TROPIC

1/14/73

# THE RELUCTANT HAWK

In an exclusive Tropic interview, Dean Rusk talks frankly about his stormy years as Secretary of State, his life today on a Georgia campus — and the “Kissinger phenomenon”

By Phil Gailey

Meet Dean Rusk, professor of international law at the University of Georgia.

He is known for his dry wit, his open-door policy to students, bull sessions in fraternity houses and earthy speeches to small-town civic clubs which never dreamed of having such a historical figure in their midst.

His classes are so popular that hundreds of students are turned away each quarter. So Rusk tries to spread himself beyond the law school by visiting undergraduate history and political science classes in his spare time. Some of the campus' strongest anti-war critics — students and professors — can be found these days sitting cross-legged on Rusk's living room floor discussing foreign policy with the man they once denounced as a warmonger from campus platforms.

Is this the same reticent and ambiguous man who became so closely identified with the Vietnam tragedy as Secretary of State under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson? The man whose mere presence on a college campus once was sure provocation for an anti-war demonstration? The man whose evangelical and emotional defense of U.S. involvement in Vietnam made him one of the most controversial and enigmatic figures of the 1960s?

It is the same Dean Rusk.

But Professor Rusk, his family and close friends will tell you, is more like the pre-Vietnam Rusk they once knew — witty, open-minded, idealistic, intellectual and peace-loving.

Since he came to Athens, Ga., in January, 1971, to assume a $45,000-a-year professorship, Rusk, America's only living former Secretary of State, has shattered that monolithic cast of the public image he earned as a loyal minister and guardi-

PHIL GAILEY is a Herald staff writer.

an of secrets in Washington.

"It didn't take us long to discover that Rusk didn't have ice water in his veins," says one of his law school colleagues.

Milner Ball, a former University of Georgia Law School assistant professor now teaching law at Rutgers University, worked with Rusk last year in preparing for the United Nations Conference on the Environment held in Stockholm. Rusk was one of the U.S. representatives.

"I admit that I went to work for him with misgivings," says Ball, who was a vociferous campus critic of Vietnam and Rusk at the height of the war. "I was never so surprised by anyone in my life. He is one of the gentlest men I have ever known — always open to ideas and criticisms. I remember going to Washington with him once, and children would ask for his autograph in the airport and cab drivers wanted to give him free rides, but he always insisted on paying. He's one of my best friends now."

The 63-year-old Rusk seems to have adjusted to campus life as well as the campus has adjusted to him.

"He's relaxed now and like his old self," says Roger Rusk, Dean's older brother, a retired physics professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. "Dean's always envied me because I was teaching, and I have no doubt that he's doing something he's always wanted to do."

During a recent exclusive interview for *Tropic* in a green-carpeted suite lined with inscribed pictures of the men he served — John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, George Marshall, John Foster Dulles, Dean Acheson and Robert Lovett — Rusk talked freely about Vietnam, his years as Secretary of State and his life today.

"After a 30-year detour," he said, opening one of the three packs of Lark cigarettes smokes each day, "I am finally doing what I have always wanted to do. It's good to be home." (Rusk was born in Cherokee County, Ga.)

In the classroom, Rusk chain-smokes and constantly shifts his brown-framed glass as he lectures without notes. He rarely refers to personal anecdotes, tries to see clear of Vietnam and does it all with the detachment of a teacher who has never witnessed history except in text-book.

Outside the classroom, he spends his tim-tutoring individual students, helping graduate students "working on a thesis about something I was involved in," or just dropping by a fraternity house for what he calls a "bull session." He accepts 50 speaking invitations each year and especially likes to visit small rural towns where "I try to get across that foreign policy is not just a chess game up in the sky, but something that affects them."

It rarely brings up the subject of Vietnam or off campus and is pleased with the inference of those around him. There has not been a single demonstration since he served on campus.

Of some of the more activist campuses, Rusk's presence would undoubtedly have stirred protest, for the former Secretary of State persists in his loyalty to the Presidents he served and their policies.

"don't want to be one of those rats that are slithering off the decks," he says. "I want to be standing on the bridge with Kennedy and Johnson."

Risk is confident that when all the secret documents of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations are made available to "dispassionate historians" sometime in the future, many of the "distor-

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HAWK

Continued

tions and inaccuracies of instant history
will be corrected."

After leaving office, it appeared that Rusk would not respond to his critics, seemingly willing to let history vindicate him, if indeed vindication was required. Shortly before stepping down from the State Department in 1968, Rusk is said to have remarked to a friend, Lucius Battle: "Isn't it remarkable that this has happened to me? I leave office seen as a hawk. And basically I am an idealist and a man of peace."

"You know," Rusk says now, "when Bob McNamara would go up to Congress to talk to the armed service committees, he was seen as a dove. Then I would go before the Foreign Relations Committee and say the same thing Bob had said, and I'd come out as a hawk."

"Our critics," he adds, "tend to forget about the non-proliferation agreement, the Peace Corps, the Alliance for Progress and all the other achievements we made during our years in office. When you take a complete look at what was done during my years, the total package is not hawkish."

Although Rusk is known for his unflap-
pability in the face of criticism, he is
showing some signs of impatience with
the slow pace of history's vindication and
is beginning to respond to some of his
critics.

A recent article titled "The Tragedy of Dean Rusk" in *Foreign Policy* magazine said: "With Rusk, policy and personality were intertwined — the public man and the private man inseparable. What for another might have been a matter of bureaucratic expediency or deference was for Rusk an obsession. He was to find in the policies chosen by the President something akin to divine sanction, and those who served that office, he felt, must be willing not only to live with the results but defend them to the bitter end."

Rusk called the article "a piece of
amateur psychoanalysis," adding: "My
God, all I did was read the Constitution!
Dean Acheson used to say that between a

President and his Secretary of State it is
important they understand which one is
the President. A President has the right
to have a Secretary of State who supports
his policy."

Rusk said he "didn't lift a finger" to
get the State Department job and that "I
made it clear to the two Presidents that
my resignation was always on their desk.
My philosophy is that no one in public
service should ever want to hold on to his
job."

Rusk was painted by his critics as
being a weak advocate who dutifully and
unquestioningly fell in line with presiden-
tial policies. The same critics today are
at work on Secretary of State William
Rogers, Rusk believes.

The "Kissinger phenomenon," Rusk
says, has not relegated Rogers out of the
foreign policy decision-making process.

"I think Dr. Kissinger's role has been exaggerated somewhat," Rusk says, recalling the whirlwind of speculation that followed President Nixon's meeting with Mao Tse-tung, when Kissinger was present and Rogers was not. "Secretaries of State normally do not sit around in the room and twiddle their thumbs while the President talks to a Mao Tse-tung for 15 minutes. They are somewhere else, working on important basics."

Who is standing next to Nixon during
a picture-taking session with Mao, says
Rusk, is a "phony issue."

"That is not to say there are no real
aspects to this sort of thing," he adds.
"The State Department sends out a thou-
sand cables a day all over the world. If
the people who send out these cables
should start looking over their shoulders
at Kissinger wondering if they have the
authority to send out these messages,
then that would be interference with the
functions of the State Department.

"Each President is going to make arrangements that are comfortable for himself. The Kissinger phenomenon is not without precedent. President Roosevelt had Harry Hopkins. But the nuts and bolts of foreign policy still belong to the State Department."

Later, Rusk recalled Arthur
Schlesinger Jr.'s description of him at a
Cabinet meeting. "He said I just sat

HAWK

Continued

there like a great silent Buddha, and I guess I did. As Secretary of State, my primary obligation was to be sure that the President understood the implications of his foreign policy decisions. I did have a peculiarity: I never debated the President on a point before 35 people in a Cabinet meeting. I always preferred to debate him privately, and I debated him hard when I thought it necessary. We had some far-ranging debates at President Johnson's Tuesday lunches. He knew we'd keep our mouths shut and he wouldn't read about it next day in *The Washington Post*.

Another personal foible was that Rusk invariably avoided putting his feelings on paper. "Most of my discussions with the President were oral. I learned as a junior Army officer years ago that things you don't write don't leak. Also, if the Secretary of State gets in the habit of circulating a lot of memos, it tends to inhibit the flow of new ideas and free discussion in his department. I wanted my people to come up with their own ideas and not spend their time guessing what my position was."

Like Gen. George Marshall, whom Rusk still mentions in reverential tones, the former Secretary of State will not write his memoirs. "I believe it is of the utmost importance that this country maintain the ability to talk to foreign governments in private," he explains. "If the Secretary of State is going to write books when he leaves his office, foreign governments won't feel that they can talk to us."

Lyndon Johnson, of course, did write his memoirs, and from them, along with the Pentagon Papers, it becomes clear that Rusk was not a superhawk in the beginning, but rather a private doubter who warned against harnessing "American prestige to a losing horse" in Vietnam.

As Undersecretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs in the Truman Administration, Rusk had opposed signing the SEATO treaty that tied us to Vietnam. "I opposed it on the grounds that it was a mistake to align with some nations and not others. I thought it would make us a divisive influence in Southeast Asia and I thought we should wait until those countries worked out their own groupings."

But by the time he became Secretary of State, SEATO was "the law of the

land and I had another idea in my mind. I wanted to be sure President Kennedy didn't underestimate the seriousness of committing troops and to understand it was not a casual thing."

The Pentagon Papers disclosed that Rusk warned JFK of the consequences of sending 8,000 troops to Vietnam under the guise of "flood relief," as was being suggested by Gen. Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow. At that point, Rusk reasoned, the U.S. could still walk away from an entangling conflict, but once the troop commitment was made, they would be forced to see it through. Unless President Ngo Dinh Diem undertook major political reforms, Rusk told Kennedy, there would be little worth supporting in Vietnam and a handful of American troops would make no difference.

Once the U.S. committed itself in Vietnam, Rusk said he had no trouble with "seeing through our SEATO obligation." As U.S. involvement escalated and the war intensified, Rusk increasingly became one of its chief defenders while other members of the presidential team were wavering and backing off.

In retrospect, Rusk now believes that it was a mistake to have pursued the war without insisting that both houses of Congress vote on the matter each year. "If I had my time to go over," he says, "I would have recommended to the President that he insist the Congress vote on this question every year. No President could have pursued such a policy without the support of Congress."

Rusk believes he and other members of the war team overestimated the patience of the American people and underestimated the capacity of the North Vietnamese to endure our military might and fight back. "Americans are very impatient," he said, "and we could never honestly tell them when the war would be over."

World peace, he believes, will be even shakier if the U.S. fails to keep its commitment in Vietnam. "I know it's not fashionable these days to talk about such things, but I believe that one of the great pillars of peace in the world is the feeling on the part of certain nations that they had better be a little careful because those crazy Americans just might do something about it. If that feeling is ever transformed into a certainty that we will not do something about it, then I think we are headed for periods of very great danger."

For Rusk, there have rarely been any gray areas. He sees things in black and

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HAWK

Continued from Page 12

white. Certainly, he says, there were moral issues involved in Vietnam. "Some of the condemnations of the war on moral grounds came from the failure by some people to see the total moral picture. Was there no moral issue involved when North Vietnam tried to overrun Laos? Was there no moral obligation to honor a solemn treaty we had made?"

His brother Roger recalls: "Dean was never one to break his word. If he told you something, he did it. That's just the way we were brought up."

To some extent, Rusk's experience and background set him aside from the rest of the Kennedy team, and he never felt as completely comfortable with the jet-set Bostonians of the New Frontier as he later did with Lyndon Johnson, a fellow Southerner who enjoyed arguing with Rusk over who was born in the smaller farmhouse.

