WASHINGTON POST
28 JULY 72 Pg 1

# President
Hits Foes
On Dikes

By Murrey Marder
Washington Post Staff Writer

President Nixon charged yesterday that his war critics are being "taken in" by enemy propaganda about the bombing of dikes in North Vietnam which applies a "hypocritical double standard" to the United States.

"If it were the policy of the United States to bomb the dikes," he said indignantly at an impromptu news conference in his office, "we could take them out—the significant part of them out—in a week. We don't do so... because we are trying to avoid civilian casualties, not cause them."

War issues dominated the President's meeting with newsmen at the White House, the first since the Democratic National Convention in which Sen. George McGovern's anti-war stand was a major factor in winning the nomination.

What the President mounted yesterday was an across-the-board attack on all critics of his Indochina policy, domestic and international. He appeared determined to try to prevent the charges concerning the dikes, and the new burst of antiwar drives in the Senate and House, from combining into a major morality challenge in the politically sensitive months ahead.

The President flayed U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim for giving credence to Hanoi's charges that the United States is bombing North Vietnam's dikes.

Waldheim, he said, "just like his predecessor (U Thant), seized upon this enemy-inspired propaganda, which has taken in many well-intentioned and naive people." without "raising one word against deliberate bombing of civilian installations in South Vietnam."

On Monday, Waldheim said he was informed through private channels that dikes have been hit or damaged by American bombing, adding that this could produce "enormous human suffering" in North Vietnam. Waldheim added, however, that "I cannot tell

you whether the bombing was intentional or not."

Nevertheless, Secretary of State William P. Rogers immediately attacked Waldheim's statements, saying that allegations of "deliberate bombing to damage the dikes" are "false."

The State Department said on Wednesday that administration studies show only "the most incidental and minor impact" on the dike system from what was described as unintentional damage during attacks on military installations.

President Nixon said yesterday that "if damage did occur ... we are making every possible effort to see that it will not occur again..."

North Vietnam has a 2,700-mile chain of flood-control installations including about a half dozen "major dams which are the heart of the system," the President said.

There has been "no report of any flooding," the President said, "no reports of any stikes on the major dike areas," and only "reports of incidental damage to some of the peripheral installations..."

Instead of being condemned, he said, the United States should be credited for using "greater restraint than any great power has ever shown in handling this war."

He said the United States deliberately has avoided "argets in the heart of Hanoi," such as major power installations, fuel installations, to avoid civilian casualties. Mr. Nixon said acidly that the impression that American military men are "a bunch of savage fly-boys" who "love to get down and machine-gun all the innocent little civilians" is totally unwarranted.

The President recalled a conversation with President Eisenhower about the deliberate bombing of German cities in World War II in which Gen. Eisenhower cited the difficult "moral question" but also noted, "The height of immorality would be to allow Hitler to rule Europe."

"Now, in our case," said Mr. Nixon, "we have not gone that far. We are not going to bomb civilian targets in the North. We are not using the great power that could finish off North Vietnam in an afternoon, and we will not." But, he said, "it would be the height of immorality for the United States at this point to leave Vietnam and ... to turn over to the North Vietnamese the fate of 17 million South Vietnamese who do not want a Communist government..."

The President repeated a

claim he has made often before, that this could produce a "blood bath" in South Vietnam. He said Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker recently reported that as a result of the Communist offensive launched on March 31 the casualties now number "45,000, including women and children, of which 15,000 are dead." The Communist offensive, Mr. Nixon said, now has produced 860,000 refugees in the South, 600,000 of them still in refugee camps.

Mr. Nixon said that those who vote for "so-called end-the-war" resolutions in Congress really should name their resolutions "prolong the war."

Such resolutions, he reiterated, "can only confuse the enemy, at best, and, at the worst, they will prolong the war."

With "just three months left before the election," the President said, now is no time to take actions that could "jeopardize" negotiations now under way.

"At this point," he said, "the chance for a negotiated settlement is better than it has ever been."

NEW YORK TIMES

29 JULY (31)p1

# U.S. ISSUES REPORT TO REBUT CHARGES ON DIKE BOMBINGS

By BERNARD GWERTZMAN

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, July 28—
The Administration today released a Government intelligence report finding that American bombing had damaged North Vietnam's dike system at 12 points. But the report concluded that the hits were unintentional, their impact was minor "and no major dike has been breached."

The eight-page report, put together largely by the Central Intelligence Agency, was given newsmen by the State Department to buttress the Administration's contention that North Vietnam was falsely charging the United States with bombing the dikes systematically and deliberately.

"Photographic evidence shows conclusively that there has been no intentional bombing of the dikes," the report said. The photographs were taken on July 10 and 11, a State Department official said. Later photos were not available, the official said, because reconnaissance flights by the United States Air Force were hampered by cloud conditions over the Red River Delta area in which the extensive 2,700-mile network of dikes and dams is centered.

[In the dispute between President Nixon and Secretary General Waldheim over bombing of dikes, the Secretary General called in George Bush, the United States delegate. Their conversation, while not described publicly,

that Mr. Waldheim had been "taken in" by Hanoi's assertions. And in South Dakota. Senator George McGovern asserted that Mr. Nixon had "stooped beneath the dignity of his office" in his news-conference comments on bombing. Pages 2 and 10.]

The intelligence report made public today declared "Photographic evidence shows conclusively that there has been no intentional bombing of the dikes." The pictures on which the findings were based were taken on July 10 and 11, a State Department official said.

Later photos were not available, the official said, because reconnaissance flights by the United States Air Force were hampered by cloud conditions over the Red River Delta area, where the extensive, 2,700-mile network of dikes and dams is centered.

The report also said that all the dike damage occurred within close range of "specific targets of military value."

"Of the 12 locations where damage has occurred, 10 are close to identified individual targets such as petroleum storage facilities, and the other two are adjacent to road and river transport lines," the report said.

It said that because a large number of the dikes serve as the bases for roadways, "the maze they create throughout the delta makes it almost inevitable that air attacks directed against transportation targets cause scattered damage to dikes."

The report said that the bomb craters identified by photographic reconnaissance at the 12 locations "can be repaired easily with a minimum of labor and equipment—a crew of less than 50 men with wheelbarrows and hand tools could repair in a day the largest crater observed."

"Repairs to all the dikes could be completed within a week," it said.

Although the report was based on photographer reconnaissance, the State Department refused to show newmen any of the photographic evidence. A department official said that it was decided today not to issue the photograph because it was felt by the Administration that this would only provoke North Vietnam to issue its own photographs in rebuttal, some of which might be "fabricated."

This report, including the photographs, prepared earlier and presented on Monday to Kurt Waldheim, secretary general of the United Nations, by George Bush, the United States delegate. Mr. Waldheim had said he had unofficial information that the United States was bombing the dikes.

Yesterday, at his news conference, President Nixon forcefully denied Hanoi's charges about a systematic bombing campaign against the dikes and said that Mr. Waldheim and other well-intentioned and naive people" had been "taken in" by Hanoi's propaganda.

Mr. Nixon conceded, as have other spokesmen, that there had been some damage to the dikes by accidental hits. Today, North Vietnam's radio repeated that "Nixon has intentionally attacked the dike network in North Vietnam in line with all his wicked and barbarous plans"

Senator J. W. Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, was briefed along with other Senators by the C. I. A., a few days ago. He said today that he had no quarrel with the conclusion of the report. He said that the photo evidence he was shown seemed to support the view that the like damage was near military targets.

CBS MORNING NEWS CBS-TV 7:00

June 30, 1975
An Interview With Senator McGovern

******

DAVID SCHOUMACHER: Senator, the President announced last night that peace talks would resume in Paris on July 13th, which is just a day or two before the opening of the Democratic convention. Does this indicate what you've feared all along, or, let's say, suspected all along, that we are going to see an orchestrated peace movement?

SEN. MCGOVERN: Yes, I think that's what we're seeing, Mr. Schoumacher. I think that the President is really running this war to suit his own election timetable. I would not be surprised to see him announce that the last American has been withdrawn the day before the election next November.

But what -- what disturbs me is not only the political cynicism involved in this, dragging out the war for another four years to suit the President's own reelection timetable, but the lack of any sense of moral urgency. People are dying. He talks about bombing as though he were sending in a couple of new backfield aces. It's a -- it's kind of a game, as though bombs were sort of a political strategy.

I don't understand the almost total lack of moral concern in the President's statements last night and, as a matter of fact, in the way he's handled this whole war. God only knows how many tens of thousands of innocent people have died under these bombs. And I speak as a former bomber pilot who knows something about what goes on when bombs are dropped.

But going back to Paris will accomplish nothing if the bombing continues. It's obvious that our prisoners are going to remain in their cells. Each day these bombing missions take place, more American boys are taken as prisoner. The war drags on. More innocent people are

killed. And I almost despair over the President's attitude, the lack of any moral concern at all about this needless destruction of life.

NELSON BENTON: Senator, so far as the return to the peace table coming right in the middle of the convention, the history has been that really nothing very much happens the first day they go back to the peace table after a hiatus. So is there really an orchestration going on?

SEN. MCGOVERN: Oh, I don't think much will happen. I think it's a -- I think it's a political game. I'm glad they're going back to Paris. I wish both sides would show a little bit more urgency about the possibility of a negotiated settlement. But I don't really expect any negotiations as long as the bombing is going on.

We're right back where we were, as you know, during the last three years of the previous administration President Nixon has repeated all the same old tragic mistakes that drove his predecessor from office in 1968. We're bombing at even a higher level today than we were four years ago. Almost everyday we waste enough money on bombing Indo China to rebuild one of our cities.

We're killing people who have nothing to do with this war, innocent children, innocent men and women. There's some indication now we may be destroying the dikes in NVN or getting ready to do it.

All of this senseless slaughter and killing going on for nothing. There's nothing that we can accomplish now by this massive bombardment that we couldn't have accomplished almost four years ago when the President first came into office on a pledge to end the war. I -- I don't think there were very many Americans who thought, when he was running for office, four years ago, and said he had a secret plan to end the war that it was going to take four years to tell us what that secret is.

JOHN HART: Senator, we're going to take a minute, and gentlemen, we'll come right back.

HART: "...in Indo China was the most barbaric act committed by any modern state since the death of Adolf Hitler." End quote. Is that a low blow? Is there any historical

justification for a statement like
that?

SEN. MCGOVERN: Mr. Hart, I repeat that statement again today. And I believe it one hundred percent I love this country; I'm very proud of its ideals; I'm proud of what the founding documents of this country set forth as our fundamental purpose: our respect for dignity, our reverence for life, our respect for justice. None of those things are involved in this senseless slaughter that's now going on all across Indo China. And it pains me and embarras ses me to see this country that I love participating in that kind of barbarism.

I don't think the American people approve of it. I think they want this slaughter put behind us; they want this war ended, and they want some new sense of moral tone brought to the government of this country.

HART: Well, do you think it is even politically wise to associate Richard Nixon with Adolf Hitler?

SEN. MCGOVERN: Well, I'm not associating him with Adolf Hitler. I'm just saying that this is the worst thing that any country has done since the days of Hitler. And I don't think it represents what the American people want. If somehow American public opinion could be brought to bear on this war, it would have been ended long ago. Every poll indicates that. Every fiber of the American people is reaching out for peace, for a settlement of this war. I think that's why the last President chose not to run for reelection. I think that's why this President is going to be defeated next November.

WASHINGTON POST 30 JULY 1972 (31)

# Vietnam: Presidential Inconsistencies

Mr. Nixon's complaint that "well-intentioned and naive" people like Kurt Waldheim have been "taken in" by enemy propaganda about bombing North Vietnamese dikes ignores two crucial facts. First, there would be no propaganda if there were no bombing. Second, the President himself is the real author of the "propaganda," for the reason that three months ago, as part of a deliberate campaign to intimidate Hanoi and bring it to negotiate on his terms, he began to hint carefully that under certain conditions the dikes could be bombed. Last Thursday he said that on April 30 at the Connally ranch he had declared he would not bomb the dikes. In fact, his remarks of April 30 were by no means so categorical. He said then:

"... we will continue to make strikes on military targets throughout North Vietnam. Now, the problem that is raised with regards to dams or dikes is that, while it is a strategic target and indirectly a military target, it would result in an enormous number of civilian casualties. That is something that we need to avoid. It is also something we believe is not needed."

"... we are prepared to use our military and naval strength against military targets throughout North Vietnam, and we believe that the North Vietnamese are taking a very great risk if they continue their offensive in the South.

"I will just leave it there, and they can make their own choice."

When Mr. Nixon thought it might serve his own purpose, he dangled ambiguities about bombing dikes. Only now, when three additional months of fierce bombing evidently have not produced a negotiating breakthrough and when eyewitnesses have reported some dike damage (however unintentional) and when a world outcry has broken out, does the administration offer a belated report on 12 instances of "minor" bomb damage to the dikes —while the President perceives "enemy-inspired propaganda."

As for his complaint of a "double standard" leveled against critics of his policy who don't also criticize enemy attacks on South Vietnamese civil-

ian installations, it is almost embarrassing to have to explain that the violence committed by parties in what is essentially a civil war—however deplorable—is of a very different political and moral order from violence committed by a foreign country intervening in that conflict to uncertain purpose and equally uncertain effect. It seems almost superfluous to add that the standard of American conduct in war really ought not to be fixed, or justified, in terms of the conduct of the North Vietnamese.

Mr. Nixon's reminder that the country has only one President at a time—intended to put down congressmen who doubt he can soon end the American part in the war—is no less off the mark. It was, after all, Richard Nixon, who declared on March 10, 1971: "Those who think Vietnam is going to be a good political issue next year are making a grave miscalculation. Now I am applying our policy there not for political reasons, but for reasons of national security. Nevertheless, those who are counting on Vietnam as a political issue in this country next year are going to have the rug jerked from under them."

The President was saying then, as we read him, that he would end the war by election day. If that was a pledge to the American electorate (and a warning to his domestic political opposition), then it was also a notice to Hanoi that he had to have a settlement to run successfully for re-election.

Mr. Nixon protests now that war critics in Congress are undercutting his negotiating position with antiwar speeches and votes. But to the extent that he meant what he said earlier, he was undercutting his own negotiating position—by imposing on his own diplomacy a deadline for American disengagement more rigorous than any that might have been imposed by the various measures that have been debated in Congress. He is in the insupportable position of claiming that it's acceptable for American diplomacy to be circumscribed by his own definition of his political requirements but not by the political requirements of his opposition and not by the widespread and growing popular sentiment for an early end to our involvement in Vietnam on almost any terms.

NEW YORK TIMES · 31 JULY 1972

The Real War Issue

President Nixon's return last week to the tired theme
that his war critics are "naive" dupes of Hanoi indicates
a desire to pose campaign debate over the nation's de-
fense posture in terms as irrelevant and unilluminating
as were the arguments over the missile gap and the
future of Quemoy and Matsu in earlier election dialogues.

The purpose of the Republican campaign is to frighten
voters with deceptive numbers games over defense-
cuts or with unfounded claims that American with-
d withdrawal from Vietnam would be tantamount to the
abandonment of legitimate American interests and com-
mitments everywhere. Once again, political homage will
be paid to the absurd superstition that the peaceful
settlement of any conflict is a re-enactment of appease-
ment at Munich.

The real issue is not how many missiles and nuclear
submarines are needed to obliterate potential adver-
saries. Not is it to determine what constitutes "peace
with honor" in Vietnam when it is evident that secret
policy-planning has dragged the United States into a
war increasingly devoid of honor. A far more fundamen-
tal question is how the nation can be led back to conduct
its foreign policies in the national interest under the rule
of the Constitution.

Professor Alexander Bickel of the Yale Law School, a constitutional lawyer with basically conservative leanings, in an article in the current issue of Commentary examines the President's war-making powers under the Constitution and concludes: "President Lyndon Johnson did launch an unconstitutional war, and President Nixon, though entitled to wage de facto war until Congress stops him, should know, conservative lawyer that he is, that the war he wages was unconstitutional in its inception."

The framers of the Constitution deliberately separated
the power of Congress to "declare" war from the Pres-
ident's power to "make" war. They did so because they
knew that it is easier to resort to war than to keep the
peace, and they therefore wanted to make it as difficult
as possible to take the nation to war without the
overwhelming support of the people.

Capacity for action, Professor Bickel writes, is the
genus of the Presidency; its weakness is its regal insu-
lation from the mood of the people—its broad incapacity
to receive trustworthy communications from below.

Congress, by direct contrast, is admirably equipped
to communicate but frequently finds it difficult to act
quickly. In foreign affairs, particularly when there is a
risk of warlike action, this can be an advantage. Except
in the case of enemy attack, hasty resort to military
action is usually ill-advised.

The Constitution, in giving to Congress, and not to the
President, the power to declare war, intended to prevent
such hasty action. It sought to create permanent insti-
tutional safeguards which, by demanding the approval
of both houses of Congress, would eliminate the risk
that the country might be led into wars by Presidential
command decisions reached in secret agreement with
advisers who are not responsible to the electorate.

What has happened in Indochina is the result of dis-
regard by the White House of the Constitution and of
abdication by Congress of its clearly assigned duty, even
though the Constitution permits no such abdication.

It was against this background that Senator McGovern,
In his acceptance speech, said that he had begun to
seek the Presidency "in large part because during four
administrations of both parties a terrible war has been
charted behind closed doors." Such charting of secret
policies, in disregard of constitutional processes of rep-
resentative government, undermines the people's trust
In their leaders and institutions.

How to turn away from the corruption of Presidential
power and reassure the American people that their
Government will not act arrogantly and in disregard of
the Constitution are the real foreign policy issues of
this Presidential campaign. Senator McGovern and Presi-
dent Nixon can perform a useful service by addressing
themselves to those questions.

SMART BOMBS
AND DUMB STRATEGY

230

C.Y.J

If peace comes to Vietnam, a military analyst argues, it will not be because the North Vietnamese have been bombed into submission, but because Washington has used its furious yet ineffectual attacks to mask a painful settlement.

If the pace of battle in Vietnam has slowed somewhat this past month, the same cannot be said for the tempo of the military press releases emanating from Washington and Saigon. The releases tell glowingly of ever-more-massive B-52 raids and of such technological wonders as the air force's new "smart bombs," TV- and laser beam-guided unerringly to their targets. Such sophisticated weaponry, we are asked to believe, makes all the difference between Lyndon Johnson's prodigious yet ineffectual bombing campaign during the years 1965 to 1968 and the present assault on North Vietnam and against the enemy armies operating in the South.

