A funny thing happened on the way to the embassy...

Ngo Vinh Long '68 is a Vietnamese student at Harvard who tried to make a dent in Washington earlier this month. He came away quietly disillusioned.

Long went to Washington two weeks ago to present the Vietnamese embassy with an anti-war statement signed by him and 15 fellow Vietnamese studying in the United States. It was a dangerous action--Long was defying a 1965 Vietnamese law demanding execution or long-term jailing for saying or doing anything which might "weaken the nation's anti-Communist effort."

Afterwards, he alluded to the subtle pressure he met before getting to the embassy, the mildly veiled hostility at the embassy, and the poor coverage of the confrontation in the national press. He had not expected a warm welcome from the ambassador, but when he returned to Cambridge he seemed to be disappointed in his trip.

Long and several colleagues arrived in Washington Wednesday night, Feb. 28. He said he called two Vietnamese friends that night to discuss the petition--which already bore 14 signatures--and they told him they would meet him the following morning at 10 a.m. "Next morning, I called them again," Long explained, "and a roommate said they were not there. I called later and he said they were asleep. It seemed to me they simply did not want to see me." Long added that a friend later informed him that these two students had been contacted between 10 p.m. Wednesday night and 10 a.m. Thursday morning by a Vietnamese official.

On Thursday, Long said, he received a call from Nguyen Chanh Thi, a former Vietnamese general who was pushed out of the military by the then Premier, Ky, in 1966 and who now resides in Washington. Long said that Thi praised him for what he was doing, but asked him to delete a sentence reading "A lasting peace for Vietnam should be based upon a total withdrawal of foreign troops that will allow us, Vietnamese, to shape our future free from all foreign interference."

Thi, reached in Washington this week, admitted to speaking with Long on the phone that Thursday but denied asking Long to delete anything from the petition.

By Friday morning, Long had added two more signatures to the petition, bringing the total to 16. Although, according to Long, there are about 500 Vietnamese students in the United States, the petition was only mailed to a randomly selected group of 40. It was mailed only a few days before Long left for Washington.

The visit to the embassy was scheduled for 10 a.m. Friday. Long had contacted about 30 newspapers and wire services, asking them to appear at the embassy at 10 or at a press conference at 12:30 p.m. at the National Press Club. He spoke personally to Tom Wicker, the Washington Bureau Chief of the New York Times. Although this was the first statement to the Vietnamese government by Vietnamese students residing here, most of the papers were unresponsive. Wicker informed the New York office to use wire copy. Only one reporter, from Associated Press, went to the embassy.

At 9:50 a.m., Long and his colleagues were driving on R Street, four blocks from the embassy. They were in the right lane of a two-lane, one-way street. "Suddenly," Long recalled, "a truck next to us rammed into us by swerving into our lane while we were going about 5 miles an hour." The Vietnamese students pleaded that they had an urgent appointment, Long said, while the truck driver insisted on a complete exchange of papers and calling a policeman. Half an hour later, they finally arrived at the embassy. It was 10:15. They were greeted by Nguyen Ngoc Bich, Second Secretary to the embassy. Bich informed them that the AP reporter had already left. (The reporter explained in an interview later that he had to get his car fixed, and decided at 10:10 not to wait any longer.) He then conducted them to the ambassador, Bui Diem.

"The ambassador," Long said, "came out, pointed his finger at me like this and said sharply, 'Are you Mr. Long?'" Long said Diem then pointed at each of the other three students (including Long's wife Nguyen Hoi Chan '68) in the same fashion.

"Then he read the letter aloud, casually," Long said. "After the first sentence (voicing anguished concern) he said 'I wholly agree.' After the second (decrying the destruction) he said again 'I wholly agree.' After the third (calling this a war of genocide) he became colder and said nothing. He read on sarcastically."

Long said the ambassador often pointed his finger "belligerently" during the hour-long talk and once commented, "If you are pure Vietnamese, you would not draw up a statement like this." Then, Long said, "he began to threaten. He said, 'Of course, you are now in a free country, and can say what you like. But remember the consequences on the people you love and like.'"

Bich, reached this week at his embassy, did not recollect the visit in the same way as Long. He described the visit as a "reasonably cordial" one, adding "Even if policy-wise we might disagree, that does not sour our relationship." Bich emphatically denied that any threats had been made against the students.

Bich said that "if the idea is to call for peace, this petition leads to misunderstanding, because it appears to me as a condemnation of the United States, even if it is not meant to be."

Long spoke of the students' attempts to convince Bich and the ambassador that their goal was not a condemnation of the United States. When a statement speaks of the "moral, political and military bank-ruptcy of American policy in Vietnam," this is difficult to do.

"If they only wanted to voice concern," Bich suggested, "they would not have included such paragraphs." Bich said the petition was forwarded to the Saigon government.

The only news coverage the event received was a three-paragraph dispatch by the Associated Press, based on the afternoon press conference.

The next month will be a quiet one for Long, while he concentrates on his thesis. But afterwards, he hopes to organize as many of the 500 Vietnamese students in this country as he can. He says he is optimistic because he was earlier able to get more than a dozen signatures in a few days. "But the possibility of punishment makes it difficult," he admitted. Long's own passport is up for renewal in May. He wants to go to graduate school here.NGO VINH LONG '68, Vietnamese student at Harvard, earlier this month confronted his country's ambassador to the United States with an anti-war statement--the first public statement against U.S. policy by Vietnamese students.