MAILGRAM SERVICE CENTER
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1-059701S346 12/12/79 ICS IPMMTZZ CSP WSHA
2023870705 MGM TDMT WASHINGTON DC 126 12-12 0520P EST

HONORABLE DR AND MRS HENRY KISSINGER
1800 K ST NORTHWEST
SUITE 520
WASHINGTON DC 20006

TODAY, I RECEIVED THE UNPLEASANT NEWS, THAT HIS EXCELLENCY AMBASSADOR DOBRYNIN WHO LEFT FOR SOVIET UNION ON CONSULTATION WILL BE DETAINED FOR A FEW MORE DAYS AND THEREFORE, MUCH TO HIS REGRET AND OURS, HAD TO POSTPONE THE DINNER BEING GIVEN IN HIS HONOR ON FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14TH.

RUTH AND I HAD BEEN LOOKING FORWARD SO MUCH TO THAT EVENING AND SEEING YOU, WE BOTH FEEL VERY BADLY ABOUT THIS UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENT WHICH OBLIGES US TO PUT OFF THE DINNER TO A LATER DATE.

WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOU LATER IN JANUARY, WHEN WE PLAN ANOTHER DATE FOR THIS SAME DINNER.

SINCERELY,
JÜRGE A AJA ESPIL, AMBASSADOR OF ARGENTINA

17:21 EST

MGMCOMP MGM

DEC 14 1979

5241 (R1/78)

TO REPLY BY MAILGRAM, SEE REVERSE SIDE FOR WESTERN UNION'S TOLL - FREE PHONE NUMBERS

1133 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS, SUITE 3500, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10036 / Tel: (212) 575-0066 / Cable: PROSOCCER NEWYORK / Telex: 12-6705

NORTH AMERICAN SOCCER LEAGUE [lc]

April 11, 1979

Mr. Hugo A. Espinosa
Billing Department
The Metropolitan Club
Washington, D. C. 20006

Dear Mr. Espinosa:

Your letter to Dr. Kissinger regarding your nephew has been forwarded to this office for a reply.

Before I can give you a definite answer to your letter, we need to know how many years he has played in college.

Please understand that according to the NASL rules no player in the United States and Canada can become eligible to an NASL team until he has been eligible for an NASL Selection Meeting (Player Draft) which is held in January of each year.

With the information you have made available your nephew would fit into one of the following three categories:

1) If he has graduated from college or will graduate by June of 1979, or if he has completed his collegiate soccer eligibility, then he may try out with any team.

2) If he will graduate or complete his eligibility until January or June 1980 then he will be eligible for the Player Draft in January 1980.

3) If he will not graduate or complete his eligibility before June 1980, then he would only become available for the draft if he petitions to the Commissioner before December 15, 1979 requesting to be placed in the draft. The letter must have a signed acknowledgement from the Athletic Director of his college. Please understand that the petition letter does not require approval of the Athletic Director. It is merely a means of letting him know of the player's intention.

If you have any further questions regarding these procedures please call me.

cc: Ms. Suzanne McFarlane ✓
Marion Whiting

March 2, 1979

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
Suite 520
1800 K Street, N. W.
Washington, D. C. 20006
Dear Dr. Kissinger:

This is in reference to the advice you so kindly gave me at the
Metropolitan Club regarding my nephew, the Soccer player.

It is my pleasure to give you some brief information about him.
His name is Fernando Espinosa, age 21. He is studying at Bellarmine
College in Kentucky. He has a scholarship because of his skills as a soccer
player as well as his scholastic ability.

In 1975 he was awarded the title "Best Player in the State of
Virginia", and his name was in the Virginia All Stars. He had the privilege
of being in "Who's Who" in America. During his high school years he accu-
mulated several trophies as well as a diploma from President Nixon for
Physical Fitness.

Personally, I can assure you of his high standing as a soccer
player as well as his moral character. His dream of dreams is to have the
opportunity to play on a professional team on the East Coast.

Fernando and I will be most appreciative if you can help to give
him the chance to show his skills, at any time.

If you need further information his records are at Bishop Ireleton
High School in Alexandria, Va. I am also enclosing a letter from his soccer
coach.

Since you are an enthusiastic fan and authority on soccer, we apply
to you for any assistance you can give.

With my best wishes to you, I remain,

MAR 5 1979

DANIEL J. EVANS

March 27, 1979

The Honorable Henry Kissinger
1800 "K" Street N.W.
Suite 520
Washington, D. C. 20006

Dear Dr. Kissinger:

I thoroughly enjoyed the occasions I had to meet with you and to listen to your presentations to the nation's Governors during the time I served as Governor of the State of Washington. I am also pleased that you have joined the Trilateral Commission and I cheered quietly at your able presentation during the Bonn meeting. I hope that you will be in Tokyo and that I might have an opportunity to say hello once again. Now I hope I can invite you to visit our state once again for a different, but important and enjoyable, occasion.

This is to add my personal invitation and note of encouragement for you to be the featured speaker at a major Republican fund raising dinner in Seattle during the week of September 10 through 15. The funds from this event will be critical to important Republican campaign races, including a campaign to replace the incumbent Democrat Governor Dixy Lee Ray - whom you will recall, of course, as an Assistant Secretary of State.

Washington State Republicans experienced a healthy resurgence in 1978, and your help could provide the impetus needed to extend this resurgence. Last year President Ford saw fit to help with the First Annual Fall Dinner, making Washington, as far as I know, the only state in which he visited during '78 to raise funds for state legislative races. His help certainly paid off, because we reversed a 10-year losing trend in our State House of Representatives, and surged back to a 49-49 tie.

Based on last year's event, I am confident the Republican State Committee of Washington will produce an excellent Second Annual Fall Dinner and Reception at which you would be featured. I can be equally confident that arrangements for your visit will be competently handled and you will be pleased with the trip. I hope you can make it.

