TO: HAK

FROM: LPB, 9/11

SUBJECT: The New Republic Article

September 18, 1990

The article makes four accusations.

1. That KAI offered economic advice to Saddam (Stoga's visit was to explain how he could reschedule his debt).

2. Such advice would profit KAI clients.

3. We "did business" in Baghdad after Saddam developed chemical weapons. Indeed, our firm's activities may even have contributed to Saddam's arrogance that produced the current crisis.

4. You recently "abruptly" changed your views on Iraq after the invasion.

The general thrust is that as in the case of China, your business activities may have affected your political views.

The key questions we need to be prepared for:

1. What was the purpose of Stoga's visit to Iraq? Did he give the Iraqis advice on their financial situation? If not, why was he there? Were there KAI clients along on the trip?

2. Does KAI have any business in Iraq?

3. Before the invasion, what advice were we giving clients about Iraq? What are we saying now?

4. Didn't KAI's activities until recently contribute to the Iraqi impression that America was so eager to do business in Iraq that we would not react to his invasion?

5. Doesn't this incident show that there is a conflict of interest between your activities (or those of your associates) and your commentaries on international matters?

cc: AS, WDJ, MM

SEP. 18 '90 11:33 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

F.02

gas are quite another, and it touched one of the most sensitive nerves in Israeli society. In tough language never before heard from the Israeli left, Sarid wrote: "For the first time, Daraoushe and Mi'ari have called into question their own civic loyalties. They will pay dearly for this mistake."

Sarid's party was not happy with his intemperate rhetorical outburst. Its executive committee gathered to hear its leader, Snulamit Aloni, rebuke Sarid for the damage he caused the Movement's moral and intellectual stands. "What does that mean, 'compared to the crimes of Saddam Hussein, the sins of the government of Israel are as pure as the driven snow'?" wondered Aloni, the elder stateswoman of the Israeli left, quoting from Sarid's celebrated piece in *He'aretz*. "Are those our standards for morality? for humanity? Because [Saddam] is a butcher, we have the right to rule over another people? to oppress? to deport? to destroy?"

Sarid defended himself, arguing that his reaction had in fact helped maintain the credibility of the Israeli left. "Absent my response, the left would be seen as dogmatic—deaf, blind, and dumb—incapable of sou searching or re-evaluation; an entity that molds the world to fit its point of view, rather than adapting its views to conform to reality."

Sarid's words, whether intended or not, amounted to a sweeping indictment of his colleagues on the left. Have they really been so self-indulgent as to "mold the world to fit their point of view"? Have they really failed to recognize the nature of Arab intentions, as suggested so often by their right-wing critics?

For most Israeli doves this debate is not so much about repenting past sins as about present credibility: How do you talk an essentially hawkish majority into major territorial and political concessions without appearing to be a sellout? Israeli leftists have been increasingly compromised in the eyes of those who are sometimes described as "second Israel," an equivalent, say, of blue-collar workers in Queens or Chicago. To them, the left has remained socially aloof, secluded in the Ashkenazi middle-class neighborhoods of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa: self-righteous in its eagerness to "blame Israel first," to paraphrase Jeanne Kirkpatrick: intellectually patronizing in its poorly disguised contempt for the cultural traditions of North African and Middle Eastern Jews.

The left did not realize how alienated it had become from a majority of the population until the 1981 election. Ever since then it has attempted to shift its political message from the high ground of moralism to the pragmatic level of Israel's self-interest. Leftist tacticians have suggested that emphasis should no longer be put on the virtue of Palestinian self-determination (since, after all, elections are rarely won on the basis of unilaterated altruism) but rather on how perpetual occupation would be self-defeating for Israel.

In Israel being a dove requires more than marching in demonstrations or taking a political stand on op-ed pages. Given the country's small size and the almost

insecurities nature of Israeli society, liberals have to confront their critics also in the supermarket, in the workplace, and even in the military reserve—a most demoralizing experience in a culture not noted for its political tolerance. Leftists have to bear the political cross of alleged "appeasement" (toward greedy Arab nationalism) and pay the social price extracted by the stigma of being labeled "Arab lovers."

One ought not to underestimate the psychological dimension. Virtual political pariahs such as Yossi Sarid may well begin to enjoy receiving fan mail extolling their patriotism instead of hate mail questioning their mother's decency. This newfound acceptance could encourage second thoughts, beyond the Persian Gulf and perhaps over much broader agendas of Israeli political culture.

If Hussein is finally routed and Palestinian extremists, who endorsed him, are dealt a severe blow, Israeli doves may feel that their message has become relevant again, and a reassured Israeli public may be willing to consider it. But if Hussein remains in power in Baghdad and radicalism in the Arab world emerges from this crisis intact, the Middle East should brace itself for a new Israel, one in which sworn doves will join the NRA, and declared hawks will be transformed into full-time vultures.

YO'AV KARNY is chief foreign correspondent of the Israeli newspaper *He'aretz*, and is based in Washington.

Kissinger, the Business Forum, and Co.

THE IRAQ LOBBY

By Joe Conason

No advocate of military force in the Persian Gulf has been more widely quoted in recent weeks than Henry A. Kissinger. In op-ed articles and television appearances, he has offered his antiseptic-sounding prescription of "surgical and progressive" air strikes against Iraqi targets and has urged the destruction of the Iraqi regime. These views have been cited repeatedly by hawkish editorialists and were treated as front-page news by *The New York Times*. None of this is startling—until one considers that the former secretary of state's consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, under the auspices of a pro-Iraq interest group, was not so long ago offering economic advice to Saddam Hussein.

Of course, Henry Kissinger isn't the only American businessman who has abruptly changed his view of Iraq. Before the current crisis erupted, dozens of major U.S. and multinational corporations—nearly all of them members of a little-known trade association called the

14 THE NEW REPUBLIC OCTOBER 1, 1990

SEP.18 '90 11:35 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.03

U.S.-Iraq Business Forum—eagerly supplied the Hussein regime with everything from rice to computers to helicopters, and anticipated that Hussein would spend billions more. But because Kissinger and his associates straddle the worlds of business and diplomacy, they offer a particularly striking example of how U.S. policy elites virtually ignored the threat to regional (and global) security and to human rights posed by Iraq until the invasion of Kuwait made that threat too obvious to overlook.

Though Kissinger now says that Hussein should be deposed because he "used poison gas against his own dissident population," that did not prevent his consulting firm—or other corporate powers—from continuing to do business in Baghdad for years after Iraq's chemical warfare capability had been unleashed against Iraqi minorities (and Iranian soldiers). If anything, Hussein was coddled by government officialdom at the urging of his U.S. business partners. The companies seeking Iraq's petrodollars arranged for U.S. taxpayers to assume the risk of doing business with Hussein through commodity credits and loan guarantees underwritten by the federal government.

Keeping these subsidies in place wasn't easy, given the nature of the Iraqi regime. Safeguarding them from congressional sanctions and the federal bureaucracy was, from 1982 until last month, the raison d'être of the U.S.-Iraq Business Forum. Based in Washington, where it worked closely with the Iraqi Embassy, over the past few years the Forum and its powerful members have quietly kept the U.S. credits and loans pouring into Baghdad. By June 1989 these efforts raised the Forum in Hussein's estimation so high that he invited a number of the group's leading members—accompanied by a representative of the legendary Dr. Kissinger—to Baghdad for a four-day program of meetings and banquets with Cabinet officials and other top members of his government, and he himself granted them a highly unusual two-hour audience.

The Forum's membership, currently more than fifty firms, has expanded as rapidly as the growth in trade between the United States and Iraq. (Annual sales grew from about $400 million in 1985 to $1.5 billion in 1989, and had been expected to double again this year.) Its board of directors includes officials of Amoco, Mobil, Westinghouse, Caterpillar, and the First City Corporation of Texas (whose chairman and CEO, A. Robert Abboud, also chairs the Forum). Its daily affairs in Washington are overseen by Forum president Marshall W. Wiley, a lawyer at the huge lobbying law firm of Sidley & Austin and a former U.S. ambassador to Oman. (He also ran the U.S. interest section in Baghdad before full diplomatic relations resumed in 1984.) The bland, reassuring Wiley is assisted by executive director Mary E. King, a pioneering civil rights activist who served as associate director of ACTION, the umbrella agency for the Peace Corps and its domestic offshoots, during the Carter administration.

Neither the Forum nor any of its officers or members

is registered with the Justice Department as an agent for Iraq, although they have spent much of the past five years seeking to promote that nation's interests in Washington. "We're not putting out propaganda about Iraq to the general public," Wiley told me in an interview last May, while admitting that his mission of advocating more trade "does have a public relations aspect to it." He draws a fine line, arguing that the Forum doesn't lobby, leaving that task to its constituents. "We keep our members informed," he explained, "so they can then pursue their own interests as they see them."

But in fact the Forum has insistently put out a soft line on Iraq that goes well beyond Wiley's occasional appearances on TV programs like "This Week with David Brinkley," or his letters opposing sanctions that appear in *The Washington Post* and *The Washington Times*. In May 1988, while Hussein was wiping out thousands of Kurdish civilians, the Forum sponsored a Washington symposium on Iraq that was wholly dominated by apologists for the regime. The keynote speakers were Nizar Hamdoon, then Iraq's ambassador to the United States, and Abdul Rahim al-Chalabi, Iraq's oil minister, and much of the discussion was given over to their country's rapid growth and the enormous market it would create for imported capital and consumer goods. A. Peter Burleigh, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, closed his remarks by cheerfully noting that the administration looked "to those in the U.S.-Iraq Business Forum to help preserve—and expand—the overall U.S.-Iraqi relationship through its commercial side, as only the private sector can do."

Several months later Wiley prevailed upon his friends in the Reagan administration to oppose economic sanctions, which were under consideration after Hussein's use of poison gas against the Kurds was revealed. In an October 1988 letter to President Reagan on Forum stationery—which lists such corporate affiliates as Mobil, Amoco, and GM—Wiley wrote, "We fully understand and agree with your desire to limit the use of chemical weapons," but he insisted that imposing sanctions on Iraq "would have the opposite effect." Sanctions were never imposed, and have been consistently opposed, until now, by the Reagan and Bush administrations. It is worth considering the possibility that had sanctions been imposed two years ago, the present crisis might never have begun.

The Forum's pro-Iraq activities in Washington have been financed by dues of member companies, not by the Iraqi treasury. But as early as May 1985, before the Forum even opened its doors, Ambassador Hamdoon gave Wiley a letter on embassy letterhead. It bluntly advised "any United States company interested in doing business with Iraq" that it "would do well to join the Forum." Several months later the Hussein regime announced publicly that for companies wishing to do business in Iraq membership in the Forum was practically mandatory. Flanked by Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, Hamdoon told a Washington audience: "Our people in Baghdad will

OCTOBER 1, 1990 THE NEW REPUBLIC 15

SEP. 18 '90 11:37 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P. 84

give priority—when there is competition between two companies—to the one that is a member of the Forum." A directory of Forum members was later issued to officials of every ministry in Baghdad, with instructions to use it when awarding contracts or procuring supplies.

By directing contributions to Iraq's friend in Washington, Iraq's foreign ministry took advantage of what many regard as a loophole in the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which mandates a detailed report of agent activities every six months. Because it was not registered as an official agent of the Iraqi regime, the Forum was able to operate far more freely in Washington and maintained credibility as an advocate of American interests, rather than a mouthpiece for a discredited tyranny.

The ultimate sign of appreciation for services rendered came in the spring of 1989, when the Iraqi government invited the Forum's "blue ribbon" trade delegation to Baghdad. Present in addition to Abboud, Wiley, and King were CEOs or senior executives of Amoco, Mobil, Occidental Petroleum, Westinghouse, General Motors, Xerox, Bell Helicopter Textron, and several other Fortune 500 companies. Invitations were extended only to member companies with annual sales in excess of $500 million, but an exception was made for Alan Stoga, an economist specializing in international finance and oil markets who is Kissinger's senior associate.

True to the secrecy that is his boss's obsession, Stoga has refused to discuss his visit to Baghdad, or any interests the Kissinger firm and its clients may have in Iraq. According to Wiley, Stoga "was asked to accompany us, although Kissinger Associates is not officially part of the Forum, because of his general knowledge of international finance and banking problems." At the time, as the Forum's newsletter pointed out, Iraq's massive debt was "the principal constraint" on U.S. trade, and Stoga's job was to explain how Hussein could restructure his debt and obtain loans from U.S. commercial banks and other lenders.

Private financing would have meant bigger profits, not only for financial institutions like Chase Manhattan that have long retained Kissinger, but for other Kissinger clients doing deals in Iraq. Although Kissinger Associates closely guards the identities of its clientele, the list of acknowledged clients includes several firms that have won large contracts from the Hussein regime in the past few years: Volvo, whose chairman, Pehr Gyllenhammer, sits on Kissinger's own board; Hunt Oil, which also sent an executive on the Baghdad trip; Fiat, whose subsidiary has been implicated in weapons sales to Iraq; Coca-Cola; and the Yugoslav construction giant Energoprojekt. At least one other Kissinger client, Britain's Midland Bank, is one of a small group of commercial houses already holding large amounts of Iraqi paper, so it too would have benefited from fresh loans by other lenders.

The nature and substance of the Kissinger firm's advice to its clients is another closely guarded secret. But given Kissinger's own Middle East expertise and that of many of his employees and ex-employees (nota-

bly Lawrence Eagleburger, now deputy secretary of state, and national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, a prominent pre-Kuwait advocate of cooperation with Saddam Hussein), it is reasonable to assume that the firm's advice on Iraq was sought and given.

The former secretary of state's business interests in the Middle East (and around the world) pose an ethical problem for journalists when they seek him out as the nation's most prominent foreign policy expert. When Kissinger appears in the media to comment upon the Gulf crisis, reporters and editors have refrained from questioning him about his interests in Iraq (or Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, for that matter). They made the same omission last year when he took to the airwaves to discuss China, a country where he has substantial commercial interests. In the China case the omission was more egregious, since Kissinger was defending the Chinese government and arguing that the United States should "not do any sanctions" in response to the Tiananmen Square massacre. But even though Kissinger's post-Kuwait message on Iraq was very different, it might have been worth asking him if he thought his firm's previous activities had in any way contributed to the Iraqi arrogance that produced the present crisis.

Kissinger too has declined all requests to be interviewed about the June 1989 trade delegation. Explaining its activities has been left to Wiley. "Iraq plays an important role now in bringing about stability in the Gulf region as an offset to Iran," Wiley told me after the Baghdad visit. "This balance of power is important to us because of our interest further down the Gulf in the countries that are friendly to us and where we have substantial energy reserves that must be protected. So Iraq plays an important political and geopolitical role in addition to being an important trading partner for us and we can't push all these considerations to the side and shut our eyes to them because of some perceive human rights violations." Wiley added piously: "We should work with the Iraqi government to try to improve their human rights behavior, in whatever ways we can. [But] we will not achieve that if we cut off our ties with Iraq."

That view prevailed in the State Department until Hussein invaded Kuwait, although other Middle East experts disagreed. In a 200-page report on Iraq issued last February, the human rights group Middle East Watch exhaustively documented Iraq's record of brutality, recommended that the United States terminate all credits and loans to Baghdad—effectively ending most trade—"until such time as the Iraqi government dramatically curbs abuses." Many of the same media outlets now decrying Hussein's atrocities and repressing ignored the Middle East Watch report when it was published.

And almost no one noticed the report's footnote about the June 1989 trade delegation, which mentioned Kissinger Associates. There was a touch of morbid injury in the fact that Stoga arrived in Baghdad on June 4, the day Kissinger's old friends in Beijing sent the tan into Tiananmen Square. Meanwhile, the U.S.-Iraq Bu

19 THE NEW REPUBLIC October 1, 1989

SEP.18 '90 11:39 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.05

ness Forum is effectively out of business. But when the crisis recedes, no matter what tyrant rules in Baghdad, it seems safe to predict that Marshall Wiley and his corporate allies will be back, insisting that it is in our interest to help them make money.

JOE CONASON is editor-at-large of Details magazine.

America's obscenity test lacks serious value.

'MILLER' TIME

By Jeff Rosen

This fall a Cincinnati curator is facing a federal judge for having displayed the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe. Luther Cambell of 2 Live Crew will appeal his Florida conviction for having produced *As Nasty As They Wanna Be*. And Karen Finley may challenge her grant denial from the National Endowment for the Arts. All three will use the Supreme Court's obscenity test to defend their work as "serious" art. But in a perverse betrayal of its purpose, the Supreme Court's test, properly applied, may threaten naughty artists more than it protects them.

When the test was announced in Miller v. California in 1975, it promised to distinguish art from obscenity by protecting sexually explicit work that had "serious" artistic value. (The more lenient previous test said obscenity had to be "utterly without redeeming social value.") But over the years, art has become more sexually explicit, the line between high art and low has been increasingly blurred, and artists have come to question the idea of artistic "seriousness." Now the Miller test measures art by a standard that many artists are unwilling to meet and that jurors are unable to identify. For different reasons, unlikely allies such as William Brennan, Antonin Scalia, and movie czar Jack Valenti agree that it's time to take aesthetic decisions out of the courtrooms.

In Miller the Court said that judges and juries should ask themselves three questions when attempting to distinguish between art and obscenity: first, "whether 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest"; second, "whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law"; and, third, "whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." If the answer to all three questions is yes, then the work can be banned; if not, then the work must be protected.

From the moment it was conceived, the test seemed

ambiguous. "To be prurient and offensive, a work has to turn you on and gross you out at the same time," says Kathleen Sullivan of Harvard Law School. But during the 1980s the ambiguous test became unintelligible as changes in art and law eliminated "serious" artistic value as a viable distinction between art and obscenity. First, artistic goals changed. As Amy Adler argues in a student note in a recent issue of *The Yale Law Journal*, postmodernism rebelled against the modernist demand that art should be "serious," or that it should have any traditional "value" at all. "Bad" painters like David Salle juxtaposed images from art history and pornography. Sculptors like Jeff Koons created what *New York Times* critic Michael Brenson called "art that looks like trash and trashes high art," including a porcelain bust of Italian porn star Cicciolina. And rappers like 2 Live Crew mixed scatology with Muddy Waters. As a result, the Miller test has come to evaluate postmodern art by the very standard that postmodern art seeks to defy.

Second, the Miller test itself changed. Three years ago, in *Popr v. Illinois*, the Supreme Court decided that courts should ask whether a "reasonable person" would find serious value in the suspect art. It is hard to imagine a more philistine and less appropriate test for artistic value than the aesthetic sensibility of the "reasonable person." Reasonable people attacked Manet's *Djeuner Sur L'Herbe* and Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" as indecent. And reasonable people are even less likely to find serious value in artists like Mapplethorpe and Finley, who go out of their way to offend reasonable tastes. When the "reasonable person" standard was announced, liberals like Brennan cringed at the bewildering union of law and aesthetics. But they were joined by the conservative Scalia, who is wary of judicial subjectivity wherever it occurs. "[I]t is quite impossible," wrote Scalia, "to come to an objective assessment of (at least) literary or artistic value.... Since ratiocination has little to do with esthetics, the fabled 'reasonable man' is of little help in the inquiry.... For the law courts to decide 'What is Beauty' is a novelty even by today's standards."

The changes in art and law left artists vulnerable to prosecution when local authorities decided to crack down in 1990. As a result, the artists who face federal judges this fall have no way of predicting with confidence whether they have broken the law. To appreciate their predicament, pretend you are a juror at an obscenity trial and try to apply the Miller test to the work of Mapplethorpe, 2 Live Crew, and Finley.

Start with Mapplethorpe's photograph of the man with the bullwhip up his ass. Would an average person in your community find that it appeals to the prurient interest? The Supreme Court complicates matters by defining "prurient" not only as "material having a tendency to excite lustful thoughts," but also as material that shows a "shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion." An expert witness may be helpful. "The male genitals are often presented ... as surrogates for the face," writes the poet Richard Howard in a tribute to Mappiethorpe. Sounds like an interest in

OCTOBER 1, 1990 THE NEW REPUBLIC 17

CORRESPONDENCE

Kissinger and Iraq

To the editors:

I have read with surprise and outrage an
article in your edition of October 2
("The Iraq Lobby" by Joe Conason).
The piece is alive with false allegations
about my consulting company's activities
in Iraq which in fact are nonexistent.

Mr. Conason states that Iraq's recent
behavior "did not prevent Kissinger's
consulting firm ... from continuing
to do business in Baghdad for years af-
ter Iraq's chemical warfare capability"
emerged. Yet our firm has never done
any business in Baghdad.

Mr. Conason suggests that my asso-
ciate Alan Stoga was along on the Busi-
ness Forum trip to help the Iraqi govern-
ment with its debt problem. This is
simply not the case. Mr. Stoga went to
Baghdad to listen and learn. Neither he
nor Kissinger Associates has or ever had
anything which can even remotely be de-
scribed as a consulting relationship with
the Iraqi government.

Mr. Conason implies a relationship be-
tween this firm and the U.S.-Iraq Busi-

ness Forum. Yet neither Kissinger Asso-
ciates nor Mr. Stoga nor any other
member of our firm is or ever has been a
member of the Forum. Whatever the
views of the Forum may have been, I
have never made a secret of my concerns
about the need for balance in U.S. policy
in the region or of my conviction that
Iraq is and has always been a radical
state. To argue, as Mr. Conason does.
that the Iraqi invasion caused me
"abruptly" to change my position on
Iraq is to misrepresent completely my
views on Middle East affairs.

Finally, there is the implication in the
article that our firm must encounter a
conflict of interest because we have "in-
terests" in countries on which I or my
associates are sometimes asked for com-
ment by the media. But this is to miscon-
strue entirely the nature of our business.

Kissinger Associates itself has no "in-
terests" in any foreign country. We have
no governments and no countries as cli-
ents. Our clients hire us to give them our
frank and straightforward analysis of in-
ternational events of interest to them
which we do without fear or favor from
any nation. It is not, and can never be, in
our interest to shade our analysis for any
reason. And we don't.

One way to inform ourselves about in-
ternational issues is to visit foreign coun-
tries to talk to people about them—

which is why Alan Stoga went to Iraq last
year.

