5

soreheaded ex-employee. Yet it is unimaginable to the
uninitiated that a book by a Pulitzer Prize reporter could
contain a lie or distortion on practically every page.
Moreover Hersh has cleverly put reviewers on the
defensive by claiming that one of his purposes is to expose
my manipulations of the press so that no one wants to appear
as being taken in. And he has cynically mixed attacks from
the left with appeals to the right. The conventional--if
grotesquely distorted--Vietnam critique is coupled with an
assault on SALT negotiations as misleading as it is difficult
to rebut for the non-expert. (I am enclosing an unsolicited
letter from a former staff member whom I have not seen or
talked to in ten years to illustrate this point.)

Uncheckable "facts", out of context, suppression of all
contrary evidence brew a poison that seeps out first as a
(though Hoffman is a well known critic)
news story, then as a summary in good faith by reviewers/
finally through columnists eager to prove their own well-

6

established prejudices. Sidney Shanberg alleges--
presumably on the basis of Hersh--that I instructed
subordinates to lie about refugee figures in Cambodia.
(I have no idea to what he is referring but the basic
allegation cannot be true.) Tony Lewis repeats every
charge as if no doubt is permissible so long as I am the target.
It takes a special case of paranoia to believe that guards
were placed by me on a Pentagon command center to keep out
the Secretary of Defense (how?); that I circumvented the chain
of command in giving orders to field commanders; that I
personally selected the targets--even the flights plans--
for Cambodia bombing. And to have Hersh backed by Lewis
assault me from the right for "flaws" in SALT agreements never
previously discovered even by such competent critics of SALT
as Scoop Jackson carries the "end justifies the means" to
McCarthyite lengths. What "improvements" were possible;
were they worth the risk of procrastinating? Any serious

ly

7

study deserves an answer to such questions.

I am not saying that the Times has been unusually severe; if anything it has been more careful than others. But it has a special position of influence; its standards set the tone. Its newsstory on my role in the '68 race, as contained in Terrence Smith's story of June 13 did a fair amount of damage. For example, the largest German Sunday paper--Die Welt am Sonntag--of June 19 used the story to buttress Hersh's account. This is especially the case because Smith had no axes to grind; I know him to be fair. And I do not suspect him of a desire to collaborate in a hatchet job. The question all this raises is what in the system of current media ethics prevents--and indeed what abets--the exposure of the kind of character assassination being practiced by Hersh.

The come-on, the bait of Hersh's book is for once relatively straightforward. The charge is that I maneuvered with both camps to be appointed security adviser. Hersh alleges that

8

I offered Humphrey through Brzezinski Rockefeller's "dirty shit files" on Nixon; the quotes are presumably to suggest my actual language. I allegedly offered Nixon "secret" information from the Paris peace negotiations to which I was a consultant; Nixon in turn used this to seek to block the negotiating process by dealing with Thieu behind Johnson's back. I called the Humphrey charge a "slimey lie". I had already dealt with my relations with the Nixon campaign in my memoirs. That is what Smith set out to investigate. It is important to me beyond Hersh's credibility for it happens to involve my honor.

I can understand the reporter's quest for "facts". But there are some intangibles that are surely significant.

It is true that in later years Humphrey occasionally stated that I would have been his security adviser had he won in 1968. If so, that was not due to non-existent services in his campaign but to a friendship already several years

9

old in 1968 and destined to grow in warmth until his death.

In 1968 I did not need Brzezinski as a conduit to Humphrey
nor was duplicity the way to gain Humphrey's respect.

There is more than a remote possibility that in this
whole episode Brzezinski was promoting himself. However
let me confine myself to the "facts" contained in Smith's
story freed from the dramatic gloss with which Smith
embellishes them.

a. No "dirty shit" file on Nixon was maintained by the
Rockefeller organization. There was only a collection of
clippings of Nixon's published foreign policy pronouncements
of 1967 and 1968 which the record will show were rather
skimpy.

b. Brzezinski, by his own account, _initiated_ a call to
me shortly after the Republican convention which nominated
Nixon, to solicit my opinion on an arms control paper being
prepared for Humphrey. In the event he never sent me the

[y]

10

paper and I never commented on it.

c. During the conversation Brzezinski claims I offered some unspecified files from the Rockefeller campaign.

d. Smith notes that Humphrey's close associates Kampelman and Ginsburg never heard of the alleged offer, and that both find it inconceivable that it would have been made without their knowledge. To the same effect he could also have cited Humphrey's Chief of Staff, Bill Connell, Dwayne Andreas, and his friend and biographer, Dr. Edgar Berman, whose names I gave to Smith but whom he chose not to contact.

e. Brzezinski says that he waited four weeks before asking for the files--in itself unlikely--and was then rebuffed by a secretary who told him I was now "aligned with Nixon." That a secretary would have dismissed Brzezinski in so cursory a manner is not credible; that Brzezinski would have accepted so cursory a dismissal is even less credible.

[Y]

11

f. Every other witness cited by Smith acknowledges having heard of the alleged file incident from Brzezinski; none claims any independent knowledge.

With what are we then left--even should one believe Brzezinski's unlikely version? Confusion about a single phone call which might have led to an honest misunderstanding? No other contact between me and the Humphrey camp on *any* subject. A notification by a secretary to the Humphrey people that I was aligned with Nixon--a strange way to promote myself.

Because these "facts" could not possibly support the charge that I would stoop to anything to curry favor with Humphrey, a bold-faced lie has been concocted to the effect that I wrote a letter to Humphrey late in the campaign expressing my abiding distaste for Nixon, my high regard for Humphrey and offering my services to a Humphrey administration.

Brzezinski's own statements undermine that invention.

12

Can anyone believe that within four weeks of notifying
the Humphrey camp that I was "aligned" with Nixon--to use
Brzezinski's phrase--I would announce a reversal? Why
would I wish to reiterate my regard for Humphrey of which
he was well aware? Even if public figures have lost the
presumption of morality they must be given some credit
for a minimum of intelligence and prudence. No such letter
has been found; no other witness claims to have seen it.

Let me now turn to the Nixon allegation. The remarkable
aspect is that I had covered it already in _White House
Years_ (p. ___) and Nixon in _RN_ (p. ___) without attracting
any particular attention.

Again some intangibles may be in order. I have always
avowed that until he appointed me security adviser I shared
the academic community's prejudice against Nixon. In August
1968 both Rockefeller and I were deeply disappointed by
the outcome of the Republican convention and chagrined

[y]

13

by the conduct of some of the Nixon forces there. Nevertheless
during August Rockefeller decided--and I agreed--that he
would not repeat his dog-in-the-manger attitude of 1968
and work instead for the Republican ticket. He approached
Nixon and Mitchell; I contacted my friend Bill Buckley
to offer my cooperation. Buckley arranged a meeting between
me and Mitchell which took place around September 11. (I
left for Europe on September 12 and the Nixon files show
a Mitchell memo of that day.)

As it turned out Mitchell was primarily interested in
the likelihood of a bombing halt. I was somewhat of an
expert on the subject having visited Vietnam three times
and more relevantly having conducted a secret negotiation
for a bombing halt on behalf of the Johnson administration
a year earlier. That negotiation was not an assignment
given to me. I originated it by digging up a French
acquaintance who had once sheltered Ho Chi Minh and was

14

willing to travel to Hanoi at his own expense. I was never
a consultant to the Paris negotiation as Hersh claims,
much less to Johnson as he asserts on talk shows; most
of my knowledge derived from the previous year's experience.

That convinced me that the real gap was relatively small
and that a bombing halt was likely before the election--
if only to commit both candidates (especially Nixon) to
it. I urged Mitchell that Nixon not oppose the effort
and say nothing about it in the elections. The internal
memoranda of the Nixon campaign (reports from Mitchell
to Haldeman) support this; they contain no "secret" only
that I thought a bombing halt likely; they are printed
presumably out of Hersh in the *Village Voice* of June 21--
hardly an admiring journal. These excerpts also make clear
that Allen did not even know about my meetings with Mitchell.

With what are we then left? Two meetings --according
to the Nixon records--with Mitchell in which I predicted

15

a bombing halt and urged that the candidate do nothing.

Nothing was done by Nixon. No other position was conceivable for me because I had then an article in print for Foreign Affairs which would appear shortly after the election supporting a bombing halt.

Recognizing this skimpy fare Hersh through Allen has invented other incidents and a fiction. The first is a phone call by me to Allen offering my services to Nixon "on or about" September 10 based on my contacts in the Johnson administration. Unlike my detractors I do not have perfect recall of what calls I may or may not have made 15 years ago. But the context makes such a conversation nearly inconceivable; by September 10 Buckley had already arranged my meeting with Mitchell. Why would I call Allen? The second was an alleged call to Allen on October 26 giving him 12 hours warning of an imminent bombing halt. That too cannot be true as Mitchell had specifically instructed

16

me to deal only with him. In any event the bombing halt
was not announced til November 1. (I cannot exclude at
this remove that Allen called me and I gave him my judgment
but if so--and I have no recollection of it--it was surely
less melodramatic than he presents it and less explicit
than I would have been with Mitchell.)

Finally the fiction that all this enabled Nixon to urge
Thieu to resist the bombing halt. According to the public
record, whatever message Nixon sent to Thieu--if there
was one--occurred *after* the bombing halt had been *publicly*
announced on November 1. It was based on public, not secret,
information. I was not consulted or aware of it.

What then is left? A single phone conversation initiated
by Brzezinski and an arms-length relation with the Nixon
campaign of a pattern not at all unusual among academics
moving in and out of government.

What does Smith do with these skimpy facts? He does

17

not admit that there may be much ado about nothing based
on conflicting recollections of peripheral events of fifteen
years ago. Nor does he ever state clearly what is
incontrovertible that there was no "dirty shit file"--
much less a quote to that effect and that I gave no help
to the Humphrey campaign.

Instead, he begins with an irrelevancy: an alleged
dialogue between Allen and Brzezinski a month ago in a
Washington hotel. He neglects to mention--what should
surely be of interest to a fairminded reader--that these
two gentlemen are Hersh's principal sources in the first
place. He fails to point out that Allen's bitter animus
towards me is hardly a secret to Washington's reporters;
it dates back to when I was given the job he coveted after
which I eased him out from his subordinate position. Nor
has Allen's veracity gone unchallenged in the interval.
His whole story is preposterous. He claims I called him

18

four times from Paris from a payphone after September 17
even though I spent less than 48 hours in the French capital
and even though I had already seen Mitchell who had
instructed me specifically to deal only with him (as Hersh
confirms).

Brzezinski's attitude is more ambivalent. Yet his book
leaves little doubt that taking a cheap shot at a presumed
rival is well within his capabilities.

