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THURSDAY, JUNE 4, 1970
NIGHT EDITOR: NADINE COHODAS
A day in, the life
Congres,
By ANITA WETTERSTROEM
THE ARRIVAL of "ethnic-Cambodian
Thais" in Cambodia is not particularly
surprising. After a decade of Americans
present in the area, fine distinctions of
ethnic origins are somewhat ludicrous.
.Equally undeserving of headlines is the
announcement that the U.S. will provide
arms and equipment to the volunteer Thai
troops.
What does deserve attention in the mat-
ter, is that the announcement of this latest
foreign commitment came from the State
Department-Congress was left out again.
Although it is a minor decision compared
to Nixon's dispatch of American troops into
Cambodia, it is because of its seeming in-
significancetthat it warrants attention. It
is precisely such "gentle" sidestepping of
congressional deliberation of foreign policy
matters that keeps edging us toward total-
itarian government. Congressional war
power has been effectively nullified.
PRESIDENT NIXON opposes the Cooper-
Church amendment as an affront to his
powers as Commander-in-chief. Last year,
he similarly, opposed Senator John Ful-
bright's national Commitment resolution
even before his new administration had de-
fined his position on war power.
The Fulbright resolution, which was
eventually adopted by the Senate, humbly
Too late
for a comeback?
suggests that the President observe Con-
gress constitutional rights by asking the
executive branch to interact with the legis-
lative branch when making U.S. commit-
ments.'
The resolution defines national commit-
ment as "the use of the armed forces of
the United States on foreign territory, or
a promise to assist a foreign country, gov-
ernment, or people by the use of the armed
forces or financial resources of the United
States."
As a simple "sense of the Senate" reso-
lution, the Fulbright proposal has not the
force of law and therefore can, and is ig-
nored by the President as well as by the
Departments of State and Defense.
FEW WOULD DENY that there may
come a threat to American lives so great
and imminent as to warrant circumvention
of democratic processes-an all out nuclear
attack, perhaps. But such was not the
danger in the Bay of Pigs, the Dominican
Republic or Vietnam. Even in the much
applauded Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy
had ample time to deliberate at length with
his hand-picked cabinet members but in-
stead, he deemed it expedient to by-pass
elected Congressmen.
Similarly there was ample time to con-
sult Congress regarding U.S. intervention
in Cambodia. Comparable caches of North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong supplies had
been there for months. But again, the Pres-
ident found it was more expedient to dis-
regard his legislative counter-part
Even the power to initiate war -tiested
by the Constitution exclusively in Con-
gress-is now under the exclusive control
of the executive. Powers of the commander-
in-chief, once defined by Hamilton as
"nothing more than the supreme command
and direction of military and naval forces."
are now interpreted as conferring upon the
President full constitutional power to com-
mit armed forces to conflict without the
consent of Congress.
UNFORTUNATELY Congressmen t o o
often defer to presidential supremacy and,
in many cases, come out in their defense.
Sen. Everett Dirksen, who often opposed
any hint of restricting presidential prero-
gatives, once said, "It is always possible
that (the leaders of other countries) may
come to the conclusion that, suddenly. the
Senate of the United States has placed a
limitation on the power of the President.
and has in fact, handcuffed him . . . I
shudder at the prospect of that kind of in-
terpretation."
It is rather inconceivable that such an
interpretation could be any more danger-
ous than the decisions of unfettered presi-
dents and military heads have proven to be.
THE UPSURGE of Presidential prowess
has been accompanied by a swelling of
military heads. Fulbright commented a
year ago that "the men who fill the top
ranks of the armed services have acquired
an influence disproportionte to their num-
bers in the nation's security policy. The
defense department itself has become a
rigorous partisan in our policies, exerting
great influence on the President, on the
military committees of Congress, on the
'think tanks' and universities to which it
parcels out lucrative research contracts.
and on public opinion."
It is inevitable that military expertise
gain such influence when a nation becomes
so paranoid about security.
And it is tragically ironic that a nation
which is so bent on democratizing the
world, frequently abuses its own dem-
ocratic processes.
PRESIDENTIAL USURPATION of con-
gressional responsibilities cannot be dis-
missed as a necessity of the nuclear age.
The constitution cannot be disregarded as
obsolete.
The Nixon administration has proven
that it will take more than a Senate resolu-
tion to restore Congressional authority in
foreign affairs. It will take an honest
evaluation of our national security and a
determined observance of our republican
oovernment. Without this, our democracy
is little more than an elective dictatorship.
4
YESTERDAY, PRESIDENT Nixon proud-
ly told the nation that Cambodian
venture has been a complete success. His
speech surprised no one, reportedly not
even one high-echelon Viet Cong leader
who agreed that it might take a week or
two to recover from the effects of the
drive instead of the usual 24 hours.
