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At a press conference last week, President Nixon hit back at the accusers, taking a particularly sharp slap at Waldheim, whose charges he described as "hypocritical." Added the President: "I note with interest that the Secretary-General, just like his predecessor, seized upon this enemy-inspired propaganda." Nixon vigorously defended his bombing policy as "restrained," and said: "If it were the policy of the U.S. to bomb the dikes, we would take them out, the significant part, in a week. We don't do so because we are trying to avoid civilian casualties, not cause them." Actually, that judgment in part seemed to run counter to the views of some U.S. military experts. A secret Air Force report prepared in 1965 for General William Westmoreland, then the U.S. commander in South Viet Nam, concluded that —moral considerations aside—Hanoi's flood-control system could probably not be destroyed by conventional bombing because of the system's massiveness and complexity.
As it happens, Nixon's denial that the dikes were being deliberately bombed was backed up last week by a not-always-friendly source, Columnist Joseph Kraft. During his own current tour of North Viet Nam, Kraft reasoned that if the U.S. Air Force were "truly going after the dikes, it would do so in a methodical, not a harum-scarum way." Summarized Kraft: "I have to conclude from what I have seen that there is no deliberate American drive to bomb the dikes. But the dikes do run parallel to many roads. Some are close to railroad tracks and bridges." Inevitably, some dikes have been hit in error, Kraft believes, and the damage—also inevitably —has been exploited by the North Vietnamese for propaganda purposes.
Kraft's conclusion more or less supports what U.S. officials have been saying. They have maintained that the dikes were not being "targeted," but have admitted that a few dikes near military targets have been damaged accidentally. At week's end the State Department released the results of a photo-reconnaissance of the entire Red River Delta taken in mid-July. The survey, said the department, revealed bomb craters at only twelve locations in the dike system—ten of them near petroleum storage tanks, and all relatively minor. Insisted State flatly: "The evidence shows conclusively that there has been no intentional bombing of the dikes."
Nonetheless, a great many people remained unconvinced—especially in light of the recent shocking disclosure that Air Force Lieut. General John Lavelle had for four months defied White House directives and sent U.S. bombers to hit unauthorized targets. More light may soon be cast on the question by the witness of an eight-man international team that last week flew from Moscow for a two-week fact-finding trip through North Viet Nam. Among its members: Sean McBride, the respected Irish jurist who is head of Amnesty International, and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark.