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FOR RELEASE: 6:00 PM, EDT, WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 1983

OUTRAGED THEN, HENRY KISSINGER NOW SAYS PRESS WAS

RIGHT TO PUBLISH TOP-SECRET "PENTAGON PAPERS"

"I Do Not Think Media Should Censor Themselves" When It
Comes To Leaked Information, Says Former Secretary Of State

NEW YORK, July 20 -- Although he was "outraged" at the time, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger now believes it was appropriate for the news media to publish the top-secret "Pentagon Papers" report that was leaked to them. "I do not think the media should censor themselves with respect to information that has come their way," he asserts in an exclusive interview in August AMERICAN HERITAGE magazine.

"At the time I was outraged," Kissinger says about the publication in 1971 of the "Pentagon Papers" history of America's Vietnam involvement. The government at the time tried unsuccessfully in the courts to suppress publication, "which seemed to me to threaten vital and delicate negotiations in which we were engaged," adds Kissinger, who then was national security advisor to President Nixon.

Kissinger reveals in AMERICAN HERITAGE, however, that "On sober reflection I would go along with" publication of the report, which was leaked to the press by former Defense Department official Daniel Ellsberg.

"I do not think the media should censor themselves with respect to information that has come their way, provided they did not commit the act of theft or get somebody else to steal a document," Kissinger declares. "But if somebody takes a document

more ...

KISSINGER

- 2 -

and gives it to them, however ill I think of the thief, it is not the media's respon-
sibility to police themselves in that regard."

The former Cabinet official notes, "I have contempt for individuals in
government who turn over to the press classified documents in their trust. But I
don't have contempt for those in the press who receive" them.

Kissinger also upholds the news media's right to ferret out and report informa-
tion on diplomatic negotiations, even while they are still going on.

"I do not believe that it is the press's job to discipline itself about what information it receives, or to reject information it can obtain, on the ground that it might harm a negotiation. The media are in no position to make such a judgment," he says.

On the other hand, the former Secretary of State states in AMERICAN HERITAGE that secrecy is crucial to successful diplomatic negotiations, especially early on.

"If ideas become public before one has even thought them through in one's own government, if fallback positions are made public, the whole negotiating process is undermined," he asserts.

Diplomacy, according to Kissinger, "must seek a common position that can stand the test of time. This means that **both** sides must consider it in their interest. The amateur believes that a clever diplomat tells everybody a different story. But in diplomacy you meet the same person over and over again, and in the long term his confidence in you is more important than any minor advantage you can achieve by trickery."

He notes in AMERICAN HERITAGE, "In any public debate about negotiations, the critic can always score brilliantly against his country's negotiator simply because any agreement must have elements benefiting the other side. Otherwise the other side wouldn't have signed it. The issue is whether it also benefited **our** side. One's opposite number may have the same sort of problems. I always spend my first few sessions in a negotiation explaining what I am trying to achieve. I believe that for this purpose secret negotiations are very important."

more ...

KISSINGER

- 3 -

Kissinger notes in AMERICAN HERITAGE, "In the United Nations you don't have open diplomacy, you have open rhetoric. That isn't diplomacy, it's everybody stating his maximum position and playing to his own gallery. Most of those speeches are made for domestic consumption back home."

"Clearly, the results of negotiations should be public. The process by which these results are achieved generally should have a private phase and then it may have a public phase," he says.

Robert Bendiner, author and former member of THE NEW YORK TIMES Editorial Board, conducted the AMERICAN HERITAGE interview.

# # #

had just emerged from the darkness,
Harrington hardly looks the part of a
legendary figure. But his contribution is
universally acknowledged.

"With so many people doing histori-
cal archaeology these days," he says,
running his fingers through his thin,
white hair, "it's difficult to realize just
how little interest there was for it back in
the 1930s. Most people just equated
archaeology in America with the exca-
vation of Indian sites. They called us
'tin-can archaeologists.'"

Undaunted, Harrington stayed on at Jamestown until 1941, amassing a vast collection of seventeenth-century artifacts and locating the foundations of many buildings associated with the first permanent English settlement in America. But it wasn't until after the war, in the course of excavating Fort Raleigh and a number of other historic sites for the National Park Service, that he began to question what he was doing. "Nobody had really thought about it before," he says. "We were too busy digging and writing reports and recording what we found."

In 1955 Harrington presented a
paper to the American Anthropological
Association, the first ever delivered to
that group on the subject of historical
archaeology. It was titled "Archaeology
as an Auxiliary Science to American
History," and in it he attempted to set
forth his views on what this new
discipline was all about. His assessment
was not altogether self-flattering. "It is
time we ask specifically what these
excavations at historic sites have con-
tributed to American history," he wrote.
"Briefly, it is my contention that their
contributions to historical data are
considerable; to history, relatively
little."

