The White House Teach-in

Though the war in Viet Nam hangs heavily over Capitol Hill, the news from the battlefield of late (see THE WORLD) has given rise to cautious optimism in the White House. So, in hopes of as suaging congressional anxiety, the Presi dent last week organized a marathon series of briefings, or more accurately teach-ins, Lyndon-style. The Senate assembled into two shifts in the White House state dining room; the House membership, 140 at a time, trooped up for three sessions in the East Room. For each of the closed briefings the President produced his top advisers on Viet Nam, who had been instructed to limit their talks to five minutes each--just in case L.B.J. had an electric buzzer handy to cut off any official who overshot the mark. As master of ceremonies and principal speaker, Johnson allowed himself unlimited time. By any measure, it was an adroitly balanced show. From Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, President Johnson's guests got a somber rundown on the situation in South Viet Nam's central highlands since the monsoon set in there. Secretary of State Dean Rusk gave a low-key recital of the diplomatic issues involved in Viet Nam. But then retired Ambassador Maxwell Taylor, newly returned from Saigon--and granted special exemption from the time limit--delivered a 15-minute talk that one Republican called "the most optimistic report I've heard from Taylor in 15 months." Highlights: the Viet Cong have been severely mauled in recent engagements, their morale is sagging and Communist desertions are up; by contrast, the increased commitment of U.S. troops has greatly stiffened the fighting spirit of the South Vietnamese government's forces in the field. Wagging Finger. For the doves, the President had on hand the men he calls his "peacemongers." One was new U.N. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg, who vowed that he would leave no corridor unpaced in his pursuit of a negotiated peace. Another was former World Bank President Eugene Black who reported serious interest among Far East nations, notably Japan, in President Johnson's proposal for a billion-dollar Asian Development Bank--and protested: "No one has ever asked me to speak on a subject like this in five minutes." Johnson applied his own b'.end of reasonableness and rhetoric. Twice in three minutes he told one group of Congressmen: "Our goal is to seek peace with honor and try to get out of this mess." Commenting on reports that Henry Cabot Lodge, the U.S.'s Ambassador-designate to South Viet Nam, had told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the U.S. would stay in Viet Nam even if the Saigon government asked it to leave, President Johnson said cryptically: "The United States would never undertake the sacrifice these efforts require if its help were not wanted and requested." At one point, Congressmen reported, the President wagged a pedagogic finger at his audience and warned: "I know which of you have made statements supporting me and which have made statements criticizing me on Viet Nam. And when the right time comes, I intend to throw some of these statements from my critics right back in their faces." Praise & Complaints. Most Democrats came out of the stereophonic briefings full of praise for the experiment. "Very educational," said Pennsylvania's Thomas Morgan, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, adding that the sessions were particularly "good for Congressmen trying to figure out how to answer mail from their constituents." More experienced hands complained that they had learned nothing new, while many Republicans, leary of any attempt to stifle criticism of the Administration's handling of the war, dubbed the briefings Operation Smother. In a Senate speech last week, Georgia Democrat Richard Russell, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, voiced another reason for concern over the expanding conflict: that the U.S. will be caught in an economic squeeze between the mounting costs of the war and the Administration's ever more ambitious domestic programs. Russell's dismay even caused him to mix his metaphors. "If we are able to have both butter and guns," he pronounced, "we will have accomplished the feat of having our cake and eating it too, which no government has heretofore been able to achieve."

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