The Washington Star

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Founded in 1852

MURRAY J. GART, Editor

SIDNEY EPSTEIN, Executive Editor

WILLIAM F. McIlWAIN, Deputy Editor

EDWIN M. YODER JR., Editorial Page Editor

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1979

# Cambodia and Dr. Kissinger

The publicity attending Thursday evening's David Frost stormy interview with Dr. Henry Kissinger made it sound, in prospect, a bit like a collision between prima donnas. To a degree, perhaps, it was:

But that doesn't obscure the light this interesting television dispute shed. — not so much on how history may judge the U.S. undertaking in Vietnam (historians will differ quite as sharply as participants and journalists) as on the current debate over it, recently sharpened by William Shawcross' book, *Sideshow*, subtitled "Nixon, Kissinger and the Destruction of Cambodia."

Mr. Shawcross' harsh indictment, which Mr. Frost echoes, is that through blunder and misjudgment the Nixon administration needlessly converted Cambodia from a neutral bystander in the Indochina conflict into its most pitifully mauled and hapless victim.

In the face of their prosecutorial brief, Dr. Kissinger seemed unusually disarmed and handled Mr. Frost's grilling with less than his usual aplomb. Yet no case so tendentious as the Shawcross-Frost case on Cambodia is unanswerable. And Dr. Kissinger did, after a fashion, effectively answer it.

In the initial stages, he claims, the "secret" U.S. bombing of North Vietnàmese sanctuaries in Cambodia (which he elsewhere says was known in detail to "at least 25 members of the Congress") was necessitated by the changing U.S. strategy, which came to be known as Vietnamization. As American forces were drawn down, the North Vietnamese from their staging areas along the Cambodian border intensified their military pressure, killing 500 Americans a week in the process. Since President Johnson had stopped the bombing of North Vietnam during the 1968 campaign, bombing the Cambodian sanctuaries was seen as an alternative to the politically-explosive renewal of the bombing of the North.

The administration's premise, as Dr. Kissinger said, was that the U.S. could not accept a headlong rout and must end the war short of dishonorable acquiescence in the overthrow of a South Vietnàmes regime that had, in good faith, linked its destiny with ours. That premise was controversial then, and remains so, although it seems valid to us.

There are all sorts of subordinate questions, too — whether or not the mercurial Prince Sihanouk accepted American bombing; how North Vietnamese forces in the border areas were redeployed after the bombing and, later, after the 21-day "incursion" by U.S. and South Vietnamese

forces in May of 1970, and the political effects of that redeployment in Pnom Penh; whether the U.S. encouraged or too quickly acquiesced in the ouster of Sihanouk, and the ensuing enlistment of Cambodia under the inept Lon Nol as an active combatant in the war; and finally the role of all these developments on the ultimate triumph of the murderous Khmer Rouge forces in the closing stages of U.S. withdrawal. It was a complex sequence of events, and no settled view is possible today as to precise cause and effect.

Dr. Kissinger might have strengthened his case by yielding a bit of tactical ground to the Shawcross-Frost case; for the U.S. military role in Cambodia was undeniably furtive and of dubious legality, and there was substantial risk all along that its side-effects would unsettle the delicate political balance in Cambodia. The best that can be said is that American policy was insufficiently attentive to political consequences, in Cambodia as at home.

Still, it remains nonsense — on this we believe Dr. Kissinger to be everlastingly right — to blame the entire ruin of Cambodia, ending in its virtual disintegration as a society, on limited U.S. intervention in the border areas.

Dr. Kissinger insists, correctly we think, that if any single military action was responsible for destroying the neutrality and peace of Cambodia, it was North Vietnàmese action. It was they who first carried the war into Cambodia, in violation of its neutrality. It was they who only last year imposed its most recent military outcome. As Mr. Shawcross himself observes, historic Vietnamese ambitions in Cambodia were probably only postponed, not altered, by U.S. intervention in Indochina.