DJE:bb

DANIEL J. EVANS

May 17, 1979

The Honorable Henry Kissinger
1800 "K" Street, N.W.
Suite 520
Washington, D. C. 20006

Dear Henry:

I was pleased to see you in Tokyo recently and enjoyed your participation in our Trilateral discussions. It was encouraging, indeed, to find that you were willing to be with us if a suitable time could be found this fall.

Republicans in this state have made a substantial move in the last election, gaining a tie vote in our House of Representatives, and the momentum necessary to elect a Republican Governor in 1980 and to further our gains in our Congressional delegation and in the Legislature. Much of the stimulus for this move came from the successful fund-raising dinner which President Ford addressed last year. I am confident that you are the one speaker who could give us the enthusiasm and response necessary to make an even better showing in 1980.

I know that Ken Eikenberry, our Washington State Chairman has written to you still suggesting that any date in September would be desirable and even a date in the first half of October would certainly be workable.

I do hope that you will find some opportunity during that time period to be on the West coast and that you will be able to be with us for a first-rate kickoff to next year's campaign.

I appreciate any consideration you find possible to our request.

Daniel J. Evans
4202 Leavelle NW
Olympia, WA 98502

DJE:bb

MAY 21 1979

THE SUNDAY TIMES 200 GRAY'S INN ROAD LONDON WC1X 8EZ 01-837 1234

Harold Evans

3rd Janu a ry 1979

Dear Henry,

I very much hoped I could cope with my editing
work for you without saying this, but the volume and intensity
of it is such that I have to ask if we can put our liaison on
some minimal business footing. I am using Oscar Turnill for
some copy editing and have a budget total of 10,000 dollars for
that: I've paid him 3,000 dollars so far but the total will
certainly not be exceeded for volume one. But of course I do the bulk
of the editing myself and nobody else can do the restructuring
or drafting I do and that is enormously time consuming.

I find the work I do perpetually fascinating
and I am proud to be associated with what I consider one of the
great books of our generation. But to meet the deadline, as you will
appreciate, I have had to abandon all my freelance writing
and speaking so that I can give every hour to the magnum opus if I am
to it the justice it requires; additionally, our dispute here means
I'll have to finance outside retyping/copying. I don't mind giving up
my "social" life - the book is more fun than that at the moment!

Can't Marvin work something out with Sterling Lord, my New
York agent, perhaps with Little Brown who are getting an easy ride on
a work of some magnitude and importance?

Happy New Year

TIMES NEWSPAPERS LIMITED

Reg. Office: P.O. Box. 7, New Printing House Square, Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8EZ
Reg. No. 894646 England

CONDITIONS OF CONTRACT

[L]C

(1) As used in this contract, "Convention" means the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules relating to International Carriage by Air, signed at Warsaw, October 12, 1929, or that Convention as amended by the Hague Protocol, 1955, whichever may be applicable to carriage hereunder; "air waybill" is equivalent to "air consignment note", "shipper" is equivalent to "consignor", "Carriage" is equivalent to "transportation" and "Carrier" includes the air carrier using this air waybill and all air carriers that carry the goods hereunder or perform any other services related to such air carriage. For the purposes of the exemption from and limitation of liability provisions set forth or referred to herein, "Carrier" includes agents, servants, or representatives of any such air carrier. Carriage to be performed hereunder by several successive carriers is regarded as a single operation.

(2) (a) Carriage hereunder is subject to the rules and limitations relating to liability established by the Convention unless such carriage is not "international carriage" as defined by the Convention. (See Carrier's tariffs for such definition.)

(b) To the extent not in conflict with the foregoing, carriage hereunder and other services performed by each Carrier are subject to (i) applicable laws (including national laws implementing the Convention), government regulations, orders, and requirements, (ii) provisions herein set forth, and (iii) applicable tariffs, rules, regulations and timetables (but not the times of departure and arrival therein) of such carrier, which are made part hereof and which may be inspected at any of its offices and at airports from which it operates regular services.

(c) For the purposes of the Convention, the agreed stopping places (which may be altered by Carrier in case of necessity) are those places, except the place of departure and the place of destination, set forth on the face hereof or shown in Carrier's timetables as scheduled stopping places for the route.

(d) In the case of carriage subject to the Convention, the shipper acknowledges that he has been given an opportunity to make a special declaration of the value of the goods at delivery and that the sum entered on the face of the air waybill as "Declared Value For Carriage", if in excess of 250 French gold francs (consisting of 65% milligrams of gold with a fineness of 900 thousandths) or their equivalent per kilogram, constitutes such special declaration of value

(3) Insofar as any provision contained or referred to in this air waybill may be contrary to mandatory law, government regulations, orders, or requirements, such provision shall remain applicable to the extent that it is not overridden thereby. The invalidity of any provision shall not affect any other part hereof.

(4) Except as the Convention or other applicable law may otherwise require: (a) Carrier is not liable to the shipper or to any other person for any damage, delay or loss of whatsoever nature (hereinafter collectively referred to as "damage") arising out of or in connection with the carriage of the goods, unless such damage is proved to have been caused by the negligence or wilful fault of Carrier and there has been no contributory negligence of the shipper, consignee or other claimant; (b) Carrier is not liable for any damage directly or indirectly arising out of compliance with laws, government regulations, orders or requirements or from any cause beyond Carrier's control; (c) the charges for carriage having been based upon the value declared by the shipper, it is agreed that any liability shall in no event exceed the shipper's declared value for carriage stated on the face hereof, and in the absence of such declaration by shipper, liability of Carrier shall not exceed 250 such French gold francs, or their equivalent per kilogram of goods destroyed, lost, damaged or delayed; all claims shall be subject to proof of value; (d) a carrier issuing an air waybill for carriage exclusively over the lines of others does so only as a sales agent.

(5) It is agreed that no time is fixed for the completion of carriage hereunder and that Carrier may without notice substitute alternate carriers or aircraft. Carrier assumes no obligation to carry the goods by any specified aircraft or over any particular route or routes or to make connection at any point according to any particular schedule, and Carrier is hereby authorized to select, or deviate from, the route or routes of shipment, notwithstanding that the same may be stated on the face hereof. The Shipper guarantees payment of all charges and advances.

