The War, The Presidency: Flak from Hanoi

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Eight days later, Times Chief Far East Correspondent Seymour Topping, now the paper's foreign editor, reported that Hanoi was indeed using a Sihanouk trail and that "the movement of trucks on the route has been confirmed by American and other foreign observers."

Salisbury also failed to emphasize that his casualty and damage statistics came, unverified, from Hanoi. Only near the end of his fifth dispatch did he casually write: "It should be noted, incidentally, that all casualty estimates and statistics are those of North Vietnamese officials." He also gave the impression that some of the most heavily bombed areas were of no military significance.

Yet the Pentagon pointed out that Nam Dinh, for example, has four major targets: a big transshipment area for war materiel, a thermal power plant, petroleum-storage facilities and key rail links to the South. Even if Salisbury's report of 89 civilian deaths there is true, said the Defense Department's Arthur Sylvester, that would mean "rather precise bombing," considering that the U.S.

has made 64 raids on the city.

Salisbury also claimed that incessant bombing of Highway 1 and the rail line running parallel to it had scarcely interrupted traffic. A British newsman recently back from North Viet Nam reached just the opposite conclusion.

"Heavy American bombing has reduced all travel—road, rail and river—to a crawl, and then only by night," wrote Norman Barrymaine in a recent Look article now reprinted in Aviation Week.

"Highway 1 is so badly battered that peasants call it the 'Road of Bygone Days.' The 100-kilometer road journey from Haiphong to Hanoi can take three or even four days."

Ringed with Fire. Perhaps the most stinging criticism of all came from Navy Commander Robert C. Mandeville, who recently returned to the U.S. after leading a squadron of Intruder jet attack bombers in frequent raids on Nam Dinh. "Simply unbelievable," he said of Salisbury's conclusion that the town had no really valuable military targets.

For one thing, Mandeville pointed out, 100 antiaircraft batteries protect Nam Dinh, and "the North Vietnamese don't waste their AA batteries—they only put them around stuff they want to protect." The town, he said, was so "ringed with fire" that "nobody wanted to go to that place."

Salisbury's series also came under attack at the Times. In a 2,000-word front-page story at week's end, Military Editor Hanson Baldwin quoted U.S.

military men as saying that Salisbury's estimates of civilian damage appeared to be "grossly exaggerated." Some casualties, they noted, are inevitable. Said one: "You can't fight an immaculate war." Defending Salisbury, Managing Editor Clifton Daniel said that "in a place like that, you test the water with your toe. Obviously, where he has been permitted to go so far is to look at bomb damage."

The implication was that Salisbury was getting little more than a guided—or misguided—tour. Nor was he alone.