The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 15

The Boston Globe Tuesday, February 27, 1968 15 Political Circuit I ART BUCHJVALD A president would never tell a lie Ft JFK Library faces 3d crisis By TIMOTHY LELAND Globe State House Bureau as thinSs were' finally beginning to look bright for construction of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library in Cambridge, a new cloud has appeared on the horizon. Once again, an effort is being made to block the event that will make this construction possible the relocation of the M.B.T.A. train yards now located across the Charles River from Harvard Stadium. This is the site on which the library a nation's living monument to its 35th President is supposed to be built.

"Rut if ponnrtf Ko ltiWIt am At urnm a WASHINGTON They've just discovered a new batch of papers belonging to President George Washington and among them was a transcript of a press conference held at George's home when he was six years old. It sheds new light on the famous cherry tree-chopping incident. A spokesman for the Washington family, not identified in the papers, was asked at the noon briefing to comment on destruction of a beautiful cherry tree on the estate. Spokesman: "To my knowledge, there have been no cherry trees destroyed on the property." Reporter: "Is it possible a cherry tree could have been chopped down without your knowledge?" Spokesman: "I believe that I would be informed if a cherry tree were destroyed and I'm not going to deal in rumor and conjecture." Reporter: "But someone actually" saw the cherry tree chopped down. It's out there by the garden." Spokesman: "IH check into it and get back to you." At 3:30 briefing: Spokesman: "I have an announcement to make.

A small cherry tree accidentally fell down on the Washington property some time this morning. We are now investigating to find out what happened. It did no harm to the cherry orchard and immediate steps are being taken to see it doesn't happen again." Reporter: "Does anyone know who chopped down the tree?" Spokesman: "I said it was an accident." Reporter: "But witnesses who saw the tree say that there were ax marks on the trunk, indicating that someone had deliberately chopped it down." Spokesman: "I think that anyone who spreads a malicious rumor like that is doing a disservice to the future United States of America." Reporter: "These same witnesses say that they saw six-year-old George Washington walking away from the orchard with a hatchet over his shoulder. Is it possible that young George could have chopped down the tree?" Spokesman: "Whose side are you on? It is rumors like this that are giving aid and comfort to the British. I can say authoritatively that George Washington had absolutely nothing to do with the chopping down of this cherry tree." Reporter: "How would we be giving aid and comfort to the British if we printed this story?" Spokesman: "Someday George Washington may be the father of his country, and if it were known that he had once indiscriminately chopped down a cherry tree, it would play right into the hands of the Tories, who would do anything to discredit him." Reporter: "All the same, would you please check and find out what George was doing with his hatchet this afternoon?" Spokesman: "IH get back to you." At the 6 o'clock briefing: Spokesman: "I have an announcement to make.

At 10 o'clock this morning, George Washington, aged six, swung his hatchet playfully at a six-foot-3 inch cherry tree and knocked it to the ground. "At exactly 12:17 p.m., George was asked by his father if he knew who had chopped down the tree. Without hesitation young Washington replied, and I quote, 'I cannot tell a lie, Pa. I cut it down with my 3 Reporter: "Is that all he said?" Spokesman: "I see no reason to go into this matter any further." Reporter: "But wouldn't you say there was a credibility gap in Washington between the time he chopped down the cherry tree and confessed to doing it?" Spokesman: "George Washington, as all future presidents of the United States, would never lie to the press." uc uuiii nicie uniu me ivi.c i.a. moves out, and that's the rub.

Every time the transoortati on suthoritv pnmp up with a new idea on wViprp in mrvo V10 vqttIc needed to store cars, local and legislative forces team up to prevent the M.B.T.A. relocation in that area. The first proposal was to expand the Codman Yards near Carney Hospital in Dorchester. This plan WAS rlpfpntprl after raciMnnto SunniiMiiiniiiiiii in 11111111111111111111111111 1 niiroiiiiiinimi 1Im FLORA LEWIS Khe Sanh A strand of dubious value objection and the Legislature passed a bill prohibiting the Authority from building a storage area within 800 yards of a hospital. A second suggestion, to store the cars at Butler near the Milton marshes also raised a storm of protest, mostly from conservationists, and was eventually dropped.