The passage of twenty-eight years has
not done much to alter his views.
Although he retired from the Park
Service in 1965, two years before the
Society for Historical Archaeology was
founded, he has kept up with recent
developments in the profession. And he
is not altogether pleased with the way
things have turned out. For one thing,
the union between archaeologists and

*This was probably a 1760 icehouse*
*at Flowerdew Hundred, a Virginia*
*Plantation along the James River.*

historians that he once hoped for has
not materialized. Indeed, with a few
notable exceptions, Allan Nevins and
Daniel Boorstin among them, the re-
sponse of historians has been, he says,
"terrible."

The fault is not entirely with the
historians. The emphasis on archaeolo-
gy as science over the past two decades
has, if anything, made cooperation even
more difficult. Harrington's criticism
that archaeologists have failed to inter-
pret their data in a way that is palatable
to historians may be more valid today
than when it was first delivered in 1955.
"My attitude then, as it is now," he says,
"was that archaeologists could no more
develop laws governing why cultures
behave as they do than historians could.
We always called archaeology a science
and, in a methodological sense, it is.
We're very precise. We record every-
thing. We leave little to the imagination.
But I've always looked at archaeology as
a handmaiden to history, not to
science."

Despite all this, Harrington is opti-
mistic. Historical archaeology is still a
young profession, he says, and he has no
reason to feel any different about its
future than he did in 1955 when he
concluded his talk to the American
Anthropological Association with these
words borrowed from the colonial his-
torian Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker:
"Perhaps the day is not distant when the
social historian, whether he is writing
about the New England Puritans, or the
Pennsylvania Germans, or the rice
planters of South Carolina, will look
underground, as well as in the archives,
for his evidence."

That day may soon be breaking. And
if Pinky Harrington has his way, he'll be
around to see it.

☆ In last October's issue Robert Fried-
man wrote "Freedom of the Press:
How Far Can They Go?," an examina-
tion of the First Amendment.

NOLTE VON GERING IN NORDRHEIN-ZURICH

[LC]

THE CONDUCT of American foreign policy has changed radically since the days when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was essentially his own Secretary of State. AMERICAN HERITAGE believes it is a matter of importance to examine those changes through the eyes of an expert. Few people, we think, better qualify as such than Henry A. Kissinger, who not only had a hand in those changes but who probably exercised greater power than any Secretary of State in this century. Dr. Kissinger was interviewed in the New York office where he conducts a fraction of his still feverish schedule of activities. The understanding was that he would be questioned not on the substance of the foreign policies he carried out under Presidents Nixon and Ford but rather on the evolving ways of American diplomacy in the past few decades of this country's history.

*It is generally believed that strong Presidents are their own Secretaries of State. What persuaded you to take the post under a President as activist in foreign policy as Richard Nixon?*

First of all, one does not turn down the position of Secretary of State. Secondly, I had been a principal adviser to President Nixon on foreign policy when I was in the White House, so for me it was not like coming in from the outside; I had worked with President Nixon, and I may say I worked well with him. Moving to the State Department simply gave me the institutional machinery to carry out a function that, to some extent, I was already exercising.

*What about Secretary of State Rogers? Was he not exercising his function?*

Yes, he was, with great dignity. But President Nixon had stated during the election campaign that he would run foreign policy from the White House. And he carried out his pledge.

*Traditionally, historically, foreign policy has been made by the President and his Secretary of State. But now we have a National Security Council and a CIA and a Defense Department, as well as the Senate and even to some extent the House of Representatives, all taking a very active hand in the process. Are there too many cooks for the good of the broth?*

Let's make a distinction between the management of foreign policy in the executive branch and the management of foreign policy as between the executive and legislative branches. With respect to the executive branch, it is

impossible today for any one man or one department to encompass all the disciplines and interests that have to be reflected in foreign policy. Inevitably, a President has to consider many aspects of a problem and also take into account advisers who reflect still other aspects that have not occurred to him. This process contains a twofold danger. First, in order to settle a problem, the President may accept the least common denominator by way of bureaucratic compromise. Secondly, each issue tends to be dealt with on its individual merits. There is not necessarily among the various contenders for presidential attention a representative speaking for the most important of all aspects of foreign policy: the relationship of various measures to each other over an extended period of time. A sense of nuance and of strategy is very difficult to develop in the modern government.

As between the Congress and the executive branch, there is no doubt, in my mind at least, that the Congress is asserting an excessive influence over the day-to-day tactical management of foreign policy. Congress is not organized to do this. The attempt is enormously time-consuming and undermines Congress's own power of ultimate control, which should be directed toward fundamental purposes and overall strategy, not toward tactical decisions.

