maurice Schumann: "Hope is re-born." The French national radio called the bombing halt "the best news of the end of 1972," but scorned Washington's carrot-and-stick tactics.

Former Ambassador Averell Harriman: "I thanked God that he stopped the bombing. The damage done really is a national disgrace. And if anything it has made the negotiations more difficult."

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Far East

BALTIMORE SUN

8 January 1973

Viettalks
resume
today

Kissinger back
in Paris for
'one more' try

By SCOTT SULLIVAN

Paris Bureau of The Sun

Paris—Henry A. Kissinger came to Paris last night to make what he called “one more major effort” to negotiate a peace treaty for South Vietnam.

Dr. Kissinger, President Nixon's special adviser for national security affairs, will meet this morning in rural Gif-sur-Yvette with Le Duc Tho, North Vietnam's chief negotiator.

The meeting will mark their third series of "final" negotiating rounds since Dr. Kissinger announced October 26 that peace was "at hand."

Remarks brief

When the American envoy arrived at Paris' Orly Airport last night, the tensions and disappointments of the intervening 10 weeks showed clearly through his newly acquired tan.

He held his remarks to the crowd of waiting newsmen to a bare-bones, four-sentence statement, in which he declared:

"We expect the talks this time will be serious and worthy of the yearning of the people of the world for an early end of the war."

He added: "As far as the United States is concerned, we will dedicate ourselves to the effort with patience, goodwill and hope."

Dr. Kissinger's tight-lipped demeanor and taciturn remarks last night contrasted vividly with the good-humored, even light-hearted performances that he had put on at his most recent arrivals here.

Tho's long statement

His only joke, a wan one, came when he told reporters that he would not "keep you as long as my colleague did yesterday"—a reference to Mr. Tho's long, tough-talking ar-

rival statement at Le Bourget Airport Saturday.

Conspicuously missing last night were Dr. Kissinger's earlier kidding with William J. Porter, the American delegate to the formal peace conference, and his elaborately defensive bows to Pham Dang Lam, the South Vietnamese delegate.

Mr. Porter and Mr. Lam accompanied President Nixon's special envoy last night, along with William H. Sullivan, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs; Jack B. Kubisch, the acting United States ambassador in Paris; Heyward Isham, Mr. Porter's deputy, and Nguyen Xuan Phong, Mr. Lam's No. 2 man.

The official party reflected Dr. Kissinger's steely, businesslike mood, staying in the airport's VIP Lounge just long enough for cameramen to photograph them, then hurrying quickly away.

Dr. Kissinger's austere performance last night jibes perfectly with a whole series of recent leaks and statements by American and South Vietnamese sources warning against any excessive optimism over the new series of talks.

No one here pretends to know what will happen this morning when Dr. Kissinger and Mr. Tho sit down together in the Leger country home at Gif to try to get on with the negotiations, which wound up in deadlock December 13. That stalemate precipitated the most intense bombing raids on North Vietnam in the long history of the war.

What is known, with some precision, are the issues that remained outstanding at the close of the last round of negotiations, and, roughly, the degree of compromise that must be achieved if peace is to come.

A Paris source very close to the talks summarized the main points of the negotiations yesterday and analyzed them this way:

1. Withdrawal of all North Vietnamese troops from the south, which President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam has insisted was a prerequisite to the settlement.

After having tried to persuade the North Vietnamese of this point, Dr. Kissinger made it clear in his December 16 press conference that it no longer would be pressed. The October agreement for a standstill, or "leopard-skin," cease-fire will be adopted.

At the same time, the United States will insist on North Vietnam's accepting the principles that its forces do not have the right to interfere in South Vietnamese affairs.

2. The National Council of Reconciliation and National Concord, which President Thieu insisted must not develop into a super-government for South Vietnam.

Here again, the October version will stand, with some tightening of the language. In effect, the political future of South Vietnam will be left up to the postwar interplay of forces in South Vietnam.

3. The question of who is sovereign in South Vietnam, or of whether "Vietnam" is one country or two.

This is the rub of the problem. Its most acute expression comes with the question of whether the old demilitarized zone between north and south is to be reinstalled. Dr. Kissinger will insist that it must be. The North Vietnamese may be persuaded to accept it, if language is included emphasizing its "temporary" quality, pending reunification.

Dr. Kissinger also will insist, that, along with already existing language in which the United States recognizes the independence and territorial integrity of "Vietnam," North and South Vietnam agree to respect one another's territorial integrity. Here, the problem to finding a formula that saves face on both sides is paramount.

Linguistic problems

4. A variety of linguistic problems which, from a technical point of view, are considered relatively easy to solve, providing the political will to do so exists.

A fifth problem, regarded here as relatively minor and clearly open to compromise, stems from North Vietnam's rejection of the American proposal for a 5,000-man peacekeeping force and the counter-proposal for a 350-man force.

The biggest question mark hanging over the whole new round of negotiations is the effect that the recent round of bombings will have produced on both sides.

While it generally is admitted here that President Nixon has "played his last card" and could not resume the bombing, it also is pointed out that the recent attacks proved to North Vietnam that China and the Soviet Union are determined to deny Hanoi any support that would prolong the war or hurt their relations with Washington.

WASHINGTON POST

8 JANUARY 1973

Thieu Says Communists

Cling to Use of Force

From News Dispatchers

SAIGON, Jan. 7 — South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu warned yesterday that despite recent displays of flexibility on the world scene, the Communist countries had not renounced the use of force.

The president made this remark at a ceremony to mark the presentation of credentials by the new Taiwan ambassador to Saigon, Hsu Sho Chang, the official Vietnam news agency reported today.

Faced with the continuing threat of Communist violence, the president said he still believed in the "victory of our just cause."

Communism was "incompatible with the moral values on which our society rest," he added.

The South Vietnamese leader hailed Taiwan's contribution to "freedom in Southeast Asia," affirming that this "proved that in a free society one can more easily devote oneself to the improvement of the masses' standard of living."

Meantime, commentaries on Radio Saigon appeared to harden over the weekend after indications of a slight easing in South Vietnam's position.

In a morning broadcast, Radio Saigon praised President Nixon for resisting the pressures from political "doves" at home as well as international protests abroad.

Mr. Nixon did not allow "a group of belligerent and belligerent Communists to deceive and insult him. As a hail of bombs fell on the pirate warriors... this finally brought the Communists back to the negotiating table," it said.

Diplomats said last week that South Vietnam's position has shifted slightly since the collapse of the talks in December.

They said South Vietnam, while insisting on the withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops, appeared to have dropped its insistence that this be written into the agreement.

17

NEW YORK TIMES

9 January 1973

Raids Go On in Southern North Vietnam

marine tests.

Mr. Laird, who will give way
at the Pentagon to Elliot L.
Richardson, now the Secretary
of Health, Education and Wel-
fare, always has been rated in
the forefront of those pushing
withdrawal from Vietnam and
has perceived his plan for
turning over the war to the
South Vietnamese as the nec-
essary alternative if negotia-
tions come to naught.

Early in his 100-page report, he said, "Should negotiations fail, Vietnamization makes possible the complete termination of American involvement in the war, contingent always on the safe return of American prisoners-of-war and an accounting for those missing-in-action throughout Indochina."

Later on, he said:

"From a military standpoint, the Vietnamization program has been completed. Some American military personnel remain in Vietnam, in keeping with the commander-in-chief's pledge that all our forces will not be withdrawn until all prisoners have been released and our missing-in-action accounted for.

"But ... I want this committee to understand that the continuing United States military presence in South Vietnam is not being maintained because of a lack of capabilities on the part of the South Vietnamese."

Interprets testimony

Representative F. Edward Hebert (D., La.), the committee chairman, interpreted Mr. Laird's testimony on South Vietnamese defensive capabilities to mean that the key to negotiations in Paris is an agreement on prisoners and missing men. There has to be an "honorable peace," Mr. Hebert said, and it now hangs "solely" on the prisoner issue. He said to Mr. Laird: "I think you share that opinion."

"I do," the secretary replied.

At another point, Mr. Laird seemed to imply that the prisoner issue was a major sticking point for the Paris negotiators. When Representative Otis Pike (D., N.Y.) said he inferred from administration statements that the prisoner matter had been decided, Mr. Laird said he was not going to discuss negotiations, but Mr. Pike's assumption was "not correct."

There have been reports that
in December Hanoi reopened
the prisoner issue, thought set-
tled in October, by linking it
with release of "political pris-
oners" jailed in the South.

