Mr. SALISBURY. I do not believe that De Gaulle's trip out-I believe he went to Cambodia, made a speech out there, and they had some contact with him there. I do not think this did very much except to enhance his prestige in Hanoi. He is regarded as a very outstanding world figure there. In fact, they think France is doing fine now. They do not think they did so well before.

I do not believe, however, that this means that he necessarily has great influence or that he might be an intermediary in this situation. I had a very definite feeling that they were quite leery of intermediaries; that they would much prefer man-to-man American and North Vietnamese negotiations, to having somebody else get mixed into it. A number of people, of course, have tried to do this, and I have a feeling they are not too keen on that.

Senator COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

NLF REPRESENTATIVE IN HANOI

The CHAIRMAN. May I pursue that a little. Do you mind saying whom you saw representing the NLF in Hanoi or is it better not to? Mr. SALISBURY. I do not mind at all. I reported it in my stories. I am sorry to say his name escapes me at the moment.

The CHAIRMAN. That is all right.

Mr. SALISBURY. But it is their official representative in Hanoi, and it is on record.

The CHAIRMAN. You did write an article on this?

Mr. SALISBURY. I wrote a rather full report of the conversation. The CHAIRMAN. I was a little surprised that he had diplomatic prestige as if he were recognized as a sovereign government, is that right? Mr. SALISBURY. Well, yes. They have the appurtenances of that, and they sort of make a point of this, as he kept telling me, that these are matters-I asked him, for example, I said, "How do you negotiate for supplies? You get your supplies from all sort of countries. You get them from Russia, you get them from Poland, Czechoslovakia. Do you go to, come to, the government here in Hanoi and say, 'We need so many machineguns' and get them from some place?"

He said, "No, we conduct our own direct negotiations with the Poles, or with the Russians and then they ship the stuff in."

I do not know whether that is true, but that is what he said.

The CHAIRMAN. And the shipped goods are consigned, I assume, to the NLF and not to Hanoi?

Mr. SALISBURY. That is what he said precisely.

The CHAIRMAN. That is what he said. It is very curious, because, you know our attitude has been the NLF is just a tool or a puppet, if you like, of Hanoi.

Mr. SALISBURY. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you say your best information is that this is not so?

Mr. SALISBURY. My impression is that whatever they may have been in the past, and they may have been a tool or a puppet, that they are growing up, and that they have an identity, and a unity, and an organizational structure of their own.

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The CHAIRMAN. I have one of your articles which says, "The picture of the Front and its role in Vietnam was presented by Nguyen Van Tien"

Mr. SALISBURY. That is the man.

The CHAIRMAN (continuing). “A former Saigon professor, a member of the resistance movement since 1945 ** **

He is a southerner, not a northerner?

Mr. SALISBURY. Yes, he is; that is right.

GEOGRAPHICAL ORIGIN OF THE NLF MEMBERS

The CHAIRMAN. Is it your impression from your discussions with him that the leaders of the NLF are primarily southerners or are they northerners?

Mr. SALISBURY. No. I asked him about that, and I am sorry to say I cannot remember exactly what he told me. But my impression was that most of them were southerners. There are some northerners in the movement as well, but I think almost all of the leadership is southern.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you ask him in his opinion what percentage of the NLF are communists and what percentage are non-communists! Mr. SALISBURY. Yes; I asked him that question, too.

The CHAIRMAN. What did he say?

Mr. SALISBURY. And he contended that a minority were communists, and that they had a broad representation, including some ordinary political people of one sort and another, some religious people. He mentioned all of the different parties and movements represented. Unfortunately I cannot recall all of them at the present time. I honestly believe that they do include these other elements, but I also believe that the communists do dominate that government.

GEOGRAPHICAL ORIGIN OF THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT

The CHAIRMAN. It is a fact-at least it has been reported in the paper-that most of the leaders of the official government that we recognize in South Vietnam are from the north, is that not right? Mr. SALISBURY. I think that is true; yes.

