Irish Minister Pays Visit To Eliot With Bodyguards

The Secret Service agents waiting outside said that he was the Kuwaiti Ambassador, but it was really Connor Cruise O'Brien, Irish Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, attending a reception in his honor at Eliot House yesterday afternoon.

O'Brien visited Cambridge to give a lecture last night on the French author Simone Weil and her wide-ranging philosophical beliefs.

At both the reception and his speech last night, O'Brien was protected by five Secret Service agents who guarded doorways and chauffered his car.

The agents told one inquiring student that the visitor was the ambassador from Kuwait, and later declined to make any comment to curious onlookers who noticed the agents' ear microphones and ominous postures in front of Eliot House.

Anti-IRA Views

There were fears that O'Brien would receive undue attention for his anti-IRA views as a minister of the Irish government.

O'Brien, introduced at the lecture as an intellectual who had successfully made the jump to elective politics, is a reknowned playwright and literary critic, and once served as assistant to former U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskold.

Weil wrote her book "The Need for Roots" while a member of the Free French movement during World War II.

In an interview yesterday O'Brien said Weil saw society as an "unthinking beast" and O'Brien feels she gave the best warning against "what happens when human beings get together."

While admitting Weil's philosophy is "utterly unworldly," O'Brien still finds great value in her criticism of the basic political bonds that govern life. Even while fighting with the Free French, Weil spoke out strongly against all nationalism.

"As Prophetic as Cassandra"

O'Brien said that in her analysis of the effects of Charles DeGaulle's postwar imperialistic plans on France's future Weil was "as prophetic as Cassandra."

Weil died in 1943, too soon for her to have any influence on the course of history, but O'Brien said he is sure she would have played an influential role in the events of the postwar world.

Throughout the lecture the Secret Service agents sat quietly, watching O'Brien and occasionally listening to their ear mikes. After the talk they escorted O'Brien to another public reception. They had no comment after the lecture.