Representative Lucien Nedzi
(D., Mich.) tried to get a
statement from Mr. Laird link-
ing the year-end bombing with
the prisoner-negotiations issue.
If South Vietnam now can

SAIGON, South Vietnam,
Tuesday, Jan. 9 (AP)—Heavy
United States air raids were
continued yesterday against
the southern part of North Viet-
nam in an effort to check the
flow of men and material to
Communist forces in South
Vietnam.

The United States command
said that B-52 heavy bombers
flew 15 missions presumably
consisting of three planes each
— and tactical fighter-bombers
during the 24-hour period ended
at 8 A.M. yesterday.

The bulk of the B-52 strikes were said to have been in the region of Thanh Hoa, a port city 12 miles south of the 20th Parallel.

B-52 strikes to suppress enemy activity were also flown in South Vietnam from Quang Tri in the north to the Mekong Delta, the command said.

Vi Thanh Reported Attacked

Reporting on the ground war, the South Vietnamese command said that enemy mortars killed nine civilians and wounded 49 more in a daylight attack yesterday on the provincial capital of Vi Thanh, 110 miles south-west of Saigon.

At the same time, the Saigon command said that North Vietnamese and Vietcong attacks across the country dropped from an average of 100 a day in the last five days to 77 for the 24-hour period ended at dawn yesterday. Most of the attacks consisted of shelling by mortars and rockets, the command reported.

Reports from the field said
that South Vietnamese units
battled Communist troops yes-
terday in three separate engage-
ments in areas 30 to 60 miles
north of Saigon. South Viet-
namese casualties were put at

eight killed and nine wounded.
Communist casualties were not
given.

In other developments, United States spokesmen reported the loss of the 33d American warplane since Dec. 18, when the intensive bombardment of the Hanoi and Haiphong regions began. The spokesmen said that an Air Force F-4 Phantom returning from a mission

The New York Times / Jan. 9, 1973

Areas near Thanh Hoa (1)
and Quang Tri (2) were
among B-52 targets. In
ground war, fighting was
reported near Saigon (3)
and Tram Khnar (4).

crashed near Udon Thani air
base in northeast Thailand. The
two crewmen were said to have
bailed out safely.

Ninety-nineteen crewmen have been killed, captured or are listed as missing as a result of the plane losses in this period, according to United States command reports.

New Drive at Tram Khnar

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia,
Jan. 8 (Reuters)—The Cambodian command reported today that Government troops, supported by waves of air strikes, had renewed their effort to push Communist forces away from the outskirts of the battered southern town of Tram Khnar.

The Government soldiers
were said to have come under
hassling fire throughout the
night inside the town, 24 miles
south of here, and at surrounding
positions. At down, the
command said, the Government
force, numbering 2,000 men in-
cluding reinforcements, ad-
vanced cautiously again from
the town's southern edge.

Fighting Near Saravane

VIENTIANE, Laos, Jan. 8 (AP)—A Government military spokesman said today that there had been a steady increase in fighting near the provincial capital of Saravane, 280 miles southeast of Vientiane.

Ten Communist soldiers were killed and eight wounded during the weekend, while Government troops suffered light casualties, the spokesman said.

Other Communist troops reportedly fired eight rockets into Thakhek, in the Laotian pahandle 150 miles northwest of Saravane, killing two civilians and wounding three.

WASHINGTON POST

9 JANUARY 1973

• The Soviet government newspaper Izvestia berated Japan for its indirect role in the Vietnam war through military accords with the United States.

defend itself. Mr. Nedzi asked,
is not the public entitled to an
explanation of the bombing?
Mr. Laird, the first official to
testify in Congress since the
two-week bombing campaign,
responded by putting President
Nixon's May 8 speech in the
committee record and saying
the bombing and port-mining
policies announced in that
speech were put into effect
again December 18 because
the North Vietnamese would
not bargain seriously.

NEW YORK TIMES

8 January 1973

Cambodian Journalist Killed

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia,
Jan. 7 (UPI) — A Cambodian
journalist was killed today
while covering lighting near the
market town o Tram Khnar,
about 25 miles southwest of
Phnom Penh. Ieng Chamroeun,
22 years old, was killed by gun-
fire west of the town. He was
the younger brother of Ieng
Charoun, a cartoonist-photog-
rapher for a local paper, who
was captured along with Kate
Webb of United Press Interna-
tional in April, 1971.

23

WASHINGTON POST

9 JANUARY 1973

# Lon Nol Calls Negotiations With Sihanouk 'Impossible'

"military base" and asserted: "Vietnam is one, the Vietnamese nation is one."

Tran Van Tu, the spokesman for the Vietcong, commented in the same vein. He said that the stand of the Saigon Government that there were two Vietnamese states was "a maneuver to serve the designs of the United States to perpetuate Vietnam's division."

## South Presses Withdrawal

But the Saigon Government spokesman Nguyen Trieu Dan, clung to the two-state concept and demanded that North Vietnam withdraw its troops and cease all interference in the South.

"What we seek," he said, "is that the people of the North stay at home and leave the people of the South in peace."

According to the nine-point draft agreement drawn up in October, "the United States recognizes the independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of Vietnam." No mention is made of North Vietnamese troops in the South or of Saigon's sovereignty.

The South Vietnamese spokesman said that "points have to be clarified and modified" in the agreement, while the two Communist spokesmen called on the United States to sign it as is and forthwith.

Mr. Lo of North Vietnam, however, acknowledged that "there are problems left to be settled."

PHNOM PENH, Jan. 8 (UPI) — Cambodian President Lon Nol today reiterated his government's refusal to negotiate with deposed Prince Norodom Sihanouk or with Sihanouk's Peking-based government-in-exile.

At one of his Infrequent news conferences, the semi-crippled Lon Nol said: "Sihanouk has been rejected by the Cambodian people who have suffered from his acts and his crimes. In my opinion, it is impossible to negotiate."

Sihanouk, whose ouster as chief of state in March 1970 led to Cambodia's entrance into the Indochina war, is the nominal head of an estimated 45,000 Cambodian insurgents.

According to several Western diplomatic sources, the United States has been putting pressure on Lon Nol to

negotiate with the prince to prevent the eruption of a full-scale Cambodian civil war after an Indochina peace settlement in Paris.

Lon Nol today called the North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris "cunning" and expressed pessimism about the possibility of peace for Cambodia or the rest of Southeast Asia as a result of the renewed Paris peace talks.

Lon Nol also renewed his request that the International Control Commission be reactivated under the terms of the 1954 Geneva Accords and sent to supervise any cease-fire in Cambodia. However, if the members of the commission are not sent in sufficient numbers, he warned, "The North Vietnamese will repeat their acts of 1954 when they camouflaged their personnel and hid their weapons and led away

young Cambodians for training in Hanoi to prepare for another war."

## One Killed in Paris

## In Clash of Cambodians

PARIS, Jan. 8 (AP)—One man was killed and about 30 hurt today in fighting between rival factions at the Cambodian students' quarters in the University of Paris, police reported.

They said the dead man was shot in the head with a .22 caliber rifle.

Witnesses said about 50 supporters of exiled Prince Norodom Sihanouk entered the quarters and attacked student backers of the present Cambodian government of Marshall Lon Nol. The attackers used iron bars, long knives and pelting stones, the witnesses reported.

NEW YORK TIMES

7 January 1973

# U.S. Reports Strikes on Caches in North

NEW YORK TIMES

9 January 1973

## Antiaircraft Build-Up Is Reported by Hanoi

SAIGON, South Vietnam, Jan. 2 (AP)—North Vietnam announced today that hundreds of antiaircraft units had been formed by the home guard and militia in the Hanoi and Haiphong regions, the main targets of last month's heavy American air raids.

The announcement, broadcast by the Hanoi radio, suggested that the North Vietnamese were expecting new air attacks north of the 20th Parallel if the peace talks, just resumed in Paris, broke down again. President Nixon halted bombing north of the parallel on Dec. 30.

The broadcast said that the new antiaircraft units were being formed to "deal more stunning blows to the U.S. air marauders," added that "more artillery units have been set up" in provinces west and northeast of Haiphong by militia forces.

SAIGON, South Vietnam, Sunday, Jan. 7 (Reuters) — American bombers raided the North Vietnamese panhandle again yesterday, the United States command said, striking targets near key junctions and storage areas of military equipment destined for the South.

A command spokesman said 45 B-52 bombers dropped more than 1,000 tons of explosives on what were described as "enemy supply caches."

