Lightning strikes U.S. camp defenses at Plei Do Lim in South Vietnam and triggers off mine explosions that cost 88 casualties, 14 of them killed. One American was wounded. The American casualty was an enlisted man in the United States Army’s Special Forces. He was reported in serious condition at the Eighth United States Army field hospital in Nha Trang. The lightning activated 40 electrically operated mines on the inner perimeter of the camp, 240 miles northeast of Saigon. Each mine spewed an arc of deadly pellets through the troops’ huts and tents.
It is revealed today that U.S. and South Vietnamese planes are using herbicides to defoliate jungles and destroy crops. Weed killers are among the weapons being used against Communist guerrillas in what Secretary of State Dean Rusk has labeled the “mean, dirty struggle” in South Vietnam. The weed killers, such as are, used in many American gardens, are employed to strip jungle areas of foliage to expose Việt Cộng insurgents and to deprive them of possible ambush sites. They can also used to damage farm crops in areas where Việt Cộng control has long been established. United States military forces, while participating in most of the defoliating efforts, have not taken part in crop-damaging operations. Defoliation operations have been carried on in South Vietnam since 1961.
Ambassador Maxwell D. Taylor left for Washington tonight after declaring that the situation in South Vietnam had “generally improved” since his last trip. home, at the end of last year. Asked whether he would recommend the assignment of more United States troops to the country, the Ambassador said he preferred “not to underline any single matter I will discuss.” He said he expected to spend about a week in Washington.
Ambassador Taylor, flying to Hawaii for an overnight stop, planned to reach Washington. tomorrow. He was accompanied by Brigadier General William E. De Puy, deputy chief of staff for operations in the United States’ Saigon command; Roy S. Weherle, an assistant director of the United States aid mission, and Freeman Matthews Jr., a member of the embassy’s political section. They flew in a blue-and-white military jet aircraft.
The pace of the war with the Việt Cộng guerrillas was as subdued during the day of Mr. Taylor’s departure as it had been for almost two weeks. No major action, by either the government or the Việt Cộng, was reported. A bomb, apparently planted inside a United States landing ship carrying American cargo, exploded shortly after midnight at the port of Đà Nẵng, slightly injuring one crewman, a Japanese. The cargo, consisting of commissary supplies, was not damaged.
Near the capital, two Việt Cộng actions were reported in Giã Định Province. About 80 miles south of Saigon, a band of Communist guerrillas clashed with government militiamen defending a hamlet. Aircraft dropped flares to aid the government troops, but no air strikes were ordered because the opposing forces were too closely intermingled. The Việt Cộng guerrillas broke off the fighting and retreated. Their casualties were not known. Two militiamen were killed and one was wounded. The second action, also initiated by the Communists, involved small-arms harassment of another hamlet. No casualties were reported.
Throughout the day, American B-57 jets struck at suspected Communist concentrations in Tây Ninh Province. The area, 50 miles northwest of Saigon, has been a principal Việt Cộng base. Government forces also reported the discovery of two large rice caches near Việt Cộng bases. They uncovered 128,000 pounds in Bình Long Province, 70 miles north of Saigon, and 132,000 pounds in three piles in Phước Thành Province.
Two squadrons of Marine warplanes are expected to arrive in Vietnam to support ground forces here. An informed source said the aircraft would be stationed at Đà Nẵng, complementing the missile squadron and two squadrons of Marine helicopters. The Đà Nẵng airfield is guarded by 4,000 United States Marines. The Marines Ninth Expeditionary Brigade two battalions of combat troops landed in Đà Nẵng this month. The planes would be assigned to furnish them with tactical support. The source said the new force would consist of a squadron of jets and a squadron of propeller-driven fighter-bombers. With the Hawks and the helicopters on the base, they would be incorporated into a Marine air wing.
At Quy Nhơn air base, two American enlisted men were burned slightly when a United States Air Force observation plane accidentally fired two white-phosphorous-rockets during take-off.