A skeptic might recall that there was no talk of ineffectuality when President Johnson was running the show. Quite to the contrary, back then the bombing took on the grandiloquent code name "Operation Rolling Thunder." Nevertheless, there is no mistaking the new note of glee. According to the Associated Press, reporting from Saigon in a typical story last month, "F-4 fighter-bombers . . . destroyed the Tai Hut and Dong Khai bridges, fifty miles south of the Chinese border. The jets directed five laser-guided bombs on the bridges. . . . 'We knocked hell out of them,' an official said. 'Those laser-guided bombs don't miss. They just don't miss,' he added."

As an engineering achievement the new weapons, in truth, are impressive. TV-guided bombs, such as the navy's Walleye, home in on their targets from altitudes as great as 30,000 feet, thereby significantly cutting down the risk to the attacking plane. Once the bomb is released, an airman monitors the target through a TV camera mounted in the nose of the falling weapon and controls its fins with radio impulses so as to guide the bomb directly to its target. By contrast, the A-37—a work-horse fighter-bomber of the Vietnam War, armed with four 500-pound bombs, two cylinders of rockets, and a 762-mm. machine gun that can "hose

Edmund Stillman is the author of several books, including *Power and Impotence: The Failure of American Foreign Policy*. Formerly adjunct professor at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, he now lives and writes in Paris.

BY EDMUND STILLMAN

down" a hostile area at 7,000 rounds per minute—had to dive 1,500 feet to release its bombs and then descend even lower to target in its rockets. This procedure was much less accurate than the Walleye's, and, not surprisingly, the attrition rate of A-37s has been high.

Laser-guided bombs are even more sophisticated than the Walleye. Two attacking planes work together—one fixes the target with a thin beam of light from afar, while the other launches the bomb. The bomb then directs itself along the laser, impacting, it is claimed, within a "circular error probability" of five feet. An even newer laser system requiring only one attacking plane is on the way.

No, there is nothing comical about U.S. military technology in Vietnam—even if the gee-whiz demeanor of the public relations officers in Washington and Saigon who boast about it sometimes is. Still, the very prowess of American technology raises uncomfortable questions. Given the introduction of smart bombs, given the blocking of the North Vietnamese harbors and inland waterways with highly sophisticated mines that detect passing ships by variations in pressure, magnetism, and even sound, given the studious tonnage of bombs dropped on troop positions and supply lines in the South by tactical jets and B-52s, given the tremendous shellings by the sixtyodd ships of the U.S. Navy maneuvering off the coast—why has not the North Vietnamese spring offensive simply died? Why has not the North Vietnamese army disintegrated in the field? For that matter, why has not North Vietnam itself collapsed?

Some observers have gone so far as to remark that the continuing North Vietnamese resistance is the greatest defeat for American technology since Sputnik. Could it be, others have asked, that the explanation for the endurance of North Vietnam and her military forces is that the Soviets have equipped the North Vietnamese with an arsenal technologically superior even to our own? This latter notion, at least, can pretty well be dismissed. For all of Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird's publicly displayed anger against the Soviet Union for supplying Hanoi with

what he called advanced weapons of war, the real truth is that the U.S.S.R. has hardly done so. The NVA fights with simple, if not downright primitive, weaponry. The Soviet leaders, as most of the Third World well knows, have given more and better equipment to the Egyptians (more than 1,000 T-54/T-55 medium tanks, fifty or so heavies such as the JS-3 and T-10, and superfast Mig-23s and Styx naval missiles that could make life terribly unpleasant for an American fleet operating close to the North Vietnamese coast). Hanoi has been making do without any such assistance. All the Soviets have supplied are light and medium tanks, a limited number of 130-mm., long-range artillery pieces, mortars, machine guns, and the AK-47 automatic rifle, but not much more.

In the Soviet arsenal there is plenty of other weaponry, some of it ten or fifteen years old, that Moscow could introduce into the battle, thereby turning the military situation upside down. A repeated scare is "Strella"—a light, shoulder-fired infrared-guided rocket that can home in on the motor heat of a hovering helicopter gunship and knock it down. Delta Company of the Fourth Air Cavalry reported the loss of a helicopter to Strella on May 2 only fifteen miles south of Hue. Subsequently, the story was confirmed by a high-ranking American officer in Saigon. There have been scattered reports of Strella since. But evidently the weapon, if available to the North Vietnamese at all, is in short supply.

Throughout the war Moscow has no doubt been afraid to anger Washington by introducing advanced weaponry—though of late Moscow's tone has been gun to harden, as witness Brezhnev's words in his welcoming speech to Fidel Castro, demanding a change in the Saigon government and promising support for Hanoi "to find victory." The capability for mischief is certainly there—something the escalation artists in Washington might do well to remember. Escalation is a multi-sided game; there is always the theoretical possibility that the enemy, or even third-party players, will respond in kind—or more than kind.

Until now, at any rate, the technology used by the enemy in Vietnam to de-

technology employed by the United States has been of the simplest kind. For example, in defensive positions the North Vietnamese resort to the expedients of dispersion and digging. Our napalm may be a terrifyingly effective weapon against a company of troops caught in the open or against a tightly formed convoy of trucks. But against troops spread out over a wide area, dug into foxholes, and insulated by layers of straw mats doused with water, it is something else. North Vietnamese trucks seldom move in tight convoy thereby presenting an easy target; they move one by one without lights, at night. In the daytime, for all the defoliants, visibility from the air is desperately limited in the thickly forested high plateaus of central Vietnam. Perhaps it is true, as professors Arthur H. Westing and E. W. Pfeiffer have claimed in a recent article in *Scientific American*, that there are twenty-one million craters in South Vietnam; that a staggering thirteen million tons of explosives were dumped on the country between 1965 and 1971; and that giant bulldozers with eleven-foot blades have subjected 750,000 acres, mostly woodland, to "Rome Plowing"—an allusion to the Roman legionnaire's habit of making a graveyard and calling it a peace. The question remains: How militarily effective has this devastation proved?

Hard as it is to credit, the countryside of Vietnam is not a desert, at least not in the South. The ecosystem is surprisingly hard to destroy; its survival is perhaps the eeriest feature of all. I make no defense of the bombings, north or south of the 17th Parallel, but it was not so long ago, though, before the latest upsurge in fighting, that I flew over a large part of South Vietnam by helicopter at an altitude of 1,500 feet or less, and, for all the death and suffering that had gone on below, there was damnably little evidence of ruin in the countryside. (I presume that since the spring offensive began, apart from such leveled cities as Quang Tri, Kontum, or An Loc, the situation has not greatly changed.) And where was the enemy, I asked myself, as I peered down from 1,500 feet at those smiling valleys, wide-stretching rice paddies, and green jungle clumps—where, but where?

Well, some people thought they knew. And so, one afternoon at four o'clock, I saw two South Vietnamese Air Force A-37s peel off and splash napalm all over a hillside. How many tens of thousands of dollars, I wondered, were being expended in the hope of intercepting a little band of black-pajamaed Vietcong who, according to intelligence reports, just might have been sneaking down into the valley to collect a little rice?

Jets? Napalm? All that to intercept five or six coolies creeping under thick jungle cover—if they were there at all that four o'clock of a sunny afternoon somewhere in II Corps area. Why not instead dispatch an ambush patrol to intercept the enemy? Well, it is an old story that American troops do not

clump of jungle lay two or three thousand feet above the plain—and the South Vietnamese army has learned its ways from the Americans. It seems that they, too, prefer ordering napalm strikes to climbing hills. Everyone on our side in Vietnam is spoiled; we are fighting a rich man's war. But, of course, the South Vietnamese army is not rich, and if we and our air power should go...

The jets wheel and dive, oily flame blankets the hillside, parrots scream, monkeys chatter, and five minutes later, I imagine, the little band of Vietcong clamber from their hiding place and slip down into the valley below. They will get their rice.

This war is a parable—the toils and tribulations of America, the blind giant. It is so hard to understand. Flying into the Tan Son Nhut or Bien Hoa or Nha Trang air bases, the eyes bulge at the wealth and power assembled. There are acres of helicopters, Phantom jets, and Dragonships—so sinister in their black night paint, each equipped with four miniguns that can spew out 2,000 or 3,000 rounds per minute. No wonder a succession of civilians such as McGeorge Bundy and Walt Rostow and Mr. Agnew and Mr. Laird, to say nothing of reporters—Americans as well as other foreigners—have not been able to make themselves believe in the futility and waste of it all. To see the American military effort in Vietnam is to see immediately where tens of billions of dollars go—and to stand momentarily reassured in the faith that the United States is still, after all, the mightiest of the mighty.

Alas for the civilian's awe of military power, for most of this might is inef fectual. Ten or twelve miles from Nha Trang air base, one does not stroll in the countryside except on combat patrol. The young soldiers on the mountain top outpost huddle behind sandbags and concertina wire, besieged by the unknown, while in plain view, so achingly near and yet unutterably far away, the sailboats heel to wind along Nha Trang beach. It is a surreal war.

The trouble is that for all these years there has been too much talk about things like "smart bombs" and hardly any at all about the other 99.8 per cent of the bombs that remain "dumb," abysmally dumb. Bombs—short of nuclear bombs, which can be ruled out, one hopes, from any consideration—are not magical weapons. The simple truth, borne home again and again by the experience of combat, is that air power *alone*, unsupported by disciplined and able ground forces, cannot turn the tide. This remark is carefully formulated. It says something very different from the armchair theorists' airy dismissal of air power—the exaggerated claims for air power by the fly boys having engendered some equally exaggerated rebuttals.

In modern war air power is immensely powerful, and in the appropriate circumstance it can make a crucial difference. But it is not a universal weapon, equally effective every-

Americans) as a merely vengeful weapon—the unreasoning resort to violence by a baffled combatant who cannot, or dares not, or must not, use his forces on the ground.

This past half century has seen no lack of extremist ideologies of air warfare. There was Douhet, with his doctrine of terror raining from the skies—a doctrine that seized the imagination of the Luftwaffe and Royal Air Force alike. There was Alexander de Sevsky, with his glib promises early in World War II of easy Victory Through Air Power. There was Hermann Goering, uselessly bombing Coventry; there was "Bomber" Harris of the RAF, who rejected the "panaceas" of discriminating bomber attack in favor of murderous city-bombing, such as the hideous (but unnecessary) attack on Dresden. There were our own unreflective air force generals, caught up, willingly or not, in the Vietnam War.

The attraction to the American home front of strategic bombing of the North is obvious: There is the appearance of the war being prosecuted, and not many of our boys die. But, according to the historical record, the actual military effect of mass "strategic" bombing in this century—and even of precision strategic bombing of the enemy's home front—has been ambiguous, to say the least. Between 1941 and 1945, the British Bomber Command visited a veritable hurricane of bombs on Germany's cities, dams, and railroad system. Yet the paradoxical result, as both the British and American strategic bombing surveys concluded after World War II, was that Germany's indus production for war was significant, higher in 1944 than three years earlier, in spite of all the killing and damage.

A reasonable assumption is that the North Vietnamese case is similar—an assumption that is strengthened by the fact that massive bombing attacks, sustained over more than three years, did not in the days of Lyndon Johnson bring the other side “to its senses,” still less to the point of collapse. The Nixon administration may claim greater effectiveness for the present campaign, citing its bombing of new strategic targets, once forbidden, in Hanoi and Haiphong and its mining of the harbors; the air force may crow about its smart bombs and other engineering feats, but essentially it is the same air force and naval air carrying out the bombings, and, more to the point, it is the same North Vietnam.

The great difficulty is that North Vietnam is a singularly unrewarding target. The qualities of courage and discipline shown by its people aside, there is the discouraging fact that north of the 17th Parallel there is simply not that much to burn or to blow up. North Vietnam is not an industrial agglomeration like Hitler's Germany, Tojo's Japan; it is an underdeveloped country, with the most rudimentary, production facilities and a capacity to disperse to the open countryside what facilities it does have.

As a result, the United States is up against the classic dilemma of the de-

civized power, but somehow the
word will not quite come) fighting
against the underdeveloped barbarians
—a dilemma as old as that of the Per-
sian Cyrus the Great marching against
the Scythians in their trackless
steppes, as that of the Roman Emperor
Hadrian and later Antoninus Pius
harrying the wild Picts and Scots be-
vond the northern wall and finding
nly wretched straw huts to burn, as
not of the British army in India in the
days of the Raj lunging against the
Pathans and Afghans of the barren
northwest frontier hills. The barbar-
lans, in every case, have little of ma-
terial value to destroy.

In mid-June, for example, air force
spokesmen claimed the destruction of
North Vietnam's principal electric
power plant—a hydroelectric genera-
tor "capable of producing up to 75
per cent" of North Vietnam's require-
ments. The air force neglected to note
that this was the same plant reported
on by then Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara to the Senate Armed Ser-
vices Committee on August 25, 1967.
The claim, even then, was that "85 per
cent of the country's central electric
generating capacity" had been de-
stroied. However, Mr. McNamara ad-
mitted unhappily that the plant in
question was smaller than the Pepco
plant supplying suburban Alexandria,
Virginia, and in any case was made
superfluous by the more than 2,000
small diesel-driven generator sets scat-
tered around the country to supply es-
sential needs. Concluded the Secretary
of Defense: "The significant industrial
acilities can be counted on your fin-
gers... [North Vietnam has] no real
war-making industrial base and hence
none which could be destroyed by
bombing." Additionally discouraging
is the fact that our "enemy" draws his
weaponry, not from his own produc-
tive capacity, small in any case, but
from vast sanctuaries in the Soviet
Union and China that cannot be at-
tacked and that the Nixon administra-
tion, in spite of all the frenetic diplo-
matic activity of the past few months
and all the repeated hints dropped,
has yet to demonstrate convincingly
have been wholly cut off, or neutral-
lized, by political means any more than
by technical.

None of this is to say the bombings
and the mining of the harbors of the
North do not hurt the enemy. Hanoi
has admitted as much. On June 5,
Nhan Dan, the official Communist daily
in Hanoi, conceded that "very difficult"
economic problems have resulted from
the bombing. But the editorial added:
"Even if the enemy succeeds in the
bomb destruction of our cities and our
large industrial installations, they can
never paralyze our economy to the
point of preventing our survival and
our ability to supply the South."

The conclusion may not be sheer
braggadocio. North Vietnam shares a
long border with China and Laos over
almost any point of which supplies may
be moved. In addition, the North Viet-
namese are building an oil pipeline
from China to circumvent the block-

ade. Moreover, a careful reading of Thieu's
communiques reveals that we have
claimed the same rail lines leading to
China as cut again and again.

The truth, as the Washington intelli-
gence community must know, is that
the North Vietnamese prepared far in
advance for their current invasion of
the South. For three years during the
bombing pause stocks were built up.
It is estimated that the railroad net-
work was expanded five times. Along
every mile of railroad track, one or two
hundred yards back, hidden among the
brush and trees, lay piles of railroad
ties and spare steel rails. Pontoon
bridges are hidden under riverbanks,
ready to be swung into use when
needed. It takes only a matter of hours
to repair the effects of most bomb
attacks—by smart bombs or dumb.

None of this suggests that North Viet-
nam will crack under the bombing
any time soon, or even that Hanoi's of-
fensive in the South will quickly (liter-
ally) run out of gas. What, then, of the
effects of tactical bombing—air attacks
against the North Vietnamese troops
operating in the South?

If the A-37s, F-4s, F-10s, and Cobra
gunships can find the enemy—and this
is purely a matter of reliable battle-
field intelligence and competently
trained forward air controllers—they
can be devastating. The question is,
How good is the intelligence and the for-
ward air control? It is noteworthy that,
while the North Vietnamese spring of-
fensive must have been preceded by
intense, and detectable, ground activ-
ity as the troops moved south and pre-
pared for the assault, the Saigon army's
intelligence was caught completely by
surprise. Even Secretary Laird pro-
claimed just a few weeks before the
spring offensive that it *could not hap-
pen*. The advanced American detection
system—electronic sensors, for exam-
ple—in the end is still only as good as
the ability to process the information
gathered, the mental energy to assess it
accurately, and the courage to push
unwelcome news up the line of com-
mand to all-too-often incompetent, sloth-
ful, and politically minded generals who
are cronies of President Thieu. As for
the South Vietnamese forward air con-
trollers, only a few have mastered their
art; and, more important, before going
into action the U.S. Air Force usually
requires the request, or, at the mini-
mum, the confirmation, of an American
adviser present on the ground near
where the strike is to be directed. Thus,
the preponderance of air power avail-
able in South Vietnam is not normally
at the disposal of the South Vietnamese
army acting on its own.

The problems of communications are
vastly complicated when the much-
touted "Arclight" raids by B-52s come
into play. To begin with, when the
B-52s appear over the battlefield, they
have already flown hundreds of miles
from such bases as Utapao in Thailand,
if not thousands of miles from Guam.
The request to call them in has pro-
ceeded along a complex chain of com-
mand: from the South Vietnamese
army commander to the American ad-
viser attached to the ARVN unit re-

headquarters in Saigon (where, tech-
nically, consultation with ARVN head-
quarters is necessary for "approval"
and "permission"), and only then to
the distant air bases themselves. In-
credible as it may seem, the usual time
between the initial request for B-52
support at the front and the arrival
of the giant eight-motor bombers is
twelve hours. It can spin out to as
much as twenty—even though the air
force claims the bombers are some-
times diverted to new missions once
they are in the air. The chances are
that against an intelligent enemy—and
the North Vietnamese are intelligent—
the target has long since disappeared
from the field or dug underground.

Taken in the abstract, the power of
the B-52s is awesome. Able to fly thou
sands of miles without refueling, able
to bomb with amazing accuracy from a
height of 30,000 feet, each plane carry-
ing a bomb load of twenty-five tons,
they would seem irresistible. Nor
mally, too, the B-52s operate in "cells"
of three—so that the total weight of the
270 bombs dropped into a "target box"
measuring 1.8 by 0.6 miles is a horri-
fying 67.5 tons. The bombs fall faster
than sound so that they impact with-
out warning—which, according to Pen-
tagon publicists, accounts for the
fact that the North Vietnamese have
dubbed the B-52s "Whispering Death."
Such a weapon seems utterly unan-
swerable by the enemy until one looks
into the actual effect of the weapons—
and it is here that the technology of
the shovel comes to the fore.

