The task of analyzing President Ford's reassessment of U.S. foreign policy--the subject of this week's cover stories--involved TIME correspondents from Saigon to Tokyo to Western Europe. But the principal reporting for Senior Writer Ed Magnuson's lead story on the Administration's policy reappraisal came from the members of our Washington bureau who have been following the review since it began late last month.

White House Correspondent Dean Fischer began gathering background on Ford's deliberations during the President's recent eight-day working vacation in Palm Springs. Back in Washington last week, Fischer saw the White House mood turn sharply "from calm contemplation to grim apprehension" as the military situation in Indochina deteriorated. Pentagon Correspondent Joseph Kane, who filed on the plans for emergency evacuation of U.S. citizens and others from Saigon, found an atmosphere of bleak and open pessimism

in Defense Department briefing rooms. "There is a sense of candor among the military men," Kane observed. "No one is talking about corners to be turned or lights at the end of tunnels."

Diplomatic Editor Jerrold Schecter, who reported from Saigon for TIME in the mid-60s, noted the emotional wrenching that the events in Indochina worked on Americans with long involvement in South Viet Nam's fortunes. Many of Schecter's sources spent years "in country" as soldiers, diplomats or intelligence officers, and they feel a deep sense of loss. "The war is personalized for the Americans who served in Viet Nam," Schecter wired last week. "Somehow everybody feels that they did not do enough. None of the experts I talked to is blaming the Vietnamese in his heart, no matter what analysis is in his head. 'Why must it end this way?' they ask."

Between bouts of reporting this week's Nation story on Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, Correspondent Jack White of our Atlanta bureau flew to Jefferson City, Mo., to accept the Unity in Media award from Lincoln University for the TIME team that produced last year's cover story on "America's Rising Black Middle Class" (TIME, June 17). The award--for journalism that betters human relations--is shared by Senior Editor Marshall Loeb, Associate Editor Edwin Warner, Staff Writer Ivan Webster, Reporter-Researcher Sarah Bedell, White and San Francisco Bureau Chief Joseph Boyce.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.