[c]

The Wichita Eagle
WICHITA, KANS.
D. 123,562

DEC 4 1979

Russell Baker

Little Brown
of five House Years

I know that Americans like thin women and fat books, but lately matters have been getting out of hand. As the women get leaner, the books get fatter. It is common nowadays to find yourself confronting a woman no thicker than a slim volume of poetry while buying a book wider than a piano.

It was just such a woman who sold me a copy of Henry Kissinger's book not long ago. I had heard that Kissinger's was a big book. How big I hadn't guessed. When the lean woman showed it to me, I could see that it would make a far deeper depression in my lap than she would.

Naturally, I did not say so aloud. Salespeople are very testy these days. Several months before, I had said much the same thing to a cadaverous clerk who sold me a copy of David Halberstam's "The Powers That Be," and she, thinking I was being flirty instead of caustic about literature's expanding girth, retaliated by trying to strike me with William Styron's

Books by the Tonnage

"Sophie's Choice."

Fortunately, the weight of Styron's opus was too much for her to lift above the hip bones and she had to settle for dropping it on my foot, where it fractured an instep. Naturally, to show I was a good fellow, I had to buy Styron's book along with Halberstam's, and then rent a mule to get the entire load home.

IN ANY CASE, seeing the weight that Kissinger had wrought, I did not flap my lip about what my lap could more happily support, or remark that the world would be a cheerier place if Kissinger put his prose on her diet and she partook a bit of whatever Kissinger was feeding his typewriter.

"I'll take the Kissinger," I said.

"Suit yourself, Hercules," she said, "but most people find it's smarter to have a moving van take it for them."

VANITY GOT THE BETTER of me here. Her tone indicated that she had studied my double chin and concluded she was dealing with a man whose lap was incapable of supporting her undernourished frame for an interesting length of time.

"Do you know whom you're talking to?" I asked superfluously, since she obviously did not. "I am the man who purchased Richard Nixon's memoirs in this very same shop and established the Olympic literature record by carrying it a block and a half before collapsing."

"And I," she said, "am the woman who read two and a half pages of it before collapsing." I was tempted to tell her that if she ate once in a while she could probably get through five pages of the Nixon book, as I had. Instead, I contracted for the moving van.

When the moving crew arrived the next week with the Kissinger book, they discovered they couldn't get it up the stairs without damaging the banister and decided to hoist it on pulleys through a window. They had it halfway to the second floor when the building inspector happened by, though I suspect he had actually been tipped off by grandmother.

"Just a minute there," he said, and in another minute was inside the house, standing in awe and terror before my library.

A man's home is his castle, I said. "And a man's library these days is his deathtrap," said the inspector. "Bring the Kissinger in here and this whole building is going to collapse."

"Pshaw!" said I.

"THRUMP!" said the entire front of the house as it peeled away and collapsed into the street under the suspended weight of Kissinger.

I am forbidden to add any books thicker than "War and Peace," and the city is trying to charge me for excavating the Kissinger book from the pothole it made in the street.

© New York Times News Service

THE PLATINUM DEALER

DEC 9 1979

Books

# The Imperial Presidency adviser polishes his image — endlessly

WHITE HOUSE YEARS, by Henry Kissinger; Little, Brown, 1,521 pp., $22.50.

By James M. Naughton

Once upon a time, when there was an Imperial President, there was an Imperial Presidency adviser who wished it known that while the government had been waging war and deceit and repression he had been — secretly, of course — good and decent and truthful and caring and prescient and wise. So the Imperial Presidency adviser sat down with many pieces of paper. He wrote and wrote and wrote until his manuscript, like Pinnochio's nose, grew longer and longer and longer. Some called it a fable and others pointed out it had no happy ending. It had no ending at all.

The Imperial Presidency adviser had no close.

Try as he might, he could not end his memoirs. In truth, he had too many beginnings, for he chose to write chronologically and thus was bound to leap all about, touching now on Cienfuegos, then on Korea, here on SALT, there on CIA. He managed even to rupture the compelling tale of the wondrous diplomatic overture to Peking, beginning the telling of it between pages 163 and 194 of his volume and not resuming until — many bated breaths later — page 684.

He attempted to bring things to a head by giving a few, a very few, anecdotal glimpses of the Imperial Presidency at work. Such as the President nearly setting the White House afire by lighting Chi-

> Nixon emerges as ungainly, petty, withdrawn, vindictive, paranoiac, impetuous, craven, sometimes irrational, Kissinger as purposeful, candid, resourceful, peaceable, intelligent, tolerant, gracious and, above all, blameless.

was critical of pussyfooting over tactical choices:

> "If Nixon hated anything more than being presented with a plan he had not considered, it was to be shown up in a group as being less tough than his advisers ... I have no doubt that Agnew's intervention accelerated Nixon's ultimate decision to order an attack on all the sanctuaries and use American forces."

The Imperial Presidency adviser used graceful phrases sparingly, though he aptly summarized the whole of American involvement in Indochina (had he only let it go at that) by writing: "Psychologists or sociologists may explain some day what it is about that distant monochromatic land, of green mountains and fields merging with an azure sea, that for millennia has acted as a magnet for foreigners who sought glory there and found frustration, who believed that in its rice fields and jungles some principle was to be established and entered them only to recede in

On and on he wrote. It was not easy, of course, to construct a faultless self-defense. The Imperial Presidency adviser's memoirs followed the Imperial President's (which, oddly, took a third fewer pages to deal with half again as many years) and amounted to a rebuttal in part of William Shawcross' published attack on the adviser for his role in the desecration of Cambodia.

The adviser's defense is, largely, to attack the Imperial President. Thus the Imperial President emerges as ungainly, petty, withdrawn, vindictive, paranoiac, impetuous, craven and sometimes irrational. "In serving Nixon one owed it to him to discriminate among the orders he issued and to give him another chance at those that were unfulfillable or dangerous."

By contrast, the adviser comes across as purposeful, candid, resourceful, peaceable, intelligent, tolerant, gracious and, above all, blameless.

[lc]

Los Angeles Times
LARGEST CIRCULATION IN THE WEST

LOS ANGELES CAL.

n 1,011,000 1,010,533

NOV 25 1979

BOSTON
DAILY GAZETTE

A memoir that
speaks for itself

With more than 1,500 pages covering in detail eventful years, intricate international diplomacy and the analysis of the complex personalities involved, "White House Years" is a great big banquet of a book, the richness of which can only be hinted at in a review. Perhaps the best way to give the reader a sense of the book is to quote generously from it, as it deals with various facets of Kissinger's observations.

First, he is both sympathetic and analytical towards President Nixon, who is shown as a curious mixture of great abilities and deep insecurities:

"Despised by the Establishment, ambiguous in his human perceptions, (Nixon) had yet held fast to a sense of nation-

Reviewed by Sen. S. I. Hayakawa

al honor and responsibility, determined to prove that the strongest free country had no right to abdicate. What would have happened had the Establishment about which he was so ambivalent showed him some love?"

"Making and enforcing decisions left so many scars on him and others . . . that . . . it perversely created the maximum incentive for strong-willed subordinates to evade his directives. Since Nixon disdained any effort to instill a team spirit and usually kept his designs to himself, his Cabinet was tempted to exaggerate its autonomy. . . . All this became a vicious circle in which the President withdrew ever more into his isolation . . . in turn heightening the resentments and defiant mood of his appointees."

And there is a touching account of President Nixon as the nicest of nice guys. John Freeman, who was the British ambassador to Washington, had publicly described Nixon "as a man of no principle," a remark that Nixon naturally resented. Everything was done to keep him and Freeman apart on social occasions but they had to be at a dinner together at 10 Downing Street:

"At the end of the dinner, (Nixon) rose to make a toast. Looking squarely at Freeman, Nixon said, 'Some say there's a new Nixon. And they wonder if there's a new Freeman. I would like to think that that's all behind us. After all, he's the new diplomat and I'm the new statesman, trying to do our best for peace in the world."

"The impact was electric. (Prime Minister Harold Wilson) called the toast the most gracious he had heard at 10 Downing

Breaks for itself

but never addressing the real issue—methods by which through the centuries the Vietnamese have sought to break the spirit of foreigners before tackling them physically in one of their heroic charges. One cannot say it has not worked. Unfortunately it inspires little confidence; it is especially tough on allies. But then no Vietnamese, North or South, would believe that confidence or friendship is decisive. They have survived foreigners for centuries not by trusting them but by manipulating them."

