Hix Befoxex dxnthxx

His dinner conversation elaborated on the Year One speech,
as he explained to the Americans how the Zulus and other Black
African tribes xxx would have been much more formidable foes had
they ever learned XXXXXXXXXXXX there was water under the ground
and had XXX they ever learned to dig a well. X his remarks were
literally denigrating. XXX

Kissinger was embarrassed, mostly because this time around,
he did have a black American with him, XXXXX John Reinhardt,
the former Ambassador in Nigeria and now the Assistant Secretary
of State for Africa Public Affairs.

For the next three days, Kissinger apologized to Reinhardt
for the dinner experience. XXXXX teased Reinhardt: XXXX

He also teased Reinhardt, accusing him playfully of trying
to avoid being photographed with the South Africans, so that at
every picture-taking session, Kissinger insisted that Reinhardt
appear front and center.

For the television correspondents, the South Africa functioned as efficiently as Israel, but it presented the same kind of personal logistical problems. The story was occurring in Pretoria, but the TV studio was in Johannesburg, about one hour's drive away.

And since we were seven hours ahead of New York 'n time, that meant we had to be 'n the studio at nine midnight for the satellite feed, and then drive back to Phoenix Pretoria at the end of an 18-hour day.

I did manage to get out to a good dinner in a good restaurant during one of the nights in Pretoria, and it turned out to be mildly profitable. I ate with Barry Dunsmore and Peter Jennings of ABC. Jennings was in an expansive mood, brought on perhaps by first-class the high quality of a white African Riesling.

He told me he didn't like my tie--a blue and yellow joo I had bought in Paris. I didn't especially like it either, which is why I took it on trips. The good ties I left home.

I offered to swap. Jennings was wearing a dark blue tie
said
with white dots, which he INSIGNED came from Tie City in New
York at a cost of 43.

Just after the first course, we indeed swapped ties.

Only Jennings took my tie and crammed it into the ice bucket
holding the wine, much to the bafflement of the busboy.
Jennings even offered the songy tie to the busboy,
but he declined it--no doubt suspecting some trick.
Come on now, thexx tie wasn't That bad). Jennings claimed the busboy's
attitude vindicated his own judgment.

You had to be there.

The Big Story out of South Africa was Kissinger's meeting
with Ian Smith. The first Kissinger-Vorster meeting had been
inconclusive in setting it up, but we began to pick up vibrations
with Smith - at least
about a meeting, until various people were talking it as a
certainty.

The announcement finally came at midnight on a Saturday, eight
nicht.

I was virtually certain it would come, but the timing waswkward--I would have to be in a TV studio in Johannesburg,
facing the possibility that the announcement would be made after
the my story had been transmitted by satellite to New York.

recorded
So, for the first and only time in my career, I mix the
story two rays. I wrote one script saying no decision
had yet been made. And I wrote another script saying they would
definitely meet the next day. Both narrations were sent to New
York via The Bird. After the feed, I got word from Victoria
about the announcement, and so I called New York to ask go with
Version Two.

UPI did not have comparable success.

Jim Anderson was also expecting the announcement. He had,
and dictated
in fact, already written his bulletin lead. He had a open
phone line from the Burgerspark, where the announcement was

being made, to his office, which in turn had an open telex to
APX KWAHQUAY XIX UPI's European headquarters in Brussels, so
that within minutes of the announcement, Anderson had a 500-word
story on the wire.

APX was probably even faster than the announcement.
Anderson's logistical plan was designed to give UPI a
text story if impossible. Its main competitor.
A few beat of a few minutes over AP, but its possibles were
over-planned.
It was actually beat by almost an hour, since AP
was not even present at the time of the announcement. But it was
a hollow beat.

AP had filed a story about Kassirer delivering a "virtual
ultimatum" to the Rhodesians to capitulate. And since it was
a Saturday in the United States, and most Sunday newspapers have
an early deadline, it appears that most editors finally decided to
go with the earlier--and more dramatic story--filed by the AP.

So despite an hour beat--a tremendous amount of time for a
wire service on a competitive story--AP appeared in more newspapers

that all over the country then did UPI, even though, ironically, the "virtual ultimatum" story was a virtual fabrication.

For our convenience, the press room in the Burgerspark had phones from which we could dial directly anywhere in the world that had direct dialing. Reporters were soon calling their wives and girlfriends all over the world. The South Africans got stuck with the tab. (If Israel was left holding a similar telephone book during Egyptian President Sadat's visit to Jerusalem).

## THE MEETING

Kissinger's meeting with Smith took place at the U.S. Ambassador's residence, which was also located on a hill overlooking the city. It was a sunny, windy day, and we about a hundred of us were crowded onto the lawn when Smith and his Cabinet ministers arrived, somber-faced. Kissinger was already inside, and the Americans very carefully avoided any pictures of Kissinger and Smith together so that they could not be shown in throughout black Africa as an example of the colonial Americans

FEEFEX consorting with the racist Rhodesians.

an uncommonly conventional
For Smith, this was XXXXXXXXXXXX site for ME
conversations about the future of his country. Previous meetings
had taken place on Royal Naval ships--with the British--and in
a railroad car on a bridge above Victoria Falls--with Rhodesian
nationalists.

The public record shows Kissinger referring to Ian Smith
as "Mr. Smith and his colleagues" and "the Rhodesian delegation."
But XXXXXXXX people who were there said that XXXXX in private,
he was more deferential, calling him "Mr. Prime Minister."

He was, after all, XXX explaining to them why XXX they had to do it, to commit national suicide.

As Kissinger recorded it later, "it had to be the most
painful experience of their lives."

