~e l ti n at
Eighty years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich
Editorials printed in The Michigan
or the editors. T
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1971
News Phone: 764-0552
Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
This must be noted in oil reprints.,
NIGHT EDITOR:
DAVE CHUDWIN
i
CIVIl Librboard responds to
the ban of a GLF conference
SINCE LAST April, when President Rob- University facilities must be directe
ben Fleming arbitrarily imposed a toward those specializing in that field ca
ban on Gay Liberation's planned mid- only serve to further accentuate the par
west conference on homosexuality, the chialism caused by the compartmentali
move has meet with an ominous silence ed nature of the academic community.
from most of the academic community. Fleming's contention that the confe
In that context, the recent decision of ence would hurt the University's positio
the faculty Civil Liberties Board to cross with the Legislature is also serious:
Fleming and condemn the ban is a wel- questionable. The University has conti
come sign. Hopefully, the board's state- ued to host a variety of controversi
ment will help to renew and focus op- speakers and conferences (including t
position to the president's policy. 1968 SDS national convention) witho
Through his actions and statements, any resulting loss of legislative suppo
Fleming has evidenced a willingness to, and there is little reason to feel th
compromise the rights of homosexuals the situation would be different in th
and to bend the concept of academic free- case.
dom to his own purposes. The wiwde range of events that Flem
In his initial response to the request ing has allowed to take place on camp
for University facilities for the confer- also underlines the selectivity of the con
ence, Fleming constructed a set of cr1- ference ban and the extent to which it
teria never before applied to any organi- simply an attack on homosexuality.
zation. These guidelines - that the event "If we are to prepare students to li
be "clearly educational -in nature and in a free and open society where con
directed at people who have professional troversy in the pursuit of truth is tole
interest in the field" - were then used ated," the Civil Liberties Board state
to justify the conference ban. "we must have a free and open Unive
Two month later, Fleming seemed al- sity where the same values are espow
most to discard this facade, when he jus- ed."
tified the ban by citing "some very prac- . With regard to the rights of homose
tical considerations" - possible adverse uals, at least, President Fleming h
legislative reaction to the holding of a clearly indicated that he does not vah
conference on homosexuality at the Uni- these principles highly. Hopefully, he an
versity. the Regents, who have supported h
stand on the issue, will receive increa
WHILE THE University should be pri- ing pressure to lift the conference ba
marily an educational institution, the from the students and faculty membe
practice of defining "educational" in the who continue to be sensitive to the righ
most limited academic sense can only of all individuals, regardless of their se
serve to isolate the campus community ual practices or beliefs.
from the full range of perspectives on
social and philosophical issues. -MARTIN HIRSCHMAN
And the notion that all activities in Editor
Making pot a misdemeanor.
Not an effective approach
UNDER THE guise of reform, Mayor Dearborn ordinance differs from the An
Robert Harris has proposed a city Arbor proposal as it includes all dru
ordinance that would lower the penalty not simply marijuana. Moreover, in Dea
for possession of marijuana to a misde- born more, not fewer, young people a
meanor with a maximum jail sentence of going to jail for possession of marijua
90 days and a fine of $500. because local judges there apparently fi
In fact, however, the enactment of the it easier to i m p o s e a city ordinanc
ordinance would lead not to a "lessening Prosecutors, as well, find it easier to o
of the penalties for possession of mari- ain convictions in small local courts tha
juana" as Mayor Harris claims, but to a circuit court.
the actual increase in the number of peo- In addition, the Ann Arbor ordinan
ple sent to jail for the so-called offense would not deal with the most serious a
of smoking marijuana. pect of the drug problem, since it h
Under the envisioned ordinance the no provision for heroin.
police would have the power to determine If the city sincerely feels that the dru
whether charges should be brought under problem is not going to be solved by sen
the terms of the city ordinance, or state ing young people through the courts, an
law-a felony charge. inevitably into the jails, then it shou
It is a valid fear that blacks and poor agitate at the state (and federal) levi
people will continue to be charged with for the repeal of all narcotics laws. F
felonies while young rich of Ann Arbor such laws do not treat addiction to th
Hills and Barton Hills will escape with harder drugs as a medical problem, an
only a misdemeanor against their name. they interfere with the freedom of in
dividuals to do with their bodies as the
HARRIS HAS cited the example of choose. Their repeal is a first step towa
Dearborn w h e r e similar legislation alleviating the drug problem.
has been enacted, as an argument in -JONATHAN MILLER
favor of the proposed ordinance. But the
~ ciii9au auig Ten years after
Editorial Staff
MARTIN A. HIRSOHMAN, Editor f sho
STUART GANNES JUDY SARASOHN
Editorial Director Managing Editor AT 9:54 YESTERDAY morning, AlanI
NADINE COHODAS ........ .....Feature Editor Shepard Jr. became the fifth hums
JIM NEUBACHER.......... Editorial Page Editor
ROB IERI............Associate Managing Editor being to stand on the surface of the moo
LAURIE HARRIS ......... . Arts Editor
JUDY KAHN ...................Personnel Director Quite an accomplishment. A tributet
DANIEL ZWERDLING .............. Magazine Editor
ROBERT CONROW ... ............ ..Books Editor American technology and engineeri
JIM JUDKIS..............Photography Editor skill. It was also something of a rewar
EDITORIAL NIGHT EDITORS: Jim Beattie, Lindsay for Shepard, who ten years ago becam
Chaney, Steve Koppman, Pat Mahoney, Rick Perloff.
NIGHT EDITORS: Jim Beattie, Dave Chudwin, Steve the first American to travel in "out
Koppman, Robert Kraftowitz, Larry Lempert, Lynn space."
Weiner.
DAY EDITORS: Rose Berstein, Mark Dihllen, S a r a But what a difference between the
Fitzgerald Art Lerner, Jim McFerson, Jonathan and now. That 20 minute sub-orbit
Miller, Hannah Morrison, Bob Schreiner, W. E.
Schrock. flight glued a whole nation and a go
COPY EDITORS: Tammy Jacobs, Hester Pulling, Carla portion of the civilized world to the
Rapoport.
ASSISTANT NIGHT EDITORS: Juanita Anderson, television sets one fine spring mornin
Anita Crone, Linda Dreeben, Alan Lenhoff, Mike in 1961. The news was splashed across th
McCarthy, Zack Schiller, John Shamraj, Geri Sprung,
Kristin Ringstrom, Gene Robinson, Chuck Wilbur, front page of every newspaper in th
Edward Zimmerman, country and filled a good portion of th
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The
By I.F. STONE
Reprinted from I. F. Stone's Bi-Weekly
with permission
THE REVELATIONS of the Sy-
mington subcommittee report
on "Security Agreements and
Commitments Abroad" would fall
into better focus if it began by say-
ing plainly that the U.S. since
World War II has become the big-
gest empire the world has ever
known.
The huge military and intelli-
gence establishments required to
maintain that empire become in-
creasingly difficult to control. Their
size and secrecy makes ours a par-
tially closed society. The truth is
that no one, not the President or
the Secretary of Defense, or even
the heads of secret service agen-
cies like CIA, DIA, or NSA, much
less the Congress can fully control
these monstrous bureaucracies. In
their murky depths moves are
made which may turn out later to
have set the course for disastrous
military interventions.
We are all trapped by the sheer
inertial mass of the machinery re-
quired to run the empire. In doz-
ens of ways it frustrates free de-
cision by freely elected govern-
ment, and there is always the dan-
ger that it may, if challenged or
given the chance, apply at home
the methods it employs abroad.
Widespread Army spying on anti-
war civilians may be seen as the
application at home of the "pacifi-
cation" techniques the military in-
telligence apparatus has developed
in Vietnam. As in ancient Rome,
the price of empire may be the
downfall of the Republic.
"UNDER THE Constitution, the
Congress, particularly the Senate,"
the report begins, "has a responsi-
bility to keep itself fully informed
about matters of foreign policy."