(6) The goods, or packages said to contain the goods, described on the face hereof, are accepted for carriage from their receipt at Carrier's terminal or airport office at the place of departure to the airport at the place of destination. If so specifically agreed, the goods, or packages said to contain the goods, described on the face hereof, are also accepted for forwarding to the airport of departure and for reforwarding beyond the airport of destination. If such forwarding or reforwarding is by carriage operated by Carrier, such carriage shall be upon the same terms as to liability as set forth in Paragraphs 2 and 4 hereof. In any other event, the issuing carrier and last carrier, respectively, in forwarding or reforwarding the goods, shall do so only as agents of the shipper, owner, or consignee, as the case may be, and shall not be liable for any damage arising out of such additional carriage, unless proved to have been caused by its own negligence or wilful fault. The shipper, owner and consignee hereby authorize such carriers to do all things deemed advisable to effect such forwarding or reforwarding, including, but without limitation, selection of the means of forwarding or reforwarding and the routes thereof (unless these have been herein specified by the shipper), execution and acceptance of documents of carriage (which may include provisions exempting or limiting liability) and consigning of goods with no declaration of value, notwithstanding any declaration of value in this air waybill.

(7) Carrier is authorized (but shall be under no obligation) to advance any duties, taxes or charges and to make any disbursements with respect to the goods, and the shipper, owner and consignee shall be jointly and severally liable for the reimbursement thereof. No Carrier shall be under obligation to incur any expense or to make any advance in connection with the forwarding or reforwarding of the goods except against repayment by the shipper; if it is necessary to make customs entry of the goods at any place, the goods shall be deemed to be consigned at such place to the person named on the face hereof as customs consignee or, if no such person be named, to the carrier carrying the goods to such place or to such customs consignee, if any, as such carrier may designate.

(8) At the request of the shipper, and if the appropriate premium is paid and the fact recorded on the face hereof, the goods covered by this air waybill are insured while in the ordinary course of transit under an open policy for the amount requested by the shipper as set out on the face hereof (recovery being limited to the actual loss or damage not exceeding the insured value) against all risks of physical loss or damage from any external cause whatsoever, except those arising directly or indirectly from war risks, hostilities, legal seizure or inherent vice, and subject to the terms and conditions of such open policy which is available for inspection by the shipper. The insurance coverage will not extend beyond the reasonable period of time required for the consignee or shipper to effect clearance from Customs. Claims under such policy must be reported immediately to an office of Carrier.

(9) Except as otherwise specifically provided in this contract, delivery of the goods will be made only to the consignee named on the face hereof, unless such consignee is one of the Carriers participating in the carriage, in which event delivery shall be made to the person indicated on the face hereof as the person to be notified. Notice of arrival of the goods will, in the absence of other instructions, be sent to the Consignee, or the person to be notified, by ordinary methods; Carrier is not liable for non-receipt or delay in receipt of such notice.

(10) (a) No action shall be maintained in the case of damage to goods unless a written notice, sufficiently describing the goods concerned, the approximate date of the damage, and the details of the claim, is presented to an office of Carrier within 7 days from the date of receipt thereof, in the case of delay unless presented within 14 days from the date the goods are placed at the disposal of the person entitled to delivery, and in the case of loss (including non-delivery) unless presented within 120 days from the date of issue of the air waybill;

(b) Any rights to damages against Carrier shall be extinguished unless an action is brought within two years after the occurrence of the events giving rise to the claim.

(11) The shipper shall comply with all applicable laws, customs and other government regulations of any country to, from, through or over which the goods may be carried, including those relating to the packing carriage or delivery of the goods, and shall furnish such information and attach such documents to this air waybill as may be necessary to comply with such laws and regulations. Carrier is not liable to the shipper or any other person for loss or expense due to shipper's failure to comply with this provision.

(12) No agent, servant or representative of Carrier has authority to alter, modify or waive any provision of this contract.

THE SUNDAY TIMES 200 GRAY'S INN ROAD LONDON WCIX 8EZ 01-837 1234

Harold Evans

February 2nd, 1979

Dr. Henry Kissinger,

Dear Henry,

Ron Hall, the Editor of my Colour Magazine, should be delivering this letter with the bulk of the remaining chapters. A number of points arise:

1. **India/Pakistan:** This is mainly edited on copy with a few queries written in the margin, notably on dating. It is very good. One substantive point, however, bothers me. You argue that on the human rights aspect it was preferable for you to exert influence on Yayha privately (page 42). But we don't give any supporting text on private representations about the mayhem by the Pakistan Army in East Bengal. I remember it well because of our own reporting and they murdered one of my oldest journalist friends.

If you want a further point - and it is more than a debating point - you might recall that the Mukthi Bahini were hardly models of good behaviour: Remember the public bayoneting of their victims which I show at the front of my book "Pictures on a Page". I've written in a sentence on page 241.

2. **Middle-East:** I had some difficulty with the first but am satisfied with it especially when it is read with the second as well. The two works marvellously well in succession. There is no need, of course, to make a decision on that yet. As you know, it was my original view of the book. It is a decision that can be left until everything is in galley proof or the whole book completed in edited Mss.

TIMES NEWSPAPERS LIMITED

Reg. Office: P.O. Box. 7, New Printing House Square, Gray's Inn Road, London WCIX 8EZ
Reg. No. 894646 England

/2

- 2 -

3. **Vietnam and Cambodia:** I have written a new introduction to this. The chapter is so huge that one needs some indication of its scope. Moreover, your arguments have been sustained and borne up by events and it is necessary to point this fact up in the first few paragraphs. Thereafter the structure of the chapter is basically as you devised it. I have done some interweaving but not as much as in other chapters.

4. **Footnotes:** As you will see, I think it is far better to incorporate some of the footnotes into the text. Footnotes that occupy most of a page do look absurd as after thoughts or annotations in a book of well-constructed narrative and analysis, which this is. I haven't, of course, reincorporated all footnotes, but if the setting style I have indicated is followed by the publishers the reader will be able to read or skip the indented material so that the narrative is not delayed but the material has its part exactly in the text where it ought to be.