Instead, Smith gives my original accusers an opportunity
to restate these falsehoods in an alleged conversation
which would be hilarious were it less malicious. Allen
gravely recounts to Brzezinski a nasty and exaggerated
version of my relation to the Nixon campaign already described
in Nixon's memoirs and mine. Brzezinski is "indignant".
"Henry was working for our side," he exclaims. But what
had led him to that conclusion? By his own account, _he_
called _me_ in early August, no action resulted, and I

19

finally informed him that I was "aligning" with Nixon."

So where was I working for his side?

Smith, however, has a sense for drama. The two men
are described as startled; they shake their heads in disbelief--
could it be true they ask each other? Smith gravely reports
all this as if it were neither absurd nor nasty.

Having established my duplicity Smith then mentions
my denial which in the context looks preposterous. (At
the risk of appearing paranoid even the pictures
accompanying the story tend to support this innuendo.)
And he weakens my denial even further by citing four Humphrey
aides who confirm Brzezinski's story, neglecting to mention
the crucial fact that not _one_ of them had any personal
knowledge. They merely restate what they purport to have
heard from Brzezinski--whether misunderstanding, self-
promotion or malice. No one of a contradictory view is
given the dignity of a quote.

20

Smith ignores that his own evidence proves the "dirty shit" file to be false and goes on to speculate about its nature. It was "apparently" a "compendium of Nixon pronouncements on foreign policy that the Rockefeller staff had assembled for use against Mr. Nixon in the Republican primaries that year." Bunk. Rockefeller entered no primaries that year and so declared publicly in early March. He announced his candidacy on June __ when the primaries were over. His six-week campaign, limited and improvised, consisted of a series of full-page newspaper and advertisements outlining his program and implying that Nixon was an unknown quantity. These contained no attacks on Nixon at least in the foreign affairs field--as your morgue will show.

The Nixon clip file was used to make sure we were plowing new ground. And Nixon as the frontrunner was careful to say very little that was controversial. All this can easily be checked.

21

Smith gives cursory treatment to two men in Humphrey's top command that anything like this could have happened without their knowledge. He fails or refuses to check with at least three others far closer to Humphrey than the people Smith uses to indict me on the basis of their hearsay. Can anyone believe that Brzezinski would not have reported an offer of Rockefeller files to Connell or anyone else in the Humphrey high command? Or that Van Dyk (who I understand was a staff speech writer) would have the authority to throw a letter which allegedly I addressed to Humphrey into the outbasket--showing it to no one else--from which it apparently disappeared?

Nor does Smith ever raise the question why Brzezinski waited 15 years to disclose these startling facts. Smith's hypothesis--as told to Ginsburg--is that it took a reporter of Hersh's stature to collate and surface them. This does Brzezinski an injustice. Why, I repeat, did Brzezinski

22

not use it when I was in office or at the latest in
1976 when he aspired with Carter to replace the Ford
Administration. I suggest that there were two inconvenient
obstacles: Humphrey and Rockefeller were still alive;
they would have blown this tale to smithereens.

The time and space needed to rebut even one inherently
improbable allegation shows the near hopelessness of the
task for combatting the modern McCarthyism. And it should
raise some questions about the responsibilities of the
media. A Kafkaesque atmosphere results from current investigative
reporting with its seemingly "objective" collection of
facts about trivial or irrelevent incidents long after
the event. The people with seemingly total recall of events
as long as fifteen years ago are most likely to have
the most axes to grind. They do not reflect but distort
the essence of reality. If the media turn all policy
disagreements into versions of Watergate they will wind

23

up discrediting the major contribution they have made when
true malfeasances were involves. By covering up their
own transgressions--or being reluctant to expose their
colleagues--they run the risk of creating their own
Watergate.

I seek no remedy, indeed at this point I cannot think
of one--that indeed is precisely the issue. And obviously
I would not write at all did I not believe in your
personal fairness and decency.

With high personal regard,

typed

6/20/83

PERSONAL
NOT FOR PUBLICATION

Dear Abe:

By the time the Hersh book has run its course you
may be as sick of the controversy as I am. Still it raises
such issues of personal honor for me and of journalistic ethics
that I will prevail on your patience once again.

I confess I consider the book a villainous work of
character assassination, unscrupulous in its use of
sources, dishonest in its presentation of facts, mendacious
in its intentions. Yet in the best McCarthyite style it deluges
the reader with documents and quotes whose essential fraudulence
he has no means of checking, and overwhelms him with 1,000
alleged interviews of which only a small fraction (mostly
disgruntled individuals previously dismissed) are identified.
(Can there possibly be 1,000 reliable witnesses as to my activities?)
What decent reviewer can accept that a whole book is in essence
a lie and a hatchet job? For that reason the Humphrey episode

-2-

dealing with a finite range of facts seemed to me so seminal.

It is why I was so hopeful when you told me Terry Smith had
been assigned to look into the issue.

The facts for once appeared relatively free of the
obfuscatory detail with which Hersh weaves his innuendo.

Hersh had alleged that I had offered Brzezinski "dirty shit files" --
putting the phrase in quotes presumably to suggest my actual
language. The material, he claimed, would be made available if
Brzezinski informed Humphrey of the offer. One problem with this
tack is that at that point I almost surely knew Humphrey better
than Brzezinski did -- as all really close friends of Hubert's
will confirm to you. I needed no intermediaries to get to Humphrey
and duplicity was hardly the way to gain his respect. Nor was
Zbig who considered himself a competitor the best channel. There
is a distinct possibility that Brzezinski was promoting himself.
But since Terry Smith could not know this let me confine myself to
the facts that are contained in Smith's story apart from the way
Smith presented them.

-3-

[y]

a. There was no "dirty shit" file -- only clipping files of Nixon's published foreign policy pronouncements.

b. The phone call was _initiated_ by Brzezinski, shortly after the Republican convention which nominated Nixon, to solicit my opinions on an arms control paper being prepared for Humphrey.

d. Nobody really close to Humphrey has ever heard of such an offer. Smith cites Kampelman and Ginsburg but he could have included Bill Connell, Duane Andreas and Dr. Berman whose names I gave to Smith but who were obviously never contacted.

e. Brzezinski alleges that he waited four weeks before asking for the files -- in itself not superplausible. He was then allegedly rebuffed by a secretary who told him I was now "aligned with Nixon".

f. Other witnesses cited by Smith all heard of it from

-4-

Brzezinski; they claim no independent knowledge. With what are we then left -- even should one believe Brzezinski's version? Confusion about a single phone call which might have led to an honest misunderstanding? No other contact between me and the Humphrey camp on *any* subject. A notification by me to the Humphrey people that I was aligned with Nixon -- a strange way to promote myself.

Because these "facts" could not possibly support the charge that I would stop to anything to curry favor with Humphrey, a cock-and-bull story has been concocted to the effect that I wrote a letter to Humphrey late in the campaign expressing my distaste for Nixon and my high regard for Humphrey.

Brzezinski's own statements cited above give the lie to that invention. Can anyone believe that within four weeks of notifying the Humphrey camp that I was "aligned" with Nixon -- to use Brzezinski's phrase -- I would announce a reversal? Why would I wish to reiterate my regard for Humphrey of which he was well aware? Even if public figures have lost the presumption of

[y]

-5-

morality they must be given some credit for a minimum of intelligence
and prudence. Obviously no such letter has been found; nor
another witness who claimed to have seen it. There
is no such letter.

What does Smith do with these skimpy facts which hinge on
a single phone conversation between Brzezinski and me right after the
Republican convention and before Humphrey was nominated and which
led to nothing?

He begins with an alleged dialogue between Allen and
Brzezinski. He neglects to mention -- what should
be
surely/of interest to a fairminded reader -- that these two
gentlemen are Hersh's principal sources for the allegations against
me. Nor does he point out that Allen's poisonous hatred of me
is hardly a secret to Washington's reporters dating back to when
I was given the job he coveted and then eased him out from his
subordinate position. Nor has Allen's veracity gone
unchallenged in the interval. Brzezinski's attitude is more

-6-

ambivalent. Yet his book would leave little doubt that taking a
cheap shot at a presumed rival does not come hard to him.

Instead Smith gives my original accuser an opportunity to
restate these falsehoods in an alleged conversation which would be
hilarious were it less malicious. Allen gravely recounts to
Brzezinski a nasty and exaggerated version of my relation to the
Nixon campaign already in Nixon's memoirs and mine. Brzezinski
our side,"
is "indignant". "Henry was working for he exclaimed. On the
basis of what? By his own account, a phone conversation in early
August was followed by no action and by a message that I was
"aligning" with Nixon.

Smith, however, has a sense for drama if not for
intangibles. The two men are described as startled; they shake
their heads in disbelief -- could it be of each other ?
Smith gravely reports all this as if it were neither absurd nor
nasty.

Having my duplicity well established Smith then mentions

-7-

my denial which in that context looks preposterous. And he
weakens my denial even further by citing four (count them) Humphrey
aides who confirm Brzezinski's story. Of exactly what? He
neglects the crucial fact that not one of them had any contact
with me. Their story is what they heard from Brzezinski, his
misunderstanding, self-promotion or maliciousness. This does not
keep Van Dyke from speaking on the record about the content of a
file he knows only from hearsay. (I have not even met Van Dyke.)
No one of a contradictory view is given the dignity of a quote.

Smith forgets the derogatory "shit" allegation and goes
on to speculate about the file on his own. It was "apparently" a
"compendium of Nixon pronouncements on foreign policy that
the Rockefeller research staff had assembled for use against Mr.

Nixon in the Republican primaries that year." Demonstrable bunk.

and so declared publicly in early March.
Rockefeller entered no primaries that year / He announced after
the Kennedy assassination in mid-June when the primaries were over.

more improvised than other similar efforts
His six-week campaign/consisted of a series of full-page newspaper
advertisements outlining his program and implying that Nixon was
an unknown quantity. These contained no

attacks on Nixon at least in the foreign field--as your morgue
will show. The Nixon clip file was used to make sure we were
plowing new ground . All this is easily checkable.

After this it makes little difference what the
rest of the story says. But Smith warms to his theme.
He gives cursory treatment to Kampelman's and Ginsburg's
denial that anything like this could have happened and
no treatment at all to the fact that being in the top
command they were in a much better position than his other
witnesses to know. Nor did Smith check with Duane Andreas,
Bill Connell or Dr. Berman -- all
of whom were closer to Humphrey than the people Smith uses to
indict me on the basis of hearsay evidence. Can anyone believe
that Brzezinski would have an offer of Rockefeller
files unreported to the Humphrey high command? Or that Van Dyke
who I understand was just a speech writer would have
the authority to throw a letter by me into the outbasket from
which it apparently disappeared.

-9-

Smith's dedication to overkill causes him to turn the rest of the column over to the four Brzezinski associates with perfect recall after 15 years-- committing that he is reporting malicious hearsay evidence.

He has exactly two hard facts: a phone conversation initiated by Brzezinski; no further (contact) afterwards though the second fact tends to disappear. He never mentions that the essence of what is true here is already in my memoirs.

