4 Wednesday, January 26, 1972 University Daily Kansan Garry Wills KANSAN comment Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers. An Open Letter To President Richard M. Nixon The White House Washington, D.C. President Nixon: There are two good aspects in your speech last night calling for withdrawal of all American forces from Indochina within six months after agreement by North Vietnam to free 400 U.S. prisoners. The first positive aspect is that you finally have set a date for American withdrawal. There can be no question in this country that the single key issue to ending the war, a fixed date for total withdrawal, has been met. The second positive proposal you made last night was "a major reconstruction program throughout Indochina to help all those people recover from the ravages of a generation of war." Obviously such a program is the least any country should do to try to compensate another country, in this case four other countries, for nearly destroying its civilization, for nearly annihilating its culture. But aside from these two points, Mr. Nixon, I cannot find anything positive, noble or good in your nationally televised speech. the timing. The timing of it bothers me most. Why now? Why January 25, 1972, 1,100 days after you took office? Often during the 390 days I spent in Vietnam I asked, "Why doesn't he set a date now?" I asked myself that question in July 1970. And again I find myself asking the same question: Why now, Mr. Nixon? You went to great lengths last night to explain why. You said the secret negotiations began in Paris August 4, 1969, that they included seven separate, private meetings from then until last October 11, that our country offered a variety of proposals to the North Vietnamese and the Nationz' Liberation Front—all of which you said they rejected. What you did not say, Mr. President, is that you waited more than two years to include a stipulation the North Vietnamese and NLF have demanded since the Paris talks began. This stipulation was that South Vietnamese election leaders before new elections are held. This stipulation was not included until last October in the proposal which you termed "the most comprehensive peace plan of this conflict." It begins to appear, then, that the proposals offered by Mr. Kissinger to the opposition during this time were not substantially different from those presented publicly at the round table in Paris. The sevenpoint plan announced publicly and repeatedly by the North Vietnamese in Paris demanded Thieu's resignation. And now, Mr. Nixon, your publicly proclaimed eight-point plan incorporates that requirement. The caretaker government to be set up in Saigon when Thieu resigns is to be headed by the chairman of the South Vietnamese Senate. The Viet Cong will fault this proposition, considering this an unsatisfactory compromise since the senate chairman is a Thieu backer. You also propose that all armed forces must remain within their national frontiers. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong will buckle at this requirement since it has been their contention throughout the war that the arbitrary demarcation of North and South is invalid. As you know, they have consistently refused to acknowledge that any of their troops are fighting south of the DMZ. Your final, frothy point that there will be an international guarantee for the fundamental rights of the Indochinese and the status of all countries in Indochina, remains so much rhetorical window-dressing. Human fundamental rights are violated by "protective reaction strikes" throughout Indochina, CIA conscription of Laotian Mee tribesman as mercenaries to fight North Vietnamese soldiers in that country, and the Phoenix program of selective assassination of dissident South Vietnamese persons. I am bothered by the secret nature of the past 30 months of negotiations. You said, "It is my judgment that the purposes of peace will best be served by bringing out publicly the proposals we have been making in private." Would not the purposes of peace have been served by revealing these proposals when they began? Their substance is not radically different from similar proposals urged in the McGovery Haldock and Oppenheimer amendments, in presentations by former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford ("Set a date, stick to it, get out"). former presidential adviser McGeorge Bundy and former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare John Gardner, all Democrats, all making their proposals before 1972, an election year. Do you not think, Mr. Nick, that have the purposes of peace would have been served by publicly presenting your proposals long before now? I mean peace in this country, Mr. President. Is it logical to assume that had you presented this formula to the North Vietnamese and NLF you would have forced their hand and diluted the public sentiment which they gauge so well and to which they respond so readily? Is it reasonable for us to think that had you done this in 1969 or even early in 1970 that Kent State and Jackson State would not have happened because Cambodia would not have happened? For a moment, Mr. President, let us consider what would not have happened had you presented this peace package shortly after you took office. Three million tons of bombs, the amount dropped during the last two years, would not have landed in Indochina. Some of the 1,050,000 killed in the bombing 325,000 dead, would be alive or whole. Some of the 258,000 Vietnamese orphans and 131,000 war widows would have parents and husbands. And remember, Mr. Nixon, that I was there, that I am a Vietnam veteran. Some of the 55,000 other American soldiers who didn't come back might have; some of the more than 300,000 wounded might have been shot or killed by their bodies because a lot of them would not have been in Vietnam. Some of the $120 billion spent in Indochina might not have been; some of it might have been used here. It is a long, somber list of subjunctives, Mr. Nixon. What might have happened. What would have happened. But it didn't, Mr. President. It didn't happen till now, January 25, 1972. Sloven hundred days after you visited the U.S., even seven days before the next election. Yours truly, Mike Theroux Votes Are Power— Register Mike Tharp --- FBI Policies Questioned Do you remember, back in 1960, the summer day when Henry Cable Lotod pulled out a large plaque of the Great Seal, and showed the UN Security Council, rigged, inside our Moscow listening device, with a Russian listening device? There was a shiver of righteousness in America the nasty Russians were invading our diplomatic rights and ambassadorial privilege. Lodge's dramatic show helped him, later that same summer when the Republican presidential candidate had to choose a running mate-Nixon got