Smaller fighter-bombers made 115 strikes on the four southern provinces of North Vietnam, attacking water and rail-transportation facilities and antiaircraft artillery sites.

The American spokesman said that half of the B-52 missions were made on an area several miles west of the industrial city of Vinh. Other raids were made inland from the city of Dong Hoi, along valleys just above the demilitarized zone and at feeder points to the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

There was no bombing above the 20th Parallel, the northern limit set by President Nixon a

week ago, the spokesman said, but he added that American planes might have flown above the bombing limit to knockout antiaircraft positions or that weather planes might have gathered data above the 20th Parallel.

The Vietcong, meanwhile, fired heavy rockets into the La Thieu district 10 miles north of Saigon yesterday as enemy activity in South Vietnam remained at a high level.

The Saigon command's count of enemy-initiated incidents over the 24-hour period that ended at 6 A.M. yesterday reached 106 as Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces intensified their drive for territory and against population centers before the resumption tomorrow of the private peace talks in Paris.

Military sources believe that small groups of North Vietnamese and Vietcong soldiers are now operating near Saigon to cut roads and harass the Government in its efforts to assert control over rural areas.

Fighting was also reported in a Binh Dinh Province on the cen-

tral coast and in the central Mekong Delta. United States and South Vietnamese military sources believe that the new surge in fighting will be felt mostly in the delta as enemy forces try to cut highways leading to the capital.

## Cambodian Town Retaken

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Jan. 6 (Reuters) — Government troops reoccupied the burned-out central market of Tram Khnar today, Cambodian military sources reported. They said that about a company of troops entered the marketplace in the beleaguered town about 25 miles south of here shortly before noon today.

WASHINGTON POST

7 JANUARY 1973

## U.S.-China Ties

HONG KONG—A delegation of the National Committee on U.S.-China relations said the prospects for expanding “people-to-people” exchanges between the two countries looked promising. The 14-member delegation, headed by Prof. Alexander Eckstein of the University of Michigan, arrived in Hong Kong after a month-long tour of China.

25

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

8 January 1973

# Vietnam: on the razor's edge

By Takashi Oka

Paris

Once again, Washington and Hanoi stand on the razor's edge between peace and continued war.

Henry A. Kissinger, representing the military might of the United States and the will of its President, begins a new series of talks here Monday with Le Duc Tho, the voice of Hanoi's Politburo and the embodiment of its collective determination.

"The decisive moment has come," said Mr. Tho on his arrival in Paris via Moscow and Peking, "either to rapidly settle the Vietnamese problem and to sign the agreed agreement [which Hanoi says the two sides reached on Oct. 20] or to continue the war. The American Government must make a definite choice: The responsibility rests entirely with it."

The atmosphere surrounding the new talks has been undoubtedly clouded by the intensive bombing of Hanoi, Haiphong, and surrounding areas which President Nixon ordered during the interval between these talks and Dr. Kissinger's last round with Mr. Tho.

It is also apparent that the differences remaining between the two sides are basic, despite the important concessions each side has made.

Dr. Kissinger has tended to present these difficulties as mainly technical and linguistic, and he has even accused Hanoi of seeking "frivolous" changes in phrasing already agreed to.

The North Vietnamese, in turn, accuse the United States first of having agreed to a draft peace agreement in October, and then of seeking substantive changes in this agreement on the pretext of clarifying details or tidying up language.

For an entire week before the arrival of Messrs. Kissinger and Tho, "experts" from Hanoi and Washington headed respectively by North Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach and American Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William P. Sullivan have been working on these questions of detail and language, trying to draw up the immensely complicated and elaborate protocols that will implement the peace agreement itself. The results of these efforts are still shrouded in secrecy.

But it has been clear from the very start of the long negotiations between Washington and Hanoi that Washington's basic weakness lies in the fact that it has to represent Saigon, instead of allowing Saigon to speak for itself.

The enormous military effort the United States has thrown into the Vietnam war cannot obscure the fact that basically, it is a fight between Communist and non-Communist Vietnamese which the non-Communists would have lost long ago had it not been originally for the French, who were fighting to preserve Vietnam as a colony, and then for the Americans.

Dr. Kissinger made clear in his two recent press conferences (Oct. 26 and Dec. 16) that while the United States sympathized with Saigon, it would conclude an agreement with Hanoi regardless of Saigon's objections whenever it considered the terms right.

He has made it equally clear that President Nixon's major objection to the proposed agreement centers on Hanoi's refusal to approve the kind of language that in the President's view would give the Saigon regime a fair chance of survival after a cease-fire.

All the other points, including the emotion-rousing one of returning American prisoners of war, appears to have been basically settled. Hanoi began to place conditions on the return of American prisoners only after, in its view, the United States began making new demands in favor of Saigon.

On instructions from President Nixon, who has indirectly threatened to resume bombing Hanoi and Haiphong unless the North Vietnamese "negotiate seriously," Dr. Kissinger is said to be holding out for language that "however allusive, however indirect," as Dr. Kissinger put it, would show that Saigon and Hanoi intended to live in peace with each other and that "neither side would impose its solution on the other by force."

Saigon, putting its case more bluntly, wants Hanoi to acknowledge that North and South Vietnam are two separate states.

Hanoi insists that the Vietnamese people as a whole are "one nation."

Saigon, ever since its founding under French auspices as the State of Vietnam in 1949, has been fighting for Hanoi to recognize its claim to legitimacy — a claim Hanoi, which was proclaimed by Ho Chi Minh in 1945 as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam with sovereignty over all, Vietnam, has never conceded.

Hanoi has pledged many times that the reunification of Vietnam must be carried out peacefully and gradually, and it concedes to the people of the South the right of self-determination.

How to express these pledges in language that gives Saigon legitimacy, without forcing Hanoi to renounce its own historically well-founded claims to sovereignty over all Vietnam, is a task that could take the best language and legal experts months and years.

Peace, in that case, would scarcely be for tomorrow.

(Meanwhile, Monitor Pentagon correspondent Dana Adams Schmidt reports a somber mood in Washington as the talks resume. President Nixon told a bipartisan group of legislators at a White House breakfast Friday that he felt "neither optimistic nor pessimistic."

(If the negotiators should unexpectedly score a breakthrough to settlement in the next few days or weeks, Mr. Nixon's prestige would ride high again; but for the moment confidence here in his conduct of the war and negotiations, and in the touch of his chief negotiator, Mr. Kissinger, has been shaken, correspondent Schmidt reports.

(The possibility has begun to dawn on some in the capital that perhaps there will be no settlement — that even after further rounds of bombing the United States might find itself obliged to end its commitment in Vietnam without a formal agreement — leaving the future of U.S. POWs in doubt. Even if a document were signed, it seems likely that the struggle between President Thieu's parti-

26

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, 10 JANUARY 1973

WASHINGTON STAR & NEWS - 10 JANUARY 1973 - PAGE 1

# 'Progress Nil' in Paris Talks

By ANDREW BOROWIEC
Star-News Staff Writer

PARIS—Strong hints of continuing deadlock today accompanied the third day of secret negotiations by presidential adviser Henry A. Kissinger and North Vietnamese Politburo member Le Duc Tho.

After 10½ hours of talks Monday and yesterday, Communist informants described the situation in the following terse comment: "Temperature icy, progress nil."

These informants—French Communists in contact with the North Vietnamese—have previously reported the ups and downs of the negotiations with amazing accuracy.

The United States and North Vietnam stuck to their standard policy of news blackout. But the tone of information emanating from Hanoi seemed to confirm the spirit of gloom.

French officials reexamined pessimistic and President Georges Pompidou hinted at this news conference yesterday that he was disappointed by the American attitude.

Such was the atmosphere as the negotiators prepared their

third meeting, this time in suburban Gif-sur-Yvette with the Communists acting as hosts. Yesterday's six-hour session took place in a villa owned by an American businessman in St. Tom-la-Breteche.

Communist informants claimed the talks hitherto have concerned the same perennial problems: The role and size of the proposed armistice commission, the question of whether Vietnam is one or two countries, the conditions of the self-determination process and the presence of North Vietnamese troops in the South.

The Communist side appears to have countered all American efforts to revise the treaty. One source described the Communist attitude as follows:

> "After all, the American side has asked us to resume the talks. It is up to the Americans to make the negotiations succeed. We have nothing more to offer besides the peace treaty which has been waiting for signing nearly three months."

From Hanoi, French correspondents reports new orders to guerrilla units to prepare for long resistance. Anti-aircraft units in the city are reportedly being strengthened.