The air force does not release per-
formance figures about its bombs, but
reliable estimates published by British
experts hold that a normal 500-pound
bomb is lethal within a radius of 100
feet for a man standing in the open,
but only with a radius of 30 feet for a
man hiding in a decent foxhole. "Fle-
chette" bombs have a greater killing
radius against unprotected troops but
are virtually useless against structures.
The B-52s could not better this per-
formance by carrying bigger bombs.
To double the size of each bomb would
reduce by half the total number of
bombs carried and increase the lethal
area of each individual explosion by
only 30 per cent. The present bomb
size-to-number ratio has been carefully
calculated so as to optimize lethal ef-
fect within the target box. Yet the
enemy on the ground may easily im-
prove his already remarkably good
chances of survival with simple expe-
dients. A mere 25 per cent increase in
protection, for example, cuts enemy
losses by approximately half, so the
enemy has ample incentive to dig.

And the North Vietnamese do dig.
The average NVA soldier is given nine
months of basic training, of which four
months are devoted to the theory and
practice of digging. It is estimated that
without using heavy earth-moving or
earth-drilling machinery, the average
NVA private can dig twenty feet down
in one hour in average soil. This extra-
ordinary burrowing capacity vastly in-

creases the life expectancy of enemy soldiers.

And thus, in the final analysis, the horrendous B-52 raids are an extremely clumsy method of "zapping Charlie." Some estimates have it that it takes an average of seventy-three tons of bombs to kill one North Vietnamese soldier—more, that is, than the total bomb load of any single three-plane B-52 cell appearing over the battlefield.

If the B-52s can find the enemy in the open (it has happened, but not often) men will die in 28 per cent of the 1.08-square-mile target box. This means that in the ideal case, where the target box exactly coincides with the enemy troop dispositions, so that no bombs fall on unoccupied fields or jungle, the chance of killing an NVA soldier is less than one in three.

But (again assuming an ideal congruence between the enemy dispositions and the box) if the enemy soldiers are crouched in average foxholes, the lethal area is reduced to a meager 2.5 per cent of the box. Here the chances of killing the enemy fall to less than one in forty. And if the enemy is hiding in even rudimentary bunkers—that is, bunkers far weaker than those around An Loc or Kontum—the lethal area may well fall to a trivial 0.6 per cent, and the probability of kill plummets to a near-hopeless 1 in 157.

Thus it is not too difficult to understand the reasons behind an Associated Press dispatch during the fighting in May: "United States B-52 bombers carried out the heaviest concentration of strikes of the war along an eight-mile line to the north of [An Loc]. They dropped more than 1,700 tons of explosives, but when the raids were over, the enemy guns opened fire again."

Although the figures may have varied a little this way or that over the years, tactical bombing has always proved relatively ineffective. On the island of

Tarawa during World War II, for example, the U.S. Navy fired and dropped more than 3,500 tons of shells and bombs into an area of nineteen million square feet—that is, only a little more than half a single B-52 target box. This was to drop one ton of explosives for each 5,340 square feet. By contrast, the B-52 cell drops a mere one ton for each 446,054 square feet. In other words, the weight per square foot of bombs and shells unloaded at Tarawa was eighty-three times greater than in a standard B-52 target box.

Now read what the navy's "Secret Information Bulletin No. 15, Battle Experiences-Supporting Operations Before and During the Occupation of the Gilbert Islands, Nov. 1943," later made public, has to say:

> ... The naval bombardment prior to the landing on D-day was greater per square unit of ground than had ever previously been given in preparation of a landing operation. On practically every square foot of the island pieces of shell fragments were later found. ... Hundreds of the enemy in open trenches were killed. In contrast to this destruction ... heavily protected dugouts, pillboxes, machine gun emplacements, and bombproof shelters, and the personnel in them, remained almost unaffected by this fire.

Before Tarawa could be taken, 1,115 marines out of approximately 5,000 who took part in the assault lost their lives. Another 2,309 of that number were wounded.

But in spite of all this, the bombing does matter; it has had its effect.

Certainly, it has slowed General Giap down—an army that must dig cannot practice blitzkrieg—and its aid to the morale of the ARVN has been immense. Can anyone doubt that, left to their own devices, the South Vietnamese would long ago have crumbled? The trouble, from the official American point of view, is that without a high

grade army cooperating on the ground, bombing is a weapon of war that injures the enemy's fighting capacity but does not kill it. For if the object of the NVA spring offensive was to test the success or failure of Vietnamization, the proof of its failure is by now overwhelming. The level of American air support has had to be more than tripled; the naval forces operating off the coasts dramatically raised from twelve to sixty-five ships. We are building new air bases in Thailand. Secretary of Defense Laird is now telling us that next year the direct cost of American operations in Vietnam will rise by $5 billion and the actual figure will surely be higher.

This is hardly ending the American involvement in the war. Yet it is typical of this war that the American planners never seem to assimilate the truth. From the depths of despair, six or eight weeks ago, they have begun to regain their customary euphoria. They have guessed wrong in this war, again and again—not the least in predicting that the spring offensive would begin at Tet, in February, as in 1968, as if Hanoi would pull the same trick twice. Now that the swift deterioration of the military situation has halted, the have begun to confuse holding with winning. But how will they win? Has the other side really no possibility of pulling new surprises? Are the Soviets really incapable of delivering dangerous new weapons?

Surely, the better part of wisdom would be to settle things now, while the situation is, for the precarious moment at least, a little better. That is our best hope—but we should understand if a ceasefire comes, it will not mean that our power smashed the enemy, but our furious and inefficient attacks have made it possible for Washington to accept and disguise a painful settlement in Vietnam. ☐

3 AUG. 1972 P-1

# New Vote Sets GI ullout

## Senate, 50-47, Puts 4-Month Limit on Funds

By Spencer Rich

Washington Post Staff Writer

In a new rebuff to President Nixon on his Vietnam policy, the Senate voted 50 to 47 yesterday to force total U.S. military withdrawal from all of Indonesia in four months, provided North Vietnam releases U.S. prisoners of war within that period.

It was the second time in two weeks that the Senate has voted to cut off funds for U.S. military operations in Indonesia within four months, subject to prisoner release. Virtue same amendment lided to the foreign military aid authorization a week ago Monday on a 49 to 46 vote, but the Senate then killed the aid bill.

Yesterday, however, the amendment, sponsored by Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass.) and backed by 10 other Republicans and 39 Democrats, was added to the $20.6 billion defense procurement authorization bill, and the bill was then passed, 92 to 5. The procurement measure, unlike foreign aid, is considered absolutely necessary to U.S. security even by most critics of the war.

The bill now goes to conference with the House, which doesn't have a similar antiwar provision. The administration hopes to kill the amendment in conference.

Administration supporters like Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and Armed Services Committee Chairman John Stennis (D-Miss.) argued that by setting a fixed withdrawal date without requiring North Vietnam to agree to a cease-fire as a prior condition, the amendment would cripple the President's efforts to negotiate an able peace that could South Vietnam with some hope of survival.

"It's ridiculous to try to carve into hard law" a specific date for withdrawal and instructions to the President

he use U.S. funds only for the purpose of withdrawal, said Stennis.

"That might be a good regulation for a schoolchild, but the idea of putting the President of the United States under restrictions like this ... he's not permitted to be Chief Executive ... why they'd laugh at him, they'd laugh at him."

"Binding the hands of the President—if we're going to do that, I think we ought to send up the white flag," Stennis thundered.

Brooke, Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), Jacob K. Javits (R-N.Y.) and other supporters of the fund cutoff argued that the time had come, once and for all, to put an end to the war, subject only to release of U.S. prisoners. They said this should be done without waiting until the future of South Vietnam as a non-Communist power had been made certain, regardless of how long this would take.

"If we don't bite the bullet, if we keep hoping for negotiation, we might be there not four months more, but a year or two more," said Brooke.

Cranston argued that the preconditions of withdrawal demanded by the President—release of prisoners and an Indochina-wide cease-fire—were simply a formula for endless U.S. involvement, since the South Vietnamese could bet the cease-fire. Others argued that the all-Indochina cease-fire requirement implied a demand that North Vietnam guarantee the non-Communist future of South Vietnam, and meant endless war.

Seeking to reassure Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who feared the language of the Brooke amendment might not contain guarantees strong enough to require release of U.S. prisoners, Brooke said, "before he withdraws all our forces (under his amendment), they must return the prisoners of war."

Cranston gave this interpretation, "If I'm my understanding that we don't get all the way out... we retain the right to use land, sea and air forces, until the last prisoner is out. If there's no release (of prisoners), we don't necessarily apply" the withdrawal requirement for U.S. forces.

Final passage of the Brooke amendment and the bill came in a series of 12 successive roll-call votes which took more than two hours. With Vice President Agnew in the chair, administration forces—knowing they were a few votes short—forced one roll-call vote after another in an attempt to reverse the outcome, perhaps by delaying the final vote so long that some senators favoring the Brooke amendment would leave for out-of-town engagements, a

ious issues in the past.

But the bloc favoring the amendment held firm on one procedural roll-call vote after another.

The first vote on the war issue came on an amendment by Sen. George D. Aiken (R-Vt.), which, in effect, killed strong Vietnam fund-cutoff language being proposed by Cranston and substituted an endorsement of President Nixon's demand for prior release of all U.S. prisoners of war and for an Indochina-wide internationally supervised cease-fire before the United States withdraws.

This carried, 50 to 47, since many middle-of-the-road senators considered the Cranston language simply too tough in requiring withdrawal of all U.S. forces from South Vietnam by Oct. 1, without preconditions.

However, the Senate next took up the Brooke proposal—a more moderate amendment than Cranston's, but far stronger than Aiken's in the demands it placed on the President to withdraw.

This carried, 49 to 47, in the first crucial roll-call, with 11 Republicans favoring it while 14 Democrats (virtually all Southerners) opposed it.

This vote wiped out the earlier Aiken language. On this vote and all the others, Sens. Charles McC. Mathias Jr. (R-Md.) and William B. Spong (D-Va.) voted to back the Brooke amendment, while Harry Flood Byrd Jr. (Ind.-Va.) and J. Glenn Beall (R-Md.) voted to oppose it.

Administration forces then began their series of procedural moves to reverse the 49-to-47 decision. They lost them all by margins of two and three votes.

Brooke forces then mopped up by tabling (killing), 59 to 38, a Dole amendment that Congress "assumes responsibility" for the consequences of passage of the Brooke language.

Just before final passage, the Senate accepted, 95 to 2, an amendment by Jack Miller (R-Iowa) adding the requirement that North Vietnam account for U.S. men missing in action, as well as release prisoners of war, as a precondition of U.S. withdrawal from Indochina.

The final vote on the Brooke amendment was 50 to 47. It would have been 49 to 48 had not Sen. James B. Allen (D-Ala.), opposing the amendment, switched his vote to "yes" in order to be eligible to move for reconsideration.

Despite heavy pressure from the administration, none of the Republicans who supported the fund cutoff last week switched their votes.

Brooke amendment reads:

"Funds authorized of approximately by this or any other act for United States forces with respect to military actions in Indochina may be used only for the purpose of withdrawing all United States ground, naval and air forces from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and protecting such forces as they are withdrawn. The withdrawal of all United States forces from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia shall be carried out within four months after the date of enactment of this act; provided that there is a release within the four-month period of all American prisoners of war held by the government of North Vietnam and all forces allied with such government."

The Senate bill authorizes $20.6 billion in Fiscal 1973 for weapons procurement. The administration asked $23.3 billion, and the House voted $20.6 billion. Total Defense Department appropriations, for which the Nixon administration has requested $86 billion, will be voted separately. The $86 billion includes pay, food, equipment and benefits for the armed forces, as well as weapons.

The Senate bill also includes an unlimited authorization for arms credits for Israel through the end of 1973; authority for a one-time recompensation of military retirement pay for persons who retired before Jan. 1, 1972; a requirement that the Defense Department notify all subjects being used for medical experiments of any danger to their health; and a ban on deliberate attempts to start firestorms and alter the weather as methods of warfare.

All these provisions were added by Senate floor amendments and aren't in the House bill.

Major provisions of the Senate bill provide the full $444.5 million sought for the B-1 bomber, virtually the full amount sought for the Trident submarine-fired missile system ($906.4 million in the Senate bill), the full $299 million sought for the fourth nuclear-powered carrier, $732 million for the F-14 navy fighter (procurement of 48 is called for), and $171.4 million for the SAM-D missile. All these provisions are the same as the administration asked and the House approved.

The Senate bill, however, contains only $561 million for the anti-ballistic missile system and limits it to one site, the one already being built at Grand Forks, N.D. It bars a start on a second ABM site in the Washington area. The House granted the administration's request for $800 million for both sites.

C73

234

The Senate bill allowed only $120 million for four 747 jumbo jets to serve as emergency command posts for the President and other top officials, while the House granted about twice that money for the full six jets asked by the administration.

Both chambers approved $7 million in authorizations for procurement of long lead-time items for seven added destroyers, but barred an actual start on construction of the destroyers at this time.

The Senate bill cut the maximum average personnel authorized for the armed forces from the 2,396,517 figure requested by the administration to 2,340,517, a slash of 56,000. The House bill granted the full request.

The Senate bill also cut the $2.5 billion requested for military equipment for South Vietnam, Korea and Laos to $2.1 billion, while the House granted the full amount.

The House and Senate measures also differ on the Cheyenne helicopter and the Harrier VSTOL plane. The Senate measure provides no new funds in fiscal 1973, while the House granted $58.6 million for Cheyenne and $133 million for Harrier.

WASHINGTON POST - 4 AUGUST 1973 P.2

Rep. Albert
May Back
War Curb

By Daniel Rapoport

United Press International

Speaker Carl Albert (D-Okla.) was reported yesterday ready to break with the administration and throw his support behind an antiwar amendment scheduled for a crucial House vote next week.

Chairman Thomas E. Morgan (D-Pa.) said he had "indications" from the Speaker that he would support the Foreign Affairs Committee's efforts to keep the Vietnam amendment in a $2.1 billion foreign military aid bill it approved two weeks ago.

The provision would order a halt to all U.S. military operations throughout Indochina, and a withdrawal of all American military forces in the area, by Oct. 1.

The only conditions to the pullout would be a return of American prisoners, an accounting of the missing in action and a limited cease-fire between U.S. and Communist forces to the extent necessary for a safe withdrawal of the Americans. The House bill does not contain a fund cutoff, however.

The House has never approved legislation setting a date for termination of U.S. military actions in Vietnam and Albert has never supported any of the amendments put forth to do so. But Democratic sentiment has been running more than 2-to-1 against President Nixon's policy and Albert and his chief lieutenant, Democratic Leader Hale Boggs, have been feeling the pressure from their colleagues.

A new element in this round of the Vietnam debate is the

presidential candidacy of Sen. George McGovern, who has a long record of opposition to the war. Albert and Boggs, unlike some other "establishment" Democrats, have endorsed McGovern without qualification and have demonstrated their willingness to help him get elected.

Albert's reported shift—which was expressed in more definite terms by a Democrat who asked not to be identified—came as the congressional debate over the war moved from the Senate to the House.

The Senate, for the second time in less than two weeks, approved an amendment to the military procurement bill Wednesday that would cut off funds for all U.S. combat activities in Indochina within four months of enactment, subject to Communist release of the POWs during that period.

That measure went to a House-Senate conference yesterday where hawkish negotiators on both sides of the table were expected to knock it out of the measure or water it down to the point where it was meaningless.

House doves passed up an opportunity for a vote on restructuring the House conferees to accept the Senate war amendment, deciding instead to concentrate their energies on the foreign aid bill, where they would operate under more favorable parliamentary circumstances.

(The Senate version of the military procurement authorization contains $20.6 billion, the House version $21.3 billion.

(Commenting on the Senate antiwar amendment, sponsored by Massachusetts Republican Edward W. Brooke, White House press secretary Ronald L. Ziegler said yesterday, "We don't think the amendment is helpful to our efforts to achieve a rapid negotiated settlement." But he suggested that it would not survive the conference.

(Asked whether the President will support Brooke's campaign for re-election in November, Ziegler said Mr. Nixon has "long held the position that these things do not relate ... Of course he has the President's support.")

By JAMES RESTON

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3.—The Senate's 49-47 vote to withdraw all United States forces from Indochina within four months, provided all prisoners of war are released, amounts to a vote of no-confidence in President Nixon's tougher peace terms.

This was done after Henry Kissinger, the President's Security Affairs adviser, had returned from his latest peace mission to Paris, but there is no evidence that it has persuaded the President to give up his additional demands for an internationally supervised cease-fire and his continued support of the present Saigon Government.

If anything, Mr. Nixon seems even more determined to insist on his four-point peace plan than before the Senate's no-confidence vote was taken, for all indications are that he is running well ahead in his campaign for re-election, and now feels confident that he will win in November even if the whole Congress goes along with the Senate and the Paris stalemate continues.

This is one of the ironies of the faltering McGovern campaign, for the more Senator McGovern presses for peace on the Senate's terms—unless of course he wins the election—the more Mr. Nixon is likely to interpret a Republican victory at the polls as an endorsement of his present policy and an invitation to carry on the war until the enemy settles on his terms.

There is no evidence on the public record to date that Hanoi and the National Liberation Front are taking this connection between the pro-Nixon trend of the election and the war into account. President Nixon said in his press conference here on July 27, "At this point the chance for a negotiated settlement is better now than it has ever been." But while the private talks with Mr. Kissinger go on, there has been no modification of the enemy's demands.

Nevertheless, Hanoi is now in a more awkward position politically and militarily than it was in early May after its first successful advances into the northern provinces of South Vietnam. It has gained ground at appallingly cost in men and arms, but its offensive toward Hue and Saigon have been blocked, its ports and industry are under savage and unremitting attack by American air power, the outcry in the United States against this systematic destruction has dwindled, and while Moscow and Peking keep on sending supplies to the North, Soviet and Chinese officials have recently been more cordial to American officials than usual.

This obviously confronts the eight-man Politburo in Hanoi (only one of whom has ever been in the West and only three ever out of Vietnam) with some very hard choices.

If they agree to peace on Mr. Nixon's terms before November, or any rough equivalent thereof, they would almost certainly be assured that both Mr. Nixon and General Thieu in Saigon

would remain in office.

But if they don't agree to settle on his terms, the chances are—the way the election is now going—that they will be confronted by a President and maybe even a Congress less willing to compromise than at present. And this after three more months of U.S. bombing between now and the election.

