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derivative filename/jpeg
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363-07699 to 363-07706.pdf
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Digital Object Identifier
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363-07699 to 363-07706
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Title
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Article about the delay of President Lyndon Johnson's rural electrification project
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Description
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Keever's title: "Even President Johnson isn't 'an authority' in his pet rural electrification project: Disgruntled American", article about the delay of President Lyndon Johnson's pet rural electrification project, for the New York Herald Tribune
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AI Usage Disclosure
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Draft transcripts were automatically generated via Google Document AI and are currently under review. Please report significant errors to Archives & Special Collections at archives@unl.edu.
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Transcript
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(Morgan Gandy)
SAIGON 11200 (UPIS) President Lyndon Johnson's pot
projet of low-cost rural electrification for Vietnamese
peasant villagers has encountered "delay after delay" here
targ LED
within the named American bureaucratic red-tape and
in-fighting.
As a result of the "deliberate" bureaucratic delays,
one American official said villagers this week threw stones
at him in An Giang Province where the Vietnamese rural folk
had been promised cooperative electricity months ago-but
had yet to receive it.
American and Vietnamese officials have waged a tooth-
and-nail fight to push through the President's plan for
low-cost cooperative rural electricity for more than a
quarter million Vietnamese villagers and peasants in
Tuyen Duc, Dien Hoa and An Giang provinces,
(MORE - MALLOY
- FD)
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- Page 2
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first add-morgan gandy-saigon
x x x an giang provinces x x x.
One high-placed American official became so angered
by the bureaucratic delays that he considered resigning--
but didn't. Another considered writing to his home
Congressman, "but these bureaucrats even have Congress
under their thumb." The intra-mural American in-fighting
once became so intense that American officials threatened
each other with calling in Congressional investigations.
"The program had the support of all the high-level
Washington officials and the high-level and low-level
Saigon officials, both American and Vietnamese," the source
explained. "But the middle-echelon career bureaucrats who
1er stay in Saigon and never see the countryside caused
delay after delay. The source explained that the opposition
to the President's plan mirrors the lengthy, bitter
controversery within the United Sates about electric power
ownership--the conflicting interests between public power
(federal, state or city-owned), private power (such as
Con Edison in New York), and cooperative ownership--the
Profident's plan for Vietnam--in which private citizens
collectively form and join a cooperative, for establishing in
this and managing electricity distribution in rural areas.
(More Malloy--BD)
And
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second add-morgan gandy-saigon
I I X rural areas XXI.
This latter method has been used to electrify large
chunks of rural America during the past three decades.
In 1955, President Johnson directly helped organize the
PEDERNALES REPEAT PEDERNALES, Texas, rural electrification
cooperative.
The LBJ ranch is supplied electricity from this cooperative.
A high-placed source detailed the American rod-tape
in Saigon.
DINOSA
"The American bureaucracy here is a due with a little
hoad and an outmoded lumbering body," one high-placed source
explained. "Even with the approval of the President and a
five-million dollar appropriation from Congress, the middle-
level bureaucrats threw up block after block and then
counter-block to stop the program. The bureaucrats ask
thousands of questions--and it takes thousands of hours
to answer the question, then so we lost time day by day.
5/
(MOPE - MALLOY - BD)
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- Page 4
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third add-morgan gandy-saigon
x x x day by day x x x .
"So you write a memo to explain the project and some
bureaucratic hides it in his bottom desk drawer for a week and
you have to go persuade him gently to pull it out," the source
continued. "Then he refers it to another department for
signatures or counter-signatures and you lose more time.
"The American agencies all have manual after manual defining
the relationship of everyone to everyone else--so whenever
someone wants to do something, there's always a rule to stop
you," the source continued.
"One American bureaucrat pulled out the manual and pointed
to the rule prohibiting me to do something. I said 'I don't
The
care about the rules--I want to help wim the war here.'
'I do care about the rules--and
Saigon bureaucrat told me,
that's all I care about. My job is to watch the rules.'
(a recent management survey team has recommended the
ro-organization of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
(AID) in Saigon.
Saigon).
(MORE MALLOY - BD)
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fourth add-morgan gandy-saigon
x x x in saigon). = = =
The program began in April, 1965, when President
Johnson sent a six-man study group to Vietnam, to analyso
the feasibility of low-cost cooperative power in the countryside
and how the engineering should be handled.