The South Vietnamese Government announced today that it was abolishing martial law throughout the country and reducing the Saigon curfew period by an hour. Martial law had been in force since last November, when anti-government riots broke out in several South Vietnamese cities. The capital’s curfew is to last only two hours, from 2 AM to 4 AM. Previously it began at 1 AM.
With more and more roads cut by the Việt Cộng, the course of the war in South Vietnam has become increasingly dependent on a fleet of scarred C-123 transport planes. At any hour of day or night, these twin-engine propeller-driven aircraft with a high tail and thick fuselage are in the skies over South Vietnam. Virtually every base and camp in South Vietnam looks to some extent to the 315th Air Commando Group and its 112 aircraft for supplies, spare parts, mail, movies and leave trips to Saigon. The cargo carried by these planes shows clearly the rapid increase in American participation in the Vietnamese war.
In the last 12 months, the tonnage handled by the group’s ground squadron has risen from 12,000 a month to more than 24,000. Tân Sơn Nhứt Air Base, the group’s headquarters on the outskirts of Saigon, has now become the third largest military air-transport center after Travis Air Force Base in California and McGuire in New Jersey.
Allies of the United States have gradually been stepping up trade with North Vietnam at the very time that the United States has been increasing its aid to help South Vietnam resist “aggression” from the North.
Leftist trade unionists staged a rally in a downtown Tokyo park today to demand the withdrawal of United States forces from South Vietnam. Kyodo, the Japanese news agency, estimated that 5,000 persons attended.
The regime of Premier Fidel Castro declared itself ready today to send “men and weapons” to Vietnam if its help was requested by its Communist allies. President Osvaldo Dorticos Torrado said in an official statement that the Cuban Government backed declarations by the Soviet Union, Communist China, and North Korea offering military aid to North Vietnam if the representatives of that country asked for it. “The people and Revolutionary Government of Cuba would reply positively to any request in this sense,” the President affirmed. His declaration recalled that Premier Castro, in a speech on March 13, urged all Communist countries to overcome their ideological quarrels and go to North Vietnam’s aid.
The United Nations mediator in the deadlocked Cyprus dispute has urged in a report to U Thant, the Secretary General, the immediate opening of negotiations among the “parties concerned.” The report by the mediator, Galo Plaza Lasso of Ecuador, was submitted to the Secretary General yesterday but has not been made public. Details were given today in a dispatch from New York published in the pro-government Athens newspaper Eleftheria. Qualified sources described them as accurate. Eleftheria, the Athens newspaper, reported that Mr. Plaza had urged immediate negotiations at any level, with any combination of powers or parties concerned.
It said his report stressed that the will of the Cypriot people must be respected, and that the negotiations must be the briefest possible, while providing a durable solution. Informed sources at the United Nations said Mr. Plaza had reported “no progress” in the Cyprus dispute. His report was known to have indicated that none of the major parties — Greece, Turkey, the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots — had budged on major issues.
The Soviet Union announced today sweeping agricultural reforms that were interpreted as marking a major shift in the regime’s attitude toward peasants, long treated virtually as second-class citizens. The program, providing for more investment in agriculture, higher farm prices, lower prices paid by peasants for consumer goods and lower rural taxes, is expected to raise the farmers’ purchasing power and to help reduce the sharp differences in living standards between town and countryside. Details were disclosed with the publication of a speech made Wednesday by Leonid I. Brezhnev, First Secretary or chief of the Communist party. at a three-day meeting of the party’s Central Committee, which ended yesterday.
The farm program was the first major reform adopted by the new Soviet leadership since the reunification last November of the party structure. Former Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev, who was deposed last October, had divided the structure into urban and rural hierarchies. The reform represents a major shift from the deposed leader’s approach to the Soviet farm problem by emphasizing the economic levers of prices and costs rather than the use of farm techniques and cropping systems dictated from above. The shuffle of technicians in the top echelons of the Soviet leadership that accompanied the adoption of the farm program is regarded as a move to place efficient managers in key positions rather than as evidence of a power struggle among politicians.