It seems clear that Rusk, like Johnson, had something of a "Southern complex." After he left the State Department, his brother Roger asked him why the "Eastern liberals" had turned so bitterly against the Johnson Administration. "Dean is hard to smell out on things like this," Roger recalls, "but he told me that the Eastern liberals just didn't like having Southerners in Washington."

Dean Rusk, meanwhile, is ending his career on much the same note as it began. One of his students said: "You never hear emotion or excitement in his voice — until he starts talking about world peace or the possibility of a third world war. Then you can tell the man is serious."

Rusk himself says: "I am speaking from another age and sometimes I feel that the world has passed me by. An entire generation in foreign affairs — Truman, Marshall, Acheson and others — is leaving the scene. It is a generation that, in my judgment, has written a record of progress, generosity and restraint."

Rusk says he has never claimed God was on his side ("That's up to somebody else"), but that his ultimate allegiance was to his idealized image of America's role in the world and to the Presidents he served.

"I just hope that this new generation realizes they will not improve our world by rejecting the mistakes of their fathers only to embrace the mistakes of their grandfathers," he says. "As for me, I have no apologies to make..."

T

WASHINGTON POST, 16 JANUARY 1973

# Hanoi: Only Balk by U.S. or South Vietnam Could Halt Cease-Fire, Reports Say

By Murrey Marder
Washington Post Staff Writer

HANOI, Jan. 16 (Tuesday)—Even before President Nixon announced the halt in offensive action against North Vietnam, this capital had begun churning out a sudden flood of reports apparently intended to accelerate a full cease-fire accord.

The message being put out here by various sources is that only a last minute balk by either the United States or the Saigon government could once again frustrate an agreement.

Officially the North Vietnamese government has said nothing so far except that there has been "progress" in the Paris talks, but that it is maintaining its "vigilance."

With Gen. Alexander M. Haig's tip to Saigon, North Vietnam's concern has mounted that South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu may again seek to block an accord unless world pressure is brought to bear on him.

That pressure has been greatly stimulated from here since Saturday, the day U.S. envoy Henry A. Kissinger left Paris to consult with President Nixon.

Three antiwar delegations now here have issued statements appealing for a peace accord. The visiting delegations represent the Stockholm Peace Conference, the World Peace Council and a Japan-Vietnam friendship association that includes members of the Japanese Communist Party.

The Stockholm group said in a statement last night that it was informed by a member of the Central Committee of North Vietnam's Workers (Communist) Party that the Paris talks are at "a new crucial phase" that will produce peace or intensified war.

The Swedish delegation is led by a member of Sweden's Parliament, Bertil Zachrisson. The group also includes another Swedish parliamentarian, Ola Ullsten, and a Canadian member of Parliament, Andrew Brewin.

They met with Hoang Tung, editor of the party newspaper Nhan Dan, and reported that he told them that in Paris the United States and North Vietnam "had been able to agree on a draft treaty which mainly was based on the principles and points elaborated on Oct. 20, 1972."

The group's statement said that Hoang Tung added "that the agreement had been able to eliminate some remaining doubts and ambiguities in the previous draft agreement."

The Stockholm group concluded: "It is our conviction that the North Vietnamese side is serious when saying it is prepared to achieve peace on the principles of the agreement reached in Paris. Therefore, time has come for the whole of world opinion to turn to the American side in urging the American government to make use of this opportunity of peace unbroken."

The whole thrust of the North Vietnamese position is that the decision is up to President Nixon and North Vietnam wants the world to know in advance where it will place the

blame if there is another failure.

In a delayed dispatch sent from Hanoi Sunday, Marder reported the following:

Despite the halt in the American bombing of the Hanoi-Haiphong region throughout the nation a continuing state of siege is maintained regardless of day-to-day prospects for a cease fire accord.

"We have had too many bitter experiences to relax our vigilance now," said a North Vietnamese official. "Our antiaircraft are constantly prepared to shoot.

The news of U.S. negotiator Henry A. Kissinger's departure from Paris with new talk of progress on both sides of the negotiations and Kissinger's consultations in Florida and President Nixon re-enacted here only among those with independent access to the world outside. This includes North Vietnamese with short-wave radios.

But whatever hope or skepticism the news aroused was kept invisible in this determinedly disciplined society. To this moment, the North Vietnamese government has held off telling its own people even what its own delegation spokesman said in Paris when talks re-ended.

The response here today to all inquiries is, "It is all up to Nixon."

To a newly appointed visitor, however, Hanoi outwardly appears more placid than any capital would be expected to be after a generation of war.

On this Sunday afternoon, the streets are lively with thousands of cyclists, the markets are crowded, the vegetables plump and the meat, chicken and other foodstuffs seem ample. The people by no means look undernourished, and now that the bombing is suspended, there are children rolling hoops on the sidewalks, pretty girls strolling and flower stands in the center of the city.

There is also a remarkable silence. It is punctuated only by the rumble of army trucks, usually hauling road-building supplies, or the occasional horn of a car or truck weaving a path through the omnipresent bicyclists.

Even the presently infrequent interruption of an air alert warning produces no break in the pattern. Because the announcement identified only a reconnaissance flight, no one even broke stride over it. The people in the streets seemingly have complete confidence in the ability of the

alert system to distinguish between a reconnaissance flight and an attack. The system is said to be refined enough to advise if a reconnaissance flight is by a piloted plane or a drone.

War has by no means scarred all of this city or even the major portion of it, one can quickly see even while awaiting a closer inspection of the air raid damage.

Much of Hanoi's city center is still lined with stately trees in full foliage, although the weather is gray and chilly in this season. The bomb damage is in pockets or strips where American B-52s dropped an unprecedented tonnage of destruction on this capital between Dec. 18 and 29.

Nevertheless, the immediate impact on the arriving visitor is a scene of devastation on landing at Gialam airport on the weekly Soviet Aeroflot flight. For the Gialam area in general, on the east bank of the muddy Red River opposite Hanoi, was a prime target with its industry, railroad repair yards and other installations, some of them near or virtually surrounded by the poorest residential sections. Here, casualties were reportedly high.

Men and women workers methodically are picking through the ruins of crumbled buildings and residences on that side of the river salvaging everything possible, brick by brick.

Desolation continues to the water's edge where the broken skeleton of the famous Longbien Bridge (formerly the Paul Doumer Bridge) looms in the distance, once North Vietnam's prized artery to the east and north. It withstood "Johnson," the interpreter wryly notes referring to the war years of President Johnson. "But not Nixon. But we have many pontoons."

Soon you are on the pontoon bridge after a line of trucks perhaps half a mile long allows your passenger car to squeeze through, zigzagging perilously across the remnants of a roadway. Improvised Bridge

The improvised bridge across the Red River is a hazard itself for a passenger car, even if it is a punishable Soviet-built Volga. No longer straight under the jarring truck traffic, the pontoon bridge, held by cables anchored to the river bed, presents an obstacle at each joined section where heavy planks tie it together. The passenger car mounts each section as a new challenge.

On the Hanoi side of the river, the roadbed is still clocked with craters being

filled with dirt and gravel. As the river area recedes, however, so does the scene of continuing bomb damage.

Hanoi is officially displaying its wounds far more than it is cringing from them. No outside especially a non-Vietnamese speaker, can know what the Vietnamese people really think about their war plight.

The official presentation portrays the bomb scars as battle ribbons for heroism under fire. The people act as if they agree. Glancing away from their roadbuilding, they look at the passing foreign visitor, unable to know if he is French, Russian, Swedish, East German—or a rarer American—with an expression of calmness rather than misery. As if they were saying "Look what we survived." All they can read or hear in the official media tells them they are heroic.

By official invitation, peace delegations are now coming into North Vietnam at an increased pace to inspect the American war damage, to deplore and condemn the strategy that in>flicted it and to extoll the fortitude of those who survived.

Billboards and banners across Hanoi's wide, shaded streets hail "Victory" over the 12 days of American B-52s and exhort the population to "Sacrifice All. But Never Submit." To "American aggressors."

North Vietnam's statistical claims to victory in this period, about double the acknowledged American count, abound in signs and posters across the city: "Planes down 81, including 34 B-52s, 5 F-111s and 42 others."

Across the front of the city's closed theater a red banner about 50 feet high proclaims: "The people and army of Hanoi have won great exploits to be worthy of the people of the heroic capital of the whole country."

The reference to the "whole country" means North and South Vietnam, the unity of which is of course Hanoi's ultimate objective.

As Kissinger conferred with President Nixon, one of North Vietnam's leading exponents of national unity talked of the ability of North Vietnam to persevere in war or peace to achieve the goal of unity. He was Luu Quy Ky, who bears the disarming title of secretary general of the Association of Vietnamese Journalists. Ky, among other things, is the author of 16 books about Vietnam.

"The secret of Vietnam," he said, is "how to endure."

Ky, a southerner by birth, relished recounting the history of Vietnam's repulsion of foreign invaders during

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 11 JANUARY 1973, (16)

# Moscow's missile-race sprint

By Dana Adams Schmidt

Staff correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

U.S. missile experts are keeping a wary eye on the Soviet Union's rapidly developing missile systems.

The experts here are impressed by how fast the Soviet Union is improving the quality of its missiles and closing the gap between American and Russian missile power.

They are not charging the Soviet Union with any violation of the SALT I (strategic arms limitation talks) agreements which gave the Soviet Union a numerical advantage in missiles in recognition of the lag in Soviet development of such devices as the multiple-targeted warhead used by the United States. But they are using the recess in the SALT talks to reassess the nature of Soviet missile development.

Some American experts argue that the Soviet emphasis on offensive devices will require the United States to take a new look at the Soviet numerical advantage.

The most impressive single Soviet technical development of recent months is SIG, which stands for stellar inertial guidance. Installed in advanced models of missiles aboard the Y-class Soviet submarines, it enables a missile to keep on its course by keeping a fix on certain stars. If it works well, the Russians are expected to incorporate it into land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles.

A similar device has been considered for the American Poseidon missile but was rejected because American experts believed its use might be interpreted as an effort to build up a first-strike offensive ability. Now that the Russians are using the SIG system, American missile experts expect to incorporate it in the new Titan missile.

The Soviets are also experimenting with a maneuvering missile which maintains accuracy with a ground-scanning device. Thus far, this system has been used only on a short-range 200-mile weapon.

Its use of a built-in computer for guidance purposes is a departure from the Soviet tradition of relying on weapons which followed a fixed trajectory like an artillery projectile. These weapons were vulnerable to antimissile devices because their course could not be varied.

The Soviets are believed to have tried out a so-called MRV cluster of three warheads of their largest missiles, the SS-11 and the SS-9, but they have still not succeeded in testing the MRV — multiple independently targetable vehicle — which is the central American

technical technological advantage.

## Multiple warheads

The United States has installed a triple warhead on about 2,000 of its Minuteman missiles, and a warhead capable of dividing into 10 parts or more on 160 of the Poseidon missiles used aboard nuclear submarines.

This means that for the time being, even though the Soviets have 1,530 ICBMs and 560 missiles for use on submarines plus about 335 missiles under construction, compared with 1,054 ICBMs and 656 submarine missiles on the American side, the United States actually has an advantage in the number of targets its missiles could hit.

According to the Institute of Strategic Studies of London, the U.S. enjoys an advantage in the number of aiming points of 8,550 compared with 2,090 aiming points which could be reached by the Russians. If bombers are included, the United States advantage is in the order or 5,580 to 2,510.

