Vietnam War Report; Frank White, Oliver Strauss, Harrison Salisbury

Vietnam war report a 30 minute program every week at this time concerning some of the many aspects of the war in Southeast Asia. This week several different items a report from Frank White in London on the anti-war movement in Britain a discussion with science reporter Oliver Strauss about how military scientists are using the latest in technology in Vietnam today. And finally an interview recorded in our studios earlier this month as Louis Lyons questions Harrison Solsbury the assistant managing editor of The New York Times about recent developments in the search for peace. To all appearances the protest movement to American involvement in the Vietnam War is extensive on the continent of Europe as here in our own country. Vice President Hubert Humphrey's tour of several European countries last month occasioned a series of anti-war anti-American demonstrations in particular in France and Italy and even in Germany. But what about Britain. How extensive and intense is the anti-war feeling in Britain. Frank

White who graduated from Harvard a year ago is in Oxford England this year as a Rhodes scholar. He recently attended a so-called march of shame in London's Trafalgar Square. Here now his taped report of the event. This was a rather typical example of protest in Britain. Indignation by a few response by some of the uncommitted and absorption of the whole thing by the authorities and by British apathy. This march was different. In the wings to which the organizers went to arouse interest and public opinion and public authorities had been upset for the past few weeks by the announcement that someone would impersonate the queen in a confession at the rally. Officials had hinted that such an act was liable to prosecution and letters had poured into newspapers from irate citizens. The progress of the of the committee for 100. The Committee of 100 the main Vietnam protest organization here

was very emotional and inflammatory. The opening sentence of the handout asked. How far can a five year old run covered in flaming napalm. The answer was that the American Army knew even if British citizens did not. Because Vietnam was viewed by the Pentagon as a testing ground for new horrible weapons. Then flip went on to accuse the British government of complicity in the American war effort and asked for people of all political views to march quote everyone who shares our contempt and disgust for those who degrade us by supporting aggression and atrocity. Police clearly expected some trouble as they lined the march route and surrounded the speakers platform. It is Kathleen Farr who played the part of the queen during the demonstration had already received some assassination threats and a few royalist counter demonstrators had gathered to greet her. As it turned out the police

had little to fear. As a compromise Mrs 4 I was introduced as Queen Kathleen not Queen Elizabeth. And the entire rally was received with no more than a few boos and attempts at an eruption with bugles or other noise makers. It is also doubtful that much will come of it in a larger sense. Certainly the British public is unhappy with the war in Vietnam but it is really not the government's support for the Americans which will determine its fate. The war is too far away for the average Briton and it fails to affect his life enough. He is very unlikely to make any sacrifices to stop it. The Labor party surely knows this and they will not be stampeded by such public displays. Growing out of the frustration of other attempts to affect Mr Wilson's policy and to break the bonds between the United States and Great Britain on this war. This march seemed mawkish and overdone.

And it is unlikely I think to sound the talks and for an overwhelming upsurge of anti-war feeling and anti-war demonstrations in Great Britain. And this is Frank White reporting from London on anti-Vietnam protests in England. Some of the more aggressive critics of American policy in Vietnam have charged that this country has promoted and in fact escalated the war for the purpose of testing new military hardware and weapons systems. This was for example one of the charges arising from Bertrand Russell's war crime trials in Stockholm earlier this month. The administration has chosen not to dignify such charges with a reply and it's been clear that only the most radical opponents of the war have gone so far as to charge this. On the other hand it is clear that the war has brought about a number of new developments in the field of military science both the nature of the battle against a guerrilla enemy. And the topography and climb out of South Vietnam have occasioned many

of these developments. Some of them are evolutionary. This is the first war for example that the mobility of the helicopter has been truly utilized and with it the concept of vertical envelopment. For fire support of our convoys there is now Puff the Magic Dragon a slow lumbering cargo plane with its sides cut out and converted by an advanced form of gatling gun. There is the ute 10 a psychological warfare plane and the M-16 the new rapid fire combat rifle. But technology is being used in far more sophisticated ways as well. Here now I have a science reporter Oliver Stroh's to talk with me about one example of this. The use of our weather satellites to guide our planes in air strikes. Now Oliver I see from an Associated Press dispatch here that American bombers are now being guided to their targets in North Vietnam by daily photographs received from our weather satellites. Now is this in fact an and true assessment

