Gallup Poll

BALTIMORE SUN 18 AUGUST 1972 P-7

GOP peace image grows

Princeton, N.J.,—On the key issues of peace and prosperity—the Republican party's central campaign theme this year—the GOP has registered major gains with the nation's voters compared to one year ago.

In the latest survey, voters by the ratio of 37 to 26 per cent say the Republican party is more likely than the Democratic party to keep the United States out of another world war. One fourth of those interviewed see no difference between the two parties in this respect, while 12 per cent do

not express an opinion.

The Republican party has made equally dramatic gains over last year in terms of the party perceived as better able to keep the country prosperous.

Today's findings compare closely with those recorded in August of the last presidential election year of 1968.

The GOP at that time had a 41 to 23 per cent lead on the peace issue and was tied with the Democratic party, 36 to 36 per cent, on the issue of prosperity.

An 'October measurement

showed the Democrats had made gains on both issues. In regard to the issue of peace, the Republicans led 37 to 24 per cent, while the Democrats had gained a marginal 37 to 34 per cent lead over the GOP on prosperity.

Which political party do you think would be more likely to keep the United States out of World War III—the Republican party or the Democratic party?

Here are the latest results, those recorded one year ago, and the findings in August, 1968:

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th colspan="2">Rep. Dem.</th><th colspan="2">No No Diff. Opin.</th></tr><tr><th></th><th>%</th><th>%</th><th>%</th><th>%</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>LATEST</td><td>37</td><td>26</td><td>25</td><td>12</td></tr><tr><td>Aug., 1971</td><td>28</td><td>28</td><td>32</td><td>12</td></tr><tr><td>Aug., 1968</td><td>41</td><td>23</td><td>19</td><td>17</td></tr></tbody></table>

The following question, asked since 1952, was next put to respondents:

Looking ahead for the next few years, which political party—the Republican or the Democratic—do you think will do the better job of keeping the country prosperous?

Here are the latest results, those recorded a year ago, and the findings in August, 1968:

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th colspan="2">Rep. Dem.</th><th colspan="2">No No Diff. Opin.</th></tr><tr><th></th><th>%</th><th>%</th><th>%</th><th>%</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>LATEST</td><td>35</td><td>38</td><td>16</td><td>11</td></tr><tr><td>Aug., 1971</td><td>23</td><td>46</td><td>21</td><td>10</td></tr><tr><td>Aug., 1968</td><td>36</td><td>36</td><td>15</td><td>13</td></tr></tbody></table>

BALTIMORE SUN - 18 AUGUST 1972

Reflections on the Salinger Mission

In years past the Logan Act was referred to every now and then as a prohibition against private negotiations with a foreign government. In 1799 Logan, a Philadelphia Quaker, sought to avert war between the United States and France by undertaking private negotiations with the French government. Congress thereafter undertook, on its part, to lay down the rule that in negotiations with foreign powers the President was the only authorized, legal representative of this nation. The intent of the Logan Act has been infringed upon many times since, but seldom less skillfully and to such little purpose as now has been accomplished by Senator McGovern, the Democratic nominee for president.

After some confusion and devious language, Mr. McGovern said on Wednesday that Pierre Salinger, a White House press secretary during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, had met with representatives of North Vietnam in Paris. "At my request," said Mr. McGovern, "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 hostilities. 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."

In a response to news reporters' questions, Mr. McGovern said he was not negotiating with the North Vietnamese. But the Logan Act aside, and whatever term may be applied to the Salinger assignment, the episode suggests an amateurish approach to a most serious matter. Mr. McGovern, along with most Americans, would like to see peace in Vietnam negotiated as soon as possible. But he cannot negotiate with North Vietnam nor should he attempt to do so.

Mr. McGovern, further, has a responsibility to make use of the foreign policy briefings offered to him by the Nixon administration. The purpose of such briefings is not to tie Mr. McGovern's hands as a presidential candidate, as he seems to suspect, but to give him infor-

mation which should be of help to him as a candidate now and as a president if he should be elected. Briefings of this sort are designed to be of benefit to the American public, which is something Mr. McGovern should keep in mind.

The Democratic nominee, in short, has been setting a poor example with respect to foreign policy, injecting partisan politics in areas where it should be minimized. But so, it must be added, has the Nixon administration. Mr. Rogers, the Secretary of State, and Mr. Laird, the Secretary of Defense, have trampled over the custom of keeping these two offices out of election-year politics. Whereas they should feel an obligation to maintain a nonpartisan stance in the conduct of defense and foreign policy, they have been leading the administration attack on Mr. McGovern. The point is not that Mr. McGovern should not be attacked, but that other administration figures in political posts should do it. Like the Logan Act, the custom of nonpartisan defense and foreign policy is founded on respect for American traditions and institutions and is designed to be of ultimate service to the public.

THE WASHINGTON POST 19 AUGUST 1972 P4

Mansfield Asks U.S. Get Out of Cambodia

Reuter

Senate Democratic Leader Mike Mansfield called yesterday for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Cambodia and suggested that the Nixon administration enlist China's help in returning Prince Norodom Sihanouk to head an interim government in Cambodia until the fighting there is over.

Mansfield said in a Senate speech that the Cambodian people would be a lot better off if Sihanouk, living in exile in Peking following a coup in Cambodia, were returned to Phnom Penh.

Declaring that fighting in Cambodia has taken a heavy toll of American lives and money, the senator called on the Nixon administration to immediately end U.S. military involvement in the "Cambodian theater" of the Indochina war.

"As for the Cambodian people the matter is for them to decide, but it would seem to me they would be a lot better off if Prince Sihanouk were to be returned to Phnom Penh to head an interim government at least until such time as the war ends in a peaceful settlement," he said.

"The Peking government, with whom the President and

his foreign policy adviser, Dr. Henry Kissinger, have established such excellent working relations, might well be pre-vailed upon to assist in the diplomacy of this endeavor," he added.

Mansfield has been highly critical of U.S. policies in Indochina and has made a series of attempts to nave Congress pass an antiwar amendment.

There has been no indication the administration would work for the return of Sihanouk to the Cambodian capital.

The senator said the U.S. incursion into Cambodia had brought "not peace, but another costly extension of our involvement in Southeast Asia

and one more expensive dependent government."

"Regrettably, the Cambodian situation is one in which we permitted our involvement again as we did in Vietnam, as we did in Laos—to rise from the wetting of a toe up to the level of our necks," he said.

The United States, Mansfield said, played a major part through military aid programs, air support and bombing in converting "a palatable, productive and certainly peaceful existence for ordinary Cambodians into a life of aimless refugees among the spreading ruins of their towns and villages"

NEW YORK TIMES

20 August 1972 (21)

Vietnam Review

Henry Kissinger's consultations in Saigon and the return to Hanoi of North Vietnam's chief Paris negotiator, Le Duc Tho, suggest that a moment of truth is approaching in the long quest for peace in Indochina. After three secret Kissinger-Tho meetings in six weeks, both sides are reviewing the bidding in preparation for the final round of settlement talks before the American election.

Both Washington and Hanoi are under maximum pressure to reach some agreement by October. President Nixon would welcome a cease-fire before American voters go to the polls. Hanoi knows that, if he stays in the White House, American peace terms and military action are more likely to stiffen than ease after Election Day. Meanwhile, the two sides are compelled to continue talking—both to avoid missing the opportunity October may bring and to be able to blame the other if the outcome is failure. But the fact of talks is less important than whether Washington and Hanoi are talking to the point.

The point is political—Vietnamese politics, not American. President Nixon's May 8 proposals for a military settlement—withdrawal of all American troops in return for release of prisoners of war and an all-Indochina cease-fire—have been rejected by the Communists. They insist that an agreement without a "political element" is unacceptable. While that insistence is not likely to change, it is also wholly improbable that the complex political solution proposed by Hanoi could be negotiated in the few weeks before November, even if Washington were prepared to go that route. Unless a simpler first step can be devised, agreement in October already is out the window.

In the past the Communists have insisted that a cease-fire and release of prisoners must wait until a three-party coalition government is formed, made up of elements of the Saigon Government, the Vietcong and neutralist groups. They now say they would negotiate the compo-

sition of such a coalition with a new Saigon Government rather than the United States, and that Washington's political responsibility could end once President Thieu resigned and was replaced by a regime more congenial to Hanoi.

It is unclear, however, whether this new two-stage proposal means that American prisoners of war would be released and a cease-fire declared prior to negotiation of a coalition government. Nor have the Communists, up to the last Kissinger-Tho meeting at least, been willing to indicate whom in Saigon they would consider acceptable as negotiating partners.

If these questions could be answered reasonably, a formula for an October agreement is conceivable. At a minimum, the political element would have to comprise a broadening of the Saigon Government, the opening of talks with the Vietcong and third groups on a coalition and a pledge by President Thieu to resign when agreement is reached, rather than five months later. The military element then could be an immediate cease-fire, which would halt the bombing of North Vietnam, and the release of American prisoners in parallel with the withdrawal of all remaining American troops.

With flexibility in Hanoi and Saigon, such a formula to transfer the struggle in Vietnam from the battlefield to the conference table by November is clearly feasible. Moscow and Peking, which have made their peace with President Nixon, undoubtedly favor it. But Hanoi remains a cipher. And in Saigon, President Thieu has called publicly for the bombing to go on—a position fortified perhaps by President Nixon's February pledge that "any future proposals we make will be joint proposals of the Government of South Vietnam and the Government of the United States."

As long as that implied veto is left in President Thieu's hands, chances for a negotiated settlement either in October or later will remain small. Another discouraging, but we hope not totally prohibitive impediment to Mr. Kissinger's efforts to reach an accommodation is the hard line on Communist participation in a new Saigon Government that is set forth in the White House-drafted Republican platform.

19 AUGUST 1972 (21)

# A Question of Intent

By ANTHONY LETTS

If a man keeps dangerous animals running wild on his estate, and one meuls a guest's child, he cannot escape responsibility by saying that he had no intention of letting children be hurt. That is generally the law now, and common sense. Subjective intent does not have to be proved, because keeping wild animals where people go makes it so likely that someone will be hurt.

The same common-sense view cuts through the argument about whether the United States is "deliberately" bombing dikes and other civilian targets in North Vietnam. When the greatest power on earth pours bombs on a small, backward country, it is a necessary consequence that people and things of an innocent character will be destroyed. In the legal phrase, the great power will not be heard to argue that it meant no harm.

Of course there would be a different degree of moral culpability in any calculated attempt to destroy dikes or houses or hospitals in North Vietnam. The generals and the politicians in this and previous Administrations have concealed so many horrors—massacres and forest fires and crop destruction and the like—that we cannot exclude the possibility of more.

But it is bad enough to deny responsibility for the human costs of a policy of mass destruction. And that is what the United States Government is doing: putting on a show of amaze-ment at the notion that American bombs actually kill people. The piety of the performance drips like treacle.

Consider, for example, an episode well before the present phase of continuous all-out bombing. Last December, when four American Phantoms were shot down in Laos, the U. S. retaliated by 1,000 bombing sorties against North Vietnam in five days. Most of the time the weather was so bad that the pilots could not even see the ground. Yet the official claim remained that only military targets were being hit. President Nixon called the raids "very successful."

Since last May, Mr. Nixon has removed some of the restrictions on American bombing of North Vietnam. The command is now free to hit economic as well as military targets, and to carry on a planned bombing campaign without regular reference back to Washington.

Half the planes in the Strategic Air Command—200 B-52's—are now being used against Vietnam, North and South. Those are our strategic planes, designed for use against aggressive targets in an ultimate conflict with another great power. And the United States is using them against a peasant country.

## ABROAD AT HOME

The propaganda from Washington and Saigon makes it sound as though every American raid is hitting the Ruhr or some mighty military installation. There is talk of destroying "industries" and "naval bases."

Naval bases! For what--?—sampans? As for industries, there is hardly a factory in North Vietnam that an American businessman would have looked at twice in 1950. When the Joint Chiefs of Staff first tried to pick bombing targets in North Vietnam, they found only eight industrial sites worth dist-ing.

It is on this backward country, with its mud villages and primitive technology, that the United States is dropping thousands of tons of bombs every month. (The total figure for Indochina is running over 100,000 tons a month, but the Pentagon does not give the total separately for the four target countries.)

Necessarily, then, inevitably, bombs in that volume destroy things not remotely related to the North Vietnamese war effort. In Halphong last May I saw acres of housing smashed flat, a school destroyed, a hospital damaged. More recently Joseph Kraft wrote from Hanoi: "I have seen with my own eyes the damage done by American bombs to homes, schools, stores and many innocent people."

First-hand reports of civilian bomb damage have in fact been available for years, but American officials continued to reject them with an injured innocence, an imperishable cynicism. It is in the light of this experience that one should now read the denials of any "deliberate" bombing of the dikes.

The explanation given by Washington for the bomb craters that have been seen in the dikes is that the damage was incidental to attacks on nearby military targets such as "road and river transport lines." But in the waterlogged Red River Delta, laced by more than 2,000 miles of dikes, the dikes are often the only place to build an all-weather road. If you bomb roads and "river transport lines" in North Vietnam, you will hit dikes.

The United States has now dropped on Indochina three times the tonnage of bombs that it used in all theaters of World War II. Those bombs have hit, among other things, dikes and hospitals and schools and peasant villages. Washington knows about that destruction: it has the pictures. In those circumstances a judge in the Common Law tradition would not allow the American Government to wash its hands of responsibility for the civilian damage. Or the American people.

WASHINGTON—In the spring of 1971, as he planned to unveil his projected “journeys for peace” to Peking and Moscow, President Nixon was quoted by his staff as saying at a White House meeting: “Anyone who tries to make a political issue out of Vietnam in 1972 will have the rug pulled from under him.” In an interview last January he said: “The issue of Vietnam will not be an issue in the [Presidential] campaign . . . because we will have brought the American involvement to an end.”

Last week, on the eve of the Republican convention in Miami, these confident predictions remained unfulfilled. For despite the détente with Peking, the Moscow summit and the withdrawal of the last of the American ground combat troops from Vietnam, the war was still on, the American involvement was continuing in the form of a stepped-up aerial offensive and a series of charges and countercharges pushed the Vietnam issue to the forefront of the campaign.

President Nixon could still pull off a settlement before Election Day, but time is short; and though the White House sought last week to "pull the rug out" from under the Democratic war critics, the rug seemed stuck.

These were the main elements of the debate:

SHRIVER'S RECOLLECTIONS: A little over a week ago Sargent Shriver, the Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee, charged that Mr. Nixon had misread or ignored a North Vietnamese pullback in late 1968 and thus "blew" a chance for a compromise settlement in early 1969. Mr. Shriver, who was then Ambassador to France, said he and the two principal American delegates to the 1968 Paris peace talks, Averett Harriman and Cyrus Vance, "felt peace was within their grasp." Mr. Vance and Mr. Harriman promptly supported the charge.

In swift rebuttal, Secretary of State William P. Rogers accused the three Democrats of engaging in rationalization bordering on "political fantasy." Mr. Rogers said a search of the records, including Mr. Shriver's own messages to the State Department in early 1939, when he was still Ambassador to Paris, turned up no evidence of any such opportunity for peace.

CLARK'S THOUGHTS: Winding up an inspection trip to North Vietnam, Ramsey Clark, a former Attorney General under President Johnson, was reported in news dispatches last weekend to have given his conclusions in interviews in Hanoi and over Hanoi radio. Mr. Clark was quoted as (1) declaring that the United States was guilty of "inhuman" behavior in Vietnam, (2) calling for an immediate end to the bombing of the dikes and (3) contending that the American prisoners of war would be returned only if Senator McGovern were elected President. This led to attacks on his judgment, if not his loyalty, by the Administration, which has denied deliberate targeting of the dikes, and by its supporters. John N. Mitchell, Mr. Nixon's former Attorney General, accused Mr. Clark of "broadcasting Communist propaganda from Hanoi."

On returning to the United States last week, Mr. Clark sought to clarify matters. On the bombing damage, he insisted that he had only described what he had seen with his own eyes. On the prisoners, he said he had only meant to make the point that Hanoi would not release the men while the bombing continued. And he emphasized that he had not broadcast over Hanoi radio; taped recordings of his interviews had apparently been broadcast without his knowledge.

Nonetheless, the net effect may have been to diminish his utility to Mr. McGovern. The Democratic candidate, who had been saying that Ramsey Clark was the kind of man he wanted in his Cabinet, began describing him as the kind of man one ought to "consider" for a Cabinet post.

SALINGER'S SALLY: Pierre Salinger, former press secretary to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and now a McGovern aide, disclosed last Wednesday that he had met privately with the North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris on July 15 and Aug. 9 to find out if there was any chance of Hanoi's releasing American prisoners in advance of a peace settlement. He said he had found that Hanoi's position had not changed: A settlement would have to come first.

Ronald Ziegler, the White House press secretary, was quick to spy an opening. Private efforts of this kind, he said in effect, could well "jeoparize" Presidential diplomacy. And Mr. McGovern himself seemed to be caught by surprise. In a display of the kind of managerial uncertainty that has gladdened Republican hearts of late, the Democratic candidate at first denied giving Mr. Salinger any instructions concerning such a meeting, then said in a formal statement that Mr. Salinger had indeed met with the Communists "at my request." He insisted that his emissary had done nothing to damage chances of a settlement.

KISSINGER'S TRAVELS: Henry Kissinger was a very busy man last week. On Tuesday he met with the top North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris —his third such secret trip in a month—and on Wednesday he flew to Saigon for two days of meetings with President Nguyen Van Thieu. The fact that Le Due Tho, a top North Vietnamese Politburo member, flew back to Hanoi immediately after the Paris meeting fanned speculation that some important breakthrough had been made and that the White House adviser was informing Mr. Thieu about it. From Saigon, New York Times correspondent Sydney H. Schanberg cabled:

"The secrecy blanket thrown over the Kissinger visit has been so tightly woven that newsmen have been unable to find out what his meals consisted of. All we could tell was that he arrived wearing a gray suit, and left wearing a blue suit and dark (possibly black) tie. His shirts on both occasions were blue. No one here, however, thinks that a peace settlement is likely soon."

NEW YORK TIMES 20 AUG

Vietnam Issue:

War of
Words on
War of
Bombs

In sum, what the Democrats sought to do last week was portray themselves as versatile and generous peace-makers—and Mr. Kissinger's new mission to Paris and Saigon as little more than a preconvention stunt. Mr. Nixon and his spokesmen in the executive branch and Congress, on the other hand, sought to portray the Democrats as undercutting the President's negotiating posture—and to cast doubt on Mr. McGovern's credibility, as well as on his capacity to control his own aides. Yet there was something synthetic about the whole debate.

Whether Mr. Shriver's recollections of a Communist "peace signal" in 1968 are true or revisionist seems secondary, in the view of many observers, to the main point: whether the Communist peace terms in 1969 were terms on which Mr. Nixon was prepared to settle then or might be prepared to settle now.

The President, if he means what he says, is determined to maintain an American role in the war until he can be sure that he will leave behind a non-Communist government in South Vietnam. Such a role is not compatible with the Communists' terms, in 1969 or today. Senator McGovern says it is worth losing the notion of a non-Communist South Vietnam in order to "save America."

The terms of a settlement—Mr. Kissinger apparently hopes the Communists will soften theirs in fear of being confronted with still tougher American terms after a Nixon victory in November—remain the crucial issue. Measured against that, the charges and countercharges of last week seemed to many observers to be the political shadowboxing of an election year, with little certainty as to which side was scoring which points with the electorate.

—ROBERT R. SEMPLE, JR.

LIFE MAGAZINE 25 AUGUST 1972 (27)

WHAT I SAW AND HEARD
IN NORTH VIETNAM

by RAMSEY CLARK

I do not know what targets the U.S. bombers sought to hit, nor do I know what targets were hit that I did not see. What I personally saw during my two-week visit to North Vietnam was damage or destruction in five villages, areas of five cities, six dikes, two sluices, six schools, four hospitals and four churches. This was within six provinces in the northern part of the country and constitutes a minor part of the damage even there. By far the heaviest damage from air bombardment has occurred in the southern part of the nation.

North Vietnam is a poor rural nation, with 95% of the population. I am told, living outside the cities. The chief of the economic section of a West European mission said that North Vietnam had barely entered the 19th century industrially. In his view, it has now been bombed back into the 17th century.

Officials in Haiphong told me that between -il 16, 1972-when President Nixon resumed bombing after three and a half years-and -g. 4, after I had arrived in North Vietnam, the city was subjected to 101 bombing attacks. They claimed that 2,208 demolition or blast bombs were dropped and 250 "mother bombs," each containing hundreds of deadly penetrating or antipersonnel bomblets. An antipersonnel bomb does not badly damage buildings; it has one purpose: to kill people. As I climbed over the ruins in Haiphong on Aug. 5, the head of civil defense said that 25 people were killed and 47 wounded in the July 31 raid.

For an urban people, and for my generation which experienced World War II, the destruction of cities is most easily understood. I had seen the effect of bombing on Hamburg and London. The damage in Haiphong and Hanoi was reminiscent.

The villages are more difficult for Americans to comprehend, but most life in Vietnam is village life. In South Vietnam, American bombing drove the people from the villages to the cities, and in North Vietnam, it drove the people from the cities to the villages. Even high officials have sent their children and often their wives to the countryside-not together but separately, because they know that the villages, too, are good, and do not want to risk losing an entire family to one bomb. The villages, though, are a major reason bombing cannot subdue the country. There are too many villages, too scattered and too small to carpet-bomb.

