Missing in Cambodia (Contd.)

Few correspondents know their way around as well as Richard Beebe Dudman. Resourceful without being reckless, in 20 years on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch he has learned to operate with equal ease in Cuba or Washington, the Middle East or London, Viet Nam or Paris. But no newsman can be at ease on assignment in Cambodia.

One day this month, on his sixth visit to Indochina, Dudman left Saigon in a turquoise scout car for a firsthand look at developments across the Cambodian border in Svay Rieng province and perhaps Phnom-Penh. Driving the car was Michael Morrow, 24, a founder and correspondent of Dispatch News Service, the tiny agency that distributed Seymour Hersh's Pulitzer-prizewinning story on My Lai. Between the two men sat Elizabeth Ann Pond, 33, on leave from her job as Viet Nam correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor.

Noncombative. The trip was supposed to take less than two days. Beth Pond, in fact, was due the next night at a small dinner party being given by South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu. But the group ran into difficulty at a Cambodian army roadblock on the outskirts of Svay Rieng town. Ronald Ross, correspondent for the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, was in another vehicle ahead of them. "I looked back and saw Dick and Beth arguing with the Cambodians about getting through," he says. Ross continued on his way. Dudman, Morrow and Pond have not been heard from since.

Back in Saigon, fellow correspondents concluded that the Viet Cong had captured the Dudman group after it finally got past the roadblock. Morrow, whose wife was born in Hanoi, speaks Vietnamese, so there was hopeful speculation that he could explain their noncombative role as journalists. In fact, each of the three has criticized U.S. military involvement in Indochina. In 1963 Dudman was even refused a visa by South Viet Nam after he wrote articles unfavorable to the Diem regime.

The trio's disappearance brought the number of journalists missing in the Cambodian-South Vietnamese area to eleven, including two other Americans (TIME, April 20). As official and unofficial attempts to locate them continued last week, one response came from Cambodia's deposed Prince Sihanouk. Cabled in Peking by the Christian Science Monitor, Sihanouk replied: "If news of these journalists reaches us at any time, I shall not fail to inform you."

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