Mr. SALISBURY. Senator, I would have to say, since I am not familiar with all those circumstances, I would have to say if the facts are as you described them, it would not be unreasonable for the North Vietnamese to be suspicious of the United States.

Senator MORSE. As a correspondent you do know what the United States has done on a unilateral basis in regard to the building of the regime in South Vietnam, or rather a whole series of regimes in South Vietnam, leading to our eventually getting 4,000 American troops over there, increasing numbers of them being killed in a war that we have not even declared, and yet we talk to the North Vietnamese about peace. Do you think it is unreasonable for the people of North Vietnam to mistrust a government that follows that warlike course of action in their area of the world?

Mr. SALISBURY. Well, I again would have to say that, in general, it seems to me not unnatural for the North Vietnamese to be suspicious of us and distrustful of us because, as they see our conduct, it has been hostile toward them.

Senator MORSE. I will leave that question. However, I could continue to add incident after incident relating to our course of action in South Vietnam in open violation of the Geneva Accords which are bound to make us a mistrusted nation, and rightly so.

If we were North Vietnamese, I think we would hold the same mistrust against the United States when we are trying to exist, as you have described it, under the bombing policy that we are following in North Vietnam.

Now, 400,000 troops-Senator Sparkman says I said 4,000-400,000 troops.

UNITED STATES POWER TO DESTROY CHINA

Mr. Salisbury, would you say that we have the power to destroy China, agreeing with Senator Fulbright's observation? What do you mean by the destruction of China?

Mr. SALISBURY. Well, I mean if we were to unleash our nuclear weapons, we could destroy Chinese nuclear facilities, their large cities and, I suppose, extensive areas of their farming land.

I am not familiar with how many nuclear weapons we have. I do not know whether we have enough to cover that whole vast territory, but I think we could undoubtedly cripple the country and damage it beyond, maybe even beyond, repair. That is to say, we could do all this if we simply used all the forces at our command and no one else interferred with this operation while we engaged in it.

Senator MORSE. You used the word "destruction." Do you mean to use it definitively to mean also conquer?

Mr. SALISBURY. I do not use it to mean conquer because, as you perhaps know, the Chinese rather anticipate that eventually we are going to try something like this, and they have evolved a strategy which may or may not be an effective one, but which they think will enable them to survive as a nation by retreating into caves and underground shelters and places like that, and just hanging on and forcing us to come in across the nuclear poisoned soil and fight them out.

I do not know whether they could do that or not, but it might require a long period of time.

Senator MORSE. Would you agree, Mr. Salisbury, that if we inflicted that destruction, and we certainly have the power to inflict

that destruction, that we would not succeed in either conquering China or obtaining a peace with China, but that we would have to keep large numbers of men, far in excess of what we already have in South Vietnam, to police the nation that we have so destroyed?

Mr. SALISBURY. Well, the only parallel or precedent that we have to give us some guidance on that point is Japan's experience with China, and I think we are fairly familiar with the enormous manpower demands that China required for Japan in the years before the opening of World War II.

It seems to be insatiable so far as trying to occupy China is concerned.

CONSEQUENCES OF U.S. USE OF NUCLEAR BOMBS

Senator MORSE. I ask these questions, Mr. Salisbury, because, as I am sure you know, there are people in this country in very influential positions who seem to think we ought to bomb China; we ought to knock out the nuclear bases; we ought to use our nuclear power. But these people never stop to tell the American people what some of the consequences would be. So I would ask you what your reaction would be to this possible consequence which was told to me by the American consul general in Hong Kong, that once we got through with that kind of destruction we had better be ready for the great damage to our own country from the psychological bombs that would be dropped on us from all around the world for, as he put it, we would lose the support of the people of all the major countries of Asia, of Africa, of much of Latin America, and millions of people in Europe.

Would you disagree with that observation?

Mr. SALISBURY. I have no doubt that any nation which invokes nuclear war, and that would include the United States, would bring about in the world a cataclysmic effect as far as public opinion is concerned, and one which I think is almost impossible to evaluate at the present time-the consequences of it.

