Word: saigon
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...Indochina's battlefields. On the U.S. side, a slowdown in activity was already evident at the beginning of the month as the withdrawal proceeded; in the week ending June 5, American fatalities fell to 19, the lowest seven-day toll since October 1965. Yet U.S. officials in Saigon are particularly concerned as the monsoon season begins this year. In selected areas, Communist troops are not only maintaining the pressure but, despite the rains, seem intent on increasing...
...North Vietnamese have already gained control of Snuol at the far southern terminus of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In the course of five days of fighting, they mauled an ARVN task force of 4,000 holding the town, forcing it into a disorderly retreat. Saigon insists that it had long planned to leave Snuol once the rains began, yet there is plenty of evidence that ARVN departed with embarrassing haste. It left behind no fewer than 72 vehicles-including tanks, armored personnel carriers and trucks -and eleven artillery pieces. The U.S. Air Force had to bomb the abandoned...
...Government has usually remained silent about the cancerous corruption that afflicts South Viet Nam today: the pilferage at the docks, the smuggling at Saigon's Tan Son Nhut Airport, and the large-scale theft and export of scrap metal. But Washington has reacted with anger and alarm to recent disclosures about the widespread use of heroin by American G.I.s (see THE NATION) and to charges that Vietnamese officials, high and low, are involved in the hard-drug traffic...
Such an interpretation, however, is a careless reading of Washington's mood. Last week New York's Republican Senator Jacob Javits warned in a Saigon press conference that the narcotics scandal was "the kind of issue that could upset everything"-meaning the continuation of U.S. military and economic aid. Bunker, in a strongly worded note, told Thieu much the same thing...
There is so much opium in Laos that it is not surprising that Americans have found some way to take advantage of it. Reliable reports say that pilots smuggle vast quantities to Saigon and Hong Kong in their spare time. It is also reported that pilots smuggle gold-which is in great abundance in Laos-from Vientiane to Hong Kong. The legal price differential is so great that if you buy a half-pound of gold in Laos, pay full duties on it, and sell it legally in Saigon you can pay for the round-trip airfare from Vientiane...