Quoting Associated Press photographer Horst Faas and unidentified sources, AP reporter Peter Arnett broke the story that U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were using gas warfare in combat. Though he emphasized that these were “non-lethal” gases dispensed by helicopters and bombers, Arnett wrote that “one gas reportedly causes extreme nausea and vomiting, another loosens the bowels.” Hours after the story was revealed, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed for afternoon papers the story about the use of gas, but said that it was only being used by “South Vietnam’s armed forces.” Two days later, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk would hold a press conference to respond to the controversy saying, “We are not embarking upon gas warfare in Vietnam. There has been no policy decision to engage in gas warfare in Vietnam. We are not talking about agents or weapons that are associated with gas warfare… We are not talking about gas that is prohibited by the Geneva Convention of 1925.”
The State Department confirms a report out of Saigon that the United States has supplied the South Vietnamese armed forces with a ‘non-lethal gas which disables temporarily’ for use ‘in tactical situations in which the Việt Cộng intermingle with or take refuge among non-combatants, rather than use artillery or aerial bombardment.’ The gas has already been used three times — with little effect. This triggers off a storm of criticism around the world; the North Vietnamese and the Soviets loudly protest this introduction of ‘poison gas’ into the war. A group of Labor members of Parliament tonight assailed the United States for its use of gas and napalm in Vietnam.
United States planes attacked a radar station 60 miles inside North Vietnam today in carrying out an armed reconnaissance of roads for the first time in this war. A United States military spokesman said one of the eight F-105 Thunderchiefs that had taken part in the raid had been shot down but the pilot had been picked up safely from the South China Sea by a rescue amphibian.
The spokesman described route reconnaissance as a mission in which fighter-bombers fly above enemy roads in search of military targets. If they find such a target they attack it, he explained. He said today’s route reconnaissance was the first to be made over any part of North Vietnam. In the past United States and South Vietnamese planes have conducted only carefully planned raids on military targets that have been reconnoitered and photographed previously. When asked if there would be more armed route reconnaissance missions in North Vietnam, the spokesman said he could not comment.
The target hit today was an early warning radar station at Vĩnh Sơn, 60 miles north of the 17th Parallel, which divides. North Vietnam from South Vietnam. The station is 30 miles from Đồng Hới, a naval base that was one of 11 targets struck in previous raids. A military spokesman said three armed junks near the radar station had fired on United States jets. The fire was returned and the three junks were sunk. Returning pilots reported that the radar station had been “virtually destroyed.” They said ground fire had been light to moderately steady. The weather was perfect for flying. For the first time no formal statement on the purpose of the raid was given. A United States Embassy spokesman said only that the attack was “our response to their continued aggression.”
In military action in South Vietnam, a United States military spokesman reported. Government forces scored another victory yesterday when they killed 28 Việt Cộng guerrillas and captured 28 others in Kiến Hòa Province, 50 miles south of Saigon. Contact with the Việt Cộng was made during a search and destroy operation. A battalion of government troops was lifted by helicopter to the area. One Việt Cộng squad, in a rare move, surrendered after its leader was killed. A large-scale attack was started this morning 10 miles southwest of the large United States air base at Đà Nẵng, where American Marines are dug in. Acting on reports that the area contained a Việt Cộng training camp, 17 American bombers and fighters struck it. Soon after, 58 helicopters took elements of several government battalions to the village of Đồng Nghệ, near the camp. By late this afternoon no contact had been made with the guerrillas.
Off Bình Định Province on the coast of central Vietnam a motorized junk that reportedly fired on an observation plane yesterday was towed into Quy Nhơn harbor today by a Vietnamese naval vessel. The junk had been strafed by South Vietnamese Air Force planes after it was said to have fired on the observation plane. Fifteen persons on board were killed and nine others drowned. Vietnamese officials said later that “apparently valid” papers found aboard the vessel had given it permission to sail to Nha Trang. Three of those killed were in government army uniforms. An investigation was being made of a statement by the province chief that the suspected Việt Cộng on board fired at the plane and then discarded their weapons and swam ashore.
