10

mood, or at least a retrenching one; congressional support for
Israel remained quite broad, but also seemed contingently thin;
America's European allies, including the client Greek dictator-
ship, were not being cooperative on the matter of transport;
even the Portugese were showing signs of truculence; detente
seemed to be at stake to an administration desperate that it be
sustained; vast expenditures of funds were expected from a con-
tracting economy; and it was difficult to overcome the "certainty"
of an inevitable Israeli victory, and in the face of the most
frightful evidence that a defeat was quite possible. All of
these obstacles were transcended by the efforts made at the major
and only successful propaganda command post of the October war, the
Israeli Embassy in Washington. The Jewish community was mobilized
to provide unprecedented financial support to the U.J.A. and keep
up the momentum of carefully orchestrated and pointed political
pressure in Washington. The American labor movement, the academy,
even most of the churches, were organized into some sort of
corporate activity for Israel. And sufficient arms were made
available so that the soldiers of Israel could repel the aggres-
sors back to where they started and beyond. For his role in this
achievement, Dinitz should be honored and not submitted to the
sniping of writers who have not bothered to check even the most
self-evident sources. And those who are concerned for Israel's
security should also ponder the implications of having an Ambas-
sador with whom the Secretary of State - any Secretary of State-
cannot work in harmony.

THE NEW REPUBLIC
A Journal of Politics and the Arts, Vol. 173, No. 11,
Issue 3166, September 13, 1975. Published weekly (except the issues of January 4, July 12,
August 9, August 23) and distributed by The New Republic, 1244 19th Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036. Phone 331-7494. Single copy, 50¢; Yearly subscriptions, $17;
foreign, $20; students, $10. Send all remittances and correspondence about subscriptions,
undelivered copies and changes of address to Subscription Department, The New Republic,
381 West Center Street, Marion, Ohio 43302. Copyright 1975 by The New Republic, Inc. Item g. Second class
postage paid at Washington, DC and additional mailing offices. Indexed in Reader's Guide.

Contents

3 Comment
Brokered Peace

5 Science Atrocities—Thomas J. Cottle

6 White House Watch: In the Press Room
—John Osborne

8 Down on Jerry Brown—Derek Shearer

10 On the Take—James R. Polk

18 The Spanish Succession—Tad Szulc

22 Films—Stanley Kauffmann

23 Where Are the Repertory Critics?
—Robert Brustein

26 Books—Reviews by Joseph L. Rauh,
Melville J. Ulmer, Robert Leiter,
David Sanford, Peter McGrath

33 The Back of the Book—Roger Rosenblatt

34 Correspondence

The Staff

Chairman, Editorial Board—Martin Peretz

Publisher—Robert J. Myers

Managing Editor—David Sanford

Literary Editor—Roger Rosenblatt

Senior Editor—John Osborne

Associate Editor—Eliot Marshall

Assistant to the Editors—Gwen Somers

Assistant to the Literary Editor—
Cherryl Holt

Staff Writer—Lincoln Caplan

Contributing Editors—Robert Brustein,
Robert Coles, Joseph Featherstone, Gerald
W. Johnson, Nathan Lewin, Roger Morris,
Peter J. Ognibene, John Seelye, Tad Szulc,
Melville J. Ulmer, Michael Walzer,
Paul R. Wieck

Films and Theater—Stanley Kauffmann

West Coast Editor—Peter Barnes

Production Manager—Ilene Briggin Kahane

Assistant Production Manager—
Elise D. Ritter

Circulation Manager—Elizabeth A. Scanlan

Business Manager—Pearl Wilmer Ramsey

Assistant Business Manager—
Constance Cole Twining

New Republic Feature Syndicate—
Leslie B. Seagrave

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Beth W. Newburger

Receptionist—Ruby McGowan

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E. Laurence White, 50 E. 42nd St.,
NYC 10017, (212) 986-6210

Brokered
Peace

It is hard to imagine how fearful the world would seem today if a second interim agreement had not been reached in the Middle East. While we do not at this writing know the exact details of the American undertakings to Israel and Egypt, we do know the essence of them; and it is clear that these are crucial underpinnings of the overall agreement announced publicly, and that they alone made this pact possible after the negotiating fiasco last March. In the US the debate over America's new role in the region has already begun; and since Congress will have to act with considerable speed, it is important that the context and possible consequences of the accord be fully understood.