5. **Vietnam Book:** You will deliberate in the sun on the Buckley-Evans' about a separate Vietnam book. If the publishers respond, fine. But though Bill and I had the same thought independently some time ago, I do not feel as passionately as he does. It does serve as a stratagem to draw the fire - but it might also be seen and criticised as just that. And though Vietnam etc. does loom eloquently large in the book as conceived, the momentum of the volume is sufficient to carry it. In addition, there is force in Peter's view that covering every subject, admittedly over a four year period, gives a feel of the range and complexity of problems.

At the end of the day, I supposed, I would feel that the book is good enough to answer the critics and there is no way of escaping the rage of the professional hindsighters. On serialisation I am sure that, outside the US certainly, most publishers will take their selections from the various crises (including Cambodia), the interspersed portrait of Nixon; and China; with the Middle-East and the Soviet Union as secondary items. Obviously some national serialisers will look for national references.

Harold Evans

February 6th, 1979

Dr. Henry Kissinger,
River House,
425 East 52nd St.,
NEW YORK.

Dear Henry,

This is a postscript to my longer letter with
this packet. I use it to make a number of points
which I may or may not have time to discuss with
you.

1. Editing the US-Soviet Union chapters, I am struck again, as I was with the Middle East, how much is gained if there is more sequence. We still ought to leave open the possibility of running the chapters more thematically. Take Salt. The reader has to carry with him the arguments and thoughts from Chapter VI and then to the first US-Soviet chapter, and then again to another US-Soviet chapter. There is a case for saying that the force of narrative would be stronger if what is thematically linked but separated by chapter, were united by chapter or section. The only argument in favour of the present scatter is that each chapter has more variety and that each chapter has at least the identity of a US-Soviet context. It is something for you to ponder for the time being. It would involve me in more work, undoing some of the knitting and putting it back together again. I have not done it now for the simple reason that I am hard-pressed to complete a bulk of editing before you go to Mexico.

1/2

TIMES NEWSPAPERS LIMITED

2. I have started US-Soviet Relations 1970 differently because the metaphor that occurred on page two was so vivid (blind men in a room) and much better than the rather more familiar chess metaphor, but I have given you a "gambit", anyway.

3. Wherever you get into a recitation of known public events I have attempted to increase the momentum. These sequences are essential, of course, for understanding the private deliberations. They are part of the history. I am reasonably satisfied with them after editing but the trouble with them is that I cannot myself give them any of the feeling and perception that you had at the time. Even a few sentences would transform what any of us could write into something that only you could write. For instance, what did you do on the day of the big demonstrations on May 9th? (c.f. RN). What were your feelings? Similarly, though less importantly, how did you react on the news of the Polish uprising? A few sentences or paragraphs is all that is required and they would transform these episodic passages. I'd be glad to interpolate them if you wanted to send some notes.

4. I have not, of course, seen anything yet on Part IV and I hope that the same attitude to detail and narrative will be maintained: It would be a pity to give the appearance of finishing the book in a rush.

Finally, partly for fun and partly for elucidation, I am sending a copy of a book I wrote on English. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 set out the principles of editing and English that I have brought to your master work.

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

34 BEACON STREET
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02106

1837

LARNED G. BRADFORD
SENIOR EDITOR

22 January 1979

Dear Henry:

During the three days in your office last week, I was
able to read all but one chapter of the manuscript -- Chap-
ter XXI, "The European Community and Allied Cohesion, 1970-
71," which, I think, can wait until your return from Mexico.
I came away from the experience with the strong feeling that
you have said what you wanted to say and what needs to be
said -- of which you are after all the best judge -- almost
as economically as the facts permit. Consequently I am no
longer going to be concerned about the length of Volume I
per se for the largeness of the concept and the spacious-
ness of the theater in which you were acting makes that
exercise comparatively irrelevant.

If I were you, though, I would trim the book here and
there where it may accommodate the reader's attention span,
in the course of which I doubt that you're actually going
to be able to achieve even a ten per cent reduction. In
this connection, though, there are a few places which de-
serve some attention. The two Vietnamese chapters taken
together total something like 571 pages, which seems dis-
proportionate in relation to the balance of the book. And
as Al Silverman astutely commented in his letter, because
most people are trying to put the Southeast Asia "trouble"
well behind them, there may simply be more data in these
chapters than the average reader wants to take in.

In Chapter IV, "European Journey," could not *The Nature
of the Challenge*, Pp. 18 to 54, be compressed or perhaps placed
earlier? It interrupts for far too long the flow of this very
interesting chapter.

Dr. Kissinger

1/22/79

p. 2

I'm wondering too whether Chapter XX, "The Tilt: The India-Pakistan Crisis of 1971," could be somewhat abbreviated -- although, I hasten to say, not in its first twelve or fourteen pages which are a perfectly beautiful and wonderfully lucid historical description of the religious, social and political forces that still bedevil the great sub-continent.

One other chapter bothers me somewhat -- XIX, "U.S.-Soviet Relations 1970-71." The negotiations described here in considerable detail become a bit tiresome largely, I think, because of the Russians' style. Consequently the narrative becomes needlessly complex. Could it not be simplified without any loss of content?

As I think I've mentioned before, many letters, diary entries, periodical quotations, memoranda (even to RN), etc., now inserted verbatim, in the text or in footnotes, and in some cases at length might be simply summarized without fear of losing anything -- either authority or credibility -- or even dropped altogether, especially when you have already outlined their purport, as you almost always do.

I might say that after last week, I am overwhelmed by the abundant evidence of your research and powers of recall, of your skill in marshalling the often diverse elements of the narrative and fitting them properly into place, and your judgement in evaluating the significance of the events and the importance of the individuals you must deal with in Volume I. I am impressed also by your style which has never been so relaxed and so vivid. In fact in all of my thirty-odd years at Little, Brown, I cannot think of a non-fiction book we have published which approaches this work in intrinsic brilliance, readability and importance -- and, sir, I'm prepared to be quoted on that.