Accordingly, unless Hanoi can manage to mount a military offensive and achieve its objectives on the battlefield, which seems unlikely between now and the autumn, it will either have to make peace or at least accept something like Mr. Nixon's terms of peace before November—or gamble on the odds of a McGovern victory.

Even to those in the Senate who voted against the President and for a simple policy of getting out in four months with the prisoners this seems a very dubious gamble. Yet the Senate has at least clarified one of the fundamental issues of the campaign and put the question of war aims plainly before the American people.

Do they want to end this war in four months if all prisoners of war are released, as the Senate has proposed? Or do they want to continue the war, not only until the prisoners are home, but until South Vietnam is

reasonably sure that it will not be taken over by the Communists?

No doubt the question can be put in a different way. President Nixon phrased it as follows in his last press conference: "It would be the height of immorality," he said, "for the United States at this point to leave Vietnam, and in leaving, to turn over to the North Vietnamese the fate of 17 million South Vietnamese, who do not want a Communist Government. . . . That is what this is about. That is the only issue that is left."

Here then is the great political and moral issue of the election that is bound to emerge, if the Democrats ever get over their fiddling. Mr. McGovern's position is that it is the height of immorality for the United States to continue the killing for the specific purpose of preventing a Communist takeover.

He would leave that question to the South Vietnamese, and so would the Senate, though by a very narrow vote. But the question cannot be decided by the Senate. It is probably going to have to be determined by the American voters, and at least the issue is now being stated in terms that can be widely understood.

NY TIMES 4 AUG 1972

# The War And the Election

238

By ALBERT SEHLSTEDT, Jr.

Washington.

"Out."

Senator Mike Mansfield (D., Mont.), a majority leader who sometimes recommends to questions in monosyllables, used that three-letter word Thursday when asked to characterize the "message" sent to President Nixon Wednesday with the Senate's passage of a tough Vietnam withdrawal amendment. Mr. Mansfield could be pardoned for stating the obvious, succinct though it was, because he more than anyone else would have reason to believe that the White House has had difficulty in the past grasping the Senate's message.

Last November, for example, President Nixon chose to disregard a modified version of a relatively mild end-the-war amendment originally sponsored by Senator Mansfield. The amendment said it was United States policy to end the war as quickly as practicable and to withdraw American forces from Indonesia "at a date certain," subject to release of this country's prisoners of war. President Nixon said then that the Mansfield amendment was "without binding force or effect," adding that such legislative actions "hinder rather than assist in the search for a negotiated settlement" of the Southeast Asia conflict.

The President also might be pardoned, however, for not taking Congress too seriously-up to now-in matters pertaining to ending the Vietnam War. On June 166, according to Congressional Quarterly, Congress has voted more than 100 measures aimed at limiting or ending American involvement in Southeast Asia. Only three of those have become law. Those three have restricted American activities in Laos, Cambodia and Thailand and, in the case of the Mansfield amendment, called for withdrawing forces by "a date certain."

## The dollar pipeline

Now the Senate has brought forth a very prickly amendment, vigorously opposed by the administration in last week's debate on the measure. However, it is a legislative device with an uncertain prognosis in the House. The amendment was sponsored by Senator Edward W. Brooke (R., Mass.) and it resorts to what has been called Congress's ultimate weapon: it would cut off the dollar pipeline supporting American military operations in Indochina.

Since the amendment is brief, understandable and important it is worth stating in full:

"Funds authorized or appropriated by this or any other act for United States forces with respect to military actions in Indochina may be used only for the

"The withdrawal of all United States forces from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia shall be carried out within four months after the date of enactment of this act: Provided, that there is a release within the four-month period of all American prisoners of war held by the government of North Vietnam and all forces allied with such government."

For now, the critical words in the Brooke amendment are "enactment of this act." To be enacted the House must approve the amendment. And before that happens, the amendment must survive a House-Senate conference. The amendment is attached to the annual military procurement authorization bill which, in varied form, has passed both houses of Congress. It is the job of a conference committee, composed of members from both branches, to thrash out legislative differences and agree upon a bill that is regarded as acceptable to both houses.

The House, which passed its version of the procurement bill June 27, attached to Vietnam withdrawal amendment to the legislation. The House conferees will be the six most-senior Democrats and the five most-senior Republicans on the Armed Services Committee. They will be led by an affable, unabashed hawk, Representative F. Edward Hebert (D., La.), chairman of the committee. Heading the Senate conference group will be John C. Stennis (D., Miss.), the gracious and conservative chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee who was a leader in the fight against the Brooke amendment last week.

## 5-minute half-life

Perhaps the Senate Republican leader, Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, had this line-up in mind when he said Thursday: "I predict the half-life of this amendment will be about five minutes in conference."

Senator Mansfield, though on the other side of the argument, was not optimistic either. Asked if the amendment would survive a House test, he replied: "My guess, based on past experience, is that it will be rather difficult."

He was then asked if the Senate vote for the Brooke amendment was symbolic.

"It was anything but symbolic," he said. "It was a recognition on the part of the majority of the Senate that something more has to be done than was done."

He added that the matter will not die absorbing. And Mr. Mansfield has made it clear in the past that, for his own part, he will keep adding Vietnam withdrawal amendments to appropriate bills as they come up for Senate consideration.

In any event, the Senate position on this issue appears more adamant than at any time in the past, even though a Vietnam pullout became the Democratic majority sentiment in the Senate about two years ago. This persuasion emerged in the Democratic Policy Committee, then spread to the Democratic Caucus

and finally to the floor with passage of the Mansfield amendment that President Nixon chose to disregard.

The most recent chapter in this two-year history began July 24 when the Senate approved the Brooke amendment as an attachment to a foreign aid bill. But then the Senate, with the help of members opposed to foreign aid, turnaround and killed the entire bill. Senator Brooke brought up his amendment again last week. It was approved by a margin of two votes and the bill to which it was attached, authorizing fund for procuring weapons, also passed. The amendment stuck.

While the amendment has more teeth in it than anything yet produced in Congress it still falls short of what some antiwar senators would like.

The Brooke amendment is directly descended from the Cooper amendment, a proposal of Senator John Sherman Cooper (R., Ky.), who wanted no conditions attached to a Vietnam pullout, excluding even the release of prisoners of war. That condition was later added by Senator Brooke.

Senator Cooper told his colleagues in

an extensive debate July 24:

"We must face the question of our responsibility to assist in ending the war, and the question of finding the best means to secure the release of the prisoners. We must ask what are the opportunities for their release, and what is humane for them. I have said always that negotiations are the best means to secure their release, for the ending of all fighting and for the settlement of the problems of Indochina. President Nixon has made a serious, a responsible and a humane proposal to North Vietnam to end the fighting. North Vietnam, if it truly desires peace-and in the whole course of the war I have seen no evidence on its part that it desires peace-can negotiate seriously so that an agreement will be reached. But absent such an agreement through negotiations, I see no prospect for the release of American prisoners and the ending of the war except by ending our participation in the war."

Senator Brooke took a different view, saying the incentive for the North Viet namese to release the prisoners would be, removed once the United States withdrew its troops:

"As long as we have the troops there they will have an incentive to release the prisoners as a quid pro quo. It is something to be worked out between the two governments, but once we march out, sail out or fly out, leaving our prisoners in those camps, what assurance do we have that they will release them?"

Senator Cooper, who is retiring this year, lost his fight to have his amendment stand free and clear of any conditions. His colleagues voted 62 to 33 to add the Brooke prisoner-release to the Cooper proposal.

And Wednesday, the Brooke amendment made it all the way through the Senate, despite a series of parliamentary moves to reverse the decision.

BALTIMORE SUN, August 6, 1972

Viet Nam • Year of Last Five Months Annpraised

BY PETER ARNETT

SAIGON, Viet Nam, Aug. 5
[AP]—Here are answers to
some questions about the war
in Viet Nam:

Q.—Just what is the military situation in South Viet Nam now?

A.—For the first time in the
Viet Nam War there is a true
stalemate. All the big, dramat-
ic military possibilities are
gone. The Saigon army had
hoped to shift the battleground
away from South Viet Nam's
cities and villages and into
neighboring Cambodia and
Laos. Major military cam-
paigns with that objective in
1970 and 1971 failed.

The American troop withdrawal left open the possibility that a massive North Vietnamese invasion might crumble the southern armies and lead to military defeat. That major invasion came this year and the South has held.

Both Sides Suffering

Q.—Are both sides
suffering?

A.—For the South. Vietnamese, the bloodletting is the worst since the war began, with an average of 1,000 soldiers dying each week. The nearly million refugees generated by the fighting constitute the biggest mass movement of people in Viet Nam since the country's partition in 1954.

The suffering is also serious for the North Vietnamese who are dying in the South in at least as great numbers as the bloodiest days of battle against the Americans. Also, the American air campaign in the North has shattered industry and ruined transportation routes.

Q.—Is it possible to judge who is suffering more?

A.—Both sides are bleeding freely now that sophisticated weaponry has escalated the conflict far above the guerrilla insurgency of 10 years ago, and even above the American phase of the war during the late 1960s.

The youthfulness of the Hanoi soldiers fighting in the South indicates the tremendous drain on North Vietnamese manpower in the last few years. The Saigon government, on the other hand, not only has high battle casualties but also faces a crippling setback to the pacification effort.

N. Vlets Want Dominance

Q.— Is all this leading to
any signs that the leaders
want to end it?

A.—The North Vietnamese still want dominance over the South and still appear unwilling to accept any settlement that fails to provide it. There is increasing talk of cease-fire in Saigon and Washington but no indication that South Viet Nam is ready to relax its firm anti-Communist stance.

Those observers who see some kind of settlement this year base this on the classic stalemate situation developing on Viet Nam's battlefields, and compare it to World War I and Korea prior to their settlements.

Q.—Can the South afford this
level of warfare, economically
and otherwise?

A.—South Viet Nam is totally dependent on American aid for its economic and military well-being. Even with a bumper rice harvest this year it could not feed itself. South Viet Nam can afford as much spending as the United States can afford to let it have.

Massive U. S. aid rebuilt the battlefield devastation of other years, but many doubt that the money will be freely available to repair the damage of this offensive.

Thieu's Achilles Heel

Q.—Are the South's casualties too high for the public to accept?

A.—The increasing casualty toll is President Thieu's Achilles heel. Lacking the iron grip over his people that the Communist leaders have in the North, Thieu has to persuade the South Vietnamese that his government is worth dying for. Otherwise he could face serious trouble in the streets and rebellion in the armed forces.

Continued attrition on the
battlefield is seen by some ob-
servers as a major factor in
bringing about a future settle-
ment of the war.

Q.—Is the draft still viable
in the South?

A.—Public opinion has forced the Saigon government to shelve a proposal to draft 17-year-olds, and plans to draft veterans were modified because too many key personnel were being swallowed up.

The gaping holes left in un-
its by the fierce fighting are
being plugged with local mili-
tiamen upgraded into the reg-
ular forces, a practice which
could ultimately undermine
the pacification program if
continued.

Reds-Back In War Zones

Q.—Is the South more secure or less secure now, than say a year ago?

A.—The four-month North Vietnamese offensive has placed the Communists back in the traditional war zones and base area that American troops cleared them from. These include War Zones C and D north of Saigon, the Plain of Reeds in the northern delta, and the Seven Mountains region in the south.

This means the Communists are closer by several days' march to the South Vietnamese population than they were last year, and more able to disrupt communications and launch hit-and-run attacks.

Q.—Where have all the Viet
Cong gone?

A.—The Viet Cong were once powerful enough to threaten the Saigon army with extinction and force American ground troops into the war. Now they are a spent force and North Vietnamese troops are bearing the brunt of the war.

One reason for the demise of
the guerrillas who lived in the
swamps and forests was the
tremendous effort by U. S.
forces to destroy them. The
U. S. 9th Division contended it
killed 100 each day for months
during 1969.

Another reason was that as pacification spread into outlying districts the Saigon government drafted all the young men, leaving very few for the Viet Cong ranks. Viet Nam experts are now watching to see if the hard-core Viet Cong cadre, still known to exist in many hamlets and villages, can rebuild the "Peoples Army" amidst the population captured in the current offen-

A.—The North has for yet successfully concealed its internal problems from out observers. The Hanoi leadership seems to have convinced the population that the enormous, continuing losses in South are worthwhile. The diers sent south are getting younger—many 17-year-olds were captured this year—their dedication and valor, cording to most battlefield ports, are as intense as the elders'.

The massive American bing of the North has obviously created major problems Hanoi, particularly in maintaining the tempo of the e lated war with its heavy a lery and tanks.

Signs of Compromise

North Viet Nam is just as
pendent upon Russian and
nese aid as South Viet Nam
upon the Americans. The ten
of future fighting will be
termined by the willingness
the Soviet Union and Chin
rebuild the North's bric
and battalions.

Q. What signs could tip
an imminent compromise
to the war?

A.—Cessation of the U.S. bombing of North Viet Nam would be a tipoff, indica that the secret Paris talks brought tangible results, softening in President Thieu's position, particularly conce ing his own tenure in off would show he was reac for a compromise.

A North Vietnamese ges over the American prison of war, such as the release a group of them or the dis sure of all pertinent det surrounding their capt could indicate Hanoi was se ing some kind of compromi

Q.—What about North
Nam's problems?

242

BALTIMORE SUN

7 AUG -72 Pg 8

Laird links
bomb halt,
Red pullout

Washington **UP**—In the absence of a negotiated settlement of the Vietnam war, the Secretary of Defense. Melvin T. Laird, said yesterday he would recommend continued bombing of North Vietnam until Hanoi pulls back its forces across the demilitarized one.

President Nixon's proposals for a negotiated settlement of the war call for a halt to the bombing once a cease-fire is negotiated and American prisoners of war are released.

Asked if he was adding another condition to this proposal. Mr. Laird said Mr. Nixon's conditions constitute "the negotiated track."

"I would accept the proposal to negotiate" as Mr. Nixon has offered it. Mr. Laird said. But he added that if the North Vietnamese do not accept, "I would not recommend the bombing be terminated until the enemy pulls back the forces."

Mr. Laird made the comments on the ABC network program. Issues and Answers.

After the secretary's appearance, Senator William Proxmire. (D., Wis.) said Mr. Laird's statements "dramatically changed the fact that the administration has no plan for stopping the bombing and getting out of Vietnam."

"The issue in the 1972 presidential campaign could not be more clearly drawn." Senator Proxmire said in a statement. "McGovern would stop the bombing now and have every

American out of Vietnam lock stock and barrel within 90 days. The administration would not end the bombing until the North Vietnamese withdraw behind the DMZ, a prospect that may be years away."

Nixon Misses Chance To End War

OSGOOD: Earlier this week Sargent Shriver charged that President Nixon missed a golden opportunity to end the VN War when he took office in 1969.

Secretary of State Rogers promptly called the statement "bunk," and accused Shriver of political fantasy.

But today Averill Harriman, one of the original US negotiators at the Paris Peace Talks, came to Shriver's defense.

Harriman spoke out at his home in New York's Westchester County in an interview with Chris Kelly.

Kelly asked Harriman about a reported NVNese signal of willingness to withdraw most of their troops from SVN's northern provinces.

KELLY: Now, was President Nixon aware of the signal, as you put it, that the NVNese were willing to negotiate.....

AVERILL HARRIMAN: I can't imagine why he wasn't because the same information that we got we got from our military and the Secretary of Defense had that information. I certainly made it very plain what we considered was the right thing to do.

KELLY: So there's no doubt in your mind that President Nixon knew of this particular development in the war. What was going to happen or what could happen in Paris.

HARRIMAN: Well, there were certain people, certain hard liners that said they didn't interpret it the way we did. They said it was for military reasons that made it so hot for them. But all the evidence was sent forward of our military advisors indicated that it was clearly a political move on their part. I believe we should have tried it out

As a matter of fact Clark Clifford was quite determined at that time that the first order of business which should have been how to mutually reduce the level of violence.

And I'm satisfied a settlement could be made. Instead of that the President decided he was going to VNize the war. We maintain that he should have VNized the peace.

OSGOOD: In response to Harriman's statement, the State Department said tonight it finds no record of any such so-called signal.

NEW YORK TIMES 12 August 1972

# Vietnam Mirage

The removal from field duty in South Vietnam yesterday of the last United States ground combat troops is a landmark that unfortunately does not signify meaningful progress toward peace in Indochina. The rejoicing would be vastly greater if there were genuine evidence of progress in the deadlocked negotiations in Paris or if Congress were not throwing up its hands in resignation to an Administration apparently still unwilling to recognize that military victory is unattainable for either side in this tragic conflict.

President Nixon's promise of withdrawal has proved a mirage. For while the Administration has reduced troop levels until only 39,000 advisers, logistics personnel, air crewmen and technicians remain in South Vietnam, it has mobilized more than 100,000 airmen, sailors and marines to carry on the fighting from air bases in Thailand and Guam and from Seventh Fleet ships off the Vietnamese coast. Devastating both North and South Vietnam with an unprecedented concentration of aerial firepower, this reconstituted American expeditionary force continues to provide critical support for the Saigon regime of President Thieu.

Despite the inability of that regime to fight its own battles three years after inauguration of Mr. Nixon's "Vietnamization" program, Mr. Thieu reiterated only last week his rejection of any compromise that would create a coalition government including Communists in Saigon. As long as the United States supports these policies, there can be no hope of a settlement in Paris.

In this situation of open-ended war and obstructed peace it is depressing that a substantial House majority, bowing to Administration pressures and swollen by confusion among the Congressional doves, has rejected a moderate withdrawal proposal that would at least have prodded the President to move faster toward disengagement and peace. The House went on to approve a $2.1-billion military aid bill which gives the Administration almost all it asked to continue United States military involvement around the globe, including substantial sums for Cambodia and Thailand—money that will help prolong the Indochina conflict indefinitely.

By rejecting the plea to set a date for total withdrawal and by voting indiscriminately for additional military assistance, the Democratic-controlled House has made itself a partner in the continuing destruction of American values and Vietnamese lives.

LOS ANGELES TIMES 16 AUGUST 1972 (23)

# The Real War Issue

It is a futile argument, this noisy dispute between Democrats and the Republican Administration about whether there was or wasn't a peace signal from Hanoi in 1968 or 1969 which the U.S. government ignored.