## Submarine installation

The SIG guidance device is likely to be installed on the new SSN-8 missile, which has a range of 4,000 miles and is expected to become operational in the next few months aboard the new Y-class Soviet submarines which are distinguished from older models by the designation Delta. The Russians now have 45 Y-class submarines including the Delta.

Another expression of the rapid Soviet qualitative advance is the introduction of a new larger version of the SS-11 ICBM which has been test-fired at 3,000 and 4,700 miles and appears to be ready for deployment.

Somewhat further from the deployment stage is a new and larger SS-9, which will be the largest of all the Soviet missiles.

## Silos detected

The new SS-11 and SS-9 missiles are presumably to be installed in about 100 missile silos which the United States detected by satellite observation in 1970. According to a statement by Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird last week, 60 of these silos will probably be used for the SS-11 while the rest are apparently intended for the oversized SS-9.

To gain extra underground space, the Russians are believed to have developed a system of popping the huge SS-9 out of its silo before it is ignited. This system permits installation of a wider missile in the inner core of the silo.

## KISSINGER...CONTINUED

October that apparently satisfied both the United States and North Vietnam. Kissinger, after stopping in Washington to get instructions from the President, then flew to Saigon to obtain Thieu's signature on the agreement. According to subsequently published accounts, Kissinger planned to fly on to Hanoi on October 24 to initial the agreement, and the ceasefire was to have been put into effect shortly thereafter. It would have been the incredible climax to an incredible year of personal diplomacy for President Nixon and his tireless negotiator.

Thieu had other ideas. He had blocked the United States before, either buying time or calling our bluff in repeated showdowns over the last six years. Ellsworth Bunker, now in his sixth year as ambassador in Saigon, had spent a sleepless and unforgettable night in late October 1968 trying to get Thieu to accept the "understanding" that Averell Harriman and Le Due Tho had worked out in Paris to stop the bombing and start full-fledged negotiations; Thieu had successfully resisted the pressure Bunker conveyed from Lyndon Johnson, and in so doing bought himself almost three months of time in which nothing had happened, and any "peace momentum" which might have existed was dissipated.

And so a very funny thing happened to Henry Kissinger on his way to Hanoi. To quote his own words, again, written four years before the event, "When agreement seems imminent, American diplomats go into 'high gear to gain the acquiescence of the ally. He in turn feels tricked by the very intensity and suddenness of the pressure while we are outraged to learn of objections heretofore not made explicit."

Failing to get Thieu's agreement, Kissinger returned to Washington, where, on October 26, he held his original "peace is at hand" press conference. But the President apparently had already decided not to force the agreement down Thieu's throat in the pre-election period. If Thieu would not come along right away, then the administration would wait until after the elections, and try again.

AFTER THAT, as the world knows, with the momentum gone, and distrust rising on all sides, the talks broke down, and bombing resumed—but at a level unprecedented in the Indochinese war.

Now Haig is back in Saigon trying, presumably, to get Thieu's agreement to whatever is still being worked out in Paris. One assumes that Kissinger and Tho are deep in the process of returning to the general outlines of the original agreement. If after decades of

war, they were acceptable to Hanoi in October, they should be acceptable to Hanoi in March, with some modifications. And, if they were acceptable in general outline to the administration in October, what reason could be given to justify their rejection this year? Certainly not that the original agreement was too vague; that was precisely its special genius, for it left ambiguous those very issues which the war had been unable to resolve over 27 years. A genuine peace remains unachievable through negotiations or military efforts by either side, but a ceasefire is finally within reach, if both sides can negotiate back to about where they were in October.

But if that has been done, are we confronting again the problem that Henry Kissinger could not overcome in October—Nguyen van Thieu and the South Vietnamese? There is, of course, the possibility often hinted at and hoped for by the administration—that Thieu will buy this agreement without complaints. But if he doesn't, can we "ram it down their throats," as some people advocate, or will that approach fail... again... for the very reasons that Kissinger so clearly detailed in 1963?

The question is Richard Nixon's to answer. On the basis of his performance up until now no one—probably including Henry Kissinger, perhaps even including the President himself—can know what he will do.

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Evidence mounts

CHICAGO TRIBUNE - 17 JANUARY 1973 P-18

# Administration's Viet Nam disarray

By James McCartney

WASHINGTON—Evidence is mounting that the Nixon administration is in disarray—at top levels—over Viet Nam.

High officials in recent weeks have been giving Congress different versions of what has been going on, and why.

Public statements have differed from information dispensed by administration officials at secret briefings.

The incoming and outgoing secretaries of Defense have publicly differed also they haven't clashed face-to-face on what is necessary to end the war.

AND BEYOND all that, well-posted officials say that the White House Viet Nam staff itself is in disarray, with political bickering and "backstabbing" the order of the day.

"The White House Viet Nam operation has become a pigsty," said one official. "People are playing very dirty."

"Everyone is trying to blame someone else for failing to reach a peace agreement."

A widespread belief in the bureaucracy is that President Nixon has put tighter reins on his chief Viet Nam peace negotiator, Henry Kissinger. In fact, one official says that the State Department's top Viet Nam expert, William Sullivan, a long-time hater on the war, has been sent to Paris by President Nixon to "monitor" Kissinger's negotiations.

"His job is to keep an eye on Henry," the official said—particularly to see that Kissinger insists on what Nixon would consider a "tough" agreement.

Sullivan is the handsome, white-haired "technical expert" on the U. S. team who has been meeting with lower-level North Vietnamese officials in recent days.

Kissinger himself is believed by some White House sources to have split with his former top deputy; Gen. Alexander Haig, over the decision to massively bomb North Viet Nam.

These sources say that Kissinger opposed the bombing, but that Haig favored it—and Haig's position won. Haig is leaving Kissinger's staff to take on a new job as vice chief of staff for the Army,

THE MOST striking example of differences in interpretation over what the administration has been doing in Viet Nam is the contrast between testimony from Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird as well as Laird's replacement, Elliot Richardson.

Adm. Moorer, the nation's top military man, justified the 12-day bombing attacks on North Viet Nam's populated areas last month as "very effective" in reducing North Viet Nam's "war-making potential."

While the admiral was testifying about the bombing's effectiveness on

the House side of Capitol Hill; Richardson was insisting to the Senate that the bombing was not fundamentally a military matter.

In fact, he persistently declined to answer questions about the bombing for precisely that reason, saying it was part of the "negotiating process"—a position taken earlier in the week by the outgoing Laird.

At one point Richardson was asked if he would oppose renewed bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong in case the peace talks should fall apart.

He said the question should really be asked of the secretary of State—not the secretary of Defense.

Adm. Moorer had not shown the same reluctance to classify the bombing as a military matter.

But Adm. Moorer's testimony was in even greater conflict with another high officer of the government—Richard Helms, outgoing head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

At a secret session of a Senate committee Helms said that the bombing had not seriously impaired North Viet Nam's ability to continue to wage war—and had not undermined Hanoi's morale or will to carry on.

Then, too, there were open contradictions in the testimony of Laird and Richardson.

The two did not, and will not, say so openly, Laird is clearly not in accord with the White House about what is necessary to end the war.

In fact, Laird's views are so much at variance with the White House that Richardson was apparently given instructions to shoot down Laird's proposals.

Laird said flatly on Jan. 8 that he thought that an "honorable peace" in Viet Nam depended "solely" on the

(CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)

3

PWR-FYI

Gus Ingraham

## VIETNAM DISARRAY, CONTINUED

Return of U. S. prisoners of war and an accounting of the missing in action.

And he repeatedly made the point in testimony that South Viet Nam now, in his opinion, is capable of taking over the war, thus making possible "the complete termination of American involvement" if the POWs and missing are returned.

After tough questioning last Wednesday by a Senate committee Richardson was forced into an admission that "we clearly have other negotiating objectives."

HE SAID the President wants more than a simple deal in which the U. S. would withdraw, in return for prisoners—he wants a negotiated settlement, including a cease-fire.

An obvious reason for at least some of the confusion among officials about administration policies is White House secrecy.

The White House is keeping a secret of its reasons and rationale for Viet Nam programs not only from the public and Congress—but also from many high administration officials.

Adm. Moorer, for example, confessed this week that he had not been consulted in advance in any way about the decision to bomb North Viet Nam in December.

Congress was also told during the week that even the Air Force secretary, Robert Seamans, wasn't consulted. And the Air Force had to drop the bombs.

Knight Newspapers

RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.

4435 WISCONSIN AVE. N.W., WASHINGTON, D. C. 20006

RODMAN

FOR COMMITTEE FOR THE RE-ELECTION OF THE PRESIDENT

PROGRAM The Dick Cavett Show

STATION WMAL TV
ABC Network

DATE January 22, 1973 11:30 P.M.

CITY Washington, D.C.

## AN INTERVIEW WITH ORIANA FALLACI

DICK CAVETT: The lady I'm about to introduce is a legend, in her way. She's a journalist and one of the most envied ones in the world. I have often heard that people have submitted to interviews with her and then wished they hadn't done them afterwards, and yet they continue to do them, because she has a reputation for being one of the great journalists of our time.

She did the interview with Henry Kissinger which he then read and said, "I was stupid to give that." And it's very rare for him to give a private interview, but she got one. And then she did an incredible interview with President Thieu of South Vietnam.

And will you welcome, please -- the remarkable Oriana Fallaci.

[Applause, musical salute]

This can't be very exciting for you. You've covered wars and riots and been in planes and tanks and trenches in the Middle East and everywhere. And...

ORIANA FALLACI: It's my work.

CAVETT: ...here you are sitting in a living room, practically, or what's supposed to look like one. And I loved your movie, The Fallaci Papers. I just thought that was...

[Laughter]

FALLACI: You know, my drug store, they always call me "Valachi" when I call to order cigarettes. And I say, "Fallaci -- F, like flower, not V, like Venice."

CAVETT: [Laugs] So you have to...

2

FALLACI: They say, "Oh, yes, Miss Fallaci."

CAVETT: ...spell it out, Fallaci.

FALLACI: They get very nervous.

CAVETT: They get half of it right, anyway. Do --
do you think you got the interview with -- with Dr. Kissinger
because you are a woman? Would that have tipped the balance
somewhat?

FALLACI: Oh, no. On the contrary, Dr. Kissinger
was a little worried about the fact that I was a woman.

CAVETT: Uh-huh.

FALLACI: And in the middle of the first encounter
that we had -- you know that he called me, he made me a call
and say, "Come to Washington. Would you like to come to Washington
after tomorrow? And so we have a -- a conversation and I will
decide if I do this interview or not, because it's very delicate,
you know, it's very important." And so I went there and we
talked about many things and Giap and Thieu and Cao Ky and Le
Duc Tho. And then finally it seemed that I had passed the test
and that I was -- he would grant me this interview. And he
said, "But, you know, Miss Fallaci, what makes me a little nervous
is that you are a woman."

And I said, "That I can't afford. Honestly. I don't
know what to say about that."

And he said, "Because, you know, I had a bad experience
with a woman journalist, you know, this French woman who wrote..."

CAVETT: [Comment unintelligible].

FALLACI: Yes. Yes, she wrote that "Dear Henry,"
that book, he said to me. And then I said, "Listen, Dr. Kissinger,
I can only promise you that I'm not going to marry you; I'm
not going to fall in love with you. And if you want, I may
come with a [word unintelligible] moustache myself."

CAVETT: So did that break the ice and...

FALLACI: It's very difficult to break the ice with
Henry Kissinger. He's a rather shy man.