Incidentally, Peter and I have been talking about maps and pictures and I believe we're going to be well ahead of the printers in that department.

Warm regards.

Yours ever,

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
1800 K Street, N.W. Suite 520
Washington, D.C. 20006

LB:SF

THE SUNDAY TIMES

With the Compliments of

HAROLD EVANS
Editor

☐ for your information

☐ for your approval

☐ please comment

☐ please return

☐ returned with thanks

THE SUNDAY TIMES
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Telephone 01-837 1234

[Lc]

Master, Wardens, Members of the Court of Assistants,
Liverymen, Ladies and Gentlemen:

There is a character in Tom Stoppard's play *Every Good Boy Deserves a Favour* who is incarcerated in a Russian lunatic asylum because he thinks he is an orchestra conductor. He is quite mad but harmless. I have to begin tonight by asking you to extend to me, an editor without a newspaper, the kind of indulgence the Stoppard audience affords to the demented conductor without an orchestra. There is a *Sunday Times* - I can hear it now - and I hope it will be back with you before too long. I will have something to say about its suspension and that of *The Times* shortly, but it would, I am afraid, be an appropriately sombre overture for this paper tonight on the state of the British press, its freedom and its performance: Tosca, or if you are of an optimistic disposition, Fidelio Act One with the prisoner condemned but not yet executed. I have a benchmark for melancholy. When I gave the Granada Guildhall lecture five years ago in 1974 I characterised the British press as half-free for reasons of legal restraint which I need merely indicate without detail tonight.

The comparison was, of course, with the freest press in the world, that of the United States. I did not say then, and I do not say tonight, that the American press is twice as good as the British - in some respects such as prose and design it is markedly inferior - but only that it was twice as free: that it has a greater opportunity for excellence. It would be possible, in the Micawberian manner of defining happiness, to say that the British press was 100 per cent free by taking as the norm the liberties enjoyed by, say the *Albanian People's Daily* or the *Times* of Kampala or Manila. But Britain, seed bed of the idea of free press, has higher pretensions. We can accord the American press 100 per cent freedom not because it is wholly without restraints of course but because its freedom is entrenched in its constitution and because we can compare, in area after area, a specific limitation in Britain with a specific liberty in the United States. These comparisons are a gauge for us to measure our liberties, and that is a useful exercise to do from time to time, because in the organic development or decline of that living organism, the modern complex

1

[LC]

political democracy, it is the cellular changes which matter – the barely perceptible accretion of case law, the creep of administrative rules, the seduction of public temper, the effrontery that goes unchecked or is unchallenged so it becomes a custom and finally a new power.

Freedom in a sophisticated society perishes in a thousand whimpers rather than in the single revolutionary bang of a developing state. Adding up or subtracting all that has changed since 1974 I can only conclude that the epithet half free would today be an exaggeration.

There is no single cause of this deterioration; and no single solution. It is the result of individual decisions and of inertia, of acts and of attitudes in law, government, public life and the press: journalists as well as judges and politicians and civil servants have played their part, each perhaps with a clear conscience but producing a collectively malign consequence. There have, to be sure, been one or two good moments. The Royal Commission on the Press has rejected a variety of schemes for weakening or ruining papers that people want to read in favour of papers they don't want to read. But the Commissioners were too optimistic of course in saying that by arguing the pros and cons at length they hoped they had finally laid them to rest, but have laceratingly revealed the familiar combination of naivity and nascent authoritarianism that ran through all these plans for government subsidies, licences, controls and allocation of advertising revenue including the Labour Party's People and the Media.

Then there is the gleam of light represented by the Liberal MP, Mr Clement Freud, who, where Jenkins feared to tread, has introduced a Freedom of Information Bill as a private member's measure. There are facts the British Government will not tell you here or which British companies prefer to keep to themselves which you can discover in the United States because of their Freedom of Information Act. It is absurd that it should be so, that we can learn more about our own affairs in Washington than we can in London, but so we can in a wide variety of subjects whenever a British firm trading with American or Govern-

2

[Lc]

ment Department has to comply with US regulations. The information elicited then by US regulation is available to the press on demand and is normally forthcoming without a fight.

Never to my knowledge is the safety of the realm at issue in the refusal to yield the same information in Britain: In what foods, for instance, does the FK dye appear rather than kippers? One of Britain's Official Secrets. We may yet have reason to be grateful to Don Quixote Freud. His Bill is a modest one by comparison with the American, and it may fail, but its existence is itself evidence of the paradox that has developed: we have a democratic political system and an authoritarian information system.

Parliament's powers of scrutiny have withered. Question Time is reminiscent of Owen Glendower's boast in *Henry IV* that he could call spirits from the vast deep to which Hotspur sardonically replies: 'So can any man, but will they come when you do call for them?' Ministerial powers have grown enormously since 1906 but Question Time has stayed fixed at 50-55 minutes; it would need to be 4-5 hours to have kept pace. But not only is the time perfunctory. The rules have grown so restrictive that Question Time is something of a joke for extracting information other than that which the administration wants to give.

There are at least *ninety-five forbidden subjects*. There is no explanation for the reasons of refusal. Successive administrations have refused to answer questions about rent for government offices, telephone tapping, Cabinet committees, the cost of the hot line, details of air miss inquiries, trade statistics for Scotland, details of export licences, advice from economic planning councils, contracts for the Forestry Commission, for forecasts for future trends in incomes, the forecasts for changes in food prices, the names of non-medicinal and cosmetic products containing hexachlorophane, the number of prosecutions, both successful and unsuccessful against chief constables since 1945. Details of government contracts with manufacturing companies, and particularly contracts for building Concorde. The report of an inquiry into Government Building Standards. A report

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on the Central Office of Information and departmental
information services. And so on and so on and so on.