The CHAIRMAN. I think I have seen that one of the ten generals, nine were emigrés from the north. Is that correct?

Mr. SALISBURY. I think it is something on that order, yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Is it true that General Ky is a native of Hanoi? Mr. SALISBURY. My impression is he comes from the north someplace, yes.

The CHAIRMAN. I wondered if you talked about this in your discussions with the people in Hanoi!

Mr. SALISBURY. I did because I was interested.

You see, the country is very mixed up. In the Hanoi Government it is

The CHAIRMAN. Are they as mixed up as we are? [Laughter.] Mr. SALISBURY. I do not know.

The CHAIRMAN. About the war, I mean.

Mr. SALISBURY. No, I did not mean about the war. I meant about their population.

The CHAIRMAN. Oh, oh; I see.

Mr. SALISBURY. The government in the north, for example, if I have the figures correctly in my mind, consists of six northerners and six southerners, and it is my impression that the Front government has somewhat of an equal mixture of north and south but not as many north as the northern government has.

IMPRESSION OF NORTH VIETNAM PRIME MINISTER

The CHAIRMAN. You spoke at great length with the Prime Minister. I wonder if you would give us a little better impression of this man. I do not wish to press you too much, but you are the first American we have ever had, to my knowledge, who has spoken to these people. Everything we have had is secondhand. I wonder if you would go a little bit further of your impressions of Pham Van Dong. Mr. SALISBURY. Pham Van Dong.

The CHAIRMAN. Is he an intelligent, able, alert man or does he suffer from this lack of information you described a moment ago, namely, lack of knowledge of the outside world, particularly this country?

I understand Ho Chi Minh spent two years in this country. It is true it was in New York and perhaps he did not learn much about the country, but he was in New York, according to some of the New York papers. Is that correct?

Mr. SALISBURY. Well, I believe that is right. He was in the United States for awhile. I think he was working as a waiter in New York. The CHAIRMAN. I heard it as a busboy for two years.

Mr. SALISBURY. Maybe it was as a busboy.

The CHAIRMAN. The papers said for two years, and that he does speak English.

Mr. SALISBURY. He does speak English?

The CHAIRMAN. Does Pham Van Dong speak English?

Mr. SALISBURY. No, he does not. He speaks French and unfortunately, I do not speak very good French, and we had to converse through an interpreter.

He struck me as a very able man, a very bright man, an interesting man to talk to.

I have talked to a great many communist leaders, and they are not all interesting. Some of them are very dull indeed, because their minds are very routine and they go into the Marxist dialectics and they never come out of it.

Now, this man is not that sort of a fellow. He is very direct. He is bright. He kept me interested all during the time I was talking with him.

So far as his knowledge of the world is concerned, he has a pretty good idea of what goes on in the world. He is much better than the average man in the street that I described.

The CHAIRMAN. That description you gave, I believe, to Senator Case a moment ago of their limited knowledge does not apply to him? Mr. SALISBURY. No, it does not apply to him.

The CHAIRMAN. It applies to only the man in the street?

Mr. SALISBURY. The description I gave to Senator Case applies to the ordinary person and to some of the lower levels of officials. The CHAIRMAN. But not to Pham Van Dong.

Mr. SALISBURY. Not to Pham Van Dong.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you feel he has some feeling of the realities of the matter?

Mr. SALISBURY. Yes, I think he has. I think he exaggerates on some things. I think he exaggerates, for example, on the extent of their successes, as he calls them, in the south.

I do not think they are doing as well as he tried to make me think they were doing. Now, maybe he knows better himself, but he put up a big case for their getting along very well there. I do not think they are doing all that well.

U.S. BASE INVESTMENT AND CONSEQUENT CREDIBILITY

The CHAIRMAN. Did you discuss with him the question that has been raised about our investing vast sums in places like Camranh Bay and Sattahip, and the indication that we have no intention of ever leaving there? Did that matter ever arise?