HENRY A. KISSINGER

New York, New York

Joe Conason replies:

Alan Stoga did not go to Iraq merely to
visit a foreign country and talk to people
about it. In the *United States-Iraq Business
Forum Bulletin* (August 1989), Forum
president Marshall W. Wiley wrote that
the delegation with which Stoga (whom
he identifies as "Alan Stoga of Kissin-
ger Associates") visited Iraq "was re-
ceived by President Saddam Hussein in
an extended and friendly two-hour ses-
sion that bodes well for the future of
U.S.-Iraqi commercial relations." Wiley
added: "Much of the discussion focused
on Iraq's current financial situation and
the various steps which could be taken to
finance expanded trade with the U.S."

Wiley fleshed out this point in my
interview with him when I asked about
Stoga's role. Here is his reply, which I
quote in full from the tape transcript:

"Alan is an economic adviser to Kissin-
ger Associates. He was there because of
his general knowledge of international fi-
nance and banking problems, and at the
present time the biggest constraint on
our expanding trade with Iraq is the debt
management policies of the Iraqi govern-
ment. They have a large amount of short-
term debt as a result of the war. They
have practically no longer-term debt and
they have excellent long-term prospects,
but do have a bunch of short-term debt
that is now making it difficult for them to
get private sector credit. Alan, as an ex-
pert on international private financing,
was along with the delegation to discuss
some of the problems with the debt man-
agement with the Iraqis."

I did not assert that the Iraqi govern-
ment was a client of Kissinger Associates.
or that Kissinger Associates is a member
of the U.S. Iraq Business Forum. These
are straw men. My point was that Kissin-
ger Associates does have interests in for-
ign countries, including Iraq, because its
clients—multinational corporations, not
governments—have such interests. These
interests are not necessarily identical with
the interests of the people of those coun-
tries. or, for that matter, with the national
interests of the United States. Might the
comments of Kissinger the media star be
influenced by the needs of Kissinger the
businessman? I would say yes, but the eth-
ical burden rests less on Dr. Kissinger
than on the editors and producers who
use him. He is lucky so many of them are
even more shameless than he.

The editors add:

On one major point—why Alan Stoga
was in Iraq—Dr. Kissinger’s quarrel is
continued on page 55

"At the rate
things are going, we are all
going to end up working
for the Japanese."

— LESTER THUROW, MIT

More and more
Japanese companies
now own and operate
factories and offices in
the U.S. What is it like
for American workers,
with their ingrained
habits of individualism,
to work for Japanese
companies which
expect results through
devotion to harmony,
cooperation and the
team concept?" To find
out, journalists Joseph
and Suzy Fucini spent
three years inside the
Mazda auto plant in Flat
Rock, Michigan. What
they witnessed and now
report is a head-on colli-
sion of cultures in the
workplace that may well
put a big dent in the
American Dream.

"Triumphs as an
eye-opening, sweat-
stained account of
what goes on
behind the plant
doors."

—BusinessWeek

"Astute but trou-
bling...the dream
turned into a dark
night of pain. The
history recounted
by this book is
important because
it has significance
beyond its time
and locale."

—The New York Times

THE FREE PRESS

258 pages. $1.95. Available
at bookstores now or call 800-
323-7445 (between 9:00 A.M.
& 5:30 P.M. EST) to place
your credit card order.

6 THE NEW REPUBLIC | OCTOBER 15, 1990

Have been forgotten. Might some of the
plays be worth reviving? *Mr. Pim Passes By*
was once thought to be a modern classic,
and Wodehouse, often an acid judge,
called *The Dover Road* his favorite play.
Still, Pooh is immortal: "Wherever they
go, and whatever happens to them on the
way, in that enchanted place on the top
of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will
always be playing." Or will they? Like so
many English literary figures, Pooh and
his friends toured the United States,
making money from personal appear-
ances, and Milne eventually presented
the animals to Dutton, his American
publisher. They now reside in the New
York Public Library: prisoners of Man-
hattan, they will never see the Forest
again. As for Milne's home, it is hard for
a cottage within forty miles of London to
keep its innocence, and Cotchford Farm,
once simple, has since been smartened
up with every modern convenience. It
was bought by Brian Jones, one of the
Rolling Stones; his drug-addled body
was found floating in the bright new
swimming pool.

RICHARD JENKYNs is the author of *The Victorians and Ancient Greece* (Harvard University Press).

TRB *continued from page 4*

America than is life in New York. Simply
because it is bigger and more crowded
than anyplace else. New York's quotidian
texture is different. Even very affluent
people don't own cars. Even people of
modest means don't do their own laun-
dry. Things like that. This is not a moral
judgment on New Yorkers. Different
doesn't mean better or worse. It's just an
observation that it may be healthier for
democracy when members of Congress
drive to the mall on Saturdays.

On the other hand, a nation's life does
lose something when all the politicians
are off in a bell jar of their own. In Lon-
don the political types, cultural types,
and business types all mix together, talk
together, drink together, sleep together,
sometimes even procreate together. The
result is a richer stew than any of the
ingredients taken alone.

In America the people who write nov-
els, make movies, and produce television
shows know nothing about how politics
really works, and it shows. The politi-
cians tend to be philistines, and that
shows too. You don't find *THE NEW RE*
*PUBLIC* casually reviewing a collection of
parodies of famous poems edited by the
secretary of education, as did a recent
issue of the *London Spectator*. There is no
modern-day Trollope to do for Wash-
ington what Tom Wolfe did for New

York in *Bonfire of the Ventrines*, because no
one who could write *Bonfire of the Ventrines*
would want to live in Washington. It's a
price we pay.

So there will probably never be a great
Bonn novel. Members of the Bundestag
won't be performing, or even drinking,
in smoky Berlin cabarets. That's OK.
Some of us prefer our German politi-
cians on the boring side.

MICHAEL KINSLEY

CORRESPONDENCE *continued from page 6*

with Marshall Wiley, not with Joe Cona-
son or TNR. Clearly the Forum intended
the Iraqi government and the financial
community to think that the purpose
of Stoga's presence on its delegation
to Baghdad was to enhance the Iraqi
American commercial relationship. If this
impression is somehow at variance with
the facts, Kissinger Associates has made
no apparent effort to get the organization
to correct it. Still, apart from Stoga's trip
with the Forum delegation (and the evi-
dence of the activities of Kissinger Assoc-
iates' clients, which is essentially circum-
stantial), the record shows no proof that
Kissinger Associates was otherwise in-
volved in commercial undertakings with
Iraq. If the "Kissinger angle"—as op-
posed to the unambiguous involvement
of the corporate members of the U.S.-Iraq
Business Forum—was overemphasized in
Conason's article, it should be noted that
this relative emphasis was the idea of the
editors of TNR, not of Conason. As for Dr.
Kissinger's view of the Saddam Hussein
regime, it remains what it has been for
years, and it is not friendly.

## Sand grouses

To the editors:

In your editorial "Sand Trap" (September
24), you set forth a totally inaccurate rep-
resentation of my position on the Persian
Gulf crisis. You extrapolated from one ar-
ticle out of dozens and came up with a mis-
taken interpretation of my views.

As I have consistently stated, I agree
completely with the president's goals
and actions. At no time have I differed
with him. I did suggest, in the early
days of the crisis when war fever ap-
peared to be gripping everyone, that
we should lower the rhetoric momen-
tarily and explore whether Saddam
Hussein would back down before we
rushed the likelihood of shedding the
blood of American men and women.
The same afternoon I made this obser-
vation, the president himself expressed
support for U.N. Secretary General

Pérez de Cuéllar's diplomatic mission
to the region.

At no time did I suggest we should
negotiate away our principles and goals.
Hussein has to withdraw unconditionally
from Kuwait, with a return to the status
quo ante. Clearly, he should not be al-
lowed to benefit from his aggression,
and I never suggested he should. No dip-
lomatic outcome that I have ever envi-
sioned would permit him to do so.

Your article suggests that I do not
know how to avoid the nuclear problem
with Iraq. I disagree. My statement em-
bracing covert or overt measures is ex-
plicit on its face. As one who openly sup-
ported Israel's destruction of the Iraqi
nuclear weapons facility, I believe I have
been clear on this subject.

I have never suggested an unwilling-
ness to use force if that is required.
As a matter of fact, I was a very early
and prominent supporter of President
Bush's action to remove Manuel Noriega
from power in Panama. But before exer-
cising a military option the president had
exhausted every diplomatic option, in-
cluding efforts through the Organization
of American States, to isolate and topple
Noriega. In the case of Noriega, the OAS
failed in its responsibilities. In the case of
Hussein, the United Nations has re-
sponded very well.

I believe the president and his admin-
istration have done a brilliant job to date
in bringing nearly complete internation-
al isolation to the Hussein regime and in
ensuring that if the military option is nec-
essary we are truly prepared to use it
effectively and with a minimum of U.S.
casualties.

JOHN F. KERRY

Washington, D.C.

The writer is a senator from Massachusetts.

## Postmodern Babbitts

To the editors:

In Irving Howe's fascinating essay on his-
tory and the novel ("History and the Nov-
el," September 3), he mentions that Sin-
clair Lewis's character Babbitt is now
"almost forgotten, the name familiar only
to the elderly." Howe might be interested
to know that in a recent episode of "thirty-
something," the advertising man Miles
Drentell (a sort of postmodern Babbitt
himself, as emblematic of his age as the
original Babbitt was of his) referred to the
businessman who was trying to take over
Drentell's agency as "a Babbitt." I took an
informal poll of my thirty-something
friends, and most of them recognized the
reference. Archetypes do die, but in this
particular case, reports of Babbitt's death
are greatly exaggerated.

JAMES HYNES

Iowa City, Iowa

OCTOBER 15, 1990 THE NEW REPUBLIC 53

[Y]

SSM,

This picture of Dr. Kissinger and short
paragraph appeared in the magazine

The Franklin Almanac - May 1992 Issue.

The magazine is put out by The Franklin
Mint located in Pennsylvania.

GB-H

The
Franklin
Mint

WORLD

Photo by Faris Sammar

Above: Kissinger discusses American involvement in Vietnam while speaking to an honors class at the University of Maryland at College Park.

### KISSINGER RECEIVES VIETNAM MEMORIAL SCULPTURE

Former U. S. National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger received a Franklin Mint Vietnam Memorial bronze sculpture when he spoke recently at the University of Maryland at College Park. Addressing a class of honors students in a course called America in Vietnam, Kissinger spoke on issues relating to American foreign policy in Southeast Asia. Instructor Philip Straw—a veteran of the Vietnam War—made the presentation on behalf of those enrolled because he felt the sculpture was “one of the most fitting, appropriate and lasting expressions of gratitude we could give such a distinguished American for his contributions both as a diplomat and a teacher.”

### MINT PRIZE AWARDED AT PARIS AUTO SHOW

For the second time, a Franklin Mint Prize was presented at the annual "Automobiles Classiques—Louis Vuitton" classic car show, held last fall in Paris. The prize for the Most Beautiful Show Car went to a 1952 Bentley R-type Continental (H.J. Mulliner), brought to the Paris event by British collector Peter J. Fisher, of London. Organized by the magazine *Automobiles Classiques* of the Condé-Nast group, the event, now entering its fifth year, is twinned with another revered auto show, the Concours d'Elégance of Pebble Beach.

Above: Rafaela Noyer presents The Franklin Mint Award of Beauty to Peter J. Fisher at the Automobiles Classiques, held in Paris.

8

ENGLAND • FINLAND • FRANCE • GERMANY • HONG KONG • JAPAN • MALAYSIA • NETHERLANDS • NEW ZEALAND

Overlooking Kissinger

DAVID B. WILSON

According to a source in a position to know, Henry A. Kissinger has never refused to accept an honorary degree from Harvard. Nor has he received one.

The implication is that this extraordinary man, a graduate of Harvard College in the Class of 1950 and arguably the university's most distinguished alumnus, has just never quite measured up, at least in the estimation of whoever it is who makes these decisions.

America, for historical reasons, has no nobility. Some honorary degrees are bought. So are peerages. But honorary degrees amount to a kind of democratic patent of distinction.

Why not Kissinger? He would appear to be so obvious a choice as to burden Harvard to explain itself.

Sunday's Globe, casting about for a successor to Derek C. Bok, who retires as Harvard's president at the end of this academic year, mentioned what it termed "general prerequisites" for the job.

He is supposed to have a Harvard degree. Kissinger has four: his bachelor of arts, a master's, the doctorate and a law degree.

He is supposed to be a scholar of repute. Kissinger has written a half-dozen books, some of which have won major prizes, and 40 scholarly articles, not counting popular publications.

He is supposed to be an administrator. Kissinger has been one, at the very highest level, both at Harvard and in the government of the United States.

He is supposed to be good at handling and raising money. After hanging around with the Rockefeller family all his adult life, Kissinger may be expected to have learned something about fund-raising.

He is supposed to be between 40 and 50 years old. Well, he is between 60 and 70. But should that constitute disqualification?

Now, this column is no plug for Kissinger's appointment as president of Harvard, although he might turn out to be a splendid one should the corporation persuade him to take the job. But it seems that an alumnus whose CV so redundantly possesses the qualifications for the presidency of the university ought not to be regarded as ineligible for an honorary doctorate.

Much wind has blown up and down John F. Kennedy (formerly Boylston) Street about the challenge and promise of professional government service over the past generation or so. One wonders where a Harvard exemplar more distinguished than Kissinger might be found.

My suspicion is that because the man served Republican administrations and remains controversial among leftish members of the Harvard faculty his name has been omitted from consideration simply to avoid the threat of gaudy resignations or disruptive misconduct in The Yard.

This, if true, firmly aligns the administration and the corporation with that repulsive faction of the Harvard community which believes that the United States is what's wrong with the world.

In 1973, having just received the Nobel Peace Prize, Kissinger was being questioned by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in proceedings leading to his confirmation as secretary of state. Watergate clouds were darkening.

"Where once we ran the risk of thinking we were too good for the world, we might now swing to believing that we are not good enough," he warned the senators. "Where once a soaring optimism tempted us to dare too much, a shrinking spirit could lead us to attempt too little. Such an attitude - and the foreign policy it would produce - would deal a savage blow to global stability."

"But I am hopeful about our prospects. America is resilient. The dynamism of this country is irrepressible. Whatever our divisions, we can rally to the prospects of building a world at peace and responsive to humane aspirations. In so doing, we can replenish our reservoir of faith."

There are supposed to be about a dozen professional academics on the short list to succeed Bok. It is an important choice. The influence of the Harvard presidency extends regionally and globally beyond the university.

Herewith a modest proposal: Equip each prospect on the short list with a blue exam book. Sit them all down in Memorial Hall and give them an hour to explain in writing why Henry Kissinger ought - or ought not - to be awarded an honorary degree. Award the presidency to the author of the best blue book.

David B. Wilson is a Globe columnist.

2 Ex-Military Chiefs Urge Bush to Delay Gulf War

Ask That Embargo Stay
in Place for Year —
Kissinger Dissents

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 — Two former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff urged the Bush Administration today to postpone military action against Iraq and to give economic sanctions a year or more to work.

"If in fact the sanctions will work in 12 to 18 months instead of six months, the trade-off of avoiding war with its attendant sacrifices and uncertainties would, in my view, be worth it," said Adm. William J. Crowe, who appeared with Gen. David Jones.

"It's curious," Admiral Crowe continued, "that some expect our military to train soldiers to stand up to hostile fire but doubt its ability to train them to occupy ground and wait patiently."

The testimony by the two retired officers before the Senate Armed Services Committee was significant because it reflects a strong current of opinion within the active military and because the two men remain influential with Congress. The hearings took place as the United Nations Security Council prepared to meet Thursday to vote on a resolution authorizing the use of force if Iraq does not pull out of Kuwait.

In recent weeks, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of American forces in the Persian Gulf, and Gen. Alfred Gray, the Marine Corps Commandant, have urged that the United States avoid a rush toward war and give economic sanctions more time to work.

Kissinger Opposes Delay

The remarks by Admiral Crowe and General Jones were warmly received by the committee's Democratic members, who have called for restraint by the Administration.

But in his appearance before the panel, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger argued that the United States could not afford to wait a year for the sanctions to work because the prolonged presence of American forces in Saudi Arabia would destabilize the country and other moderate Arab states.

"The issue in Arabia is not American staying power but the host country's domestic stability," Mr. Kissinger said.

"Conditions in the gulf are not even

*Continued on Page A14, Column 1*

Paul Hosefros/The New York Times

Former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William J. Crowe, foreground, and Gen. David Jones, at Senate Armed Services hearing.

The Nation.

October 29, 1990 $1.75 U.S. / $2.25 Canada

EDITORIAL

SAME OLD
SNOOPS

Last week, forty-five years late, Japanese-Americans interned during World War II received their first compensation checks. Years from now will the government owe similar checks to Arab-Americans and Middle Eastern immigrants? A new General Accounting Office report on the F.B.I. hints that the bureau is keeping the U.S. Arab community under exactly the kind of surveillance that for a decade before Pearl Harbor prepared the way for the Japanese internment.

Arabs in this country aren't the only target. The G.A.O. report on the F.B.I.'s "international terrorist" program shows that although the cold war is over our all-American secret police persist, immune from Congressional scrutiny.

Representative Don Edwards first ordered the review in 1988, after revelations of extensive F.B.I. snooping directed at the Committee in Solidarity With the People of El Salvador. On October 9 an exasperated Edwards declared that his inquiry had been "seriously hampered" by bureau officials, noting incredulously that even Congressional auditors with top-secret clearances were denied access to crucial records.

The G.A.O.'s circumspect revelations are chilling: 19,500 investigations under the largely phony rubric of "terrorism" between January 1982 and June 1988, nearly half involving people suspected only of tenuous association with a broad range of groups; 2,080 undercover investigations of rallies, meetings and religious services; names, sometimes dozens of them, added to the F.B.I. permanent index in every case.

F.B.I. director William Sessions responded to the G.A.O.'s disclosures with bland bureauspeak.

Indexing such names, he insisted, is simply "a basic management concept of information retrieval." Hold that thought.

08585

03775356

STATE/LOCAL
FISCAL CRISES
Robert Fitch

CUBA AND
SOVIET AID
Samuel Farber

MURDER IN
VIRGINIA
Stephen Hooker

BUYING A CAR
IN HUNGARY
Miklós Vámos

TOUGH JEWS
Michael
Rosenthal

SEXUAL DESTINY
Paul Mattick Jr.

MINUTES OF THE MEETING

THE SECRET
LIFE OF HENRY
KISSINGER

The Nation has obtained confidential minutes of a sensitive 1975 meeting of senior State Department officials, presided over by then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and attended by Lawrence Eagleburger, currently President Bush's Deputy Secretary of State. The minutes, printed on page 492, offer a revealing glimpse of the attitudes of these men regarding the public's right to know about policies undertaken in its name, and of the accountability of government officials within a democracy. These minutes seem particularly noteworthy today, as the United States prepares for war in the Middle East.

— The Editors

MARK HERTSGAARD

Nothing, it seems, succeeds like failure. How else to explain the media visibility of Henry Kissinger during the Persian Gulf crisis? After all, the former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser's record of achievement in that part of the world has been checkered at best. Not only did he help to make the Middle East war of 1973 inevitable by "his need to dominate [then-Secretary of State William] Rogers and his willful misunderstanding of the limits of Soviet influence inside Egypt," as Seymour Hersh argued in *The Price of Power*, but he was also the man

who pressured President Carter into allowing the deposed Shah of Iran into the United States in 1979, thus precipitating the calamitous and entirely predictable seizure of the

(Cont. on p. 488)

474

The Nation.

October 29, 1990

LETTERS.

THE BUCK STOPPED HERE

Kinderhook, N.Y.

Until recently I felt confident that I could read *The Nation* and not be assaulted with reactionary advertisements or rhetoric (Christopher Hitchens notwithstanding). I was shocked, therefore, to see a two-page ad in the July 16/23 issue for the Seamless Garment Network. They claim that abortion as well as euthanasia are linked to the arms race and threaten the world. Does this echo Billy Graham or am I being paranoid? I am not going to give a defense of a woman's right to an abortion; Katha Pollitt has done that admirably. But I am horrified to see *The Nation* compromise itself for a buck.

Susan Hogan

UNSEEMLY

Hamden, Conn.

You have a pitch for *The Nation* that leads off with, "Subscribing to Our Principles Isn't Enough." Can *The Nation* claim to go beyond merely subscribing to its principles when it accepts advertising from an anti-choice organization like the Seamless Garment Network? It makes no difference that the advertisement is sprinkled with noble sentiments about war and poverty, or with names like Berrigan, Sheen, Ellsberg and Hentoff. In fact, the names make that ad all the more insidious because these people are lending their vaunted progressive reputations to a most dangerous cause. *The Nation*, in turn, is reinforcing the respectability of that cause by printing the ad. I hope that you will not accept any more advertising from this source. How about from NOW, Naral or Planned Parenthood instead?

Thomas Malchodi

THE AD DIRECTOR REPLIES

New York City

What is almost as difficult as selling ads for *The Nation* is the task of judging which ads our readers should be allowed to see. *The Nation* accepts ads not to further its views but to help pay the costs of publishing. As our ad policy says, *The Nation* has "a strong presumption against censoring any advertisement, especially if we disagree with its politics." We would welcome ads from Naral and NOW, and we did carry Planned Parenthood ads until its agency said, Why preach to the converted? and began advertising in more conservative magazines. Hogan is right—that line does sound like a Billy Graham riff, and Katha Pollitt's eloquent pieces better express my views too. But *The Nation* did not compromise itself. The advertiser paid full rate. Chris Calhoun

DEEP DISHING NEO-NAZIS

New York City

Elinor Langer notes in "The American Neo-

Nazi Movement Today" [July 16/23] that as a result of the controversy surrounding their use of public-access channels, white supremacists have been invited to appear on mainstream TV talk shows, winning greater exposure for their ideas. Of equal concern to those of us actively producing and programming progressive shows on public-access TV is the impact that the white supremacist programming has had on the access channels themselves.

The use of these channels by hate groups has been cited by cable companies, city governments and citizens' groups as a justification for placing editorial control over access channels and, in the case of Kansas City, Missouri, as a reason to eliminate altogether the existing access channel. The threat of the use of access channels by hate groups has been successfully used by cable companies (for example, in St. Petersburg, Florida) to discourage provisions for access channels and facilities in cable franchise agreements. The logic is that it's better to have no access than access that might be used by Nazis. That is a position activists cannot afford to take.