The latest proposal one that seems eminently sensible is to extend the Cambridge-Dorchester rapid transit line from Ashmont Station to Mattapan, where the cars could be stored on land owned by the M.B.T.A. At present, passengers get off at Ashmont and take 25-year-old trolley cars to Mattapan. But now comes a bill sponsored by several legislators to put the kibosh on this plan, as well. Filed last week, it would prohibit the M.B.T.A. from constructing maintenance facilities in a city of more than 150.000 without first obtaining the approval of the General Court.

SAIGON The storm that doesn't break at Khe Sanh has the generals worried. They expected an attack on the outpost weeks ago and it still hasn't come. Nobody really knows why. Maybe the North Vietnamese are tunneling deep in the hills as they did around Dien Bien Phu so that hundreds of daily air raids and bombardments will only bounce off the rocks above them when they move. Maybe they are waiting for the defenders to relax, to slacken with the fatigue of endless alert.

Maybe they don't intend a massive attack there at all and only want to pin down large numbers of American forces while they strike at other bases. Still, a Khe Sanh attack is expected and the decision has been made to defend the base at all costs, so that it cannot become America's Dien Bien Phu. It is curious thinking. The French army in Indochina wasn't defeated by Dien Bien Phu. There was nothing militarily decisive about the battle.

It was rather that the unexpected loss of a post that had been ordered to defend itself at all costs broke France's will to fight. It was really the French, not the were the Viet Cong's predecessors, who gave Dien Bien Phu its apocalyptic quality by making it the test of their war effort. Now the United States is doing something similar with Khe Sanh, although it is so inaccessible it can only be supplied by air. The prime reason for the decision to wait for confrontation at Khe Sanh is psychological, American generals here say. If the U.S.

chose not to sit there and wait for a major battle whose timing the other side can pick Hanoi would say and the world would believe that we had been forced out. That too is curious thinking. The decision is ours to make. It has long been painfully evident that successful defense in set battles here is not going to win the war. North Vietnam's Gen Giap has often explained to his forces that even defeats in certain bat tles can advance the Communist cause because they pin down the adversary, prevent his choosing the place of attack, and show the world that the war will go on and on.

So far, nothing has disproved Giap's argument. Neutral observers recently in Hanoi brought back the impression that what they call the "Dien Bien Phu complex" is intense there. Hanoi, they say, seems to feel that if the Americans can only be lured into losing one big battle on which they staked their hopes, America will give up as France did. That is the risk of Khe Sanh. It is a staggering risk.

No number of signatures by the Joint Chiefs of Staff can really guarantee that Khe Sanh will never be overrun, although it is true that the U.S. has many more resources for holding it than France did at Dien Bien Phu. Of course, Khe Sanh does have some military value. Without it, the job of sieving the flow of supplies down the Ho Chi Minh trail nearby in Laos would be harder. With it, however, the flow has been steady and heavy enough to permit the build-up around Khe Sanh and feed the battle at Hue, almost directly to the east).

Without Khe Sanh, South Vietnam's two northern provinces would be more vulnerable. The main line of defense might have to be drawn back from the mountains to the more easily defensible flatlands but with the compensating disadvantage of having to fight in populous areas. Still, Khe Sanh's importance militarily is marginal, not overwhelming. If it is held, a loss will have been averted but nothing decisive will have been gained. If it is lost, it could be America's Dien Bien Phu because we are behaving that way about it.

On balance, the risk is huge for the uncertain possibility of a quite small return. It doesn't make good sense, except perhaps to the kind of military mind that still thinks of the Vietnamese war in terms of Waterloo and the Marne and perhaps even so recent an engagement as 1944's Battle of the Bulge. But Vietnam isn't Europe. This isn't 1944. Giap knows it.

