No Confidence on Cambodia

SHOWMANSHIP and semantics seemed to overtake substance as the lingering argument between President Nixon and a clear majority of U.S. Senators over his decision to send troops into Cambodia went into its fourth week. While Senate sentiment still ran against Nixon, time was on his side as U.S. troops prepared to pull out by the June 30 deadline.

The Administration sent a carefully selected group of hawkish Senators, Congressmen and Governors off on a quickie tour of battlefields and briefings in South Viet Nam and Cambodia. The 13-man mission used seven helicopters to drop in on a muddy mountaintop fire-support base six miles inside Cambodia. They had been preceded by three barbers, who clipped the shaggy locks of G.I.s outfitted in fresh fatigues for the impending visit. Artillery pieces were moved to drier ground, a pathway and railing were constructed to facilitate inspection of an enemy arms cache and enclosures were erected around open-air latrines to provide VIP privacy. The visitors were treated to a spectacular aerial bombardment of a nearby hillside, although no one claimed that there were enemy troops on it. A colonel called the attack "reconnaissance by fire."

Glowing Words. After four days in Indochina, the group headed home --with a rest stop in Honolulu--while Presidential Counsellor Bryce Harlow wrote a glowing report of the success of the Cambodia invasion. His words were toned down before the team presented the report personally to the President. It called the Cambodia operation a certain short-term military success that helped ensure that U.S. troops would be withdrawn from South Viet Nam on schedule, or possibly even faster. The only dissenter was New Hampshire Senator Thomas J. Mclntyre, a Democrat, who said that the action had "widened the war" and might prolong rather than curtail U.S. involvement.

The favorable report failed to have its intended effect on the Senate debate over whether the President could use federal funds to finance future U.S. troop movements in Cambodia or to support foreign troops in defending the present Cambodia government against the Communists. The first critical vote on such restrictions, embodied in the Cooper-Church amendment to a military funding bill, came on a pro-Nixon move by West Virginia's Democratic Senator Robert Byrd. He offered a provision that would remove any restrictions against a future move into Cambodia if the President considered it necessary for the protection of U.S. troops in South Viet Nam. Since that was the Administration's public rationale for the initial Cambodian venture, Byrd's change would have effectively nullified the Cooper-Church proposal.

The White House then backed the

Byrd amendment, and the issue became in effect a vote of confidence in the President on Cambodia. As Idaho's dovish Senator Frank Church put it: "We stand up now, or we roll over and play dead." Republicans who had been engaging in a muted filibuster to block any substantive vote detected growing support for the President and permitted a vote. But on the roll call, the Administration lost some Republicans it had hoped to land, including William Saxbe of Ohio and Oregon's Robert Packwood. When the Byrd amendment was declared lost, 52 to 47, some spectators cheered.

The debate will continue as Republicans offer other amendments that might ease the restrictions on the President or at least delay a final vote until the issue seems academic. Much of the intensity already is going out of the argument as the public temper cools. If the Senate does pass the Cooper-Church language, the House is not expected to go along, and even if it did, the President would surely veto the bill. Yet the issue is not meaningless. What is really at stake is a highly political proposition: whether the Senate will in effect censure the President for taking military action in Cambodia without its consent. Nor is congressional impatience with the Administration's explanations of its war policy limited to the Senate doves. The House voted overwhelmingly (223-101) last week to send its own twelve-man fact-finding team to "study all aspects of U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia" and to report back within 45 days. Explained Mississippi Democrat Gillespie V. Montgomery, who proposed the House mission: "We're tearing ourselves apart over this business. Let's find out for ourselves what is happening over there."

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