I.F. Stone Says Military Undertow Is Dragging U.S. Into Deeper War

"I feel like I should be breaking windows," I. F. Stone admitted to a Harvard audience yesterday. "What I really ought to do is incite a riot." Stone's despair, born of reading the morning newspaper, led him to a discussion of a variety of political issues.

Nixon is gambling in Indochina, Stone said, trying to achieve a Korean solution. If Nixon wins, "military power in this country will be increased and so will faith in military solutions." If Nixon loses, there will be war with China. Either way, "the country is trapped by this terrible war."

The war carries its own momentum, Stone said, so that even though Nixon and Zeigler are probably sincere in insisting that the Americans pose no threat to China, "the terrible undertow of this war is that we've been moving to draw a war we can't win (guerrilla style) into a war we can (nuclear)."

Stone, author of the I. F. Stone Biweekly, is well known for accurate investigative reporting of government lies and cover-ups. He talked yesterday to an overflow audience of 250 students attending Professor Leonard Boudin's Law School class, Advanced Constitutional Litigation B.

Stone reported that he had uncovered the fact that the U.S. had redeployed [Marine troops back to Vietnam last week for the first time ever in the war.

The Marine units now positioned on landing craft off the coast of the DMZ (acting either as a decoy deterrent force or as an attack group to invade North Vietnam) are the same units which were sent to Okinawa from Vietnam in 1969.

If the North Vietnamese interpret their belligerent position as an invasion threat, Stone said, events may carry the conduct of the war beyond political control into the hands of the military.

Stone acknowledged that protest marches, trashings and bombings haven't ended the war, but he hasn't given up on student political actions. The recent author of The Killings at Kent State said, "I feel if we had several thousand kids out in the country talking to people-to learn as well as to teach-the margin of reality in our politics would increase. The tide could be turned."

The greatest threat to the country, according to Stone, is the military, which has to find or create work to justify the money it craves. The military mind sees the war as a scenario where "we're Buck Rogers (Boom! Boom!) up in the sky and there are a bunch of lesser breeds-gooks-on the ground," he said.

As for the military leaders themselves, Stone suggested that the Vietnam war serve as an object lesson in how dumb the Joint Chiefs of Staff are. General Westmoreland, for years enthusiastic about fighting the war, was only "a boy scout who had been at Harvard Business School," he said.

From Wire Dispatches

A furious battle enveloped a South Vietnamese artillery base in Laos Friday, slowing the drive to cut off the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

In the first major battle since the U.S.-sponsored South Vietnamese forces entered Laos Feb. 8, government rangers were reported suffering severe casualties. The base is six miles inside Laos on one of the branches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Forward elements of the Laotian push last were reported 171/2 miles inside Laos, and the South Vietnamese claimed they had cut 30 miles of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Informed U.S. sources in the northern military zone said the rangers manning the base were under heavy attack by a North Vietnamese regiment with a second regiment possibly moving into position to join the fight.