From Bad to Awful

FOREIGN RELATIONS

The war in South Viet Nam still seemed to be going from bad to awful.

Offered a rare opportunity to wipe out the Communist Viet Cong's crack 514th Battalion, some 2,000 U.S.-supported government troops last week trapped 500 of the enemy in a swamp ringed with coconut and banana groves, moved in for the kill. But a single Viet Cong platoon managed to hold off a timid government battalion for five hours. Other government troops failed to contact the enemy before dark. Instead of slipping away in the night as usual, the Viet Cong blasted right through the government lines and escaped, killing 22 government soldiers, wounding 38.

Seeking ways to avert a long series of such defeats, the Johnson Administration continued to hint that it is seriously considering fundamental changes in the ground rules under which it has waged the war. The State Department announced the 'creation of a new interagency task force to reassess the whole deteriorating situation. It is headed by William H. Sullivan, 41, a special assistant to Under Secretary of State Averell Harriman, and it will report directly to Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

A Remarkable Talent. Only partially by coincidence, President Johnson accepted the resignation of Roger Hilsman, 44, who, as Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, was the State Department official most directly charged with responsibility for Viet Nam policy under both Jack Kennedy and Johnson. A graduate of West Point (Class of '43), a wartime guerrilla fighter with Merrill's Marauders in Burma, an OSS officer in the Far East, holder of a Ph.D. in international politics from Yale, Hilsman had long talked about returning to academic life. He once tried to submit his resignation to Kennedy, but Kennedy persuaded him to stay on. Both Kennedy and Harriman admired Hilsman's rapid-fire command of facts, ideas and advice.

Hilsman did not have the same rapport with Johnson, and he displayed a remarkable talent for getting other U.S. officials mad at him. His aggressive, abrasive personality hindered the teamwork necessary for policy coordination. He liked to give lectures on how to fight counterguerrilla warfare to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Maxwell Taylor--much to Taylor's disgust. When Hilsman quit, a State Department colleague explained: "It's a two-way deal. Roger wants to go and we--well, let's say we don't mind."

Three-in-Five. At week's end Johnson announced that Hilsman's job will go to William P. Bundy, 46, now Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs and, in effect, the Pentagon's "Secretary of State." The shift could mean an end to the squabbling between the Defense and State Departments over Viet Nam policy. Bundy is a brother of top White House Aide McGeorge Bundy, Special Assistant for National Security Affairs.

In his weekend press conference, President Johnson said he did not be lieve that speculation "that we are losing the fight in that area, or that things have gone to pot there, is at all justified." Added he: "We feel that we are following the proper course and that our national interests are being fully protected." Nevertheless, Johnson dispatched Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to South Viet Nam for a field assessment--McNamara's third in five months.

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