More Men, More Aid

Only six months ago, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was talking hopefully of pulling most U.S. troops out of Viet Nam by the end of 1965. Last week, after his fifth visit to the war front, McNamara called for stepping up American military and economic assistance to Saigon, currently pegged at 15,500 "advisers" and $500 million a year. McNamara's reversal was a reflection of how far the U.S.supported war against the Communist Viet Cong has deteriorated of late.

Miserable Story. Casualty totals for April, during which the Viet Cong continued to roam the Mekong Delta almost at will, were the highest so far. The government suffered 610 killed, 1,630 wounded, 390 missing or captured (v. an officially estimated 1,700 Viet Cong dead). The toll of Americans last month was six killed, 101 wounded. According to one U.S. official, General Nguyen Khanh's "clear-land-hold" program in the delta is making "practically no indent at all," and Long An province south of Saigon is "a miserable story."

Terrorism is on the increase, not only in provincial villages, where local administrators have been beheaded by the Reds, but in Saigon. A few days before McNamara's arrival, police surprised two Viet Cong mining a bridge over which his car was to pass. Driving through the streets of the capital, McNamara was cloaked in a bulletproof jacket. It was, in a way, the most revealing aspect of his visit; never before had McNamara found it necessary to adopt such rigid measures in Saigon.

Again, the Buddhists. During a two-hour conference with McNamara, Khanh reported still another problem: lingering animosity between his country's Buddhists and Roman Catholics, which has been fanned anew by Buddhist demands that a former Catholic army officer who had served under the late President Diem be executed for ordering troops to fire on Buddhists demonstrating in Hue last May.* Last week the progovernment head of the Buddhists' political bureau, Thich Tarn Chau, resigned, charging other monks with trying to stir up trouble. The resignation meant increasing influence for another leading monk, Thich Tri Quang, who enjoyed refuge last year in the U.S. embassy, but who is considered antigovernment and potentially neutralist.

Back in Washington, McNamara reported to President Johnson, congressional leaders and the National Security Council, announced to newsmen that because Viet Cong terrorism "has increased very substantially in recent weeks, it is absolutely essential that we consider ways and means through increased economic assistance and in creased military support to assist the government of Viet Nam. We have agreed with them that their regular military forces and their paramilitary forces must be increased in size very substantially and very soon . . . And we consider it desirable to increase by 100% the number of Vietnamese pilots." Again, McNamara stressed that Viet Nam "is a long, hard war," warned: "It may be necessary to send over certain additional U.S. personnel."

* Speaking in Los Angeles, a U.S. State Department official somewhat tardily questioned the Buddhists' charge that they were persecuted under Diem. Richard I. Phillips, the Department's chief press officer, suggested that the Buddhists had been victims of "favoritism in favor of the Diem family and the Catholic Vietnamese." But pinned down as to whether they suffered "persecution," Phillips replied: "I would say no." He added that "they carried on a very effective public relations program in getting their story before the American people," and noted that they had been supported by fellow Buddhists in neutralist Burma and Ceylon and in Red China.

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