CHICAGO TRIBUNE 3 APRIL 1972 PAGE 10

Vote Near on Troop Limitation

BY FRANK STARR

(Chicago Tribune Press Service)

WASHINGTON, April 2—A bill that would sharply delineate the President's power to deploy American troops in hostile situations is under Senate consideration and may be voted upon this week.

In debate on the bill last week, Senate Democratic leader Mike Mansfield (Mont.) said he believed opponents of the bill were in the minority and urged it be brought to an early vote without referring it for consideration by the Judiciary Committee.

Introduced first in 1970 by Sen. Jacob Javits [R., N. Y.], the bill has bipartisan support of senators who object to the Presidential use of authority which allowed American forces to be deployed in Korea in 1950, in the Dominican Republic in 1965, in Cambodia in 1970, and in the entire Vietnamese War without the approval of Congress.

### Troop Use Limited

As now drafted, the bill would allow the President to commit troops to hostile situa-

tions only in the event or threat of attack on the United States or on U. S. forces abroad, or to "protect while evacuating" American citizens whose lives are in danger abroad.

The bill provides that even in these situations, the President must promptly report to Congress why the troops were committed and terminate hostilities within 30 days unless Congress votes to continue.

If a declaration of war or other authority is voted by Congress, the President must, even so, continue to report at least every six months on the scope and expected duration of the hostilities.

Any other use, including logistical support of allies who are engaged in hostilities, would require the specific authority voted by Congress in advance.

### Provisions Defended

Supporters of the bill insist that it is not intended to limit the power of the President as commander-in-chief, nor to change the balance the Constitution provides between execu-

tive and legislative branches.

Rather, they argue, it is a reassertion of the authority expressly given Congress to declare war and make rules governing use of the armed forces —in the words of Sen. Robert Taft [R., Ohio], "bringing into play the people of the United States acting thru Congress."

While President Nixon has had little to say publicly about the bill, the administration, thru Secretary of State William Rogers, has strongly opposed it as "unconstitutional and unwise."

Rogers, in a letter to Sen. Gordon Allott [R., Colo.] made public last week, said the Constitution provides the President with authority to defend U. S. territory without a time limitation and that tampering with the balance between executive and legislative branches ought to be done by constitutional amendment, not by statute.

### Points to Problems

Rogers argued further that the bill would deprive the President of the use of the armed forces for foreign policy objectives.

Passage. Rogers argued,

might cause North Atlantic Treaty allies to question U. S. will and ability to react in a crisis and cast doubt on the U. S. role in maintaining a Middle East peace by acting as a balance to the Soviet presence there.

Sen. Javits, who pressed the bill during the period of congressional frustration that accompanied use of U. S. forces in Cambodia and, last year, in Laos, said in debate last Thursday that "people are getting very cynical about us as politicians and give us too little credit for responsibility."

In hearings on the bill held a year ago by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 20 witnesses were called who favored the bill or the general concept, including Prof. Henry Steele Commager of Amherst College; Alexander Bickel, a Yale University law professor; Arthur Goldberg, former U. S. ambassador to the United Nations, McGeorge Bundy, a Presidential adviser in the Kennedy administration; George Reedy, press secretary to President Johnson, and a number of senators.

WASHINGTON POST

31 MARCH 1972

# Stennis Tells Hill
War Powers Bill
Won't Hurt Safety

By Spencer Rich

Washington Post Staff Writer

Armed Services Committee Chairman John Stennis (D-Miss.) assured the Senate yesterday that the President would retain full power to protect the nation in military emergencies under the terms of the war powers bill now being debated on the Senate floor.

"I speak as one who is not wanting to restrict the President of the United States," declared Stennis in his deep booming voice. "I speak as one who has a voting record over the years as leaning toward the executive powers ... I don't want anyone in the President's office to sit idly by and fail to act in an emergency, and I say this resolution fully takes care of the situation."

The bill, of which Stennis is a cosponsor, permits the President to wage undeclared war for up to 30 days in emergency situations, but requires him to come to Congress if he wishes to extend hostilities beyond that period. Sponsors say it would restore the eroded constitutional power of Congress to determine when the nation shall go to war. Critics argue that it could hamstring the President, and the Nixon administration opposes it.

Stennis, the single most prestigious figure in Congress on military matters, said the measure had been carefully tailored to give the President flexibility to act in all genuine emergency threats to the United States, without giving him the complete freedom to carry on hostilities indefinitely without congressional assent which passive Congresses have allowed presidents over the past two generations.

"There is some flexibility in the language of the bill itself." said the Mississippi senator. "The authority of the President to use the armed forces without prior congressional approval is recognized in the

event of armed attacks upon Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-the United States or its forces Ariz.), meanwhile, issued a and in the event such use is press release enumerating required to evacuate American citizens in foreign countries on emergency action ties. It is important to note by the President. Goldwater's that the President is also authorized earlier by Sen. Jacob K. armed attacks, but also to Javits (R-N.Y.), the chief GOP 'forestall the imminent threat' sponsor, in a floor discussion of attack upon the United States with other senators.

States or its armed forces."

Goldwater said the bill

Stennis said he saw nothing doesn't give the President in the bill that would cripple enough discretion to determine what is an emergency carry out its commitments to justify action without congressional assent.

was strongly backed by Sen. William R. Spong (D-Va.) and other sponsor. Spong said he expected that as debate proceeds, one "red herring" after another would be brought forth, like the NATO charge or the contention that the bill dilutes presidential powers, rather than merely reasserting Congress's power to set our conditions for exercise of the Majority Leader Mike Mansfield said, "I do not want to see another Dominican intervention ... I do not want to see another Vietnam" unless Congress gives its full, express approval.

"In a quarter of a century, Congress has not been consulted in the use-of-force decisions," said Spong.

Sen. Robert Taft Jr. (R-Ohio), another sponsor, declared, "War is not only too important to be left to the generals, the American people abhor war to such an extent that it is too important to be left to the President alone."

Sen. Gale W. McGee (D-Wyo.) suggested it might be better to appoint a high-level presidential commission to study the whole question of war decision-making in the Constitution and hinted he may propose such a floor amendment.

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 26 MARCH 1972 (30)

A bill to end one-man war declarations

THE FOUNDING FATHERS, who had ex-
perienced first-hand the war-making power
of a king, were determined that no one man
should have the authority to commit their
young republic to battle without the consent
of the people's representatives. Yet, they
recognized that crises might arise that would
require swifter action than Congress could
provide.

Their solution to the problem was simple: The President would be commander-in-chief of the United States armed forces, and as such would possess the authority to repel sudden attacks without the prior consent of Congress. But only Congress would have the power to declare war.

Between 1799 and 1972 Congress has de-
clared war only five times—the War of 1812,
the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War,
World War I and World War II. But during
the same period, American troops have seen
military action overseas on more than 150 oc-
casions. Although Congress has approved some
of these actions through measures other than
declarations of war, others have been initiated
by Presidents without specific authorization.
and while there have sometimes been con-
gressional complaints about the Presidents'
actions, the man in the White House has
always had his way.

Since World War II, the number, scale and
global implications of presidential military
actions have all increased. During 16 of the
past 23 years U.S. forces have been engaged
in undeclared wars; and five times within the
past 10 years Presidents have mounted mili-
tary interventions in foreign lands without
prior consultation with Congress—the Bay
of Pigs invasion, the invasion of the Domini-
can Republic, the attacks on North Vietnam,
Cambodia and Laos.

President Johnson's 1965 policy committing
U.S. troops to full-scale war in Vietnam
"amounted to an all but explicit transfer of
the power to declare war from Congress ...
to the President," said a Yale law professor
to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
recently—a view certainly shared by Mr.
Johnson, who on the one hand claimed the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution as congressional
approval of his actions, and on the other hand
declared that he "did not think the resolution

was necessary to do what we did and what
we're doing."

While Presidents have been adapting and
expanding their role as commander-in-chief,
Congress has done little to adjust its declara-
tion-of-war powers to the realities of the pres-
ent. In an age of nuclear stalemate and brush-
fire wars, a declaration of war—with the na-
tional mobilization and invocation of defense
treaties that such an act implies—just hasn't
been practical.

So as the nation approaches its 200th birth-
day it's faced with the situation the Founding
Fathers tried to avoid.

Now a number of Senators representing a
broad spectrum of political philosophies have
united in a belated effort to correct what
Senator Jacob Javits has called this "most
dangerous imbalance in our constitutional sys-
tem of checks and balances."

The war powers bill reported by the For-
eign Relations Committee and scheduled for
Senate debate soon, would define the circum-
stances under which the President could com-
mit American forces to war or lesser hostili-
ties "in the absence of a declaration of war
by the Congress" and outline procedures by
which Congress could overrule the President's
action.

The bill, whose chief cosponsors are Repub-
lican liberal Javits and pro-military Demo-
cratic conservative John Stennis, would allow
the President to deploy troops to:

✔ Repel or prevent an armed attack on the United States.

✔ Repel or prevent an armed attack on U.S.
forces stationed outside the United States.

✔ Protect and evacuate U.S. citizens and
nationals in foreign countries if their lives
were threatened.

✔ Or as specifically authorized by Congress
in law.

The bill would also limit to 30 days the
length of a commitment of forces initiated
by the President under those emergency con-
ditions, unless Congress by specific legislation
authorized their continued use. And if it dis-
approved of the President's action, Congress
could terminate the use of U.S. forces by
enacting legislation before the 30-day period
expired.

The Foreign Relations Committee chair-

man, Senator William Fulbright, and Sena-
John Sherman Cooper, both of whom sup-
port the intent of the bill, have expressed
well-founded reservations about some of
provisions and have offered amendments.

Senator Fulbright believes that the bill
specific list of emergencies in which the
President may act leave the commander-in-
chief too many loopholes for, unauthorized
action. Those provisions, he says, "could be
construed as sanctioning a pre-emptive, or
first strike, attack solely on the President's
own judgment," and "could also be used to
justify actions such as the Cambodia interven-
tion of 1970 and the Laos intervention of
1971."

He has proposed, instead, a broader provi-
sion allowing the President to use troops to
respond to "any act or situation that endan-
gers the United States, its territories or pos-
sessions, or its citizens or nationals . . .
(which) in his judgment constitutes a national
emergency of such nature as does not permit
advance congressional authorization, . . ." The
Fulbright amendment also would prohibit use
of nuclear weapons "without the prior expli-
authorization of the Congress."

The proposed amendment, while leavi-
the President free to act quickly in emergen-
cy situations, also gives him the responsibility
of justifying any warlike action he takes with-
out congressional consent.

The second amendment—sponsored by
Senators Fulbright and Cooper—is certainly
desirable, but may jeopardize passage of the
bill if it's adopted. It would remove an exemp-
tion the bill provides for ongoing hostilities—
particularly the Indochina war. "To exempt
any war from the bill's provisions is, in effect,
to exempt it from the Constitution," Senator
Fulbright says.

That may be true. But if it becomes clear
that the amendment would turn the debate
into another dove-hawk confrontation—in
which case the bill would almost certainly be
killed by the House—it should be dropped.

Another belated attempt to establish con-
gressional authority over our dwindling role
in Vietnam shouldn't be allowed to endanger
the broad-based effort to remove the power
to declare war from the President—a man
who, in the words of Founding Father George
Mason, "was not safely to be trusted with it."

WASHINGTON POST 24 March 1972 P06

LYJ

# 41 on Hill Launch New Drive for U.S. Vietnam Pullout

Accusing President Nixon of plans to continue massive Indochina bombing operations indefinitely, seven Democratic senators and 34 House members yesterday launched a campaign to cut off all funds for all U.S. bombing, shelling and land operations in Indochina within 30 days.

Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska), the chief Senate sponsor, said the President, while withdrawing ground forces from Indochina, was stepping up the bombings and offshore shellings and creating an "au-

tomated war... that may literally hover over Southeast Asia for years to come."

According to Gravel, Sen. Walter Mondale (D-Minn.) Rep. Robert Drinan (D-Mass.) and other sponsors of the new fund-cutoff legislation, the bombing is intended to preserve American-backed governments in power in Indochina without the use of U.S. ground forces.

Gravel and Mondale, as well as Fred Branfman, director of a group called "Project Air War" who appeared with Drinan at a news conference, displayed what they said were

anti-personnel weapons dropped by U.S. planes to cripple and maim North Vietnamese civilians.

The devices included a plastic shrapnel bomb whose fragments don't show up in the human body under X-ray: a small pin-like weapon with raspy teeth, called a flechette, which rips the flesh; and a fragmentation bomb.

Gravel read from a letter which he identified as a Dec. 10, 1971, report from the Defense Department, in which he said the government denied using plastic shrapnel weapons.

"Yet they are manufactured by a U.S. manufacturing company within 25 miles of this room and used in Indochina," he asserted.

The legislation outlined yesterday would require total withdrawal of all U.S. forces and a cessation of all U.S. air and shelling operations throughout Indochina within 30 days after enactment, in exchange for North Vietnamese agreement to release of U.S. prisoners. If there is no such agreement, the date of withdrawal would be extended for 30 days. But after that, unless cancelled by Congress, the withdrawal would proceed with or without a POW agreement.

All activities outside South Vietnam would stop immediately; the 30-day limit would be to allow withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Vietnam.

WASHINGTON POST 26 MARCH 1972 (27)

# Slamming the Paris Door

Mr. Nixon's decision to suspend American participation in the Paris talks with Hanoi and the Vietcong does nothing so much as call into question his interest in a negotiated Vietnam settlement. We would have thought it essential to his own purposes to stay at the table, no matter how abusive or unresponsive the other side might be, in order to keep pressing his eight-point settlement proposal of Jan. 25. The resultant image of patient earnest questioning could have served his diplomacy and his politics as well.

Instead, the President had Ambassador Porter deliver a savage and bullying attack on the Communists; part of it are excerpted "For the Record" on this page today. Although the Communists spoke first, Mr. Porter's prepared statement read: "Our side is very disappointed by your presentations of today." The clear intent to break things off is evident. The statement was studded with gratuitous remarks explicitly and insultingly questioning the other side's good faith. His demand that Hanoi apply the Geneva Convention to American prisoners could not have been put in a form more certainly calculated to draw a rejection. It is almost as though the President feared that North Vietnam might be inclined to grant him a point on the POWs and thereby to make it more difficult for him to continue the air war and to continue his support of Saigon.

Ambassador Porter's words on suspending negotiations were utterly meretricious. There will be

no more Thursday talks, he said, until "some sign from you that you are disposed to engage in meaningful exchanges." He went on: "If you do indicate a desire for "serious discussion"... we may need to explore your intentions rather fully prior to agreeing to meet." We do not say—nor can anyone know: that is the point of talking—that Hanoi and the Vietcong are interested in negotiating now. But we do not see how any self-respecting party could continue talks on the arrogant conditions laid down by Ambassador Porter. To speak as he did on the eve of the return to Paris of the chief Vietcong negotiator, Mrs. Binh, is to assure that the United States will not soon hear any hints of change she may have borne.

Will this gesture by Mr. Nixon "break the filler," in his own phrase Friday, or reduce the Communists' propaganda opportunities, or leave open whatever secret negotiating channels may still exist? Will the American electorate appreciate the President's show of toughness? Will the Russians in May be the better induced to urge compromise on their Vietnamese friends? How will the American prisoners (and their kin) react to learning that Mr. Nixon has blocked indefinitely the one bridge—negotiations—by which they might cross back home? The answers are problematical. But we suspect that if the President had deliberately set out to impair the chances of his own Jan. 25 proposals, this is what he would have done. And we cannot understand why.

PAGE

3 MARCH 1972

WASHINGTON STAR

War is Top Issue to New Voters

By MICHAEL SATCHELL
Star Staff Writer

Vietnam remains the strongest among national concerns for young, new voters in the Washington area.

The Washington Star Survey of area opinion found the weight of sentiment is for a continued de-escalation of American involvement, even among the young voters who said they approved of President Nixon's handling of the war.

The approval is tempered also by negative reaction to increased bombing in Indonesia, and it appears that any major reversal of policy could badly erode what support Nixon has among these young people for his re-election.

The interviewed group is a local segment of the 24 million potential new voters, 18 to 24 - year-olds who are eligible to vote for the first time this year and are thus an untested element in national politics.

They were asked to reflect on the President's handling of national problems, particularly the war, and on whom they were thinking of supporting in November.

Although only about one in twenty of the young men interviewed expected to be drafted in the near future, and most agreed that Nixon is extricating the United States from what they consider to be a bad situation, the conduct of the war seems to have more bearing than any other issue on how these people will vote.

REACTION TENDED to divide along political lines. Those who said they will vote against Nixon said they don't like his handling of the war, or had mixed feelings, while those with Republican voting preferences, almost to a man, praised his policies in Indochina.

Support for Nixon's policies on the war among the students surveyed generally is linked to a continued Vietnam withdrawal, no major upsurge in bombing and maintaining — at most — a small residual American presence such as economic aid, diplomatic relations and perhaps a military training mission.

Asked whether they wanted to see the United States "step up the fighting, pull out or continue the way we are," about three in ten said things should remain as they are and nearly everyone else wanted to pull out faster. Almost no one said the war should be stepped up.

A Maryland University junior in chemistry, son of an Eastern Shore farmer who voted for George C. Wallace in 1968, was in a lonely minority

When he commented that since Nixon's latest peace plan, "they should take it or we'll blast them off the map."

A related question was whether the United States "should pull out or stay on some basis." Public opinion analyst Samuel Lubell has found, in interviews around the country, that about 45 percent of Americans are willing to see a continued long-term but low-level American presence in Asia. Among the students interviewed in The Star survey, only about 33 percent felt that way. Most were Nixon supporters.

FOR THE MOMENT, these findings invite the conclusion that any decision to reverse the withdrawal policy or to lean heavily on a massive bombing strategy could erode what support Nixon now has among these young people.

That feeling is demonstrated by a group of new voters who, contrary to their parents' politics, want to see Nixon re-elected. A 19-year-old son of an Air Force accountant—his father voted for Humphrey in 1968—said of Nixon: "At first,

I thought he wasn't going to do much. Then he began bringing the troops back from Vietnam. He is trying to achieve something."

On the war issue, these GOP supporters from Democratic-voting families are like Nixon supporters from Republican families. But even among the later group, some waver.

"If he hasn't ended the war by November," said a pharmacist's son from Lanham, "then I wouldn't vote for him. But if the war's over like he promised in '68, then I'll go for him."

For some students who had been Nixon backers, the pullout is coming too slow and too late. A 20-year-old sociology major at Northern Virginia Community College said he listened to the President in 1968 and liked what he heard.

"He said he could get the guys home from Vietnam by Christmas," the youth said. "He said that for three years, and now he's doing it, but he should have done it when he said he would."

AS THE WAR issue seems to unify the pro-Nixon students, it divides the Democrats interviewed.

Asked to name the country's most serious problem, they mentioned the economy more often than they did the war.

to see a continued American presence—compared with about 65 percent of the Nixon supporters.

Disaffection over the continuation of a war that began in earnest when many were barely out of grade school still rages deep among some students. While only a minority expressed views of the war showing an uncompromising, bitter attitude, they included sons and daughters of both Republican and Democratic-voting families.

The 19-year-old son of an Arlington lawyer said Nixon "is using the Vietnam war as a stepping stone—he's killed 20,000 men in order to get re-elected." He said one of his friends tried to commit suicide after suffering a broken back and arm in the war while "another got shot up, and he's an alcoholic ... two or three more are on heroin."

A George Mason College student, the daughter of a small private college president said she knew six young men who were killed in Vietnam.

An Italian immigrant's son said he shed his father's Republican outlook for a radical

philosophy after going to the Capitol to watch the vote on the McGovern-Hatfield amendment that would have cut off funds for the war.

"When it was voted down ... that's when I started losing faith in the government," the youth said. "Nixon think's he's the President of peace, but he's not. When we vote, there ought to be a third lever—one for abstaining. If enough people vote to abstain, maybe the politicians would get the message."

AT THE SAME TIME a number of students following their parents' Democratic voting habits gave the President credit for achievements. An Air Force colonel's daughter, who lives in Potomac and attends Montgomery County College, said: "He's done a good job, in being concerned and trying to end the war. I just wish he's done it faster. It's gone on too long."

"Everybody has screwed up on the war." A Marine's son from Rockville said. "It shouldn't be the only deciding factor in voting."

The President's announcement of secret peace talks with the North Vietnamese had little impact on these interviewed in the survey.

It has been supposed by some political writers that the

CYD

The Vietnam War, out of the Democratic hothels, particularly Sen. George McGovern, who had accused Nixon of failing to respond to the North Vietnamese invasions. Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, too, has been the target of administration attacks for his skeptical views on the peace efforts.

No such feeling about the candidates emerged in The Star's interviews, which too place after the President's announcement.

Rather, students question about the peace proposal reacted generally along partisan lines and according to how they felt about Nixon's handling of the war in the first place. None of them said he had changed his mind about Nixon's re-election as a result of the peace plan.

"I'm really amazed that I made the announcement, such a politically opportune time," said an unshaken Mkie supporter from a Democratic-voting home in Silv Spring. "I'm willing to co-cede that he tried, but he just hasn't tried hard enough."

A 19-YEAR-OLD Maryland University sophomore, a strong Republican from a GOP family, declared his support for Nixon's handling of the war but conceded that the secret talks announcement ups him.

"It was an obvious political move," the youth noted. "I tried, but he's boxed in a corner."

Said a pre-medical student "He's trying to get out gradually, and he's doing all right. But he's trying to please co-servatives and peaceniks he's damned anyway he can it."

Reactions to proposals for draft evaders sharply across party lines. Those who said they will vote against Nixon in November vided about the same way his supporters — about his favoring amnesty, a few proposed, the rest uncertain with mixed feelings. Veterans also were split.

"I'm for amnesty," a former machine-gunner in Vietnam and Purple Heart holder said. "I have to admit that feel somewhatlite, but I had to put in my time when the others left the country but I'm for amnesty."

Washington
Star Survey

WASHINGTON POST 13 MARCH 1972

The Harris Survey

# 51% Feel Viet War 'Still Pretty Big'

By Louise Harris

Despite his plan for negotiating an end to the war, President Nixon is still not out of the woods on the issue of American involvement in the Vietnam war.

When asked directly to assess the future U.S. role in the war, no more than 23 per cent of the public feels that it is "close to an end." A much larger 51 per cent agrees with the statement, though it is not what it was, it is still pretty big." And an additional 21 per cent sees America's presence in Vietnam a very big involvement."

In the view of the public, Mr. Nixon has moved some in the right direction on Vietnam, but not nearly as far as most would like to see him go.

What is more, public expectations are not high that this country will soon be disentangled from the war. When asked whether "all U.S. involvement in Vietnam will be ended by election time," the public expresses the view that we will "still be involved" by a substantial 70 to 15 per cent.

Although there has been a rather steady and even heavy rate of removal of American troops from Vietnam, public pressures to speed up the withdrawal of U.S. fighting forces still remain high. The Harris Survey has periodically asked a cross section of the public this question, most recently in mid-February among a cross section of 1,557 households:

"Do you feel the pace of withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam is too fast, too slow, or about right?"

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Too Slow</th><th>Too Fast</th><th>About Right</th><th>Sure</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>February, 1972</td><td>45</td><td>4</td><td>44</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>November, 1971</td><td>48</td><td>3</td><td>40</td><td>9</td></tr><tr><td>October</td><td>53</td><td>3</td><td>38</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>July</td><td>42</td><td>4</td><td>48</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>April</td><td>45</td><td>5</td><td>45</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>March</td><td>34</td><td>3</td><td>53</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td>February</td><td>46</td><td>4</td><td>42</td><td>10</td></tr><tr><td>July, 1970</td><td>32</td><td>8</td><td>49</td><td>11</td></tr><tr><td>May</td><td>27</td><td>13</td><td>46</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td>December, 1989</td><td>26</td><td>5</td><td>56</td><td>13</td></tr></tbody></table>

Ever since the President announced his troop withdrawal policy and an unwinding of American involvement in Vietnam in November, 1969, it is apparent that the impatience of the public to liquidate the American presence in Indochina has outstripped the pace of bringing troops home.

Each time the President

has announced a step-up in the withdrawal rate, the number expressing the view that the removal if American forces was "too slow" would diminish some. But then, a month or two later, sentiment for accelerating the withdrawal rate would once again rise.

Today, nearly half the public still expresses the view that the withdrawal rate is "too slow."

Perhaps an even more sensitive area is that of continuing substantial U.S. air support for South Vietnamese military operations. The cross section of the public was asked:

"Would you favor or oppose U.S. policy in Vietnam which brought home all U.S. combat troops but left American bombers and planes piloted by the U.S. Air Force and Navy?"

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Total Public</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Favor</td><td>23</td></tr><tr><td>Oppose</td><td>57</td></tr><tr><td>Not Sure</td><td>13</td></tr></tbody></table>

By better than two to one, Americans say they are opposed to leaving behind U.S. bombers and fighters to air support for the South Vietnamese. Furthermore, they would not regard such a

course as a fulfillment of Richard Nixon's campaign pledges in 1968.

The cross section was asked:

"Do you think President Nixon will have kept his 1968 promise to end U.S. involvement in Vietnam or not if the only real involvement of the U.S. is providing bombing support for South Vietnamese troops?"

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Total Public</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Will have kept promise</td><td>28</td></tr><tr><td>Will not</td><td>44</td></tr><tr><td>Not Sure</td><td>28</td></tr></tbody></table>

There is one highly emotional factor, however, which would turn around public opposition to continued U.S. air support of South Vietnamese forces—the question of the release of American prisoners of war.

The cross section was asked:

"Would you favor or oppose U.S. policy in Vietnam which refused to halt bombings of North Vietnam until North Vietnam released our prisoners of war?"

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Total Public</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Favor</td><td>54</td></tr><tr><td>Oppose</td><td>25</td></tr><tr><td>Not Sure</td><td>21</td></tr></tbody></table>

The single issue, then, on which continued bombings might be justified in the view of the American people would be to force the release of American POWs. This desire to continue the bombings until the prisoners are released is currently holding back a strong tide of public opinion for ending all U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

© 1972, Chicago Tribune-

NEW YORK TIMES

9 APRIL 1972 (10)

A Crucial
Test for
The Nixon
Policy

WASHINGTON -- In the basement of the White House there is an area full of reassuringly modern communications equipment that its known to its inhabitants as the Situation Room. In the middle of the complex there is a small conference room insulated from the surrounding commotion by paneled walls. It was to this room that Henry A. Kissinger summoned President Nixon's senior advisers last week, and their mood was as sober and serious as the news clattering over the teleprinters outside.