For me the destruction of cities was bearable, if horrible. I had seen it before. To see the survivors of bombed villages was almost unbearable. I have seen stunned people in war and peace, but the incomprehension of the simple villager is of another dimension in human suffering. I spent a day and a night in the village of Thienminh. The hut I stayed in was the main living quarters for four generations of a family that had lived there for as long as they knew. From the 93-year-old great-grandfather to the youngest baby, four months old, not one had ever before seen a foreigner (not even a Laotian, they said). Few in the village had traveled the 150 kilometers to Hanoi. At 3 a.m. on April 13, I was told, bombs had hit their neighbors three kilometers away, killing 23, including 11 children under 15, and wounding 33, one of whom later died. I visited that bombed hamlet-Zanai in the village of Thieuhoa. I also visited the village of Phucloc, near Haiphong, which had been virtually demolished by U.S. bombs on April 16.

I saw what remains of the hospital at Thanhhoa. Nobel Prize winner George Wald had visited there some six months before the renewal of the bombing. It was then a large, sprawling facility. There were a number of new buildings, with two large buildings nearing completion. The nearest habitation was kilometers away across fields and paddies. On April 27, at 8:50 a.m., 36 bombs were dropped on the Thanhhoa hospital, the head of the hospital told me. Six buildings were completely destroyed. The others were all intensively damaged. When I arrived, the place was completely abandoned, in ruins and in the water and mud from the monsoons. Eleven people were killed, they said-seven members of the medical staff and four patients. Were soldiers bivouacked there on April 27? The debris I saw was rubble, medical equipment, hospital beds and patients' records. Were SAMs standing among the buildings? Was it a mistake, an accident? The effect is the same. I am an American. I do not want to believe we deliberately bombed a hospital. I will ask the Department of Defense whether planes operated in this area at 8:50 on the morning of April 27 and, if they bombed, what were their targets?

Schools are special places for me. I still believe education can save us from ourselves. I inspected six schools that were heavily damaged. Perhaps the most poignant was in the village of Vuban, Thaibinh province. It was a small school

270

LIFE MAGAZINE

25 AUG 72 (27)

A visit to Hanoi sharpens
the debate

Once again the nation's front pages were strewn with news of Vietnam. No sooner had the last U.S. combat unit pulled out than news came of the biggest B-52 raid over North Vietnam in history. Raising new hopes of a settlement, or at least a bombing halt, Henry Kissinger met in Paris with the North Vietnamese chief negotiator, Le Duc Tho; then Kissinger flew off to Saigon, Tho to Hanoi. Meanwhile, moved by election-year fervor, Democrats and White House spokesmen traded blows over claims that the Nixon administration had muffed a chance for negotiated peace back in 1969. Another debate, over whether or not the U.S. was deliberately bombing North Vietnam's extensive and crucial dike system, continued unabated. In Washington, officials maintained that dikes are hit only when military targets are on or near them, and released pictures like the one at right to prove the point.

In the midst of this furor, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark returned from a two-week visit to North Vietnam. Like most Western visitors, he saw what his hosts were willing to show him, and this did not include military targets. He was the most prestigious American to go there since the war began. He had seen, he said, "more apartments, villages, dikes and sluices destroyed than I ever want to see again," and he disputed administration claims that POWs were being mistreated. He was convinced that there was no hope that the POWs would be released until the bombing stopped. Some of his comments on U.S. policy, it developed, had been broadcast by Hanoi radio.

Clark's trip and his statements touched off a storm of angry comment. Former Attorney General John Mitchell called him "naïve" and a "dupe" of Hanoi, and even some fellow Democrats (including George McGovern) questioned his taste and timing. But Clark stuck to his claim that he was simply trying to bring the war to an end. On page 42, he speaks of what he saw on his visit to North Vietnam.

Six of the 15 teachers talked to me. They said that on July 31 their school was bombed, along with three churches and a nearby leper colony. I saw all in ruins. The children were not at school because of summer vacations, but two teachers were injured by shrapnel from four bombs. The cells remained. In the classrooms, painted on the walls, were some of the aphorisms these people love so well: *kinh thay*—"we must respect our teacher"; *cham hoc*—"we must study well"; *giay tot*, *hoc tot*—"teach well, learn well."

A dike is just a pile of dirt to me. To the people of the Red River Delta it is the foundation of their civilization. They sense the imprint of the hands of their most ancient ancestors on sides of the dikes. They know that if the dikes do not hold, thousands can drown, rice crops will be lost, and that if seawater enters, the land will be unusable for six or eight growing seasons, for more than two years. They know their society depends on the dikes. If water cannot be retained for the rice in the dry season, crops will be lost. The Lan Sluice is a key water-control facility servicing 48,000 acres of land, according to the minister of water conservancy, and some 600,000 people live in the area affected by its operation. When I saw it on Aug. 3, it was ringed by bomb craters on the dry-land sides. The concrete was heavily pocked. The superstructure and its steel frames, engine houses, lifts and cables were demolished. No repairs were under way.

When we met on Aug. 11, Pham Van Dong, the prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, told me, through an interpreter: "Of course it is a war of genocide. Of course there is deliberate intention of bombing dikes." I believe in our basic goodness. We will not tolerate this policy if it is true. I believe our government has the highest duty to demonstrate the truth of its answer to this charge. The accumulation of evidence from geographers, demographers and engineers will provide substantial circumstantial factual data later. But intention can be determined only from the intenders and the circumstances.

Our bombs destroy churches, hospitals, schools, dikes. They kill old men, women, babies. We withdraw our men, we say we are winding down the war, and yet we bomb. We pit technology against life. But we cannot bomb people into submission. We should not if we could. We must stop or we will destroy ourselves.

NEW YORK TIMES 25 AUGUST 1972 217

The New York Times/Aug. 25, 1972

‘The Real Casualties’

By J. W. FULBRIGHT

WASHINGTON—Chivalry in war-
fare, I suppose, is an antiquated con-
cept. Such notions are impossible for a
B-52 bomber crew five miles up in
the sky. The targets they drop their
bombs upon are like grid squares on
a map; they bear no physical resem-
blance to real cities and farms in-
habited by real people. Now the crew
hardly even have to concern them-
selves with accuracy; their "smart
bonibs" are carried on laser beams.
It is called "surgical" bombing but it
is not so "surgical" as to spare the
schools and hospitals, and the men,
women and children who happen to be
in the target areas.

Their dying and their burning take
place beyond the sight—and beyond
the psychic knowledge—of the B-52
crews and their countrymen across
the sea. Only occasionally do the
sights of war intrude upon our vision,
as in the widely published picture of
a little naked Vietnamese girl, screaming
as she ran toward the camera
to try to escape from the napalm which
was burning the skin from her back.

Such are the sights and sounds of
Vietnamization program through
which the Nixon Administration has
reduced American casualties to almost
none. Appealing to our weariness and
disgust, our leaders have invited us
to lose interest in Vietnam, to ignore

what happens there now that our
own sons are no longer dying in large
numbers. They have invited us to
ignore the tragic fate of the Viet-
namese themselves and to look else-
where to the President's visits to Pe-
king and Moscow.

We are told that we must continue
such a policy if we are to remain a
great power and retain respect through-
out the world for the office of the
American Presidency. In his dealings
with the Soviet Union and China Mr.
Nixon no longer engages in ideological
warfare for its own sake; he has
ceased to be a crusader against "god-
less Communism" and has become a
skilled practitioner of realpolitik in
the tradition of Metternich and Bis-
marck. But in his continued prosecu-
tion of the war in Vietnam the old
Nixon has survived—Nixon the Red-
baiter, Nixon the battle-scarred vet-
eran of the "warfare of politics"—to
take the term he used in his book
"Six Crises."

One of the most ironic of the many
ironies of this long and futile crusade
is that the Vietnamese Communists
themselves have found it incompre-
hensible that the mighty United States
could take an obsessive interest in the
internal dissensions of so small and
remote a country. For a short period
in 1946, the only official representa-
tive of the United States in Hanoi
was a young major in the Office of
Strategic Services named Frank White.

Ho Chi Minh had formed a Vietnam
Provisional Government and had pro-
claimed the independence of the state
of Vietnam "within the French Un-
ion." On a number of occasions during
those turbulent days, White spoke in-
formally and at length with Ho.

On one occasion Ho "dwelled at
some length on the opposition of
Americans as a people to be sympa-
thetic to the self-determination of na-
tions and generous in making con-
tributions to less fortunate states. But
he doubted that the United States
Government could be counted on to
come to the aid of Vietnam."

For reasons that will likely puzzle
historians for decades to come, just
as they puzzle and dismay ordinary
citizens today, Vietnam has captured
and held America's interest beyond
Ho Chi Minh's wildest imaginings of
26 years ago. It has caught us in the
grip of a prideful, fearful obsession
with "defeat" and "humiliation."

Perhaps, as the Nixon Administra-
tion has seemed to suppose, the Amer-
ican people will tolerate an endless
war as long as it is Asians rather than
Americans who are being "wasted"
on so prodigal a scale. But I do not
think so; I think that the American
people are offended and outraged by
the prolongation of this useless killing
even though most of those now being
killed are foreigners.

I think that the American people
are disgusted by the obsession with
victory, even in its various, euphemis-
tic disguises. I think that the majority
of Americans would now share the
puzzlement and dismay expressed in
a letter which I received back in 1967
from an American soldier in Vietnam.
Speaking of the phony propaganda
and the savagery of the war, he de-
scribed the real casualties—"the farm-
ers and their families in the Delta
mangled by air strikes, and the villag-
ers here killed and burned out by our
friendly Korean mercenaries."

This young soldier then asked, "...
whatever has become of our dream?
Where is that America that opposed
tyrannies at every turn, without in-
quiring first whether some particular
forms of tyranny might be of use to
us? Of the three rights which men
have, the first, as I recall, was the
right to life. How then have we come
to be killing so many in such a dubious
cause?"

J. W. Fulbright, Democrat of Arkansas,
is chairman of the Senate Foreign Re-
lations Committee.

N.Y. TIMES 26 AUG 72 (28)

# Vietnam: That Missed Opportunity

By W. AVERELL HARRIMAN

WASHINGTON—The American public is entitled to know what the President's current plan is to end the war in Vietnam. As the election campaign heats up, Henry Kissinger has held highly publicized secret talks in Paris, and in Saigon. An impression that real progress toward peace is being made is being created. Secretary Rogers personally predicts peace before the end of the year. Yet nothing has been disclosed of the substance of these talks and therefore it is impossible to judge whether realistic offers are being made or whether the flurry of activity is just part of the effort to re-elect the President.

The last public United States offer was the withdrawal of all American troops within four months after the start of an internationally supervised cease-fire and the return of our prisoners. If the North Vietnamese are being required to give up permanently their military struggle while Thieu remains in power, there is no possibility of the offer being accepted.

When I was the American negotiator in Paris we recognized that cease-fire first was not a promising route. The North Vietnamese have been consistent in asserting that political and military aspects of a settlement are indivisible. To a guerrilla a cease-fire without some settlement is a surrender.

Any political settlement must necessarily involve the status of Thieu.

Since the bombing halt of November 1968 opened the way to serious negotiations, President Thieu has been a major obstacle to a compromise solution.

Although we had agreed in October 1968 to join the negotiations after the bombing stopped, he first reneged on his commitment and then created the unseemly dispute over the shape of the table in order to break off or at least to delay talks until the new Administration took office. Finally, just before the inauguration in 1969, the path was cleared for substantive negotiations including the private talks which were the only place progress could be made.

During this period the North Vietnamese had removed most of their forces from the northern two provinces of South Vietnam and practically ceased fighting there. Instead of seizing the opportunity for immediate discussion of mutual reduction of hostilities which Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford had publicly called for as the first order of business, the Nixon Administration took as its first task restoring of close relations with Mr. Thieu. These relations had become badly frayed as the Johnson Administration applied pressure to induce Mr. Thieu to participate in the peace talks.

Then, as now, President Thieu saw his primary goal as maintaining his personal position. This meant opposing a negotiated solution since any compromise would inevitably eliminate his absolute power.

The Nixon Administration tolerated Thieu's scuttling of real negotiations by refusing to have his representatives participate in private meetings with the National Liberation Front. When, two months later, he condescended to accept private meetings, he stated that under no circumstances would he agree to a coalition government. He continues to oppose adamantly any coalition government although it is

obvious that there can be no politics settlement without some sharing power.

Even now, when the comings and goings of Dr. Kissinger have raised some hope of moving toward peace, Mr. Thieu has again dug in his heels. This month 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 potential."

So far as we can tell, the Nixon Administration has continued to give Mr. Thieu veto power over the United States negotiating position. Despite the Administration's avowed solicitude for the right of the South Vietnamese people to self-determination it helped to create and then excused the faults of Thieu's re-election in a one-candidate race. The overwhelming majority of the South Vietnamese people clearly want peace. They showed this by giving the most votes in last August's Senatorial election to a Buddhist slat which emphasized a compromise peace. Instead the people have been made victims of continuing war and are subject to repressive military rule, including the jailing and torturing of non-Communist opponents and the suppression of the press.

American men should not continue to die to maintain Mr. Thieu in office. We should be told whether the Administration intends to continue to fight the war for one man.

The danger is great that if President Nixon should be re-elected without ending our involvement in the war, he would then construe his victory as a mandate to continue his present policy—and more Americans and more Vietnamese would go on dying for Thieu.

W. Averell Harriman was President Johnson's Ambassador to the Paris talks.

The President and the War

It says something about President Nixon's conduct of the Vietnam war—and something about the war itself—that after more than three and a half years in the White House he could not bring himself to make as firm an end-the-war pledge in his acceptance speech in Miami Beach last week as he did in the same circumstances four years ago. Rather, he recited his accomplishments to date: over a half-million troops withdrawn; no more draftees being sent to the war front; a 98 per cent reduction in American casualties; endless efforts to negotiate an "honorable" settlement. Solemnly, he promised not to abandon our prisoners of war or be a party to imposing a Communist government in Saigon or otherwise to "stain the honor of the United States."

In short, it was familiar stuff, complete with one of those I-could-do-the-easy-political-thing turns, in which the President said a lot of people were telling him that it "might be good politics" to sell out the Saigon government and blame everything on the Democrats, but that he would have none of this, naturally, because it would be "disastrous to peace." "If at this time we betray our allies, it will discourage our friends abroad and it will encourage our enemies to engage in aggression," Mr. Nixon said. So he is not going to do this thing (which would in fact be a political disaster, as he well knows) and we are left to presume from the other things that he says he isn't going to do that he plans simply to soldier on with the most devastatingly heavy bombing attacks in history until the North Vietnamese come to their senses and abandon the objective for which they have been fighting on and off for 40 years.

Now it may be, assuming nothing further develops before election day, that this prospect of a continuing, open-ended war, with almost no American casualties but with heavy American involvement from the air, is acceptable to most Americans. Maybe a majority is indifferent to the spectacle of the world's greatest nation—their own—relentlessly raining bombs on one of the world's smallest nations to no particular effect. Perhaps most people in this country actually do accept without question that we must continue our involvement in this struggle, using airplanes and warships instead of foot soldiers, because to do otherwise would be to "stain our honor" and paralyze our foreign policy. Certainly, the way the President puts the alternatives gives his policy added appeal; he is offering us his way, or unalloyed calamity, and faced with that choice a good many people are likely to choose the President's way.

But these, of course, are not the only choices and never have been in all of the time that Mr. Nixon has had to make good on his bold promise four years ago of a "secret plan" to end the war. It was never necessary, for example, for Mr. Nixon to adopt his predecessors' excessive war objectives as his own, even as he was progressively diminishing American military capacity to influence the outcome of the war. He was never obliged to resort to the tired old cold war rhetoric, or to conjure up the specter of this country as a "pitiful, helpless giant," as if our continuing, futile efforts to bludgeon North Vietnam into a settlement did not make us appear pitiful and helpless enough as it was.

On the contrary, in 1969 Richard Nixon had an opportunity to redefine the American mission in Vietnam in realistic terms; to profit from the lessons of the earlier years; to learn the limitations imposed by limited warfare on what it is that we could ever hope to achieve. Lyndon Johnson had done the hardest part by stopping the bombing and ending the steady build-up of troops and thereby abandoning the strategy of "graduated response" that had carried us into an ever-deepening involvement in the war. With the upward momentum halted, and public opinion sharply turned against the whole enterprise, there was no way to justify continuing on in the same old way—no place to go but out, while progressively handing the war effort over to the South Vietnamese. This has been largely done, to Mr. Nixon's credit; our combat role is happily over—on the ground. What has not been scaled down, proportionately, has been our expectations of what we might still hope to gain. Instead, the President has tried to compensate for our diminishing military capability on the ground with a series of quick fixes—the "incursions" into Cambodia and Laos, and now the resumption of bombing and untold death and destruction in both North and South Vietnam.

This is the part of the record that Mr. Nixon did not trouble us with on Wednesday night—the 20,000 American dead (one third of the total) during the Nixon years; the thousands of sailors and airmen dispatched to Vietnam this year even while the last of the ground troops were headed home; the thousands of civilians killed, injured, or made homeless, in both Vietnams; the staggering costs of the renewed air war. And for what? The President would have us believe that it all hangs now on Hanoi's demand that we conspire to overthrow the Thieu government in the South and impose Communist rule. And yet, spokesmen for the North Vietnamese have specifically and publicly disavowed an intent to implant a Communist government in Saigon. The President would also have us believe that this disavowal is of no consequence, because the Communists would take over anyway,

If we withdrew from the war, and while this may be so, it does not say much for all that we have done to shore up the South Vietnamese. We are also told that we must fight on because we cannot abandon our prisoners, and this would be reasonable enough on its face were it not for the fact that we have never really tested the simple proposition of an American withdrawal from all military involvement in Vietnam in exchange for our POWs. The only sensible rationale for this reluctance to withdraw our support is that the Nixon administration does not believe that the South Vietnamese could survive our departure—that the vaunted Vietnamization program, in other words, is far from the crowning success it has been made out to be. And that may well be the case.

But that is also a risk that this country ought to be more than willing to take at this late stage. It is not, "a sellout" to send an expeditionary force of as many as a half-million men to the far side of the globe for upwards of five years in order to buy, for a small country, the time needed to prepare it to handle its own defense. It is not a "surrender" to have helped mobilize a South Vietnamese army of over a half-million men, and to have equipped it with our most modern armaments. There is no loss of face, or faith, to be suffered

around the world by a declaration that our Vietnam mission has been accomplished, when you have expended over 50,000 men and billions of dollars and done just about everything else you could reasonably have been expected to do. The loss of face, or faith, comes much more easily from a never-ending demonstration of inability to have a decided influence on the struggle in South Vietnam, our capacity to do for the South Vietnamese what they must ultimately do for themselves, if it is ever to be done. This is what was missing, and it has been consistently missing. In the President's latest exposition of his war policy—any willingness to acknowledge the hard, realistic limitations on what we can hope to accomplish with any degree of certainty in the defense of South Vietnam.

And this missing ingredient, in turn, accounts in large part for President Nixon's failure, at terrible cost, to make good on his four-year-old promise to end the war. He may yet do so before election day and even if he doesn't, many may agree with him that he has gone as far as he can be expected to go in pursuit of honorable settlement. Others, however, may recall that in 1968, presidential candidate Richard Nixon thought that four years was time enough in which to end a war. If the Democrats "don't end this war by November, I say they've had their chance," he said on October 8, 1968, at a rally in Flint, Mich. "Give us a chance," he pleaded, "and we'll bring an honorable end to this war. Give us a chance..."

The Air War in Vietnam—Two Views

WASHINGTON POST 28 AUGUST 1972

# Ramsey Clark on the Impact of the Bombing...

By Ramsey Clark

WE MIGHT better understand of our actions in Vietnam had the United States been bombed in 1947 by the B52s of some distant land 10 times its size, centuries ahead technologically, peopled by men half as big as we were.

Imagine Gen. Zachary Taylor poised to strike at Matamoros, Monterrey and Saltillo, Col. Robert E. Lee marching from Vera Cruz to Mexico City with Gen. Winfield Scott, and Capt. Ulysses S. Grant struggling with mule teams up the mountains from the

The writer, former attorney general, recently returned from a visit to North Vietnam. He wrote this piece for United Press International.

Gulf of Mexico to Chapultepec: All in showers of bombs and Phantom jets and B52s destroying most habitation and much of the countryside.

By 1948, our population exceeded the present population of North Vietnam. Our industrial development then was a century ahead of the present capacity of the country we are bombing.

Imagine New York harbor in 1848, mined so ships could not enter or leave. Baltimore, Boston and Charleston experiencing a dozen air alerts a day. St. Louis severely bombed, and the little villages as one approached the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers, the DMZ of the Mexican-American War, Memphis, Natchez, Galveston, San Antonio and Santa Fe destroyed.

Visualize hundreds of the big steel birds with their deadly bombs and rockets raining variety of death—napalm, fragmentation, mical, fletchette, percussion, demolition exhausting the ingenuity of man. Once or twice a week a rocket or jet supplied by a foreign nation, or a Kentucky Long Rifle might bring down a plane, but in the main the bombers destroy with impunity.

Seems unreal? It is what we are doing in Southeast Asia. The United States of America, the richest and most powerful nation in history, is unleashing the cruelest means of destruction it can conceive on an undeveloped agrarian Asian people.

President Nixon, already responsible for ordering more bombing than any man in history, daily causes U.S. planes to play God for hundreds of people in Vietnam. Today, this village shall perish, this hospital be demolished, this dike ruptured to spill its rainswollen waters onto the rice paddies that feed the people and the huts that house them.

