Paying for Thieu's Police

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Cruel Police. That may not be enough for Congress, however. Senators Kennedy and James Abourezk have denounced the U.S. support of Thieu's police, and Senator Alan Cranston told TIME: "AID is continuing to bolster a cruel and repressive police apparatus in South Viet Nam. A vast surveillance system is in effect, aided by U.S. communications equipment and personnel. Police torture and inhuman jail conditions, including the notorious tiger cages, await those who criticize the government's policies. That the American taxpayer should subsidize torture is an outrage."

Officials of Computer Sciences Corp., meanwhile, are claiming a blissful ignorance about their own role in the politics of South Viet Nam. "We are doing nothing to set up dossiers," said a company spokesman, "and we have no knowledge of what [the South Vietnamese] are doing with the technical training we are giving them." As for its future plans, Computer Sciences has been awarded a $43 million contract to process data for federal agencies in Washington, starting with population and price figures.