To put on your bookshelf beside Machiavelli's "The Prince," it would be a good idea to excerpt from "White House Years" those passages that deal with statecraft—a book to be entitled Kissinger's "The Diplomat." It could include erceptive passages such as these:

"To the industrial democracies, peace appears to be a naturally attainable condition; it is the composition of differences, the absence of struggle. With the Soviet leaders, by contrast, struggle is ended not by compromise but by the victory of one side . . . The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men, each believing himself to be in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each side should know what frequent uncertainty, compromise and incoherence are the essence of policymaking. Of course, over time even two armed blind men in a room can do normous damage to each other, not to peak of the room.

"Soviet policy is also, of course, the inferior of an ancient tradition of Russian nationalism. Over centuries, the strange Russian empire has seeped outward from the Duchy of Muscovy, spreading east and west across endless plains where no geographical obstacle except distance set limit to human ambition . . . Perhaps from this insecure history, perhaps from a sense of inferiority, Russia's rulers—communists or czars—have responded by identifying security not only with dis-

tance but never believe a consentless, lute security.

Perhaps ten large, every day, the country

"The price behind him not only

[LC]

CEDAR FALLS, IOWA
RECORD
D. 4,950

[LC]

DEC 7 1979

Commentary

Keeping Kissinger honest

*Or the different ways Henry and Dick remember ev*

White House Years
25 Little Bigens

By WILLIAM SAFIRE

The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Henry Kissinger evidently did not like being portrayed as a pessimist at a crucial moment. In Richard Nixon's memoirs, in a downbeat moment after Hanoi's spring offensive in 1972 threatened the Moscow summit, Nixon quoted himself as saying "And then we're defeated," and wrote this about Henry's response: "'Then we will just have to tighten our belts,' Kissinger replied glumly."

In his own memoirs, Kissinger gives a quite different impression. When Nixon mused that our failure in Vietnam might lose the whole free world, Kissinger quotes himself as rebutting that firmly with "No, if it fails, we'll have to tighten our belts and turn the forces around."

Was Kissinger glum, as Nixon reports, or resolute, as Kissinger reports? Why did Kissinger, whose memoirs followed Nixon's by almost a year, go out of his way to correct that quotation and give it a wholly different tone? Such questions about state of mind—and of the accuracy of direct quotations—are important to historians.

NIXON'S SOURCE, according to former Nixon writer Frank Gannon, was the diary Nixon dictated after an Oval Office meeting on May 1, 1972. Kissinger's source, according to his associate, William Huland, was the transcript of a telephone conversation held three weeks before, on April 9. Kissinger (especially conscious of his belt

that month) used the earlier quotation to change the impression left by the glum comment cited by Nixon.

Spotlighting such a nuance is fair in examining a book replete with nuances, delicious details, and

William
Safire's
column

glimpses into the workings of the world of power politics and collegial backstabbing. For too long, a Watergate fixation has blocked an information-laden analysis of the last time the U.S. had a coherent foreign policy. Some highlights:

HENRY THE newsmaker:

The most newsworthy chapter deals with Kissinger's secret trip to Moscow before the summit in 1972, (as he tightened his belt glumly or resolutely). The president's envoy disagreed with his elected superior, treated anxious cabled instructions from the White House as "too late and too vague," and refused to press the issue of Vietnam nearly as strongly as Nixon directed him to.

Never in our history has an envoy set his own judgment ahead of the president's in dealing with the head of a superpower; Nixon's memoir says only "there was no gain saying his performance after the fact." No reviewer seems to care about the

extent of Kissinger's amazing presumption. In his Memoirs, Henry explains why "I stretched whatever authority I had..." Unfortunately, he withholds much of what he told Brezhnev about Nixon, which I suspect would be embarrassing for him to reveal today.

HENRY THE gentle self-wristslapper:

He is amusedly apologetic about conspiring with a Soviet leader to deceive our secretary of state about the drafting of an important document; in fact, that act, though presidentially approved, was a spectacle for which "Dobryssinger" should be profoundly ashamed.

HENRY THE solid historian:

The mosaic of the China initiative is painstakingly, lovingly presented; he even tells the truth about the desire for secrecy coming from us, not the Chinese.

On Vietnam, his detailed exposition of the maddening negotiations—he quotes Le Duc Tho's "I temporarily believe"—makes a powerful case for the wisdom and courage of the course taken.

HENRY THE settler of scores:

He pays back five years of personal slights by portraying Nixon as the Tribly to his Svengali. Because he was agent and not prime mover, Kissinger strains to make it appear that Nixon was merely a ratifier, and stops just short of suggesting that Nixon had been "a student of mine at Harvard in 1956."

Because Kissinger responsibility for his wiretapping; because he boat on human rights; he dismisses as "excited the documentation in this his disgraceful sellout Kurdish people; and be often forces me to agree w whose side I do not like t pains me to write the follo

He has produced the M of diplomatic memoirs House Years" (which discount, for a paltry pen is an astounding r resource—lucidly passionate, richly text solutely necessary to derstanding of the Nixon a credit to the mind and the man who brought it Laird, Rogers, Mitchell, others see events differ them invest the effort in thorough and challenging

LAST WEEK, Henry target of an orchestrated of White House and Sta tment abuse for having c the sin of having sug regard to admission of that our national honor aside for fear of what regime might do.

Out of place, but not ou he will slam back in his o retrospect, I am gratef own odd form of collabora memoirs:

As one of those suing disclosure of the "Dead K telephone transcripts, I li I had a hand in keeping H tighter and memoirs hone

COLUMBIA, MO.
TRIBUNE
D. 17,875

[Lc]

DEC 2 1979

# KISSINGER

## His interpretation of the realities of Vietnam sometimes are fantastic.

By SEN. GEORGE McGOVERN
Special to The Los Angeles Times

I begin this review with the need to make clear my biases relative to Henry Kissinger:

* I always have liked him as an individual and have admired his wit, his brilliance and his capacity for utilizing his remarkable talent to widen his influence. If he had worked within parameters set by a president with a sturdy moral sense of the world around us, he would have been not simply a brilliant foreign policy strategist, but a great one.

* I think his book "White House Years" is without question an important work that should be read by hawks and doves alike—as well as by other serious birds. For the past decade, Kissinger has demonstrated a rare capacity to sell himself to the public and the press, even when he was pursuing, in my view, outrageously mistaken policies. This book advances that art of self-promotion in a marvelously skillful style.

* For 10 years I have been appalled by Kissinger's views on the horrible tragedy his policies helped perpetuate in Indochina. The elaborate rationalization of this incredible nightmare that Kissinger lays out in his memoirs only widens the gap between my personal affection for him and may dismay over his part in the still-unfolding holocaust of Indochina.

His account of the Vietnam venture is a brilliant ex-position of how he and his associates viewed and man-aged both the war and the domestic political reaction to the war, as well as their coordination of massive military bombardment with their hopes for peaceful negoti-ations.

In this sense, Kissinger's account is a vital part of the historical record. As an interpretation of the realities we faced in Vietnam, however, the book sometimes is as much an exercise in fantasy as was our Vietnam-Cambodia-Laos intervention itself.

Reading this massive volume, I was struck forcefully by an impression formed the first time I visited with Kissinger in the spring of 1969. I talked with him alone that day in his White House office—about Vietnam. In effect, I asked him: “Why don’t we face the fact that plunging into the Indochina jungle after the French were driven out was a mistake? That war drove the Johnson administration out of office. Why don’t you get us out now before the continuing destruction produces even worse consequences both in Southeast Asia and in the United States?”

Again paraphrasing, I recall him saying in substance: “I agree that the war is a tragedy. But if we were to pull out now, it would set off a political reaction in the United States that might make it difficult for us to govern the country.”

This chilling, seemingly amoral theme—the continuation of killing abroad to prevent a volatile political reaction at home—offended my sensibilities in 1969.

The Kissinger memoir explains in detail how the war was extended and widened even as negotiations were

COLUMBIA, MO.
TRIBUNE.
D. 17,875

[LC]

DEC 2 1979

KISSINGER

'White House Years' is
a book of statecraft to
put beside 'The Prince.'

