GETTING the story from an area closed to our correspondents poses special problems--somewhat like but still different from the task of covering the other side in World War II. Most of the reporting has to be done on the periphery, with techniques that have been well tested for years in the process of covering Communist China. Every facet of that kind of reporting was brought to bear for this week's cover story on the other side's dilemma and the shadowy figure who runs the North Vietnamese war machine, General Vo Nguyen Giap.

We asked our correspondents around the world to tap every source --from the not-for-attribution background of intelligence officers to the firsthand reports of returning travelers, including journalists. Scores of such sources were interviewed: our correspondent in Eastern Europe found a Polish girl recently returned from Hanoi; the Washington bureau talked with a schoolmate of Giap's now living in the nation's capital; the Boston bureau interviewed a French journalist-scholar now at Harvard who has been close to the problems of the Viet Nam area for more than 20 years. More general sources were readily available--monitored broadcasts from Hanoi, North Vietnamese newspapers, Giap's own book, People's War, People's Army, published in 1961.*

While many TIME bureaus thus contributed to the story written by Jason McManus and edited by Edward Hughes, the bulk of the reporting task fell naturally to our growing Saigon staff. As the war has escalated so has our personnel count in South Viet Nam. Only a little more than two years ago, the TIME representation there consisted of a single resident nonstaff reporter, aided on frequent occasions by correspondents going in from Hong Kong and Washington. The U.S. military presence then totaled about 16,000. Today, with 335,000 U.S. military on the scene, the TIME-LIFE team includes 14 correspondents and photographers plus a group of ten South Vietnamese. Our Saigon bureau chief is Simmons Fentress, formerly of the Washington bureau, and his two top resident correspondents are Donald Neff and William McWhirter. Constantly shuttling in and out of South Viet Nam from Hong Kong are Frank McCulloch, our senior correspondent in Asia, and Reporters Karsten Prager and Arthur Zich.

Headquarters for the staff is a small villa, which also serves as a residence for Correspondent Neff and lodging for the frequent staff visitors (Nation Editor Michael Demarest has just returned from two weeks in Viet Nam, including several days in the jungled central highlands). With its one air-conditioned room, the villa is looked upon by the Saigon staff as practically a dream house, but Stateside visitors bring back word that it wouldn't be such a hot piece of property on the U.S. market.

EDUCATION this week runs the second installment of "Kudos" (from the Greek noun for glory; it's singular, not plural), an annual feature in TIME since 1925. Two staff members also received degrees: Managing Editor Otto Fuerbringer, an L.H.D. from New York's Wagner College, and the publisher of TIME, an LL.D. from Vermont's St. Michael's College, with the citation: "Behold the whole huge world wrapped each week in red-bordered paper."

* The background for Artist Louis Glanzman's cover portrait is taken from a French photograph of a mosaic in a propaganda show now on display in Hanoi.

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