The 28 pages are packed with ex-
amples of how poorly informed-
and often deliberately misinformed
-the Congress has become. Senate
leaders did not learn until the Sy-
mington hearings that our bombing
operations in Laos began, not with
interdiction of the Ho Chi Minh
trail, but in support of Royal Lao
forces in Northern Laos.
The Nixon Administration talks
of improving relations with China
but raids on the mainland continue
from Taiwan, unmanned U.S. ,-e-
connaissance planes still fiy over
China, air bases on Taiwan have
been enlarged to handle B-52
bombers and the Nationalist Army,
dec line
of
the
"despite U.S. efforts to "aake i%
appear otherwise", still trains
(with U.S. supplied equipment) for
return to the mainland. Until the
Symington hearings, no one knew
that the U.S. had conducted joint
military exercises with Franco's
army to combat a hypotnetical up-
rising.
"Creeping commitments" spark
new wars in fighting old ones.
"After Thai approval of U.S. use
of Thai bases for bombing in Laos
and Vietnam, insurgent elements
surfaced in Thailand. In turn, the
U.S. increased its counter-insur-
gency forces. In Ethiopia, to ob-
tain the use of Kagnew Station
(obviously for U-2 flights over the
Soviet Union). the U.S. secretly
agreed in the 50s to finance a 40.-
000-man army for Ethiopia. U-2
flights have been replaced by sa-
tellites but Kagnew station is still
in operation. It is now threatened
by Arab-supported Eritrean guer-
rillas, and the Soviets have reacted
by supplying arms to Ethiopia's
traditional enemy, Somalia. So cold
war engulfs another part of the
globe.
EVERY businessman knows the
problem of keeping tabs on what
goes on in his own business. Ima-
gine trying to ride he, d on the
biggest business in the world: U.S.
military and intelligeace opera-
ticns. Nobody knows the full cost
but it probably comes close to $100
billion a year. "As but one illus-
tration of the incredible duplica-
tion and waste," the report says,
"at one time the three military
services, along with AID, USIA
and CIA, were each operating in-
dependent counter-insurgeney pro-
grams" in Thailand,
The report discloses that no
mechanism exists in the executive
branch to eliminate duplication be-
tween civilian and military snoop-
ers and that even in the Pentagon
there is no overall review of com-
peting military intelligence pro-
grams-this despite the establish-
ment by McNamara yeas ago of
a DIA (Defense Intelligence Agen-
cy supposed to coordin e all Pen-
tagon gumshoe work. The total cost
of military intelligence in 170, the
report reveals, was $2.9 billion, no
bagatelle even in the Pentagon.
The secret services are big
enough to run their own s e c r e t
wars. "Everyone recognizes," the
report says, "that national secur-
ity imposes limits on the disclos-
ure of information. But the multi-
million dollar support of a 30,000
man army can in no way be con-
sidered an intelligence operation."
The reference is to the CIA in
Laos.
There may be some benefits in
secrecy. Considering the monumen-
tal misjudgments of U.S. intelli-
gence in the past two decades in
Korea, in Cuba, and in Viet-
nam, it's just as well that intelli-
gence reports are confinad to a
select circle. The Symington re-
port has a lovely quotation from
Walter Lippmann. He once wrote
of the information funnelled into
our policy makers that the men
reporting to them realize "that
it is safer to be wrong before it
has become fashionable to be
right." Every bureaucracy likes its
intelligence apparatus to confirm
its preconceptions. But couldn't
this reassuring yesmanship be
done more cheaply?
THE PASSION for secrecy, and
its use to hide misjudgments from
those who must ultimately foot the
bill in lives and money, was the
main obstacle in this two-year in-
vestigation. If ever there was a
David-and-Goliath operation, this
was it. A newspaperman, Walter
Pincus, and a lawyer, Roland A.
Paul, were the two-man staff of
this special subcommittee of Senate
Foreign Relations under Senator
Symington.
