Soc Rel Man To Interview Cong Defectors

A Harvard political sociologist will spend eight months in Vietnam working with Vietcong defectors in as effort to improve the "Open Ar me Program"--the official attempt to bring more of the Vietcong over to the government.

William V. T. Knight, a special student in Bolcal Relations, will head one of those teams that will interview Vietcong defectors. Americans will lead the teams, but Vietnamese students will do the actual interviewing.

The idea for the project came from Itiel Sola Pool, chairman of the Department of Political Science at M.I.T. and applications. Pool will go to Vietnam this summer to supervise the program's beginning, but will return in the fall.

From the interviews, it is hoped that the researchers can draw an accurate picture of the average Vietcong defector. According to Knight, "If we know what a defector thinks, then we should be able to predict his behavior under certain circumstances. Then if we can duplicate those circumstances, perhaps more of them will come over to the government."

The information gathered from he interviews will be used not only to encourage greater defection but also to help defectors adjust to South-Vietnamese life. "Having a full picture of the defector, we should de able to help create conditions that will make his reintegration into village life easier," Knight said.

The defectors who are interviewed will be old the project's scope and its goals. In addition, they will be paid.

Though funds for the project come from the Advanced Research Projects Knight stressed that "this is totally a non-military project. We don't want to know names, or dates, places, of anything like that."

The defectors will be asked about their personal backgrounds and the circumstances that led them both to join and to defect from the Vietcong. Vietnamese students, rather than the Americans, are being used for the interviewing to avoid "contaminating" the information received, Knight said.

Knight has no special training in Asian studies, but he has been studying Vietnamese eight hours a day for the past two weeks. He will leave for Vietnam in about three weeks