To some of the newsmen in Saigon he was known as "Meck the Knife." His name, as it has appeared on the TIME masthead since 1948, is John Mecklin. A veteran foreign correspondent, he went on leave of absence between 1962 and 1964 to take on one of the toughest press jobs to be found: U.S. Information Chief in South Viet Nam.

The war correspondent is a relatively new figure in history. Even newer is the PIO, or Public Information Officer, who is supposed to see to it that the war correspondent gets easy access to the facts. The PIO must serve his Government--but reporters often angrily insist that mostly he must serve them. While everybody will agree that, above all, he must serve the truth, the truth is not easily ascertained in a place like Viet Nam. Thus, changing his role from reporter to information officer, from newsman to "news manager" (as some would put it), Mecklin often got caught between U.S. policy and the passionate opinions of his former colleagues. "You are a poacher turned gamekeeper," a British friend told him.

Mecklin was in the thick of the skirmishes between the U.S. press, the Saigon government and the U.S. embassy, and very much in the midst of the bitter political battles that ended the career and the life of President Ngo Dinh Diem. Yet "Meek the Knife" emerged from his difficult tour of duty to write an excellent account of the South Vietnamese war which he called Mission in Torment (see BOOKS). Author Mecklin had unique credentials for the task, having reported the .disastrous French campaign against the Communists and the establishment of the Diem regime for TIME between 1953 and 1955. He also covered the Middle East and West Germany for us, is now our San Francisco Bureau Chief. Says Mecklin: "I wouldn't have missed the Saigon experience for anything, but then again I wouldn't want to repeat it. It's great to be back on the reporter's side of the news."

SPECIALISTS in every field from cardiology to television develop their own trade jargon. Newsmen writing about those specialties must learn the lingo--in order to pass it along to the reader with appropriate translation or, perhaps more often, to protect the reader from it. Spacemen, of course, have their own jargon too. In doing the basic reporting for this week's cover story (see THE NATION), Houston Bureau Chief Ben Cate picked up some of the newer entries in the space vocabulary:

Beco--Booster cutoff during rock et launching.

Boilerplate--Dummy space capsule used in both ground and flight tests.

Bridle--The straps which connect the spacecraft to the main parachute during reentry.

EVA--Extravehicular Activity, for instance, walking in space.

Hardline--A ground communication link as distinct from a radio link.

LOS--Loss of Signal.

OAMS--Orbit Attitude Maneuvering System, the 16 rocket engines that control the movements of the Gemini 4.

Seco--Second-stage cutoff during launch.

Wet-Mock--The loading of fuel and oxidizer into the Titan II's tanks.

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