*Are you thinking of things like Congress's refusal to appropriate money for some Central American states unless they improve their human rights record?*

I don't want to go into which specific decisions would fall into this category, but I can mention one from the period I was in office—just to take the discussion

## “Explaining What You Are After Is the Secret of Diplomacy”

### An Interview With Henry A. Kissinger by Robert Bendiner

*This century's most powerful Secretary of State talks about the strengths and weaknesses of the Foreign Service, the role of the CIA, the rights of journalists, the contrast between meddlers and statesmen—and about the continuing struggle for a coherent foreign policy*

Kissinger in his New York study, 1982

DIANA H. WALKER/NEWSPAPER

49

Most Secretaries
of State
spend nine-tenths
of their time
on the tactical
issues and too
little on
where we are
trying to go.

away from immediate controversies. We were attempting to negotiate an agreement between Greece and Turkey on Cyprus. The Congress, in the middle of the negotiations, voted an embargo on arms to Turkey. The end result was that the negotiations stopped entirely, and to this day the Cyprus situation is totally stalemated. Now I can't prove that those negotiations in 1974 would have succeeded, but with every passing month the position of those who occupied the territory became more firmly established. I also think that the attempt by the Congress to legislate criteria for emigration from the Soviet Union had the practical consequence of stopping the emigration and worsening our relationship with the Soviet Union for no practical achievement.

*It has been said that the State Department is so large now and with so many layers of bureaucracy that it has to be bypassed in the very crises that it was meant to resolve. Can it be streamlined or will it become a white elephant, to be bypassed?*

When I was Security Adviser I frequently bypassed the State Department because I was afraid that its cumbersome machinery and its tendency to leak would thwart the negotiations in which I was engaged. On the other hand, when I became Secretary of State, it became rather clearer to me that one could not in the long run bypass the Department of State. You have fifty thousand people with assignments that they will carry out—either in ignorance or after being adequately briefed. Still, I do believe that the State Department will ultimately have to be transformed into a more policy-oriented apparatus.

*In your most recent book, you said that you had become Secretary rather too late in the Nixon administration to make substantial changes. Would you explain that?*

The trouble any Secretary of State has is that when he comes into the Department, he doesn't understand it well enough, and by the time he understands it well enough, it is too late in his term to affect it. For me that problem was compounded by the fact that I was

immediately faced with the Middle East War.

*Could you say roughly—you must have thought about this when you took the office—what major changes you would have made if you had had the opportunity?*

I had not, in fact, thought about how I would reorganize the State Department before I took the position because I quite frankly never thought that I would be appointed Secretary of State. And even to this day I haven't fully thought through what I might do. I operated with a small inner Cabinet, so to speak, of top advisers through whom most papers were screened and with whom I met regularly to discuss long-term strategy. They then had the responsibility of imposing that on the various bureaus. I believe that some mechanism has to be found to break through the current procedure. Right now the State Department is a cable machine with every desk officer or country director forwarding his preferred policy in the form of a draft cable to the Secretary of State. Some of these cables don't survive the relevant Assistant Secretary, but many do. Typically the Secretary of State faces, therefore, a daily sheaf of cables in which he's asked to give instructions on very disparate situations. Even if he's an expert, which not all Secretaries are, he would have great difficulty appreciating the real significance of each instruction in each area. So most Secretaries of State spend nine-tenths of their time on the tactical issues and too little on where we are trying to go.

*Couldn't some of these day-to-day tactical decisions be delegated? Don't the Assistant Secretaries and the Undersecretaries meet with the Secretary of State on a regular basis, in order to make their contributions to policy?*

Each Secretary of State has to operate according to his own personality. I had four or five, maybe as many as seven, very close advisers, among them the head of the Policy Planning Staff, Winston Lord; the present Undersecretary for Political Affairs, who was then

50

Deputy Undersecretary for Management, Larry Eagleburger; the Soviet expert, Hal Sonnenfeldt; the Political Undersecretary, Joe Sisco; and later Phil Habib. Then we brought in the appropriate Assistant Secretary as the case required. That core group met more or less regularly in my office to discuss long-term strategy and also to discuss tactics in the light of the long-term strategy. But that was my own creation and didn't survive my period. I'm not saying it should have, because it had no official status.

**What do you see as the proper role for some of these other agencies that were not created for the purpose of making policy—like the CIA?**

I don't want the CIA to be involved in policy making at all. The CIA should be confined to making factual analyses of political situations and to giving its views about the likely consequences of proposed courses of action. Now that second role is admittedly close to the area of policy making, but I am extremely distrustful of getting the CIA involved in the policy process as a chief player, because there is the great danger that Intelligence will then tend to follow policy rather than guide it with objective information. I would think a major effort has to be made to keep Intelligence and policy making as far apart as possible.

