NEWS AND VIEWS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP73-00475R000401520001-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 19, 2013
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: May 26, 1967
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/12/19: CIA-RDP73-00475R000401520001-5
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NEWS AND VIEWS
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As firm supporters of the war in Viet-
nam, the editors of America could
hardly have been expected to approve of
the April 15 Peace March; but, oh my,
it was upsetting to the Jesuit editorialist
who covered it (America, April 29).
Draft-card burners! And people selling
Marx and Mao?and even Ramparts!
Vietcong flags and daffodils and mini-
skirts! Dear me, things like -this don't
happen on Jesuit campuses.
Whatever could it mean when a few
hundred thousand people gather to pro-
test a war waged in their name? "The
smell of roast bananas was in the air...."
America explained. Etc., etc. "Men
worked late that night cleaning the
streets of Manhattan," the editorial con-
cluded. Respectable citizens rest assured. ;
America guarantees that your feet will'
not be infected by all that peace scum.
Robert Hinck of Columbia University
summed up the feelings of many of us
who marched that day in an article in the
Ow/, one of the student papers. Hinck
found himself -unable to do the straight
news story he was assigned, and he ad-
? dressed his remarks to "America" instead.
He was talking about the country, not
the magazine. Works out rather appro-
priately, though:
"There will be no news story on the
Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam.
I was there and I was supposed to do the
story but I can't. Who am I to argue with
the New York Times?
"Those who were there know how it
was and those who weren't have already
heard all of the reassurances needed to '
keep them in their state of 'apathy. We
were all smoking pot. We cooked bananas,
burned draft cards and had scruffy hair.
We sang about our preference for mak-
ing love, rather than fighting the war that
our betters out there in respectable Amer-
ica have taken to their hearts. . . . War is
virility; love of peace is bohemianism and
quite probably a sexual perversion. 'I
saw all those weirdos on the news.'
? "Well, America, you saw all those peo-
ab y find some? ent from the govern-
to help.
0 0 0 0 \we,
pie; and maybe you're not ready for this
yet, but they are people, and they weren't
the Only ones! There were a thousand or
two of us from Columbia and if all of us
didn't get on TV it's because only a few
of us were wearing our psychedelic T-
shirts. . . . There were teachers and little
old ladies. There were parents with chil-
dren clinging to their backs. There was a
man in a wheelchair who took one in the
spine at Guadalcanal. . . .
"In short there were average Ameri-
cans and far from average Americans,
and . . . we got to the U.N. and went
home happy. . . . We were wet and tired
but we all felt that maybe this had ac-
complished the beginning of the end of
American intransigence in Vietnam.
"Then we got home and found out that
it just might be impossible to accomplish
anything. NBC told us what we were: a
bunch of kooks. Not only that but the
great majority of us were not even in the
parade at all. NBC told us that we were
'late-comers.' 100,000 people and a few
'latecomers' marched today after smoking
pot all morning in Central Park. . . .
1
The newsletter of Operation York-
ville, a militant,, interfaith, anti-obscenity
organization in New York chooses Miller
R. Gardner as its most recent "Man of
the Month." Gardner is General Man-
ager of Radio New York-Worldwide,
which the newsletter describes as a chan-
nel "to promote better understanding be-
tween peoples, and point out the advan-
tages of our free society." Actually,
Radio Worldwide serves as an outlet for
a variety of CIA-sponsored broadcasts,
especially to Latin American countries.
WRUL, its international station, broad-
cast bulletins to Latin America during
the 1954 CIA coup in Guatemala, and
played a role in the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Mr. Gardner is very worried about what
obscene material may do to the minds and
morals of American youth. "An entire
generation is at stake. . . . how can they
lead us when their time comes?"
Don't fret, Mr. Gardner. They'll prob-
/
Commonweal: 274
.Ma ai 26; 1967
? Presenting an award to Archbishop
Krol of Philadelphia, Mcthodist Bishop
Fred Pierce Corson declared: "We have
seen him refuse to panic when crises, due
to a misguided and over-exercised inter-
pretation of freedom, threatened the
orderly operation of the functions of the
Church.... Amid the neurotic and exotic
demonstrations manifesting the diseased
and sin-sick soul of society, Archbishop
Krol has . . . moved quietly among us to
restablish . . . decency, safety, well-be-
ing, and betterment."
The award came immediately after the
Philadelphia diocesan school strike.
The U.S. government isn't sure how
many civilians it kills in Vietnam, but it
does know the heartbeat rate of Ameri-
can pilots during bombing runs. Not only
'Administration
The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration reports, in the words of
the New York Times (April 11), that
"Even during bombing runs on the most
hazardous missions over North Vietnam
American pilots remain remarkably cool."
This is in marked contrast, mind you, to
the people being bombed, who have been
known to get excited and run for cover.
Little children covered with flaming na-
palm often lose their cool entirely.
But then the NASA report explained
that the American pilots had the advan-
tage of long experience. Perhaps after
ten more years of war, Vietnamese kids
will be getting used to napalm.
?
As I type up that last angry note, I re-
ceive a postcard telling me that a high-
school friend has been killed after a
bombing mission in North Vietnam. The
card comes from another friend, a con-
scientious objector. He believes this war
is immoral and fears he cannot honestly
support the memorial fellowship being
set up in his former classmate's name.
For one generation of Americans, any-
way, that dilenma goes a long way
toward summing up this war.
PETER STEINFELS
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/12/19: CIA-RDP73-00475R000401520001-5