BOMBING OF HANOI BRIDGE

Senator MORSE. I will ask you one more question dealing with our present bombing practice. You mentioned that a big bridge that extends from Hanoi over to the north bank of the river has not as yet been touched. Do you consider that a major military target, and what do you think the effect of bombing it would be on the North Vietnamese people?

Mr. SALISBURY. To my way of thinking, it is a prime military target which has not been attacked in North Vietnam. It provides the sole rail link and the principal highway link between Hanoi and the north of the country.

I do not know why it has not been attacked, except that it is right in Hanoi, it is right in the middle of Hanoi. It links one side of the city with the industrial suburbs and the airport and everything else on the other side, and I believe our policy has been not to bomb Hanoi. The consequence of knocking out that bridge would be considerable. It would interrupt, make more difficult, the flow of rail traffic and truck traffic from the north.

On the other hand, I do know they have their pontoon preparations, and also some barges, ferry installations, ready to put into use if the bridge is knocked out.

I would say it would be a severe blow to them but not a fatal one. Senator MORSE. If we are to continue our bombing in North Vietnam, and I pray that we stop it, would you advocate bombing this bridge?

Mr. SALISBURY. If we are, if our bombing policy is to be based purely on military calculations, I see no reason at all why we do not take the bridge out, take out the Mig fields, take out Hanoi. This is what the North Vietnamese expect us to do.

Senator MORSE. And by doing it you would also conclude that we would not lessen the distrust of the Vietnamese people to the United States?

Mr. SALISBURY. It certainly would not encourage them to love us very much.

Senator MORSE. That is all, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Senator Mundt.

OPENING UP OF HANOI TO NEWSMEN

Senator MUNDT. Is Hanoi now a city which is open to American newsmen, generally, or did you negotiate something of a scoop? Mr. SALISBURY. I negotiated a scoop all right. But in the process of doing that, or perhaps the process had happened before that, it seems to be opening up. There will be more newsmen in there month by month, as we go along.

Senator MUNDT. Do you know of other newspapers or other newsmen who have tried to get in and failed-American newsmen ?

Mr. SALISBURY. I only know specifically of one of my colleagues. There were two of us on the Times who had applied at about the same time. Our foreign editor, Mr. Topping, was also working on this, perhaps not as vigorously as I was. I understand from reading in the Times that there had been about 30 people who had had their passports cleared for travel to North Vietnam, and I presume they were all working as I was.

Senator MUNDT. Well, I am glad that you went, and I wish other newsmen would go, because it is interesting to get this information. I am especially pleased that you appeared before the committee and straightened out, for me at least, what quite apparently was a misunderstanding I had from reading part of your reports and reading what four New York ladies who were over there at about the same time were saying and reading some of the critics of your comments. It always gets to be one mishmash.

MILITARY EFFECT OF BOMBING

I felt that the purport of your report was that, first we had been deliberately bombing civilian targets, and from reading your statement I do not believe that is your report at all. And, second, I thought that you felt that the bombing was futile and was not really minimizing or curtailing their military effectiveness. If I read your report correctly, you do not hold that position. Is that right?

Mr. SALISBURY. My position about the military effect of the bombing, Senator, is one in which I feel that probably we lose enough on the plus that they get out of greater national unity than we make up on the destructive side. In other words, I think it is a marginal question, one way or the other, but I do not minimize, and I do not want to minimize, the fact that it has inflicted military damage, particularly their communications facilities, their ability to deliver the supplies to the south. It certainly has damaged that.

Senator MUNDT. And you do not submit any evidence to our committee that there has been a deliberate bombing of civilian areas. Mr. SALISBURY. No, I do not, and I think that would be

Senator MUNDT. That it was a consequence of-like President Eisenhower said, when you hit a military target you are going to hit some civilians. But there has been no civilian bombing, to your knowledge. Mr. SALISBURY. Not to my knowledge in the north, and I think it would be very difficult to establish such a thing.