The North Vietnamese had moved across the demilitarized zone (DMZ) to launch massive, coordinated attacks on South Vietnamese strongholds, thereby putting the Vietnam war precisely where Mr. Nixon did not want it—back on page one—and raising an ominous challenge to the President's election-year hopes.

By the end of the week the South Vietnamese seemed to have stiffened their resistance. Nonetheless, there was little question that the enemy attacks had severely shaken the Administration, confronted Mr. Nixon's military advisers with hard choices and caused his political strategists to question his three-year effort to engineer an American withdrawal from Vietnam by Election Day without simultaneously sacrificing Vietnam to the enemy.

Most analysts here saw the offensive as an all-out effort to discredit the Vietnamization program, shatter South Vietnamese morale, weaken Mr. Nixon's hold on public opinion at home and force him to offer more generous terms if and when the suspended peace negotiations resume in Paris.

Asked on Monday what the President would do to help South Vietnam in its moment of trial, White House spokesmen said Mr. Nixon was keeping his "options" open. But he did not seem to have many options left.

To withdraw completely from the conflict at this critical moment would be to concede the failure of Vietnamization. It would seem to many to be an abandonment not only of Mr. Nixon's pledge to find an "honorable" solution in Vietnam but his own oft-stated concerns about the "credibility" of America's pledges overseas.

The President's withdrawal program has reduced American forces in South Vietnam to 95,000 men—including only 6,000 or so ground combat troops—and indications have been that the number would drop to 35,000 by Election Day. Reintroduction of ground troops at this point would have enormous political impact. It would amount

to a public vote of no confidence in Mr. Laird, speaking for the Administration while the President rested and tion to a renewal of sharp domestic conflict with Mr. Kissinger in Key dmission over Vietnam.

The President spent most of Monday on the phone—with Admiral and troops. Admiral Moorer said the Thomas H. Moorer, chairman of the planes were bombing targets up to 40. Joint Chiefs of Staff, with Melvin to 50 miles north of the DMZ. Other Laird, his Secretary of Defense, and sources said the "upper limit" would probably be the 20th Parallel, about 200 miles above the DMZ and about 70 miles south of Hanoi.

tives. In the end he won support for his own tentative decision that if the fighting worsened the United States should seek to stem the enemy offensive by the only means available—air power.

The President assigned the task of devising detailed options to the Washington Special Action Group, a team of planners headed by Mr. Kissinger and including representatives of the State and Defense Departments, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff that meets at moments of emergency. The group met daily in the Situation Room until Mr. Nixon left for Florida late Thursday.

And to his press secretary, Ronald L. Ziegler, Mr. Nixon entrusted the propaganda war, instructing him to devise some way of portraying concern and preparing the public for retaliatory action without conveying or creating a sense of panic and failure in the White House itself.

The solution, devised in morning huddles among Mr. Ziegler and his counterparts at Defense and State, Dan Henkin and Robert McCloskey, was to impose on State and Defense the burden of enunciating Government policy and articulating official fears and hopes without directly committing the authority of the President to any particular argument or line of reasoning.

It was Mr. McCloskey, for example, who first pointedly called attention to the enemy's reliance on Soviet-supplied equipment — not the White House, whose occupant still wishes to go to Moscow and has no interest in engaging in personal name-calling with the Soviets. And when the first massive retaliatory raids began Thursday, Mr. Nixon — who of course had ordered them to begin—was well away from the scene making a speech and shaking hands in Philadelphia.

As devised by the Special Action Group in conjunction with the United States commanders in Vietnam, the massive air strikes Thursday and Friday went well beyond the concept of "protective reaction" used by the Administration to justify earlier retaliatory raids.

In domestic political terms, the present round of fighting may yet prove to be acceptable. Much depends on how long it lasts. If the South Vietnamese show themselves capable of mastering what is clearly their sternest test in a year, it would strengthen the credibility of Mr. Nixon's withdrawal strategy.

But if the South Vietnamese fail to stem the tide, even with American air power to help them, or if the attack proves to be only one of a series of intermittent enemy offensives, each requiring new doses of American help, it may occur to the American public that the war, after all, is not going to disappear.

If this idea were to take root, Mr. Nixon's speeches about a "generation of peace" might begin to sound hollow. And his inability to shed an old commitment could make him yet another political casualty of the Vietnam war.

—ROBERT B. SEMPLE

C73

89

The Measure of Success in Vietnam

As the North Vietnamese offensive approaches its third week, theebb and flow of battle are such as to make premature any disinterested and definitive judgment on which side will, in a conventional military sense, "win." That Hanoi would be conspicuous early gains was to be expected.

The test is whether these gains can be sustained. North Vietnam is said to have committed upward of 50,000 soldiers, using such heavy Soviet equipment as they could procure—and could move south; other divisions are apparently poised near the various battlefields. But Saigon is not defenseless. It has a long-trained million-man army fitted out with immense supplies of heavy American equipment, plus a million or two civilians under arms, and it is supported by an American air armada of unprecedented power and size. North Vietnam, of course, has no airplanes to speak of.

If the outcome of the battle remains uncertain, so is Hanoi's purpose in starting it. The view publicized by the administration is that North Vietnam is making "one last throw of the dice": an all-out effort to demoralize South Vietnam, further undermine American public toleration of the war, and force an election-minded President, with a Moscow summit ahead, to sue for peace in Paris. By this reckoning, there has been no Tet-like "general uprising" in the South, not as some suspect, because Hanoi judges the moment not yet ripe but because the Vietcong never recovered from the losses dealt it in Tet in 1968, and thereafter.

Prophecies are unnecessary: events will show whether the administration view is more hardheaded analysis or merely the latest exercise in official wish-fulfillment. We note though, that the last-throw-of-the-dice theory, comforting as it is to its American proponents, is quite inconsistent with the record of the Communists in Vietnam. Perhaps they have bet unwisely on their chances in this particular battle. But they have fought for decades to expel a series of foreigners from their homeland, in the process surviving setbacks and suffering losses that stagger the Occidental imagination. To believe that they now will quit or otherwise be rendered incompetent to continue their struggle flouts everything we thought Americans had learned in Vietnam.

If Hanoi "wins"—say, if it holds a northern province or two into the spring, or panics other provinces, or revives strong opposition to President Thieu in Saigon—then it may try to secure better settlement terms from Mr. Nixon than he has so far offered. But—no less possible—if Hanoi does not so "win," then it will hardly head for Paris; if the record is any guide, the North Vietnamese will simply start preparing for the next round, figuring that Washington will have less heart and license to use its airpower by the time that round begins. In the interval, Saigon would presumably be tending to the improvement of its own defenses or it would be moving in a political direction that might abviate another military showdown with Hanoi. Who can say?

Uncertainty is not only unavoidable, however. It offers its own rewards to a President willing to

rop them. More likely than not, the military results of the current battle will be mixed and debatable: mixed and debatable enough to sustain a range of judgments, including a presidential judgment that Saigon has finally demonstrated its worth and will to fight its next big battle on its own. Mr. Nixon has advertised as never before—and to questionable military effect—Saigon's resistance on American airpower. But that is only one element in an over-all picture that undeniably includes a formidable South Vietnamese ground effort as well.

"Vietnamization" remains a term of art, not a description of reality, as long as the American air component is as large and, in crunches like the current one, as crucial to Saigon as it is. Nonetheless, whatever President Thieu's failings—and they are not in short supply—he has felt enough confidence to put arms in the hands of a great many of the peasants of South Vietnam: these people are the "sea" in which the guerrilla "fish" should supposedly be swimming at their ease, according to Maoist theology. The extent to which the Thieu government might conceivably improve its military performance—or for that matter, alter its political posture in respect to the Communists—if it did not have the "crutch" of American air, is a question too little pondered aloud.

Domestic critics of Mr. Nixon on the war issue should be even more eager than his supporters to see him follow up his last-roll-of-the-dice theory with a firm judgment, once this roll is over. that Saigon has "a reasonable chance" to carry on its war by itself. Such a judgment alone can provide the President a basis for halting American combat participation and for offering Hanoi a troop-POW exchange. Any other presidential judgment would constitute an open admission to the American electorate in November, and to the Kremlin in May, that the Nixon policy in Vietnam has failed.

WASHINGTON POST 12 APRIL 1972

POSTER GLOBE 7 APRIL 1972 (11)

Incident of truth in Vietnam

The offensive now taking place in Vietnam is first and foremost a challenge to Vietnamization and, as a of the forces of Hanoi against forces of Saigon, it must ultimately prove whether there is a will as well as a capability to preserve division in a country divided and torn by war since 1946.

For the first time since the United States got involved in Vietnam in 1954, the South Vietnamese are basically on their own on the ground, with only six US combat battalions to back them up. And another 26,500 GIs are scheduled to leave this month. Aside from materiel and air power supplied by the United States, the battle is being fought by people who live in the country.

In recognition of this fact Hanoi's eading newspaper, Nhan Dan, has been urging South Vietnamese soldiers to desert the army and rejoin their own people. "Those who have a conscience in Saigon - and there are many - know the crimes of the Americans and the Thieu administration, the rottenness of the regime," says one editorial. "This leads naturally to collective opposition against the war, to mutinies, insurrections and participation in popular uprisings."

President Thieu has also responded along the same lines, warning that, if the North Vietnamese succeed in their offensives, "they would go on to demand a political solution for the whole of South Vietnam which would either consist of a coalition government or territorial concessions to the Communists toward ultimately taking over all our country."

So the scene at last appears set for something Americans have increasingly both feared and favored: self determination for the peoples of a nation halfway around the world.

The outcome is not clear now. And it may not be clear a month from now. Since the offensive began, a week ago, South Vietnamese forces along the Demilitarized Zone in the north have abandoned 12 fire bases and given up half of Quang Tri

Province. But one Pentagon observer points out that, in the face of a surprise attack directly across the DMZ with superior manpower and fire power, "the South Vietnamese would have been damn fools to stay and be surrounded." And there is already some evidence that the South Vietnamese are regrouping for a comeback.

Significantly, President Nixon has left all commentary to the Defense Department and, despite two new and more threatening offensives in the Central Highlands and on the Cambodian border, 75 miles from Saigon, he left on Thursday for Key Biscayne.

The United States cannot simply drop the pick on a nation we have led into war for more than a decade, especially at a time when the Hanoi forces have launched a western-style assault in the north, using tanks and artillery supplied by the Soviet Union. And, as long as the South Vietnamese show a will to fight, we must continue to supply materiel and air support. Already two additional aircraft carriers have moved into the area and the addition of 20 high altitude B-52 bombers will bring the total to 102 or the number present at the peak of the war in 1968.

What we cannot do, as we have learned over 10 years with as many as 550,000 American troops on Vietnamese soil, is win a war that does not have the support of the people. And there may not be much reason for the South Vietnamese to support profiteering businessmen in Saigon or a regime installed by the United States or a system that has destroyed tribal governments and forced villagers, more concerned with growing their food than with politics, into refugee camps.

The time has come for the people of Vietnam to make their own determination, given a fair chance through training and material support. And, if the outcome is a unified nation under a form of Communist government, so be it. A swift determination would save lives in the end and such a nation, if truly viable, could be a friend not a foe.

WASHINGTON POST 11 APRIL 1972

The War Powers Bill

The Senate's war powers bill represents a long and well considered effort to end the 20th century practice of presidential wars by restoring to Congress the basic right of deciding whether the nation should be committed to war. It would let the President take military action—in the absence of a congressional declaration of war — to repel or forestall an attack on the United States or on American forces overseas; to protect endangered American citizens abroad; or "pursuant to specific statutory authorization." To fight longer than 30 days, however, for purposes other than disengagement, the President would have to win congressional sanction in the meantime, as Kenneth Crawford notes in his criticism of the bill elsewhere on this page today.

It is quite so that it took the Vietnam war to bring to wide attention the erosion in congressional powers—perhaps one should better say, the erosion in congressional thoughtfullness and responsibility—which underlies the current bill. It would be quite misleading, however, to view the war powers bill — which does not apply to Vietnam, in any event—as an instrument of liberal catharsis or institutional revenge or partisan challenge. Senator Javits drafted the bill but nine Republicans and 16 Democrats, including the likes of John Stennis, Herrman Talmadge, Everett Jordan and Lloyd Bentsen, are co-sponsors. What unites these men is a common belief that legislation is required to bring Congress its larger and rightful role in war decisions.

The administration has made any number of claims about the alleged unconstitutionality and unwisdom of the war powers bill. Suffice it here to note that it has been unable to win audible support for its claims from any senator recognized for expertise in either the constitutional or foreign-policy field. One should not be surprised that a President would instruct his lieutenants to fight hard for presidential powers. Still, the caliber of argument is embarrassing: the Secretary of State, for instance, professes to believe that the bill would limit the President's authority to defend American territory. The administration is expected to try today to kill the bill. Few think it will succeed.

To become, law, of course, the bill must not only pass the Senate, but the less independent-minded House; if that happens, a presidential veto could be anticipated. So the bill is a long, long way from enactment. That means, in turn, that what is involved now is not a fundamental "reaffirmation" or "rearrangement" of presidential and congressional powers in respect to war-making. The Senate bill is essentially an exercise in educating the Congress and the country and the President in what are the appropriate limits within which foreign policy must henceforth be made and implemented. Indeed, it is essentially no more than an attempt to make somewhat more explicit the guidelines for the very "consultation and cooperation" which the President constantly insists are the preferred substitutes to new legislation. This makes it all the more unfortunate that Mr. Nixon should choose to view the bill—gratuitously, in our judgment—as a political and constitutional challenge.

NEW YORK TIMES 12 April 1972 P16

War Powers Bill Wins
Test in Senate, 60 to 26

By JOHN W. FINNEY
Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, April 11 — Legislation defining the war powers of the president survived a test today when the Senate refused, by a vote of 60 to 26, to send the measure to the Judiciary Committee for further study.

The one-sided vote indicated that the Senate, probably later this week, would approve the measure. The bill, while authorizing the president to make emergency use of the armed forces, would provide that he cannot continue hostilities for more than 30 days without congressional approval.

As the Senate finally settled down to voting on provisions of the bill after a week of debate, it refused to take a direct vote on a proposal by Senator Mike Gravel, Democrat of Alaska, on the United States of America war on North Vietnam. By a vote 78 to 7, the Senate laid aside the declaration, which Senator Gravel had offered as an amendment.

The Senate also rejected, by a vote of 74 to 11, another Gravel amendment that would have specified that the legislation applied to the Vietnam war. The Vietnam war is excluded from the terms of the bill as it was approved by the Foreign Relations Committee.

Also defeated, by a vote of 25 to 2, was an amendment by Senator W. Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, that would have substituted for the bill, by exempting the Vietnam war, for the other, upon the President's authority to continue hostilities in Southeast Asia.

The effect of both the Gravel and Fulbright proposals would have been to undo a basic understanding that led to sponsorship of the legislation by a coalition of liberals and conservatives.

Senator John Stennis, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, for example, agreed to co-sponsor the bill with Senator Jacob K. Javits, Republican of New York, on the understanding that the measure would not apply to the Vietnam war.

The sponsorship of Senator Stennis is crucial in providing conservative support for the legislation.

From today's votes it was apparent that the coalition was holding firm and that it had a clear majority to drive the bill through the Senate over the opposition of the Administration. Even if passed by the Senate, however, the legislation is believed unlikely to be approved this year by the House.

The Administration, which has been opposing the bill as unconstitutional and as an unwise limitation upon the powers of the President, had hoped to block the measure by sending it to the Judiciary Committee. The motion was offered by Senator Roman L. Hruska, Republican of Nebraska, who along with Senator Barry Goldwater, Republican of Arizona, was working closely with State Department officials in lobbying against the measure.

Proponents of the measure said they sought to restore the war powers of the Congress by establishing procedures under which Congress, in an era of undeclared war, would be involved in decisions of war and peace.

CJ

WASHINGTON POST 15 APRIL 1972 (17)

Nixon's Dual Strategy for the War

By Charles W. Yost

The OLD MOMENT of truth has arrived in
Cambodia not for "Vietnamization," be-
cause despite the vast armament we have
provided Thieu, President Nixon obviously
does not intend to risk letting him go it
alone against the North. What is being
tested now, and probably will be for the rest
of 1972, is "Vietnamization plus" — that is,
Vietnamese fighting on the ground and
Americans fighting from the air.

Will Vietnamese and Americans in these complementary belligerent roles be able to repulse General Giap's offensives as effectively as Vietnamese and Americans, both of them fighting on the ground, were able to do in the past? That is the immediate question.

This strategy is no doubt designed to get Americans out of ground combat, where most lives are lost, but nevertheless to enable them still to play a sufficiently decisive role to prevent either victory or significant successes by the North Vietnamese.

This has no doubt been the President's dual objective ever since January, 1969 — to achieve by November 1972 both a withdrawal of United States ground combat forces and a victory for Thieu in the sense that at that date he would still control Saigon and most of the South.

Obviously no one can be sure at this writing whether this strategy will succeed. Two things, however, one can be sure of: It will end the war, and it will not get the Americans out of it.

It will not end the war because, if Hanoi would not stop fighting when it was confronted by half a million American troops plus heavy American bombing of much of the North, it is certainly not going to stop when it is confronted by the bombing alone.

The essential fact that President Kennedy, President Johnson and President Nixon have failed to understand or to admit is that the North Vietnamese will go on fighting indefinitely, at whatever cost, but that the Americans, being unconvinced the issue is a vital one to them, will not.

Therefore the final settlement, by fighting or by negotiation, will inevitably be made between Vietnamese. Bombing may prolong the war but will not settle it.

The second fact that is clear is that continued United States bombing will not "Vietnamize" the war or get the United States out of it. As long as our bombing continues, we shall not know where the South Vietnamese, after seven years of massive American support, are at last able to stand on their own feet.

As long as our bombing continues, more United States lives will be lost, the number of United States prisoners in enemy hands will increase, and the chance of getting any prisoners released will be nil. As long as our bombing continues, the possibility of dealing with the Soviet Union and China, and comprehensive stabilization of South-Asia, will be delayed and perhaps jeopardized.

The old argument that the bombing is "to protect American forces" is completely threadbare, now that we have practically withdrawn from ground combat and our small residual forces are not being directly attacked.

So-called "agreements" about reciprocal restraint announced by the United States in 1968 were never acknowledged by the North Vietnamese and have long since been violated by both sides. We know, moreover, from bitter experience between 1965 and 1968 that bombing in Indo-China is inherently indecisive, that it will not win the war or intimidate Hanoi.

What seems to be taking place on the American side therefore is primarily a buying of time until November. The United States public is simply not going to stand for indefinite United States participation in the war.

At some point, President Thieu and our South Vietnamese friends are going to have to be left to stand on their own feet, and prove that "Vietnamization" really works. That means fighting without any United States participation whatsoever, on the ground or in the air, though it does not necessarily mean cutting of United States mill-

tary and economic aid.

I hope personally that the South Vietnamese can stand on their own feet, fighting if necessary, making their own political settlement if possible. But I see no reason whatsoever to believe that, if they are unable to do so in April 1972, they will be able to do so in November 1972 or in April 1973.

Let us at long last "Vietnamize" 100 percent, stop bombing, arrange the release of our prisoners, and get but completely. This should not be a partisan political issue. It is in the interest of all Americans.

Copyright 1973 Charles W. Yost

CYD

94

NEW YORK TIMES

14 APRIL 1972

Vietnam Recommitment

President Nixon's massive recommitment of American power and prestige in Vietnam is ominously reminiscent of President Johnson's costly and futile intervention that began in 1965, a few months after the Tonkin incidents. Because of the risks of a prolonged and still wider war and the danger that the growing concentration of sea and air forces in Southeast Asia may seriously dilute this country's capacity to deal with emergencies elsewhere, it is essential that Americans take a hard look at the premises upon which this latest escalation is based, as most did not do in 1965.

This Administration's basic justification for its actions is hauntingly familiar—that it is necessarily defending freedom against a clearcut case of Communist aggression across international boundaries, aided and abetted by Moscow. This theme is reflected in President Nixon's admonition to the Soviet Union that "a great responsibility rests upon the great powers, that every great power must follow the principle that it should not encourage directly, or indirectly, any other nation to use force or armed aggression against its neighbors."

The reality is that the United States and the Soviet Union are both meddling in a civil conflict in Vietnam. The crucial question for Americans is whether it is vital for United States interests to preserve the present anti-Communist government in an independent South Vietnam; or at least whether that goal, doggedly pursued by President Nixon like his predecessors, is important enough to warrant the high costs and risks of continuing direct involvement.

The present regime in Saigon is hardly a credible model of democratic freedom. The coalition government that might emerge if the Vietnamese were left to settle their own affairs would not necessarily be dominated by Communists, at least at the outset. Even the Communists in South Vietnam have indicated they are in no hurry to reunite with the North.

In the event the Administration's worst fears were realized, a united Vietnam under Communist rule could pose no serious threat to the United States. Indeed, it could be argued that a united Vietnam would more effectively restrain the extension of Chinese power in Southeast Asia, which was the original objective of United States intervention there.

Prolonging the war does not serve this country's true interests. The massing of United States air and naval forces in Southeast Asia to rain more death and destruction on a small, underdeveloped country represents a grotesque perversion of American power and priorities.

NEW REPUBLIC 15 APRIL 1962 (13)

Vietnam — What Now?

Barry Goldwater was overruled and rejected by the voters in 1964, because they didn't want a wider, worse war and Goldwater's advice (resubmitted last week) that we bomb and bomb and bomb them nervous. As Hubert Humphrey said at the time, America did not want a President with "a nervous finger on the nuclear button." In the ensuing four years the war was enormously widened and yet nowhere nearer being won. And in 1968 voters rejected Hubert Humphrey, in part because he could not or would not disassociate himself from the policies that kept the war going. He lost to the candidate who said, on March 5, 1968, "I pledge to you the new leadership will end the war and win the peace in the Pacific." And here we are, facing the prospect that these two, Humphrey and Nixon, may again compete for the presidency. No wonder a recent opinion survey by a team of psychologists from the University of Connecticut finds that the public asked to rate the competence and altruism of 20 occupations, puts politicians next to last, just above used car salesmen.

The administration's first response to the present military offensive by the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong was to order more bombing, simultaneously putting out the word that the White House was keeping all options open. The impression was allowed to stand that quite a few options are available. They are, but only in theory, not in practice. Unless the President were to reverse his withdrawal schedule, by next month US forces in Vietnam will have gone down from over a half million to about 70,000. The 70,000 could still do, and suffer, considerable damage, but the option of resuming large-scale ground combat in Vietnam has been foreclosed; it is unthinkable politically. The bombing and shelling from the sea and the B-52 raids from Guam and Thailand can be kept up and stepped up, but the enemy's antiaircraft defenses are getting more sophisticated, and if there is one thing that should have been learned in the past seven days, it is that the war will not be ended by air strikes. We can follow the earth policy, level more villages, kill more people; the outcome will still be determined not from the air but on the ground. Goldwater's formula for victory through air power made no sense in 1964; it makes none today.

The President certainly has the option of reconvening the talks in Paris, but that course could only be productive if he were prepared to settle for far less than he has been in the past. So what is there left for him to do? He can take evasive action, designed not to get us out, but to provide protective cover for candidate Nixon at home. He can do this by inferring that his domestic critics have an affinity for Communism, which Lyndon Johnson found somewhat useful on occasion. That is a strategem natural to Mr. Nixon; he is practiced at suspecting that advocates of total withdrawal are dupes of the enemy, unwitting of course and not necessarily unpatriotic. There will always be a clientele for that insinuation, but it's getting smaller. The gullibility of the public has limits, and the limit has been reached: every recent national sampling shows that a majority of Americans have had enough of Vietnam.

The President also has the short-term option, which he is exercising, of keeping his opponents off balance by the claim that we need to bomb the North to protect our withdrawing forces. (Conversely, indiscriminate bombing of the North risks the lives of our POWs here.) The claim is so transparently fraudulent it cannot frequent repetition. For it asks us to believe at Hanoi and the Vietcong want to impede US withdrawal, whereas common sense tells us they would be happy to help carry out any plan for rapid and total

evacuation. Nearly three years have passed since Mr. Nixon first announced his schedule for troop cutbacks, on May 14, 1969. Eighty percent of our forces in Vietnam have since been taken out. (By comparison, 80 percent of American forces were withdrawn from the China-Burma-India theater within six months after the end of World War II.) Just as the President has the authority to step up the bombing, he has the authority to step up the withdrawal rate, thus permitting true Vietnamization of the war.

This has been the longest, least justified conflict in our history, and it has been the costliest. Military spending jumped from $42 billion in fiscal 1960 to an estimated $76.5 billion in fiscal 1973. As of the 25th of last month, 45,659 Americans had been killed in action in Vietnam, 302,787 wounded. We have trained, paid and equipped with the most advanced weapons a Vietnamese army in the South far larger than its Vietnamese foe. We have trained, paid and equipped thousands of mercenaries from Korea and Thailand. We have underwritten at staggering expense the entire southern economy, and underwritten as well the corruption that has accompanied our investment. We have witnessed the demoralization of our fighting men, the deaths of at least two million Vietnamese, and the homelessness of another 10 million. We have had Tiger Cages, heron addiction, and Mylai. Twelve years later, the President's only realistic option is to face the truth that the war was a mistake from the start, make known our determination to cut loose, and negotiate whatever settlement he can now get.

NEW YORK TIMES 17 APRIL 1972 P-1

Behind Nixon's Decision:
More Than Military Issues

By MAX FRANKEL
Special to the New York Times

WASHINGTON, April 16—
President Nixon has kept silent
this weekend on his new bomb-
ing policy in Vietnam to avoid
overt challenge to the Soviet
Union, which he still hopes to
visit next month, and to avoid
further inflammation of pub-
lic opinion at home.