CAVETT: You said to him somewhere in the interview,
"You're the -- you're the toughest person I've ever tried to
interview," or something -- or, "You're the most protective"

3

or defensive or something.

FALLACI: Yes, I -- at -- at the end of the interview, which was supposed to be much longer than it was, but Nixon called him -- I mean, he kept calling him every five, ten minutes.

[Laughter]

We were continuously interrupted. And...

CAVETT: Really?

FALLACI: Yes. And in the very end and he is -- you know, he is very cautious, he speaks in a very low voice, and he pays much attention to what he says, and he doesn't open. And a couple of times I tried to -- to push him, you know, to open himself a little more. And he said, "Why should I say that to your magazine and to you?"

I said, "Well, since I'm here, and let's try to do it better."

But then I said to him, "Are you shy? It seems to me that you are a shy man."

And he said, "But, cheri, yes, I am shy," you know. And he -- it was difficult. He is closed; he protects himself very much.

CAVETT: His clothes?

FALLACI: Yes. I don't know if you say it's the right word in English. I mean, you know, not an opened.

CAVETT: Oh, he's closed. I thought you said "his clothes."

FALLACI: Not -- uh-huh.

CAVETT: Yes. What were the parts that he regretted, then, afterwards? Did he tell you?

FALLACI: I guess that he regretted the whole interview. I guess that he regretted to have seen me. Which offended me very much, because I did -- I think to have done a very good job in the sense that it was very correctly, very faithfully I reported all what he said to me. And he did not deny one thing of what he had said to me. But he says, I don't know if privately or not, "Why I gave that interview I'll never know." Now, this is not fair, because he knows very well why he gave

4

me that interview; he said it to me. Number one, he knew my
book [title unintelligible], the book on Vietnam.

CAVETT: Uh-huh.

FALLACI: And number two, he knew particularly well
my interview with General Giap in Hanoi, the one I did in Hanoi
in February '69.

CAVETT: Yes.

FALLACI: And in the first meeting that we had, on
November the 2nd at White House, he said to me, "You know that
I never grant any individual interview. You know it -- I don't
like to be interviewed. Only in press conferences. The reason
why I see you, the main reason why I see you" -- we had never
met before, this is interesting -- "is that I know very well
your interview with Giap. I liked it very much. I found it
terribly interesting. And it's because of that interview that
I accepted to see you."

So I don't understand why now he's going around saying
this. I mean, I do understand, also, Kissinger -- you know,
when you are in such a position of responsibility. But he's
said other things that made me sorry.

CAVETT: Made you sorry?

FALLACI: Yes. He said, for instance, that I had
placed some of his answers out of context. This is absolutely
untrue and false, and he knows it, because what I wrote -- usually
I edit a little my interviews -- this time...

CAVETT: Yes.

FALLACI: ...I chose not to do it.

CAVETT: You printed everything?

FALLACI: I put it as it had began, as it developed,
as it ended.

CAVETT: Did you tape it?

FALLACI: Exactly. Tape it. I had a tape recorder;
it was sitting there on the table. And Dr. Kissinger could
see it very well. I respected -- in a -- in a very scrupulous
way, I got crazy going in the dictionary and find the right
word to translate. And he knows that this is not true: that
no answer is out of context, absolutely.

But, you see, what's the point? Dr. Kissinger is

5

a -- a diplomatic [sic], is a politician. And we all know that politics and diplomacy are the sublimation of lying. And sometimes they do have to lie.

[Laughter]

Yes, they have to. I mean, I do understand that.

CAVETT: Yes.

FALLACI: It's a necessity.

CAVETT: Right.

FALLACI: But I am a writer, I am a journalist, and I have to do all the contrary. I have to write the truth. So if I understand that he has to lie, he must understand that I have to say the truth.

CAVETT: Yes, you're both under pressure, I suppose.

[Applause]

We have to -- in the -- in the Thieu interview, which maybe we can talk about later, it's a wonder you weren't thrown out a couple of times. But maybe we can get to that.

We'll -- we have a message. And we'll be right back.

*

*

*

CAVETT: We're back. We were talking about the Thieu -- you interviewed President Thieu.

FALLACI: Yes.

CAVETT: And he took several risks in that interview, because you kept -- you asked him several things that were highly sensitive. You confirmed all rumors about him, like that he has Swiss bank accounts and wonderful exotic houses in all parts of the globe that he can retire to, and that he's corrupt, and all of those things that...

FALLACI: You know, it's funny...

CAVETT: I don't know why you weren't booted out.

FALLACI: I was much nicer with Dr. Kissinger than I was with President Thieu. It was a very brutal interview in the sense -- I mean, I did not save anything that I wanted to ask him, included the fact -- "What about the fact that you

6

have reputation to be the most corrupted man in Vietnam? Are
you afraid to be assassinated like President Diem? Are you
ready to go to exile? What about the fact that you are considered
the dictator of South Vietnam?" And a funny, funny thing happened.

You know, anybody who has read my book about Vietnam,
or anybody who has read my reportage from Vietnam, knows what
I -- I think about this war and how much I've been opposing
it; and it also knows -- he also knows that I was always very
hard with Thieu, that he is not my blue prince. However, it's
very funny what happened: that while talking with this man,
well recalling that the man is a man of many faults, that the
prisons of South Vietnam are full of Viet Cong, suspected Viet
Cong, and prisoners, that he represents what I hate, I ended
with feeling towards him a certain human sympathy which I never
felt for Dr. Kissinger.

And the reason is the following one. You know, everybody
in these last days have been asking to me with surprise: "You're
not that tough in the end with President Thieu." And I said,
"It's true." "Why?" they say. And I say, "Well, superficially
I could answer that he was so small and so alone and so lost
and so thirsty to be understood. But that can be said, I guess,
of any dictator in his last days. The real reason is that President
Thieu, as he appeared to me on Saturday the 3rd -- the 30th
of December, was a symbol of a small country, or should I say
all the small countries, crushed and used and humiliated by
the world interests of the great powers and by the global strategies
of the various Drs. Kissingers of the present and of the past."

[Applause]

And -- and therefore there was a certain dignity in
the man and in his tragedy. And since it is always beautiful
to rescue a man and the dignity of a man, I liked to treat him
with respect and with comprehension, and much more, for sure,
than the one I feel for President Nixon or Dr. Kissinger.

[Applause]

CAVETT: That's interesting. This, I take it, surprised
you. I mean, you -- you didn't go into the interview expecting
that.

FALLACI: Well, you see, what he says...

CAVETT: You expected the other way around.

FALLACI: What he says is -- is very clear. I mean,
when you speak of the global strategies and the world interests
of the various Dr. Kissingers and President Nixons, etcetera --

7

I mean, you don't go to someone and say, "Communists are bad. You must fight them. You must kill them," and so they go on and they fight and they kill them, and in the middle of this, all at once, you come, because it is in your interest to make peace with China and Russia, and you say, "Why are you fighting the Communists? Why are you killing the Communists? You must make peace with them." I mean, it's kind of making fun of people.

I thought of many things during that morning with Thieu, Santo Domingo and so on.

CAVETT: Do -- do people constantly claim they haven't said the things they said to you in -- in your interviews, since you are so -- so...

FALLACI: Oh, no. They -- they never can, because I use a tape recorder. And the tapes...

CAVETT: But that happens, doesn't it? Don't they...

FALLACI: ...are there at their disposal. No, never -- it never happened.

CAVETT: It hasn't?

FALLACI: Oh, no. Ever, ever, ever. I mean...

CAVETT: Yes, I guess it would be foolish.

FALLACI: ...Thieu cannot, Kissinger can't, Indira Gandhi can't, Golda Meir can't, King Hussein can't -- I mean all the chief of states I've interviewed. It's -- it's very clear with them. The -- the tape is there. I push the button and say, "May I go on?" And I stop. And they say, "Go on."

CAVETT: Okay. Thieu in the interview denied the thing about -- "You have great wealth stored all over the world," that you confronted him with, but somebody said that he may have been telling the truth there, that he doesn't have it, but his wife may have it.

FALLACI: You know, he was very -- he had tears in his eyes when I accused him of that. And he kept swearing on the head of his children. And he seemed very sincere. He made the least of the things that he possesses in Vietnam, South Vietnam, which is not much. But you know that in -- I don't want to be nasty with him, because I -- I repeat I've taken a position, I -- I want to treat him with respect and comprehension. I hope that tomorrow and after tomorrow I will do the same. If he behaves in another way, then I -- I will not.

CAVETT: Is it possible you were taken in?

8

FALLACI: In -- in Vietnam it is the women who keep the wealth.

CAVETT: Yes.

FALLACI: You know, it's the wife...

CAVETT: Yes, that's what I...

FALLACI: ...who keeps the bank account. But I put the question three times to him. And there were other things that I wanted to ask him, so I could not go on about the story of the corruption. Anyhow, besides, he could have answered to me if I told him, "But, President Thieu, everybody knows that in Vietnam it is the woman, it is the wife, that takes the money, who keeps the money," he could have answered to me that his wife was rich already when he married her, so I would have got involved in something. I was not really interested in that.

CAVETT: Is there any chance he deceived you and you could find out that it was -- it was all untrue?

FALLACI: No, and I would like to see Thieu more happy for other reasons. I would like to see that all the prisoners who are in South Vietnam are really liberated. And I would like to see that he keeps his word when he says that he is ready to deal with the National Liberation Front and is -- is ready to accept the Viet Cong as a political party in South Vietnam.

CAVETT: And of course we'll find the answers to all that eventually.

BALTIMORE SUN

24 January 1973

Text of the President's truce speech

Washington Bureau of The Sun

Washington—Following is the text of
President Nixon's television and radio
speech on Vietnam last night:

Good evening. I have asked for this
radio and television time tonight for the
purpose of announcing that we today
have concluded an agreement to end the
war and bring peace with honor in
Vietnam and in Southeast Asia. The
following statement is being issued at
this moment in Washington and in
Hanoi:

At 12.30 Paris time, today, January 23,
1973, the agreement on ending the war
and restoring peace in Vietnam was
initiated by Dr. Henry Kissinger on
behalf of the United States and special
adviser Le Duc Tho on behalf of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The
agreement will be formally signed by
the parties participating in the Paris
conference on Vietnam on January 27,
1973 at the International conference cen-
ter in Paris.

The cease-fire will take effect at 2400 Greenwich mean time, January 27, 1973. The United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam express the hope that this agreement will insure stable peace in Vietnam and contribute to the preservation of lasting peace in Indo-china and Southeast Asia.

That concludes the formal statement.

Throughout the years of negotiations,
we have insisted on peace with honor.
In my addresses to the nation, from this
room, of January 25 and May 8, I set
forth the goals that we considered essen-
tial for peace with honor. In the settle-
ment that has now been agreed to, all
the conditions that I laid down then
have been met.

Cease-fire to begin Saturday

A cease-fire, internationally super-
vised, will begin at 7 P.M., this Sat-
day, January 27, Washington time.

Within 60 days from this Saturday, all
Americans held prisoners of war
throughout Indochina will be released.
There will be the fullest possible ac-
counting for all of those who are miss-
ing in action.

During the same 60-day period, all
American forces will be withdrawn from
South Vietnam.

The people of South Vietnam have
been guaranteed the right to determine
their own future, without outside inter-
ference.

By joint agreement, the full text of
the agreement and the protocols to
carry it out will be issued tomorrow.