Today the pollsters will announce that
a full 75 per cent of the people-people
defined as those over 21-support the
President and agree that Cambodia was
necessary, proper and successful. It will
probably take another couple of weeks
before reports leak out that the war is
not going so well, despite Cambodia, and
that the Viet Cong have rebuilt every-
thing they lost--whatever that was. And
in due course, Nixon will take to the tele-
vision again to a n n o u n c e something
hopeful about the war, and 75 per cent of
the people will support him. . . . So it
goes.
IN CALIFORNIA the same court that
overturned Huey Newton's manslaught-
er conviction denied him bail without
comment. No doubt Huey will stay in
jail until the state can contrive a second
conviction.
GOV. WILLIAM Milliken talked about
pollution, and in Ann Arbor people
talked whether the railroad should die
now or in five years. Protestants fought
Catholics in Northern Ireland, and Israel
bombed Egypt. So it goes.
IN HONG KONG, the Viet Cong charged
that American chemical warfare crimes
in Vietnam have caused hundreds of de-
fective births or miscarriages, sickened
thousands of civilians and killed thou-
sands of domestic animals.
The Viet Cong's Liberation Radio said
American p 1 a n e s flew more than 40
chemical spraying raids on civilian areas
in South Vietnam, during the first five
months of this year.
The broadcast, which gave no explana-
tion of why there had been no previous
report of the alleged incidents made these
accusations:
In June 1967, at Binh An, Binh Dinh
Province, U.S., South Korean and South
Vietnamese troops "captured more than
100 children, herded them into a small
shelter and hurled grenades into it until
no more pitiful cries were to be heard."
In December 1967, U.S. and South Viet-
namese troops "concentrated 469 children
from Thuy Bo, Thuy Loan and Ha Nong
villages, Quang Nam Province, into. a
holding area, raped most of the -girls to
death, and killed the rest of the children
by shooting, throwing them into blazing
bonfires, or crushing them to death be-
neath the treads of their tanks."
In March 1968, U.S. and South Vietna-
mese troops on a search and destroy mis-
sion against Son Tinh and Binh Son vil-
lages, Quang Ngai Province, "penned up
270 children, tortured them, including
tearing them to pieces, then put those
still living to death."
On June 6, 1969, in Vinh Long Province,
"13 children were captured, tortured,
stripped of all their clothing, bound hand
and foot, left outdoors all night, and then
shot dead the following morning."
There was no comment from the U.S.
Command in Saigon, which usually does
not comment on such charges from the
other side.
FEARS OF invasion from the south
forced concerned members of a Cana-
dian veterans organizations to call for
banning entry of U.S. draft dodgers. And,
not to be outdone, a U.S. Veterans of For-
eign Wars leader said he will urge his
group to move its 1970 convention out of
New York because of Mayor Lindsay's
anti-war stand.
DONALD NIXON closed a big business
. deal with Ari and Jackie Onassis.
After the election, Donald was hired as a
vice president by millionaire restraunteur
and hotel owner J. Willard Marriott, who
is a leading Republican money source
and a chief contributor to brother Rich-
ard Nixon's campaign. Marriott's firm will
cater for flights on Onassis' Olympic Air-
ways. At a dinner in Athens, Donald sat
next to Greek deputy premier Styliane
Pattakos and proclaimed the member of
the Greek distatorship "a good solid in-
dividual." So it goes. The Onassis' said
they liked Donald for his own unique
personality.
-MARCIA ABRAMSON
ALEXA CANADY
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mwoJAMES WECHSLER.
Nixon and his Southern Strategy
"All we're trying to do is give
the South equal treatment. The
people down here could stand a
little more even-handed treat-
ment for a change." - Vice
President Agnew during a jour-
ney to South Carolina last week-
end.
IN THE RHETORIC of most of
the voices of the Nixon Ad-
ministration, "the South" is a
monolithic country inhabited by
respectable, middle-class white
folks who have too long suffered
Northern persecution.
That there remain 10,000,000
black citizens below the Mason-
Dixon line is rarely mentioned.
Equally forgotten are thousands
of white Southerners who have
participated in one way or another
in the battle for equality and are
also vulnerable victims of the
present retreat on the Potomac.
They are school officials, journal-
ists, clergymen, lawyers and oth-
ers who made their commitment
to enforcement of desegregation
laws and now find themselves
morally deserted by the Adminis-
tration.
The real impact of what has
happened since South Carolina's
Strom Thurmond came to Richard
Nixon's rescue at the GOP con-
vention in 1968 is not truly meas-
urable, in any school statistics or
other arithmetical yardsticks. The
payoff to Thurmond-and the
Southern strategy giving coher-
ence and continuity to the Thur-
mond allance-has produced a
psychological upheaval that casts
a shadow over the 1970s.