Corruption among officials, a recurring sickness of China, has become a major problem for the Communist regime. The Chinese Communist press is full of complaints about self-seeking officials who cheat in the administration of the rural economy or assume arbitrary privileges for themselves and their cronies. A “cleansing movement” to correct these evils is being given priority in what Peking calls its program of Socialist education for the population. The movement affects more than 30 million cadres. “Cadre” is an all-embracing term for officials who administer the country. It includes party and non-party officials ranking from the top of the Peking hierarchy to the farmer who manages a production team, the basic work unit on a collective farm or commune.
Relations between Manila and Jakarta were at a new low today following receipt of reports that Indonesian agents might have infiltrated into the southern Philippines. A 40-member Congressional committee left for Mindanao, the southernmost island of the Philippines, to survey defenses there. The group, headed by Salipada Pendatun, Speaker of the House of Representatives, is expected to recommend a count of all Indonesian “immigrants” who have been trickling into the Philippines from Celebes for many years. It was estimated that there were 15,000 to 20,000 such Indonesians in the Mindanao area, with concentrations at such points as Sarangani and Balut Islands.
Philippine authorities suspect that among ordinary immigrants are Indonesian agents and spies. Representative Simeon Valdez, Chairman of the House Defense Committee, said there were unconfirmed intelligence reports that a number of infiltrators were “ranking officers of the Indonesia Army.” General Alfred Santos, Chief of Staff of the armed forces, has asked Congress to appropriate the equivalent of $50 million to shore up Mindanao’s defenses against infiltration or possible invasion. He did not specify where such an invasion might originate.
Some Western diplomats report indications that the United Arab Republic would like to find ways to avoid an irrevocable breach with West Germany once it sends an ambassador to Israel.
In Rabat, a Moroccan firing squad executed 14 people who had been convicted of plotting to overthrow King Hassan II.
A 17-member Cabinet formed by the new Prime Minister, Dudley Senanayake, leader of the conservative and pro-Western United National party, was sworn in today in the nation of Ceylon.
Pope Paul VI met with his commission on birth control on the third day of their meeting to determine whether they had reached a conclusion on recommendations about the Roman Catholic policy toward contraception in time for his scheduled pre-Easter speech. The commission, created by the Pope in June 1964, whose work was kept secret, was said to have been composed of “40 to 50 experts from a dozen nations” including moral theologians, physicians, psychiatrists, and population study specialists.
The Catholic Traditionalist Movement has issued a manifesto deploring recent reforms in the church’s liturgy and expressing alarm at what it describes as efforts to “Protesantize” Roman Catholic churchgoers.
The Norwegian tanker SS Nora collided with the Liberian ship MV Otto N. Miller off the coast of Eastbourne in the English Channel. Both ships caught fire and there was a large oil spill. Trygve Tyse, the captain of the Nora, ordered his crew to abandon ship, then remained on board to fight the fire.
119th Grand National: Tommy Smith becomes first American jockey to win the Grand National aboard a U.S. trained and owned horse, Jay Trump at 100/6.
Robert M. Shelton Jr., Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, charged today that the killing of two white civil rights sympathizers in Alabama had been part of a “trumped-up Communist plot to destroy the right wing in America.” Mr. Shelton said that the Klan “has evidence” that the deaths of Mrs. Viola Gregg Liuzzo and the Rev. James J. Reeb had been planned by Communists to blacken the reputation of the Klan. At a news conference at the Dinkler-Tutweiler Hotel, Mr. Shelton, an unemployed former tire salesman from Tuscaloosa, said that the Klan Bureau of Investigation “is investigating this lady from Detroit” for possible “Communist connections.”
This was a reference to Mrs. Liuzzo, who was shot to death Thursday night in an automobile near Lowndesboro, Alabama. “I understand she hasn’t been home most of the last several months but has been around the country on these demonstrations,” said Mr. Shelton. who heads the United Klans of America, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc. Mr. Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Boston, was clubbed March 9 in Selma and died in a hospital here two days later without regaining consciousness, Four men have been charged with his murder. Mr. Shelton said Mr. Reeb “had been dying of cancer before he ever came to Alabama.” Then he asked: “How are we to know that this was not another created incident?”