The official North Vietnamese party daily, "Nhan Dan," wrote:

> "Nothing permits the belief that the negotiations can be fruitful. On the contrary, the American side has again showed bad signs."

The main Communist negotiating tactic seems to be based on world pressure against any resumption of U.S. bombing north of the 20th Parallel.

In Paris, left-wing organizations staged a day-long "march of petitions" to the U.S. Embassy, calling on Washington to stop the raids, sign the treaty in its present form and withdraw from Indonesia.

The "march," carefully regulated by police, gained intensity in the late afternoon hours when hundreds queued outside the steel barriers before being allowed to bring in their petition.

Police admitted groups of four to five persons.

Pompidou's statement on Vietnam was in response to a question at the eighth news conference of his presidency. Although refusing to disclose the contents of his letter to President Nixon about the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, Pompidou said he had expressed "deep disappointment and sorrow" about the bombing.

"No one among the leaders of different countries was affected more than I by the resumption of the bombing and particularly, by such violent bombing," the French president said. He added that last month's breakdown of the talks was particularly disappointing to him because "we believed that an agreement had been reached."

This was a reference to extremely optimistic French reports on Dec. 12 and even 13—when the talks were broken off at President Nixon's orders.

Pompidou shed no further light on the talks and basically kept his remarks on a low key, in keeping with France's attitude of neutrality as host to the conference. But the general tone of his statement prompted many observers to feel that he was blaming the United States for the breakdown of the talks.

Questioned later, high French government officials said they had not been briefed on the latest phase of the talks but simply believed that "things were not advancing."

LOS ANGELES TIMES - 10 JANUARY 1973 PAGE-III/10

# Navy to Cut Back 1,300
California Civilian Jobs

## Probe Set on Claim of Mismanagement at State Shipyards

WASHINGTON (AP)—The Navy plans to eliminate about 1,300 civilian jobs in California in the coming months, it announced Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a Navy team acting under orders of Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird was on its way to investigate alleged mismanagement at Naval shipyards in the state.

Laird ordered the investigation after Rep. Robert F. Leggett (D-Calif.), told Laird during a session of the House Armed Services Committee that his stewardship of the Pentagon had been a "minus" because of the war and scandals in defense management, particularly shipyards.

### Investigation Set

Laird promised an immediate investigation of California yards, focusing at Mare Island Naval Shipyard at Vallejo, Leggett's home town, and at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard near San Francisco.

Both Mare Island and Hunter's Point are among the Navy facilities which are slated to undergo cut-

backs. They will lose 1,115 positions.

The cutbacks were disclosed to Sen. John Tunney (D-Calif.) by the Navy's congressional relations office.

They were also revealed to Leggett shortly before the start of Monday's hearing.

Laird said later that he had not been aware of the timing of the notification and was concerned that it would now appear as if he ordered the cuts because of Leggett's criticism.

### Denies Implication

"Nothing could be further from the truth," Laird said.

Some of the cutbacks are to take place as soon as possible and others apparently not until the start of fiscal year 1974 in July.

The Navy avoided specifics but described the shipyard cutbacks as necessary because the respective work forces were found "to be excess to the needs of the shipyard in meeting future workload requirements."

Here are the scheduled cutbacks:

* Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo: elimination of 900 positions;
* Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, San Francisco, 215; Long Beach Naval Shipyard, 100; Naval Schools Command, Treasure Island, San Francisco, 14;

* Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, 50 and Naval Training Center, San Diego, 29.

The Navy also issued orders Tuesday to trim civilian jobs from its work force in 11 other states.

The reduction, although currently small in total number, is a prelude of what is expected to be large-scale civilian layoffs throughout the Armed Forces, in the coming months as defense activities are curtailed.

Although no base closings are involved in the Navy's action, the Pentagon has said a number of military bases and installations will be closed or their operations reduced once the size of the new budget to be submitted to Congress this month is fixed.

The Defense Department now employs about 1.1 million civilian workers, about 200,000 fewer than at the 1969 Vietnam war peak when the Nixon Administration took office.

3

# Top of the Week

Newsweek

Smith

## What Went Wrong? PAGE 8

It was the heaviest bombing campaign in the history of warfare, and the U.S. air attacks took more than a physical toll. They made it clear there would be no year-end peace—and left behind still more U.S. POW's in North Vietnam. What's more, the sudden

turnaround on the road to peace insured that Vietnam would haunt Richard Nixon as he entered his second term. If peace was indeed "at hand" two months ago, what went wrong? With files from Washington, Saigon and Paris, General Editor Richard M. Smith tells the story. From reporting by Henry Hubbard, Associate Editor Tom Mathews assesses reports that Henry Kissinger is in trouble at the White House. (Newsweek cover photo by Wally McNamee).

## Embattled Media

It was an embattled week for the media. The White House, tilting once more at the liberal "bias" in network newscasting, unveiled a carrot-and-stick plan to encourage independence in network-affiliate TV

stations (page 13), at the same time moving to de-escalate public TV's public-affairs coverage (page 58). The press's battle not to disclose confidential information took an odd, new turn in a Washington courtroom (page 58). And Mr. Nixon's feud with The Washington Post reached a sublimity of silliness as social reporter Dorothy McCardle was excluded from four White House functions in one week (page 14).

## Mao's Agile Envoys PAGE 28

Shenyang gymnasts: Art and politics

A gifted team of friendly acrobats from the People's Republic of China is currently dazzling American audiences. Mary Alice Kellogg reports on the troupe's opening night in Chicago in a story accompanied by four pages of color photographs.

Christopher

## Internationalizing International

A major expansion of Newsweek's International Edition was announced last week, its aim the creation of the first truly international newsmagazine. International Edition Editor Robert C. Christopher has established a separate editorial staff in New York and has appointed Rafael Steinberg as managing editor, Newsweek International, to run it. Edward Behr becomes regional editor for Europe, and an Asia editor will be named soon. Newsweek International will, of course, continue to rely heavily on Newsweek's correspondents around the world—and on Senior Editor Arnaud de Borchgrave, who remains the magazine's chief foreign correspondent.

Steinberg

## Contents

January 1, 1973

THE WAR IN INDOCHINA 8

The peace talks—what went wrong?
(the cover)
Henry Kissinger: man on the spot

NATIONAL AFFAIRS 13

Jawboning the media
The White House feud with The Washington Post
A lowfalutin Inauguration
The President's Christmas
CIA: Schlesinger for Helms
The electoral college votes: guess who?
The Pentagon in war and peace
A Klansman's comfortable jail term
Detroit's murder binge

INTERNATIONAL 22

Britain joins the Common Market: the views of four key Europeans
A "victory" for Enoch Powell
Inflation, Tokyo style
Japan: again the Asia bogeyman
Chinese acrobats on the road in the U.S.
Uganda vs. the British
A white chief in Ghana

THE CITIES 37

Violence and the girl hitchhiker
Fighting fires for a fee

SCIENCE 38

Apollo: hail and farewell
Women's lib in Africa

RELIGION 39

The devil's comeback
An ecclesiastical Robin Hood

BUSINESS AND FINANCE 41

The budget: Mr. Nixon swings the ax
The great wine bubble
What future for the helicopter?
The nursing-homes caper
Delta: the no-frills airline
Discontented workers
The do-it-yourself car-repair boom

SPORTS 51

Reviewing the bowl games
The furor over the pro blackout

EDUCATION 57

Black schools where quality is the rule
My daughter the engineer

THE MEDIA 58

A standoff in the reporters' rights war
A crisis for public broadcasting

THE ARTS 36

ART
At the Met: angels, angels, angels

MUSIC 40

Bringing children and opera pros together
Sound in the round

THEATER 52

Neil Simon's "The Sunshine Boys": another laugh machine

BOOKS 53

The year in books

MOVIES 55

"Effect of Gamma Rays ...": about a loser

"Jeremiah Johnson": vapor at the center
"Pete 'n' Tillie": complicated

OTHER DEPARTMENTS

<table><tr><td>Letters</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>Periscope</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>Newsmakers</td><td>34</td></tr><tr><td>Transition</td><td>35</td></tr></table>

THE COLUMNISTS

<table><tr><td>My Turn: 'Adam Smith'</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>Henry C. Wallich</td><td>47</td></tr><tr><td>Clem Morgello</td><td>49</td></tr><tr><td>Stewart Alsop</td><td>60</td></tr></table>

© 1973 by Newsweek, Inc., 444 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022. All rights reserved.

