The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 7

The Boston Globe Saturday, April 15, lt'67 i WASHINGTON CIRCUIT MuumniiniiiiiiiiiiimniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiHiiiMiH James Doyle Justice Dept. Has Plymouth Robbery Case 5 'Weak' will be leading There appear to be no special political overtones to the college visits, but they may be discovered nonetheless by some syndicated pundits. But except for a rather vague and subsequently repudiated confession that one inspector swears he obtained, there have been no indications that the Feds have much evidence. To date none of the $1.5 million has been: recovered, despite a $200,000 reward. With a the government will have spent more than $2 million on the case.

And the Feds know that once in court they will have to deal with charges that the suspects' rights have been trampled by illegal searches, the bugging of lawyer-client conversations, and various less important trespasses. The junior senator, Edward Brooke, leaves for Israel and the Middle East momentarily, his second lengthy trip away from his Senate desk during the four long months of his tenure. Globe Washington Bureau WASHINGTON Federal lawyers are finishing the case for the prosecution of the Plymouth mail robbers of 1962, apparently expecting to go to a grand jury before the statute of limitations runs out in exactly four months. But informed sources in the Justice Department are not holding their breath waiting for a conviction. Some feel that if it ever comes to a trial the Feds will be covered more with scorn than glory, and convictions will be both elusive and subject to the most precarious of journeys through Appellate Court.

If there is anything new in the case, it is a very well protected secret. Post Office sources say the investigation phase of the case was wrapped up more than a year ago, and although '15 men have been working on it since that time, there apparently aren't any breaks. What has the Justice Department been doing during that year? A spokesman says it has had the mail case the biggest cash heist in the written history of North America "under very active consideration "The Department is fully aware of the time problems," he adds. Aside from fleeting time, the problem seems to be that the United States Attorney's office in Boston is less than overjoyed with the evidence that postal inspectors turned over after spending four years and $1.75 million on the case. Instead of.

the tough, hard detective work that was needed there were a lot of muscle-flexing tricks of dubious Constitutionality, and some wishful thinking that one of the principles would crack and hand the government its case on a silver platter apparently. And the same high-ranking Postal gumshoes, who four years ago pointed out that they get their men 99 percent of the time, are now saying they just didn't get "that big break" that is needed in a case like this. The "Postals" exude confidence that they know who at least four of the robbers are the same four men who have publicly stated that they are prime suspects. McGeorge Bundy, formerly Harvard and then White House, and Fred Friendly, formerly CBS news, are two men who have known the arrogance of power. Today they share the.

shelter, of the Ford Foundation in New York. Both men testified about educational television before a Senate committee Wednesday, and afterwards Bundy was overheard telling Friendly "you got your metaphors a little mixed." Friendly smiled and replied in a loud voice "Who the hell do you think you are," a non sequitur perhaps but a remark properly unhinging nonetheless. It was the last word. Sen. Ted Kennedy is planning a series of one-man "teach-ins" in the next month.

Monday he will be at Northwestern Evanston, 111., for a major speech on European foreign policy; Apr. 24 he will speak at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst; May 2 he will be at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and May 9 at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His subject at each school will concern some problem that will be facing the nation in the 70s, when the listening students presumably iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiHiiiiiiiiiitiiim A. A. MICHELSON WILLIAM F.

BUCKLEY JR. Brooke's Cohorts Suicide-Bent 'Forget Slum Poor' 18th Congressional seat in the House. District were being singled out for special attention because he is a Negro. the Harlem legislator departs from his Bimini retreat in the Bahamas to take his seat in Washington. If Ford persists in the same approach this month when -Powell comes to Washington to rejoin the House, 40 days and 40 nights of workshops won't help the Republicans in the big cities, particularly with Negro voters.

This is particularly so now that the leading Republican contenders for President have either sided with President The latter is' of particular significance in the light of the 84 percent vote that Powell received in last Tuesday's special election. His margin this week was greater than that of last Fall when he was returned to the House for his 11th term with 72 percent of the vote. The big endorsement for Powell indicated that many who ordinarily don't vote for him believe that Uowell's irregularities The point is that in the unseating of Powell, Republicans in the House refused to just go along with the stiff censure and committee-stripping recommended by a special study committee. Through their leader, Rep. Gerald Ford of Michigan, they insisted that he not be allowed to take a seat in the 90th Congress, thereby raising anew another fiasco when even acuter sense of desperation, and alienation.