**Would you say that that has been achieved? Is that the relationship between the CIA and the Department?**

No, I'm afraid it's gone the other way. I shudder every time I see a CIA report published in order to support a policy, because that really means there is a subconscious pressure on the agency to write reports that fit in with official preconceptions. Furthermore, no CIA report should ever be declassified for any purpose until maybe ten years after the event. The CIA analysts should write their reports for the President of the United States, and the President should never use them in a public forum to support his position. He might use their information but he should not identify it as coming from the CIA.

**Could you say whether this is the tack that you took with regard to the CIA? Say, in Latin America?**

More or less. You know, when the CIA tells you that the consequence of a Communist government in Chile will be to upset the political equilibrium in

neighboring countries, this is an implicit policy recommendation. That cannot be helped. But as a general proposition, I think separation of policy making and Intelligence is the tack that I took. If I did take another one from time to time, it was wrong.

**Let me go back a little bit in time on a different aspect of policy. Woodrow Wilson made it fashionable for a while to talk about "open covenants, openly arrived at," but others have taken the view of Dean Acheson, Truman's Secretary of State. He said it was his duty to "inaugurate new policies and bring them to maturity free from public scrutiny and pressure." Is open diplomacy possible, and if not, how far can secrecy be carried in a democratic state?**

PRESIDENTIAL PAPERS/NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Kissinger at the Great Wall in 1971. He was preparing the way for Nixon's historic visit in February 1972.

51

Any amateur can
make a proposal
that is highly
desirable from
his own country's
point of view and
has no features in
it interesting to
the other side.

I don't believe the question permits a clear-cut answer. In a democracy the results of negotiations obviously have to be made available to the public. Except in the rarest of cases, secret agreements will not stand the test of crisis if the public has not been informed about them. So, clearly, the results of negotiations should be public. The process by which these results are achieved generally should have a private phase and then it may have a public phase. I believe that it is terribly important in a negotiation for one's interlocutor to understand one's real purpose. In fact, that is infinitely more important than the negotiating position, because the negotiating position you can simply telegraph to him, but explaining what you are after is the secret of diplomacy.

*Could you give an example of "negotiating position" and "real purpose"?*

Every negotiation begins with some formal proposal by one side, occasionally by both of them. But that position is frequently very formal. It may reflect a desire to feel out the interlocutor or a bureaucratic compromise. But finally diplomacy must seek a common position that can stand the test of time. This means that both sides must consider it in their interest. The amateur believes that a clever diplomat tells everybody a different story. But in diplomacy you meet the same person over and over again, and in the long term his confidence in you is more important than any minor advantage you can achieve by trickery. A diplomat must never forget that he can get away with duplicity only once. Secondly, the other side obviously will analyze any proposal put before it. And it will perhaps give you more credit than you deserve because it will try to find a rational, profound explanation. It is therefore essential to explain to the other side what it is you're trying to achieve and why it is in the mutual interest. You have to do it in terms of mutual interest, because nobody will sign an agreement that is exclusively in the other party's interest. Any amateur can make a proposal that is highly desirable from his own country's point of view and has no features in

it that are interesting to the other side.

In any public debate about negotiations, the critic can always score brilliantly against his country's negotiator simply because any agreement must have elements benefiting the other side. Otherwise the other side wouldn't have signed it. The issue is whether it also benefited *our* side. One's opposite number may have the same sort of problems. I always spend my first few sessions in a negotiation explaining what I am trying to achieve. I believe that for this purpose secret negotiations are very important.

*What can you say about the openness of diplomacy in the United Nations? Is that of any value?*

*Is it useful at all to us?*

The United Nations has some useful functions in the technical field. It's also a convenient meeting place. I don't think that it is of major utility for settling great power disputes.

*You have been criticized in the past for going to great lengths to control "leaks." Now if there is not in your view an excess of secrecy, why should there have to be leaks at all?*

That depends on what you mean by an excess of secrecy. The period when I was most intensely concerned with controlling leaks was when we were trying to end the Vietnam War by secret negotiation; when we were making a new opening to China; and when we were beginning to feel our way toward some compromises with the Soviet Union. In each of those cases a premature disclosure would have made it impossible to proceed.

*Aren't the advantages of secrecy offset by a loss of credibility when the media do what they're supposed to, which is to uncover the secrets?*

In the abstract it is an unanswerable

52

question. Secrecy carried beyond a certain point runs the risk of weakened credibility. On the other hand, openness carried beyond a certain point contains the danger of sterility and ineffectiveness. Secrecy is obviously not an end in itself. But if ideas become public before one has even thought them through in one's own government, if fallback positions are made public, the whole negotiating process is undermined.

