Nation: WATCHING FOR THE PEACE SIGNALS

An unmistakable sense of movement was in the air. Saigon hummed with nervous anticipation, Washington with barely concealed jubilation, Paris with electric excitement. For the first time since the Viet Nam peace talks began 51 months ago, there seemed to be genuine evidence of a breakthrough toward peace. Rumors of the initiative roiled through capitals from Canberra to London. The word was that Lyndon Johnson, in the last three months of his presidency, was on the. verge of ordering a complete bombing halt over North Viet Nam. At week’s end, Johnson had still made no overt move, and U.S. planes continued to range over the northern panhandle. Nonetheless, it seemed possible that, for once, both sides might be prepared to make the first crucial concessions that could breathe new life into the Paris negotiations.

Into the Woodwork. The most dramatic indicator was an intelligence report that between 40,000 and 60,000 North Vietnamese troops have withdrawn from South Viet Nam, many of them slipping into Cambodia and Laos from the northern provinces and from such metropolitan areas as Saigon. “They just seem to have disappeared into the woodwork,” said a U.S. officer.

Still, the Communist units may have pulled back merely to regroup and refit, as they have done so often in the past. Washington concentrated on an amplitude of other significant clues that a bombing pause might be in the works. There has been an extraordinary flurry of diplomatic activity in recent weeks, ranging from Peking and Paris to the Pedernales. Three weeks ago, Cyrus Vance, the No. 2 U.S. negotiator in the slow-paced Paris peace talks, flew home to confer with the President. Early last week Johnson cut short a stay at the L.B.J. ranch to return to Washington, and White House Adviser Walt Rostow canceled plans for a weekend away from the capital.

Despite the flurry of diplomatic activity, the President found time to attend the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner in Manhattan, where he shared the dais with Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon and New York’s Archbishop Terence Cooke. Johnson was in good humor. Mimicking Nixon’s farewell speech after he lost the election for Governor of California, he declared that “this is the last time you will be able to kick Lyndon Johnson around.” For all his seeming relaxation, however, the President’s attention was focused on any signs from Hanoi that might signal a desire for peace. In what could have been a significant move, word came that North Viet Nam’s Ambassador to Peking, Ngo Minh Loan, had hurried back to Hanoi at about the same time that Johnson had left his ranch.

Other clues pointed to the possibility that the impasse might at last be breaking up. One was the return to South Viet Nam, at the invitation of President Nguyen Van Thieu, of Major General Duong Van Minh (“Big Minh”). The leader of the 1963 coup that deposed Ngo Dinh Diem, he had spent nearly four years in exile. Hanoi, which apparently sees Big Minh as a possible bridge between the present Saigon regime and the Viet Cong guerrillas, has accordingly taken pains to treat him gently. A sharp reduction in fighting in the South also took place. U.S. battle deaths have been declining steadily since the end of August, dipped to 177 during the week ending Oct. 12. During the first three days of last week, a total of seven U.S. servicemen died.

According to top-level U.S. sources, the chief catalytic agent in the new peace moves was a proposal from President Johnson to Hanoi that was couched in more flexible terms than usual. With out using the term “reciprocity,” which always riles the Communists, Johnson requested assurances from the North Vietnamese that Hanoi 1) would not increase the infiltration of men and supplies in the event of a complete bombing halt; 2) would not use the Demilitarized Zone to mount attacks on allied forces in the northernmost provinces; and 3) would permit the Saigon government—along with the Communist National Liberation Front—to be seated at expanded peace talks. After receiving Johnson’s proposals in Paris, Le Due Tho, a high-ranking member of Hanoi’s Politburo who is euphemistically described as an “adviser” to the North Vietnamese delegation, left abruptly for consultations at home—with a stopover in Moscow for talks with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin.

Undiplomatic Hour. All this intense activity seemed to come into focus when U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker called at the Presidential Palace in Saigon for a meeting with South Viet Nam’s President Thieu at the extraordinarily undiplomatic hour of 6:45 a.m. Bunker had been in touch with Washington for much of the previous night. He was closeted with Thieu for an hour, then returned at noon for another session, this one lasting almost an hour.

Obviously, more than routine consultation was involved. A South Vietnamese official, believed to be a member of Thieu’s government, leaked rumors to the Saigon press that a bombing halt was imminent—perhaps in hopes of forestalling it. The capital’s 30 dailies were soon splashing the story across front pages and baying after confirmation. Australia’s Prime Minister John Gorton added credence to the rumors by commenting: “It may be that the U.S. will be making a statement soon.”