DC 3

LETTERS

## The High Seas

It may come as a surprise to some of your readers, but it's no shock at all to me that pot does nothing at all for Bill Buckley (NATIONAL AFFAIRS, Dec. 11). His level of intoxication with himself is "high" enough.

DORIS HOUSER

Brighton, Mass.

■ Bill Buckley says he went "outside the 3-mile limit—I'm a law-and-order advocate, you know"—to take up, but neglects to mention where he got the stuff. Did he grow it on international waters? If so, there are lots of people who would like to know how. Otherwise, I would like to hear his explanation of how he came by the weed legally.

LINDA CHAPEL

Big Rapids, Mich.

✔ Bill Buckley says that he grew his grass on board.

## Run for Glory

A lusty bravo and kudos to Petes Axthelm, Bonventre and Greenberg for their best-ever article on pro football. I've been a fan since the '20s and have never been so impressed as I was after reading "The Running Backs" (SPORTS, Dec. 4).

T. J. GOULD

Towson, Md.

■ Axthelm's cover story was excellent but it was not really about football at all. Rather it dealt with qualities like pride, dedication and determination—fundamental characteristics of anyone who strives to become all that he might be.

FRED SPECTMAN

Topeka, Kans.

■ Just once I would like to see a feature on the linemen, those "lovable" brutes—the men of the pit—who perform the pounding, scratching and assorted mayhem that makes possible the year of the runners.

NORTON W. LEE

Hyde Park, Mass.

## At Home Abroad

"The Aliens" (EDUCATION, Dec. 11) talks about the lack of friendliness of Americans. As a foreign student at the University of California at Berkeley and East Texas State University, my experience has been quite the contrary. I have been well received by the Americans and have many close friends.

The article says that top students from foreign countries have mediocre academic performances in U.S. universities. My experience again was the opposite. I found graduate school at Berkeley easier

than my undergraduate work in India and my grades support this observation.

RANVIR MOHINDRA

Denison, Texas

■ "The Aliens" concludes that the inability of the foreign students to relate to the environment they find themselves in is caused primarily by the indifference of the American students. I disagree. This argument has long been a useful cop-out for narrow-minded foreign students. I have been in the U.S. for four years and I feel very much at home. The effort of trying to adjust to a new environment must come from the alien. Most foreigners, and Asians in particular, take the

Wally McNamee—Newsweek

Larry Brown: True grit

easy way out by giving up the struggle and sticking to their own kind.

PIJUS K. BASU

Cleveland, Ohio

■ While some foreign students are disoriented here and consequently focus on the negative features of our culture, a vast majority view us constructively. Though the Soviet Union offers a financial free ride to its foreign-student visitors, most foreign students prefer the U.S. Foreign students often disapprove of inequities in U.S. society, but they admire our candor and marvel at our openness and tolerance of dissidents.

MORGAN H. HARRIS JR.
Chairman of the Board

International Student Center
Los Angeles, Calif.

■ Perhaps the reason "the foreign student isn't the exotic article that he used to be" is that vast numbers of college-age Americans have visited the countries and peoples from which these students have come. The "patronizing" American who took a Chinese girl to the laundermat is hardly typical of "The Americans [who] are so concerned with themselves that they are unwilling to make a friendly move." There are still many communities

in this world without laundermats. The French student who doesn't like Americans makes about as much sense as an American saying he would expect such a remark from a Frenchman. And if a foreign student feels pressure and "has no one to turn to," I should think that those who are supposed to counsel him have been remiss. It is unfortunate that, in attempting to be informative, you have presented such a negative picture.

MALCOLM F. REED
Executive Director

Japan Scholarship Foundation, Inc.
Westfield, N.J.

## The Role of the Polls

Herman Chase is flattering in his appreciation of the accuracy of the Gallup poll (LETTERS, Dec. 11), but his suggestion that elections be abolished and replaced by polls is based on a misconception of the role of public-opinion polls.

Polls are not intended—and should never be construed—to be substitutes for elections. They play an invaluable role in easing communications from the electorate to their elected representatives. Also, by focusing attention upon the opinions of the "man in the street," polls enrich public discussion of leading issues. Our final pre-election poll has as its primary function the demonstration of the accuracy of the methods we use.

IRVING CRESPI

Executive Vice President

The Gallup Organization, Inc.

Princeton, N.J.

## 'Everybody's Angry'

NEWSWEEK quotes Louise Nevelson as saying, "Who are these people who tell us what we have to do and what we have to think? There are artists who have been ignored because they didn't fit into the mold; they're angry—everybody's angry and they've had it" (ART, Dec. 4).

If you check the interview with Louise Nevelson in "The Feminist Art Journal," you will discover those are my words, not Nevelson's. But I still think it was a good choice of a quote.

CINDY NEMSER

Brooklyn, N.Y.

✔ Ms. Nemser is right—it is a good quote and it is hers, not Nevelson's.

## Alive and Well?

Ladislas Farago's tale of Martin Bormann's hiding out in Argentina is absolutely absurd (THE MEDIA, Dec. 11). Everyone knows that Bormann is in fact living in a commune on the top of the Tribune Tower on Chicago's North Michigan Avenue, in company with Amelia Earhart, Judge Crater, Richard Halliburton and Glenn Miller. It is rumored that Leslie Howard may be there, too.

R. K. SMITH

Washington, D.C.

Letters to the Editor, with writer's name and address, should be sent to: Newsweek, 444 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022

NEWSWEEK, January 1, 1973, Volume LXXXI, No. 1. NEWSWEEK is published weekly. $14 a year, by Newsweek, Inc. Printed in U.S.A. Second Class postage paid at New York, N.Y. and at additional mailing offices.

Registrado como artículo de segunda clase en la Administración Central de Correos de esta Capital, con fecha 17 de marzo de 1944, Mexico, D.F.

POSTMASTERS: Send form 3579 to NEWSWEEK, The Newsweek Building, Livingston, N.J. 07039.

4

# THE PERISCOPE

## THE SOVIET TOUCH IN NORTH VIETNAM

While the new heavy toll of B-52s in Vietnam (page 8) is the result of the great numbers now flying and the area-saturation missile fire they meet, Soviet advisers get credit for downing half a dozen U.S. F-111 swing-wing bombers. They have taught Hanoi's gunners an old World War II trick: firing shells filled with "chaff"—clouds of tinfoil—into the path of a ground-hugging F-111. The plane's "radar terrain-guidance" system is thrown out of track, and the craft lurches upward, out of control. The Russians also have put more muscle into Hanoi's tiny navy with four Komar-class missile ships fitted with the Styx, the surface-to-surface weapon used by Egypt to sink the Israeli destroyer Elath in 1967.

## THE IRA'S NEW WEAPON

The outlawed Irish Republican Army in Ulster is adding a more subtle weapon to its arsenal money. The IRA's extremist Provisional wing plans to flood Londonderry and Belfast with counterfeit £1 and £5 notes, hoping to foul up still further the economies of the two terror-torn cities. The first "issue," which bank managers say is an excellent forgery, has been limited to £100,000 (about $235,000) because that was all the banknote paper the IRA could get.

## BREACHING A WHITE HOUSE WALL

A Presidential practice dating back to George Washington—citing “executive privilege” to keep officials from testifying before Congress—will come under new fire in 1973. Sen. Sam Ervin Jr. will try for a showdown over the current White House practice of replying to a Congressional summons with nothing more than a letter citing the privilege. He wants a law compelling a personal appearance to invoke it. The North Carolina Democrat, a constitutional expert, believes the privilege can only be properly called into play to protect direct communications between the President and his aides.

## BLACK AND WHITE IN LOS ANGELES

For the first time in ten years, political forecasters expect Los Angeles's normally solid black leadership to split in the 1973 race for mayor. In 1969, a black city councilman, Thomas Bradley, with the backing of five top black politicians (all state legislators), swept the Negro vote and lost narrowly to Mayor Sam Yorty. Bradley is running again, but this time Jess Unruh, the slimmed-down "Big Daddy" of California's Democrats

and former Speaker of the state Assembly, is getting the endorsements. Merv Dymally, California's lone black senator, is backing Unruh, as are three black assemblymen.

## LAIRD'S SILVER LINING

The now-dashed hopes for an early cease-fire in Vietnam did produce one dividend, according to Defense Secretary Melvin Laird. The rush to pour arms into Saigon before a truce took effect, he says, allowed the Vietnamization program to be just about completed, a half year ahead of schedule. The 25,000 Americans still in Vietnam, he adds, "could be civilians for all that it matters." Civilians also can handle whatever training the Vietnamese still need and with 2,000 planes and 5,000 pilots, Saigon, in Laird's view, can handle air support and air defense, except for long-range flights beyond its borders.

