Plot to Unseat Mao Foiled as Lin Piao Dies in Air Crash

Foreign diplomats reported yesterday that Chairman Mao Tse-Tung and Premier Chou En-lai have successfully crushed a plot to oust them from power in China led by Defense Minister Lin Piao.

The reports said that when the plot was exposed, Lin Piao and some of the higher military conspirators tried to escape to the Soviet Union in an air force plane which crashed in the Mongolian Republic.

Ezra F. Vogel, professor of Sociology and an expert on China, said last night, "we don't have any more information that rounds out the story so it's hard to discuss the matter with any precision," but he added that the reports "sound true."

Vogel said that there was an inner power struggle in China and that "in the showdown Chou En-lai came out clearly ahead."

Vogel said yesterday that Lin Piao's death will cause "the decline of the army's role in political life." Vogel added that the Chinese withheld the facts of Lin Piao's death from the world as "a precaution" against "the discontent and unrest" which any transition of this importance might lead to.