Their job was to survey commit-
ments to more than 43 nations
represented by 375 major, and
3.000 minor, U.S. bases abroad.
They visited 23 countries and held
37 days of hearings. The published
record fills over 2,500 heavily cen-
sored but nevertheless revealing
pages, The hearings were made
possible by Symington's conver-
sion in recent years from a pillar
of the military establishment to one
of its severest critics. The report
deserves wider reading and closer
study that it is likely to get.
The subcommittee's greatest dif-
ficulty was in dealing with the sub-
ject of nuclear weapons. We seem
to have scattered these all around
the globe. Some day rebels against
governments we support may "kid-
nap" and use some of them for
a kind of blackmail. A leak during
the hearings disclosed that our
military feared something like this
in Greece. The danger to these
sacred monsters we havetplanted
around the globe may yet serve as
additional rationale for helping a
Chiang, a Papadapolous or a
Franco to put down a rebellion
against the lack of freedom in so
many corners of our "free world."
At one point "the Executive Branch
claimedthat this subject is of such
high classification that it could not
be discussed before this Poreign
Relations subcommittee under any
circumstances."
Subsequently it relented and
agreed to a single-day world-wide
briefing of the full Senate Foreign
Relations committee but only on
condition that there be but one
transcript, and this to be held by
the State Department! This is a
long way from the Constittion,
which begins to seem a quaint
relic.
THE BUREAUCRACY, with its
gift for reassuring euphemism,
sold the country long ago on "con-
tainment." It sounded neat and
sanitary. No one ever put the ques-
tion, "Shall we sow instant death
around the borders of the Soviet
bloc and China by ringing them
with nuclear devices and delivery
systems?" This is what has been
.S. empire
going on since the 50s. The report to break out of the nuclear ring
reminds us that the ZTS. went to that has been drawn around a
the brink of nuclear war in 1962 them."
"when faced with the possibility
that the Soviet Union was putting NEW MISSILE crises may not
missiles in a country 90 miles from be resolved as peacefully as in
the U.S." 1962. How can Congress and the
We must assume that "the Sov- country take preventive measures
iets, as they view our placement when censorship blacks out so
of tactical nuclear weapons in much of what we need to know?
countries far closer to their bord- The full price of empire has yet
ers than Cuba is to ours, will seek to fall due.
Dick, John and Mel,
tell it to S piggy
By LINDSAY CHANEY
DICK, JOHN AND MEL were sitting around in Dick's office
waiting for Spiggy to show up. "Where can he be?" grumbled
Mel.
The door flew open and Spiggy tumbled in. After knocking
over a wastebasket, and sweeping by John and Mel, he came to
a stop at Dick's conference table.
"Sorry I'm late fellas," he apologized. "I missed a turn by the
Blue Room and got lost in the bowling alley."
"Quite understandable," demured Dick. "It happens to the
best of us."
"Okay, let's get down to business," said Mel
"RIGHT," replied John. "Now we all understand that the
purpose of this meeting is to explain the whole Laos invasion
episode to Spiggy so he won't spill the truth in his speech to the
National Aardvark Society next week. So why don't we start by
having Spiggy ask any questions he has about the whole thing."
"Fine," said Spiggy. "First, what was the purpose of this
news blackout or news embargo or whatever you call it. It seems
to me that we would have more public support if we let everyone
know how we're hard at work stopping the commies from coming
down the Ho Chi Minh trail or whatever they were doing."
"It's not that simple," replied Dick. "But first let me clarify
the distinction between 'news embargo' and 'news blackout'. 'News
blackout' means that no news about troop movements can come
out of Vietnam. 'Embargo' means no news about the news black-
out can be reported." t
"BUT WHY?" Spiggy wanted to know.
"The reason we announce publicly is that the secrecy was
necessary for the national interest and to protect American lives,
but . . . you know the real reason," said Dick,
"I do?" replied Spiggy, quite astonished.
"Sure," said John. "If we had let the newspapers report our
invasion when it happened, liberals all over the country would
say we were expanding the war and would be calling us nasty
names. I hate to think what the radicals would be doing."
