United States marines yesterday captured the last remaining bit of high ground commanding the strategic battle position near the isolated Khesanh airstrip and valley. In all, the campaign had taken 12 days and cost the units in the area almost half their combat troops in dead and wounded. Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the American commander in Vietnam, toured the area and said he did not believe the fighting had ended there.
President Johnson is spending a long weekend of work and rest at his Texas ranch. Part of his work included reading the first report from Ellsworth Bunker, new ambassador in Saigon, on the situation In Vietnam. The report told of continued progress in the battle against inflation and an encouraging turnout in recent village elections.
In Washington, several members of the House Armed Services Committee demanded that the Justice Department disregard the First Amendment right of free speech and begin prosecuting those who urge young men to defy the draft. They mentioned recent statements by the Negro civil rights leaders Stokcly Carmichael and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
In Moscow, a publishing house spokesman said that the Soviet Union was planning to publish a children’s book of biblical stories retold from a nonreligious point of view. The book, scheduled for fall publication, is to be called The Tower of Babel.
A high official of the ruling military junta in Athens has urged the United States to help the nation s economy to prevent Greece from falling to the Communists. Meanwhile, Washington is continuing to supply military assistance to Greece at a rate of more than $70-million a year.
The Kentucky Derby may turn out to be just a horse race and not a civil rights demonstration. It was learned in Louisville that civil rights leaders, despite a wide split in viewpoint, have agreed to abandon their threat to disrupt the race and substitute a protest march In the downtown area.
Appearing in New York City for a fundraising luncheon, the House Republican loader. Gerald R. Ford, predicted that the 1968 convention would select a moderate as its candidate and that the party would be united “as never before.”