of the situation for Monday's Danny it is. In fact I think a rather interesting aspect of this is that we very often talk about the civilian fallout benefits from both the space effort of Nassa and occasionally for military endeavors. And in this instance we have a reverse example namely a rather strictly civilian end of the ESFS a ministration satellite and the Nimbus satellite. Which is of enormous use for ordinary weather forecasting all around the globe and for agricultural purposes has been put to use in Vietnam in order to help guide the timing and location of strikes by both the Naval Air Forces and the army. Now how high up how high up are these two satellites that you mention the US and THEM BOTH. They are both of the order of 600 miles in a more or less circular circular orbit 600 miles over the surface of the earth and there is a polar orbit which means that as the Earth turns under

them they do indeed view the whole the whole surface of the globe or very nearly the whole surface from that altitude. Can I one shot scan pick up all of Vietnam or all of North Vietnam. Oh yes it would take up probably two or three times the length north and south of Vietnam and it depends a little bit. Each of these satellites have two cameras in them one a wide angle camera would pick up a very large area possibly half a continent of Australia or perhaps a whole one and then a narrow angle one that would take in something more than the longest dimension of Vietnam itself. Do we have any way of isolating the returns from the satellite from these satellites in other words do we have the saw. So the sole means of communication with them. No they. I have two ways of dumping their information back to Earth. Back to a ground station. One that can be triggered and it's not a secret trader. It's a public matter of public information since we have an agreement with Russia and other nations to share this information

generally. The other is that there are broadcasts from a satellite back to ground stations of a sort of a TV picture. Which occur at timed intervals. Consequently one can either order it or get it when it comes on a sort of a time clock schedule. In other words when the North Vietnamese could very well be receiving the same pictures that we are precisely yes. I think there's been no attempt to create any secrecy here. The advantage however I should say probably lies with us since we have more aircraft and more facilities to react to. Good or bad news about the weather this case may be. When our How is this done. In simple terms how do we pick what are the satellites. How do they transmit their message onto us. They take a picture periodically. Time so that they overlap a little bit but not entirely and store this in a device on the satellite. Then either on command from the ground station or on a time schedule they proceed to broadcast this back somewhat

slower per frame than television. My take. I don't recall exactly 30 seconds to a minute while the satellite is passing over to dump one whole picture. However this can be received by any ground station friendly or otherwise. Over essentially 80 the receiving system with a better than average antenna. So there is no secret there is a difference however between there the weather satellite pictures and the ordinary TV set with me or with at home. In that the resolution or detail you get out of the satellites. Is composed of 800 lines as opposed to five hundred twenty five on TV in Seoul the racial sharpness is about 8 to 5 somewhat better than a home set. Well now how about. How about from from the sort of altitude how much detail can they include or does this just merely give us overall weather patterns. It gets both actually with the narrow angle. More or less telephoto lens they have. I think a rather detailed data down to perhaps

identifiable down to 5 miles of absolute location on the ground there was a remark published in the press that came up with the Associated Press wires to three weeks ago by the commander of naval aviation in the area of Vietnam in which he said something that the Meuse me rather he said. If we were simply in a season like this to predict bad weather 95 percent of the time we got a bit higher score of accuracy than the Weather Bureau. He said How about where the satellites come in is that we aren't interested in the 95 percent of bad weather we're interested in the 5 percent of good weather or 5 percent of time when there was a break over a potential target area. That's what the satellites can do for us. One of these one of the satellites go up in other words how long that we've been using them in this manner. We've been having weather satellites now for about four and a half to five years but they've aggressively been increasing the accuracy.

