San Antonio Express from San Antonio, Texas • Page 34

SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS Monday, March 13, 1972 Saigon Image-Building Move Under Way Bv GEORGE Me ARTHUR (C) LOS ANGELES TIMES SERVICE SAIGON It is late in the day for image-building in South Vietnam but the government of President Nguyen Van Thieu is once again giving it a try, particularly in Saigon. Though no Madison Avenue types have come up with any slogans which would be received skeptically at best it is evident the governmment is attempting what passes locally as a cleanup drive. The targets range from over-greedy generals and colonels to mini-skirted bar girls hustling the fast piaster on downtown neon strip. The word rnas gone out among street people that "the heat is Police Chief Do Kien Nhieu, an army colonel, rattled the night people last week with an order to close the downtown girlie joints by June 30. lie sounded like he meant it, which will be a new twist and one not yet accepted by patrons and bar girls who have survived many previous puritanical aberrations.

Nhieu quickly followed his move against the bars by ordering the police to sweep the beggars and lepers off the order already being indifferently enforced. He started a crackdown on unlicensed street peddlers and he rounded up some 30 sharpies wlio were scalping motion picture tickets. Nhieu then ordered his cops inside the movie theaters to see that the ban on smoking was enforced. At the same time, national police had evidently scared off at least some of tfie cowboys who lurk in alleyways offering lucrative black market currency deals (the government was embarrassed back in 1970 when one sharpie tried to entice visiting Sen. Edward Gurney of Florida into such a deal).

While Nhieu has been getting more or less favorable headlines with his low-level crackdowns, the South Vietnamese have been more skeptical of the parallel anticorruption drive being waged by Vice President Tran Van Houng. Order goes out to close girlie joints and siveep beggars and lepers off the streets. Huong has railed at corruption but failed to make much headway against it since the days two decades ago when as mayor of Saigon he pedaled about on a rickety bicycle. In a candid moment as prime minister only a few years back he was quoted as saying, we really wiped out corruption. we have anybody left to work with Still.

wrhen he was asked after the inauguration to take on an anticorruption drive once again (he had a similar job as prime minister under Thieu in 1969), Huong accepted and has since managed to take some smaller scalps. is a Huong announced. He soon arranged to get the police chief of Cholon, Chinese district, put in the guardhouse for corruption. He is now' trying to imprison Lt. Col.

Ly Trong Le, a man with family connections now serving on the general staff. Le was charged with making a bundle bv selling government construc- ticn materials when he wras a province Chief. Huong also has stepped into the sensitive controversy surrounding the army savings fund, which is made up of forced monthly contributions from soldiers. Possibly amounting to $10 million, the fund w'as supposedly for veterans benefits, but w'as manipulated by chosen bankers for their own benefit. Huong ordered that soldier contributions to the fund be stopped and that an audit be made a step that ruffled military feathers.

These things, however, failed to still local critics who are aware how widespread corruption is. One newspaper printed a cutting cartoon showing an aging and pudgy Huong with eyes covered by groping labeled and critics accuse him of saddling Huong with the anti-corruption drive in the knowledge that the aging vice president will be unable to accomplish much. This argument is partially based on the assumption by critics that he wishes to refurbish South image as much as possible, without rocking the boat at 'home, by the time the U.S. presidential elections arrive in November. In private conversations, members of government frankly admit that assisting in the reelection of Nixon is now government policy, wim the exception of Sen.

Henry M. the Democratic candidates send shivers up the collective spine of the Thieu government. Part of this policy is admittedly image-building by striking at corruption do you Americans go into orbit when the word corruption is mentioned, an aide to former Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky once asked an American newsman). Another part is assisting American authorities in such sensitive matters as the control of drugs. American officials say the Saigon government, starting almost from scratch last year, has built an effective anti-narcotics division within the national police force.

think we now have the drug thing turned a U.S. military spokesman said. is not over but we now have it under U.S. Upping Ante in Antidrug Fight Throughout S. America (C) NEW YORK TIMES SERVICE LIMA, Peru The number of American narcotics agents stationed in South American cities has been increased fold in the last two months in an effort to stem the flow of heroin, cocaine and marijuana into the United States.