And there is this question, finally: If it was ultimately beyond American capacity to determine or even greatly affect the political future of Vietnam itself, at a tolerable price, by what logic may it be insisted that American intervention preponderantly determined the outcome of the Cambodian "sideshow"?

Cambodia remains the last argument for the thesis, elsewhere confounded, that it was U.S. intervention that turned a placid and innocent land into a war ruin. American power greatly intensified and coarsened the conflict — there is no escaping that realization. But as for the political and military ambitions that primarily propelled the war, it would seem that Hanoi was determined from the outset to unite Indochina — including Cambodia — under its domination. As it has done.

Kissinger's Cambodian Ghost

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Like the United States itself in the Indochina war, Henry Kissinger did not start the Cambodian invasion; but he and Richard Nixon escalated it beyond all justification. Somehow, the full dimensions of the Cambodian tragedy which resulted directly from the Nixon-Kissinger Indochina policies seem to be beyond the former secretary of state's comprehension. Like King Lear, Henry Kissinger can find no peace.

— Provoked by the probing of interviewer David Frost on NBC network television, Mr. Kissinger's thin-skinned responses provided him little defense for carrying the war into Cambodia:

Kissinger—We weren't destroying a country when we were...

Frost—We started to destroy a country...

Kissinger—We did not start to destroy a country from anybody's point of view when we were bombing seven isolated North Vietnamese base areas within some five miles of the Vietnamese border, from which attacks were being launched into South Vietnam.

That, in effect continues to be Mr. Kissinger's line of

defense for expanding the war until it totally ungulfered Cambodia. In September issue of *The Economist*, Mr. Kissinger challenges author William Shawcross' assertion in his book, "Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia," that the United States ended Cambodia's neutrality by invading the country.

Mr. Shawcross, however, maintains that it was with just this invasion on March 18, 1969, which the former secretary of state engineered and President Nixon ordered, that Mr. Kissinger consolidated "his control over foreign policy."

Still, whatever the world might now think of Mr. Kissinger's defense that "we inherited a tragedy," it is unavoidably clear that the true tragedy today is the total destruction of the Cambodians through continuing warfare and starvation. Only a few days ago, thousands of starving Khmer Rouge civilians and soldiers resumed their flight into neighboring Thailand, straining already inadequate refugee facilities.

Whatever might have been Mr. Kissinger's role, this suffering is now a moral blot on mankind which cries out for greater international response.

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TV & radio

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# Shot in the arm for NBC's Kissinger

NBC probably isn't very happy with David Frost, now that he has demeaned the journalistic standards the network used in the special interview with Henry Kissinger tonight.

But really he did the network the biggest favor since Fred Silverman decided he was too big for just two networks. By sounding off about alleged unprofessional compromises with Mr. Kissinger, Mr. Frost stirred up more attention for this show than it ever could have gotten under normal circumstances.

How many viewers would be eager to hear Henry Kissinger expound upon the foreign policy initiatives of the Nixon years in the middle of the World Series? Or in the middle of the world kayak championships, for that matter?

But now maybe a few folks will be intrigued enough by the supposed controversy to tune in and hear what the good doctor has to say. The special is on Channel 11 at 10 tonight.

There are several interesting angles from which to examine this show, none of them having anything particular to do with its content.

First of all there's the totally unsurprising fact that the interview with Mr. Kissinger conveniently coincides with the publication of his memoirs. Mr. Kissinger is following the time-honored tradition of using a TV interview as free publicity to hawk his new book.

It's also mildly diverting to note that Mr. Kissinger happens to be under contract to NBC. He signed up with them shortly after he left public service. (Some say he's due back at any moment.) For a sizable six-figure-per-year retainer, Mr. Kissinger agreed to supply NBC with his foreign policy expertise on at least one special a year.

The agreement began in July, 1977. Since then, Mr. Kissinger's contributions to the network have been decidedly minimal. He has been interviewed on specials before; one will be remembered as one of the least-watched TV shows of all time.

DAVID FROST

## Bill Carter

That probably says more about the character of the nation than it does about the character of Henry Kissinger. But it's safe to say NBC hasn't exactly turned the Kissinger deal into a bonanza.

