Orphaned Cornucopia

Even as Cambodia and South Viet Nam were falling to Communist armies, millions of dollars in U.S. aid to those countries were still surging through the pipeline across the Pacific. The Defense and State Departments acted immediately to turn off the flow: they rescinded letters of credit to recipients, canceled orders to suppliers, and cabled ships at sea to "frustrate" their cargoes (that is, dump them) at the nearest port. Result: military aid was routed directly to U.S. bases but non-military goods are piling up in warehouses all over Asia, especially in Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Manila.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) has dispatched a dozen or so troubleshooters in the Far East to take inventory of the orphaned aid and figure out something to do with it. They have found that goods are still pouring in as if conjured up by some sorcerer's apprentice, even though it is scarcely conceivable that the shippers would not have got Kissinger's orders by now. "I expect things to keep coming out of the woodwork for the next 45 to 60 days," sighs Clifford Frink, 54, senior AID man in Hong Kong.

Estimates of how much the troubleshooters may eventually find range from $50 million to $100 million or more. It is a cornucopia of miscellany--"everything from vaginal foam to cement mixers," says one AID official. Among the items found so far: tin plate, steel sheet, chemicals, dies, pumps, cotton, newsprint, forklift trucks, photocopying machines. Says Frink in Hong Kong: "We have part of a rice mill. It may be an entire rice mill--I won't know until I get into the boxes. The same thing with an edible oil mill. There is a big shipment of ladles. Our hunch is that they are ladles for pouring glass."

What to do with it all? AID officials will divert some of the goods to nations that the U.S. is still assisting, not to expand programs but to fill existing commitments. Foodstuffs, mainly rice, wheat and corn, will go primarily to Bangladesh, India and perhaps Egypt. But industrial goods pose a much tougher problem. They were intended for the sophisticated economic base that the U.S. wanted to build in South Viet Nam until the very end. (The Mayaguez, for instance, was unloading 3,000 tons of industrial goods--just what is still not clear--when it hastily had to leave Saigon in mid-April.) AID officials are committed to no similar development of other aid-receiving nations, and while they look around for a use for the goods, hefty warehouse bills are piling up.

AID will try to persuade suppliers in the U.S. to buy back some of the homeless goods. Whatever they do not want will have to be peddled to Asian entrepreneurs, some of whom are already expressing interest. Their average offer so far: 10-c- on the dollar.

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