First of all the terms of this agreement appear to be significantly better from Israel's point of view than those offered six months ago. It is not to the credit of the US that it was prepared in March to impose on its ally an arrangement so much less advantageous than the present one—insisting, at the time, that nothing more was possible. Last week's achievement represents at least a small victory for Israeli fortitude, a rebuke to those who thought the Rabin government pointlessly obstinate. It also marks an American return to sensible calm after the panic of last spring. The collapse of South Vietnam generated a mood of desperation in Washington, and Israel was very nearly made a victim of it. The American "reappraisal" of its Mideast position after the failure of the negotiations seemed a kind of revenge on the Israelis for refusing to play their part in creating good news for the United States. But as the months passed, it became clear that there was nothing else to do except to resume the diplomatic efforts so abruptly cut off—and this time to move them along at a pace and in an atmosphere more appropriate to the seriousness of the issues involved. That resumption and its eventual success is a welcome recovery, moral as well as political, for American diplomacy. This is Secretary Kissinger's accomplishment, and it should be recognized as that.

The major moves since March have been American moves: to offer Israel a greater degree of diplomatic, military and economic support; to provide a more credible guarantee of its oil supply; and to permit the stationing of US technicians in the Sinai passes. This last, it should be stressed, is an expedient. Rather than American personnel policing the agreement, Israel would have preferred the establishment of mixed

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Israeli-Egyptian surveillance teams. But Egypt would not accept this kind of cooperation. So there will be US-Israeli and US-Egyptian teams, and several stations manned by Americans alone. The proposed arrangement is a continuation of the recent negotiating pattern into the post-negotiation period. It avoids, as Kissinger's diplomacy has consistently done, those direct contacts between the adversaries that Israel has always sought. It extends the American middleman role, offering Israel a somewhat greater degree of security but not yet peaceful links with its neighbors. As the US has stood between Israel and Egypt in the negotiations, so it must now stand between them—at least symbolically—on the ground. It's not the best arrangement, though it may well be the best that is possible.

Israel has also extracted new concessions from Egypt, some explicit, others conveyed privately to Israel via the US. These have to do chiefly with the principle of the renunciation of force, the duration of the agreement now set at three years from date of implementation, and with the exact lines and terms of withdrawal and mutual disengagement. The Israeli defensive position, established on Jebel Gidi, the highest point in the region and in the foothills of the passes, is better than it would have been in March. Moreover, the agreement, with its tough restrictive provisions on missiles, weapons and troop numbers, preserves the essentially demilitarized character of the vacated areas—an important precedent for Israel and to peace. It does seem clear that the more secure the Israelis are, the less likely war is, and the safer the American technicians will be. If the Americans are there primarily for Israel's protection, they are also protected by Israel's strength. Our government should not undermine the painfully attained stability in the region by rushing to sell or give Egypt the very arms that might entice it to war.

But for all these gains, the fundamental structure of the agreement is what it was in March: Israel is taking major strategic risks in return for minimal political gains. Drew Middleton's sober analysis in *The New York Times* of the military disadvantages Jerusalem has incurred reads very much like the nightmares of Israel's hawks: another war with the new lines would take many more Israeli lives. Golda Meir voiced just about everyone's realistic apprehensions when she said that the accord should be greeted "not with mourning . . . not with fanfare." Nor should one minimize the gravity for oil-starved Israel of its retreat from the Abu Rudeis fields. In the early negotiations, it had hoped to establish the right to purchase at going world prices some of the Sinai's oil production. But Egypt would have none of this normalizing commercial relationship either. So Israel was obliged to give up what the whole world now frantically pursues.

It may be that President Sadat has made all the political concessions he can make in the context of Arab

politics; it may be that his commitment to the Egyptian economy is the best guarantee he can offer Israel of a period, at least, of détente. These points are commonly made in the American press, and perhaps they are right. But there is little evidence to prove that he has gone the limit of what he might do, and the great advantage of Egypt's position right now is that it is very hard to test Sadat's intentions. Egypt's behavior at the recent conferences of African and "nonaligned" states suggests how easy it is to look moderate by standing just this side of a group of fanatics. One supposes that the Israeli government should be pleased that Egypt worked, on both these occasions, to defeat proposals to expel it from the United Nations. On the other hand the proposals that Egypt worked for are sufficiently unfriendly to undercut the pleasure. The punitive sanctions of the UN charter now proposed against Israel have, after all, never been voted against any member state. Is this a small step forward—or part of a long-term policy of hostility? Another example: among the political provisions of the agreement is that Egypt ease the economic boycott of companies dealing with Israel. But as the accord was about to be initialed, the Arab Boycott Office in Cairo announced that three additional American companies had been placed on the index. The truth is that the Israelis must make concessions, tangible and irrevocable, without being sure that Egypt has made any at all or that it will sustain those it does make.

It clearly is in America's interest that Israel make these concessions. That is the chief reason the US has emerged in these negotiations as a full participant, no longer merely a mediator or "honest broker." In truth we were never merely mediators; our interests made us participants long ago. We have a general political interest in maintaining peace in the Middle East, a specific strategic interest in minimizing the Russian role in the area, and a concrete economic interest in guaranteeing our own (and Europe's and Japan's) oil supply. All these motives lie behind the steady pressure we have brought to bear on Israel over the past months. And while there are still opportunities for Russian mischief in the area, particularly as intra-Arab conflict intensifies, Secretary Kissinger has certainly succeeded in dislodging the Soviet Union as the preeminent foreign power in Egypt. This attainment will also give American corporations the advantage over competing commercial interests in much of the Arab world.