## IDI AMIN'S OTHER HAND

Uganda's President Idi Amin, busy ejecting his original British benefactors (page 33), is at the same time trying to patch up his relations with Moscow, ruptured since he threw out his Soviet military advisers in 1971. The U.S.S.R., which is wary of Amin's dealing with Peking, is moving very carefully. Western diplomats now believe that Moscow will hedge by having East Germany handle any new help for Uganda.

## WISCONSIN'S WINTER BOOK

Wisconsin Republicans are scouting for candidates to take on Sen. Gaylord Nelson in 1974; No. 1 choice is soon-to-retire Defense Secretary Melvin Laird (who says he is not interested, feeling he has been "politically tainted" by his Pentagon association). Backup men include Bart Starr, ex-quarterback of the Green Bay Packers; Curtis Tarr, onetime Selective Service director; astronaut James Lovell, and Rep. William Steiger, 34, a popular four-term congressman.

## O'NEILL'S NOT-SO-LITTLE LIST

The man in line to become the next Democratic Majority Leader, the No. 2 job in the House of Representatives, T.P. (Tip) O'Neill of Massachusetts, has been besieged by no fewer than 26 colleagues, all looking for his old job of Majority Whip, the No. 3 man, who is appointed by the leader. He may be spared the job of choosing, however. House reformers plan a strong drive to make the Whip, like the Speaker and Majority Leader, an elective post.

January 1, 1973

7

Newsweek

WHAT WENT
WRONG?

The number of dead is very high ... thousands of homes have been destroyed ... the area near the airport is a lunar landscape ... electricity is short in the city and water is unavailable in some sections.

—Agence France Presse report
from Hanoi

It was the heaviest bombing campaign in the history of warfare, and the relentless American air attacks on North Vietnam took a toll beyond the massive human and material wreckage in Hanoi and Haiphong alone. Rumbling in the wake of the negotiating breakdown in Paris, the bombs made it clear that there was no hope for peace—or for the return of U.S. POW's—by the year-end. Indeed, a whole new batch of captured (and killed) American airmen was left behind. After nearly two months of “peace-is-at-hand” euphoria, the savage, wrenching turnabout on the path toward a settlement confirmed the belief of many Americans—well founded or not—that they could not trust their own government. And it seemed to insure that the bitter divisiveness over Vietnam that has plagued the nation for nearly a decade would continue to haunt Richard Nixon as he entered his second term.

"When I tell you I am completely confident that we are going to have a settlement, you can bank on it," Mr. Nixon said in a pre-election interview that did him no good at the polls since it was held for release until after his landslide victory. Although some people still insisted that the Administration's handling of the October peace breakthrough was politically motivated, there seemed little reason to doubt that the President had sincerely believed an agreement was in the bag.

What went wrong?

In his latest briefing to the press on the stalled Paris talks, a suddenly vulnerable Henry Kissinger put the blame squarely on the North Vietnamese—and they, predictably enough, pointed an accusing finger at the U.S. The truth lay somewhere in between, for both sides seemed

to have miscalculated just how far they could push each other around in search of fresh concessions. The critical difference was that the U.S. had the power to back up its demands, and when Mr. Nixon concluded that the North Vietnamese were stringing him along, he followed a familiar pattern—lashing out with bombs to teach Hanoi a lesson.

He called on virtually the entire U.S. air armada in Southeast Asia to do the job. Night after night, some 125 Thai-based B-52s and 300 other attack planes swept deep into North Vietnam, pounding Hanoi and Haiphong and—on Presidential orders—hitting targets closer to populated areas and to the Chinese border than ever before. For the giant B-52s, the raids were the first ever over the capital, and as the big jets swept unusually low to lay down their 30-ton payload of bombs, they were subjected to the heaviest anti-aircraft fire they had faced during the war. Hammering away with shotgun-like salvos of SAM-2 missiles, the Communists bagged ten of the $10 million planes, and although Pentagon officials had projected that a maximum of 40 U.S. servicemen would be lost during the campaign, at least 55 were downed in the first six days alone. With other heavy losses sure to come, the U.S. command announced that “for security reasons” it would no longer release the exact number of downed airmen. As in the past, the North Vietnamese trotted out their new POW's for the press, and this time, activist folk singer Joan Baez was on hand in Hanoi to serenade the downed pilots with a tune called “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”

The Response Was Tepid

As might be expected, everyone from the Pope to the Cuban envoy in Hanoi (who reported his embassy had been hit) reacted with shock and dismay to the American re-escalation of the war. But far more to the point was Hanoi's reaction, and when it came it was remarkably contained. Almost ritualistically, the North Vietnamese declared: "This insane

Keystone

Tho and Kissinger in Paris: The mood changed, progress ceased

Department of Defense

action by the U.S. will never be able to remedy its desperate situation in South Vietnam. It further unmasks its deceptive statements about its desire for 'peace' and 'serious negotiations.'" Yet although Hanoi announced the "postponement" of the so-called technical-level talks in Paris, Le Duc Tho and his second-in-command, Xuan Thuy, both studiously avoided saying that the peace negotiations had broken down or that a settlement was doomed.

The reaction from Peking and Moscow was equally tepid. Some experts had reasoned that the Chinese and the Russians—who ignored Hanoi’s call for help after the U.S. mined the harbors of the north last May—would not snub their North Vietnamese comrades again. So far, however, they seemed to be doing just that. In Peking, Chinese officials produced a pro forma declaration reaffirming China’s “all-out support and assistance to the Vietnamese people in their war against U.S. aggression”—but offered no specific pledges of men, matériel or even money. Speaking to some 6,000 Communists gathered in Moscow for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Union, Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev felt compelled to issue a somewhat harsher denunciation of the U.S. bombing attacks. At one point, he linked—for the first time—the future of Soviet-American relations to the outcome of the war, but almost in the next breath, Brezhnev praised the results of his meetings with Mr. Nixon in the Kremlin last spring.

In the long run, strangely enough, Mr. Nixon may find that his toughest critics are right in his own backyard—that is, in the new, liberally tinged Congress. With Capitol Hill in recess for the holidays, initial criticism of the bombing was scattered. It was sufficiently harsh, however, to suggest that when Congress reconvenes early next month there may be moves to cut off U.S. military aid to Vietnam. "The dashed hopes of recent weeks will give new strength to our resolve," declared Sen. Edward Kennedy. "I am confident now, as never before,

that if the President and Dr. Kissinger cannot end America's role in the war themselves, then Congress will end it for them." Or as Majority Leader Mike Mansfield put it: "Anger, stubbornness, prestige will not bring this war to a close; the only possible answer I can see is through negotiations." Even Mr. Nixon's key man in the Senate, Republican Minority Leader Hugh Scott, hinted at his displeasure, saying that while he fully supported the President, he was "heart-sick and disappointed" over the return to bombing.

## Tortuous Twists and Turns

The peace marchers and antiwar activists of yesteryear no doubt felt the same, but aside from a vocal few, they seemed to be having trouble whipping up much public opposition to the President. The prevailing mood appeared to be one of discouragement, even demoralization. That didn't make for headlines, but in a curious way, the lack of noise might even make it easier for Congress to act. In the past, legislators from conservative states or districts have hesitated to support end-the-war amendments for fear of appearing to be in league with street demonstrators. Now, those fears have subsided. At the same time, virtually all U.S. combat troops have been withdrawn from Vietnam, and it will be more difficult for the Administration to argue that a Congressional aid cutoff would jeopardize American servicemen in the field.

Whether Congress eventually acts will depend in large measure on how the legislators interpret the tortuous twists and turns in the last three months of negotiations between Washington and Hanoi. Privately, Kissinger has threatened to release the full transcripts of his talks with Le Duc Tho, but already enough information has emerged to piece together a detailed chronology of those secret conversations:

**Oct. 8:** By all accounts, the U.S. expects only the offer of a limited cease-fire agreement from the North Vietnamese,

Strategy session: For the President, the answer was obvious

9

January 1, 1973

THE WAR IN INDOCHINA

but when Le Duc Tho meets Kissinger at a villa outside Paris, Hanoi indicates virtual acceptance of all American terms. Not only do the Communists agree to a cease-fire and return of all U.S. POW's, but, for the first time in the four-year history of negotiations, they accept the concept of the separation of a military settlement from a political accord. No longer, in effect, is Hanoi insisting on the establishment of a coalition government and on the immediate ouster of South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu. Two days later, Mr. Nixon tells Hanoi that the agreement is essentially complete, but asks for certain clarifications. After one more marathon session, Kissinger returns to Washington, leaving members of his staff to refine the English and Vietnamese language drafts of the accord. The agreement seems all but sealed.

