Nation: How the Prisoners Were Released

THE first contact leading toward last week's prisoner release came on July 1, two days before the North Vietnamese announced the move as a gesture in honor of American Independence Day. Xuan Oanh, of the Viet Nam Committee for Solidarity with the American People, cabled U.S. Pacifist David Dellinger, urging him to come to Paris to discuss matters of a similar character to Stewart Meacham's trip to Hanoi. The obliquely worded message referred to last year's release of prisoners to a delegation headed by Meacham, peace education secretary of the American Friends Service Committee. Dellinger, 53, a patriarch of the American peace movement, obtained a plane ticket from a "movement" travel agent and flew to Paris. He talked for three days with Xuan Oanh, North Vietnamese Negotiator Colonel Ha Van Lau and N.L.F. Foreign Minister Madame Nguyen Thi Binh.

A particularly sensitive point with Hanoi's representatives was whether the released prisoners would remain with escorts of the peace delegation all the way back to the U.S. In the first of two previous releases, the prisoners had been met in Laos by State Department representatives, who induced them to board military aircraft for the rest of the trip home, thus cutting them loose from their pacifist escorts. The North Vietnamese felt that this had reduced the propaganda effect of their gesture and were anxious to avoid a recurrence.

As a result, Dellinger called upon Henry Cabot Lodge, U.S. Ambassador to the Paris peace talks. Lodge gave him assurances that the peace delegation would be allowed to escort the released prisoners all the way from Hanoi to the U.S.

Returning to Manhattan, Dellinger hoped to recruit a delegation that would span the spectrum of the peace movement. After days of negotiations, he settled upon Grace Paley, 46, a New York writer and worker in the Resistance, an antiwar organization; James A. Johnson Jr., a Negro who was one of the "Fort Hood Three"—three Army privates who in 1966 refused to serve in Viet Nam, and Linda

Evans, 22, a regional organizer for the Students for a Democratic Society. The leader of the group was Rennard C. Davis, the National Coordinator of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Viet Nam. A founding member of the S.D.S., Davis has been a longtime, virulent critic of the Viet Nam war and one of the most enterprising organizers of the radical movement. Dellinger and Davis are under indictment on charges of conspiracy to incite a riot during last August's Democratic Convention. With less than five hours left before his plane's departure, Davis managed to obtain a Federal Court of Appeals ruling permitting him to leave the country. Three days later, the peace delegation, along with three cameramen from an underground moviemaking group, The Newsreel, landed in Hanoi.