*What is your feeling about the media on this score? Do they go further than you would like in getting and publishing information while negotiations are in progress?*

I do not believe that it is the press's job to discipline itself about what information it receives, or to reject information it can obtain, on the ground that it might harm a negotiation. The media are in no position to make such a judgment. Secondly, it is my experience that the media can be extremely helpful to public understanding if one gets them involved in the conceptual part of policy making. I spent a lot of time explaining to them what I was trying to do. I never gave them classified documents. However, by having me explain what we were trying to do, they could understand what a particular event probably meant, and they were very often right. I don't consider that leaking. That sort of information is helpful to the public understanding and it permits a meaningful debate.

*Would you object to publication of such material regardless of how it is obtained by the press?*

If the press broke into a government office, I would think that highly improper. And I have contempt for individuals in government who turn over to the press classified documents in their trust. But I don't have contempt for those in the press who receive it.

*Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart has made the point that a journal or television channel that obtains stolen information may be liable to prosecution for that action but is perfectly free to use the information once it has it. Do you agree?*

I would deplore its getting the information in that fashion. But I do not think the media should censor themselves with respect to information that has come their way, provided they did not commit the act of theft or get somebody else to steal a document. I would regret that, I think it would be wrong. But if somebody takes a document and gives it to them, however ill I think of the thief, it is not the media's responsibility to police themselves in that regard.

*In other words, it was OK for The New York Times and the Washington Post to publish the Pentagon Papers, but Daniel Ellsberg shouldn't have made them available.*

At the time I was outraged by the whole procedure, which seemed to me to threaten vital and delicate negotiations in which we were engaged. On sober reflection I would go along with the distinction I've just made.

*What is the effect on the State Department when a President short-circuits it by using personal envoys in times of crisis—or even just to break new ground—as Roosevelt did with Hopkins and Harriman, as Kennedy did with Bundy, and as Nixon did with you? Does that leave the Secretary of State out in the cold?*

Well, it depends on whether the action occurs with the knowledge of the Secretary of State or behind his back. If it's done behind his back, as occasionally occurred in the Nixon administration, I think it is very demoralizing for the Department, not really a good procedure. It may, in some emergencies, be necessary, but my present view is that if the President doesn't trust his Secretary of State, he should replace him rather than go around him. On the other hand, it is occasionally desirable to send an emissary who is clearly identified with the President. This should be done with the approval of the Secretary of State—as for example Vice-President Bush's recent disarmament mission to Europe.

*Is it true that both Secretary Rogers and Defense Secretary Laird knew*

With Nixon in Moscow, May 1972. The Mideast and nuclear controls were topics of a summit meeting.

PRESS PRINCIPAL PAPERS/NATIONAL ARCHIVES

53

The role of the
ambassador in
explaining the
intangibles of his
country to the
country to which
he is accredited
is more important
than ever.

of but were opposed to the initial
bombing of Cambodia?

Absolute nonsense. They knew of it in
advance and approved it.

You know that charge has been
made, of course.

Many untrue charges are made. The
documents on this are incontrovertible.
Rogers and Laird attended the meetings
at which the decision was made, and
they approved the decision.

The Foreign Service once had a
reputation that rested on terms like
"striped pants" and "cookie pushers."
Let me ask you if things have changed much in this regard since
Roosevelt's day. How much of a hand
does the working Foreign Service
have in actual policy making?

I have become a great admirer of the Foreign Service. It is the ablest group of men and women with whom I have ever been associated. Despite their reputation for leaking and self-willedness, I found them to be extremely loyal and, with proper leadership, extremely disciplined. Nor do I think such terms as "cookie pushers" and "striped pants" at all appropriate. If you go through the top echelon of the Foreign Service today, you find men like Phil Habib, who is of Lebanese extraction, and Joe Sisco, my Undersecretary for Political Affairs, who is of Italian extraction. Both reached the highest Foreign Service rank, so I think the kind of snobbery implied by those terms is no longer the problem.

I think the major problem in the For-
eign Service is that its traditions were
formed in a period when the primary
objectives of the United States were ec-
onomic. Rarely having had to think
about grand strategy, the Foreign Ser-
vice, by nature, and the State Depart-
ment, by organization, were tradition-
ally more geared to tactical than to
strategic issues, more to the middle-
range and short-range than to the
long-range. But that has nothing to
do with the social background of
the Foreign Service officer. It has to
do with the kind of people, with the
kind of organization, that has grown
up over the years.

There was considerable evidence in
World War II days that, whatever
President Roosevelt said about
bringing victims of Hitler out of
Germany, many of our officials cer-
tainly did not do their best to bring
them out. There's a good deal of
evidence piling up that they fought
against such a rescue policy.