**Oct. 18:** After a one-day stopover in Paris, Kissinger heads off to Saigon with the draft agreement in his briefcase. So confident is the White House at this point that Mr. Nixon cables word to the North Vietnamese that Kissinger may fly direct-

the White House, a decision is made to suspend all bombing of North Vietnam above the 20th parallel-or 70 miles south of Hanoi-as a goodwill gesture. Apparently not satisfied, the North Vietnamese choose to put public pressure on the U.S. two days later. In a detailed radio broadcast, they announced the substance of the nine-point draft peace agreement that has been hammered out in their meetings with Kissinger in Paris.

**Oct. 26:** Within hours after the Hanoi broadcast, Kissinger appears at a White House news conference to confirm the North Vietnamese version of the draft accord and to announce that "peace is at hand." Only minor problems remain, he insists, problems that can easily be ironed out in "one more negotiating session, lasting no more than three or four days." He says later his message was aimed at both Vietnams: "We didn't want to sign it-but we didn't want to lose it. We chose to play it hard. We wanted to tell Hanoi there was no reason to worry, and to tell Saigon that there was no reason to dig in its heels because the decision for peace was irrevocable."

convinced that "Hanoi has made a significant decision for peace."

**Dec. 4:** The "final session" begins in Paris and the mood-and substance-of the talks change dramatically. According to U.S. sources, the North Vietnamese reject all the progress made in the November sessions and it takes three days of hard bargaining just to nail down those matters again. By the weekend, though, Kissinger feels the agreement is so close that he sends his assistant, Gen. Alexander Haig, to Washington with orders to be ready to fly out to Saigon within the next 48 hours. But from then on, things only get worse. There are two more days of tough negotiating. As the differences multiply between the two sides, Kissinger cables the White House to hold up Haig. Finally, with the North Vietnamese reopening issues faster than the negotiators can settle them, Kissinger reproaches Hanoi for stalling and heads back to Washington.

**Dec. 16:** After a hectic series of consultations with officials at the State Department, the Defense Department and the

Capt. Barrows

Capt. Wilson

U.S. fliers on display in Hanoi: A whole new batch of POW's

Capt. Certain

Maj. Alexander

Capt. Simpson

ly from Saigon to Hanoi for the initialing of the accord. But when Kissinger arrives in South Vietnam, he has second thoughts-and the trouble begins. There are intelligence reports of an imminent Communist land-grab offensive before a cease-fire. In an interview with NEWSWEEK Senior Editor Arnaud de Borchgrave, North Vietnam's Prime Minister Pham Van Dong makes disturbing references to a coalition government. Most important, however, Kissinger finds that President Thieu will not go along with the peace settlement unless he is given time-and some moral support-to help shore up his domestic political base. After consultations with Mr. Nixon, Kissinger requests the reopening of negotiations with the North Vietnamese.

**Oct. 23:** The main concern in Washington now is how to handle Hanoi. Within

**Nov. 20:** Both sides return to Paris. For three days the negotiations go smoothly. Agreement is reached on the principles covering international supervision and on South Vietnamese demands that the importance of the Demilitarized Zone be affirmed in the final accord, including the phrase "it shall be respected." Then, suddenly, progress ceases. According to U.S. officials, Hanoi seems to be stalling for time: with the American elections over and with pressure on Mr. Nixon to get the POW's home by Christmas-or Inauguration Day at the latest-Hanoi feels it can afford to sit back and balk at Thieu's demands. According to the North Vietnamese, however, the Americans come back to the bargaining table with a threat that there will be "a resumption of hostilities" if the Communists do not agree to Washington's terms. Still, as he returns to Washington, Kissinger remains

Central Intelligence Agency-and several hours with Mr. Nixon himself-Kissinger appears before an unusual weekend press briefing at the White House to blast the North Vietnamese for making "frivolous" demands in Paris and to announce that the two sides have not reached an agreement that "the President considers just and fair." In the meantime, Mr. Nixon has been reviewing military options with Deputy Defense Secretary Kenneth Rush and chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Thomas Moorer at Camp David and with the Joint Chiefs as a whole at the White House. One day after the Kissinger briefing, the President orders the bombers to go north.

There was little doubt that the President had ordered the bombing to punish Hanoi, but from the beginning the Ad- (Continued on Page 12)

10

Newsweek

IS KISSINGER IN TROUBLE?

He had become the Merlin of American diplomacy, whizzing out of the White House on secret missions toeking, Moscow and Paris. One by one, the most intractable of his foreign opponents seemed to fall under his spell, and only two months ago he went before the American public with what appeared to be the capstone of his career: a promise that peace was at hand in Vietnam. But since then, Henry Kissinger has picked up a few dents in his magic wand. His failure to make good on the peace pledge has tarnished his once-shiny credibility. Worse yet, it opened the gates to a torrent of rumors that he had provoked the displeasure of his boss. Remarked one old Kissinger friend on the mood in the Nixonian White House: "I guess they're gunning for Henry."

That probably overstated the case, but there was no doubt that in the Vietnam crisis atmosphere gripping Washington last week, the anti-Kissinger rumor mills were working overtime. Sometimes, people went to Kremlinological lengths to try to prove that Henry the K and Richard Nixon no longer saw eye-to-eye. For instance, they pointed to the fact that in his original peace-is-at-hand speech, Kissinger seemed to take most of the credit for the breakthrough and mentioned the President's name only three times. By contrast, two weeks ago when Kissinger announced that the U.S. was not satisfied with the terms of the settlement, he focused attention on Mr. Nixon by mentioning him no fewer than fourteen times. Others, going on equally flimsy evidence, recalled that during a recent visit to Key Biscayne Kissinger spent three days within a few minutes' drive of the Florida White House and yet rarely talked with the President—and then only by telephone.

**Support:** Kissinger himself has moved to quash the speculation. "The story of a Nixon-Kissinger rift is total balderdash," he snapped. That may be true, but politically astute Washingtonians noted that neither the President nor any top member of his palace guard has personally stepped forward to back Henry up. So far, in fact, the only support has come from Kissinger's own close friends. "Henry has negotiated with the Chinese and with the Soviets," observed one colleague who knows him well. "He couldn't suddenly have become an idiot." Indeed, it was inconceivable that the President would blame Kissinger for bobbling the Paris peace ball when Mr. Nixon himself was at one point just as optimistic as his national security adviser about the prospects for peace. Kissinger insisted sturdily that talk of a hard-line President and a soft-line negotiator was simply nonsense. "The folklore can now become that I was naïve," he shrugged. "There is a record which will answer that."

Still, even if Vietnam was not a factor, there was reason enough to believe that Kissinger has lost a measure of influence around the White House as the transition to the second Nixon Administration moves ahead. The most striking sign so far is the elimination of two pro-Kissinger officials who have fallen victims to the Nixon house cleaning broom: CIA chief Richard Helms and Commerce Secretary Peter G. Peterson, the U.S. negotiator who hammered out the final version of the Soviet-American trade pact last October. Kissinger trusted both men and relied on them heavily in many of his more sensitive foreign policy forays. What rankled Kissinger most was a curious leak out of the White House four weeks ago, while he was engrossed in the Paris negotiations, saying that Helms was being dropped over policy differences with him. Kissinger denies that flatly. "I consider Helms the best professional intelligence man I have ever dealt with," he told NEWSWEEK'S White House correspondent Henry Hubbard. "He is a friend, an ally and a tremendous asset to national policymaking."

**Gaffe:** The remarkable sight of the once unassailable Kissinger striking a defensive stance was quickly noted in Washington. And all the signs indicated that the enemy headquarters was located somewhere in the White House. Some people speculated that the President's chief of staff, H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, and his chief domestic counselor, John D. Ehrlichman (who jointly have taken on the nickname "the Germans"), had grown unhappy with Kissinger's vast powers and unconventional life-style. It was also clearly true that Kissinger shares many of the same traits that landed Helms and Peterson in hot water. His breezy independence, sophisticated wit and fondness for newsmen—as well as beautiful women—do little to endear him to the Nixon loyalists. Worse yet, his headline-grabbing exploits have occasionally overshadowed the President himself—the worst possible gaffe a retainer can make in the eyes of such captains of the guard as Haldeman and Ehrlichman.