We could also consider the choice of Mr. Frost as the interviewer rather than one of the perfectly capable journalists already in the employ of NBC news. Why would the network pass over its own people?

Well, Mr. Frost did make quite a bit of hay for himself (even if not too many dollars) with his famous interviews of Richard Nixon in 1977. Could it be NBC thought Mr. Frost's name would give the show a little zip it might lack if someone like David Brinkley were doing the questioning?

Perhaps. NBC's official explanation went like this:

"Frost's skill and expertise as an interviewer is [sic] well-documented. His history-making interviews with former President Nixon in 1977 demonstrated his grasp of complex matters and his ability to translate them effectively for television viewers."

Mr. Frost seems to have taken this praise seriously, to the point where he quit the show rather than agree to what he alleged was a sellout by NBC to Mr. Kissinger.

It seems that Mr. Frost and Mr. Kissinger really got into it over Mr. Kissinger's actions concerning Cambodia during the first of their two scheduled interview sessions. After the second session, NBC came to Mr. Frost and asked him to participate in a third interview segment.

At first he was willing, but then demurred, saying NBC had agreed to allow Mr. Kissinger to make a 15-minute statement defending himself. Mr. Frost said he'd do this, and the fact that he would not be editing all the material by himself, would violate his journalistic principles.

NBC denied Mr. Frost's charges, saying it had never told Mr. Kissinger he could make a blanket statement free of cross-examination. It's gone back and forth like that the past week or so.

Meanwhile, the show is on tonight and NBC is going to preface it with a long statement explaining the network's position. It comes down to the fact that NBC says Mr. Frost is off base and Mr. Kissinger was never given any guarantees that would mean a compromise of the network's journalistic standards.

However, NBC did agree to Mr. Kissinger's request that a transcript of the entire first interview with Mr. Frost be released, so that nothing would be lost on TV in the editing process.

So what's it all come down to? Lots of publicity certainly, which should make most of the participants happy. Mr. Frost gets to be on the program as well as score some brownie points for his "journalistic integrity." Mr. Kissinger gets tons of publicity for his book, which won't hurt sales much.

The NBC network will probably get more viewers than it would have otherwise with what most viewers would regard as something more appropriate for public TV.

Only NBC news is likely to lose anything in the controversy. Despite the denials, Mr. Frost's critical comments hurt, especially when combined with the fact that NBC news wasn't exactly smelling like a rose for signing

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Kissinger special

up Mr. Kissinger in the first place.

-0-

CBS still says it's not ready to pull the plug on its sick
shows, but it at least seems anxious to send them to the in-
tensive care unit.

The network already has announced that it will shelve
the two Wednesday night comedies, "Struck by Lightning"
and "The Last Resort," for at least the rest of this month.
Now it is working on a "game plan" to salvage some re-
spectability on Saturday night, which has been hell's
kitchen for CBS.

The network apparently will put three mega-losers,
"Working Stiffs," "Bad News Bears" and "Big Shamus,
Little Shamus," on the back burner and plug the gap with
movies, at least until it figures out something else to do.
That means another weak show, "Paris," may hold on at
10 Saturday nights for the time being.

AN END TO INNOCENCE

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GEORGE F. WILL

Henry Kissinger's memoirs are an elegant literary achievement and a political act of, I hope, profound consequence. His aim is to purge foreign policy of sentimentality.

The book, which covers just 1969-1972, is fat (1,521 pages) yet lean; it will disappoint today's ravenous appetite for gossip. The author is frequently eloquent, griping, droll, ironic, sarcastic, tetchy and aphoristic. But throughout, he makes readers wade waist-deep in detail. Like Monet, he covers a large canvas with small strokes that have a remarkable cumulative effect.

Some works of literature can be read in snippets. Others, like Kissinger's, should be experienced as a steady march. Read relentlessly, his book conveys an overwhelming impression of the grinding, exhausting weight and density of things at the juncture of international and intragovernmental politics. No book better reveals the texture of experience at the highest levels of the modern bureaucratic state.

