AT the airport in Vientiane, Correspondent Frank McCulloch watched a young Laotian in dungarees servicing a small aircraft. The youth drained fuel from the plane into an open bucket, carried the pail into a shed where 500-lb. bombs, rockets and machine-gun ammunition were stored, picked up a tool box and sauntered back to the airplane. Only then did he throw away the cigarette he had been smoking all the while.
Watching such vignettes in the Southeast Asian powder keg last week, Hong Kong Bureau Chief McCulloch mused that "covering Laos is like being Alice in Wonderland—surrealistic, exasperating, frequently incomprehensible but often utterly...
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