Kissinger's most notorious lapse came two months ago in a taped interview with enterprising Italian journalist Oriana Falacci. "Americans admire the cowboy leading the caravan alone astride his horse," he told her, "the cowboy entering a village or city alone on his horse. Without even a pistol, maybe, because he doesn't go in for shooting. He acts, that's all, aiming at the right spot at the right time." The image was engaging—though a bit incongruous in the age of nuclear diplomacy—but it left precious little room for President Nixon around the old corral in spite of the obvious truth that Kissinger could never have saddled up in the first place had it not been for

Nixon's favor. "Why I agreed to [the interview]," Kissinger later said ruefully, "I'll never know."

For the moment, Kissinger seems to have escaped personal retribution from Mr. Nixon, who is known to look on his adviser's interest in beautiful women with avuncular good humor. When Kissinger's style in more serious matters comes up, however, his critics—and even a few friends—are a bit less charitable. "Henry is too soft," observes one knowledgeable insider at the Paris peace talks. "He operates from principles and he doesn't like to do violence to the rules of international order."

**Clash:** That diagnosis is shared by former Treasury Secretary John Connally, the winter-book favorite to step into the post of Secretary of State if, as expected, William Rogers leaves before the second Nixon Administration comes to a close. Connally's healthy contempt for the velvet-glove approach to diplomacy is near-legendary, and the prospect of a vigorous Kissinger-Connally rivalry for the President's ear is enough to conjure up a bureaucrat's worst nightmares of charisma clash. For the moment, Kissinger appears unlikely to lose any sleep over Connally. While Kissinger has undoubtedly lost some of his magic, few observers believe that he will be toppled from power. Still, in a sober mood he once observed that "Vietnam may be one of those tragic issues that destroys everyone who touches it." Until last week, Kissinger seemed to be a stunning exception to that gloomy axiom. But with the Paris peace talks stalled and with massive U.S. bombing of North Vietnam under way once again, Henry Kissinger may end up yet as his own Cassandra.

Waily McNamee—Newsweek

Kissinger, Ehrlichman: Sour notes

January 1, 1973

11

THE WAR IN INDOCHINA

(Continued from Page 10)

ministration weakened its own case by
suggesting that the new air attacks were
really designed to head off an imminent
North Vietnamese offensive in the south.
That sounded fine, except for one thing:
U.S. officials from Defense Secretary
Melvin Laird on down have been crow-
ing for months that because of their
heavy losses in last spring's offensive the
Communists would not be able to mount
a significant attack for at least two years.
"Sure, there are a few tanks coming down
the Ho Chi Minh Trail," said one Penta-
gon analyst last week. "But they look
like normal replacements. The enemy's
intentions are no doubt not exactly honor-
able, but I doubt they can mount any
major offensive action." Even if the North
Vietnamese were positioning their troops
for a cease-fire-as seems likely-most
people could discern little differ-
ence between that tactic and
Washington's own recent mad-
dash effort to push supplies into
South Vietnam in advance of an
expected truce.

Much of the finger pointing by
the United States—including the
Kissinger briefing and the round
of “backgrounder” that followed
it—diverted attention from anoth-
er major culprit in the peace
debacle: South Vietnam’s Presi-
dent Thieu. Indeed, one theory
had it that the Nixon Administra-
tion was afraid to level any of the
blame for the impasse on Thieu &
Co. for fear that a disillusioned
Congress might jump to cut off
all funds for the war. And there
was no doubt that the Administra-
tion had begun a quiet arm-twist-
ing campaign in Saigon. In the
first few days after the Kissinger
news conference, South Vietnam-
ese officials were openly jubilant
over the deadlock in the Paris
talks. As one pro-government dep-
uty put it: “It was the best news
all year. The President must be
dancing in the palace.” But with
the arrival of Haig in Saigon last
week, the dancing must have slowed
down a bit. For Haig reportedly carried
a personal letter from President Nixon
advising Thieu that he faced a drastic
cutback in U.S. military and economic
aid unless he embraced the American
negotiating position—thus presumably
trimming his demands for an ironclad
clause in the peace accord guaranteeing
Saigon’s “sovereignty” over all of South
Vietnam.

A Setback for the Doves?

But even if the South Vietnamese gave
in, there was no guarantee that Hanoi
would be in any hurry to go back to the
bargaining table. Still persisting was the
question that has plagued American mil-
itary planners throughout the war: just
how effective is massive bombing? For
Mr. Nixon, the answer was obvious; per-
sonally convinced that his tough mining

and bombing campaign had brought Hanoi to serious negotiations once, he was confidently trying again. For others the answer was not that simple. Even Melvin Laird himself was said to harbor serious doubts about the value of trying to bomb an agreement out of Hanoi, and many experts—both in and out of government—believed that the unprecedented level of aerial violence would ultimately make the resumption of peace talks and a settlement much more difficult than before. “If it hadn’t been for the bombing, I think the prospects for peace would still be pretty bright,” says one U.S. diplomat in Asia. “But with the bombing, it’s hard to say what Hanoi will do. Certainly, they are going to consider going back to war.”

As much as the Saigon politicians were
rejoicing over the stepped-up bombing,

the war right back on our doorstep.”

The North Vietnamese may well launch such attacks, but it seemed unlikely that they have given up on the negotiating track entirely. The pressures—both military and diplomatic—that prompted their October concessions have not changed substantially. What's more, they may still entertain the notion that with the return of Congress and the upcoming Inauguration, they may be able to squeeze concessions out of the President. Their objective is simple enough: to get the U.S. to soften its new conditions or to accept the October draft outcome. If they fail to achieve that, the North Vietnamese will face a painful dilemma—either to dig in and fight a long war of attrition in the south—without the legitimate political foothold an agreement would sanction—or once again to rewrite the negotiating ground rules and make more concessions to nail down an accord.

Was It Worth the Effort?

As much as the pressure is on the
North Vietnamese, however, the Ad-
ministration clearly seems to be in a sim-
ilar bind—a bind that goes beyond the
danger of a Congressional uprising. For
with the resumption of all-out bombing,
the U.S. once again finds itself portrayed
as the petulant giant, angrily trying to
bomb a tiny Asian nation into submission.
To much of the world and to many
Americans, that is not a pretty picture
—and the continued bombing and the
deadlock in the peace talks could have
an impact more far-reaching than a
tarnished U.S. image. For no matter
what the North Vietnamese provocation,
the vengeful American response runs
the risk of dooming American POW's
to weeks, months or even years more
in the prison camps around Hanoi—
and of dooming the U.S. to a continuing,
perhaps open-ended, involvement in
Indochina.

And for what? Throughout his four
years in office, Mr. Nixon has constantly
reminded Americans that he was seeking
a peace with honor, a peace that would
give South Vietnam a chance to survive.
As many people saw it, he had that kind
of peace agreement handed to him in
October, and yet he let it slip from his
grasp. Then, as now, he seemed to be
holding out for an agreement that not
only would insure Saigon's survival, but
also insure that the fighting would end
in Indochina altogether. In an area
where the fighting has gone on for al-
most three decades and the animosities
show no sign of diminishing, that may
well be an unattainable goal, and under
any circumstances in the eyes of many
Americans was not worth the U.S. effort.
To the war-weary, a decade of agony
and effort on Saigon's behalf had been
enough; the time had passed to hold out
for dubious negotiating points in Paris,
and the time was past due to withdraw
U.S. forces as honorably as possible and
end the American role in the war.

© Herblock in The Washington Post

'Now You See It—Now You Don't'

they, too, recognized that the attacks
might only serve to stiffen Hanoi's will to
continue the war. For months now, the
North Vietnamese Politburo has report-
edly been split between hard-liners who
want to fight on at any cost and the so-
called doves who want to shift the con-
flict in the south from the military to the
political arena. Perhaps the ferocious
bombing, some experts say, has strength-
ened the hard-liners' contention that
dealing with Mr. Nixon is folly. In any
case, with the memories of the Commu-
nists' recent attack on Tan Son Nhut Air-
port still fresh in the south, rumors have
already begun to spread that the North
Vietnamese are planning a series of
similar rocket and mortar assaults on the
capital itself. "With the talks still going
on, we felt that peace was truly at hand,"
remarked one opposition senator in
Saigon. "Now the bombing may bring

12

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