TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/60s/60viet

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                ▀,f.w.»,                                                      ╚Vietnam:1961-1965


  [As the decade began, the growing insurgency in South Vietnam
was less troubling to the U.S. than the crisis in next-door
Laos, where the Soviets had moved to take advantage of a
confused and even somewhat comical civil war. The U.S. could do
little to back--or buckup--its neutralist and quasi-rightist
clients, who steadily lost ground to the Communist Pathet Lao
guerrillas. When Kennedy took office, he bypassed Laos as being
no place for American fighting men to get involved, and deployed
Longtime Diplomat Averell Harriman to negotiate a treaty at
Geneva guaranteeing a "neutral and independent" nation.

  But Kennedy rejected a similar solution for Vietnam. Under
pressure from the Communists on many fronts during his first
year in office, he decided that "we have a problem in making our
power credible, and Vietnam is the place." Setting a policy that
was to be followed throughout the decade, however, he tried to
do it piecemeal and with limited expenditures, introducing only
a few U.S. advisers at first to brace the South Vietnamese
forces, then gradually committing more and more men and materiel
as the Communists matched the U.S. buildup.]


(August 4, 1961)

  Every night furtive little bands of Communist guerrillas,
dressed in black peasant pajamas or faded khakis, splash through
the marshes of the Mekong Delta or dart silently along jungle
paths of South Vietnam, pursuing their intent, murderous
missions. On the road from Banmethuot last week, one band melted
into the shadows as two members of the National Assembly
approached in their Jeep. Then, at a signal from their leader,
they raised their ancient rifles, clubs and swords and pounced
with bloodcurdling cries. Seconds later, the two assemblymen lay
dead, and the grim struggle to keep the Communists from winning
South Vietnam had claimed two more victims.

  The struggle is savage. Just since January the dead on both
sides total 2,500--roughly triple the total casualties of all
eleven months of fighting in Laos. With the disintegration of
the West's position in Laos, most areas along the South Vietnam
border are now held by the Pathet Lao, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail
has become an almost open thoroughfare through which Communist
reinforcements pour into Diem's beleaguered country.

  Faced with this Communist challenge, the U.S. has made a
major decision: South Vietnam must be defended at all costs.
While all Asia watched, the U.S., by fumbling unpreparedness and
the lack of a dependable local fighting force to attach itself
to, last spring abandoned Laos to its fate. South Vietnam has
been U.S.-sponsored from the start; its government is militantly
anti-Communist, and its soldiers are willing fight. If the U.S.
cannot or will not save South Vietnam from the Communist
assault, no Asian nation can ever again feel safe in putting its
faith in the U.S.--and the fall of all of Southeast Asia would
only be a matter of time.


(November 24, 1961)

  The hotels in Saigon last week were jammed with officers of
the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. The once-neglected
airfield at Bien Hoa, 20 miles northeast of Saigon, is now
receiving a steady stream of Globemasters that unload tons of
electric generators, radar equipment, trucks and Quonset huts.
A U.S. ground crew of 200 lives in tents near by to service the
planes and take care of 24 U.S. fighter-bombers and transports
scheduled to be turned over to the South Vietnam government.

  In the weeks ahead, more and more U.S. and Vietnamese activity
will become evident as a result of the visit to Southeast Asia
by General Maxwell Taylor. Among U.S. plans to help South
Vietnam resist massive Communist guerrilla attacks: 1) the
dispatch to South Vietnam of U.S. operational personnel, who
might include such groups as demolition experts, engineers,
communications teams and anti-guerrilla training officers; 2)
reconnaissance missions by U.S. planes along the border between
North and South Vietnam; and 3) bomber strikes at Communist
guerrilla bases.


(May 17, 1963)

  How is the war actually going? Measured against the desperate
situation that faced General Maxwell Taylor on a fact-finding
mission for the President 19 months ago, there is room for
qualified optimism. When Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
returned from a conference with service chiefs in Pearl Harbor
last week, the Pentagon said "the corner has definitely been
turned toward victory." No one was setting any timetable, but
U.S. military chiefs and South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem
say that the war should be won "within three years."