By Sen. S.I. HAYAKAWA

Special to the Los Angeles Times

With more than 1,500 pages covering in detail event-
ful years, intricate international diplomacy and analysis
of the complex personalities involved, "White House
Years" is a great big banquet of a book, the richness of
which can only be hinted at in a review. Perhaps the
best way to give the reader a sense of the book is to
quote generously from it, as it deals with various facets
of Kissinger's observations.

First, he is both sympathetic and analytical toward
President Richard Nixon, who is shown as a curious
mixture of great abilities and deep insecurities:

"Despised by the Establishment, ambiguous in his human perceptions," Nixon "had yet held fast to a sense of national honor and responsibility, determined to prove that the strongest free country had no right to abdicate. What would have happened had the Establishment about which he was so ambivalent showed him some love?

"Making and enforcing decisions left so many scars on him and others...that...it perversely created the maximum incentive for strong-willed subordinates to evade his directives. Since Nixon disdained any effort to instill a team spirit and usually kept his designs to himself, his Cabinet was tempted to exaggerate its autonomy.... All this became a vicious circle in which the president withdrew ever more into his isolation...in turn heightening the resentments and defiant mood of his appointees."

And there is a touching account of Nixon as the ni-
cest of nice guys. John Freeman, who was the British
ambassador to Washington, publicly had described
Nixon "as a man of no principle," a remark that Nixon
naturally resented. Everything was done to keep him
and Freeman apart on social occasions, but they had to
be at a dinner together at 10 Downing St.:

"At the end of the dinner," Nixon "rose to make a toast. Looking squarely at Freeman, Nixon said, 'Some say there's a new Nixon. And they wonder if there's a new Freeman. I would like to think that that's all behind us. After all, he's the new diplomat, and I'm the new statesman, trying to do our best for peace in the world.'

"The impact was electric," Kissinger writes. Prime Minister Harold Wilson "called the toast the most gracious he had heard at 10 Downing St. He wrote Nixon a note on his menu. 'You can't guarantee being a lord. It is possible—you've shown it—to be a born gentleman.' The usually imperturbable Freeman was close to tears. Thus was born a mission that proved a spectacular success."

Kissinger is especially acute in assessing what
makes people what they are. Here is what he says
about his great friend and benefactor, Nelson Rocke-
feller, to whom the book is dedicated.

"Nelson Rockefeller, I am certain, would have made
a great president. He possessed in abundance the
qualities of courage and vision that are the touchi-
ance of leadership. But at the moments when his

KENOSHA, WIS.
NEWS
D. 31,473

[L]

NOV 30 1979

# 1. For hawks, doves, other birds

(WHITE HOUSE YEARS, by Henry Kissinger; Little, Brown, $22.50).

Reviewed by
SEN. GEORGE MCGOVERN

* I have always liked him as an individual and have admired his wit, his brilliance and his capacity for utilizing his remarkable talent to widen his influence. If he had worked within parameters set by a president with a sturdy moral sense of the world around us, he would have been not simply a brilliant foreign policy strategist, but a great one.

* I think his book is without question an important work that should be read by hawks and doves alike — as well as by other serious birds. For the past decade, Henry Kissinger has demonstrated a rare capacity to sell himself to the public and to the press, even when he was pursuing (in my view) outrageously mistaken policies. This book advances that art of self-promotion in a marvellously skillful style.

* For 10 years I have been appalled by Kissinger's views on the horrible tragedy his policies helped to perpetuate in Indochina. The elaborate rationalization of this incredible nightmare that Kissinger lays out in his memoirs only widens the gap between my personal affection for him and may dismay over his part in the still unfolding holocaust of Indochina.

His account of the Vietnam venture is a brilliant exposition of how he and his associates viewed and managed both the war and the domestic political reaction to the war as well as their coordination of massive military bombardment with their hopes for peaceful negotiations. In this sense, Kissinger's account is a vital part of the historical record. As an interpretation of the realities that we faced in Vietnam, however, the book is sometimes as much as an exercise in fantasy as was our Vietnam-Cambodia-Laos intervention itself.

Reading this massive volume, I was forcefully struck by an impression formed the first time I visited with Kissinger in the spring of 1969. I talked with him alone that day in his White House office — about Vietnam. In effect, I asked him: “Why don’t we face the fact that plunging into the Indochina jungle after the French

reaction at home — offended my sensibilities in 1969.

The Kissinger memoir explains in detail how the war was extended and widened even as negotiations were pursued until the final announcement a few days before the 1972 election that “peace is at hand.” Repeatedly we are told that the military operations were continued to protect the credibility of the White House in the eyes of the American public and in the eyes of the world. Kissinger may have been right that this combination of military bombardment with domestic political management and diplomatic maneuver was the course most likely to be embraced by the American majority. But it was also a course that profoundly alienated tens of millions of Americans, twisted our economy, demoralized our military services and drastically reduced her political and moral credibility around the globe.

Kissinger's account would have the reader believe that the continuing tragedy of Indochina could somehow have been prevented if the divisions over our Vietnam policy had not finally forced us to withdraw our forces and end our bombing. He does not yet recognize that a rather primitive, indigenous Southeast Asian struggle was converted into a raging sea of destruction by the introduction of American military technology. Our policies, by brutalizing Indochina contributed to the circumstances that have made a charnel house of Cambodia. The smashing of Southeast

Asian society by American automatic weapons, helicopters, gunships, flame throwers, defoliants and B-52s helped to create the hell that is now manifesting itself in millions of starved Cambodians, desperate refugees and an Indochina political structure seething with hatred and fear.

Kissinger recognizes none of this. Instead he concentrates on the admittedly tragic fact that in some weeks of the war we also lost scores of young Americans. While taking great pains to demonstrate that the Nixon administration inherited the war, he minimizes both the secret and the public bombing of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, which was acceberated and widened in the Nixon years.

One of the ironies of our time to which Kissinger pays scant heed is that Richard Nixon was twice elected president in large part because Vietnam tore the Democratic majority asunder. In 1968, Nixon scored a narrow victory over Hubert Humphrey, with George Wallace polling millions of third-party votes in the South and among disaffected voters across the nation. Many normally Democratic voters alienated by the war either did not vote at all or participated half-heartedly.

Four years later, with Wallace out of the running, Nixon joined the Wallace voters to his and scored a landslide victory over me. Whereas the antiwar Democrats vented their antipathy against Humphrey in 1968, the pro-war Democrats took their vengeance on me four years later. In each

instance Nixon was the ficiary.

Kissinger's unique political acumen, which he has managed the foreign policy of the United States and to orchestrate coverage of that political matter, is now a political skill. It was managing, cajoling and disciplining the secure, impetuous brooding Nixon. This firmed my already strong sense that Kissinger was a most important Nixon confidant. One has sensitivity and perception in understanding and strengths and weaknesses.

As for his world would, I believe, unlike the United States to influence and lead our power in oppositional forces that he is using the developing world to further his view, American survival only if we have an imperial role in the world.

Kissinger and Nixon mark for their open quest for detente with ion and their search for peace in the Middle East. It gives a valuable account of these considerations.

This first volume of a reward experience. It is different than a discipline and a seasoned statesman. Kissinger could have generally gripping memoir.

KENOSHA, WIS.
NEWS
D. 31,473

[L]

NOV 30 1979

2. A big banquet of a book..

(White House Years, by Henry Kissinger; Little, Brown, $22.50)

Reviewed by Sen. S.I. Hayakawa

"Despised by the Establishment, ambiguous in his human perceptions, (Nixon) had yet held fast to a sense of national honor and responsibility, determined to prove that the strongest free country had no right to abdicate. What would have happened had the Establishment about which he was so ambivalent showed him some love?"

"Making and enforcing decisions left so many scars on him and others...that...it perversely created the maximum incentive for strong-willed subordinates to evade his directives. Since Nixon disdained any effort to instill a team spirit and usually kept his designs to himself, his Cabinet was tempted to exaggerate its autonomy...All this became a vicious circle in which the president withdrew ever more into his isolation...in turn heightening the resentments and defiant mood of his appointees."

