McCarthy Attacks Nixon's Corruption

Former Senator Eugene J. McCarthy, (D-Minn.), on the McGovern campaign trail, denounced yesterday the public's "indifference" to alleged corruption in the Nixon administration.

McCarthy appeared at a rally sponsored by the Concerned Clergy for McGovern-Shriver, a division of the Massachusetts Committee to elect McGovern. McCarthy told an audience of 500 in Faneuil Hall that this is "the first administration in which public officials were not condemned for accepting bribes."

McCarthy said the public's indifference to scandal was matched by its apathy toward poverty, injustice and the bombing of Vietnam "which the public accepts because they believe it will get us out of Vietnam."

McCarthy attacked Nixon and former President Lyndon Johnson for blaming their part in the Vietnamese war on "obligations made by former administrations." McCarthy said McGovern would end that obligation.

"We act as though John Foster Dulles were still signing us up to clean up the world," he said.

The Nixon administration distorts its language to disguise its deeds. McCarthy said. "The invasion in Cambodia wasn't an invasion, it was an incursion."

McCarthy, who was introduced by Martin Peretz, assistant professor of Social Studies and McCarthy's chief campaign contributer in 1968, was given a standing ovation.

Other speakers at the rally included Harvey Cox. professor of Divinity at Harvard and Frances Fitzgerald, author of Fire in the Lake and former Vietnam correspondent in 1967-8.

Fitzgerald denounced the chasm created by technology between war crimes and their perpetrators. "Pilots flying over Vietnam are to busy eating ham sandwiches and listening to baseball scores to see what they're doing," she said.

Cox "praised" Nixon's running mate as "a man of excellent qualities," and said he looked forward to working in the Nixon campaign in any of three divisions--" espionage, forgery or phony demonstrating.