Conference Call. The word traveled swiftly. At about 7 a.m. in Washington (Saigon time is twelve hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast), newsmen began besieging the White House with questions. Was it true, they asked, that Bunker had sought Thieu’s approval of a bombing halt that would cover all of the North, including the region from the 17th to the 19th parallels, roughly the area that was left open to attack after Johnson’s March 31 announcement of a limited halt?

Within three hours, the White House had a statement ready. “There has been no basic change in the situation, no breakthrough,” it said bluntly. Just before noon, the President placed a conference call to Presidential Candidates Hubert Humphrey in St. Louis, Richard Nixon in Kansas City, Mo. and George Wallace in Los Angeles to fill them in on the situation “in light of the uncertainty created by various reports,” as a White House spokesman put it. Humphrey took the call in the men’s room of the Christian Brothers High School gymnasium.

Nixon, who has realized all along that a Democratic Administration could make things difficult for him with a dramatic, vote-catching eleventh-hour move toward peace, quickly applauded the idea of a bombing pause—if it did not endanger the lives of U.S. servicemen. Humphrey made no direct comment, but it was clear that a pause would help him, particularly in Michigan, New York and California, pivotal states in which antiwar sentiment is strong.

Second Thoughts. Inevitably, doubts, reservations and second thoughts began to surface. In Saigon, government officials declared that an unconditional bombing halt was not only unwanted but unwise. In the U.S., Republican orators warned that it would be viewed by the voters as a cheap political gimmick. Among U.S. military men, there were fears that the lull in the fighting would prove illusory; the generals have too often seen the enemy withdraw, only to return with renewed vigor. So far, insisted President Thieu, Hanoi had made “no concession whatsoever.”

Most important of all was the fact that Lyndon Johnson was not yet completely convinced that a total bombing pause was in order. As far as he is concerned, North Viet Nam’s leaders should be required to offer some concessions in return for the bombing halt. The last thing the U.S. should do now, he insists, is offer something for nothing. For that reason, he is said to believe that Humphrey’s speech in Salt Lake City last month, virtually promising an unconditional bombing pause as an acceptable risk, may prove a handicap in the quest for peace. He is reported to feel the same way about the speech given at Indiana’s DePauw University two weeks ago by Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy, a former presidential assistant and longtime supporter of the war.

Bundy argued that the original decision “to stand and fight in South Viet Nam was right.” But he also noted that the cost had grown so heavy—$30 billion and 10,000 U.S. lives a year—that “continuation on our present course is unacceptable.” Calling for a gradual U.S. troop withdrawal and an unconditional bombing halt, he added: “It is equally wrong to accept the increasing bitterness and polarization of our people. There is a special pain in the growing alienation of a generation that is the best we have had. So we must not go on as we are going.”

Cuban Precedent. A number of high officials agree that a change in direction, or at least emphasis, is in order. Some experts, noting that Hanoi is plagued by worsening shortages of manpower and food, insisted that the U.S. would have more to gain than to lose by calling off its bombers and enabling the North Vietnamese regime to save some face. Others detected signals that Hanoi was anxious to begin scaling down the war, citing as evidence a speech delivered in August by Truong Chinh, the No. 3 Politburo member. “Under certain circumstances,” said Truong, “we must shift to the defensive to gain time, dishearten the enemy and build up our forces for a new offensive.”

Still others maintain that the U.S. would do well to recall how it reacted during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had sent two messages to John F. Kennedy, one truculent, the other conciliatory. At the urging of his brother Robert, President Kennedy decided to ignore the first and reply to the second, and a settlement swiftly followed (see THE PRESS).

Now, some officials argue, the U.S. might adopt the same attitude in evaluating the signs of reduced military activity in the South. The North Vietnamese pullback could merely reflect the impact of recent allied military successes, but the fact remains that Hanoi has never before withdrawn troops on so large a scale. Why not, ask some officials, interpret this move as a signal that Hanoi is attempting to offer reciprocity for a bombing pause? If this is not a signal, they ask further, what is?

At week’s end, the U.S. maintained that it had received no reply from Hanoi to Johnson’s latest suggestions—though there were reports that an answer had already arrived and was under study. A break could come at any time, but just when depended principally on two men: North Viet Nam’s President Ho Chi Minh and Lyndon Johnson. On the other hand, if the present initiative should prove fruitless, Johnson could continue through the end of his term without uttering another word about a bombing halt. Still, he must find it tantalizing to think of the impact he could create, on his way out of the White House, by making a major move to end the Viet Nam war.