This is not to say, and I think we ought in all fairness to say, that the people in North Vietnam think that they are deliberately being bombed. This is a very natural human reaction. The bombs come down and they hit their house, and they kill their wife or something like that, and they do not know what the aviator up there who may be going at 12,000 miles an hour was actually aiming for. He may have been aiming for something a mile away.

The CHAIRMAN. 1,200.

Senator MUNDT. That is a little fast.

The CHAIRMAN. 1,200, not 12,000.

Mr. SALISBURY. 1,200.

Senator MUNDT. I agree that the psychology could be as you describe it, even though the speed of the plane, unhappily, is not quite that fast.

EVIDENCE OF RUSSIAN PERSONNEL IN NORTH VIETNAM

Did you see any Russians over there?

Mr. SALISBURY. I saw some Russians, particularly in the bar at the hotel and in what passes for the PX in Hanoi, a special store where You can buy vodka but, unfortunately, no caviar.

I did not see Russians very visibly around the place. They are not. in uniform, and I talked to the foreigners there, and they said that the Russians did not seem to be there in large numbers.

Senator MUNDT. Any idea as to why they are there?

Mr. SALISBURY. The ones that I saw, and here you will have to forgive me for being very subjective, I have seen a lot of Russians out in Siberia, these fellows from their looks and their shirts, and their lack of ties and general appearance, looked to me like construction engineers from Siberia. They were probably in there to either aid with the railroad or maybe to aid in some sort of installation work. They did not look like military people, in other words.

The Russian military are a little better groomed than that.

Senator MUNDT. More likely to be engineers or scientists or scientific advisers, or something of that nature?

Mr. SALISBURY. Engineers of a construction type.

SUPPLY ROUTES FROM RUSSIA AND CHINA

Senator MUNDT. I read from your statement that Hanoi requires both Chinese aid and Russian aid to maintain the war effort at its present level. It would be severely handicapped if China closes its borders and if it cut off its supply routes or ceased sending aid.

You have described, I think, the nature of the aid in the general area of small arms, arms which can be built with a less sophisticated industry. Those come primarily from China?

Mr. SALISBURY. That is right.

Senator MUNDT. The SAMs and the MIGs, the superior grades of antiaircraft guns come from Russia, and the presence of the SAM you have correctly described. This is borne out by what we hear from other committees. They cause our aircraft to fly low to escape them because they are highly devastating, and that brings them within the range of the antiaircraft weapons that surround Hanoi and other installations over there.

So that, if in some way, we could discourage either the Russians, or the Chinese, or both from supplying their respective types of aid, it would seem to me that this would tend to decrease our casualty lists in South Vietnam. Would you agree with that? Mr. SALISBURY. I think that is quite true.

PRIVATE NEGOTIATIONS WITH HANOI

Senator MUNDT. One other question only. In your last statement, you say the most profitable course of the United States to take would be to quietly and secretly explore with Hanoi to see if a reasonable and honorable settlement might be forthcoming. I think you related that to the fact that the people of Hanoi must be exceedingly nervous about what is going on in China. They do not know for sure whether friends of theirs or people less likely to be friendly are going to come out on top in this disruption in China, which we call a civil warwhether it is or not we do not know. In any event, it is highly probable that it is decreasing their industrial production and making it less certain that they are going to be able to continue to rely on a Chinese influx of arms, and without them they would really be in serious difficulty.

Did you have that in mind when you indicated that this might be a propitious time to explore

Mr. SALISBURY. That is exactly right, Senator, precisely.

Senator MUNDT. I agree with you, but I would be completely shocked if I felt that our Government were not doing that. It seems to me that Mr. Rusk, President Johnson, and his advisers must also come to that very natural reaction. Since you listed as a proposal such a thing, my question is, have you any reason to believe that it is not being done by our Government now?

Mr. SALISBURY. Well, I would sav about that-I will be very frank-what I said both Hanoi and Washington, that if it is being done, I do not want to know about it. I do not want to read about it in Scotty's column. I do not want to see it in Newsweek's periscope, because if that is true, then it is not secret, and it probably would not be productive. So I just do not know whether it is going on or not. I hope so.