Nation: BERETS: GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

THE case of the accused Green Berets, surely one of the most bizarre episodes in the often surrealistic world of spies and counterspies, ended last week in much the way it had begun: by tainting nearly everyone involved in it.

Army Secretary Stanley Resor insisted in one breath that “the Army will not and cannot condone unlawful acts of the kind” his uniformed subordinates had charged eight Green Berets in Viet Nam with committing: namely, the murder of a suspected double agent. Yet in the next moment he announced that the charges were dismissed. He placed the blame on the CIA for refusing to allow its agents to testify against the defendants. That seemed to imply that the CIA was a law unto itself. The White House at first aided that impression, claiming the President had taken no part in the decision. Then Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler conceded that Nixon had approved it. In fact, the President had ordered the dismissals. As for the Berets, they jubilantly claimed to have been exonerated; ion their release, some even insisted that !there had been no killing, at least not in the legal sense of murder. Yet Thai Khac Chuyen, a Vietnamese employed by the Special Forces, was assuredly dead, and all signs pointed to U.S. responsibility for his death.

Commonplace Killings. Unsatisfactory and untidy as that ending was, it stemmed from a growing conviction in Washington that the impending courts-martial of the Berets would have been even messier. Two of the nation’s most publicized lawyers, Edward Bennett Williams and F. Lee Bailey, had been hired by the defendants and were poised to portray their clients as victims of nasty rivalries among U.S. intelligence-gathering agencies. They would have blistered the U.S. commander in Viet Nam, General Creighton Abrams, for initiating the charges and would have exposed jealousies between the regular Army and the elite Special Forces. The cold-blooded killing of double agents by U.S. forces would have been pictured as commonplace. CIA’s disputed role in the case would have been dissected, and agents in the field might possibly have been compromised. “If there had been a trial,” said Bailey, “the defendants would have become Abrams, [CIA Director Richard] Helms and Nixon. The only winner would have been North Viet Nam.”

Such a prospect should have been foreseen before eight of the Green Berets stationed in Viet Nam, including the Special Forces commander, Colonel Robert Rheault, were arrested last July. Certainly, when they were charged with the murder of Chuyen, the devastating public consequences were clear. Yet it took intense pressure by Congressmen from both parties to get the charges dropped. The most influential was South Carolina Democrat Mendel Rivers, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. As a longtime defender of military appropriations, he has a major say on military matters. Rivers summoned Secretary Resor, argued that the Army’s reputation is under enough attack because of the war, and vowed: “I will not see the Army denigrated and downgraded before the world.” When Resor insisted that he must stand behind General Abrams and pursue the case, the two quarreled sharply.

Greatest Mockery. The determined Rivers then went over Resor’s head. He made his pitch to Deputy Defense Secretary David Packard and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird. Both seemed unhappy with Resor’s stand but were unwilling to overrule him in an intramural Army matter. Rivers then asked to see the President. Nixon ducked the confrontation, but sent his Congressional Aide Bryce Harlow to hear Rivers’ plea. Rivers hardly needed to point out that he is a chief advocate of the President’s ABM authorization bill that was before the House. What he did do was threaten to give three of the Berets a chance to rebut all charges in public hearings before his committee. If the courts-martial were held, he warned, they would become “the greatest mockery since the trial of Christ.”

Nixon got the message. While the Joint Chiefs, backing their general in Viet Nam, still urged that the trials be held, Nixon sent Resor to the rostrum to kill the charges and set the Berets free. The claim that the CIA would not allow its agents to testify was only a pretext—and a transparently clumsy one at that—for calling the whole thing off.

Some of the accused officers promptly consulted their attorneys on how to seek compensation from the Army for damage to their reputations or get their names fully cleared. Those prospects seemed dim, and most of the Berets probably agreed with Colonel Rheault, who said on arrival at California’s Travis Air Force Base that he hoped history would ignore the affair. “It would better be forgotten as long as people remember that we were exonerated.” There is little likelihood of that, but unless some of the Green Berets themselves tell their full stories, the details of the episode may remain a mystery.

Some Lessons. Why, in a war in which some 3,800 soldiers on both sides die each week, had the killing of one civilian become such a cause célèbre? Partly because Chuyen’s slaying exposed the tensions that exist among U.S. agencies carrying out spying activities in Viet Nam and along its borders. Chuyen was employed as an agent and interpreter by the Special Forces, which had assumed some intelligence-gathering duties long the prerogative of the CIA. The Berets suspected him of being a double agent and shot him, claiming that the CIA had ordered the execution, then rescinded it too late. Not so, claims the CIA, it only suggested that Chuyen be turned over to the South Vietnamese. CIA sources even raised the ugly possibility last week that it had all been a matter of mistaken identity. They claimed that the Berets were no longer certain that Chuyen actually was the man spotted talking to the Viet Cong in a photo taken inside an enemy camp.

Regardless of who was right, the Berets were ordered prosecuted by the Army’s General Abrams, who was incensed at being lied to by the Berets. They told the general that Chuyen was only “off on a dangerous mission” at a time when he actually was dead. Abrams apparently was determined to dramatize his insistence that the Special Forces must operate under his command. It will be difficult for Washington to keep the case closed; it demands that ways be found to keep U.S. spies from fighting each other.

Probably the only person more furious than Abrams with the decision was Pham Kim Lien, the 29-year-old widow of the victim Thai Khac Chuyen. Last week she alternately threatened to join the Viet Cong, kill herself and her two children, or take her case to the United Nations. “The soul of my husband,” she said, “will follow those who killed him.” She wants $38,440 in reparations, the equivalent of 20 years of her husband’s pay, in order to see her through until her children are grown.