SECRET
NS 76/76/988
ECLIPSE
9th May, 1975.
D/%
Renors of US Special Study Mission
South East Asia, 27th December 1974 - January 9th, 1975
12
By a circuitous route (in fact, from Adrian Cowell in . Washington to Geoff Barnes in PHQ), I have received a copy of the
above-mentioned report, plus statements on it to Loster Wolff's Sub-Committee, by the following:-
Ambassador Sheldon Vance
(a)
(b)
John R. Bartels
(c) Adrian Cowell
(d) David A. Feingold.
Photostat copies of all the above are enclosed. You will note that the Report has the unmistakeable stamp of Lester Wolff, and is couched in language that at times verges on the emotional and melodramatic. It is critical of both the State Department and the Burmese Government, but we come in for some rather laudatory comments, albeit in a rather patronising way.
I rang Keith Shostrom this morning and, without divulging that I had a copy, said that I had heard that the Mission had made a report to Congress, and could he let me have three or four copies. In reply Keith stated that he had not yet received it himself, although he knew it existed; he promised to telex Washington for copies,
î In Adrian Corell's letter, he said that the opium purchase project had come to a head recently in a congressional hearing. Various statements other than those enclosed, and all the cross-questioning, have not yet been typed, but he thinks they will be published in a final report in June 1975.
Cowell said that what does not come out in the state- ments is how weak the State Department case appeared under cross- questioning, and that Vance was so hard pressed that he eventually agreed to present the Shan proposals to the United Nations. Cowell also sent the attached press cutting which reveals that Wolff and his Congressional Committee expect the United Nations to reject them, thereupon they will move to cancel the United States contribution to the United Nations Narcotics Control Commission when it comes up for renewal before the Committee on International Relations in one month's time. Presumably, the protagonists hope that a compromise solution will eventually be found.
J.P. Law, Esq., Q.P.M., C.P.M., Counsellor for Hong Kong Affairs, British Embassy,
BANGKOK,
SECRET
ECLIPSE
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