NOTES in the NEWS
NOTES in the NEWS The Widening War There is something depressingly familiar about the rapidly unfolding sequence of events in Southeast Asia. While Secretary of State William Rogers assures the...
...A special Army investigation board headed by Lieutenant General William Ray Peers, after a three-and-a-half month inquiry which included the questioning of more than 400 witnesses, charged Major General Samuel W. Koster, commander of the division in Vietnam whose troops were involved in the Songmy incident...
...This plea for amnesty for Vietnam war protesters is the first to be made by a high-ranking Roman Catholic cleric...
...There have been other threats of Congressional revolt in the past, and most of them have fizzled...
...We cannot and will not...
...President Nixon established a task force headed by Secretary of Labor George Shultz to look into the oil quota system...
...Lockheed, it will be recalled, is a prime component of the military-industrial complex...
...The revolt is a small one so far, but there are indications it will spread as the gerontocracy clings tenaciously to its power...
...This was as much public money "as was spent by all governments on all forms of public education and health care...
...But when a proposal is made by key members of his own Cabinet to cut a couple of billion dollars a year from the $5 billion in yearly overcharges levied by oil companies, he finds it more to his taste to surrender to the power of the oil lobby...
...The 1969 figures revealed that the Senator's subsidy payment on his plantation in Doddsville, Mississippi, came to $146,792...
...the average tenure of the Commission's bureau directors is thirty-one years...
...The fact is," says Senator William Proxmire, Wisconsin Democrat, "that Lockheed has been milking the Pentagon for years . . . and that Government agency has been standing still like a contented cow giving milk...
...taxpayers about four and a half times the $9.8 million appropriated in calendar 1969 to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency to try to slow down the worldwide arms race...
...Nor should we look at them through the eyes of a narrowly based South Vietnamese government seeking to perpetuate its power at our expense...
...The French government is convinced," said a French Cabinet statement, "that the extension of a war that is tending to become indivisible can be avoided only by negotiation among all interested parties with a view to seeking and guaranteeing the bases of a peace itself indivisible...
...The Government owns Lockheed's plant at Marietta, Georgia, at which the C-5A is being built...
...There is even more support for attempts to reform the pernicious seniority system that governs the assignment of House committee chairmanships...
...ASCS administrator Kenneth Frick said he did not believe that his receiving subsidies in view of the position he holds involves him in a conflict of interest...
...Lockheed's plea for a handout illustrates the extent to which this process has already taken place...
...The turning over of his holdings to a corporate trust while he remains in the Government does not mean he will not ultimately benefit from subsidies paid into the trust...
...Considered on temporary detachment from the Thai army, they also receive a Lao salary paid from U.S...
...If the ASCS administrator wishes to be above reproach, he can resign and clear the air...
...Hundreds of others have been jailed in this country for refusing to be drafted or for actions held by judges to be illegal forms of protest against the war...
...House in Disorder The dismal state of affairs in the seniority-ridden House of Representatives has finally reached the point where some young members are willing to throw political caution to the winds by openly attacking the House's archaic rules and decrepit leadership...
...call back from over the border and the world the young men who are called 'deserters...
...A year ago, John Kenneth Gal-braith suggested that the Federal Government ought to nationalize the arms industry...
...While Secretary of State William Rogers assures the Senate that the United States has no plans "for the present" to send ground combat forces into Laos, American "advisers"—and bombers—are stepping up their intervention...
...His brother Howard helped shore up the family finances by collecting a subsidy of $41,375 on the 900-acre farm he owns in the same area...
...The essential steps that must be taken to end the widening war are the same that have been required since the beginning of American intervention : We must withdraw our troops —all our troops—from Vietnam, and our support—all our support—from the Saigon regime...
...A similar plan has long been the National Liberation Front's basic proposal for settling the war in South Vietnam...
...It obviously should also turn them to more productive purposes...
...and David Kennedy, Treasury, as well as George A. Lincoln, director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness, and in view of the fact that these members all joined in urging termination of oil quotas, President Nixon's brush-off of their recommendation again demonstrates the awesome power of the oil lobby...
...Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston has now come forward to urge that those who have fled the country should be given a chance to come home and those in jail should be freed...
