May 6: Senator Fulbright was told: “In short, no arms have been provided since the beginning of the crisis and the question of deliveries is under review,”
May 8: The Sonderbans. a Pakistani ship carrying arms to Pakistan, sailed from New York, without public announcement or public knowledge.
June 17: The State Department told reporters, as reported in this newspaper the next day that “no deliveries of military equipment have been made to Pakistan since
March 25, when the fighting began."
June 22: The department, responding to story in the New York Times, acknowledged that two shiploads of arms were going to Pakistan and explained that they had been licensed before March 25. The same day the second ship, the Padma, sailed.
Six days later: The administration said it would allow further shipments of military material if licensed before March 25. The first reason cited was to apply “leverage” to induce the Pakistan Government (1) to bring about a political accommodation in East Pakistan (it has yet to do so) and (2) to take back the six million refugees who had fled to India (the flight continues, according to report, at a 40,000-a-day rate). The second reason cited by the administration-which had earlier downgraded use of American arms in the carnage by saying Soviet, Chinese and British arms also were used-was to discourage Pakistan from shifting to other arms suppliers.
June 29: It was revealed that four or five more arms ships were scheduled. The Kaptai sailed July 2.
This is, we submit, an astonishing and shameful record, with two meanings. The first is that, for the shabbiest of political reasons, the United State is supplying military equipment to a brutal regime that has killed an estimated 200,000 of its citizens and driven some six million others out of their country. The second meaning must be read in the context of the current controversy over the Pentagon Papers. which turns on the public right to know and the government's right to conceal. Here we have a classic example of how the System really works; hidden from public scrutiny, administration officials have been supplying arms to Pakistan while plainly and persistently telling the public that such supplies were cut off. We assume that this deception is due to a combination of organizational confusion and bureaucratic dissimulation and not to deliberate deceit. The fact is: arms ships still sail. It is up to the President to stop them- assuming the government is serious about its proclaimed policy.
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