Word: sons
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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...cover story this week deals with a particularly poignant aspect of the war, yet one unusually difficult to report: the U.S. prisoners in North Viet Nam. From Saigon, Correspondent James Willwerth cabled that he was personally convinced that there had been no security leak on the abortive Son Tay raid: "Most military and intelligence people in Saigon simply weren't given the details of the air strikes or the commando raid. They hadn't seen the script." In Washington, Correspondent William Mader, who has followed the plight of the prisoners all along, talked with concerned Government officials...
Their target was a scant 20 nautical miles from the center of Hanoi: Son Tay, an American prisoner-of-war compound. As the tiny fleet scuttled into North Viet Nam, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger followed its progress at the Pentagon. The radio monitors in Washington were only two minutes behind the actual events. When the choppers passed their first checkpoint, they were seven minutes ahead of schedule. Kissinger made a quiet joke to a high-ranking officer about the plan's being off. Just wait, Kissinger was told. By the time the squadron passed the last checkpoint...
...this public and private activity was beginning to surface long before the Son Tay raid, but Son Tay brought the whole effort into the open. "After this, I believe that nothing is impossible," says Mrs. Kevin McManus, secretary-treasurer of the National League. "It's a tremendous boost. People do care now." Many wives take the Son Tay raid as an overdue sign of concern on the part of the U.S. Government; they also feel that it will buoy the morale of their imprisoned husbands. No one, however, is quite sure just how the prisoners will find out about...
Some in Washington believe that the Son Tay raid left the U.S. worse off than it was before. With Hanoi surely tightening the defenses of the P.O.W. camps, further rescue attempts will be vastly more difficult?but President Nixon has already hinted that he has just that in mind. At his Thanksgiving dinner for injured servicemen, speaking to Marine Sergeant George Lowry, the President likened the situation to a football game. "Sometimes you have to take them by surprise," he said. "You run a play and it fails. Then you turn around and call the same play again because they...
...similar raids had been carried out in enemy-held areas of South Viet Nam over the years. (Significantly, none of them had ever found a single live prisoner either, but the omen was discounted.) Eventually, Laird told the President that his intelligence people had recommended a P.O.W. camp at Son Tay as a likely target for search and rescue. Nixon was enthusiastic. On Aug. 11 he gave a go-ahead for planning the operation without actually authorizing the mission. The Pentagon assigned Brigadier General LeRoy Manor, head of air commandos at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., and Colonel Simons...