...In a recent series of revealing dispatches to The Washington Star, correspondent Tammy Arbuckle reported from Vientiane on the deadly charade being acted out in Laos...
...It was Senator Ful-bright again who spoke for countless Americans when he urged a "transitional coalition government for what would become a neutralist, independent South Vietnam and a commitment to a definite schedule for the ultimate total withdrawal of American forces...
...The danger is so great that the Post Office believes it can no longer adhere even to the former practice of notifying recipients before it decides to tamper with their mails...
...It proposed a gradual changeover to tariffs...
...The Administration's policy, in fact, makes a wider war in Indochina almost inescapable, since it has as a central goal the closing of North Vietnamese infiltration routes through Laos and Cambodia...
...His holdings, Frick added, have been placed in a Bank of America corporate trust for the duration of his Federal service...
...Brigadier General George H. Young, Jr., assistant commander...
...According to Post Office Department spokesmen, this latest bit of Big Brotherism is urgently needed to protect innocent Americans from a "flood" of feelthy pictures entering the United States from the Scandinavian countries, as well as from such pernicious mail matter as Irish Sweepstakes tickets...
...it owns the plant at Sunnyvale, California, at which Poseidon and Polaris missiles are turned out...
...Demonstrations of need are for poor people only—everybody knows that...
...He was appointed by Secretary of Agriculture Clifford Hardin a year ago to direct the ASCS, which pays out more than $350 million a year to farmers and farm corporations...
...Instead, the Treasury Department's Customs Bureau will be responsible for protecting us from our foreign correspondents...
...Senator George McGovern March 18, 1970...
...The interests of the Thieu-Ky government are, I believe, increasingly hostile to our own...
...This is the road we must take...
...But the very fact that he and others are now willing to speak out in such affirmative terms offers some hope that the House may yet attempt to put its affairs in order...
...He asked the President- to "ignore the politics of oil and lead the fight against inflation...
...What they represented in the view of The Progressive, not much given to praise of the Pentagon, was one of the few shining hours in the history of military administration...
...Since the quota system was set up under President Eisenhower in 1959, it is estimated that U.S...
...Although the world's standard of living has improved little in the last six years, the per capita burden of military spending has increased to fifty-six dollars for every person in the world, a figure higher than millions of people in the poor countries average in per capita annual income...
...All we are saying is give capitalism a chance...
...In Laos, the Communist-led Pathet Lao proposed, early in March, the formation of a provisional coalition government leading to the eventual election of a neutralist government of national union...
...drop the cases, that are still awaiting judgment on our college youth...
...The $5 Billion Holdup Among major U.S...
...Our own suggestion is to let Lockheed sink or swim...
...If the company can't make it, even under the terms of Pentagon munificence, the Government should put its production facilities into more competent hands...
...The question now is whose interests are to be considered in this matter, the public's or Lockheed's...
...Senator Edward Kennedy found Mr...
...Each of these programs has been plagued by technical problems and huge cost overruns—a total of more than $2 billion projected for the C-5A alone...
...and three colonels, two lieutenant colonels, three majors, and four captains with offenses including false swearing, dereliction of duty, and failure to report possible misconduct...
...Senator George McGovern, South Dakota Democrat, called the Pathet Lao initiative "a major diplomatic opening for resuming high-level negotiations in Paris...
...The oil industry, a heavy contributor to both political parties, had clearly influenced the President to permit the scandalous quota system to remain intact—at least for the time being...
...The taxpayers' contributions to the Fricks came to light when Representative Paul Findley, Illinois Republican, placed in the Congressional Record a list of 7,795 farmers who received $25,000 or more in subsidies in 1969...
...In one telling bit of testimony before the Senate Anti-Trust Subcommittee, Secretary Shultz said the oil import quota system "does not reflect national security needs, present or future, and is no longer acceptable . . . the quotas have caused inefficiencies in the market place, have led to undue Government intervention, and are riddled with exceptions unrelated to national security...
...The Cardinal's appeal is both moving and sound...
...If not, there could be a threat of the young members breaking away and forming a third party in the House of Representatives . . . and it could spread outside Congress...
...It is a depressing report that fully documents its conclusion that the ICC ought to be abolished...
...The principal weapon in the holdup, the oil import quota system, maintains artificially high prices for petroleum products by placing severe Federal limits on the quantity of these products that may be imported...
