STALAG '68

ON the site of Chicago's International Amphitheatre, all manholes have been sealed with tar. A chain-link fence, seven feet high and topped with barbed wire, is going into place west of the arena. Secret Service men are checking every pipe, seat and rafter against bombs or snipers' hiding places. Taking antiwar demonstrators at their word, Chicago officials are preparing for every possible disruption at next week's Democratic National Convention. In the process, the nation's second largest city is beginning to take on the appearance of a city under siege.

Protest groups hope to muster at least 100,000 marchers outside the amphitheatre the night that the nominee is selected, and security arrangements are being prepared accordingly. The city's 11,500-man police force will be put on twelve-hour shifts during the week of the convention; 5,500 riot-trained members of the Illinois National Guard are being alerted for duty. The Guard has been given permission to bivouac troops in two parks near the hall and in five public high schools. Halsted Street, which runs along the east side of the amphitheatre, will be accessible only to special buses for a mile. Cross streets leading into it, from 39th to 47th Streets, will be closed to regular traffic.

Jail Tents. Employees at the Stock Yard Inn, where many of the delegates will eat at least once, have been checked for security. (Three failed to meet specifications, but were fired for "incompetence" before the test was completed.) Secret Service agents will inspect all personnel and cargoes going into the stockyards. Other agents will be positioned to survey everyone arriving by public transport. Known militants and agitators will be shadowed as a matter of course.

Up to 2,000 Chicago cops and 1,000 federal agents will be in and around the amphitheatre during evening sessions. A special contingent of 200 firemen will also be on the grounds round the clock to answer special calls. The memory of last year's multimillion-dollar holocaust that gutted the modern McCormick Place convention hall--it probably would have housed this year's convention--is still painfully fresh. If mass arrests overflow the Cook County Jail, officials are prepared to put prisoners in tents in the jail yard. While the candidates trade charges on whether the convention is open or closed, it is, physically at any rate, the tightest in U.S. history--a kind of Stalag '68. Already the demonstrators have achieved the feat of forcing a major party to pick a candidate for President behind barbed wire, in a charged atmosphere reminiscent of a police state.

Arrayed against the impressive show of official strength will be, if plans jell, one of the oddest, least cohesive armies in history--an uncoordinated alliance of hippies, yippies, antiwar militants, unhappy liberals and far-out radicals. Goals vary from outright disruption of the convention proceedings to a ribald mockery of the electoral system. The yippies (members of the Youth International Party) plan to nominate a 220-Ib. pig, Pigasus, for President, on a platform of garbage--"just like the platform of all the other parties." Groups led by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Viet Nam are altogether more serious. Says Coordinator Rennie Davis: "We want to focus attention on the war."

Starting this week, the committee plans workshops in churches, parks and union halls around the city to discuss draft resistance, police brutality, foreign policy and slum problems. The day of the nomination, delegates' hotels will be picketed, and protesters will assemble at 4 p.m. south of the Loop for the 21-hour march to the amphitheatre. For all their concern over dem onstrations, city officials are even more worried about what they might start in the black ghettos that nearly surround the convention site.

Johnsonian Secrecy. Host to 23 national conventions in the past, Chicago is always a hot, uncomfortable city in August--with a foul redolence of the stockyards in the vicinity. This year it will be an ordeal. A three-month-old strike of Illinois Bell electricians has prevented the installation of extra lines that candidates need for fast communication, and stopped the networks from putting live cameras outside the convention hall. As if that were not enough, a taxi strike began tying up the city at week's end, and black bus drivers threatened to walk out.

To further cloud the week for the candidates, President Johnson was maintaining such hermetic control of the schedule that none of the candidates knew what the exact order of busi ness would be. From the seclusion of his ranch in Texas, Johnson was dictating almost all of the convention arrangements through John Criswell, treasurer of the Democratic National Committee (see box). No one but the President knew whether Lyndon Johnson would even pass near Chicago.

McCarthy people, not unnaturally, assumed that the secrecy was being directed against them and complained that they could not plan their candidate's activities without even a hint of the convention's scheduled events. "We haven't been frozen out," said McCarthy, "but there's an awful lot of ice on our edge of the pond." Yet the fact was that the Humphrey camp was no better informed, with just as many complaints and just as many frustrations.

A high Humphrey aide wrote a letter to Criswell detailing the problems at length. The answer, he said, was almost totally unresponsive. "Here we are," said one Humphrey man, "two weeks before the convention opens, and we can't even get our hands on the convention program. If that's an example of preferential treatment . . ."

In all the gloom, there is only one bright note so far. The Democrats have decided to stop the colorful but meaningless floor demonstrations, with balloons and bands, that hold up nominations and transform the nominating process into a ludicrous anachronism.

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