More on the prisoners of war: Air Force Major Philip Smith, shot down over Red China nearly eight years ago, says he too was tortured and beaten. His treatment didn’t improve until the Kissinger-Nixon visits to Peking. . . . Brig. Gen. John Flynn, the highestranking U.S. prisoner of the North Vietnamese, says he and other senior officers will study the conduct of the POWs with a view toward possible revisions of the Code of Conduct (for prisoners of war). Flynn says he was brought to a point where if they had told him to shoot his mother “I probably would have done so.” . . . When Lt. Commander John McCain III refused to see “foreign visitors”—he believes they were Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden—he was beaten, an arm and leg were broken, ribs cracked, teeth knocked out. He refused at the time to accept a “propaganda release.” . . . Jane Fonda has been declared persona non grata by the Maryland state legislature, and moves are under way in both Colorado and Tennessee to censure her for calling some returning POWs “war criminals, not heroes.” . . . When Tom Hayden testified for the defense in the Ellsberg-Russo trial he identified himself as a college teacher, lecturer, and organizer. He’s teaching a course on the Pentagon Papers at the Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles, he says. . . . Another former peace activist and Chicago Seven defendant, Rennie Davis, has split with politics according to the College Press Service and become a disciple of 15year-old Guru Maharj Ji. According to CPS, when Davis gets back from Guruland he intends to set up a nationwide chain of Divine Light Sales stores to spread the lighght.
Upcoming political races: F. Clifton White has signed on as campaign consultant for Rep. Charles Sandman, a conservative Republican who will challenge New Jersey’s Republican Gov. William Cahill in the June 5 primary. Sandman is given fair to good chance of upsetting Cahill, whose administration has not been scandal-free. . . . Both the Kennedy- and the McGovernites moving in on Republican Sen. Peter Dominick in Colorado. Former RFK aide Joe Dolan says he’s interested in running against Dominick next year as is Gary Hart, the McGovern “whizkid” campaign manager.
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