The resolution of the lenses of the TV and saw the current ones are better perhaps by a factor of two in the finest detail two or three finest of the other able to provide both civilian and military forecasting. Does this mean or is it fair to say that since the air war over North Vietnam began in earnest which was in January of 65. That we've been making use of this. Well I suspect that that's classified military information and the honest answer is that I don't know. However I think it's highly probable that in the original communication equipment carried on fleet that's all for the Naval Air Arm. They have the materiel the tech technological capacity to pick up whatever broadcasts are being made and the frequencies are published. Now another thing you mention that right now their public knowledge is pretty much the signals coming from these or they can be picked up with any by anybody with the proper equipment is there any way of making this private knowledge in the future.

It would be possible to would I think it would be against the long range policy as I understand it has been stated in that this is part of a civilian effort if it has a fringe fallout benefit for the purposes of military action somewhere. Fine. But it is public policy of the US to keep this strictly a public service and to exchange information and make it available to any other interested countries agricultural peaceful purposes. The prime military advantage of this weather satellite which we've been discussing of course is as Mr. Strauss just said to better direct our aircraft and strikes over North Vietnam. These raids of course have been a subject of great controversy since they began more than two years ago. The big question concerns the effect of the raids are they in fact hurting the North Vietnamese. Or are they only strengthening their will to resist. One of the first firsthand reports we received on the mood of the people north of the 17th parallel was from Harrison Solsbury the assistant managing editor of The New York Times. He spent three weeks in Hanoi at the turn of the year and his dispatches made headlines around the

world. He was for example one of the first to report civilian deaths as the result of our bombing of the north. Six months have passed since Harrison Salisbury was in Hanoi. Time enough to reflect on his conclusions and to see how subsequent events have proven his predictions about the progress of the war either true or false. WGBH newsman Louis Lyons interviewed him here in our studios about justice earlier this month. For those who missed this on background here now that interview as Harrison songs really defines what he regards as a change in attitude in Hanoi since his visit there I thought that when I came back from Hanoi and the chances were pretty good that if we wanted to we could get into a private plan best time exploration in Hanoi looking toward a possible form of negotiation there were lots of signs and indications of it at that time. I was afraid that the fact that there were these signs might lead people in

Washington to think that Hanoi was weak or they were up against it. And this was the time instead of talk to escalate. And I'm afraid that is the conclusion that Washington writes because the there's no sign of talk now and I think it would be quite difficult to get such a situation back into his favorable stances it wasn't genuine not impossible but it's going to be darn hard to do it. Well you've noticed Washington claiming to be concerned by the amount of dissent and differences in this country that it might encourage Hanoi. And today just today these 16 so-called doves among the Senate is issuing a statement saying it in effect though they're critical of the government. They would not support any withdrawal without an honorable statment. Do you think that kind of thing makes some difference in North Vietnam. I don't think it makes any difference in North Vietnam actually because I don't think North Vietnam is counting on us or protesters in this country or marchers or anything like that to turn Mr. Johnson around the reason I say that is that

I raised this specific question with the prime minister and I said because I didn't think it was sound if they were counting on a turn in American sentiment. President Johnson being compelled to change his policy or something like that. And I could not find that they were counting on that at all in fact they told me that they didn't think that sentiment in this country was going to change Washington and Washington might change but it would be because of events out there on the battlefield and they weren't counting on it they were delighted to have anybody who wanted to protest the war but it wasn't going to change their strategy or they were not taking it into account and it seemed to me that was quite a realistic view on their part. Well since you came back it's been reported that they Russians have stepped up their aid to North Vietnam in spite of their differences with China. But China is still in this convulsive internal situation. How would you feel that North Vietnam

stands in respect to the prospect of adequate. Well you know when I was out there in December in January they were in trouble this is really why I think they were willing to talk because the Chinese were sabotaging the shipments from Russia and they were delaying it and sometimes taking the SAMs and stuff off a flat cars and not letting it through. No and this is I think a very significant development beginning toward toward the end of March. The Russians and the Chinese while they are still just as better and maybe even more bitter against each other have apparently decided to call a truce in this business of sabotaging aid to North Vietnam. There is every indication the stuff is not coming through without impediment and of course this puts Hanoi in a better position. When I was in Moscow and I went to Moscow the end of February and early March for a week the Russians told me flatly that if as they thought then we were going to go in for escalation and they had no alternative but to escalate themselves in sending in the