[L]

The Secretary dispelled for good those various theories about Rhodesia that basic component of Rhodesian mythology--that the United States or the Western world would, in the final analysis, intervene to save black Rhodesia from being overrun by blacks, if it came to that.

According to those who were there, Kissinger did not exert any naked pressure. He simply explained and analyzed.

The "objective conditions," as Kissinger used to call them, were obvious--to him, to Smith, and to the South Africans: the white minority regime was必essarily doomed. The manner of its going would determine the future of the country.

Smith's delegation included the following points: a whole spectrum of political thinking in his country. He wanted black Communists in on such a fateful decision.

Outside, Eagleburger had told us the meeting would probably last for an hour. It went on for four hours. The extension provided us with the basis for our early stories.

119

It also gave us time for a lot of liar's poker.

The meeting broke, to be resumed a few hours later at the
Prime Minister's residence. we gathered there for a other long
wait.

During that session, Smith and his colleagues acceded to the
principle of black majority rule within two years, but we didn't
find out about it until later.

One of the participants told me later the conversation
We not very "rarr." Smith suffers from facial paralysis,
a result of being shot down over German-occupied Italy in a
British Spitfire during World War Two. It made him seem even
more dour.

There was no joking here. the mood remained somber throughout.

For Smith, this had been a historic occasion. It was the
first time he had been able to talk to a ranking official
of the United States, and he was now included

dozens of
Once we were in the air, Kissinger began sending messages
all over the world, laying out what the follow-up to the Smith
and speech should be.

Frank Kissinger, Frank Wisner, of the Secretariat, and other
staffers were drafting them as fast as they could, and Kissinger
was complimenting them on some, excoriating them on others.

Wisner, who had been getting about three hours of sleep
a night, fell asleep upright in his chair in the middle of
drafting the final message. He dreamed that his inner was raging
at him again, demanding to know, "Where's my message?"

It was no dream. He woke up to find Kissinger raging at
him, demanding to know, "Where's my message?"

At the first post-Pretoria stop, Zambia, we found a six four-
front column, front page picture spread across the front page
of the Zambia Daily Mail, the official government news agency,
purporting to show Smith and Kissinger meeting in South Africa.

It was a blatant phony. Bernie Guertzman and some others were called up the XXXX editor to ask him about his journalistic ethics, but he claimed he had been out of town, and that's the town and didn't know about the picture until he got back.

The return visit to Tanzania Tanzania produced an unaccustomed sound on the plane—the voice of the pilot over the inter-com.

During one of Kissinger's first trips, the pilot was one of the chatty types you encounter on the Eastern Airlines shuttle between Washington and New York, the frustrated disc jockey type who yaps endlessly about the weather, the altitude and

pilot's voice on the inter-com the texture of the ozone. That XXXXX kept him interrupting Kissinger's briefing profundities. The Secretary thenceforth bated all inter-com announcements, except on an occasional happy birthday announcement for football score.

But as we flew over Mount Kilimanjaro, Major David Bassett, perhaps figuring Kissinger would soon be a lame duck anyway, ignored the XXXXX intercommunal intervention and urged us all to look out the window to see the splendor of the mountain.

The end was obviously nearing for the State kisinaer.

He also touched base in Kenya, where he pointed out
that "those of you who have seen me dancing Kixiex (ed's note: sic)
will recognize that as far as dancing is concerned, we need a lot
of technical assistance from President Kenyatta.

Kissinger was obviously not in the mood.

[cc]

In London, the last stop before heading on to Washington, the Ermally British press kept asking Kissinger: "Do you think perhaps you have pulled it off once again?" The Secretary took pains to point out that whatever he had done, he had done it only with the EU closest cooperation and collaboration of the British Government. Prime Minister Callaghan kept making the same point, since the British had been trying for eleven years to get Smith to accept the principle of majority rule.

but privately, Kissinger was worried that the British would not follow through effectively.

As we flew home, somebody typed out a lead for the New York Times. It read: "Washington, Sept. 24 (NYT)--Secretary of State Henry Kissinger returned to Washington late today with another coonskin nailed to the wall."

Gwertzman declined to use it.

[Lc]

During the flight to Washington, the intercom crackled again, this time with *the* Smith's speech piped in by short-wave from Salisbury. We were over Labrador, 79,000 feet up. Kissinger stood in the aisle, XXXXX wearing his baggy pants and a sweater, listening intently, his lower lip XNXX protruding as it does when he's deep in thought. And I thought again of his description of his meetings with Smith: "The members of the Rhodesian delegation behaved with great dignity on what I had to be the most painful day of their lives."

I also taped the Smith speech with my portable tape recorder and then used the sound for a TV piece I did on arrival at Andrews.

The engineers' union filed a grievance against me.

Before we landed, somebody typed out a lead for the New York Times. It read: "Washington, Sept. 24 (NYT)--Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger returned to Washington late today with another coonskin nailed to the wall."

Gwertzman declined to use it.

Y eventually negotiations on the future of Rhodesia did
get under way in Geneva. But Smith trated the five-point program
as a take-it-or-leave-it contract rather than a negotiating document,
the Front Line Presidents all demanded changes such as make while
looking over their shoulders at the Nationalists, and the
alphabet-soup Liberation Movements with the zany acronyms all
bickered with one another, so that the Geneva Conference quickly
degenerated into stalemate.

Prime Minister
Eighteen months after the "breakthrough," Ian Smith
was still ruling Rhodesia, and time was still running out.

One reporter saved an audio tape of one of the briefings
Kissinger gave on the plane following the visit to South Africa.
It had a poignant ring to it: A Reporter: "Do you think Smith
tricked you?" (audience Pause...plane noise...pause...)
"Why would he want to trick me?"