Nor does Smith ever raise the question why Brzezinski waited 15 years to disclose these startling facts. Smith's hypothesis--as told to Ginsberg--is that it took a reporter of Hersh's stature to bring them to the surface. Few others have seen that reticent side of Brzezinski. Why, I repeat, at did he not use it when I was in office or/the latest in 1976 when he aspired with Carter to replace the Ford administration?

There were two inconvenient obstacles: Humphrey and Rockefeller were still alive; they would have blown this tale to smithereens.

-10-

One peripheral fact. I have treated my loose connection with the Nixon campaign in my memoirs. It developed when I reluctantly concluded in early September that the Democratic party would never be able to end the war honorably, despite my deep affection for Humphrey which survived and grew until his death. A meeting with Mitchell was arranged by Buckley, not Allen as he claims; my conversations throughout were with Mitchell, not Allen -- a source of initial unhappiness. I checked my memories with Mitchell to make sure my recollection was correct. I was not consultant to the peace delegation as Hersh claims.

I had conducted a negotiation in 1967 that I had originated through some French friends. I knew the chief American actors personally and on the rare occasions that I saw them they gave me orally a general account of where things stood.

I had no regular access to classified information. Mitchell was not interested in the details of the negotiation in my four or five meetings with him, only whether there would be a bombing halt. My judgement was there would be

-11-

because Hanoi would want to commit both candidates and especially Nixon before the elections. I recommended that Nixon should not make an issue of it in the campaign. He did not do so, never mentioning the negotiations. It can hardly be said that this was against the national interest. Hersh asserts that my alleged information caused Nixon to approach Thieu to block the talks. Aside from the fact that I had then an article in print supporting the talks, simple checking would have shown the opposite to be true.

According to the public record, whatever message Nixon sent to Thieu--if there was one--through Anna Chennault occurred *after* the bombing halt had been *publicly* announced in the last days of the campaign. It was based on public, not secret, information. At any rate I was not consulted or aware of it. The Village Voice of June 21, 1983 has come to my attention containing representations Mitchell sent to Haldeman about my conversations with him. They confirm

-12-

what I have written in my memoirs and repeat in

this letter: that my constant advice to the Nixon people

was to say and do nothing about the negotiations and that the

only information I gave them was my judgement that there would

be a bombing halt.

cont'd on next page

-13-

What then is left? A single phone conversation initiated by Brzezinski and an arms length relation with the Nixon campaign of a pattern not at all unusual among academics moving in and out of government, coupled with a notification to the Humphrey people that I was supporting Nixon.

I am going on at such length because the essence of a character assassination may be of some interest to the editor of one premier newspaper. And I knew you to be both fair and interested in printing the truth.

Two issues transcending me seem involved. One is the Kafkaesque atmosphere being created by current investigative reporting with its seemingly "objective" collection of facts about trivial incidents long after the event. The people with seemingly total recall of events fifteen years ago are most likely to have the most axes to grind. They distort the essence of reality. Take this case: In the summer of 1968 Humphrey and I knew each other well. I was a Rockefeller supporter, not a partisan

-14-

Republican. I had often answered queries from Democrats, including Humphrey and Kennedy. What was strange or selfish about answering a call from Brzezinski, a colleague since graduate school days? Until September 1968 I considered myself essentially an independent. After the Democratic convention I reluctantly decided to support Nixon, whom I had disliked throughout his public life--as my memoirs explain. Like many others of similar background, I thought the decision reflected the national interest; perhaps selfish motives were involved as well. At any rate, Brzezinski claims him I informed/of the fact, so all was above board. What then justifies such an assault fifteen years after the event?

The even deeper issue concerns the media. The media are the only institutions in our country for which there are no checks and balances. And their power can be devastatingly precisely because they are believed to be objective. No public servant has a right to demand immunity from criticism.

-15-

The fear of a vigilant press is in fact a powerful discipline. But to be proper the ferocity in expressing malfeasance must be coupled with an equal dedication to protect the innocent--if necessary against journalistic abuse.

Otherwise, the media will become a force for nihilism destroying everything that could rally our country or sustain our people's faith.

I leave it to you what role the *Times* has played in this affair first reporting a disgraceful book as news and then repeating its core allegations as investigation.

I want to stress that I seek no remedy. Quite enough damage has been done. I can think of no cure that would not be worse than the disease.

With high personal regard,

Back of page 10

Two issues transending me seem involved. One is the Kafkaesque atmosphere being by current investigative reporters [reporting?] with its seemingly "objective" collection of facts about trivial incidents long after the event. The people with seemingly total recall of events fifteen years ago are most likely to have the most axes to grind. They distort the essence of reality. Take this case: in the summer of 1968 Humphrey and I knew each other well. I was a Rockefeller supporter, not a partisan Republican. I had often answered queries from Democrats, including Humphrey and Kennedy. What was strange or selfish about answering a call from Brzezinski, a colleague since graduate school days? Until September 1968 I considered myself essentially an Independent. After the December convention I reluctantly decided to support Nixon, whom I had disliked throughout his public life - as my memoirs explain. Like many others of thought the decision reflected the national interest; perhaps selfish motives were involved as well. At any rate, Brzezinski claims I informed of the fact, so all was above board. What then justifies such an assault fifteen years after the event?

Page 10

the bombing halt had been publicly announced in the last days of the campaign. It was based on public, not secret, information, At any rate I was not consulted or aware of it. (U)l111ge u11c1o 111sct)

What then is left? A single phone conversation initiated by Brzesinski and an length relation with the Nixon campaign of a pattern not at all unusual among academics moving in and out of government, coupled with a notification to the Humphrey people that I was supporting Nixon.

I am going on at such length because the essence of a
character assassination may be of some interest to the editor
of one premier newspaper. And I knew you to be both fair and
[omit "both"?]
interested in painting
the truth?

[ADD MATERIAL DIRECTLY ABOVE]

The even deeper issue concerns[?] the media. The media are
the only institutions in our country for which there are no
checks and balances. And their power can be devastating pre-
cisely because

Why So Many People Write Them
By Jeff Weinstein (P.42)

1983 $1.25

PHOTOGRAPH OF SEYMOUR HERSH BY JAMES HAMILTON

GAMMA/LUABSON

# Do You Trust ?
## *and the Pursuit of Truth*

ble to Kissinger "long
men have slunk back
les."

issinger remains mute
ifics of *The Price of
and publish a 1521-page
*The White House*

PLUS

Kissinger
m-and Ours

By
mont-Smith (P.44)

Years, which stands as his account of
the events discussed by Hersh.

Inside are excerpts from both
books, which reveal starkly different
interpretations of crucial interna-
tional events in the late '60s and
early '70s as well as evaluations of
Richard Nixon, the man who, for
better or worse, made all this possi-
ble.

This issue transcends arguments
about who did what to whom and
when. Hersh has raised significant
questions about the practice of poli-
tics at the highest levels of govern-
ment.

Sissela Bok, (Continued on page 8)

able to control the flow of information to the press, to the Nixon campaign, and to Nguyen Van Thieu, the President of South Vietnam. If word of a possible agreement leaked out, the Thieu government might be tempted by the Republicans to stall the negotiations or find other ways to make it impossible to reach agreement before the election. Lyndon Johnson and his aides were already suspicious of the role of Richard Nixon. Johnson told an adviser a week after the Democratic defeat that in early October he and President Thieu had agreed on a joint statement supporting negotiations, but Thieu had suddenly backed away. Jack Valenti, one of Johnson's closest confidants, quotes Johnson in his memoirs as saying that "hard information had come to him that representatives of Nixon reached President Thieu and urged him not to accept" any last-ditch negotiations, suggesting he would get a better deal if Nixon won the election.

The best source for what happened next is Richard Nixon himself, in his memoirs, RN, published in 1978. Johnson's bombing halt, Nixon wrote, "came as no real surprise to me. I had known for several weeks that plans were being made for such an action... I had learned of the plan through a highly unusual channel. It began on September 12, when Haldeman brought me a report from John Mitchell that Rockefeller's foreign policy adviser, Henry Kissinger, was available to assist us with advice."...

Nixon goes on: "I knew that Rockefeller had been offering Kissinger's assistance and urging that I make use of it ever since the convention. I told Haldeman that Mitchell should continue as liaison with Kissinger and that we should honor his desire to keep his role completely confidential."

On September 26, two weeks after Mitchell's first contact with Kissinger, Nixon wrote, "Kissinger called again. He said that he had just returned from Paris, where he had picked up word that something big was afoot regarding Vietnam. He advised that if I had to say anything about Vietnam during the following week, I should avoid any new ideas or proposals."...

Nixon writes that Kissinger had advised him he considered it "proper and reasonable" to warn the candidate against "making any statements that might be undercut by negotiations I was not aware of." Yet John Mitchell remembers that his direct link to Kissinger was considered

one of the campaign's most important secrets—so vital that the trusted Bryce Harlow and even Richard Allen, who was busily reporting about his own communications with Kissinger, were kept in the dark. "I thought Henry was doing it because Nelson wanted him to," Mitchell says. "Nelson asked Henry to help and he did...."

It was also in late September that the Nixon campaign got its second report from Kissinger, relayed by Haldeman and Mitchell. Nixon recalls in his memoirs that Kissinger warned that "there is a better than even chance that Johnson will order a bombing halt at approximately mid-October." A Haldeman memo, referring to Kissinger as "our source," included the following advice: "Our source does not believe that it is practical to oppose a bombing halt but does feel thought should be given to the fact that it may happen—that we may want to anticipate it—and that we certainly will want to be ready at the time it does happen." And again, "Our source is extremely concerned about the moves Johnson may take and expects that he will take some action before the election."...

Kissinger's last telephone call before the election was his most dramatic. Some twelve hours before the bombing halt, Kissinger telephoned Allen and excitedly announced, "I've got important information." He went on to say that in Paris Harriman and [U.S. peace negotiator Cyrus] Vance had "broken open the champagne" because a bombing halt had been negotiated and would soon be announced. Kissinger's latest information was "absolutely hot stuff."...

There was a direct telephone line from the New York campaign headquarters to Nixon, and Allen quickly relayed Kissinger's last-minute information about the champagne party. Allen later said, "My attitude was that it was inevitable that Kissinger would have to be part of our administration.... Kissinger had proven his mettle by tipping us. It took some balls to give us those tips." Allen was well aware that it was "a pretty dangerous thing for him to be screwing around with the national security."

John Mitchell was impressed too: "Henry's information was basic. We were getting all of our information from him."...

Other sources, with direct access to Kissinger, make clear that Kissinger expected his high-risk reporting for the Nixon campaign to project him into the post of national security adviser.

## II
Chile and Allende: 1970

The body of Chilean president Salvador Allende in Santiago, September 12, 1973.

my knapsack out of the Oval Office, it was that day [emphasis added]." Asked specifically by Senator Gary Hart, Democrat of Colorado, whether assassination was included, Helms responded carefully: "Well, *not in my mind*. ... I had already made up my mind that we weren't going to have any of that business when I was director [emphasis added]."

