Wheeler Upset By Execution

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31597, 7 February 1968, Page 13

Wheeler Upset By Execution

(N.Z. Press Association-Copyright)

WASHINGTON, February 6.

General Earle Wheeler, chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff, yesterday deplored the publicised summary execution of a Viet Cong officer but suggested it occurred “more in a flash of outrage” than in cold blood.

General Wheeler expressed a “sense of revulsion at Barbarous acts and summary executions” in a letter to Mr Henry Reuss, a Democrat member of the House of Representatives from Wisconsin, who protested that the Saigon killing was “horrible.”

General Wheeler told Mr Reuss he conferred with General William Westmoreland about the matter on Saturday and was assured of “his wholehearted efforts to bring such isolated occurrences to a complete halt.” General Wheeler told Mr a copy of a directive from General Westmoreland, dated last November 2, listing examples of prohibited war crimes.

Among them was “killing spies or other persons who have committed hostile acts without trial.”

The directive applied to United States military and civilian staff in Vietnam. The Wheeler-Reuss exchange was prompted by the execution of a captured enemy soldier in front pf reporters by the south Vietnamese police chief, Briga-dier-General Nguyen Ngoc Loan.

Brigadier-General Loan was photographed as he shot the prisoner last Thursday. Explaining, Brigadier-Gen-eral Loan said: “They killed many Americans and many of my people.” Mr Reuss wrote to General Wheeler that such an act “carries the terrible risk that our prisoners in the hands of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong will be exposed to retaliatory brutality.” In his reply, General Wheeler noted that in recent days large numbers of South Vietnamese civilians had been Jeft “dead, maimed and homeless because of acts of the North Vietnamese Army and the cynically-named National Liberation Front.” Referring then to the execution, General Wheeler said: “While I am distressed at such a happening I would suggest that the act was performed more in a flash of outrage than in cold blood, as some have asserted.” Six execution stakes at Saigon’s central market have been removed, leading to speculation that the United States Embassy pressed the South Vietnamese Government into being less gruesome In its handling of captured Viet Cong.

The posts had been put up at the central market, a traditional spot for public executions, after the Viet Cong began their widespread attacks and raids on the capital city itself last week.

The stakes were never used, but there have been reports of on-the-spot executions of captured Viet Cong in city streets and even executions without trial of Viet Cong held in Saigon prisons.