Throughout these negotiations, we
have been in the closest consultation
with President Thieu and other repre-
sentatives of the Republic of Vietnam.
This settlement meets the goals and has

the full support of President Thieu and
the government of the republic of Viet-
nam, as well as that of our other allies
who are affected.

The United States will continue to
recognize the government of the Repub-
lic of Vietnam as the sole legitimate
government of South Vietnam. We shall
continue to aid South Vietnam within the
terms of the agreement and we shall
support efforts by the people of South
Vietnam to settle their problems peace-
fully, among themselves.

We must recognize that ending the
war is only the first step toward build-
ing the peace. All parties must now see
to it that this is a peace that lasts, and
also a peace that heals; and a peace
that not only ends the war in Southeast
Asia, but contributes to the prospects of
peace in the whole world.

This will mean that the terms of the
agreement must be scrupulously
agreed to. We shall do everything the
agreement requires of us. And we shall
expect the other parties to do everything
it requires of them. We shall also expect
other interested nations to help insure
that the agreement is carried out and
peace is maintained.

As this long and very difficult war
ends, I would like to address a few
special words to each of those who
have been parties in the conflict.

First, to the people and government of
South Vietnam: By your courage, by
your sacrifice, you have won the pre-
cious right to determine your own fu-
ture. And you have developed the
strength to defend that right. We look
forward to working with you in the
future. Friends in peace, as we have
been allies in war.

To the leaders of North Vietnam: As
we have ended the war through negotia-
tions, let us now build the peace of
reconciliation. For our part, we are
prepared to make a major effort to help
achieve that goal. But just as reciproc-
ity was needed to end the war, so too
will it be needed to build and strengthen
the peace.

The time for mutual restraint

To the other major powers that have
been involved, even indirectly: Now is
the time for mutual restraint so that the
peace we have achieved can last.

And finally, to all of you who are
listening—the American people: Your
steadfastness in supporting our insist-
ence on "Peace With Honor" has made
peace with honor possible. I know that
you would not have wanted that peace
jeopardized. With our secret negotiations
at the sensitiv stage they were in
during this recent period, for me to
have discussed publicly our efforts to
secure peace would not only have vio-

lated our understanding with North Viet-
nam, it would have seriously harmed—
and possibly destroyed—the chances for
peace.

Therefore, I know that you now can
understand why, during these past sev-
eral weeks, I have not made any public
statements about those efforts.

The important thing was not to talk
about peace, but to get peace, and to
get the right kind of peace.

This we have done.

Now that we have achieved an honor-
able agreement, let us be proud that
America did not settle for a peace that
would have betrayed our allies, that
would have abandoned our prisoners of
war—or, that would have ended the war
for us, but would have continued the
war for the 50 million people of Indo-
china.

Let us be proud of the 2½ million
young Americans who served in Viet-
nam—who served with honor and dis-
tinction, in one of the most selfless
enterprises in the history of nations.

And let us be proud of those who
sacrificed—who gave their lives—so that
the people of South Vietnam might live
in freedom, and so that the world might
live in peace.

Stood for the right kind of peace

In particular I would like to say, a
word to some of the bravest people I
have ever met: the wives, the children,
the families of our prisoners of war and
the missing in action. When others
called on us to settle on any terms, you
had the courage to stand for the right
kind of peace, so that those who died
and those who suffered would not have
died and suffered in vain, so that where
this generation knew war, the next
generation would know peace.

Nothing means more to me at this
moment than the fact that your long
vigil is coming to an end.

Just yesterday a great American who
once occupied this office died. In his life
President Johnson endured the vilifica-
tion of those who sought to portray him
as a man of war. But there was nothing
he cared about more deeply than
achieving a lasting peace in the world. I
remember the last time I talked with
him. It was just the day after New
Year's. He spoke then of his concern
with bringing peace, with making it the
right kind of peace, and I was grateful
that he once again expressed his support
for my efforts to gain such a peace.

No one would have welcomed this
peace more than he. And I know he
would join me in asking, for those who
died and for those who lived, let us
consecrate this moment by resolving
together to make the peace we have
achieved a peace that will last. Thank
you, and good evening.

27

WASHINGTON POST

24 JANUARY 1973

# U.S. to Give Up Several Bases, Cut Military Forces in Japan

By Don Oberdorfer

Washington Post Foreign Service

TOKYO, Jan. 23—The United States agreed today to reduce its military personnel in mainland Japan by about 10 per cent and to give up several major bases over the next three years in order to save money and lower the U.S. profile in this part of the world.

The U.S. base consolidation plan, which has been under discussion for more than a year, was formally approved and announced at a high-level, U.S.-Japan meeting called under the provisions of the security treaty between the two nations.

Ranking American officials, who briefed newsmen at the U.S. embassy following the high-level meeting, said the reductions were not directly related to developments in Indonesia.

The officials, who cannot be identified under the rules of the briefing, said U.S. "forward positioning" in Asia would not be affected by the changes here, nor would its military mission of "deterring aggression" in the region.

Under today's agreement, Japan will pay a large part of the cost of the consolidation, including construction of new facilities at semi-permanent U.S. bases to replace some facilities the United States is giving up elsewhere. This undertaking, which is reported likely to cost Japan $80 million or more, has already come under fire by opposition politi-

cal groups here. It appears certain to stir controversy in the forthcoming session of Parliament.

### Accord Attacked

The major opposition parties—including the Socialists and Communists—denounced the results of today's meeting within a few hours of the announcement.

These parties are fundamentally opposed to the U.S.-Japan security treaty and have attacked it in election campaigns. The Tanaka government and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party are hoping, however, that the expected termination of the Vietnam war will sap the force of the opposition's arguments.

Despite some advance speculation, no change was made today. In the ground rules under which the United States must conduct "prior consultation" with Japan before deploying major new forces or nuclear weapons here or using the Japanese bases for combat operations. The U.S. officials briefing newsmen today said Japan had not suggested any change in the touchy procedures.

The joint communique emphasized "mutual trust and close consultation in actual circumstances" as an essential element in the "prior consultation" clause. It also said that "In the present international situation" there was no expectation of circumstances which would require the United States to seek "prior consultation" with Japan.

At the end of the post-World

War II occupation, the United States occupied a vast array of 3,800 military installations on Japan's main islands. These have been steadily reduced over the years to a total of 93 installations today, plus another 86 installations on the island of Okinawa. The totals under the new consolidation plan are 89 on the mainland and 84 on Okinawa.

### Bases Returned

Under the newly announced consolidation plan, Yokota Air Force Base west of Tokyo will become the only major U.S. Air Force installation in the heavily populated Kanto Plain. It is also likely to become headquarters for the U.S. military command and Air Force in Japan.

Four U.S. Air Force facilities in the Kanto Plain are to be returned completely to Japan and major parts of three others will be turned back.

The most important and illustrious facility being given up is Tachikawa Air Force Base, a former Japanese army facility which was a hub of U.S. military activity during the postwar era and particularly during the Korean War. Actually, Tachikawa has not been used for U.S. air operations for several years because the largest U.S. jets have outgrown its 5,000-foot runway.

Fuchū Air Force Base, now headquarters for U.S. forces in Japan, and for the U.S. Air Force here, will be returned except for a relatively small communications area.

According to today's an-

nouncement, U.S. military strength in mainland Japan will be reduced by 2,100 from the present level of 22,900 (including both uniformed personnel and U.S. civilians).

### Okinawa

On Okinawa, the United States agreed in principle to return the airport at Naha, the largest city, contingent on replacement facilities to be provided by Japan at other bases. No reduction in U.S. personnel on Okinawa was announced, leaving the total strength there at 41,700.

Under the consolidation plans, some 19,400 U.S. Marines are to remain on Okinawa and close to 7,000 marines in mainland Japan. This is the principal ground combat force remaining here, with most of the other elements being supply, logistical, headquarters and air or naval support units.

The American officials who briefed newsmen after today's meeting suggested that there might be further consolidations and reductions in the U.S. presence here, even within the three-year period of the plan announced today.

One official pointed out that the U.S. military will be operating under economic strictures imposed in Washington. Another official noted that "There is pressure [for termination] around every U.S. base in Japan." Easing political pressures in landshort Japan is one of the aims of the base consolidations.

WASHINGTON POST

24 JANUARY 1973

## VC Pledges
To Respect
Peace Pact

HONG KONG, Jan. 24 (Wednesday) (AP) — The Vietcong promised today to "seriously carry out the peace treaty" reached by Henry A. Kissinger and Le Due Tho in Paris.

Making its own announcement of the peace agreement more than two hours after the other three forces in the Vietnam war had made simul-

taneous announcements, the Vietcong said it "hopes that the treaty will be respected and also carried out seriously" by the United States, South Vietnam, and North Vietnam.

The statement was broadcast by the Vietcong's Liberation Radio in the name of the "Foreign Ministry of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam."

"I said if respected and seriously carried out by all parties. The agreement should "guarantee a stable peace in Vietnam and contribute to lasting peace in Indochina and Southeast Asia."

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WASHINGTON POST

24 JANUARY 1973

Initialing Ends Months of Bargaining

By Jonathan C. Randal

PARIS, Jan. 23—The initialing of a Vietnam cease-fire agreement today ended three months of hard bargaining to work out problems in the original draft accord which Hanoi charged the United States had agreed to sign in late October.

The final details were worked out in a 13-hour meeting Monday of American and North Vietnamese technical experts.

White House adviser Henry A. Kissinger and Hanoi's chief negotiator Le Due Tho put their initials to the agreement this morning during a three-hour-and-45-minute meeting at the Hotel Majestic, where the formal weekly peace conference met fruitlessly for four years while the real negotiating went on in secret sessions.

Kissinger and Tho emerged from the meeting smiling broadly and waving to cameramen. For the first time since the late December American bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, the two principal negotiators not only shook hands warmly, but went around

shaking hands with each other's deputies.

"It's Really Over"

"Now it's really over," a North Vietnamese said.

As happened Jan. 13 when Kissinger and Tho made the final breakthrough on major points, a North Vietnamese and American-hired team of photographers was called into the meeting room today to record the event.

North Vietnamese sources let it be known that Foreign Minister Nguyen Duy Trinh is to fly from Hanoi to Paris within hours to attend the formal signing ceremony, planned for Saturday.

Mrs. Nguyen Thi Binh, foreign minister of the Vietcong's Provisional Revolutionary Government, returned to Paris Sunday night and the South Vietnamese foreign minister, Tran Van Lam, arrived here Monday morning.

Rogers Expected

Only Secretary of State William P. Rogers is neither here nor on the way, but the flight from Washington is only seven hours and Rogers is expected to arrive Friday morning.

The fact that the agreement would be initiated today was telegraphed Mon-

day when the North Vietnamese announced that this morning's meeting would take place at the Hotel Majestic. In the past, the secret sessions have been held in various suburban villas in an effort by both sides to escape the pursuit of the media.

The importance of the Hotel Majestic is in the fact that it was the first forum in which the United States and South Vietnam were obliged to talk with the Vietcong as equals.

It is being suggested here that the formal signing by the four foreign ministers at the Hotel Majestic may follow the formula that was finally arrived at to bring the Vieacong into the Paris

The order of signatures would involve accepting the allied view that, there are "two sides" rather than "four delegations." Thus, the United States and Saigon could sign the document first, followed by North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government. 'Progress' Jan. 13

The final breakthrough on major points first became apparent Jan. 13 when, for the first time since October, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong delegations said that "progress" had been made in the talks.

From North Vietnam's angry charges Oct. 26 that the United States had reended on an agreement until Jan. 13, there was apparently little movement toward a cease-fire.