  The South Vietnamese government and its 14,000 U.S. military
"advisers" pin their hopes on an integrated, long-term plan that
aims at isolating and driving out the Viet Cong. Basic element
of the government's battle plan is to resettle almost the entire
rural population in some 12,000 "strategic hamlets," with bamboo
fences, barbed wire and armed militiamen to keep the predatory
Viet Cong from exacting food and manpower from a helpless
peasantry. Already 8,000,000 villagers--59% of South Vietnam's
population--are living in the 6,000 hamlets that have been so
far been completed.

  But normal battlefield statistics are largely meaningless. The
Viet Cong's casualty rate is rising, but the Reds have actually
increased their hard-core strength (to an estimated 25,000) by
recruiting more peasants.

  Such a war is a new and frustrating experience for U.S.
military advisers. Mindful of the fact that 73 Americans have
lost their lives in the fighting so far, their most bitter
complaint is that military operations are constantly hobbled by
political considerations. The big command decisions have to be
cleared with President Diem, who still leans heavily on such
members of his family as Brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, and the beauteous
Madame Nhu, for advice in the struggle against the Communists.

  U.S. officers have pleaded in vain with Diem to allow more
small-unit sallies and night operations to challenge the Viet
Cong's after-dark supremacy. In their impatience with Diem, some
exasperated U.S. officials wish that he could be replaced by a
more flexible man. But they admit that there is no other leader
in sight.


  [The downfall of Diem began with a religious crisis that
galvanized all the discontent with the regime into a political
upheaval, threatened the country's ability to fight the
Communists and turned Diem's generals to intriguing against
him.]

(June 14, 1963)

  A dusk-to-dawn curfew emptied the streets of the ancient
Vietnamese capital of Hue, 400 miles north of Saigon. Riot
police and armored personnel carriers patrolled the dark and
deserted city. Roadblocks were set up on the outskirts, and
barbed-wire barricades encircled the sacred Tudam Pagoda. These
government security measures were not a precaution against an
attack by Communist guerrillas; they were taken to quell
demonstrations by Hue's Buddhist population against the regime
of Roman Catholic President Ngo Dinh Diem. While all the world's
attention was focused on South Vietnam's bitter struggle against
the Reds, the country was divided by a religious conflict that
might imperil the entire course of the war against the Viet
Cong.

  South Vietnam's Buddhists, who comprise 80% of the country's
15 million people, are bitter over alleged favoritism by Diem
and his Catholic ruling family toward the nation's 1,500,000
Catholics. Buddhists feel that Diem's government is trying to
make Catholicism the official state religion, point to the
morality crusade of Diem's militantly Catholic sister-in-law,
Mme. Ngo Dinh Nhu. In sharp variance with the easy social mores
of most South Vietnamese, Mme. Nhu has banned abortion,
adultery, polygamy, concubinage, divorce (except by presidential
dispensation), and the sale of contraceptives.

  The situation came to a head last month in Hue (pop.
106,000), which happens to be the see of Diem's brother,
Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc. Though Catholics were allowed to fly
Vatican flags at a church celebration honoring Archbishop Thuc,
three days later the government forbade the Buddhists to unfurl
their religious flags for the 2,507th birthday of Gautama
Buddha. When the Buddhists staged a protest march against the
edict, government armored cars fired over the heads of the
rioters. In the melee, nine people were killed. The Buddhists
blamed the slaughter on Diem's troops; the government blamed the
killings on Communist agitators.

  The Hue disaster caused Buddhist demonstrations throughout
the country. Buddhist delegations in Saigon demanded the removal
of restrictions on their faith, equal job opportunities and
indemnity for the families of the dead and wounded in Hue.
Instead, the government arrested demonstrators, blamed the
unrest on "liars, foreigners and the Viet Cong."


(June 21, 1963)

  The automobile at the head of the procession of saffron-robed
Buddhist monks in Saigon suddenly choked to a stop at
intersection. The occupants of the car lifted its hood as
chanting priests began forming a circle seven or eight deep
around the vehicle. Prayer beads clutched in his hand, a
phlegmatic, 73 year-old monk named Thich Quang Duc sat down
crosslegged on the asphalt in the center of the circle. From
under the auto's hood, a monk took a canister of gasoline and
poured it over the old priest. An express of serenity on his
wizened face, Quang Duc suddenly struck a match. As flames
engulfed his body, he made not a single cry nor moved a muscle.
"Oh my God," cried a Western observer, "oh my God." Quang Duc's
premeditated act was a demonstration of Buddhist determination
to force South Vietnam's Roman Catholic President Ngo Dinh Diem
to knuckle under to demands for increased religious freedom.