As a response to this threat, Deep Dish Television, a grass-roots satellite network, transmitted the series *Public Access: Spigot for Bigots or Channels for Change?* this past spring to more than 250 public-access channels throughout the country. The series profiles activist organizing against racism and bias, tells the history of some of thesupremacist organizations and explores the issue of censorship. Nation readers interested in running this series, free of charge, on their local access channels or in showing it at a community screening should contact: Deep Dish TV, 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 or call (212) 473-8933. Martha Wallner

NOT THE WORLD'S POLICEMAN

Washington

We, the undersigned, deplore the rush toward war in the Middle East and the urgings for unilateral American attack upon Iraq by influential editors and writers. A U.S. military attack on Iraq is wrong for moral, political and economic reasons. The United States cannot and should not be the world's police-man. Without major participation by European, Arab and Asian air and/or ground forces, the United States certainly has no business being the instigator of military action against a nation that has not threatened it militarily. A unilateral military action by the United States, either planned or accidental, may be seen as an attack on the Arab or Muslim world with, at best, long-term unforeseen consequences. Cheap oil is not worth the risk of starting a major war. As Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's former Defense Minister, is quoted in a London *Financial Times* interview, "It is easy to start a war, but not so easy to control its outcome. Many

people tend to forget that more than 70 percent of all wars in the twentieth century have ended with the failure of those who actually initiated the fighting."

Jon B. Utley, Accuracy in Media

Henry Regnery

Father Robert Sirico

Thomas G. Moore, Hoover Institution

William A. Niskannen, CATO Institute

Judith Bingham

David Boaz, CATO Institute

Eric Brodin

Robert Poole, Reason Foundation

John A. Baden, Foundation for

Research on Economics

& Environment

Ramona Marotz-Baden, Montana State

University

BLACK, WHITE AND READ ALL OVER

Washington

Thank you so much for publishing the first intelligent article I have read on the Marion Barry case—Paul Ruffins's "Washington's Black Press: Rallying 'Round Mayor Barry" [July 30/Aug. 6]. Living in the middle of this mess, I am dismayed both by racial obsession without class consciousness and by the dishonesty of the establishment and black bourgeois media. I have not summoned the courage to write about the subject, so I am glad that Ruffins has broken a taboo against discussing the true nature of the black media: "But the truth is that their almost blind support is motivated... by a bourgeois black nationalism that refuses to engage in critical analysis of black leadership." That is the essence of the matter. The comments of Ethelbert Miller and Grigsby Hubbard also go to the heart of the matter. I hope that more class-conscious black writers will surface to denounce the ubiquitous petty bourgeois nationalist foolishness that multitudes and betrays the working class.

Ralph Dumain

TROGLODYTES ON THE WING

Milwaukee

I particularly enjoyed Michael Waldman's recent review of *The Politics of Rich and Poor* ["Swing Time," Aug. 13/20], particularly his observation that racial issues might yet derail the radical-liberal bandwagon. If you would permit a few observations from the troglodyte wing of the Republican Party: You do have a race problem, and his initials are J.J.

J.J. is the Republicans' dream come true — the Democrats can't live with him and can't live without him. He can't be ignored because he has a lock on the black and ultra-liberal electorate. But the Democrats can't put him on the ticket because he is far outside the mainstream, has never held elective or government office and is, incidentally,

(Continued on Page 504)

October 29, 1990

The Nation since 1865.

475

# CONTENTS.

Volume 251, Number 14

## LETTERS

474

## EDITORIALS

473 Same Old Snoops

475 His Two Crises

476 Big Green

476 Evading Justice

477 World's Children

Scott Wallace
Jewell Handy Gresham

## COLUMNS

477 On Postmodern Buildings

478 Minority Report

479 Watching Rights

Calvin Trillin
Christopher Hitchens
Aryeh Neier

## ARTICLES

473 Minutes of the Meeting:
The Secret Life of Henry Kissinger

Mark Hertsgaard

480 State/Local Fiscal Crises:
Money's There - 5 Ways to Get It

Robert Fitch

482 Isolation Case:
No More Soviet Aid for Cuba?

Samuel Farber

485 Unreasonable Certainty:
The Killing of Joe Giarratano

Stephen Hooker

487 Capitalism Has Won But ...
Kicking the Tires in Hungary

Miklós Vámos

## BOOKS & THE ARTS

494 Breines: Tough Jews: Political
Fantasies and the Moral
Dilemma of American Jewry
Friedman: The False Prophet: Rabbi
Meir Kahane-From FBI
Informant to Knesset Member

Michael Rosenthal

496 Eyes on the Prize

Robyn Selman

499 Gilman: Sexuality:
An Illustrated History

Paul Mattick Jr.

502 Assouline: An Artful Life:
A Biography of
D.H. Kahnweiler, 1884-1979

Susan Grace Galassi

503 What Your Body Holds
Against You (poem)

Laurie Blauner

Illustrations by Mike de Seve

Editor, Victor Navasky

Executive Editor, Richard Lingeman; Associate Editors, George Black, Andrew Kopkind; Assistant Editor, Micah L. Sifry; Literary Editor, Elsa Dixler; Associate Literary Editor, Art Winslow; Poetry Editor, Grace Schulman; Managing Editor, JoAnn Wypijewski; Copy Chief, Roane Carey; Copy Editor, Judith Long; Assistant Copy Editor, Anne-Marie Otey; Assistant to the Editor, Dennis Selby; Interns, Sefka Cibulka, Nicholas Clegg, Alyssa Katz, George Lerner, Danzy Senna (Washington), Peter Siskind, Claire Thevenoux, Saralyn Wilson.

Departments: *Architecture*, Jane Holtz Kay; *Art*, Arthur C. Danto; *Dance*, Mindy Aloff; *Fiction*, John Leonard; *Films*, Stuart Klawans; *Lingo*, Jim Quinn; *Music*, David Hamilton, Edward W. Said, Gene Santoro; *Theater*, Thomas M. Disch, Moira Hodgson; *Bureaus: Washington*, Kai Bird; *Europe*, Daniel Singer; *United Kingdom*, E.P. Thompson; *Paris*, Claude Bourdet; *Corporations*, Robert Sherrill; *Defense*, Michael T. Klare; *Columnists and Regular Contributors: Alexander Cockburn (Beat the Devil)*, Stephen F. Cohen (*Sovieticus*), Christopher Hitchens (*Minority Report*), Aryeh Neier (*Watching Rights*), Edward Sorel, Calvin Trillin; *Contributing Editors*: Kai Bird, Thomas Ferguson, Doug Henwood, Max Holland, Molly Ivins, Jefferson Morley, Katha Pollitt, Joel Rogers, Kirkpatrick Sale, Herman Schwartz, Michael Thomas, Gore Vidal, Jon Wiener; *Editorial Board*: Norman Birnbaum, Richard Falk, Frances FitzGerald, Philip Green, Elinor Langer, Deborah W. Meier, Toni Morrison, Michael Pertschuk, Elizabeth Pochoda, Neil Postman, Marcus G. Raskin, A.W. Singham, David Weir, Roger Wilkins. *Editors at Large*, Richard Pollak, Katrina vanden Heuvel. *On Leave*, David Corn.

Manuscripts: The magazine cannot be responsible for the return of unlicensed manuscripts unless accompanied by addressed, stamped envelopes.

Publisher, Arthur L. Carter

President, David Parker; Associate Publisher and General Manager, Neil Black; Associate Publisher and Advertising Director, Chris Calhoun; Advertising Sales Representative, Caerthan Banks; Classified Advertising Director, Gary Pomerantz; Business Manager, Ann B. Epstein; Bookkeepers, Ivor A. Richardson, Shirleathia Watson; Art/Production Manager, Jane Sharples; Vice President and Circulation Director, Margaret Pyle; Subscription Manager, Cookee V. Klein; Circulation Coordinator, Jacqueline Lucas; Receptionists, Greta Loell, Vivette Dhanukdhari; Data Entry and Mail Coordinator, John Holtz; Administrative Secretary, Shirley Sulat; Production, Terry Miller; Typography, Sandy McCroskey; Vice President and Nation Associates Director, Sandra Zickefoose; Nation Associates Assistant Director, Carlos Durazo; Permissions and Back Issues, Josh Neufeld; Publicity and Special Projects Director, Peter G. Meyer.

The Nation (ISSN 0027-8378) is published weekly (except for the first week in January, and biweekly in July and August) by The Nation Company, Inc. © 1990 in the U.S.A. by The Nation Company, Inc., 72 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011. (212) 242-8400. Washington Bureau: Suite 308, 110 Maryland Avenue N.E., Washington, DC 20002. (202) 546-2239. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. International Telex: 667 155 NATION. Subscription orders, changes of address and all subscription inquiries: The Nation, P.O. Box 10763, Des Moines IA 50340-0763. Subscription Price: 1 year, $36; 2 years, $64. Add $14 for surface mail postage outside U.S. Missed issues must be claimed within 60 days (120 days foreign) of publication date. Please allow 4-6 weeks for receipt of your first issue and for all subscription transactions. Back issues $3 prepaid ($4 foreign) from: The Nation, 72 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011. The Nation is available on microfilm from: University Microfilms, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Nation, P.O. Box 10763, Des Moines IA 50340-0763. This issue went to press on October 11.

# EDITORIALS.

## His Two Crises

President Bush is skipping along the edge of two gaping disasters—military conflict in the Middle East and economic collapse at home—and yet he will hardly acknowledge their crucial connection. The level of denial in both cases is truly awesome. The budget “debate,” which was more like a sandlot free-for-all

conducted by a bunch of spoiled and senseless children, was devoid of discussion about the policies demanded by war and recession. Instead, Congress and the Administration called each other names and the news media were consumed with the inane political “process” and the relative failure or success of certain men in dark suits.

You might imagine that a world-class confrontation caused by a dispute over the control of oil supplies would produce a debate about energy policy. But Bush pointedly refuses to

476

The Nation.

October 29, 1990

discuss the matter seriously, and the Senate—lobbied by an unbeatable coalition of automobile manufacturers, the auto workers' union and corporate power-wielders—easily beat back an attempt to impose forty-miles-per-gallon standards on cars over the next decade.

The problem with Bush (Congress has its own mysteries, which are impenetrable) is that he is handling his two big crises as if they were extensions of his election campaign. He has his little slogans ("read my lips," "line in the sand"), but they have nothing to do with the reality of politics or power. He grabs the cameras and the headlines with great declarations of principle, but in fact his only principle is what will look good on the evening news. Thus he vetoes a Congressional resolution for temporary government funding on Saturday and then signs a similar bill forty-eight hours later that is even less to his liking. He opposes tax hikes for the very rich one day and the next says he might have no problem with them.

Speaking on events in the Persian Gulf, he declares that there is no basis for negotiation and the military option is about to be taken. Then he tells the United Nations that Iraq might get what it wants from Kuwait if Saddam pulls out his troops and, what's more, it's quite possible to link such a withdrawal with the matter of Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.

Politicians change their minds, but in Bush's case there is no evidence that he has a mind—that is, a made-up mind—to change. In other words, he's winging it, just as he did in 1988 with the pledge to the flag, Willie Horton and "no new taxes." Other members of the governing elite in Washington may have very clear notions of what they want to do, and most of it is probably bad. But Bush—the consummate lap dog, in George Will's phrase—is just wagging his tongue and his tail, waiting for the next tracking polls. That's not a good way to run a country.

## Big Green

Assessing the situation in California recently, a Sierra Club representative said, "If Big Green loses, it will look like the movement cannot translate the rhetoric of Earth Day into the reality of Election Day." Big Green, officially Proposition 128 on the state's November 6 ballot, would give California the strictest environmental law in the country, banning offshore oil drilling, phasing out the most dangerous pesticides, sharply reducing air pollutants, limiting forest clearcutting and providing for an independent elected advocate to enforce the law. Big Green would also cost corporate titans and state and local governments billions of dollars and, like earlier successful progressive initiatives, would surely prompt a years-long legal battle effectively nullifying its provisions, at least in the near term. Given that prospect, it is more pertinent to ask, If Big Green wins (and latest polls give it a weak margin), where is the movement that can translate the pseudoreality of Election Day into the bright dawn of political change?

In many ways the initiative, backed by virtually all the major environmental groups, is an apt expression of Earth Day: educating large numbers of people and involving them individually in an essentially anonymous ritual act. This is not a bad thing, but it should not be confused as the main thing.

Here we meet our old friend context, in which the political meaning of Big Green, indeed of the entire initiative process, introduced in 1911 to give citizens leverage in a state government then dominated by railroad barons, must be placed. One joke has it that the Devil comes to the California legislature and says, "I can offer you unlimited special interest money, money impossible to trace or to be found unclean; in return I ask for your souls and the souls of all your children." The legislators ponder this for a moment and then ask, "What's the catch?"

In a political atmosphere so corrupted, the initiative process might seem democracy itself. And besides Big Green this year, citizens will vote on two other worthy measures—Forests Forever, which primarily would protect 3,000 acres of old-growth forest while forcing timber companies to stop overcutting elsewhere, and Proposition 131, which would provide partial public electoral funding while limiting legislative terms—as well as on three countermeasures put up by corporate and right-wing opponents of those initiatives. All of these have aroused far more interest and could have greater significance than the miserable gubernatorial race, which Danny Goldberg discussed here last week.

But however noble an initiative and however engaging to the ballot-casting public, democracy should never be defined in the loneliness of the voting booth; nor social change mistaken in some loud but unchorused expression of discontent. This is especially true in California, where so many of the people who make the state work are illegal and therefore unfranchised, or, like loggers in the Northcoast, simply fed up and therefore uncounted.

Politics most seriously practiced is an implicating and collective act, at its best symbolized by such actions as Redwood Summer, where people outraged by the clearcuts in Mendocino and Humboldt counties faced their neighbors and forced a public confrontation of the issues of nature, work and corporate greed. The lawyers and funders and consultants who serve as intermediaries for the people in initiative campaigns like Big Green devise useful tools by their efforts—tools that can be properly deployed only by an invigorated and fully joined political community.

## Evading Justice

For our years ago, the International Court of Justice in The Hague found the United States guilty of financing and directing a mercenary war against Nicaragua. The court ordered the United States to pay unspecified damages to Nicaragua for the *contra* war, leaving it up to Managua to present a reasonable claim for the destruction wrought by Washington's "freedom fighters." The Sandinista government estimated total damages — direct

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Now you have to wait in the second office for a few hours, and the room is smelly and crowded. The other customers are angry and sweating and cursing. They all have suitcases with them. Czechoslovak and Polish tourists are lining up to buy forints, which for them is almost a hard currency, since theirs are even softer.

Later, you'll realize that even the bank was preferable to the aluminum bunkhouse-like building of Merkur, which is in an industrial suburb. When you arrive there are already 600 people sitting in and standing around fifty plastic-covered armchairs. The first thing you do is hand over the papers you have. Then you wait for an hour or two. Then you can choose the color of your future car—from the three colors available. Sometimes it's only two. On some days there is only one. (This may really remind us of capitalism: The car is available in every color, but you want black.)

Now you wait another two or three hours. It is very hot under the aluminum ceiling—no air-conditioning or windows. Capitalism is present only on the screen of two TV sets. MTV can be seen via satellite, but fortunately the sound is turned off; people are angry enough without it. Everywhere there are exhausted little children asleep on their parents' laps and shoulders.

Next you can enter the car showroom and choose your car. "Choose" may not be the proper word. Usually, the salesperson has only one car to show you. The seats are dirty, the chassis is scratched, one of the doors is jammed and there are signs of a fuel leak. Still, as you'll soon realize, this is the best car available. So you sigh and take it.

Now you have only another three hours to wait before the car is yours. You are so tired that there is the risk you'll be in an accident on the way home. Statistics prove that lots of people wreck their cars on the first day they get them. No wonder.

The gas tank is almost empty (Merkur employees can do with the free gasoline). You have to buy some at the first filling station. Here there's capitalism—the amount you pay is one-tenth the monthly salary of an engineer. If you give up your apartment, don't eat, don't buy any clothes and don't raise your children, you can buy gasoline nine more times this month.

That is how *Kapitalismus siegt* in Eastern Europe up to now. The Berlin wall is down, but there are lots of other walls that have to be destroyed. Shortages, stupidity and

disorder rule the industry, agriculture and commerce of the ex-Communist countries, and the newly elected governments and parliaments haven't done much yet. Democracy is a time-consuming sport even if you already know the rules. Eastern Europe is just studying those rules. Customers are still treated as hirelings by lots of companies, and shortages don't let competition come into play.

We should be patient and not lose our tempers. Socialism, which never worked, needed half a century to fail. Capitalism will also need some time before its victory—or failure—in Eastern Europe. ☐

# Kissinger

*(Continued From Front Cover)*

American Embassy and hostages in Teheran.

Nevertheless, in the weeks after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Kissinger was a ubiquitous presence on the nation's airwaves and in newspaper columns. He was interviewed on ABC's *This Week With David Brinkley*, published at great length on the opinion page of *The Washington Post* (and, through the *Post-Los Angeles Times* syndication service, in newspapers across the country) and respectfully quoted in *The New York Times*. He was, as they say, a player again.

Not that he ever truly lost access to ruling circles. Since leaving government in 1977, Kissinger has maintained a lucrative global network of business and political contacts and has made a special point of cultivating influence in the news media. Besides circulating opinion columns through the *Post-Times* syndicate, he has served on the board of CBS Inc. and has been a paid consultant to both NBC News and ABC News.

Whatever one thinks of Kissinger's deeds on a substantive level, the "most favored expert" status that the U.S. media have bestowed on him is odd, if only because of his demonstrated record of contempt for an independent press and the free flow of information upon which it depends. Kissinger has admitted to wiretapping reporters and his own aides during his years as Richard Nixon's National Security Adviser. Kissinger requested the wiretaps (which were handled by former F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover and by Alexander Haig, then the White House Chief of Staff) in order to find out who was leaking information to the press about American policy toward Vietnam. Kissinger, of course, was hardly opposed to leaks in principle; he spent a good portion of his working days spoon-feeding such influential denizens of the Washington press corps as *Time's* Hugh Sidey and CBS's Marvin Kalb. But Kissinger trusted no one else with this delicate task, which is perhaps understandable, given the considerable distance between his private version of events and the reality of his policies. Indeed, his wiretaps can be seen as part of a multifaceted White House campaign

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October 29, 1990

The Nation.

487

CAPITALISM HAS WON BUT . . .

# Kicking the Tires In Hungary

MIKLÓS VÁMOS

Budapest

Capitalismus Siegt—that's a direct quote from the Berlin wall. "Capitalism wins," read the graffiti on the gray concrete colossus that was the most impressive result of socialist architecture, built almost overnight. It was supposed to defend socialism from capitalism. It could not. Now that the wall is down, politicians in Eastern Europe are trying to forget every word starting with "social." People in this area are willing to believe that capitalism looks exactly like Florida. Under the blue sky everyone is rich. But the newborn capitalism brought unemployment, poverty and dramatic social and ethnic tensions to Eastern Europe—while it didn’t change the weather.

American business people are gathering in the expensive hotels, hoping to get the largest possible slab of the new meat. Maxwell and Murdoch buy newspapers. Western joint ventures mushroom, and Western journalists like to declare in a triumphant voice that capitalism has won, just as the graffiti said.

Gimme a break. Returning to Hungary from the United States after two years I can see that socialism lost. That's obvious. At the same time, capitalism will have to wait awhile for its victory. I am aware that this is the last thing American readers want to hear. They would like to celebrate the collapse of socialism as the greatest victory of the United States since World War II. I don't want to spoil the fun, but I have to cool down the general optimism. Socialism is not only a social system, it is also a way of thinking that is still present in the ex-bloc-en bloc.

Let's take just one example. In a capitalist country, buying a car is only a financial problem. You go to a dealer and buy the car you can afford. In Eastern Europe, thousands and thousands of citizens are waiting for their cars. They applied for them and paid an advance many years ago. In Hungary, you had to lay down half the purchase price of an out-of-date Russian, Polish or Czechoslovak automobile. You still have to. Then you must wait. The most popular cars will be yours—in seven or eight years.

And don't forget that Hungary is considered the most developed country in Eastern Europe, a political and economic pioneer. It is already possible to buy Western cars, but only for those lucky citizens who have access to hard currency. In Hungary you get paid in forints, a "soft currency" that buys half a dozen types of cars produced in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. These vehicles—Lada (Russian), Trabant and Wartburg (East German), Skoda (Czechoslovak), Dacia (Romanian) and Polski Fiat (Polish)—are poor replicas of Western European models of the 1960s. They burn a lot of leaded gasoline, pollute the air heavily and break down often. Even so, those who can get them are more than happy.

The citizens who made their down payment six or seven years ago have already forgotten about it. Suddenly, they receive a five-day notice from Merkur, the central car-distributing company. The citizens are informed that their car has arrived. Now they have to pay the second installment and pick up the car in five days. Six or seven years ago half the price—in the case of a Lada—equaled the annual salary of an engineer. In the meantime, car prices were raised several times. Due to an inflation rate of 50 percent a year, wages were also raised. The second half of the price is now no less than twice the engineer's salary.

Eastern Europeans usually don't have that kind of money. They have to borrow. If they cannot, they won't see the car for months. The Merkur company is not very fast, in spite of its name, which is Hungarian for Mercury, swift messenger of the gods.

When you have collected the money you need, you go to the bank. It is called the National Savings Bank (O.T.P.). It has lots of branch offices throughout the country, but for some unknown reason you have to go to the only one that is assigned to deal with payments for cars. If you have money in a C.D. at any other branch office (checking and savings accounts don't exist—and what kind of capitalism can function without them?), there's no way to send your money from your office to the one where you have to pay, although both belong to the O.T.P. What do you do? You withdraw your money from one O.T.P. office, put it in a suitcase and carry it to the other O.T.P. *Kapitalismus siegt . . .*

Miklós Vámos writes regularly for The Nation from Eastern Europe.

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October 29, 1990

to keep the nation ignorant of the true nature of his and
Nixon's foreign policy.

Kissinger's obsession with keeping everyone—the citizenry,
the Congress, even his own Administration colleagues—in
the dark about his actions is displayed in all its banal iniquity
in the State Department document printed on page 492. So
are his casual disdain for law and constitutional procedure,
his disregard for the human consequences of his policies, his
bizarre personal paranoia and his petulant sense of self-
importance. “You have a responsibility to recognize that we
are living in a revolutionary situation,” he admonishes aides
at one point, adding ominously, “Everything on paper will
be used against me.”

What provoked this particular outburst on Kissinger's part was the State Department's dispatch of the "cable on [East] Timor" that he refers to in the third sentence of the minutes. As Secretary of State, Kissinger had just returned from a tour of Asia with President Gerald Ford. One objective of this tour seems to have been psychological. Saigon had fallen to North Vietnamese forces that April, and Kissinger apparently thought it urgent to send a message to friends and foes alike that the United States remained a power to be reckoned with and would not retreat an inch in the global struggle against Soviet and Chinese "adventurism."