It is futile because what was or wasn't done three and four years ago is not a real issue in this presidential campaign. Administrations of both parties bear responsibility for this terrible war and its continuation. The history of the war is replete with missed opportunities for ending it. They were missed because neither the Johnson Administration nor the Nixon Administration was willing to pay the price necessary to end it. It is not the ignoring of this or that real or imaginary peace signal which continued the war. The war continued because the North Vietnamese, the South Vietnamese and the Americans willed it to continue.

These are the facts of the matter, and we suppose most Americans know them in their bones to be true. So Sargent Shriver, the Democratic candidate for Vice President, is probably not going to get very far if he continues to press his attack on the Administration for not taking the withdrawal of large numbers of North Vietnamese from the northern provinces of South Vietnam as a sign they were willing to make peace. Nor are the Republicans going to get very far if they continue to throw the blame on the Johnson Administration.

The issues are larger than that. The issues are what is to be done now—about the appalling amount of bombing, about getting the prisoners back, about the U.S. position in Southeast Asia after the war, above all about how to end the war.

It may just be possible that by the time of the election these issues will not be so important as political issues as they look now.

Henry Kissinger's intense diplomatic activity—his trips to Paris to meet with North Vietnamese negotiators and now his visit to Saigon—may foretell some kind of settlement. Certainly it would be to the President's political advantage to have the war closed down by Election Day, even, we suspect, if in order to do it he had to open the way for the departure of President Thieu.

But wishful thinking has been the hallmark of the American attitude toward the war, and it is too soon to read into Henry Kissinger's talks the ardent hope nearly every American must feel. Much depends upon the North Vietnamese, whose reading of the probable election results here will no doubt help them decide what to do next. Much depends also on the South Vietnamese government, to whose fortunes a succession of American Presidents have tied this country too closely. Sooner or later, and preferably sooner, that tie must be loosened.

No, the issues in the campaign are not the charges and countercharges about what might have been. What McGovern is saying, and what the President may be doing, tend toward the same point.

There is general agreement in the country, we believe, that the war must be ended, and ended swiftly; that the appalling destruction and loss of lives must cease; that the Vietnamese must be left to manage their own affairs; and that to the extent it can the United States must help rebuild two broken countries and encourage a spirit of moderation after a long civil struggle. That aftermath of the war, as we have seen, can be terrible. But not so terrible as the continuation of the war.

NEW YORK TIMES

11 AUGUST 1972 P-1

END-WAR MEASURE
BEATEN IN HOUSE
BY 228-178 VOTE

By JOHN W. FINNEY
Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10.—In a crucial setback for the anti-war movement in Congress, the House of Representatives rejected today an amendment demanding the withdrawal of all American forces from Indonesia.

The vote of 228 to 178 was a major victory for the Administration, which had lobbied intensively to defeat the Vietnam troop-withdrawal amendment that the House Foreign Affairs Committee had attached to a $2.1-billion foreign aid bill.

In view of the House action, it now seemed improbable that any "end-the-war" legislation would be passed in this session of Congress.

The House went on to pass the foreign aid bill by a vote of 221 to 172. The bill's authorization of $2.1-billion in military assistance in the current fiscal year is about $200-million less than the amount requested by the Administration. A similar foreign aid bill was killed in the Senate last month after an amendment on ending the war was attached.

Stand Seems Decisive

The Senate earlier this month attached an amendment to a military procurement bill that through a cut-off of funds would require withdrawal of all forces in four months, subject to concurrent release of prisoners of war, and it is likely that the Senate will add the same amendment to the foreign aid bill when it is received from the House.

With the decisive position taken by the House, however, all, such Senate amendments are now likely to die in a Senate-House conference committee.

The 50-vote margin represented a loss of strength from last October for House critics of the Vietnam war policy. At that time in a procedural action the House voted 215 to 193 to instruct House conferees not to accept a troop-withdrawal amendment approved by the Senate. In advance of today's vote, a White House aide predicted, "if we win by 40 votes or more, end-the-war legislation is dead for this session."

House doves contributed to

their own defeat because they were divided over what deadline to set for the withdrawal.

As approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the amendment demanded a termination of all hostilities and withdrawal of all American forces by Oct. 1, subject to release of prisoners of war and a limited cease-fire with North Vietnam to assure the safe withdrawal of the troops.

The Oct. 1 deadline was set several months ago when the amendment was first being drafted by its co-sponsors — Representatives Lee H. Hamilton, Democrat of Indiana, and Charles W. Whalen Jr., Republican of Ohio.

In an attempt to pick up added votes for the amendment, Representative Whalen moved on the floor to change the deadline to Dec. 31. Administration forces taunted supporters of the "end-the-war" amendment, saying they were proposing to "extend the war by another 50 days."

The change in the deadline was also opposed by some of the more outspoken doves, such as Representative Benjamin S. Rosenthal, Democrat of Queens, and Representative Ronald V. Dellums, Democrat of California.

Republican Ranks Solid

In what was to be a critical test vote, some of the doves thus lined up with opponents of the amendment to reject an extension of the deadline by a vote of 304 to 109.

With that, the doves lost the support of Speaker Carl Albert and Representative Hale Boggs, the majority leader, both of whom had voted for extension of the deadline.

With the White House successful in holding the Republican ranks almost solid in opposition to the amendment, the votes of the two Democratic leaders had been regarded as crucial in swinging over some moderate Democrats.

As appraised by an official of Common Cause, the organization that mounted a nationwide lobbying campaign for the amendment, the outcome depended in large measure upon some 50 Democrats, most of them committee chairmen or subcommittee chairmen and thus part of the Democratic Establishment, which has tended to support the President on foreign policy issues.

The two Democratic leaders were under intense political pressure from their own Democratic ranks to support the amendment, particularly in light of the action of the House Democratic caucus in April in calling for legislation providing a prompt termination of the war. It was the caucus action that influenced the once hawkish House Foreign Affairs Committee to adopt the troop-withdrawal amendment.

Right up to the debate, the two Democratic leaders remained publicly uncommitted on how they would vote, an indecision

that some doves felt was hurting their cause. Then with the decision not to extend the deadline, Representative Boggs came out publicly against the amendment.

Noting that it was unlikely that the foreign aid bill would be enacted before Oct. 1, Mr. Boggs roared from the well of the House:

"I am not going to stand here and do something that is, a valn and useless thing and could be misinterpreted around the world."

Mr. Albert also then voted to strike the amendment from the bill. The only member of the Democratic leadership to vote for the amendment was Representative Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. of Massachusetts, the majority whip, who led the move to place the Democratic caucus on record in favor of legislation to end the war.

Among the doves, there also was some bitterness directed to Representative Thomas E. Morgan, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, for insisting that the first vote come on whether to change the withdrawal deadline. The doves had felt they would be in a stronger position if there had been a vote first on the amendment, with a subsequent vote on changing the deadline.

Mr. Morgan had supported the amendment in committee, but in the maneuvering on the floor, some doves felt he had worked to the advantage of the Administration.

The move to strike the

amendment from the bill was led by Representative Richard Bolling, Democrat of Missouri, who argued that in a Government of divided powers "there is no way Congress can make the President accept terms he finds unacceptable" and "it is a cruelty to the American people to pretend otherwise."

By voice vote, the House accepted an amendment by Representative Ogden R. Reil, Democrat of Westchester, authorizing the President to suspend foreign aid to any nation that refuses to prosecute or extradite planes hijackers when requested to do so by the United States.

The House, by a vote of 253 to 140, also struck out a committee amendment restoring to the President authority to ban the importation of Rhodesian chrome in compliance with a United Nations embargo.

The President's authority to control the importation of strategic materials from Rhodesia was removed in legislation passed last year by Congress.

Dike bombing issue
rages

BOSTON GLOBE 13 AUGUST 1972 (23)

By Thomas Oliphant
and Darius Jhabvala
Globe Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Propaganda wars can be messy affairs, usually far more complicated and difficult to follow than the ones fought with guns and bombs.

And so it is with the latest war
work between the United States and
North Vietnam on the subject of the
American bombing of the large, in-
tricate, and vulnerable system of
dikes and related structures that
protect the rice which keeps North
Vietnam alive.

The principal result of a proga-
ganda battle is confusion, not of
course among the tiny group of se-
nior officials on both sides who know
perfectly well what is going on, but
rather among the public, which finds
it extraordinarily difficult to make
reasoned judgements on the avail-
able evidence.

On the one hand, there are defen-
fers of the Administration, like
Senate Republican leader Hugh
Scott, who told Senate critics last
week that the bombing of the dikes
is not deliberate. He said—as has
the President — that the dikes are
not chosen targets but may be hit ac-
cidently if they are near military in-
stallations selected for bombing.

On the other, critics of the bomb-
ing, like the 10 in the Senate last
week led by Sen. Kennedy, feel the
bombing is deliberate — or is con-
ducted in such a way that it amounts
to the same thing. To bomb targets in
those proximity to dikes, regardless
of the consequences, is to jeopardize
countless innocent lives, they main-
tain. They also charge that the Ad-
ministration, in its "unseemly zeal"
to bomb the North — into a settle-
tment of the war before election day,
knows that the tonnage of bombs
dropped in an area smaller than New
Mexico will almost by definition
have a serious effect on the dike
system.

Sometimes, in such situations, it
helps to begin with those basic facts
which cannot be denied by either
side. In the case of North Vietnam's
dike and irrigation system, the most
important ones are as follows:

* Bombs dropped by American planes are hitting the dikes.

* Bombs dropped by American planes will continue to hit the dikes.

US officials, including Defense
Secretary Laing, have said that "mili-
tary targets", such as roads, bridges,
and anti-aircraft emplacements, will
be attacked even if they are next to
or on top of a dam or dike.

* No evidence as yet has been
presented which proves conclusively
that such damage as there has been
to date is so extensive as to raise the

serious possibility of造成 such a
Red River Delta this month or next.

Perhaps the most important fact
of all, and one by no means widely
appreciated in this country, is that
this is not a propaganda war over
some minor debating point.

The gravity of the charges makes
the intense efforts by the Nixon ad-
ministration to persuade people to
disbelieve them equally understand-
able.

What is involved is an intricate
3000-mile system of structures de-
signed and built over the last 1000
years or so to protect a country for
which water is both a desperately
needed friend and a dreaded enemy.

A small portion of the system
protects against flooding of smaller
rivers in the southern part of the
country and against sea water all
along the coast. The heart of the net-
work, though, guards the fertile and
heavily populated Red River Delta,
just south and southeast of Hanoi.

The region contains some 5 mil-
lion acres, and 15 million people live
in it, or three fourths of the coun-
try's total population. Rice also lives
in the delta, and what is grown there
feeds the entire nation.

The purpose of the dike network
is to protect the people and the rice,
and also to control the course of the
Red River and its major tributaries,
which are vital transportation routes.

It is no easy task. The dikes must
be constantly strengthened as well as
made taller, especially along the Red
River, which moves millions of tons
of silt that end up in the river bed.
After the rains each year, above all
in the late summer and early fall,
there is the additional problem of
preventing flooding.

About a third of the 3000-mile
system is controlled by six or seven
major dikes, which US intelligence
analysts say are about 200 feet wide
at the base, 40 feet high, and up to 80
feet across.

These dikes are backed up by a
series of secondary one, anywhere
from four to 22 feet high, and they
run roughly parallel to the big ones.

The final element in the system is
a huge number of small dikes, often
nothing more than a hand-operated
gate (or sluice), that controls the
flow of water along narrow irriga-
tion ditches next to rice paddies.

When there is a major rupture in
the system, the results can be devas-
tating and terrifying. Last year, for
example, just four big bursts in the
Hanoi area resulted in the flooding
of more than a million acres and the
killing of hundreds of people.

When bombing is added to the
dangers posed by nature, the results
can be calamitous. In 1944, for exam-
ple, when Vietnam was occupied by
the Japanese, the US Air Force con-
ducted numerous raids on the dikes,
according to the late historian Ber-
nard Fall.

How much damage the bombing

can still is not known for sure, but
there were huge floods that year,
which mined one-fourth of the rice
land under cultivation. Much of whi-
ich remained was requisitioned, by the
Japanese, leaving an estimated tw-
million Vietnamese without an
food.

The United States also bombe
irrigation facilities, and dikes in
North Korea nine years later, an
there were frequent documents
reports of intentional strikes against
dikes during the Johnson Adminis-
tration's bombing campaign from
1965 to 1968.

Much of the suspicion that some
thing is amiss today is directly trace
able to the Nixon Administration's
own public statements, which fo
four months have been evasive, con-
tradictory, and greatly lacking in
candor.

When the North Vietnamese of-
fensive began in April, a nervous ad-
ministration responded at first with
statements clearly designed to mak-
the leaders in Hanoi wonder whether
their dike system might be bombe
in reprisal.

Questioned about the like-
American response to the offensiv-
al all major spokesmen — includ-
ing Laird, Secretary of State Rogers, and
White House Press secretary Ronald
L. Ziegler — would only flatly rub
out two courses of action, the use of
cnuclear weapons and a re-introduc-
tion of US combat troops into the
war zone.

The first major softening of the
stance came in a television speech of
April 26, when President Nixon sa-
that "only military targets" in the
north would be bombed.

However, only four days late
Mr. Nixon, at John Connally's ran-
c in Texas, called the dams "a strate-
gic target and indirectly a military ta-
get."

Referring to the huge number of
civilian casualties that attacks on
them would cause he said mere
that "that is something that we war
to avoid. It is also something we be
lieve is not needed."

Then, in stronger language, the
President said:

"Just let me say that as far as the
targets in North Vietnam are con-
cerned, that we are prepared to us-
our military and naval strength
against military targets througho-
North Vietnam and we believe the
North Vietnamese are taking a ve-
gent risk if they continue their of-
fensive in the South. I will just lea
it there and they can make their ow
choice."

Almost within days, charg-
began flowing from Hanoi that t
skies were being hit, and the charg
c were accompanied by citations
dates and places.

Initially, the administration r
fused to respond to these charges, b

247

gradually a public relations strategy emerged that had spokesman saying that the dikes had not been "targeted," but leaving unanswered the question of whether they had been hit.

By mid-June, the charges from Hanoi began getting even more numerous and specific. Especially worrisome for the administration were "two eyewitness accounts of bomb damage to dikes.

One was from Jeen Thoraval, a reporter for Agence France Presse, and the other came from the Swedish ambassador to North Vietnam, Jean-Christophe Ceberg. President Nixon was asked about these reports at his televised news conference on the evening of June 29.

"We have checked those reports," he said. "They have proved to be inaccurate. . . . We have orders out not to hit dikes because the result in terms of civilian casualties would be extraordinary."

When he spoke, the Administration already had in its possession evidence that at least some dikes had been hit.

Gradually, the Administration shifted. Laird in a news conference on July 17, after the "no targeting" comment, said:

"Now there are occasions, of course when a dam or a dike could be hit when an anti-aircraft installation is placed on a dam or dike or when there is a roadway or a bridgework that is also tied in with a dam or dike formation. All you have to do is look at any of the aerial photography of North Vietnam and you will see that dams and dikes run through all of the agricultural area.

On July 26, the State Department said: "There is no indication but the most incidental and minor impact on the system of levees as a result of strikes on military installations."

These statements produced more charges, however, and there was an

additional demand from many quarters that the Administration give the public whatever information it had on the subject.

The same day of the State Department statement, word got around town that the Administration was about to start a campaign to counter the charges, and had produced a study. George Bush, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said as much in a televised interview.

In fact, a briefing had been tentatively scheduled for that day to lay out the facts and offer evidence, but there was a last minute change in plans, and nothing happened.

The next day, the State Department's daily spokesman, Charles Bray, responded to reporters' questions as follows:

Q. If the administration has evidence that refutes the North Vietnamese contentions then why is it reticent to make it public?

Bray. (He began with some words that sounded like the old "no targeting" line, but then stopped himself.) I can't answer that question.

Q. Is there a study at hand that has been prepared by the Administration?

Bray. I am left in the desultory position of neither confirming nor denying the existence of such a study.

Q. You puzzle me by your response. An American ambassador (Bush) has said in a public session that there is a study and you leave the State Department in a position of neither confirming nor denying whether the US ambassador is telling the truth.

Bray. Isn't that odd?

Q. Dynamic immobility?

Bray. Immobile Dynamism.

That afternoon, President Nixon held a news conference in his office during which he launched the Administration's propaganda counter offensive on the dike issue. The next

afternoon, a report, attributed to the "intelligence community" was handed out at the State Department.

According to State Department sources, the document was eight pages long, mostly dealing with basic geography. Only five paragraphs, all summary in nature, dealt with the current status of the dikes.

These were the main points made:

* Photographic evidence, reportedly including some from agents on the ground shows no intentional bombing was done and that the few dikes that have been hit were hit by "stray" bombs aimed at nearby military targets.

* Damage to the system from last year's floods has not yet been fully repaired, implying that if there is flooding this year it won't be because of the stray bombs.

* Photos taken in mid-July turned up bomb craters at 12 locations, none near Hanoi, and none large, and ten close to "identified individual targets".

* All the craters spotted could be repaired "easily", by less than 50 men in a day.

The report, in essence, does not explicitly contradict the basic North Vietnamese charge, namely that since April there have been about a hundred individual raids on 58 sections of the dike and water conservation network. What the Administration released were the results of two days of picture-taking in mid-July. The pictures themselves were not released, and a longer report that went to the White House also has not been released. There is some speculation that more information is being saved for release, for example, if former Attorney General Ramsey Clark returns here from Hanoi with fresh charges.

Until all the information is released, the bombing the dikes controversy will continue to rage.

Ramsey Clark Airings
Called 'Contemptible'

By Tim O'Brien

Washington Post staff writer

Secretary of State William P. Rogers yesterday criticized former Attorney General Ramsey Clark for an attack against U.S. bombing policy broadcast over Radio Hanoi.

Rogers said he was "shocked" by Clark's statements, calling his action "contemptible."

"I was surprised that he went to (North) Vietnam," Rogers said. "But to hear the voice of a former member of President Johnson's Cabinet—a former Attorney General of the United States, a man who was involved in sending more than half a million Americans to Vietnam—to hear him on Radio Hanoi was, to me, contemptible."

"It's beyond belief, frankly," Rogers said.

Clark was appointed Attorney General in the spring of 1967, after President Johnson's decision to begin buildups in Vietnam.

Since leaving his Cabinet post, Clark has been a frequent critic of U.S. war policies.