The buildup reflects an awareness in United States law-enforcement agencies that smugglers seeking to bring drugs into the United States have more and more been taking routes through South America. Recently, the United States Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs has opened offices manned by two or more agents in Asuncion, Paraguay; in Bogota, Colombia: in Caracas, Venezuela. and in Quito. Ecuador. Until the end of last year, the bureau had Latin American offices only in Mexico City, Panama City and Buenos Aires.

Agents from Buenos Aires office covered all of South America. The newly assigned agents, according to the accounts of United States and foreign officials in five South American countries, are after illegally distilled cocaine from Andean plantations in Peru and Bolivia, heroin that reaches the east coast of South America from clandestine laboratories in southern France and some marijuana grown in the northernmost South American countries. These agents work with Interpol and local police, investigating tips frcm the United States and passing tips ack to the United States. There is no accurate estimate of the volume of drug traffic from South America to the United States, but there are rough indications that it is a big business with many competing organizations operators. One example of the high stakes involved: an agent of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs recently recalled that a Mexican citizen arrested in the southern part of the United States for smuggling South American cocaine posted a bond of $250.000 in cash and then disappeared.

Despite the lack of solid information on the 1 methods and direction of drug smuggling frcm South ca. the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs seems to have established its new offices athwart two routes roughly known to local authorities. Offices in Buenos Aires and Asuncion, on the Atlantic coast of the continent, near most of the major ports, are near the most probable route of heroin from France to South America for transshipment to the United States. On the west coast, the new stations parallel the traditional route followed by illegal cocaine exporters from the eastern slopes of the Andes in Peru and Bolivia, where the coca leaf is grown, at least technically under government control. The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs is reported to believe that Peruvian coca paste is being refined to cocaine powder in clandestine laboratories in a a- quil, the principal port in Ecuador and a wide open city, and perhaps also in Colombia.

Heroin from the Atlantic coast, refined in France, also has been known to make its way toward the United States through these two countries, as well as through Venezuela. And, perhaps because of the French-American effort to shut down the traditional heroin routes from the Middle East to the United States through France, there have been rumors that heroin refining has begun in Ecuador. Wrong One, However Florida Vote Push A Ferocious Battle By WARREN WEAVER JR. (C) NEW YORK TIMES SERVICE MIAMI To the vast majority of Florida voters who draw their political intelligence from the broadcast media, Democratic primary looks and sounds like a pitched battle between Sen. Henry M.

Jackson of Washington, Mayor John V. Lindsay of New' York and Gov. Reubin Askew. Television screens from Coral Gables to Tallahassee have been filled in recent days with Jackson hiking and fishing with his young children, the open-collared blue-eyed mayor telling voters how well he fights and the sober young Florida governor discussing the key issue, busing. The difficulty with that picture, a composite of three days of television viewing in this city and Tampa, is that the senator is regarded only as a possible third-place challenger and the mayor as trying hard for fourth while the Florida governor is not in the field of 11 candidates at all.

During a random sample of continuous viewing, the confident front-runner, Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama, surfaced only once, on a half-hour weekend documentary, a sort of illustrated version of the basic speech he has been delivering all over the state for weeks. Sen. Edmund S.

Muskie of Maine, vying with his 1968 runningmate, Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, for second place according to the polls, only appeared in a few political spots left over from New' Hampshire, reflecting a cutback variously attributed to lack of money and questionable impact of the earlier advertis4ng. Humphrey appears to have compensated for a relatively low media budget by insinuating himself onto several free talk shows. Sen.