The two hot spots most vexing to Kissinger at the moment
were East Timor and Angola. Both were former Portuguese
colonies; both had been promised independence by the
democratic government that had taken over following the
overthrow of Lisbon's right-wing dictatorship in 1974. As
Kissinger met with his colleagues in December 1975, how-
ever, this independence still seemed a long and bloody way
off, and not least because of policies Kissinger himself had
implemented. East Timor is situated on the eastern end of

the Indonesian archipelago; Angola, on the southwest coast
of Africa. Although located half a world away from each
other, both shared the common cold war misfortune of
being regarded primarily as pawns in a global chess game. In
July 1975 Kissinger had obtained President Ford's approval
for a covert military program designed to install a pro-U.S.
government in Angola. And in August, he had signaled Ja-
karta that the United States would not object if the Indo-
nesians invaded East Timor, which by then was controlled
by the leftist Fretilin movement.

The Indonesians invaded on December 7, one day after
Ford and Kissinger left Jakarta. It was a punishing assault,
and the result was mass slaughter. According to church
sources, an estimated 100,000 people—one of every seven
Timorese—were killed over the next twelve months. The In-
donesians did comply with an American request to delay
their attack until Air Force One was well clear of Jakarta,
but they alarmed State Department officials by making ex-
tensive use of U.S.-supplied military equipment. This
violated American law, which mandated that such equip-
ment be employed only in self-defense, and triggered one of
the controversies detailed in the minutes printed below.

Kissinger was upset with his subordinates on two counts: first, with their conclusion that the Indonesians had broken the law (and thereby made suspension of additional aid politically necessary on Capitol Hill); second, and most important, that they had dared notify Kissinger of this in a cable sent before his return to Washington.

Kissinger's great fear, of course, is that the American
public might eventually discover the truth about his policy
on East Timor. He wants "to stop it [the aid] quietly," and
dismisses Assistant Secretary Philip Habib's assurance that
the cable "will not leak." Kissinger becomes nearly apoplec-
tic when he learns that actually "there are two cables! And
that means twenty guys have seen it." This naturally raises
the odds that a reporter will eventually get wind of it.

Near the end of the meeting, Kissinger decides to finesse
the legal problem by telling Congress that aid will be cut off
"while we are studying" the issue. But the aid will secretly
"start again in January." And so it came to pass. A "modi-
fied suspension of military aid" to Indonesia was imposed
for six months, but in name only; as Noam Chomsky later
testified to the United Nations, "the flow of arms [was] un-
interrupted, including attack helicopters and other equip-
ment required to wipe hundreds of villages off the face of
the earth, destroy crops, and herd the remnants of the popu-
lation into internment centers."

Why publish this fifteen-year-old document now? That Henry Kissinger has lied, circumvented the law and blasphemed democratic principles is, after all, hardly late-breaking news. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to fill in another small portion of the public record. And the special advantage of this document is that it cannot be discounted in the way that some of Kissinger's friends tried to undermine Hersh's *The Price of Power*, a work that relied in part on the recollections of Kissinger's associates. No one can dispute the memory or accuracy of the sources quoted here,

492

The Nation.

October 29, 1990

for they are Kissinger and company themselves, as recorded
by the State Department's own notetaker.

But the larger reason for calling attention to these minutes
of a long-ago conversation is that Kissinger is still managing
to escape his past. Readers of *The Nation* may not need a
refresher course in the mendacity and personal unpleasant-
ness of Henry Kissinger, but the executive producers of this
country's television talk shows and the editors of its news-
paper opinion pages evidently do. For they have enthusi-
astically welcomed Kissinger back onto the public stage
during the Persian Gulf crisis, just as they cooperated earlier
this year in the most recent resuscitation of Richard Nixon.
One may doubt that these media gatekeepers will now some-
how be swayed by the addition of yet another brick in the
bloody wall. But one can always hope.

SECRET/SENSITIVE
MEMORANDUM OF CONVERSATION

Participants:
The Secretary
Deputy Secretary [Robert] Ingersoll
Under Secretary [for Political Affairs Joseph]
Sisco
Under Secretary [Carlyle] Maw
Deputy Under Secretary [Lawrence] Eagleburger
Assistant Secretary [Philip] Habib
Monroe Leigh, Legal Advisor
Jerry Bremer, Notetaker

Date: December 18, 1975

Subject: Department Policy

*The Secretary:* I want to raise a little bit of hell about the Department's conduct in my absence. Until last week I thought we had a disciplined group; now we've gone to pieces completely. Take this cable on [East] Timor. You know my attitude and anyone who knows my position as you do must know that I would not have approved it. The only consequence is to put yourself on record. It is a disgrace to treat the Secretary of State this way....

What possible explanation is there for it? I had told you to stop it quietly. What is your place doing, Phil, to let this happen? It is incomprehensible. It is wrong in substance and in procedure. It is a disgrace. Were you here?

Habib: No.

Habib: Our assessment was that if it was going to be trouble, it would come up before your return. And I was told they decided it was desirable to go ahead with the cable.

*The Secretary:* Nonsense. I said do it for a few weeks and then open up again.

Habib: The cable will not leak.

*The Secretary:* Yes it will and it will go to Congress too and then we will have hearings on it.

Habib: I was away. I was told by cable that it had come up.

*The Secretary:* That means that there are two cables! And that means twenty guys have seen it.

Habib: No, I got it back channel—it was just one paragraph double talk and cryptic so I knew what it was talking about. I was told that Leigh thought that there was a legal requirement to do it.

Leigh: No, I said it could be done administratively. It was not in our interest to do it on legal grounds.

Sisco: We were told that you had decided we had to stop.

*The Secretary:* Just a minute, just a minute. You all know my view on this. You must have an FSO-8 [Foreign Service officer, class eight] who knows it well. It will have a devastating impact on Indonesia. There's this masochism in the extreme here. No one has complained that it was aggression.

Leigh: The Indonesians were violating an agreement with us.

*The Secretary:* The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?

Leigh: That's a different situation.

Maw: It is self-defense.

*The Secretary:* And we can't construe a Communist government in the middle of Indonesia as self-defense?

Leigh: Well...

*The Secretary:* Then you're saying that arms can't be used for defense.

Habib: No, they can be used for the defense of Indonesia.

*The Secretary:* Now take a look at this basic theme that is coming out on Angola. These SOBs are leaking all of this stuff to [New York Times reporter] Les Gelb.

Sisco: I can tell you who.

*The Secretary: Who?*

Sisco: [National Security Council staff member William] Hyland spoke to him.

*The Secretary:* Wait a minute—Hyland said...

Sisco: He said he briefed Gelb.

*The Secretary:* I want these people to know that our concern in Angola is not the economic wealth or a naval base. It has to do with the USSR operating 8,000 miles from home when all the surrounding states are asking for our help. This will affect the Europeans, the Soviets, and China.

On the Timor thing, that will leak in three months and it will come out that Kissinger overruled his pristine bureaucrats and violated the law. How many people in L [the legal adviser's office] know about this?

Leigh: Three.

Habib: There are at least two in my office.

*The Secretary:* Plus everybody in the meeting so you're talking about not less than 15 or 20.

You have a responsibility to recognize that we are living in a revolutionary situation. Everything on paper will be used against me.

Habib: We do that and take account of that all the time.

*The Secretary:* Every day some SOB in the Department is carrying on about Angola but no one is defending Angola. Find me one quote in the Gelb article defending our policy in Angola.

Habib: I think the leaks and dissent are the burden you have to bear.

*The Secretary:* But the people in charge of this Department could have lacerated AF [Bureau for African Affairs].

Ingersoll: I was told it came from up the river.

Eagleburger: No way.

*The Secretary:* Don't be ridiculous. It's quoted there. Read Gelb. Was [Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs William] Schaufele called in and told to get his house under control? This is not minor league stuff. We are going to lose big. The President says to the Chinese that we're going to stand firm in Angola and two weeks later we get out. I go to a NATO meeting and meanwhile the Department leaks that we're worried about a naval base and says it's an exaggeration or aberration of Kissinger's. I don't care about the oil or the base but I do care about the African reaction when they see the Soviets pull it off and we don't do anything. If the Europeans then say to themselves if they can't hold Luanda, how can they defend Europe? The Chinese will say we're a country that was run out of Indochina for 50,000 men and is now being run out

GUILD BOOKS
invites everyone to
**The Nation's**
125th Anniversary Celebrations
**in Chicago**

First, we'll have a party . . . *

BIRTHDAY BASH

Friday, October 26, 6:30-9:30

The Chicago Public Library Cultural Center
Preston Bradley Hall, 78 East Washington Street

Keynote by: Jonathan Kozol

"Destitution and Empowerment: The Role of
Radical Utterance in the Millennium of Greed."

Other participants include: Gwendolyn Brooks, Marty Lee, Victor Navasky, Luis Rodriguez, André Schiffrin, Studs Terkel and Laura Washington, with a special performance by David Hernandez and Street Sounds. Admission: $8 and up, sliding scale.

*Co-sponsored by: The Third Unitarian Church, The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, PEN Midwest and The Guild Complex, The Chicago local of the National Writers Union and the following bookstores: Women and Children First, Seminary Co-Op, Bookstall at Chestnut Court, Kroch's and Brentano's and Barbara's Books.

Then comes . . .

ANTHOLOGY BOOK PARTY

Saturday, October 27, Noon to 2
Guild Books, 2456 N. Lincoln Avenue

Join Victor Navasky, The Chicago Cabaret Ensemble and other friends for a book signing and reading in character from the new anthology *THE NATION 1865-1990: Selections from the Independent Magazine of Politics and Culture*.

Free and open to the public.

And to top it all off . . .

ROUND-TABLE DISCUSSION

Saturday, October 27, 3:00

The Guild Complex
at 'the edge of the looking glass'
62 East 13th Street (at Michigan)

"The Media Today: Issues and Tasks"

moderated by Ken Davis, WBEZ

With: André Schiffrin, former managing editor, Pantheon; Marty Lee, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting; Victor Navasky, editor, *The Nation*; Studs Terkel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author; Jonathan Kozol, author, *Illiterate America*; Laura Washington, editor, *The Chicago Reporter*; Michael Miner, *The Reader*; Laura Garcia, *The People's Tribune*; Salim Muwakkil, *In These Times* and John Higginson, University of Massachusetts.

Admission $3.

For more information and tickets call Lew at Guild Books:(312) 525-3667

October 29, 1990

The Nation.

493

of Angola for less than $50 million. Where were the meetings here yesterday? Were there any?

*The Secretary:* It cannot be that our agreement with Indonesia says that the arms are for internal purposes only. I think you will find that it says that they are legitimately used for self-defense.

There are two problems. The merits of the case which you have a
duty to raise with me. The second is how to put these to me. But to
put it into a cable 30 hours before I return, knowing how cables are
handled in this building, guarantees that it will be a national disaster
and that transcends whatever [Deputy Legal Adviser George]
Aldrich has in his feverish mind.

I took care of it with the administrative thing by ordering Carlyle
[Maw] to not make any new sales.

How will the situation get better in six weeks?

Habib: They may get it cleaned up by then.

*The Secretary:* The Department is falling apart and has reached the point where it disobeys clear-cut orders.

Habib: We sent the cable because we thought it was needed
and we thought it needed your attention. This was ten days ago.

The Secretary: Nonsense. When did I get the cable, Jerry?

Bremer: Not before the weekend. I think perhaps on Sunday.

*The Secretary:* You had to know what my view on this was. No one who has worked with me in the last two years could not know what my view would be on Timor.

Habib: Well, let us look at it—talk to Leigh. There are still some
legal requirements. I can't understand why it went out if it was not
legally required.

*The Secretary:* Am I wrong in assuming that the Indonesians will go up in smoke if they hear about this?

Habib: Well, it's better than a cutoff. It could be done at a low level.

*The Secretary:* We have four weeks before Congress comes back.
That's plenty of time.

Leigh: The way to handle the administrative cutoff would be that we are studying the situation.

*The Secretary:* And 36 hours was going to be a major problem?

Leigh: We had a meeting in Sisco's office and decided to send the message.

*The Secretary:* I know what the law is but how can it be in the US national interest for us to give up on Angola and kick the Indonesians in the teeth? Once it is on paper, there will be a lot of FSO-6's who can make themselves feel good who can write for the Open Forum Panel on the thing even though I will turn out to be right in the end.

Habib: The second problem on leaking of cables is different.

The Secretary: No, it's an empirical fact.

*Eagleburger:* Phil, it's a fact. You can't say that any NODIS [most restricted distribution] cable will leak but you can't count on three to six months later someone asking for it [sic] in Congress. If it's part of the written record, it will be dragged out eventually.

*The Secretary:* You have an obligation to the national interest. I don't care if we sell equipment to Indonesia or not. I get nothing from it. I get no rakeoff. But you have an obligation to figure out how to serve your country. The Foreign Service is not to serve itself. The Service stands for service to the United States and not service to the Foreign Service.

Habib: I understand that that's what this cable would do.

*The Secretary:* The minute you put this into the system you cannot resolve it without a finding.

Leigh: There's only one question. What do we say to Congress if we're asked?

*The Secretary:* We cut it off while we are studying it. We intend to start again in January. ☐

EDITORIALS.

(Continued From Page 477)

however, are economic and social; dire poverty undermines
life expectancy. Add to this the ravages of AIDS.

To put teeth into the provisions, the framers drew up an
accompanying World Declaration on the Survival, Protec-
tion, and Development of Children and Plan of Action for
Implementing the World Declaration, which sets specific
goals for the 1990s. Built into the convention are monitor-
ing provisions that cover, among other things, the right to
adequate housing, health services, child care, education and
recreational and cultural activities. The very existence of the
convention creates a standard against which to measure the
treatment of children everywhere. It is enshrined in interna-
tional law, whether or not the children's governments ratify
the convention. All seventy-one of the nations that attended
the summit, including the United States, have signed the
declaration, thereby pledging to work for ratification and
implementation of the convention.

The U.S. press was late turning its attention to the summit. Few among the U.S. mass media reported that, as agreement neared on the final draft, the proceedings hit a roadblock when the United States and Britain killed a provision that would have established a minimum age of 18 for military conscription [see "All Our Children," December 18, 1989].

In this country African-Americans will surely look upon
the enactment of the convention as the hand of God inter-
vening again when all seemed dark. The plight of the masses
of black children and others of color in America represents
in microcosm the crisis afflicting children in the most
desperately poor countries. The potential power of this new
instrument should not be underestimated. Just as the Amer-
ican Declaration of Independence, despite its failure to pro-
tect the rights of blacks, Native Americans and women, held
up a model that made the struggle for justice in the United
States possible, and the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights
proved to be a powerful weapon in the hands of the people
of many nations, so with the Convention on the Rights of
the Child.

When new instruments for advancement are placed in
human hands, the possibilities for running—and winning—
the race increase. Extraordinarily, almost incomprehensi-
bly, the U.N. has just handed children and all who love
them a magnificent one.
JEWELL HANDY GRESHAM

Jewell Handy Gresham was co-editor of The Nation's special issue on the black family.

COMING UP

Virginia N. Sherry on Kuwaiti Non-Democracy

Eric Alterman on the Rosenthal/Buchanan Imbroglio

Daniel Singer on The New Holy Alliance

494

The Nation.

October 29, 1990

BOOKS & THE ARTS.

No More Nice Jewish Boys?

MICHAEL ROSENTHAL

TOUGH JEWS: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry.
By *Paul Breines*. *Basic Books*. 277 pp.
$19.95.

THE FALSE PROPHET: Rabbi Meir Kahane—From FBI Informant to Kneset Member. By Robert I. Friedman. Lawrence Hill. 282 pp. $19.95.

Tough Jews, Paul Breines says, was written in "the service of gentleness," in the hopes that it might provide an antidote to the ideology of toughness and nationalism that Breines sees dominating political discourse today. Robert I. Friedman's *The False Prophet* complements Breines uncannily. A biography of Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League, it is an implacably pursued exposure of a particularly virulent strain of that nationalism embodied in one pathological but all-too-persuasive figure. Ostensibly the toughest of all tough Jews, Kahane constitutes a vivid case study of all that Breines decries. The books make particular sense when read together, and both deserve to be read.

Breines's thesis is a simple one: With the astounding Israeli military victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, American Jews were suddenly drawn to a new conception of the Jew. The traditional stereotype of the Jew as passive victim—the weak and gentle Jew who endured through his wits and wisdom, the Jew as amiable schlemiel—dramatically gave way to a new idealized type: the tough, sunburned Jewish warrior who can fly jets, handle Uzis and generally outgun the goyim. For Breines, the triumph of Israeli military might fundamentally transformed the American Jewish community, changing the ways American Jews thought about Israel, the Holocaust and even their own bodies. *Tough Jews* is a speculative, wide-ranging essay focusing on this transformation and the new images, popular fiction and morally deform-

ing consequences it has produced.

It is also intensely personal. Breines charts his own "tough Jew experience," which led him to undertake this book in the first place. It occurred not in 1967 but in 1982, when he read Ken Follett's best-selling spy novel *Triple* and found himself seduced by its Mossad secret agent hero, Nat Dickstein, the Auschwitz survivor who dispatches large numbers of evil Arabs and Russians with dazzling virtuosity. Dickstein's toughness, his capacity to kill, provided Breines, the 41-year-old leftist Jewish professor, with a visceral satisfaction he had not expected. Even as he was appalled by his responses, he found himself thrilled by Dickstein's awesome lethal powers. The infatuation was brief, lasting only several days, but it was the disturbing sensation of what he calls "the Jewish adrenalin of revenge and power" coursing through his body that led him to want to investigate the relationship between his "passion for

> Reconciling the tradition of gentleness with the intoxication with toughness poses a major challenge to Jewish identity.

toughness” and a Jewish cultural tradition that has always prided itself on chewing violence in the interests of rationality and gentleness. Beginning with his own “conversion” experience, rather laboriously elaborated through discussions of Freud and Isaac Bashevis Singer, Breines argues that his fantasies of Jewish toughness are not only representative but that such fantasies undercut the assumption that Jews are by nature gentler and less violent than others. According to Breines, Jewish meekness constitutes a remarkable adaptation to the fact that Jews were historically excluded from what he calls the “world of effective bodily activity”—war, hunting, farming and landownership. The cultural ideal of gentleness emerged, in part, as

the virtue of this historic necessity.

But give Jews the means of destruction and they can be as tough—and as unyielding and as violent—as anybody else. No worse, certainly, but no better either. And this is one of the painful ironies Breines emphasizes: Having normalized their situation in the world through the forging of a nation, the Jews are now free to act the way other nations seem to act, which includes all manner of brutality and oppression in their own perceived interests. Although Breines tends to tread rather delicately around the Palestinian issue and the *intifada*, the point is clear.

One of the fascinating themes Breines explores throughout the book is the extent to which the imagery and ideals of toughness that American Jews now find so attractive depend for their legitimacy on the traditional counterimagery of powerlessness and frailty. For it is Jew as historical victim that finally authenticates the role of Jew as victimizer, and behind the brutal Israeli response to the *intifada* lurks the horror of the Holocaust. Breines states persuasively that “Zionism needs its weak and gentle Jewish counterparts to give moral justification to Jewish participation in the world of bodies, specifically, of physical violence, including killing or even sadism.” For Breines, the need to reconcile the tradition of gentleness with the current intoxication with toughness—who can suppress a smile of satisfaction at the thought of Entebbe?—poses a major challenge to Jewish identity today.

Although it was not until the establishment of Israel that the Jews had the opportunity to organize their toughness in a focused political way, Breines is at pains to show that Jewish toughness has always existed and that it was neither Zionism nor the Jewish state that invented it. Relying heavily on the work of two historians, Reuben Ainsztein and David Biale, Breines finds individual instances of tough Jews everywhere, in addition to Masada and the resistance during the Holocaust: in the Middle Ages, when Jews were known for their fighting prowess; in seventeenth-century Poland, where they actively resisted the pogroms that swept the country; in Peter Stuyvesant's New Amsterdam. Jewish soldiers fought in the Revolutionary War and in the Boer War. There were Jewish heavyweight boxing champions, Jewish spies, Jewish cowboys and some especially tough Amer-

*Michael Rosenthal is a professor of English at Columbia University and the author of The Character Factory: Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts and the Imperatives of Empire (Pantheon).*

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4 MICHAEL KINSLEY TRB: LAW AND ORDER Look who's big on international law.

6 CORRESPONDENCE Attacking Iraq, killing the NEA, honoring Nixon, &c.

7 THE EDITORS **THE TRIBAL FACTOR** It's become impossible to ignore the real animus behind much of South Africa's black-on-black violence. **THE TIE THAT BINDS?** What Bush didn't bring back from Helsinki. **NOTEBOOK** Club dues, Marcus Cunliffe, &c.

12 YO'AV KARNY **PEACE NIX** The newfound enthusiasm for Saddam Hussein on the part of Palestinians has sent Israeli doves flying in the other direction.

14 JOE CONASON **THE IRAQ LOBBY** Henry Kissinger talks tough about Saddam Hussein now, but his firm and its corporate clients used to make nice with him.

17 JEFF ROSEN 'MILLER' TIME An obscenity test that requires judges to decide whether works of art possess 'serious' value makes less sense than ever.

19 JACOB WEISBERG **CONSTITUTIONAL CURE** A strong bill of rights and democratic elections would provide a better vehicle for an equitable settlement in South Africa than the current strategy of negotiations.

23 SANFORD J. UNGAR **THE AUTHORITARIAN CENTER** There's reason to suspect that Mandela's ANC and de Klerk's Nationalists are working toward a deal that leaves them jointly in charge and muffles dissenters on both sides.

26 STANLEY KAUFFMANN **ON FILMS: FIVE ITALIAN HANDS** Maurizio Nichetti's *The Icicle Thief* is as allusive clever as its title suggests; plus another iconoclastic Italian tragically-comedy, Nanni Moretti's *Ecce Bombo*.

28 ALAN BRINKLEY **MEANS OF DESCENT** Richard Nixon's latest memoir, and a new crop of books about him, suggest that he carried realism to corrosive extremes. He was master of the craft of politics, but cared nothing about its ultimate goals.