But it is acknowledged here
that more than military con-
siderations lay behind the de-
cision to resume air strikes
against North Vietnam's major
cities. Specifically, it is said
that the President's demonstra-
tion of resolve is aimed both
at Moscow and at the Ameri-
can electorate, as well as at
the Governments in Hanoi and
Saigon.

As far as can be determined
from secondary sources here,
the important elements of Mr.
Nixon's calculations are as
follows:

The President is portrayed
deeply disturbed by the ap-
pearsly indirect but nonthe-
less vital Soviet support for
the extensive North Vietna-
mese attack on South Vietnam.
The timing of the offensive,
though probably not determined
by Moscow, had the effect of
making the United States ap-
pear weak and failing in Indo-
china at the very moment
when Mr. Nixon was heading
for the Soviet Union to con-
clude new agreements on arms
control, trade and credits, and
European security.

Gif, despite the atmosphere
of summitry, the Soviet leaders'
insist on giving maximum sup-
port to their ally in North Viet-
nam, the President is said to
be convinced that he can do
no less for his ally in the
South. The extended bombing
may chill the mood of the
scheduled visit to Moscow, due
to start May 22, but no more
than it was already chilled for
Mr. Nixon by the Soviet sup-
port for the North Vietnamese
challenge. From study of So-
statements Mr. Nixon as-
sumes that the Russians share
his eagerness to avoid the col-
lapse of a promising meeting.
It is thought that he may have
conveyed that eagerness direct-
ly to the Kremlin in recent
days, but there is no confirm-
tion of any secret.

Mr. Nixon is said to have
feared that if there was no re-
solute response to the North
Vietnamese offensive, there,
would be an angry domestic,
political reaction to the sched-
uled agreement with Moscow-
on arms control — a reaction
possibly fed by an already un-
enthusiastic group of military
advisors on the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. He is also said to have
feared an adverse reaction to
his plan to give the Russians
credits to finance trade expan-
sion.

Moscow aside, Mr. Nixon is
said to believe that the North
Vietnamese needed a finn re-
member that the continuing
withdrawal of American forces,
from South Vietnam and disil-
usion with the war in the
United States would not assure
them of immunity from heavy
air attack in the foreseeable
future. The raids at Hanoi and
Haiphong, like the invasions of
Cambodia and Laos in 1970 and
1971, were intended to serve
notice that even diminishing
American resources could exact
a heavy price for military
offensives.

The raids were intended also,
it is said, to give psychological
as well as military support to
the South Vietnamese Govern-
ment, whose troops are de-
scribed here as performing well
above expectation.

Finally, in strictly military
terms, the attacks are said to
have been designed to gain time.
They are expected to have little
or no effect on the current
fighting in South Vietnam but
are said to promise battlefield
benefits between June and
Election Day. The destruction
of fuel supplies and depots
around Hanoi and Haiphong
will be felt by troops farther
south in about two months,
officials here say. Strikes
against truck yards and other
targets should be felt at the
front in the months therefter,
it is said.

Direct Challenge Discouraged

Mr. Nixon is believed to have
been persuaded that the 'pit-
ful, helpless giant' speech with
which he justified the inva-
sion of Cambodia two years ago was
a serious mistake, even though
the invasion itself was not,
although many or the same mo-
tives inspired his new bombing
policy, he was cautioned against
a direct rhetorical challenge to
the Soviet Union and the kind
of belligerent statement that
might rekindle protest in an al-
ready war-weary electorate at
home.

Although he has not in-
volved himself in any of the
Administration comments on
the fighting. He has twice re-
peaked the Russians for en-
couraging and aiding Hanoi,
indirectly. He has given said-
in Canada Friday —that arms
control and other accords have
little value so long as "the ag-
gressive use of existing weap-
ons is encouraged."

He has left the revelation
of his bombing strategy to the
Saigon commanders and has
kept the comment of the State
and Defense Departments to a
minimum. He has held back to
let the public grow accustomed
to the new bombing, to let the
Russians choose the level and
tenor of their response, and to
let his Democratic rivals take
positions without benefit of
guidance or explanation from
the White House.

Massive bombing has always
been the last available weapon
in President Nixon's Vietnam
arsenal as he withdraws Ameri-
cans from combat there. He has
warned all along that he would
use it, and he has exhorted
both Moscow and Peking to the
effect that if they could not
help negotiate an end to the
fighting they at least urge re-
straint on Hanoi,

Indeed, the President sched-
uled his meetings in Peking and
Moscow in this election year,
with the hope that the improved
international atmosphere would
becalm the Indochina front.

**Warnings by Peking Reported.**
The Chinese to the obvious an-
noyance of the North Vietnam-
ese, tried to warn them against
a frontal assault during Mr.
Nixon's year of political vulner-
ability. The Russians' apparent
unwillingness to give similar,
advice has been particularly
nettling to him, it is said.

The early reactions make it
virtually impossible to predict
the consequences of the Presi-
dent's decision. Much will de-
pend on how frequent and how
extensive the air strikes are
in the coming weeks and
whether the attacking planes
can avoid direct damage to So-
viet and other foreign shipping
in the Haiphong harbor.

The first Soviet comment,
issued today, was read here as
relatively restrained, and per-
haps awaiting more detailed re-
ports from Hanoi and a full
meeting of the Soviet leaders.
The Russians have shown them-
selves so eager to include their
treaty with West Germany and
the agreements with Mr. Nixon
that the Administration would
be very much surprised if the
bombings—at least those con-
ducted so far—caused Moscow
to cancel its invitation.

Strong statements of opposi-
tion to the raids from most
Democratic candidates for the
Presidency had been expected,
by the White House, but the
course of the fighting is deemed
to be of much greater impor-
tance to Mr. Nixon's chances
of re-election.

For the moment, it is said,
Mr. Nixon feels himself chal-
lenged and tested again, and
the posture he continues to
value—both in the world and
before the public at home—is
that of the leader who, when
pushed, will almost always
push back.

PREPARED TO EXTEND
NORTH VIETNAM BOMBING

By WILLIAM BEECHER

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, April 16 — Administration officials declared today that the United States was prepared to bomb military targets almost anywhere in North Vietnam.

The statement followed weekend air raids on Haiphong and Hanoi by waves of fighter-bombers and eight-engine B-52 bombers. The attacks were the first against those cities since the end of March, 1968, and marked the first time that B-52's had been used against Haiphong or Hanoi.

In a terse statement today, the United States Command in Saigon said the planes struck fuel dumps, warehouses, truck parks, "and other activities which are supporting the invasion of South Vietnam by the North Vietnamese forces."

[In Saigon, the United States Command announced Monday that Hanoi as well as Haiphong had been bombed, and that two American warplanes had been shot down. Military authorities said the raids "on the outskirts of Hanoi" had heavily damaged North Vietnamese petroleum storage areas.]

## Sensitive Areas Cited

In discussing the raids, United States officials in Washington emphasized that President Nixon must personally authorize future raids in areas that are considered politically sensitive.

In this regard, they said that no consideration was being given "at this time" to hitting targets near North Vietnam's border with China and that the attacks made on Haiphong by B-52's and fighter-bombers did not involve the docks or harbor.

This statement followed a report by the Hanoi radio that a Soviet freighter in the harbor had been damaged and one of the ship's officers injured when bomb fragments and 20-mm,

shells from American planes struck the vessel.

Spokesmen for the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon declined to offer a rationale for the raids into the heartland of North Vietnam.

But senior military and diplomatic sources said that the rapidly expanding air campaign against the North sought, among other things, the following objectives:

* To disrupt the flow of war supplies and reinforcements toward North Vietnamese units pressing offensives throughout South Vietnam.

* To warn Hanoi that if it planned to conduct weeks or even months of heavy fighting in the South, it would face mounting raids in the North.

* To persuade the Soviet Union to use its influence—particularly in regard to future shipments of heavy weapons and ammunition—on North Vietnam to scale down or terminate soon its offensive operations in the south.

A ranking Defense Department official, asked whether repeated strikes were contemplated in the Hanoi-Haiphong area, said:

"We'll play it day by day. It depends on what North Vietnam does. There will be recommendations from our commanders in the field and various considerations here. But decisions will be made by the President."

He said, however, that the bulk of American air strikes would continue to be focused on enemy concentrations in South Vietnam.

In addition, he said, a large portion of the air campaign will continue hitting supply movements in the southern part of North Vietnam and along the Ho Chi Minh complex of trails in Laos. Disruption of Hanoi's resupply effort in those areas, he continued, will have a more immediate impact on the course of battle than raids deep in the North.

Earlier in the war, some military experts argued that the best way to intercept combat material was to mine Haiphong harbor—through which most heavy weapons and petroleum arrive—and to strike supplies concentrated in storage yards, warehouses and fuel dumps in the areas of Hanoi and Haiphong.

## Blockade Ruled Out

The mining or blockading of Haiphong harbor, knowledgeable officials now say, has been ruled out for fear of upsetting President Nixon's visit to Moscow late next month.

Because of the stockpiles of enemy supplies that have already entered South Vietnam, some military men said today, raids in the far north now will not affect the course of the battle for some time.

"There's a heavy dose of diplomacy involved in the Saigon, Hanoi-Haiphong strikes," one Pentagon official said:

White House, State Department and Pentagon officials report that President Nixon was "extremely angered" by the unexpected movement of large numbers of tanks, self-propelled artillery and troops through the demilitarized zone into South Vietnam two weeks ago.

They said that Mr. Nixon felt that such a major effort would not have been attempted without at least tacit advance support from the Soviet Union.

## Raids Originally Barred

Despite the North Vietnamese build-up, the White House originally ruled out strikes in the Hanoi and Haiphong areas, hoping for some sign of restraint from North Vietnam, they said. But supplies continued to move across the demilitarized zone, attacks were enlarged throughout South Vietnam, and the North Vietnamese 325-C Division was reported starting south from the Hanoi area toward the demilitarized zone. It is now reported below Vinh, about 150 miles south of Hanoi.

Concern grew, the officials said, that although the onset of the monsoons would force Hanoi to taper off its attacks north of Saigon and in the Central Highlands next month, the North Vietnamese were planning a second armor-supported push in Quangtri province.

When all signs indicated that Hanoi was determined to continue its offensive for weeks or months — despite public warnings from Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that American bombings of the North would go on as long as the offensive was pursued—the President decided to "send another signal" to North Vietnam, the officials said.

The decision to order the raids on Haiphong and Hanoi

some sometime Friday right or yesterday morning when the President was in Ottawa, well-placed sources said.

While major decisions on the target areas are made by the President, the sources said, the planes carrying out the missions are under direct command of Gen. Creighton W. Abrams, commander of American forces in Vietnam, and Gen. John W. Vogt Jr., who was dispatched from Washington a week ago to take charge

BOSTON GLOBE

18 APRIL 1972 (19)

Bombing
hearings
refused

By Thomas Oliphant
Globe Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee has refused to hold hearings, in public or in secret, on the adequacy of official statistics being given to the public about the scope and intensity of the American bombing of Indochina.

Rep. F. Edward Hebert (D-La.), in a letter to Rep. Michael Harrington (D-Mass.), who has been pressing for an open information policy with regard to the bombing, gave no reasons for his apparent decision to avoid the subject.

However, the generally hawkish Committee will be forced to deal with the subject this morning, when it takes up a resolution submitted by Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.), demanding that a vast amount of hitherto secret information about the American involvement in the continuing conflict be made public.

Mrs. Abzug's resolution, formally called a resolution of inquiry, must come to the floor of the House itself for a vote, regardless of any action taken on it by the Committee.

Harrington, meanwhile, said he intends to press ahead with his own resolution of inquiry, directed in more specific terms at the bombing itself. Under the rules of the House, these resolutions have to come to the floor for a vote seven business days after they are introduced.

At present, the government makes public very little statistical information about the bombing. Each month, it releases a number representing the tonnage of bombs dropped on all the countries of Indochina, but the Administration has refused to break this down by country or to make it public more frequently.

The government also releases figures on the number of sorties (missions by a single plane against one target) being flown over South Vietnam, but it has refused to provide such data on the bombing of Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam.

No information of any kind on the cost of the air war is being made available.

Hebert's letter to Harrington suggested that he feels recent statements by Defense Department officials on the subject and Harrington's own trip two weeks ago to South Vietnam "provide you with the information you desired."

Harrington responded with a letter denying that this is so, and repeating his request for a Committee hearing to discuss information about the air war.

Harrington said statements from the Pentagon have done "little more than reiterate at length the assertion that my request for the announcement of bomb tonage that has already fallen jeopardizes

national security... I repeat that I am only asking that the American people be told what the other side has already learned."

As for his trip to South Vietnam, Harrington reminded Hebert that the chairman himself had denied him permission to go to Laos and Cambodia, and added that he and an aide got little cooperation from American officials in South Vietnam in getting the information they were seeking.

Harrington also said he

was dismayed that Hebert would take a request for a Committee hearing and consult the Pentagon before replying in the negative.

In renewing his request, Harrington said that "recent events have made it even clearer than before that the American people must be told the truth about our massive air warfare in Indochina, so that they can perceive the gap that exists between the rhetoric of Vietnamization and the reality of American involvement."

The President, the Sultan
of the United States of America

W. W. T. -- An antiwar
member of the House Armed Ser-
vices Committee yesterday claimed
that Admiral Thomas Moorer, chair-
man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has
argued that if domestic restraints
were relaxed the US would have the
option of bombing Haiphong harbor
in North Vietnam and launching
amphibious assaults behind North
Vietnamese lines.

Rep. Michael Harrington (D-Mass.) called for Moorer's resignation, citing secret testimony the admiral gave the Armed Services Committee last Tuesday. Harrington said Moorer's comments "make it clear that he continues to believe in the efficacy of military solutions to the war in Indochina."

"This is an error of fundamental proportions. It ignores the overwhelming evidence of the last 10 years and it condemns this country to continued support of a bloody and expensive war in the face of the public's desire for an end to the killing."

Specifically, Harrington said that
in response to various questions from
supporters of the war on the commit-
tee, including chairman F. Edward
Hebert (D-La.), Moorer implied
that unspecified "restraints" were
to be off the military the North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong could be
forced into a more accommodating
negotiating stance.

"This is precisely the kind of
self-deluded reasoning that led to
our tragic involvement in this war,"
Harrington said. "Its continued ad-
vocacy in the highest level of the
Pentagon is a continuing
fact and I call for Admiral
Moorer's resignation be-
cause I do not think this
country can afford to re-
peat the mistakes of the
past decade."

Among the restraints on
the military which he said
Moorer had in mind were
the activities of the peace
movement and of the press.

Harrington paraphrased
Moorer's remarks as sug-
gesting that if such re-
straints were not present
there were certain actions
that could be taken, in-
cluding the bombing of the
harbor of Haiphong in
North Vietnam, and the
launching of an amphi-
bus assault behind North
Vietnamese lines in that
country while the "of

their forces are preoccu-
pled with the fighting in
the south.

Harrington said that
until he was reminded of
it, Moorer made no men-
tion of the standard Ad-
ministration justification
for its escalation of the air
and naval war in response
to the renewed heavy
fighting on the ground —
namely a desire to protect
those Americans who re-
main in South Vietnam.

Harrington said he
would respect the rules of
secrecy which govern such
congressional testimony,
but added he feels "most of
what the admiral said
could and should be pre-
sented publicly so that the
American people can learn
what is being done with
their money and in their
name."

However, he was unable
to cite any portion of
Moorer's testimony on the
current state of hostilities
that had not already been
placed in the public do-
main by the Administra-
tion itself.

Harrington said Moorer
had no answers to give the
committee in private to
such basic questions as
whether there will be any
further air and naval
buildup of American
forces, and how long this
greatly increased presence
will be maintained.

Criticizing Moorer's con-
tention that the use of mil-
itary power by the United
States can change the ne-
gotiating posture of the
other side, Harrington
said: "It is time for the De-
fense Department to join
the rest of the nation in
recognizing that we must
accept a political solution
in South Vietnam and that
our ability to dictate the
terms of that solution is
very limited.

"For the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to accept in only the most grudging and tenuous fashion the limits the American people strongly desire to put on our military activities goes directly counter to our long tradition of civilian control of the military and I believe that Admiral Moorer's position in this matter makes his resignation essential."

100

Harrington says admiral
discussed N. Viet invasion

BOSTON
GLOBE
15 April '72

(19)

CJD

NEW YORK TIMES 17 APRIL 1972

Of Blood and Slogans

Slogans can have a fateful significance.

Taking office in 1969 on a pledge "to end the war and win the peace," President Nixon made a fateful decision concerning the true content of that vague but beguiling campaign slogan. "Winning the peace," he decided, meant that an anti-Communist Government had to be consolidated in power in South Vietnam. Otherwise the "peace" would be lost because additional military effort by the Communists would soon bring them the victory they have long sought.

Since the United States and its South Vietnamese allies had not conclusively defeated the Communists on the field of battle, there was no immediate visible way to "win the peace" in Mr. Nixon's special sense of that term. As a result, "ending the war" had to be indefinitely postponed and the subtly but significantly different objective of "winding down the war" had to be substituted. Even this phase had to be defined in a special sense. The war itself was not wound down; on the contrary, it was extended to Cambodia and Laos and American bombing greatly increased. What was "wound down" was the scale of American involvement in the ground fighting.

When these special Nixonian interpretations have been decoded, that 1968 promise "to end the war and win the peace" translates into ordinary English as a promise "to continue the war until the enemy concedes defeat and accepts American peace terms."

Would the American people have accepted Mr. Nixon's leadership four years ago if they had understood the true import of his slogan? The question is unanswerable. What can be said is that the Communist forces in Vietnam are not prepared to accept Mr. Nixon's special definitions. The bloody fighting of the last ten days demonstrates that the war was not ended.

South Vietnam's Army has been able to achieve at least a temporary stalemate but on terms that have ominous implications for long-term American involvement. Only massive American bombing, including heavy raids in North Vietnam itself, enabled the South Vietnam forces to halt the Communist advance. And it is the precarious position of South Vietnam's embattled forces that has led to the weekend's American escalation of the air war near Haiphong and Hanoi.

If American air support on a large scale is the essential prerequisite for staving off a South Vietnam defeat, the United States may be fighting an air war in Southeast Asia for several more years—on and on into the indefinite future in an elusive effort to "win" an ever-receding "peace."

America's involvement in the Vietnam war cannot be satisfactorily ended until this country obtains the release of its prisoners of war. Every new air raid means more pilots shot down and captured. The number of American prisoners steadily grows. Thus, every raid not only brings death and devastation to Vietnam but postpones the end of the war.

The war is being fought to determine the political future of South Vietnam. Since the United States can not win the war by means acceptable to the American people, it has to achieve peace by a political compromise with its Communist adversary. A negotiated settlement is the only alternative to more bombing, more bloodshed, more prisoners. Deceptive slogans can no longer obscure that harsh choice

NEW YORK TIMES 16 APRIL 1972 (1

Negotiation Needed

By their current major military action in South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese clearly hope to demonstrate that "Vietnamization" has left Saigon able neither to win nor to end the war, even with massive American air and sea support. The Communists thus expect to improve their position for the renewed private negotiations both sides now have said they want. In those negotiations, Hanoi hopes to replace the Thieu regime by a coalition government with the Vietcong playing a dominant role.

It will be the ultimate tragedy in this tragic war if the current bloodletting does not finally restore a sense of reality to both sides. Neither the Communist offensive nor the escalation of American air and naval action is likely to destroy the military capability of either South or North Vietnam. After heavy casualties on both sides, the essential stalemate that has characterized the Indo-China conflict for eighteen years undoubtedly will remain. It is a stalemate that can be ended only by a "political solution," which is to say a negotiated settlement acceptable to both sides.

Washington and Saigon must face the fact that, short of an invasion of North Vietnam, which could bring Chinese intervention as in Korea, there is no other way to end the war and free American P.O.W.'s than by a negotiated compromise. Hanoi must also realize there is no way that it can overpower the South militarily as long as American air power is committed to its defense.

The time to negotiate is now. To reopen both the Paris talks and the private Kissinger-Le Duc Tho negotiations, there is no need to await the outcome of the current battle, which might continue off and on for months, or to waste time in recriminations over which side refused to resume the talks. An immediate stand-down in the fighting would, in fact, be the first American proposal in returning to the Paris conference table. But it should not be a prelude for returning to the talks.

More importantly, the time has come to resume the cautious probing of Communist proposals for an interim coalition government—to be confirmed by elections—that was undertaken last year in Dr. Kissinger's talks with Le Duc Tho. Those talks, besides being broken off by Hanoi, had reached agreement in principle on seven points of the nine-point Communist peace plan. The length and nature of a caretaker government, which could well include Communist ministers, are the critical issues that now need to be negotiated. No one can predict whether Hanoi would be prepared to settle. But it would be a profound error, now that Le Duc Tho has apparently offered to reopen the talks, to delay their resumption until the current battle is over.

WASHINGTON POST 17 APRIL 1972

Vietnam: "Getting Out" by Way of the Brink

What President Johnson and his predecessors steadfastly tried not to do over 15 years or more, President Nixon has managed to do almost overnight: he has brought the war in Indochina to the brink of a head-on confrontation with the Soviet Union by his decision to send American bombers over the suburbs of Hanoi and the port of Haiphong and to amass an American naval armada off the North Vietnamese coast.

There does not seem to be any other way to interpret what he has done. One could understand—if not accept—the monumental air support given to the South Vietnamese during the ongoing North Vietnamese offensive of the past few weeks, and the systematic substitution of our air power for our manpower in the months before that. One could see this as having something to do with bolstering the South Vietnamese forces, and even with "saving the lives" of our remaining troops. Leaving aside the cynical euphemism of "protective reaction," there were enemy tanks to be hit, and SAM missile sites to be taken out and trucks and roads and bridges to be blown up. You could even believe, but just barely, that most of this was being carried on in remote, unpopulated areas so that civilians were pretty much out of the way of it.

But you cannot believe that anymore about a reversion to bombing tactics which plainly endanger population centers and which cannot be related in any immediate sense to the fighting now under way south of the Demilitarized Zone and in the Central Highlands and around Saigon. Nothing that is blown up in Hanoi or Haiphong today is going to influence, in any direct way, the course of battle in the South for a good many months, perhaps even a year; we have ample evidence of that, out of long experience.

And you cannot seriously believe that this revival of the thumbscrew is directed at "the will of Hanoi" for we have more than enough evidence on this score, too: the thumbscrew, sometimes called "rolling thunder" (by the military) or "graduated response" (by the professors in residence in government), has never really worked. In the days of Dean Rusk and Walt Rostow, it didn't persuade the North Vietnamese to "leave their neighbors alone"—if anything it stiffened them—and there is no reason to believe that the effect would be any different now. Moreover, there is nothing "graduated" about what is going on.

So you have to assume that the Russians, who are the main suppliers of the heavy weaponry now in use by the North Vietnamese, are the main object of the weeken I bombing strikes around Hanoi and Haiphong; that the President is reviving and applying what John Foster Dulles described as "the necessary art" and which his critics called "brinkmanship"; that he is seeking to persuade the Russians to use their benefactor's influence on Hanoi either to slow down the current offensive or to promote negotiations, or both; and that he is prepared, for lack of any other leverage, to throw Soviet-American relations into the scales, to put the SALT talks and the European detente and Russia's alleged a anxiety over China and East-West re-

lations in general on the table, for the sake of salvaging whatever precisely it is that Mr. Nixon would conceive of as an "honorable" way out of the war.

There is a grim logic in this assessment. It fits the President's long-standing concepts about the utility of air power, particularly in Indochina; it is quite in keeping with his oft-expressed admiration for the way President Eisenhower supposedly achieved a Korean truce—by threatening the Chinese with nuclear attack. It accords with the Administration's own proud account of how Jordan was saved and a Middle East conflagration averted —by the maneuvering of American sea power in the eastern Mediterranean. It would be, in short, almost a classic exercise in balance-of-power politics of the sort that Mr. Nixon and Dr. Henry Kissinger have long espoused.

In other words, it figures—which leaves you to wonder only by what set of values, or what sense of American obligations or security interests, or what reading of American sentiment, it is necessary at this stage of the game to go to the brink with the Russians over Vietnam?

We were told long ago of a plan "to end the war." Can this be it? Can the Russians, in fact, maintain their position in the world while telling their sister socialists in North Vietnam to abandon what they have been fighting for these forty years?

We were told that the South Vietnamese could "hack it by themselves." Are we now to believe that this really means is that this country must not only continue to provide massive combat air support but also to confront the Russians with the twin threats of aerial and naval blockades against North Vietnam? Is this what "Vietnamization" is all about? Or isn't the real meaning of the Hanoi-Haiphong raids that "Vietnamization" doesn't work well enough to guarantee the President the kind of outcome of the current Vietnam fighting he could feel comfortable with, either in Moscow at next month's summit, or in the election campaign next fall?

This, in our view, is the rub of it—the sort of outcome the President wants and the risks that are worth taking to bring it about, for the risks involved do not seem to us to bear any relationship to the possible gains. If the President's "Vietnamization" policy is as successful as he would have us believe, we have done all that we could reasonably have been expected to do for the Saigon government and we ought to fix a date for our total military disengagement, negotiate as best we can for the return of our prisoners, and get out.

If "Vietnamization" turns out, in fact, to be less than it has been proclaimed to be, the end of it all in Vietnam may then be something well short of what we set out to accomplish, and some might even see it as "dishonorable." Against that ultimate, and still hypothetical judgment, however, you have to weigh the honor, not to say the sanity of trying to influence the outcome in Vietnam at this late date by resuming bombing in or around population centers in North Vietnam for the indirect and largely theoretical effect this may have on the actions of the men in power in Moscow or Peking or Hanoi.

ABC EVENING NEWS, APRIL 17, 1972

Rogers Defends Bombing

103

SEN. FULBRIGHT: Even though we have a President who came into office in January of 1969, promising to end the war either through negotiation or through VNization, instead three years after that President took office we find the largest force of combat aircraft and naval vessels the US has ever assembled in SE Asia, massive bombing of NVN resumed, and the Port of Haiphong and the Capital of Hanoi are under attack at the risk of grave international complications.

SEC. ROGERS: As you know, Mr. Chairman, for a long time the NVNese have been able to peddle, to sell a cruel hoax to a segment of the American people that somehow the war in VN was a civil uprising.

Now, it is quite clear, and I don't believe anyone can deny it, that this is a major invasion offensive action by the NVNese in SVN.

It comes at a time when its purpose is to disrupt the withdrawal program, to endanger American lives, the lives of Americans who are still in SVN, and the enemy is committed outside of NVN twelve of its thirteen combat divisions.

So, we think it's essential to conduct the attacks that the President has ordered to be conducted against military targets wherever he decides to make these attacks, to protect American lives, to permit the withdrawal to continue, to give SVNese forces a chance to defend themselves.

CLARK: Rogers emphasized in strong terms: that American air power will continue to be used to protect the withdrawal of American troops. Under quest ioning by Senator Church he said he would give only two assurances of what the US would not do.

SEC. ROGERS: They're not going to reintroduce American ground combat troops in SVN, and we are not going to use nuclear weapons in SVN or in NVN. But short of that we are not going to make any announcements of what we are going to do or not going to do.

SEN FRANK CHURCH: Well, I hope,

out against this offensive. My only disagreement is based upon a 30-year record that the North is going to continue to press this war, and by now either the South is able to defend itself or it looks to be very dubious that they will ever be able to defend themselves.

CLARK: Two influential Republicans on the Committee, Aiken and Cooper, spoke out in support of the President's action, though both are longtime critics of the war.

Their defection reduced prospects for any dramatic new action by Senate doves to force any end to the war.

A resolution introduced by Senator Muskie today calling for an immediate end to all American military action against NVN appears unlikely to gain wide support.

The Senate will probably pass still another version of the Mansfield Amendment, but despite the new crescendo of criticism about the war this is expected to be blunted once again in the House.

Bob Clark, ABC News, Capitol Hill

REASONER: Late today the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to cut off funds for US land, sea and air forces involved in hostilities in VN by December 31st, 1972, if NVN releases all American prisoners.

The vote was nine to one with two Committee members abstaining.

As it happened President Nixon showed up on Capitol Hill in the midst of the new VN debate, but he was there just to eat.

BILL GILL: The President went to Capitol Hill for a leisurely luncheon with retiring Congressman William Colmer of Mississippi. If there was tension in the White House over the newest bombing controversy he reflected none of it. All smiles and composure he shook hands with tourists and secretaries outside on the Capitol Plaza.

Not everyone was enchanted with the occasion. There were a few shouts of end the war, stop the bombing. Mr. Nixon pretended not to hear.

White House insiders say that the President has decided to keep an almost invisible profile in the bombing controversy. They point out that any public statement by the President would likely inspire even bigger anti war demonstrations, and it would concentrate the protest on the President

CJD

himself. They claim this would
harper his determination to do what-
ever is necessary to break the back
of NVN's invasion.

Sneaking quite candidly one White
House source admits that a public
statement by the President this time
would only feed the guns of his Dem-
ocratic political opponents. And
he says this is no time to hand them
even more ammunition for their pol-
tical stump speeches.

Bill Gill, ABC News, at the White
House.

NBC NIGHTLY NEWS NBC-TV 6:30 PM

APRIL 13, 1972

Laird Answers Senate Questions

JOHN CHANCELLOR: The biggest
story of the day was the appearance
of Defense Secretary Melvin LAIRD
before the Foreign Relations Com-
mittee.

LAIRD said that the bombing of
NVN wou'd - could be continued with
no part of that country immune from
air attack as long as the NVNese
invasion of SVN continued.

In a four and a half hour ap-
pearance before J. William FUL-
BRIGHT's Foreign Relations Com-
mittee, LAIRD indicated that the
Administration had not called a
halt, temporarily or otherwise, to
the bombing of NVN although he
would not talk about targets.

LAIRD also said as long as the
invasion of the south continues,
there will be no negotiations.

DEFENSE SECRETARY MELVIN LAIRD:
If the enemy will withdraw the
forces that invaded across the DMZ.
in violation of the understandings
of 1968, if those forces that did
invade in violation of those under-
standings are removed, north of the
DMZ, then the suggestions on nego-
tiations and working out other
understandings or treaties, would
be a viable opportunity for this
country, but as long as the viola-
tion continues and the violation
is continuing at this very minute,
the NVNese regular forces pro-
d across the DMZ, and this is
not the time, Mr. Chairman to talk
about further understandings,
treaties or negotiations.

It seems to me, is the height
of irresponsibility as far as our
government is concerned.

SENATOR J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT:
Well, Mr. Secretary, I - I under-
stand your point of view that there
is no intention of negotiations on
the present conditions.

I...

LAIRD: I - I believe Mr. Chair-
man, that you would agree with me
on that point.

FULBRIGHT: Well, I can only
point out one or two observations,
if you will allow me.

One is that the negotiations
were broken off long before this
invasion and there was no serious
progress made at that time, so that
you had the same attitude, the
Administration did, before the in-
vasion that it does now.

But - trying to get back to this
- the real question. It seems to
me that in view of this long and
very tragic war I had thought that
the people of this country and the
Congress felt it was time to settle
it.

And that it is not in our in-
terest to pursue it in the interest
of the US.

What I'm trying to develop, what
is the objective of this Adminis-
tration now and it strikes me from
the - not only what you say but the
spirit and eagerness with which you
say it is that we must have a mili-
tary victory.

LAIRD: That is not the case.
You talk of military victory or
whatever characterizations you want
to use of the VNization program,
those are your characterizations,
our VNization program was to com-
pliment and to take the place of
negotiations only if negotiations
fail.

But it was to give the SVNese
an in-country security capability
and that is what we've done and I
can assure you that the VNization
program has succeeded.

By GEORGE SHERMAN

The French, British and American governments, from both Capital and Moscow, has vowed to continue "whatever action necessary" to repel the Hanoi offensive in South Vietnam.

The French, British and American governments from Saigon today said they were bombing around Haiphong and Hanoi had been suspended after the weekend raids and other bombing farther to the south in North Vietnam considerably reduced in order to get a "political response" from Hanoi.

However, every public statement out of the White House and State Department has stressed the administration's determination to continue bombing military targets in North Vietnam until the invaders are defeated.

Furthermore, Secretary of State William P. Rogers said yesterday the United States will not resume negotiations until that invasion ends.

In a sharp give-and-take session yesterday with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rogers said there have been "far too many announcements in this war about what we will not do."

This time, he said, there were only two announcements he wanted to make about what the U.S. would not do in Vietnam:

are not going to reinvade the American ground combat troops in South Vietnam.

"We are not going to use nuclear weapons in either North or South Vietnam."

"Short of that," he continued, raising his voice, "we're not going to make any announcements of what we're going to do or not going to do. ... We think it is essential to conduct these raids."

Shortly after the three-hour session, part of it nationally televised, the Foreign Relations Committee voted 9-1 in favor of cutting off all funds for use of U.S. ground naval and air forces in Vietnam after Dec. 31, 1972. The provision was attached as an amendment to the $916 million authorization for the State Department.

The committee today hears from Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird, who was scheduled to spend the morning in the Senate defending the administration's position.

Hours briefly first with John Chiefs of Staff Chairman Thomas H. Moorer at a closed session of the Senate Armed Services Committee, then goes into the open session before the Foreign Relations Committee.

Both Laird's and Rogers' meeting with the Foreign Relations Committee were scheduled, for defense of the administration request for $2.15 billion in new foreign military aid. But the bombing of North Vietnam has become the only focus of the hearings.

### Aiken Dissents

In the committee's vote on cutting off war funds, the only dissenter was Sen. George Aiken, R-Vt., senior Republican on the committee, and a longtime critic of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

To the surprise and obvious delight of Rogers, Aiken had said at the hearing earlier that North Vietnam was clearly the aggressor now across the demilitarized zone between North and South, and he could support the bombing to end the invasion.

Other senators present, led by Committee Chaiman J. William Fulbright, D-Ark., and including Republicans Clifford Case of New Jersey, Jacob Javits of New York and Charles Percy of Illinois, questioned that the new bombing would be any more effective than that which President Johnson called off in 1968.

"I, for one," said Fulbright in an opening statement, "cannot understand what possible national interest has dictated these military measures. ... Surely we are no longer under the illusion that a military victory can be achieved by bombing or that a renewal of bombing will improve the chances of negotiating a settlement or recovering our prisoners of war."

But Rogers refused to yield on any of the argument with Fulbright and the critical majority on the committee.

He repeatedly maintained that the North Vietnamese "massive invasion" across the demilitarized zone is a "different kind of war," where bombing of such installations as oil dumps in the North would drastically slow down an offensive based on tanks and mobile anti-aircraft batteries.

At the State Department later, parts of the U.S. response to the Soviet protest Sunday on the Haiphong raids was also released. The U.S. note, delivered by U.S. Ambassador Jacob Beam in Moscow, made no apology for the alleged hitting of four Soviet ships in Haiphong harbor.

According to the State Department, the note said any damage to Soviet ships at Haiphong "was inadvertent and regrettable." But it added, bluntly repeating the public warning of President Nixon last week, that "nations which

supply offensive equipment to the North Vietnamese and enable them to mount an invasion of South Vietnam (share responsibility" for the intensified fighting.

The note also suggested that any damage to international shipping "could well be the result of anti-aircraft fire or misfirings from the North Vietnamese side."

At the Senate hearing, Rogers repeatedly emphasized that the only targets were military, not civilian — at one point electing an outburst from a young man in the audience, who jumped up and shouted "That's a lie, you are bombing people, bombing people!"

### Military Targets

He also maintained that defeat of the offensive would produce the essential precondition for a peace settlement in Vietnam.

The administration assessment said Rogers, is that the South Vietnamese are fighting "courageously," that repelling the invasion would set back North Vietnamese capacity to hurt the South "several years," and that Hanoi would then be more resonant in seeking a political settlement.

Rogers maintained that the resumed bombing has had no impact on U.S. policy toward either the Soviet Union or China. He also said President Nixon's pledge to have U.S. ground forces in Vietnam down to 69,000 by May 1 could be kept.

But he stopped short of committing Nixon to an announcement of specific new numbers of future withdrawals in the Nixon statement promised before May 1, saying only that the withdrawal policy over-all would continue.

### Three Considerations

Under close questioning from Fulbright, Rogers said Nixon had three considerations in ordering the resumption of full-scale bombing—to protect the lives of the 85,000 U.S. forces in South Vietnam; to enable withdrawals to continue on schedule; to help South Vietnam defend itself against the invasion from the North.

Rogers was extremely careful not to predict that the new bombing will have no effect on Nixon's plans to visit Moscow from May 22-29.

But he said plans for the visit are going ahead on schedule, and "no evidence" currently exists that either the summit or the talks with the Russians on limitations strategic nuclear weapons have been effected.

### Poland Visit Added

Further proof that the Rus-

sians and their European allies want to go ahead with the meeting came yesterday when Poland formally invited Nixon to spend two days, May 31 and June 1—in Warsaw on his way back from the Soviet Union. Polish Ambassador Witold Trampczynski called at the White House to officially extend the invitation—which Nixon accepted.

Nixon will go to Poland from Theran, Iran, where he will spend two days as guest of the Shah immediately after leaving the Soviet Union. Nixon received a large, warm reception in Poland in July 1959 as vice president, after returning from his "kitchen debate" with Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow.

Today Nixon receives the visiting Chinese table tennis team in his White House office—further proof, for analysts, that neither Peking nor Washington sees the upsurge of Vietnam fighting as a real reason to cut off the dialogue begun with Nixon's February visit to Peking.

# Administration Firm
## On Viet War Policy

WASHINGTON STAR 18 APRIL 1972 Pg-1

CYC

["Students Plan\n'Actions' Today\nTo Protest War", "Joining in anti-war protests today on dozens of the nation's campuses, students from at least three universities here planned to march to the Capitol to demonstrate against U.S. bombing of North Vietnam.", "On the eve of the campus rallies, two U.S. senators joined a coalition of anti-war groups in calling for a national moratorium protest on May 4 at Federal buildings around the country.", "Although the National Student Association had urged all college students to go on strike today to protest the bombing, the types of scheduled activities appeared to vary from campus to campus.", "\"Some were planning strikes, some not — we are referring to today's events as 'actions,'" an NSA spokesman said.", "Rallies were set at Georgetown, George Washington and Catholic universities, to be followed by silent, informal marches to Capitol Hill, where students planned lobbying visits to congressmen.", "Disorders, mostly minor and, limited, flared on a number of campuses yesterday, including the University of Maryland where National Guardsmen were ordered onto the campus and 140 arrests were made.", "At Wright Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, police arrested 125 persons — mostly from nearby colleges — when they tried to block the main gate yesterday.", "At Boston University, some 250 young demonstrators took over the administration building, ripped telephones from the wall and stole some records before police arrived.", "## California Arrests", "The ROTC building was seized and about, two dozen persons arrested yesterday at the University of Massachusetts. An administration building was occupied at Princeton University yesterday in a peaceful hour-long protest.", "One person was arrested and four Stanford University students suffered minor injuries in a brief clash at Palo", "Alto yesterday between protesters and police who declared an anti-war march to be an illegal assembly.", "About 300 protesters from Isla Vista, scene of violent disorders in 1970, held a candlelight protest at Santa Barbara yesterday and 700 persons met yesterday on the University of Illinois campus at Champaign.", "In Madison, Wis., police used tear gas to disperse crowds after some 4,000 persons attended an anti-war rally yesterday, and some downtown store windows were broken.", "President William McGill of Columbia University ordered the New York City campus closed today to provide time \"to think and talk about the war and what it means to us.\"", "Military recruitment was ordered suspended at the University of Massachusetts yesterday, and some 2,000 Harvard University students voted to boycott classes.", "Organizers of the May 4 moratorium were planning marches and demonstrations at federal buildings, military induction centers, recruitment stations and Internal Revenue Service offices.", "## Say Support Grows", "Ron Young, a coordinator of the moratorium, said at a Capitol Hill press conference that support was growing rapidly.", "Young said President Nixon assumed that the public was \"cynical\" about the heating up of the war while student opponents feel \"the conscience of the American people\" can be aroused against it.", "Sen. Mike Gravel, D-Alaska, and Sen. Fred Harris, D-Okla., appeared at the press conference in support of the moratorium. Also speaking at the press conference were Rep. Paul N. McCloskey, R-Calif., and Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who leaked the \"Pentagon papers.\"", "Sen. George McGovern, D.S.D., speaking at Catholic University, said Nixon's re-election \"would be an open hunting license for him to wage an all-out war on the people of Indochina.\""]

NEW YORK TIMES - 20 APRIL 1972

Q. & A. on the Bombing

A Distillation of Official Views
On the Main Concerns of Critics

By MAX FRANKEL

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, April 19—Of all the many questions raised here in recent days about the current United States role in the Vietnam war, perhaps a dozen best summarize the major concerns of members of Congress and other critics. Below are what appear to be the Government's composite replies,

News
Analysis

drawn not from any single official source but rather from the general testimony of Secretary of State

William P. Rogers and Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird and from the private comments of other top Administration officials.

Q. What is the jurisdiction for any continuing American involvement in the Indochina war?

A. To redeem an already costly American commitment to protect South Vietnam against military conquest; to protect program of gradual American withdrawal so that the Saigon Government can survive under a political system of the South Vietnamese people's choosing; to force the return of American prisoners of war; through such a generally "honorable" end of the involvement to demonstrate the fidelity of the United States' commitments to other allies and dependent nations.

Q. What is the purpose of intensified American bombing in North and South Vietnam?

A. To protect the remaining American troops in the war zone; to protect the program of troop withdrawals; to help the South Vietnamese resist a major frontal attack; to render on slaughters in the months to come more difficult or even impossible; to retaliate for violation of a 1968 "misunderstanding" forbidding troops to cross the demilitarized zone along the border between North and South Vietnam; to demonstrate the continuing American power

that can be applied in the war; to neutralize some of the advanced equipment supplied to Hanoi by Moscow.

Q. Why bomb Hanoi and Haiphong at this time, and why will the bombing of North Vietnam be more effective now than it was between 1963 and 1968?

A. Because the current highly mechanized North Vietnamese attack differs from past enemy offensives; because the tanks, personnel carriers, mobile missiles and other weapons and vehicles are more dependent on fuel and replacements that could be moved quite quickly to the front; because raids against the main supply depots in the major cities inflict the greatest damage on those essential items.

Q. Why was Congress not consulted on the escalation?

A. Because the President alone determines tactics, and he needs surprise when he strikes.

Q. Why not protect American troops by withdrawing them immediately?

A. Because air support and other logistic and advisory services are still needed by the South Vietnamese; because some combat troops are still needed to protect the American bases; because the presence of some troops will be used to negotiate the release of American prisoners of war.

Q. If Vietnamization is working why do the South Vietnamese need such extensive American air power while the North Vietnamese fight without anything comparable?

A. The first objective of Vietnamization was to relieve Americans of the high casualties resulting from ground combat operations. Now the South Vietnamese are beginning to assume logistic and tactical air power, but this gives them capacity to fight only in their part of Vietnam and not reach up to the supply routes and centers in the North. On the other hand, the Russians have equipped the North Vietnamese for offensive operations far from home base.

Q. Does Vietnamization provide for the end of American strategic and tactical air strikes?

A. The Saigon Government is to assume tactical air responsibilities on an undisclosed schedule, but American strikes

against enemy troop concentrations and supplies will be conducted whenever Saigon's forces appear to need help. For the time being nothing is ruled out except the increase in American troop strength and the use of nuclear weapons.

Q. What would happen if the United States stood aside and let North and South Vietnam fight it out?

A. Current estimates are that the South Vietnamese forces would suffer serious reverses, perhaps even a rout, particularly in the region around Saigon and in the Central Highlands. American air power has been less directly necessary—or useful—in defending the northern sectors of South Vietnam.

Q. Do the diminished number of American troops really need protection?

A. It is thought that major North Vietnamese breakthroughs would cause American bases to be overrun, but in any case the protection of American troops is the only constitutional authority available to the President for the military operations he is conducting.

Q. Why is the Administration taxing the Soviet Union with responsibility for Hanoi's offensive?

A. Because Moscow should bear some responsibility for of-

fensives made possible by its arms even if it does not plan them; because a policy and counsel of Soviet restraint may still be necessary to diminish the fighting and negotiate the end of the war; because the United States and the Soviet Union cannot expect to profit from dènse and agreements in some areas while they induce military challenge to each other and their allies elsewhere.

Q. Is not American help to South Vietnam vastly greater than Soviet help to North Vietnam?

A. Yes, but the American help is for the purpose of defending South Vietnam while Soviet help is for the purpose of invasion and conquest.

Q. How serious are the American threats of mincing the Haiphong harbor or otherwise blockading North Vietnam against Soviet and other foreign supply ships?

A. Those measures are recognized as extreme steps that would have only long-range effect on the battle in South Vietnam while immediately confronting the Russians and other Naval suppliers with a direct American challenge. But there have not been ruled out and will not be ruled out until there is evidence of greater "mistrust" in Hanoi.

NEW YORK TIMES

19 APRIL 1972

The Strategy of Failure

President Nixon's decision to turn the clock back four years by cutting the bombing of North Vietnam from southern Indochina to the Hanoi-Haiphong area is exercise in folly and futility. It revives a strategy that for three years and abandoned finally by President Johnson in 1968 because it was demonstrably a failure. The mystery is why it is being tried again.

Secretary Rogers and the White House in separate statements have indicated that the bombing was meant in part as a threat that Mr. Nixon will "take whatever action is necessary" to halt the North Vietnamese offensive in South Vietnam. The lull that has followed evidently is intended to underline this warning. Both statements ruled out the reintroduction of American ground forces into the war or, of course, the use of nuclear weapons. The threat then, directed presumably at Moscow as well as Hanoi, is that a continued Communist offensive will bring back large-scale bombing of North Vietnam as in 1965-68—extended, perhaps, to the mining or bombing of Haiphong harbor and other ports. But neither Hanoi nor Moscow is likely to be intimidated now by a threat they have already faced down.

Officials in Washington and Saigon acknowledge that the current North Vietnamese offensive is being fueled by supplies already in South Vietnam or nearby. Bombing Haiphong, the so-called "top of the funnel," they assert, is aimed at the supplies that must reach the front during the summer or later and keep the battle going then—at a time even more embarrassing politically for President Nixon. If the Administration's objective is to prevent this, it is doomed in advance to fail.

As long ago as July 1966, the C.I.A. and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency reported that sixteenths of bombing North Vietnam "had no measurable direct effect on Hanoi's ability to mount and support military operations in the South." Moreover, the intelligence estimate concluded that this situation was "not likely to be altered" by mining Haiphong and other harbors or adopting other military proposals then contemplated for expanding the air offensive.

A year later, after the air offensive had been expanded in most proposed ways except for hitting Haiphong harbor, Defense Secretary McNamara reported that "there continues to be no sign that the bombing has reduced Hanoi's will to resist, or her ability to ship the necessary supplies south."

The risk of conflict with the Soviet Union and China dissuaded President Johnson from attacking Haiphong harbor. He concluded that the Communist superpowers were more likely to increase their involvement than to back down if their supply ships were sunk. The damage reported by Moscow to four of its ships last weekend, although American planes had orders to avoid Haiphong harbor, emphasizes the danger.

President Nixon may be prepared to run this risk. He may be gambling that the Soviet Union will restrain Hanoi or restrict its supply flow rather than accept a confrontation that would endanger Mr. Nixon's May 22 visit to Moscow and, with it, such other Soviet objectives as a strategic arms agreement, increased trade with the United States and Bonn's ratification of the German-Soviet treaty and the European status quo.

But a SALT agreement and détente in Europe are as much Mr. Nixon's objectives as the Kremlin's, and they important to his re-election campaign. Is he pre- to risk them and the peace of the world by going beyond implied threats of a naval-air blockade of Haiphong—which are unlikely to intimidate Moscow—

110

BOSTON GLOBE 18 APRIL 1972 (19)

A step closer to the brink

President Nixon has taken a momentous step in ordering the bombing of North Vietnam's chief port of Haiphong and her capital, Hanoi. For many this action has all of the ominous meaning of the words of Edward, Viscount Grey of Fallodon, gazing on Aug. 4, 1914, from his room in the Foreign Office at the lights being extinguished in St. James Park:

"The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."

Yet there are those who foresee no such Armageddon. Secretary of State William P. Rogers, who is certainly no Viscount Grey, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Monday that he ruled out any reintroduction of US ground forces into South Vietnam or the use of nuclear weapons, and White House Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler followed his lead.

But the American people have been reassured so many times about Vietnam that they may be pardoned now if they can no longer believe the words spoken to them.

Only four months ago the American people were assured of the success of the Vietnamization program. Then came the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong offensive of the last few weeks, and on Monday we had Secretary Rogers claiming that our bombing was essential both to the protection of American troops and to Vietnamization itself. "The United States," he said, "is not going to turn tail and leave our ally alone."

What all this makes of Vietnamization is, all too clearly, a shambles. Does anyone in Washington now want to say once again that the South Vietnamese can "hack it by themselves?"

Clearly what has happened is that President Nixon has come to the realization that his game plan was not working, and he has opted, not for completing our withdrawal lock, stock and barrel, but for raising the ante at the risk of a head-on confrontation with the Soviet Union and China as well.

It is not merely, as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has said, that this is reckless re-escalation of the war. It is a re-escalation of it to a point that President Johnson and his predecessors, for all their errors, tried for more than 15 years to avoid reaching.

The Pentagon Papers revealed last year that the bombing of Haiphong and Hanoi was urged on President Johnson by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military, but opposed by then Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and by McGeorge Bundy, Mr. Johnson's national security adviser.

McNamara told the President in late 1966 that our bombing was "yielding very small marginal returns, not worth the cost in pilot lives and aircraft." Bundy told him that "the case against going after Haiphong harbor is so strong that a majority would back the government in rejecting that course."

Wrote McNamara: "The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1000 noncombatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not pretty one."

And it is still not a pretty picture. President Johnson suspended the entire bombing campaign over North Vietnam on Oct. 31, 1968. President Nixon has not only resumed it, but he has enlarged the canvas.

In doing so, he has made it all too perfectly clear that the Administration's purpose is not so much to end the war as Mr. Nixon promised in 1968, but to end it with a military victory, ignoring the process every lesson to be learned since we first entangled ourselves in Vietnam 18 long years ago. After Cambodia and its fiasco, we have Haiphong.

And this means that the war will go on and on, without a chance of its disappearing as a campaign issue this year. Above all, the peace of the world is gravely endangered. It is not too late, but it is almost too late, to move immediately toward a negotiated settlement in Paris.

to the reality? Does he dream of turning Soviet supply ships around in the Gulf of Tonkin the way President Kennedy turned them around during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962?

One danger is that the Soviet Union may feel that Mr. Nixon is bluffing and, calling him, find that he is not. Since the Cambodian invasion of 1970, the President's aides have hoisted of Mr. Nixon's "unpredictability." The stakes are too high for the nation or the Congress

C.YJ

Both Houses to Debate War;
Rogers Plans Secret Briefing

By JAMES DOYLE
Star Staff Writer

For the first time this year,
both the Senate and House will
be occupied today with full-
fledged debate over the con-
duct of the Vietnam war.

Secretary of State William
P. Rogers planned to be on
Capitol Hill for a closed-door
briefing on Vietnam for mem-
bers of the House in what
was seen as an effort to halt
the growing disenchantment
with the war.

More than a quarter of the
100 Senators are expected to
take part in the three hour
debate prompted by the Nixon
administration's decision last
week to escalate the air war
over North Vietnam.

In the House, the Democrat-
ic caucus is debating a new
proposal aimed at halting all
bombing immediately and
all American involvement in
Indochina within 30 days, and
a softer general resolution
calling for U.S. troop with-
drawals.

Increased Strength

The House has refused on
several occasions in recent
years to offer any condemna-
tion of the Vietnam War ef-
fort, but each vote has shown
increased strength among the
anti-war faction.

The extent of opposition to
Nixon's new bombing policies
was expected to be clearer aft-

er today's debates, although
effective votes on end-the-war
proposals will not come to the
floor of either branch for sev-
eral days.

The debate centers around
President Nixon's policy of
Vietnamization, and his mas-
sive use of American Air Pow-
er to support South Vietnam-
ese ground combat troops
against the invading North-
Vietnamese.

Some members of Congress,
including a few who have con-
demned the war in the past,
argue that the bombing is jus-
tified by the battle conditions
and North Vietnamese at-
tacks.

'Knife-Edged Course'

The anti-war forces argue
that, on the contrary, the need
to resort to large scale bomb-
ing, which did not defeat the
enemy in the past, is an indi-
cation that the President's pol-
icy is a failure.

Senator Alan Cranston,
D-Calif., who organized the de-
bate by 26 Senators on both
sides of the question, opened it
with a prepared speech
charging that President Nixon
has set up a "knife-edged
and touching off World War
course between political defeat
and touching off World War
III."

Cranston said that the bomb-
ing might accomplish Nixon's
aims, which he said were to

"prevent the Thieu regime
from collapsing before next
November, lest he lose the
right wing of his party, his
prime political base."

But, Cranston asked, "What
if it doesn't work?" He said
that was the more likely
event. "What other options are
open to a President who, like
President Nixon, insists upon
seeking a solution to this di-
lemma on the battlefield?"

Two Alternatives

Cranston charged that only
American combat troops or
tactical nuclear weapons
would remain as alternative
pressures, and he suggested
that Nixon might employ one
or both of these weapons.

"I am relieved that Secretary of State Rogers has assured the Nation that the administration has ruled out both these alternatives," Cranston said, but he added, "I hope he is being kept better informed now than he was the day before the Cambodian invasion when he said we would not invade Cambodia."

If the President's policy
works well enough to re-elect
Nixon, Cranston said, "It's far
more likely that he would con-
tinue his present, supposedly
'successful' policy and grace a
floundering Thieu regime with
American sea and air power
for still another four years."

Congress yesterday was
urged to demand that the Nix-
on administration provide de-
tailed information on the war
in Indochina.

The proposal was made by
Rep. Bella S. Abzug, D-N.Y.,
at a hearing of the House
Armed Services Committee.
She accused the administra-
tion of "blatant management
of information about its air
war."

Rep. Samuel S. Stratton,
D-N.Y., called her proposal "a
device," saying "I don't think
the information would be used
for any purpose other than to
divide this Congress and the
country."

And Rep. Charles S. Gubser,
R-Calif., linked peace groups'
agitation to Project Air War
which he said was founded a
year ago by people who have
attended Communist confer-
ences abroad.

Another member of the com-
mittee, Rep. Michael Harring-
ton, D-Mass., accused the pan-
el of operating "as an exten-
sion of the Defense Depart-
ment" and said the committee
should demand enough infor-
malation for independent assess-
ment of war policy."

WALL STREET JOURNAL

25 April 1972 P4

Newly Formed Group
Is Telling U.S. Secrets

—To the U.S. Public

War Outfit Gets Its Data
From Disgruntled Soldiers
And Spreads It Far & Wide

By WILLIAM M. CARLEY

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Is the United States planning an amphibious invasion somewhere in Vietnam?

Could be, says Frank Neisser, could well be. The U.S.S. Blue Ridge, an amphibious command ship, left Okinawa a few days ago loaded with Marines, Mr. Neisser says. What's more, he adds, the men aboard had been given immunization shots, Geneva convention cards telling them how to act if captured and unmarked jungle fatigue uniforms. Finally, Mr. Neisser concludes, the U.S.S. Tripoli, a helicopter carrier that could help land the Marines, is already standing by off the Vietnam coast.

Mr. Neisser seems to know a whole lot about secret troop movements. Is he a spy for the Russians, maybe? Not at all, he says cheerfully; he's gathering information for the Americans—all the 200 million Americans who don't learn about things like that from the Pentagon.

Mr. Neisser and a dozen or so of his friends make up the Ad Hoc Military Buildup Committee. At first glance, it's hard to take the committee seriously. It was formed just a few days ago as a ragtag collection of representatives from various peace groups, and its head is in a ramshackle house near Harvard Square that is used by several antiwar groups. Mr. Neisser, a lanky, bespectacled 25-year-old dressed in jeans and an old blue shirt, on a battered couch as he happily fills someone who asks on loop and ship moves.

## Constant Credibility

But the committee's information seems to have been amazingly accurate in the past few days. Not all of it, but enough to matter. On April 13, the group told United Press International that the 548th Reconnaissance Group at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, was hurriedly drawing target charts for Hanoi and Haiphong under a rush order.

Nobody took that very seriously. Then, a few days later, both Hanoi and Haiphong were bombed. And all at once, a lot of people began making the committee very seriously indeed.

"Suddenly our credibility was established," says "Sam" Butterfield, who is one of the committee's operatives in Washington and who is also a 21-year-old woman with long red hair. "The initial response we got (before the bombings) was really sad," says Miss Butterfield. She recalls that besides the news services, several Congressmen were informed of the bomb target charts being drawn up. They "just shrugged their shoulders," she says.

Now however, Miss Butterfield says, Congressmen are more recalcitrant, and "in the papers we escalated from 'persistent running' to 'sophisticated Washington observers'.

And now we're even being quoted by name sometimes."

How does the committee find out all that stuff about secret bomb targets and troop shipments? Simple, Mr. Neisser says. Someone simply picks up the phone in that dilapidated house in Cambridge and starts calling all the antiwar coffee houses, book shops and counseling services that have sprung up near U.S. military bases all over the world. Such establishments are centers of military gossip, and most of them are frequented by disgruntled troops who are more than happy to spill the beans when they learn their units are apparently headed toward Vietnam.

"Pooh Pooh!"

A few servicemen have gone directly to phone booths near their bases and called, collect, to Cambridge to pass on information to the committee. But most of its revelations come from the phone calls it initiates itself. "We've called . . . all over the world—the Philippines, Okinawa, Japan, Germany—you name it," says Mr. Neisser. (That may lead to complications, with New England Telephone & Telegraph Co. "We haven't gotten the phone bill yet, but we're pretty sure it'll run into several thousand dollars," Mr. Neisser says, confessing that he isn't quite sure how the committee will ever be able to pay the bill.)

At any rate. "We've come up with what might be an outline of what the U.S. military establishment is up to," Mr. Neisser says. To wit: 650 planes have left U.S. bases around the world for Indochina in the past two or three weeks, including B52s and their KC 135 tankers, F105 fighter-bombers and others; about 40 ships, including four aircraft; carriers have also been so dispatched; in all over 33,900 men are on their way to or already have arrived in Indochina.

To all this, the Pentagon, in the person of Jerry Friedheim, its chief spokesman, says, "Pooh pooh."

Pooh pooh?

"That's been my response," says Mr. Friedheim, "since most of their information has been erroneous, including that Hickam report on targeting Hanoi and Haiphong." As for that alleged amphibious operation, Mr. Friedheim says: "That helicopter carrier has been stationed off Vietnam forever and it has nothing to do with current operations." Whatever factual data the committee has gathered has been only what any Pentagon reporter could have gotten, says Mr. Friedheim. (In fact, though, a good deal of the committee's information hasn't previously been made public by Pentagon reporters or anyone else.)

Mr. Neisser concedes that the committee isn't always "100% accurate," but he says it has an accurate outline of what's going on. And he adds that in recent days the committee has tightened up its reporting procedures—now, a source must be personally known to a committee member or his information must be confirmed by a second military man.

The committee, whose handful of members come from groups such as the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and from various service-men's counseling groups, was born early this month at a regional conference in Boston of the GI anti-war movement.

"A friend called during the conference," Mr. Neisser recalls. "He had read that B52s were leaving an Air Force base in Kansas. And we knew that B52s were leaving Westover Air Force Base (in Massachusetts), heading for Indochina. We said to ourselves, 'If this is happening nationally, the American people ought to know about it, because here we go again with another escalation of the war.'"

In short order, the committee began planning to ban the plane and ship movements and eliminating them to the world at large.

"Yokota Air Force Base, Japan—Two squadrons of 36 fighter planes have definitely left for Vietnam. Twenty to 28 of these were F4 Phantoms and the rest A6's. Two hundred and fifty crew members and maintenance personnel are going also."

"McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas—Seventy to 90 F105 all-weather fighter-bombers are scheduled to leave for Vietnam."

"Norfolk Naval Base, Va.—The Newport News, a heavy cruiser with eight-inch guns, the most powerful shore-bombardment cruiser the Navy has, is on its way to Vietnam."

"Subic Bay, Philippines—On Easter Sunday, the attack carrier Kitty Hawk cut short her normal port call in such haste that 300 men were left behind. The ship received urgent orders to return to station off the Vietnam coast."

To the question of whether the committee's data might be tipping off Hanoi, Mr. Neisser, replies that he doubts that the committee will ever get specific information that a U.S. strike will be made at a certain place at a certain time. But what if it comes across just such information? "We'll have to decide then what to do," he says. In the meantime, "we think we're saving lives by telling the American people what's going on so we'll get out of there. And I don't think we're giving out any information that the North Vietnamese don't have already."

So far, the committee has received little flak from either the government or the military. "We've gotten a couple of crank calls," says Mr. Neisser, "from military officers who called collect to say we were doing a disservice to the nation—but that's all."

For its part, the Defense Department says it isn't bothering to investigate the committee. But someone may be. Sam Butterfield says it is possible that she and other committee members in Washington are being shadowed. "We keep running into the same guy—on the Capitol steps, in a Congressman's waiting room, on the street. We must have bumped into him eight or 10 times in the last few days."

The FBI says it would rather not comment on that.

Meantime, the committee's members are hoping they can quit spying on the nation's armed forces soon. "We don't plan to monitor the military until kingdom come," says Mr. Neisser. "We hope to go out of existence soon—as soon as the war is over."

WALL STREET JOURNAL 21 APRIL 1972

# Raids on North Vietnam Peril Nixon Stand Against Pullout Law, Especially in House

By NORMAN C. MILLER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

WASHINGTON--The Nixon administration's renewed bombing of North Vietnam is threatening to destroy the White House's shaky defenses against end-the-war legislation in Congress.

The new drive for legislating a Vietnam-pullout deadline is most dramatically evident in the House, which has always quashed Senate withdrawal proposals in the past. While the Senate moved toward a vote on a Vietnam measure, possibly next week, the usually cautious House erupted over the newly charged war issue.

Yesterday, the House Democratic membership voted 144 to 58 to order the House Foreign Affairs Committee to produce within 30 days legislation setting some deadline for total U.S. withdrawal from the war.

Moreover, the resolution adopted by House Democrats condemns the U.S. bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong as "a dangerous escalation of our role in the Indochina war." The Democrats also approved a one-sentence condemnation of North Vietnam's invasion of South Vietnam, but they rejected a tougher resolution attacking Russia, for its arms-supply role, as well as Hanoi.

The Democrats' unusual directive to the Foreign Affairs Committee poses the prospect of the first full-dress House floor fight over Vietnam policy. In earlier tests, pullout proponents always were handicapped because the House was considering Senate-initiated bills under restrictive rules. Still, in the most recent House test last October, administration forces beat back a pullout deadline by only 23 votes. Gain in Strength

The overwhelming Democratic vote yesterday indicates that the opponents of the Nixon policy have gained strength since then. While a pullout bill might still be defeated in the House, to do so the White House would have to hold almost all Republicans behind the Nixon policy—and that would be difficult if current antiwar sentiment continues to boil.

The resolution by the Democratic Caucus directs the House Foreign Affairs Committee to write legislation establishing a date to "terminate all U.S. military involvement in and over Indochina," subject only to the release of U.S. prisoners and an accounting of the missing. Democrats control the House and thus have a majority of the committee. While the committee could nonetheless refuse to obey the Democratic directive, the unusual order by the party membership is so unusually strong that the measure's backers are confident that one way or another they will be able to force a pullout bill to the floor.

The effect of such legislation, even if passed, is questionable, as it would depend on acceptance not only by the Nixon administration but by the North Vietnamese. But its passage obviously would put powerful political pressure on the administration.

The Senate, which three times has approved policy declarations calling for a Vietnam pullout, may vote as early, as next week on a far tougher proposition: A cutoff of appropriations for U.S. land, sea or air forces engaged in "hostilities in Indochina" after next Dec. 31. The cutoff would be conditional on the return of American prisoners of war.

Not even the Senate has been willing to invoke the ultimate congressional weapon of closing the purse strings on the war, though the doves have tried several times. The new effort is a rider attached by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last Monday to a bill authorizing funds for the State Department. The amendment, sponsored by Sens. Frank Church (D., Idaho) and Clifford Case (R., N.J.), would cancel any other law authorizing combat spending in Indochina after this year.

## Floor Vote Next Week

The State Department money bill is scheduled for floor action next week, and administration supporters will try to remove the Church-Case rider. However, the White House could decide to stall this vote in hopes the current criticism of the air action over Vietnam will subside, especially if there isn't any repeat bombing in the Hanoi area. Another reason for possible delay is the absence of Democratic Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana and Republican Leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, who are in the middle of a three-week visit to China.

Another possible hitch to Senate approval of the Church-Case rider is dissatisfaction with it among some of the war critics themselves. Making the money cutoff conditional on release of the prisoners of war could indeed prevent a withdrawal, contends Sen. John Sherman Cooper (R., Ky.).

The POW condition was attached to the Senate's milder policy resolution last year as a way of nullifying the administration's use of this issue as a justification for keeping a residual U.S. force in Vietnam. Now, more antiwar Senators—including some Democratic presidential candidates—are openly suggesting North Vietnam will release the prisoners only after the American forces depart.

Sen. Jacob Javits (R., N.Y.) concurred in this view in a Senate speech yesterday. "It is my firm conviction that there should be no preconditions attached to the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam," he said. "The likelihood of getting out the prisoners is on precedent much greater on this basis."

The White House reacted angrily to the condemnation of its bombing policy by House Democrats. "Words and resolutions are very ineffective in stopping brutal armed aggression," declared Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler.

Mr. Ziegler also attacked the House Democrats for taking a "somewhat contradictory" position in condemning both U.S. and North Vietnamese military actions. "The Democrats are trying to have it both ways," he said. "In matters such as this they can't have it both ways."

Meantime, a group of long-time Senate and House doves joined antiwar organizers in calling for massive demonstrations on May 4 against the Nixon Vietnam policy. At a press conference, they said demonstrations are being planned in several cities.

At the same time, antiwar lobbying organizations, such as Common Cause, are beginning to organize a grassroots campaign in support of end-the-war legislation. The lobbying effort will concentrate both on the pending Senate measure and on members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee as they take up their bill.

agaenda campaign to shift the onus for
the suspension of the negotiations onto
the United States. In two news con-
ferences and a separate statement,
they repeated their demand that the
United States resume the weekly ses-
sions that were suspended indefinitely
March 23.

I kept up the pressure on Thursday issuing their own version of the controversial 1968 "understanding" under which the United States agreed to stop bombing North Vietnam in exchange for Hanoi's agreement to enter into negotiations. To observers here, the document appeared to be a truncated and self-serving paper, neatly edited to prove Hanoi's long-standing claim that the bombing halt was entirely unconditional.

Behind the public jousting, there
were persistent but unconfirmed re-
ports of private diplomatic exchanges
in which the United States apparently

has attempted to get North Vietnam
to suspend its offensive in Indochina
in return for a resumption of tru-
sations. There was no visible progress
on this front, however, and Secretary
Rogers declared on Monday that the
United States would not negotiate in
public or private as long as the Com-
munist "invasion" continued.

Thus, given a negotiating climate,
what seems inevitable is more sharp
fighting in the weeks to come, more
strikes and more mutual retrench-
ment. What is not predictable is the
speed the events on the battlefield will
have on the political wars that are pending
momentum at home.

—BRUCE SMITH

WASHINGTON POST 27 APRIL 1972

Antiwar Stand
Approved by
Science Group

By Victor Cohn

Washington Post Staff Writer

In an unprecedented anti-war protest, the National Academy of Sciences yesterday urged President Nixon and Congress to do-emphasize U.S. reliance on military force" as an instrument of policy.

The country's leading body
of scientists voted a resolution
saying that America should
develop foreign policies to use
its huge technological skills to
advance the welfare of other
nations.

Several academy members
said that the statement was a
thinly veiled anti-Vietnam war
resolution. Academy President
Philip Handler told a news
conference that he "person-
ally" opposed the war when
the buildup began and that "I
disagree with bombing of the
orth."

other important actions
week, the group:

* Voted 44 to 24 against the latest proposal by Nobel-winning physicist William B. Shockley to review the evi-

dence on heredity versus envi-
ronment in determining intel-
ligence. It was a rebuff for his
attempt to spur research to
test his belief that black intel-
ligence is lower than whites'
on the average. But his past
resolutions have all been ta-
bled. He called the vote "en-
couraging" and said he would
keep trying.

* Approved a sweeping re-
organization of the academy's
research arm, the National Re-
search Council, to put new
multi-disciplinary departments
and more full-time staffs to
work on the growing number
of jobs being given the acad-
emy of Congress and the gov-
ernment. These include moni-
toring auto-makers' ability to
build clean-air cars and, in a
bill passed by the House, judg-
ing whether new clean-water
standards can be met.

* Voted to give members
more opportunity to review
agreements with the military
to do classified studies. Such

studies represent only 2 per
cent of the group's $35 million
annual budget, but include
such sensitive subjects as un-
dersea war and learning to
counter act enemy land mines.

Prof. Alexander Rich of the
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology introduced yester-
day's antiwar resolution. It
was passed with only two or
three nays by the 125 mem-
bers present of the 750-mem-
ber organization.

Among other prominent sci-
entists attending were Har-
vard Prof. George Kisti-
kowsky, science adviser to
President Eisenhower; Eman-
uel R. Piore, retired chief sci-
entist of IBM, and Harrison
Brown of California Institute
of Technology, the group's for-
eign secretary.

Civil, Military Studies

The stf-electing but feder-
ally chartered academy in-
cludes most of the nation's
leading researchers. The gov-
ernment relies on it heavily
for both civil and military
studies, and for its more than
100-year history the group has
generally leaned over back-
ward to avoid tangling with
any administration.

But now, Handler said,
many members "feel strongly
that there are larger moral is-
sues in the world, and the
academy has a right to ex-
press its views."

What their resolution tries
to say, he added, is that "reli-
ance on military force will not
solve" the world's most press-
ing problems, but also that th

United States should deploy
its brains and ressources to
help solve them "rather than
build a Fortress America and
say 'to hell with it.' "

Yesterday's move to give
members a greater chance to
comment on use of their
brains for the military came
in response to severe prodding
by strongly anti-militarist
members.

Resigns in Protest

Last year University of Chi-
cago Prof. Richard Lewontin
resigned to protest any secret
military studies. The group fi-
nally accepted his resignation
yesterday, but deferred action
on a similar act by Cornell's
Bruce Wallace.

Members hoped Wallace
might be satisfied with yester-
day's vote: to send all mem-
bers brief unclassified descrip-
tions of all classified pro-
grams, then give them three
months to object and even
send a delegation to Washing-
ton before any contract is
signed.

Academy leaders fully ex-
pect to continue to accept se-
cret projects. Vice President
Kistiakowsky recently urged
fellow scientists to continue
to cooperate with the military, al-
though he himself has refused
to join in war projects be-
cause he opposes the Vietnam
fighting.

"It's a complicated situ-
ation," he commented yester-
day. "But we should not let
the military become isolated,
as has happened in some for-
eign countries."

THE TODAY SHOW MBC-TV 7:00 AM

April 20, 1982
Church Commends War

BILL MONROE: Senator Frank CHURCH, would you agree that there's some justification for the US bombing of NVN if that bombing helps the SVNese fight off the NVNese or if it weakens the capacity of the NVNese for a later offensive without involving China or Russia?

SENATOR CHURCH: No, I can't agree with that. There has to come a time when we end our involvement in this war.

And the thing to remember is that we have equipped the SVNese to defend itself. We've given them all the tools. They have a million two hundred thousand men under arms.

They have far greater fire power than the north. They have the largest air force. As a matter of fact, Secretary LAIRD told us the other day that they have the fourth largest air force in what we like to call the free world.

Now why can't they defend themselves?

I thought that was the purpose of the NIXON VNization program.

MONROE: You indicated a moment ago that you didn't feel VNization was working. Now some administration spokesmen say that the SVNese seem to be standing up pretty well to the attacks on the ground, that they're doing their own ground fighting against massive attacks for the first time.

And they feel this indicates that it is working.

CHURCH: Well, if it is working, why are we there?

I mean, why do we have to bring our large bombers in at fifty thousand feet and start bombing the north again as if that would work.

It didn't work for JOHNSON; why? It work for NIXON? If VNization is indeed working, then I say let's put it to its test. SVN not only has the ground forces; it has the air forces as well,

The answer is written plainly in the facts, not in the rhetoric.

NEW YORK TIMES 21 APRIL 1982

# Tragedy of Ignorance

By JAMES RESTON

WASHINGTON, April 20—The Vietnam war has illustrated once more the limitations of political leadership and the unpredictability of human conduct. Nothing is more tragic in this seemingly endless story of human weakness than the consistent misjudgments on both sides of the enemy on the other side. Time and again, by misconceiving the leaders and people they were fighting against, both have failed to serve their own best interests. It is happening again in Hanoi.

First, it was President Kennedy who thought he could bluff Moscow and intimidate Hanoi by increasing the American contingent in Saigon to 16,000 American "advisers." Then Lyndon Johnson, in the critical period after his spectacular victory as a "man of peace" in the 1964 election, misjudged the tenacity of the North Vietnamese and the determination of Moscow and Peking to risk a confrontation on a battlefield unfavorable to the United States.

It was simply inconceivable to Mr. Johnson that the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong would not submit if (1) he put his air power over the battlefield, and then (2) put an American expeditionary force on the ground. And now, even Mr. Nixon, who is a less romantic and more pragmatic man, is still operating on the assumption that the enemy that would not compromise when we had over half a million soldiers on the ground and an even larger air force in the battle, will compromise when we are saying negotiate on our terms or we'll pull all our ground troops out anyway.

This says a lot about human faith and patriotism, but even more about human ignorance, for Moscow and Peking will probably never have a better opportunity to confront the United States under more favorable circumstances, at so little cost to themselves, and with a Communist ally in Vietnam whose soldiers have more courage and endurance.

All this having been said, it is now apparently Hanoi's turn to demonstrate that its ignorance of America's psychology and America's politics is almost equal to our ignorance of theirs. They are supposed to be among the most patient people on earth, but they couldn't wait to let the logic of the American withdrawal from Vietnam work its way. They felt they could smash their way through the demilitarized zone and defy the "understanding" they knew we expected, even if they had not agreed to it themselves, and destroy the South Vietnamese without the massive intervention of American air power.

This was an assumption and a pre-judgment of Washington as great as Kennedy's or Johnson's assumptions in the earlier phases of the war. Leave aside the wisdom or unwisdom of the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong—the main point in both cases is that war is unpredictable, and Hanoi, like Washington, misjudged the reaction.

Hanoi is now misconceiving the United States in other ways. It apparently thinks it can influence the outcome of the American Presidential

election if it can embarrass and humiliate President Nixon; but it would have to smash his Vietnamization policy all the way and destroy or scatter the Saigon forces to do that, and this would be such a humiliation for the President that the American voters might, very well rally to his support and re-elect him.

Hanoi's handling of the American prisoners of war is an even better illustration of its misjudgment of American psychology and its own best interests. Hanoi is trying to win the battle of American public opinion. It thinks the American people are sick of the war, which is right, and that they will act like the French people after Dien Bien Phu, which is wrong.

They seem to believe that holding the American prisoners is their trump card in winning their battle for American opinion, and forcing President Nixon to settle the war on their own terms, and one can understand their logic in historical terms.

Seldom, if ever, in the history of warfare have prisoners been released before the terms of peace have been arranged. But the Americans are funny people. They care more about the human problems than the political problems. And in the present situation, the guess here is that they will be more likely to get out of the war if t'prisoners are released and safe condi- for the remaining 69,000 American soldiers is assured, than if Hanoi holds onto them as hostages and demands that Mr. Nixon knuckle under to them.

The attempt by Hanoi to win a classic victory on the battlefield and compel a settlement by holding the prisoners is probably as great a blunder as Kennedy's or Johnson's efforts to win by power in the sixties. The lesson of this war is that physical power has not worked for either side, and it is not going to end the conflict by bombing Hanoi, invading the DMZ or holding prisoners as blackmail.

The families of the American prisoners are now well organized. They know better than anybody else t'increasing the violence by a massive invasion of South Vietnam or by sending the B-52's against Hanoi and Haiphong is not going to settle anything but merely keep their men in prison.

If American opinion is Hanoi's objective—and it has been for a long time—its greatest opportunity is to release the American prisoners, not to the American Government, but to their families, and guarantee the safe exit of the last few thousand soldiers.

These are really the popular objectives of the American people, not the defense of the Saigon Government, or the democratization of South Vietnam, or the future strategic configuration of Asia and the Pacific. But Hanoi at the end of the war, has misjudged America, as Washington misjudged North Vietnam at the beginning. As this is the ultimate tragedy, for America is ready for a settlement, if the politicians on both sides will only give back its prisoners and its soldiers.

NEW YORK TIMES

April 23, 1972

Bombs
On Hanoi;
Explosions
At Home

WASHINGTON — The day after he sent waves of B-52 bombers against targets in the Hanoi-Haiphong area last week, President Nixon bumped into an old Congressional friend as he was leaving a luncheon on Capitol Hill. Asked about the new bombing strikes, the President gently punched his friend on the shoulder for emphasis. "When they jump on you," he said, "you have to let them have it."

That remark was perhaps the best one-line explanation of why the President had felt compelled to send his bombers north, after a four-year hiatus, in retaliation for the powerful offensive being pressed in the south by the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong. It formed the substance of much of the Administration's defense of the air action in the face of the predictable outcry on Capitol Hill last week and a new flare-up of antwarps on college campuses across country. And it gave good grounds for supposing that in his mountain retreat at Camp David, where Mr. Nixon retired for the weekend, his thoughts were on whether the Communists' progress in their offensive and their daring MIG attack on American ships in the Tonkin Gulf on Wednesday would make it necessary for him to "let them have it" again.