Members of Parliament are, of course, up against an
entrenched bureaucracy, one of the wonders of the world
in its ability to change form, to multiply, to camouflage, it
resembles an octopus in every way and in particular in its
ability to squirt dark ink when alarmed. It has so contrived
affairs that any number of great decisions have gone
unscrutinised and looking back one cannot think that
secrecy has been the handmaiden of triumph – the millions
wasted on the Beira oil patrol, when Whitehall knew the oil
was going through South Africa; the wrong decisions on
Stansted assisted by the suppression of an interdepartmental
committee's report; the faked cost estimates for Concorde,
the continual concealment of bases for economic
forecasting. It will require a great deal of change if
Parliament is to resemble the efficient engine of inquiry
that the US Congress is; and MPs like Clement Freud and
Jack Ashley will need allies inside and outside Parliament.
One of the saddest aspects of Britain's slide is that there has
not been here the alliance for free speech and free inquiry
between journalists, politicians and lawyers which set back
in the United States the inexorable tendencies to increase
executive power. The American Bar Association played a
major role in the ten years of pressure that led to the US
Freedom of Information Act; but our own Bar sees its role
differently. And turning to the law as it affects free speech
and free inquiry one cannot but be dismayed.

The impetus for my judgement in 1974 was the reali-
sation that the crimes of Watergate could never have been
exposed in Britain because our laws of contempt and of
confidence would at several stages have prevented news-
papers doing what the *Washington Post* did – provoking
sufficient concern to set up a Congressional inquiry. British
laws of contempt would have come down as series of port-
cullises as first the burglars and then others were named,
protecting them from press scrutiny from the moment a
charge was imminent whatever the apparent public
interest. Secondly, the British law of confidence would have

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quickly suppressed any use of the vital document the *Washington Post* obtained listing the names and addresses of the Committee members of Creep. The officials of the committee could have sought, and would under English law, have readily obtained an injunction – not merely to prevent the wording being reproduced but to any use of the information in the document. This common law of confidence was not much more than the shadow of a tipstaff's hand when I spoke in 1974. It was originally invented to protect Queen Victoria's etchings and then developed over such great constitutional issues as to whether it was Peter Pan Brassieres who invented a new cup or whether it was Fashion Silhouettes Ltd. So it has stayed in the United States, a law relating to trade secrets, in which information may fairly be regarded as property. But in Britain, such is the elevation of property rights over personal rights, the law of confidence has been extended into the discussion of public affairs so that any information may now fall under censorship by court injunction. And I am talking about information, however it is worded, not the necessary and understandable entitlement of copyright.

Together with the archaic powers of Crown Privilege, which punishes many a citizen to an unfair fight with the Executive, and which judges have been afraid to challenge, the Executive secrecy shield is as thick as a Kremlin wall. It was confidence which was used by the Attorney General in the attempt to ban the Crossman diaries. It succeeded at the first hearing and even though the Lord Chief Justice lifted the injunction at the trial he none the less accepted the Attorney General's submission that the law of confidence, hitherto used in private contests, could be invoked to protect Government information. In private actions confidence has been used against the *Daily Mail* when it tried to detail corruption affecting a Labour peer; it hindered *The Sunday Times* in disclosing information about the then world's biggest air crash involving a DC10 and Turkish Airlines. And confidence – much more than the law of contempt – has ensured that the world will never know what it was in the thalidomide documents that the company wanted to

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conceal. The contempt injunction has long since lapsed but there is no time limit to the order of Mr Justice Talbot that the material in them must remain secret on grounds of confidence and be destroyed if the company so chooses. There is a very limited public interest defence against the law of confidence: it cannot be used to conceal 'iniquity'. The narrowness of how this is interpreted by judges is well illustrated by Mr Justice Talbot's dismissal of it: even if the documents did demonstrate negligence that was not sufficient of an iniquity to set against the property right.

When I spoke in 1974 there was hope, on all these matters, of some easement for the British press. A Law Commission was examining confidence. Expert committees were about or had just recommended changes in the laws of libel, contempt and official secrets, which would have more sensibly reconciled the competing claims of government and the press, privacy and publicity, fair trial and free press. We in the press attached particular importance to the Committee under Lord Justice Phillimore which was set up in 1971 by the Lord Chancellor, and which reported in 1974 with a series of highly judicious proposals for contempt reform. This was followed by *The Sunday Times* appealing to the European Commission of Human Rights, arguing that the thalidomide contempt decision was in breach of Article 10 on free speech, and the Commission agreeing: the matter is now before the European Court. Yet after all this not a single clause of a single one of any of these legal reforms recommended by expert committees, set up by Government itself, has passed into legislation. On the contrary. Judges taking a narrow view have made matters worse and worse in case law. The National Union of Journalists has just had a victory in the House of Lords in the Colonel B case, but on a technical point – when is a court order not a court order? Otherwise the law of contempt is more onerous than it ever was, more erratic, more absurd, more arbitrary.

There is supposed to be no such thing as a gagging writ but the Attorney General himself attempted to intervene with *The Sunday Times* when we refused to wait two years for a libel trial while lies in the *Babies for Burning* abortion

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book continued to pollute public discussion. And the Attorney General notably failed to intervene when, pending a law suit, a Government report was leaked making criticisms of the Birmingham smallpox laboratory. Contrary to what we understood in 1973 it can now be contempt to publish a fair and accurate report of a public trial (when there are overlapping charges). It is still, despite Phillimore, a contempt to report something when a charge may be 'imminent' and a Scottish case has even suggested that contempt begins from the moment the authorities start to investigate, which is certainly a discouragement, if no more, for spontaneous press monitoring of fraud and corruption. As Paul Freund said of imminence in another context, 'imminence, weighing gravity against probability, is countenancing speculation in historical futures, the most dangerous form of gambling with liberty of speech.' And what does the Lord Chancellor's department say when it is asked what it will do about Phillimore, which it set up itself after a decade of anxiety and which reported with a draft bill five years ago? 'We must,' says the Lord Chancellor Elwyn Jones, 'approach this matter with deliberation.' The Lord Chancellor's department reminds me of nothing so much as Dorothy Parker's remark when told that Calvin Coolidge was dead. How do they know?