34 BRAD LEITHAUSER **POEM** Subarctic

35 GEOFFREY HAWTHORN **GET REAL** Wilhelm Dilthey: Selected Works—Volume I: Introduction to the Human Sciences edited by Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi

38 E. V. THAW **THE ART OF THE DEAL** *An Artful Life: A Biography of D.H. Kahnweiler, 1884-1979* by Pierre Assouline, translated by Charles Ruas

39 MICHAEL HEYWARD **DOMESTIC TERRORS** *Family Sins* by William Trevor

42 JACOB WEISBERG **WASHINGTON DIARIST: FIGHTING WORDS** A dictionary of Newtspeak.

THE NEW REPUBLIC, Vol. 203, Number 14, Issue 3,950, October 1, 1990. (Printed in the U.S. on September 12, 1990.)
Published weekly (except for combined issues dated Jan. 8 & 15, July 9 & 16, July 30 & Aug. 6, Aug. 20 & 27, and Sept. 10 & 17, 1990) at 1220 19th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036. Telephone (202) 331-7494. Leadership Network advertising (212) 684-5500. Yearly subscriptions, $59.97; foreign, $89.97; Canada, $74.97. Back issues, $3.50 (includes postage & handling). ©1990 by The New Republic, Inc. (ISSN 0028-6583). Second-class postage paid at Washington, DC, and additional mailing offices. Indexed in Readers' Guide, Media Review Digest. Available on microfilm from University Microfilms Int'l., 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 and Bell & Howell, Old Mansfield Road, Wooster, OH 44691. Member, Audit Bureau of Circulations. Unsolicited manuscripts can be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Subscribers: Please send all remittances, changes of address, and subscription inquiries to Subscription Service Dept., The New Republic, P.O. Box 56515, Boulder, CO 80322. For subscription problems call 800-274-6686.

OCTOBER 1, 1990 THE NEW REPUBLIC 3

TRB®
FROM WASHINGTON

Law and order

"America and the world must support the rule of law. And we will." —President Bush to a joint session of Congress, September 11

Kuwait, embarrassingly, was not a democracy or a "free" country, as the term is commonly understood, before August 2, and still won't be one when and if the Emir is restored. Saudi Arabia suffers the same unfortunate defect. So to justify American actions in the Persian Gulf, President Bush cannot call upon the usual rhetoric about democracy and freedom. Instead, the reigning concept is "order." Saddam Hussein, he says, has assaulted "the very essence of international order and civilized ideals."

The notion of "order" as a supreme value in the affairs of nations is not universally accepted. In fact, it is at the heart of international law, an area of thought the U.S. government has not had much time for during the past decade. "Order," and the related concept of "sovereignty," assert that the status quo has its own legitimate claims, simply because it is the status quo and disturbing it risks "chaos"—war, misery, death—as Bush now says.

The Reagan Doctrine was a specific rejection of international law as the illogical elevation of sovereignty over more important values such as democracy and freedom. Why should the forces for good sign a charter of self-abnegation? Legal rules are fine for fishing treaties, but not for more important matters. In Grenada, in Nicaragua, as recently as nine months ago in Panama, the Reagan and Bush administrations gave scant attention to the claims of sovereignty, or of various treaties we have signed promising to eschew force against fellow signatories.

International law can be ambiguous. And even under international law, sovereignty doesn't trump everything. State Department lawyers usually have been able to cobble together some legal rationalization for various American adven-

tures over the decade. But the efforts became more and more halfhearted. By the end, the contradiction could no longer be contained in any gray area. Our assertion of America's right to promote American values by violent means was incompatible with even the least ambitious claims of international law to protect sovereignty and limit the use of force. Conservative thinkers circled in for the kill. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan writes, with endearing overstatement, in his new book, *On the Law of Nations* (Hartford University Press): "In the annals of forgetfulness there is nothing quite to compare with the fading from the American mind of the idea of the law of nations."

Yet suddenly, in the Gulf crisis, Bush cannot cite international law often enough. "The occupation of Kuwait is illegal under international law." Iraq is "an outrageous violator of international law." "And so my message [to Iraq] is ... : Adhere to international law." The economic sanctions: "international law ... must be enforced." The hostages: "contrary to international law." Negotiate with Hussein? He "has been so resistant to complying with international law" that there is no point.

International law—it's not just for wussies, anymore. Why the unacknowledged change of heart? International law serves two vital purposes for the United States in this crisis. First, with democracy unavailable, it is a high-minded value we can legitimately claim to be protecting, thereby avoiding undue emphasis on oil and other unromantic and narrowly strategic concerns. Oh sure, a police state like Iraq is worse than a feudal kingdom like Kuwait. But you cannot ask Americans to die for that kind of comparative awfulocracy. Something nobler is required.

Second, the principles and procedures of international law have been essential to gaining the support of the rest of the world. And everyone agrees that gaining the world's support is Bush's greatest triumph.

Robert Bork has written, "The major difficulty with international law is that it converts what are essentially problems of international morality ... into arguments about law that are largely drained of morality." In fact, this is actually an advantage of all law, not just international law. Even without an automatic enforcement mechanism (international law's obvious defect), it is easier to get people to agree to apply a pre-existing set of rules than to agree ad hoc on the moral merits of a particular policy. And even if we disagree on the morality of a specific case, we still share a vested interest in the rule of law generally, which inclines us to fol-

low the rules even when a particular application doesn't suit us.

Furthermore, as Moynihan presciently points out in his book, "Allied and non-aligned nations ... can far more readily support (or at least accept) American policies if our conduct is seen to be based on law that binds us as well as them." *The New York Times* reports, as if revealing something, that the Bush administration's early resort to the United Nations was a pragmatic decision, "rather than flowing from a set of lofty principles." That's the point. International law is valuable—useful—even to superpower America.

To take one small example within the large one, there are already disputes about what constitutes "humanitarian" food supplies under the U.N. embargo of Iraq. To what extent you bend the embargo to alleviate the suffering of innocents is a tough moral question on which reasonable people can surely differ. It is extremely useful for the United States to be able to say: you may not decide this for yourself. Under the law, exceptions are up to the Security Council. That is far easier than stopping each ship for a moral argument.

Writing in *Newsweek*, George Will explores Bush's rediscovery of international law. "President Bush will regret this recourse if he decides his policy requires removal of Saddam Hussein." True: international law makes resort to war harder. But all of Bush's hope to end this crisis short of war depends on other nations taking him seriously about international law.

Should he be taken seriously? Is international law more than just a rhetorical convenience? Having sneered at it for a decade, then having found it necessary, will the United States abandon it once again when it ceases to be convenient? This is not merely a hoity-toity question of not wishing one's country to appear hypocritical. Obviously, even the rhetorical usefulness of international law depends on others believing that this time we really mean it.

Really meaning it means giving up our own freedom of action on occasion, and allowing our own case-by-case moral assessments to be constrained by rules that will sometimes strike us as wrong. It means respecting the sovereignty of governments we rightly don't like. It means allowing the judgment of other nations to stay our hand sometimes, even when we think that judgment is mistaken. Law that need not be obeyed if you disagree with it is not law. If we want meaningful international law to be available when we find it useful, we must respect it even when we don't.

MICHAEL KINSLEY

Sarid's party was not happy with his intemperate rhetorical outburst. Its executive committee gathered to hear its leader, Shulamit Aloni, rebuke Sarid for the damage he caused the Movement's moral and intellectual stands. "What does that mean, 'compared to the crimes of Saddam Hussein, the sins of the government of Israel are as pure as the driven snow'?" wondered Aloni, the elder stateswoman of the Israeli left, quoting from Sarid's celebrated piece in *Ha'aretz*. "Are those our standards for morality? for humanity? Because [Saddam] is a butcher, we have the right to rule over another people? to oppress? to deport? to destroy?"

Sarid defended himself, arguing that his reaction had in fact helped maintain the credibility of the Israeli left. "Absent my response, the left would be seen as dogmatic—deaf, blind, and dumb—incapable of soul-searching or re-evaluation; an entity that molds the world to fit its point of view, rather than adapting its views to conform to reality."

For most Israeli doves this debate is not so much about repenting past sins as about present credibility: How do you talk an essentially hawkish majority into major territorial and political concessions without appearing to be a sellout? Israeli leftists have been increasingly compromised in the eyes of those who are sometimes described as "second Israel," an equivalent, say, of blue-collar workers in Queens or Chicago. To them, the left has remained socially aloof, secluded in the Ashkenazi middle-class neighborhoods of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa; self-righteous in its eagerness to "blame Israel first," to paraphrase Jeane Kirkpatrick; intellectually patronizing in its poorly disguised contempt for the cultural traditions of North African and Middle Eastern Jews.

The left did not realize how alienated it had become from a majority of the population until the 1981 election. Ever since then it has attempted to shift its political message from the high ground of moralism to the pragmatic level of Israel's self-interest. Leftist tacticians have suggested that emphasis should no longer be put on the virtue of Palestinian self-determination (since, after all, elections are rarely won on the basis of unadulterated altruism) but rather on how perpetual occupation would be self-defeating for Israel.

incestuous nature of Israeli society, liberals have to confront their critics also in the supermarket, in the workplace, and even in the military reserve—a most demoralizing experience in a culture not noted for its political tolerance. Leftists have to bear the political cross of alleged "appeasement" (toward greedy Arab nationalism) and pay the social price extracted by the stigma of being labeled "Arab lovers."

YO'AV KARNY is chief foreign correspondent of the Israeli newspaper *Ha'aretz*, and is based in Washington.

THE IRAQ LOBBY

By Joe Conason

Saddam Hussein. On the same page was an op-ed piece by Yossi Sarid, a member of the Knesset and the parliamentary conscience of the Israeli left. His words were stunning to any regular reader of Israeli papers even if the rhetorical hyperbole was only half serious. "If it is possible," wrote Sarid, "to champion Saddam Hussein, who has murdered tens of thousands of his regime's opponents without batting an eye, who unleashed poison gas on Kurdish men, women, and children—then maybe it's not so bad to back the policies of Shamir, Sharon, and Rabin; compared to the crimes of Saddam Hussein, the sins of the government of Israel are as pure as the driven snow."

Interestingly, Sarid's piece was titled "Let Them Come Looking for Me," them being Yasir Arafat, Faisal Al-Husseini (considered the chief spokesman for West Bank Palestinians), and Abdul Wahab Daroushe (an independent Arab member of the Knesset). The Hebrew expression used in the title, *sheyechappesu otti*, is far more dismissive than may be suggested by a literal translation; the connotation is, to put it mildly, "get lost."

In the Israeli political context, Sarid is a leftist version of Winston Churchill in the political wilderness. A scion of the Zionist labor elite, he grew up among the country's most powerful political figures. They groomed him for greatness; and had he not bucked the establishment, he could now be vying for the leadership of the Labor Party. His eloquence (he ranks among the best of Israel's orators) as well as his boldness in defying convention turned him into a kind of cult figure in a society where politicians, not baseball players, occupy the most prominent places in a national hall of fame. Sarid's essay in *Ha'aretz* was, therefore, a dramatic event, a possible turning point.

Sarid and Peace Now were not Hussein's only casualties among the Israeli left. Remarkably similar sentiments had been voiced three days earlier by Yaron London, formerly a prime-time talk-show host on Israeli television, who is now a popular columnist for the mass-circulation daily *Yedi'ot Ahronot*. "Farewell, Husseini, Nusseibeh, Shalbieh and the rest of you 'authentic leaders,'" wrote London, referring to the most prominent Palestinian spokesmen in the territories. "This week you showed me what a fool I've been for the longest time.... When you come back asking for my support for your 'legitimate rights,' you'll find I have hearing trouble: my ears will still be ringing from your cheers for Saddam Hussein."

Even if Sarid and London's pique was somewhat akin to the anger of betrayed lovers, it was directly related to the greatest agony of the left throughout the 1970s and most of the 1980s: Are there any serious Palestinian interlocutors, or is the left pretty much negotiating with itself? An unanswered question, which cost the doves considerable grief, was "Where is the Palestinian 'Peace Now'?"— namely where are the Palestinians who are not only willing to speak to Israelis, but are also ready to make major concessions, starting with the acceptance of Israel's right to exist. In the late 1980s the Knesset enacted a law against contacts with "members of terrorist organizations" (i.e.,

the PLO), and Israeli peaceniks risked not only social isolation but prosecution and imprisonment as well. Deprived of a domestic power base, and rejected by potential Palestinian interlocutors in the West Bank, the "Peace Camp," as the disparate liberal groups are sometimes referred to, was suffering increasing marginalization.

Arafat's 1988 Geneva declaration, which announced terror and recognized Israel's legitimacy, seemed to have reversed the doves' fortunes almost overnight. Leading Palestinians became more than eager to talk to any Israeli on his or her terms. A process started, however slow and exhausting, of diplomatic endeavors to bring official Israelis, not just the old peacenik crowd, face-to-face with PLO-sanctioned Palestinians. A growing number of Israelis—though not quite enough for an electoral majority—were actively reconsidering some of the greatest truisms of the previous twenty years, including "there is no Palestinian 'Peace Now.'" Last March it briefly looked as though Labor leader Shimon Peres would manage to form Israel's first ever dovish government, one bent on pursuing some sort of a dialogue with the Palestinians. The cruel anti-climax of his ultimate failure had more to do with the peculiarities of Israeli domestic politics than with Peres's foreign policy agenda.

Then came Arafat's shockingly affectionate pilgrimage to Baghdad shortly after the rape of Kuwait, as well as the emergence of Palestinian cheerleaders for Saddam Hussein in the West Bank, which seems to have undone the dramatic impact of the Geneva declaration. It is no longer the shameless ultra-Orthodox wheeler-dealers who don't give peace a chance, but the Palestinians themselves, who, supposedly, have now revealed their true colors.

Three weeks after the Iraqi invasion Dedi Tzucker, Sarid's fellow MK for the Civil Rights and Peace Movement (MCRP), and a founder of Peace Now, addressed an open letter to an East Jerusalem Palestinian activist under the banner "We Have Gone Back to 1987," that is, to the dark age that preceded Arafat's recognition of Israel. Peace Now quickly called off a petition drive urging formal Israeli-Palestinian dialogue that was planned to be held in both Israel proper and the occupied territories. Tzali Reshef, a Peace Now leader, told me: "At this point in time, the public's receptivity to this kind of message is not at its greatest." Reshef recalled two years of combined effort on the part of his movement and Palestinian leaders in the territories "to de-demonize the Palestinians, to portray them as worthy partners in dialogue. This was a Sisyphean labor. Just when we were reaching the top of the mountain, the stone has been rolled down the hill further than before."

Even more troubling than Saddam Hussein's popularity in the West Bank was the overt sympathy for him shown by two independent Arab members of the Knesset, Abdul Wahab Daraoushe and Muhammad Mi'ari. Palestinians living in the occupied territories are one thing; but Arab citizens of Israel singing the praises of one who vows to asphyxiate the country with mustard

OCTOBER 1, 1990 THE NEW REPUBLIC 13

Though Kissinger now says that Hussein should be deposed because he “used poison gas against his own dissident population,” that did not prevent his consulting firm—or other corporate powers—from continuing to do business in Baghdad for years after Iraq’s chemical warfare capability had been unleashed against Iraqi minorities (and Iranian soldiers). If anything, Hussein was coddled by government officialdom at the urging of his U.S. business partners. The companies seeking Iraq’s petrodollars arranged for U.S. taxpayers to assume the risk of doing business with Hussein through commodity credits and loan guarantees underwritten by the federal government.

give priority—when there is, competition between two companies—to the one that is a member of the Forum.” A directory of Forum members was later issued to officials of every ministry in Baghdad, with instructions to use it when awarding contracts or procuring supplies.

The ultimate sign of appreciation for services rendered came in the spring of 1989, when the Iraqi government invited the Forum's "blue ribbon" trade delegation to Baghdad. Present in addition to Abboud, Wiley, and King were CEOS or senior executives of Amoco, Mobil, Occidental Petroleum, Westinghouse, General Motors, Xerox, Bell Helicopter Textron, and several other Fortune 500 companies. Invitations were extended only to member companies with annual sales in excess of $500 million, but an exception was made for Alan Stoga, an economist specializing in international finance and oil markets who is Kissinger's senior associate.

Kissinger too has declined all requests to be interviewed about the June 1989 trade delegation. Explaining its activities has been left to Wiley. "Iraq plays an important role now in bringing about stability in the Gulf region as an offset to Iran," Wiley told me after the Baghdad visit. "This balance of power is important to us because of our interest further down the Gulf in the countries that are friendly to us and where we have substantial energy reserves that must be protected. So Iraq plays an important political and geopolitical role in addition to being an important trading partner for us, and we can't push all these considerations to the side and shut our eyes to them because of some perceived human rights violations." Wiley added piously: "We should work with the Iraqi government to try to improve their human rights behavior, in whatever ways we can. [But] we will not achieve that if we cut off our ties with Iraq."

That view prevailed in the State Department until Hussein invaded Kuwait, although other Mideast experts disagreed. In a 200-page report on Iraq issued last February, the human rights group Middle East Watch exhaustively documented Iraq's record of brutality. It recommended that the United States terminate all credits and loans to Baghdad—effectively ending most trade—"until such time as the Iraqi government dramatically curbs abuses." Many of the same media outlets now decrying Hussein's atrocities and repression ignored the Middle East Watch report when it was published.

And almost no one noticed the report's footnote about the June 1989 trade delegation, which mentioned Kissinger Associates. There was a touch of morbid irony in the fact that Stoga arrived in Baghdad on June 4—the day Kissinger's old friends in Beijing sent the tanks into Tiananmen Square. Meanwhile, the U.S.-Iraq Busi-

16 THE NEW REPUBLIC OCTOBER 1, 1990

JOE CONASON is editor-at-large of *Details* magazine.

'MILLER' TIME

By Jeff Rosen

When the test was announced in *Miller v. California* in 1973, it promised to distinguish art from obscenity by protecting sexually explicit work that had "serious" artistic value. (The more lenient previous test said obscenity had to be "utterly without redeeming social value.") But over the years, art has become more sexually explicit, the line between high art and low has been increasingly blurred, and artists have come to question the idea of artistic "seriousness." Now the *Miller* test measures art by a standard that many artists are unwilling to meet and that jurors are unable to identify. For different reasons, unlikely allies such as William Brennan, Antonin Scalia, and movie czar Jack Valenti agree that it's time to take aesthetic decisions out of the courtrooms.

In *Miller* the Court said that judges and juries should ask themselves three questions when attempting to distinguish between art and obscenity: first, "whether 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest"; second, "whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law"; and, third, "whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." If the answer to all three questions is yes, then the work can be banned; if not, then the work must be protected.

ambiguous. "To be prurient and offensive, a work has to turn you on and gross you out at the same time," says Kathleen Sullivan of Harvard Law School. But during the 1980s the ambiguous test became unintelligible as changes in art and law eliminated "serious" artistic value as a viable distinction between art and obscenity. First, artistic goals changed. As Amy Adler argues in a student note in a recent issue of *The Yale Law Journal*, postmodernism rebelled against the modernist demand that art should be "serious," or that it should have any traditional "value" at all. "Bad" painters like David Salle juxtaposed images from art history and pornography. Sculptors like Jeff Koons created what *New York Times* critic Michael Brenson called "art that looks like trash and trashes high art," including a porcelain bust of Italian porn star Cicciolina. And rappers like 2 Live Crew mixed scatology with Muddy Waters. As a result, the *Miller* test has come to evaluate postmodern art by the very standard that postmodern art seeks to defy.

Second, the *Miller* test itself changed. Three years ago, in *Pope v. Illinois*, the Supreme Court decided that courts should ask whether a "reasonable person" would find serious value in the suspect art. It is hard to imagine a more philistine and less appropriate test for artistic value than the aesthetic sensibility of the "reasonable person." Reasonable people attacked Manet's *Déjeuner Sur L'Herbe* and Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" as indecent. And reasonable people are even less likely to find serious value in artists like Mapplethorpe and Finley, who go out of their way to offend reasonable tastes. When the "reasonable person" standard was announced, liberals like Brennan cringed at the bewildering union of law and aesthetics. But they were joined by the conservative Scalia, who is wary of judicial subjectivity wherever it occurs. "[I]t is quite impossible," wrote Scalia, "to come to an objective assessment of (at least) literary or artistic value. . . . Since ratiocination has little to do with esthetics, the fabled 'reasonable man' is of little help in the inquiry. . . . For the law courts to decide 'What is Beauty' is a novelty even by today's standards."

The changes in art and law left artists vulnerable to prosecution when local authorities decided to crack down in 1990. As a result, the artists who face federal judges this fall have no way of predicting with confidence whether they have broken the law. To appreciate their predicament, pretend you are a juror at an obscenity trial and try to apply the *Miller* test to the work of Mapplethorpe, 2 Live Crew, and Finley.

Start with Mapplethorpe's photograph of the man with the bullwhip up his ass. Would an average person in your community find that it appeals to the prurient interest? The Supreme Court complicates matters by defining "prurient" not only as "material having a tendency to excite lustful thoughts," but also as material that shows a "shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion." An expert witness may be helpful. "The male genitals are often presented . . . as surrogates for the face," writes the poet Richard Howard in a tribute to Mapplethorpe. Sounds like an interest in

nudity, which might even be shameful, depending on
what your neighbors are used to. Is the simulation of
sodomy patently offensive? Again, your community is
the judge. As for the third criterion, wouldn't someone
like Dennis Barrie, the director of the Contemporary
Arts Center of Cincinnati, know "serious" artistic value
when he sees it? Other art experts, though, doubt Map-
plethorpe's seriousness. Robert Hughes calls Map-
plethorpe an "overrated photographer." And Hilton
Kramer of *The New Criterion* detects no serious artistic
value. "Are these disputed pictures works of art?" Kra-
mer asks. "Alas, I suppose they are," but they do not
"belong to the highest levels of art." Who is a more
reasonable person, Barrie or Kramer? Would a reason-
able person find either of them reasonable?

Now try the same exercise with 2 Live Crew. Assume, as Judge Jose A. Gonzalez did, that *As Nasty As They Wanna Be* appeals to lustful thoughts (it doesn't; it's boring), and that it is patently offensive in some parts of Florida (Gonzalez justified his knowledge of community standards by noting that he had "attended public functions and events" throughout the community). Scholars and journalists have been properly ridiculed for defending 2 Live Crew by exaggerating their artistic, literary, even scientific seriousness. (See "Too Cruel, Live," TNR, July 9 & 16.) But the legal test requires no less, refusing to protect pop culture unless it masquerades as high culture.

