Official Denies Administration is Withholding Essential Information from Public

A State Department official disputed here today charges that the State Department was flouting the American people’s “right to know” and that the public was being denied the “essential facts” concerning Vietnam, the Middle East and other troubled areas. The charges were made yesterday before the 39th annual convention of the National Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs by Arthur D. Morse, author of “While Six Million Died.” The reply today was by Mrs. Charlotte Hubbard, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs.

“The United States faces very great and complex problems,” she said, “among them the security of Southeast Asia and the achievement of stability in the Middle East. It is inevitable that some people should feel that the Government is not giving out all the facts. If all the facts are not being given out, it is equally true that the essential facts are being reported and disclosed. The public’s right to know is being respected and the U.S. Government is taking the people into its confidence on vital issues.”

Rabbi Samuel I. Teplitz of Woodmere, L.I., in a vigorous defense of student dissent on college campuses, told the convention that this dissent “deserved the respect of serious Americans everywhere.” While he deplored violent manifestations, he said the student protests were “reassuring evidence of the intellectual and spiritual health of today’s college generation.” He declared that “the students are calling us to account. They are demanding answers from a social order and a social milieu that tolerate racial injustice, poverty and double standards of sexual morality.”

Rabbi Edward Sandrow, former president of the New York Board of Rabbis, urged American Jews to “recapture and retain the deep religious spirit of Israel’s victory” last June. He noted that “even skeptics sensed the prevalence of Providence” in that victory and he urged that “the passage of time ought not to blunt that most majestic confrontation.”