See Kissinger flail against a monster slug. (The Kremlin? No, the State Department.) See him at daggers drawn with a wily foe. (Le Duc Tho? No, silly: Secretary of Defense Mel Laird, for whose deviousness Kissinger feels something like the admiration Michelangelo must have felt for Raphael.) Kissinger does not tell even half of his side of the many-sided conspiracies, jealousies and maneuvers in what is called, antiseptically, "the policymaking process." As Mark Twain said, confession is good for the soul but bad for the reputation.

**CHARACTER:** The greatest political memoirs of this century begin: "All my life I have thought of France in a certain way." De Gaulle knew where to begin: with national character. It has been said that anyone who has seen the same opera performed before Italian and English audiences knows how different national characters can be. Kissinger's memoirs are, in part, a meditation on the character of his adopted nation. He believes that because America became great by assimilating disparate groups, it believes too much in the possibility of tolerance and compromise, too little in protracted conflicts about unbridgeable differences. He hopes America is losing its "innocence" and coming to terms with the practice of "balance of power" diplomacy.

People have been announcing the end of American innocence since Yorktown. Innocence? John Adams? James K. Polk? Lincoln? The Founders built a "balance of power" into the constitutional system of checks and balances, and did well in diplo-

macy. Last century, Americans fought often to consolidate the nation and suffered proportionately more casualties than any European nation. This century, Americans learned childishness (which, any parent knows, is not innocence).

Kissinger notes that in 1919 Americans withdrew from the world because they thought the world too evil for America, and 50 years later the intelligentsia wanted to withdraw because they thought America too evil for the world. The Marshall Plan and Point Four expressed the faith that our moral and material resources could overwhelm all problems. It was the New Deal internationalized: economic progress would dissolve political conflict. Peace, people thought, is "normal" and is the final result of diplomatic goodwill. Kis-

> History, Kissinger senses, has trends, but is neither a prison nor an alibi.

singer says that finality is a chimera. "History knows no resting places, no plateaus," because "the management of a balance of power is a permanent undertaking, not an exertion that has a foreseeable end."

Kissinger admires de Gaulle, who also faced, simultaneously, problems of a withdrawal (from Algeria; he, too, took four years) and restoration of national confidence. De Gaulle, "the son of a continent covered with ruins," knew that a statesman must sense the "trend of history." History, Kissinger senses, has trends, but is neither a prison nor an alibi. There is "a margin between necessity and accident" in which one can act to "resist the decay that besets all human institutions."

Kissinger believes that the hinge of the history he helped make was autumn 1970. Jordan was disintegrating, the Soviets had troops in Egypt and were building a submarine base in Cuba, and Allende came to power promising to turn Chile into a Cuba. But two great events of 1970 involved no human volition. One was Nasser's fatal heart attack, which led to the ascendancy of Sadat. The other was the cyclone that devastated East Pakistan and set in train civil war, then the India-Pakistan war, during which the U.S. "tilted" toward Pakistan to show, to China and the Soviet

Union, a commitment to balance-of-power diplomacy. But historical accidents only make possible what other events have prepared. In nurturing events, the statesman must "rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance."

If you culled from Kissinger's tome all his maxims, you could assemble an essay as slender and pithy as Machiavelli's "Prince." Machiavelli stressed fortuna, meaning the capriciousness of history, and virtù, the ability to show mastery amidst the flux of things. But on page after page, Kissinger demonstrates that a leader of the American democracy is apt to be bound down with many cords, like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. The chief impediment to creative diplomacy is not, as has been said, the turbulence of the people, but the sluggish, clogging bureaucracy, which "confuses wise policy with smooth administration [and] has an incentive to exaggerate technical complexity and minimize the scope and importance of political judgment." How can a leader show virtù when fortuna dishes up something like the State Department?