It is hard to conclude, as Gonzalez did (using the
wrong test), that *Nasty* is "utterly without any redeem-
ing social value." You don't have to compare the rap-
pers' braggadocio in the call and response form to
duets from Wagner's Siegfried ("The boy is fearless
and his sword is sharp") to recognize that boasting
about sex in rhyme is part of the black oral tradition. If
dirty rap can be banned, suggests Bruce Jackson, an
English professor at the State University of New York at
Buffalo, then so can hundreds of equally filthy verses
dating back to the nineteenth century. And a quick skim
of his anthology of black narrative poetry, *Get Your Ass in
the Water and Swim Like Me*, proves the point.

But if a nineteenth-century pedigree suggests that
scatology in rhyme may have some literary or artistic
value, how is anyone, reasonable or not, to decide
whether the value is "serious"? In a relativistic age, that
is a judgment that even the defenders of rap are reluc-
tant to make. To complicate matters, black culture,
from novels to jazz, has long rejected the distinction
between popular art and serious art. Gonzalez's analy-
sis is embarrassing ("Obscenity? Yes!" his opinion
shrieked), but 2 Live Crew leaves the *Miller* test at a loss.

Finally, consider a performance artist like Finley,
whose angry, scatological feminism is intended to be
*anti-pornographic*. "If a woman can't talk about rape or
sexual violence in the language she was abused in,"
Finley said in 1988, "it's against our First Amendment
rights." But it may not be if our First Amendment rights
are defined by *Miller*. Prurient interest? Finley says,
"There's nothing sexually exciting about my work"; but

remember that prurient also means "a shameful or
morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion." That,
suggests Adler, sounds like an apt description of Fin-
ley's oeuvre, as she smears food into her genitals, defe-
cates onstage, and describes graphic sex acts with
priests and the handicapped. Patently offensive? That's
Finley's goal. Which leaves "serious artistic value" as
the only way of distinguishing Finley from the pornog-
raphy she abhors. But performance art was designed to
mock the idea of artistic seriousness. "This is work that
sends up the notion of art taking itself seriously," says
Barbara Tsumagari, executive director of the Kitchen, a
performance space in New York where Finley has per-
formed. Does that effort itself have serious artistic val-
ue? "It's a very postmodern question. We need a post-
modern test," says Tsumagari.

Until we get one, sexually explicit artists will continue
to be suppressed. But that can't be constitutional if the
First Amendment protects self-expression regardless of
its political value, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly
held. In other words, if art can't be cleanly distin-
guished from obscenity, as more than thirty years of
failed Supreme Court tests make clear, then private
consumption of obscenity must be endured so that art
can be protected.

Justices Brennan and Scalia, who rarely agreed on anything, have said that the *Miller* test should be reconsidered, although they disagree about appropriate alternatives. In a little noticed concurrence last January, Scalia suggested that courts should focus on the intention of the distributors, rather than on the intention of the creators, of sexually explicit material. He would prohibit communities from suppressing particular books or films, but would allow them to close down adult bookstores and theaters that specialize in pandering sex for profit. Scalia's solution has the clear advantage of taking the courts out of aesthetics and guaranteeing that individual works of literature or art (or pornography for that matter) could never be banned in America again. At the same time, Scalia would allow communities to reduce access to soft-core porn, which is constitutionally protected, as well as hard-core porn, which is not. But Mapplethorpe, Campbell, and Finley would be safe.

Justice Brennan's alternative—no obscenity test at all—fell one vote short of a Supreme Court majority in 1973 and is likely to fall shorter today. But it remains the solution of choice for First Amendment absolutists, and it would allow communities to focus their attention on the problem at hand: keeping sexually explicit material away from children and unwilling adults in an increasingly explicit age. Until the *Miller* test exposed itself this year, the most important pornography cases over the past two decades concerned zoning regulations rather than aesthetic decisions. In 1976, and again in 1986, the Supreme Court gave local communities broad discretion to concentrate red light districts or to disperse them in the interest of preserving the “quality of urban life.” Liberals like Brennan dissented from the

18 THE NEW REPUBLIC OCTOBER 1, 1990

THE NEW REPUBLIC

A Weekly Journal of Opinion

Editor
HENDRIK HERTZBERG

Senior Editors
FRED BARNES, SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL,
ANN HULBERT, MICKEY KAUS, MICHAEL KINSLEY,
MORTON KONDRACKE, ROBERT WRIGHT

Economics
ROBERT KUTTNER

Films
STANLEY KAUFFMANN

Theater
ROBERT BRÜSTEIN

Music
EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

Poetry
RICHARD HOWARD

Art
MARK STEVENS

Architecture
HERBERT MUSCHAMP

Contributing Editors
ROBERT COLES, STANLEY CROUCH,
JAMES K. GLASSMAN, CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER,
VINT LAWRENCE, LOUIS MENAND, ADAM MICHNIK,
ROBERT B. REICH, JONATHAN RIEDER,
MAGGIE SCARF, RONALD STEEL, E. V. THAW,
ANNE TYLER, NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN,
MICHAEL WALZER, G. VANN WOODWARD

Literary Assistant
AIMS MCGUINNESS

Reporter-Researchers
DAVID GREENBERG, JAMES WORKMAN

President
JEFFREY L. DEARTH

Publisher
JOAN M. STAPLETON

Controller
JEAN GANDY

Leadership Network Advertising
ROBERT E. SENNOTT JR.

OCTOBER 15, 1990

Cover by Gerry Mooney for THE
NEW REPUBLIC.

FOUNDED 1914
WASHINGTON, D.C.
ISSUE 3,952

4. MICHAEL KINSLEY TRB: GOODBYE TO BERLIN The advantages of a dull capital.

6. CORRESPONDENCE Kissinger complains; Kerry, too, &c.

7. THE EDITORS WAR OPTIONS The president seems to be looking for a pretext to attack Iraq. He doesn't need one. LOOSE BUCHANAN Of course the pundit is an anti-Semite. And that's not all. NOTEBOOK Saddam's ten commandments, &c.

12. JOSEPH S. NYE JR. AGAINST 'DECLINISM' The Iraqi crisis is only the latest problem for Paul Kennedy and others who argue that American power is on the wane.

13. QUENTIN PEEL WALLED IN Gorbachev and Yeltsin are juggling a pair of economic reform plans. It'll take a lot longer than 500 days to implement either of them.

18. LAWRENCE N. POWELL READ MY LIPOSUCTION Despite all that medical science and more occult forms of wizardry have done to give David Duke a new look, he still looks curiously like a guy on his way to a cross burning.

19. SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL DUKE'S DUDS The white sheet as political fashion statement.

22. JOHN B. JUDIS A TAXING GOVERNOR Governor Jim Florio thought the talisman of the 'progressive populist' brand of liberalism would protect him from political fallout when he dropped a bombshell tax increase on the state of New Jersey shortly after taking office. He could hardly have been more wrong.

30. FRED BARNES FLEEING FLORIO Fellow Democrats aren't making the same mistake.

32. STANLEY KAUFFMANN ON FILMS: THE AFTERMATH, AND AFTER Bertrand Tavernier's humanist vision shines in *Life and Nothing But*, about the world after World War I.

34. LUC SANTE BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE Live from the stage, in color and in context, here's everything you always wanted to know about Karen Finley's act.

37. ROBERT ALTER TYRANTS AND BUTTERFLIES Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years by Brian Boyd

44. IRVING HOWE THE GREAT SEDUCTION The Cause That Failed: Communism in American Political Life by Guenter Lewy

46. BRUCE BOND POEM Alban Berg

47. RICHARD A. POSNER US V. THEM Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion, and American Law by Martha Minow

50. RICHARD JENKYNS TRUE POOH A. A. Milne: The Man Behind Winnie-the-Pooh by Ann Thwaite

54. MARTIN PERETZ CAMBRIDGE DIARIST: CONFESSIONS A voter's primary concerns.

THE NEW REPUBLIC, Vol. 203, Number 16, Issue 3,952, October 15, 1990. (Printed in the U.S. on September 26, 1990.)
Published weekly (except for combined issues dated Jan. 8 & 15, July 9 & 16, July 30 & Aug. 6, Aug. 20 & 27, and Sept. 10 & 17, 1990) at 1220 19th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036. Telephone (202) 331-7494. Leadership Network advertising (212) 684-5500. Yearly subscriptions, $59.97; foreign, $89.97; Canada, $74.97. Back issues, $3.50 (includes postage & handling). ©1990 by The New Republic, Inc. (ISSN 0028-6583). Second-class postage paid at Washington, DC, and additional mailing offices. Indexed in Readers' Guide, Media Review Digest. Available on microfilm from University Microfilms Intl., 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 and Bell & Howell, Old Mansfield Road, Wooster, OH 44691. Member, Audit Bureau of Circulations. Unsolicited manuscripts can be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Subscribers: Please send all remittances, changes of address, and subscription inquiries to Subscription Service Dept., The New Republic, P.O. Box 56515, Boulder, CO 80322. For subscription problems call 800-274-6686.

OCTOBER 15, 1990 THE NEW REPUBLIC 3

TRB®
FROM WASHINGTON

Goodbye to Berlin

The new German constitution says un-
equivocally, "The capital of Germany is
Berlin." But it adds, equivocally, "The
question of the seat of government will
be decided after the unification of Ger-
many." Unification comes October 3,
but the battle has already been going on
for months between Berlin and Bonn,
the little town picked by Konrad Adenau-
er as the temporary capital of the Federal
Republic because it was across the river
from his home. (George Washington
picked the site of the United States capi-
tal city for similar civic-minded reasons.)

A move to Berlin was thought to be
inevitable for most of the past year. Polls

show that three-quarters of West Ger-
mans and nine-tenths of East Germans
want it that way. But recently plucky little
Bonn has taken the lead in the conven-
tional wisdom.

Most non-Germans may understand-
ably feel that where they put their capital
is something for Germans to decide for
themselves—provided they don’t try to
put it in Poland. Nevertheless, it’s not
every day you get to ponder the reinven-
tion of a great nation, and the question
makes for an interesting parlor game. Is
it better for a democracy’s seat of gov-
ernment to be in a city devoted more or
less exclusively to that purpose, like
Washington, Ottawa, Canberra, New
Delhi, Brasília? Or does a nation’s great-
est city have a natural claim to be its
political capital as well, like London and
Paris? Comparing London and Paris to
Ottawa and Canberra may seem like
stacking the deck. But in fact the correct
answer is that the Germans should
choose Bonn, not Berlin.

Most of the reasons given by advocates
of Bonn are particular to Germany, and a
bit farfetched. Moving the government
east to Berlin, they say, will wrongly sug-
gest that a united Germany is loosening
its ties with the Western bloc. Staying in
Bonn will relieve foreign fears that the
new Germany is "facing east." Similarly,
they say, a move to a large, glorious city

like Berlin will give foreigners a whiff of
renewed German megalomania. Bonn,
its mayor told *The New York Times*,
"would remain a capital without trium-
phal arches, one that would try to com-
bine modesty and honor." (Washington
may not be the best precedent for this
particular argument.) Third, Berlin has
too many associations with and remind-
ers of the Third Reich—though defend-
ers of Berlin point out that it gave the
Nazis fewer votes than any other part of
Germany in 1933.

Fourth—a more practical consider-
ation, and one that seems to be carrying
the day—moving the entire federal gov-
ernment to Berlin would cost $30 billion
to $50 billion.

But the real case against Berlin is the
same as the case against putting the U.S.
capital in New York. Keeping the politi-
cal capital separate from the cultural and
financial capital prevents one city from
becoming an enormous centripetal force
in the nation's life, condemning the rest
of the country to provincial status.

In Britain you're truly either in Lon-
don or you're out of town. There are
people who say they'd rather live in
Manchester or Birmingham, and some
may even mean it, but they are few and
not generally believed. In the United
States the political capital is Washing-
ton, the business capital is New York,
culture (broadly defined) is split be-
tween New York and Los Angeles. This
scrambles the geographical incentives,
making it possible for Chicago, Boston,
Seattle, and a couple of dozen other
cities to make credible claims on ambi-
tious youth.

Partly by accident and partly by de-
sign, West Germany went even further
in the diffusion of power and cultural
influence. Frankfurt became the busi-
ness center. Berlin, even divided and
distant, remained the source of most
cultural energy. But Bonn didn't get the
whole government. The central bank
went to Frankfurt. The Supreme Court
is located in a small suburb of Stuttgart
called Karlsruhe, where the justices so-
cialize with the local burghers rather
than with members of the Bundestag.
The German equivalent of the FBI is in a
town called Wiesbaden. It's a wonder-
fully democratic arrangement that it
would be a pity to discard. A reunited
Berlin will be the biggest city between
Paris and Moscow. Its power as a mag-
net does not need to be enhanced.

When one city is the capital of a nation for all purposes, the problem of isolation and elitism (which always exists) is worse. For all the talk of "the Beltway" as a great barricade separating Washington from the rest of the country, daily life in Washington is more like life in the rest of

*continued on page 53*

"WONDERFULLY ENTERTAINING AND INSTRUCTIVE."

—JAMES FALLOWS

TROPICAL GANGSTERS

Armed with his surfboard and
a $10 million dollar loan from
the World Bank, an adven-
turous young economist ar-
rived in Equatorial Guinea
eager to rehabilitate its ruined
economy. Nothing at Harvard
prepared him for what he
found. In *Tropical Gangsters*,
Robert Klitgaard takes us on a

journey that's both a gripping adventure story and an insightful
look at why foreign aid so often fails.

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4 THE NEW REPUBLIC **OCTOBER 15, 1990**

CORRESPONDENCE

Kissinger and Iraq

To the editors:

ness Forum. Yet neither Kissinger Asso-
ciates nor Mr. Stoga nor any other
member of our firm is or ever has been a
member of the Forum. Whatever the
views of the Forum may have been, I
have never made a secret of my concerns
about the need for balance in U.S. policy
in the region or of my conviction that
Iraq is and has always been a radical
state. To argue, as Mr. Conason does,
that the Iraqi invasion caused me
"abruptly" to change my position on
Iraq is to misrepresent completely my
views on Middle East affairs.

HENRY A. KISSINGER

New York, New York

Joe Conason replies:

"Alan is an economic adviser to Kissinger Associates. He was there because of his general knowledge of international finance and banking problems, and at the present time the biggest constraint on our expanding trade with Iraq is the debt management policies of the Iraqi government. They have a large amount of short-term debt as a result of the war. They have practically no longer-term debt and they have excellent long-term prospects, but do have a bunch of short-term debt that is now making it difficult for them to get private sector credit. Alan, as an expert on international private financing, was along with the delegation to discuss some of the problems with the debt management with the Iraqis."

I did not assert that the Iraqi govern-
ment was a client of Kissinger Associates.
or that Kissinger Associates is a member
of the U.S. Iraq Business Forum. These
are straw men. My point was that Kissin-
ger Associates does have interests in for-
eign countries, including Iraq, because its
clients—multinational corporations, not
governments—have such interests. These
interests are not necessarily identical with
the interests of the people of those coun-
tries, or, for that matter, with the national
interests of the United States. Might the
comments of Kissinger the media star be
influenced by the needs of Kissinger the
businessman? I would say yes, but the eth-
ical burden rests less on Dr. Kissinger
than on the editors and producers who
use him. He is lucky so many of them are
even more shameless than he.

The editors add:

continued on page 53

— LESTER THUROW, MIT

More and more
Japanese companies
now own and operate
factories and offices in
the U.S. What is it like
for American workers,
with their ingrained
habits of individualism,
to work for Japanese
companies which
expect results through
devotion to harmony,
cooperation and the
"team concept?" To find
out, journalists Joseph
and Suzy Fucini spent
three years inside the
Mazda auto plant in Flat
Rock, Michigan. What
they witnessed and now
report is a head-on colli-
sion of cultures in the
workplace that may well
put a big dent in the
American Dream.

"At the rate things are going, we are all going to
wind up working for the Japanese."

—Lester Thurow, M.I.T.

WORKING
FOR THE
JAPANESE

INSIDE MAZDA'S
AMERICAN
AUTO
PLANT

Joseph J. Fucini and Suzy Fucini

—BusinessWeek

"Astute but trou-
bling ... the dream
turned into a dark
night of pain. The
history recounted
by this book is
important because
it has significance
beyond its time
and locale."

—The New York Times

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at bookstores now or call 800-
323-7445 (between 9:00 A.M.
& 5:30 P.M. EST) to place
your credit card order.

THE FREE PRESS

6 THE NEW REPUBLIC **OCTOBER 15, 1990**

[LC]

## EXCERPT

# I Could See No Reason to Live

In an emotional and extraordinarily candid memoir, the former President describes the agony of his exile and his struggle for renewal

By Richard Nixon

FAREWELL

"My enemies wanted to make sure I did not rise again in view of my past record of comebacks."

BILL PIERCE

Haig reported to me that based on his conversation, he did not believe we would continue to suffer harassment by the special prosecutor. He had not reckoned with the young activists on Jaworski's staff.

Far from being satisfied by the resignation, their appetites for finishing the injured victim were whetted. When my daughter Tricia's husband Ed Cox urged me not to resign, he warned me that this might happen. He had known several of Jaworski's staff at Harvard Law School and had served with some in the U.S. Attorney's office in New York City. He said, "I know these people. They are smart and ruthless. They hate you. They will harass you and hound you in civil and criminal actions across the country for the rest of your life." He was right.

They were following the dictum of the 19th century Russian revolutionary Sergei Nechayev: "It is not enough to kill an adversary. He must first be dishonored."

One after another, the blows rained down.

I resigned from the Supreme Court and the California and New York bars. The Supreme Court and California accepted my resignation. The New York Bar Association refused to do so and instituted disbarment proceedings.

Scores of lawsuits were filed against me by individuals seeking damages for assorted Government actions. Few involved presidential decisions. Most were dismissed, but all had to be defended.

The cost was staggering. In the 16 years since I resigned the presidency, I have spent more than $1.8 million in attorneys' fees to defend myself against such suits and to protect my rights that were threatened by Government action.

The Supreme Court ruled against me on my suit to gain possession of my papers and tapes, including those that were private.

A scandal magazine printed letters that I was supposed to have written to a countess in Spain whom I had never met. They were obvious forgeries, but the story was never retracted.

## San Clemente, 1974

As our plane circled the El Toro Marine Air Base on the afternoon of Aug. 9, I could see hundreds of cars lined up trying to get into the already overflowing parking area. I had not thought I could find the energy to make another speech that day, but I managed to thank them for welcoming us home, and I vowed to continue to fight for the great causes of peace, freedom and opportunity that had been my motivating principles from the time I first ran for Congress in 1946. As we walked toward the helicopter, I heard someone from the crowd shout out, "Whittier is still for you, Dick!"

Thanks to Gavin Herbert and a group of volunteers from U.S.C., La Casa Pacifica's grounds were beautiful almost beyond description. I said to Gavin, "It is good to be back in a house of peace." But it was only a lull before a storm.

The following day, the blows began to fall again. The special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, had been delighted when my chief of staff, Al Haig, informed him of my decision to resign. He thought it would be in the best interests of the country.

34

©1990 Richard Nixon. From *In the Arena*, to be published in April by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

NIXON

The pounding continued unrelentingly. I was the favorite butt of jokes on the talk shows. Hundreds of columns attacked me. A number of anti-Nixon books were published. Those by critics I understood. Those by friends I found a bit hard to take.

The Rose Bowl game in 1975 was interrupted on television by an announcement of the conviction of John Mitchell and my other top aides. I could no longer even take refuge in my favorite avocation, watching sports on television.

It was not enough for my critics to say that I had made terrible mistakes. They seemed driven to prove that I represented the epitome of evil itself.

## My Second Most Painful Decision

I will never forget the moment that Jack Miller, my attorney from Washington, came into my office in San Clemente on Sept. 4, 1974, to inform me of President Ford's decision to stop the hemorrhaging by issuing a presidential pardon. Now I had to decide whether or not to accept it.

I told Miller I was worried the pardon would hurt Ford politically. He said that in the short run, it would. But he added that if the country continued to be obsessed by Watergate, Ford and others would suffer even more from being unable to devote their attention to urgent problems.

Miller also knew my desperate financial situation. He pointed out that the costs of defending actions against me would bankrupt me. In view of what happened soon thereafter, he was remarkably perceptive when he added that he thought that I had taken as much physically, mentally and emotionally as I could and that I should accept the pardon for my own well-being and my family's. His strongest argument was that because of the publicity over the past year and a half, there was no way I could get a fair trial in Washington.

Next to the resignation, accepting the pardon was the most painful decision of my political career. The statement I issued at the time accurately describes my feelings then and now:

> "I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy.

> "No words can describe the depths of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate have caused the nation and the presidency—a nation I so deeply love and an institution I so greatly respect."

The pardon was granted on Sept. 8. The predictable occurred. Ford went down in the polls, and I was subjected to a whole new round of attacks in the media.

## Nothing Left to Fight For

I have always believed that there is a direct relationship between mental and physical health. Events in the aftermath of the pardon proved it, as far as I am concerned. Twenty years had passed since I had last suffered from phlebitis, blood clots that usually occur in the legs. Just before my trip to the Mideast in June 1974, my left leg began to swell. Hot and cold compresses reduced the swelling, but it increased alarmingly again when I had to stand too long at various ceremonies. It became

even more aggravated when I went to the Soviet Union in July. In Minsk I had to walk for almost a mile and a half over cobblestone paths, and the pain was excruciating.

When I returned to Washington, the pain subsided, and I was so busy in the weeks before the resignation that I forgot about it completely. A few days after the pardon, the swelling recurred. My family doctor, Dr. John Lungren, urged me to go to the hospital, warning that if a clot should break loose and go to the lungs, it would be fatal. That got my attention. I went to the hospital.

For almost two weeks, I slept very little because the nurse had to come in every hour to refill the intravenous heparin medication to dissolve the blood clot. It was a miserable experience. When I returned home, I told Pat that I would never go to the hospital again.

Within three weeks, I was back. Lungren had warned me that sharp pains in the abdomen would be a danger signal. After X rays, the doctors decided that an operation should be performed immediately. I remember the pinprick of the anesthetist's needle and being

wheeled down to the operating room, but for six days thereafter I was in and out of consciousness.

My first recollection was of a nurse slapping my face and calling me. "Richard, wake up," she said. "Richard, wake up." I knew it was not Pat or Lungren. In fact, only my mother called me Richard. When I woke up again, Lungren was taking my pulse. I told him that I was anxious to go home. He said, "Listen, Dick, we almost lost you last night. You are not going to go home for quite a while."

