The Payoff

To the Editors:

Renata Adler makes a good point in her article in your December 8 issue. It is indeed better if investigative reporters cite their sources by name.

I am amused that when she feels called upon to do the same herself, she cites herself. That circumstance is made necessary by the fact that her own conjecture is the only known authority for her statement that the Nixon administration was paid to stay in Vietnam.

Her article in the December 1976 Atlantic was based entirely on speculation and has not been confirmed by any developments that have come to my attention in the year since its publication.

I have no doubt that the Vietnam government might have been willing to pay the Nixon administration to continue the war, and the Nixon administration might have been willing to accept such a payment. But I know of no evidence that such a payment was actually made.

Richard M. Weiss

St. Louis, Missouri