I have never studied that particular
subject, therefore I cannot comment on
whether the Foreign Service sabotaged
some Roosevelt policies or has been used
as the fall guy. It is certainly the case that
Foreign Service officers, having spent
their careers in foreign affairs, are
occasionally very self-willed with re-
spect to their expertise. They occasion-
ally interpret orders in the way that is
most compatible with their preconcep-
tions, and they have been known to try
going around their superiors. That is still
true today to some extent; it depends on
leadership. The Foreign Service is
oriented to the Secretary of State more
than to the President—he is their Chief
of Staff. If the Secretary of State makes
it clear and insists on a policy, he can get
it, and I wonder whether in World War
II it was clearly understood thatOOSE-
velt, in fact, wanted to do more for Nazi
victims. In my experience it may take
some doing, but if you can convince
Foreign Service officers that you mean
business, they will take orders.

Given the speed of technology and
the ease with which you can confer
instantly with people anywhere in
the world, are ambassadors and the
whole panoply of diplomacy really
becoming obsolete?

They play a different role now than
they used to. In most parts of the world,
it is possible technically to give instruc-
tions in such detail that, for day-to-day
negotiations, ambassadors are less im-
portant. On the other hand, the political
leaders' understanding of each other is
infinitely less today than it used to be
when leadership groups were more
homogeneous and foreign policy was
confined to a smaller area. So the role of
the ambassador in explaining the intan-
gibles of his country to the country to
which he is accredited and vice versa is
more important than ever. The concep-

54

tual function of the ambassador is really quite fundamental.

*The ambassador carries on where the more or less understood details of day-to-day diplomacy leave off?*

He ought to try to provide a broader understanding of what the telegraph is communicating in terms of specific proposals and specific ideas. The complexities of the culture and the politics of most countries will not be understood by the policy makers' countries. They will not have a framework. In the nineteenth century foreign ministers understood the domestic structure of the countries they had to deal with because they came from the same social background as their counterparts. But the cultural gaps today are so great—and the people who come to high office have so focused on getting there rather than on the substance of what they will have to do in office—that they need a lot more assistance than before in understanding the problems.

*Why, then, do the Department and the Service keep changing their representatives just when they have attained a good understanding of the country they're accredited to?*

It's a great mistake. They shouldn't. There are, of course, some career considerations. To move somebody every four or five years does not seem to me wrong. But to change people every twelve or eighteen months, which frequently happens, is crazy.

*As a scholar in this field, as you were long before you took public office, whom do you consider the great Secretaries of State? Who would be—or were—your models?*

Acheson was a great Secretary of State. It's difficult to go back to the earliest periods because foreign policy problems were so different. Certainly Jefferson was a great man and almost certainly a great Secretary of State. More recently, I think Stimson was a considerable man.

*Would you include General Marshall?*

Marshall, yes. Acheson, Marshall, Stimson. Dulles was a strong Secretary of

State but very single-minded and didn't really use the institution very well. I guess those would be the leading Secretaries in this century.

*Would you, under any circumstances, want to return to that office?*

Not really. I suppose that in a crisis one has a duty to accede to a President's request, but for normal times public life is now behind me. I consider myself an elder statesman who is willing to advise. I have enormous admiration for the current Secretary and I'm helping him in any way I can from the outside.

*Just considering the Department as an institution, what are some of the major problems a Secretary faces today?*

There's a certain historic snobbishness that has left a residue even though the social background of personnel has broadened, as I mentioned before. There is still a certain lack of discipline. When you consider the Secretaries of State who didn't know anything about foreign policy when they were appointed, or very little, and add to it the frequency of change, it is not surprising that there have been relatively few consecutive periods in which strong Secretaries of State could impose a coherent way of thinking on the Department. This has made for a tendency toward self-will. It doesn't always make it easy to carry out a coherent policy.

*I take it that since you admire the present Secretary, you believe he will be able to improve the Department in this regard.*

I have no doubt that he will succeed, if he stays in the job long enough.

*And the President will let him?*

I am confident the President will let him, but we have another election in '84, and if there should be a change, that means somebody else will have to start again from scratch.

☆Robert Bendiner, a former member of the Editorial Board of The New York Times, has written six books on public affairs.

PINKFOWLER, ESR

When Sadat met Kissinger in June 1974, the Egyptian President called our Secretary of State a "magician."

55

AMERICAN CHARACTERS by Richard F. Snow

Charles Tyson Yerkes: The Streetcar Baron Who Got Rich Twice

CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Yerkes stands before his fireplace in Chicago at the height of his power.

A TELESCOPE FULLY six stories high turns its forty-inch lens to the skies above Williams Bay, Wisconsin, where the University of Chicago operates the Yerkes Observatory. Any reasonably sophisticated person, seeing that enormous instrument, would conclude that the observatory is less likely to be named for a noted Midwestern astronomer

than for whoever put up the money to build it. But no one would guess this particular donor's motives.