The most striking summation of the glacial genius for inertia we possess is that seven years after all the hullabaloo about the thalidomide children, nothing has changed to avoid a repetition of that shambles. The worst evil was leaving damaged individuals to win their own compensation, while preventing the press crying foul until almost too late. But that is precisely the situation still today. The Pearson Commission on personal injury has reported – and been shelved just like Phillimore, and few MPs seem to care. Years ago MPs gave themselves immunity from libel and contempt laws. The logic of it was that Parliament was the forum for scrutinising power and the public interest required unqualified free speech. There was a time perhaps when a few hundred privileged free-speaking MPs and a very much limited Executive were in equilibrium. Today

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nobody pretends Parliament alone can monitor the diverse
interactions of modern government and society – yet none of
the logic about free speech is applied to speed the merely
marginal easements sought by the press.

Having suggested what others might do for us, I must
turn reluctantly to what we might do for ourselves. For
there is no doubt that some of the dispiriting disappoint-
ments, not to say menacing developments, have come from
within the press itself.

Beachcomber in the *Daily Express* once reported how Dr Strabismus of Utrecht (whom God preserve), was making a speech at a public meeting when he suddenly began pelting the audience with eggs. In the ensuing riot as he was led away by the police he murmured 'Sorry, I seem to have got things the wrong way round.'

An image of the absurd Dr Strabismus has been my only
consolation at the sight in recent weeks of journalists inciting
public officials to suppress public news. I have no doubt
what I think about the pay of provincial journalists. It is too
low. I do not want to open up the whole can of worms about
reward and responsibility in this society but if rewards on
newspapers should be related to the contribution made
there, then it is wrong that the experienced journalist should
be paid less than the experienced printer. But there is a
greater wrong than that and it is this: the invocation of
press censorship by any journalist. It is one thing to with-
draw one's labour. It is another to conspire with the jacks in
office for the blacking of news - news about the rates, gas
leaks, fires, building plans, television programmes, rents,
from councils and public and semi-public bodies. This is
what the NUJ did in the recent provincial strike; not only
were NUJ press officers ordered to hinder newspapers by
refusing to answer inquiries from editors and IOJ and non-
striking NUJ men, which is one thing, but councillors and
other unions and especially Nalgo press officers, were
beseeched to stop public news getting out. This is hard to
understand, impossible to condone. The NUJ has been
sensible in its attitude to editors, recognising though not
encouraging their ambition to keep their papers going, yet

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it has, contradictorily, tried harder than ever to cut the flow of news. This is a mockery of years of valiant effort by journalists - and by the NUJ and IOJ - against secretive public authorities. It is defended as a temporary industrial weapon. But that is like asking Sweeney Todd for a close shave. It is at best imprudent, at worst suicidal for it legitimises the suppression of news in a conflict. The founders of the NUJ would have died a thousand times at the idea that journalists would encourage a political leader to dictate to newspapers about who shall be told what and when. It is a professional betrayal; and it has exposed again the sickness about freedom in Britain. For if the NUJ is possibly entitled though foolish to ask for suppression in a sectional cause, what right is it that entitles council leaders George Wilson in Sheffield and Roy Shaw in Camden, to name two well known examples, to accede?

Or the Coal Board, the Post Office, Granada TV, Yorkshire TV, The AA and those refugees from the stage army of the good, the National Citizens Advice Bureau and the Consumers Association? The Press Council condemned such discrimination on a previous occasion. Will anybody else say boo?

I am conscious of a certain awkwardness in making these criticisms. After all, I have agreed to the suspension of publication of *The Sunday Times* along with *The Times*, *The Times Educational Supplement*, *The Times Literary Supplement* and *The Times Higher Educational Supplement*. There is no denying that these are severe blows to press freedom. The first duty of an editor may be to truth but the second must be the continuation of his paper. Suspension began on 30 November and the dispute has become so complicated, so forgotten in its origins, I am reminded of Lord Palmerston's remark about the Schleswig Holstein question. It was, he said, so abstruse, that only three people had ever understood it: one was dead, the second was in a mental institution; he was the third and he had forgotten.

Along with the other unhappy events, I have been trying to trace tonight, there has been a crisis of newspaper production in Fleet Street, often unpublicised by the papers

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affected. The best newspaper is that in the hand of the public and the Sunday Sometimes, as we came to be called, was on that account becoming one of the worst in 1978, because of unofficial disruption in breach of agreements. As the Royal Commission on the Press said of millions of copies lost in this way in 1977, events which would have been unthinkable a few years ago were now becoming commonplace. By April when Times management appealed to the production unions *The Sunday Times* had lost 3.5 million copies; by 30 November losses had trebled to 9 million, heartbreaking and demoralising to most of the staff. We had reached a point where we were fast losing credibility with the readers and with advertisers, where editorials adjuring others to efficiency could only be hypocritical given the chaos of our own production. Something had to be done to protect the reputation, the viability, and the very life of *The Sunday Times*. It is a tragedy it has had to be suspension. There is no doubt that suspension, following failure to agree, and a programme of dismissals, has induced bitterness and resentment, not least among loyal staff who were never themselves, as distinct from others in their same union, responsible for the losses, and especially amongst journalists who have never disrupted production.

There is no doubt also that a settlement on production, manning and technology is possible which would be good for staff and revitalising for the *independence* of *The Times* and *The Sunday Times*.

Nobody can say that for the latest wheeze of Mr Wedgwood Benn for at a time when the Government menaces the BBC by fixing its licence fee inadequately and for only a year and proposing the appointment of Home Office nominees to the board of management, Mr Benn suggests that two great independent newspapers should also come within its thrall. Can't he wait until 1984?