So should we. The intriguing thing about the bill, politically, is the fact that its primary sponsor is Rep. Michael Paul Feeney (D-Hyde Park), a long-time Kennedy supporter and one of the Legislature's most influential members. Considering Feeney's alliance with Sen. Ted Kennedy in the past (he was a key Kennedy supporter at the 1962 pre-primary Democratic convention), it was surprising when he turned up as a signer of the legislation putting another roadblock in the way of the Kennedy library.

is reported, however, that Feeney's motivation stems in part from a secret, long-held pique, carried "over from past political battles. In 1963. Feeney unsuccessfully challenged then House Speaker John (the Iron Duke) Thompson for election to the leadership role, in what turned out to be one of the fiercest donnybrooks seen on Beacon mu in receni years, rvenneay, ust elected senator, worked behind the scenes for the Hyde Park Democrat, 'but was anxious to avoid becoming entangled in a local skirmish. "-Two years later, in 1965, Feeney ran in the special 1 election for the Senate seat of the late Julius Ansel of Dorchester. Again Kennedy helped his friend, unobtrusively, and again Feeney lost.

Feeney is said to feel that in both cases Sen. Kennedy let him down, and this is why he is moving against the Kennedy Library. Be that as it may, there is no question that the cause of the library is again in jeopardy. In addition to the legislation pending on Beacon Hill, a resolution was offered at the Feb. 19 meeting of the Boston City Council requesting the mayor to express to the M.B.T.A.

"the opposition of the City of Boston to the proposed location of the M.B.T.A. yards in the Mattapan area. I The resolution passed 8 to 1. The problem is that the M.B.T.A. is running out of feasible sites, and the Kennedy Library trustees are known to be running out of patience.

There is a very real possibility that if the dilemma isn't resolved soon, Massachusetts may lose-a memorial center that will be a key point of nostalgic and historic interest for the nation's tourists, as well as an important part of the American political fabric. 'Winning? Of course we're winning! Butsay we'll need a few thousand more troops and a few billion more dollars to get back in the game' ROBERT L. LEVEY The revolt of Noam Chomsl The bait WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. Wallace was a Democrat, tration sources and at some length he builds his case against the United States' war in Southeast Asia.

Speaking in an ironically soothing tone, Chomsky catalogues a horrifying case against our involvement. Beyond his belief in the implicit immoral-ity of the war, Chomsky believes America will also pay a high price for the war because of the straining of the country's image. And at this point he sees disturbing signs of repression developing in Washington. The conspiracy indictments against Dr. Spock and four other men stemming from the draft dissent and the draft revisions that have struck down graduate school deferments could be part of a bigger picture, Chomsky speculates.

Add to this the decision to hold the Democratic Convention in" Chicago an open invitation to rioting by black militants and one could see a pattern of decisions that all appeal to the great moderate mass in America and fly directly in the face of the intellectual community, the Negro population and even the capital-ists of Wall who deplore the uncertain-, ties generated by the war and racial Chomsky has even brought his crusade against the war to the M.I.T. campus. He has started teaching a new course called "In. tellectuals and Social Change." Chomsky says that universities are becoming distorted to the point where they often become agents of the government. In this new course, he can explore these questions and even dis-, cuss such things as college professors who-, go out talking against the war.

Previous to his anti-war involvements-Chomsky admits to having shied away rom the activist role. "I feel rather guilty for having waited this long," he said. But now that he is devoting so much of his effort to the anti-war movement and the draft dissent, he seenr- in making up for Noam Chomsky is a major force in the highly esoteric field of transformational linguistics. That, I confess, makes no immediate impression on me other than to produce some curiousity about what transformational linguistics is or are. But let it be understood that at M.I.T., where he teaches, Chomsky is considered very good at what he does and Time magazine recently devoted a page and a picture to the linguistics thing selecting Chomsky as the spokesman of that portion of the field that has come up with a new approach to the whole discipline.

linguistics the study of the underlying prmciples of language is a complicated and theoretical area of study and Time points out that some people believe that Chomsky's impact on his field is comparable to Galileo's or Freud's on their fields. One would suppose that with this background and academic stature, it would be especially comfortable for the 39-year-old professor to bask in the glories of his accomplishments teaching his courses, pursuing refinements in his linguistics theory and going to meetings of philosophers to read papers and discuss the subleties of sentence structure. But instead, Chomsky writes fierce anti-administration articles for the New York Review of Books, takes to the speaking stump a couple of times a week to fan antiwar sentiment and counsels young men on how they may best confront their government on the draft question. In short, Chomsky, the tranquil philosopher of language, is wearing a new face. He has become virtually a full-time social activist working against what he believes to be his country's immoral involvement in Vietnam.