Kissinger's claim that "peace is at hand," made on Oct. 26 just before the U.S. presidential election, seemed to haunt the U.S. negotiator as weeks passed

and he failed to extract the desired modifications in the original draft agreement.

Sources close to the Communist delegations charged that on Nov. 20, when the secret talks resumed at American insistence, Kissinger had presented a Saigon-inspired compendium of major revisions in the draft agreement.

On Nov. 25, the talks broke up after Tho rejected the allied demands. Erased his own demands and, most unusually, raised his voice and pounded on the table.

After a nine-day interval, the negotiating began again for nine days from Dec. 4 to Dec. 13.

Five days after that round, of talks collapsed, President Nixon ordered the start of 12 days of massive bombing of North Vietnam's heartland, but refused to explain his reasons for the bombing campaign.

On Dec. 30, the White House announced that bombing north of the 20th parallel had been stopped and that Kissinger and Tho would meet again Jan. 8. Technical experts began their marathon meetings Jan. 2.

Proof of the progress made in the early January meetings came Jan. 15 in the form of a total cessation of American Air and Naval attacks against North Vietnam.

This was followed, in turn, by South Vietnamese willingness to accept the Paris terms and then the quick half-day session needed to initial the accord.

NEW YORK TIMES

24 January 1973

Philippine High Court Rejects
10 Challenges to New Charter

MANILA, Jan. 23 (UPI)—The Supreme Court dismissed 10 petitions last night that indirectly challenged President Ferdinand E. Marcos's right to proclaim a Constitution allowing him to rule indefinitely with full personal powers.

Mr. Marcos said the ruling opened the way for "full implementation of the Constitution."

The 10-man Supreme Court, by a vote of 9-1, dismissed as "moot and academic" 10 identical petitions questioning the martial-law decree that called for a national plebiscite to ratify the new Constitution.

The decision noted that the plebiscite had been scheduled for Jan. 15 but postponed and later canceled by Mr. Marcos, who instead called for a national opinion poll. This was carried out in citizens' assemblies in each city and town.

Announcing the results of the poll Jan. 17, Mr. Marcos said more than 15 million Filipinos had voted for ratification of the

Constitution, indefinite suspension of elections and continuation of martial law.

He issued a proclamation the same day declaring the Constitution in effect and assuming the offices of president and premier for an indefinite period.

The Supreme Court did not rule on the presidential proclamation itself, saying that the question of its validity was not raised. The petitions were limited to the question of holding a plebiscite.

33

WASHINGTON POST

24 JANUARY 1973

Thieu Claims
Saigon Victory

By Thomas W. Lippman

SAIGON, Jan. 24 (Wednesday)—President Thieu told the South Vietnamese people this morning that a cease-fire at 8 a.m. Sunday would end their 18 year struggle against "Communist military aggression" and end it in victory.

"(North Vietnam's Premier Pham Van Dong, at a reception in Hanoi, hailed the agreement as "our victory." Story on A8.)

In a 40-minute radio address to the nation that began at the same time as President Nixon's cease-fire announcement in Washington, Thieu said the Communists had failed to achieve their military or political goals in the South.

He said they had been "forced to end the war" because they could not defeat the South Vietnamese people and army by violent means."

One by one, Thieu ticked off the demands he said the Communists had made for accepting an end to the war and had failed to achieve: ouster of the current South Vietnamese regime, dismantlement of the government's administrative system, changes in the constitution, and a coalition government.

He said the Communists—he did not refer to North Vietnam—had been forced to accept at least temporarily the existence of two separate Vietnamese states and to acknowledge that they had no right to interfere in the affairs of South Vietnam.

"In one passage that was somewhat murky, however, he referred to the recognition of a second parallel government within South Vietnam as another demand that the Communists had failed to achieve.

He added, "Whatever they want to call it, we will never accept it," implying by this that some sort of legal recognition of the Communists' Provisional Revolutionary Government was in the accord.

"Thieu's speech was preceded by an hour of patriotic and martial music that stressed the theme of South Vietnamese unity in a struggle against aggression, a theme Thieu picked up in discussing what is to happen after the cease-fire."

"The agreement to be signed in Paris, he said, "is a cease-fire agreement, no more, no less," and is only a first step toward a "real

and permanent peace."

As the government has been doing unofficially for weeks Thieu called on the people for increased vigilance and determination in a political struggle against the Communists after a cease-fire.

Beginning within the hour, he said, the people should begin a new campaign to show the flag all across the country and be prepared to defend it against any attempt by the Communists to tear it down.

There were, in fact, more than the usual number of flags on display in downtown Saigon this morning. But apart from that, the city appeared to be going about its business in the usual frenetic way without being affected one way or another by the news.

There was no sign of any jubilation of the type that marked the end of the World War II in the United States.

One reason could be that the end of the military phase of the war is far from a clear-cut victory for South Vietnam, despite Thieu's strong words about the failure of North Vietnam to achieve its objectives.

A substantial number of North Vietnamese troops are to remain in the South, occupying large, still-undiscovered swatches of territory, and the people of the South have already been told that restraints on their personal freedom are likely to increase after the cease-fire.

Thieu said that the North Vietnamese troops are still considered "foreigners and invaders" whose departure is a matter that must be negotiated quickly between Hanoi and Saigon.

Without that, he said, "the right of self-determination cannot be implemented freely, democratically or adequately."

On the political front, Thieu did nothing to clear up the mystery about when elections are to be held or for what offices. South Vietnam's constitution and other laws, which he said are to remain in force, ban any form of political activity by Communists, but Thieu left the door open for a change of some kind by saying that these were matters to be negotiated between his government and the National Liberation Front.

The Front, he said, would be allowed to participate, "in freedom and democracy," in implementing a negotiated political arrangement.

Thieu said nothing about when South Vietnam's soldiers would go home, a ques-

tion with important implications for Vietnamese society and economy. But he indicated that demobilization was far in the future by saying that "no international power can effectively guarantee peace for us 100 percent."

"Only we can guarantee a real peace," he said, "through the strength of our army and of our masses and our spirit of determination."

Thieu indicated that an international peace-keeping force would not be in place by Sunday and called on soldiers, policemen and the citizenry not to relax when the cease-fire comes.

He said nothing about the United States and its role in the war or the peace, nor did he mention Laos and Cambodia, where he had been demanding a simultaneous cease-fire.

News agencies reported these other developments.

The official Vietnam Press News Agency announced new measures Tuesday designed to crack down on Communist activity after a cease-fire. Troops in Danang, South Vietnam's second largest city, already were on full alert, and Americans in Danang were placed on "grey alert," with orders not to leave their posts except on official business.

Before Thieu spoke, he received a stream of local officials at the presidential palace. These included Prime Minister Tran Van Khiem, the chairmen of all major committees in the senate and house and all cabinet ministers.

The overwhelming majority of South Vietnamese did not hear hear Thieu speak, because the advance announcement preceded his speech by only a few hours.

On the other hand, virtually all of the 23,000 American servicemen still in South Vietnam heard President Nixon's speech.

The U.S. Armed Forces Network carried announcements that the President would speak at 15 minute intervals and servicemen were huddled around transistor sets long before Mr. Nixon's voice came over the air waves.

South Vietnamese military units all over the country have been on an alert status for two weeks.

Based on the decrees Thieu himself promulgated after winning virtual dictatorial powers from the Senate and Assembly, orders went out authorizing troops and police to shoot-to-kill in the event of serious disturbances.

The stringent measures decreed amounted to a virtual state of siege for the nation—restricting movement, author-

few prisoners released earlier by Hanoi were quickly shunted off to military hospitals so they could be brainwashed before talking publicly.

The Pentagon's top experts stress that both immediate medical examinations and intelligence debriefings—so soon after the medical checks as possible—are necessary not only for the returning prisoner's own good but to wrestle from his memory, while it is still fresh, knowledge of the whereabouts of any missing comrades.

Pentagon specialists claim returning POWs repeatedly display the desire to have such checks and also say "that every man who returns from captivity urgently needs to tell his story—not publicly but privately—to someone who will listen, not critically or with sympathy, but with empathy and understanding."

As Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird put it last night, "the entire Department of Defense is ready and set to go with Project Homecoming.

"In particular, flight crews, doctors, nurses and other medical personnel are on notice for initial homecoming flights as soon as possible after the formal signing of the agreement in Paris.

"I want to emphasize that we will be just as concerned about the safe return of the last of our men as we are about the first, and we will also do everything possible to obtain, an accounting of all the missing in action.

"The Department of Defense will provide further details about Project Homecoming as soon as that is appropriate."

36

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

23 January 1973

# Saigon-Cong concessions pave way to agreement

By a staff correspondent of
The Christian Science Monitor

Paris

Even the weather has turned springlike as the signs of peace in Vietnam multiply in a city that has hosted so many international gatherings.

Tran Van Lam's plane touched down in balmy sunlight Monday morning — the first time Saigon's Foreign Minister has come to Paris during the long Vietnam peace negotiations.

His Communist counterpart, Mme. Nguyen Thi Binh of the Provisional Revolutionary Government set up by the Viet Cong, flew in from Moscow the previous evening.

The two, in a sense, will be peering over the shoulders of U.S. presidential adviser Henry A. Kissinger and Hanol's Politburo member Le Duc Tho when they meet Tuesday "to complete the text" of a peace agreement, as White House press spokesman Ronald L. Ziegler put it.

## Who makes concessions

The principal concessions made to achieve the agreement have come from Saigon and the Viet Cong, neither of whom is directly participating in the Kissinger-Tho talks. Each side has spoken of safeguarding principles while giving way on details.

The principle, for Saigon, is refusal to acknowledge the Viet Cong as a government. For the Viet Cong, it is to win this acknowledgment, if not directly from Saigon, then at least from the United States. The principle is important because it will influence its continuing struggle for political supremacy in

South Vietnam after a peace agreement is signed.

It is understood that an elaborate and complicated compromise has been worked out to get around this hurdle. The more important and anxious question being asked here is to what extent each contestant will recognize the zones controlled by the other side once an agreement is signed.

Whatever Saigon ends up calling the Viet Cong, whether Provisional Revolutionary Government or National Liberation Front, or simply "the other interested party," the important point is that it respects Saigon's zones of control.

There is plenty of precedent for truce violations, and none whatsoever for peaceful coexistence in intermingled zones of two opponents who have been fiercely fighting each other until the very day of a cease-fire.

Another group of neutralists, meanwhile, the "free forces of Vietnam," held a press conference Monday to demand the liberation of political prisoners and to suggest that Saigon and the Viet Cong create a provisional administrative committee to take charge of domestic affairs during the interim period before all-South Vietnam elections.

## Ex-officers included

The group is led by Lt. Col. Tran Dinh Lan, a former officer in the French and Vietnamese armies, and includes several former officers in the Saigon Army.

Liberation of political prisoners was essential, Colonel Lan said, because it was from the prisons that the "third force" would secure its most effective and valuable cadres.

izing widespread arrests and ordering immediate crackdowns in the event anyone tries to raise a Vietcong flag or distribute leaflets.

Vietnam Press reported that bolts of red, blue and green cloth would be confiscated from warehouses to keep the North Vietnamese and Vietcong from making uniforms and flags after the cease-fire.

The Vietcong flag is red and blue with a yellow star. North Vietnamese uniforms are green.

BALTIMORE SUN

24 January 1973

# Thieu terms truce only a first step

By ARNOLD R. ISAACS

Sun Staff Correspondent

Saigon-President Nguyen Van Thieu announced his acceptance of a Vietnam cease-fire today, but declared it is "only a first step toward peace, not a real peace."