Officials in Haiphong told me that be-

tween April 16, 1972—when President Nixon resumed the bombing after 3½ years—and Aug. 4, the city was subjected to 101 bombing attacks. They claimed that 2,208 demolition or blast bombs were dropped and 250 “mother” bombs, each containing hundreds of deadly penetrating or anti-personnel bomblets. An anti-personnel bomb does not badly damage buildings. It has one purpose. It kills people. As I climbed over the ruins of the Haly area of Haiphong Aug. 3, the head of civil defense said that 25 people were killed in the July 31 raid and 47 wounded. It was bombed again the next day.

For an urban people, and for my generation which experienced World War II, the destruction of cities is most easily understood. By 1946 I had seen the effect of bombing on Warsaw, Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Paris and London. The damage in Haiphong and Hanoi was reminiscent.

The villages are more difficult for Americans to comprehend, but most life in Vietnam is village life as most life in the U.S. in 1848 was rural. In South Vietnam, American bombing has driven the people from the villages to the cities and in North Vietnam it drives the people from the cities to the villages.

The villages, though, are a major reason bombing cannot subdue the country. There are too many villages, too scattered and too small to carpet bomb.

To see the survivors of bombed villages was almost unbearable. I have seen stunned people in war and peace but the incomprehension of the simple villager, generations in that place never visited by a foreigner, is of another dimension in human suffering.

There are no significant military targets in the North. They have no submarine stalls, no ballbearing factories, no forts or military bases. There are just the cities and villages, the few dirt roads, the several small railroad lines, the dikes built over the centuries that support their civilization, rockets, guns and the people. If we bomb we will necessarily hit homes, schools, churches, hospitals and kill old men, women and children. We do. So it goes.

The effect of all this bombing is very much as it would have been on us. Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying in 1776 that “human nature is the same on both sides of the Atlantic,” not a very popular observation then. Well, human nature is much the same on both sides of the Pacific, too, or the DMZ for that matter. Until we recognize our

common humanity we will continue to destroy—our souls, their bodies.

Each bomb increases their resolve. In a nation given to aphorisms, the most popular today is: “We shall drown the thunder of the bombs with our singing.” So they sing. The militia women, their husbands and brothers gone to war, their children separated and evacuated to scattered villages so all cannot fall to one bomb, speak of their “battles” with the airplanes on which they fly with rifles. They need this. It breaks the loneliness. It involves them directly in the struggle.

It is, as Hoang Tung, the editor of Nhan Dan said, the “most suffering war in history.”

The North is constantly aware of the greater suffering of the South. Much of the leadership in the North is Southern-born and raised. But they will not be bombed into submission, or deterred in their purpose which they call “freedom and independence.”

They are bewildered by the present bombing. When the U.S. fought to win the war, when it had half a million men committed on the ground, they said they expected to be bombed. Even then the B52s did not strike north of the 18th parallel, and by October 1968 bombing of the North ceased. But now, with constant talk of imminent peace from Washington, with the withdrawal of U.S. ground forces, with firm assurance that America is winding down the war, they do not understand why we bomb their people.

Foreign Minister Tranh concludes, “The Nixon Administration has greatly increased the ferocity of the war and the bombing of our country.” Hoang Tung says, “The savageness of Nixon is several times greater than Johnson.” Nguyen Phu Soai, the chief Provisional Revolutionary Government (Viet Cong) representative in the North said: “The biggest obstacle to peace is the Nixon Administration which has not given up a policy of aggression.” The provincial president of Thanh Hoa Province said: “Nixon is committing war crimes by bombing throughout my province while speaking of peace.” Pham Van Dong, the Prime Minister says “Of course, it’s a war of genocide.”

I do not know. I only know the bombing is utterly purposeless. It necessarily slaughters essentially defenseless civilians. It is unconscionably inhumane.

America will have to live with itself and in this world community. We cannot be forced by our leaders to choose between justice and our country. We must make our country just. We must stop this immoral bombing.

# ... And Some Thoughts on the Outery Against It

By Kenneth Crawford

ATTEMPTS TO whip up a new wave of moral outrage at the intensified bombing of North Vietnam have so far been frustrating to the moralists. Opinion polls indicate substantial public approval of President Nixon's decision to withdraw American ground forces from South Vietnam and to use only 

Yet McGovern persists. He has moderated his stance only to the extent of suggesting

that he might keep an air force in Asia long enough to assure release of U.S. war prisoners, presumably equipped with bombs capable of exploding Sen. William Fulbright is still asking Americans not to forget pictures of a little Vietnamese girl napalmed by mistake in a raid on her village. Ramsey Clark, recently back from an inspection tour of North Vietnam, bids the American conscience revolt against the spectacle of a mighty Western power picking on a primitive little Asian country. Jane Fonda, after

a similar tour, calls Mr. Nixon a war criminal and advocates his impeachment.

Why hasn't America responded to these outcries? Have its moral sensibilities atrophied? Has it become so accustomed to the violence of war that it no longer notices? Is it, as some of the sensitive critics of U.S. warmaking imply, so callous that it is unmoved by the suffering of the little brown people of Asia so long as its big, brawny soldiers are relatively safe? Or, as Fulbright guesses are the American people really

"offended and outraged by this useless killing" and only waiting for an opportunity to express their feelings?

It would be unfair and perhaps untrue to attribute political or, anything but humanitarian motives" to those who denounce the present American course in Vietnam. McGovern opposed the war long before he emerged as a presidential candidate. Jane Fonda forthrightly sides with the North Vietnamese on the assumption that any leftish revolution improves a miserable world. Fulbright, almost since he sponsored the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, giving President Johnson a free hand in Vietnam, has been trying to correct his record on the war. This mission has come to seem obsessive.

Clark is something else. He isn't running for anything and he has no record to expunge unless, as a cabinet officer in the Johnson administration, he feels some measure of responsibility for policies wholly outside the Attorney General's jurisdiction. His revulsion against the bombing seems sincere and heartfelt. He has testified before a Senate committee not only that he sees no moral justification for the bombing but that he sees no military purpose in it.

This is puzzling. The only explanation for it would appear to be almost incredible naivette. Clark concedes that his only military expertise was gained as a corporal in the Marine Corps. But, morality apart, it doesn't take a military genius to recognize the military purpose of the air war. It is to destroy guns, munitions and other materiel before they reach the battlefields of the South to be used by enemies against friends. Also to kill enemy soldiers before they can kill their enemies.

The American military insists that it has never deliberately bombed civilian targets—

only military-related installations such as power plants and areas in which anti-aircraft guns and other ordnance have been installed or stored. Obviously some bombs, especially those dropped by B-52s from high altitudes and without benefit of "smart" guidance systems, go astray. There is no reason to doubt the word of the Pentagon in all this. Strategists have learned in previous wars, and relearned in this one, that bombing to terrorize civilian populations is self-defeating, that it tends to stiffen rather than weaken morale.

The North Vietnamese have shrewdly exploited American squeamishness from the start. They have stored military supplies and mounted missiles along dikes and then charged, through Clark and others, that dikes and civilian centers are being bombed to wipe out civilian populations. They have made a practice of hiding military personnel in civilian areas both in North and South Vietnam, making it impossible to get at soldiers without molesting civilians. The inevitable consequences are cited in support of the charge that the Americans are bent on genocide.

Clark talks as though the gallant North Vietnamese were fighting with bows and arrows against B-52s. The fact is that the North Vietnamese are equipped with the best the Soviet Union and China have to offer, or were until Moscow and Peking cooled a little toward Hanoi's cause—Sam missiles, heavy tanks, Mig fighter planes and all the rest except long-range bombers. The discipline North Vietnamese imposes upon its people has produced one of the best modern armies in the world— comparable with Israel's.

North Vietnam is not, as Clark would have it, a David fighting a Goliath. It is merciless in its military operations, indif-

ferent to civilian as to military casualties, as its ongoing guerrilla warfare and its several offenses have demonstrated.

The reason the war in Vietnam has gone on so long and so taxed the patience of America is that American strategists have not countered in kind. They have limited their tactics and strategy as well as the objective.

Somewhere, it was assumed, there had been an unhappy medium between ruthy destruction of cities, dikes and countryside and overly sensitive limitation of means. Mr. Nixon thought he had found it by blockading ports and bombing military supplies as close to their source as possible. But it is questionable how well this is working. The most recent Communist attack in the Quo-son valley and intelligence reports that the enemy is still re-supplying himself through the blockade at 25 per cent or more of the pre-blockade rate are disquieting. North Vietnam's ingenuity and tenacity threaten to prolong the war even more unless Mr. Nixon finds a formula this side of surrender or unless McGovern is elected on his promise to withdraw from Indo-China unconditionally.

There is no such thing as a benign war. People, helpless, innocent people, get killed. The only way to avoid this kind of killing is not to fight wars. Yet, but for war, Adolph Hitler would probably now be ruling Europe; Israel would be a forlorn memory: Saigon would be Ho Chi Minh City and all of Indo-China would be as strictly regimented as North Vietnam is. It is not immorality that inoculates Americans against the fervor of Fonda. Fulbright, Clark and McGovern. Rather, it is the suspicion that the sell-out of Saigon would be essentially more immoral than the bombing of North Vietnam.

EYJ

277

By RICHARD J. LEVINE

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

WASHINGTON—The Nixon administration is braced for yet another Communist push in South Vietnam that could, if it comes, hurt the President politically this fall.

After a decade of an unpredictable war, no one here pretends to know what Hanoi's leadership intends between now and Election Day. But many top officials believe the Communists are preparing a major drive aimed at embarking President Nixon in the campaign and er undermining support for continued U.S. involvement in the war.

Though they suffered heavy losses of men and supplies in the big offensive that started Easter weekend, the North Vietnamese remain a potent fighting force, especially in the northern part of South Vietnam. According to U.S. intelligence, more than 50,000 enemy troops, or most of six divisions, are in the northernmost military region of South Vietnam, significantly threatening Hue and Danang.

Moreover, the Pentagon has conceded in recent days that the mining of North Vietnam's ports and the resumption of widespread bombing of the north, while effective, haven't reduced the flow of war supplies as much as originally indicated. Hanoi, Pentagon officials say, may be getting 25% of the war supplies it was obtaining before the bombing resumption and mining operation.

These disturbing facts aren't expected to have any dramatic effect on President Nixon's announcement of further troop withdrawals, scheduled for some time this week. With U.S. military strength in Vietnam down to 39,000 men, the Vietnam-based American force couldn't affect the outcome of a major battle anyway.

But the threat of a renewed offensive is likely to mean that U.S. naval and air power, in the South China Sea and in Thailand, isn't going to be shaved much, if at all, before Nov. 10. Today, there are 39,000 Navy men off Vietnam and 45,000 Air Force men and Marines in Holland, the same levels as two months ago, when President Nixon last announced a pullout schedule.

### Trying to Minimize Impact

The administration also is using another tactic to counter a possible Communist thrust. For weeks it has tried to discount in advance the significance of any preelection offensive, claiming it would represent a last-gasp effort, more dependent on supplies already cached away in the South than on material that has flowed in since the mining and resumed bombing of the North.

Thus, for example, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird has talked repeatedly of the enemy's capability to launch a few more "spectaculars" this fall, noting that the Communists have the troops and war supplies "in place."

If the North Vietnamese are going to make a major move, it will have to be soon, because heavy rains are due in the vulnerable northern part of the country within four to six weeks. Once they come, the movement of supplies and men would be difficult, if not impossible.

A Communist offensive dominating the TV network news shows needn't be a military success to damage Mr. Nixon. Obviously, his Democratic opponent, Sen. George McGovern, could use the mere fact of a Communist drive to escalate his attack on Mr. Nixon's policy. The South Dakota Senator undoubtedly would read in a North Vietnamese offensive proof of the wisdom of his pledge to get the U.S. out of Vietnam immediately.

### Reaction of Voters Uncertain

While Americans have in the past rallied around a President in a foreign policy crisis near Election Day, it might not be the case this time, with an American public thoroughly frustrated and disturbed by the longest war in the

nation's history. In any event, a Communist offensive could inject a new nastiness into the campaign. Nixon administration officials already have implied that Hanoi's desire to see Mr. McGovern elected was partly responsible for battlefield events.

At the Pentagon, the prevailing view appears to be that the military situation in Vietnam has improved immeasurably since the setbacks that occurred when the North Vietnamese swept across the Demilitarized Zone into the South over Easter weekend.

"Our overall assessment is that the South Vietnamese are strong enough to meet the enemy and prevent him from regaining (Northern) Quang Tri Province or taking Hue," says one well-placed defense analyst. "But if the enemy's willing to pay the price, he can increase his activities to the point where they get headlines."

In addition to attacking in the northern military region, the Communists also could step up military activity in the Southern Mekong Delta and the Central Highlands. They might also send sappers into Saigon itself. But Defense officials here believe such action wouldn't have a major effect on the military situation, though they would "make a lot of noise."

What remains clear is that American air power continues to be essential to the survival

of the South Vietnamese forces. U.S. war planes have engaged in some of the heaviest bombing of the war recently to disrupt enemy supply lines in the North and to kill attacking enemy troops in the South.

Recent performances by the South Vietnamese have been mixed. Some of Saigon's best troops have battled fiercely to recapture the city of Quang Tri, though the fort-like Citadel still eludes them. Yet the South Vietnamese Second Division that a week ago abandoned the Queson valley, which guards entry routes to Danang, performed poorly. Since then, the valley has been reoccupied by the South Vietnamese. However, the second division's showing must be a bit unsettling for the White House in the countdown to Election Day.

WALL STREET JOURNAL

28 AUGUST 1972 P4

# Nixon Braces for New Communist Offensive
In Vietnam That Could Hurt Him Politically

WASHINGTON POST 1 SEPTEMBER 1972 P24

"...Pilots Don't Paint Peace Signs..."

# Are the Air Casualties Too High?

By Michael Geller

IF IT is possible for the death of some young men in war to be more tragic than the death of others, then perhaps the greatest tragedy is reserved for those who die last-while the negotiators and politicians flit around the world and the country with the issue of war or peace in their briefcases and in their campaign speeches.

In Vietnam, it is becoming increasingly clear that the last Americans to die in any numbers there are going to be Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps pilots and aircrewmen who are carrying out daily bombing raids against North Vietnam.

What is unclear, however, is how long these raids and these losses will go on, and whether many Americans are thinking about, sharing and acting upon the sense of tragedy that comes with dying at this point in the war.

Between April 1-when the Communists launched their big ground offensive across the DMZ and brought on renewed U.S. bombing of the North-and last weekend, the U.S. military command has reported 84 American planes shot down over the North and 94 airmen missing. There may be more by now.

When the numbers lost over South Vietnam are added, the total jumps to more than 175 U.S. fliers listed as missing, another 72 as dead and 55 wounded since the offensive began.

FOR MANY Americans, the war in Vietnam is a bad dream that is fading. The war is over on the ground, and the personal involvement of many citizens is likewise over. The last combat battalion was withdrawn earlier this month. The weekly casualties are way down, and the protests are way down, too.

But the air war is not over, and something very curious seems to be happening. American pilots, who are continuing to drop record tons of bombs on North Vietnam, continue to be shot down at a rate which any

country would be outraged at-other than one made numb by years of such high losses. Yet, there does not seem to be any really strong public outcry on either point.

To the extent that protest and dissent lingers, it focuses on the bombing and damage being done to the north. This is countered, of course, by administration spokesmen who point out the devastation caused in South Vietnam by the Communist offensive. But with the U.S. now out of Vietnam almost entirely on the ground, the continuing loss of American airmen-as a measure of whether our continuing combat involvement in the war is worth it-is generally being overlooked.

Meanwhile, the toll in POW camps mounts.

Superpowers apparently cannot be expected to make decisions on the basis of the lives of just a few men. But several issues appear to be converging now which raise serious questions about where the continuing U.S. air war is leading. For one thing, it is fair to ask ourselves, now that the vast majority of American troops is out of South Vietnam, if we are witnessing a willingness by a majority of Americans to accept-without much dissent-a continuation of the air and sea war for an indefinite period into the future?

If that is so, then the next question is whether we have thought hard enough about the costs to those left fighting it.

This second point is compounded by another factor. When the U.S. had half-a-million ground troops in Vietnam and the war became highly unpopular, there were visible signs of that unpopularity. Anti-war veterans groups were made up of GIs, grunts who fought on the ground. Tanks with peace signs painted on them showed up on the nightly TV news with regularity.

But pilots don't paint peace signs on their airplanes. They are a different breed of fighting man. And, for a variety of reasons, they would probably be the last to stand up

and shout: "Hey America. We're still out here and getting killed," even if they wanted out.

ANYONE WHO FLIES an airplane does it because he prefers that to anything else. Flying in combat escalates the challenge that most aviators love. Each pilot is an officer, and in effect a military commander of his own fighting machine.

What we seem to be witnessing is a situation in which men not given to protest are fighting the war, making it easier for the population as a whole to forget about what is going on.

Yet, if the country has rejected the human cost of the ground war for Americans, why should it tacitly accept the lower but still human cost of carrying on that fight from airbases in Thailand or from aircraft carriers off the coast?

In a philosophical sense, the question of whether these pilots are prepared to carry out their missions-which undoubtedly many of them are-becomes secondary to the question of whether they should be assigned to carry them out.

Finally, there is the question of how long the air war will go on and how much more it will eventually cost in American lives.

Last week, at an informal evening meeting with a few newsmen, a high-ranking Air Force official was asked if he thought the air war could go on for another two or three years. He said that he hoped not, but that it was possible.

The next day, the Pentagon labeled such possibilities as sounding "pretty incredible."

The Nixon administration has, in fact, pledged to turn over the air war to the South Vietnamese just as it has the ground war. But that pledge was made years ago and no date has ever been set publicly for that turnover to be completed.

And, perhaps most important, it would be impossible for the U.S. to turn over the type of air war now being fought by the U.S. The South Vietnamese don't have huge B-52 heavy bombers, nor fast F-4 Phantom or A-7 Corsair fighter-bombers, nor is it U.S. policy to give such planes to the South.

So the question remains, what will the U.S. do if the North just keeps on fighting, doesn't agree to a negotiated settlement and doesn't go home?

BALTIMORE SUN 31 AUGUST 1972 Pg 1

Congress faces
war funds request

By CHARLES W. CORDRY
Washington Bureau of The Sun

Washington-President Nixon apparently will have to ask Congress for still another increase in war funds, adding fuel to the Vietnam debate, if the current pace of American air and naval operations continues through next month.

There is no sign that pace will slacken, barring an abrupt change for the better on the negotiating front.

Legislators, returning next Tuesday from a two-week holiday, already have before them an administration request for extra war funds totaling $2.8 billion to pay the costs of the massive air and naval campaigns mounted after the North Vietnamese spring offensive.

The money is for maintenance and operation of the expanded forces, combat pay for servicemen, and replacement of aircraft, munitions and other war material expended.

When the request was prepared for Congress in July, however, it was based on known and anticipated needs only through September 30. At that time, the war situation was expected to ease enough to allow a reduction in the vastly expensive operations undertaken against the North Vietnamese.

If that were not to happen then the administration would have to ask for still more money for the same purposes as the $2.8 billion request now pending in Senate and House appropriations committees.

Defense officials said yesterday it is beginning to be clear that either that course will have to be taken or other defense programs will have to be cut back.

Mr. Nixon, announcing Tuesday a further 12,000-man reduction in troops within South Vietnam, said he was "absolutely not" going to cut down the bombing of North Vietnam

or end the mining of its harbors unless there is "substantial" progress in negotiations. There would be no such "election eve tactic," as the bombing halt ordered by President Johnson just before the 1968 vote. That order suspended all bombing of the North.

While the troop strength in South Vietnam itself will continue to dwindle—later cuts below the newly announced December 1 level of 27,000 are certain—there was no presidential sign of early reduction in the naval forces off the coast or the air forces in Thailand and Guam.

The Air Force and the Navy have high proportions of their total combat strength involved in those operations. Of the Air Force's total fleet of 390 B-52's, there are 150 at Guam and 55 in Thailand involved in the war. Their daily operations, about 100 sorties, cost well over $3.5 million.

The Air Force has 20 of its 50 F-4 Phantom-fighter squadrons stationed in Thailand—360 of a 966-plane force—for operations over North and South

Vietnam and, less frequently, Cambodia and Laos.

The Navy has 6 of its 16 aircraft carriers, with a total of more than 360 combat planes, committed to the war. Four are usually in operation off the coast at any one time. The six are the Kitty Hawk, Oriskany, Midway, Hancock, Saratoga and America.

$2.8 billion in funds

Of the $2.8 billion in extra war funds already sought for the expanded operations, the Pentagon says $200 million was for increased needs in the last three months of the fiscal year that ended June 30, and $1.2 billion is for the current fiscal year. The remainder, for items that take longer to produce, mainly aircraft, will be spent later as orders are filled.

But it all will be either spent or put on order by September 30, if Congress provides it; hence, the prospective need for more as the air and naval operations continue.

The overall cost of the war for the current fiscal year is now estimated at $5.8 billion and raising, up at least $1.2 billion from earlier estimates but still under last fiscal year's $7.3 billion.

NEW YORK TIMES 3 SEPTEMBER 1972 P-1

War Opponents to Escort
3 Freed Prisoners to U.S.

Special to The New York Times

PARIS, Sept. 2—Two leaders of the American peace movement said today that they fly to Hanoi soon to meet three American prisoners of war back to the United States.

David Dellinger and Cora Weiss, cochairs of the Committee of Liaison with the Families of Servicemen Detained in North Vietnam, said at a news conference that they conferred with the North Vietnamese delegation here yesterday and were told of the decision to free the prisoners. North Vietnam announced early this morning that the pilots would be released.

Mr. Dellinger and Mrs. Weiss said they would return to New York today "to complete arrangements" for the trip. The date has not yet been set, Mr. Dellinger said, but he expects the prisoners to reach home "in a matter of weeks."