George S. McGovern of South Dakota, w'hose Florida campaign has been a little more than token from the beginning, has only a few spots running but shows up frequently on the local news broadcasts. The Florida radio campaign, much cheaper and capable of last-minute political revision, is a good deal less subtle and. in some ways, more revealing than the television effort. spots, for example, present him as in Roosevelt-Truman-Kennedy but never mention the man who carried him into the vice-presidency, Lyndon B.

Johnson. Some of the Humphrey radio spots sound like echoes of Wallace. In one, the announ- Lindsay Askew Jackson voice declares: will stop the flow of your tax dollars to lazy welfare chiselers. He will put your tax dollars to work here at home before giving handouts around the In his half-hour telecast, Wallace explains that the reason people receiving Social Security payments have not received higher benefits is that liberals wanted to give our money to welfare loafers throughout the United States, they wanted to give all our money overseas to countries who spit in our radio spots are tougher on fellow Democratic liberals than his stump speeches. In one on racial equality, the announcer but not the candidate says: politicians back down on their beliefs when it gets a little bit Muskie has replaced most of his original radio material with more specific spots contending that he is the only one of the Democratic contenders with a realistic chance of beating President Nixon.

Jackson went into the closing days of the media campaign by putting out his third half- hour telecast two more than any competitor which was scheduled to appear a dozen times before election day, an investment that seemed certain to lift his effort close to the $180,000 broadcast spending ceiling here. Askew, who has raised nearly $100,000 to finance his attempt to defeat an antibusing referendum on ballot, is really running against Wallace on a straight issue basis. His political supporters say the best he can expect is to cut the referendum majority from 80 to about 65 per cent. The Wallace television broadcasts make no attempt to edit the exaggerations but present him almost exactly as he appears on the stump. Cruise Ship Freed MIAMI, Fla.

(AP) high tide Sunday night. 530 passengers frolicked on It had been stranded about board with bingo, sunbathing a mile from shore in 20 and a champagne party, five feet of water since it ran tugs freed a grounded cruise aground Saturday while steamship from the mouth of ing out of Miami on its maiden busy harbor Sunday night and voyage as a recommissioned sent it on its way to Puerto ship. Rico. i Spokesman for Carnival on our way to San Cruise Lines owner of the said the commu- 11-year-old vessel, said the pas- nications officer of the Mardi serigers a during the Gras over ship-to-shore radio. 24 hours they were marooned A spokesman for the Miami off Miami.

Coast Guard Station said! was just like they were on the vessel way to San said off the sandy bottom Martins vice president Bomb Threat Sets Off New Airline Searches NEW YORK (AP) Police and airline personnel searched National Airlines terminals and aircraft at Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports Sunday after a telephone caller said explosives would be placed on a New York to Miami jetliner. Two dogs trained to detect explosives were held in readiness at Kennedy and LaGuardia but did not take part in the search. The anonymous caller demanded $800,000 in ransom money, police said. The caller made at least three phone calls but did not say which flight or airport might be his target, according to police. The caller instructed that the ransom money be paid over at Breezy Point, a remote beach in Queens.

Police searched terminals and airline personnel searched jetliners, but no explosive was found. Passengers were not searched. There were no flight delays during the search, the airline said. Police said federal authorities in Miami also telephoned them there might be explosives hidden in the National terminal at Kennedy. The FBI clamped a tight security lid on discussion of the incident and it was unclear why the information came from Miami, although headquarters are located there.

New Sign Goes Up New signs went up on major highway entrances to Fredericksburg calling attention to the Admiral Nimitz Center, a museum in the Hill Country city that is expected to attract the greatest number of visitors in its history this summer. The signs, designed by deMartin-Marona of New York play an integral part in the indentification program at the center. The old sign, removed to make room for the new, is at the bottom right. Placing the sign are Darrell Holloway of the center staff; Douglas Hubbard, executive director; and Mike Penick, architect-historian at the center. Douglas Testimony To End Harrisburg 7 Trial HARRISBURG, Pa.