In a radio speech broadcast as President Nixon was announcing the agreement in Washington, Mr. Thieu also insisted that South Vietnam has not given up its demand for the withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops and he hinted that he might refuse to begin negotiations for a political settlement between the Saigon government and the National Liberation Front as long as any North Vietnamese troops remain.

"The political future of South Vietnam will be determined by the South Vietnamese people," he said. "... As long as North Vietnamese troops stay here, the self-determination of South Vietnam cannot be solved."

In his 40-minute speech, Mr. Thieu never mentioned the withdrawal of the remaining United States troops from Vietnam. Nor did he refer to the U.S. role in the war or the American sacrifice of more than 46,000 lives in the last 12 years.

Recalling the breakdown of the 1954 Geneva Indochina accords, Mr. Thieu warned that the Communists might violate the cease-fire and he made it clear that South Vietnam will remain under wartime discipline after the fighting ends.

"No peace agreement can guarantee peace and no international control body can guarantee peace. Only we can guarantee peace. Only our armed forces and the determination of our people can provide an effective guarantee."

It had been expected that

both sides would attempt to gain the best possible position in the final hours before a cease-fire takes effect and the result could be a final burst of heavy fighting similar to the battles in October, when the Communists penetrated a number of hamlets in the Saigon area.

The government is expected to impose strict security measures, possibly including an extended curfew. Civil servants were told to bring food to their offices today and to prepare to remain there. Many Vietnamese have been stockpiling food in case a round-the-clock curfew is ordered.

A strict ban on Communist activity will continue to be enforced. The Saigon government has made it clear that open Communist participation in political life is a subject for

later negotiations and not an immediate, automatic consequence of the agreement.

In the initial post-cease-fire period, the government has declared that martial law will remain in effect and the Constitution, which prohibits Communist activity, will be enforced.

It is expected that the government will use strong measures to prevent anyone from leaving government-controlled territory for areas held by the Communists. This could become a major political headache, since there are 300,000 to 400,000 refugees in camps whose homes are in Communist territory, and uncounted thousands of others who are not listed as refugees but who left their homes for greater safety from air attacks and shelling.

37

16

THE ECONOMIST JANUARY 20, 1973

# The neighbours get ready

The governments of the rest of south-east Asia are preparing to look after themselves when the ceasefire comes in Vietnam

The rest of south-east Asia is making its dispositions to deal with the uncertainty that will follow a Vietnam ceasefire. President Marcos of the Philippines is the latest ruler in the area to discard parliamentary democracy and set a course that appears to lead towards personal dictatorship. The referendum on his new constitution that was supposed to be held on Monday was scrapped, on the ground that a public opinion poll carried out by government officials—partly by no more than a show of hands in the villages—demonstrated that a majority of Filipinos are fed up with elections, like the new constitution, and want an even tougher application of martial law than the country has experienced over the past four months. The new constitution was promulgated on Wednesday.

Mr Marcos has entrenched himself by even cruder measures than were used by President Park in South Korea last month. At least Mr Park had the confidence, and decorum, to hold a plebiscite in which go per cent of the South Korean voters dutifully turned out to support the new constitution that gave him the right to another six years in office. In less dramatic ways, several other south-east Asian rulers have been barring themselves inside their palaces. Thailand's new national assembly, is entirely composed of government appointees, two-thirds of them military men, and the prime minister, Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn, has given himself the power to lock up anyone in the interests of "national security." In Cambodia, the two main opposition parties refused to contest the legislative elections in September after the government redrew the constituency boundaries in a way that favoured its provincial supporters.

All this means that western ideas of democracy are going to be a lot slower to take hold in south-east Asia than once seemed likely. A common pattern seems to be emerging. Most governments in the region are now convinced that, as a result of their disenchantment with the Vietnam war, the Americans will not be prepared to commit ground forces to another Asian war in the foreseeable future. In Bangkok last week Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's prime minister, urged the United States to shore up Thailand as a barrier against the expansion of communist power. But even the Thais cannot count on American support, except perhaps money and arms, in suppressing the guerrilla movements that are still gathering strength in the north-east and south of the country. President Nixon preached self-reliance to America's allies at Guam in 1969; most south-east Asian governments have interpreted that to mean tightening the screw on their local opponents, communist or otherwise.

It looks as if democracy in south-east Asia could take hold quickly only in the hothouse conditions of American involvement. The countries of the region were faced with the common problem of all developing societies: the

difficulty of creating a viable political system after decolonisation. In most of Latin America, that problem has not been solved after a century and a half of independence. It should be no surprise if democratic institutions are hard to establish in Manila or Saigon. Parliamentary institutions in south-east Asia were an alien import; but then so was communism. Maybe communism has proved relatively durable in the other halves of Korea and Vietnam, and in China, partly because it was better adapted to the authoritarian nature of traditional Asian societies, as well as because its one-party system and its closed society are that much more efficient at suppressing opposition. But then south-east Asia is changing, and the tragedy is that the American loss of heart in the region should have come just when it had at last become possible for many of its countries to move forward to a more open and liberal society.

The Americans went into Asia in order to uphold a conception of democracy that could be sustained in many of these countries only as long as they themselves remained involved. Some people will say that that goes to show that elections in South Vietnam or the Philippines were only window-dressing. There was rather more to it than that. "The essence of small people," said Confucius, "is that of grass. And when a wind passes over the grass, it cannot choose but bend." The wind in south-east Asia still comes from the north. The world's attention has been riveted on Indochina, but the insurgencies in neighbouring countries have not miraculously faded away. It is easier in Boston to think of China as a status quo power than in Chiang Rai. South-east Asian governments are girding themselves up in order to survive by means that will not be very palatable to western liberals.

## The others who can still help

How far that process of bolting the hatches will go will partly depend on whether the local powers can build up a credible replacement for the American military guarantee. It is particularly depressing that, at precisely the moment when the need for greater regional cooperation is most pressing, Mr Whitlam's government in Australia seems to be contracting out of the area's defence. Perhaps Lord Carrington's visit to Canberra early next month will help to persuade Mr Whitlam that Australia has an interest in continuing to contribute to the defence of Malaysia and Singapore. But it now seems likely that, at best, Mr Whitlam will agree to a compromise: to keep air and naval forces in the region while replacing the permanent battalion stationed in Singapore with a rota system of visiting battalions. That would leave Britain as the major outside power there. It is to be hoped that Mr Whitlam can be brought to realise that Australia has a bigger role to play than as an island fortress.

38

EDITORIALS

NEW YORK TIMES 25 January 1973

NEW YORK NEWS 26 January 1973

Vietnam Agreement...

The Vietnam settlement, which will bring an end to American participation in a war that has wracked the United States for nearly a decade and could even conceivably bring peace to Indochina after a quarter-century of hostilities, is a diplomatic triumph that will be welcomed by the people of America and of every other nation in the civilized world.

Although, as Henry Kissinger pointed out in his remarkable television performance yesterday, the agreement is full of ambiguities, its most important aspects from the American point of view are reassuringly unambiguous. These are the sections which provide for the release of American prisoners of war throughout Indochina to United States governmental representatives in Hanoi within sixty days of the signing and for the concurrent safe withdrawal of remaining American troops from South Vietnam under an internationally supervised cease-fire. Although the number of foreign observers is to be substantially less than the United States had originally sought, their responsibilities and mode of operation have been spelled out in a manner which should at least lessen the uncertainties of a formidable task.

The achievement of these essential conditions can only earn the approval and applause of every American, to say nothing of America's many friends abroad who have long waited for this historic moment.

Beyond the immediate cease-fire and early withdrawal of United States troops and prisoners, however, the prospects for a more enduring peace in Indochina remain, in the word ascribed to President Nixon yesterday, "fragile." Ambiguity abounds in the pact's provisions for resolution of the political problem in South Vietnam, which, as Mr. Kissinger candidly observed, was "what the civil war is all about." The proposed Council of Reconciliation in South Vietnam seems more tenuous than ever; and the rule of unanimity under which it is to act bodes ill for any kind of effective political progress, much less "reconciliation."

Failure to resolve this fundamental political problem was unavoidable since, as Mr. Kissinger noted, "it is not easy to achieve through negotiations what has not been achieved on the battlefield." But there may be ground for hope that a people who have suffered through a generation of fraternal bloodletting will, when left to their own devices, at last seek a peaceful resolution of their differences. Much will depend on the willingness of the United States and other involved big powers to honor President Nixon's plea for mutual restraint.

The question will doubtless be debated for years whether the settlement that was finally hammered into completion this week could not have been achieved, at least in its essential details, four years ago—or even last October when Hanoi and Mr. Kissinger outlined an agreement that does not appear to differ in major degree from the one that was made public yesterday. There is plenty of ground for skepticism over President Nixon's assertion that this accord represents "peace with honor" in contrast to every other kind of peace that might have been achieved during the past four years, or months.

But everyone will agree that it is more honorable to end the fighting than to continue a conflict that has brought so much suffering to the people of Indochina for ill-defined purposes that have little relevance, if any, to American interests in the contemporary world. In that sense it is a "right kind of peace," deserving support in the hope that its calculated ambiguities can be transformed in time into the reality of an enduring settlement.

...Motivations...

An offhand quip by Mr. Kissinger at yesterday's

LET US GIVE THANKS

The Vietnam ceasefire takes effect tomorrow at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. It would be most fitting if Americans would pause at that moment to voice—if only in their hearts—our prayerful gratitude that the anguish and bloodshed the nation has endured so long is at an end.

We hope, too, that on Sunday there will well up from churches across the land further heartfelt prayers—in homage to our dead; for the safe, swift return of American prisoners; for strength, unity and reconciliation in our beloved country.

briefing may well turn into the most revealing and provocative of all his remarks about the final phases of President Nixon's war policy in Vietnam. Asked whether twelve days of saturation bombing of North Vietnam's cities and countryside early this month provided the final impetus to the agreement, the Presidential adviser wisely declined "to speculate on North Vietnamese motives." Then he added, "I have too much trouble analyzing our own."

Mr. Kissinger is not alone in puzzling over what past weeks of delay and combat have been designed to achieve. Only a detailed parsing of the various drafts at each stage of the negotiations will prove just what was conceded by whom, and when.

Mr. Nixon errs in thinking, as he said Monday night, that the nation will now understand why the Chief Executive had to keep silent during all the weeks of final and horrendous combat. Congress and citizens alike still have the right to a fuller explanation of why this ruinous war had to be waged so long and so bitterly after peace was declared at hand.

...and the Kissinger Role

In his impressive account yesterday of how agreement was reached on the war in Vietnam, Henry A. Kissinger observed almost parenthetically that "no one in the war has had a monopoly of anguish and . . . no one in these debates has had a monopoly of moral insight." If there was a defensive note in the comment, there need not have been; for Mr. Kissinger, emerging from his long ordeal of negotiation, clearly deserves the respect and admiration of the country.

Whatever the flaws in the agreement—and there are many—whatever the disappointments that may come—and they may be great—Mr. Kissinger must be credited not only with skill and tenacity as a negotiator but with a calm and detached perseverance under merciless cross-fire from every direction. He can say now that the North Vietnamese, when they are not disposed to settle, are "the most difficult people to negotiate with" that he has ever encountered. But he cannot yet admit to the complex pressures to which he was simultaneously subjected by Washington and Saigon, or complain publicly of the castigation that came his way at the same time from anti-war and pro-war segments of American public opinion. It is to his lasting credit that he remained steadfast "through peaks and valleys in these negotiations of extraordinary intensity."

