Kissinger decides if he really intends to make a run for Jacob Javits' Senate seat from New York (Javits will be 75 in 1980).

By way of contrast to the loosely-drawn, inadequately thought-out Ford and Kissinger contracts, talk show host and entrepreneur David Frost put together his own small organization, signed Richard Nixon to a real, veto-proof, exclusive contract and, without groveling, produced some memorable television with his Nixon interviews, both in ratings and in substance.

**The Production:** NBC maintains that Kissinger did not have editorial control of the first program on Eurocommunism; rather, says one official, "he worked with us." That sounds like a Woody Allen line to the effect that both the lion and the calf may lie down together, but the calf won't sleep very well. Kissinger and his NBC "co-editors" were not an even match on the topic of Eurocommunism. The program's executive producer was Stuart Schulberg, who previously had been executive producer of the Today Show. Even if Schulberg had developed his own opinions about Western European politics since World War II, he could not oppose the Kissinger version; the program's star, after all, was Kissinger. NBC, in any case, was not spending $1 million to reach independent conclusions about events; it was showcasing a celebrity.

Two Western European specialists, one at Columbia University and one at M.I.T., were interviewed by NBC News crews; but, to no one's surprise, not a word of theirs was heard on the air. It was Kissinger's program. Western European politicians like Willy Brandt, Giulio Andreotti, Santiago Carillo and Michel Rocard fared a little better, playing cameo roles to Henry Kissinger Superstar. Marcel Ophuls, a documentarian of accomplishment ("The Sorrow and the Pity"), later noted: "From the ten seconds he is given to 'express his views' on the screen, it would be hard to guess that Michel Rocard is perhaps the most brilliant, and most consistently anti-Communist, among present-day French opposition leaders, perhaps the most remarkable French politician on the Left since Pierre Mendes-France."

NBC picked the garden of the palace of Versailles for David Brinkley's long interview with Kissinger that was the program's centerpiece.

Kissinger behaved like a Sun King, at NBC's expense. In Europe, he traveled with his own bodyguards, with a research associate named Michael Ledeen, and according to Alexander Cockburn's report in the *Village Voice*, with "a male nurse named Jock Covey." What the male nurse did is unrecorded; the security guards were intended to protect Kissinger from terrorist kidnappers; researcher Ledeen later reviewed the program he had worked on for an Italian newspaper, *Il Giornal*, a measure of sorts of the whole squalid enterprise, and of the journalistic standards of the Kissinger clique.

> "A viewer doesn't have to be a Harvard scholar to realize what is wrong with arrangements like NBC's. Board chairmen have to be kept out of the news process, whatever their ambitions for themselves, or their company."

**The Program:** Critics who saw the special concluded it was "Kissinger vision," Roger Morris's phrase, rather than television. Criticism of the program's content has taken two forms—what wasn't said, and what was. Ophuls, and to a certain extent Morris, wanted Kissinger pressed on his global geopolitics in general. But certainly Kissinger would never have permitted NBC to put him on record about Vietnam, Chile or CIA incursions in Italy. Some words, however, can be worse than silence. Kissinger's version of the record of Eurocommunism brought this evaluation from Stanley Hoffman, professor of Government at Harvard and head of Harvard's Center of European Studies:

> There were outright lies. There were distortions of truth and innumerable false innuendos. There was cynical manipulation of the public's ignorance or limited memory, such as Kissinger's praise of Portuguese Prime Minister Soares, whom he had, when he was Secretary of State, called

a new Kerensky. There was a rich variety of scare words certain to instill in the audience a fear of Communist cunning and might and sure to promote the idea that Moscow continues to pull all the strings.

Hoffman said he counted at least 34 instances "of the above kinds of tricks in the text of the final script." He also faulted the program for failing "to describe the reasons for the surge of the Left or for terrorism or to explain why so many voters who are not dupes of Moscow are willing to desert conservative coalitions that have failed to solve problems far deeper and broader than the structural unemployment mentioned by Kissinger." The networks, he concluded, "do not need to try to balance every statement with a counterstatement. But there is a difference between taking a stand and indulging in pure propaganda."

I leave the quarrel about what makes a Eurocommunist to the specialists. My concern here is what makes a news program. A viewer doesn't have to be a Harvard scholar to realize what is wrong with arrangements like NBC's. Board chairmen have to be kept out of the news process, whatever their ambitions for themselves, or their company. If NBC is going to buy stories, then it has to buy them on terms that allow more than one version of the story, or at least one full version, to come out. It isn't as if Kissinger or Ford didn't have ample platforms in the past to get across their records. Richard Nixon, in the hands of David Frost, was made to give as good as he got. He had to put out for his paycheck.

It isn't very likely, however, that the audience will be seeing much more of NBC performers Ford and Kissinger. They probably both will be too busy running for office, or giving the appearance of running, to work for their NBC megabucks. NBC News did use Kissinger sparingly as a commentator during the Camp David summit preparations. To the credit of Les Crystal, the journalist who succeeded Richard Wald as NBC News president, NBC used Kissinger in an unexceptional manner, as one more resource to be interviewed by NBC News people, not as the sovereign of an independent country. It was quite clear who was in charge, and who was responding to questions. But it certainly wasn't worth $1 million, or even the cost of one more reporter in a bureau, say, in Cleveland or Miami.

34 WJR January/February 1979

'Run Henry, Run'

1/27/79

Since I was among the 18,673 people from whom Henry Kissinger sought advice—"in great confidence"—about joining the Nixon team a decade ago, I feel a special obligation to him now as he ponders a Senate seat in 1980. It is hard, however, to add much to the solid analysis of pros and cons presented by Tom Braden ["Run Henry, Run," op-ed, Jan. 13]. But I'll try—a raisin or two in the suet, as it were. Tom and Henry deserve at least that.

