VIET NAM: NO MORE ARMS

"The Viet Nam debate has now run its course. The time has come for restraint and compassion. The Administration has made its case. Let all now abide by the verdict of the Congress--without recrimination or vindictiveness."

With those words, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger acknowledged last week that the final Indochina crisis was at hand--both in Indochina and in Washington. The Khmer Rouge were masters of Phnom-Penh; the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were tightening their noose around Saigon. Meanwhile most Congressmen remained adamantly opposed to voting any more military aid for South Viet Nam. U.S. involvement in the wars of Indochina was coming to a last and dangerous conclusion; now the most important question to the U.S. was how to evacuate several thousand Americans from South Viet Nam and what to do about 200,000 South Vietnamese who have worked closely with the Americans during the war.

The debate between the Executive and Legislative branches centered on President Gerald Ford's request for $722 million in emergency military aid for the Saigon government. In speeches and testimony before congressional committees, Ford and top members of his Administration argued that the aid was needed to "stabilize" the military situation long enough to permit a negotiated settlement of the war. At the very least, it was needed for a safe evacuation of Americans.

In private, Administration officials continued to express fears that South Vietnamese troops and civilians, if not bolstered by the prospect of additional military aid, however chimerical, might turn on the Americans. The North Vietnamese last week reiterated their assurances that Americans and other foreign nationals would not be molested. But the Administration believed that it had no choice but to play a dangerous game: extricate Americans from South Viet Nam even as they assure President Nguyen Van Thieu of at least the possibility of continued U.S. support.

Vague Solution. Ford directed that all "nonessential" Americans be removed from the country, and each day last week hundreds were flown out. But the scope of the problem and how to solve it were vague. Scoffed one Republican Senator: "They don't even know how many are over there, let alone how they are going to get them out."

Congressmen did not take seriously Ford's proposal to evacuate 200,000 Vietnamese who are closely identified with the Americans. Democratic Senator Frank Church of Idaho suggested that the U.S. consider bargaining with the North Vietnamese for the safe passage of the South Vietnamese. Others have proposed that the U.S. ask Russia or China to bring pressure on Hanoi to negotiate a ceasefire. Kissinger thinks that would be useless. As one senior official put it: "What can they do that is worth the debt we would incur? The idea that the Russians and the Chinese can put the squeeze on Hanoi now is unrealistic. To negotiate a surrender, we don't need them."

Secret Promise. Monday, Senate leaders and members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee paid an extraordinary call on the White House to tell the President that Congress was willing to vote some humanitarian aid and anything necessary to get Americans out of South Viet Nam. But they gave Ford no reason to believe that Congress would approve additional military aid.

The Administration continued to insist that the U.S. had no "secret agreements," only a moral obligation to provide the aid. But that did not still the controversy over charges that former President Richard Nixon covertly encouraged Thieu to count on the U.S.'s coming to his rescue. Indeed, TIME has learned that Nixon, in a series of letters from 1970 to 1974, made just such a promise to Cambodian President Lon Nol, despite repeated Administration assurances to Congress that the U.S. had made no commitment to help Cambodia. In January 1974, for example, Nixon wrote Lon Nol: "The U.S. remains fully determined to provide a maximum possible assistance to your heroic self-defense and will continue to stand side-by-side with the republic."

Pleading the case for more arms for Saigon, Ford and others at times went to desperate lengths. Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the President drew an unfavorable contrast between U.S. behavior toward Saigon and Chinese and Russian backing of Hanoi. Said Ford: "It appears that they have maintained [their] commitment. Unfortunately the U.S. did not carry out its commitment." He added: "I don't think we can blame the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. If we had done with our allies what we promised, I think this whole tragedy could have been eliminated." Next day Kissinger tried to straighten out the record. Said he: "We shall not forget who supplied the arms which North Viet Nam used to make a mockery of its signature on the Paris accords."

En route to Taiwan for the funeral of Nationalist China's President Chiang Kaishek, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller told a reporter that the situation in Indochina "has the makings of political issues" in 1976. In an effort at explanation, he said: "Let's say 2,000 Americans or 3,000, half of them are killed, half of them are taken captive. That raises a lot of new issues." In the course of the rambling interview, Rockefeller made several other careless statements. Rather breezily, he suggested that Greeks should be pleased that the Turkish invasion of Cyprus led to the restoration of democracy in Greece. "If I were a Greek," he said, "I would be down on my knees praying to whomever they pray to." Asked at another point if Ford intended to make more use of him in foreign affairs, Rockefeller, in an apparent attempt at black humor, said: "It depends on who dies."

No Assurances. The case for further military aid to Saigon was made by Administration spokesmen before various congressional committees.

Army Chief of Staff General Frederick Weyand told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the request included $138.6 million to reconstitute and equip four divisions made up of draftees and stragglers from the six divisions lost by Saigon in the retreat, $117.8 million to convert twelve light-infantry Ranger groups into four regular army divisions, $70 million to convert regional-forces units into regular regiments, and $221 million for enough ammunition for 60 days of intensive fighting. Weyand and other Administration spokesmen could offer no assurances that the extra aid requested would ensure survival of the Saigon government. Said Weyand: "I don't want to give you any lights at the end of the tunnel. The aid we have requested gives South Viet Nam a chance. I can't go beyond that. The North Vietnamese have too many options open to them to give any guarantee."

Weyand's "chance" was not enough for the formerly hawkish Senate Armed Services Committee. Last year its members authorized about $1 billion in military aid for Saigon in the current fiscal year; Congress appropriated only $700 million. Thus the question before the committee was whether to increase the $300 million authorized but not appropriated and, if so, by how much. In a series of 8-to-7 votes, the committee opposed increasing that authorization by $215 million, by $149 million or by $101 million. No matter what action the committee now took, there was almost no chance that additional military aid would clear the Congress.

Second Thoughts. That left Ford with no potential money for Indochina except a $200 million contingency fund that was proposed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Half the money would be for humanitarian aid to Cambodia and South Viet Nam, and the other half would pay for evacuating Americans from South Viet Nam, their dependents and a small number of "endangered" Vietnamese. Said one Democratic Senator: "They can do what they did in Cambodia, bring out as many as they can at the time that they bring out Americans. But we're not going to let them go beyond that." The House International Relations Committee proposed a $327 million fund for the same purpose.

At first, the Administration rejected outright the proposed funds as, in one aide's words, "worse than nothing." Later, Ford apparently had second thoughts and gave in to Senate committee members' demands for details of the secret U.S. evacuation plan. It called for reducing the number of U.S. citizens in South Viet Nam to about 1,000 before the end of this week. The Senators were told that more than two dozen U.S. ships had been assembled off Indochina and were to take the Americans aboard.

Satisfied by the report, the committee members cleared the bill for Senate action this week, and it seemed likely that something along the lines of the proposed contingency fund would eventually clear Congress, though when remained uncertain. In the Administration's view, if no military aid was to be voted, American interests would be better served by a delay of that verdict that would keep alive a spirit of anticipation in Saigon and, as one presidential adviser said, "avoid spooking the South Vietnamese." The long agony of America's involvement in Viet Nam seemed to be ending in one final act of deception --cynical, but perhaps also necessary.

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