The North Vietnamese last released American prisoners three years ago.

Mr. Dellinger said there were two problems in fixing the date for the prisoners' release, one of them "the danger of flight in North Vietnam." Hanoi rains are continuing longer than usual because of "U.S. meteorological warfare," he said.

The other problem is that he must get permission from a court to travel, "because I am free on bond from the Chicago conspiracy case." However, he said the court had given immediate approval for the Paris trip when it learned prisoners were involved, and he said he did not expect any difficulty in getting permission to go to Hanoi.

Mr. Dellinger emphasized that he and Mrs. Weiss would

pick up the three pilots in Hanoi and stay with them until they joined their families, using civilian transportation all the way.

This is to prevent the United States military from "kidnapping" and "brainwashing" the men before they can see their families and the press, he said.

Names Released by Hanoi

The North Vietnamese Foreign Ministry gave the three pilot's names and identifications as:

Lieut. (g.) Markham Ligon Gartley of the Navy, service number 703644, born on May 16, 1944 in Kentucky, captured on Aug. 17, 1968, in Nghean.

Lieut. (g.) Norris Alphonzo Charles, of the Navy, service number 755256, born on Aug. 4, 1945, in Florida, captured on Dec. 30, 1971, in Hating.

Maj. Edward Knight Elias, of the Air Force, service number 429649169 FR, born on Jan. 16, 1938, in Arkansas, captured on April 20, 1972, in Quangbinh.

Mrs. Weiss said she understood all three were in good health.

The Hanoi statement said that the United States Government had "compelled" pilots released in July, 1969, to "put forward distortions about the humane policy" of its treatment of prisoners, and had used them "in war activities" against Vietnam and Indochina. That is why, Hanoi said, such releases had been "temporarily suspended."

Mr. Dellinger, who was involved in each of the three previous releases, of three prisoners each, said the conditions set by Hanoi had been "flagrantly violated" by the United States.

The men were "interfered with on their way home," isolated for several months, and forced by "threats" to change initial statements about good treatment at North Vietnamese hands to complaints of inhumane treatment," Mr. Dellinger said.

Further, he said, they were used to train pilots and plan raids. He mentioned specifically the futile raid on the Sontay prison camp two years ago.

At one point, Mr. Dellinger said he felt the present release would be the last before the end of the war. He also said he had been told that 44 United States prisoners had been captured since intensive bombing of the North was renewed last April.

Mrs. Weiss said that North Vietnamese officials had told her that as of Aug. 23, they held 383 American prisoners, but could not provide an "up-to-date list with names because new ones were being captured all the time."

The figure and the official United States figure of 1,123 men listed as prisoners or missing is explained by a United States refusal "to take off the list the men who have been confirmed dead," she said.

Moreover, she said, Hanoi lists only men captured on its territory, while the United States lists those missing anywhere in Indochina.

The Gallup Poll

BALTIMORE SUN

3 SEP 1972 (5)

Viet coalition government
acceptable to U.S. public

BY GEORGE GALLUP

Princeton, N.J.—Only a minority of the American public would insist on a government run solely by representatives of the South Vietnamese people.

Six out of 10 Americans say they would like to see either a coalition government take over in South Vietnam after United State troops are withdrawn, or feel that it would not make much difference what the composition of the government is in that country.

At the same time, however, a majority of the public feel that military aid should be continued to the South Vietnamese even after the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Gallup surveys have consistently shown the Vietnam war to be the No. 1 concern of the American people with a large majority in favor of bringing all our troops home by the end of the year.

Little difference is found among the various population groups on the question dealing with the composition of the government in South Vietnam, with McGovern supporters and Nixon, supporters holding closely comparable views.

Even among the under 30 group; who have been particularly vocal on the Vietnam issue, views closely parallel those for the nation as a whole.

Support for continued military aid to South Vietnam is also held by similar proportions in every population group, including persons under 30 years of age and among McGovern supporters.

Even among persons who favor a coalition government, the weight of opinion is 5-to-4 in favor of sending military aid after U.S. troops are with-

drawn. Among those who want a government run solely by the South Vietnamese, opinion is 2-to-1 in favor of continuing to send military supplies.

The table below shows the relationship between views on the two questions:

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Should<br>Continue<br>Aid</th><th>Should<br>Cut off<br>Aid</th><th>No<br>Opin.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Favor government<br>run by South</td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Vietnamese</td><td>64</td><td>31</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>Favor coalition</td><td>52</td><td>41</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>Makes no<br>difference</td><td>40</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Here is the first<br>asked in the survey:</td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

After U.S. forces leave Vietnam, what kind of government would you like to see take over there—1, one run by the South Vietnamese, 2, one run by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, 3, a coalition government consisting of representatives of both sides—or doesn't it make much difference to you?

Here are the national results: Coalition government ... 40. Run by South Vietnamese 29

Does not make

much difference ... 21

Run by Viet Cong/ North Vietnamese ... 1

No opinion ... 9

Here is the next question asked:

After the withdrawal of U.S. troops, do you think the U.S. should continue to send military aid to South Vietnam, or do you think the U.S. should cut off all military aid?

Should continue aid ... 51

Should cut off ... 39

No opinion ... 10

The survey is based on in-person interviews with 65 adults. 18 and older were interviewed in more than 300 times. The survey was selected locally across the nation during the period August 4 and 5.

NEW YORK TIMES

3 SEP 1972 (5)

Nixon's Strategy:

To Defuse
The War
Issue

WASHINGTON — President Nixon's celebrated but never really stated four-year "plan" to resolve the nation's agony in Vietnam was, in fact, a three-tiered strategy aimed at that pivotal day of reckoning, Nov. 7, 1972. As Election Day nears, only one of those tiers has actually been reached, but the President appears to have been right in calculating that this would suffice to mollify the voters.

The war continues and no settlement is yet in sight. In Senator McGovern Mr. Nixon faces a challenger who most directly poses the war as a central issue. The intensive American bombing of North Vietnam continues, and Mr. McGovern, along with many critics at home and abroad, condemns the aerial destruction as a pointless policy of havoc and retribution. Yet the President again showed himself confident last week that he had neutralized the issue to the point of most voters would decide because the candidates for other offices. Indeed, he seeks to capitalize on the issue by proclaiming his policy as the only honorable course.

In offering repeatedly since 1969 to be held accountable at the polls for his handling of the Vietnam problem, the President carefully and progressively hedged on his actual promise.

His first pledge was to end the war outright, by persuading Hanoi to accept a draw and a deal to tolerate, at least for a time, the survival of a non-Communist regime in South Vietnam.

That failing — as he gradually acknowledged — his goal was to expedite the United States from the war, after forcibly reducing Hanoi's capacity for offense and augmenting Saigon's capacity for defense. Ergo the invasions of Cambodia and Laos, the heavy bombing, the mining of the ports and the program of "Vietnamization."

That also failing — as it eventually became clear — Mr. Nixon was willing to face the voters after he had reduced the American involvement to such an extent that most of them would perceive the war as essentially painless.

A series of moves last week the President maintained that the third option was now the only one consistent with his overriding objective of saving face and honor for the United States by not contributing to a Com-

munist take-over of South Vietnam. He said he could not predict when the war would end, though the time for a settlement seemed to him at hand. He said he could not predict when the heavy American bombing of Indochina would end. It would not be ended as an "election-eve tactic," he pledged. On the other hand, a prediction of two to three more years of bombing was, he said, "quite ridiculous."

He announced another projected cut of the American ground troops in South Vietnam — from 39,000 to 27,000 by Dec. 1. He hinted that there might not be any more withdrawals so long as any Americans were held prisoner by Hanoi or unaccounted for — a policy unaffected by Hanoi's decision yesterday to release three more American pilots. And he reiterated his pledge to end the draft by mid-1973.

All these moves were extensions of the long-evolving and politically effective plan to end the pain, if not the war. Mr. Nixon points with pride to the withdrawal of more than 500,000 troops from Vietnam and of all Americans, save some advisers, from ground combat in Vietnam. Moreover, he points to a dramatic decline in American casualties; to the fact that all risks in Vietnam are now borne by volunteers; to the fact that the draft, while it lasts, is being run by the much fairer system of random lottery, and to the prospect that in less than a year, provided Congress pays for the increased costs of attracting volunteers, there will be no more compulsory military service anywhere.

Nor is there the slightest apology in Mr. Nixon's presentation of this record. He insists that only Hanoi's intransigence accounts for the failure of negotiations thus far. He is aggressive rather than defensive about his failure to produce peace during his four years in the White House.

"We always, of course, set our goals high," he said last week. "We do our very best to reach those goals. I think there are those who have faulted this Administration on its efforts to seek peace, but those who fault it, I would respectfully suggest, are ones that would have the United States seek peace at the cost of surrender, dishonor and the destruction of the ability of the United States to conduct foreign policy in a responsible way. That I did not pledge in 1968, I do not pledge it now."

The fighting in South Vietnam, meanwhile, remains intense, with Saigon's forces paying with severe casualties for the defense of their northernmost territories. Further offensives are expected in the next 60 days, on the theory that Hanoi will wish to weaken Mr. Nixon politically. But the President is confident that his bombings and Saigon's forces can repel these assaults and that his victory at the polls, if not the threat of his re-election, will finally persuade North Vietnam to negotiate on acceptable terms.

It had been his hope, and even

more the hope of Henry A. Kissinger, his chief negotiator, that Hanoi would perceive Mr. Nixon at his most flexible and generous in this election season and thus agree to a bargain as late as this month or next. If this was ever an element in Hanoi's calculation, then the President's huge lead in the opinion polls must be having the paradoxical effect of persuading the North Vietnamese that he does not really need a settlement badly enough to soften his terms appreciably.

That indeed has been the finding of the polls and other political soundings. The New York Times-Yankelovich electoral survey has found that although many more voters cite the war as a campaign issue than any other subject, nearly two-thirds of them, including half of all Democrats, believe that Mr. Nixon is doing all he can to end the war. Voters in the East perceive Mr. McGovern as the "real peace candidate," but voters elsewhere, and lopsidedly in the South, think the label fits the President best.

Moreover, and perhaps more important, there is the less tangible evidence for belief that most voters are not likely to make the war the decisive element in their choice this fall. As the director of a nonprofit registration drive said recently in comment on the difficulty of signing up noncollege youth, "The war has turned into essentially an ethical issue that takes hold only among students. The others don't care about bombing Asians, only the draft."

You don't really know what doesn't hurt you — that may be a hypothetical ordering of values or just a cynical estimation of the American voter. For the moment, it seems an eminently practical political judgment.

—MAX FRANKEL

THE NATION 4 September 1972 (1)

The Cost of Nixon's 'Peace Plan'

With a large section of the media apparently convinced
that Nixon is pitching a "no-hitter" and that McGovern's
showing will be on the order of Landon's in 1936 (eight
electoral votes) it is worth while to take a look at the cost
of the Nixon "Peace Plan," about which we heard so much
in 1968. It is of course perfectly possible that some sort
of peace arrangement, or semblance thereof, will be
patched up before November 7. Nixon may contrive an
opportunity to slit the throat of that redoubtable anti-
Communist statesman, Nguyen Van Thieu, in order to get
the Indochinese war out of the headlines (it is. rele-
gated to the back pages already) and off the tube. We
have never fallen into the trap of saying that a President
as unprincipled as Nixon will not end up doing what he
has vowed he will never do. We have only insisted that
Nixon must be judged by his handling of the issue over
his entire four-year term, and that is what McGovern
should be stressing in the months ahead.

Rep. Donald W. Riegle, Jr. (R., Mich.) has done the spadework for him, asking the right questions and supplying answers under the rubric, "Actual Cost to Date —Blood and Money—of Nixon's 3½-Year 'Peace Plan'." It is a devastating compilation. "It is standard practice," Riegle writes, "for the Administration to express its Vietnam war policy with a single major graph—one with a downward slope reflecting the staged withdrawal of American ground forces." The carefree voter will be satisfied with the reduction from more than 500,000 troops to less than 50,000, with a further reduction to be announced about September 1. (Never mind the actual total of 120,000, including the Air Force and Naval complements, capable of inflicting far greater damage than all of Johnson's ground troops.) But if this complacent voter would allow his mind to dwell for just a minute on the past, he might be less satisfied.

Nixon's "Peace Plan" might more accurately be called
a "War Plan." In summary, since Nixon took office it has
cost more than 20,000 American dead, and more than
109,000 additional American wounded—many blinded,
maimed or crippled for life, and many with only a short
time to live because of their injuries. Missing in action in
Nixon's war: 467, and known POWs: 70. With Nixon as
Commander in Chief, 3.6 million tons of bombs have been

dropped on the countries of Indochina, or some 200
pounds for every man, woman and child in North and
South Vietnam combined. The horror can be better ap-
preciated by comparison with the total U.S. tonnage of
bombs dropped in World War II: 2.2 million. Less im-
portant, but not to be neglected, a money cost ascribable
to Nixon of $59 billion, or some $1,200 for every Amer-
ican family of four.

But these figures, all based on data furnished by the
Department of Defense, take in only part of the cost of
the "Peace Plan" with which Nixon started what may, not
inaccurately, be termed his reign. Thousands of young
servicemen became drug addicts in Indochina in the past
three and a half years. Nixon expanded the war into two
countries, one of which—Cambodia—had been spared
the ravages of combat entirely, and another—Laos—
that had been, by comparison, only slightly touched. The
additional Asian dead, wounded and homeless number in
the millions. Barry Romo, a former Army lieutenant and
a national coordinator of Vietnam Veterans Against the
War, said at Miami: "We want an end of the Vietnam
war, not a changing of the color of the skins of those who
are dying"—the precise opposite of the Nixon policy.

What impels Nixon to continue the destruction of a
small country that poses no threat to the United States, to
drain billions of dollars desperately needed for constru-
tive purposes at home, to accustom Americans to sensei,
bloodshed so long as their own kin are spared, and to
support a dictatorial regime that tortures political prison-
ers, imprisons the few opponents that are left, subsists on
corruption, and disgraces the United States before the
world? The inescapable fact is that Nixon has no regard
for world opinion, or for that matter American opinion
from a moral standpoint. What does concern him is what
he calls respect for the Presidency, and in particular the
incumbent—Richard Nixon himself.

Anthony Lewis, writing from the Republican conven-
tion to *The New York Times* of August 22, said: "The
historic notion that American wars have a dominant moral
element divorced from militarism is now finished." That,
Lewis comments, is a considerable achievement in one
term as President. So far Nixon has got away with it.
The judgment of history will be another matter, but he
is apparently too self-satisfied to concern himself with
anything beyond the triumphs and vanities of the present.

3-E

NEW YORK TIMES 6 SEPTEMBER 1972

About the Dikes in North Vietnam

"Premeditated character of the bombing"

By YVES LACOSTE

PARIS—To the long controversy be-
tween critics of U.S. bombing of North
Vietnamese dikes and the American
Administration, it is now possible to
add new elements to the available evi-
dence. They are the result of a geo-
graphical analysis of the points in the
dike network that have been hit by
bombs.

From April 16 to July 31 (and the
bombing continued into August), more
than 150 attacks were made on the
whole of North Vietnam's canal sys-
tem, causing heavy damage in 96
places. The International Commission
on War Crimes made a special study,
among others, of the effects of the
bombing in the Red River delta. The
bulk of the population is in fact here;
and it is also this region which suffer-
ed the greatest number of hits (58
out of 96).

The U.S. Administration first denied
that the dikes had ever been bombed.
It later admitted that some canal in-
stallations may have been hit—"be-
cause they were in the immediate
neighborhood" of military objectives.
Washington, however, strongly re-
jected allegations that the dikes were
deliberately bombed.

One thing emerges from a scrutiny
of the map [right] showing where
dikes have been hit. Apart from two
strikes near Hanoi, and two others,
including the Phuly locks on the Day
River, all the points which have been
bombed (54 out of 58) are in the east-
ern part of the delta, ranging from the
Namsach district in the north to the
provinces of the Taibinh, Namdinh and
Ninhbinh in the south.

The American Administration admits
this, but points out that bombing in-
tended to cause major flooding would
be concentrated upstream on the west-

ern part of the delta, which has in fact
been spared. A study of the country's
physical layout, however, leads to
somewhat different conclusions.

Schematically, the Red River delta
can be divided into two parts: to the
west, in the upper delta, the rivers
which tumble directly out of the badly
eroded hills have built up several al-
luvial ridges, along which the rivers
flow and which frequently cause
changes of course before their waters
are brought under control by dikes. To
the east, in the lower delta, the rivers,
which have deposited most of their al-
luvial contents further upstream, flow
along rather lower natural levees, sep-
arated from one another by vast
stretches of very low-lying flat land.

It is in the eastern part of the delta
where the Red River and its various
branches flow into the sea that the
areas most likely to be flooded can be
found. In the upper delta most of the
villages are perched on top of the al-
luvial ridges, which rise prominently
over the flat lands. In the lower delta,
on the other hand, the villages are
generally below river level.

It is just this destruction which the
bombing is largely trying to achieve.
If the bombs were being aimed not at
the dikes but at "military objectives"
then they would be more evenly spread
across the delta. The concentration of
bombing attacks on the dikes in the
eastern part of the delta, which also
happens to be the most thickly popu-
lated and heavily farmed area in the
country, can therefore be regarded as
deliberately planned, for the attacks
are directed against a region where
they can have the gravest conse-
quences.

At another level of geographical
analysis, a close examination of the
various sectors in the eastern delta
area reveals the premeditated charac-

ter of the bombing.

One of the most striking examples
can be seen in the southern part of
Thaibinh province between the Red
River itself and the south and one of
its branches, the Traly, to the north.
These two waterways, which both flow
along alluvial ridges, form the outer
edges of a kind of gutter, which drains
towards the east, the sea. Reclamation
of the area, where some 600,000 per-
sons live, was made possible by build-
ing dikes along the rivers, and dams
to keep the sea out. And even then,
rainwater collecting in this vast "gut-
ter" must be pumped out at low tide
—which is the function that the big
Lan locks perform.

The bombing was directed against
the vital points of this system, and
primarily against the Lan locks. Be-
tween May 24 and July 29, the locks
were bombed nine times. Even after
they were wrecked, three more bomb-
ing attacks were launched against this
installation, which is far from any
military objective, no doubt with the
intention of hindering repairs. So the
water, unable to flow into the sea, is
beginning to accumulate in the rice-
fields, where a good part of the crop
can be written off as a loss.

What must be emphasized here is
that in President Johnson's time, the
bombing of the dikes usually stopped
before the rainy season. Under Mr.
Nixon there is no sign of a halt. River
and sea dikes continue to be bombed,
and the latter are continually shelled
by units of the Seventh Fleet. Locks
are the primary objectives, for by de-
stroying them, villages and fields can
be flooded or the sea let in to render
the soil unfit for cultivation for years
to come.

Yves Lacoste, professor of geography
at the University of Paris, visited
North Vietnam as a member of the In-
ternational Commission on U.S. War
Crimes in Vietnam. This is adapted
from La Monde.

"The issue will be employed by Hanoi"

By NGUYEN TIEN HUNG

WASHINGTON—Not only is November the month for the U.S. election, but more important to North Vietnam, it is the time for harvesting the most important crop of the year. The dike issue will therefore be employed by Hanoi for dual purposes: to influence public opinion abroad and to justify poor agricultural performance at home.

The people of Vietnam are grouped around the deltas of two great rivers, the Red River in the North and the Mekong River in the South. While the latter is like the Nile in Egypt, flowing through the South as an irrigator of adjoining lands, the former, in Pierre Gourou's words, "crosses the (Tonkin-ese) delta as a fearful stranger." It is so strange and fearful that for centuries it has never ceased to be a source of greatest anxiety to the peasants and their rulers for while the Red River supplies water for paddy

sowing, transplanting and growth, it can also destroy crops by flooding.

The violence and swiftness of the Red River flow is well known. Heavy rains are often accompanied by great winds which turn into typhoons with winds reaching speeds as high as 101 miles per hour. When they come, the Red River may suddenly break loose, threatening man and his entire rice crop since most of the delta is no more than ten feet above sea level, and some of it is three feet above or less.

Under the Communist regime, state expenditures on hydraulic works amounted for over 70 per cent of total annual spending on agriculture. In spite of these efforts the prospect of completely defending the dikes appears to be as remote now as ever before.

The history of the Red River dikes is one of dike breakings. Between 1890 and 1926 the Tonkin delta suffered sixteen major dike breakings. Between 1927 and 1945, in spite of new, more modern works constructed under the French, the dikes broke seven times. Since the 1954 partition, North Vietnam has not had much luck in controlling seasonal floods. Perhaps with the exception of 1956, 1959, 1964, 1965 and 1967, most of the other years have been classified as bad years, during which typhoons, floods and drought dominated. Natural calamities were climaxed by the devastating flood of last year. On Sept. 2, 1971, Premier Pham van Dong publicly declared: "Flood waters from upstream have caused the water in the entire system of the Red River and Thaibinh River to rise to an unprecedented level, while heavy downpours in the delta caused added difficulties for the defense of the dike system."

The impact of last year's flood is still being felt in North Vietnam. In spite of substantial relief aid from Communist allies, the food shortage situation remains acute. This year, the summer crop was harvested (during

May and June) at the time when the whole population was mobilized to support the current military offensive.

It appears probable that North Vietnam will suffer another calamity this year. At least some major portion of the dike..., especially those which were damaged by last year's flood, will be broken when typhoons strike from now through November.

In the past, North Vietnam's population could turn to the South for food relief in times of crisis. In 1945 when floods ravaged the Tonkin delta and the flow of Southern paddy was cut off because of war, starvation claimed the lives of over one million persons. Since the 1954 partition, North Vietnam has turned for assistance to the Communist bloc to partially substitute for the traditional Southern rice. Relief for last year's flood was provided by China, Russia, North Korea and East Germany.