missiles and the rockets and the weapons that Hanoi would need to shoot down our planes they said we don't like to do this but what alternative is there if there are allies if you're going to escalate what you do to them will escalate what we have the aid that we give to them I think they're doing it well. North Vietnam forces seem to be pressuring our forces in the north of South Vietnam very hot. But just even this weekend last weekend to have a very large temporary capacity French's they were able to shell the city of way just yesterday. Do you feel like I had this capacity when you were there. It would just be a recent addition. Well what they're using of course are large scale mortars and and rocket weapons of one sort or another. I think they have them in the north. I think they were moving them south this is part of the the steady movement of supplies that comes down from China into the north and then down from the north into the south. And they've been able to keep up this train of supplies quite steadily ever since they began it.

I think that they shift their emphasis from time to time from one sort of weapon to another. It's evident now that they are engaged in setting up more SAM sites in the south part of North Vietnam in order to to use them against to be 52 says they fly in on their missions and other planes they also are obviously equipping some of the forces in the south who have these very effective long range mortars and we've we've been subjected to increasing fire from them. How much would you worry about Chinese intervention you see in these interview just this week you claimed if you was a low picking has been I'd only go on my threatening if we moved to North Vietnam or had what he would feel an inadequate sight much trying to command. Remembering Korea would you be concerned I take I take the Chinese position extremely seriously I am inclined to accept Jalan lies with the Chinese a denial of this particular interview. But one doesn't have to have that interview to know what the Chinese position is the possibility of Chinese intervention in this conflict

is becoming more and more likely as we escalate. It may come because Hanoi asked the man because they have offered of course to send their forces in or it may not come because the Chinese feel that we are pressing the threat to their national interest to close. They have warned again and again and again that if this happens that they will intervene. They made the same kind of war any warnings in Korea. We laugh those things off said all they wouldn't dare do it. The truth of the matter was they were dead serious and I think they're deadly serious in this matter too. Now you've noticed that Lester Pearson in Canada has been having trouble with his opposition and because of statements his some of his own ministers have made criticizing us on Vietnam and that the foreign minister of Italy criticized just in Vietnam and his ambassador to Washington resign. Well this rather suggests that some difficulties in foreign relations because of you know you've seen more of this and I have you think these are serious among our allies around the world.

Yes I think they are. You know we I think they stem from two things in the first place. Many of the Europeans are seriously concerned intense preoccupation with Southeast Asia. They feel that we're neglecting Europe and our European commitments. They also are beginning to worry very much about the escalation of the war and the possibility that it may suddenly widen out into an all Asian conflict or even get into a nuclear phase or something really terrible of that kind they're concerned. We don't seem to have the ability to either press it to a successful conclusion or to go into some reasonable kind of negotiations and they may see no limit to it and it's beginning to spread. Concern all around the world. Well when you say reasonable kind of negotiations would you feel that some kind of settlement with the Viet Cong that included them in a coalition government somewhat like Laos would be reasonable. Kind of. I don't like I don't like fishing and what do you think of as a as a possible up.

I think that I think that the Laotian president is a bad one because it fell apart it was a it was really a hydra headed monster and it never really worked. But it took Laos out of being dangerous. Well they did it one time but of course it's fallen back into a very desperate situation in the present time. I would look in a settlement or a negotiation to a settlement toward a coalition regime in the south. I would hope that we would aim for making the central element in that coalition some of the emerging figures in the Constituent Assembly there are several men there who have stature who have lots of support in South Vietnam who have little ability who would be able to give the country leadership. Liberation Front of the Viet Cong has said that it will enter a coalition with members of the constituent assembly and members of the key government but not the marshal himself. The constituent assembly people have said they will enter such a coalition. A number of the civilian ministers in the key government have said they will join this.