Referring to Mrs. Liuzzo and Mr. Reeb as “these martyrs,” Mr. Shelton said that “we have seen a statement by the doctors” who treated Mr. Reeb “that if he had had immediate medical attention he might have lived a normal life, but only for a short time.” A spokesman at the University of Alabama Hospital, where Mr. Reeb died, said the pathology report had not yet been returned and he had no knowledge that the minister had had cancer.
Leaders of the Ku Klux Klan said the FBI attempted to bribe one of its members now facing charges as a result of the slaying of a rights worker in Alabama.
Dr. Martin Luther King apparently will urge labor unions to participate in a nationwide “work stoppage” demonstration. Civil rights leaders intend to apply even greater pressure on Alabama as the result of the slaying of a white woman from Detroit on an Alabama highway Thursday night. “We are launching a nationwide campaign to make Alabama a democratic society,” said the Rev. Andrew Young, executive assistant to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in a telephone interview today from Atlanta. Dr. King will describe the expanded drive on “Meet the Press,” a National Broadcasting Company television program, tomorrow from San Francisco. Dr. King is expected to call for more support from trade unions. Mrs. Viola Liuzzo, the civil rights worker who was killed by gunfire as she rode in a car with a young Negro man, was the wife of a Teamsters Union official.
He may also call for a Federal murder law. Four Ku Klux Klan members arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the killing were charged with conspiring to violate Mrs. Liuzzo’s civil rights, a felony carrying a penalty of 10 years in prison or a $5,000 fine. Hosea Williams, director of political education and voter registration for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said at Selma that Dr. King had sent a telegram of congratulations to J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI. He said the telegram praised the bureau for its fast work in arresting the four men. They were taken into custody less than 14 hours after the murder. Only a few months ago, Dr. King and Mr. Hoover were quarreling publicly. Dr. King suggested that Georgia agents of the FBI had not acted on the complaints of civil rights workers because the agents were white Southerners. On November 19 Mr. Hoover said in an interview that Dr. King was “the most notorious liar in the country.” The two men later made peace.
Although neither Southerners nor supporters of civil rights appear to like the voting rights bill before Congress, it seems certain of passage.
A bill to abolish the office of comptroller of the currency and transfer supervision of banking to the Treasury Department will be introduced Monday.
The drive for the Great Society is entering a new phase in which President Johnson will try to prove that a big majority is not an unworkable one. Less than three months after his State of the Union address, the President has made most of the major recommendations he will end to this session of Congress, sources close to the President say. He will increasingly turn his attention to seeing that major portions of the program are not killed or mutilated.
President Johnson hailed today the action of the House of Representatives in passing his $1.3 billion Aid-to-Education Bill, calling it “the greatest breakthrough in the advance of education since the Constitution was written.”
Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, facing his first. re-election test as a Republican, is refusing to oppose the reelection of Democratic state officeholders who have conservative records. “Principle over party” is his message to South Carolina voters. Mr. Thurmond, a former Democrat who was the Dixiecrat candidate for President in 1948, is trying to persuade his party of recent adoption to his point of view. Thus the small but vibrant state Republican organization finds itself in a
dilemma.
Tax-supported birth-control assistance in the form of advice, drugs and devices is increasing in all parts of the country.
Remembering the horrors of concentration camps, Poles and Jews have apparently blocked an attempt to make Munich, Germany, the “sister city” of Milwaukee.
America’s first two-man space flight put the United States and Russia closer together in the space race and precipitated a speedup in flight scheduling.
Born:
Johnny April, American bass guitarist (Staind – “It’s Been A While”), in Enfield, Connecticut.
Stacey Kent, American jazz singer (Breakfast On The Morning Tram), in South Orange, New Jersey.
Sean Smith, NFL deensive end and defensive tackle (Chicago Bears, Dallas Cowboys, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Los Angeles Rams), in Bogalusa, Louisiana.
[Ed: LOL. At this time, Robbie does not know one of his “good old boys” is actually an FBI informant.]
History Diaries 