...The Post Office emphasizes that the job of reading other people's mail will not be assigned to latter carriers who, Lord knows, have quite enough to do already...
...Their considerable power is usually wielded in behalf of interests diametrically opposed to those their party supposedly represents...
...Among its other contributions to the public welfare are the Army's Cheyenne helicopter, the Air Force's short-range attack missile (SRAM), and a fleet of Navy destroyer escorts and amphibious craft...
...consumers have paid between $40 billion and $70 billion more than they would have without the quotas...
...Thus the House recently voted to increase the amount of credit available to countries that want to buy U.S...
...The House also wrote into the same measure, the Foreign Military Sales Act, a request that the President review American military aid programs, and initiate U.N...
...Would it be too much, he asked, to suggest that "we empty our jails of all the protesters—the guilty and the innocent—without judging them...
...Last year his subsidy check was $77,981 on a 2,175-acre farm he owns near Bakersfield, California...
...The Army's Shining Hour When the Army recently accused two generals and twelve other officers of being involved in the suppression of information about the mass killing of civilians at Songmy two years ago, the Pentagon's patron saint, Representative Mendel Rivers of South Carolina, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, proclaimed the accusations to be "one of the darkest days in U.S...
...If foreign oil is not kept out, quota advocates argue, domestic producers will be so enfeebled that should there be a war cutting off imports, our oil industry will not be able to meet U.S...
...Findley, who in the past has persuaded the House (the Senate refused) to vote for a $20,000 ceiling on individual farm subsidies, said that in the Frick case "there is a conflict of interest in the broadest sense...
...The danger that many of us have been concerned about for years is being realized: The war in Vietnam, which the Nixon Administration continues to insist is being "wound down," is instead being expanded to the entire region of Indochina...
...Such antic movements by Congress ¦—one small step toward peace, one giant step toward war—reflect the inability of the peace forces to develop significant and enduring political pressure...
...This puts Frick in a position where it cannot be known whether or not he plays any part, direct or indirect, in agency decisions that determine the size of his own subsidy payments...
...Since we happen to cherish the old-fashioned idea that a personal letter is personal, we are planning to apply for appointment to a suitably high position in the diplomatic corps or the Federal bureaucracy...
...And the expansion is taking place in the same fog of deception and dissimulation that characterized the catastrophic American intervention in Vietnam...
...The Senator, the Frick brothers, and others from coast to coast who were paid subsidies last year do not have to submit to a means test under this welfare program run by the Department of Agriculture...
...That the quest for "victory" still guides American policy seems beyond doubt...
...But a groundswell of expression of the spirit of compassion and understanding exemplified by the Cardinal would confront the Administration with the opportunity to take a simple step of tolerance and mercy that would greatly brighten its image...
...industries—steel, autos, and oil—it is difficult to tell which is the hungriest...
...arms...
...military history...
...Defense procurement is, to all intents and purposes, a program of socialism for the rich...
...He appointed still another study committee, and requested that Congress make additional studies of oil import controls...
...Since 1964 his plantation has raked in more than $550,000 in Federal subsidies...
...The excuse given by the industry and the Government for this enormous levy on the consumer is "national security...
...The Friends Committee on National Legislation, in an excellent U.S...
...Other clergymen and laymen have voiced it in other words and at other times...
...This is the road The Progressive has proposed during the many years our country has lost its way on detours that have led only to disaster...
...Only diplomats and high official's are to be exempt from regulations recently promulgated by Postmaster General Winton Blount that provide for the scrutiny of "suspicious" foreign mail...
...The President responded to his own task force's findings by shelving the 400-page report based on 10,000 pages of testimony...
...Lockheed's, says Mr...
...A disaster of great proportions to American foreign policy in Asia would induce a wave of recrimination at home, which in turn could set off a chain of events culminating in a disaster to American democracy...
...But that terrible truth, thanks to the press and the Peers board, is now emerging...
...It held more than $2 billion in defense contracts last year, including that most costly boondoggle, the C-5A transport plane...
...Newsweek commented that the Peers board, "instead of letting junior officers and enlisted men take the rap," had pursued its probe until these higher officers stood accused: "Possibly never before had any military establishment taken such pains in the midst of war to investigate an atrocity committed by its own forces and the failure of its own high ranking officers to report the crime...