"So we imposed the news blackout so no one would know what
we were doing," said Mel.
"BUT THE NEWS leaked out anyhow," interrupted Spiggy.
"Exactly," said John. "Almost everyone knew or had a pretty
good idea about what was goin on, but they didn't know for sure,
so they couldn't make loud complaints and of course the liberal
newspapers couldn't make a big stink about an 'alleged' invasion."
"Then, when we finally lifted the news blackout and con-
firmed everything that had already been known," continued Mel,
"the news was almost a week old, and who can get excited about
old news?"
"Pretty clever,"marveled Spiggy.
"And to be even more sure that no one gets too upset," added
Dick, "we lifted the news blackout the day before the moon
landing. This way, the papers are covering the landing and not
the war."
"YOU HAVE TO remember that this whole operation also sets
a few precedents," said John. "If the people accept a temporary
news blackout, it won't be long before they're accepting less tem-
porary news blackouts, and finally, there won't be any news to
black out."
"No news is good news," said Mel.
"That is, no news except for Radio Free America, the voice
of the Great White Father," added John.
"Of course, we can't call it censorship," said Dick. "We'll call
it 'protective inaction' or something like that."
"It's all part of the Plan," said Mel, confidently.
Spiggy looked alarmed. "What's this Plan?" he asked.
"You've heard of the Plan before," said John.
"No I haven't," said Spiggy.
"Well, then, if you haven't heard of it before, why do you
want to know now?" asked Mel.
John and Mel looked at each other. They both looked at
Dick. Dick shrugged his shoulders and everyone looked at Spiggy.
"Come on fellas," pleaded Spiggy. "You can trust me. I'm a
white man,"
"YEAH, I GUESS SO," said Dick. "The Plan is really very
simple. In Vietnam we make raids into Laos and Cambodia from
time to time, and occasionally bomb North Vietnam. We always
make up moralistic lies like 'saving American lives' for every-
thing we do. Here at home we ignore commission reports, grad-
ually impose newspaper censorship, and quietly do anything else
that will enrage the vocal minority. Of course, we have to think
of good excuses - that is, noble reasons - for everything we do.
'Main Street will not be turned into Smut Alley' and all that."
"The silent majority will believe us," continued John, "and
the vocal minority will get so used to our lies that they'll finally
give up complaining and ignore us.
"THEN," whispered Mel. "When no one is looking . . . we'll
steal the country and we'll be rich, rich, RICH!
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Foot soldiers for the empire
LETTERS TO THE DAILY
Students International won 't give re fund,
To the Daily:.
ON OCTOBER 29. 1970 we
signed up and paid for three seats
on a charted flight with Students
International, scheduled to leave
on December 20. We paid a total
of $747.00.
This flight was canceled by Stu-
dents Internationalon November
25. and we were asked whether we
to realize a trip for which we had
been planning and saving a long
time.
It has now been more than two
months since t h e charter flight
was canceled. We have continued
asking for o u r money, without
success.
It seems highly unfair to us, a
student family. that Students In-
ternational claims to be a non-
real differences between Ann Ar-
bor's Democratic city administra-
tion and the new radical party
which has been nominating candi-
dates and adopting a platform for
the city elections. Unfortunately
the issues which exist are obscured
by misleading portions of the new
party's public statements. T h e
flyer which I was handed in the
Fishhowl aleges that M a y 6 r
the headships of such departments
as Personnel), and its successful
campaign to win public approval
for the restoration of the Huron
River dams.
The flyer notes that "the c it y
government is still financed by an
arachaic and regressive property
tax system," which is true; but it
fails to mention that in 1969 the
Mayor' and fDemocr~atic Courncil-
THE HARRIS administration has
compiled a record of hard and
imaginative work, and substantial
accomplishment, in the raalm of
social services. What the c i t y
government can do In these areas
has been, and will be, limited
chiefly by its financial resources.
The city's tax structure, in turn,
is limited by state law and the
reluctance of the electorate to vote