"Forty six days later the President had annouced the
projects and we were floored things were moving so fast,"
one source explained. "Then we got the five-million dollar
FARMARKED
Congressional appropriation for the three-province
project in Vietnam and it really looked like things were
flying high.
Then
"A11 wo had to do was to get our engineering equipment
in here and we could begin construction in November.
the President announced we'd being construction in November
and the Vietnamese villagers were also told that.
(More-alloy-10)
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fifth add-morgan gandy-saigon
x x x told that x x I.
"But what we were too unsophisticated to realize was
this skilled, shrewd, vicious oppositionists, who with
back-kniving, with asking questions blocked us for month
after month. The 'outs' threw blocks and counter-blocks
in front of us, tossing papers from department to department.
"Other things happened I wouldn't even dream of telling
you," the source explained.
"I've been fighting for this program for nine months,"
the source explained, "And I've never had such a frustrating
experience in my life. I'm used to smooth operations--
but this American bureaucracy is just incredible. It's
not the fault of the directors of agencies--it's the system,
it's the instability and the emotionalism.
"We're still going to win this war, but we don't
deserve win the way we're operating now."
(More Malloy BD)
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sixth add-morgan gandy-saigon
x x x operating' now x x x
An example of one of the delays in the program was the
construction of a plant to manufacture and treat the wooden Piv
poles that would be used in the rural electrification along
two HUNDRED
miles and miles of Vietnam's countryside (y miles in
Tuyen Duc provinco, 155 miles northwest of Saigon, for example).
The standard price of the cement polos generally used in
Vietnam was one hundred thirty five unistates dollars per pole,
"which is alright in the gold-plated French system of
supplying power at a high price," the source explained.
"But it was too expensive for the low-cost operations we
wanted. So we found three hundred thousand /of treatable pine
We flew in an
trees in the highlands that could be used.
expert from Washington who said the timber was good and could
be effectively treated against the weather and the insects,
So this plant for the pinetree poles would have dropped the
cost from one hundred thirty five dollars per pole to fifteen
or sixteen dollars per pole.
"But we had to fight the bureaucrats for seven months to
get this plant," the source continued. "Even with the advice
85
2n
expert one bureaucrat wanted us to scrap the whole
idea and come up with another way to manufacture the poles.
(More-Malloy BD)
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seventh add-morgan gandy--saigon
x x x the poles x x x .
"We kept running into blocks and red-tape like this,"
continued "Today wa
the source
in February we are exactly where we should
have been in September with that pole plant. Our materials-transformers,
nuts and bolts, are just now beginning to leave the United States
for Vietnamese seaports.
"SO,
now it will be at least six months before we begin construction--
which the President said would begin in November last year. Obviously,
even he isn't an authority on his own project."
As a stop-gep measure about three hundred electric light poles have
been shipped to Vietnam from Taiwan.
"We call these 'off the hooks poles' to get the President off the
hook he got himself on by saying we'd begin construction in November.
These will be installed as aye symbolic act for the Vietnamese people-
but they still won't have the electric lines up."
thevie
exp
One source joked that in Vietnam elephants could be used to plant
the treated poles in the ground. Another source e specifically
repérem recommended an elephant named 'Ong Nhu' (Mr. Nhu), which once
belonged to Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu and was "nationalized" after the Diem
regime fell.
"But we
didn't think the President would approve of using any
elephant in any form-including 'Ong Nhu'," the source explained.
(Note to oditors: informatively, other specials also working on
RESE
same pieces on rural electrification.)
EnditMalloy-BD
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Date
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1966, Feb. 11
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Subject
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Vietnam War, 1961-1975; Economic assistance; Lansdale, Edward Geary, 1908-1987; Electric utilities; Rural electrification; Electricity in military engineering; Civilians in war; Psychological warfare
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Location
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Saigon, South Vietnam
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Coordinates
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10.8231; 106.6311
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Size
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20 x 26 cm
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Container
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B188, F3
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Format
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dispatches
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Collection Number
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MS 363
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Collection Title
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Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers
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Creator
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Collector
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Copyright Information
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These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.
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Publisher
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Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
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Language
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English