(July 26, 1963)

  With rifle butts, clubs and tommy-gun clips, the cops battered
the demonstrators. Women who had fallen to the pavement in the
first police rush were savagely kicked. A young girl had her
head split open with a carbine butt, and as blood streamed into
her eyes, she was carted away in a police van. From the windows
of a brothel, girls shouted insults at the police until forced
inside at machine-gun point.

  Throughout South Vietnam, government forces crushed Buddhist
demonstrations with similar violence, arrested nearly 300
marchers in Saigon alone, following orders to "use any means"
to disperse Buddhist demonstrations.

  Brother Ngo Dinh Nhu has always urged a hard line. What he
fears--with some reason--is that if Diem gives in even slightly
to the Buddhists, it would only cause new demands that would
eventually threaten the government's whole power structure. By
week's end, however, in a belated attempt to ease tensions, the
government ordered the release of 267 Buddhists arrested during
the demonstrations.


  [The generals schemed for months to enlist U.S. support for
their moves, but Kennedy and his aides debated and demurred,
then finally bucked the decision to U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot
Lodge.]

(November 8, 1963)

  The week in Saigon began and ended with death. At its start,
another Buddhist, the seventh, chose the now notorious way of
protest against President Ngo Dinh Diem's regime. Soaked in
gasoline, he rode up to a crowded square, struck a spark, and
went up in flames before anyone could stop him. At week's end,
Diem himself lay dead alongside his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu. The
two men who had fought so long and so stubbornly--against
Communism, against their critics, against the Buddhist
demonstrators--had been consumed by a fire more slowly and
carefully prepared.

  For months "coup" had been the loudest whisper heard in South
Vietnam. Coup is what correspondents and lesser U.S. officials
talked in the bar at the Hotel Caravelle. Coup is what Diem and
his guards feared in the palace. Coup is what the generals
finally plotted in their headquarters.

  They had been slow enough to move. Weeks ago, the word in
Saigon was that, before risking an uprising, the military wanted
assurances of U.S. support. Officially the U.S. denied all
involvements, but it was perfectly plain that the reduction of
U.S. aid to Diem and Washington's public disapproval of his
measures against the Buddhists set the scene for the coup.

  The uprising was led by a Vietnamese soldier well known to
the American military, a man of whom one U.S. general had said:
"I would certainly like to have him in the U.S. Army." He is
Lieut. General Duong Van Minh, 47, known as "Big" Minh, a blunt,
burly, French-trained veteran. Obviously he had been able to
rally, at least for the moment, the deeply divided Vietnamese
army.

  Abruptly, at 9:45 p.m., the barrage began--first against the
palace guard barracks, where a mortar and artillery attack went
on for hours. Forgotten for the moment were Diem and Nhu. A few
hours later, the ugly facts began to emerge. First, there was
the official story. A spokesman for the military junta announced
that the pair had slipped out of rebel hands during the
cease-fire, boarded a departing truck while wounded were being
removed, and somehow reached a Catholic church in the Chinese
quarter of suburban Cholon. There, according to the story, both
killed themselves at 10:45 a.m.

  It would have been an incredible end for such devout adherents
of Roman Catholicism, which sternly condemns suicide. But, in
fact, the President and his brother were obviously murdered.
According to one version, Diem and Nhu should have been sent
abroad by plane; but instead, they escaped from the palace, were
found in the Cholon church by a troop of soldiers who arrested
the pair and drove them off in an armored car toward military
headquarters. On the way, an order was given to kill them. When
the armored car arrived at headquarters, both men were dead.

  There could be no question that the U.S., in the policies and
in the pressures it brought to bear, had effectively encouraged
the overthrow of the Diem regime. Only a few weeks ago President
Kennedy, appearing on a television interview with C.B.S.'s
Walter Cronkite, argued that the winning of the war against the
Communist Viet Cong would probably require "changes in policy,
and perhaps in personnel" in the Diem government.