NOT LONG AGO the Wall
Street Journal, in a survey of the
Southern
findings:
"The
landscape, offered these
Nixon administration's
easing of federal pressure for
school integration has rekindled
Southern defiance reminiscent of
the Dixie of a decade ago.
"Southern segregationist leaders
say Washington's slackening of
past efforts to integrate schools
has heartened them greatly. They
see new hope in reasserting old at-
titudes of fervent resistance, at-
titudes that in the past couple of
years had been abandoned as
futile."
It does not seem to matter that
HEW Secretary Robert Finch and
Education Commissioner James
Allen make intermittent sounds
that seem to contest these great
expectation. The elder statesmen
of Southern reaction believe they
have heard the true message from
Agnew and Attorney General
Mitchell and that it was confirm-
ed anew in the President's emo-
tional, bitter assault on opponents
of the Carswell nomination. (In a
recent interview with right-wing
journalist Holmes Alexander, Mit-
chell described Mr. Nixon's state-
ment as a "very factual" descrip-
tion of Senate "anti-Southern"
bias and added: "The country
wants the South in the same post-
ure as other regions.".
Again "the South" for which
the administration speaks is the
Old Guard of diehard segrega-
tionists, not its disadvantaged Ne-
groes or the whites who were mov-
ing in new directions when Mr.
Nixon took over.
PERHAPS THE LARGEST as-
pect of the tragedy is that so
many young white Southerners-
especially in the universities-had
discarded the prejudices and
stereotypes of their fathers and
begun visualizing a new era.
Whatever his other failures, Lyn-
don B. Johnson had contributed
significantly to the change in an-
cient Dixiecrat habits of minds.
But now the word from Washing-
ton is regression.
Historically this new deference
to old (white) Southern customs
could hardly have come at a more
explosive moment. For a variety
of reasons, including the frustra-
tion of domestic dreams caused by
our interminable investment in
Vietnam, black separatist move-
ments had began to assume new
strength in the latter part of the
60s. The assassinations of Martin
Luther King and Robert Kennedy
intensified those passions.
In a time crying out for reas-
sertion of the human values and
dignity of the equalitarian freedom
movement, the Nixon administra-
tion's advent-and the ominous
Southern signals accompanying it
-brutally undermined the Ken-
neth Clarks of the country who
bravely remain unreconstructed
integrationists.
That is what was wrong about
the timing and tone of Sen Ribi-
coff's celebrated "challenge to
Northern hypocrisy" and Moyni-
han's memorandum on race rela-
tions (ably dissected by Bayard
Rustin in the current issue of New
America). They were speaking and
writing in a period when all the
dominant tendencies of the na-
tional Administration were to en-
courage right-wing Southern in-
transigence and to practice "be-
nign neglect" toward the blacks.
Ribicoff's words were seized and
exploited as a rationalization of
Southern reaction, not as a sum-
mons for Northern action. while
Moynihan's appeared to sanctify
complacency.
MEANWHILE THE appalling
transcendent fact is that millions
of black Americans-regardless of
previous hopes-once again feel
themsleves strangers in their own
country; Even the administration's
economic policies of "planned un-
employment" have an inescapably
discriminatory r e s u It. W h e n
Messrs. Nixon, Agnew and Mitchell
talk of "the South" as an op-
pressed racist entity, they seem to
formalize the announcement that
the clock is being turned back.
And that is how Panthers are born
every day, and why even their
most irrational excesses acquire so
many apologists.
(c) New York Post
Agnew: More of the same
"Oh, yes, Mr. President... your flag is almost
finished... I'm sewing on the stars now!"
.i'
VICE PRESIDENT Spiro T. Agnew has
again attacked the antiwar bloc in
this country. This time his setting was
the U.S. Military Academy's graduation
ceremony at West Point. .
His speech sounded just- like his past
attacks on the media, youth and anyone
else who opposes Nixon's other policies.
He told° the audience--who jumped to its
feet when Agnew entered-that this is an
era when "criminal misfits of society are
glamorized while our best men die in
Asian rice paddies to preserve the free-
dom that these misfits abuse."
He kept the audience enraptured by
telling them that "this is a time when
application, achievement and success are
derided as callous, corrupt and irrelevant
. . this is a time when the charlatans
of peace and freedom eulogize foreign
dictators while desecrating the flag that
keeps them free."
But even that was not enough for
Agnew. He added more flavor by saying
that much of the nation's discontent is
"contrived by a clever, sustained assault
on America's system and institutions."
TOWARD THE end of his speech, Agnew
warned his audience that it was up to
them to save American society. He told
the West Pointers that it was up to them
to bring "courage, strength, resolve and
dedication" to this country.
