The Best and the Rightest: A Souvenir

A police lineup of suspected criminals? Photographer Richard Avedon insists that he did not mean to create that impression with his 1971 collage of officials at the U.S. embassy in Saigon. But his disclaimer does not prevent the mind's eye from leaping to that comparison. Avedon, who spent seven weeks in Viet Nam taking pictures, caught the men who were directing U.S. policy there at a staff meeting. He stood them up against a sheet of white paper and snapped them in twos and threes. Avedon never bothered to have the photo published, but a number of journalists knew of its existence. Among them was Charlotte Curtis, editor of the New York

Times Op Ed page, where the photo finally appeared last week. It was accompanied by Veteran Viet Nam Reporter Gloria Emerson's article about the men in it and their role in Viet Nam's continuing tragedy. Emerson, now a freelance writer, wrote, "I wonder if their dreams are dark and ugly things, if any of them trembled and turned away from the television films of Vietnamese refugees weeping, pleading, talking to themselves." Did they? General Creighton W. Abrams died last September. The ten others showed no signs of trembling and have turned away to other tasks:

HAWTHORNE Q. MILLS, 46, who was mission coordinator, is now posted as political counselor at the U.S. embassy in Teheran.

ERNEST J. COLANTONIO, 56, who was counselor for administrative affairs, is now executive director of the State Department's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs in Washington.

EDWARD J. NICKEL, 57, who was counselor for public affairs, is now a high official in the U.S. Information Agency in Washington.

JOHN E. McGOWAN, 62, who was counselor for press affairs, has retired to Honolulu.

GEORGE D. JACOBSON, 62, who helped run the Civil Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS) program, is still at the Saigon embassy as special assistant to the ambassador.

ELLSWORTH BUNKER, 80, then our ambassador in Saigon, is now ambassador-at-large at the State Department.

SAMUEL D. BERGER, 63, Bunker's deputy, has retired to Washington.

JOHN R. MOSSLER, 51, who was Viet Nam director of the Agency for International Development, is now a U.S. representative to a committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris.

CHARLES A. COOPER, 41, who was minister-counselor for economic affairs, is now serving as assistant secretary for international affairs at the Treasury Department in Washington.

LAURIN B. ASKEW, 52, who was counselor for political affairs, has retired to Spain.

The space between Cooper and Askew was left blank by Avedon for Theodore Shackley, 47. Shackley was the CIA station chief in Saigon. He now heads the CIA's East Asia and Pacific Affairs Bureau in Washington. Others stood patiently for Avedon's camera, but last week few of them were pleased with the result. Said Bunker: "I didn't think the photograph was flattering." Said Berger: "The photograph and the story are absurd. It's not history, it's emotion. Of course I feel a sense of responsibility for Viet Nam, everybody does." Said Colantonio: "I deeply resent the interpretation Gloria Emerson put on my motivations and those of my colleagues while we were carrying out U.S. policies in Viet Nam."

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