"At the end of the dinner, (Nixon) rose to make a toast. Looking squarely at Freeman, Nixon said, 'Some say there's a new Nixon. And they wonder if there's a new Freeman. I would like to think that that's all behind us. After all, he's the new diplomat and I'm the new statesman, trying to do our best for peace in the world.'

"The impact was electric. (Prime Minister Harold Wilson) called the toast the most gracious he had heard at 10 Downing Street. He wrote Nixon a note on his menu. 'You can't guarantee being a Lord. It is possible — you've shown it — to be a born gentleman.' The usually imperturbable Freeman was close to tears. Thus was born a mission that proved a spectacular success."

Kissinger is especially acute in assessing what makes people what they are. Here is what he says about his great friend and benefactor, Nelson Rockefeller, to whom the book is dedicated.

"Nelson Rockefeller, I am certain, would have made a great president. He possessed in abundance the qualities of courage and vision that are the touchstones of leadership. But at the moments when his goal might have been realized...he uncharacteristically hesitated...In a deep sense, Nelson Rockefeller suffered from the hereditary disability of very wealthy men in an egalitarian society. He wanted assurance that he had transcended what was inherently ambiguous: that his career was due to merit and not worth...if he is lucky he learns in time that it makes little difference...History will judge not the head start but the achievement.

"Nelson Rockefeller never fully resolved this dilemma. After his untimely death, it was said that he failed to win the presidency despite the fact that he was a Rockefeller. The opposite was more nearly true. He failed largely because he was a Rockefeller."

Why was Anatoly Dobrynin such an effective ambassador for the U.S.S.R.? Kissinger writes: «

"He was one of few Soviet diplomats of my acquaintance who could understand the psychology of others. He was suave not just by Soviet standards — which leave ample room for clumsiness — but by any criteria."

"He knew how to talk to Americans in a way brilliantly tuned to their perceptions. He, too, was especially skilled at evoking the inexhaustible American sense of guilt, by persistently but pleasantly hammering home the impression that every deadlock was our fault. Experience had taught him that in the Washington Establishment there was an inexhaustible reservoir of masochism eager to assume the blame for every impasse."

Kissinger describes a meeting with President Nguyen Van Thieu — one of many such encounters.

"Thieu never engaged in a conceptual discussion. Instead, he fought in the Vietnamese manner, designed to exhaust rather than to clarify, constantly needling but never addressing the real issue — methods by which through the centuries the Vietnamese have sought to break the spirit of foreigners before tackling them physically in one of their heroic charges. One cannot say it has not worked. Unfortunately it inspires little confidence; it is especially tough on allies. But then no Vietnamese, North or South, would believe that confidence or friendship is decisive. They have survived foreigners for centuries not by trusting them but by manipulating them."

To put on your bookshelf beside Machiavelli's "The Prince," it would be a good idea to excerpt from "The White House Years" those passages that deal with statecraft — a book to be entitled Kissinger's "The Diplomat." it could include perceptive passages such as these:

struggle. With the contrast, struggle compromise but by side...The superpo- lity two heavily each believing him peril from the other. to have per- side should know t the course, over time blind men in a room damage to each oth- er the room.

"Soviet policy is an inheritor of an and Russian nationalism the strange Russi- seeped outward from Muscovy, spreading across endless plat- tographical obstacle e a limit to human a from this insecure from a sense of infi- rulers — Communis responded by identi- only with distance nation. They have n they could build among other people's security for all its n

Perhaps the fol- written large, fram- wall of every depart- science in the cou- ntry.

"The philosopher's ing behind his statesman's test is no tion of his goals but he averts. Mankind what it was spared avoided or because that averted awful co dialogue between the statesman is t likely to be incon- philosophy, policy w dards; but without t peer into darkness faltering steps witho- manly would never l

D. 155,889

DEC 2 1979

SHAWCROSS

Little Drouce
New York

HENRY KISSINGER is in trouble. Though virtually untouched by an admiring press during his ascendancy, Kissinger was badly mauled in William Shawcross's "Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia." The nightmare of recrimination that Kissinger hoped to avoid after our defeat in Indochina had arrived. Shawcross indicted the former secretary of state for bombing the hell out of Cambodia without much regard for the consequences, thereby helping to usher in the atrocities of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge.

Kissinger, of course, excuses himself from the Cambodian debacle in his recently published memoirs, "White House Years," while appearing to side-step "Sideshow." Now, in a transatlantic phone interview Shawcross responded to Kissinger's disguised rebuttal.

# Clawing at Kissinger Over The Cambodian Tragedy

By Philip Nobile

bombing and the 1970 invasion, the country virtually disappears from "White House Years": Kissinger has completely passed over the 1970-72 period in which the White House built up the Lon Nol army, extended the bombing into the countryside, and helped trigger the disintegration of Cambodian society.

Q. In a letter to The Economist, Kissinger writes that it is "obscene" for you to argue that the limited bombing of the Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia and the eight-week invasion "explain or justify the Khmer Rouge massacres of two to three million Cambodians in 1975."

A. It almost makes me laugh that Kissinger would retort that I am soft on genocide.

I didn't argue that the secret bombing and the invasion alone caused the massacres. These were only two events in a five-year period of utterly negligent White House decision-making that helped create the conditions in which the Khmer Rouge came to power.

Q. Kissinger accuses you of rewriting history. Do you make the same accusation?

A. Yes. In his chapter on the 1970 invasion, Kissinger asserts that Hanoi was AT THAT TIME trying to capture

Even after the invasion, there was

no consensus in Washington as to Hanoi's real intention. The National Secret Council staff was unable to establish that North Vietnam indeed had been seeking hegemony over Cambodia.

It is certainly true that North Vietnamese forces moved westward deeper into Cambodia before the U.S. invasion in April 1970. But Kissinger glosses over the fact that the South Vietnamese had intensified their cross-border attacks on the North Vietnamese sanctuaries.

Q. If Cambodia was a "crime," as you insist in "Sideshow," then by your own logic Kissinger and Nixon are war criminals. Yet you shrink from this designation. Why?

A. I hate the word; it has such emotional overtones from the Nazi era. But there is a prima facie case that international law was breached in Cambodia — not only by Kissinger and Nixon, but also by the North Vietnamese, and, of course, the Khmer Rouge, whose actions were far more terrible than any committed by the United States.

However, I do think Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon should be held accountable for their part in the destruction of Cambodia.

Q. Prince Sihanouk told you that Nixon and Kissinger created the Khmer Rouge. But Kissinger quotes him as

KISSINGER

for Cambodia is also a sideshow?

A. The real nature of the Cambodian holocaust has not sunken in, and the West has not yet responded with proper urgency. The U.S. and Europe appear to be afraid of upsetting Peking, which sustains the Khmer Rouge, and the awful truth is that the Cambodians have never aroused adequate compassion. Though Carter called the Khmer Rouge the worst violators of human rights, the U.S. winds up supporting Pol Pot at the U.N.

How will we explain to our children that we let two million Cambodians die because we refused to recognize the North Vietnamese regime there?

The U.S. should be air-dropping food on Cambodia just as it air-dropped food on the Laotian hill people during the war. Maybe Hanoi would threaten to shoot down the planes, but at least they should be forced to go on the record as blocking such aid.

Q. Kissinger has denied revising his text in response to "Sideshow." He says he merely added some footnotes. Do you believe him?

It seems to me that he did

Q. How does it feel to be called an apologist for the Khmer Rouge by Henry Kissinger?

A. That's a ridiculous smear. I'm not hurt because the remark is so stupid. If

> 'There is a prima facie case that international law was breached in Cambodia—not only by Kissinger'

[L.C.]

ANCHORAGE, ALASKA
TIMES
D 44,001 SUN. 39,458

[L.C.]

NOV 17 1979

## Betty Beale In Washington

# Gilt-Edged Celebrities Pack Rockefellers' Capital Parties

By BETTY BEALE

There probably never has been another private dinner here like the David Rockefellers' for packing in the gilt-edged VIPs. The world's most prominent banker and head of Chase Manhatten chose Washington for the first time for meetings of the bank's far-flung International Advisory Committee whose chairman is Henry Kissinger.

Rockefeller and wife Peggy tossed two big glittering dinners in honor of all those top industrialists from around the globe.

