Nixon Visits Saigon In Strict Security

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32054, 31 July 1969, Page 15

Nixon Visits Saigon In Strict Security

<N ZP.A -Reuter—Copyright) BANGKOK, July 30. President Nixon had landed in Saigon for a secrecycloaked one-day visit during which he would talk with President Nguyen Van Thieu, of South Vietnam, and speak to American troops, authoritative sources said.

A communications black-out was imposed on the President’s movements in South Vietnam. Accompanied by his wife. President Nixon took off in mid-morning from Bangkok after a two-day official visit Although his destination was well known, no official announcement was made in Bangkok.

The President was scheduled to return to Bangkok later today. The British Broadcasting Corporation reported that the President’s jet liner landed at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut airport at 12.01 p.m., local time. The South Vietnamese Government imposed the communications black-out, as it did when President Johnson visited Vietnam in 1966 and 1967.

N.Z.P.A.-Reuter reported that the communications

.black-out blocked all cable, I telex and telephone circuits Ito the outside world. i The President and his wife were accompanied on the plane by General Creighton Abrams, the United States

troop commander in Vietnam, and Mr Ellsworth Bunker, the United States Ambassador to Saigon. Some 8000 police were put on alert in the South Vietnam capital and were rein-: forced by paratroopers around the Presidential palace in the heart of the city. \ Security measures—including searches of cars and taxis by armed troops—were particularly tight round Saigon’s sprawling airport. The airport, one of the busiest civilian terminals in the world, is also headquarters for the United States military assistance command in South Vietnam, the top American military policy-making body in the country. Informed Vietnamese sources also expected President Nixon to visit the big Bien Hoa air base 15 miles north-east of Saigon to say goodbye to some 750 troops due to leave today as part of the United States phased withdrawal from the country. The President’s trip gives him an opportunity to brief President Thieu on his talks with other Asian leaders in the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand.