the first Turkish invasion, "Joe Sisco is on the way back, and it is my impression that he will not soon volunteer again for a mission."

As to what was happening inside Greece, Kissinger said whatever it was, he was certain the talks with Turkey in Geneva would go forward, and that "some Greeks of some sort will attend."

Sisco's visit to Athens produced a curious trans-Atlantic communication. He went to see the junta officers with Ambassador Tasca, but since Tasca had refused to deal with the powers behind the throne, he didn't know all the players. Sisco sensed that some admiral appeared to be a key actor in the drama. The admiral approached Sisco and said he wouldn't discuss the situation further until he had talked personally to Kissinger. Sisco put a call through to the Operations Center at the State Department, which operates around the clock.

The ops center put the call through to a Chinese restaurant in downtown Washington, The Empress, where Kissinger was having dinner. But there was something wrong with the connection, and so the Secretary had to call State back from a pay phone.

As one official recalls, "You could hear coins dropping periodically" while Kissinger and a Greek admiral talked across the Atlantic about the fate of Cyprus and the southeastern flank of NATO.

Shortly thereafter, Kissinger got another late-night trans-Atlantic call, which he later talked about incessantly.

The trans-Atlantic call had gone to his home well after midnight by Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, who insisted Greek ships were approaching Cyprus while flying Turkish flags to confound the Turkish air force. The Greeks denied it.

Nancy Kissinger, who heard snatches of the conversation after being awakened by the call, muttered, "Why don't you tell him to shut up and sink the God-damned things?"

It's not known if Ecevit heard Nancy's advice, but the Turks did indeed sink the God-damned things, only to find out those ships flying Turkish flags were Turkish. The Turkish air force bagged one Turkish destroyer and damaged two other ships.

The sarcasm was heavy when Kissinger would relate this story afterward and add how confident it made him feel about the southeastern flank of NATO and the defense of the Free World.

And, in that way he had of repeating the same story or line over and over, he never failed to recount the incident when he met with Ecevit. Ecevit did not appear to be amused by his former Harvard instructor.

The Turkish invasion set off an uproar in Greece and among the Greek community in this country.

The focus of the Greek wrath here was Henry Kissinger, and as a reporter pointed out to him at an August news conference, "You have been burned in effigy on Lafayette Square, I believe, for the first time."

"Well, I am honored," Kissinger cracked, "Is it really only the first time? →

The reporter replied, "In Lafayette Square, I believe."

"I hope you all realize," Kissinger said, "that half of the demonstrators were State Department employes." The State Department employes at the news conference laughed louder than the reporters.

It was not the last time Kissinger used that line, and it produced amusing repercussions, as these verbatim notes from a conversation with a Latin American foreign minister show:

"K: Mr. Foreign Minister, I sincerely hope that you have taken my remarks in the spirit in which they were intended.

"FM: Oh yes, Mr. Secretary, we Latins are known for our warmth and sense of humor.

"K: Good, good. You know, Mr. Foreign Minister, there are some people who just have no sense of humor at all.

"FM: Really?

"K: Yes. Now you take the Turks. I had the Turkish Foreign Minister to my office in Washington, and there was a large, Greek anti-Kissinger demonstration in front of the State Department. I said to him, 'Don't be alarmed, Mr. Minister, any anti-Kissinger demonstration immediately attracts half the Foreign Service officers in this building.' And do you know what he did? He sent his Ambassador to the Turkish desk to find out whether half of all American diplomatic officers are of Greek extraction? "

Nor was that the only time Kissinger's sense of humor fell on deaf Turkish ears.

Ecevit himself was extraordinarily intelligent and cultivated. He spoke excellent English, had translated T. S. Eliot into Turkish, and had studied under Kissinger at Harvard.

But some of the other Turkish leaders lacked those intellectual credentials and were sometimes befuddled by Kissinger's sense of humor.

In his dealings with the Turks, Kissinger had been impressed by their
obstinance. He did not find them to be the most flexible of people.

At one of his sessions in Ankara, as soon as the photographers had
left the room, Kissinger lowered his voice and addressed the Turkish side:
"Gentlemen," he said, "I have something very delicate to discuss with
you. I must say it, and I hope you'll not regard it as offensive.
But I must say that it's difficult to be allied with a people who are so
soft and pliable and flexible that they give away the store every time
they sit down to negotiate..."

There was a long pause. And then one of the Turks said, almost
sheepishly, I don't really think we are too pliable. And the rest of the
delegation spent the remainder of the meeting protesting to the
Secretary of State that they were not overly flexible.

Kissinger had a peculiar problem with the Turks. He simply could not
pronounce the name of the Foreign Minister, Ihsam Caglayangil, in
either English or German or German-accented English.

His aides told him to think of Charley-Ankle, and that's how he
said it, which was close enough.

After the invasion of Cyprus, Kissinger spent a lot of time trying
to work both sides of the strait, but without much success.

He would have been lynched had he gone to Athens, and it
was the only NATO capital he did not visit during his term in office.

Kissinger's dilemma in dealing with the Greek-Turkish dispute was
reflected at an appearance before a North Atlantic Assembly meeting
in Williamsburg, Virginia.

A retired Greek Air Force General got up and asked
"I am, sir, very much concerned, as I am sure all of us here are,
about the weakness in the effectiveness of the southern flank of the

Alliance which, as all of us know, is due to the existing state
of tension in our relations with Turkey... So I ask on which
side lies the bulk of responsibility for creating such problems
which produce generally this tension?

Kissinger reflected before answering: "Well," he said,
"I am reckless, but I am not suicidal."

Then he smoothly sidestepped the direct question: "In my
limited but intense exposure to the Greek-Turkish problem, it has
become apparent to me that in the history in which Greece and
Turkey have impacted on each other over the centuries, there has
developed a legacy of distrust in which an outsider would better
not attempt to apportion the responsibility."

No single issue served to sour Kissinger's relations with
Congress as much as the Cyprus crisis and the resultant cut-off
in military aid to Turkey.

It even led to a threat to cite Kissinger for contempt of
Congress when the White House refused to give a House sub-committee
a classified memorandum on Cyprus policy written by a State Department
desk officer at the time.

As Murrey Marder of *The Washington Post* observed, "Cyprus supplied
the rationale for the congressional revolt against Kissinger."

Kissinger later told a group of European journalists that "all
of my advisers knew that I anticipated Turkey would invade Cyprus. I
did not say anything against Sampson in the first week because I did
not want to give them another excuse to invade. The Turks would
have invaded sooner," he claimed, "had Makarios gone back."

After the Turkish invasion, a surprise lobby--a pro-Greek lobby-
materialized in Washington, the capital of lobbyists. It persuaded
Congress to cut off military aid to Turkey because the Turks had
used American weapons in the invasion of Cyprus. Kissinger claimed
that the basis for a cut-off was a "legal technicality," which led
to charges that Kissinger had put himself "above the law."

Cyprus served as an ironic counterpoint to a tenet of diplomacy
which Kissinger himself had once enunciated: "The acid test of
a policy is its ability to obtain domestic support."

Cyprus and the pro-Greek lobby detonated an explosion of anti-
Kissinger criticism in the Congress. Vietnam, Chile, Pakistan,
style, morality--everything that had been held back while Nixon was being

70

eased out of office suddenly burst forth. The Cyprus crisis also
generated a re-assertion of Congressional authority in foreign affairs.

Kissinger felt very strongly that the military aid cut-off
was a self-inflicted wound, totally unnecessary, which hurt the national
interest, which alienated a NATO ally unnecessarily, and which would
impede what it was allegedly supposed to produce--some progress toward
resolving the Cyprus dispute.

The lobby was led in the House by Congressmen Paul Sarbanes and
John Brademas, who are of Greek extraction, and by Congressman Ben
Rosenthal, whose district in Astoria, Queens, is heavily Greek.

But Kissinger never did take the House too seriously, and he
directed most of his anti-lobby wrath against the principal Senate figure,
Thomas Eagleton of Missouri.

During the swearing-in of Kenneth Rush as Ambassador to France
at the State Department, Kissinger noted, "No appointment gives me
more pleasure...unless it were sending Senator Eagleton to Outer
Mongolia... Indeed, for that occasion, we won't even insist on
establishing diplomatic relations."

The audience laughed nervously.

In a private conversation, he was less diplomatic when he heard
a report of something unfavorable Eagleton had said. "He needs a
few more shots," Kissinger said venomously.

Just before leaving office, he turned some of that acid humor on
himself. On his final overseas trip, he was asked by a reporter
on his plane if he would go on "special missions" for President Carter.

Kissinger laughed as he replied: "Vance will send me to
Nicosia and tell me to wait for instructions."