The difficulty I think is that we seem to be lending more and more of our prestige to marshal key and the Marshal seem to be maneuvering the situation in such a way that a military man is almost certain to win in the elections in September and thus perpetuate a new government which has really no genuine popular support in the south and has very little political viability. Which government which would be an intense handicap to us if we ever get to the negotiating stage then you would feel that the September elections are the chance that he will be president don't offer as much hope as people talk. So not if not if they're going to be rigged in such a way that Martial key is going to win. Well one other point about that the people call pacification program output as I understand it more or less under General Westmoreland adequate security. And many people have thought there should be a part of the program for years but that you've got to do it before you can really get any kind of stability. How do you how do you feel about.

Pacification program has been kind of a bust really from the start because of the conditions under which they work. And the conditions are not going to be any better with military people running it than with civilians running and I think that might have more military around to keep right you might have been the end you might be able to get better protection for some of the villages and things of that kind. And I must admit that I dont see much hope of that program working without a very strong political arm on the part of the South Vietnamese. And as long as they cripple themselves who are permitted to do that by being dependent on a on a thinly supported military dictatorship its very difficult to see how you can get the political motivation that will make pacification a real genuine thing I want to say to you while theres still time horizon that all the newspaperman I know were greatly disappointed that the putative award for international reporting didn't go to you. What I think all of us feel was a great journalistic coup. I think if you were disappointed you contain yourself admirably about it.

I'm very pleased to have you say that. I think I was disappointed I think one is if if one comes close to a big prize and doesn't get it I'm going to survive it all right I've had so many more my expressions from people whose opinion I respect that it takes the sting out of it. And you've got a book coming out now. I've got it it's out already. What's the name of it's called Behind the Lines Hello. Have you had a chance to follow at a distance as we have this so-called war cry Behold the Russell set up in Sweden to try us. What do you make of it if anything. I don't make too much of it you know. You know and it provided a chance for a number of people who feel very strongly about American policy and Vietnam to express their sentiments. I doubt very much that they elucidated the facts very extensively or that they came up with many things that hadn't been reported in the press previously.

Well one of what I think we have time point. You're not just a shock issue among Republicans over the policy committee staff report which suggested some pretty hard hitting criticism of the administration indicated the Republicans were preparing to 68 must have certain things in mind. What do you say to the notion that some people feel quite strongly that one of the real dangers in this war is that the administration will be terribly good to get it over with before the 68 election. Well I think the administration is terribly eager to get it over with before 68 if it's intact it's possible anyway. It's difficult now to see how that can be achieved. I doubt very much that the intense escalation is going to compel the Vietnamese to come to the conference table or to surrender or to accept terms which I suppose is what we really hope that they will do. And if we if we don't break it off then there's very little chance of more thoughtful negotiation.

And the indications are that Washington is not terribly interested in exploring whether such negotiations might be possible. So that I am rather pessimistic of the possibility of getting this war over before the 68 elections unless we suddenly have taken an entirely new approach toward it and there are no signs of that at the present time. Do you feel any response to Senator Mansfield's kind of approach I think when he made just last week that we ought to seek through the U.N. to get some kind of a confrontation of all the parties. Well I like the idea. The Mansfield approach very much and I think Todd has been doing as much as any human being can to try to bring the parties together. The problem is that three of the main elements for the main elements really in this confrontation are non members of the U.N. that's China North Vietnam South Vietnam and the Vietcong. It's very hard in those circumstances. We're going to get a formal framework for negotiation it seems to me that the

Geneva agreements provides that framework. Personally I prefer an informal framework and I prefer face to face meetings I think that it's very difficult for a third party to stand behind between the two sides which are so bitterly opposed to being misunderstandings arising from it. But I do be willing to see any kind of procedure that would give us some chance of ending the intensification of the war. Well perhaps we might stand on that now. How should I feel by time. Thank you very much for coming in letting us have this talk with you. Louis Lyons and Harrison Salzburg of the New York Times in an interview recorded earlier this month. This is Crocker snow speaking and inviting you to listen again next week at the same time to another Vietnam War report.