Yie 1flrligu &UAil
Vol. LXXXII, No. 61-S
Ann Arbor, Michigan-Friday, August 11, 1972
Ten Cents
Twelve Pages
-AP Photo
SOUTH VIETNAMESE helicopters carrying combat troops leave the pickup zone Tuesday near Route
4 for an assault on communist positions in Mekong Delta.
Communists overrun highland
posts, threaten Mekong River
TR-ES is
cleared in
assault case
DETROIT (R) - Three Detroit STRESS officers ac-
cused of assault with intent to commit murder in a "shoot-
out with Wayne County sheriff's deputies last March have
been found innocent.
The verdict was reached yesterday after one hour of
deliberation and followed more than eight weeks of testi-
mony on the incident which killed one sheriff's deputy
and wounded three others.
The three officers were called "trained killers" by the
prosecuting attorney Wednesday in his closing summa-
tion to the jury.
But defense attorney Norman Lippit portrayed the
three - Virgil Starkey, James Harris and Ronald Martin--
as just kids trying to do their job.
He also claimed the defen-
dants have been abandoned by
the top law officials in the
county. A w
Officers from the special unit
STRESS - an acronym for 1
Stop The Robberies, Enjoy
Safe Streets - work as decoys b illes
to entrap suspected criminals.
T he shootout erupted i"o
March 9 when one of the in House
STRESS officers entered an
apartment where the sheriff's
deputies were engaged in a WASHINGTON (A)-In a vic-
poker game. tory for President Nixon, the
theintr House yesterday rejected 228 to
erepu iessaiditheut intu- 178 a mandate to pull U.S.
erbegayfiring wi h dntid forces out of the Indochina war
fying himself, and continued by Oct. 1 in return for release
firing even as the deputies o American prisoners and a
tossed out their identification of limited ceasefire.
badges and surrendered.
badgs an surendeed.Friends and foes of the pro-
The STRESS officers con- posedndirective said it would
tended they did identify them- not by itself have forced U.S.
selves and received fire from forces out of the war. But
the apartment immediately Nixon's critics said it would
upon entering, have imposed a new war bar-
-They said they followed a gaining position on him and
man carrying a gun into the registered widespread antiwar
maarng g h sentiment.
apartment. The vote was the closest yet
Prosecuting attorney Michael in the House on an end-the-
Conner said it didn't make any war measure. Last November an
difference who fired the first attempt to cut off money this
shot since the STRESS officers. July 1 failed 238-163.
who were on routine patrol The House vote removed the
war pullout provision from a
duty at the time, entered the pending $2.1-billion foreign-
apartment illegally - without military-aid bill.
a warrant or probable cause to "We're giving the President a
believe a felony was being com- blank check for no one knows
mitted. how long in the future to con-
tinue the war," argued Rep.
The S T R E S S officers Donald Riegle (R-Mich.).
claimed they had entered the "We have a right to ask the
apartment after seeing a man, President to change his terms."
later identified as one of the Democratic Whip Thomas
deputies, carrying what they O'Neill (D-Mass) told the House
thought was a gun into the the war pullout directive prob-
apartment. ably would never become law if
SAIGON (M) - North Viet-
namese infantry overran two
South Vietnamese positions in
the central highlands, field re-
ports said yesterday, while gov-
ernment forces cleared the
southern sector of Quang Tri-
The government of neighbor-
ing Cambodia charged, mean-
while, it has been the victim of
a "major attack" by North Viet-
nam and declared the capital of
Phnom Penh may be threatened.
Communist infantry charged
through a South Vietnamese
position in the highlands 20
miles southwest of Pleiku on
Wednesday night.
In a simultaneous attack,
Communist-led troops drove out
100 militiamen from the nearby
hamlet of -Thanh Gia.
Round-up
Blindfolded villagers suspected
of collaboration with the Viet
Cong and North Vietnamese are
led hand-in-hand Tuesday through
a village north of the central
coastal town Tan Quan, South
Vietnam. They are being taken
for interrogation.
It was the first major flare-up
in the highlands since the North
Vietnamese were driven out of
the city of Kontum in early
June.
South Vietnamese marines on
the northern front, making a
significant advance for the first
time in two weeks, reached the
eastern end of a broken bridge
across the Thach Han River
which forms the western boun-
dry of Quang Tri.
Only a handful of communist
snipers remained in the ruins of
the city, south of the Citadel.
But a battalion of North Viet-
namese-about 400 men- still
was entrenched inside the old
walled fortress.
In Phnom Penh, a series of
attacks by communist infantry,
backed for the first time in
Cambodia by heavy tanks, has
jeopardized what little is left
of the government's hold on the
east bank of the Mekong River.
The Cambodians maintain a
precarious hold on about 12
miles of Highway 1, which links
the capital with Saigon, and are
battling heavy odds to hold half
of the ruined district town of
Kompont Trabek.
In the air war, over North
Vietnam, low clouds cut U.S.
strikes Wednesday to 160. Seven
B52 bombing mpissions were
flown north of the demilitarized
zone and the planes hit storage
facilities and supply and com-
munications lines,
C
J
t
L
a
S
f
It will be increasingly cloudy
with a high in the upper 70's
and a low in the upper 50's.
There will be scattered showers
tonight with a chance of thun-
der showers.
the House approved it but urged
House support it as "an ex-
pression of how the American
people feel about this war."
Speaker Carl Albert and
Democratic Leader Hale Boggs,
under heavy pressure from
Democratic sponsors of the di-
rective to back it, stuck to their
opposition to imposing congres-
sional directives on the Presi-
dent and voted against it.
eat, Eat, EAT
See STORY, Page 3