In a speech tonight to the Saigon Lion’s Club, the United States Ambassador, Maxwell D. Taylor, declared that any negotiations with North Vietnam that would permit the Communists to enjoy the fruits of their terrorism or leave them in a dominant position in the South would be an affront to justice and humanity.”
A senior Communist official in North Vietnam has echoed the Chinese Communist stand that the United States must withdraw from South Vietnam before there can be any negotiated settlement.
A communiqué of the Cambodian Army high command charged today that “soldiers belonging to the American-South Vietnamese forces, supported by fighters” attacked a village about one-and-a-quarter miles inside Cambodian territory yesterday. The communiqué identified the village as Preah Trohing, in Kampot Province. It said aircraft had machine-gunned the surrounding area during the attack. The Cambodian losses were put at two killed and three wounded, including a 10-year-old boy, and three houses set on fire.
President Johnson is sending Ellsworth Bunker to Indonesia to see whether anything more can be done to avoid a virtual collapse in United States-Indonesian relations. Mr. Bunker, who is 70 years old, has served many years in United States diplomatic posts. He is expected to confer with President Sukarno and other Indonesian leaders, as well as with the retiring United States Ambassador, Howard P. Jones. The special mission will last about a week. Officials said that the Administration wished to do everything possible to look beyond the irritations of the moment to determine whether any meaningful relations between Washington and Jakarta could still be salvaged. Indonesia has the largest Communist party in the non-Communist world and the fear here is that President Sukarno may soon be unable — if he is not already unwilling — to prevent a virtual takeover of his government. Strategically situated between the Southeast Asian mainland and Australia, the Indonesian islands are rich in resources and have more than 100 million inhabitants.
Chairul Saleh, Indonesia’s Minister of Basic Industries and Mining, appeared today to be seeking an arrangement with four foreign oil companies that will allow them to continue operating here under government control and supervision.
The new Soviet Government today appeared for the first time to be accusing former Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev of having been mistaken about Communist theory as well as practical policy. Kommunist, the ideological journal of the party’s Central Committee, charged in effect that he had underestimated the importance of Marxist theory in running the country’s affairs. In the past. Mr. Khrushchev had been charged with tactical errors only. In the view of Western specialists, the new charges could have an important bearing on the ideological conflict between the Soviet Union and Communist China.
It was noted that the Soviet charges against Mr. Khrushchev were being made when a new plenary session of the Central Committee, the party’s ruling body, was believed to be imminent. The session, expected within a matter of days, is to deal with ideological problems as well as with agriculture and economic policy in general. The editorial in Kommunist, like the editorial attacks that followed Mr. Khrushchev’s ouster last fall, did not identify the former leader by name. It said the principal mistakes of the recent past were “subjectivism,” “arbitrary decisions,” and a tendency to resort to administrative changes as a cure-all for all sorts of failures. Mr. Khrushchev has frequently been criticized on such grounds.
But the journal then added that “in recent years” the Leninist principle of the unity of theory and practice had been misinterpreted. The role of Communist theory was unduly reduced and used only as a basis for day-to-day, short-range action, and not for consistent planning of economic policy, the journal said. Western observers believed that this came close to saying that Marxist principles had often been ignored and that; government and party decisions were made on a purely pragmatic basis — a charge with which the Chinese Communists would enthusiastically agree.
The Chinese party declared Monday that the ideological clash had entered a critical new phase in which the pro-Peking parties would intensify their fight against Moscow.
France and the Soviet Union agreed today to pool their efforts to develop a single color television system for Europe — the French system. Two days before the opening of a European conference in Vienna to discuss a common system of color television, France announced that it had signed an accord with the Soviet Union to adopt the French version, SECAM (Séquentiel couleur avec mémoire), which was competing with West Germany’s PAL (Phase Alternating Line) system. The result at the Vienna Conference would be that all of the other Western European nations except France would use PAL, while SECAM would be used in Eastern Europe and France. North America and much of Latin America would use the NTSC (National Television System Committee) standard.