Helms's answer was carefully hedged and far from responsive. In a conversation later with a close associate, Helms provided a much more believable description of what took place on September 15; Nixon had specifically ordered the CIA to get rid of Allende. Helms told the associate that there was no doubt in his

## III
Ending Vietnam War

### Kissinger

I sat alone in my office, waiting for Nixon's speech to the nation. It was the culmination of all we had endured and endeavored for four years. Over two million Americans had given parts of their lives to that distant land. Over forty-five thousand had laid down their lives for it; several hundred thousand had been wounded. They and their families could now take some pride that it had not all been in vain. Those who had opposed the effort in Indochina would, we could hope, close ranks now that their goal of peace had finally been achieved. And the people of

the New York campaign headquarters to Nixon, and Allen quickly relayed Kissinger's last-minute information about the champagne party. Allen later said, "My attitude was that it was inevitable that Kissinger would have to be part of our administration. ... Kissinger had proven his mettle by tipping us. It took some balls to give us those tips." Allen was well aware that it was "a pretty dangerous thing for him to be screwing around with the national security."

## II

# Chile and Allende: 1970

### Kissinger

Nixon asked [CIA Director Richard] Helms, Mitchell, and me to his office in the early afternoon of September 15. In a conversation lasting less than fifteen minutes Nixon told Helms that he wanted a major effort to see what could be done to prevent Allende's accession to power: if there were one chance in ten of getting rid of Allende we should try it; if Helms needed $10 million he would approve it. Aid programs to Chile should be cut; its economy should be squeezed until it "screamed." Helms should bypass [Ambassador Edward] Korry and report directly to the White House, which would make the final decisions. The operational objective at the time was still the "Rube Goldberg" scheme. Nixon did not in fact put forward a concrete scheme, only a passionate desire, unfocused and born of frustration, to do "something."

This conversation is now treated as the inception of what was later called Track II—as opposed to the formal 40 Committee decisions, which in retrospect became Track I—so gleefully exposed by Com-

gressional committees. But there was always less to Track II than met the eye. As I have shown many times in this book, Nixon was given to grandiloquent statements on which he did not insist once their implications became clear to him. The fear that unwary visitors would take the President literally was, indeed, one of the reasons why Haldeman controlled access to him so solicitously. In the case of Track II, for example, not only was there no expenditure of $10 million; no specific sum was ever set aside. The expenditures, if any, could not have amounted to more than a few thousands dollars. It was never more than a probe and an exploration of possibilites, even in Helms's perception.

### Hersh

In his testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Helms said he left the Oval Office meeting with the "impression ... that the President came down very hard ... that he wanted something done, and he didn't much care how and that he was prepared to make money available. ... This was a pretty all-inclusive order. ... If I ever carried the marshal's baton in

lia

III

# 'Ending Vietnam War

### Kissinger

I sat alone in my office, waiting for Nixon's speech to the nation. It was the culmination of all we had endured and endeavored for four years. Over two million Americans had given parts of their lives to that distant land. Over forty-five thousand had laid down their lives for it; several hundred thousand had been wounded. They and their families could now take some pride that it had not all been in vain. Those who had opposed the effort in Indochina would, we could hope, close ranks now that their goal of peace had finally been achieved. And the peoples of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia would perhaps attain at long last a future of tranquility, security, and progress, a future worthy of their sacrifices. ...

Around midnight, when I was at home, Nixon called from the Lincoln Sitting Room, where he was brooding alone. I was wondering whether the press appreciate what had been done; nor not. But that was not what he really on his mind. He knew that every day brings a terrific let down, he said. I should not let it get to me. I should not be encouraged. There were many battles we fight; I should not weaken. In fact; I neither discouraged nor did I feel down. Listening to him, I could picture the scene: Nixon would be sitting solitary and withdrawn, deep in his brown stuffed chair with his legs on a settee in front of him, a small reading light breaking the darkness, and a wood fire throwing shadows on the wall of the room. The loudspeakers would be playing romantic classical music, probably Tchaikovsky. He was talking to me, but he was really addressing himself.

What extraordinary vehicles: destiny

selected so largely to be the vehicles of his mostARDative and that right

10

VOICE JUNE 23, 1983

*Continued from preceding page*

my initials on the Paris Agreement on
Ending the War and Restoring Peace in
Vietnam. And I was at peace with myself,
neither elated nor sad.

Hersh

The record is far from complete, but
there is clear evidence that Nixon came to
a significant decision by the end of No-
vember [1972]: He would make a secret
agreement with Nguyen Van Thieu. In
return for Thieu's acceptance of the peace
agreements, he would assure Thieu that
the Nixon Administration would view the
political agreements—which called upon
Saigon to share power in the South with
the PRG [Provisional Revolutionary Gov-
ernment]—as meaningless. Thieu would
still be considered the sovereign ruler of
all South Vietnam and would not be
censured if he continued his military and
political activities. If the North Vietnam-
ese chose to retali ate, as was inevitable,
the President would unleash American
bombers, which would have retreated, un-
der the peace agreement, to aircraft car-
riers offshore and bases in Thailand.

Just when Nixon conveyed his secret
agenda to Thieu is not known, but the
policy first came to light during his annual
briefing with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on
November 30, the day after Nixon's meet-
ing with Duc and Phuong [aides to
Thieu].

"The President, Kissinger and Al Haig already were in their armchairs when we Chiefs trooped in," wrote Elmo Zumwalt [chief of naval operations] in his memoirs, "sober of mien, highly beribboned and; I fear, a little like performing poodles or trained seals. Our annual meeting always included a picture-taking session and so before we got down to business, photographers materialized and we all assumed the expressions and stances of statesmanship." Zumwalt took copious notes. If the talks with Le Duc Tho [chief peace nego-

tiator for the North Vietnamese] were
broken off, Nixon told the military men,
there would be violent retaliation: "...
[I]f they get hardnosed, then we will mine
and hit more targets with B-52s."

Nixon was clearly seeking support
from the Joint Chiefs for an agreement.
"The left will debunk his deal," Zumwalt
paraphrased his remarks. "DOD must
support it... after all the blood, the sacri-
fices, the military must be for it... We
need to make the point that no paper is
worth a damn, what really matters is the
economic and military support...whether
the war resumes or not depends on the
PRC and the USSR...but they've got
other fish to fry." Nixon continued, ac-
cording to Zumwalt's notes: North Viet-
nam "faced resumed hostilities from the
U.S. and South Vietnam if they violate
the deal. We have told the Soviets and the
PRC of our concern ... he urged that we
not worry about the words, we will keep
the agreement if it serves us—their in-
terests require them to obey" [emphasis
added].

Zumwalt was distressed at Nixon's du-
plicity. "[I]t was perfectly obvious to all of
us at the time," he wrote, "that the prom-
ise of massive American assistance to
South Vietnam and of prompt U.S. re-
taliation to serious truce violations [would
be] the critical elements in securing the
cease-fire and that the fulfillment of these
promises would be the critical element in
maintaining the cease-fire." He criticized
the administration's decision not to in-
form the American people fully of the
obligation, in case of ceasefire violations,
to renew military support to the Thieu
regime and added: "There are at least two
words no one can use to characterize the
outcome of that two-faced policy. One is
'peace.' The other is 'honor.'"

Nguyen Van Thieu had been told that
he could ignore the Paris peace agreement
and would receive continued American
support in so doing. No senior official in
the White House or in the Presidential
Palace was taking the political provisions

of the agreement
when the treaty
Paris.

On that day, the
ond inauguration,
singer were being
makers, Richard
end of the war in
He claimed peace
fulfilled one of his
Thieu by declaring
will continue to be
ment of the Repu-

A

Kissinger

The President.
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Japanese] were military men, estimation; "... en we will mine B-52s."

Seeking support from agreement. deal," Zumwalt "DOD" must blood, the sacrifice for it... We at no paper is that matters is the port... whether depends on the fact they've got continued, actions: North Vietnadies from the if they violate Soviets and the urged that we, we will keep us—their industry" [emphasis

at Nixon's dubious to all of that the promotion to U.S. relations [would in securing the fulfillment of these official element in "He criticized him not to include fully of the fire violations, to the Thieu are at least two characterize the policy. One is "...

> He been told that peace agreement sued American senior official in the Presidentialical provisions

of the agreement seriously on January 23, when the treaty was finally initialed in Paris.

On that day, three days after his second inauguration, and while he and Kissinger were being celebrated as peace-makers, Richard Nixon announced the end of the war in a television interview. He claimed peace with honor and then fulfilled one of his secret commitments to Thieu by declaring: "The United States will continue to recognize the Government of the Republic of Vietnam as the

The President was convinced that most leaders of the Jewish community had opposed him throughout his political career. The small percentage of Jews who voted for him, he would joke, had to be so crazy that they would probably stick with him even if he turned on Israel. He delighted in telling associates and visitors that the "Jewish lobby" had no effect on him....

... He considered himself less obligated to the Jewish constituency than any of his predecessors had been and was eager to demonstrate that he was impervious to its pressures. He also had his doubts as to whether my Jewish faith might warp my judgment. Normally I would have shaped his strategic options and given tactical guidance to the departments. But I was precluded from doing

sole legitimate government of South Vietnam." With that sentence Nixon was broadcasting his intention not to abide by the agreement, which had established the right of the PRG to share power in the South with the Saigon regime.... It was, of course, not the end of the war. Both sides fought on, but Nguyen Van Thieu now had a presidential promise of American air support, continued aid, and carte blanche to violate the peace agreement.

It was inevitable that war would continue.

## IV
# Nixon and Anti-Semitism

### Kissinger

this in Middle East policy until late in 1971.

### Hersh

There were days when Nixon would directly castigate liberal Jews in front of Kissinger.

"Nixon would talk about Jewish traitors, and the Eastern Jewish Establishment—Jews at Harvard," John Ehrlichman recalls. "And he'd play off Kissinger. 'Isn't that right, Henry? Don't you agree?' And Henry would respond: 'Well, Mr. President, there are Jews and Jews.'" Ehrlichman remembers that when Jerome B. Wiesner, who had been a science adviser to the Kennedy Administration, criticized Nixon's March 1969 decision to deploy a limited antiballistic missile system, Nixon angrily denounced Wiesner in front of Kissinger as "another

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one of those Jews."...

... "You can't believe how hard it is, especially for a Jew," [Kissinger] told one senior journalist, who was also Jewish. "You can't begin to imagine how much anti-Semitism there is at the top of this government—and I mean at the top."