Clark is touring North Vietnam as a member of an international committee of inquiry into U.S. "war crimes" in Indochina.

Radio Hanoi broadcasts have quoted Clark as saying that U.S. bomb strikes against the country's dike system should be halted immediately. The United States denies that the dikes have been intentionally bombed, while admitting that some may have been hit accidentally.

The North Vietnamese broadcast also quoted Clark as having begged villagers of a bombed area "to forgive the criminal actions of the American people."

(Meanwhile, United Press International reported that Clark was quoted by the Vietnam News Agency, a Hanoi organization, in a broadcast heard in Tokyo, as saying in a press conference in Hanoi yesterday that "it has been "massive, inhuman" American bombing in North Vietnam.

(Clark, according to the communist agency's report, said two things were clear: "That there has been massive, inhuman bombing on cities, villages, churches, schools, hospitals, dikes, sluices, canals and the wide water system that supports the culture and the life of the country. Whatever the cause and the purpose of that bombing there can be no possible justification in the eyes of common morality."

"(Secondly," he was quoted as saying, "the people of this country believe their cause is just. Every person I have seen has shown by his acts and his word his total commitment.)"

Rogers said there are "two types of Americans" that go to North Vietnam. "One is the Jane Fonda type, and I think people understand the Jane Fonda types."

"Ramsey Clark is different. I listened to him—I think it was him—yesterday on a broadcast that was repeated here and that was alleged to be a broadcast. he made from Hanoi on Radio Hanoi.

"I am frank to say that I was shocked," Rogers said.

"Imagine going to a nation that we are at war with, taking their version of everything that is said, and then going on their radio and broadcasting back to the U.S. and around the world, at a time when American men are flying over there and losing their lives."

He said "the American people would be shocked to hear his voice on Radio Hanoi while the war is in progress, while American lives are being lost, particularly a man who was involved in the very decisions that made the whole thing come about."

Meanwhile, Rep. Fletcher Thompson (R-Ga.) asked the Justice Department to inquire into Clark's activities in North Vietnam.

WASHINGTON
POST

12 August
1972

Page 7

Thompson accused Clark of lending his support to enemy propaganda attacks on the United States. He said he wrote Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, asking him to initiate an inquiry into whether Clark's activities constitute violations of U.S. sedition or treason laws.

"It is too bad that a former Attorney General of the United States would lend himself, to support propaganda activities of the enemy and not condemn the thousands of murders and atrocities they have committed," Thompson said.

The House Internal Security Committee voted Thursday to reject Thompson's motion that it subpoena actress Jane Fonda for questioning.

Thompson had earlier asked the Justice Department to make a similar investigation of Miss Fonda's Radio Hanoi broadcasts, reportedly beamed at U.S. troops in Vietnam.

## On the Mideast

On another press conference subject, Secretary Rogers reiterated his call for "active negotiations between Egypt and Israel," saying this is the only area in the world where there are long-standing hostilities where talks have not been undertaken.

Rogers supported the Israeli position that talks will eventually have to be face-to-face "because it makes sense." But he also said U.S. policy on the Mideast, as he stated it on Dec. 9, 1969, remains unchanged.

This policy would allow

for only insubstantial alterations of frontiers, had been denounced by the Israelis, and has not been discussed lately by administration officials.

Rogers refused to comment on the ouster of Soviet military men from Egypt, calling it an "internal decision."

In other comments, Rogers:

* Said it is possible that North Vietnam might launch a pre-election offensive in South Vietnam. "The Secretary of Defense and the members of the military establishment feel that there is a real prospect that this might occur." But he predicted that South Vietnam could handle "any such activity on the part of the enemy."

* Struck out at Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, saying that "once a political opponent says to the enemy 'we'll give you everything you want if I'm elected, does impair the prospects for successful negotiations."

* Praised the House of Representatives for defeating a provision of the foreign military aid bill that would have fixed a date for total U.S. military withdrawal from Indochina. He said that, "If the House of Representatives had voted the other way, our prospects for a negotiated settlement would have been damaged."

Rogers also said he has no plans to leave his post after the fall election, and said he will speak out on foreign policy matters, which he thinks will be important as the campaign progresses.

WASHINGTON POST - 15 AUGUST 1972 P-1

Paris Talks
Held Again
By Kissinger

By Murrey Marder

Washington Post Staff Writer

Presidential adviser Henry A. Kissinger met in Paris again yesterday with North Vietnamese negotiators while political blame-fixing rolled on in the United States over earlier failure to end the war.

Kissinger talked privately with Hanoi Politburo member Le Duc Tho and Xuan Nam's delegation at the Paris peace talks, White House Press Secretary Ronald L. Ziegler told newsmen. No details whatever about this 16th announced meeting were disclosed. The meetings are coming on a fortnightly pattern, July 19, Aug. 1, Aug. 14, which administration sources earlier have described as a prolonged automatic probing process.

Van Sau, a spokesman for the Vietcong's Provisional Revolutionary Government, charged in Paris that "Mr. Nixon is using the so-called private meetings to make American opinion believe that something is happening, while in fact he is increasing the escalation of the war." But the spokesman declined to say why, in that event, the Communist side is continuing private talks.

Disclosure of the latest Kissinger-Tho talks coincided with new statements by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark attacking Nixon administration war policy on Clark's return from a trip to North Vietnam.

Clark said in San Francisco that he is convinced that American war prisoners "will be released immediately when we stop this senseless, murderous bombing and end the war and get out..."

North Vietnam, however, reported in a broadcast from Hanoi yesterday that its version of ending American involvement in the war also required ending support for the regime of South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu.

The Hanoi broadcast, refers to ongoing support.

signal. Rogers charged, "It was President Johnson who missed the boat, not President Nixon."

Rogers was responding to statements supporting Shriver that were made Saturday by W. Averell Harriman, President Johnson's ambassador at the Paris peace talks, and Cyrys R. Vance. Harriman's deputy.

The secretary cited the Harriman-Vance statement that in October or early November of 1968, North Vietnam "signalled its willingness to reduce the level of violence" by withdrawing "almost 90 per cent" of its troops from South Vietnam's two northernmost provinces. Said Rogers:

> "That would mean the Democratic administration had three months to act on the supposed signal before President Nixon took office." Rogers, reiterating his charge of Friday that Shriver was engaged in "political fantasy," told reporters in Miami, "President Johnson was president then, and we cannot find that he passed on any reference to such a signal."

The public record does show, however, that when the Nixon administration came into office in Jan. 1969, Kissinger ordered a National Security Council review of Vietnam policy that included a question on why North Vietnam had pulled some of its troops out of combat in 1968. The record shows mixed interpretations among government agencies about the extent to which Hanoi's troop pullback actions were judged to be based on political or military motivations.

State Department spokesman John King said yesterday that the department is still checking "this very complex period of American history" and he could not "confirm or deny" what Harriman and Vance said they reported, but he maintained there was nothing that the department construed as a "signal" for negotiations.

In the current sequence, the administration's announcement of the latest Kissinger meeting in Paris left open the question of where Kissinger will be in the days ahead, as well as the status of the secret talks.

Press Secretary Ziegler said that after the Paris meeting, Kissinger was going to the town of Laax, near Zurich, Switzerland, where his parents, Louis and Paula, are celebrating their 50th wedding

ring to President Nixon's peace offers, said, "No one naturally believes that if there is a cease-fire, if the Americans withdraw their troops and if the captured soldiers are released, the Vietnamese people will be able to solve their own political problem... Militarily speaking, the Americans must withdraw. Politically speaking, the puppets must be toppled. The Americans must stop supporting the Thieu clique. Vietnamese traitor Thieu must resign."

This is a critical point on which the Nixon administration and its political challenge, Sen. George McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee, are at odds. McGovern has declared his readiness to abandon support for the Thieu government.

Secretary of State William P. Rogers, in Miami to testify before the Republican Platform Committee, said yesterday:

> "As our military involvement in Vietnam ends, we will continue to provide economic support and military supplies to South Vietnam to prevent a military takeover by North Vietnam. Thus the political future of Vietnam will be left to the Vietnamese themselves to be determined by the political process."

Rogers added a new counterattack yesterday to the continuing political crossfire over the charge by Democratic vice president nominee Sargent Shriver that President Nixon passed up "an unparalleled opportunity" to end the war in 1969.

If anyone ignored a peace

anniversary. Ziegler said Kissinger's younger brother, Walter, and the presidential adviser's two children, Elizabeth 13, and David, 10, would be with the family group.

Ziegler said Kissinger will leave Switzerland today, but he declined to say where Kissinger is going. That raised speculation about a further Kissinger-Tho meeting, which Kissinger declined to discuss.

The recurring secret talks in Paris are increasing speculation about possible progress in the talks—speculation which the Nixon administration has no interest in discounting. The Washington Post reported on Aug. 4 that according to informed sources North Vietnam was described as "flirting" with U.S. proposals on the central issue of a possible compromise for sharing political power in South Vietnam. Other reports, notably in Time magazine this week, report continuing probing on this issue.

C13

250

BALTIMORE SUN - 16 AUGUST 1972 P 1

Kissinger flies
to Saigon to
talk with Thieu

By PHILIP POTTER
Washington Bureau of The Sun

Washington—American and North Vietnamese participants in Monday's secret meeting in Paris are heading, respectively, for Saigon and Hanoi, but a White House spokesman cautioned yesterday against making too much of it.

Ronald L. Ziegler, the White House press secretary, announced that Henry A. Kissinger, the presidential adviser on national security, will be in Saigon today for two days of talks with President Nguyen Van Thieu and American officials with respect to all aspects of the war and the peace negotiations.

Third meeting in month

In Paris, simultaneously, Ly Van Sau, a spokesman for the Viet Cong peace delegation, disclosed that Le Duc Tho, a top Hanoi Politburo member, is leaving Paris today for Haini.

Mr. Tho, special adviser to the North Vietnamese delegation in Paris, and Xuan Thuy, the delegation's chief, met privately with Dr. Kissinger Monday for the third time in less than a month. Dr. Kissinger later went to Switzerland for a visit with his parents, but left there last night for Saigon.

Mr. Ziegler said Dr. Kissinger would review there all aspects of the Vietnam problem and progress in the whole series of negotiations in Paris, but the trip was "not geared specifically to the meeting" in Paris Monday.

The presidential adviser also is scheduled to confer with the United States ambassador, Ellsworth Bunker, and the United States commander in Vietnam, Gen. Frederick C. Weyand. But it was clear his major concern is a talk with President Thieu, whom he last saw in early July last year.

When asked if it meant there had been a "breakthrough" in the Paris talks, Mr. Ziegler said the trip had been under

consideration for several weeks and President Nixon believed it a "desirable and appropriate time" for Dr. Kissinger to go and "review personally the situation."

He added, "We have at no time discussed the contents of the talks or characterized them in any way. I caution you against speculation."

"We are in a negotiating period and this is not an appropriate time to speculate or characterize the negotiations taking place. We are there to negotiate constructively."

Mr. Ziegler said Mr. Thieu, whose future. has become the main stumbling block to a settlement because of Hanoi's insistence that his reten tion as head of the Saigon government will not be countenanced by the Communists, had been kept informed "all the way" on the secret talks in Paris, 16 in all to date.

But the U.S. had initiated the meeting this week because Dr. Kissinger had not seen Mr. Thieu for "a long time," Mr. Ziegler said.

In a recent major speech before the National Defense College in Saigon, Mr. Thieu, calling for continued "relentless" bombing of North Vietnam, said it was the only way to peace.

And "if our allies ... lack determination, the Communists will revert to their half-guerilla, half-conventional warfare, and the war will go on in Indochina forever," he said.

Many foreign diplomats saw in the speech an expression of worry that Mr. Nixon, in a bid

for votes to insure his re-election, might relax or even halt the bombing to win some kind of a localized cease-fire before election day.

Mr. Ziegler turned aside a question as to whether Dr. Kissinger was carrying any new proposals to make to the South Vietnamese president. He repeated, "They will discuss all aspects of the problem, including the negotiations."

It has been the custom in the past, whenever the U.S. initiated a new negotiating formula, to seek the closest consultation with Mr. Thieu.

This occurred for instance, before Mr. Nixon put forth a comprehensive proposal for a political and military settlement October 11, 1971. It has sparked sometimes scriminous debate between the Saigon and Washington governments.

It was suggested by one usually reliable source here, however, that Dr. Kissinger's trip to Saigon this time is no more than for "a look-see."

"I cannot imagine," this source said, "that it's any more than that. He wants to satisfy himself how things are going and that Thieu's behaving himself. He hasn't been there for a long time. And in this political year, we wants to say things for himself."

As for rumors that Washington is contemplating dumping Mr. Thieu, the source said:

"I don't see how we'd do it. The possibility that there's been a breakthrough at Paris is most unlikely. I don't see that prospects are very much better than they've been."

When asked if the timing of the Kissinger trip had anything to do with the future status of Mr. Thieu, Mr. Ziegler said:

"I'd not link such speculation to the fact of the trip. He (Dr. Kissinger) is going for the purposes I calculated and I caution you against expanding on it."

Mr. Ziegler left in mystery where Dr. Kissinger might go from Saigon, although Bangkok, Thailand, where a large contingent of American troops and airmen are stationed, seemed a likely possibility.

The press secretary ruled out a return by Dr. Kissinger to Paris or a trip to Peking or Moscow.

He said Mr. Kissinger would be back in Washington by the weekend after ending his Saigon visit Friday, and would report his findings to Mr. Nixon before the latter leaves Washington for the Republican

National Convention early next week.

Mr. Ziegler said he had nothing to add to the President's observation at his last press conference that "chances for peace were never better."

In a statement to a question that the Kissinger trip was not linked to the fact that Mr. Nixon will make another announcement about American troops in Vietnam before September 1, when remaining U.S. forces are to be down to 39,000.

In a later announcement yesterday, the agency for International Development said Mr. Nixon had ordered 115 million in additional U.S. aid to South Vietnamese refugees victims of the Communist offensive began in March.

The statement said 100,000 persons, mostly women, children are the elderly, had been forced to leave their homes. The agency credited the Saigon government with having done "exceptionally well" in meeting their needs, but said it needed help with the burden.

NEW YORK TIMES 16 August 1972

Fumbled Opportunity

Secretary Rogers, former Ambassador Lodge and the State Department are being disingenuous, to put it mildly, in denying "any" knowledge of the 1969 chance for peace in Vietnam that Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Sargent Shriver and former Ambassadors Harriman and Vance claim President Nixon "blew." Interpretations of the events of that period may differ, but there can be little dispute on the facts or the Nixon Administration's detailed knowledge of them now and then.

The new Administration's secret National Security Council study memorandum on Vietnam of February, 1969, (NSSM-1), which leaked to the press last spring and has now been published in the Congressional Record, is conclusive on these points. During his first week in office, President Nixon asked eight Government agencies for their interpretation of North Vietnam's withdrawal of large numbers of its troops from South Vietnam—the move the Johnson Administration negotiators in Paris and Defense Secretary Clifford, among others, had interpreted as a "signal" of Hanoi's desire for de-escalation of the war and a negotiated settlement.

Secretary Rogers and the State Department were among those replying that they saw a political purpose related to the Paris negotiations in North Vietnam's troop withdrawals. In response to another NSSM-1 question, they indicated a belief that Hanoi had come to Paris to seek a negotiated settlement—on terms favorable to itself, of course.

Ambassador Harriman briefed President-elect Nixon at the Hotel Pierre in New York in December, 1968, and saw him again at the White House on his return from Paris after the change of Administrations in January, 1969. Ambassador Vance, who stayed on as Paris negotiator for another month, reported to President Nixon on his return. Both negotiators gave their estimate of the situation repeatedly to Secretary Rogers and other high Nixon Administration officials. Notes on these conversations must exist in State Department and White House files.

There is no valid security reason why some of this data should not now be made public, especially after the detailed reports Henry Kissinger has given publicly about his secret 1971 negotiations with North Vietnamese Politburo member Le Duc Tho. The Harriman-Vance view is that the tenor and the context of their Paris negotiations made it clear that Hanoi's troop pullbacks were intended to initiate a reduction in the violence of the war, mutual withdrawal of American and North Vietnamese forces and substantive negotiations for a political settlement. The country has a right to the facts on which to base an independent judgment.

Mr. Shriver's personal role, which the Administration understandably has made the center of its counterattack, was essentially peripheral to the negotiations. As President Johnson's Ambassador to France, who continued for fourteen months under President Nixon, he handled some liaison with French and Soviet diplomats. But, as he has now confirmed, his job did not charge him with reporting to Washington on talks and there is no documentary evidence that he resigned the Ambassadorship out of disagreement with Nixon policy on the peace issue.

The important issue, however, is not Mr. Shriver's role but rather whether the Nixon Administration embarked from the start on a policy that brought stalemate in Paris and the continuation of the war for another four years.

Beginning in the summer of 1968, while Lyndon Johnson was still President, and resuming in early October, the North Vietnamese removed 22 of their 25 regiments from the two northernmost provinces of South Vietnam. That signaled an intention, at the very least, of abiding by the understanding that large-scale violation of the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Vietnam at the 17th Parallel would be suspended once American bombing had halted.

The other key factor, as seen by Ambassadors Harriman and Vance, is that Hanoi agreed after arduous negotiations to seat the Saigon Government at the negotiating table in return for the admission of the Vietcong. Unfortunately, that breakthrough was largely negated first by procedural foot-dragging by President Thieu and then by his refusal to consider either legalization of the Communist party in South Vietnam or a coalition government there, conditions that made a compromise settlement impossible.

The Harriman-Vance view is that the new Administration should have set a negotiated peace as its first goal, but instead emphasized the survival of President Thieu and his Saigon Government. The same factor that made a compromise settlement impossible in 1969 remains the chief stumbling block in 1972.

WASHINGTON POST 16 August 1972

# The War as a Campaign Issue

Not exactly out of nowhere, the Vietnam war has wheeled front and center as a campaign issue. This, we believe, is at it should be. No single question touches more Americans more deeply or affords citizens a more important measure of the politicians vying for their votes. It was a large issue, and recognized as such, in 1968; Mr. Nixon has further validated it as an issue, almost daily, since then. Senator McGovern launched his whole candidacy on the war. It therefore seems a bit late in the game for one side to be protesting that a presidential contender has no proper business challenging government war policy and for the other—having challenged it—to be complaining that a secretary of state has no right of reply. In fact, we regard it as a healthy development that questions of war and peace can now receive much the same kind of scrutiny in an election campaign as is normally accorded to domestic affairs.