The first was an informal affair for 100 at the National Portrait Gallery. The second, a black-tie banquet for 200 at palatial Anderson House where only governments or members of the Society of the Cincinnati can entertain. That's why Douglas Dillon, who's a member (meaning a descendant of one of GW's officers) was co-host.

Mingling with famed Washington figures were the two biggest tycoons in their respective countries — Johnny Agnelli (the macho sportsman Italian industrialist who owns Fiat) and his chic wife Marella, and Jeh Tata, the legendary "Mr. India" who owns Air India, Tata Steel, Tata Railroads, you-name-it.

Two more motor moguls present with their wives were Ford Motor Company president, attractive Philip Caldwell, and Volvo's chief executive officer, Pehr Gyllenhammar who winged in from Sweden. Other blue chips among the vips were Holland's Gerry Wagner, chairman of Royal Dutch Petroleum, Germany's Hans Merkle, head of Robert Bosch company, Ian Sinclair, chairman of Canadian Pacific Limited and Switzerland's Pierre Liotard-Vogt, head

## ROCKEFELLERS LAUGH WITH FRIEND

Henry Kissinger, left, laughs with his host, Mr. and Mrs. David Rockefeller, at a prominence-packed party they gave in Washington.

slew of senators and congressmen, etc.

At one point Clare Luce was suddenly face-to-face with CIA Director Stansfield Turner who abolished the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board on which Clare had served previous presidents. They greeted each other coolly.

The next time they found themselves standing together Luce said to him, quoting an early president, "No man ever left the White House with the reputation he brought into it.' A man is very fortunate to enter government without a great reputation, so to speak, because he has no place to go but up. Your reputation has been constantly rising." The much-criticized Turner looked pleased.

David Rockefeller, a shy-looking man with a sweet smile, may have enormous power but there was

noth-
title. You remember all his older
cousins — Nancy Mitford, Unity Mit-
ford, etc. A profusion of girls still
runs in the family. He said he has
six.

At the end of the meal the host asked Bob Strauss as "an outstanding member of the administration" to talk about the new trade act and the Middle East and Bob began by saying he was disappointed in the introduction. The last time David introduced him, he said, was as "a very well-to-do Texan and any time a Rockefeller can introduce you as rich, believe me it's good."

Strauss talked about the new trade act and the Middle East but somehow he managed to boost his candidate, Jimmy Carter, throughout his speech. Clare Luce told him afterwards, "That was the most non-political political speech I've ever heard." The Texan grinned.

comment. Sir Nicko may have been
surprised but he just smiled.

Former Assistant Secretary of State William D. Rogers (not former Secretary of State William P. Rogers) who helped Henry with his book, explained why "White House Years" is so much better written than the five books Henry wrote when he was a professor: "He's learned not to put the verb at the end of the sentence." How does Henry, who actually did his own writing, account for the difference? "I was writing for the world and I took a lot of trouble," he said.

— Joy Baker, wife of newest proclaimed GOP presidential candidate, Sen. Howard Baker, R-Tenn., is an old-fashioned political wife. She will not do any solo campaigning like Rosalynn Carter. "I would rather be a helmate," she says. "My way of being a good wife is to travel with him and keep his peace of mind when he gets up tight about something. If he wants to yell about something he can do it to me instead of the staff. Then he and the staff can go right on an even keel."

— John Coleman, Washington's new bachelor tycoon who owns two hotels in Chicago and bought and redid quite dreamily the Fairfax Hotel here a year ago, has just bought a hotel in the Big Apple. It's the 50-year-old Navarro on Central Park South around the corner from the Plaza. "I'm going to rebuild it like the Fairfax," says John who is also going to add 150 rooms to the Fairfax. He may be the discreet man's budding Hilton but he hasn't put his name on a single one of them — nor his portrait in the lobbies, thank heaven!

— Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association, is about

there's a fly in every ointment. For the sake of your scalp and hair you should avoid all fried foods, chocolate, salt, whole milk, cream, white bread, white sugar and processed foods, says the man who has treated the locks of the British royal family. Candy Bergen, Audrey Hepburn, Lord Olivier, Norman Mailer and Peter Sellers.

There's no telling what effect he will have on hair styles. According to Kingsley, one's crowning glory is a secondary sexual characteristic and the only sexual characteristic that can be openly flaunted in our society.

PEOPLE WEEKLY
NEW YORK, N.Y.
V. 2,000,000

DEC 17 1979

Clyde

NORMAN ROCKWELL
THE SELF-PORTrait COVERS ABBEVILLE PRESS/RANDOm HoUSE

One of 332 collected Norman Rockwell covers is *Champ*, from 1922.

Pages

□ NORMAN ROCKWELL—
332 MAGAZINE COVERS
by Christopher Finch

Before he died in 1978, Rockwell came to be the painter laureate of Middle America (though he was born in Manhattan). This book—which includes his 47 years of *Saturday Evening Post* covers plus some rare early ones for other magazines—proves that he was not without substance. While he drew a surfeit of annoyingly adorable and grinny kids, there were also a lot of wistful, puzzled, stern faces too. There's the *Post* cover of a Boston Red Sox rookie being coldly scrutinized by new teammates in the locker room. Another shows a jury room, with 11 men browbeating the only woman juror, and she lacks the cloyingly girlish look of many Rockwell women. *Triple Self-Portrait* shows Rockwell self-mockingly using portraits of his idols Rembrandt, Picasso, Van Gogh and Durer for models. Pop-culture historian Finch, who wrote the Judy Garland biography *Rainbow*, suggests in his notes that Rockwell is the art world's Charlie Chaplin or Irving Berlin. This well-reproduced book, a boon to Rockwell fans, tends to bear him out. (Abbeville Press/Random House, $75)

□ DARKNESS VISIBLE
by William Golding

"We're all mad, the whole damned race. We're
wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about
the penetrability of partitions, we're all mad and
in solitary confinement." That's how one of the
characters sums up life near the end of this
dense novel by the author of *Lord of the Flies*.
the allegory about boys who survive a plane
crash and create a vicious society on an island.
This book is...

FOREIGN AFFAIRS
NEW YORK, N.Y.
QUARTERLY

WINTER 1979

Gaddis Smith

WHITE HOUSE YEARS. By Henry Kissinger. Boston: Little, Brown; 1979, 1,521 pp. $22.50.

In every generation in this century, in the immediate aftermath of an epoch in American foreign policy, a commanding work by or about the President's most important adviser has appeared. In the 1920s we had *The Intimate Papers* of Colonel House, edited by Charles Seymour; in 1948 we had Robert Sherwood's

House Years—but not for a long time, not until historians have access to the full archival record and the time to digest it.

Kissinger's literary monument to himself is a work of description, exhortation and scorn. He gives the reader more detail about the events of 1969-1973 than has yet appeared and he draws extensively on his famous notes and recordings as well as on secret memoranda and cables. He exhorts us to see the world as he does and above all to affirm (this is the major theme) that "diplomatic skill could augment but never substitute for military strength. In the final reckoning weakness has invariably tempted aggression and impotence brings abdication of policy in its train." And nearly everywhere there is scorn—masquerading as condescending praise for Nixon, but explicit for colleagues like William Rogers, and for his critics. The work is worthy in every way of the achievements of the man.

CENTRAL ILLINOIS
GAZETTE
DALLAS CHRONICLE

[Lc]

DEC 3 1979

# Kissinger memoirs
a 'moving' experience

By Russell Baker

Naturally, I did not say so aloud. Salespeople are very testy these days. Several months before, I had said much the same thing to a cadaverous clerk who sold me a copy of David Halberstam's "The Powers That Be," and she, thinking I was being flirty instead of caustic about literature's expanding girth, retaliated by trying to strike me with William Styron's "Sophie's Choice."

In any case, seeing the weight that Kissinger had wrought, I did not flap my lip about what my lap could more happily support, or remark that the world would be a cheerier place if Kissinger put his prose on her diet and she partook a bit of whatever Kissinger was feeding his typewriter.

My determination to be discreet was reinforced by the content of the adjoining book table — to wit, an immense literary tonnage from Norman Mailer entitled "The Executioner's Song." If she pushed one of these the

WILMES BARRI. 1A
INDEPENDENT
SUN. 57,280

[LC]

DEC 2 1979

Karnow...