It was an epochal event when, responding to the Soviet threat to China, the U.S. decided that it had a strategic interest in the survival of a major Communist country. The "triangular diplomacy" made possible by the opening to China reflects Kissingerian doctrine: the multiplication of diplomatic variables creates opportunities for a subtle and supple Prince. The more intricate the game of nations becomes, the more opportunity there is for creative leaders to compensate with cleverness for what their democratic societies lack in discipline.

**MATURITY:** Yet leadership exercised—even a decision taken—at the center of the U.S. Government often trickles away and disappears like rain on sand. No theory of the "imperial" Presidency will survive Kissinger's descriptions of the executive branch busily inventing "backchannels" around itself. And Kissinger's book is an antidote to frivolous talk about its not mattering who is elected President. It matters very much that a President have the tenacity to radiate his energy through the government.

James Joyce expected his readers to devote their lives to understanding his writings. Kissinger has a bit less brass, but he thinks people should devote many evenings to understanding how he thinks history happens. If enough people do, this will be a more mature nation when it enters a decade that threatens to demand more maturity than the nation has recently shown.

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NEWSWEEK/OCTOBER 29, 1979

Kissinger Calls
Cambodia First
Nixon Decision

Continued From A-1

Vietnamese border, and there were
few civilians living there.

The bombing decision was made at an Oval Office meeting on Sunday afternoon, March 16. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird advocated the attacks. Secretary of State William Rogers opposed them on the grounds that they would provoke too much opposition in Congress. At that meeting, Rogers finally agreed to a B-52 strike on the area that presumably contained the Communist headquarters.

Kissinger explains that the Cambodian bombings were kept secret as a device to protect Cambodian leader Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who, he maintains, was giving his tacit consent to the American actions.

"We saw no sense in announcing what Cambodia encouraged and North Vietnam accepted," writes Kissinger, adding that the bombing was kept secret because to announce it publicly might force an embarrassed Cambodian government to demand that it stop.

Kissinger discloses for the first time that the United States attempted to negotiate the neutrality of Cambodia, but that this was rejected by chief Hanoi negotiator Le Duc Tho during an April 1970 session with Kissinger in Paris. According to Kissinger's account, Tho emphasized that "it was his people's destiny not merely to take over South Vietnam but to dominate the whole of Indochina."

The former national security adviser rebuts in his memoirs what he calls "the folklore" that the U.S. war effort in Cambodia, and particularly the effort to root out Vietnamese sanctuaries there, are responsible for the disasters that came to that country after the war.

Kissinger says that "myth survives even today when the Vietnamese... with barely a whimper of world protest have finally fulfilled the ambition of conquering the whole of Indochina."

Kissinger says that when Cambodian Prime Minister Lon Nol seized

power from the country's mercurial leader Prince Sihanouk in March, both the United States and Hanoi were taken by surprise.

By the middle of April, he maintains, before the United States had taken any significant action, Sihanouk had irrevocably joined forces with the Communists. Furthermore, he says, the United States had not at that point begun to arm the government of Lon Nol.

However, the United States, in Kissinger's view, was confronted with the danger that with Sihanouk in the Communist camp, the fall of Lon Nol would confront the United States with a situation in which all of Cambodia would effectively be transformed into a Communist base from which attacks could be launched against American troops.

Thus, he adds, "We were being driven toward support of Lon Nol, hesitantly, reluctantly, in response to circumstances in Cambodia that we could neither forecast nor control."

By the middle of April, says Kissinger, the North Vietnamese were embarked on a plan to expand their Cambodian sanctuaries into a single "liberated zone."

Nixon, after much discussion

among his advisers, sided with the arguments of Vice President Spiro Agnew and ordered an invasion of the sanctuary areas, using American troops. But Kissinger reveals that an even more drastic response was briefly considered and then, to Kissinger's regret, dropped by Nixon.

At one point, shortly after the decision to make the Cambodian incursion, the president invited Kissinger to Camp David. While Nixon swam, he told Kissinger, strolling by the side of the pool, that he was considering "going for broke," and bombing North Vietnam and mining Haiphong harbor simultaneously with moving into Cambodia.