...The plan, he said, would create a security zone "free from all attempts at sabotage and pressure by forces inside or outside Laos," and would ensure the normal functioning of a provisional coalition government...
...it owns, as columnists Frank Mankiewicz and Carl Braden have pointed out, "nearly all of Lockheed—except the stock and the profits...
...Senator J. W. Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, summed up the tragic consequences of this Administration policy when he warned in a recent Senate speech that tensions arising out of the crisis in Southeast Asia "will be aggravated if Vietnamization is allowed to continue until a major military disaster occurs in Indochina...
...The average age of the most influential chairmen is more than seventy, and three will be in their eighties by the end of this year...
...Double Payment Kenneth E. Frick has enjoyed handsome support from the Government in two forms: his salary as head of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS), and a farm subsidy under the program that agency administers...
...Meanwhile, South Vietnamese forces have already carried the war across the Cambodian frontier, to the professed astonishment of American officials...
...From its original Nineteenth Century function as an agency designed to curb abusive practices of the railroad monopolies, the ICC has deteriorated into an agency whose prime purpose is to serve the demands of industry and diminish or eliminate any threat of competition...
...Representative Jerome Waldie, a California Democrat not previously noted for maverick tendencies, recently startled his colleagues in the Democratic Caucus by offering a motion of no-confidence in the seventy-eight-year old Speaker, John McCormack of Massachusetts...
...Senior staff members of the ICC are veteran bureaucrats whose deeply ingrained habit it is to serve private rather than public interests...
...Until they do, as they nearly succeeded in doing when the Senate came within one vote of defeating the ABM, there is small hope that the United States will seek to exercise effective leadership in bringing the worldwide arms race under control...
...discussions and talks with countries that supply arms, with a view to limiting the trade in conventional arms...
...Like a companion study of the Federal Trade Commission compiled last year, the Nader report on the ICC should serve as the springboard for a ¦searching Congressional investigation •—one that produces a long-needed overhaul of the Government's entire regulatory structure...
...After nearly a year's study it concluded that the quotas should be scrapped and a tariff system substituted that would increase imports of lower priced foreign oil, permit some modest reduction in domestic prices, and at the same time yield additional tariff revenue for the Government...
...The United States remains the pacesetter in the international arms race and in the size of its military appropriations...
...The result of such staffing, Nader's Raiders conclude, has been "rate collusion, price-fixing, and the absence of competition...
...At a Pentagon news conference General Peers said, "Our inquiry clearly established that a tragedy of major proportions occurred there [at Songmy] on that day [March 16, 1968...
...In other words, the "victory" that has eluded the United States in South Vietnam may now be pursued by extending the war into Laos—and probably in Cambodia, too, now that a "sympathetic" regime has been installed in Pnompenh...
...Investigate the Regulators Nader's Raiders, the enterprising law students working under the direction of consumer advocate Ralph Nader, have rendered another distinguished public service by producing an exhaustive, 1,000-page study of the Interstate Commerce Commission...
...Representative Paul N. McClos-key Jr., the California Republican who won a House seat in 1967 after defeating Shirley Temple Black in a primary contest, says: "Every young, poor, or black person in the country ought to understand by November that the reason for the unresponsiveness of Congress is the seniority system...
...The government of France, which has more than a passing acquaintance with the disastrous potential of a new Indochina war, declared last month that a solution lay in the creation of "a zone of neutrality and peace" in the entire region...
...The steelmakers raise prices at will, as do the auto and oil companies...
...Nor is the revolt confined to the Democratic side of the aisle...
...The agency, says the report, is "an elephants' graveyard of political hacks...
...The interests of the Thieu-Ky government are, I believe, increasingly hostile to our own...
...Our National Honor' "It is time we stopped approaching negotiations from the standpoint of a nation still convinced it can achieve military victory...
...If that doesn't work out, we'll settle for a job in the Customs Bureau...
...Given the repressive mood of the present tenants of the White House, it is most unlikely that amnesty would be granted...
...budget analysis published in its Washington newsletter, estimated that of $156 billion appropriated by Congress in calendar 1969, $76 billion— or about half—went for military spending and only 16.5 per cent for health, education, and welfare...