  During that same period, the U.S. stepped up its economic
pressure against the Diem regime, suspending a
$10-million-a-month commercial import program, reducing sales
of U.S. surplus commodities that ran to $2,000,000 a month,
cutting off part of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's
$350,000 in monthly payments to the Vietnamese Special Forces,
and stopping funds used to finance Ngo Dinh Nhu's secret police.

  The U.S. has a long-standing investment, both in money and
blood, in the fate of Vietnam. It would, therefore, be
preposterous to propose that the U.S. should have no interest
in the makeup and effectiveness of the Vietnamese government.
But even with that fact taken into consideration, there remained
considerable doubt that the U.S.-encouraged coup would actually
achieve what it was intended to.


  [It quickly became clear that however bad Diem had been, his
uniformed successors were worse; squabbling, corrupt and unable
to prosecute the war. Generals continued to overthrow and
intrigue against one another, until in mid-1964 a more durable
cabal of officers took over, headed by Nguyen Cao Ky and Nguyen
Van Thieu.

  Three weeks after Diem's death, Kennedy was killed in Dallas
and Lyndon Johnson inherited the war. He was determined not to
"lose Vietnam," but unwilling to level with the American people
about the steadily rising level of the U.S. commitment and its
cost, or to mobilize popular support by putting the country on
a war footing thereby jeopardizing his chances of being elected
to a full term in 1964. Johnson juggled political blocs and
advisers' recommendations, manipulated the statistics and the
press, and stuck to the policy begun by his predecessor.]

(March 27, 1964)

  Once again U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was back in
Washington after a fact-finding trip (his fourth) to South
Vietnam. Gist of his recommendations, duly accepted by President
Johnson: More of the same and hope for the best.

  The U.S. will step up aid to Saigon by $30 million to $40
million a year (current rate: $500 million), will send in
"limited but significant additional equipment" and provide more
American combat advisers if necessary.


(May 22, 1964)

  Only six months ago, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara
was talking hopefully of pulling most U.S. troops out of Vietnam
by the end of 1965. Last week, after his fifth visit to the war
front, McNamara called for stepping up American military and
economic assistance to Saigon, currently pegged at 15,500
"advisers" and $500 million a year. McNamara's reversal was a
reflection of how far the U.S.-supported war against the
Communist Viet Cong has deteriorated.


(August 7, 1964)

  Across the weary,, tortured land, the strange conflict grinds
on in its savage way, filling the eye with myriad tableaux of
tragedy.

  On a canal bank in Chuong Thien province, the body of a
Communist guerrilla sprawls among the water lilies. On a track
through a swamp in Hau Nghia province, a young Vietnamese
rifleman happily plucks a duck for supper, white feathers
sticking to his mud-spattered battle dress.

  Always there are the innocent caught in the crossfire. On a
Mekong Delta back road, a country cop flags down a row of buses
packed with peasants, cabbages and poultry, to let a column of
armored personnel-carriers rumble past to a fire fight just
ahead. In a village hut in Kienhoa province, an old woman lies
dying, broiled lobster-red from napalm, while a soldier spoons
watery soup between her lips.

  There are the tall, serious Americans. At Saigon's Tan Son
Nhut Airport, a line of UH-1B "Huey" choppers, cigar-chomping
U.S. Army pilots at the controls, shatters the morning calm with
a roar of cranked-up motors and the whip-whip-whip of whirling
rotors. In Quang Duc province, the local American adviser, a
Negro captain, jounces along a red-dust path in his familiar
Jeep, packing a .45 on his hip and speaking Vietnamese with a
Basin Street beat.

  Such is the war in Vietnam--a dirty, ruthless, wandering war,
which has neither visible lines nor visible end and in which the
U.S. over the past three years has become increasingly involved.
Last week the involvement was carried a step further with the
revelation that President Lyndon Johnson has ordered thousands
of additional American troops into the struggle. This would
increase the American military contingent there, currently
numbering 16,323, to probably 20,000 or more. Also to be sent
are more helicopters, planes, trucks, Jeeps and armored
cars--plus at least 300 additional AID technicians, to join the
414 already at work on the Vietnam economic front.