North Vietnam must understand, however, that the vulnerability of its economy to the Red River and the dike system will render the prospect for permanently solving the food problem extremely remote. On the other hand, it cannot count on foreign assistance for lasting relief, especially in view of the Sino-Soviet dispute and its effect on the Communist bloc.

Presumably North Vietnam has looked back toward the South for a solution. It is also highly possible that the devastating flood of last September was a determining factor behind Hanoi's decision to go on toward its goal to conquer the South in the spring offensive. In any case, the food crisis of last year certainly helped strengthen the hand of the hawk faction in North Vietnam.

The Red River, the dikes and the vulnerability of North Vietnam's agricultural sector are critically important in explaining Hanoi's determination in the current conflict.

Nguyen Tien Hung is associate professor of economics at Howard University.

By Thomas W. Lippman
Washington Post Foreign Service

SAIGON, Sept. 5—South Vietnam's government-controlled radio and television stations are waging an extraordinary campaign of personalization and insults against Sen. George McGovern (D-S.D.) the Democratic candidate for president of the United States.

Epithets such as "vile," "braven," "mad dog" and "traitor" are being used in what informed Vietnamese say is the bitterest attack on a foreign office seeker in Vietnamese history.

The denunciations began shortly after McGovern was nominated but increased in frequency and intensity after the candidate said he expected President Nguyen Van Thieu "and his cohorts" to flee the country if President Nixon is defeated.

The broadcast attacks on the candidate sometimes go on for 10 minutes or more.

Few persons here believe that McGovern, who has pledged to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war if he is elected, will win in November, high-ranking government officials, allies of Thieu and others with something immediate to lose are nonetheless apprehensive and make no secret of their distaste for the Democratic candidate.

As Sen. Huynh Van Cao, a strong supporter of Thieu, said in an interview today, "George Meany is right when he calls McGovern an apologist for the Communists. He encouraged them to continue to make war, to invade our country. That is bad."

Foreign Minister Tran Van Lam said McGovern was "risking the contempt of the Vietnamese people." South Vietnam's ambassador to the United States, Tran Kim Phuon, accused the senator of a "gross violation of international courtesy" and "bad manners exceeding the limits of human decency."

But the remarks about McGovern being disseminated on the air here go far beyond these in condemning McGovern.

Radio and television stations in Vietnam are controlling the Ministry of Information, which also appoints

the directors of the individual stations.

Shortwave radios that bring in foreign signals are popular and many Vietnamese prefer to get their news and commentary from the Vietnamese language broadcasts of such agencies as the BBC and Voice of America.

On television, however, the only alternative to the government stations is the American military network, which broadcasts in English.

There have been 23 anti-McGovern editorial commentaries on the radio since his nomination, many of which were also aired on television.

An official of the stations said commentators had received directives from a "higher level" to write denunciations of McGovern and that every piece had the approval

of the information ministry before it was put on the air.

"We attack McGovern," he said, "not because he attacked President Thieu, but because he attacked our whole nation, which is an ally of the U.S. How can we tolerate him, when he uses such haughty arguments to slander us?"

On Sunday, an official commentary summarized the reasons for the attacks on McGovern.

"We would not spend so much time on the internal affairs of others if those affairs at the beginning did not involve us," the broadcast said.

"We, anti-Communist and anti-criminal Vietnamese, must oppose McGovern. He does what Vietnamese children dare not do—bowing, bending and kneeling before the enemy."

An earlier commentary called McGovern "a shameful blight on the American people."

It continued in a stronger tone, saying that "for the sake of society, we must engage in such acts as holding the jaw, caging and if necessary beating to death the political mad dog who is soiling the traditions of American democracy, slandering the American people and playing into the hands of an enemy of the U.S., and particularly interfering insolently into the internal affairs of an ally..."

"We ought not to say nor explain the right and wrong to him any more but we ought to take actions, strong actions, and if necessary eliminate him, as veterinarians do with animals that have become harmful to mankind due to disease or the weather."

WASHINGTON POST 6 September 1972 P20

# South Vietnam Media Ordered To Vilify 'Mad Dog' McGovern

Vietnam:

Democracy
Was Very
Disorderly

289

EYJ

"SAIGON—" I abide by democratic principles," President Nguyen Van Thieu told a military audience here recently. "but the more open is democracy, the more disorderly it is, and the more fissures it will leave open to Communist penetration."

Over the past two months, President Thieu, who has been governing by decree since he pushed a special-powers bill through the South Vietnamese senate after curfew late one night in June, has been moving to cement those fissures.

His latest move was becoming apparent last week. Officials began putting into effect another executive decree which gives President Thieu's hand-picked province chiefs the power to appoint and dismiss all the previously elected officials of the 10,775 hamlets in the countryside. The effect was to abolish popular elections at the most basic local level and thus further reduce citizen participation in the democratic processes.

For the South Vietnamese peasant, hamlet officials are the closest governmental contact in his everyday life. He goes to them when he needs governmental assistance, permission or advice; and he hears from them when the Government needs taxes, professions of loyalty or information.

An American diplomat observed of the development, "The American-inspired democracy building era is all over." But to many, he was slightly off the mark: What is all over is the era of United States control over the war machine the Americans created in Vietnam.

Democracy is a Western concept not familiar to any Oriental society. President Thieu, it seems clear now, only put up with it as long as he had to when the Americans were so numerous, so generous, and therefore so powerful here. Now that they are leaving, he is confident that his benefactor, President Nixon, will be re-elected, no matter what happens in Vietnam, and so he is moving to rid the country of "disorderly democracy" because, to him, it is dangerous.

The official reason given by the decree on appointment of hamlet officials was "to unify the chain of command." This does, since the lines of authority in the country now flow uninterrupted down from President Thieu through the province chiefs he appoints to the village and hamlet officials they name.

The decrees on the hamlets and rule by executive fiat were only the latest signs that the forms of democratic government have been weakened. When President Thieu was elected last

October, he was the only candidate. Later he placed restrictions on the South Vietnamese press and stiffened the penalties for common crimes and for dereliction of duty.

Mr. Thieu has used the exigencies of the current Communist offensive in the South as justification for his previous decrees, but the plan to do away with election of hamlet officials was in the works as early as last February, before the offensive started.

The only people who really were embarrassed by all of this are American officials who have been pretending that South Vietnam is a democracy. It never was before the Americans arrived and never was when they were here in force. But, presumably to try to win some semblance of popular support for the war at home, the Johnson and Nixon Administrations in the 1960's portrayed it as democracy ab building and forced upon the military regime the forms, if not the substance, of a freely elected civilian government.

A senior American in Saigon has occasionally described the South Vietnamese constitution, adopted in 1966 and 1967, as "grafted" onto Vietnamese society by the Americans. It has a bicameral legislature, a supreme court, and a popularly elected president—all only on paper. For these institutions have all been superfluous since Mr. Thieu's election last fall. In that election, Gen. Duong Van Minh and former Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky refused to run because they believed Mr. Thieu was rigging the elections against them. Mr. Thieu engineered a 94.3 per cent victory for a second four-year term.

On things Vietnamese and political at least, Mr. Thieu now cares so little for American opinion that he did not even inform the United States in advance of his decision to decree democracy in the hamlets out of existence, according to the State Department in Washington. "We have a free hand now, finally," one South Vietnamese palace adviser told a visitor recently.

Why get rid of even the pretense of democracy? Mr. Thieu explained, in a speech on Aug. 11, before the decree was promulgated: "If our country were a secure, peaceful and proper country like the United States, all of our democratic rights and freedoms could be fully observed without any trouble at all. However, our country is still on the path of development and the Communists are blocking our way and interfering everywhere. We can find them everywhere, under our beds, under our ancestors' altars, behind our backs, and even among our ranks."

—CRAIG R. WHITNEY

Nixon's
Reward

290

The public has turned against the war, but if the polls are right they have not turned against the Commander-in-Chief. Why is that? The war is no nearer being won than when Mr. Nixon took office. It still consumes a large part of his budget, over a billion dollars more than scheduled, just for the current bombing raids. Do the polls mean that by withdrawing ground combat troops, he has drawn a curtain across the agony suffered by the Vietnamese because of American intervention? It is that in part. If one is not beneath them, bombs don't hurt. Dead Asians, like dead Indians, can be forgotten.

There is more, however, and more to the President's credit, than the shift from ground to air attacks in Indochina to explain why his foreign policy has wider support than Lyndon Johnson's had four years ago. Nixon has come a long way from debating with Khrushchev in the kitchen to dining with Mao in Peking. Looking back, we can measure the distance traveled. For most of his political career, Nixon fed and fed upon anti-communism, thriving on real or fancied menaces, insinuating that liberals who opposed him were cranks, cowards or communist sympathizers. That has not been an easy habit to kick, especially for a leader with Nixon's following. Anti-communism has been their opiate, and even today they are not sure they want to be told how destructive their addiction can be. They like to be reassured from time to time in American Legionese that Richard Nixon has not really changed and is the man in the Pumpkin Papers they knew and admired. But the presidency has changed him.

He has not become less a man of principle. The principle to which he remains faithful is the principle of expediency. But the dictates of expediency are different from what they were when Mr. Nixon was on his way up. When Stalin ruled Russia, when Europe and China and Japan were weak, when the tidal wave of nationalism had yet to wash over most of Africa and South Asia, and when the United States had an incontestable nuclear and technological superiority - a foreign policy quite unlike that of the '70s was appropriate. President Nixon and his advisors have understood that, which is why a part of their foreign policy makes William F. Buckley, Jr. uneasy, and why a handful of Republican renegades have set up their own party this year. It is also why the President will pick up votes this November that he never got before. Does he deserve them?

A case can be made that he does. Every administration for a quarter of a century has paid blackmail, not always unwillingly, to a bipartisan Cold War coalition always ready with the charge of "soft on communism." Foreign policy was negative and often hysterical. The only acceptable trade with Reds was in epithets. There could be no communication with China; China was Taiwan. The world was split in half, our half pasted together by military pacts. Allies were exhorted and bribed to stand with us against the Soviet Union, and the Republicans thundered that a Democratic President had betrayed us at Yalta.

And who has returned the United States to the big power policy of Yalta? Richard Nixon. Not only is summitry back in fashion, not only is it no longer respectable to speak of rolling back communism or unleashing Chiang; we mean to do business with all varieties of communist governments. Tito is welcome in Washington, Nixon is welcome in Warsaw, and we think none the less of West Germans for negotiating with East Germans.

The change has profound political significance. In

a Democratic successor. He has made it possible for a Democratic administration to conduct a sensible foreign policy without worrying too much about Republican reprisals. That is a major contribution, long overdue.

But why, given Mr. Nixon's campaign promise to do in Indochina what President Eisenhower shortly after taking office did in Korea, are we still mired in the war? Has the President, remembering how he and others savaged Dean Acheson for having "lost China," feared that the GOP and he would be victimized by the slander that they "lost Vietnam?" That would be a shabby excuse for prolonging the war, and it would be foolish. For here also public opinion is ahead of the administration. The danger of retaliation at the polls against a President who negotiates release of POWs, along with total US military withdrawal and the establishment of a new government in Saigon, is slight.

It would be an act of statesmanship to admit that the objective that has been pursued in Vietnam has been futile. But that is not to be expected. Mr. Nixon does not have to confess error in order to correct it. He need only do the necessary and put the best face on it he can. Instead, having had 43 months to work his way out, he faults his critics for his failure, blaming "the enemy" for not giving up, the Russians and the Chinese (but oh so circumspectly) for supplying the North. He blames Senator McGovern, Senator Fulbright, Ramsey Clark, Jane Fonda, Dr. Spock and left-wing journalists: If they would stop trying to see for themselves what has been done to Vietnam, if they would stop asking the North Vietnamese what they want, if they would stop raising hopes in Hanoi that Washington will someday wash its hands of the war-then a durable peace would be around perhaps not the next corner, but the one after the next.

This rationalization is agreeable to General Thieu, who wants the US to "keep up relentless bombing" for another six or seven months. Why shouldn't he? Without it, where would he be? His Vietnamese enemies aren't willing either to surrender or to accept a settlement that includes Thieu on top. But Thieu has not been elected President of the United States, and apart from human concern for the personal safety of Thieu and his friends, why should their fate be of decisive importance to Mr. Nixon? And what, after all the evidence of corruption and low morale, in the South, convinces the administration that if Vietnam were reunited by the revolutionaries, Vietnamese peasants, soldiers, students, Buddhists would be worse off than they are, or less in charge of their own destinies?

The White House may open another surprise package before November. Henry Kissinger may find a formula for giving "the enemy" the minimum it requires without seeming to give up anything. Whatever settlement may be negotiated by election time would most likely be on terms heretofore unacceptable in Washington. It would nonetheless be welcome, as would lowering the level of violence by halting the bombing and disengaging all American forces. Meanwhile, however, Nixon's war goes on. By Defense Department count, 1,090,530 have died, and that figure excludes civilians. There was more bombing in August,

1972 than ever before. Sixty US warships and 39,000 sailors and pilots are on duty off the shores of Vietnam. Fifty thousand US troops and 900 combat planes operate out of Thailand. More B-52s and other support forces are on Okinawa and elsewhere in the Pacific.

Under a parliamentary system, which this country does not have and could not use, an honorable prime

minister who had failed to redeem so solemn a pledge as the President's to end the war would resign. The honorable course for Richard Nixon, after nearly four years of failure, would have been to decline to run again. Instead he offers himself as the candidate of peace, while holding to the essentials of a military policy that has needlessly destroyed a small nation and killed 55,000 Americans. Is the reelection of the Commander-in-Chief to be their reward?

NEW YORK TIMES - 12 SEPTEMBER 1972

The Issue of 1972

By TOM WICKER

President Nixon has taken American ground combat troops out of the war and therefore American casualties are down, but American war prisoners are nowhere near freedom, "Vietnamization" has never looked more dubious, the Thieu regime has never seemed a less attractive ally, and neither lethal bombing nor mining of its harbors has ended North Vietnam's ability to carry on and perhaps intensify the war.

Even Congress continues to pick at Mr. Nixon's Vietnam policy, despite his success in fending off end-the-war legislation. In approving the biggest defense bill ($74.6 billion) since World War II, for instance, the House nevertheless cut $450 million from the $2.8-billion Mr. Nixon had requested for increased military operations. These cuts included trimming from 252 to 180 the number of helicopters to be sent to South Vietnam—just one day after seventy of those they already have been destroyed or damaged at Bienhoa, in the worst aircraft loss of the war.

Those with long memories will recall that it was the South Vietnamese Army's inability to protect air bases that first brought American air power directly into the war; in February, 1965, infiltrators blew up a number of American aircraft at Pleiku, and President Johnson sent the bombers north in retaliation. More than seven years later, the South Vietnamese still can't protect their aircraft, which is one eloquent comment on the "success" of Vietnamization.

Another is the continuing display of North Vietnamese and Vietcong mil-

itary enterprise in South Vietnam—despite the incredible weight of American bombing in North and South, and despite the mining of Hanoi's ports. American officers now are claiming that the North Vietnamese threat to Hue has been ended, but in the last week, Saigon lost an important base camp in the Central Highlands and suffered setbacks at Tienphuoc 35 miles south of the important city of Danang.

Together with vigorous North Vietnamese and Vietcong activity in the Mekong Delta, all this suggests that neither Vietnamization nor Mr. Nixon's air power and mines have tipped the balance of fighting in favor of Saigon; indeed, without American planes and pilots, the Communist spring offensive might well have been a knockout punch.

Politically, the new Vietcong peace proposal—"for a provisional government of national concert that shall be dominated by neither side"—may be pronounced by American analysts to be the same old stuff clad in new rhetoric. On paper, however, it appears fair enough and is so stated that it may prove hard for Mr. Nixon to ingore.

This is particularly so since the proposal appears to demand something less than what Mr. Nixon calls "the overthrow of the Saigon Government." It would specifically permit participation by members of that Government, excluding only President Thieu himself—and the evidence is mounting that this exclusion is a splendid idea.

Having already wrested from the Senate the right to govern by decree in the fields of security, defense, economy and finance, having intimidated and virtually silenced the opposition

press by Draconian publication rules, having—since the spring offensive began — thrown into prison literally thousands of Vietnamese on nothing more than suspicion, Thieu has now abolished popular democratic election of officials in his country's 10,775 hamlets.

These moves make it clear that as Americans have been withdrawn from Vietnam, while Mr. Nixon's commitment to the Thieu regime has been continued and perhaps solidified, Thieu himself has seized the opportunity to concentrate all power in his own hands. So much for all the talk by the Nixon Administration and its predecessors about democracy and self-de termination in South Vietnam.

To its credit, the Nixon Administration has protested against attacks by Thieu's controlled radio and television network (financed by American money) on George McGovern as a "mad dog" and "mentally ill." The question is whether the nation that finances South Vietnam and guarantees its existence with the most destructive air assault in history, has the power left even to stop this presumptuous behavior.

Sad to say, none of this seems to be costing Mr. Nixon any votes at home. The American people do not seem to realize that their air power is carrying out one of the most terrible mass exterminations in history, not only in the North but in the South Vietnam that it is supposed to be defending and over which the squalid Thieu has been given such dictatorial sway.

That is the message George McGovern ought to be carrying day by day and state by state to the American people. That is the theme that brought him the Democratic Presidential nomination, and if it is not the true issue of 1972, then there is no issue.

WASHINGTON POST

9 SEPT. 1972 P-1

# Hill Kills
Cutoff of
Viet Aid

By Spencer Rich

Washington Post Staff Writer

House-Senate conferees yesterday killed an Indochina fund cutoff and a proposed military pension boost as they finished work on a compromise $20.9 billion military procurement authorization bill.

But a new Senate fight over the Indochina war cutoff appeared certain when Sen. Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass.), author of the provision that was dropped yesterday, immediately announced that he will re-offer it as an amendment to the foreign military aid bill whenever that measure reaches the Senate floor.

The fund cutoff was approved by a 50-to-47 vote last Aug. 2, the first time the Senate ever passed a bill barring further war money. It would have stopped all spending for U.S. military operations in Indochina four months after enactment, provided that North Vietnam released U.S. prisoners.

It was strongly opposed by President Nixon and by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Stennis (D-Miss.). Stennis said it would tie the President's hands and force him to get out of Indochina regardless of the fate of South Vietnam, leaving him no leverage to negotiate for the survival of that regime after U.S. cessation of military operations.

Stennis told reporters yesterday that both Brooke and Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) had been allowed to address the Conference Committee on behalf of retaining Brooke's language.

But Stennis said House conferees had absolutely refused to accept either the Brooke language or any alternative proposal—even one based on the Nixon administration's own insistence on an internationally supervised cease-fire.

However, the Mississippi Democrat said House confer-

ees had agreed to include in the conference report a statement that a 1971 war provision, signed into law as part of that year's military procurement bill, is still valid.

The 1971 provision declares it the policy of the United States to set a date for withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Indochina and calls on the President to fix such a date. Mr. Nixon, in signing that bill into law last November, said that he regarded that provision as "without binding force or effect" and that he had no intention of complying. He has never set such a date.

Stennis said, "I still think it's binding. . . It's a valid law."

Stennis said that House conferees, in refusing to accept any Indochina cutoff language, had also cited the Aug. 12 House roll-call vote of 221 to 172 rejecting language similar to the Brooke amendment, in another bill. The conference report now goes to the full House and Senate.

Conferees accepted a Senate provision barring use of any funds for the proposed Washington site of a Safeguard anti-ballistic missile. Aldes said House conferees had proposed allowing the use of some leftover money for minor site-preparation work. Stennis said the only Safeguard money allowed by the bill was for continuation of work at Grand Forks, N.D.

Conferees also accepted a provision allowing Lockheed up to $4.4 million for depreciation of equipment usable solely for construction of the controversial C-5A military transport plane. Stennis said depreciation allowances had been blocked by the Senate up to now on $400 million worth of equipment, and the provision would allow only $4.4 million this year.

The military recomputation provision dropped by the conferees was sponsored by Sen. Vance Hartke (D-Ind.). It

would have meant higher pensions for some 600,000 retired military personnel, with increases ranging from a few dollars a month to up to $5,000 a year, Stennis said.

Stennis said the proposal was being dropped but not forgotten, and that House Armed Services Committee Chairman F. Edward Hebert (D-La.) would hold hearings on it.

Stennis said he favors the principle of recomputation, but that the cost figures for the Hartke proposal were not clear and no decision could be made until they were. He said Hartke in good faith had given $275 million as the first-year cost and $10 billion as the total cost for his amendment over the lifetime of the 600,000 receiving the benefit, but new Defense Department figures raise these estimates to $343 million and $19 billion.

He added that some broad adjustments in military retirement pay scales — perhaps a contributory system — probably are needed, because it didn't make too much sense to let people retire after 20 years and then draw pensions for 30 to 35 years—longer than they'd served.

The $20.9 billion authorized in the compromise bill compares with a $23.3 billion administration request. In addition to cutting back Safeguard to the Grand Forks site only, the final bill killed $20 million sought for a hard-target warhead, but allowed $40 million for hard-site defense, $10 million for a submarine-launched cruise missile and a like amount for improved command and control communications.

Also in the final bill were funds for four Boeing 747 airborne command posts (instead of the requested six), 30 Harrier planes, seven Northrup Y-5s, 12 Lockheed C-130s, and 24 A-7s, and a requirement for a 16,000-man reduction in the 2.3-million-person armed forces. A provision barring weather manipulation as an instrument of war was dropped.