...Although the Congressman claimed no illegality was involved, it remains a fact that the agency Frick directs makes decisions on acreage allotments to individual farmers and these decisions affect the profitability of their holdings...
...But such an American response is inconceivable so long as Washington remains committed to continuing the war by "Vietnamization...
...Thai mercenaries, directed by American Special Forces officers working for the CIA, "arrive in American aircraft and are dressed in civilian clothes," he wrote...
...What is the purpose of these thinly disguised operations...
...plan is to suck Hanoi into Laos, where the North Vietnamese, as outsiders, are disliked and, through better intelligence gathering with the help of the mountain population are more vulnerable to U.S...
...Nixon's treatment of the task force report "astounding, not merely because of his recent anti-inflation rhetoric but because he now has the benefit of a thorough report...
...Since seniority automatically favors members from "safe" districts, no fewer than forty-two Representatives from Southern and border states hold chairmanships of committees and subcommittees in this Congress...
...They are not the only Thai forces serving in Laos...
...American policy is the major obstacle to the achievement of such a peace...
...On arrival they are issued Lao army uniforms, Lao identity papers, and paybooks...
...If it is our national honor we seek to preserve, then let us recognize that our honor is battered and sullied by our embrace of that regime...
...In fact, Lockheed's current financial problems are a direct result of Pentagon socialism, which permits major defense firms to secure contracts at deceptively low bids on the understanding (called a "golden handshake") that they will recover their costs—and more—in subsequent procurement through cost overruns approved by the Defense Department...
...NOTES in the NEWS The Widening War There is something depressingly familiar about the rapidly unfolding sequence of events in Southeast Asia...
...NATO spent $108 billion of this, the Warsaw Pact nations $63 billion...
...William Rogers, State...
...Many of the Thais are regular officers of the royal Thai army serving in Laos with full knowledge of Thailand and continue to receive their full salary from the Thai government...
...Koster resigned his post as Superintendent at West Point when the Peers board announced its action...
...1i The increase in the arms expenditures of the big countries has slowed somewhat in the past two years while the amounts spent by the developing countries have increased sharply...
...Thai air force pilots fly transports belonging to the Central Intelligence Agency-contracted airline...
...They search for love and all they discover is sex...
...With "friends" like these, the consumer doesn't need enemies...
...Conviction of the fourteen by courts-martial on any of the charges would mean dismissal from the service and sentences that might range as high as three yaars of hard labor...
...H Last year alone the global outlay for arms and armies was $200 billion...
...Not only does this country incite arms escalation with its huge military budget and its expanding nuclear weapons systems, but it provides easy lines of credit to "hook" small nations into arms addiction...
...If it is our national honor we seek to preserve, then let us recognize that our honor is battered and sullied by our embrace of that regime...
...In fact, twenty liberal Democrats have already threatened to bolt the Party next year unless meaningful reforms are instituted...
...This is no more likely to happen than the prospect that Senator James O. Eastland will refuse his farm subsidy...
...The full story of Songmy may be disclosed during the courts-martial of those officers and enlisted men charged with being directly involved in the killings...
...Pentagon Socialism Deputy Defense Secretary David Packard and other high panjandrums of the Pentagon are, at this writing, devoting their considerable talents to an urgent search for ways to help the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation out of a financial jam—at the taxpayers' expense...
...In these troubled times, the Cardinal emphasized, the young "are bewildered, confused protesters against a world they are reluctant to inherit...
...Waldie's highly unorthodox move was supported by only twenty-three members, but many others have indicated that they will try to end McCormack's insensitive and ineffective reign when the House is reorganized next January...
...It is reflected in the Administration's persistent refusal to enter into serious negotiations in Paris...
...Big Brother Is Reading If you like the idea of receiving personal mail from abroad without having it opened and inspected first by Government investigators, you had better apply immediately for appointment to an ambassadorship or a top Federal position...
...I think it's very undesirable to have him in that position...
...As an "anti-inflation" measure President Nixon has not hesitated to cut Federal funds for health, education, and welfare...
...By January 30, 1971, we will overthrow it...
...Senator George McGovern March 18, 1970 compared to $1 trillion in the past six years...
...The Party that has a majority in the House will have had to agree...