(AP) FBI informer Boyd Douglas, the star government witness in the conspiracy trial of Philip Berrigan and six other antiwar activists, is expected to wind up this week testimony on which the verdict eventually may rest. The entire case against the Harrisburg 7 is built around testimony by the 31-year-old convict. The trial resumes Monday after a weekend recess, with Douglas beginning his third week on the witness stand. of the cruise line. had our normal cruise sunning, swimming, four or chestras, seven meals a Another company spokesman said the ship hosted a cham pagne party Saturday night, adding: not charging for the The 650-foot ship carried a crew of 360 in addition to the 530 passengers, officials said.

Five tugs waited until high tide late Sunday afternoon and then pushed the huge vessel clear. Four of the six defense attorneys have cross-examined him. A fifth, Rev. William Cunningham, a Jesuit lawyer- priest, may ask a few questions of Douglas. New York attorney Leonard Boudin is scheduled to bring the cross-examiniation to a close.

Thus far Douglas has held to his story that the 48-year-old Berrigan and the other defendants not only presidential adviser Henry kidnapping, but also the blowing up of underground tunnel heating system and the destruction of draft records in nine states. Douglas and Berrigan were fellow inmates in 1970 at the Lewisburg, Federal Penitentiary, Douglas serving time for fraud and assault, Berrigan for destroying draft board records. As a study-release prisoner, Douglas was free to leave daily for classes at nearby Bucknell University. Douglas testified he became a mail and telephone courier for Berrigan and then turned FBI informer on the Roman Catholic priest. The two were together at Lewisburg from arrival May 1 until he was transferred to Danbury, Federal Prison Aug.

1970. chief FBI contact from the outset was agent Del- mar Mayfield. On Nov. 27, 1970, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover announced before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee the purported plot to kidnap Kissinger, identified at the time only as a high government official.

A week later, on Dec. 5, at Danville, Douglas met with Mayfield and two other agents, 10 days after parole. He testified he verified from photographs the identities of several of the defendants, and told the agents were all in a plot to destroy the tunnel system and kidnap Henry Douglas went before a federal grand jury Jan. 5, 1971. One week later, the panel indicted six of the present defendants.

Meanwhile, Douglas dropped out of sight, eventually living in Phoenix, from about Feb. 25 to March 30, 1971. It was there that Mayfield sat him down night after night for additional interviews. One month after this intense interrogation ended, a superceding federal indictment was issued, on April 30, 1970. It raised the number of defendants, added the charges of draft board vandalizing and otherwise revamped the accusations.

This was the indictment which outlined the current case. Lon Nol To Form New Government A KJ, v. v. Beauty of Week Terry Michelle Hall, daughter of Mr. and Mrs.

E. D. Hall of 4919 Pecan Grove in San Antonio, has been named campus beauty of the week by Sul Ross State University's student newspaper, The Skyline. A Sul Ross freshman, Miss Hall is a 1971 graduate of San Antonio's Sam Houston High School. (C) AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE PHNOM PENH, Cambodia Marshal Lon Nol, in his first news conference since taking over as Cambodian head of state Friday, said Sunday he was considering the formation of a new government which would use maximum efficiency to restore order in the country.

Lon Nol, who spoke shortly after it was announced that the entire cabinet had resigned, refused to say whether Gen. Siso- wath Sirik IVlatak, who was acting i during the recent illness, would be asked to form a new government. He defended the general, however, against the attacks made against him over the past fortnight by Cambodian students. The students themselves reaffirmed their oppositiion to Gen. Sirik Matak during another news conference Sunday.

According to political sources here, Lon Nol had planned to strengthen i regime Friday by naming the general as premier. The students vociferously opposed this plan, however, and the sources said Lon Nol apparently did not wish to move in opposition to the desires of the young people, many of whom supported him at the time of the overthrow of the for chief of state, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, now in exile in China..