We would add that it is particularly appropriate for those cabinet officers holding what Senator McGovern calls "sensitive" positions, the Secretaries of State and Defense to join the debate. Indeed, it's somewhat odd he did not welcome their open entry into the political arena, the better to hold them accountable. Mr. Laird has scored the McGovern defense statement no fewer than three times in five weeks. Mr. Rogers last week took on not only Ramsey Clark but Sargent Shriver, explaining he was challenging the latter's criticism of administration diplomacy because "I'm one of the few that can answer." Quite so. Mr. Rogers has the cables and the responsibility to conduct policy, and also the right to defend his chief and himself against attack. Whether he should respond as he did in an overblown political way rather than confining himself to a statement of the administration's version of the public record, is of course something else again.

The Shriver and Clark episodes both deserve closer looks. In our view, Mr. Shriver's contention that Mr. Nixon "blew" a sure peace opening in early 1969 would have been more credible, and would have done Mr. Shriver more credit, had he not then been serving in apparent contentment as Mr. Nixon's ambassador in Paris and had he unloaded his blast before being picked as Mr. McGovern's running mate. The question of whether Mr. Nixon did "blow" a peace opening is necessarily more difficult, hinging on an appraisal of whether Hanoi was trying to send a "signal" by withdrawing certain units from South Vietnam and whether, if Mr. Nixon had decided to read that withdrawal as a signal—he did not—he and Hanoi could have moved on towards a settlement.

We believe, as we have stated, that in early 1969 Mr. Nixon had the mandate and the flexibility to end the American role in the war expeditiously, if he had chosen. He also had, according to the Vietnam policy review conducted in 1969 by Henry Kissinger, the real possibility of doing so. Mr. Nixon did not do so because the terms then available were unsatisfactory to him. Instead he chose to fight on, while changing the style of his fighting, in quest of more satisfactory terms. In other words, Mr. Nixon

did not "blow" an opportunity for "peace"; he deliberately held out for terms more favorable to the Saigon government. It is not his diplomacy in 1969 that is at issue so much as his war aims, which do not appear to have changed in 1972.

A former Democratic Attorney General, Ramsey Clark is the latest and the most political American to have been invited to Hanoi. The severe criticisms levelled at him for protesting against American policy, in statements made in Hanoi and broadcast on Hanoi Radio, seem to us the price any such critic of the President's ought to expect to pay for speaking out as and when he did. The result, hardly helpful for either the anti-war cause or for George McGovern, has been to divert public attention from the bombing to his own conduct in Hanoi.

Mr. Clark saw only the evidence of bombing that his hosts showed him. However incomplete his testimony, the administration still would prefer to have no American witnesses at all to a bombing campaign that has been savage militarily and barren politically so far. He reported in his San Francisco news conference Monday the statements on POW release which Hanoi, knowing of his prominence, wanted him to put before the American people. The statements amounted to Hanoi's familiar public refrain and the fact that he was being used should surprise no one. Attempts to manipulate the other side's public opinion are a standard part of this war; that is why, for instance, the United States has increased daily broadcasts to North Vietnam from five to 18 hours since the Easter offensive began. The separate fact remains that nothing Mr. Clark saw or reported about North Vietnam indicates to us that a collapse in Hanoi is near.

In the Shriver and Clark episodes, a range of important issues has been partially exposed. We would hope, however, that in the excitement and confusion of the campaign, the central issue of the war is not obscured. The central issue is not whether Richard Nixon played his diplomatic cards right in 1969 or whether Sargent Shriver accurately recollects his own role at that time or whether Ramsey Clark conducted himself properly last week in Hanoi. The central issue is whether the United States still ought to be fighting in Indochina or whether any legitimate purpose of American involvement there has not long since been adequately served.

Our own judgment has been that the risks and costs of continuing the American part in the war are far greater than any conceivable gains. This is a judgment which, we believe, Mr. Nixon could well have made in 1969. He could have told the American people that the United States had done all it could reasonably be expected to do for Saigon, that there were limits to what the U.S. could hope to achieve by staying on, and that a congenial result could not be guaranteed in any case. It may yet come to that in 1972 as Richard Nixon strives to fulfill his earlier campaign pledge to end the war, and if he does, Americans will be entitled to ask why the President had to wait almost four more years and expend 20,000 more American lives for an outcome that was within his reach in 1969.

THE WASHINGTON POST 16 AUGUST 1972

Peace Bargaining: No Campaign Letup

By MURRAY MARDER

Washington Post Staff Writer.

Presidential envoy Henry A. Kissinger's mission to South Vietnam indicates that triangular Washington-Saigon-Hanoi peace bargaining is likely to re-echo through the American presidential campaign.

There are some remarkable similarities between the pattern emerging now and what happened in the final months of the 1968 election campaign in the United States. Recognizing this, the Nixon administration is counting on avoiding the pitfalls that resulted in a negotiating disaster for the Johnson administration four years ago.

In 1968, the South Vietnamese government of President Nguyen Van Thieu outmaneuvered the Johnson administration by refusing to show up in Paris for what it feared would be peace terms galling North Vietnam and the United States would force it to accept.

Saigon dragged its feet until the Nixon administration took office.

Former President Lyndon B. Johnson related in his memoirs his conviction that the Saigon government had been "promised they would get a better deal from a Nixon administration" than from

News Analysis

a Democratic administration headed by presidential candidate Hubert H. Humphrey. Mr. Johnson said he had "no reason to think that Republican candidate Nixon was himself involved in this maneuvering, but a few individuals active in his campaign were."

Saigon's refusal to join the Paris talks, and the resulting negotiating stalemate, said Mr. Johnson, "was a grave disappointment." Some political analysts thought it may have cost the Democrats the election.

In this political campaign year, it remains the vital objective of the South Vietnamese government of President Thieu to prevent once again what it regards as premature, total U.S. disengagement from the war.

South Vietnam, in the intervening four years, has been strengthened considerably by equipment, training and other American resources. But its government remains highly dependent on American air power, advisers, and most especially, money and material support, after a half-million U.S. troops have withdrawn.

The Indochina policy of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, with its pledge to take the United States out of the war within 90 days, is regarded as a supreme threat in Saigon. As a result, the Saigon government seeks, in effect, to duplicate what it accomplished in 1968: to get past the November

election in the United States without jeopardy.

The Thieu government's vital objectives, therefore, are twofold: to avoid negotiating compromises between now and November that would jeopardize its own war objectives; to try to avert what it regards as any critical reduction in the use of American power, in the belief that after November the domestic political pressures on the Nixon administration over the war will subside.

President Thieu virtually said as much in a speech on Aug. 1. He called for continuing "relentless bombing" of North Vietnam for "six or seven months" more to produce "the total destruction of their economic and war potentials." Thieu also said that a separate cease-fire between Americans and North Vietnamese would hold "great danger for South Vietnam."

In addition, Thieu warned about what he called the unacceptable risk of a "leopard skin" cease-fire in South Vietnam.

This means a cease-fire in place, which would result in a pockmarked maze of areas in the hands of opposing forces.

Thieu's comments have been construed by diplomats as broad hints about his apprehensions over proposals being exchanged in the secret talks in Paris between presidential security adviser Kissinger and North Vietnamese Politburo member Le Due Tho.

The last public U.S. position for American disengagement from the war was President Nixon's May 8 proposal to separate military issues from political factors.

Under the May 8 proposal, the United States offered to withdraw all remaining American troops "within four months" after an "internationally supervised cease-fire has begun" and "once prisoners of war are released."

That was rejected by North Vietnam with insistence that military and political questions cannot be separated. In the current round of negotiations between Kissinger and Tho, which began July 19 in Paris, the bargaining has

been reported authoritatively to have swung back to political matters. This means, essentially, who is to control South Vietnam after U.S. troops leave, which is what the war is about.

Although U.S. officials refuse to discuss any details of these negotiations, any serious exploration of even the May 8 offer was bound to involve political questions as well as military disengagement.

The implementation of a cease-fire is itself a political matter, with critical decisions on how a cease-fire is to be controlled, and which political authority shall exercise power — as Thieu's alarm about a "leopard-skin" cease-fire indicated.

In addition, there is still on the bargaining table an elder U.S. political offer to settle control of South Vietnam through an election, with President Thieu to resign one month before the election. North Vietnam spurned that offer on grounds it was a "farce," because the Thieu government structure would remain. In place, giving the Saigon regime domination of the election process.

Nothing in the Vietnam mix is necessarily rejected for all time; however, A U.S. offer to bargain over the time and terms of Thieu's resignation—which alarmed Thieu—may appear in a new formulation that could arouse Hanoi's interest, or at least provide it with ammunition to play on Saigon's suspicions of U.S. "flexibility."

For there is a double edge to the negotiating process in this election campaign period, as there was in 1968. The United States is obliged to obtain not only North Vietnamese agreement to a negotiating formula, but, at least the acquiescence—however strained — of the Saigon government if Washington in fact fulfills President Nixon's repeatedly expressed pledge that he will not "impose" a war settlement on South Vietnam.

Administration critics protest that this gives Saigon a veto over U.S. disengagement from the war. Privately, Nixon administration strategists long have

tended, nevertheless, that in an ultimate collision of Washington-Saigon vital interests, U.S. interests will prevail.

But there is one major advantage that the Nixon administration holds in 1972, compared to the Johnson administration in 1968, as noted earlier: for Saigon there is no attraction in trying to "wait out" the Nixon administration, because dovish McGovern is the alternative.

This is the important missing factor that neither side has chosen to mention in the current political dispute about whether President Nixon in early 1969 "blew" an opportunity to disengage the United States from the war.

Secretary of State William P. Rogers has scuffed at that claim by Democratic vice presidential nominee Sargent Shriver, supported by W. Averell Harriman and Cyrus R. Vance, the Johnson administrations envoys in Paris. Harriman has acknowledged, said Rogers, that in October-November there was evidence that North Vietnam was "disengaging" part of its forces from South Vietnam, which offered the incoming Nixon administration opportunity to launch its disengagement from the war. This only shows, Rogers charged on Monday, that "it was President Johnson who missed the best not President Nixon."

Past President Johnson earlier in 1968 chose to avoid subtle disengagement such as Harriman and Vance advocated, and he tied his policy to the conviction that he could bring South Vietnam along with it. One result was frustration for the Johnson administration; another was new assurances given by the Nixon administration that it would honor all commitments. President Thieu is certain to seek constant satisfaction of that as negotiations once again weave through the critical months of an American election campaign.

Kissinger visit swings
spotlight toward Thieu

By Courtney R. Sheldon
Staff correspondent of
The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

President Thieu stands today, as he has for
the four years of the Nixon administration, at
the storm center of the Vietnam peace
debate.

In the fury of the presidential campaign,
the dispute rages deceptively around whether
Mr. Nixon ignored "peace signals" from
Hanoi in 1969.

But, in substance, the argument is over the
wisdom of negotiating seriously with the
North Vietnamese if it means the early
demise of the Thieu government, or one
similarly oriented.

President Nixon's sudden dispatching of
presidential adviser Henry A. Kissinger to
South Vietnam confirms this.

Though the administration is tight-lipped,
the No. 1 item for discussion may be the
future of Mr. Thieu.

Mr. Kissinger is fresh from secret confer-
ences with Hanoi negotiators in Paris. He
carries with him to Saigon either a softening
of the Communist position or a recommenda-
tion that the U.S. and South Vietnam modify
theirs - or, and this seems most likely, both.

The fluidity of present negotiations with
Hanoi are still so great, however, that
ministration spokesmen caution against
culation that there has been a significant
eakthrough in the Paris bargaining.

Mr. Nixon upholds the Thieu government.
Senator George McGovern and Sargent
Shriver do not.

Thorough interrogation

When Mr. Nixon took over the White House
from Lyndon B. Johnson in 1969, Mr. Kiss-
inger thoroughly interrogated the State De-
partment, Pentagon, and Central In-
telligence Agency for their best judgment of
Hanoi's intentions.

In a National Security Memorandum in
early 1969, which surfaced in April of this
year, it was stated:

"There is general U.S. Government agree-
ment that Hanoi is in Paris for a variety of
motives but not primarily out of weakness;
that Hanoi is charting a course independent
of Moscow, which favors negotiations, and of
Peking, which opposes them; and that our
knowledge of possible political factions
among North Vietnamese leaders is ex-
tremely imprecise."

It also said that among the "major points of
consensus" was that:

"A combination of military pressures and
political tactics explains recent enemy with-
drawals and lower levels of activity."

It is this judgment which is at issue in the
current crossfire between Secretary of State
"William P. Rogers and Sargent Shriver,
posed up by W. Averell Harriman and Cyrus
Jance, who represented the U.S. at the
Paris talks during the Johnson adminis-
tration.

Mr. Shriver, then the U.S. Ambassador to
France, says that the enemy's pullbacks in
1968 were Hanoi's way of signaling the U.S.
that they would buy a compromise settle-
ment.

Fraud suspected

Mr. Rogers denies anything at all was done
or said by Hanoi which constituted a peace
signal.

What he is really saying is that the
proffered peace that the Democratic doves
might be willing to have accepted, was, from
his standpoint, a fraud.

If accepted, he and Mr. Nixon have many
times contended, South Vietnam would have
been taken over completely and U.S. pledges
of commitments henceforth would be consid-
ered worthies by the world.

Against this, the Democrat doves argue
that Mr. Nixon always responds to Hanoi's
signals with military toughness and more
bombing. Further, it is said that the U.S. has
done more than its share to save South
Vietnam, and President Thieu is a dictator
who does not represent the dominant thinking
of a South Vietnam weary of having its own
people killed.

As might be expected in a political cam-
paign, there are peripheral issues rippling
out from the central debate over peace
signals.

Mr. Rogers is saying that if there were
peace feelers of the consequence Mr. Shriver
now describes, why didn't the Johnson ad-
ministration do something about them?

The record of that period shows that the
Paris negotiations were bogged down on such
elementary questions as the shape of the
table. It was a period when a lame-duck
administration had no power in Washington
to commit the incoming Nixon adminis-
tration.

The hassle over whether Mr. Shriver
himself warned the State Department that it
should pursue the "peace signals", is only a
side issue.

Mr. Rogers says he has no such com-
munications form Mr. Shriver. Mr. Shriver
retorts that his views were incorporated in
memorandums from the Paris negotiators.

The spotlight focuses more and more on
Mr. Thieu, and the appearance grows that the
U.S. will find ways to ease him out of the
picture quicker.

Mr. Thieu moves, meanwhile, to restrict
the opposition press in Saigon under emer-
gency powers.

The New York Times reports that there is
torture and mutilation of suspected Commu-
nist sympathizers in the South. And Mr.
Thieu calls for relentless bombing of the
North, for years if necessary.

THE NEW YORK TIMES 16 AUGUST 1972

Kissinger's Diplomacy

By JAMES RESTON

WASHINGTON, Aug. 15—Henry Kissinger's trips to Paris are good news and good politics, since they suggest that there is some movement toward peace, but the fact is that even Kissinger does not expect any real change in the Paris talks until late in the election campaign.

It is assumed by top officials here that Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, despite their serious losses on the battlefield since May, are determined to mount one more offensive before November.

Their supplies from the North have been reduced by the American mining of Haiphong harbor and the relentless pounding of U.S. air power, but they have not been stopped, and there is no evidence that the Hanoi negotiators are responding to Kissinger's argument that Mr. Nixon's peace terms are more generous now than they are likely to be if he wins the election.

Nevertheless, the Administration intends to keep the secret Paris talks going throughout the campaign, for the more active Kissinger is on the peace front, the more awkward it is for Senator McGovern to argue that Mr. Nixon is concerned mainly with waging war.

Kissinger's mission to Saigon has a dual purpose. It enables him to inform General Thieu of the tone and substance of the Paris talks and relieves him of the charge that the Administration talks to Hanoi but not to Saigon. Also, while Mr. Nixon has said he would not force the retirement of General Thieu, he does not want to give Thieu a veto over Washington's peace terms or allow Thieu to think that American airpower will be at his disposal for as long as he wishes to remain in office.

The Administration would obviously like to see a compromise settlement and a cease-fire in Vietnam before the election in November, but the President is said to be confident that he can win anyway even if Hanoi offers before the voting to release all prisoners of war under Senator McGovern's more generous peace terms.

What the President has not been able to see, however, is how he will be able to withdraw if both Saigon and Hanoi stick to their present policies, and the Communists go back to guerrilla warfare, which could go on indefinitely.

His dilemma is that the Saigon regime cannot be relied on to defend

itself without American air power, and yet is not likely to make any more concessions for peace as long as it thinks the American fighters and bombers will remain.

The Administration has been trying to persuade Hanoi, not only in Paris, but with some help from the Soviets, that it is trying to work out a lasting accommodation with Moscow, Peking and the other Communist capitals, and that North Vietnam can avoid the destruction of its industries and benefit by the reconstruction of its country if it makes peace.

Officials here say Kissinger has been instructed to inform the negotiators on the other side that Mr. Nixon's terms are flexible, and he is said to be urging them to propose modifications to the Nixon peace plan. But unless there has been a change in the last session at Paris, Hanoi has not budged from demands that are unacceptable to the President.

The Administration is said to have pointed to the progress made toward a reconciliation between Washington and Peking, and to have observed that no progress would have been possible if Peking had demanded that the United States get rid of Chiang Kalshek and take all its troops out of Taiwan as conditions for establishing more normal Sino-American relations. If China could move toward an accommodation one step at a time, why not Hanoi? But apparently this argument made no impression on the other side either.

So the stalemate continues and is likely to do so until it is clear to Hanoi that its next offensive has failed, and that it faces the possibility of a Nixon victory and the protracted bombardment of its country by a President who doesn't have to worry any longer about the political consequences of the war.

The hope here is that this prospect will look even more unpleasant to Hanoi than Mr. Nixon's terms of peace near the end of the election campaign, and that then the Kissinger's negotiations will finally make progress.

Meanwhile, the Administration is content to carry on the Kissinger talks and let Hanoi choose between bombing and compromise. Logically, officials here still keep saying, Hanoi will finally choose peace, or Thieu, if he cannot count indefinitely on American air support, will adjust to the realities, but logic has never been a surplus commodity in Vietnam, and it is likely to get even scarcer between now and November.

