UPI Roundup I
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Putting peace *in perspective *
WASHINGTON — President Nixon, putting the Vietnam
peace accords “in perspective," said Thursday the cease-fire
will bring peace only to the extent leaders of both sides have
the will to comply. He cautioned that the past peace record “is
not too encouraging.’’ “All the paper in the world, all the
fancy phrases that are already in the agreement would mean
nothing if the individuals who have the responsibility for
keeping the agreement do not keep it," Nixon said. He
pledged that the United States will keep its part of the pact,
adding “we expect others to keep the agreement. That is the
way peace can be kept abroad."
Taking the credit
W ASHINGTON — President Nixon said Wednesday he
personally ordered the dismissal of an Air Force civil ser
vant who first told Congress about cost overruns on the C54
cargo plane. Nixon told a news conference A. Ernest Fit
zgerald was fired on his instructions The Air Force
previously had contended it released Fitzgerald in an
economy drive. “I was totally aware Mr. Fitzgerald would be
asked to resign.” Nixon told a news conference. “I approved
it. This was not a case of someone down the line saying he
should go.” It is a crime punishable by a $5,000 fine and
imprisonment up to five years, to “influence, intimidate or
impede" any witness before a congressional bearing.
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Vietnam fighting continues
SAIGON — North Vietnamese troops in two major
battles Thursday annihilated a force of 100 South Vietnamese
marines who were trapped with their backs to the sea at a
former U.S naval base near the Demilitarized Zone, military
|| sources said. UPI correspondent Donald Davis, reporting
from the northern sector, said he was told that three U.S.
Navy gunships were offshore from the South Vietnamese but
did not intervaie because of the cease-fire. Further to the
south, the Noth Vietnamese overran 200 Saigon government
paratroopers below Quang Tri City, military sources said.
Watergate civil trial set
W ASHINGTON — With the Watergate criminal trial
finished, wheels were set in motion Thursday to begin the
next stage of the bizarre affair—civil trials involving $10
million in claims and counter-claims between Republican
and Democratic officials.
Thieu: there was no
victor in Vietnam
NEW YORK (UPI) — There was no victor in the Vietnam war,
President Nguyen Van Thieu said Thursday. Everyone lost.
“I think everyone has lost — lost on the casualties, on the blood
and money — and no winner and no loser,” he said in an interview in
Saigon.
“I think everyone has lost. The peace on behalf of the prosperity of
the world, the security of the world, I think that everyone has lost.
Nobody has won.”
Thieu’s sober appraisal came in an interview on the Columbia
Broadcasting System (CBS).
“We will never ask U.S. troops to come back here,” he said.
However, when asked if he would request American air support in the
event of a new outbreak of hostilities, he said, “Yes.”
Thieu said be did not believe the Communists would respect the
cease-fire.
“I think that they will continue the guerrilla war on the remote
rear and ... continue the infiltration and ... would like to capture as
many as possible the hamlets and the people," be said.
“I think we have not to be confident on their goodwill. We have to
be confident on the efficiency of the control commission.”
The International Commission for the Control and Supervision
(ICCS) of the Vietnam truce — Canada, Indonesia, Poland and
Hungary — was meeting in Saigon, preparing to oversee the cease-fire
as soon as post-truce battle activity subsided.
“If I have the continuation of full support, economic and military,
from the United States, the Communists will never win in South
Vietnam.” Thieu said.
“If you continue the military and economic aid, certainly we will
win," he added.
“I have no ambition, no political ambition, I have nothing," Thieu
said in the interview with correspondent Bernard Kalb.
“I just play the roie of the soldier a leader to save the nation. But I
realize that South Vietnam can be saved only with the help of the
United States.”
Asked about elections. Thieu said be still favored his own proposal
of holding a presidential election with several candidates from both
sides.
“And the man who has the highest percentage of the vote will
become president and the man who has the lower percentage would be
together in the so-called national coalition government,” he said,
adding, “The Communists have rejected that, too.”
Thieu said he had not decided whether to run again for president
or whether he would agree to participate in a coalition government.
“But anything decided by the people I will respect," the president
said. “Now for my personal case, it is not time yet for me to decide.”
Budget Director backs
Nixon’s impoundments
WASHINGTON (UPI) — Budget Director Roy
Ash testified Thursday that contradicting orders
from Congress — telling him both to spend and to
economize — empower President Nixon to impound
billions appropriated by Congress.
Making his first Capitol Hill appearance as
director of the Office of Management and Budget
(OMB), Ash, the former president of Litton In
dustries. defended Nixon’s impoundments of funds
— actions many in Congress call unconstitutional.
Ash testified before the Senate subcommittee
on separation of powers He opposed a bill which
would forbid a President to withhold money for
more than 60 days unless explicitly given per
mission by Congress.
Ash engaged in a constitutional quarrel with
Sen. Sam Ervin. D-N.C., considered by his
colleagues the Senate’s foremost constitutionalist.
Ervin argued the President's impoundment policy.
Ironically, both men cited the same con
stitutional language to make their paint — the
clause directing the President to see that the laws
are faithfully executed.
“An appropriations bill is a law,” said Ervin,
contending Nixon must spend all that is ap
propriated.
Yes, said Ash. but the debt ceiling passed by
Congress is another law, forbidding the President to
borrow — and spend — above a certain level.
He conceded “that there is no explicit law that
stipulates the President has the specific right to
impound funds” but impoundment is nonetheless
“fully consistent with the President’s constitutional
duties.”
Hie subcommittee was stung when Agriculture
Secretary Earl Butz and Administrator William
Ruckleshaus of the Environmental Protection
Agency changed their minds and refused to testify
about impoundments of farm and environmental
funds. Later they sent word agreeing to appear next
week. Sen. J. William Fulbright, D-Ark., threatened
to cut off foreign aid funds until Nixon agrees to
release impounded funds appropriated for domestic
programs.
Fulbright testified that impoundments left
Nixon free to decide which laws enacted by
Congress to carry out and which to ignore.
“If Congress is going to fulfill its constitutional
functions and to operate as a separate, co-equal
branch of government, we cannot continue to allow
the President to use impoundment to impose
policy,” Fulbright said. “To do so wou’d be to
subvert the explicit constitutional authority of the
Congress.”
Nixon said Wednesday he justified his
withholding of funds “the same way that Jefferson
did, and Jackson did and Truman did.”
The President contended Congress had spent
irresponsibly and so it was up to him — in the in
terest of combatting inflation — to withhold some
appropriated funds.
Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, noted that legislation must
pass by Feb. 28 if the administration wants to have
any foreign aid funds to spend.
He said be may attach an amendment to a
foreign aid bill “which would require release of
funds for these important domestic programs if the
administration wanted to continue foreign
assistance.”
Top White House aide blasts
opposition to Nixon policies
WASHINGTON! WPI >- Charles
Colson, one of President Nixon’s
closest political advisers, said
Thursday night that end-tbe-war
measures in Congress prolonged
the Vietnam conflict and made
more difficult the negotiations for
a cease-fire.
Colson, who is resigning March
1 to return to private law prac
tice, said that if Nixon had en
joyed the kind of bipartisan
support that former President
Dwight Eisenhower received
from a Democratic Congress in
the 1950’s “the war would have
ended much sooner than it did.”
Colson was interviewed on the
“■niirty Minutes With . . .”
production of National Public
Affairs Center for Television. The
program was broadcast on public
television stations.
He called former Defense
Secretary Clark Clifford a
“hypocrite,” and said Sens J.
William Fulbright, George
McGovern, Frank Church and
Edward Kennedy were members
of a “sellout brigade.” He
charged that press critics of the
war had “almost a vested in
terest in our failure.”
Colson also predicted new
restrictions on network television
newscasts. He said a television
network was like “a bus company
... a public utility.”
He said the networks “are
going to be broken up one way or
another in the next four or five
years.” This, he said, would be
due chiefly to “new technology in
communications. ”
“The networks are constantly
talking about wanting
unrestricted First Amendment
rights,” Colson said. “They want
the same right to say or do
whatever they want, without
restriction. But at the same time
they really are using public
airways as a public trustee . . .
“Now you can’t have it both
ways,” he said. “You can’t have
a free license given to you by the
public . . . and not have a con
comitant responsibility to
present to the public a fair and
balanced perspective on the
news."
Although he said he was
questioning no one’s patriotism,
Colson said critics of Nixon’s
Vietnam policy wanted what “I
would call a dishonorable
peace.”
“The Eastern Establishment
that had been a part of the New
Frontier, the Kennedy Cabinet
that came to Washington that got
us into Vietnam in the first place,
they were the harshest critics of
the efforts of this President to get
us out honorably,” he said.
“I think the people who
perhaps had a sense of guilt or a
sense of failure amply couldn’t
reconcile themselves to the fact
that this man who had been their
political opponent was doing
successfully that which they
couldn't do," he said.
Asked by interviewer Elizabeth
Drew to go into specific, Colson
said:
“Well for example Clark
Gifford left office with 550,000
Americans in a ground war to
which there was no end . . .
“I think the grossest hypocrisy,
really shocking hypocrisy, of the
man who contributed so much to
our being in Vietnam, for him to
be so consistently wrong and so
harsh in his criticism of the
President.”
Clifford became Defense
Secretary early in 1968 at a time
the total ofU.S fares in Vietnam
had come within a few thousand
men of the all-time high. He was
later reliably reported to have
argued against a Joint Chiefs of
Staff request for over 200,000
more troops and to have urged
President Johnson to halt
bombing of North Vietnam.
Island used for target
practice to get relief
(ZNS) — Several members of the
United States Senate report that
they are going to fight with the
Pentagon on behalf of the island
of Culebra.
Culebra is a small island in the
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
that has been used as a practice
target by U.S. Navy ships for the
past 37 years. Testimony in front
of a Senate committee reveals
that at least 10 people have been
accidentally killed during the
Navy's shelling operations.
Being a target for U.S. gunners
is obviously not a pleasant
situation — and the inhabitants of
Culebra received some good
news from Secretary of Defense
Melvin Laird nearly two years
ago; Laird reported that all
target operations on Culebra
would be halted by 1975.
However, on December 27th,
Laird suddenly announced a
change in plans; he reported that
a •‘classified” study by the Navy
revealed that Culebra could not
be abandoned after all; in fact,
said Laird, shelling would con
tinue until at least 1985, and
would be intensified.
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