VICTIMS OF VIETNAM LIES

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CIA and Pentagon lawyers have battled the commandos' allegations for two years. The CIA cited an 1875 Supreme Court case that it has used successfully to fend off past suits by agents who claimed to have been cheated. In that case, a Civil War spy was denied back pay because the court ruled it had no jurisdiction to enforce secret contracts for espionage. Retired Major General John Singlaub, who ran the SOG program from 1966 to 1968, gives another defense. He insists that the South Vietnamese government, not the U.S., decided which commandos should be taken off the lists. "I don't think there is a legal or moral justification for saying we should accept responsibility for them," Singlaub says. "They were not Americans."

Last week CIA Director John Deutch finally did take responsibility, realizing that the revelations could endanger operations being run today. Foreign spies might now be far less willing to take risks for the CIA if the agency got a reputation for not paying its bills. "The CIA feels very deeply that it must take care of the people who work for it," CIA general counsel Jeffrey Smith told Time. White House aides quickly cobbled together an amendment that calls for the commandos to be paid; it will be attached to the defense appropriations bill now before Congress. For about the cost of a new Comanche helicopter, the betrayal of Pham Ninh Ngoc and his comrades may finally be repented.

--Reported by Dan Cray/Garden Grove and Frank Gibney Jr./Hanoi