The Battle of the Dikes

IS the U.S. deliberately bombing the dikes of North Viet Nam? That was clearly the most perplexing question of the week about the war in Viet Nam, where the rival armies remained locked in a bitter, seesaw battle for Quang Tri city. The accusation was serious, since nearly 15 million peasants live in the Red River Delta, whose floodwaters are controlled by a centuries-old, 2,500-mile labyrinth of earthen dikes (TIME, July 31). In the virtual absence of uncontestable firsthand information, however, the shouting of partisans all but drowned out the testimony of witnesses.

The fusillade of charges began in late June, when a North Vietnamese diplomat in Paris alleged that the U.S. was systematically bombing the dikes --"purposefully creating disaster for millions of people during the coming flood season," as Hanoi's chief negotiator in Paris, Xuan Thuy, said later. Systematic bombing of the dikes could, in fact, result in the death by drowning and famine of millions of people--as occurred in the floods of 1945. Hanoi's allegations were soon taken up by several Europeans who had recently been in North Viet Nam. Jean Thoraval, Hanoi correspondent for Agence France-Presse, told of a U.S. bombing raid that he had witnessed on the morning of July 11. Describing how a dozen planes had dropped bombs and fired rockets on a nearby dike, he concluded that "the attack was aimed at a whole system of dikes." Another eyewitness was Sweden's Ambassador to Hanoi, Jean-Christophe Oeberg, who said he had seen bomb-damaged dikes in early June and described the attacks as "methodic."

Two Swedish journalists backed up his charge with their own testimony that they had seen the results of apparently deliberate aerial attacks on the dikes.

More recently, Hanoi's charges have been endorsed by several prominent individuals, whose accusations Washington found difficult to ignore. Though claiming to have no special information, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, appealed to President Nixon to stop bombing the dikes. Last week he was joined by United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, who had just returned from a trip to Moscow. Announcing that he had received word of U.S. damage to the dikes through "private unofficial channels," Waldheim declared that he was "deeply concerned" and pleaded for an end to "this kind of bombing."

The outcry was joined by Actress-Activist Jane Fonda. Returning from a two-week trip to Hanoi, where among other things she interviewed several American prisoners of war, she presented a 20-minute film of the visit at a New York press conference that purported to show several recent bomb craters in dikes near Nam Sach, 40 miles southeast of Hanoi, and further damage near the provincial capital of Nam Dinh. Hardly a dispassionate witness, she said: "I believe in my heart, profoundly, that the dikes are being bombed on purpose." From firsthand observation and from pictures shown her by the North Vietnamese, she concluded: "Not only the dikes are being bombed, but hydraulic systems, sluice gates, pumping stations and dams as well. The worst damage is done by bombs that fall on both sides of the dikes, causing deep fissures that weaken the base of the dikes."

At a press conference last week, President Nixon hit back at the accusers, taking a particularly sharp slap at Waldheim, whose charges he described as "hypocritical." Added the President: "I note with interest that the Secretary-General, just like his predecessor, seized upon this enemy-inspired propaganda." Nixon vigorously defended his bombing policy as "restrained," and said: "If it were the policy of the U.S. to bomb the dikes, we would take them out, the significant part, in a week. We don't do so because we are trying to avoid civilian casualties, not cause them." Actually, that judgment in part seemed to run counter to the views of some U.S. military experts. A secret Air Force report prepared in 1965 for General William Westmoreland, then the U.S. commander in South Viet Nam, concluded that --moral considerations aside--Hanoi's flood-control system could probably not be destroyed by conventional bombing because of the system's massiveness and complexity.

As it happens, Nixon's denial that the dikes were being deliberately bombed was backed up last week by a not-always-friendly source, Columnist Joseph Kraft. During his own current tour of North Viet Nam, Kraft reasoned that if the U.S. Air Force were "truly going after the dikes, it would do so in a methodical, not a harum-scarum way." Summarized Kraft: "I have to conclude from what I have seen that there is no deliberate American drive to bomb the dikes. But the dikes do run parallel to many roads. Some are close to railroad tracks and bridges." Inevitably, some dikes have been hit in error, Kraft believes, and the damage--also inevitably --has been exploited by the North Vietnamese for propaganda purposes.

Kraft's conclusion more or less supports what U.S. officials have been saying. They have maintained that the dikes were not being "targeted," but have admitted that a few dikes near military targets have been damaged accidentally. At week's end the State Department released the results of a photo-reconnaissance of the entire Red River Delta taken in mid-July. The survey, said the department, revealed bomb craters at only twelve locations in the dike system--ten of them near petroleum storage tanks, and all relatively minor. Insisted State flatly: "The evidence shows conclusively that there has been no intentional bombing of the dikes."

Nonetheless, a great many people remained unconvinced--especially in light of the recent shocking disclosure that Air Force Lieut. General John Lavelle had for four months defied White House directives and sent U.S. bombers to hit unauthorized targets. More light may soon be cast on the question by the witness of an eight-man international team that last week flew from Moscow for a two-week fact-finding trip through North Viet Nam. Among its members: Sean McBride, the respected Irish jurist who is head of Amnesty International, and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark.

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