  Washington's medicine may best be described as a big dose of
more of the same. It "does not imply," U.S. Ambassador to Saigon
General Maxwell Taylor was quick to warn, "any change in U.S.
strategy or in the command structure"--meaning that the U.S. was
still not taking over direct command in the war or changing the
rules. Like those who preceded them, the bulk of the new men
will fan out into the most harassed provinces, not to command
but to teach, cajole, curse, exhort, and occasionally inspire
Vietnamese soldiers half their size, in what must be history's
first war fought by on-the-job training.

  But if its solution is an elusive dream, the Vietnam dilemma
to American is also an all-too-real nightmare. For after three
years of intensive effort and considerable pain, including the
expenditure of $3.3 billion in aid, after the loss of 262
Americans killed, 1,196 wounded or injured and 17 missing, the
war is still not being discernibly won. Probably no conflict has
ever been more elaborately computed, analyzed, studied: the
Pentagon even sent out a team of psychiatrists to examine the
"attitudes" of frustrated G.I.s. Yet, as a Washington policy
maker said tiredly, "nothing really changes."


  [Johnson wanted a mandate for his policies in the form of a
congressional resolution giving him a free hand. In August, he
found his opportunity to push it through.]

(August 14, 1964)

  There was no reason to panic on that sunny Sunday last week
when Maddox lookouts sighted three Communist torpedo boats near
the island of Hon Me. The destroyer merely continued north on
it patrol, and in due course made a leisurely turn and headed
back south.

  But at 12:30 p.m., as the Maddox cruised down the gulf 30
miles from any land, her radar men spotted three torpedo boats,
ten miles to the north, speeding toward the Maddox. The
destroyer skipper, Commander Herbert L. Ogier, 41, sounded
general quarters. Two hundred and fifty-five officers and
crewmen raced to their battle stations. Ogier held his course
southward. And he waited.

  The battle began at 3:08. The Maddox opened up with her aft
five-inches and her 3-in. and 40-mm. guns. The two trailing
craft closed to 5,000 yds., launched one 18-in. torpedo apiece.
Ogier swung the ship to port. The torpedoes passed 100 yds. to
starboard. For a farewell blast, the two boats sprayed away
futilely with their 25-mm. machine guns, turned tail and headed
toward the north.

  Now the third torpedo boat took up the attack. Skillfully,
she pulled 5,000 yds. abeam of the destroyer so that evasion
would be far more difficult. But this also brought the PT boat
under the fire of two pairs of the Maddox's biggest guns. The
Maddox fired--a direct hit. The enemy craft stopped dead in the
water, helpless and aflame.

  Tuesday dawned. The weather in the gulf turned bad. Thunder
rumbled across the water.

  By nightfall the warships were steaming near the center of
the 150-mile-wide gulf, some 65 miles from the nearest land. Yet
the number of radar contacts was growing, and their tracks were
converging on the destroyers.

  Through the darkness, from the west and south, the intruders
boldly sped. There were at least six of them, Russian-designed
"Swatow" gunboats armed with 37-mm. and 28-mm. guns, and P-4s.
At 9:52 they opened fire on the destroyers with automatic
weapons, this time from as close as 2,000 yds.

  The night glowed eerily with the nightmarish glare of
air-dropped flares and boats' searchlights. For 3 1/2 hours, the
small boats attacked in pass after pass. Ten enemy torpedoes
sizzled through the water. Each time the skippers, tracking the
fish by radar, maneuvered to evade them. Gunfire and gun smells
and shouts stung the air. Two of the enemy boats went down.
Then, at 1:30 a.m., the remaining PTs ended the fight, roared
off through the black night to the north.

  There was no doubt in Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, Admiral
Sharp's mind that the U.S. would now have to answer this attack
with much more than a diplomatic protest note. He recommended
that the U.S. hit the North Vietnam torpedo-boat bases. Could
the carriers do the job? asked McNamara. "Hell, yes!" replied
Sharp. That was all McNamara needed to know.

  As the massive military machinery gathered its strength,
Lyndon Johnson and McNamara briefed the National Security
Council and summoned congressional leaders to the White House.
Johnson also asked the legislators to move swiftly for a
resolution expressing congressional approval and support of "the
determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take
all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the
forces of the U.S. and to prevent further aggression."

  When he was sure that the air strike at North Vietnam was
under way, Lyndon went on nationwide TV networks at 11:37 p.m.
to deliver his somber message. "My fellow Americans: As
President and Commander in Chief, it is my duty to report that
renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high
seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order the
military forces of the United States to take action in
reply...That reply is being given as I speak to you tonight. Air
action is now in execution against gunboats and certain
supporting facilities in North Vietnam which have been used in
these hostile operations."