By
STANLEY
KARNOW

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Anyone interested in international affairs ought to read Henry Kissinger's voluminous memoirs. But nobody concerned with the subject can afford to miss the brilliant critique of the book by Kissinger's erstwhile friend and colleague, Harvard Prof. Stanley Hoffmann.

For Hoffmann's analysis, which appears in the current issue of the "New York Review of Books," underlines a basic flaw in Kissinger's global outlook that, in my estimation, negates the value of the book as a guide to the conduct of foreign policy.

One of Kissinger's central concepts during his years in Richard Nixon's White House and in the State Department was what he termed "linkage," which sought to fit events everywhere into an "overall strategic and geopolitical view."

This approach was consistent with Kissinger's conviction that, by mobilizing American power against the Soviet Union, he could bring coherence to a chaotic world.

But the weakness in that idea, as Hoffmann correctly observes, is that it discounts the local dimension in so many places--thereby making every crisis a test of U.S. ability to deal with the Russians.

IN CHILE, for instance, Kissinger preferred to ignore the complexities of the Allende coalition and its opposition, but considered the leftist trend there to be a projection of Soviet influence that challenged the United States. As a consequence, he approved covert American intervention against a constitutional government.

Similarly, Kissinger tilted toward Pakistan during its war with India on the grounds that siding with the Pakistanis was vital to the Nixon administration's opening to China, which in turn would give the United States leverage against the Soviet Union. Neglected in that move, however, was the horrendous slaughter in Bangladesh.

The U.S. invasion of Cambodia is justified by Kissinger as having been necessary to prevent the collapse of South Vietnam, on whose survival hung his initiatives toward Moscow and Peking. The destruction of Cambodia as part of that process appears in his perception to have been an unavoidable incident.

The commitment to the Shah of Iran, to cite another example, was another facet of Kissinger's grand design that failed to appreciate the deeper forces at work in that country. The present Iranian revolution, it seems, simply did not figure into his calculations.

IN THESE and other situations, consequently, Kissinger based his conduct on what Hoffmann refers to as "the notion of indivisible credibility," which means that the position of the United States is at stake universally and constantly. It is, in Hoffmann's words, a "recipe for political hubris, military overex-tension and moral callousness."

For one thing, Hoffmann notes, every apparent Soviet gain is not necessarily permanent. Therefore, the United States can squander resources in trying to react to setbacks that may turn out to be temporary.

An example was the Angolan civil war, which Kissinger regarded as a surrogate conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. Since their victory, however, the forces backed by the Russians have not only been cooling off toward Moscow and seeking to improve their relations with the United States, but they have been protecting the Gulf Oil installations in Angola.

The Kissinger thesis, Hoffmann further points out, also can limit American flexibility in attaining those

SAN PEDRO, CALIF.
NEWS-PILOT
D. 14,365

[LC]

NOV 30 1979

The
book
score

| | R | W-Q | V | Grade |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| **Title** | | | | |
| **The Green Ripper** | 91 | 86 | 84 | A- |
| **Eisenhower Declassified** | 86 | 83 | 84 | B® |
| **R-Readability** | | W-Q-Writing quality | V-Value | |

Maximum score: 100

By Tom Streissguth

Before we get started on the above, you might want to know why the big book of this month (and perhaps the year) has not been reviewed here — Kissinger's *White House Years* (Little, Brown, $22.50).

First, it would mean having to read all or most of the 1,500 pages. Buying it, too, since it hasn't come in via the (free) reviewer's copy route. Second, there are current reviews available which are more than adequate in helping you decide whether or not it is a "must".

Reviewer Walter Clemons has said what I probably would have said...that it is "an infuriating, absolutely necessary book. Dr. Henry Kissinger seems to me to have told something that fairly closely resembles the truth."

*White House Years*, according to industry insiders, will earn as much as $6 million for Kissinger. It will not be necessary, even, for Kissinger to appear on talk shows and in department stores to promote his work. This is due, for the most part, to the marketing genius of his agent, Marvin Josephson. (Incidentally, Kissinger interviewed potential agents...that is clout, son.)

Josephson accepted the Little, Brown bid of about $2 million; it was highest among about a dozen publishers. What they got was a package including hardcover, book-club and paperback rights. *Time, Inc.*, which owns Little, Brown, bought the North American serial rights. *Readers Digest* purchased the chapters on China. Foreign publishers magazines and newspapers added another couple million. Then there is a $2 million contract for Kissinger as a special consultant to NBC.

Perhaps this tired, soggy reviewer just can't get into "duty reading" at the moment. With $6 million coming in, Henry probably doesn't need much help from this sector. Just between us, I don't like Kissinger very much. His version of truth is, in too many instances, uniquely his own.

**The Green Ripper** by John D. MacDonald (Lippincott, $9.95).

Any Travis McGee fan (and there are millions of us) already will have this latest caper-venture in hand and will have gobblled it up. That's one of our problems...you

love is coolly and impersonally murdered. In his relentless search for the faces behind the blood-stained cult, McGee is captured, tested, and finally given a thin portion of their trust.

McGee's revenge is explosive, savage...and total. He is deeply affected by what he has done and what has been done to him. His long, scarred life never will be the same.

John D. MacDonald (never to be confused, please, with Ross McDonald) continues to maintain the high quality, almost seamless prose, of all his Travis outings. *The Green Ripper* never falters. MacDonald — and McGee — never disappoint.

**Eisenhower Declassified** by Virgil Pinkley (Revell, $12.95).

This book sort of plods along, but Pinkley — former war correspondent and newspaper publisher — obviously knows his subject well. Pinkley claims he was the first to suggest the possibility of becoming president to Ike...in 1942. This seems to be confirmed in Eisenhower's book, *Mandate for Change*.

Pinkley: "Time has its own casual way of distilling the relevant from the irrelevant. Its distillation tells me that perhaps no other man in recorded history was called upon to pit his mind, reputation and career against so many incredibly complex problems (with such high risk factors) and before so many eyes."

The reader does get a feeling of history being made and a sense of place. We discover Patton as a shrill-voiced egomaniac who kept telling Pinkley, "It's difficult for me to discuss strategy, because I am the greatest soldier who ever lived." Eisenhower's many victories had to include holding 'Georgie' in line (more or less) and keeping the general public unaware of Patton's basic emotional instability.

Did Ike really have an affair with his driver, Kay Summersby? Pinkley puts together a great deal of evidence to show, quite convincingly, that the "affair" was the result of Summersby's overactive imagination.

I also learned that Senator Ed Thye (B., Minn.) for whom I once served as press

NEW ORLEANS, LA.
D. 210,846 SUN 315,109

[LC]

NOV 27 1979

OTHER OPINIONS
Columns

Kissinger Regains Stage

By HENRY L. TREWHITT

WASHINGTON--By the time he left the State Department in 1977, Henry A. Kissinger had eaten his way into a new wardrobe.

Never visibly unnerved, he spent on food the tensions of eight years at the pinnacle of foreign policy. His attack on snacks during airborne press briefings was truly awesome.

He never left the limelight entirely; he merely stepped to its edge. With him went several of his former Secret Service agents, a private bodyguard many regard as more of a conceit than a necessity. But perhaps they contributed to the mystique that converted him into a one-man intellectual industry.

As a speechmaker he is reported to earn $1,000 a minute — perhaps an exaggeration, but a small one. His memoirs commanded $2 million in advance. For consulting at a Washington think tank, he received office space, help in composing his writings and a fee. NBC contributed to the golden flood in an arrangement both the network and Kissinger have come to regret.

Now he is back at center stage, slim again, carrying "White House Years," the book that is his return ticket to the unending Washington seminar on international affairs.

It is, quite simply, a tour de force. No doubt it is infuriating to many of his enemies and critics. But it is there for debate. It is brilliantly organized, and it withholds less, and is less self-serving, than most such undertakings.

His re-entry may be tentative for a while. Another book is in the making. But it is hard to imagine that Kissinger will not make his judgments felt in the developing presidential campaign. In that respect he may be a torment, wittingly or not, directly or indirectly, to the Carter administration.

For what Kissinger represents, above all, is a coherent view of a chaotic world. It is a view that commands maximum balance of contending forces. Until after World War II those forces were exercised by a small

States and the Soviet Union. Today they include all of the above, plus a large group of disparate nations in the so-called Third World, some of which may soon have nuclear weapons.