## V
# Starvation in Biafra: January 1970

### Kissinger

During [British Prime Minister Harold] Wilson's visit in January 1970 the Nigerian civil war was drawing to a bloody conclusion. The central government was about to overrun, the seceding province. Independent studies had indicated that unless massive relief supplies reached Biafra immediately, a million and a half would starve to death. The Nigerian government insisted that all supplies be delivered through it. The White House—with Roger Morris of my staff playing an energetic and passionate role—was seeking to rush supplies directly. I supported Morris. So did Nixon, happy for once to be on the humane side of an issue. British obfuscation and State Department pro-crazination soon made the issue moot. We never succeeded in establishing an

independent relief program. Federal troops took control of the province and snuffed out Biafran "independence." A curtain of silence descended. In the end, the Nigerian federal government successfully carried out a policy of reconciliation with the defeated Ibos. Wilson influenced Nixon's policy to a degree and curbed our interventionist impulses. From the point of view of our long-term interests he and the State Department were undoubtedly right.

### Hersh

Kissinger's and Nixon's unwillingness to take on the State Department—even with hundreds of thousands of lives possibly in the balance—frustrated and further disillusioned Morris. He later wrote that "Throughout this sequence of events, Kissinger and Nixon were suddenly transformed: the responsible, powerful men who had so forcefully seized control of other policies for the good or ill now remained distracted, cynically detached onlookers."

Nixon, preoccupied as usual with political issues, went into hibernation in the last half of January, working for long stretches in his hideaway office in the Executive Office Building on his first State of the Union address. After one meeting with Elliot Richardson and other State Department officials, all of whom downplayed the estimates of Biafran starvation, Nixon telephoned. Kissinger and, Morris recalls, said simply of his State Department, "They're going to let them starve, aren't they, Henry?" Kissinger's answer, according to Morris, was "Yes." He and Nixon then began discussing some of the foreign policy passages in the State of the Union speech....

Years later, Morris concluded that Kissinger had, in fact, behaved "the worst" of all the senior officials in the Nixon Administration in not doing everything possible to obtain immediate relief in the first days

after Biafra fell. "Henry understood the issues perfectly and"—unlike the State Department—"had no bureaucratic rationale of protecting an interest. There really is a streak of compassion in him, yet everything is expendable. He had no rational reason for letting those kids starve. He was just afraid to alienate Richardson because he and Richardson had other fish to fry. And with the President, Henry just didn't want to bother him. He'd look soft."

## VI
# Crisis over Cuba?

### Kissinger

On Cuba's southern coast there is a port named Cienfuegos. Its harbor can be reached only by a single channel leading to a bay dotted by a number of small islands and surrounded by steep hills. On one of these islands, called Cayo Alcatraz, a U-2 on August 26 [1970] photographed new construction activity that had not been evident during a flight eleven days earlier. It seemed to have been going on for several days; all that could be definitely identified was work on a wharf and on some new barracks. In itself this was not unusual. What made it of more than passing significance was another piece of intelligence: A flotilla of Soviet ships was on a course heading toward Cuba; it consisted of a submarine tender, a guided-missile cruiser, a guided-missile de-

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after Biafra fell. "Henry understood the issues perfectly and"—unlike the State Department—"had no bureaucratic rationale of protecting an interest. There really is a streak of compassion in him, yet everything is expendable. He had no rational reason for letting those kids starve; he was just afraid to alienate Richardson because he and Richardson had other fish to fry. And with the President, Henry just didn't want to bother him. He'd look soft."

VI

# Crisis over Cuba?

## Kissinger

 stroyer, an ocean-going salvage tug, a heavy salvage ship, a merchant tanker, and an amphibious landing ship carrying two eight-foot barges. The submarine tender and the barges were of a type normally used for servicing nuclear submarines. The composition of this task force was so unprecedented that something more than a courtesy visit seemed to be involved. . . Daily U-2 flights were ordered to begin. . . [on] September 14. . .

As it happen, conclusive evidence was being collected that very day by a U-2. What the photography showed was that in less than three weeks the Soviet Union had rushed to complete a fairly significant shore installation. Two new barracks and administrative buildings suddenly stood on Cayo Alcatraz, which had been barren only a month earlier. Recreation facilities had quickly risen on the island, including a basketball court and a soccer field. In my eyes this stamped it indelibly as a Russian base, since as an old soccer fan I knew Cubans played no soccer. More important, the submarine tender was moored in permanent fashion to four buoys in the bay. Alongside the tender were the two support barges, which had been unloaded from the amphibious ship. The tender was thus in a position to service submarines. Antisubmarine nets guarded the entrance to the harbor. On the mainland, a few miles from the town of Cienfuegos, there had arisen a new dock, a fuel storage depot, and the early stages of a major communications facility, undoubtedly the radio link to Moscow, guarded by antiaircraft missiles and surveillance radar. What we saw, in short, had all the earmarks of a permanent Soviet naval base.

## Hersh

As H. R. Haldeman described the scene in his memoirs, Henry Kissinger burst into his office, slammed down a file of highly classified reconnaissance photo-

ON THE WATERFRONT

11 VOICE JUNE 21, 1983

graphs on a desk, and said, "It's a Cuban seaport, Haldeman, and these pictures show the Cubans are building soccer fields...These soccer fields could mean war, Bob." Haldeman asked why. "Cubans play baseball. Russians play soccer," Kissinger replied.

Kissinger's dramatic visit to Haldeman took place on September 18, 1970, at the height of the Jordanian crisis, and only hours before the Syrians, so the White House thought, began invading Jordan with hundreds of tanks. Now the evidence was clear, both Kissinger and Nixon wrote, that the Soviets were challenging Nixon's leadership not only in the Middle East but in Cuba. American reconnaissance intelligence, Kissinger wrote, had established beyond doubt that the Soviet Union had "rushed" in recent weeks to build a submarine service installation on a small island in the bustling harbor of Cienfuegos, on Cuba's south shore. A Soviet flotilla was tracked by satellite intelligence and U-2 spy planes as it sailed across the Atlantic in late summer and into the harbor on September 9; the small fleet included a submarine tender and two barges of the type normally used for serving nuclear-powered submarines, Aerial photographs on September 15 showed "a fairly significant shore installation," Kissinger wrote, including two new barracks, administrative buildings, a new dock and a fuel storage depot, the beginnings of a major communications facility ("undoubtedly the radio link to Moscow"), and recreation facilities, including a basketball court and that soccer field. "In my eyes this stamped it indelibly as a Russian base," Kissinger went on, "since as an old soccer fan I knew Cubans played no soccer. [Hersh's footnote: Kissinger could not have been more wrong. The first Cuban soccer association was founded in 1924, and by the 1930s, Sunday afternoon soccer was so popular on the island that winter-league baseball games had to be rescheduled for morning. In 1938, a Cuban team reached the final eight of the World Cup international soccer competition in France. The sport declined in popularity in the 1950s, according to *Sports Illustrated* magazine, but revived after Castro's takeover in 1959. Cuba began fielding teams in the World Cup competition again, and by the late 1970s had seventy organized teams] ...

If the immediate issue for Nixon and Kissinger was how to deal politically and diplomatically with the alleged submarine base, for the rest of the bureaucracy there was a more fundamental question: Just what was going on in Cienfuegos? Intelligence experts in the State Department, the CIA, and even the Pentagon saw no tangible evidence of a major installation. In their opinion, Cienfuegos was meant to be a rest-and-recreation facility for Soviet submarines that would permit the Soviet Navy to lengthen its normal overseas tours. Over the next year, confirmation of

for the DIA, told the Fascell subcommittee in a separate set of hearings in the fall of 1971. Similarly, the new dock Kissinger had noticed enclosed "a small area, perhaps ... a swimming area, or something like that." The water was far too shallow for any other use, one officer said.

State Department officials did not realize that Kissinger was eager for a confrontation, whether justified or not, and thus were dismayed at his reaction. Many of them viewed the Soviet moves as essentially routine fleet exercises. The Russians had been expanding their naval operations in the Atlantic since July 1969, when a Soviet flotilla visited Cuba and the Caribbean. In May 1970, a larger group of Soviet ships, including three submarines, had visited Cuba for two weeks. There was nothing the United States could do about such visits, which were consistent with internationally recognized rights of free sea passage. The State Department also concluded that the Soviets had a political motive for such ostentatious visits: to challenge what seemed to be a double standard that permitted the United States Navy to sail anywhere with impunity, and to establish bases all over the world, while criticizing the Soviet Union for any similar expansion. The Soviet goal in building the temporary facilities in Cuba, these analysts concluded, was to ameliorate this double standard.

The increase in Soviet construction activity at Cienfuegos was first reported on September 15 by the CIA. A few days later, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, then directed by Ray S. Cline, a former CIA official, provided a cautious assessment. Cline realized that any development inside Cuba would be nerve-wracking for Richard Nixon, particularly in the middle of a congressional election, and thus he decided to brief Alexis Johnson. "I remember clearly going to Alex and saying, 'Look, I don't think this is a crisis,'" Cline says, "'but you ought to at least be aware that something new and unusual is going on in Cienfuegos and it has to do with Soviet submarines in Cuba.'" He concluded that the Soviets were seeking elementary facility to give their submarine crews a chance to go ashore, relax, eat fresh vegetables, and perhaps mingle with Cuban women.

Johnson took Cline's findings directly to Kissinger's office, and the crisis began. "There's no doubt that Henry overplayed it for his own purposes," says Cline....

Nixon returned in early October; [Soviet Ambassador Anatoly] Dobrynin visited Kissinger the next day to present a note reaffirming the 1962 understanding on Cuba between the United States and the Soviet Union. He also told Kissinger that, as Kissinger wrote, "he was prepared on behalf of his government to affirm that ballistic missile submarines would never call there in an operational capacity." The Soviets were not going to make an issue of

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buildings, a new dock and a fuel storage
depot, the beginnings of a major com-
munications facility ("undoubtedly the
radio link to Moscow"), and recreation
facilities, including a basketball court and
that soccer field. "In my eyes this stamped
it indelibly as a Russian base," Kissinger
went on, "since as an old soccer fan I knew
Cubans played no soccer. [Hersh's foot-
note: Kissinger could not have been more
wrong. The first Cuban soccer association
was founded in 1924, and by the 1930s,
Sunday afternoon soccer was so popular
on the island that winter-league baseball
games had to be rescheduled for morning.
In 1938, a Cuban team reached the final
eight of the World Cup international soc-
cer competition in France. The sport de-
clined in popularity in the 1950s, accord-
ing to *Sports Illustrated* magazine, but
revived after Castro's takeover in 1959.
Cuba began fielding teams in the World
Cup competition again, and by the late
1970s had seventy organized teams.