an appointment to marshal his josted anti-Communist points against Moscow. Last week the New York Times carried a front page story about another bit of spying on an embassy. But this was not a chapter in the Cold War struggle between Russia and America (you bug our seal and we'll U-2 your missile sites; you U-2 our missile sites and we shoot it out of our air, This was a story of spying done on a friendly country's embassy; and not done by Moscow, but by Washington. Former FBI agent Robert Wall has told how he was trained to spy on Israelis, to make sure they were not getting any American secrets. After he met with an Israeli listen over a tapped phone, to电话 calls going in and out of the Israel embassy. Where are the righteous shivers now? Mr. Wall's revelations are fit into the growing picture of J. Edgar Hoover's domain as a lawless one invading the lives of his former associates chasing the harmless. We were treated to tales of sophomore counter-violence stunts—like sending forged letters back and forth from one New Left group to another, and up their demonstration plans. Forgery is against the law, of course; but the FBI has never felt obliged to obey the law while purporting to uphold it. Wall has many tales of bank accounts, Internal Revenue documents, telephone company records, and Social Security files illegally scanned or copied by the Bureau. Wall himself began the investigation of the open center for New Left scholars called the Institute for Policy Studies. While other intelligence agencies tried to place spies on the working staff of the Institute, the FBI tried to infiltrate it with a "ghetto sociologist" and hired informers to attend its seminars. All this was not only an invasion of privacy, but a waste of the taxpayer's money. I spent a long period writing an article on the Institute for Policy Studies, two years ago; and found the most interesting part of it there "is just to walk in and ask. The place is about as secret as Macy's window, a constant flow of visitors and students all over the place, and the most talkative staff you can imagine. There are so many people hired some people to inform him what's on in Macy's window these days). It used to be that the only ex-agents of FBI we heard from were anti-Communal crusaders on the lecture circuit. The recent Princeton panel, Hoover's panicity firing policies, and testimony like Mr. Walls, hold out a promise that the wall of silence and fear built up in Hoover may at last be crumbling. Copyright, 1972, Universal Press Syndicate James J. Kilpatrick Fund Plan Includes Workers SAN JUAN, P. R—He looks like a professor of astronomy, unwinding at the Faculty Club after a long day on Observatory Hill. He is slightly bermed by the inability of others to help him. There are mysteries that are perfectly clear to him. Bow-tied and bright-eyed, he is no bigger than a large sparrow or a smallowl—but he makes you listen. His name, they say, is Lounge O. Kelso. An uneasy suspicion will not go away that his name is really Copernicus. By any name, this sawed-off San Francisco lawyer is just now the talk of Puerto Rico. He is the principal inspiration and chief advisor to the Puerto Rican legislature Friday evening, Governor Luis A. Ferer. In the astronomy of economics, the Kelso theory has all the mad simplicity of suggesting that the earth goes around the sun. Everybody knows it isn't so. This takes a little explanation. I ask you to hold still, because it takes time to plan of "universal capitalism" is sound—and a respectable flock of hard-headed businessmen have begun to try it—the guy may have found a cure for inflation, or foreign warfare. Sure enough, his formula sounds like Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound; but in real life, his food is risking his reputation on the scheme. This is the plan: The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, through its legislature, will create an unprecedented "Proprietary Fund" along the lines of our Comsat—a public corporation, privately managed. Beginning in July 2013, Puerto Rican workers, $800,000. Puerto Rican workers, earning between $500 and $7,800 a year, will become eligible to buy shares of preferred stock in the fund. Assume for the sake of example that 100,000 such workers agree to take 100 shares each at one dollar a share. That is $10 million. The Commonwealth then would match this investment, share for share, in common stock, in common stock that the great bulk of investors would not pay for their preferred stock out of savings or current earnings; it is expected that they would borrow the money through a bank at a low interest rate, pledging their total stock as security and applying to banks toward payment of interest from the Fund (does well) toward repayment of the principal also. At the end of five years, the government guarantees redemption of the preferred stock at par value. This guarantees repayment of the original $100 share. If your worker cannot lose either: He always comes out of the deal with at least his matching 100 shares of common. Neither can the Commonwealth lose; its Fund will have enjoyed the use of this capital all the way. Meanwhile, it is assumed that the Fund is earning money through investments, through rentals, through its own industrial development loans. The $10 million invested by the workers, plus the $10 million put up by the Commonwealth, and providing a $10 million. With good management, such a fund should earn 15 to 20 percent, all of which would be paid out in dividends. For the first time in their lives, the workers would be getting a little piece of capitalist action. In order to achieve this, both Kelso and Governor Fere are capitalists to the bone. They also social are thinkers. Under the present economic system, the typical worker is effectively denied a part in the capital structure. Such a worker has but one source of income—the $10 million plan would provide him, through his dividends, a second source of income—a source, moreover, that is tied to inflationary forces. Ultimately, in a thriving economy, such a dividend would be a significant public welfare. The psychological advantages are apparent. The Puerto Rican venture admittedly is small in scope. Any critic could advance 100 reasons why it can't work. At the very least, it will demand a prodigious amount of knowledge that the theory sounds crazy. But, then, one may recall, they said all that of Copernicus, too. (C) 1972 The Washington Star Syndicate, Inc. THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN America's Pacemaking college newspaper Kansan Telephone Numbers Newroom-UN-4 4810 Business Office-UN-4 4358 Published at the University of Kansas during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. 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