Kissinger never succeeded in creating his balance. Indeed, the realization that the mix is constantly changing is central to his theories. He does not hesitate to defend the threat or use of force when it is essential to the larger cause. His is a perspective dictated by history — a perception of morality that may or may not transcend emotional, or even humanitarian, considerations of the moment.

The degree of success or failure of his tenure doubtless will be debated for years. Before he left office Congress was frustrating him at every turn—rejecting his appeals for money to sustain South Vietnam in its hour of collapse and to challenge Cubans in Angola. Still, he insists that the Vietnam peace accords might have endured, had Watergate not brought down Richard Nixon, that "tortured man... who thrived on crisis, but also craved disasters."

In any event, his judgment of what is needed is as crisp as ever, reappearing in "White House Years" in a public climate more favorable than in 1976. The argument for a calculated balance of power is not new — indeed is as old as history. But it is especially pointed at a time when the Carter administration is criticized most of all in foreign policy for lacking a clear picture of its goals and how it plans to reach them.

There are enough parallels between the foreign policy apparatuses of the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations to be striking. How they evolved is another matter.

Kissinger arrived as the established academic theoretician from Harvard, becoming, first, national security adviser to Nixon. William P. Rogers, a lawyer friend of the president, took over the State department.

In the Carter administration, Kissinger's old job is occupied by Zbigniew Brezezinski, another established academic, from Columbia. Carter's

With time, of course, Kissinger came to dominate the system, eventually humiliating Rogers and succeeding him in the State Department. Treating foreign policy as a series of isolated problems, Rogers never developed the long reach that would enable him to compete with Kissinger.

Similar rivalries exist between Vance and Brzezinski. But Vance, who also tends to treat foreign policy issues in lawyerly isolation, has guarded his turf more carefully than Rogers did. And Brzezinski, a theoretician who never mustered influence comparable to Kissinger's, has not emerged in sharp focus.

One reason for the distinctions may be the differences between the two presidents. Nixon came to office with a prime interest in foreign policy and views in harmony with Kissinger's. Carter arrived with little experience and contempt for traditional policies, but with a will sufficient to control compliant subordinates.

With Kissinger's re-emergence, the stage is set for a fundamental comparison of approaches to policy. The vehicle almost certainly will be the presidential campaign, for Kissinger inevitably will appear as an adviser to one or more Republican aspirants and possibly, depending on the identity of the victor, to the party nominee.

His is a policy of anticipation and of attempts to control events as they develop. The Carter administration's is a record of reaction.

That is not necessarily a criticism, though the Republicans surely will make it one. Kissinger's anticipatory powers may have been in full bloom near the end of his tenure. His ability to control events was slipping badly, mainly because of congressional world weariness.

He bequeathed Carter a foreign policy in which the American position had eroded severely. The Soviet Union, counting on the paralysis caused by Vietnam and Watergate, was groping for advantage. In his final months in office, Kissinger had maneuvered assiduously to soften the impact.

To some of the beneficiaries the Carter

LOS ANGELES EVENING & SUNDAY
HERALD EXAMINER
LOS ANGELES Cty.
1, 398-121 SUE. 377-057

DEC 2 1979

[Lc]

Russell Baker

Today's books (and women) tell volumes about

Fortunately, the weight of Styron's opus was too much for her to lift above the hip bones, and she had to settle for dropping it on my foot, where it fractured an instep. Naturally, to show I was a good fellow, I had to buy Styron's book along with

Halberstam's and then rent a mule to get the entire load home.

In any case, seeing the weight that Kissinger had wrought, I did not flap my lip about what my lap could more happily support, or remark that the world would be a cheerier place if Kissinger put his prose on her diet and she partook a bit of whatever Kissinger was feeding his type-writer.

My determination to be discreet was reinforced by the content of the adjoining book table — to wit, an immense literary tonnage from Norman Mailer entitled "The Executioner's Song." If she pushed one of those babies onto my foot, it would be goodbye to my dreams of someday toting the pigskin for Yale.

Vanity got the better of me here. Her tone indicated that she had studied my double chin and concluded she was dealing with a man whose lap was incapable of supporting her undernourished frame for an interesting length of time.

The family was not delighted to hear that the Kissinger book was being moved into the apartment, since it meant the sofa would have to go. There was much wailing. "Why couldn't Kissinger write a book-size book like writers used to write?" asked grandmother, who liked the sofa. She was really out of it. Walking through the living room one night in the dark she had bumped into "The Power Broker," Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses, and suffered severe head injuries from which she had never recovered.

HOLLYWOOD, CALIF.
D. 11,000

[L]

NOV 30 1979

THE BOOK PAGE

"Henry Kissinger is just that — a foreigner who has more faith in this country than do most natives, a pillar of strength in a swamp of weakness."

White House
Years

By Henry Kissinger; Little Brown &
Co.; $22.50.

By BOB COLACELLO

Henry Kissinger's "White House Years" is heavy reading: 1,521 pages, eight pounds, $22.50 worth of history as seen from the heights, written in a style that can only be called "statesmanlike." Nonetheless, I couldn't put it down.

For four weekends I read on and on and on, sucked in by the densely embroidered details, riveted by the carefully chosen revelations, driven by the skillfully constructed narrative, amused by the sarcasm just beneath the formalistic pomposity only fitting for the important position of the author. And the characterizations: for the first time *ever* Richard Nixon comes alive. Mao, Chou, Brezhnev, Sadat, the Shah, Rockefeller, Agnew, Connally, Haig and Haldeman emerge as human, as well as political, creatures. But, as in all great literature, the finest drawn character is the author, brilliant, egotistical, manipulative, ambitious and — thank God! — self-deprecating; Kissinger as portrayed by Kissinger is a role only the good Doctor himself could play. Yes, dear Hollywood Reporter reader, there is a movie here.

Like a born screenwriter, Kissinger knows a good scene when he sees it. Take the night Syria invaded Jordan, and Israel threatened to counterattack. Where was Kissinger? Shuttling back and forth between the Situation Room and "an obscure alloy in the basement of the Executive Office Building . . . Nixon had decided to go bowling." Imagine this in Technicolor: the National Security Adviser hurriedly relating the contents of a hotline call from King Hussein to the President, who was "holding a bowling ball in one hand."

But, make no mistake about it, Kissinger has not written this opus to make fun of the easiest target of our time. Richard Nixon. Writing of the

"On a State visit to Ottawa in 1972, an advance man decided that the tan furniture in Pierre Trudeau's office would not flatter Nixon on television and took it upon himself to redecorate the Prime Minister's private office in blue-covered sofas."

— From "White House Years"

of the international reality and his fata-
talistic instinct that nothing he
touched would ever be crowned with
ultimate success."

In fact, Kissinger's best writing is about Nixon, the strange, solitary, imperial President who "sipped, one after another, cups of coffee that were brought in without him asking for them," all the time surrounded by "clean-cut, young men" that "Halde- man had proudly picked from advertising agencies and junior executive positions."

The following paragraph is out-
standing Kissinger-on-Nixon: "The
meeting of any new person filled
Nixon with an undefined dread . . .
He therefore insisted on briefing pa-
pers that set out the possible course of
conversation in meticulous detail. But
since Nixon did not want to admit
that he needed guidance, he would im-
pose upon himself the extraordinary
discipline of committing these mem-
oranda to memory. And to show how
well he had done, as well as to play
the little games, which so delighted

More Kissinger-on-Nixon: "Rich-
ard Nixon has to this day not over-
come his own social inhibitions . . .
Giving vent to his dislike for Tru-
deau, Nixon remarked that future
contracts with the Chinese could take
place anywhere but Canada."

Most importantly, Kissinger goes
out of his way *not* to disassociate him-
self from the President he served.
Even when he originally disagreed
with Nixon, *he now agrees*, as with
the Christmas 1972 bombing of
Hanoi. "Nixon and Haig were, I be-
lieve, essentially right," Kissinger
writes, even though history may have
let him off the hook. But then the au-
thor's Foreword rises to this climax of
honorableness: "I alone am responsi-
ble for the contents of this book, as
indeed I am for my actions as de-
scribed herein."