If the immediate issue for Nixon and
Kissinger was how to deal politically and
diplomatically with the alleged submarine
base, for the rest of the bureaucracy
there was a 'more fundamental question: Just
what was going on in Cienfuegos? Intelli-
gence experts in the State Department,
the CIA, and even the Pentagon saw no
tangible evidence of a major installation.
In their opinion, Cienfuegos was meant to
be a rest-and-recreation facility for Soviet
submarines that would permit the Soviet
Navy to lengthen its normal overseas
tours. Over the next year, confirmation of
this analysis began to emerge impreviously
classified intelligence testimony that was
published by the House Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs,
whose chairman, Representative Dante B.
Fascell, a Democrat from Miami, main-
tained a strong interest in Cuban ac-
tivites. For example, in testimony taken a
few weeks after the Cienfuegos crisis in
1970, but not publicly released until 1971,
Colonel John Bridge, chief of the Soviet
area office of the Defense Intelligence
Agency, testified that "they [the Soviets]
have established—we say it is a facility, at
Cienfuegos, which might support naval
operations, including those of sub-
marines. It is by no means to be con-
strued, I think, as a formal full-scale base.
It is a support facility, a possible support
facility." As for the barracks, he testified,
they were built of wood, obviously tem-
porary facilities for crew stopovers.
[Hersh's footnote: Another official later
described the barracks as single-story
units resembling chicken houses]. The
concrete buoys which so alarmed Kissin-
ger had been in place at least since 1968,
well before the arrival of the Russians,
Major Gerald Cassel, an analyst on Cuba

The increase in Soviet construction ac-
tivity at Cienfuegos was first reported on
September 15 by the CIA. A few days
later, the State Department's Bureau of
Intelligence and Research, then directed
by Ray S. Cline, a former CIA official,
provided a cautious assessment. Cline re-
alized that any development inside Cuba
would be nerve-wracking for Richard
Nixon, particularly in the middle of a
congressional election, and thus he de-
cided to brief Alexis Johnson. "I remem-
ber clearly going to Alex and saying,
'Look, I don't think this is a crisis,'" Cline
says, "'but you ought to at least be aware
that something new and unusual is going
on in Cienfuegos and it has to do with
Soviet submarines in Cuba.'" He con-
cluded that the Soviets were seeking
elementary facility to give their sub-
marine crews a chance to go ashore, relax,
eat fresh vegetables, and perhaps mingle
with Cuban women.

Nixon returned in early October; [So-
viet Ambassador Anatoly] Dobrynin vis-
ited Kissinger the next day to present a
note reaffirming the 1962 understanding
on Cuba between the United States and
the Soviet Union. He also told Kissinger
that, as Kissinger wrote, "he was prepared
on behalf of his government to affirm that
ballistic missile submarines would never
call there in an operational capacity." The
Soviets were not going to make an issue of
the facility at Cienfuegos; whatever they
had been building there was not essential
to their planning. Thus a major diplo-
matic victory—real or not—was in Kissin-
ger's grasp. On October 9, he wrote, he
presented Dobrynin with a formal memo-
randum, entitled "President's Note,"
which stated, in effect, that Soviet nuclear
submarines armed with nuclear weapons
were prohibited from using Cuba as a base
of operations. ... Four days later, the
Soviet Union officially denied that it was
constructing a submarine base in Cuba or
in any other way "doing anything that
would contradict" the 1962 understand-
ing.

Kissinger claimed victory: "By great
firmness in early stages of construction,
we avoided a major crisis, yet we achieved
our objective. Military construction was
halted ... the communication facility
never became operational." Nixon, in his
memoirs, went further: "After some face-
saving delays, the Soviets abandoned
Cienfuegos."

And yet, nothing changed in Cien-
fuegos. The wooden barracks were not
dismantled, the soccer field was not con-
verted into a baseball diamond. ... The

preceding page

ask, and said, "It's a Cuban man, and these pictures pans are building soccer soccer fields could mean Haldeman asked why. baseball. Russians play soc- replied.

dramatic visit to Haldeman September 18, 1970, at the Jordanian crisis, and only the Syrians, so the White man, began invading Jordan of tanks. Now the evidence with Kissinger and Nixon the Soviets were challenging ship not only in the Middle Cuba. American recon- telligence, Kissinger wrote, said beyond doubt that the had "rushed" in recent small island in the bustling海防fuegos, on Cuba's south net flotilla was tracked by igence and U-2 spy planes across the Atlantic in late into the harbor on Septem- ber 19, 1970. The Soviet fleet included a submarine to barges of the type nor- mal serving nuclear-powered iew barracks, administrative new dock and a fuel storage ginnings of a major com- facility ("undoubtedly the Moscow"), and recreation ing a basketball court and d. "In my eyes this stamped a Russian base," Kissinger e as an old soccer fan I knew d no soccer. [Hersh's foot- er could not have been more erst Cuban soccer association in 1924, and by the 1930s, noon soccer was so popular that winter-league baseball be rescheduled for morning. uban team reached the final World Cup international soc- ion in France. The sport de- clarity in the 1950s, accord- s Illustrated magazine, but Castro's takeover in 1959. fielding teams in the World tion again, and by the late twenty organized teams] ... mmediate issue for Nixon and s how to deal politically and ly with the alleged submarine rest of the bureaucracy there fundamental question: Just ing on in Cienfuegos? Intelli- gis in the State Department, d even the Pentagon saw no dence of a major installation. ion, Cienfuegos was meant to l-recreation facility for Soviet that would permit the Soviet ng then its normal overseas the next year, confirmation of he began to emerge in pre-

for the DIA, told the Fascell subcommit-
tee in a separate set of hearings in the fall
of 1971. Similarly, the new dock Kissinger
had noticed enclosed "a small area,
perhaps ... a swimming area, or some-
thing like that." The water was far too
shallow for any other use, one officer said.
...

The increase in Soviet construction activity at Cienfuegos was first reported on September 15 by the CIA. A few days later, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, then directed by Ray S. Cline, a former CIA official, provided a cautious assessment. Cline realized that any development inside Cuba would be nerve-wracking for Richard Nixon, particularly in the middle of a congressional election, and thus he decided to brief Alexis Johnson. "I remember clearly going to Alex and saying, 'Look, I don't think this is a crisis,' " Cline says, "but you ought to at least be aware that something new and unusual is going on in Cienfuegos and it has to do with Soviet submarines in Cuba.' " He concluded that the Soviets were seeking elementary facility to give their submarine crews a chance to go ashore, relax, eat fresh vegetables, and perhaps mingle with Cuban women.

Nixon returned in early October; [So-
viet Ambassador Anatoly] Dobrynin vis-
ited Kissinger the next day to present a
note reaffirming the 1962 understanding
on Cuba between the United States and
the Soviet Union. He also told Kissinger
that, as Kissinger wrote, "he was prepared
on behalf of his government to affirm that
ballistic missile submarines would never
call there in an operational capacity." The
Soviets were not going to make an issue of
the facility at Cienfuegos, whatever they

es, including a basketball court and soccer field. "In my eyes this stamped elibly as a Russian base," Kissinger on, "since as an old soccer fan I knew us played no soccer. [Hersh's foot-Kissinger could not have been more. The first Cuban soccer association founded in 1924, and by the 1930s, ay afternoon soccer was so popular the island that winter-league baseball had to be rescheduled for morning. 38, a Cuban team reached the final of the World Cup international soc-ompetition in France. The sport de-luded in popularity in the 1950s, accord-to Sports Illustrated magazine, but ed after Castro's takeover in 1959. began fielding teams in the World competition again, and by the late had seventy organized teams] ... the immediate issue for Nixon and anger was how to deal politically and matically with the alleged submarine for the rest of the bureaucracy there 'more fundamental question: Just was going on in Cienfuegos? Intelli-experts in the State Department, IA, and even the Pentagon saw no ble evidence of a major installation. Their opinion, Cienfuegos was meant to est-and-recreation facility for Soviet arines that would permit the Soviet to lengthen its normal overseas Over the next year, confirmation of analysis began to emerge in previously fied intelligence testimony that was shed by the House Foreign Affairs committee on Inter-American Affairs; the chairman, Representative Dante B. Hill, a Democrat from Miami, main-d a strong interest in Cuban ac-tions. For example, in testimony taken a weeks after the Cienfuegos crisis in but not publicly released until 1971, el John Bridge, chief of the Soviet office of the Defense Intelligence cy, testified that "they [the Soviets] establi shed—we say it is a facility, at fuegos, which might support naval tions, including those of sub-nes. It is by no means to be con-d, I think, as a formal full-scale base. a support facility, a possible support ty." As for the barracks, he testified, were built of wood, obviously tem-ory facilities for crew stopovers. h's footnote: Another official later ibed the barracks as single-story (resembling chicken houses). The rete buoys which so alarmed Kissin-had been in place at least since 1968, before the arrival of the Russians, er Gerald Cassel, an analyst on Cuba-

by Ray S. Cline, a former CIA official, provided a cautious assessment. Cline re-alized that any development inside Cuba would be nerve-wracking for Richard Nixon, particularly in the middle of a congressional election, and thus he decided to brief Alexis Johnson. "I remem-ber clearly going to Alex and saying, 'Look, I don't think this is a crisis,' " Cline says, " 'but you ought to at least be aware that something new and unusual is going on in Cienfuegos and it has to do with Soviet submarines in Cuba.' " He con-cluded that the Soviets were seeking elementary facility to give their sub-marine crews a chance to go ashore, relax, eat fresh vegetables, and perhaps mingle with Cuban women.

Johnson took Cline's findings directly to Kissinger's office, and the crisis began. "There's no doubt that Henry overplayed it for his own purposes," says Cline. ...

Nixon returned in early October; [So-viet Ambassador Anatoly] Dobrynin vis-ited Kissinger the next day to present a note reaffirming the 1962 understanding on Cuba between the United States and the Soviet Union. He also told Kissinger that, as Kissinger wrote, "he was prepared on behalf of his government to affirm that ballistic missile submarines would never call there in an operational capacity." The Soviets were not going to make an issue of the facility at Cienfuegos; whatever they had been building there was not essential to their planning. Thus a major diplo-matic victory—real or not—was in Kissin-ger's grasp. On October 9, he wrote, he presented Dobrynin with a formal memo-randum, entitled "President's Note," which stated, in effect, that Soviet nuclear submarines armed with nuclear weapons were prohibited from using Cuba as a base of operations. ... Four days later, the Soviet Union officially denied that it was constructing a submarine base in Cuba or in any other way "doing anything that would contradict" the 1962 understand-ing.

Kissinger claimed victory: "By great firmness in early stages of construction, we avoided a major crisis, yet we achieved our objective. Military construction was halted ... the communication facility never became operational." Nixon, in his memoirs, went further: "After some face-saving delays, the Soviets abandoned Cienfuegos."

And yet, nothing changed in Cien-fuegos. The wooden barracks were not dismantled, the soccer field was not con-verted into a baseball diamond. ... The

The President is crucial in a crisis. He must be seen enough to the process to give impetus to the ultimate decisions; yet he should not become so involved in the details that he precludes a thorough examination of alternatives....