To be sure, the Israelis have good reasons of their own for signing the agreement. But the pressures we have exerted explain the commitments the US has had to make. When a great power imposes risks on its allies for its own sake, it incurs obligations. Perhaps the greatest advantage of the present agreement is that obligations are spelled out and (some of them at least) formally submitted to Congress for ratification. Such has not been the case in the past: in 1956, for example, when the US pressured Israel to withdraw from the

September 13, 1975

5

Sinai, making promises that were never publicized and (partly for that reason) never kept. In 1970, at the time of the cease-fire that ended the war of attrition, the US gave Israel private assurances as to Egyptian behavior that turned out (again largely because they were private) to be valueless. This time public debate and public acceptance will give the agreement a new and significant force. Yet it will hardly be fully reassuring. Were Cairo to become bellicose, the diplomatic response from Washington should be tough and quick, as surely it would be were Jerusalem to turn bellicose; but Egyptian provocations can also be temptations for the US government "to trade for its own account," leaving Israel more exposed and vulnerable.

There is already some opposition to the agreement in Washington. A number in Congress, led by Senator Mansfield, have sharply criticized the stationing of Americans in the Sinai—as if this country might serve its interests in the Middle East without accepting any concrete responsibilities at all, a course of action sometimes possible, but rarely honorable. The example of Vietnam has been invoked, but we can see little in

common between sending "advisers" (who were not really advisers) to help one side in an on-going military struggle, as President Kennedy did in 1961, and stationing surveillance teams between two sides (with the consent and at the behest of both) in a war that is temporarily, and may be permanently ended. It is strange that Sen. Mansfield should be so quick to talk of the lessons of Vietnam when he never quite learned those lessons with regard to Vietnam itself, and was never a strong force in the congressional fight against American involvement. Apparently the Vietnam analogy will be used for a long time to come against any foreign policy measure that a politician dislikes.

Nevertheless, it seems likely that Congress will endorse the Kissinger arrangements. A refusal to do so would virtually require the US to withdraw from any substantial role in the making of a Mideast peace. And no one in Washington is prepared for that. At the same time congressmen should express their sense that, to endure, peace requires a direct settlement between Arabs and Israelis, and that the American presence, so vital now, need not be vital forever.

Science Atrocities

It's not even four months since the afternoon I reacted abruptly and coldly to some eager left wing students. We were talking oppression, FBI tactics, Rockefeller, when they presented me with the news-stuff they said they could prove-of the government using drugs on people. What kind of drugs, I asked with angry amazement. LSD, they answered. I glared at them. "You always undercut your own purposes. You want to talk oppression, I'll talk oppression. You want to talk imperialism, elitism, I'll talk imperialism, elitism. The government didn't use LSD on people. They probably still don't even know what it is." The students gave me that look that says, we're hurt now, but you'll see.

Now, of course, the news is out, more of it every day. *The New York Times* reports large scale experimentation with LSD and the importance of not telling the subjects-that marvelous scientific term-of the nature of the experiment, for fear that the experiment's results might be prejudiced. And after all, as one of the doctors said, "How would you describe hallucination to someone who has never hallucinated?" I suppose the same way you describe sickness to someone who had been healthy: slowly and with compassion.

The LSD experiments performed on unwilling volunteers-soldiers and civilians-represent an invasion of privacy, an attack on the human body and mind, testimony to a grotesque misordering of human values. In many respects, ironically, they raise again the issues of the Watergate scandal. Powerful people invading the private recesses of men they don't respect, justifying this invasion on the grounds of higher truth, like national security or the sacredness of experimentation, and finally, covering it all up. What else can one say; it is mind boggling, mind blowing. A man puts on a white lab coat and suddenly the most incredible transformations occur; everybody seems to honor the authority and believe in the justifications not only of the research, but of the methods.

I look again at the reports of these experiments, and think of Mr. Olsen, the CIA's LSD suicide, and Harold Blauer, another casualty of the research, and feel the urge to deny it all. It is, all of it, science fiction.