...Meanwhile, the Army accusation that fourteen officers had suppressed information about the incident helps to explain why so many Americans at home told pollsters and reporters they regarded the Songmy massacre stories as "press sensationalism"—the truth had been hidden from press and public by field officers in Vietnam...
...And the American puppet regime in Saigon, whose every whim enjoys American acquiescence, if not support, has demonstrated that it is only too eager to see the war extended beyond its frontiers because a wider war would slow, if not stop, withdrawal of the U.S...
...troops that prop up the Thieu-Ky dictatorship...
...military and domestic needs...
...The Senator suggested that the United States should tell the Pathet Lao, the Hanoi government, and the National Liberation Front "that we find enough of value in their peace proposals to make them the worthwhile basis for negotiations designed to end the war in Southeast Asia...
...The rift between those who want reform and the aging leadership is growing," says Representative Robert W. Kastenmeier, Wisconsin Democrat, "and the Establishment may find an open revolt next January when it comes time to organize the House...
...in its unswerving support of the Thieu dictatorship in Saigon, and in its outright rejection of any proposal that looks to a political accommodation...
...But then, the President doesn't have to drive down to the corner station and say, with a wince at the price of gasoline, "Two dollars worth, please...
...H Most ominous of all is this: According to ACDA and United Nations' reports, if military outlays continue to rise at the present rate the arms race will eat up $4 trillion in the 1970s 'Our National Honor' "It is time we stopped approaching negotiations from the standpoint of a nation still convinced it can achieve military victory...
...What a price to pay for the myth that Vietnam ever really mattered to the security of the United States...
...air attack...
...The following statistics and other facts from a recent Agency report boggle the mind: 11 More than $1 trillion dollars has been spent for arms and armed forces around the world in the last six years...
...The general, who had served in Vietnam for thirty months, said he hoped his board's report would help "to prevent an incident such as . . . [Songmy] from ever again occurring...
...Underfinanced and otherwise largely neglected by the President and the Congress, the ACDA's role does not permit it to do much more than release figures on the staggering growth of military expenditures...
...As presently constituted, the agencies are worse than useless...
...My superiors made that decision...
...They want peace so badly, he said, that they have been caught up in violence in a vain effort to achieve their goals...
...In view of the makeup of the task force, which included Shultz, Secretaries Melvin Laird, Defense...
...The Cardinal Asks Amnesty Thousands of young Americans have chosen to go to Canada and overseas rather than fight an immoral war in Vietnam...
...The challenge confronting them is Lockheed's request for $641 million in "interim financing" to tide it over while it resolves various disputes with the military over the terms of defense contracts...
...The fact that the quota system costs a family of four from $102 to $258 a year in higher prices, depending on the region of the country, does not appear to strike the President as inflationary...
...The task force reported that quotas are boosting oil consumers' costs by $5 billion a year and that this excess cost will rise to $8 billion by 1980...
...Packard, who feels the public should foot the bill in terms of "significant additional financing" to preserve the company's "important capability...
...Representative McCloskey may be overstating his colleague's enthusiasm for reform...
...Hooked' on Weapons One way to expose the lunatic priorities of our times is to point out that a single C-5A Lockheed military transport, including its huge cost overruns, will set back U.S...
...The work promises to be interesting...
...According to Laotian sources cited by Arbuckle, "the U.S...
...But over the long pull the oil industry seems the most rapacious, thanks to a beneficent Government- that permits the oil tycoons to hold up the American motorist every time he drives into a gas station...
...The arrangement "is not my decision," he said...
...On the insistence of the Young Turks, the Democratic Caucus voted recently to conduct a study of the seniority system, but the entrenched oldtimers were able to undercut the effectiveness of the move by deferring publication of the results of the study until next January—when it will presumably be too late to affect the organization of the next Congress...
...We cannot and will not...
...funds as an additional incentive...
...Nor should we look at them through the eyes of a narrowly based South Vietnamese government seeking to perpetuate its power at our expense...
...Members of the Commission are distinguished primarily for their close contacts with the transportation industries they are supposed $o regulate and by their acceptance of "deferred bribes"—that is, high-paying jobs in those industries after their retirement from public office...
...They seek beauty but find it only in rags and drugs," he said...
...In Cambodia, a new right-wing regime announces it will ask Washington for "military assistance...
Vol. 34 • May 1970 • No. 5