Nicolae Ceauşescu was unanimously elected the new First Secretary by the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party and the nation’s de facto leader, three days after the death of Gheorghe Gheorgiu-dej. Of the seven members of the Politburo, three were “ruled out from the post by virtue of their ethnic background” and Ceauşescu and Alexandru Drăghici were the two most powerful men in the Party. However, Ceauşescu had been the Secretary for organization in the Central Committee since 1955 and most of the committee members had owed their positions to him; Drăghici, as Minister of Internal Affairs and in control of the Securitate secret police, was feared by many of the same people. Drăghici would be forced to resign as Minister four months later.
In Ceylon’s parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, her Sri Lanka Freedom Party, and the Sinhalese ethnic majority suffered a landslide defeat, losing 34 of their 75 seats in the 151-member House of Representatives. The United National Party, led by Dudley Senanayake and supported by the nation’s minority, the Tamils, more than doubled its share of seats, from 30 to 66, and combined forces with the 14 seats of another Tamil group, the Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK), to obtain a majority in the House.
Avianca Flight 676 from Bogota to Bucaramanga crashed into the 7,200-foot (2,200 m) tall Pan de Azucar mountain peak after flying through a storm. All 29 people on board were killed.
President Johnson announced tonight the signing of all agreement with Mexico to solve the problem of salinity in the Colorado River that had been damaging Mexican crops.
Ghana’s President Kwame Nkrumah charged today that “imperialist-inspired” plots to overthrow at least five African states were being planned.
Selma’s Freedom marchers plodded 16 more miles through the sunny Alabama countryside today before stopping for the night in the heart of Lowndes County — which many Blacks regard as hostile territory. On their second night out, 300 marchers bivouacked on a farm here after having completed 23 miles of their 54-mile walk from Selma to Montgomery. They are due in Montgomery, the state capital, on Thursday. A court order had limited their number to 300 on the stretch of two-lane highway in Lowndes County. The march started yesterday with 3,200 persons on the four-lane highway out of Selma. The little band today was ringed by Army and National Guard troops and reassured by the presence of high federal officials, including Ramsey Clark, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States.
“We are not afraid,” the walkers sang as they passed the county line at 12:13 PM. But Lowndes County is lonesome country, and the marchers, if not afraid, are at least a little nervous. The blacktop Jefferson Davis Highway narrows from four lanes to two shortly after it leaves Dallas County. It runs through rolling farmland that gives way regularly to marshes and small swamps. The marchers have been warned to watch for the water moccasins that come up from the bog and sun themselves on the road.
But what the marchers are really watching for are embittered white men, the kind who flew a small plane over the march this morning and threw out leaflets advertising: “Operation Ban — selective hiring, firing, buying, selling — an unemployed agitator ceases to agitate.” The leaflets, signed by White Citizens Action, Inc., of Tuscaloosa, said the message had been brought by the “Confederate Air Force.”
The marchers know that until last week no Black had been registered to vote in Lowndes County, even though 80 percent of its population is Black. Last week 12 persons were enrolled. “Not a single Negro in Lowndes County had even tried to register in the last 65 years until two weeks ago,” said the Rev. Andrew Young, executive assistant to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as he and Dr. King led the group out of Dallas County. “In Lowndes County, all the Negroes are either school teachers ог sharecroppers, which means that the whites have strings on them all, one way or another.” he said.
It was the third attempt at a march from Selma to Montgomery. The first two had been stopped by state troopers — the first with tear gas and clubs. The marchers, mostly Alabama Blacks with a few visiting whites, are on the walk from Selma to Montgomery to take a petition to Governor George C. Wallace asking for a guarantee of Black voting rights. They camped tonight on a farm owned by a Black in this community 23 miles east of Selma on U. S. Highway 80. Dr. King limped into camp with a sore foot at 6:40 PM. Many of the marchers suffered blisters and sunburn.
Dr. King announced that he would leave at 10 AM tomorrow to keep a speaking engagement at Cleveland. He said he was thinking of stepping aside Thursday, the last day of the march, and letting an all-Alabama delegation try to present a petition for Black rights to Governor Wallace. Dr. King was joined for part of the time today by his wife and by LeRoy Collins, director of the Federal Community Relations Service, representing President Johnson. Dr. King and Mr. Collins discussed the problems in arranging the demonstration Thursday in Montgomery. Most of the other celebrities. left the march yesterday, the first day. Many more are expected to rejoin it for the entry into Montgomery Thursday morning.