In 1892 Charles Tyson Yerkes found himself in trouble. A bank had unexpectedly called in a million-dollar loan. He had paid up immediately, but his business rivals smelled blood, and now he couldn't get a dollar's worth of credit

anywhere. Yerkes thought it over and called on William Rainey Harper, first president of the year-old University of Chicago. Would President Harper be interested in a million dollars to build an observatory? Yes? Fine, it was his. There were only two conditions: he would have to wait a few months for the money, and he must announce immediately that his school had received a magnificent gift from Mr. Yerkes.

The announcement was made. Yerkes's credit was instantly restored; able once again to borrow the great sums necessary to fuel his complex business affairs, he was soon invulnerable. And five years later President Harper could survey the local heavens through what is still the largest refracting telescope in the world.

Yerkes had been in tighter spots than that; in fact, he was perhaps the only great capitalist of those untrammeled post-Civil War years to actually spend some time in jail. Yerkes was as coolly ruthless as any of his more famous counterparts, but he had not risen, in the classic pattern, from poverty. He was no Cornelius Vanderbilt fighting his way up from the wharves; his family had settled in Pennsylvania three-quarters of a century before the Revolution, and his father was president of a Philadelphia bank when Charles was born in 1837.

The young man began his business career in the proper fashion when, at seventeen, he entered a firm of commission brokers. Five years later he got a seat on the stock exchange and went on to open his own brokerage. Somewhere along the line he discovered that he had a particular genius, an instinctive understanding of how to squeeze riches out of a city. The secret was a fusion between finance and ward politics, and Yerkes could handle politicians as well as any man living. He was famous throughout Philadelphia while still in his twenties, and by 1871 he stood a hair's breadth away from seizing finan-

56

AMERICAN HERITAGE

August/September 1983

Pgs.49-55

The CONDUCT of American foreign policy has changed radically since the days when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was essentially his own Secretary of State. AMERICAN HERITAGE believes it is a matter of importance to examine those changes through the eyes of an expert. Few people, we think, better qualify as such than Henry A. Kissinger, who not only had a hand in those changes but who probably exercised greater power than any Secretary of State in this century. Dr. Kissinger was interviewed in the New York office where he conducts a fraction of his still feverish schedule of activities. The understanding was that he would be questioned not on the substance of the foreign policies he carried out under Presidents Nixon and Ford but rather on the evolving ways of American diplomacy in the past few decades of this country's history.

It is generally believed that strong Presidents are their own Secretaries of State. What persuaded you to take the post under a President as activist in foreign policy as Richard Nixon? First of all, one does not turn down the position of Secretary of State. Secondly, I had been a principal adviser to President Nixon on foreign policy when I was in the White House, so for me it was not like coming in from the outside; I had worked with President Nixon, and I may say I worked well with him. Moving to the State Department simply gave me the institutional machinery to carry out a function that, to some extent, I was already exercising.

What about Secretary of State Rog-
er? Was he not exercising his func-
tion?

Traditionally, historically, foreign
policy has been made by the Presi-
dent and his Secretary of State. But
now we have a National Security
Council and a CIA and a Defense
Department, as well as the Senate
and even to some extent the House of
Representatives, all taking a very
active hand in the process. Are there
too many cooks for the good of the
broth?

Let's make a distinction between the
management of foreign policy in the
executive branch and the management
of foreign policy as between the execu-
tive and legislative branches. With
respect to the executive branch, it is

impossible today for any one man or one
department to encompass all the disci-
plines and interests that have to be
reflected in foreign policy. Inevitably, a
President has to consider many aspects
of a problem and also take into account
advisers who reflect still other aspects
that have not occurred to him. This
process contains a twofold danger. First,
in order to settle a problem, the Presi-
dent may accept the least common
denominator by way of bureaucratic
compromise. Secondly, each issue tends
to be dealt with on its individual merits.
There is not necessarily among the
various contenders for presidential
attention a representative speaking for
the most important of all aspects of
foreign policy: the relationship of vari-
ous measures to each other over an
extended period of time. A sense of
nuance and of strategy is very difficult
to develop in the modern government.

As between the Congress and the
executive branch, there is no doubt, in
my mind at least, that the Congress is
asserting an excessive influence over the
day-to-day tactical management of for-
eign policy. Congress is not organized to
do this. The attempt is enormously
time-consuming and undermines Con-
gress's own power of ultimate control,
which should be directed toward funda-
mental purposes and overall strategy,
not toward tactical decisions.

"Explaining
What You
Are After
Is the
Secret of
Diplomacy"

34

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50

35

ment, Harry Eagleburger; the Soviet expert, Hal Sonnenfeldt; the Political Undersecretary, Joe Sisco; and later Phil Habib. Then we brought in the appropriate Assistant Secretary as the case required. That core group met more or less regularly in my office to discuss long-term strategy and also to discuss tactics in the light of the long-term strategy. But that was my own creation and didn't survive my period. I'm not saying it should have, because it had no official status.