... Nixon could be very decisive. Almost invariably during his Presidency his decisions were courageous and strong and often taken in loneliness against all expert advice. But wherever possible Nixon made these decisions in solitude on the basis of memoranda or with a few very intimate aides. He abhorred confronting colleagues with whom he disagreed and he could not bring himself to face a disappointing friend.

## Hersh

On May 6... William Beecher [of *The New York Times*] had published a detailed and accurate account of some of the secret deliberations about the EC-121 incident, revealing that Nixon and Kissinger had considered bombing airfields in North Korea as well as the use of nuclear weapons. [According to Hersh, "The crisis began late in the afternoon of Monday, April 14, 1969, when a North Korean jet fighter shot down, without warning and without provocation, a U.S. Navy electronic espionage aircraft known as EC-121."] The Beecher account was not taken up as an important story by other newspapers and radio and television, although it flatly contradicted the White House's version that Nixon and Kissinger calmly and coolly decided not to take action.

For Nixon and Kissinger, Beecher's May 6 account may have brought additional chills. They could not be sure how much the *Times* reporter knew about the nuclear planning or about one of the truly important secrets of the EC-121 incident. Did Beecher know that Nixon had become violently drunk early in the crisis?

Nixon's drinking had yet to be preceived as a significant problem by Kissinger and his immediate staff and the incident was quickly hushed up. Neither [National Security Council aide] Halperin nor [NSC aide Richard] Sneider were told that

A shopping expedition in New York last week uncovered 29 sparkling wines from five European countries vying for consumer attention. A blind tasting was undertaken to evaluate them, and some of the results were surprising. A bottle of genuine Champagne, Pommery Brut Royal, was included as a control or reference point.

The so-called champagnes from the United States were not included because so many consumers seem to prefer a European sparkling wine if they must settle for something less than Champagne. Also excluded were European sparkling wines that make no attempt to approximate the Champagne style—Asti Spumante from Italy or sparkling Burgundy, which have their own styles and devoted followers.

Wine

THE NEW YORK TIMES

## Wine

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1962

## Talk

BY TERRY ROBAR

The favorite wine of the tasters was not the real Champagne nor was it a French wine. It was Spanish, the Codorniu Brut Clasico

BRUT CLASICO

Imprinted by Joseph Victorini Wines, Inc., Brooklyn, New York 11201.
Excerpted from The New York Times, Dec. 29, 1962.

13

VOICE JUNE 21, 1983

Eagleburger kept a standing lunch date with an old friend that first week after the EC-121 shootdown, he was obviously upset. "Here's the President of the United States, ranting and raving—drunk in the middle of the crisis," the shaken Eagleburger told his friend. Nixon's drinking would soon become a source of distress among other NSC aides....

During the [Jordanian] crisis, one young NSC aide caught a glimpse of Nixon "at his best" that showed a great deal about the reality of life at the top. Kissinger had assigned the staff man, an expert on the Middle East and South Asia, to prepare overnight situation intelligence reports on the crisis. He quickly learned that Nixon would invariably first want to know about the Russians, and so he carefully included any possibly relevant items about the Soviet Union. "We always seemed to be dragging the Soviets into crises," he recalls. "It's almost as if the Soviets weren't there, but we were going to discover them anyway." An unusual routine was soon worked out. The aide prepared his intelligence briefing for the President and then waited outside the Oval Office while Kissinger and Nixon discussed policy in private. Upon being summoned, he was to give only an intelligence briefing and respond to Nixon's

specific questions; not—according to Kissinger's repeated orders—to engage the President in any policy discussion. That was solely Kissinger's province. It was a rare chance for an aide to see the two men in action in an informal meeting, and he learned more than he had thought possible. "I'd walk in and begin to give a specific listing of what'd happened overnight and Nixon would interject, 'Bomb the bastards,' or some other wild remark." Normally the young man was shooed out of the office at such points, but "sometimes Henry would forget to move me out and so I stayed and listened." ...

... Kissinger's staff—who rarely saw Nixon—were convinced that they were dealing with a defective President, and Kissinger did little to reassure them. Halperin recalls that even in the early days of the administration Kissinger would return from a private session with the President and say, "Maybe the President has two hours every morning to spend kibitzing about foreign policy, but I'm much too busy for that." Halperin got the distinct impression that Nixon "liked nothing better than to sit around every morning for several hours with Kissinger. For Nixon, this was a great thing. He was sitting with this distinguished Harvard professor, talking about the future of the

world. And Kissinger would go up there every morning and disappear. And the appointments would back up, the work would back up—and he would come out two hours later, having had his seminar on foreign policy."

The NSC staff sympathized with Kissinger's plight, as he depicted it, in dealing with Nixon. They soon came to believe that the most closely held secrets in the White House did not deal with CIA operatives, communications intercepts, or satellite photography, but with the character of the man running the nation's government. Nixon's drinking was to be kept quiet at all costs; and so was his racism.

There seems to have been an unrelenting stream of anti-black remarks from the President during the first year in office. In his telephone conversations with Kissinger, he repeatedly referred to blacks as "niggers," "jigs," "jigaboos." Some of the slurs were obviously results of Nixon drinking bouts, but NSC aides who monitored Kissinger-Nixon telephone calls came to believe that Richard Nixon, drunk or sober, was a racist. Far more disillusioning was their boss's attitude; Kissinger also repeatedly made clear his contempt for black people. Yet there was a constant stream of Kissinger aides to his staff about Nixon's racism. ■

Former New York Times wine critic Terry Robards conducts a blind tasting of 29 sparkling wines.

# The Winner

THE NEW YORK TIMES

## Wine

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1982

## Talk

BY TERRY ROBARDS

English Cuvee imported by Joseph Victori Wines, Inc. of Brooklyn and priced to retail at $5.99. Its bouquet was delicately fruity and yeasty, and its flavor was full yet elegant, with a clean aftertaste. The wine, widely available, had great balance.

isis. He
cess to
ons; yet
in the
ough ex-

live. Al-
ency his
ong and
l expert
Nixon
on the
ew very
fronting
d and he
a disap-

er of The
ed a de-

12

VOICE JUNE 21, 1983

44

VOICE JUNE 21, 1983

MAKING-BOOK

# My Kissinger Problem
—and Ours

By Eliot Fremont-Smith

Make no mistake. Seymour M. Hersh's *THE PRICE OF POWER: Kissinger in the Nixon White House* (Summit, $19.95) is very rough. Rough on Kissinger, rough on Hersh, rough on the reader. It's like a machine gun—four years in the making, 698 pages of ammunition—only it doesn't always aim so well. Sometimes it backfires. The bullets fly all over. Many ricochet. Everybody is hit, one place or another. Kissinger gets his in the integrity (winged again, but he seems to have nine lives), Hersh in both feet, the reader in suspension of disbelief, the plexus of the soul. This may be inevitable, a "price" of critical hindsight. Maybe only myths succumb to this bloodbath of a book—the myth that foreign policy was kept apart from, was more noble than, the vulgarity and crooked deals that went down with Watergate; or the myth that brilliance and savvy charm radiate some decency of character. But even so, it hurts. I can tell I've been wounded—and not just in the naivete. *The Price of Power* is about ends and means; both end up very messy.

Among investigative reporters, Seymour M. Hersh is Mr. Tenacious. He was for many years on *The New York Times* and won a Pulitzer in 1970 for his uncovering of the My Lai massacre. He has received the George Polk Award four times

(a record) and numerous other honors for his reporting on such matters as the bombing of Cambodia, the CIA's involvement in Chile, illegal domestic spying, and arms sales to Libya. He is by trade and presumably by temperament a digger, an exposer, a bringer of bad news.

Sometimes the news isn't bad enough; for all his tenaciousness, Hersh couldn't quite prosecute a Gulf + Western/mafia scenario several years ago. The innuendo lives on, but it failed to feed the ravenous appetite for hard-fact scandal to which we've become accustomed. (This was one of the last pieces Hersh did for the *Times*; it is noteworthy that his present publisher is a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster, which is owned by G + W. Life is complicated. So are ambition, professionalism, and calling. The commercial arrangements for same can be distinctly octopussy.)

Sometimes eagerness clouds memory: John Crewdson shares the credit with Hersh for breaking, 10 years ago, the story of Kissinger's wiretaps on friends, colleagues, and the press. But you won't find much sharing of credit in *The Price of Power*—only in William Safire's attack on the book last week in the *Times*. Even in this addendum the ironies zip about. Safire despised Kissinger, yet invested his

[Lc]

applauding gala 60th.

More than grudging Shawcross and the *Daily Times* & Schuster book, along with memoirs of a singer, in *Power*. This it may be viewed in public life who gets a shock blame, may

At the office Hersh makes a point that he writes, "Iational officials government- in making all the people I quoted by name

Well, I get connected with a hunt for a unavailing. The rifice to dumb book, much There's plenty of footnote evidence that a verifiable

When Ted line (June 2), a candor ran to "roughly 980 Koppel, with end—Hersh looked that mumbled that Humphrey, can chapter charge ble-dealer in 1970 and every other (an electronic progress), Hersh ists check out his like doing his hundred per cent front files. Which can probably insens it league, at least to the investigative long that no one can ge whiz.

The fact is, *Price of Power* seems his target dissembling. We gemütlich wit, *H* the art of war— offense has to be overcome. The clean one, though, speedily can retard (As can assured right—last, alas, World War II again out previously by, flict-moralists, K

The Big 11

Following is a quick summary for easy reference, based on Summit's press release of "new material" in *The Price of Power*.

Kissinger earns his NSC post, playing both the Nixon and Humphrey campaigns (pp.11-24). The "Madman Theory" in action in 1969, the "Duck Hook" options, the 29-day nuclear alert (pp.118-135). The Greek junta's secret cash contribution to the Nixon campaign, and the possibility it was "laundered" CIA money (pp. 136-140). U.S. involvement in the overthrow of Sihanouk in Cambodia in 1970 (pp. 175-183). How Nixon, "while apparently drunk," ordered Melvin Laird to bomb the PLO in Jordan in September 1970, which order the secretary of defense declined to carry out (pp. 235-237). How the Nixon-Kissinger

Middle East policy in 1969-70 was aimed primarily at undermining Secretary of State William Rogers, and a possible 1971 Suez Canal agreement was sabotaged by Kissinger (pp. 213-234, 402-414). Kissinger's role in the Allende overthrow in Chile (pp. 258-276). The SALT breakthrough and the secret grain deal (pp. 334-348). How Moraji Desai was on the CIA payroll before becoming Prime Minister of India: Nixon-Kissinger ignorance of South Asia and the "tilt" to Pakistan (pp. 444-464). How the Soviets outmaneuvered Kissinger in the SALT negotiations (pp. 147-167, 334-349, 529-560). How Nixon betrayed Kissinger's Vietnam peace negotiations in 1972 (pp. 589-635).