Mr Benn's diversion suggests, among other misdemeanours, that the Times management wants 'to impose the new technology by force.' That is not true and the subject is too important to be left to Mr Benn's mischiefs. What the management proposes is a phased introduction of a pro-

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gramme announced in 1976, with guaranteed employment for everybody who wants it. There is more to this than simple economics. Fundamental interests of journalism are at stake in the jurisdictional arguments about who shall have access to the visual display terminals and through them the computer. This has not been sufficiently appreciated. It is essential that every individual affected is treated decently, generously, honourably, imaginatively; there must be time for consultation, and adjustments. But to deny the journalist access to the computer would be to damage the potential of journalism to assist the conduct of open debate about detail which characterises democracy.

The VDT is more than a copying or setting device. To take the simplest examples first, it is also a counting device. Through the computer it can offer the reporter, sub-editor and layout man instant precise calculation of how much space in such and such space any article will take. Or any headline. This is a boon which is completely wasted where the journalist is denied access to the VDT, for the typesetter who is simply copying does not require this facility. The second simple benefit of the VDT for journalism is that typing at it is not the same as typing on an ordinary or even electric typewriter. The VDT keyboard is much more sophisiticated. It is faster: there is no need, for instance, manually to return the carriage to start a new line. It is more accurate. It is easier to transpose paragraphs, words, sentences, letters, to rewrite – again a facility for which the ordinary typesetter has no need. Thirdly, the potential of front end entry to limit setting and journalistic error is very real: you can rarely find a typo in the front-end American newspapers. But beyond these important practical benefits the future holds prospects of still further benefits which go to the very heart of journalism – advantages which, again, are wholly irrelevant to the copying typesetter and which will be lost to society if there is a one-union monopoly of the VDT keyboard.

Data retrieval is the most significant, though there are others. As systems improve the VDT will be seen more and more not simply as a mechanism for copying but as a

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creative part of the whole communication process. For
instance, advances in data retrieval will mean it is possible
for a journalist to summon up on the right hand side of his
screen the information he wishes to examine and knit into a
story on the left hand side of the screen. There is already the
Telegram VDT, which can be used to collect information
for background research from remote computerised data
banks. The *Washington Post* with Raytheon has a system
which enables the reporter to use his machine as a note-
taker - to take his collections of notes for all the stories on
which he is working at any time. And the terminal will also
record telephone messages.

I hope that men of goodwill and imagination can devise
a solution to the current impasse, not necessarily the same
as in other countries. Our genius for compromise, might, for
instance, settle on defining some key strokes as mechanical
copying of prepared text; and some as creative writing
and editing. It could be agreed that at least for a transition
period creative keystrokes by journalists would not exceed a
certain percentage of content in any single issue.

Eventually, no doubt, the configuration of trades unions
could adapt to the new configuration of production skills.
But whatever happens it will be a catastrophe for the free-
dom of the press to do its job if the journalist is locked off
from the computer. Nothing can replace the dedicated
journalist following his nose, the ability to write clearly or
vividly and the courage to publish. But if we are to make
sense of an increasingly complex world, to bear, in Walter
Lippman's phrase, the burden of popular sovereignty,
spontaneously supplying the truth that democracies hoped
was inborn, we will need all the help we can get. Without
the computer it would be more and more like trying to play
Bach's *St. Matthew's Passion* on the ukelele: the instrument
is too crude for the ambitions of the performer and the needs
of the audience.

To conclude, there is one sense in which my current
deprivation has been salutary. It has put an editor at the
receiving end of the business. This has persuaded me that all
the things I have been saying all these years about the

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importance of the press are true – but also that we have a
long way to go to justify I A Richard's description of the
newspaper as a machine to think with. Little light, I am
sorry to say, has been shed on the problems at Times
Newspapers and there are other causes for unease. There
have been some good things – notably *The Guardian's*
exposure of offensive testing of immigrants' virginity.
But in the industrial crisis there has been a surfeit of
emotion and a famine of facts. Too much adversary jour-
nalism, and not enough analysis. Too frequently a reminder
that the struggle in communication is a struggle between
education and propaganda.

The vocabularly of the national crisis has been clobber,
hammer, war, bosses, cripple, nightmare, knife at the
nation's heart etc. I do not object to strong opinion but as
Christopher Hitchens has documented in the *New
Statesman* there have been grave examples of distortion and
there has certainly been a dearth of explanation. For weeks
press and broadcasting resounded with slogans about low
pay but not until last week did a newspaper – *The Guardian*
again – take the trouble to find out exactly what current
earnings were for public employees (higher than the
placards) and demonstrate the lack of *assumed* correlation
between the low paid and the poor. Increasing low pay may
be the least effective way of helping poorer families. I wish
I could say that *The Guardian* had done as well with our
dispute. On foreign affairs it seems to me, a humble reader,
that the press has been swift in confirming the picture of
violence in Iran, but slow or negligent in providing an
understanding of the events and their underlying causes.
Again, when one reads of the North Vietnamese conquest of
IndoChina we must pause, I think, to ponder on the ante-
cedents. The world's press was free to roam in South
Vietnam and duly exposed corruption and errors. There
was never any such facility in North Vietnam and all too
readily we let it be assumed that the North Vietnamese
possessed the mirror virtues of the vices exposed in the
South. Similarly in Cambodia the Khymer Rouge,
unreported, unreportable perhaps, were given a hue of

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glamour in contrast to the bumbling inefficiencies of the Central Government. The individual reporters in both countries did a splendid job, but the press as a whole, including my own, quite failed to reflect the realities of the Khymer Rouge and the imperialism of the North Vietnamese. We may be doing the same in Africa today where the glare of exposure is borne by those who maintain some semblance of a free press.

Our case for the beneficial effect of the press assumes a free flow of information but judgements are all too easily made on the basis of a demonstrably partial flow.

These are perplexities that can be no more than sketched tonight. I mention them as a reminder to myself and my colleagues that we must defend and enlarge the freedom of the press, not merely by resisting and attacking the daily encroachments as I have tried to do tonight, but by improving our standards, reflecting on our aspirations, and rededicating ourselves to truth in print.

14

Judi Morgan

Design

Colin Darlington

Production

Alistair Thirkettle

Costing

Produced and printed
at The London College of Printing