C43

292

WASHINGTON POST

11 SEPTEMBER 1972 P2

Swelling Majority Supports
President's Stand on the War

By Louis Harris

By a substantial 55 per cent to 32 per cent, a majority of likely voters support the continued heavy bombings of North Vietnam by the United States. And by 64 per cent to 22 per cent, the mining of North Vietnamese harbors by this country is also backed by American public opinion.

The rationale behind public thinking is that "by mining harbors and bombing, the North Vietnamese will come to peace terms faster," a view by a 53 per cent to 32 per cent margin. In addition by 74 per cent to 11 per cent, a lopsided majority supports President Nixon's contention that "it is important that South Vietnam not fall into the control of the Communists." Thus, by a 47 per cent to 35 per cent margin, a plurality of the public now opposes a coalition government in Saigon, "if that were the only way we could get peace in Vietnam"—the widest plurality in opposition to such a coalition solution the Harris Survey has recorded since March of 1971.

Yet these results from the latest poll of 1,640 like-ly voters, conducted in per-son across the country be-tween Aug. 30 and Sept. 1, tell only half the story about the profound shift that has taken place in the past month in American public opinion about the Vietnam war.

* Much of the renewed credibility of Nixon policies on Vietnam can be traced to the succession of statements and campaign tactics of Sen. George McGovern on the issue. Back in May, by a substantial 54 per cent to 21 per cent margin, a majority of the voters agreed that McGovern "deserves credit for being against the Vietnam war

before other politicians." Yet, now in September this credit has shrunk to no more than a 42 per cent-to-41 per cent edge, a dramatic drop of 32 points in the margin paving tribute to McGovern's early stand against the war.

* Contributing to this decline in confidence in McGovern on Vietnam is the 58-to-18 per cent disagreement with the recent statement by the South Dakota senator in effect that "the U.S. was more brutal in its bombings than the Communists when they occupy parts of South Vietnam."

* By 56 to 15 per cent, the voters also feel that it was "wrong for McGovern to predict that if he wins the White House in November, General Thieu will flee South Vietnam and a coalition government with the Communists will take over."

* By 49 per cent to 20 per cent, a plurality of the voters simply do not give credibility to the charge by McGovern's running mate, Sargent Shriver, that "the Nixon administration blew a real chance to achieve peace in 1969, just after it took, office," even though the Shriver charges were backed up by Averell Har-riman and Cyrus Vance, the negotiators in Paris under President Johnson.

* By 51 per cent to 26 per cent, a majority of the public does not agree with Sen. McGovern's charge that "Henry Kissinger's travels to Paris and Saigon were no more than a publicity stunt that falsely raised hopes for peace."

* By 49 to 32 per cent, a plurality of the voters also does not go along with the claims of former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, after visiting North Vietnam, that "the U.S. was engaged in immoral and inhuman bombings of hospitals, dikes, and other

non-military targets which should stop."

The irony of these results is that by an overwhelming 76 per cent to 21 per cent the American people favor "bringing home all U.S. military, naval and air forces from Vietnam." And when measured against his 1968 pledge to end U.S. involvement in Vietnam, President Nixon is scarcely out of the woods, as far as the public is concerned.

Repeatedly, the Harris Survey has asked cross-sections of likely voters:

Do you tend to agree or disagree that President Nixon has not kept his pledge of 1968 to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war?

Sept. - Oct.
July - Aug.
April - May

Although in this latest Harris Survey for the first time a plurality expresses the view that the President has kept his pledge to end U.S. involvement in the war, the margin who feel this way is no better than a narrow two points.

In sharp contrast is another question which asked voters:

If you had to say, which candidate would you feel most in agreement with in his approach to bringing home U.S. troops, naval, and air forces from Vietnam — George McGovern or Richard Nixon?

Total
Voters
51%
33
16

Harris
McGovern
Hot Sure

Slowly, President Nixon is rallying public opinion back to his position on Vietnam. But up to this point in the campaign, he has been materially aided and abetted by the statements and tactics of his opponent for the White House, George McGovern.

© 1972, Chicago Tribune

VN War Promises Made By Nixon Re-called

CRONKITE: In Washington, Eric SEVAREID recalls the presidential campaign of 1968 and Richard NIXON's statements on settling the VN war.

ERIC SEVAREID: In the beginning, that is, in the New Hampshire primary of four years ago, was the word.

Now, at the end, is the word.
But, what word?

For four years, innumerable
writers, broadcasters and politi-
cians have said that Richard NIXON
said he had a secret plan to end
the VN war.

We are now all put on public de-
tailed notice by the White House
that he never did say that.

In other words, that he had no
plan.

The notice comes in today's New
York Times from one of the Presi-
dent's ghost writers, who have been
materializing recently going public

Mr. William SAPHIRE (?) demon-
strates conclusively that Mr. NIXON
never said it, that the press had
just gone on perpetuating an error.

It is useful to have this point-
ed out but probably not as useful
to the President's cause at this

particular point in time as Mr.
SAPHIRE may think.

What Mr. NIXON said four years
ago was a pledge that he would end
the war, that if he did not, he
would expect the people to hold him
accountable.

That while he had no magic for-
mula or gimmick, he did have some
specific ideas primarily in the di-
plomatic area.

Perhaps it is fair in war and
politics to make a pledge without
a plan behind it. But what the
nation assumed from the NIXON re-
marks at the time was that he had
in mind a new way of going about it
and could guarantee success.

It is a fair inference that he
wanted the people to make such an
assumption and to go on making it,
because at no time over a period
of years that he public and speci-
fically object to the misuse of -
in the press of the word plan.

Nor did Dr. KISSINGER or news
secretary ZIEGLER.

They could have stopped the
erroneous use of the word plan at
any time.

The only reasonable conclusion
from this silence is that they
wished the people to believe that
a consistent, positive policy was
unfolding step by step, that must
inevitably bring the tragedy to its
end and soon.

Even though it is very (?)
doubtful of American actions in VN
have dearly wished to believe this.
(?).

The precise wording doesn't
really matter all that much. As
SHAKESPEAR did not say, peace by
any other name would smell as
sweet, but there is no peace.

Foreign Policy: Telling It Like It Isn't

By Eugene V. Rostow

NEW HAVEN—The degradation of public discourse is the heaviest blow Korea and Vietnam have inflicted upon the American spirit. Our leaders seem almost derailed by the stress of events and the lure of “peace.” As a result, foreign policy is discussed in an Or-wellian language, according to the Red Queen’s rule that words mean what she says they mean.

One could illustrate the point from the discussion of a dozen problems. The most notable is the nearly com-plete failure of the press to explain the hopeful turn toward the United States which the Soviet Union has forced upon China. But it would be an evasion not to examine the issue first in the context of Vietnam, the most poisonous and inflamed aspect of our recent political experience.

On one side of the Vietnam debate, President Nixon starts every speech about Vietnam by pointing out that when he became President, there were more than 500,000 American troops in Vietnam, and that he has reduced the number to fewer than 100,000. Senator Dole draws the political moral with brutal simplicity. The voters, he says, know that Nixon "inherited this war," for which the Democrats, par-ticularly President Kennedy, bear "primary responsibility."

In Newspeak, it is bad form to re-call that the basic American commit-ment in Vietnam—the commitment from which all the others flow—is the SEATO Treaty, made by President Eisenhower with the full support of the Senate and of public opinion, and reaffirmed as bipartisan, nonparti-san, national policy in successive votes of Congress, and the decisions of four Presidents, during the next eighteen years. In his statements about Viet-nam, President Nixon never mentions the SEATO Treaty, although it is the principal constitutional source of his authority to use the armed forces in the area, and the source as well of the policy he must, as President, see is faithfully executed.

Mr. Nixon is of course doing his best, at great risk, to make good the promise of the SEATO Treaty, without allowing a new revulsion of public opinion against the war in Vietnam to be stirred up.—It is difficult not to sympathize a little with the politics of his position. In substance, the tenacity of the United States in Viet-nam, the Middle East, and elsewhere has made the historic turn in Chinese policy possible, and thwarted Soviet attempts to prevent and undo it. While some of President Nixon's tactics—his handling of Japan and Europe, and his apparent optimism about Soviet policy—are dubious, the broad lines of his strategy are well-conceived. But the way in which the President explains his policies to the public, especially his Vietnam policies, simply does not meet his obligations to democracy as an educational process.

The posture of the present leaders of the Democratic party is worse. Most of them are concerned only to wash the stain of Vietnam from their

hands.

Senator McGovern's campaign filter-ature claims that on Vietnam he has been "right from the beginning." If this means that he has taken his present position on the subject from the beginning, the statement is not true. McGovern now says that the war in Vietnam is a civil war within a single nation, and that we never should have intervened to help the South Vietnamese.

But McGovern voted for the Tonkin Gulf resolution and other legislation based on the SEATO Treaty, and its theory that the war in Vietnam is an international war of aggression, waged by the state of North Vietnam against the state of South Vietnam. For a long time, that is, McGovern took the offi-cial view that Vietnam, like Korea and Germany, is a nation divided into two states against its will by the cir-cumstances of the cold war; and that it would be a violation of the United Nations Charter—and a threat to the security of the United States—as it was in Korea, if one of those states used force to gain control of the other. It was therefore right for the United States and other nations, McGovern then believed, to enter into a regional defense treaty through which each signatory severally guaranteed the small, weak nations of Southeast Asia against armed attack by Communist

states, and thus—hopefully—deferred such attacks.

Morally and politically, a Senator cannot evade responsibility for his votes simply by changing his mind, or his tune. Today, however, McGovern is just as silent as Nixon about the SEATO Treaty, and the successive votes of Congress upholding it, al-though for quite different reasons. If one can pretend that repeated public acts of the President and Congress never took place, or can be ignored as unconstitutional and "void," it be-comes possible to talk darly of the decisions on Vietnam being made by an elite Establishment "behind closed doors," on grounds never discussed by Congress or the public.

Similarly, by exorcising the treaty and the legislation committing the na-tion to its course in Vietnam, one can avoid facing the really difficult ques-tion—what a President should do about a treaty of the United States, in a world whose precarious security depends in large part on the deterrent force of American commitments, when many Senators who voted repeatedly for the policy of that treaty have taken to the lifeboats.

Eugene V. Rostow, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale, was Under Secretary of State for political affairs, 1966 to 1969.

NEW YORK TIMES - 17 SEPTEMBER 1972 (18)

## Civilian Control...

The secrecy that surrounds the Senate hearings into charges that high-ranking officers were aware of Lieut. Gen. John D. Lavelle's unauthorized bombing of North Vietnam makes it impossible and improper at this point to judge the behavior of those who have appeared before the panel. It is clear, however, that, in the words of Senator Stennis, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, "a conflict" exists between the testimonies of General Lavelle and Gen. Creighton W. Abrams, prospective Army Chief of Staff.

Senator Stennis has said quite properly that this conflict must be "further pursued." This makes it difficult to understand the haste with which some members of the committee have already thrown their support behind the confirmation of General Abrams. Particularly puzzling is Senator Symington's position that although he believed that "more people than General Lavelle knew what he was doing," he has already made up his mind to support General Abrams' confirmation because he is "a fine officer."

General Abrams' quality as an officer has not been in doubt. The question is rather whether General Abrams or other high-ranking members of the top military command either participated in or were aware of the unauthorized bombing of which General Lavelle has been accused and for which he has already been demoted and retired from service.

If it is true that the rules laid down for the Air Force were too vague to be readily interpreted, as Senator Symington suggests, then it must be asked why General Lavelle has been penalized for "misinterpretations" which are apparently to be conconded in those of higher authority. Since the rules concerning the limitations of American air power were of extraordinary importance to the Administration's alleged efforts to negotiate a peace agreement in Paris, how is it to be explained that those crucial guidelines were so vague as to be subject to such fatal misinterpretations?

At stake in these hearings is the relationship between civil authority and the military. Unless the President and Congress have unquestioned control over the actions of the defense establishment, and the military leadership unquestioningly accepts this civilian authority, foreign policy will increasingly be militarized.

The framers of the Constitution took great pains to allocate to Congress and the President all specific powers over the conduct of foreign affairs, particularly on the overriding issues of war and peace. The omission of the military from the assignment of these mandates was no oversight; it was the historic recognition of the fact that civilian control over the armed forces cannot long survive unless it is absolute.

Today's infinitely more deadly weaponry makes the need for such a civilian leash on the armed forces immeasurably more important. Even the impact of those unauthorized actions on the credibility of Presidential spokesmen at the Paris negotiations offers only a hint of what unauthorized use, or threat, of military force may mean in an age when the fate of mankind depends on so delicate a balance of unimaginably destructive powers. The Senate hearings should therefore be viewed, not as a mere Inquiry into an alleged breach of military discipline, but as a first step in reversing the trend toward a fatal loss of civilian control over military action and foreign policy.

## ...and Bombing Fiasco

How purely military judgment can miscarry even from a strategic standpoint is all too sharply illustrated by the bombing of North Vietnam that was authorized.

During his first week in office in January 1969, President Nixon asked the eight key military and civilian agencies of the Government concerned with the Indo-China war what could be achieved by mining Haiphong and other ports and resuming the bombing of North Vietnam, which had been halted three months earlier.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the American military command in Saigon replied that the effect on the war would be decisive if previous restrictions were removed on the bombing of overland transport from China. But the C.I.A. and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (O.S.D.) challenged the military estimate.

As summarized by the Kissinger staff in the then-secret National Security Study Memorandum No. 1 (N.S.S.M.-1) in February 1969, the C.I.A. and O.S.D. said that "the overland routes from China alone could provide North Vietnam with enough material to carry on, even with an unlimited bombing campaign."

Three years later, on May 8, 1972, President Nixon disregarded the C.I.A.-O.S.D. judgment, which was supported by an impressive array of facts, and took the advice of the military, who evidently argued that "smart bombs" and other new techniques would make even more certain the success they predicted in 1969.

For four months now, the ports have been closed by mines and a massive bombing campaign has been under way. Indications that the Communists' war effort was not being impeded have been countered with the assertion that several months would be required before the interdiction campaign began to pinch. Petroleum supplies, which came by Soviet tanker overseas and had to be pumped ashore, were said to be particularly vulnerable.

These predictions now have been exploded by two separate Intelligence studies. The C.I.A. and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency have both concluded that the blockade and bombing, after four months, have had relatively feeble results.

The Communists have built three four-inch petroleum pipelines—which are hard to hit and can be rapidly repaired—south from the Chinese border to the Hanoi area and another from Hanoi to the southern tip of North Vietnam and beyond, into the Ashau Valley of South Vietnam. Ant-like tactics of rapid repair of damaged railroads and bridges have also kept adequate supplies of other kinds moving from China. Enough supplies have got through for new Communist offensives in the next six weeks—including one in the Mekong Delta south of Saigon—if Hanoi decides to launch them.

The mystery is why anything other than this should have been expected. As the N.S.S.M.-1 study pointed out, "almost four years of air war in North Vietnam have shown—as did the Korean war—that, although air strikes will destroy transport facilities, equipment and supplies, they cannot successfully interdict the [overland] flow of supplies because much of the damage can frequently be repaired within hours."

That these facts, known since 1969, were disregarded is bad enough. What would be even worse would be continuing illusions that the mining and bombing might force Hanoi to accept a negotiated defeat. A compromise political settlement, which involves a sharing or division of power in South Vietnam, is the one way to end a war that neither side can win on the battlefield.

NEW YORK TIMES 17 SEPTEMBER 1972

Air War: (18)

How the 'Ants' Defy
the Bombs

WASHINGTON — Every morning, seven days a week, the White House receives over the signature of Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird a detailed report on the bombing of North Vietnam in the preceding 24 hours.

Known in the Washington Intelligence community as "Lairdgrams" and marked "Top Secret-Eyes Only," these reports come with color maps on which strikes by B-52 combers are represented by red squares and hits by fighter-bombers by red dots. Since the United States began its massive bombings last April, these maps look as if North Vietnam was covered with a large blotchy rash. Last Sunday, for example, there were 320 strikes; on Monday, 300.

Aerial photography and pilots' reports, likewise forwarded to Washington, attest to the superb accuracy of the bombing what with laser beam, radar, television and computer guidance available to American pilots as they roar over North Vietnam—covering the country from the demilitarized zone in the south up to the restricted belt within 25 miles of the Chinese border in the north.

But in recent weeks the Nixon Administration has been discovering with growing discomfort and concern that the correlation between the technically perfect bombing and its real impact on Hanoi's battlefield capabilities in South Vietnam is considerably less than meets the eye on Mr. Laird's maps.

In fact, other top-secret reports reaching the White House—from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Air Force—provide evidence that despite the relentless bombing of railways, highways, bridges and depots and the mining of North Vietnamese ports, the Communists not only have been able to keep their forces in South Vietnam adequately supplied, but also have managed to send down 20,000 fresh troops just in the last six weeks—for a grand total of 100,000.

According to these reports, made available by intelligence officials last week, the best current estimate is that about 5,000 tons of supplies—including weapons, munitions, fuel and lubricants, and food—enter South Vietnam daily. These supplies support Hanoi's present military effort as well as enabling it to prepare new offensives that now are expected late this month and in October while the diplomatic stalemate persists in Paris.

The massing of North Vietnamese troops in the rice-rich Mekong Delta region southwest of Saigon suggests to intelligence officers that the opening of a new major front in the war may be in the offing along with more heavy action in the northern provinces. Hanoi's forces in the delta region have increased 10-fold since last March in what for years had been South Vietnam's most pacified area.

The C.I.A. and the D.I.A. concur in the judgment that the Communists can sustain the fighting at its present rate for two more years regardless of the bombing. Conversely, the Air

Force thinks that at least two more years of the air war are required to break Hanoi's military back—assuming, of course, that the South Vietnamese Army can hold its own.

Intelligence officials emphasize that the two-year estimate is not necessarily maximal but represents the outer limit of reasonable projections possible at this time. These officials also stress that the bombing is gradually "bleeding them white."

This state of affairs has faced Washington with three basic questions:

* How do the North Vietnamese go about their build-up despite the bombing?

Intelligence specialists report that the Communists largely neutralize the bombing with their "ant tactics"—the overwhelming use of manpower to transport equipment over bombed-out stretches of railway and highway and across the rivers where bridges are gone. Troops all over seem to be marching at night, evidently invisible to aircraft overhead.

Fuel is pumped through new underground pipelines running from China to Hanoi and thence south. The systematic measurement of munitions expended by the Communists and the constant discoveries of new arms caches indicate that they are not yet seriously hurting for ordnance.

The military here, however, claims that if it were not for the bombing, supplies would be moving into South Vietnam at twice the present volume.

* Why are the Communists building up at this stage?

Senior intelligence, military and political officials in Washington speculate that North Vietnam (like the United States) believes in fighting while talking. No serious political analysts believe that North Vietnam has the slightest intention of accepting President Nixon's offer of a cease-fire, subsequent elections in South Vietnam and a total United States military withdrawal. If anything, the most recent Hanoi and Vietcong pronouncements in Paris and elsewhere are more insistent than ever on a simultaneous political settlement, starting with the removal of South Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu (to whom President Nixon is publicly committed) and the creation of a provisional coalition.

There are few illusions that the secret meetings between Henry A. Kissinger, Mr. Nixon's national security adviser, and Le Duc Tho, the Hanoi Politburo member, will result in a diplomatic breakthrough in the foreseeable future. For now, they serve as useful diplomatic and political window-dressing for both sides.

* What can the United States do to change the situation?

There is no obvious answer here. The military acknowledge that the United States bombings have already reached their peak in terms of air capability.

As seen from Washington, therefore, the outlook is for a continued contest of political will power and military might. And more red dots and squares on the "Lairdgram" maps.

NEW YORK TIMES - 19 SEPTEMBER 1972 P-33

The Lavelle Affair

By TOM WICKER

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18th—Senator John Stennis of Mississippi is not likely to be elected man of the year by the N.A.A.C.P., but he may be the ideal person to investigate the strange case of Gen. John P. Lavelle and the unauthorized bombing of North Vietnam. Not only is the Senator a man of unquestioned personal integrity and one of those Southern patriarchs who command exceptional respect in the Senate; he also has been active and effective for so long as a member of the Armed Services Committee that he knows as well as any man can where the bodies are buried in the Pentagon and the boondoggles are buried in the defense budget.

It is therefore a warning signal as loud and clear as a fire siren that Mr. Stennis has refused to commit himself to approval of Gen. Creighton W. Abrams as Army Chief of Staff and that he remarked the other day that "there is just something that sticks out here. . . . I just do not see how [General Lavelle] could, on his own . . . have launched out on plans like this."

Indeed, there is something "that sticks out here." It is the damage done to military discipline, civilian control of the military and the nation's position as a law-abiding power. Although the dimensions of the Lavelle affair are not yet clear, all three of these concepts appear to have been outraged by it; they now must be added to the endless casualty list of this longest and most dubious war in American history.

That is so whether or not General Lavelle is vindicated in his contention that his superiors—specifically, Gen-

eral Abrams and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Moorer—knew and approved of the secret raids that were described officially as "protective reaction."

If they did not know, and General Lavelle is proved to have been acting on his own, that would be at the least a grievous breakdown of discipline, one tending to bring the nation into disrepute and to disrupt its diplomatic undertakings. Moreover, as Mr. Stennis noted, at least once General Lavelle and General Abrams were "corrected" from Washington for a raid the Joint Chiefs said had been improper and unauthorized—but nothing else was done for two more months, while many other improper raids were launched, and then only to General Lavelle, who at that was allowed to retire at a virtually tax-free $25,000 annually. Some punishment!

But if General Lavelle's superiors were aware of, or encouraging, the secret raids, something more than a mere breakdown of military discipline—bad as that is—is suggested. There seem to be two possibilities. One is a military conspiracy to sabotage, or at least in defiance of, national policy.