It is not widely known, for example, that the Public Housing Authority in New York city consciously attempts to exclude the chronic misfits the prostitutes, drunkards," 1 the mothers of periodic illegitimate children: -( indeed, New York goes so far as to inquire whether an applicant's absent husband is -about to return from the penitentiary. If no apartment. But what happens to such folk, and what should be done about them? "To tell the truth," says Mr. Moon, who devotes his life to attempting to take care of the housing problems of the very poor, "I don't care." The statement sounded callous from such a man. What hemeant by it, one suspects, is less "I don't care" "I haven't got the slightest idea." '-'t 'Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Johnson's policy in Vietnam or have complained that he isn't "doing enough" to prosecute the war.

By virtually eliminating Vietnam as an issue in the 1968 presidential campaign, Republicans leave leading Negro leaders no choice but to direct attention to the Republican leadership's seemingly discriminatory treatment of Cong. Powell. The one-man, one-vote issue is an even more direct slap at the city vote than the unseating of the Harlem legislator. It is couched in terms of "home rule." But it is obviously aimed at glorifying the "rotten borough" system that has characterized so many, state legislatures throughout the country, and has deprived so many city voters of representation in their state government. The Supreme Court rule is that legislators are supposed to represent people, not cattle, not land, not crops, and not business.

Each person is supposed to have as much representation as the next. Since it was rank and blatant discrimination against the city voter that prompted the Supreme Court to order states to redistrict, it follows that the Republican leadership, if it is really interested in winning over the urban electorate, would do well to drop the whole project. (The Berkshire Eaile) Edward W. Brooke, the state's junior U.S. senator, speaks often of his Republican Party's "suicidal particularly in its appeals to the Dig city vote, but there are indications that the party is not listening.

These tendencies were very much in evidence in Washington when Republican organization leaders from all sections of the country were gathered to participate in a 'orkshop on how to win the big city vote. There were lots of entertaining and enlightening critiques on why certain Republicans prevailed last Fall. One came from Howard Baker, son-in-law of the Republican floorleader in the U.S. Senate, Everett M. Dirksen, who was elected to his father-in-law's club from Tennessee.

There 1 were also contributions from Gov. Volpe, by top sides' to Gov. Nelson Rocke-. feller and Mayor John Lind-sy of New York and by a campaign strategist for California's Ronald Reagan all victors in heavily Democratic states. But not once in the daylong session did any one, neither the lecturers, the nor the state organization leaders, raise the question as to the efficacy of the Republican obsession for overturning the U.S.

Supreme Court's one-man, one-vote rule, or the Republican insistence on depriving Adam Clayton Powell of New York's Every now and again one happens on a public servant who is unchained to any political organization or ideology, and the experience is breathtaking. Mr. Moon (I'll call him) is one such, and his specialty is public housing, though he could master any field at all with his pragmatic flair, his sense of perspective, and his bustling mind. Mr. Moon has been immersed in the housing situation in New York city for several years.

He has developed an X-ray vision which, fastened on popular general schemes for solving the housing problem, causes them to disintegrate in seconds. For instance, plans based on the assumption that decent living conditions are in and of themselves a way of propelling chronic misfits into a life of semi-decency. Never mind the abstract arguments, some of which say yes environment is all, others that no it isn't: in fact none of the plans popularly endorsed is working, not in New York, not in San Francisco, not in Chicago. There was the housing project, for instance, of a public-spirited civic group. Its experience with the chronic misfits the irre-sponsibles, the jaded, who live from one physical sensation to another, caring naught for the emancipation of their children: these cannot be helped by decent housing, but they can do considerable harm to public housing, projects in which they are surrounded by what go by the name of the deserving poor.

The notion, says Mr. Moon, that "scat-teration" is the answer, the plan to plop one misfit family in the middle of an apartment house occupied by say, lower middle-income families, is silly. There are not only the animosities to contend with that arise from jealousy at the free ride of one's neighbor. There are the neighbor's dirty habits, which have a way of contaminating the entire building and stimulating hostilities which cause an It is refreshing to come upon people who say that they do not know how to cope with' i. i i.i ji a i i a paiucuiar proujem, mai iney Know oniy-that the standard solutions do not work.