The tendency to hit back when attacked has always been Mr. Nixon's most consistent trait. Repeatedly in times of crisis he has demonstrated his belief that the only way to meet a challenge is with a counterchallenge, a display of force that leaves the enemy with no doubt about his willingness to fight.

By first resuming and then expanding the bombing of North Vietnam the President appears to be trying to demonstrate to Hanoi and Moscow both that he is prepared to do whatever he feels necessary to defend and preserve an anti-Communist government in Saigon, despite all the opposition his actions may provoke at home.

The message to Hanoi is that any escalation on their part will be met by a comparable or more junishing American counterpunch. A massive invasion of the demilitarized zone dividing North and South Vietnam will bring a rain of American bombs; attacks on South Vietnamese cities will bring the American bombing to Hanoi and Haiphong.

The message to the Russians is that they are not free to arm and equip their Vietnamese allies with impunity. The great powers, the President has said, have a "special responsibility" to discourage assaults by one nation against another. An offensive with Soviet arms, he has indicated, will bring an American response even if Soviet supply ships are damaged in the process. Despite his strong desire to visit Moscow next month, where he expects to sign a series of historic agreements, Mr. Nixon is, in effect, telling the Russians that he does not intend to arrive in their capital feeling himself to be at a disadvantage.

The Soviet reaction to the bombing was vigorous in public last week but muted in private. A formal protest note was delivered to the American Ambassador in Moscow, but there was no follow-up in Washington nor any acrimony between the American and Russian officials engaged in subsidiary negotiations on economic and trade matters. While the controlled Soviet press was condensing the bombings, other Soviet officials were proceeding eagerly with preparations for the Moscow summit.

The reaction in Peking was equally pragmatic. The Chinese denounced the American air strikes, but as their statements came over the news tickers in Washington, their touring Ping-Pong players were trading pleasantries with the President in the White House Rose Garden. Premier Chou En-lai pledged in an interview that the Chinese would stand behind the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong "to the end," but Peking quietly rejected a Soviet proposal for a joint Chinese-Russian statement denouncing "United States war crimes."

The reaction at home, however, posed a potentially greater threat to Mr. Nixon's political plans. To counter it he sent his principal aides up to Capitol Hill in shifts. Secretary of State William P. Rogers, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, went before a hostile and agitated Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The sessions on Monday and Tuesday were the sharpest confrontations on the Hill over the Indochina issue since the American and South Vietnamese incursions into Cambodia in 1970 and Laos in 1971. The American Broadcasting Company televised the hearings live. There were some testy exchanges between Mr. Rogers and the committee chairman, J. W. Fulbright.

The Arkansas Democrat set the combative tone of the hearings at the outset by refusing to let the Secretary read his prepared statement on foreign aid. Instead, Mr. Fulbright read a statement of his own that expressed

his shock at the bombings. "Surely," he said, "considerations of prestige would not warrant such drastic steps as these."

Mr. Rogers responded with a forceful defense of the air strikes, insisting that they were necessary to protect the withdrawal program and the remaining American troops and help Saigon's forces defend themselves. Then, sensing that he had at least some of the Republican members of the committee on his side, Mr. Rogers went on the offensive, throwing questions back at Mr. Fulbright. Why, he asked, had he "heard no criticism of the North Vietnamese from this committee" for their "massive invasion" of South Vietnam?

Piqued by the Administration's defiant attitude, the committee voted to recommend a cut-off of funds for all hostilities in Indochina after Dec. 31, 1972 if Hanoi released all the American prisoners of war. Three days later, the House Democratic caucus voted 144 to 58 to call on the House Foreign Affairs Committee to prepare legislation within a month setting a date for the end of American military involvement "in and over Indochina."

The action of the caucus appeared to be a serious setback for the Administration, which has always relied upon the House to block the antiwar resolutions so frequently approved by the Senate.

On the Senate floor Barry Goldwater, the right-wing Arizona Republican, defended the President against charges of risking confrontation with Russia by his attacks on Haiphong harbor. "If a Russian ship is hit, that's too damn bad," Mr. Goldwater said. "I hope we hit them all. They have no business being in Haiphong." But a Goldwater resolution endorsing the President's Vietnam policies was blocked by the Democratic leadership. The bombing was creating division along party lines in both houses of Congress.

On the nation's campuses, it was like watching the replay of an all too familiar film. Most of the demonstrations and peace marches—such as one from the Columbia campus to downtown New York—were peaceful. But at Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, the Universities of Maryland and Michigan and elsewhere there was sporadic violence, as rock-throwing student groups tried to seize buildings while police used clubs and tear gas and made numerous arrests. In Maryland, the Governor called out the National Guard.

The bombing stirred some non-student protest as well. An estimated 30,000 persons held an antiwar march in New York yesterday. Smaller groups demonstrated in a few other cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Meanwhile in Paris, the North Vietnamese delegation intensified its prop-

WASHINGTON POST 26 APRIL 1972

Nixon's War

By way of prelude to almost every speech he has ever made about the Vietnam war, President Nixon has been at pains to remind us, just for the record, of the terrible legacy he inherited from the Democrats: over half a million Americans in a combat role; casualties running at the rate of more than 300 a week killed in action; no plan to "Vietnamize" the war or to bring our military forces home. There is some truth in this, of course; Mr. Nixon did fall heir to a heavy burden not of his making. But the roots of involvement reached back into a Republican administration of which he was a part. There was also a plan to end the war which General William Westmoreland could have furnished the new Nixon administration because he had laid it all out as early as November, 1967. For better or worse, "Vietnamization" was already in the official lexicon. And far more important, the really big, tough decisions had already been made by President Lyndon Johnson when he refused in March of 1968 to go on down the road of "graduated response," and decided instead to end the bombing of the North and to deny for the first time the next big commitment of American troops. In short, the Johnson strategy had failed by January, 1969, and the country had begun to accept the real limits of a limited war.

That lesson was also part of Richard Nixon's legacy if he had chosen to accept it. He was a free agent, in a way that his predecessor had never been, and not just because he was a new President with a mandate to end the war. He was a free man in the most significant sense because he had inherited not a bureaucratic monolith hell-bent on pursuit of a discredited and unworkable policy, but a bureaucracy divided; there were other voices saying sensible and realistic things, other forces at work in the big departments of government which were there for the President to hear and to use in the difficult business of turning the governmental apparatus around on a new course. But President Nixon did not listen to these voices and never told us about them because he did not wish, for his own reasons and out of his own geo-political concepts, to abandon the old goals of our Vietnam mission. He did not want to accept the hard consequences of the lesson other men had learned. Those on the outside could only guess at the division within the government, only hear snatches of the argument, only speculate about the depth of the carefully suppressed reservations which were held by important people in key agencies-until this week when the hard evidence finally became available. That is the real and immensely profound significance of the "Kissinger Papers," the contents of which were re-

vealed in some detail in this newspaper on Tuesday. They tell us little that is directly relevant to the current situation. Rather, they describe an opportunity tragically lost. They tell us that by early 1969 only the very same people who had made most of the miscalculations which carried us up to March of 1968 with a big war and no solution still believed that the war in Vietnam was winnable in any practical sense. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the military command in Vietnam, and the diehards in the Saigon embassy still believed this. But there was a considerable body of opinion that believed otherwise, that was prepared to support and reinforce a new, more realistic and more promising approach to Vietnam. By and large, the Secretary of Defense and the State Department and the CIA believed:

> That the North Vietnamese had the will and the resources to carry on the war indefinitely against unlimited bombing;

> That the South Vietnamese showed little prospect of ever being able to conduct their end of the war without extensive American military support including, the use of air power and combat troops;

> That pacification wasn't working and showed little hope of working over the long haul;

> That B-52s were a doubtful asset except for close-in tactical support of combat operations;

> That there was something to be said for promoting accommodations on the local level, in the districts and villages and provinces, between the government people and the Viet Cong;

> That neither this country's standing in the world nor the fate of Southeast Asia, hinged on the outcome of the Vietnamese struggle.

But Mr. Nixon ignored the best part of this counsel and so here we are, having dropped more bombs in the last three years than in all of the five years of the Johnson administration and having suffered more than one-third of all the American casualties that have been suffered in this war-and still with no solution. So it is no longer enough-now that we have seen the Kissinger Papers-to be told that this is not Mr. Nixon's fault because he didn't lead us into it. That's true; he didn't. But he had running room in early 1969 - much more than we knew. And because he didn't use it, Mr. Nixon can't be pictured any longer as the hapless prisoner of past policy. The message from the Kissinger Papers is plain. Just as the responsibility for the early Vietnam involvement and the later build-up, may have been, progressively, Dwight D. Eisenhower's and John F. Kennedy's and Lyndon B. Johnson's, what we are now confronted with, for better or worse, is Richard M. Nixon's war.

WASHINGTON POST 20 April 1972 P1

Debate Over Bombing
Rages on Capitol Hill

By Spencer Rich and Mary Russell

Washington Post Staff Writer

The Vietnam issue dominated Capitol Hill yesterday, as the Senate debated the war for five hours and the House Democratic Caucus, starting a series of votes that continues today, narrowly rejected a demand for an end to all American fighting in Indochina within 30 days.

The caucus vote on this was 105 to 97.

Rep. Robert F. Drinan (D-Mass.) and other supporters of the 30-day deadline have switched to a somewhat milder substitute being sponsored by Democratic Whip Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. (D-Mass.), and are optimistic about passing it today.

The O'Neill language calls the bombing of North Vietnam "a dangerous escalation," puts the caucus on record in favor of setting a specific termination date for the war, and directs the House Foreign Affairs Committee to report out legislation within a month setting some such deadline.

O'Neill's language will be challenged by several caucus members who prefer simply to condemn North Vietnam's attack on South Vietnam across the DMZ. But the O'Neill proposal, if adopted, would be by far the strongest antiwar statement ever to pass the House Democratic Caucus.

Before yesterday's caucus session, Secretary of State William P. Rogers made an unusual Capitol Hill appearance at the State Department's weekly briefing in the Foreign Affairs Committee hearing room.

He told House members that North Vietnam is "the culprit" for shelling cities and killing civilians. Although his talk was applauded, Rep. Bob Eckhardt (D-Tex.) said afterward that he didn't think any minds were changed.

In the five-hour Senate debate, organized by Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) demanded more bombing of North Vietnam. Democrats blasted President Nixon as risking endless war in Vietnam, escalation of the conflict into a battle with the Soviet Union and possible collapse of the nuclear arms limit talks—all for the sake of protecting the Thieu regime indefinitely.

Defending the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong as completely justified, Goldwater introduced a resolution condemning the North Vietnam-se action across the DMZ, calling on North Vietnam to "end its aggression against the people of South Vietnam," and in effect (though not in specific language) endorsing the

bombing.

He demanded immediate consideration of the proposal by the Senate, but was blocked by Acting Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), who said it should first be studied by a committee—probably Foreign Relations.

Goldwater said later that if he can't force a vote on the measure today, he will introduce it as an amendment to the State Department authorization bill due to reach the floor next week.

"If a Russian ship is hit in Haiphong harbor," said the 1964 GOP presidential candidate, "that's too damn bad. I hope we hit them all... They are enemies; I would rather blow the living daylights out of Haiphong than lose one more" American soldier.

During the Senate debate, several GOP senators, and particularly GOP National Chairman Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kans.), repeatedly charged that Democrats, having started the war under President John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson were new making "an effort to foist the Vietnam war on President Nixon."

Dole noted that Mr. Nixon had already withdrawn nearly 500,000 men and is moving to end the conflict altogether.

Although most of yesterday's Senate speeches were set pieces, senators quickly got down to what appears to be the central argument: is President Nixon really moving to end the war as rapidly as possible, or is he seeking to secure the indefinite survival of the Thieu regime before fi-

nally ceasing all ground, air and artillery combat operations? If the latter, are the risks worth it?

One Democratic senator after another took the floor charge that, in fact, the President hasn't any intention of finally ending the war until the future of the Thieu regime is assured, and to declare that even the possible loss of South Vietnam may not be worth the risk and the cost.

"He is escalating the amount of prestige the United States is putting on the line in order to protect the Thieu regime," said John V. Tunney (D-Calif.).

Democrats said continued massive U.S. bombing can threaten a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union if its ships are hit, wreck the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks—on the brink of success, disrupt the precarious new relations with China—and all for a regime with no real strategic value to the united States.

"The only reason that was ever suggested as justifying the cost of the war was to protect against China. It there still any justification for this demanded Frank Church (Idaho).

When the President was trying to normalize relations with China, it didn't make sense to fight a bloody war in Indochina as a defense against China, Church contended.

"If we choose to escalate our aid to the south, the Russians and China may choose to escalate their aid to the North," Cranston said.

He said the President has simply shifted the emphasis of U.S. military intervention from ground troops to air and sea forces.

"We cannot bomb North Vietnam into submission," said Thomas F. Eagleton (D-Mo.). "Time and again, our past experience has shown that, if anything, their resolve will be strengthened."

Republicans vehemently denied that the escalation of bombing is part of a long-term plan to defend the Thieu regime forever. Howard H. Baker (R-Tenn.) and Dole insisted that the President is moving toward a rapid end of U.S. involvement

WASHINGTON POST 25 APRIL 1972

# Vietnam: Still No End in Sight

North Vietnam, despite ferocious pummeling by American airpower, is pressing its now almost month-old offensive on three major fronts. South Vietnam, showing itself to be less dispirited than many of its American critics, is still very much in the fight. Thousands are dead; tens of thousands more are refugees. The end is not in sight.

While the battle rages, no final verdict on it is possible. But as we all know from past experience, even when the battle is ended, no common verdict on it will be possible. In a war like this one, what counts is not the residual military situation, whatever it is, but the political judgment placed upon it, necessarily an arbitrary affair. In just this element of arbitrariness, we have argued, lies Mr. Nixon's saving chance to go the route once suggested by Senator Aiken: to announce victory—or more accurately, mission accomplished—and, pausing only to reclaim the prisoners, to get out.

Not only the tragedy of the war commends such a course to Mr. Nixon but the American investment in improved relations with the Soviet Union and— to the extent that it is of importance to him—his own electoral fortunes in the fall. The Kremlin, by limiting its reaction and by continuing preparations for the pending summit, has shown itself hopeful that the President will succeed in his evident attempt to bring the North Vietnamese offensive to an end before the summit begins. For the moment, Moscow seems to regard its provision of hardware to Hanoi, including hardware used in the South, as proof enough of its great-power and socialist credentials alike. It is not "blinking." Whether Moscow can maintain the internal political equilibrium necessary to do business with Washington a month hence is something else again.

We continue to be astonished that Mr. Nixon, supposedly an astute man of the world, would choose to portray the current North Vietnamese initiative as a Soviet responsibility. What American purpose does it serve to try to corner Moscow, and in this particular corner? By the same token, we are dismayed that Mr. Nixon or anyone else might think that the United States, after all it has done to aid Saigon, somehow needs to do more in order to prove it can't be pushed around. The essence of

statemanship is the recognition of proper limits. We had thought that was what the vaunted "Nixon Doctrine" was all about.

If Mr. Nixon's rhetorical and military over-reaction to the Hanoi offensive damages the summit and Soviet-American relations, that is one thing. Even if it does not, his Vietnam policy will be in tatters. The President's summit in Peking cost him—and a welcome overdue loss it was—the United States' previous anti-Chinese rationale for fighting in Vietnam. Even a moderately successful summit in Moscow could cost him as well the anti-Soviet rationale that he has used so persistently, and so intemperately, for the last month.

Meanwhile at home, the new bombing splurge, revealing Mr. Nixon's patent lack of faith in his own "Vietnamization" program, has revived and strengthened the forces opposing him both on the war and at the polls. The Senate seems about to demand again—admittedly, to uncertain effect—that funds for fighting in Indochina be cut off by year's end, pending return of the POWs. For the first time, Democrats in the House have ordered its now-willing Foreign Affairs Committee to report a bill containing a similar demand. Some young people have taken to the streets, others to the hustings; the McGovern candidacy, especially in the Massachusetts primary today, is riding an anti-Nixon anti-war wave. The thrust of all these expressions is that, despite administration bows to a vicious phantom right, the country does not clamor for the "victory" or for the independent anti-Communist regime in Saigon which are the apparent goals of Mr. Nixon. The country simply wants him to fulfill his own pledge to end the American role in the war.

We do not contend Mr. Nixon has irretrievably destroyed either the country's political and moral decompression, or the Moscow summit, or the underpinnings of his supposed "new" foreign policy. We do believe that he has put all of these at considerable and unnecessary risk. That he should care to make his own political path steeper is his business. That he should add to the country's turmoil and confusion, and that he should put the United States at a disadvantage in dealings with the Soviet Union, are matters of legitimate public alarm.

ing the money requested or force a change in policy by cutting the funds.

Congress, what some revisionists would like us to believe, are three of the above processes were utilized by Congress in the instance of Vietnam. War-powers bill or no war-powers bill, Vietnam would still be with us based on what happened in Indochina. In fact, Vietnam is a case history in proving why the authors of the war-powers bill are badly mistaken in assuming that their bill will stop future Vietnams. fact is the bill would not even have stopped Vietnam. In the words of a Washington Star editor, this contention "is a monumental piece of historical hogwash."

It has now been judicially determined that Congress was involved in the expansion of the Vietnam War from its inception. The representatives of the people in Congress have played a broad role in authorizing both the onset of military measures in Indochina as well as each expansion of the American presence there.

On top of these very determined congressional statements, there is a broad policy announcement by Congress included in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1963, which shows that Congress knew there was a war going on in Vietnam and knew [we] were committed to that struggle. This provision declares that economic and military assistance authorized by the act should be used in Vietnam "to further the objectives of victory in the war against communism."

A year later, but before Tonkin Gulf, President Johnson requested and obtained from Congress an additional $250,000,000 of military aid earmarked for increasing the American advisory mission in Vietnam and expanding the Air Force of South Vietnam. Here was a clear-cut and visible opportunity to prevent a future escalation of our Indochina activity. What did Congress do? It voted all the funds which the President had requested.

This brings us forward to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which those of us who were here can remember was avowedly aimed at meeting the United States obligation under SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization). The resolution frankly speaks of taking "all necessary steps" including "the use of armed forces." But we do not have to stop with the resolution itself. Less than nine months later, President Johnson asked Congress for additional support of the U.S. in Vietnam. He sought $700 million to increase number of American troops in South Vietnam and expressly informed Congress he would regard a vote for the appropriation as a vote of approval for his policy in Indochina. Need I add that Congress approved the money by an almost unanimous vote?

A year afterward, in 1966, President Johnson submitted a whopping $133,000,000 supplemental appropriation request meant mainly to fund the cost of continued military operations in Indochina. The bills implementing his request became the focus for a full national debate complete with televised hearings by the Foreign Relations Committee on the proper American policy for Southeast Asia. Congress concluded the whole affair by approving each dollar for waging the war that the President had sought.

Mr. President, the list goes on and on. I could detail at least 24 statutes in which Vietnam [has figured] over the past two decades and [Congress] has authorized the conduct of that campaign. These collaborations enacted after full and open debate, placed Congress knowingly and foursquare behind U.S. military operations in Southeast Asia. These actions were taken thoughtfully and after a full explanation of what the implications were. None can now claim innocence of what he was voting about.

## Exploded Justification

The real story is that Presidents and their Cabinet members have historically spent an enormous amount of time working with Congress and striving to put the two branches in unison. It would be folly to alter this long-standing Constitutional practice by a mere statute. Even more, it would be a falsehood to use the tragedy of Vietnam as the fulcrum of a contest with the President by a Congress which was wholly involved in the policies it now questions.

Mr. President, Congress does not need new legislation to give it a place in the political command centers. It already has a very forceful and effective problem-making position. Through its power of the purse, Congress has basic control over the size and strength of the military slews with which the President can wage war.

## Senator Javits

I WOULD like to read, although I have read it before, because it is so pertinent, with respect to whether it should be the 500 men in Congress who would make the decision or one man with a staff who would make the decision, the words Abraham Lincoln, who as a member of the Congress said in connection with the Mexican War in 1848:

> The provision of the Constitution giving the warmaking power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our convention undertook to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.

Mr. President, on this issue I take my stand with Abraham Lincoln.

There are circumstances, as we have recognized in this bill, where the celerity of a decision is absolutely imperative for the security of the nation.

The bill providentially takes care that the President may have his full Constitutional power. This is not a Constitutional change, but it exercises the authority Congress has to make the necessary laws to implement Constitutional power by codifying the methodology, the procedure, which will be engaged, when we face the kind of situation in which the President has to act, and we want him to act.

## Professor's Testimony

Then, there is an opportunity for the representatives of the people, the House and the Senate, to join and determine whether they come to the same conclusion, in the exercise of their own enumerated Constitutional war powers.

There is a very significant point respecting this bill in the testimony of Prof. Alexander Bickel of Yale Law School, who testified strongly as to the Constitutionality of this bill, in discussing just such a situation as Vietnam, which the senator from Arizona discussed, and which was discussed in committee. We wanted to know how does there come about a quantitative change in the action taken by the President. We confirm in this bill Constitutional authority to take action in the event of sudden attack. Debates in the Constitutional Convention and other subsequent holdings use that wording. We confirm that power.

At what point does the state of affairs which flows from sudden attack become war? Professor Bickel explains that most admirably in one sentence. He said:

> But there comes a point when a difference of degree achieves the magnitude of a difference in kind.

That is the pivot of the issue. What happens when the President, as Commander-in-Chief, "repels a sudden attack" and that leads us into war, triggering the war powers of Congress? The Constitution, characteristically, is silent. So we have chosen the 30-day test in that regard. We have no illusions that that is a perfect answer but we believe that it is the best that a group of men ... could develop as a test of automacity, when a question of degree has brought about a change in kind, and we are no longer "repeelling a sudden attack" but we are faced with a war.

## Commander-in-Chief

At that moment the Congress, as provided by the Constitution, becomes the body whose decision is necessary to commit this nation to what has become an emergency of a different kind, to wit, an emergency of war. I refer to the powers of Congress in general; it is the President who has the specific power as Commander-in-Chief. We have shown by research what the Continental Congress defined as the role of the Commander-in-Chief and his relation to Congress.

WASHINGTON POST

14 April 1972 P1.

# War Power Limit Voted By Senate

By Spencer Rich

Washington Post Staff Writer

The Senate overrode Nixon administration objections yesterday and voted 68 to 16 for legislation to limit the President's powers to wage undeclared wars.

Sens. William B. Spong (D-Va.) and Jacob K. Javits (R-N.Y.), two of the chief sponsors, said the wide bipartisan support for the measure reflected the desire of both the Senate and the American people that Congress begin asserting its constitutional right to determine when the nation shall go to war—instead of leaving such decisions basically to the President.

"The Senate realizes that the American people expect greater participation on the question of when the nation goes to war," Spong told reporters after the final vote.

The bill spells out emergency situations in which the President may commit the armed forces to combat without first obtaining the approval of Congress, but provides that any such emergency action must cease within 30

days unless Congress specifically authorizes it to continue.

The emergency situations in which the President may act include an attack on the U.S. or its armed forces, or imminent threat of such an attack, or a threat to the lives of U.S. nationals in other countries or on the high seas.

No existing treaty would be automatically self-executing. However, subject to the 30-day limitation, emergency action also could be taken where authorized by some area resolution, such as the Formosa resolution.

Under an amendment inserted on the Senate floor to ease fears of some critics that the bill might tie the President's hands, the chief executive could ignore the 30-day limitation where U.S. troops,

disengaging from combat, were under direct threat of attack.

Javits and the other sponsors made no immediate move to send the Senate bill to conference with the House, which has already passed a much weaker measure of its own.

The House version merely requires the President to report to Congress when he initiates military operations without a prior declaration of war. It imposes no restrictions or limitations on such action.

The Senate bill—the first of its kind ever passed by either chamber, according to sponsors—was two years in the making and was finally brought to the floor with Javits, Spong, Thomas F. Eagleton (D-Mo.) and Armed Services Committee Chairman John Stennis (D-Miss.) as its chief sponsors.

Stennis' assurances that the restrictions in the measure wouldn't prevent the President from taking emergency action to protect the United States and its armed forces in any sudden crisis were a major factor in clearing the way for passage.

The most important background factor in passage of the bill was dissatisfaction with the Vietnam war. There was widespread feeling that President Johnson had unilaterally enlarged the war beyond the scope intended by Congress, and that such a decision by one man should not be allowed to happen again.

Critics of the bill charged that it could paralyze the nation in an emergency, block a show-of-force (short of actual commitment of troops) to intimidate an enemy, make the NATO treaty meaningless and handcuff any possible response to an attack on Israel. Without endorsing all these charges, the administration said it opposed the bill because it might be restrictive and suggested that the whole matter would better be handled by constitutional amendment.

In the final vote, J. Glenn Beall (R-Md.) was the only Maryland or Virginia senator opposing the bill. Republicans split 29 to 13 for the bill, Democrats 39 to 3. Spong, Javits and Stennis all conceded that getting the measure through the House would be a major difficulty, but all predicted that some war powers limitation would ultimately be passed by Congress.

NEW YORK TIMES 28 APRIL 1972

Negotiation Again

The return of the United States to the Vietnam peace
conference in Paris and the imminent arrival of North
Vietnamese Polítboro member Le Duc Tho, presumably
renewed high-level private talks, are the first fruits
of President Nixon's critical decisions in the wake of
the Brezhnev talks in Moscow. These decisions
negotiations and to continue withdrawing
from South Vietnam—outweigh
significance the unfortunate rhetoric with which Mr.
ixon surrounded them in his television address to the
ation. For the moment, what the President does is far
more important than what he says.

Mr. Kissinger reportedly remains convinced that the
orth Vietnamese military offensive in South Vietnam is
an attempt to improve the Communist bargaining posi-
tion in Paris and that there is a possibility of a settle-
ment once the relative strength of the forces on the
round is established. It is in the deepest interest of the
United States and the South Vietnamese people to explore
its possibility steadily, persistently and without dead-
nes as long as the other side is prepared to negotiate.

The period now opening, up to the November election,
offers a better prospect for a compromise settlement in
Vietnam than has existed for a long time or may exist
or a long time afterward. Hanol knows that President
ixon's interest in ending the war will never be greater
than it is now and that his military reactions after
ovember, if re-elected for four years, are less pre-
 dictable.