The other is that—generals not being notorious for sticking their necks out—the whole episode might have been known to the supposed civilian masters of the Army and Air Force, or to some of them. It may seem extraordinary to suppose that the Administration or any of its officials could play such a deceptive game, but the history of this war is replete with extraordinary deceptions by American officials.

Whatever the facts finally show, the Lavelle affair raises in the sharpest way the question why either the civil-

jan or the military spokesmen of this Administration should be accepted at face value when they say that American planes are not bombing the Red River dike system in North Vietnam. The unauthorized raids of last winter and spring show all too well that these spokesmen could either be misinforming or misinformed.

Even more clearly, the Lavelle affair suggests that Hanoi has even less reason than the American people to trust official American statements. They knew right along that those "protective reaction" raids were no such thing, and in violation of the so-called "understanding" by which President Johnson had stopped the bombing in 1968.

The worst of all this may be the way it is being handled in this country. If General Lavelle were solely responsible, he ought to have been severely punished; but he was not, certainly not by comparison to what happens to any ordinary person convicted of, say, assault or armed robbery. If his military superiors were implicated with him, the most sweeping penalties ought to be invoked all along the line; but General Abrams is being nominated for the highest Army post, Senators are falling over one another to pledge him their support and except for some members of the Senate committee, no one—certainly not the White House or the Pentagon—seems exercised over the matter.

Thus, the moral rot of the Vietnam war continues to foul institutions and processes—let alone men—of which Americans once were justly proud. How can anyone contend that there ever was anything to be gained in Indochina remotely worth the values and the honor the nation has lost in this corrupting war?

NEW YORK TIMES

20 SEPT. 1972 P-8

MILITARY AID BILL
REVIVED IN SENATE

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19—
The Senate Foreign Relations
Committee approved a revised
$1.5-billion military authoriza-
tion bill today to replace the
one that the Senate killed in
July.

The funds that the measure
would authorize represented a
cut of $700-million in the Nix-
on Administration's military
aid program, and in reporting
the bill out, the committee set
the stage for another floor baf-
ted on foreign aid.

The committee reopened the
end-the-war issue by approv-
ing an amendment to the bill
that would require the with-
drawal of all American forces
from Indochina in four months,
contingent upon the concurrent
release of prisoners of war.

Only military aid must be
authorized this year, since
Congress last year passed a
two-year authorization for eco-
nomic aid. The $1.5-billion in
military aid that the Senate
committee's bill would author-
ize in the fiscal year that be-
gan July 1 compares with the
$2.13 in the authorization bill
already passed by the House
of Representatives.

House Panel Acts Early

Yesterday, the House Appro-
priations Committee, without
waiting for the completion off
Congressional action on the au-
thorization of military aid, ap-
proved a bill calling for the
appropriation of $4.2-billion for
various forms of both econom-
ic and military aid. This is
nearly $1-billion less than what
the Administration had re-
quested.

The House committee's cuts,
however, fell heaviest on eco-
nomic aid as the pa: I ap-
proved about $2-billion in mili-
tary aid, or all but $150-mil-
lion of the total sought by the
Administration.

The earlier authorization bill,
who rejected on the Senate,
48 to 42, by a coalition of
liberals opposed to expanded
military aid and conservatives
opposed to an end-the-war
amendment attacked on the
Senate floor.

The same forces may threa-

ten passage of the revised bill.

To pass a military aid bill,
the Administration reeds the
support of some liberals and
moderates who have become
increasingly disenchanted with
the foreign aid program and in
particular with a military aid
program, which they contend
leads to excessive foreign mili-
tary commitments.

At the same time, some of
these liberals and moderates
are not inclined to vote for any
military aid bill unless it con-
tains an end-the-war amend-
ment, which the Administration
opposes.

In effect, the Senate commit-
tee took the military authoriza-
tion bill as it stood before it
was rejected and reduced the
military aid to the amounts ap-
propriated last year.

The new bill would authorize
$1.45-billion for direct military
aid against $1.72-billion n the
rejected bill. The Administra-
tion had asked $2.15-billion.
For military assistance grants,
the bill would authorize $500-
million instead of the request-
ed $780-million. For military
supporting assistance, the bill
would provide $550-million; the
Administration had asked $844-
million. The bill would author-
ize $400-million in military
credit sales, against the request
of $527-million.

The bill would also authorize
the $100-million requested by
the Administration for refugee
relief assistance in Bangladesh.

The committee retained oth-
er amendments in the rejected
bill that were designed to im-
pose policy restrictions on the
Administration.

Thus, the bill would impose
a $275-million ceiling on aid
to Cambodia and would cut off
aid to Portugal unless the Ad-
ministration submitted an
Azores base agreement to the
Senate in the form of a treaty.
The bill would also set a $150-
million ceiling on military aid
and sales to Latin-American
countries. The end-the-war
amendment was sponsored by
a Republican, Senator Edward
W. Brooke of Massachusetts.

The Senate also attached
the Brooke amendment to a
military procurement authori-
zation bill. The amendment was
subsequently dropped by a
Senate-House conference com-
mittee.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR 23 SEPTEMBER 1972

CJD

# U.S. Hanoi exploring new Saigon regime?

By Takashi Oka
Staff correspondent of
The Christian Science Monitor

Paris

Once again Hanoi and Washington appear to be approaching some kind of a watershed in secret efforts to resolve their bitter conflict over South Vietnam.

The frequency of presidential adviser Henry A. Kissinger's private talks with Polituro member Le Duc Tho, the fact that he stayed over in Paris Tuesday night for an additional session with his counterpart the next day, have fueled speculation that both sides are intensively exploring the nature of the government to replace the two rival regimes in South Vietnam.

There are those here - and they apparently include Mr. Tho - who recognize that there is an element of presidential electioneering in Mr. Kissinger's publicized comings and goings for his secret talks here with the North Vietnamese.

But analysts are inclined to believe that there must be enough going in the exchanges for Mr. Tho - despite his often-expressed impatience with alleged U.S. foot dragging - not to break them off as a window-dressing maneuver of only domestic American party political interest.

On Sept. 11, the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, commonly known as the Viet Cong, published a statement, the key points of which were that it was prepared to reach agreement with it [the United States] to the effect that neither a Communist regime nor a U.S. stooge regime shall be imposed on South Vietnam," and that the government to be established should be composed of three components - Viet Cong, Saigon, and "third force" - "in equal strength and on an equal footing."

President Thieu, however, would have to leave the Saigon administration, the statement said.

Saigon immediately rejected the statement, while the Americans negotiators at the weekly Paris peace talks showered Hanoi and the Viet Cong with questions indicating profound skepticism as to how free of Communist domination the proposed government would be.

Nevertheless, on Sept. 15 Mr. Kissinger stopped off in Paris on his way home from Moscow to Washington, in order to have his 17th private session with Mr. Tho, who had himself arrived in Paris four days previously from Hanoi, with the usual stopovers in Peking and Moscow.

Back in Washington the same day, Mr. Kissinger indicated to journalists there that the United States could not accept the Communist proposal for a coalition government.

And yet, 11 days after his Sept. 15 encounter, Mr. Kissinger is back in Paris to see Mr. Tho - this time for an extended two-day visit.

The election advantage accruing to President Nixon from these secret meetings at a time when publicly he is taking a tough stand against Hanoi is obvious.

So is the irritation with which North Vietnamese officials view the White House's haste to make public the fact of the Kissinger

Tho meetings - invariably while they are still taking place.

Hanoi, by contrast, has only announced one such meeting, by joint agreement with Washington. One is left to draw the inference that Washington has unilaterally disclosed subsequent meetings in the face of Hanoi's disapproval.

## Substantive talks?

Why then does not Mr. Tho ostentatiously pack his bags and return to Hanoi, saying that he will not let the American President use the Kissinger-Tho talks to promote his own re-election campaign?

The answer must be, analysts here believe, that enough substance is being discussed in these meetings to keep the two top negotiators from going their separate ways. The key point of the dispute between the two sides is the question of who is to take power in South Vietnam.

The Americans propose a cease-fire first, to be followed by political talks on the future of South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese refuse to consider a cease-fire until Washington and Hanoi first settle political questions.

The fact that Mr. Kissinger keeps coming back to Paris to see Mr. Tho indicates, some analysts here believe, that the two sides are indeed deep in political discussions, perhaps so far without committing either side.

The question remains: How can two opponents who have been fighting each other as bitterly and for as long as the Viet Cong and the Saigon regime consent to share power, a decision that requires a degree of mutual trust and confidence neither side shows in the other? If and when Washington does reach agreement with Hanoi on this point, can it persuade or force President Thieu to give way gracefully?

NEW YORK TIMES

28 SEPTEMBER 1972

# How Free the Prisoners?

By TOM WICKER

The United States Government did not arrange for the release of the three prisoners of war now on their way home from Hanoi. Nor, so far as can be ascertained, was it any policy or action of Washington's or any words of the Nixon Administration that prompted the North Vietnamese Government to turn these men loose. Why then should the Pentagon and officials abroad be so determined to get control of these men before they even return to this country, and why should Pentagon officials including Secretary Laird be raising the threatening possibility of court-martialing them?

It goes without saying that Hanoi has its own propaganda and no doubt diplomatic purposes in releasing the three prisoners, and may even be trying in a roundabout fashion to aid Senator George McGovern's Presidential campaign. Even so, it would make more sense and be incomparably more humane and civilized if Washington simply welcomed these men home from their ordeal, let them have their say, then "debriefed" them later.

What, after all, are these men likely to know in the way of military information that would be so valuable to the war planners in the Pentagon? What are they likely to say publicly that would be so damaging to Administration policy or to the peace talks or even to Mr. Nixon's prospects? Isn't the main thing to restore these men to their families and let them alone for awhile to enjoy their new freedom?

Instead, reports that American officials would be waiting at the Vientiane airport caused the civilian delegation accompanying the released men to choose an alternate route through Peking and Moscow. In Moscow yesterday they were met by American officials at the airport and according to reports reaching here that will be the case again today in Copenhagen.

It is true that these officials insist that they only want to offer a night's lodging in the embassy residence and a continuation of the journey in an American military aircraft. But that would be, in effect, to take custody of the men if they acquiesced; and they already have made it clear that they want to come home under civilian and not military escort.

No doubt they and the civilians accompanying them recall clearly the occasion in 1968 when three released prisoners reached Vientiane in com-

pany of the Rev. Dan Berrigan and Howard Zinn of Boston University. They were there informed by American officials that, while they were free to do as they chose, the Department of Defense wished them to transfer to a military plane and that this word had been relayed through the White House, which concurred. It is hardly surprising that the released prisoners promptly shifted to the military plane; some time later, the only one of them ever to take a public platform recanted his original statement that he had not been mistreated while a prisoner.

The same kind of veiled threat is plain in the words of Pentagon officials who, while professing anxiety to guard the rights of the returning prisoners, have raised questions about unspecified quotes they attributed to them in North Vietnam; as well as in Mr. Laird's remark that he "can't state . . . that the code of Uniform Military Justice will not be followed."

This is in sharp contrast to the attitude of Ronald Ziegler, the White House spokesman, who has said there is no possibility the Government will bring charges against any of the returning prisoners for anything they might have done while in captivity; and who put the matter in proper perspective when he said, "These men have been through a terrible ordeal. Our interest is their safe arrival back home." That ought to be the Pentagon's interest as well, and the White House ought to enforce it.

Meanwhile, as intercontinental struggle is being waged over the freed prisoners, the House Internal Security Committee has approved a bill to prevent American civilians from visiting Hanoi. This is a measure to "get Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clark" after the fact, but it has far worse defects than that futile purpose.

It appears to run afoul of a Supreme Court decision striking down travel restrictions, for one thing; for another, no legal state of war exists between the United States and North Vietnam; for still a third, the civilians who would be stopped from going to Hanoi are the only people who have ever brought any prisoners out, and the only people who have ever informed the American public about the effects of the American bombing and blockade; finally, the measure would hand even more power to President Nixon, since it would allow him to authorize visits it would otherwise forbid. If the House Democratic leadership doesn't bury a monstrosity like that, it is no leadership at all.

WASH POST 24 SEP 72 (25)

The Politics of Vietnam

# Ending the War: A Change of Goals?

By Chalmers M. Roberts

THE OTHER DAY when Henry Kissinger appeared before White House newsmen to talk about his 21 hours with Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow most of the questions were about his couple of hours with Le Due Tho in Paris. George McGovern has criticized Kissinger's globe girdling in search of an end of the war. But Sargent Shriver says he "wouldn't be surprised" if President Nixon pulled "a rabbit out of a hat" to produce "a political peace in time for a political election."

The polls, and word from reporters around the country, show a healthy majority of voters back Mr. Nixon's tough military posture toward North Vietnam. But they also show the public is tired of the war and wants to see it end. Still, they want something that Mr. Nixon calls "peace with honor" and the Democratic candidates seem to be afraid he'll come up with just that. The North Vietnamese are using their re-lease of three captured American pilots in aean they hope will enhance the anti-war movement here. They continue to send Le Due Tho back to Paris to talk secretly with Kissinger and they keep Xuan Thuy at the semi-public weekly meetings there to hurl propaganda barbs at Mr. Nixon. There is no public evidence that Hanoi is really plac-ing its bets on McGovern's electability. There is plenty of evidence Hanoi still be-lieves in the old talk-and-fight strategy and that the Communists' aim remains the same: Capture, by one device or another, of the government in Saigon.

Since preventing that aim is Mr. Nixon's central position the chances of a negotiated settlement between Washington and Hanoi remain slim. During all of his years in the White House, the President has worked hard and consistently at holding sufficient public opinion behind him so as to disabuse Hanoi

of the thought that he will be forced to surrender that central position.

IN THE LIFETIME of most Americans the United States has engaged in three wars in which the goals have gradually declined. In World War II the public clearly was behind President Roosevelt's demand for "unconditional surrender" of the German and Japanese enemies. We achieved that goal in Germany, though many historians think it was a bad idea that needlessly prolonged the war. We shaved the goal for Japan enough to permit the continuation in power of Emperor Hirohito, which most historians think was a move that saved many American lives by making an invasion of the Japanese home islands unnecessary. There was considerable muttering about letting the emperor keep his throne but no stateside rebellion over that decision.

In the Korean War Americans became bitterly divided. Most everybody backed President Truman's decision to resist the North Korean aggression though probably because most Americans believed the war had been ordered by Josef Stalin. As of today it appears Stalin acquiesced in a North Korean decision. But who really initiated the war remains unclear to the historians. The division here at home came when Gen. Douglas MacArthur charged up to the Chinese border, despite a Chinese warning that Peking would intervene.

We settled in Korea for no more than a cease-fire at approximately the line where the war began. Mr. Truman used to say, after he left office, that he would have been lynched if he had accepted the terms that President Eisenhower accepted. When Ike accepted those terms the nation was weary of the war and wanted out. The President's popularity was so vast that those who objected to the stalemate outcome were drowned out by those who cheered the end of the fighting.

WHETHER the American war in Vietnam was ever popular here at home in the sense that World War II and the Korean War were popular—that is, enjoyed wide public support—is not easy to say. Recent revelations and recriminations over the secret moves of Presidents Kennedy and

Johnson should not obscure the fact that most Americans seemed to approve the calculation because they thought the United States was fighting to at least "hold the line" against the spread of communism. If Congress is taken as reflective of the public view, it took a long time for the Senate to cast a majority vote against the war while the House has yet to do so.

The polls have shown rising percentages of Americans want to get out and rising percentages who believe we should never have gotten involved. Yet the polls also show the majority still is not prepared to move the last step from unconditional surrender to stalemate to scuttle and run. Scuttle and run may be a perjorative description of, say, the McGovern position but the reality is that most Americans seem to view the senator's position as just that.

Mr. Nixon said he expected to be held accountable at the polls if he didn't end it. He hasn't ended it and he probably isn't going to end it by election day. But he has withdrawn more than half a million men and he has stopped sending draftees to Vietnam. He is bombing the hell out of North Vietnam, and a good deal of South Vietnam as well, and he has upped the manpower in the periphery around Indochina. He has whittled down his peace terms and proposals but he still refuses to take any steps that would, as he sees it, amount to posing a Communist regime on Saigon.

Sen. McGovern gets more applause on the war issue than on anything else, by all reports, but he is not getting it from the majority of voters. Mr. Nixon has used the prisoner-of-war issue with consummate political skill while Sen. McGovern has yet to be convincing in his argument that the only way to get the POWs home is for the United States to get out completely. Quite probably the senator is right and the President is wrong in this but the majority doesn't see it that way.

If Sen. McGovern had not so badly bungled his campaign on so many issues he might have been able to make the war central. But he hasn't. Mr. Nixon has made his conduct of the war plausible to the majority who still are not ready for that last step down from the glorious days of unconditional surrender.

By Spencer Rich

Washington Post-Press

Aided by absolute majority, Administration supporters in the Senate killed an Indochina fund-cutoff provision by a 45-to-42 vote yesterday, reversing two embarrassing defeats for the President on the same cent months.

Stripping the Indochina proposal from the foreign-military-aid authorization bill, the Senate approved the $1.82 billion aid measure on a 16-to-41 roll-call vote.

President Nixon also won a victory when the Senate agreed, 56 to 32, to boost the amount in the bill from $1.45 billion to the final $1.82 billion figure. A substantial proportion of the funds will go for military economic aid to allies in Southeast Asia. The measure must now go to conference with the House, which approved an authorization of $2.13 billion.

The Indochina fund cutoff—sponsored by Sen. Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass.)—was by far the most controversial provision of the bill. So strong is the administration opposition that, at the President's request, Vice President Agnew flew back from Texas, where he was campaigning, to be on hand as presiding officer so that he could break a tie vote and defeat the provision if

nixon, Agnew's vote waseded, as Democratic President candidate George McGovern (D-S.D.), Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.), William B. Spong (D-Va.) and several others who have voted for the fund cutoff in the past were out campaigning and didn't return for yesterday's vote.

A few other former supporters either switched positions or withheld their votes and gave pairs to absent senators.

"Had all the absentees been present, and had those who paired voted instead, the fund cutoff apparently would have carried, 51 to 48.

Brooke, who has pushed the fund cutoff through the Senate twice before only to see it watered down or defeated at a later legislative stage, expressed considerable annoyance with the absences, particularly McGovern's.

The fund provision would have cut off money for all U.S. military operations in Indochina in four months, provided North Vietnam returned U.S. prisoners within that period and gave an accounting of all missing in action. Services Committee Chairman John Stennis (D-Miss.) offered the amendment stripping it from the bill.

Stennis, with strong support from Minority Leader Hugh Scott (R-Pa.), who also spon-

sored the provision raising the aid authorization amount, argued that to set a fixed date for U.S. withdrawal conditioned only on release of prisoners would leave North Vietnam no incentive to negotiate and would thereby thwart the President's effort to obtain a settlement that would guarantee the survival of South Vietnam.

Scott told the Senate that the President, having removed more than 500,000 U.S. troops from Vietnam, leaving only 39,000 there, is doing an excellent job of winding down the war and shouldn't be handcuffed in his search for a settlement on U.S. terms.

But Brooke, Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Harold Hughes (D-Iowa) and others said the current course seems to presage an endless bombing war designed to bring North Vietnam to heel while negotiations dragged on forever. They said the United States could gain no advantage whatever from continued participation and should get out.

Predictions that North Vietnam would massacre 100,000 opponents should it ever gain control in the south are a "hoax" based on dubious programs, Kennedy charged. In any event, he said, the fighting and massive U.S. bombing in the last two years has already killed 400,000 North and South Vietnamese civilians and combatants from various countries.

In the Key vote yesterday, Sens. J. Glenn Beall (R-Md.) and Harry Flood Byrd Jr. (Ind.-Va.) voted to kill the In-

dochina fund cutoff, while Sen. Charles McC. Mathias Jr. (R-Md.) voted to keep it alive. Spong was absent.

Mathias was one of only seven Republicans who joined 35 Democrats in voting to retain the cutoff. Thirty-three Republicans and a dozen Democrats (mainly Southerners) voted to kill the cutoff.

The only outright switch by previous supporters was that of Clinton P. Anderson (D-N.M.), who voted with the administration. But previous supporters Marlow W. Cook (R-Ky.) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) both gave pairs to absent senators, and McGovern, Spong, Humphrey, Lee Metcalf (D-Mont.), Harrison A. Williams (D-N.J.), and Robert L. Stafford (R-Vt.) all were absent. They had voted for the cutoff on Aug. 2.

In yesterday's vote the administration lost two senators who had backed it Aug. 2, as Thomas J. McIntyre (D-N.H.) and Howard Cannon (D-Nev.) voted for the fund cutoff. Several other backers also were absent, but it picked up Anderson, James B. Allen (D-Ala.) who didn't vote last time, and Sen. Elaine Edwards (D-La.) who succeeded the late Allen J. Ellender.

Brooke, angry at McGovern's absence, said, "The war is McGovern's chief issue, he had a chance to be effective but he was out talking about it." Cranston, responding later, said, "If McGovern is elected President, the war will end anyway."

McGovern was advised the

night before the vote that the administration probably would win because of absenteeism by others and a decision by some former GOP backers of the cutoff to withhold their votes; and therefore was told he wasn't required to come back because his vote probably wouldn't make a difference.

On final passage, the administration had the support of four Republicans who had voted against the aid bill when it was defeated in August. Sens. Norris H. Cotton (N.H.), Edward J. Gurney (Fla.), Clifford Hansen (Wyo.) and Milton R. Young (N.D.).