Mr. SALISBURY. No. The questions of the bases never did arise.
The CHAIRMAN. As you know this matter has been raised.

Mr. SALISBURY. I know it has been raised.

The CHAIRMAN. And it has been said that our having invested so much we would not leave bears upon our-this terrible word-credibility.

I notice that the Senator from Missouri has returned and I yield to him as he has not had an opportunity.

Senator SYMINGTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I apologize for not being here the entire time. I had Armed Services and a Joint Economic Committee meeting this morning. I do have a few questions.

INFILTRATION FROM THE NORTH

You say in your statement:

Despite continuous and very heavy bombing, both roads and railroads were operative during the time I was there, and other foreigners report that there has never been any serious disruption in communications to the south.

When you say "communications," does that word imply infiltration? Mr. SALISBURY. It certainly does; absolutely. I did not really have it in mind when I was using that. I was thinking basically of the movement of the men and the arms and the food to the south, but it certainly applies to that as well.

Senator SYMINGTON. The infiltration has been heavily cut, according to our authorities, and that is why I asked about the language. Later you say:

The people of North Vietnam, insofar as I observed them, seemed to be very strong and united in support of the war effort to an extent which I found surprising in a Communist country

You said earlier this morning that you had been in Russia a great deal, had written many books about it. Wouldn't you say the Russians had been strong and united in their resistance to the Nazis? Mr. SALISBURY. They were, Senator, but they were not really in the early part of the war. You probably recall when the Germans

first came in there, particularly in the Ukraine and some of those areas, they were greeted as heroes rather than as enemies.

The resistance of the Russians grew during the war, and I think it grew due to a number of different factors, one being the invocation. of national patriotic motifs by Stalin, and also the fact that the Germans conducted themselves in such a beastly manner when they got into the country that they stimulated resistance to themselves.

DEFENSE DEPARTMENT LETTER ABOUT NAM DINH

Senator SYMINGTON. Thank you. I have a letter in reply to a Congressman which came from the Department of Defense. The reply

states:

You asked about the accuracy of the statement in the New York Times that "No American communique has asserted that Nam Dinh contains some facility that the United States regards as a military objective.

This statement is without accuracy.

We receive each day from the MACV information office in Saigon a copy of the lengthy release that is made each night there at their 5 o'clock briefing. We also receive a tape recording of the briefer's amplifying remarks and of the subsequent question-and-answer session with the press. No transcript is made of the latter, although the tape is made available to the Washington press corps within two hours of the live briefing in Saigon.

A rapid spot check here of the releases as cabled to us shows that strikes in the Nam Dinh area were announced on at least three occasions once in April and twice in May, 1966. I am enclosing transmission copies of the pertinent pages of those public announcements.

The New York Times simply did not take the time to research the matter themselves or, indeed, to ask our assistance.

Have you any comments?"

Mr. SALISBURY. I certainly have. That is Art Sylvester's statement and it starts from a faulty premise. The article in the TimesSenator SYMINGTON. This letter was not signed by Mr. Sylvester. It was signed by Mr. Goulding.

Mr. SALISBURY. He made a similar public statement, Senator Symington.

Senator SYMINGTON. I see.

Mr. SALISBURY. Neither the Times nor myself said that Nam Dinh had never been listed as a military objective by the Defense Department. The stories specifically said that the residents of Nam Dinh were not aware of it ever having been mentioned in an American communique. That is what the story said. That was their belief, and it seems that they have been mistaken or at least on some occasions the Nam Dinh area was mentioned by the briefing officer in Saigon. Senator SYMINGTON. Thank you.

ALLEGED ATTACKS ON DIKES

The letter, in answer to the question about the articles from Congressman Reid of New York states:

You also asked about the alleged attacks on the Dao River dike. I mentioned in our telephone conversation that I knew of no such attack. I have double checked, both with the operations people and with the Defense Intelligence Agency. I am informed that no attack on any dike in North Vietnam has been targeted or approved.