Tom is worried about Henry's finances: A "con" against his becoming a senator "is money." A stint on Capitol Hill, it seems, would cut Henry's income by 75 percent. Tom asks the rest of us how we'd feel confronted with such surgery. That is a profound question, especially when measured against the challenges of being a senator. I hope Tom's readers discuss it carefully with friends and family and write Tom and Henry about their views. In the meantime, why doesn't Henry take on the services of a consumer adviser?

There are other cons and several pros Mr. Braden presents for Mr. Kissinger's consideration. But he saves the clincher for the end: What would happen to Henry, Tom wonders, "if one day he realized that nobody except Nancy cared about his opinion?" Implicit here, of course, is that Nancy is unlikely to pay a $10,000 fee for Henry's opinion.

When all is said, when everything is weighed, I think I could learn to live

with a 75 percent cut in Henry's income and would have to agree with Tom: Run, Henry! Except...

Except, Tom, in our great concern about what the Senate can do for Henry, we overlooked what Henry can do for the Senate. After all, a Nobel Laureate—even one who got his prize for bringing peace to Vietnam—can't expect always to be on the receiving side.

CHESTER L. COOPER

Chevy Chase

The writer was White House assistant on Asian affairs during the Johnson administration.

The Washington Post

EUGENE MEYER, 1875-1959
PHILIP L. GRAHAM, 1915-1963

DONALD E. GRAHAM
Publisher

BENJAMIN C. BRADLEE
Executive Editor

HOWARD SIMONS
Managing Editor

RICHARD HARWOOD
Deputy Managing Editor

PHILIP L. GEYELIN
Editorial Page Editor

MEG GREENFIELD
Deputy Editorial
Page Editor

Senior Vice President: JACK F. PATTERSON, Circulation; Vice Presidents: EARL K. CHISM, Controller; JOHN M. DOWER, Communications; CHRISTOPHER M. LITTLE, Counsel; ROBERT M. McCORMICK, Advertising; ROGER PARKINSON, Administration; DONALD S. RICE, Manufacturing; LAWRENCE A. WALLACE, Labor Relations.

Published by The Washington Post Company

KATHARINE GRAHAM
Chairman of the Board

MARK J. MEAGHER
President

1150 15th St. NW • Washington, D.C. 20071 • (202) 334-6000

Kissinger Entertains Westchester's G.O.P.

By JAMES FERON

Special to The New York Times

WHITE PLAINS, Jan. 26 — Dr. James F. X. O'Rourke, the Westchester County Republican chairman, knew that any lengthy introduction of Henry A. Kissinger at the party's annual dinner last night "would be superfluous," but he had to say something, he explained.

"I asked Washington to send me some background material on our guest," he told the more than 500 people who had paid $150 a plate for the occasion, "and they sent up three truckloads. They're parked outside, a very impressive collection."

The former Secretary of State got to his feet to thank Dr. O'Rourke, but regretted his having turned over the microphone so quickly, "just as he was hitting his stride." Mr. Kissinger then offered to accompany any interested guest "in reading the material," which he said was "no more than any genius would have produced."

Mr. Kissinger, who is now appearing regularly on the political banquet circuit, has learned to weave tested one-liners into any occasion, delighting sophisticated audiences with his own brand of topical humor and then plunging into a sober speech on foreign policy that one

county official called a "class act."

He is raising millions of dollars for the party while denying, in his own mocking way, that he has ambitions for public office. Asked if he was not preparing to challenge Senator Jacob K. Javits in 1980, Mr. Kissinger grinned and said, "He is going for another six years, until 1986, and God knows which candidate will replace him then."

Mr. Javits had been scheduled to appear with Mr. Kissinger, but was the victim of a canceled flight.

"Yes, the weather is turning," Mr. Kissinger said, "as fast as the friends of the Shah in Washington." He later spoke

at length of what he felt was the Carter Administration's abandonment "of one of America's closest friends."

Westchester Republicans have seen the powerful before — former Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller emerged from their own ranks — but Thursday night, in a scene likely to be repeated many times in the coming year, Mr. Kissinger dominated a roomful of political leaders and their guests "as if he were Richard Burton," Mr. O'Rourke said.

## Town Leaders Introduced

He shook hands, with Mr. O'Rourke doing the introductions, stood for photographs and signed autographs. Village and town leaders met him and then drew others into the group. Two security men, paid for by Mr. Kissinger, watched

nearby as the crowd swirled around him in the Rye Town Hilton Hotel.

Carl A. Vergari, the District Attorney, was introduced. "We met in Washington," he began, but Mr. Kissinger was dealing with other hands thrust in his direction. On the dais, he bantered with the dinner chairman, John Loeb, an investment banker and occasional political activist, and Dr. Bernard Kilbourn, the Republican state chairman.

His "warm-up" material was a combination of the new and the old. Did he aspire for high office? "I don't think so," he said, "at least that was what I told my staff this morning when they were kneeling..." He spoke of an amendment that would make the "foreign-born eligible for the Presidency," but preferred one that "would make the native-born ineligible."

"Next year," he said, "one-third of the Senate will be running, and that's only for the Presidency," a position he coveted "so that I can have a house I can afford."

Then, soberly, he spoke of the "painful" events in Iran and of President Carter's casually listing it, in his State of the Union address, with Nicaragua, Cyprus, Namibia and Rhodesia as "conflict" areas. He blamed Mr. Carter for opening the way to internal revolt by forcing a "susceptible" Shah to accept a human-rights policy "too dangerous for Communist regimes."

After the speech he remained on the dais until the last guest who wanted to shake his hand, get his autograph or take a photograph had done so.

DO NOT FORGET THE NEED