New York city manages, says Mr. Moon, to a considerable extent by ignoring a lot laws. For instance, the Building Code, or the law that sharply distinguishes between two-family and multi-family dwellings. If as the Federal government is con- stantly threatening physical, house-by house investigations are going to take place to determine whether, illegally, there are -three families living where only two (bar-; f. ring economically impossible housing alter-; ations) are supposed to live, hundreds of thousands of little landlords will find them- -selves broke.

New York and Robert Weaver, Washington's housing czar, are on a collision course at the moment, and Mr. Moon and a few others know it, but no one would dream of disturbing Mayor Lindsay (such a nice -fellow) to tell him about it. JAMES A. WECHSLER Dr. King Can Rescue Vietnam Protest From Noisy Kooks The platform will be dominated by voices of the so-called "New Left," which, in its shaping of the event, has employed tactics drably reminiscent of a very old left.

One man can still clear the air and salvage the proceedings for those who are marching without Viet Cong banners or double-think. He is Rev. Martin Luther King, who, upon much reflection, agreed to serve as leader of the march after warnings of the possible entrapment. King is not a captive of any ideological or fringe group. He is genuinely concerned about rallying the serious factor in the American debate.

Only Dr. King can restore direction and meaning to these exercises, and save the peace movement from a diversionary disaster. i The debacle is not being engineered by a diabolic conspiracy; actually, the Moscow-minded Communists as well as other groups and individuals have been-pressing for reasonableness on these points but ing to a futile coalition including nihilists, political exhibitionists and a smattering of Maoists. Most of the prospective marchers deserve' a beti ter place in history than the characterization that' they were led by irrelevant or devious men. And King's future as a meaningful voice in the land may hinge on his capacity to rise to this rough 'f-'- broadest base of peace sentiment and avoiding the identification with tiny sects preaching demagogic anti-Americanism.

Indeed, when King decided to take part, it was after writing a letter in which he urged that the. tone and temper of the march solicit the widest areas of support. But his remonstrances were Nevertheless King refused to quit under fire and his decision is humanly understandable. He knows there are many thousands who simply and earnestly regard the mobilization as the only current way of crying out against the madness of the war, and the escalation road we have traveled. He is reportedly determined not to let such people down.

But what King says today could decisively affect the climate of the march and the response it evokes. The hope is that he will steer the assemblage from the sterile, self-defeating clamor for unilateral American withdrawal and revive the valid question of why the U.S. has rejected Thant's plea for. a bombing cessation as the crucial prelude to peace talks. It was back on Dec.

19 that U.N. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg, in a letter to Thant, affirmed our readiness to seek arrangements for a mutual cessation of hostilities. Time and again since that date Thant has made clear his belief that a bombing halt is the vital first step "to bring about the necessary discussions." But the U.S. continues to act as if Goldberg had never pledged in the name of our government to follow his counsel. Were our words meaningless? In the context of the rising bloodshed, these are the questions a legitimate peace movemr'nt should be asking.

If the many thousands who march today are stirred to concentrate on this issue the most immediate and fateful one their action could still be a Few such modern events have been the subject of so much behind-the-scenes maneuver and cynical manipulation as today's "Spring Mobilization for Peace" in New York. The charge that any such demonstration gives "aid and comfort to the enemy" is one those dedicated to a rational peace in Vietnam must continually risk. The tragedy is that the dominant organizers of the march seem almost capriciously determined to give aid and comfort to the enemies of the peace movement in their choice of many of the speakers, the writing of slogans and the refusal to disassociate the crusade from those who seek not an unconditional end to the bombings as a prelude to negotiations but an unconditional and unattainable American surrender. Thousands marching in deep conscience, not because they hate their own country or because they have any primary allegiance to the Viet Cong, will experience unjust abuse and perhaps even personal disenchantment if the script proceeds according to the present schedule. TV cameras will record the presence of the pro-Viet Cong flag-waving battalions and highlight the 1 rhetoric of the far-out figures.

It is a measure of the private struggle that took place in the preparation of the march that Norman Thomas found himself unable to sign the call, despite his passionate opposition to the American course In Vietnam; that th? national board of the Sane Nuclear Policy Committee has divorced itself from the procession (despite the decision of Its chairman, Dr. Ben- Jamfn Spock, and some local chapters to participate); and that a proposal to invite a spokesman for the itudcnt leaders who voiced their thoughtful If restrained concern for our Vietnam course was turned down by a majority of the steering committee. faff iiBfe h. I 1 Jfofri. 'Martin Luther Who Nuclear Trigger i.