He told me I had gone into shock after the operation. My blood pressure had gone down to 60 over 0. Only after four transfusions over three hours were the doctors able to push it back to normal. I learned later that Pat, Tricia and Julie had been standing by me in the room for most of the night. When I woke up again, I asked Pat to come in. I now knew that I was in pretty desperate shape. Pat and I have seldom revealed our physical disabilities to each other. This time, I couldn't help it. I said that I didn't think I was going to make it.

She gripped my hand and said almost fiercely, "Don't talk that way. You have got to make it. You must not give up." As she spoke, my thoughts went back again to the Fund crisis in 1952. Just before we went onstage for the broadcast, when I was trying to get all of my thoughts together for the most important speech of my life, I told her, "I just don't think I can go through with this one." She grasped me firmly by the hand and said, "Of course you can." The words were the same, but now there was a difference. Then I had something larger than myself to fight for. Now it seemed that I had nothing left to fight for except my own life.

Among my first visitors was Jerry Ford, who was in California campaigning for congressional candidates. I must have looked like hell, because he blurted out, "Oh, Mr. President!," despite the fact that since my resignation we had been on a first-name basis. He did his best to give me a lift, but I knew that the pardon had hurt him and that the campaign was not going well.

Shortly afterward, a nurse wheeled me into another room, with a window. She pointed to a small plane with a sign trailing behind: GOD LOVES YOU AND SO DO WE. I learned that the Rev. Billy Graham's wife Ruth and some of her friends had arranged it. I am convinced now that but for the support of my family and the thoughts and prayers of countless people I have never met and would never have a chance to thank, I

WITH JULIE

> "In many ways it was worse for my family than for me. They had to suffer in silence."

OLIE ATKINS-THE WHITE HOUSE

TIME, APRIL 2, 1990

35

EXCERPT

would not have made it.

There was still bad news to come. A few days later someone brought the results of the 1974 off-year elections to my hospital room. The Republican Party was in even worse shape than I was. I knew that from that time on, the Democrats who won would be called Watergate Democrats and the Republicans who lost would be called Watergate Republicans. After the millions of miles I had logged and the thousands of speeches I

ly. You tap strength you didn't know you had when you have to
cope with adversity.

My six years in the wilderness in the 1960s helped me survive the crisis I confronted in 1974. But residing in the deepest valley is far different from passing through the wilderness. Historical precedents existed for what I went through in the 1960s. Others lost major elections, yet came back to win later. But there was no precedent for what faced me in the 1970s. No one had ever been so high and fallen so low. No one before had ever resigned the presidency.

I was down but not out. My enemies wanted to make sure I did not rise again in view of my past record of comebacks. They tried to discredit everything I had done, to blame me for my Administration's failures and to credit others for its successes. Newspaper articles invariably referred to me as the "disgraced former President." I was hated by some, ignored by others. It became unfashionable for even my friends to say anything positive about the Nixon era. While in the wilderness, De Gaulle once sardonically remarked, "Insults would have been more tolerable than indifference." I didn't have that problem—my enemies berated me, and many of my friends maintained a discreet distance.

LA CASA PACIFICA

"The grounds were beautiful almost beyond description. I said to a friend, 'It is good to be back in a house of peace.'"

JULIYWASSER

Getting Back to Par

My immediate priority was to recover my health. I needed to do this to have the energy to engage again in creative activities. To my great surprise, golf became my lifesaver. I was fortunate to have Colonel Jack Brennan, my top military aide during my last two years in the White House, as my administrative assistant in San Clemente. He was an excellent golfer, but even more important, a patient and understanding partner.

Combined with occasional swims in the cold water of the Pacific and a few laps in a heated pool, the golf routine did the trick. Within a year, I was shooting a few pars on the golf course and was back to par physically.

I also had to recover my financial health. All of my assets were invested in real estate. My presidential and congressional pensions took care of ordinary expenses. But I had to find a way to pay my attorneys' fees. In addition, the Government allowance for office expenses was inadequate to cover the staff I needed to answer my huge volume of mail. I needed extra income. I ruled out one potentially lucrative source, honoraria for speeches. It was not the right time for me to begin to speak out. But even more important, I had had a policy of not accepting honoraria for speeches ever since I had been elected Vice President in 1952. Presidents Hoover, Truman, Eisenhower and Johnson all refused honoraria, and I did not want to be the first former President to start the practice. I therefore decided to find some other source of income.

My physical recovery, while important, was not enough. A healthy vegetable is still a vegetable. As I recovered physically, I was able to tackle the more important but more difficult challenge of spiritual recovery. To recover physically involves regaining the ability to get up in the morning; to recover spiritually requires restoring the will and desire to do so.

No one can recover spiritually from a major loss without the help of others. While a political figure depends on others in many ways, he ultimately rises and falls as a result of his own decisions and actions. A personal defeat therefore is an isolating experience. Spiritual recovery is hastened by overcoming the sense of isolation, by recognizing the fact that your family, friends and supporters still stand with you, and by putting the defeat in perspective.

My first line of support was my family. No man has ever had

had made for Republican candidates over the years, I knew
that this was my final legacy to the party. It would be a heavy
burden for the rest of my life.

When I left the hospital and returned home to La Casa Pacifica, I thought that now, at least, I might get a little relief. It was not to be. Judge Sirica wanted me in this courtroom to testify against John Mitchell and the other defendants. He ordered three doctors to examine me to see if the reports on the seriousness of my illness were true. Even now, so-called biographers and journalists blithely inform their readers that I cynically arranged my near fatal illness to quell public opposition to the pardon.

So Sirica's three doctors came to San Clemente. Each took turns poking and pinching and pulling. One was obviously a little embarrassed by the exercise, but the other two seemed to enjoy their work. They were at least professional enough to report that I could under no circumstances travel to Washington and testify.

I did not get the lift that I should have from the news that I would not have to go to Washington. I was a physical wreck; I was emotionally drained; I was mentally burned out. This time, as compared with the other crises I had endured, I could see no reason to live, no cause to fight for. Unless a person has a reason to live for other than himself, he will die—first mentally, then emotionally, then physically.

At low points in the past, I have been sustained by recalling a note Clare Boothe Luce handed to me right after Watergate first broke, when she was sitting next to me at a meeting of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. It was St. Barton's Ode. "I am hurt but I am not slain! I will lie me down and bleed awhile—then I'll rise and fight again." This time it did not work. I did not have anything to fight for.

Three lessons stood out from my years in the wilderness after I lost the 1962 California Governor's race.

■ Defeat is never fatal unless you give up.

■ When you go through defeat, you are able to put your weaknesses in perspective and to develop an immune system to deal with them in the future.

■ You never know how strong you are when things go smooth-

TIME, APRIL 2, 1990

NIXON

a stronger family than I have had. In the weeks, months and years of slow recovery, a day never passed without their support. Never once did they moan about the disastrous impact of my shattering defeat on their lives. In many ways, it was worse for them than for me. When they read or saw the latest attack, their instinct was to refute the distortions and falsehoods. But they had to suffer in silence. They could not fight back.

I also relied on support from my friends. When you win in politics, you hear from everyone. When you lose, you hear from your friends. After Watergate, it was a miracle that I had as many as I did. Some came to see me, some telephoned, others wrote encouraging letters. As good friends, they did not dwell on the tragedy of the past. Thankfully, they did not express sympathy, for the only thing worse than self-pity is to be the object of pity from others. And finally, the letters from tens of thousands of people from all over the world whom I had never met played an indispensable role in bucking up my spirits. It was heartwarming to know that while there was no longer a Silent Majority, at the least the minority that remained was not silent.

With the wounds of body and spirit healed, I was now prepared to deal with my greatest challenge—mental recovery. This was the decisive factor in my decision to write my memoirs. When I finished *Six Crises* after losing in 1960, I observed that writing the book was my seventh crisis, and I vowed that I would never write another. But writing my memoirs now served several purposes. It provided part of the income that I needed. It was an enormous mental challenge requiring full use of all my creative abilities. Writing a book is the most intensive exercise anyone can give his brain. Most important, it provided the therapy needed for a full spiritual recovery by enabling me to put Watergate behind me.

## The Myths of Watergate

Reliving those days in cold print was not easy, but I tried to close the book on that episode. In the three years I spent writing my memoirs, I addressed every facet of the crisis my excellent editorial staff, under the leadership of Frank Gannon, could uncover. I learned a number of things I had not known as the events of Watergate unfolded. I was able to put all the events of that time in perspective—to learn not only what happened but why, and to provide some guidance so that others could avoid a repetition of those problems.

As I wrote, I was able to look back at Watergate and separate myth from fact. At the core of the scandal was the fact that

individuals associated with my re-election campaign were caught breaking into and installing telephone wiretaps at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel. After their arrest, others in my campaign and in my Administration attempted to cover up this connection to minimize the political damage. I failed to take matters firmly into my own hands and discover the facts and to fire any and all people involved or implicated in the break-in. I was also accused of taking part in the cover-up by trying to obstruct the FBI's criminal investigation.

Alone, that would probably not have been enough to bring down my Administration. But the term “Watergate” has come to include a wide

range of other charges that my adversaries used to try to paint my Administration as, in their words, “the most corrupt in American history.” Together, these accusations represented the myths of Watergate, the smoke screen of false charges that ultimately undercut my Administration’s ability to govern effectively.

The most blatantly false myth was that I ordered the break-in at the Democratic headquarters. Millions of dollars were spent by the Executive Branch, the Congress and the office of the special prosecutor to investigate Watergate. Not one piece of evidence was discovered indicating that I ordered the break-in, knew about the plans for the wiretapping or received any information from it.

The most politically damaging myth was that I personally ordered the payment of money to Howard Hunt and the other original Watergate defendants to keep them silent. I did discuss this possibility during a meeting with John Dean and Bob Haldeman on March 21, 1973. In the tape recording of this meeting, it is clear that I considered paying the money. I should not have even considered this option, but the key facts were that I rejected offering clemency to the defendants as “wrong” and at the end of the conversation ruled out any White House payment of money to the defendants. Moreover, those who made this accusation ignored the even more crucial fact that no payments were made as a result of that conversation.

The most serious myth—the one that ultimately forced me to resign—was that, on my specific orders, the CIA obstructed the FBI from pursuing its criminal investigation of the Watergate break-in. I discussed this possible course of action with Bob Haldeman in the famous “smoking gun” tape of June 23, 1972. At that time, I thought that since some former CIA operatives had participated in the break-in, the CIA would be concerned that their exposure would reveal other, legitimate operations and operatives and that the agency would therefore welcome a chance to avoid that outcome. I thought that would also prevent the FBI from going into areas that would be politically embarrassing to us.

In my talk with Haldeman, I made the inexcusable error of following the recommendation from some members of my staff—some of whom, I later learned, had a personal stake in covering up the facts—and requesting that the CIA intervene. But that mistake was mitigated by two facts. First, the director of Central Intelligence, Richard Helms, and his deputy, Vernon Walters, ignored the White House request and refused to intervene with the FBI, despite the pressure from members of my staff. Second, when FBI director Pat Gray complained to me in a telephone call three weeks later, on July 12, about at-

NEAR DEATH

"When I woke up, I asked Pat to come in. I was in pretty desperate shape. I said that I didn't think I was going to make it."

TONY KOROBY - SIGNS

TIME, APRIL 2, 1990

37

## EXCERPT

tempts to suppress his investigation, I told him emphatically to go forward with it, and I instructed Haldeman and John Ehrlichman to make sure the campaign and the Administration cooperated with the investigation "all the way down the line." No obstruction of justice took place as a result of the June 23 conversation.

The most widely believed myth was that I ordered massive illegal wiretapping and surveillance of political opponents, members of the House and Senate, and news media reporters. All of these charges were false, and no evidence was presented to substantiate them.

The most ridiculous myth was that I was the first President to tape some of my conversations. F.D.R. was the first to do so. Scores of tapes are kept in the Eisenhower Library. Several thousand hours of tapes are stored in the Johnson Library, none of which will be available until the year 2023. Of the several hundred hours of tapes in the Kennedy Library, only 12% have so far been made public. The rest, according to the Kennedy Library officials, will be kept secret indefinitely.

What, then, was Watergate? When the break-in first hit the news, my press secretary, Ron Ziegler, aptly called it a third-rate burglary. To compare Watergate with Teapot Dome, the Truman five-percenter scandals and the Grant whiskey scandals misses the point totally. No one in the Nixon Administration profited from Watergate. No one ripped off the Government, as in previous scandals. Wrongdoing took place, but not for personal gain. All Administrations have sought to protect themselves from the political fallout of scandals. In retrospect, I would say that Watergate was one part wrongdoing, one part blundering and one part political vendetta by my enemies.

The Watergate break-in and cover-up greatly damaged the American political process. While not unusual in political campaigns, these actions were clearly illegal. Over the years, I had been the victim of dirty tricks and other kinds of vicious tactics in the cut and thrust of political warfare. What happened in Watergate—the facts, not the myths—was wrong. In retrospect, while I was not involved in the decision to conduct the break-in, I should have set a higher standard for the conduct of the people who participated in my campaign and Administration. I should have established a moral tone that would have made such actions unthinkable. I did not. I played by the rules of politics as I found them. Not taking a higher road than my predecessors and my adversaries was my central mistake. For that reason, I long ago accepted overall responsibility for the Watergate affair. What's more, I have paid, and am still paying, the price for it.

Apart from its illegality, Watergate was a tragedy of errors. Whoever ordered the break-in evidently knew little about politics. If the purpose was to gather political intelligence, the Democratic National Committee was a pathetic target. Strategy and tactics are set by the candidate and his staff, not the party bureaucracy. I also contributed to the errors. As a student of history, I should have known that leaders who do big things well must be on guard against stumbling on the little things. To paraphrase Talleyrand, Watergate was worse than a crime—it was a blunder.

When first informed about the break-in, I did not give it sufficient attention, partly because I was preoccupied with my China and Soviet initiatives and with my efforts to end the war in Viet Nam and partly because I feared that some of my colleagues might be somehow involved. Some have said that my

major mistake was to protect my subordinates. They may be partly right. In any organization, loyalty must run down, as well as up. I knew those who were involved acted not for personal gain but out of their deep belief in our cause. That knowledge may have contributed to my hesitation in tackling the question. I should have focused on the issue immediately, dug out the truth, fired everyone involved and taken the political heat.

But what we remember as the Watergate period was also a concerted political vendetta by my opponents. Anyone who knows the workings of hardball politics knows that the smoke screen of false accusations—the myths of Watergate—was not at all accidental. In this respect, Watergate was not a morality play but rather a political struggle. The baseless and highly sensationalistic charges, the blatant double standards, the party-line votes in congressional investigating committees and the unwillingness of my adversaries and the media to look into parallel wrongdoing within Democratic campaigns, all should tip off even the casual observer that the opposition was pursuing not only justice but also political advantage.

## The Final Comeback?

On Nov. 30, 1978, as I walked into the hall where I was to address the Oxford Union, the crowd greeted me with a standing ovation. I had received a very different reception outside. Several hundred demonstrators, many of them American students attending Oxford, surrounded my car as we entered the grounds. It was an ugly crowd. We could hear them chanting "Nixon go home!" as the president of the Union introduced me. I could see he was somewhat embarrassed, but I put him at ease when I opened my remarks by observing that the demonstrators made me feel very much at home.

The students particularly liked the question-and-answer session. They were respectful, but they pulled no punches. The most intriguing question was what my plans were for a role in politics or foreign affairs. I responded that my political career was over but that while I had retired from politics, I had not retired from life. "So long as I have a breath in my body," I said, "I am going to talk about the great issues that affect the world. I am not going to keep my mouth shut. I am going to speak out for peace and freedom." The question was unexpected, but the off-the-cuff answer set forth exactly the guidelines I was to follow in the years ahead through meetings with leaders around the world, writing books and articles, and giving speeches and off-the-record backgrounders for journalists.

What positive effect, if any, all this activity has had I do not know. I do know that it had one negative fallout. My critics saw what they considered to be a sinister purpose—that I was "orchestrating yet another comeback." If this is so, my "orchestra" is really a one-man band, because I do not have any control over what anyone else thinks, says or writes.

Besides, as I said on *Meet the Press* in 1988, if I am trying to make a comeback, "what am I going to come back to? We already have a very good mayor in Saddle River, and we have a very good Governor in the state of New Jersey. It isn't a comeback. It isn't to be well thought of. The purpose is to get a message across, and then let history judge." When John Chancellor asked me how history would remember me, I predicted, "History will treat me fairly. Historians probably won't, because most historians are on the left."

GOLF

"To my great surprise, golf became my lifesaver."

LARRY ARMISTEEN - SAN DIEGO UNION

TIME, APRIL 2, 1990

38

NIXON

I shall continue to speak up for the policies that will lead to peace and freedom as long as I live. If people are interested in what I have to say, they can tune in. If they aren't, they do not have to. I intend to continue to speak out on the important issues for those who do want to hear my views.

## Searching for Recreation

People sometimes ask what a 77-year-old former President does for exercise and recreation. Unfortunately, I do not set a very good example. I have never gone hunting, and fishing just isn't my bag. I tried deep-sea fishing once as a teenager and gave it up because I used to get seasick. In 1952 Eisenhower tried to teach me how to cast for trout. It was a disaster. After hooking a limb the first three times, I caught his shirt on my fourth try. The lesson ended abruptly.

I don't ski or play tennis. People often ask me whether I play chess. I don't, but my grandson Christopher, 11, plays well enough already to give his father a run for his money. The only time I played gin rummy was in 1944, on a twelve-hour flight from Guadalcanal to Hawaii in the belly of a C-54 transport. The learning process was so expensive that I decided to stick to poker, which I still play once a year with Ambassador Walter Annenberg and other members of the Benevolent Marching and Philosophical Society of Philadelphia.

I go to an occasional baseball, football or basketball game. My most vivid memory of a sports event was seeing my first major league baseball game on July 4, 1936. The Yankees crushed the Senators in a doubleheader. A rookie outfielder for New York, Joe DiMaggio, hit a home run into the sun bleachers at Griffith Stadium where I was sitting. The next time I saw the Yankees play on the Fourth of July was on a blisteringly hot Monday afternoon in New York 47 years later. Dave Righetti threw a no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox—his first, and mine as well. I shall never forget when he struck out Wade Boggs, the best hitter in baseball, with a high inside fastball for the final out.

I quit golf ten years ago, though I enjoyed the game. There were two reasons. One day in late 1978, I broke 80. It was on a relatively easy course in San Clemente, but for me it was like climbing Mount Everest. I knew I could never get better, and

so the competitive challenge was gone. Breaking 80 was an even greater thrill than getting a hole in one. I did get a hole in one once, but I don't remember much about it, except that it was on the third hole at Bel Air on Labor Day 1961, I used a MacGregor six-iron and a Spalding Dot ball, and my partner Randolph Scott birdied the hole.

The other reason I quit golf was the decisive one. I had to meet a deadline for my third book, *The Real War*. I simply could not do it and also find four hours a day to play golf. This time, however, I found a substitute. In 1969 I asked President de Gaulle what he did for exercise. He told me that he believed that walking was the best thing a leader could do for his mental, physical and emotional health. I now follow his advice and walk four miles a day. While I miss the competition and fellowship, I get three times as much exercise as I would playing a round of golf and riding between holes in a cart.

## The Press and Privacy

Although I had always had a lively interest in public affairs, I was not aware until after his death that Franklin D. Roosevelt was crippled by polio. I vividly recall seeing newsreels that showed him in Washington and abroad. They never showed a wheelchair or crutches, nor did newspaper accounts mention his disability. The media actively kept the secret for him. Some may disagree, but I believe the press deserve great credit for not disclosing his condition. Today they could not do so because of the television cameras that follow a President everywhere.

More to the point, they would not want to do so. You don't have to point to the Gary Hart exposé to find examples where investigative reporters have made public figures, and their families and friends, fair game for disclosure of every detail of their private lives. Highly qualified people are becoming increasingly reluctant to take Government positions in Washington because they don't want to expose their families to this merciless scrutiny. We can't go back to the pre-television standards of the F.D.R. days, but the media, in the interest of fairness and responsibility, might well consider reappraising some of their practices and eliminating some of the abuses.

Based on 44 years of dealing with members of the media on

the national level, I can say they are above average in intelligence. Most are liberal politically. Virtually all are ambitious, not so much for money as for status. A Pulitzer Prize means far more to them than a six-figure salary. They are proud of their profession and sometimes find it difficult to hide their contempt for the less well-educated politicians and businessmen they cover. Many, in my view justifiably, believe they are underpaid compared with the lobbyists and p.r. flacks who rip off their employers so shamefully. Finally, most are interesting people. An off-the-record session with a group of top-notch reporters can be far more stimulating and informative than a meeting with a group of Senators or Congressmen.

I have some other observations that will probably be more controversial.

Reporters from the print press, generally, although not always, are more intelligent and thoughtful than TV reporters. Photographers tend to be more sympathetic to conservatives than reporters, possibly because there appears to be an adversarial relationship between these two groups of journalists. A poli-

## MEMOIRS

> "Writing a book is the most intensive exercise anyone can give his brain. It provided the therapy . . . to put Watergate behind me."

OLLIE KATING

TIME, APRIL 2, 1990

43

## EXCERPT

tician will get a better shake from reporters outside of Washington than in Washington. Publishers have become virtual political eunuchs: they still sign the checks, but the day is long gone when they had much control over reporters. Often a candidate is endorsed on the editorial page and cut up in the news stories, which gives many newspapers a schizophrenic quality. Even the paper I read most regularly, the *Wall Street Journal*, suffers from that syndrome. This is not necessarily bad, but those who deal with the press should know what they are up against.

Another observation, which I admit may result only from my own experience, is that members of the press hate to be proved wrong. I was warned about this after the Alger Hiss

case. Most reporters covering the case had thought Whittaker Chambers was lying and Hiss was telling the truth, and they did not appreciate being shown that they had been wrong. There was an understandable tendency among some in the months and years afterward to try to justify their original position, at my expense.

Superficial observers are wrong when they attribute all of my problems with the media to Watergate. They overlook the seminal issue of Viet Nam. The war changed Lyndon Johnson's press from highly positive to overwhelmingly negative, and poised my own relations with the press throughout my presidency. I respected the right of press people as well as politicians to disagree with me about the morality of our cause in

## PLASTIC IS TOUGHER THAN STEEL

OLLIE ATKINS PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION - GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

Pat was one of our greatest First Ladies. She was a superb and dignified goodwill ambassador who deeply believed in the importance of personal diplomacy. She championed the cause of volunteerism, especially the Right to Read program. Through her leadership, the Parks to the People program built parks that poor people could visit. She established special tours of the White House for the handicapped and personally raised the money to light the mansion at night.