Some Americans felt, in their deep and understandable resentment of the December bombing of North Vietnam, that Mr. Kissinger should have abandoned his mission in protest rather than appear to endorse so appalling an action. He chose to stay on and ride out that episode in the hope of returning to the negotiating table when the time was ripe. He is now entitled to the nation's gratitude for a job which few would have had the courage to undertake and none would have done better.

1-E

WASHINGTON POST 25 January 1973

# Vietnam: A Time for Giving Thanks

The Vietnam settlement announced by President Nixon and elaborated by Henry Kissinger marks the effective conclusion, surely all Americans ache to believe, of the most rending passage in our history since the Civil War. It is a time for giving thanks. Those who have supported the effort of successive Presidents to serve the principles they believed to be at stake in Vietnam can hail Mr. Nixon for the success he now claims to have achieved. Those who did not judge the stakes to be worth or worthy of the effort waged in their behalf can rejoice that Mr. Nixon has brought at least the active combat part of the American involvement to an end. He has honored that substantial part of his larger pledge to "end the war" in four years. We are deeply grateful that he has.

The settlement, as announced, has these immensely significant aspects. It means no more Americans will be killed or maimed by Vietnamese, and no more Vietnamese by Americans. It means the prisoners and their families will shortly be reunited, though other families face the abyss of learning that their "missing" men are in fact lost. It means the quick and safe withdrawal of the 25,000 American military men still in South Vietnam, remnant of a force that once surpassed half a million.

Politically, the agreed pact accomplishes the essential breakthrough of turning back to the Vietnamese the responsibility and opportunity to work out the political future of South Vietnam for themselves. Mr. Nixon insists, Mr. Kissinger less dogmatically, that the North Vietnamese will not interfere. Regardless, we are more than satisfied that the time bought, the aid provided, the self-preparation made and the terms of the new pact do assure the people of South Vietnam the chance to determine their own future. There can be no doubt at all that the United States has given Saigon a full measure of dedication and assistance by any and all reasonable measures. Plainly, the settlement registers Mr. Nixon's judgment that, finally, the United States has fulfilled its essential mission in Vietnam. Many other Americans feel that mission was accomplished years ago; some believe it should never have been taken up.

Lastly, in diplomatic terms, the settlement deliberately and prudently dilutes the American role and responsibility in the period ahead, creating instead a large and complex network of international roles and responsibilities: two-party commissions and four-party commissions, an international commission of control and supervision, an international conference to "guarantee peace in Indochina," international collaboration in the reconstruction of Indochina, international agreement involving "mutual restraint" among the principal arms suppliers. The more diffuse and complex this international network, the better: it is bound to help heal the physical and political wounds of Indochina, and, not least, to reduce the chance that any breakdown of the settlement would or could be regarded as one requiring an American response alone.

Indeed, this may be the major antidote to the danger inherent in Mr. Nixon's persistence in calling an unavoidably transitional political settlement, one virtually sure to usher in protracted political and guerrilla struggle, "peace with honor... a peace that lasts." By such an outlook and designation, Mr. Nixon tends to commit his own prestige to the gratuitous and dangerous project

of ensuring, that the "peace" he has won will last. Precisely down that path lies the possibility of some degree of American reinvolvement, as unthinkable as that prospect may appear today.

After so divisive and destructive a war, it would be naive to expect the questions raised by it simply to fade away. For years, Americans will be debating the purpose of the war and its conduct and costs; the nature of the society and of the political process that gave support to it; and, on another level, whether Mr. Nixon could have gotten a better or adequate agreement in January 1969 or October 1972, and whether Hanoi or Saigon better used the period after October to prepare for the next phase of their struggle. We do not wish or attempt to answer these questions today. We offer the hope that the debate on them to come will be drained of the bitterness that has marked the period of the war.

"It is obvious," Henry Kissinger wisely observed yesterday, "that a war that has lasted for 10 years will have many elements that cannot be completely satisfactory to all the parties concerned... It was always clear that a lasting peace could come about only if neither side sought to achieve everything that it wanted; indeed, that stability depended on the relative satisfaction and therefore on the relative dissatisfaction of all of the parties concerned. And therefore, it is also clear that whether this agreement brings a lasting peace or not depends not only on its provisions, but also on the spirit in which it is implemented.

"It will be our challenge in the future to move the controversies that could not be stilled by any one document from the level of military conflict to the level of positive human aspirations and to absorb the enormous talents and dedication of the people of Indochina in tasks of construction, rather than in tasks of destruction...."

"Of course, the hatred will not rapidly disappear, and, of course, people who have fought for 25 years will not easily give up their objectives, but also people who have suffered for 25 years may at least come to know that they can achieve their realization by other and less brutal means."

For Americans at home, Kissinger concluded, "it should be clear by now that no one in this war has had a monopoly of anguish and that no one in these debates has had a monopoly of moral insight, and now that at last we have achieved an agreement in which the United States did not prescribe the political future to its allies, an agreement which should preserve the dignity and the self-respect of all of the parties, that together with healing the wounds in Indochina we can begin to heal the wounds in America."

There is a refreshing and—to be quite frank about it—unaccustomed restraint and realism in this appraisal of the outlook now for South Vietnam, to which we would wholeheartedly subscribe. Whatever one may think of the Nixon administration's Vietnam policies over the last four years, and whatever may be the real prospects for "peace" under the terms of this settlement, it is enough for today to rejoice that this country is moving free and clear, in the most important ways, from involvement in Indochina and from responsibility for its peoples' fate.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER 25 January 1973

# It's not what some had in mind

KP duty should be available to women "as a step to eliminate inequality between male and female programs."

We are confident that the overwhelming majority of distaff recruits will welcome the end of male chauvinism in Air Force mess halls — excepting, of course, those who enlist with a firm conviction that woman's place is not in the kitchen.

Women's "rights" have been upheld by a U. S. Air Force review board in a decision that may be more satisfying to men than women. It nullifies a discriminatory practice at Lackland Air Force

Base in Texas where women recruits had been exempted from kitchen police. In ordering a halt to the clearly sexist policy at Lackland the review board declared that equal opportunity to perform

2-E

10 SECTION TWO

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, Fri., Jan. 26, 1973

KUPCINET

KUP'S COLUMN

Henry Kissinger laughed off the final question—"Did you talk yourself out of a job?"—at his press conference the other day. But to intimates he's saying that implementation of the peace agreement will "take months, after which I'll probably leave the administration." . . . Meanwhile, kibitzers say Kissinger is walking around the White House humming, "The Last Time I Saw Paris"! . . . Women for Peace, which protested the war with a peace vigil on State Street for the last 367 consecutive Saturdays, finally is giving up. The last vigil will be this Saturday.

A WILD RUMOR SWEPT OUR TOWN that Liz Taylor had slipped into the Sherman Hospital in Elgin to undergo treatment for her ailing back by Dr. Lyman Smith, who has an international reputation. (Bill Melton of the White Sox was one of his patients.) But Liz is nowhere near Elgin. She's in Switzerland. . . . Women's Wear Daily reports Frank Sinatra blew a gasket at the inauguration when he couldn't get permission at the last minute for his favorite comedian, Pat Henry, to entertain for President Nixon at one of the galas. According to WWD, Sinatra packed up and went home.

DR. CHARLES HURST, PRESIDENT of Malcolm X College, will resign on June 30, he revealed in taping his WLS radio show for play Sunday night. Dr. Hurst also stated that two audits, one by HEW and the other an audit ordered by the school's board, will vindicate him of charges of misuse of college funds. . . . Redd Foxx, NBC-TV's "junk man," headlines at Mill Run April 11-15. . . . And Marcel Marceau brings his mime artistry to the Civic Theater March 20-April 7. . . . WLS radio is losing an ace reporter, Rosemarie Gulley, to Ch. 7 news.

"WHAT DOES THE PEACE AGREEMENT MEAN?" will be one of the topics on our Ch. 5 Kup's Show Saturday with such guests as Hans Morgenthau, Dr. Gerhart Niemeyer of Notre Dame and peace activist Sidney Lens. Other guests include Sylvia Sidney and Katharine Houghton of the Ivanhoe; singer Lisa Kirk; actress Rita Moreno; moviemaker John Avildsen; author Mickey Spillane; Polly Smith-Connelly, Chicago's first female janitor; Georgia Sothern, former striptease star; Mister Kelly's David Frye, and director Alan Pakula.

Kissinger saw it through

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This, you should have,
Honest folk like you - are few and
far between.
The Arizona Daily Star

STAR PUBLISHING COMPANY

ESTABLISHED 1877

PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING OF THE YEAR

Michael E. Pulitzer, Editor and Publisher

P.O. Box 5846

TUCSON, ARIZONA 85703

EDITORIAL PAGE

FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 1973

# Kissinger's Peace?

The 10-year-old Vietnam war has been called Kennedy's war, Johnson's war, Nixon's war, and each label is at least partially true. But the fragile peace which is hopefully ending the war may rightly be called Henry Kissinger's peace.

For better or worse, lasting, honorable or otherwise, peace in Vietnam has been agreed to principally through the efforts of a brilliant, subtle, suave, sometimes sinister, forceful and yet very frustrated man — Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, the Harvard intellectual who went to work for Richard Nixon.

Following Tuesday's announcement that the cease-fire had been initialed, Kissinger went before the nation on television Wednesday to give a thorough, point-by-point explanation of the peace agreement and much interesting background into the manner in which it was reached.

His appearance was nothing short of dramatic. Though he had copious notes, he spoke freely and easily, but precisely, about the bewildering details of the agreement. Nothing could better have shown Kissinger's total understanding and familiarity with his subject matter, than his candid, comprehensive delivery before the cameras.

Kissinger was the humorous self-confessor when he told of having “delivered myself of some epigrammatic statements” on Oct. 26. (“Peace is at hand.”) He was the sardonic, frustrated “President’s intellectual” when he answered that he had not attempted to gauge the North Vietnamese motives for returning to serious negotiation after the Christmas season saturation bombing since he “could not always determine our own motives.”

But through it all Kissinger was Kis-

singer. This was not Richard Nixon speaking of his peace treaty through his aide, but Henry Kissinger speaking of the peace he and the North Vietnamese forged through months of exhausting sessions “which took several years off all our lives.”

It seems that with this solution to the Vietnam struggle — hopefully a lasting solution — Henry Kissinger has accomplished the task that tempted him to join the Nixon Administration. Kissinger was not always a Nixon man. He was once, at least de jure, a Kennedy man, and later was an avowed Nixon opponent. This background, and the tenor of his remarks Wednesday, raise the question of whether Henry Kissinger has ever truly been a Nixon man. There can be no doubt that Kissinger worked very hard to achieve peace, that he wanted very badly to accomplish this. The question then is, whose team but Nixon's could he have joined in order to be given that job?

He did not speak of “peace with honor” he spoke of workable alternatives to warfare. He did not speak of diplomatic victory, he spoke of compromise, of all parties involved being less than fully satisfied, and therefore somewhat dissatisfied.

In setting such a tone for his remarks to the nation, Henry Kissinger may have been setting the stage for his departure from the Nixon team. Asked about this after the formal questioning was ended, Kissinger only smiled. He had been through a maddening ordeal, but survived it, mastered it, maintained his humor and sanity through it, and is now both proud of what he has done and thankful it is finished.

Peace in Vietnam may be “Kissinger’s peace” in more than one sense. With the end of fighting and the end of negotiating, peace may return to Henry Kissinger’s own life.