Bamboo Breakthrough

It was a sight not seen for many years in a U.S. newspaper. There on the front page of the New York Times last week, in adjoining columns, were staff-written reports from two of the least accessible of Communist capitals. Anthony Lewis was describing from Hanoi a U.S. bombing alert and the look of war that lay about him, while Associate Editor Harrison Salisbury noted from North Korea that he was the first U.S. correspondent to file under a Pyongyang dateline in more than 20 years.

Why the Times'? The paper's twin coup was the result of several elements. Its correspondents have been admirably persistent in knocking on the Bamboo Curtain; Lewis had been trying to get into Hanoi for two years, and from his London base renewed his pleas to North Vietnamese officials in Paris almost monthly. Another factor is the Times's undeniable prestige and influence in the U.S. Both Pyongyang and Hanoi obviously felt that they could benefit from some press exposure in the U.S. at this time, and that the Timesmen were likely to give them a favorable shake.

Sympathy. The paper has been increasingly critical of the Nixon Administration's war policy, and Lewis' columns have been particularly tough. Salisbury, who has long experience covering both European and Asian Communist countries, in 1966 became the first journalist from a major U.S. publication to visit North Viet Nam in a dozen years. His series of stories was distinctly sympathetic. From Pyongyang's viewpoint, Salisbury's visit promises not only sympathy but also reciprocity that may give North Korean newsmen access to Washington.

The North Koreans even allowed the Times to send its Tokyo Bureau Chief John Lee. Through its unofficial representatives in Tokyo, the regime had passed the word some time ago that it would welcome a limited number of American newsmen--possibly because Peking has begun to admit U.S. reporters without suffering a bad press. Last week Washington Post Correspondent Selig Harrison was cleared for entry, and others are waiting their turn.

Enemy Conduit. Salisbury's first dispatches were long on description and short on insight, understandable for any reporter seeing a strange and previously forbidden place for the first time. He zeroed in on modern buildings and primroses in Pyongyang's parks, and marveled at the Mao-like everpresence of Premier Kim Il Sung, whom Salisbury expects to interview before his three-week visit is over.

From Hanoi, Lewis wrote on the familiar themes of North Vietnamese determination not to cave in under the accelerated bombing and the government's willingness to settle for less than a totally Communist regime in Saigon. He reported North Viet Nam's claim that it is clearing mines from the Haiphong harbor entrance and restoring partial ship traffic in the port (the White House not only denied it, but accused the Times of "being a conduit of enemy propaganda"). Conversations in Hanoi led Lewis to write that the North Vietnamese feel Americans misunderstand them, a fact that explains something about the agonized U.S. experience in Viet Nam.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.