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Oil Company Pay Off

By VVAW

(The following short article comes from UPI and was datelined "Washington." It may well have appeared in your local newspaper, but we include it here just in case you missed it.)

Truck drivers making deliveries in South Vietnam for U.S. oil companies routinely avoided sabotage by paying off Viet Cong guerrillas with fuel that was then used in the fight against allied troops, a declassified CIA report shows.

The previously top-secret study was prepared in 1966 for former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and recently released for Gen. William Westmoreland's $120 million libel suit against CBS Inc.

It appears to partially confirm reports of payoffs during the war, which have long been denied by Exxon, Mobil and Shell.

A Shell spokesman said yesterday there was "no way to know" what the truck drivers did. Mobil had no immediate comment and an Exxon spokesman said his company was aware of the problem but denied any complicity.