Kissinger says he urged against such a course of action, but in his memoirs he admits his regret that Nixon's idea was not considered more seriously. "The bane of our military actions in Vietnam throughout was their hesitancy and inconclusiveness," he writes.

Finally on April 28, Operation Total Victory 12 was launched against both major Cambodian base areas, the so-called Parrot's Beak and the Fishhook area bordering on South Vietnam, a military measure that Kissinger credits with delaying the Communist takeover of Cambodia by several years.

American troops advance across a Cambodian flat in the early 1970s.

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Kissinger Details
1971 U.S. 'Tilt'
Toward Pakistan

The Washington Star today contin-
ues its summary of Henry Kissing-
er's memoir, White House Years, ex-
cerpted in the current issue of Time,
magazine and to be published later
this month by Little, Brown. Today's
portion deals with the controversial
"tilt" toward Pakistan in 1971.

By Richard Bernstein
Time-Life News Service

"The India-Pakistan war of 1971," writes Henry Kissinger, "was perhaps the most complex issue of Nixon's first term," in part because "the stakes were so much greater than the common perception of them."

In recounting the complex events
of the India-Pakistan crisis, during
which the new state of Bangladesh

The Kissinger Memoirs:
‘White House Years’

was created, Kissinger argues that
American policy, particularly the fa-
mous "tilt" toward Pakistan, has
been widely misunderstood.

Rebutting a common belief, Kissinger says that it was not the goal of U.S. policy to prevent Pakistan's eastern portion — later to become Bangladesh — from achieving independence.

The creation of Bangladesh was
regarded as inevitable in any case.
But the administration believed that

See KISSINGER, A-8

WASH. STAR

10-9-79

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# Kissinger Tells Method Of Statecraft

The Washington Star continues its summary of the Henry Kissinger memoir, "White House Years," excerpted in the current issue of Time magazine and to be published by Little, Brown later this month. Today's portion deals with Kissinger's observation on the statesman's craft.

"The old adage that men grow in office has not proved true in my experience."

So does Henry Kissinger begin a collection of often pungent and irreverant observations on the problems and process of making foreign policy. Many of the former national security adviser's comments contradict conventional views about what does or should happen at the highest levels of government.

In the Kissinger view, for example, men holding high office are so

## The Kissinger Memoirs: White House Years

often faced with urgent but insistent demands to make decisions that they rarely have time to reflect clearly on the substance of those decisions.

"Most high officials," says Kissinger, "leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered. They learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make."

Kissinger's descriptions of how policy is made portray a corps of high officials entrapped by a huge bureaucracy that operates not with creativity but with mechanical predictability. The bureaucracy, says Kissinger, "confuses wise policy with smooth functioning."

For example, Kissinger complains that presidents are given few real options by the bureaucracy.

"If forced to present options," Kissinger writes, "the typical depart-

See KISSINGER, A-3

WASH. STAR

10-8-79

# Kissinger Tells How 'Back Channels' Work

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Continued From A-1

ment will present two absurd alternatives as straw men bracketing its preferred option — which usually appears in the middle position."

Personal relations also can limit the options presented to a president, says Kissinger. Sometimes, "the tendency to be obliging to the president and cooperative with one's colleagues may vitiate the articulation of real choices" — a problem, says Kissinger, that afflicted the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

A reverse problem existed during the Eisenhower years, according to Kissinger. Then, often the president tended to "subordinate his judgment to a bureaucratic consensus," with the danger that in practice, he has "only the choice between approving or disapproving a single recommended course."

Kissinger argues forcefully that once a decision is made, it must be rigorously implemented.

"A leader's fundamental choice is whether to approve the use of force," Kissinger writes. "If he decides to do so, his only vindication is to succeed. There are no awards for those who lose with moderation. Nations must not undertake military enterprises or diplomatic initiatives that they are not willing to see through."

Kissinger portrays the "novice secretary of state" as a man nearly buried under a pile of dispatches — rather than genuine policy options — that he is asked to approve, "un-gently."

