Two for the Show

Determined to milk as much benefit as possible from U.S. antiwar demonstrations, the Viet Cong last week freed two G.I.s especially with the Vietnik audience in mind. The men were Staff Sergeant George E. Smith, 27, and Specialist Fifth Class Claude McClure, 25, both of whom had been Communist prisoners for more than two years. The Viet Cong delivered them, well fed and in apparent good health, to a Cambodian border post only a few hours after a V.C. radio station had broadcast that the G.I.s were being released "as a response to the friendly sentiments of the American people against the war in South Viet Nam."

The Viet Cong seemed to get their money's worth almost immediately. Seated on either side of a Viet Cong spokesman at a press conference in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, the two Americans sharply denounced U.S. involvement in the war, praised their captors, and pledged to quit the Army to lead peace demonstrations. "I have known both sides, and the war in Viet Nam is of no interest to the United States," declared Smith, a ten-year Army veteran. He was returning home, he said, "so Americans can see the light about the war." McClure, a six-year veteran, told how the Viet Cong had healed his wounded leg. "Had it been the Saigon government, I would have been tortured," he said.

The men testified that they had been treated kindly, had been fed as well as possible, had not been required to do overly hard labor, and had been given books to read, Red Cross packages and mail from home. Both insisted that they had not been subjected to any form of brainwashing; but the Viet Cong representative did let slip that "the good discipline of the prisoners" had been a major factor in granting their release.

Smith, a native of Chester, W. Va., and McClure, a Negro from Chattanooga, were members of the same Special Forces detachment. They were captured when their camp 35 miles northeast of Saigon was overrun. They testified to knowing nothing about the fate of fellow prisoners who had been captured in the same action. Yet there was a press report from Washington quoting one of the prisoners--a Special Forces sergeant now in Germany--as saying that Smith had helped him escape from a cave in which they were both imprisoned, heroically sacrificing his own chance for freedom. And the parents of the two men reported that up to the moment of their release their letters had never reflected strong antiwar views.

More curious still was the fact that neither Smith nor McClure seemed in any hurry to leave Cambodia. Perhaps the Viet Cong themselves were not sure how well the two Americans might perform once they were out of Red reach and wanted to keep them under surveillance a bit longer.

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