What do you see as the proper role for some of these other agencies that were not created for the purpose of making policy—like the CIA? I don't want the CIA to be involved in policy making at all. The CIA should be confined to making factual analyses of political situations and to giving its views about the likely consequences of proposed courses of action. Now that second role is admittedly close to the area of policy making, but I am extremely distrustful of getting the CIA involved in the policy process as a chief player, because there is the great danger that Intelligence will then tend to follow policy rather than guide it with objective information. I would think a major effort has to be made to keep Intelligence and policy making as far apart as possible.

Is that any wiser this is the tack that you took with regard to the CIA? Say, in Latin America?

SECRET MEMORANDUM BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOUR AND THE INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF LABOURagencies

U.S.
2BL
COPYRIGHT

36

51

[1c]

In any public debate about negotiations, the critic can always score brilliantly against his country's negotiator simply because any agreement must have elements benefiting the other side. Otherwise the other side wouldn't have signed it. The issue is whether it also benefited our side. One's opposite number may have the same sort of problems. I always spend my first few sessions in a negotiation explaining what I am trying to achieve. I believe that for this purpose secret negotiations are very important.

*Is it useful at all to us?*

*You have been criticized in the past for going to great lengths to control "leaks." Now if there is not in your view an excess of secrecy, why should there have to be leaks at all? That depends on what you mean by an excess of secrecy. The period when I was most intensely concerned with controlling leaks was when we were trying to end the Vietnam War by secret negotiation; when we were making a new opening to China; and when we were beginning to feel our way toward some compromises with the Soviet Union. In each of those cases a premature disclosure would have made it impossible to proceed.*

*Aren't the advantages of secrecy offset by a loss of credibility when the media do what they've supposed to, which is to uncover the secrets? In the abstract it is an unanswerable*

52

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53

The Foreign Service once had a
reputation that rested on terms like
"striped pants" and "cookie push-
erz." Let me ask you if things have
changed much in this regard since
Roosevelt's day. How much of a hand
does the working Foreign Service
have in actual policy making?

I have never studied that particular
subject, therefore I cannot comment on
whether the Foreign Service sabotaged
some Roosevelt policies or has been used
as the fall guy. It is certainly the case that
Foreign Service officers, having spent
their careers in foreign affairs, are
occasionally very self-willed with re-
spect to their expertise. They occasion-
ally interpret orders in the way that is
most compatible with their preconcep-
tions, and they have been known to try
going around their superiors. That is still
true today to some extent; it depends on
leadership. The Foreign Service is
oriented to the Secretary of State more
than to the President—he is their Chief
of Staff. If the Secretary of State makes
it clear and insists on a policy, he can get
it, and I wonder whether in World War
II it was clearly understood that Roo-
velt, in fact, wanted to do more for Nazi
victims. In my experience it may take
some doing, but if you can convince
Foreign Service officers that you mean
business, they will take orders.

54

39

SC]

He ought to try to provide a broader
understanding of what the telegraph is
communicating in terms of specific
proposals and specific ideas. The com-
plexities of the culture and the politics of
most countries will not be understood by
the policy makers' countries. They will
not have a framework. In the nineteenth
century foreign ministers understood
the domestic structure of the countries
they had to deal with because they came
from the same social background as
their counterparts. But the cultural gaps
today are so great—and the people who
come to high office have so focused on
getting there rather than on the sub-
stance of what they will have to do in
office—that they need a lot more
assistance than before in understanding
the problems.

It's a great mistake. They shouldn't.
There are, of course, some career
considerations. To move somebody
every four or five years does not seem to
me wrong. But to change people every
twelve or eighteen months, which fre-
quently happens, is crazy.

Would you include General Mar-
shall?

Marshall, yes. Acheson, Marshall, Stim-
son. Dulles was a strong Secretary of

State but very single-minded and didn't
really use the institution very well. I
guess those would be the leading Secre-
taries in this century.

Would you, under any circum-
stances, want to return to that
office?

There's a certain historic snobbishness
that has left a residue even though the
social background of personnel has
broadened, as I mentioned before.
There is still a certain lack of discipline.
When you consider the Secretaries of
State who didn't know anything about
foreign policy when they were ap-
pointed, or very little, and add to it the
frequency of change, it is not surprising
that there have been relatively few
consecutive periods in which strong
Secretaries of State could impose a
coherent way of thinking on the Depart-
ment. This has made for a tendency
toward self-will. It doesn't always make
it easy to carry out a coherent policy.

I take it that since you admire the
present Secretary, you believe he
will be able to improve the Depart-
ment in this regard.

And the President will let him?

☆ Robert Bendiner, a former mem-
ber of the Editorial Board of The New
York Times, has written six books on
public affairs.

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