Washington, for its part, now knows that Communist
military power in South Vietnam has not faded away.
ietnamization clearly can not end the war—or the
american involvement, so long as a President determined
to back Saigon with airpower and seapower remains in
office. Only a negotiated settlement can terminate this
conflict.

for a settlement exists. The Kissinger-Le Due
last year reached agreement in principle on
seven points of the nine-point Communist peace proposal.
The critical issue that needs to be resolved is the nature
of the interim coalition government, to be confirmed by
elections, that will replace the Thieu regime. Private talks
on this are vital.

It is a tragedy that more lives are going to be lost
and more destruction rained on the Vietnamese country-
side while the talks proceed. But if there is to be a
hope of de-escalation and a negotiated settlement, it
is vital to avoid confusion—of the kind both Mr. Nixon
and the North Vietnamese have sowed in recent days
—about the linkage between fighting in the South and
the halt in bombing the North that was established in
the so-called "understandings" of October, 1968.

The North Vietnamese, despite their current denials,
early understood that the United States reserved the
option of resuming the bombing unless they accepted
aigon at the peace table, negotiated seriously and
voided major attacks across the damilitarized zone
(DMZ) and against South Vietnam's larger cities, Saigon,
angan and Huh. But there was no understanding on
communist military action elsewhere in South Vietnam.
intermittent Communist offensives have continued since
1968, and so has allied military action in the South.

President Nixon is setting new conditions, which are
not at all in the American interest, when he insists
that the Communists halt their offensives other than
not below the DMZ and threatens to continue the bomb-
ing and withdraw again from the peace talks unless

the American forces are prepared to make a com-
promise settlement—and no one can be sure of that—
Mr. Nixon will have to eat much of Wednesday's rhetoric
to meet them halfway. That rhetoric may be designed to
hold Congress in sway and to appease the President's
conservative constituency and his military advisers. But
it also echoes the deeply-held views of his own past,
a past with which it is painful—but possible—for him
to break.

If the North Vietnamese are prepared to make a com-
promise settlement—and no one can be sure of that—
Mr. Nixon will have to eat much of Wednesday's rhetoric
to meet them halfway. That rhetoric may be designed to
hold Congress in sway and to appease the President's
conservative constituency and his military advisers. But
it also echoes the deeply-held views of his own past,
a past with which it is painful—but possible—for him
to break.

The imaginative openings toward Peking and Moscow
that Mr. Nixon has initiated in the past year show him
to be capable of negotiating peace in Vietnam. If the
opportunity arises. What is essential is that the oppor-
tunities that may exist for negotiating a compromise
be pursued now with determination and vigor.

BALTIMORE SUN

27 APRIL 1972

Return to the Table in Paris

That the United States and South
Vietnam have agreed to return to-
day to the peace-talk table in Paris
must be counted a good thing, a
sign of possible movement, even
though the two sides face immedi-
ate new disagreement. The United
States, as President Nixon empha-
sized last night, will at once press
for an end to the "flagrant, blatant
North Vietnamese invasion" of the
South, which is not the way North
Vietnam and the Viet Cong see the
situation. "The American adminis-
tration," says a Viet Cong state-
ment, "persists in putting forth
prior conditions to negotiations,
pursues its policy of Vietnamizing
the war and undertakes military
adventures in South and North
Vietnam." The Viet Cong purpose
in the negotiations, the statement
goes on, remains what it was be-
fore the talks were broken off, a
settlement on the terms advanced
on behalf of the Provisional Revo-
lutionary Government of the Re-
public of South Vietnam.

It looks like the same old stale-
mate; but there may be more here
than meets the eye. Though Mr.
Nixon's decision to return to the
negotiations could be in part a re-
action to political criticism, the
fact remains that on its face it
reverses his earlier decision that
to continue negotiations under exist-
ing conditions would be fruitless.
That is, we have a distinct sugges-
tion that conditions have changed.

How they have changed, and
why, is yet to be made clear. One
guess is that an understanding has
been reached under which new
secret discussions will take place
as the talks around the table pro-
ceed, or even seemingly fail to pro-
ceed. There is much speculation
too as to what part Mr. Kissinger's
trip to Moscow may have played
in the latest developments. As to
this, it is interesting to note that
the 1969 National Security Council
study of Vietnam, just revealed,
included the information that the
Soviet Union helped at "several
critical points" in getting the Paris
negotiations started, while at the
same time continuing its flow of
military equipment to North Viet-
nam. Has Moscow now made its
own decision to assume a more
active role in pushing for settle-
ment? It seems at least a possibil-
ity, or perhaps we should say at
least a hope.

SENATE JAVITS ... CONTINUED

to withdraw his command of the forces, but subject
to the orders of Congress.

But Mr. President, that is all you have. The President is Commander-in-Chief. He has no general authority beyond that, but Congress does, and Congress has the general authority, in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution—

> To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States or in any department or officer thereof.

That includes the President of the United States.

So it is Congress which would proceed in this matter, with authoritative Constitutional power, rather than the President. The President is being deprived of nothing. If anything, he is being confirmed in powers which are at most implied by his designation as Commander-in-Chief.

I come to the final point the senator from Arizona referred to and that is whether or not the route for Congress is not the appropriations route. ...

The difficulty with the appropriations route has been demonstrated very clearly, exactly in this Vietnam War. In the first place, does not this counsel to rely only on an appropriations cutoff assail reason, elementary reason? You have in the Constitution the provision that Congress shall declare war. Leave everything else out.

An action of retaliation against an alleged attack on an American destroyer took place in an afternoon and resulted in the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. The sequel to that is what? It is eight years of war, 50,000-plus deaths, almost 300,000 war casualties, over $100 billion in treasure. Mr. President, what is war? Are we so blind we cannot see it? Or will we permit our judgment to be obfuscated by our unwillingness to accept responsibility?

That is what is at stake, Mr. President. That is what was at stake in the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, and that is what is at stake in this bill. Will we jointly with the President undertake to make this awful decision, or we will we shunt it off to him, as we did in the Gulf of Tonkin matter?

The senator from Montana (Mike Mansfield), with all the prestige in the world, proposes the Mansfield Amendment in a money bill in the Senate, and he cannot get to first base on it. Why? Because at that point the issue is all tangled up. Are we going to support our men in the field? This money is not only for men in the field; it also goes for camps and post stations everywhere else. Are we going to bring this American democracy to a halt by denying the President moneys while we are in the middle of a war, and let him look like a fool in the eyes of the world?

Are we impotent? If we cannot do it through the money route for reasons we consider good and sufficient, are we tied to some shibboleth that the President is likened to the divine rule of kings? He would be the first man to deny it and lay down his life to deny it. I know it. That is a very important precedent in modern times. And yet that is the argument that is made against this bill.

NEW YORK TIMES 15 APRIL 12

## The War Powers

There is no doubt that the authors of the Constitution intended that the President and both houses of Congress share the awesome power to commit this nation to war. James Madison and his colleagues would be astonished—and probably horrified—at the spectacle of two administrations waging a major war for more than seven years without ever obtaining a formal declaration of war from Congress.

Having long felt that President Johnson moustetrapped them with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution into much more of a land and air commitment in Vietnam than they had ever foreseen or desired, a majority of the members of Congress finally repealed that grant of authority. Yet President Nixon continues to wage the war and has intensified the bombing on no clearer constitutional basis than a very loose interpretation of his power as Commander in Chief to protect American troops.

Short of expressly forbidding the expenditure of additional funds for any military purpose in Vietnam, a step which the House of Representatives has been reluctant to take, Congress has apparently no way to restrain Mr. Nixon's war-making proclivities in Vietnam.

But the Senate is determined to learn something from the long, painful Vietnam imbroglio and improve Congressional procedures for coping with future, foreign crises which have a war potential. By an overwhelming margin the Senate has approved the War Powers Act sponsored by Senators Javits of New York and Spong of Virginia. Although leaving the President free to cope with an unforeseen military emergency, it would require him to submit a report immediately to Congress and would forbid the use of American armed forces in any military action for longer than thirty days unless the President had obtained the express consent of Congress.

The Administration has opposed this bill because of its implicit rebuke to Mr. Nixon's free-wheeling use of his power as Commander in Chief in the current bombing and in the earlier "incursions" into Cambodia and Laos. Yet the bill does nothing more than spell out what used always to be regarded as sound constitutional practice. Approval of the bill by the House would lay the basis for a highly desirable return to the checks and balances so carefully devised by the nation's founders.

It is equally important that the Senate act on legislation offered by Senator Case of New Jersey to require approval of so-called "executive agreements" between this country and various foreign countries. The establishment of military bases, the stationing of troops and the acquisition of naval privileges can be preludes to the making of war. These agreements, too, deserve full constitutional review.

APRIL 27 APRIL 1972 13

War Data Bid Killed

BY ARTHUR SIDDON

WASHINGTON, April 26—
The House today killed an at-
tempt by doves to require the
Nixon administration to dis-
pose so-called "highly sensi-
tive" information on military
activities in Indochina.

By a vote of 270 to 113, the House tabled a resolution offered by Rep. Bella S. Abzug, N. Y., requiring the President and the Defense Department to supply war information, including a date for final termination of all United States gorund, air, and naval support to South Viet Nam.

Other Data Sought

In addition to a termination
date, Mrs. Bazug's resolution
would have required the ad-
ministration to supply informa-
tion on:

Current U. S. troop
strength in South Viet Nam
with the number of those
troops in combat.

The number of sorties,
bomb and shell tonnages, and
costs of these activities in
North and South Viet Nam for
the first 10 days in March and
first 10 days in April.

American casulaty figures
for the same two periods.

The number of sorties,
bomb and shell tonnages, the
costs of these activities in Laos
and Cambodia since Jan. 1.

Information on increases
in movements of U. S. troops,
ships, supplies, and equipment
to Southeast Asia since March
15.

Administration compli-
nce with the Mansfield
Amendment which states as
U. S. police a total withdrawal
of American support by a spe-
cific date, pending release of
American war prisoners.

The Abzug resolution had
been reported out of the House
Armed Services Committee

with a recommendation that it
not be approved by the House.

Rep. F. Edward Hebert [, La.], Armed Services Committee chairman, said the vote in his committee was 32 to 4 against the resolution.

"Much of the information sought is of a highly-sensitive nature," Hebert told the House. "It would serve little purpose to make the information available to the public."

Hebert said Defense Depart-
ment representatives hda testi-
fied before his committee, and
that the Pentagon made all the
information available to the
committee. Thiu same inform-
ation, including classified data,
is available to any member of
the House provided he agrees
not to distribute it, Hebert
said.

Mrs. Abzug argued that the
Nixon administration is pur-
posely attempting to keep Con-
gress and the public "in the
dark" about its policy.

"Of all the executive decep-
tion about the war over the
last decade, none has been
more blatant that the Nixon
administration's management
of information about its air
war," she charged.

Mrs. Abzug claimed that in-
stead of winding down the
fighting, "the administration
has substituted highly-sophi-
cated, automated war for the
ground warfare of the Johnson
years."

The only member from Illi-
nois to speak out on the resolu-
tion was Rep. Leslie Arends,
the ranking Republican on the
Armed Services Committee.
He argued that the resolution
provided no useful purpose
since all the information re-
quested is already available to
members of Congress.

However, seven of Illinois' 24
House members voted with the
doves on the resolution. The
seven, all Democrats, were
Representatives Ralph Met-
calfe, Abner J. Mikva, Morgan
Murphy, Dan Rostenkowski',
Sidney R. Yates, Roman C.
Pucinski, and George E. Ship-
ley. Rep. John Kluczynski [D.],
was not present and did not
vote.

NEW YORK NEWS

27 April 1972 P20

Laird Attacks
Congress Bid
To Curb Nixon

By D.J. SAUNDERS

Congress came under fire yes-
terday from Defense Secretary
Melvin R. Laird for attempting
to restrict the President's author-
ity to protect American GIs with-
drawing from Vietnam "by seek-
ing to deny the air and sea power
needed."

Laird also made a strong plea
for local employers to give a
"special measure of assistance"
in finding jobs for returning
Vietnam veterans.

Speaking at a luncheon of the
called his 17 years in Congress
Brooklyn Rotary Club, he re-
and said: "I find it impossible to
understand how those who sought
no limits in the years when we
were going up and up and up in
U.S. military strength in Viet-
nam today seek limits on protec-
tion of Americans as our troop
levels go down and down and
down."

Bills To Reduce Power

In recent weeks, according to
Laird, bills have been introduced
in Congress to drastically reduce
the President's war powers.

"No one should have been sur-
prised by our response" to the
current Communist offensive he
said, as the President has repeat-
edly asserted that "we would pro-
tect" our withdrawing troops.

"I have recommended the use of air power over North Viet-nam," he said, "and will continue to make such recommendations when they (the North Vietnam-ese) interfere with our withdraw-al program and endanger Ameri-can troops."

Laird said that he was "frankly
fed up with those who would com-
promise the safety of Americans
for whom the President" and he
were responsible.

Commenting on the Paris nego-
tiations to be resumed today,
Laird said that it would be "diffi-
cult to have sound effective ag-
reements" when the enemy
"shows lack of regard" for inter-
national prisoner-of-war agree-
ments.

Turning to the problem of find-

ing jobs for the Vietnam veteran.
Laird asked local employers to
"seek out qualified veterans to
fill the jobs that they have to
offer." Finding jobs, he added
can only be done on a local level.

He predicted that this year
alone the labor market would be
swelled by 700,000 who will be
discharged from the armed serv-
ices.

Laird called the Vietnam vet-
eran "better educated than the
veteran of earlier wars.

"He wants to work," Laird
added. "He is asking for the
chance to serve his nation in
peace as he did in war. If any-
one has earned his chance, if
anyone deserves a job, it is the

NEW YORK TIMES 22 APRIL 1972 (24)

C43

# Questions and Answers on the War Protest

By MAX FRANKEL

From The New York Times

WASHINGTON, April 21 —

of the difficulties with
 campus strikes and other dem-
 onstrations is that they tend
to focus attention on the be-
havior of the protesters instead

of the substance
of the protest. Be-
low is a compila-
tion of the kind of
questions that ad-
ministration and

its supporters are posing to
their critics, at least rhetori-
cally, and an effort to distil
from Congressional debates and
other discussion the responses
of those critics.

Q. Why do you always
criticize American escala-
tion and mininfze the at-
tacks and policies of the
North Vietnamese?

A. Because the conflict is
essentially a war among the
Vietnamese, because we are
intruders in a situation with
only peripheral geopolitical
rather than local interest; be-
cause the death and destruc-
tion by both sides have been
increased by our intervention
and our introduction of super-
“arms; because we are at
with a country that does
threaten us and against
which very few Americans feel
any grievance.

Q. Why do you excuse
Soviet intervention in the
same war and why would
Communist conquest of
South Vietnam represent a
more moral form of de-
struction than our defen-
sive effort?

A. The Russians have helped Hanoi only to the extent of offsetting the advantages of American power on the side of the Saigon Government; and nothing that the Vietnamese might do to each other would match the havoc caused by American intervention over more than a decade.

Q. But was not the
United States well on the
way toward complete with-
d withdrawal from the war and
before Hanoi's offensive,
showing great restraint in
the use of its power?

A. The United States was
sparing itself the heavy casual-
ties of ground combat, but it
was doing everything possible
to perpetuate the war itself
with massive equipping of the
South Vietnamese and the re-
ition of formidable American
and sea power, as we can
now see. Increasingly, Vietnam-
ization appeared to be not an
alternative to negotiation but
a substitute for it.

various offers in secret
talks in Paris, including a
case-fire and new ele-
tions under a mixed ele-
tion commission, were gen-
ine efforts to reach a
settlement?

A. The central issue has al-
ways been the distribution of
political power in Saigon. After
our involvement and commit-
ments to the Government of
President Nguyen Von Thieu,
the other side has no basis for
confidence in an American-
style Saigon-run election. And

since the United States refuses
to trust their proposals for coa-
tion, there has been no real
negotiation of the main ques-
tion and both sides look to
the battlefield to resolve it—as if
our stake in this equaled theirs.

Q. Why should we help
them topple the Thieu Gov-
ernment and give them at
the conference table the
power they have never
been able to acquire on the
battlefield?

A. Because a long as Hanoi
is willing to continue its war
of more than 20 years, our side
can never win, the South Viet-
namese will never manage
without our help and we have
neither motive nor means for
an indefinite involvement.

Q. But if North Vietnam
were really confident that
Vietnamization would fail,
why did it not wait until
after the United States has
withdrawn all its troops
and why did it not offer
the potentially embarrassing
bargain of release of
all American prisoners in
exchange for total with-
d withdrawal and an end of all
withdrawal?

A. Because it does not be-
lieve the United States will
disengage its advisers and air
and naval forces or end its aid
to Saigon unless forced to do
so by battlefield reverses and
public opinion at home; be-
cause it plans to hold the
prisoners hostage until all
those conditions are met; and
because it sees the American
election year as a time for
achieving maximum political
effect through military action.

Q. Does not the United
States bear a heavy obli-
gation to its dead and
wounded in this war, to
its prisoners of war and its

honor and sense of com-
mitment to the South Viet-
namese, even if the obli-
gations were too lightly
assumed?

A. Further bloodshed that
fails to serve the recognized
interests of the American peo-
ple can never redeem the
sacrifices already made. The
continuing demonstration of
American impotence or stub-
bergness is no way of demon-
strating honor. We have long
ago, and many times over, kept
our commitment to help the
South Vietnamese help them-
selves. The wisdom of a policy
cannot be considered irrelevant
to its perpetuation.

Q. Would you simply
walk away from the war,
let the Communists take
over South Vietnam and
leave our allies to an al-
most certainly bloody and
painful fate?

A. Give the mood of the
American people and the re-
sources at our command, the
only remaining power we have
in Indochina is the power to
negotiate for some conditions
of our total withdrawal. That
power has been diminishing
during the years of the Nixon
Administration and may be
virtually exhausted, too. But
presumably we could still ex-
tract some guarantees against
massive reprisals and some po-
litical influence for the many
South Vietnamese who do not
wish to be swallowed up by
Hanoi.

Q. What would be the
reaction of the South Kor-
cans and West Germans, to
cite two other divided na-
tions, if the United States
proved unreliable in its
commitments, or of de-
pendent nations like Israel?

A. It is the Vietnam war, not
the absence of it, that has
sapped American energy and
will and caused other nations
to doubt the value of our sup-
port. Prolonging the war will
not restore that trust, espe-
cially if our support tends to
spread destruction among the
people whom we set out to
defend. It is not just American
power but its wise use that
would impress allies.

Q. Do you think the
Russians or even the Chi-
nese could respect us and
agreements with us if they
found the United States so
weary that it would accept
humiliation in Indochina
and among its friends and
allies?

A. Failure in Vietnam is not
synonymous with defeat, and
the redirection of American re-
sources and energy would only
enhance our strength. The Rus-
sians and Chinese have to a
certain degree profited from
our preoccupation and made
diplomatic progress at our ex-
pense. Nonetheless they deal
with us because they recognize
the United States as a formid-
able power for generations to
come.

Q. Do you think the
American people would
support a humiliating re-
treat without seeking
scapegoats and damaging
the country with witch-
hunt and recrimination?

A. No failure is without pain
or consequence, but it is diffi-
cult to imagine greater division
and strife than that already
caused by the war and the
neglect of domestic reconstruc-
tion. Some politicians and
strategists might be damaged
or destroyed in the aftermath
and some even unjustly. So
what?

ARC EVENING NEWS, APRIL 30, 1972

## Smith Comments On VN War

HOWARD SMITH: Since the President's talk the other night, the war has revived - is VN a war? ... been two separate nations, which makes the present Hanoi invasion outside aggression, as the President says, or is it a civil war in which we have no part, as critics like Townsend Hoopes say.

Well, if it matters, the President is legally right. The two VN's are legally two separate nations.

To be a nation, the rules are simple. All you've got to do is to declare yourself one, then get others to recognize you as such.

South and North VN have each separately so declared and been separately recognized by up to sixty foreign countries.

To say that they are one nation because they are the same race does not hold. North and South Korea, East and West Germany are racial pairs, but legally they are separate nations.

If it is argued that these two nations agreed back in the fifties in Geneva to become a single nation it isn't quite so.

North VN, so agreed, with France, but SVN and the US did not sign the agreement.

In any case, the argument about that is irrelevant. Even if it were a civil war in VN, civil wars have never been exempt from foreign intervention like ours.

Our civil war with England, which we called the American Revolution, was won by French intervention on our side. In the Spanish and Greek civil wars of our time, foreigners intervened freely.

Indeed, they always do when it is in their interest.

The only question that matters is, is it in our national interest to intervene as we are doing in VN? All other questions are irrevelant.

NEW YORK TIMES

30 APRIL 1972 (1 MAY)

## Chance for Peace

Despite Communist military successes, the intransigent rhetoric of President Nixon's speech last week and the sterility of the first resumed session of the Paris peace conference, it is still possible that a new pathway toward ending the war may be opening in Paris on the basis of secret arrangements reportedly reached with the Soviet Union and North Vietnam. There is some ground for hope that a serious effort at negotiations may at last be getting under way. It is noteworthy that Washington has refrained for the last two weeks from bombing the Hanoi-Haiphong heartland, while North Vietnam's secret negotiator, Polit Bureau mem ber Lee Duc Tho, is now en route to Paris.

The present talk-fight situation doctrinally suits the Communists. They need to enlarge the territories under their control before agreeing to the cease-fire that any settlement must include. Obviously it is to their interest to discourage the old Washington-Saigon illusion that the Communists have "faded away." However, there evidently have been hints from Moscow that secret meetings with Lee Duc Tho would prove worthwhile and Hanoi has shown itself anxious to resume negotiations. The projected secret talks, to succeed, will have to focus on the central issue unresolved when they were suspended last fall, a political settlement. That settlement hinges on the nature and duration of the interim coalition government, to be confirmed by elections, that will replace the Thieu regime.

President Nixon's restatement of exaggerated war aims in his television speech last week brings into question his willingness to accept compromises that are necessary to end the war. In language reminiscent of President Johnson's, he still appeared committed to American military operations in Indochina for the indefinite future. But at the same time his obvious interest in ending the war before November—and the unpredictability of his military action if he should be re-elected—provides Hanoi with an incentive to move toward a settlement now. The next few months offer the best chance in a long while for a genuinely negotiated peace settlement if both sides—ours as well as theirs—are ready to seize the opportunity.

NEW YORK TIMES

29 APRIL 1972 (1 MAY)

To the Editor:

It may be, as Secretaries' Rogers and Laird keep saying, an entirely new war in Vietnam (in which case we should ask why it was so badly anticipated). But the Vietnam problem itself remains the same. There have always been only three possibilities. One is military victory. Our side can achieve it only through massacres and risks of international confrontation disproportionate to the importance of the stakes for America's national interest. The second is perpetual American involvement to preserve Saigon. This is bound to breed crisis after crisis indecisively. The third is a negotiated settlement, under our auspices or after our withdrawal. Due to our failure to win, this settlement inevitably would have to come close to Hanoi's demands.

For years we have behaved like a trapped animal trying to break out of a cage. In the process we have accumulated destruction, damaged our reputation, divided our nation and mortgaged our policy. The latest attempt to escape from reality is as senseless and odious as previous attempts to reach the unreachable.

If the Administration fears the im-

pact of a military defeat of our allies in Asia, it should negotiate a political settlement. If it fears the impact of such a deal on them, it should know that this could hardly be worse than the impact of our recent economic moves, and even our wiser political ones, taken with inadequate preparation and consultation. To shed tears over Hanoi's violation of the 1968 "understandings" is to forget that they were based on the assumption of productive negotiations, which we have ourselves publicly broken off. To bewail Soviet support for Hanoi ill behooves those without whose support Saigon would not survive, despite all the publicity for Vietnamization.

Short of genocide, we cannot oblige Hanoi to give up its objective. As for ours—the preservation of a non-Communist South—it cannot be reached cheaply and is not worth the price already paid inconclusively. The rock which the American Sisyphus has had to push back up so many years has crushed too many people in Indochina, and the best things in us.

STANLEY HOFFMANN
Professor of Government
Harvard University

Cambridge, Mass., April 20, 1972

121

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

28 APRIL 1972

# A better way than bombing:
escalate troop withdrawal

President Nixon's latest televised report to the American people on the war in Vietnam had a familiar ring. It was, in slightly different language, the message he has given repeatedly in periodic announcements of additional U. S. troop withdrawals. And some of the rhetoric — "we will not be defeated and we will never surrender" — was painfully reminiscent of Lyndon Johnson.

It must be said in Mr. Nixon's favor that he has held doggedly to his course of slow but steady reduction of American ground forces. As he recalled Wednesday night, there were 549,000 U. S. troops in Vietnam when he took office in January of 1969. American casualties were running close to 300 a week and draft calls were 30,000 a month.

Now the number of U. S. troops in Vietnam is down to 69,000 — or will be by next Monday — and the President has announced another withdrawal of 20,000 during May and June. Thus, by July 1, there will be 49,000 remaining — a reduction of half a million in less than three and a half years. Monthly draft calls, after a three-month suspension early this year, have been resumed at a rate of 5,000 a month.

But American casualties continue, even though at a much reduced rate compared with previous years. They totaled 88 last week — 10 killed and 78 wounded — according to Thursday's report from U. S. command headquarters in Saigon.

That's 88 too many.

And troop withdrawal has become a means not of "winding down" U. S. participation in the war but of shifting the emphasis from land to air. In the past three weeks, since the start of the North Vietnamese offensive in South Vietnam, some 20,000 additional U. S. Navy and Air Force personnel have been committed to the war. Four American aircraft carriers are on war duty in waters off Vietnam, an all-time high. And it was

disclosed by the Pentagon, just several hours before Mr. Nixon addressed the nation, that 36 more F-4 fighter bombers will be sent to U. S. bases in Thailand in the next few days.

Moreover, the President emphasized that he has no intention of calling off the massive bombing of North Vietnam. "I have ordered that our air and naval attacks on military installations in North Vietnam be continued until the North Vietnamese stop their offensive in South Vietnam. I have flatly rejected the proposal that we stop the bombing of North Vietnam as a condition for returning to the negotiating table."