In spite of these accomplishments and countless more, I think she would prefer to be remembered for another reason. It was hard for young people to grow up during the turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly children of celebrities. With their father subject to massive attack, Tricia and Julie survived it all thanks to the strength and serenity of their mother. They couldn't have done it without her.

Since we left the White House, Pat has never made a speech, accepted an award or been interviewed. We entertain friends and family at home but turn down the invitations we receive to highly publicized events. But despite being out of public view for 16 years, she has been on *Good Housekeeping's* ten-most-admired-women list every year. I know why. Most people, even if they are basically happy, do not have an easy life. Some have had disappointments, others have suffered defeats. Many have experienced tragedy. Pat relates to these people, and they to her.

The resignation was harder on her than on me because she thought it was a mistake to resign. I still marvel at how she was able to go 48 hours without sleep while she supervised the packing of all our personal belongings for the move to San Clemente. My near fatal illness in California was also a greater burden on her. I was physically, mentally and emotionally drained, so in addition to keeping up her own spirits, she had to sustain mine.

After we left the White House, it did not seem possible that she could bear any more. I followed my usual practice of not reading the criticism being heaped on me. But she insisted on keeping informed. One day a well-meaning member of our staff sent her a particularly vicious book written by two Washington *Post* staff members. It was the last thing she read before tragedy struck.

On the morning of July 8, 1976, I went into the kitchen at Casa Pacifica to get some coffee. I noticed that Pat seemed to be unsteady and that the cup and saucer were shaking in her hand. The left side of her mouth was drooping. I hoped it might have been caused by an insect sting, but I knew better. It was a stroke. As we rode together in the ambulance to the hospital, her left side became paralyzed. Her speech was slurred and her mouth contorted.

Bouquets of flowers and get-well messages poured in from all over the world. But only she could handle this crisis. No one else could help her. Before she left the hospital, her speech difficulty had disappeared. But her left arm hung limply by her side.

Our home in San Clemente had a beautiful Spanish inner patio. She had an exercise wheel installed on one of the walls. Day after day as I left to go over to the office, I saw her standing there, turning the wheel around and around again. At times she was disappointed because there seemed to be no visible improvement. But she never gave up. Before the year was out, her recovery was complete. Doctors did not do it for her. Her family did not do it for her. She did it by herself, which is characteristic of her whole life. My critics in the media called her "Plastic Pat." What they did not know was that her plastic was tougher than the finest steel.

When I make appearances these days, I am most often asked, "How is Pat?" Considering what she has been through, she is remarkably well. You would never know that she had suffered a stroke. She no longer participates in public events but devotes all of her time and energy to her children and grandchildren.

44

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NIXON

(LO)

Viet Nam, our conduct of the war and my efforts to win an honorable peace. But again, the events that followed our withdrawal from Viet Nam, including the plight of the boat people and the more than 1 million slaughtered by the new communist rulers of Cambodia, showed that media critics who said we were on the wrong side were mistaken.

The press and the politicians they cover are frequently at odds, but they have one thing in common: a very low rating in the public opinion polls. Most people believe that the press is biased toward liberal causes, and I would agree. But charges that the press is generally inaccurate in its reporting are frequently unfair. Generally, I have been impressed by how accurately reporters who reach the national level cover their stories. The contention that reporters have bad manners is also usually a bad rap. While reporters are always persistent, they are usually courteous. The antics of a few oddballs who stamp their feet and holler like children to get attention should not be held against the entire group.

Here are my rules for dealing with the press:

* Don't play favorites. Doing so gives a short-term advantage but does more harm than good in the long run. I often asked Henry Kissinger to give interviews not just to the select élite in the Washington press corps but to some of the fine reporters from the less well-known papers around the country. If for some reason you are deserted by your tiny circle of Beltway bigwigs, you might wish you had cultivated some friends in the hinterlands.

* Don't cancel a subscription, but don't be afraid to cancel an unfriendly reporter's ticket on some plum presidential trip. There is no law that says if a reporter has a habit of giving you the shaft, you have to continue to give him privileged treatment.

* Wining and dining the press should generally be avoided except on an arm's-length basis. The best reporters resent being wooed in such a superficial way, and no reporter will sit on a negative story because you gave him brunch last week.

* One tactic that should be used only sparingly is for a public official who has been attacked by the press to counterattack. He may win in the short run. But in the long run the press has the last word, and they

will never forgive him for taking them on. This does not mean that he should take their barbs lying down or that he should go crawling after them to try to win their support. It does mean that he should give as good as he receives, but in a manner that will not expose him to the charge that he is taking on the press to divert attention from his own vulnerabilities.

* A President's ultimate weapon is to go over the heads of the press to the country, as I did in the so-called "Checkers Speech" in 1952 and the "Silent Majority" address in 1969 to mobilize public opinion. But you cannot go to the well too often. Only on a major issue of universal concern should a President try to reach the people directly to avoid having his views filtered through the press.

## Into the Twilight

As I look back to the time I made the decision to enter politics more than 40 years ago, three goals motivated me: peace abroad, a better life for people at home and the victory of freedom over tyranny throughout the world. I have taken some great risks and have fought many battles in attempting to serve

those goals. By exposing Alger Hiss, I earned the undying enmity of many powerful people who might otherwise have at worst taken a neutral view of me. I do not regret losing these people's support. But by going to China, I lost the support of many fellow conservatives who believed we should not have normal relations with any communist power, even if it was unfriendly toward the Soviet Union. By refusing to accept any but the most honorable and equitable peace in Viet Nam, I lost the support of many liberals, conservatives and moderates who felt that supporting me was just too risky politically. These are examples of the perils of purpose.

While it has been a rough game, it has been worth it. I might not want to do it again, but I would not have missed it. I know I have lived for a purpose, and I have at least in part achieved it. You must live your life for something more important than your life alone. One who has never lost himself in a cause bigger than himself has missed one of life's mountaintop experiences. Only by losing yourself in this way can you really find yourself.

My most vivid memory of the dark days after my resignation is a conversation with Walter Annenberg shortly after I re-

turned to San Clemente. He knew I was discouraged. He tried to buck up my spirits. He said, "Whether you have been knocked down or are on the ropes, always remember that life is 99 rounds." Today, the battle I started to wage in 1946 when I first ran for Congress is not over. I still have a few rounds to go.

Two thousand years ago, Sophocles wrote, "One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been." There is still some time before the sun goes down, but even now, I can look back and say that the day has indeed been splendid. In view of the ordeals I have endured, this may strike some as an incredible conclusion. I believe, however, that the richness of life is measured by its breadth, its height and its depth. It has been my good fortune to have lived a very long and a very full life, one in which I have been at the heights but also at the depths.

I shall always remember my first visit to the Grand Canyon 65 years ago. I did not believe any view could be more spectacular than the one from the heights of the South Rim until I hiked seven miles down to the river below and looked back up. Only then did I fully appreciate the true majesty of one of nature's seven wonders of the world. Only when you have been in the depths can you truly appreciate the heights.

DAVID DRAGUFIN

SPORTS FAN

"I shall never forget when Dave Righetti struck out Wade Boggs, the best hitter in baseball, with a high inside fastball for the final out."

TIME, APRIL 2, 1990

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INTERVIEW

# Paying The Price

**RICHARD NIXON** believes he will always be known as the “Watergate man,” the President who resigned the office, and expects little charity from history

By JOHN STACKS and STROBE TALBOTT

**Q. How do you expect the Watergate affair to be judged in the future?**

**A.** Clare Boothe Luce once said that each person in history can be summed up in one sentence. This was after I had gone to China. She said, "You will be summed up, 'He went to China.'" Historians are more likely to lead with "He resigned the office."

The jury has already come in, and there's nothing that's going to change it. There's no appeal. Historians will judge it harshly. That's what I would say on that.

**Q. Why did you write this book?**

**A.** I really wrote this book for those who have suffered losses or defeats and so forth, and who think that life is over. I felt that if I could share with them my own experiences, it might help.

The problem with that, of course, is that resigning the presidency is something that is beyond their imagination. And so, consequently, that's why throughout the book I tried to put it in a context that they could understand. But I felt that if I could let them see what I went through, and how I at least recovered in part, that might tell them that life wasn't over.

**Q. You say in your new book that you recovered in part. You also say that you have paid, and in fact are still paying, the price for it.**

**A.** By paying the price, I mean in terms of being able to influence the course of events. I mean, every time I make a speech, or every time I write a book, inevitably the reviewers refer to the "disgraced former President."

And I consider, for whatever time I have left, that what is most important is to be able to affect the course of events. My experience has been somewhat unique. I am probably wrong on a number of things, but at least it's a point of view.

The difficulty is that getting that point of view across is compromised by the fact that they say, Oh, this is the Watergate man, so we're not going to pay any attention to what he

does. Now that attitude has receded substantially, and over a period of time it may recede more, but that's what I meant by that.

**Q. Do you think the price you paid was fair, or do you think it was disproportionate to what happened?**

**A.** I don't think I'm the best judge of that. It was a price that was inevitable, and I accepted the fact that it had to be paid. I must say that many of my friends and my family think it was very unfair and disproportionate, but I'm not going to even comment about if it was fair or disproportionate.

**Q. I want to ask you a Watergate trivia question or two.**

**A.** There's nothing trivial about Watergate.

**Q. Do you have any reflections on the somewhat ambiguous role that was played by your White House chief of staff Al Haig?**

**A.** I have never shared the mistrust that many have about Haig.

Al Haig was a consummate bureaucrat, and that's said with admiration rather than condemnation. You can't get up that high in the Army without being a consummate bureaucrat. Eisenhower was a consummate bureaucrat too.

I think in Al's case, he would engage in activities that might have a double meaning. But I think as far as his goal was concerned, it was always one of loyalty to the office, loyalty to me, and I think it was almost as hard on him as on me when he came to the conclusion that I should resign. That's my view about Al.

**Q. Some say he is probably the best candidate for Deep Throat.**

**Do you believe that?**

**A.** I can't believe that's the case. It is possible. I mean, anything is possible.

**Q. Had you planned, if the Supreme Court was less than unanimous, at 6-2 or 5-3, on the tapes question to contest or to resist?**

**A.** No. I had that as a possible option, but I hadn't planned it in advance, saying if we get one or two votes, that then we will resist it. No.

**Q. One of the things Watergate derailed was your planned New American Revolution. Instead we got the Reagan revolution. How would you draw the contrast between the two?**

**A.** I won't say anything in this interview that is critical of him and the Reagan revolution, but basically we had different approaches.

I think in his case, he had very little confidence in what Government could do in some of these areas because he thought Government could screw it up. He looked at the Great Society programs, and because they failed, he thought all Government action failed.

In my case, I just looked at the Great Society programs, and I said, Well, they failed, but they were aimed at real problems. And now I want to find some answers.

**Q. How do you measure George Bush?**

**A.** I consider him to be a progressive Republican. He is highly intelligent. He is hands-on. He's not a bomb thrower, but because he isn't a bomb thrower he doesn't have any interceptions. That's one of the reasons he's doing as well as he has. Bush—I ought to leave it in football terms—

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TIME, APRIL 2, 1990

NIXON E

"Had I survived, I think South Viet Nam would still be a viable non-Communist enclave."

PHILIPPE

he's the Joe Montana. The short, sure pass. He has a very high percentage.

**Q.** You wrote that Gorbachev may turn out to be not only the man of the decade—

**A.** But man of the century.

**Q.** In the short time since you finished your book a great deal has happened in the Soviet Union. What do you make of events there in the past few weeks?

**A.** I look at Gorbachev somewhat this way: I see him as a troika. I seem him first as a communist. Second, he's a Russian nationalist. Maybe we should say he's proud of his country; he's a patriot. His purpose is not to abandon communism but to save it. But he also has another facet, which at times overrides the other two, that he is a great, pragmatic politician. And as a pragmatic politician, he sometimes will overrule even his basic communist instincts, or even his national instincts, in the event that his political survival requires it.

But also he's a great gambler. He's a great actor. He has decided that he would risk his power in order to save his reforms, rather than risk his reforms in order to save his power.

Now that was a mountaintop decision. And that's what Gorbachev has done. It was a gutsy decision. And he also believes, because he's so self-confident, that he'll win. Five years from now, he believes that reforms will work, and that if he goes before the people, he will not have lost his power.

One more point about Gorbachev. I compare him to Khrushchev. Khrushchev was not well educated, but he was smarter than Gorbachev and quicker than Gorbachev. But Khrushchev had a fatal weakness. He was rash. Gorbachev is not rash, but he does have a temper.

We have some who say that the changes in the Soviet Union happened because the U.S. under Reagan had a booming economy and a stronger military; it had SDI [the Strategic Defense Initiative], which the Soviet Union would have to spend billions of dollars to compete with, and had a firm foreign policy.

On the other side, some argue—and I agree—that the primary factor was internal. Communism didn't work: it didn't work there, it didn't work in Eastern Europe, it didn't work in the Third World. What we did may have accelerated the process.

But even had the U.S. not taken the line it did, this would have happened.

TIME, APRIL 2, 1990

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## INTERVIEW

**Q. If your policy of détente had continued, might it too have created the circumstances that we now see?**

**A.** In my view, yes. Of course, I'm a prejudiced witness on that. Now, détente practiced with linkage would have worked. What has happened now might have happened sooner.

**Q. Is the cold war really over?**

**A.** The Soviets have lost the cold war, but the West has not won it. It is not enough to say now that people have rejected communism, that we're home free. Waging a revolution is difficult, but not nearly as difficult as governing. That is the problem in all the countries of Eastern Europe. I'm not enthused about this idea of sending our political experts over and telling these poor people how to win an election. I think it's a little silly and even insulting. What they need is economic experts from the private sector, and maybe some from the Government.

**Q. Looking back on the Viet Nam War, what second thoughts do you have?**

**A.** I was asked that about [the invasion of] Cambodia once after a speech at Oxford. I said, "Yes, I wish I'd done it sooner." That was a shocker. And going further, Why didn't you do the May 8 bombing and mining sooner? Why didn't you do the December bombing sooner? And the point was, it should have been done sooner, but for one thing, I didn't feel first that the traffic would bear it within the Administration.

We might have lost half the Cabinet, certainly. Neither [Secretary of State William] Rogers nor [Secretary of Defense Melvin] Laird—not because they were doves, but because they just thought it was the wrong decision—would have supported an all-out attack in order to bring the war to a conclusion.

Eisenhower and I were once talking in 1967; Eisenhower felt we should declare war. He said, "You can declare war, then you can handle all these debaters and the bomb throwers." But the problem with declaring war was that the Russians and the Chinese both had treaties with North Viet Nam.

So the declaration of war didn't appeal. But I was also thinking of what we could do after Viet Nam. It was essential to have a new relationship with the Russians, have a new relationship with the Chinese, and I felt that at that time, early on, it would have made it difficult, almost impossible, to develop that new relationship had we declared war. It would have broken it off. In retrospect, I don't think so. In retrospect, I think we could have done it. And it may have been a mistake of judgment, but at the time, that's the reason I didn't do it.

**Q. Some people say that when all was finally said and done you—**

**A.** Didn't get any more than we would have gotten earlier?

**Q. That in 1969 you could have gotten just about what you got in the end—a kind of a decent interval, the North Viet Nam**

**army's forces in place in the South, pows—and that therefore the price in American lives was way too high.**

**A.** I know that argument, and I don't agree with it. Kissinger and I have often talked about that. And there, we have to look at the intricacies of the peace agreement of '73. Had that agreement been implemented as it was, it would be a very different situation than it is at the present time.

But as you know, there were two aspects of the agreement. One has been totally forgotten. The two aspects were: one, that the U.S. would continue to support South Viet Nam, just as the Soviets would be expected to be supporting North Viet Nam. The other was that the U.S., in the event that the North Vietnamese complied with the terms, would also support them economically. In other words, there was the economic package.

Naturally, this is self-serving, but everything I say is self-serving. But had I survived, I think that it would have been possible to have implemented the agreement. South Viet Nam would still be a viable non-Communist enclave or whatever you want to call it. But because I think that I had enormous credibility with the North—because of what I'd

done on May 8 [ordering the mining of North Vietnamese ports], because of what I'd done in December [ordering the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong]—they thought, Well, this unpredictable so-and-so, we can't be sure if we attack. You've got to remember, too, that the peace agreement worked for two years.

**Q. If you'll pardon me, this is the theory according to which you were a madman acting, or gambling, or whatever you want to call it.**

**A.** You know, they all talk about the difference between Eisenhower and Dulles and Nixon and Kissinger. Eisenhower was the very reasonable fellow, he loved peace and all the rest, and

Dulles was a hawk who was talking about the peaceful liberation of Eastern Europe.

And then the point is that they say that in Nixon's case and Kissinger's case, it is just the other way around. Kissinger is the reasonable fellow, he's from Harvard and all the rest, he'll be reasonable working these things out. But he's got this guy back there in Washington whom he just has to control. And if his warlike instincts prevail here, you'd better watch out. You see?

Now as a matter of fact, let me tell you, Dulles didn't do anything without Eisenhower's support. Eisenhower was really a hands-on President, particularly in foreign policy. And Eisenhower, he could be very curt at times. He'd just cut them short, his Cabinet members. He said, "Listen, I'll make the decisions regarding what the defense budget is going to be." He could be so genial, yet so cold.

And I would say the same was true with me and Kissinger. We would disagree politically at times. For example, a major disagreement we had was with regard to the war, but it was before the elections, you remember, in 1972. And Kissinger politically felt very strongly that it was important to get an agreement before the elections.

I knew that politically it was not a liability, particularly

"Every time I make a speech, or every time I write a book, inevitably the reviewers refer to the 'disgraced former President.'"

TIME, APRIL 2, 1990

NIXON

in view of the irresponsibility of the antiwar crowd. So we had a difference politically, and that's when Henry made his famous "Peace is at hand" statement, and I had to back off of it. Henry had greater confidence in the efficacy of negotiations than I had. I think that is the difference. He thought that even fanatics would be reasonable insofar as negotiating is concerned. He could not accept the fact of all of the forces going against him. I used to say, "Henry, I'll take care of the politics."

Henry is a world-class strategist. He has incredible stamina, which makes him a great negotiator. He'll wear you out. How he does it, I don't know. He has an insatiable appetite for all the treats they put on the table. Henry would sit there in negotiations, he'd have the peanuts out and the rest, and he'd be talking between mouthfuls. But on the other hand, that gave him the energy to keep going. But Henry needed it.

**Q. I wanted to ask you again about '72, the fall period when Kissinger declares, "Peace is at hand." And you at that point are unsure. He feels it's necessary for the election, and you feel it's not a liability. Did you feel it was actually detrimental politically to arrive at a settlement?**

**A.** Oh, no. I felt it would have been very helpful politically if we could have a settlement before the election. But I felt that until it was nailed, we should not even breathe a word about it, because I thought that then it put the responsibility on us to make the concessions.

The second point was, I felt we would be in a much stronger position after the election, after a tremendous mandate, after the antiwar crowd had been totally defeated. I thought that then we could really get these people to, shall we say, cry uncle.

**Q. One could argue that during the last two years of your presidency, Kissinger was somewhat out of your control.**

**A.** No, Kissinger never took a step without informing me. He was always very circumspect. Kissinger is a great bureaucrat.

**Q. He makes quite a point in his memoirs of where he went off the reservation and did what he thought was right, making his own political judgment or his own strategic judgment or his own moral judgment.**

**A.** That he does. I have heard that. I haven't read it. I don't read books about myself. I have read reviews of the books. I'm saying that as far as I'm concerned, I have never felt that he was out of control, that he was doing something he thought I would disapprove. And for example, I've noticed some columns indicating that he was really opposed to the so-called Christmas bombing... That's nonsense. He was for it, all the way. And so was I.

**Q. But you were never crazy about the idea of making him Secretary of State, were you?**

**A.** It was a difficult time, because Bill Rogers was my friend. And Rogers I think had done, really, under the circumstances, a very credible job as Secretary of State. But

Kissinger at that point I considered indispensable. With the Watergate problem, we didn't have any choices.

**Q. There are no regrets on that score.**

**A.** If I had them, I wouldn't tell you. Put it that way.

**Q. You have conjured up the danger that Japan and China will get together in the next century.**

**A.** It would be a very natural thing to happen. You look at what China has and what Japan has. China has resources; it has a potentially highly qualified, intelligent people. And here's Japan, with less arable land than the state of California and no oil reserve. So it's a natural. It's a marriage made in heaven, economically. And that could happen.

Let's look at it from China's standpoint. Let's assume the U.S. isolates them because of our concern about human rights. Where do the Chinese look?

They're not going to look to the Soviet Union because it's a failure, and even these latest announcements all indicate that the Chinese are all for economic reforms. And they're going to try to goose them up. Even [Premier] Li Peng [favors that], because I've talked to him. All the Chinese leaders, from the extreme reactionaries to the more progressive ones, are for economic reforms. Japan is an economic miracle, an economic success story. So they turn to Japan.

The U.S. needs to be in north Asia as a major player along with the Chinese, the Japanese and the Soviet Union.

**Q. And one should not expect a flowering of democracy anytime soon?**

**A.** Not soon, no. I don't mean the Chinese people do not have a potential interest in and, frankly, respect for and probably desire to have so-called democracy. But if you look at the country today and how far it is in

its educational standards, it's a long way off before that seeps down. I think, without question, our strategic interests require that we re-establish a constructive relationship with China. Human rights requires it too, because Li Peng is not totally in control. There are others who will be contesting with him for power. The U.S. will always come down on the side of the progressives and the reformers, rather than the reactionaries.

**Q. Have you set any specific goals for yourself?**

**A.** No, not at this point. I see some of my contemporaries on television these days. I don't intend to reach that point. I haven't quite reached it yet. It's very important for somebody not to try to stay too long in the public life, particularly in the television age. Some people are surprised at me that I'm ambulatory.

**Q. You've made so much of the importance to you of the struggle itself. Not just victory but, more important, the struggle. Do you feel that now the struggle's over for you?**

**A.** No. I must find new challenges. Because the moment that you think the struggle is over, when you have nothing to live for other than yourself, you're finished. ■

> **"I must find new challenges... the moment that you think the struggle is over, when you have nothing to live for other than yourself, you're finished."**

TIME, APRIL 2, 1990

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