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CIA GLOOMY OVER VIETNAM from Dave Windsor The Sunday Telegraph of February 25 had an extremely interesting article from its Washington correspondent, Stephen Barber, which gave a real = sight into the demoralising effect of recent events in Vietnam on the administration: ‘The CIA it is learned, is getting much rloomier information from its men about the situation than that relayed by the State ree partment to the White House from Saigon. Mr. Richard Helms , the CIA's ‘ director, is reported to have said that the wer ‘could last 100 years the way it is going now'. CIA chiefs are said to have given repeated warnings against over-Americanising the war. They say too little pressure has been put en the Saigon authorities to clean up the more outrageous forms of corruption in which officials have been involved. 'Bickering has broken out in the capital with a new vehemence, It is not just between the hawks and doves, but among people who have hitherts kept cooler, In the Senate, the Foreign Relations Committee, headed by the anti-Vietnam dove, Senator Fulbright, has voiced serious doubts as to whether it and the public were told the full truth about the Tonkin Bay naval incidents in August 1964. The incidents served as Mr. Johnson's pretext for calling for a congressional resolution. He has treated this as.carte blanche for escalating the war ever since. The doves charge that the American destroyer Maddox was on a spy mission and provoked atteck by the North Vietnamese gunboats, In turn this led te Mr. Johnsen's ordering naval air strikes. Some hawks also feel that while the President may have been justified, he acted too hastily. Significant rumblings of discontent have appeared in sections of the American Press, On February 23, the Wall Street Journal had an outright defeat#st editorial, It said the American people should be getting ready to accept the prospect that the whole Vietnam effort was donmed. 'It may be falling apart beneath our feet', the article went on. It dismissed the idea that the Communists were at their last gasp, The newspaper added: 'Let no one blink the fact that it will be a disaster .. a stunning blow to the US and the West in the larger struggle with international Communism.' Life magazine said in its editorial: ‘wherever we look, something's wrong.' The magazine referred to humiliating doubts as to the usefulness of America's military might as an instrument of Asian policy. Considerable attention was paid, too, in the Life article and elsewhere te the remarks that week of America's former Ambassador to Japan, Prof Edwin 0. Reischauer, He made them in a television discussion. Prof Reischauer said it was time for America's policy makers to realise we have lost this war in terms of what was our original objective. The obiective hed been te prove that ‘so-called wars of national liberation do not pay'. The speaker had hitherto argued in favour of resisting Communist guerilla infiltration tactics in Asia. He now feels this policy failed because the wrong metheds were adopted. Hardly less gloomy have been the utterances of such hardheaded academic hawks as Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski, until recently a leading Johnsonian in the State Department's Policy Planning Council, He told the US News and Wérld Report that there would be no ‘clearcut victory in Vietnam, He declared that 'for the rest of the century' America would be involved,"