The last reference was to the resumption of peace talks in Paris, announced after Mr. Nixon's foreign policy adviser, Henry Kissinger, had returned from a secret trip to Moscow. We share the President's hope that the war can be ended at the negotiating table, but it is folly to believe that bombing the North will be instrumental in achieving that goal.

Trying to bomb the North Vietnamese into submission is a dead-end road America traveled before, under President Johnson, with tragic results. To go that way again is a wasteful squandering of lives.

In lieu of positive results in the Paris talks, Mr. Nixon continues to pin his hopes on Vietnamization. But if the South Vietnamese army can't "hack it" at this late date without escalation of U. S. air support, how can Vietnamization be called a success?

The precarious military situation that prevails in South Vietnam should not be minimized. The safety of remaining American forces is the paramount consideration. But the most effective way to insure their safety is to expedite their withdrawal, not prolong U. S. participation in a war that already has claimed far more lives than could ever be justified.

WASHINGTON POST

1 MAY 1972 Pg 1

# U.S. Open To Limited Settlement

By Hedley Burrell

Washington Post Staff Writer

Secretary of State William P. Rogers said yesterday that the United States is willing to work out a military agreement affecting its forces in Indo-china while leaving strictly political problems to be settled at a later date.

"We have proposed something of that kind in private talks in the past and the proposals still stand," Rogers said.

This type of limited agreement would involve a cease-fire, withdrawal of U.S. troops and the return of POWs but would not sort out such thorny political problems as the makeup of the Saigon government or the method by which it should be chosen.

Rogers said, however, that he has no reason to believe the North Vietnamese might be more willing to accept these proposals now than they were in the past.

In Paris, Le Duc Tho, the North Vietnamese Politburo member associated with previous secret peace talks, reiterated general Hanoi positions but departed from standard phraseology.

"We do not in any fashion want to impose a 'Communist regime' in South Vietnam as Mr. Nixon claims," Tho said. This was believed to be the first time that North Vietnam has formally spoken out so forcefully on this issue.

Tho, returning to Paris from Hanoi, said negotiations with the United States would continue. On this occasion, he failed to mention the Vietcong's 7-point peace plan by

name, although he did spell out many of its demands.

The failure to mention the plan, in a five-page double-spaced statement, raised hopes that Tho may have brought new instructions and that the North Vietnamese may soften what the United States has felt were rigid demands in previous Communist peace packages, Washington Post foreign correspondent Jona-than Randal reported from Paris.

Randal reported that observers also were struck by Tho's mention of Article 14C of the 1954 Geneva Accords ending the French-Indochinese War. That article barred peacetime retaliation against any participant.

He did not specifically mention new secret talks of the kind he had conducted since 1968 with U.S. officials, but his frequent emphasis in his airport statement on the chances of negotiations leading to a peaceful settlement were clearly intended to suggest that he is ready to resume the talks. They were broken off last fall amid mutual recrimination.

U.S. strategists suspect that the U.S. offer to withdraw all forces by a fixed date in return for a cease-fire and the return of POWs—which North Vietnam spurned in 1971—may be served back to Washington by Hanoi with some variations.

Rogers, interviewed on "Meet the Press" (NBC WRC), said he did not know who would handle any private talks for the United States.

"There may be different people at different times," he said.

Asked if he is willing to push for a coalition government in Saigon in an effort to reach a settlement, Rogers replied, "Those matters are matters that have to be decided by the Vietnamese."

The secretary said that if the Communists, in demanding a "government of national concord," mean they want the views of the people to be respected, "then there should be some way to negotiate a solution."

But he added, "We don't believe they mean that. We think they want to control South Vietnam."

On other aspects of the war, Rogers said:

* "The next three weeks are going to be extremely difficult for this country. President Nixon has done everything a reasonable man could do to negotiate a settlement and he is determined not to surrender, not to be defeated and not to have South Vietnam taken over by military force." (Rogers did not spell out why the next three weeks will be such a challenge).

* If the enemy is serious about negotiating a settlement, the United States is willing to seek an accord. "As you know, we have indicated a willingness to settle either militarily or have a settlement including both military and political factors."

* He did not know if the Soviets have advised Hanoi to re-enter negotiations and offer political sessions but "we hope so." He said it also was hoped that the Soviets would stop sending offensive weapons to Hanoi.

* "I don't think it is possible to negotiate a settlement finally while the fighting is going on, but certainly there is no reason we can't negotiate as we are going to do while the fighting is continuing."

* The United States is not stuck forever with a policy of bombing and shelling but it will not allow the present North Vietnamese invasion to succeed.

Rogers, questioned about the prospects of a SALT treaty with the Soviets, said he and Gerard Smith, U.S. ambassador to the talks, would meet today with Mr. Nixon.

2Y3

122

WASHINGTON POST 29 April 1972 P1

# U.S. Strategists Suspect Hanoi May Use '71 Offer

By Murrey Marder

Washington Post Staff Writer

An American offer to withdraw all U.S. forces from Vietnam by a fixed date in return for a cease-fire and the release of prisoners, which North Vietnam spurned in 1971, might be served back to Washington by Hanoi with variations on it, U.S. strategists suspect.

Paradoxically, the possibility that North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho might move in that direction in secret talks in Paris is arousing a mixture of hopes and apprehensions in side the Nixon administration.

Tho, who is now on his way back to Paris, "simply rejected" that proposal which was presented to him by presidential adviser Henry A. Kissinger in a secret meeting there last May 31. U.S. strategists were not at all surprised when Tho spurned the offer out of hand.

The reasons for the rejection at that time were readily apparent to both sides: a cease-fire in the war, at that point, North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces were in a relatively passive and distinctly subordinate military position in South Vietnam, would have given great advantages to the Saigon government. In effect, the Communists would have been quitting the war, with the Saigon regime at its height of military and political supremacy.

But if North Vietnam, in the near future, should reverse course and head toward a cease-fire in place and a total U.S. troop withdrawal, it would have just the opposite military and political implications.

It would signify that Hanoi at that point was confident that it had gained enough territory, and demonstrated enough military and political momentum through its present offensive, to shake the control of the South Vietnamese government of President Nguyen Van Thieu at a time that Hanoi chooses. Or, alternatively, it would signify that

Vietnam had achieved much of its objectives as it could hope to accomplish at this time, and had put a temporary priority on getting all U.S. forces out of the Vietnamese war.

The May 31, 1971 offer by

the United States and subsequent changes in it, was publicly sketched out by President Nixon and Kissinger last January, when the President disclosed that Kissinger had 12 secret meetings with Le Duc Tho and Xuan Thuy in Paris over a 30-month period.

Kissinger said:

"On May 31 (1971), we proposed a withdrawal of American forces. We were prepared to set a deadline for the withdrawal of American forces in return for a cease-fire and the exchange of prisoners." Under those circumstances, the United States would withdraw "unilaterally; that is to say, without, an equivalent assurance of withdrawal from the other side."

This attempt "to neogitate the military issue seapartely," said Kissinger, "was simply rejected" because "the North Vietnamese said that any proposal that did not include political elements could not even be negotiated."

Subsequently, said Kissinger, the offer was amended by shortening the deadline for U.S. troop withdrawals from nine months to six months, specifying that it meant "the total withdrawal of all U.S. and allied forces," and offering an election, with President Thieu to resign one month prior to the election. North Vietnam opposed that plan on grounds that the Thieu government would still dominate such an election.

## Uncertain on Strategy

No American official, including Kissinger who conducted exploratory talks in Moscow last week on new approaches to a Vietnamese war settlement, is sure just what strategy Le Duc Tho will follow in the next round of secret Paris bargaining.

What U.S. planners do know, however, is that the ongoing Communist offensive in South Vietnam, even if blocked short of its goals, already has changed the balance in any negotiations. North Vietnam, as one administration source noted yesterday, now has "new bargaining chips on the table," as the result of its offensive, even though the full outcome is still unknown.

The United States has

mounted counterpressures—by trying to sustain the South Vietnamese forces with air support in the South, by air and naval strikes against portions of North Vietnam and by temporarily withholding further massive air raids against the Hanoi-Haiphong area—to attempt to force North Vietnam to bargain on compromise terms in Paris.

The White House and State Department declined to comment yesterday on the report by The Washington Post in Friday's editions that the United States indicated to the Soviet Union during Kissinger's talks in Moscow that it will avoid bombing the Hanoi-Haiphong area for a limited time, while the United States tests North Vietnam's intentions at the bargaining table.

State Department spokesman Charles W. Bray refused to deny or confirm the report, or to give any "public description" of U.S. bombing strategy in North Vietnam beyond what has been said previously. In diplomatic terms, that lets the report stand undisputed but officially unconfirmed.

One unusual development in the continuing military-diplo-

matic struggle was the abandonment, at least in the Chinese version, of all official pretenses that the current offensive in South Vietnam is being conducted by the Vietcong.

Le Duc Tho, at a banquet in Peking Thursday with Premier Chou En-lai and other senior Chinese officials, was quoted in a Chinese news service report broadcast in English as follows:

"In his speech, Comrade Le Duc Tho said: We are launching an offensive against the U.S. aggressors and their running dogs on the entire battlefield on Vietnam and have won some victories. This has immensely inspired our people. We are determined to win still greater victories."

U.S. specialists interpreted Tho's remarks as being aimed in great part at the Chinese themselves, to solicit greater support for the war from China, whose enthusiasm for major warfare in Vietnam has been noticeably flagging. Chou, at the banquet, praised the Communists' "brilliant victories" in the war, but his remarks were again described by U.S. experts as "very moderate" in contrast to past formulations before the warming of Sino-American relations.

NOVEMBER 1 MAY 1972 (30 APR)

## R. Nixon in Action

The most appalling aspect of President Nixon's reversion to the policy of bombing North Vietnam on a scale far greater than ever before is that it makes almost no sense at all and seems to have been motivated by a combination of neurosis and political expediency.

Nixon was and is famous that the Russians would en-ourage or tolerate such an offensive as the North Viet-nese have launched shortly before his scheduled trip to Moscow, Warsaw, Feuerstein and perhaps other diplo-matic way stations. He does not seem to consider the possibility that the Russians (or the Chinese) are either unwilling or unable to pull his chestnuts out of the fire. Nor does he seem to have analyzed the possible motives of the North Vietnamese. According to both Secretary Rogers and Secretary Laird, they have committed twelve of their thirteen combat divisions to a climactic battle in South Vietnam. They know that this will entail heavy losses and grave risks. Why have they abandoned their long-standing strategy of hit, withdraw and hit again, to adopt warfare of the World War II type, under the serious disadvantage that the South Vietnamese and the Americans have command of the air over the battlefield? There must be a compelling reason for this shift, and it could be that the North Vietnamese feel they had better hit hard now, before Nixon settles down in the Kremlin to talk business with the Russians.

In such situations, everyone looks out for himself first; allies are treasured for their usefulness and nothing else. If the American and Soviet negotiators should agree that it is to their mutual advantage to cool the war in Indochina, the Soviets might reduce their aid in the future. It is obvious that both superpowers have larger stakes in a possible cooperative relationship than in continuing to fight by proxy in Southeast Asia. Under the circumstances, the North Vietnamese have every reason to be wary of the firmness of the Russian commitment.

As Nixon sees it, he had to strike back, not because he or his advisers think the bombing raids will have much direct effect on the North Vietnamese offensive, but because if he went trampling off to Moscow without staging some retaliation, he might arouse the wrath of the right wing in his own party. At the same time, he obviously feels that he can turn the North Vietnamese offensive to temporary political advantage by using it to redefine the war and its causes. While he has carefully stayed in the background, Secretaries Rogers and Laird have been attempting to convince the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "a whole new war" was launched when the enemy violated those mysterious agreements and launched concerted attacks on its sister state of South Vietnam. This, we are asked to believe, changes the entire equation and shifts the onus for the raids—and all that may follow—to the North Vietnamese and the Russians. The Russians are to be rebuked for their aid to North Vietnam, while we have every right, apparently, to furnish 1,000 American planes and more than 500 American helicopters to Thieu, whose pilots in an air force of 40,000 men have been trained in the United States. Phony as this attempted redefinition is, it has apparently swung Senators Cooper and Aiken back into the hawk column.

Nixon's recent action should make it clear, to all those who were still deluding themselves, just where matters now stand. The war is not winding down; it has simply taken to the air, as required by domestic political considerations. There are no limitations on what we may do by way of further retaliation, short of sending combat troops back to Vietnam (those now there may not be removed on schedule) or resorting to nuclear weapons. All of this should convince the electorate that the only way to end this war is to get Nixon and his cabal out of the White House. His four years there have cost the country a fearful price, in morale, in money and property and wealth, in missed opportunities for social reconstruction, in Asian and American lives. Do we want four more years of such incompetence, irresponsibility, deception and arrogance, or have we had enough?

WASHINGTON POST 28 APRIL 1972

# The President's War Policy: Hostage to Hanoi

President Nixon addressed two audiences Wednesday to the North Vietnamese politburo and the American electorate. Although it is not easy to distinguish the separate messages he seems to have sent there, it is essential to try. To the politburo in Hanoi he said, as we read his speech:

> As soon as year's current offensive ends, and especially that part of it launched over the DMZ—whether by your decision or your decision than the United States will stop bombing the North, prevalence "Vietnamization" on the ground a success and take the necessary diplomatic overtures to arrange for complete withdrawal of its ground forces in exchange for the return of the POWs; the various Vietnamese will be left to sort out a political settlement as they will.

But Mr. Nixon also appears to be telling Hanoi that if it acts in a way to humiliate the United States—say, by imposing a Communist regime in South Vietnam or, more likely, by keeping its troops conspicuously and successfully on the offensive, especially in the provinces alongside the DMZ—then there is no deal, and harsh reprisals might be taken against the North. In short, the unspoken premise of this latest—and perhaps most reasonable—evolution of administration policy remains that North Vietnam act with a certain discretion. You can have a reasonable opportunity to gain power in Saigon, the President now says in effect, if you will not be greedy or impatient, if you will give the United States the chance to leave Vietnam without the kind of diplomatic or military humiliation that would be virtually intolerable for a great power with global commitments—and for a President facing re-election.

The question is whether there is a capability of such discretion in North Vietnam, for without it the Nixon policy is entirely bankrupt. There's the obvious rub. Hanoi may feel that discretion would only be met with a sneer in Saigon and a horselaugh in Washington. It may believe that its military prospects are good enough, and Mr. Nixon's domestic under pinnings are weak enough, to avoid any imperative of discretion. "We are resuming the Paris talks with the firm expectation that productive talks leading to rapid progress will follow," the President stated, specifying that the progress now sought consists of—and presumably is confined to—a halt to Hanoi's "invasion" and a return of the prisoners. Whether his "firm expectation" reflects a confidence perhaps based in some measure on the talks Henry Kissinger held secretly in Moscow, or is merely a wish being father to a thought, is uncertain. Past experience hardly permits one to be sanguine.

What it comes down to, then, is Hanoi's judgment of whether it has got Mr. Nixon—and Saigon—on the run. In other words, the President has made himself more than ever a hostage to Hanoi, and those who hope that Moscow can or would tip the balance decisively are, in our view,

whistling in the dark. The Kissinger-Brezhnev talks plainly did succeed in removing whatever doubts there may have been that events in Vietnam could derail the summit planned in May. This may "save" the summit but, by the same token, it denies Mr. Nixon further chance—of whatever limited value that chance might have been—to press Moscow to restrain Hanoi. The Soviet supplies that North Vietnam needs for the next month or more are obviously already in hand, and in that span Hanoi will surely determine its own policy. It takes no special prescience to observe that the course of battle will be the determining factor.

This is the principal reason, as we see it, why any American who wants Mr. Nixon to take the United States out of the war must hope that the soldiers of Saigon, with their American air and sea support, will manage to avert overall disaster and, we stress, to throw Hanoi's men back across the DMZ, the "violation" of which has been made, almost obsessively, the President's litmus test of Hanoi's good faith. Military reverses are indeed evidence of the "failure" of American policy. But military reverses are also the stuff of which Mr. Nixon would make future bad policy. There is no cheer in contemplating what a trapped Nixon, a Nixon confronting military disaster in Vietnam, might do. At this mid-battle, pre-summit, pre-election moment, it is—we say with heavy resignation—unrealistic to expect that Mr. Nixon is going to reverse himself. Hanoi would be foolish to expect such. Mr. Nixon's critics on the war are trapped in the position of having to hope that he will win, or at least that he will not appear to lose, the battle raging now.

Having said that, we must add that the part of Mr. Nixon's speech addressed, or addressed largely, to the American electorate was the President at his worst: it was reckless in its escalation of what is supposedly at stake in Vietnam, needlessly divisive in its likely impact on Americans, crude and jingoistic in tone. It would be easier to swallow if there were any objective reason to believe that such rhetoric is necessary to deter a prospective uprising on the right threatening to undermine a wise diplomatic policy—the "nightmare of recrimination" that the President likes to frighten us with. But if there ever was a potential for such an uprising, we do not think it exists now, except perhaps within the President's constituency. The apparent awe in which Mr. Nixon continues to hold that fraction of the American political spectrum, in other words, would seem to have more to do with his calculations of the stability of his own political base than with any realistic assessment of the larger American body politic. Our own guess is that most Americans are prepared to take somewhat larger risks than the President that things may not turn out entirely to our liking in South Vietnam—and to make this country considerably less of a hostage to the North Vietnamese politburo than it now appears to be.

CYD

NEW YORK TIMES

30 April 1972 (1 MAY)

# 'All We've Risked Hangs In the Balance'

WASHINGTON — Once again, an American President insisted that Vietnam was a crucial testing ground of his own and his nation's honor.

As the rival Vietnamese armies fought in bloody combat on three different fronts and United States heavy bombers roared over the battlefields, President Nixon went before the American people last Wednesday evening to reiterate his conviction that the stakes of battle may be no less than national security and world peace.

"All that we have risked and all that we have gained over the years, now hangs in the balarac," he declared.

"We will not be defeated and we will never surrender our friends to Communist aggression."

The portentous words reflected the fact that a critical juncture was at hand not only on the battlefields of Vietnam, but in the Presidency of Richard Nixon as well. For he had waged heavily on a Vietnamization policy that was now in grave jeopardy, and the threat came as he prepared for perhaps the most important foreign policy initiative of his Presidency — the trip to Moscow May 22—and the campaign for reelection that lay just beyond.

Meanwhile in Paris last week formal talks were resumed with Hanoi's representatives on a Vietnam settlement. But more significantly, the two sides had also agreed on private contacts in Paris in which they could concentrate on genuine negotiations rather than propaganda confrontations.

The new negotiations emanated from a mission by Presidential aide Henry Kissinger, who once again slipped out of sight last week—and surfaced four days later to disclose that he had not been at Mr. Nixon's side at Camp David, as the press had been told, but across the desk from Leonid Brezhnev in the Kremlin.

In the new round of negotiations, however, Mr. Nixon appears to have limited options — partly because he himself has circumscribed them. He

Has repeatedly asserted that the preservation of a non-Communist South Vietnam is an essential American war aim. Approximately one-third of the American soldiers killed in Vietnam have lost their lives since Mr. Nixon took office. His justification of these losses, as well as of the invasion of Cambodia in 1970 and the continued heavy bombing of Vietnam, has been that it was providing time for South Vietnam to train and equip its own forces to take over the fighting.

If this policy of Vietnamizing the war proves to be a failure in the first big Communist offensive in four years, the rationale for the whole Nixon stance in Vietnam would be destroyed. Small wonder, most observers felt, that Mr. Nixon judged he had no recourse except to stick with his established policy and hope that the South Vietnamese could "hack it."

Mr. Nixon's tough speech once again brought the long-simmering Vietnam debate in Congress to a boil. Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that his reaction to the speech was "one of acute depression and sadness for our country, that after all these years of destruction of life and property, there is no end to this epic tragedy in sight." Senator George McGovern denounced the Nixon thesis. "The President says we bomb to prevent a bloodbath. But his immoral and outrageous bombardment is the bloodbath," Mr. McGovern said.

Mr. Nixon had predicted a year ago that Vietnam would not be an issue in the 1972 campaign. But the sharp exchanges in Congress last week made plain that it may yet become the decisive issue in that campaign despite the fact that Mr. Nixon last week announced fulfillment of his commitment to reduce American troop strength in Vietnam to 69,000 by tomorrow—and promised to withdraw another 20,000 by July 1.

Accordingly, much may depend on what lay behind Mr. Brezhnev's quiet pressure on the United States last week to return to the Paris negotiating table. Diplomats speculated that Mr. Brezhnev must have given Mr. Kissinger solid reason to hope that some concessions might be forthcoming from the North Vietnamese. One clue was that Le Duc Tho, the North Vietnamese Politburo member with whom Mr. Kissinger negotiated secretly last year, is returning to Paris.

Diplomats disagree as to whether the Soviet Union genuinely wants to see a settlement reached in Vietnam or prefers to have the United States remain stuck in the Southeast Asian flypaper. But there is no doubt that the Russian leaders want the forthcoming summit meeting with Mr. Nixon—

where they plan to discuss arms limitation, trade and other major issues— to succeed. There is no better way to insulate that conference from the flaming Vietnam controversy than to get the antagonists engaged in fresh negotiations in Paris.

The give and take in Paris would necessarily involve some hard bargaining. Mr. Nixon in his televised talk reiterated the eight-point offer he made public last January and which he again characterized as "most generous." The President's package includes an immediate cease-fire, exchange of prisoners of war, withdrawal of United States and North Vietnamese forces from South Vietnam within six months, and new elections which would be internationally supervised.

The North Vietnamese and the Vietcong, however, have rejected the notion of holding elections while the Thieu Government remained in control in South Vietnam.

If the South Vietnamese forces manage to hold out in the battles now being waged in Vietnam, Mr. Nixon's assertion that Vietnamization has been a success might acquire a measure of credence, despite the major role played in those battles by American air power. But that would still leave Mr. Nixon with the unresolved and highly charged issue—at least insofar as the American political scene is concerned—of the prisoners of war.

The President, who appears to have an appetite for high-risk jousting with his adversaries, thus appears largely dependent at the moment on the communiqués from military headquarters in Saigon. He has, however, one ultimate recourse. He could rise above consistency—he has demonstrated before that he has no fear of that hobgoblin—and pursue a quite different policy from the one he reaffirmed on Wednesday. A policy, in other words, that might accept the possible demise of the Thieu regime, if it did not indeed guarantee its demise. But as of last week, there was no reason to believe that such might be the negotiating instructions to Henry Kissinger the next time he disappears from sight.

—WILLIAM V. SHANNON

# Mr. Nixon's Peace

By TOM WICKER

President Nixon says he wants a negotiated settlement of the war in Vietnam, but no one could prove it by the speech he made to the American people Wednesday night. He sent his ambassador back to the negotiating table in Paris, but his words make it hard to see how he could accept anything that might conceivably come of that.

Mr. Nixon's Administration long ago put the nation on notice of the dubious proposition that it should watch what he does rather than what he says; and his startling decisions to invade Cambodia, visit China and impose wage-price controls have demonstrated that his past rhetoric is no guide to his future policy. Still, in his Vietnam speech, he seemed to go far out of his way to make a negotiated settlement more difficult to achieve, and harder to present to the people.

He made such a settlement more difficult to achieve by ordering that air and naval attacks on North Vietnam continue until the North Vietnamese "stop their offensive in South Vietnam," and by proclaiming that the "first order of business" at Paris will be "to get the enemy to halt his invasion of South Vietnam..."

Surely Mr. Nixon knows that this is not realistic and that, if he is serious about a settlement, the first order of business at Paris must be the question of the future government of South Vietnam and how it is to be arrived at. That is what the war is about, and that is what a negotiated settlement must be about.

Probably, therefore, the President's apparently tougher stance was mostly bombast for the American public. Dr. Henry Kissinger is reported to believe that the outcome of the great battles now in progress will make clear the relative balance of forces, militarily in South Vietnam and politically in the United States, and, that after that balance is struck, real negotiations for a settlement can begin.

That may well be so, but unless Mr. Nixon believes the ultimate balance will be an overwhelming victory for him on both fronts, the terms in which he presented the situation to the American people are impossible to understand. He sounded far more like a leader priming his followers for a long, hard, victorious war.

Most importantly, he posed the question of support for his policy in terms of patriotism and national honor; it was only, he said, "in the Congress of the United States and among the people of the United States" that the Communists had any chance to win a victory denied them on the battlefield; but if Congress and the people would stand fast beside him, there could be "not the peace of surrender but peace with honor."

But of what would a "peace with honor" consist? To hear Mr. Nixon tell it, such a peace must "prevent the

imposition of a Communist regime on the people of South Vietnam against their will." If it did not, an "inevitable bloodbath... would follow for hundreds of thousands who have dared to oppose Communist aggression." Moreover, said the President, escalating the once-modest domino theory to globaloney, if the Communists win in Vietnam, "the risk of war in other parts of the world would be enormously increased."

In fact, history shows the "inevitable bloodbath" to be not at all inevitable. At the least, such a bloodbath could occur only following a total Communist victory and the disappearance of the million-man South Vietnamese Army. The last time Mr. Nixon conjured up the bloodbath specter (on May 8, 1970) incidentally, he said the Communists would "massacre the civilians there by the millions," which suggests that he fears a rather flexible bloodbath. Besides, what has been going on in Vietnam these many years has already been a real bloodbath.

What's more, Mr. Nixon could have as plausibly argued that continuing American involvement in a continuing Asian war is a greater barrier to improved relations among the great powers, to a useful American role in the Middle East, Europe and elsewhere, and to international stability than a negotiated settlement in Vietnam could possibly be.

Honest men might differ on these matters; but why should the President, while professing his desire for a negotiated settlement, insist to the American people that a settlement on any but his own terms would have these dire consequences? For the truth is that short of winning a military victory, Mr. Nixon cannot have the settlement he says he wants without bringing the Communists into some form of participation in the government of South Vietnam, however it might be cloaked.

How will the President then label such a settlement as "peace with honor" rather than "the peace of surrender"? How will he explain his willingness, in that event, to risk the bloodbath he now shrinks from and the dangers to world peace he claims to be avoiding? His is a curious way to prepare the nation for anything less than victory; or is it "victory" he really has in mind?