Army and National Guard military policemen are searching under every bridge and in every patch of roadside woods. Soldiers are guarding every intersection. This afternoon, they walked four feet apart across the field chosen as tonight’s campsite, looking for explosives. No violence or threats were reported today. Brigadier General Henry V. Graham, the National Guard officer commanding the troops, said the march was going splendidly. Asked if he had encountered any security problems, he said, “No sir. None whatsoever.”
The march resumed at 8 AM today. About 450 marchers walked away from last night’s campsite, a farm 7.3 miles from Selma, and headed into the sun. The sky was cloudless, the temperature was in the high 30’s and a gentle south wind was bending the high grass and making the fields alive. Dr. King, wearing a green cap with ear flaps, walked at the head of the line beside his friend and top aide, the Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy. The caravan stopped every hour to rest. At the third stop, the march leaders selected the 200 who could continue into Lowndes County. The march is being held under a court order handed down by Federal District Judge Frank Johnson of Montgomery. The order limits the number of marchers to 300 on the 13.8 miles of two-lane highway through Lowndes County.
Former President Harry S.Truman today described the march of Blacks and their supporters from Selma to Montgomery as “silly.” “They can’t accomplish a darned thing,” he said in Independence, Missouri. “All they want is to attract attention.”
Army demolition experts disarmed today the sixth time bomb found in two days in the heart of the Black community in Birmingham, Alabama. Governor George C. Wallace posted a $1,000 state reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the persons responsible for the bombs. The amount was the maximum, state reward permitted. Mr. Wallace said those who had placed the bombs “play into the hands of those who would seek to destroy our state.” A special detail of 25 policemen worked on the case. Mayor Albert Boutwell said that neither men nor money would be spared to find the persons responsible. No arrests have been made.
Senate leaders served notice today that if President Johnson’s voting rights bill was not passed by April 15, the Senators would forfeit their customary Easter recess. The Democratic leader, Mike Mansfield, said that instead of taking a week’s vacation the Senate would meet every day except Easter Sunday, if it was necessary to get the bill passed. The Republican leader, Everett McKinley Dirksen, said that he hoped Southern opponents of the bill would not stage an “over-extended discussion.” “Obviously,” he said, “there is a desire in the country and I would assume the members of the Senate would be roundly scolded if we run out on our obligation.” Mr. Mansfield, a Montana Democrat, had been telling Senators that the Easter recess; would probably consist of no more than a Friday-to-Tuesday weekend. Today, he took the Senate floor to say that the recess would be even shorter if the bill was not passed.
The House approved today a toughening up of District of Columbia law and regulations to fight crime in the nation’s capital.
The Administration’s $1.3 billion aid-to-education bill was cleared for floor action by the House Rules Committee today.
The nation’s governors asked today that President Johnson permit a new study of the so-called “Heller plan” to distribute some federal income-tax revenue to the states.
The Surgeon General, Dr. Luther L. Terry, urged Congress today to require that a cautionary health label be printed on all cigarette packages as an important weapon in the war on lung cancer.
Senator Jacob K. Javits (R-New York) has told close political associates that he will not support New York Governor Rockefeller for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1968.
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Born:
Glenallen Hill, MLB outfielder (World Series Champions-Yankees, 2000; Toronto Blue Jays, Cleveland Indians, Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants, Seattle Mariners, New York Yankees, Anaheim Angels), in Santa Cruz, California.
John Kordic, Canadian NHL right wing (NHL Champions, Stanley Cup-Canadiens, 1986; Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, Washington Capitols, Ottawa Senators), in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada d. 1992, after overdosing on drugs).
Todd Charlesworth, Canadian NHL defenseman (Pittsburgh Penguins, New York Rangers), in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Rick Harrison, American businessman, reality television personality (“Pawn Stars”), and owner of the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop, in Lexington, North Carolina.
Steve Toussaint, British actor and writer (‘Lord Corlys Velaryon- “House of the Dragon”) in Birmingham, England, United Kingdom.
Emma Wray, English actress (“Watching”), in Birkenhead, England, United Kingdom.
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