Laos: Old War, New Dispute

EXCEPT for occasional Communist patrols that stole to within a few tantalizing miles of Luangprabang and Vientiane, there was little military movement in Laos last week. Exhausted after their defeat by Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese troops on the Plain of Jars, General Vang Pao's U.S.-supported Meo guerrillas retired into their mountains to rest and regroup. Almost nothing stirred on the ground in northern Laos, except for some 20,000 Meo, many of them families of Pao's warriors, who began "walking out" of their hillside enclaves towards the Thai border and relative safety from the new Communist push that they fear will come. Edgar "Pop" Buell, U.S. aid coordinator in Laos, estimates that disease or enemy action will take 20% of the Meo refugees during their 15-day march-by-night, hide-by-day trek west.

Despite the lull, the conflict was still the object of fascination and controversy, not because of the agonies of the Laotians but because of new diplomatic maneuvering and the discomfort of the Nixon Administration. Instead of quashing congressional criticism of the U.S. role in the war, the White House's explanation of the extent and nature of the U.S. involvement in Laos has only brought on a new dispute.

The Administration's troubles began weeks ago, with news of the military reversal on the Plain of Jars. The reports provided an opening for war critics like Senator George McGovern, who seized on B-52 raids on the Plain to charge that "we are going down the same road in Laos [as in Viet Nam], and we are doing it in secret." Richard Nixon's response was swift and apparently candid. On March 6 in Key Biscayne, he outlined the U.S. role in Laos--never before admitted in detail by any Administration--as "supportive and defensive." To emphasize the "limited" nature of the U.S. role, he stated flatly that "no American stationed in Laos has ever been killed in ground combat operations." At a "backgrounder" after the Nixon speech, a White House aide said that all of some 400 Americans killed, missing or captured in six years of war in Laos had been airmen. As for "advisers," he asserted, their casualty rate "is zero."

Case closed--or so the Administration thought. It was, however, immediately and forcibly reopened. No "ground combat deaths"? The Los Angeles Times last week ran Freelance Journalist Don Schanche's eyewitness account of the death of one U.S. military adviser, Captain Joseph K. Bush Jr., during an enemy attack on a Laotian army compound in February 1969. Confronted with Schanche's story, White House aides sought safety in semantics. Nixon had been accurate, protested White House Deputy Press Secretary Gerald Warren. Bush was "behind the lines," and therefore a victim only of "hostile enemy action"; most assuredly, Warren said, he was not on a "combat operation," or in a "combat situation," or "even in combat." Somehow, of course, Bush had won several decorations, including a posthumous Silver Star, for "gallantry in action," and, as his letters to his wife indicate (see box, page 12), he would have been the last to say that he had not been in a "combat situation."

In its eagerness to recoup the situation, the White House hurriedly revealed that at least 26 American civilians had died one way or another in the Laotian war. They included three members of the International Voluntary Service, a Peace Corps-style group supported in part by the State Department. The others worked for Air America, the CIA's Asian airline. Moving further, the President ordered U.S. commanders to report air and ground casualties incurred from hostile enemy action in the Laotian war separately from the Viet Nam totals, in which they had always been included.

Had the Administration been caught in a deception? Nixon had been genuinely unaware of the killing of Captain Bush, whose death had been lost in the intricacies of casualty bookkeeping. Nonetheless, it has long been common knowledge that Americans, military advisers and specialists, as well as civilians, have died in Laos under enemy fire. The credibility flap provided a new, irresistible opportunity for congressional critics of U.S. Asian policy. The major challenge came from J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Last week, in an effort to maintain congressional control over the Laotian war, the Arkansas Democrat introduced a "sense of the Senate" resolution that the President could not employ ground--or air--forces in Laos without "affirmative action" by Congress.

A Hard Choice. A popular and congressional argument over Laos is precisely what the White House wanted to avoid. Nixon promised at Key Biscayne that there would be no commitment of U.S. ground troops to that country, but airpower is something else. A major reason that the U.S. is in Laos is to carry out bombing raids on North Vietnamese troops and supplies heading south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Trouble on Capitol Hill could seriously crimp the Administration's already narrow room for maneuver in Laos--a fact that Hanoi and the Pathet Lao seem to appreciate thoroughly. In an intriguing and unexpected diplomatic move, Prince Souphanouvong, the Pathet Lao leader, last week offered his half brother Prince Souvanna Phouma, head of the neutralist government, a peace proposal. It suggested talks about a standstill cease-fire and a conference of all Lao factions aimed at restoring a new coalition government in Vientiane. There was, of course, one precondition: a U.S. withdrawal from Laos. Premier Souvanna Phouma said that he was "ready for a cease-fire," but, much to Washington's relief, he refused to discuss even a U.S. bombing cessation until Hanoi agreed to withdraw its still unacknowledged force of 67,000 troops (by White House accounting) in Laos. These troops, of course, were ignored in the Pathet Lao proposal.

The prince's public line comforted Washington, but one high Administration official confesses that "we still don't know what Souphanouvong may be telling his half brother." Eventually, the Laotian government could bend to Communist pressure and ask the U.S. to stop the bombing. In that case, Washington would face a hard choice. It could either risk a political outcry by continuing the raids, or it could stop the raids and risk giving the North Vietnamese the opportunity for still greater mischief in the big war next door.

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