WEDNESDAY MORNING - 27 SEPTEMBER 1972

Absenteeism Helps White House

WASHINGTON POST 27 SEI

Senate Kills Viet Fund Cutoff

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WASHINGTON POST - 26 SEPTEMBER 1972 P.22

C4J

# President Appears to Have a Chance To Defeat Viet Fund Cutoff Today

By Spencer Rich

Washington Post Staff Writer

The vote will be extremely close, but President Nixon appears to have a chance to defeat a Vietnam fund-cutoff provision in the Senate today and also to restore $350 million in foreign aid funds slashed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Twice in recent months, the Senate for the first time has voted to cut off funds for the Indochina war in four months, provided North Vietnam releases U.S. prisoners.

On July 24, a fund cutoff sponsored by Sen. Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass.) was added to the foreign aid bill, 49 to 46, over bitter administration opposition, only to die when the aid bill was killed, 48 to 42. On Aug. 2, the Brooke amendment was added to the defense procurement bill, 50 to 47, but was later dropped in conference, with the House.

Today, a third vote on the Brooke amendment is due as the Senate completes action on a $1.455-billion foreign-aid authorization, and this time the President appears to have a slight edge. Absenteeism is growing as election day nears, and a number of anti-administration senators are out of town. Moreover, several senators are said to feel that it is a waste of time to get involved in a tremendous fight in a House-Senate conference when both parties are taking the war issue directly to the electorate.

"If Nixon is re-elected and he keeps the war up, then the time to make the fight is next session," said a senator.

The administration also appears to have a lead in the pending amendment to be offered by Minority Leader Hurh Scott (R-Pa.), raising the authorization back up to $1.8 billion.

If the administration should lose the vote on the Brooke proposal, it may once again advise its supporters to vote to kill the aid measure, as it did July 24. In that case, the foreign aid program, probably would be funded with an emergency financing resolution until next year.

Yesterday, the Senate by voice vote adopted:

* An amendment to the aid bill by Adlai E. Stevenson (D-Il.) declaring that the United States should refrain from supporting actions by the Thieu government in South Vietnam which trample on legitimate opposition, abridge the right to vote and individual liberties, or curb freedom of the press.

* An amendment by Vance Hartke (D-Ind.) cutting off aid to Thailand, South Vietnam, Laos, Burma and Cambodia if the President isn't satisfied that they have taken steps to control narcotics raffic.

NEW YORK TIMES 25 SEPTEMBER 1972

Where We Are

By ANTHONY LEWIS

By the end of this week President Nixon will have presided over the Vietnam war for longer than it took the United States to fight and win World War II. From Pearl Harbor to Japan's surrender it was three years, eight months and one week.

This is, therefore, an appropriate time to look at the record. What have been the costs and the achievements of the Nixon policy in Vietnam over the last three years, eight months and one week?

The direct cost in American lives is 15,243 men killed in action and 5,164 "nonhostile deaths," as the Pentagon calls them—Americans killed in Indochina by such things as aircraft failure, not enemy action. Another 53,375 men have been wounded seriously enough to be hospitalized.

Asian military casualties are less certain. South Vietnam has listed more than 80,000 of its own soldiers killed during the Nixon years, and 240,000 wounded; it claims more than 400,000 Communist troops killed and 600,000 wounded.

Civilian victims are much more numerous, although again precision is not possible. A Senate subcommittee has made these estimates for the last three and one-half years: 165,000 South Vietnamese civilians killed, 400,000 wounded and 1,850,000 made refugees; 2,000,000 Cambodians made refugees. There are no reliable figures for North Vietnamese civilian victims.

From President Nixon's Inaugural through the month of August 1972, American planes dropped about 3,750,000 tons of bombs on North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The figure is currently running close to 100,000 tons a month.

According to cautious estimates by Profs. Arthur H. Westing and E. W. Pfeiffer, the bombs dropped during the Nixon Administration have left approximately 7,500,000 craters in Indochina. They have displaced 750 million cubic yards of earth.

Budget figures put the cost of the Vietnam war to the United States since January 1969 at $60 billion. But that does not include much of the cost of outside bases serving the war, or of aid to South Vietnam and Cambodia. The true cost of carrying on the war has probably exceeded $100 billion.

All this has been spent—lives and money and nature—to carry out a stated policy of American withdrawal from Vietnam.

U.S. ground forces have largely been withdrawn. There were 542,000 American soldiers in Vietnam in January 1969. Today there are 36,000. But in other respects the trend is different.

In January 1969, there were 72,000 Navy and Air Force men of the Seventh Fleet off Vietnam and at the bomber bases in Thailand. Today the official figure is 84,000. The number serving the war at the B-52 base in Guam and in other places is not disclosed, but it would bring the total of Americans involved in the war in September 1972 to over 100,000.

The United States is now using 200 B-52s in Vietnam, North and South—almost double the number deployed in January 1969. There are 800 smaller U.S. planes, fighter-bombers, compared with 1,000 to 1,200 in 1969. Four aircraft carriers are operating off Vietnam, twice as many as in January 1969.

With the high level of American air activity, substantial losses continue. Since the U.S. resumed heavy bombing of the North last April, the Saigon command has reported the loss of 101 planes. Reports from Vietnam put the number of American airmen missing or captured in that time at 106.

What have we achieved in those three years, eight months and one week, in the war that still goes on?

In the official Washington view the significant accomplishment is that the Saigon Government has survived. Despite the massive American ground withdrawal, General Thieu is still in office.

On the other hand, the greatest use of explosive power by any country in any war in the history of the world has not crushed the other side, politically or militarily. The Communists have substantial control or influence in many parts of South Vietnam—probably as much there as in 1969, and certainly more in the other countries of Indochina. The Times correspondent in Saigon wrote this month that the Communists' "military position in the South is vastly better than it was a year ago and is virtually unchallenged in Laos and Cambodia."

In short, three years, eight months and one week of American fighting in Indochina have not achieved stability on our terms. The reason is no secret: We are trying to impose an alien system on a people with a long history of resistance to alien intrusion, against a political force that is the legitimate representative of Vietnamese nationalism. Until we stop that attempt, there can be no stability and no peace.

The other day an American officer in Danang said: "We are really giving it to them with B-52 strikes. Out in the hills around Quangtri, wherever there are reports of two or three people gathered together, they are being hit with B-52s." In terms of military effectiveness, politics and morals, that is where we are in Vietnam.

307

# Vietnam Policy:
Superficially Ingenious

By Gabriel Kolko

TORONTO—Each major failure in the conduct of postwar American foreign policy has led to the search for a new, more successful strategy which, in turn, has produced additional frus-trations in a world ever less suscep-tible to U.S. control. The Korean war and the irrelevance of "containment" evolved into Dulles' "new look" de-pendence on strategic weapons, which the Kennedy Administration then modified to include a "limited war" doctrine whose main outcome was the Vietnam debacle. Today the Nixon Ad-mnistration has proclaimed the end of a bipolar diplomacy which it alleges is a new departure—one promising future peace and stability—in its larger foreign policy.

Given the protraction and technological intensification of the Indochina war, it is clear that Vietnam is both the cause and main objective of Mr. Nixon's efforts to utilize older contradictions between China and the U.S.S.R. to obtain their cooperation in what must always remain a chimerical effort to sustain pro-American regimes in Indochina. Apart from the fact Russia and China cannot trade what they do not control, and that one of the common hallmarks of successful revolutionary movements is their essentially autonomous nature, the more pervasive reality is that the Nixon Administration has shown no real willingness to abandon the main institutional expressions of the cold war, from NATO to bases, or their key ideological premises.

Precisely because Washington overtly retains its commitment to continuing interventions in Indochina and the Third World, it must be apparent to Russia and China that no qualitative change in this main source of violence between states in the world today is possible. Washington's ephemeral effort to succeed diplomatically where it failed militarily in Vietnam is further neutralized by the fact that no conceivable quid pro quo exists to reconcile the diametrically conflicting interests of the world's major powers the U.S. must satisfy in order to derive the Indochinese revolution of the material support of all its allies.

Ironically, in the process of seeking to exploit the contradictions between the U.S.S.R. and China, the Nixon Administration has accelerated those within the formerly American-led world. As Under Secretary of State

John Irwin 2d admitted last June: "Among the most immediate challenges to allied unity and strength are the tensions caused by economic issues," and these have intensified as a result of the Peking and Moscow voyages. The "serious problems" with Western Europe and Japan to which Mr. Irwin alludes will invariably have their political consequences, adding to the already enormous diplomatic price that the imperatives of the futile effort to win the Indochina war have imposed on Washington.

These economic issues impinge on domestic employment and social conditions in the other industrialized nations, as well as the inevitable tensions and conflicts between them for what Mr. Irwin terms "access to increasingly vital energy and raw material resources." While technology precludes the translation of such disputes into deliberate wars between capitalist nations such as the world suffered in 1914 and 1939, it cannot prevent economic warfare and rival efforts to dominate less developed states as yet untouched by social revolution. Japan's emergence as the pre-eminent foreign power in assorted East Asian nations, from Indonesia to South Korea, is but one example of how future U.S. diplomacy may be defined by the deepening real antagonisms between states whose only common denominator is an anti-revolutionary heritage that is no longer a unifier when capitalist nations have conflicting interests.

The new Nixon diplomacy is but a set of improvisations and eclectic responses to immediate challenges, superficially ingenious but ultimately even less likely to prove successful than the policies of his predecessors in imposing the U.S.'s will on its wavering allies, Indochina, or China and Russia. Its vast global military establishment and its terrifying presence in Indochina remain a reality that only the ideologically bemused refuse to see.

Washington's self-serving effort to tidy up 25 years of failure in regard to Russia and China has no equivalent in the Third World nor even with the other capitalist nations. Beneath the Administration's current veneer of self-confidence remains the unavoidable reality that the United States' existing and new conflicts with an increasingly pluralistic world promise only more years of crises and violence.

Gabriel Kolko is professor of history at York University in Toronto and co-author of "The Limits of Power."

NEW YORK TIMES

30 SEP 1972 (2 OCT)

# Is Paris Happening?

By ANTHONY LEWIS

BOSTON, Sept. 29—Outside of the small circle officially involved, none of us can really be informed on the state of the talks between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. But among some people who have thought about Vietnam for years there is now a feeling — a tingling sensation, as one put it—that something just could happen in Paris.

After all the disappointments of past years, any hope of a negotiated end to the war must be shadowed by skepticism. Doubts are strengthened by the knowledge that President Nixon will use the very fact of the talks going on for political purposes.

"On the basis of experience," one man long concerned with the Vietnam problem said, "you have to think that any sign of possible success in the negotiations is a combination of false hopes and game-playing by Nixon and Kissinger." The North Vietnamese have publicly discounted talk of progress in Paris, and sources close to them still speak of election-year American politics.

On the other hand, one has to ask why Hanoi is playing the game if that is all it is. Le Duc Tho does not do things by accident: Why are he and his colleagues helping to re-elect Richard Nixon?

Western observers who have been in North Vietnam recently report no slackening in the expressed determination to bear the burdens of the war, including American bombing, indefinitely if necessary. Nor is there any convincing sign of a crippled capacity to fight. Richard Dudman of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch saw long lines of trucks bearing weapons and supplies between Haiphong and Hanoi.

But a continuing war effort would not be consistent with a decision by the North Vietnamese leaders to try seriously for a settlement. They may have a different perception now of American political and psychological realities. They may be feeling more pressure from the constituencies that matter to them—in Moscow and Beijing. French officials, who have as good contacts as anyone with the two sides in the peace talks, are expressing a high degree of optimism.

What, then, could be the framework of a settlement? Even to explore that question in a speculative way is to realize the immense intellectual difficulties involved in trying to compromise positions so deeply opposed in political objectives, fears and pride.

In President Nixon's declared view the only appropriate way to change the legitimate government in Saigon is by elections. The United States will not join in imposing a coalition government because that could be a cover for Communist control and a "bloodbath." After an internationally super-

vised cease-fire and the return of all forces, the U.S. would withdraw all forces and leave a political settlement to the Vietnamese.

Hanoi, for its part, rejects election managed by the Saigon administration. It fears that its own people would be the victims of a bloodbath if left to the control of President Nguyen Van Thieu and his police. It wants the United States to agree to a coalition by way of final settlement before leaving, so the Americans will have no excuse for returning—specifically for resuming the bombing—if unwelcome political change occurs in Saigon.

In general terms one can begin to imagine ways of closing those wide differences. President Thieu could resign a much longer time before elections than the one month the U.S. has offered, but leaving the Saigon administration otherwise intact. The political future could be fudged by leaving each side in control of its own areas, offering some form of guarantees for physical safety and protection from arrest on both sides and having elections not under the present Thieu constitution but for a constituent assembly to draft a new one.

The trouble is that stating such ideas exposes the real difficulties. For example, would the United States continue to supply massive military assistance to a Saigon government after a cease-fire? Would President Nixon accept any effective limit on that role? How could Hanoi conceivably accept the continued existence, even without President Thieu himself, of the army, police and bureaucratic apparatus through which Thieu has arrested thousands and suppressed all opposition?

Most difficult of all, would Nguyen Van Thieu be willing to resign for the sake of a settlement, betting that he will come back to power in the political process started by the agreement? Thieu's total disinclination to do so has been made plain by his recent speeches excoriating the ideas of cease-fire and coalition—speeches that must have been directed largely at the U.S.

Even such a sketchy canvas makes plain the delicacy of Henry Kissinger's role. For he must not only convince Le Duc Tho that the chance of winning politically is good enough now to end a generation's military effort. Kissinger also has to persuade his own side to accept real risks: persuade the American military, President Thieu, President Nixon. Success in Paris will depend not on detail but on basic attitudes.

The problems are so hard that even new intentions on both sides, if they exist, may not succeed. If they do, it will be because the North Vietnamese are made to believe at last that the Americans are going to leave and stay away—and because President Nixon comes to that determination himself in his view of Saigon.

EYJ

309

BALTIMORE SUN 6 October 1972 P2

# No outside interference, meaning U.S., Thieu says

By ARNOLD R. ISAACE
Sun Staff Correspondent

Saigon—South Vietnam is mounting a strong propaganda campaign against “outside interference” in settling its political future.

The campaign is apparently directed primarily at the United States. It suggests President Nguyen Van Thieu might choose to continue the war rather than accept any agreement negotiated by the U.S. and North Vietnam behind South Vietnamese backs.

Mr. Thieu set the theme in his message to the opening session of the South Vietnamese Parliament Monday.

"A political solution is a domestic affair of the South," he declared. "It is a right and responsibility of the Southern people to settle it among themselves. No one is allowed to interfere. The South Vietnamese people now have a unique constitutional, legal government. Every domestic political solution and problem of the South must be approved by the present constitutional, legal Republic of Vietnam government and by the South Vietnamese people.

"Only the present Republic of Vietnam government is competent to discuss and approve any domestic political solution for the South, and no one has the right to do it in its place."

In succeeding days, through both official statements and unofficial channels, the government has continued to sound the same theme. The drive coincided with the mission of Maj. Gen. Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Henry A. Kissinger's top deputy, who spent the first three days of the week in Saigon presumably discussing the most recent secret peace negotiations in Paris.

Others join 2d session

General Haig left Wednesday for Washington after an apparent one-day extension of his visit, during which he met twice with President Thieu. The second session was attended not only by the president, but also by Vice President Tran Van Huong. Prime

Minister Tran Thien Khiem, the foreign minister, Tran Van Lam, and Mr. Thieu's two closest advisers.

During the Haig visit, a top-ranking South Vietnamese diplomat, in a conversation with American newsmen, made no attempt to conceal his dissatisfaction with the fact that the private meetings between Dr. Kissinger and North Vietnamese negotiators have virtually supplanted the public Paris talks in which the Saigon government is represented.

"We are consulted," he said. "But we cannot participate in these meetings."

Cease-fire terms

This source also acknowledged that South Vietnam would like stronger support from the U.S. for its position on a possible cease-fire. President Thieu has declared many times that a cease-fire cannot be reached unless North Vietnamese troops withdraw from the South.

The U.S., at least publicly, has not spelled out its policy as explicitly, and has left open the possibility of a "cease-fire in place," in which both armies would remain in the areas they now hold.

Yesterday, further evidence of South Vietnamese concern appeared in the newspaper Tin Song, which is controlled by Hoang Duc Nha, President Thieu's press secretary and confidant. The newspaper is widely regarded as a semi-official outlet for the views of the Presidential Palace.

In its report on the final Haig-Thieu meeting, Tin Song quoted "well-informed sources" as saying:

"It is time that South Vietnam puts much more emphasis on self-determination than ever before. Self-determination means any response to the situation must be based on the interests of South Vietnam without pressure from anywhere."

An official Army broadcast yesterday declared that South Vietnam "will reject any solution agreed upon by outsiders."

The fear of a deal between

the U.S. and North Vietnam in which South Vietnamese interests would be disregarded is a perennial factor in Saigon politics—and it is heightened now that President Nixon is approaching the U.S. presidential elections, and presumably would make any concessions for pre-election settlement

CYJ

310

From News Dispatches

The allies have prepared a plan under which President Thieu would offer to resign and the United States would withdraw all its troops from South Vietnam, according to American and South Vietnamese sources quoted yesterday in a United Press International dispatch from Saigon.

In return, North Vietnam would release all U.S. prisoners of war and withdraw its forces from South Vietnam, according to this report.

The sources said the United States would also end the bombing and the naval blockade of North Vietnam under the plan, according to the agency report. UPI described the sources as usually well-informed.

The plan did not mention replacing Thieu's regime with a three-sided coalition government, which the Communist side considers a prerequisite for all other steps to end the war.

Word of the new proposal was the latest in a spate of reports mentioning an imminent peace agreement, but sources in a position to know in Washington declined yesterday to discuss the substance of the latest account.

White House Press Secretary Ronald L. Zeigler, however, yesterday described the Saigon report as "totally speculative." He said the report "doesn't merit a comment."

He used similar language to describe an earlier Times of London report that an agreement between Hanoi and Washington was being withheld until after the Nov. 7 U.S. elections.

In Paris, the North Vietnamese delegation to the peace talks yesterday also formally denied the London Times report as "without any factual foundation."

The proposal described yesterday in the agency report from Saigon would be presented to the North Vietnamese prior to the U.S. elections, the sources said.

Before Zeigler's statement casting doubt on the Saigon report, the stock market jumped and at one point the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 14 points. But it later fell back to close up 4 points over Thursday.

The new proposal was said to have been discussed in detail by White House envoy Maj. Gen. Alexander Haig during his conference with Thieu on Tuesday and Thursday in Saigon.

Thieu's resignation under the proposal would meet only one of the political demands

on the. Communist side. The Saigon sources said that he would offer to step down in favor of independent Sen. Nguyen Van Huyen, who yesterday was re-elected to head South Vietnam's Senate over the pro-Thieu candidate, former Defense Minister Tran Trung Dung.

In this respect, the reported plan is somewhat similar to one publicly announced by the United States and South Vietnam on Jan. 25 and rejected by North Vietnam and the Vietcong. It called for Thieu and South Vietnam's vice president to resign one month before an internationally supervised presidential election.

North Vietnam and the Vietcong adamantly opposed that plan on the grounds it would still leave the Thieu government in control of South Vietnam.

Other American sources said earlier that Haig had assured Thieu the U.S. government would not attempt to force him from office in order to create a three-faction coalition government as the Vietcong has demanded in exchange for settlement of the war.

The new plan, according to the UPI report, would not end the war but would only require United States and North Vietnamese forces to withdraw from the conflict.

The U.S. has consistently attempted to disengage from the war and leave a political settlement to South Vietnam. But North Vietnam, which holds American prisoners, has insisted that a U.S. military withdrawal cannot be separated from a political settlement ending the war.

The new proposal would carry no provision calling for an end to fighting between the South Vietnamese and Vietcong, the sources said. But Hanoi would agree to negotiate "seriously" alongside the Vietcong toward a ceasefire and final peace settlement in continuing meetings in Paris.

Major provisions of the new proposal on the part of the allies were said to be:

* total U.S. military withdrawal from South Vietnam;

* Thieu's resignation in favor of Huyen, a former law partner of Nguyen Huu Tho, who is now an official of the Vietcong's Provisional Revolutionary Government;

* an end to the U.S. bombing and the naval blockade of North Vietnam.

In exchange, the North Vietnamese would agree to:

* free all U.S. prisoners of war;

* halt all infiltration of South Vietnam, leaving the Communists' war to the Vietcong;

* agree to negotiate "seriously" in Paris or elsewhere toward a cease-fire.

The sources described the plan as the allies' "offer to end all offers." Its rejection by Hanoi, according to the report, would mean a continuation of the conflict.

The plan would leave unresolved such issues as the allies' demand for internationally supervised elections in South Vietnam and the Communist demand for imposition of a coalition government, including Vietcong representatives, prior to any election. Such questions would be left to later negotiations, the sources said.

The re-election of Huyen to the presidency of the South Vietnamese Senate yesterday was considered by some sources to be a dramatic defeat for President Thieu, who was trying to extend his control to the second of the country's two legislative bodies.

Huyen has supported the government in its prosecution of the war but opposed it on such matters as the unsuccessful legislation that would have allowed Thieu to rule by decree for six months.

Radio Hanoi yesterday attacked President Nixon's statement that secret peace negotiations had reached "a sensitive state." In a broadcast monitored in Hong Kong, North Vietnam said that the President was "trying to dupe American voters."

# New Vietnam Proposal Would Remove Thieu

WASHINGTON POST

7 October 1972 P12

Radio Hanoi said, "The true fact is that prospect for a peaceful solution of the war is still far distant." The broadcast said the Paris peace talks had made no progress because Mr. Nixon "maintains intact his stubborn stands" of supporting South Vietnamese President Thieu and bombing North Vietnam.