  The resolution cleared the House with a resounding 416-0 vote
after only 40 minutes of debate, but the Senate talked for a
full nine hours before approving, 88-2. The only two dissenters
were Alaska's Democratic Senator Ernest Gruening and Oregon's
irascible Democrat Wayne Morse, both of whom argued that the
resolution was unconstitutional because it amounted to a
"predated declaration of war power" normally reserved to
Congress.

  On the other hand, it could be argued that technically
Johnson already had all the authority he needed without the
resolution--as he had demonstrated so dramatically in the Gulf
of Tonkin. The congressional support mainly punctuated the fact
that the U.S. was united behind the President. At week's end
U.S. forces around the world stood alert. And behind them stood
their nation.


  [Only later did it become known that much of the Tonkin Gulf
"incident," especially its later developments, had been a
fabrication. It was not until the next winter that U.S. began
strategic bombing of North Vietnam, followed a month later by
the introduction of U.S. combat troops.]

(February 19, 1965)

  To the members of the National Security Council, seated around
the coffin-shaped table in the Cabinet Room of the White House,
the President of the U.S. said with quiet anger: "I've gone far
enough. I've had enough of this." And so, in response to a
murderous series of Communist attacks against U.S. military
forces and installations in South Vietnam, President Lyndon
Johnson gave the orders that on three different days last week
sent American and Vietnamese warplanes smashing north of the
17th parallel at Red supply dumps, communications systems and
guerrilla staging areas.

  As the U.S. policy evolved during the week, it became
increasingly evident that future raids against North Vietnam
will not be carried out on a strict tit-for-tat basis--a dubious
strategy that has deprived Washington and Saigon of the
initiative. Thus the war in Viet Nam has taken on a brand-new
dimension--and can never again be quite the same.


(March 19, 1965)

  Under slate-grey skies, U.S. Marine landing craft plowed
through 5-ft. waves in the Bay of Danang, came to a halt with
gravelly crunches, and dropped their ramps. Out poured hundreds
of U.S. Marines in full battle dress, with M-14 rifles held at
high port. They were the vanguard of a 3,500-man force, the
first Marines since Korea to hit the beaches in a combat zone,
and the first U.S. combat--as opposed to "advisory"--troops to
arrive in South Vietnam.

  The U.S. decision to send in combat units had been weighed
for weeks. Only after it became evident that the big Danang
airbase in the northern tier of South Vietnam was critically
threatened, did Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recommended
sending in two reinforced Marine battalions and a squadron of
24 helicopters.


  [The escalation raised the volume on the rumblings of
discontent at home about the war, though most people supported
the President and his policies, believing that the U.S. was
holding back the tide of Communism.]

(December 3, 1965)

  Americans who militantly oppose U.S. involvement in the
Vietnamese war range all the way from the hysterical Vietniks
of the far left to the less strident, pacifistically inclined
groups that fault the Administration for backing a repressive
right-wing regime in Saigon but offer no alternative to the
Communist tyranny that would surely succeed it. The Vietniks so
far have hogged most of the headlines with draft-card burnings,
teach-ins and frenetic statements in support of the Viet Cong
"revolution." Last week some 22,000 of the older, quieter
protesters, from 140 groups, came to Washington to publicize
their views on Vietnam.

  Organized by SANE (National Committee for a Sane Nuclear
Policy), demonstrators and speakers argued that neither side has
made any serious attempt to settle the war in Vietnam, urged the
U.S. to make the first move. By way of proving its good faith
to Hanoi, they maintained, the Administration should immediately
end the American buildup in the South and halt the bombing of
North Vietnam. Before marching around the White House, leaders
of the demonstration--among them Old Socialist Norman Thomas,
Mrs. Martin Luther King Jr., Pediatrician Benjamin
Spock--expressed their opinions to White House Aide Chester
Cooper, and seemed surprised that his response was "less than
satisfactory."

  To she willing, SANE leaders capped the proceedings by sending
a letter to North Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh (R.F.D. 1, Hanoi?)
urging him to join the U.S. in efforts toward peace.