—E.F.-S.

writing a letter to Humphrey "indicating his distaste for Nixon and his willingness to serve [in a Democratic administration]." So, in the press, Hersh's charge is *shmuck*. Which is less than ... oh, say traitor. It is regrettable that Hersh doesn't actually *have* the letter to Humphrey (it apparently went into an office-seekers' out-box and disappeared). No other new indictment in the book is more backed up with checkable sources than this one. Yet one misses the smoking gun and has to feel for Hersh: Is Kissinger so sacrosanct that no one will accept his duplicity short of a signed confession?

Yet I read this first shocker quite differently. What shocks me most is that, according to Hersh, Kissinger betrayed the Paris negotiations so that Nixon, if he wished, could get Nguyen Van Thieu, the head of a foreign power, to sabotage them. Kissinger was at the time an informal consultant to U.S. diplomats and (as Hersh says he boasted to anyone who

would listen) cleared for top secret. What does he do? He goes to a phone booth and leaks secret info to people outside the government possibly to be used by a foreign power against what must be deemed at the time the official best interests of the United States. I mean, *clever*, even *funny*, but isn't there a law that's been broken?

That's what shocked me; apparently nobody else, not even Hersh. Part of Hersh's trickiness—and he has to use sleight-of-hand because so many of his revelations are short of final connections that might send anyone to jail—is that he rarely makes clear what must really be on his mind. Which isn't simply mundane trading in official secrets for personal gain. What seems really on his mind, what he means by the title of his book, is human casualties, especially in Southeast Asia. Deaths, wounds, blood on the ground. D Certified, hopeless children. Endless tears.

But he never says it; Hersh never explicitly lays out the number of dead and

wounded he clearly thinks and wants to suggest to us was the "price" of the "power" Kissinger lusted for and worked Nixon over. snuggled up to Nixon, to attain. Hersh merely implies; he lets the innuendos hang.

What hangs in the first chapter, and then throughout the book, is simply this: Did Kissinger knowingly risk sabotaging a cease fire in Vietnam that otherwise might have been accomplished in the fall of 1968, saving tens of thousands of American lives and millions of Southeast Asian lives? Just so he could get a job? That's the implication. If I can spell it out, why can't Hersh?

Hersh takes minor pains to say he knows how complicated politics and diplomacy are—of course personalities and ambitions are involved—and that the Nixon-Kissinger team had what looked like a success or two in foreign policy. (Hersh is about that grudging.) The rest of the book is denunciation, mostly by circumstantial allusion and sideswipe hint; not even SALT I and China escape unscathed. It is fascinating, appalling (ruthlessness, deviousness, backbiting, constant foul language—these seem to have been the staples of Nixon's White House), and weirdly incomplete. I don't mean just in the stuff that would give exposé a capital E (Hersh was never able to talk with Kissinger, even to get his denials), but incomplete in philosophy, the point of the book, why he's been writ- ing it these last four years. He's worked very hard and got some goods—maybe all the goods, available—yet there's a hit-and-run quality to the enterprise.

There are real, substantive questions the book brings up—or that any caring reader who flagellates himself through these pages (they seem like a thousand) will bring to the book. What is the use of critical hindsight? Supposing every one of Hersh's worst interpretations is true—does that say that power, the lust for it, the joy of wielding it, is infinitely and for

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677-5690

wounded he clearly thinks and wants to suggest to us was the "price" of the "power" Kissinger lusted for and worked Nixon over, snuggled up to Nixon, to attain. Hersh merely implies; he lets the innuendos hang.

Hersh takes minor pains to say he knows how complicated politics and diplomacy are—of course personalities and ambitions are involved—and that the Nixon-Kissinger team had what looked like a success or two in foreign policy. (Hersh is about that grudging.) The rest of the book is denunciation, mostly by circumstantial allusion and sideswipe hint; not even SALT I and China escape unscathed. It is fascinating, appalling (ruthlessness, deviousness, backbiting, constant foul language—these seem to have been the staples of Nixon's White House), and weirdly incomplete. I don't mean just in the stuff that would give expose a capital E (Hersh was never able to talk with Kissinger, even to get his denials), but incomplete in philosophy, the point of the book, why he's been writing it these last four years. He's worked very hard and got some goods—maybe all the goods available—yet there's a hit-and-run quality to the enterprise.

all time corrupting? Our lives tell us there are exceptions; our ideals tell us exceptions are most possible in a democracy. If Kissinger was total, thuggish vanity, what does this do to our ideals, hopes, children? How is a society to work? How is a society to look upon itself? If no best and brightest is above the gutter, what then? How do we proceed?

And more. Is it possible that Hersh fails to lay out the victims at Kissinger's door because he knows that to do so, with numbers if not bodies, would be another kind of vanity? If so, how come he never deals with the corollary of his main, if coded, charge? The corollary is that we have no way of knowing if a cease-fire could have come down in 1968. Or anything that could have happened afterwards. For better, it's easy to presume; but maybe for worse. In the main, Hersh declines to deal with the don't knows and can't knows of unfolding events as they are happening—which is, ironically and probably manipulatively, the real meat of Kissinger's memoirs. And what about character, what about charm? Doesn't the perception of a hint of decency and humor have any positive effect? If not—and forget international politics—how do we live at all?

And more, closer to home. What are the relations between ambition and empathy, anecdote and abstraction, winning and satisfaction? I mean in politics. Why does everybody always have to be so tough, want to seem so tough? This, according to Hersh, but not him alone, was Nixon's mania, what Kissinger stroked and was ruled by, unto a secret 29-day full nuclear alert (which I don't believe) and a pose of "madman" (which I do). There was then and is now even more so, the dread word, "Munich," from which we are supposed to learn all sorts of lessons. I think the really dread words for politicians are "Neville Chamberlain": there's not a person in government who wants an

*Continued on page 93*

45

VOICE JUNE 21, 1983

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ever ex-
read and

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TEMPLE

old-time volkische ge-
mbs inexorably to the
raft-of industrial civili-

of his adopted countryman.)

ed from a novel by
L'Etoile Du Nord fea-
moret as the venerable
Brussels rooming house
et as her prize boarder.

Egypt and—more re-
lied murder of a wealthy
Brussels-Paris express,
Signoret's doorstep and
th his amiable mystère.
ound the house in a
Noiret holds forth on
st pretext but bolts the
innocence every time

Noiret is one of the prize icons of French movies—he's Fred Flinstone with Bambi's liquid eyes—and the chemistry between this portly actor (who wears a fez better than any European since Sidney Greenstreet) and the good-hearted Signoret is about the only thing going for L'Etoile Du Nord which is directed with an irritating, flashback-ridden lack of finesse by Pierre Granier-Deferre. No callow newcomer, Granier-Deferre has made 16 previous features, including three adapted from Simenon. According to the press kit, one of these "won the Grand Prix for Cinéma Français." "From there," the text continues, "Pierre Granier-Deferre followed with a body of work that he recognizes as being unequaled."

Abigail Child's new sound films (Monday at the Museum of Modern Art) are rapid-fire montages of stock and original foottage accompanied by strident shards of opera, movie music, conversations, and rock 'n' roll—something like television roulette with the sound remixed. Preface (1981) and Mutiny (1982) are both sections from her ongoing Is This What You Were Born For? The question is open. Mutiny is the stronger of the two, creating odd synch-events and match-cuts out of images of (mainly) women in motion.

Earnest as Childs is, her disjunctive
sound-image combos are neither as sys-
tematic as those of James Benning, nor as
invigoratingly anarchic as those of Betzy
Bromberg (to name two filmmakers work-
ing roughly the same turf). Her films have
their moments but they don't yet add up.

continued from page 77

Is. Because it's the same
ertising. We're going to
annel 5. We're spend-
on that. And you play
We have no rich people
soring us. I mean, Paul
between $100,000 and
son in New York. At
are we going to find
that page ad in the *Times*
is the Voice is expensive
nendous risk—because
box office say you're not
ance sale. People today
at the last minute. So
s and needles and say,
ing to happen?"

MAKING BOOK

*Continued from page 45*

umbrella to mark the grave. Chamberlain,
in brutal national interest, doing to
Czechosolvakia about what we did to
Cambodia (oh, different, but allow the
simile), had the ill-luck to be faced with a
real madman, a tyrant who did not wish to
be appeased. So now, every adversary is
the same. Stansfield Turner goes on TV
and says he'd applaud, that the whole
country would applaud, a successful cov-
ert assassination of Castro. Is there no
thought at all to the future? Somehow, we
are reading history wrong.

Hersh goes into none of this. He doesn't even discuss substantially Kissinger's balance-of-powers fatalism. (which may be another tough-guy stance, but interesting all the same), the part of his ambition that looked to Metternich, Talleyrand, and (my thought) Bismarck. Is this wrong? What would be right? It really is not enough to say we should be nicer.

This is, I think, why *The Price of Power* is ultimately so depressing, so numbing, and for all its revelations so empty. Not because Kissinger is unfairly attacked (which he may be, but he can fight back—he doesn't have to conceal from us, at our expense, his public papers until the next century), but because the book provides no hint of what might have been better or what might be now, or what ought to come. Terrible things went down, unconstitutional things, plots for muggings and much worse. Nixon was a crook. I look at Washington today and shudder. I watch old Kissinger cohorts on TV mindlessly and venomously defending Mr. Wonderful and shudder more. I read the press not talking about the passion that fires and destroys this book and shudder again.

Sy Hersh should have told Koppel
where to get off. He should have included
a source index. Kissinger should have met
with him. So many should haves. I cry and
rage. Am I all alone?

CAFES • CLUBS

Print from Village EYE 1983

JOR THINKERS Portrait/Columbia EP

This EP contains four songs on Side and the dub versions of two of the songs on Side Two. And these dubs actually add something to our perception of songs, rather than just take up space.

members of the band are from Ireland, while others are from New York. I know who's who because the EP to me courtesy of a local Irish pub and had no press kit with it, but

can tell without any trouble that the
is from the old sod. But who cares
they come from as long as they're
turntable and I hope they turn up
ours soon too. They have great Lower
Side anthem called "Avenue B is The
To Be" — well who here at 605 East
would disagree with that?

And the second tune "Wicklow Hills"
sweeping romantic ballad which
yes you like Yazzoo's "Don't Go" be-

fore you got sick to death of it. How can
you go wrong with a song that starts out
"Spring still paints fire escapes with cop-
per shades, radio's rapping speechlike
strains, a figure's floating through the
sawing sets, some guys walks by
suspended by the sky — takes more imag-
ination when everything's remote con-
trol...
The whole song's written in
sweeping major chords in which the hu-
man voice and the synthesizer meld, melt
and sweep over one another in huge roll-
ing waves — except at the end of the
chorus where the word "hills" breaks
down into a grating minor chord and a
very unromantic electric guitar saws
through the fantasy landscape. Gives
Echo's "The Cutter" close competition for
my favorite song niche. Four minutes and
fifty one seconds of unbashed romantic
chliches. Awesome!! Celeste-Monique
Lindsey

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