AUGUST 16, 1972
Clark Testifies On Hill

JOHN CHANCELLOR: Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark testified that he saw widespread damage to civilian installations in NVN, caused by American bombing.

Clark showed an anti-personnel bomb given to him in Hanoi. The Defense Department denied today using such weapons against targets other than military installations.

Clark was closely questioned by Senator Hiram Fong who spoke for the administration and here's how it went.

RAMSEY CLARK: I'm no military ordnance man but that is what I would call, as a guy who doesn't know any more than a former Marine corporal, a fragmentary bomb. When they hit they throw shrapnel all over the place. Now they have one purpose and that's to kill people. It was the Mayor of Hanoi that gave me that, and he said that that was dropped in a highly populated area of the City of Hanoi. It didn't go off.

If that's true then I know of no justification in law or morality for the use of that kind of weapon against civilian personnel.

SENATOR HIRAM FONG: Did you feel that after seeing the damage to the dike sluices and gates that they were deliberately bombed by our men?

CLARK: God knows, I don't want to think it was deliberate. But I don't know how all those bombs happen to hit on those dikes. I don't know how there could have been so much damage to the Lon sluice. Now, you can say, and it may be, that they had a bunch of SAM missiles, I don't know. But why would they have them there? What would be the point of that?

SENATOR FONG: Other material Did you see any storage of material inside the dikes?

CLARK: No. H.F.: I have here with me three pictures taken on July 24, July 29 in the Hanoi-Haiphong area, showing oil drums and other things stored within the dikes. Did you see anything like that in your trip?

CLARK: I can say that I did not see a gun mounted on a dike at any time; I did not see a SAM missile on a dike at any time. They may have removed them when they saw me coming.

than have them select, the Department of Defense select three pictures that they want to show us, I would like them to show us any pictures that they took of the Than Hoa provincial hospital area, the day before, the day of and the day after the bombing to see what's in those pictures. That would be pretty interesting, wouldn't it?

I don't know, I don't know why if we say we're withdrawing, we're increasing the bombing. I don't know why we do that. Is it to punish? What's the purpose? If we're getting out, why don't we get out?

How do you possibly justify increasing the bombing. I think it's very difficult to get the truth in the matter. I think we can barely see it and I think the distortions are enormous. And I would urge every American who cares about his children and the children of this world to go over there and see for himself. Because the truth is the most powerful problem solver that the Lord has given man on earth.

ROBERT GORALSKI: The photos shown to Ramsey Clark were given to Senator Fong by the Defense Department. More were distributed later today here at the Pentagon.

Senator Kennedy said during the hearing that his committee had requested but hadn't been able to get any reconnaissance photos of the bombed areas of NVN. These pictures show military supplies in targets in or near the dikes.

This was taken July 22nd about 30 miles south of Haiphong. Two artillery pieces used as coastal defense guns were filmed on a dike. This was taken in the same area on the same day with the camera recording Pentagon says was a string of anti-aircraft positions along the coastal dike.

Four reconnaissance planes took pictures on July 24th of what are claimed to be petroleum storage tanks stacked against a dike of a Red River northeast of Haiphong.

These are more petroleum drums stacked next to a sluice gate and dike west of Haiphong, also on July 24th.

This reconnaissance photo shows long rows of unspecified supplies strung along a dike of a Red River southeast of Hanoi. The picture was taken on July 29th.

The Pentagon is clearly concerned about what Ramsey Clark is saying about the bombing and the propaganda value that Hanoi might be getting out of it.

The Pentagon says that fewer
than 20 dikes, small ones at that,
were bombed, and then only because
they were located near military
targets.

Robert Goralski, NBC News, at
the Pentagon.

LOS ANGELES TIMES 17 AUGUST 1972 (23)

Ramsey Clark and the Bombing

If the national survival of the United States were
at stake in the current war, then it would be scran-
dalous for former Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark even to
visit Hanoi, and much more scandalous to be quot-
ed there in the press and on the radio. But then if
this country's survival were at stake in the war,
you can assume that Clark, a man of patriotism
and honor, would not have considered visiting the
enemy capital.

As columnist Max Lerner points out on the oppo-
site page today, it is a particular manifestation of
this peculiar war that selected Americans, journa-
lists, politicians and others, have been visiting
North Vietnam even while American pilots are
risking—and losing—their lives to bombard that
country from the air. For this war is not seen, in
this country, as a war for national survival. It is
not a war whose purpose the whole nation en-
dorses. The enemy capital of Hanoi in 1972 does
not have the connotations of the enemy capital of
Berlin in 1942. Rather this war has divided the na-
tion as no war before, and many Americans believe
the enemy is not the North Vietnamese but the war
itself. Hence there is an anachronistic ring to
charges by another former attorney general, John
Mitchell, and other Republicans, that Clark has
made himself a tool of the Communists. The Amer-
ican public will not be convinced any longer that
the war is reducible to the simple issue of commu-
nism and anticommunism.

It seems to us, however, that Clark was indis-

creet in allowing himself to be quoted by Hanoi
press and radio, if only because he thereby opened
himself to the allegations now being made. More
important than that indiscretion was the apparent
sloppiness with which he initially presented some
of his findings about the effects of American bomb-
ing, and reported some of his conversations with
North Vietnamese officials. He said himself he was
misquoted—or misspoke himself—on an aspect of
the prisoner issue. Accurate information about the
effects of the bombing of North Vietnam is too
hard to obtain from either American or North
Vietnamese sources for a man as responsible as
Clark to muddy his own findings through careless-
ness.

It is clear enough, though, from the steady re-
porting of columnist Joseph Kraft, from Clark's
own fuller testimony to a senate subcommittee yes-
terday and from other sources, including the Ad-
ministration, that some civilians and civilian tar-
gets have been hit. It is clear enough also that the
Administration has issued orders to take pains to
avoid civilian targets.

It is clear enough, that is, that the American
government wishes to avoid bombing civilians and
civilian targets but cannot altogether do so be-
cause of the enormous scale of the current bomb-
ing campaign against North Vietnam. The central
issue here is not Ramsey Clark but the vast, un-
precedented and terrible bombing of North Viet-
nam by the United States.

WASHINGTON POST - 17 AUGUST 1972 P 13

Warnke Attacks
Two Nixon Aides

By WILLIAM CHAPMAN
Washington Post Staff Writer

260

An adviser to Sen. George McGovern accused Secretary of State William P. Rogers and Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird of improperly making "blatantly partisan" statements in the controversy over Vietnam and other foreign policy issues.

Paul C. Warnke, a former assistant secretary of defense under President Johnson, said the two men should either cease their "political attacks" or resign.

Warnke asserted that their criticisms of McGovern violate a "tradition" in which Secretaries of State and Defense avoid partisanship in a political campaign.

Now an adviser on national security matters for McGovern, Warnke served in the Pentagon under former Secretary Robert S. McNamara, who in 1964 and 1967 took on a partisan role in rebutting statements of leading Republicans who sought the presidency.

However, Warnke maintained yesterday that, "Not in recent memory has any President called upon the nation's Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense to perform such distasteful and inappropriate roles."

He said in a news conference that he was referring to Laird's "criticism of the McGovern defense program" before the Republican National Convention's Resolutions Committee Tuesday and to Rogers' denunciation of Senator Shriver, McGovern's vice presidential running mate.

Laird, without mentioning McGovern, had urged the Republicans to "reject policies of planned weakness . . . of beginning and of abandonment of our nation's role in helping to maintain peace."

Rogers last week denounced as "political fantasy" Shriver's claim that President Nixon peace settlement in Vietnam had a chance to negotiate a in 1969 but "blew it."

Warnke said, "These political attacks with their innuendo, distortions, and inflammatory rhetoric are inconsistent with the responsibilities of their high offices."

It is frequently said in campaign years that the two secretaries ought to avoid partisan politics because they deal constantly with classified information involving relationships with foreign governments.

However, in most administrations the occupants of those

offices also reserve the right to speak on issues affecting their departments.

In 1964, McNamara was a major defender of the Johnson and Kennedy administration defense policies against the Republican presidential nominee, Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz).

In rebutting one Goldwater charge that he planned to reduce nuclear weapons delivery capability by 90 per cent, McNamara said the charge was "misleading," "politically irresponsible" and "damaging to our national security."

McNamara also denounced a Goldwater claim then that U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles were undependable.

In 1967, McNamara took on George Romney who, while running for the Republican presidential nomination, accused administration generals and diplomats of "brainwashing" him during a tour of Vietnam. McNamara said of that statement, "I don't think Governor Romney can recognize the truth when he sees it or hears it."

Warnke served under McNamara from 1966 to 1968 and left the Pentagon in early 1969. He is co-chairman of the McGovern campaign's panel on national security.

Warnke said yesterday he agreed with Shriver's charge that the Nixon administration early in 1969 missed a chance to negotiate a peace settlement with the North Vietnamese.

He referred to a "signal" from the North Vietnamese that they were willing to reach a settlement. It consisted of the withdrawal of most North Vietnamese troops from the two northern provinces of South Vietnam, he said.

Asked what he himself had done about the "signal," Warnke said, "I did nothing about it. That was not my responsibility." He was assistant secretary for international security affairs at the time. The peace efforts were then the jurisdiction of American negotiators in Paris, Averell Harriman and Cyrus Vance, he added.

Warnke has been designated by McGovern to receive private briefings on international affairs by the Nixon administration. He said McGovern will be too busy on the campaign to take part in the briefings personally. No date for the briefings has been set.

WASHINGTON POST

17 AUG 1972 Pg1

Hanoi Spurs
McGovern's
POW Plea

By William Greider

Washington Post Staff Writer

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. Aug. 18 — Sen. George McGovern sent a personal emissary to ask the North Vietnamese to release American prisoners of war before the November election, but Hanoi turned down him down.

McGovern's communication was through Pierre Salinger, press secretary to the late President John F. Kennedy and a McGovern campaign aide. Salinger said today that he met with North Vietnamese officials in Paris twice in the last month, asking about the possibility of an early release of prisoners before the war is over.

Salinger said he also advised the North Vietnamese that McGovern wants a quick-settlement to the war, even if that means a Nixon peace agreement which would wipe out the war in Vietnam as a political issue in the fall campaign.

McGovern, campaigning today in Illinois, acknowledged the efforts and said:

"Anything I can possibly do to secure the release of those prisoners, I'm going to do."

His campaign political director, Frank Mankiewicz said the prisoner return, if successfully engineered, "might have taken the issue out of the campaign—defused it."

Mankiewicz added: "It was worth asking. I don't know how much hope there ever was."

These developments came to light today in a somewhat tangled manner in which McGovern at first seemed to deny any connection with Salinger's conversations in Paris then later in the day announced that he had requested the inquiry.

It began with a United Press International dispatch from Paris which quoted unidentified "friends of the McGovern campaign."

The story said Salinger had called on the North Vietnamese delegation to urge a peace settlement with the Nixon administration and to warn them not to delay until after the election.

When reporters confronted McGovern in the lobby of the St. Nicholas Hotel here with questions about that report, McGovern said he gave no such instructions to Salinger.

"I know nothing of any such report," McGovern said. "There's no truth in it at all."

The Democratic presidential candidate recalled that Salinger told him he was traveling to Paris after the Democratic National Convention and said, "He might make some inquiries about the status of negotiations and I told him I would be interested in talking to him when he returned." But McGovern said there had been "no instructions whatsoever."

A few hours later, after a phone conversation with Salinger who was back in New York, McGovern issued this statement: "about the trip to Paris:

"At my request he met with members of the North Vietnamese delegation in Paris. The only purpose of the discussion was to determine if any change had occurred which would permit the return of the prisoners prior to the end of hostility."

"Mr. Salinger found no change in the publicly stated position of Hanoi. Mr. Salinger also made clear that I have repeatedly stated my conviction that the end of the war should not be delayed by a single day because of the American election campaign."

Confronted later again by reporters, McGovern insisted there was no inconsistency in his two public statements.

As Salinger reconstructed the events, McGovern called

him the day after the Democratic convention and 'asked me if I would make contact with the North Vietnamese delegation on one point only — if there was any chance of releasing prisoners and if there was any change in their position on the prisoners and anything that would induce them to change.'

He met with two members of the delegation staff in Paris on July 18 and put the question to them. "They told me they would get answers for them," he said. That was the day before White House foreign policy adviser Henry Kissinger met in Paris with Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam, a meeting which Salinger was told about.

Salinger said that in inquiring about the prisoners he also stated to the Vietnamese "what has been Sen. McGovern's public position—that I desire to end the war while greater than his desire to see the war remain as a political issue and therefore, if they felt they could make peace, they should not delay."

Two and a half weeks later, the delegation staff called him and they met again on Aug. 9.

They told me the word from Hanoi was that there was no change on the POW's and the prisoners will not be released until hostilities are ended," Salinger said.

COLLINGWOOD: A political war has broken out over the peace talks and Pierre SALINGER's contacts with NVNese negotiators in George McGOVERN's behalf. Republicans here in Miami Beach and at the White House itself launched a co-ordinated barrage today at the McGOVERN camp, and McGOVERN fired back.

More from Robert Pierpoint.

ROBERT PIERPOINT: "This could undermine the President's efforts to achieve a negotiated settlement of the war," charged White House Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler.

Reporters had originally brought up the subject today of SALINGER's talks with the communists in Paris, but ZIEGLER clearly welcomed it. In fact, there had been a private discussion here earlier of presidential aides on just how hard ZIEGLER should hit the McGOVERN camp if the subject came up, and the decision was to hit hard.

Later SALINGER was approached at McGOVERN's headquarters for his reaction to ZIEGLER's charge.

PIERRE SALINGER: Well, you know, once had Mr. ZIEGLER's job. And the only conclusion I can make from the remarks he made today -- it must be a slow news day at the White House.

The fact is that this administration knows, and it's known for some time, how it can accomplish peace in VN. And nothing I could say or nothing I could do would prevent that peace from coming about if the administration was willing to take those steps which are necessary to bring about peace. It's that simple.

PIERPOINT: ZIEGLER was asked just how SALINGER's Paris talks could undermine the NIXON administration's peace efforts. "We have," he said, "a situation where the opposition candidate declined to be briefed by the White House. And now his representative in Paris runs the risk of saying something that could jeopardize the peace talks."

Asked if he was expressing the President's view or his own, ZIEGLER said he had not specifically discussed his charges with President

NIXON, who is now in his third day away at Camp David.

Meantime Republicans in Miami Beach were echoing ZIEGLER's sentiments.

SENATOR JOHN TOWER: This latest exercise clearly demonstrates the ineptitude and confusion that is characteristic of Mr. McGOVERN's management of his affairs. As long as it is characteristic of the management of his affairs, there is perhaps no harm done. But it certainly cannot be characteristic of the management of the affairs of the United States of America.

But the fact is that his meddlesome interference could well have the effect of delaying the release of prisoners of war and prolonging the war.

SENATOR GORDON ALLOTT: Like all Americans of all political persuasions, I'm shocked by George McGOVERN's continuing interference with this nation's delicate peace negotiations. His meddling is reckless; it is detrimental to the efforts to end the war; and it is transparently political.

SENATOR GEORGE McGOVERN: The President now has his chief foreign policy specialist on a highly publicized global junket on the eve of the Republican National Convention. And that is what is interfering with quiet, serious, professional negotiating far more than anyone else possibly could.

Mr. NIXON has manipulated Mr. KISSINGER and he has manipulated American public opinion to appear to be negotiating seriously when actually he has been stalling to prop up General THIEU's government in Saigon.

PLANTE: McGOVERN said SALINGER's reminder to the NVNese that McGOVERN wants the war ended was made purely on SALINGER's own initiative. The candidate says he has no further plans for contact with negotiators in Paris.

Bill PLANTE, CBS News, West Racine, Wisconsin.

CRONKITE: The President's campaign manager, Clark MacGREGOR, said today his office is studying the LOGAN Act in connection with the SALINGER talks. This act forbids private citizens from engaging in diplomacy.

ABC NEWS

AUGUST 17, 1972

## White House Reacts to Salinger Talks

SMITH: Those contacts between communist negotiators in Paris and McGOVERN emissary Pierre SALINGER came under White House fire today.

ABC White House correspondent Tom JARRIEL reports.

TOM JARRIEL: President NIXON wasted no time in showing Senator McGOVERN how volatile it is for a presidential challenger to mix domestic politics with international negotiations. The President unleashed his Press Secretary to tell reporters McGOVERN's unofficial contacts with the NVNese in Paris could jeopardize the administration's efforts to achieve a negotiated peace.

Presidential News Secretary Ronald ZIEGLER could not specify any harm actually done, but implied it was possible. ZIEGLER claims that since Senator McGOVERN has declined secret White House information on the current status of the peace negotiations, McGOVERN or some of his representatives may, through ignorance, endanger the U. S. peace efforts.

McGOVERN mousetrapped himself into vulnerability on the issue by refusing to personally attend the foreign intelligence briefings customarily given to presidential candidates. The President's campaign director, Clark MacGREGOR, says he's checking to see if the Democratic nominee or his people violated the LOGAN Act, which prohibits private citizens from negotiating with a hostile foreign government.

Tom JARRIEL, ABC News, at the White House.

## McGovern Responds to Criticism

BILL MATNEY: This is Bill Matney with the McGOVERN campaign.

George McGOVERN learned of the White House blast while shaking hands in Racine, Wisconsin. He did not react immediately, but asked a staff adviser to draft a

Then he called a news conference in a nearby church to explain why he turned down the White House offer of personal briefings.

SENATOR McGOVERN: I don't want to restrict my own right to speak out on the VN issue. Many of the points of view that I have advanced over the last nine years are contrary to what one hears at White House briefings. I've been in on some of those White House briefings as a member of the United States Senate, and I found them more misleading than helpful in understanding the facts.

So I don't want to restrict my own freedom to speak out on the VN issue.

MATNEY: McGOVERN also used the occasion to counterattack the NIXON administration by suggesting that the KISSINGER trip to Saigon was a publicity stunt.

SENATOR McGOVERN: The President now has his chief foreign policy specialist on a highly publicized global junket on the eve of the Republican National Convention. And that is what is interfering with quiet, serious, professional negotiating far more than anyone else possibly could.

MATNEY: George McGOVERN still considers the VN war to be the major political issue with which to attack NIXON administration policies. And it appears clear now also that he will press that attack while, at the same time, keeping a lot of distance between himself and Mr. NIXON's foreign policy adviser.

Bill MATNEY, ABC News, with the McGOVERN campaign.