“I’m a five-star mother,” noted a matron calmly. “I want to stand up for my God and my country,” said a young hard-hat. “We are presenting the Lord … because this is a Christian nation and we want to keep it that way,” said one over-45 woman. And they clamored for it in the context of their religious faith: They wanted peace-through an immediate military win. Once again they reverberated with the tramping soles of Americans, but these marched to the tune of a different drummer. The marble and macadam of the nation’s capital often echo with the noise of demonstrations (there had already been 193 this year). who marched and rallied to demand immediate U. Who were the estimated 15,000 to 20,000 McIntire partisans McIntire kept insisting the following week that attendance had been at least 200,000, and that the rally marked the beginning of a spiritual revival in the United States. McIntire told the rally Ky’s brief text was not the full one he had seen earlier when he visited Ky in Paris. It was a contrast to the impassioned speeches of McIntire, who was flanked by Tulsa’s Billy James Hargis, and other conservative speakers on the platform. Ky’s speech, finally read to the applauding crowd by a Vietnamese embassy under-secretary, was mild it failed to attack the Nixon administration or the present course of the war. It could develop engine trouble and go back to Paris at the last minute.” Moments before the turn-around report, the third secretary of the South Vietnamese embassy in Washington mysteriously told a Washington Post reporter: “Maybe the plane cannot come. Bundy, executive director of the Church League of America and McIntire’s press officer for the rally, disclosed that an anonymous phone caller from Paris said the “engine trouble” was actually an order from the French government recalling the plane. Ky then decided against reboarding, accounts said. Half an hour out, Air France reported, the plane developed engine trouble and had to return to Orly Airport. When her plane turned back, McIntire declared he saw the hand of God in all things. The afternoon papers strained to get the New Fact into headlines. Then, at the eleventh hour, McIntire played his trump: With Madame Ky, wife of the vice-president, safely tucked aboard Air France flight 5017 from Paris to New York (so McIntire thought), he crowed to a gathering at the Pentagon that she would give Ky’s speech the next day. When publicity slackened two days before the rally (it had become obvious that McIntire had lost his Ky), the radio preacher grabbed the headlines again by doubling his already inflated boast that half a million marchers would come to Washington. Ky, remaining in Paris, said only that he had decided not to attend because “my presence may lead to unrest and violence.…” Accusing the administration of violating free speech by preventing Ky’s appearance, McIntire scolded President Nixon for being out of the country on the rally day, saying it was to sidestep political embarrassment. “Nixon is responsible himself … for keeping Ky from speaking to us,” McIntire told the audience massed at the Washington Monument October 3. ![]() Who would have thought a 64-year-old fundamentalist preacher would come within a star and a stripe of coaxing the hawkish vice-president of South Viet Nam to address a victory rally in the capital of the United States? When McIntire announced a month before the rally that Nguyen Cao Ky would speak, he sent usually unflappable political Washington reeling.Īnd Ky’s cold feet only confirmed what McIntire already suspected: Nixon didn’t want to win in Viet Nam. McIntire told reporters the rally was everything he had hoped for, and more. ![]() Never mind that the attendance was but a fraction of what he predicted the redoubtable Mr. Once again the Collingswood warrior demonstrated his formidable mettle this month as he led the highly publicized Viet Nam Victory March in Washington, D. ![]() And he knows how to use the press he constantly berates for “misinterpreting, maligning, and slandering” him. The onetime United Presbyterian clergyman knows how to milk dollars and disciples out of an issue. ![]() His lightning on the right sparks his vast radio empire and his pulpit ministry. And though he probably would deny it, he thrives on turbulence. The Reverend Carl McIntire can stir up a controversy with a twitch of an eyebrow he draws flak like a lightning rod draws zaps. Time magazine once said that everything he touches “turns to schism.”īut even his sharpest accusers seldom underestimate his prowess. His critics call him a flaccid-faced fundamentalist, a sower of dissension in the churches, and a religious bigot.
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