His speaking style could best be described at gentle. When he faces an audience, he is armed with a stack of notes and references many drawn from pro-adminis- We have seen that George Wallace stoutly insists that he is not to be thought of as a racist candidate, even though he has never explained satisfactorily why he was an enthusiastic national Democrat, in the tradition of Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Johnson, up until the moment when the Federal government began to interfere with the will of Alabama on the matter of segregation. It is not as though, when Gov. Wallace stood at the threshold of the University of Alabama and defied the Federal marshal to carry out the court order integrating the university, he there and then repented of his former activities, perceiving the implications of state welfarism. He appears to be perfectly satisfied for Washington to collect taxes and remit the proceeds to the states provided there are no accompanying instructions on how that money is to be used.

He is quite prepared to accept, for Alabama, twice as much money as Alabama contributes to the Federal treasury. What he is not prepared to do is acquiesce in Washington's instructions on how Alabama should run its school system, or indeed anything else that Alabama runs, that bears on the question of race segregation. What will prove especially interesting about George Wallace in the months to come is less his views (he has adopted the full paraphernalia of the conservative, even though he is a welfarist-populist, catalyzed by his passion for racial segregation) than his techniques. Here, as I discovered a few weeks ago, are a few of them. 1 Exaggerating the South's plight.

G.W. We had five generations of people who didn't go to school because there were no schools for black or white. All they could do is eke something out of the ground to (There were public schools in Alabama, and for that matter private schools, during the five generations in question.) 2 So's your old man. Buckley. Certain politicians grew up in the South and lusted for participation in a type of government which is distinctively anti-conservative, the type of government of which Mr.

Roosevelt and Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Johnson are (representative). Then all of a sudden, something happened. The consequences of that federalization also meant that they couldn't continue in their segregated ways, and that's when Gov.

Wallace was born G.W. Of course, I was not even voting in the days that you're talking about. I didn't even vote in those elections, but when you say that, because the people of the South voted for Mr. Roosevelt that made them anti-conservative, well New York voted for Mr. Roosevelt all four times It doesn't make any difference to me whether some prominent conservative is not for me.

Seventy percent of the people last night on a poll on the television station in St. Louis said they would support me. The fact is that I won the television poll on WIIC in Pittsburgh the other day and defeated Mr. Johnson, Kennedy, and Reagan by almost three to one. And they might have given more votes to Peron than they did to you, right? G.W.

That's a real smart answer. B. We know that he got many more votes (in Argentina) than you got in Alabama. G.W. I got more in Alabama than you got in New York.

3 Nobody-ever-lets-me-talk. G.W. Why don't you let me talk on this program? After all I thought you invited me to get my opinion. Really, I thought I was supposed to you wanted my opinion. But when you get on this show, the man that puts on the show wants to do all the talking.

(At that point in the program, the moderator had spoken 178 words, I had 6poken 269, and Wallace 845.) 4 There-ain't-nobody-loves-the-Nigra-like-me-an'-Lurleen. G.W. In fact, we don't have segregation in Alabama. I've always made speeches in my state in which I said anybody's entitled to vote regardless of their race or color and we had Negro citizens by the thousands who voted in 1958, when I first ran for governor, and I might say, in the run-off for governor, that they voted for me. B.

Is that because they didn't have the education you're talking about? G.W, You reflect on the Negro voters of Alabama if you want to, but I won't. wmc, uciuie ru 11 1 to a meeting with a Quaker note3 quietly. "I'll be sti jn. dieted this.