What does Agnew have to say about
My Lai or the invasion of Cambodia? He
justifies it as being a fact of war, but he
never really questions the necessity of
that war.
Agnew maintains that the flag keeps
dissenters free. What analysis. By that
logic, the massive armies are unnecessary.
The tax c o 11 e c t o r from Baltimore
County-which does not include the city
of Baltimore-has come a long way. But
this speech is just more of the same old
story. Unfortunately people are believing
it.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Admissions office and discrimination
To the Editor: .
I AM UTTERLY incredulous
that Mr. Gayle C. Wilson, the Ex-
ecutive Associate Director of Ad-
missions. "does not recall" dis-
cussing the University's policy of
limiting the number of women ad-
mitted in the freshman class. I
hope this letter will give his mem-
ory a gentle jog.
I met with Mr. Wilson twice
during February. In the first in-
terview Mr. Wilson talked at
length on the development of this
discriminatory policy. The conver-
sation is recounted in the Daily
magazine of Sunday, April 12.
Since I wanted to be sure of my
facts, I went to see Mr. Wilson
again a few days later. I said,
"Mr. Wilson. I want' to be sure I
have some points straight. A r e
some less qualified men admitted
in preference to more qualified
women in order to maintain sex
balance in the freshman class?"
Mr. Wilson replied, "Yes, that's
right."
-EDWARD ZIMMERMAN
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I have records of these inter-
views in my notes.
-Kathleen K. Shortridge
May 28
Reply from NMU
To the Editor:
I AM A GRADUATE of North-
ern Michigan University (NMU),
and I have just been shown an
article, written by the Associated
Press, and carried in newspapers
on May 14, which relates to my
alma mater. The article quotes
John McGoff, Williamston resi-
dent, member of the NMU Board
of Control, and president of the
Panax Corp., East Lansing, a large
newspaper group in Michigan. In
a speech to Heath International,
Inc., a businessman's group, Mc-
Goff criticized the three major
universities in this state, and their
presidents, for blaming "their in-
ternal ills on the government or
on American foreign policy rather
than taking a hard look at them-
selves." University presidents in
general, he said, are "weak sisters"
because they "permit a minority
of students to consume their time
and energy at the expense of the
majority of students who want an
education."
Obviously, such a view could be
debated. The real importance here,
however, is that McGoff, a uni-
versity board member and an im -
papers, his firm, Panax Corp., has
power, a great deal of power.
And how does Panax use that
power? He criticizes presidents in
speeches, and writes front-page
editorials in his newspaper; but he
also condones much more. In Mar-
quette. Mich., the home of NMU.
the only daily newspaper is owned
by Panax. Their coverage of a
demonstration by blacks on cam-
pus this past year was so distorted
that it was the basis of a mistrial
in the cases of several black stu-
dentsd who had been arrested at
the demonstration. McGoff says
university presidents should take
'a hard look at themselves"-he
is, I hope doing the same in his
business. The situation, I know, in
Marquette is tense-a ban on guns
on the campus had to be ordered,
and Civil Rights Commission in-
vestigators have been on campus
The town's one newspaper, there-
fore, occupies a crucial position.
It can help to calm or inflame
public opinion. I feel it is unfor-
tunate that McGoff and Panax
are involved in the affairs of Mar-
quette at this time - especially
with Mr. McGoff sitting on the
NMU board. I certainly would like
to see the governor's office in-
vestigate this matter. Is there not
a conflict of interest involved
here?
Typical of the manner in which
Panax operates was the decision
by the Ypsilanti Press to mail co-
nie nf it t rsitions which listed
shown it is not unbiased observer
Rather, it is an active participant
and can the community it serves
ever trust the newspaper :again?
I don't think so. Interestingly, a
few days after the Press' ill-con-
sidered mailing, the university lift-
ed the suspensions of 41 students
who had been arrested. Perhaps
these were not guilty. Perhaps,
like the four students who were
killed at Kent State University,
they were just observers. Yet, the
damage has been done by this
Panax newspaper to student-par-
ent relations. In some cases, no
doubt, the damage will never be
repaired. Perhaps, too, the news-
paper succeeded in forcing some
students to leave school because
an outraged father cut off funds
after reading the newspaper ar-
ticle. Students have charged police
brutality at EMU, and the univer-
sity is investigating. I wonder how
the Ypsilanti Press will cover this
story.
In conclusion, I would like to
encourage McGoff to take a "hard
look" at his own operation, where
his expertise supposedly lies, and
quit criticizing in public, in his
newspapers, the men whose lives
have been dedicated to the uni-
versity. McGoff's responsibility is
great indeed. When he speaks out,
he speaks with the knowledge that
he controls thought - his news-
papers are mainly in towns where
no other newspaper, or local news
agency, exists. I do not feel this
of
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