The LSD experiments, however, are no isolated series of events. White-coated authorities experimented on prisoners in concentration camps and in American prisons as well. In the South and in Michigan, women prisoners have been sterilized, and prisoners everywhere have been used as guinea pigs, research subjects. To what degree proper precautions were

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The New Republic

taken in these experiments cannot be judged. The Army procedures are probably typical. Enormous grants are received, experimentation proceeds, results are reported, heaven only knows what happens to the people. The people themselves don't always know. To document these invasions of human rights in the name of, well, science remains difficult. Nevertheless those of us who have been prowling around in hospitals—not merely observing the mistreatment of patients in emergency rooms—are beginning to hear some familiar refrains. Nurses, young doctors in training, orderlies, low level hospital personnel, talk about experimentation with untried drugs. The subjects of these experiments are usually poor people, frequently children. Word has it that a patient may be taken off his or her medication in order to test the effects of a drug. Sometimes consent of the patient or a parent is obtained, often it is not. Moreover consent might mean explaining the experiment and that might contaminate the results.

No one can begrudge the inevitable experimentation that proceeds on a daily basis in most branches of medicine. Creativity, ingenuity, guesswork, intuition—they're all part of experimentation in one form or another. Old ways do not work and there is no time to systematically explore alternatives; one conducts on the spur of the moment. It is a mini-experiment, worth trying when all else fails. I would want a doctor to make such an experiment on me.

One must also support all varieties of medical research, particularly those where new procedures and new drugs are tested, and eventually tested on people. Indeed it is academic to say one supports such research since every drug we consume has been tested on someone at some time. But these large scale experiments must be carried out in accordance with scientific and ethical standards. To the extent that we know these standards, it is clear we do not adhere to them. To volunteer for an experiment and be told the nature of that experiment is one thing, to be denied access to information, openly duped, or even intimidated is another matter entirely. There is no drug that needs to be tested on people under duress. Not only is this practice utterly immoral, one might also argue that the duress itself, because of biochemical changes, may contaminate the results of the experiment.

And finally the inevitability of all this drug testing does not automatically mean that the poor and powerless serve as guinea pigs in whose bodies chemical mysteries may be watched. Where then, are the ethics in all these experiments? Where is even a shred of the feeling that is supposed to accompany the taking of the Hippocratic Oath? Have they vanished in the wake of a technologically driven culture, or were they, perhaps, never there?

Thomas J. Cottle

*Mr. Cottle* is affiliated with the Children's Defense Fund.

## White House Watch

# In the Press Room

The agreement of Israel and Egypt to begin to agree had a worthy though incidental and unnoticed effect in Washington. It provided the occasion for a couple of hours of good humor in the White House press room, a place where the recent norm has been sour and unproductive conflict between Press Secretary Ron Nessen and the 30 to 40 reporters who regularly attend his briefings.

The good humor prevailed partly because the occasion for it arose on the Labor Day holiday, partly because Nessen wasn't there, and partly because the President placed himself for promotional purposes in a ludicrous situation that had nothing to do with the importance and merits of the Israeli-Egyptian agreement. Nessen was with the Ford family at Camp David, the presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains near Washington. Word that the Israeli cabinet had approved the agreement had hardly arrived at Camp David when it was decided that televising the President in successive telephone conversations with Henry Kissinger and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Jerusalem and with President Anwar Sadat in Alexandria would be a splendid thing to do. A CBS camera crew, pooling for all the networks, was summoned from Washington and made it only in time to photograph the President in his attempt at conversation with Sadat. The White House press office and press room, closed for the holiday, were opened. Washington news offices and reporters, many of whom were at home, were alerted by telephone. Most of the few press staff members and the 20 or so reporters who turned up, male and female, were in slacks, sweaters, windbreakers, tennis or sports shoes. They were in a mood to be amused and they were when the recorded conversations were transmitted to the press room from Camp David. Nessen bet Bill Roberts of his staff a dollar that the media would find a way to make fun of the event. Nessen won.

For openers, the President on the telephone to Jerusalem called Henry Kissinger "Ron" and continued: "I have to tell you and later when I talk to the Prime Minister and the President [tell them] that Walker is recording this conversation." 'Walker' is the staff code name for the White House Communications Agency, an army facility that provides and protects special presidential communications channels. Mr. Ford didn't tell Messrs. Rabin and Sadat that they were being recorded. The President later mentioned, as if it were something he had nothing to do with, a statement that had been drafted and was issued in his name at the White House before he got on the telephone. The statement reflected the Ford staff's incessant effort to establish the President's primacy over Kissinger in

Christmas 1974

Dear Friend,

Once again, we mark the joyous return of the Christmas season, with all of its warm memories and pleasant associations.

We always look forward to Christmas, for it is a family time, a time for reflecting upon the blessings of a happy home, and the comfort of good friends like you.

Too often, we are so rushed and busy during the rest of the year that we neglect telling our friends how much we appreciate them, and how grateful we are for their many kindnesses. But Christmas is a time for catching up, for saying "Thank You," and for remembering how much we are indebted to everyone who has been our friend.

May your Christmas be a happy one, and may the year 1975 bring you health, happiness, peace, contentment, and the joy of family and friends. These are jewels beyond price.

Bark, Verna and Chris Perkins

280 U.S.A.