Kissinger describes some of the means commonly used to circumvent the dreaded bureaucracy, particularly, the so-called "back channel," which avoids "normal procedures" in distributing important materials.

"Usually," he writes, "the excluded party was the State Department," largely because, no matter what restrictions are placed on sensitive cables, a large number of officials inevitably find some way of gaining access to them.

"This is why," explains Kissinger, "even the State Department has set up its own internal back channels and why almost every president has sought to evade State's formal communications machinery."

What Kissinger calls "the Nixon method of government" worked best

when it involved "one daring move" (such as the Cambodia bombing policy) or acts of "solitary diplomacy."

Kissinger provides some advice in his memoir that would, if carried out, diminish the importance of the role he himself played during the first four years of the Nixon administration.

"I have become convinced," he writes, "that a president should make the secretary of state his principal adviser and use the national security adviser primarily as a senior administrator and coordinator." Otherwise, says Kissinger, the secretary of state's status is diminished, which both confuses some foreign countries and gives others the opportunity "to play one part of our government off against the other."

Kissinger also provides some clues to his negotiating strategy that, he says, was "to determine the most reasonable outcome and then get there rapidly." In following this technique, Kissinger says that making clear what the "rock bottom position" is and holding to it avoids the misunderstandings that making "moves in driblets" often causes.

"Shaving the salami," he writes, "encourages the other side to hold on to see what the next concession is likely to be." By contrast, Kissinger says: "I favored big steps taken when they were least expected, when there was a minimum of pressure, and creating the presumption that we would stick to that position."

Clearly, the most critical time for any policy-making decision comes during a crisis, a moment, says Kissinger, that is not dominated by a mood of frenzy but rather by "a strange tranquility," in which personal animosities are submerged and petty details left to subordinates.

"In a crisis," says Kissinger, "only the strongest strive for responsibility. The rest are intimidated by the knowledge that failure will demand a scapegoat."

In the end of the Time excerpt, Kissinger returns to a common theme of his reflections on American foreign policy: namely the need to prevent it from oscillating between "excesses of isolation and overextension."

What the Nixon administration sought to do, says Kissinger, and

what made its foreign policy seem "un-American" was to make judgments "based on some more permanent conception of national interest" than on impulses toward either isolationism or its opposite.

It was ironic, he concludes, that that "flawed man," Richard Nixon, was the leader who tried to bring U.S. foreign policy into tune with the "new realities."

It was ironic, too, Kissinger says, that "the foreign leaders who best understood this were the two grizzled veterans of the Long March, Mao and Chou, who openly expressed their preference for Richard Nixon over the wayward representatives of American liberalism."

Tomorrow: The subcontinent crisis.

David Frost quits
Kissinger interview

New York (AP)—Television personality David Frost has quit as NBC's interviewer of former secretary of state Henry Kissinger in a dispute over editorial control.

William Small, president of NBC News, said Sunday that Mr. Frost notified the network he believed "fundamental journalistic ethics" were violated by certain NBC decisions about the interviews.

Mr. Kissinger, who last year signed a five-year contract worth $1 million to provide occasional services to the network, was interviewed by Mr. Frost for a television special to be aired Thursday. The program, which still is scheduled to appear, was to coincide with publication of Mr. Kissinger's memoirs, "White House Years."

In a letter to the network last week after completing two of three scheduled interviews for the program, Mr. Frost said he was quitting because NBC had agreed to let Mr. Kissinger retroactively edit and clarify statements he made during the interviews.

Mr. Frost wrote: "In effect, Dr. Kissinger is to be allowed a second opportunity to answer questions first put to him three days earlier, a clear breach of our understanding to each other and to the press that—in accordance with normal journalistic practice—we would not reveal questions to Dr. Kissinger in advance of the interview."

In a telephone interview at his Washington home, Mr. Small said Mr. Frost was wrong and that "at no time were NBC journalistic principles compromised."

Neither Mr. Frost nor Mr. Kissinger could be reached for comment on the matter.