Self-serving? Show me an auto-
biography that isn't. On Cambodia,
the 1969 bombing of which has irra-
tionally earned Kissinger (and Nixon)
the epithets "murderer" and "crim-
inal." Kissinger's defense is quite

merely dramatic book — there is
very important message here, which
will come to, but first allow me on
more choice anecdote. This one, h-
larious yet chilling, is about LB.
Shortly before assuming office, Ki-
singer visited the soon-to-be-former
President. "I have one piece of a
vice to give you, Professor," John-
sen told him. Kissinger informs us: '
leaned forward to profit from the dis-
tilled wisdom of decades of pub-
lishing, — and then moves in for the
kill — " 'Read the columnists,' John-
son added, 'if they call a member of
your staff thoughtful, dedicated ( any
other friendly adjective, fire his
immediately. He is your leaker.' "

What is the basic Kissinger me-
sage? I think he states it her-
"Whereas in the 1920s we had wit-
drawn from the world because
thought we were too good for it,
the insidious theme of the late 1960s
that we should withdraw from the
world because we were too evil for
Not surprisingly, American sel-
doubt proved contagious; it is ha-
for foreign nations to have more fa-
in a country than it has in itself."

Yet, Henry Kissinger is some-
just that — a foreigner who has mo-
faith in this country than do most n-
tives, a pillar of strength in a swa-
world. It is hard to imagine U.S.
government that included Ki-
singer at the mercy of Palestinian
torists to secure the release of Am-
ican diplomats from the clutches
Iranian religious fanatics, which
where we stand (or kneel) at this wr-
ing.

But that's political speculation
Sticking to the purely literary, w-
"White House Years" Henry Kiss-
ger has achieved the impossible: 1.5
pages, eight pounds, $22.50 and f
weekends without a visit to Studio
later, he's got me waiting for the
quel.

Bob Colacello is executive editor
Interview magazine and coauthor
"Andy Warhol's Exposures."
graduated from Georgetown Univer-
sity School of Foreign Service
1969.

BOOK PAGE

The Book Page, a weekly series
of celebrity book reviews assigned
and edited by George Christy, ap-
pears each Friday in The Holly-
wood Reporter.

Timely new publications of ir

just now to the literature com-

WINTER GARDEN, FLA.

TIMES
W. 4,229

NOV 2 2 1979

BOOK BROWSING

with Winston K. Pendleton

25 Little Brown

The book that everyone is talking about (including the Doonesbury cartoon strip) has been made the Book-of-the-Month selection for November: WHITE HOUSE YEARS, by Henry Kissinger. In this huge 1,552 page book, Kissinger covers his first four years as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and President Nixon's closest adviser on foreign policy. No book has ever received so much advance publicity; and no book has ever been written by a history professor, who helped make the history he is writing about, so soon after the events. It will take its place as one of the great publishing events of our time. A "must book" for all serious minded readers. (Little Brown, $22.50).

Ho, ho, ho-let's laugh some more with Erma Bombeck. In AUNT ERMA'S COPE BOOK, she tells the moving story of how she survived the pursuit of happiness-until the self-help books arrived. She set out to become self-assertive and tried them all-Sensual Needlepoint, Inner Jogging, Raising Consciousness at Home for Fun and Profit, and overcoming her bad body English. If you are trying to cope, and you can't seem to get from Monday to Friday in less than 12 days, Bombeck's new book was written just for you. Read it and weep-with laughter. (McGraw-Hill, $8.95).

IN PAPERBACK: A legendary star's backstage bestseller: CHARLTON HESTON, THE ACTOR'S LIFE, illustrated, 634 pages. (Pocket Books, $2.95).

Eleanor Hibbert's new book is here! Excuse me, I meant to say Jean Plaidy. (Hibbert is her real name but she writes under the names of Plaidy, and Victoria Holt and Philippa Carr). Anyway, Jean Plaidy's third and final book about the Norman kings will please her

King," and "The Lion of Justice." Excellent as usual. (Putnam, $10.00).

"For five billion years," says Basil Booth and Frank Fitch, volcano and earthquake experts, "catastrophic earthquakes have shaped and reshaped the face of our planet." In their book, EARTH-SHOCK, they review what has happened in the past and predict what lies ahead. Because they are scientists, I suppose, the book might be too technical for most readers-but, their recommendations for easing the effects of future catastrophes should be studied (Walker & Company, $14.95).

From the time when the first cowboy movie, "The Great Train Robbery," flashed across the screen in 1903, the Western has probably entertained more people than any other kind of film to come out of Hollywood. Now Bill Meyer, well known film historian, examines 30 of the best cowboy movies in screen history. THE MAKING OF THE GREAT WESTERNS, takes us behind the cameras and shows how the directors worked with the producers, writers and actors. 462 pages, well illustrated. (Arlington House, $20.00).

FOR YOUNGSTERS: Robert Newton Peck tells a funny and heartwarming story about the kids who thought they were going to have the prettiest teacher in school, Miss Kellogg. Instead, when school opened, they found their new teacher was a man. MR. LITTLE, the title of the book. When the kids tried to make life miserable for him, they discovered that he wasn't so little after all. Delightful. (Doubleday, $6.95).

For a book full of laughs, read Pendleton's great joke collection, 2121 FUNNY STORIES AND HOW TO TELL THEM. paperback, $5.95. Buy it from your local

historical fiction fans. Her from Win Pendleton, 2121, latest is titled: THE PASSIO Windermere, Fl. 32786. Add

[LC]

LONGVIEW, TEXAS
JOURNAL
D. SUN. 17.30

NOV 23 1979

# A starry guide

For the true book-lover, there's nothing nicer than seeing a pile of gaily wrapped books waiting under the Christmas tree. That is, providing they are the "right" books.

The fact is people who do a lot of reading have specific tastes and interests, which sometimes cause problems to those of us who shop for the perfect gift for our book-worm friends and lovers.

According to Tom Paynter, Senior Book Buyer for Waldenbooks, (the nation's largest bookstore chain), a man who has probably single-handedly bought more books than anybody else in the book business, many books chosen for Christmas giving fail to hit the mark.

"When buying books as gifts," says Paynter, "many people pick a book that they themselves want to read, without really considering the other person's tastes and personality. Or they'll avoid the issue entirely and give a book that is expensive, decorative, and destined to end up as a coffee table ornament, rather than being read and enjoyed.

Of course, you'll be very selective when choosing books for those you love. But to give yourself an extra edge, why not let the stars be your guide to choosing the very books ordained by the heavens!

## ARIES, the Ram. March 21-April 20

Aries is a natural leader. In fact, he's miserable if he can't be boss. In his climb to the top, Aries is seldom humble or tactful. He knows what he wants, and he won't stop until he gets it. Understand, Aries isn't out to hurt others as he rams his way toward his goal; he innocently believes he is always in the right. And if he makes a mistake, he'll do just about anything to hide it.

Ariens looking for a taste of power will enjoy *The White House Years* by Henry Kissinger, (Little, Brown $22.50). The book is an inside look at the Nixon administration and there's a wealth of backstairs White House maneuvering truly pragmatic Ariens will enjoy vicariously.

## TAURUS, the Bull. April 21-May 21

Taurus is tranquil, the proverbial "man of few words." Peace and quiet are what Taureans seek; they enjoy the comforts of home and the sensual pleasures of soft music and restful colors. Don't assume that Taurus is a push-over, however; if he is goaded too far, Taurus will charge into a rage.

Indulge your favorite Taurean with *The Apartment Book* (Crown, $27.50). Written by the editors of *Apartment Life* magazine, this book contains everything a domestically-inclined Taurus needs to know to turn "4 rms, riv vu" into "home sweet home."

## GEMINI, The Twins. May 22-June 21

Gemini is charming and fast-talking. Trouble is, he may say one thing and mean another. There are two sides to Gemini's personality, a trait that leaves most of

In *Mary's*
ham
vice,
surpris

LIBR

 LIBRARIAN. A mightily Unfortunate and laziest, he's the kind of person who, letting

Let's see, he'd be the kind of person who'd be eating someاما! Bakable

SCO

 SCOOPING. She's a great asset to any organization, whatever its nature.

AND IF
the
SA

SACR

SACRED. It's a great way to start a morning.

SACRED
ART.
OF
THE
HOLY
S

C

C
ONFIDENCE
AND
TRUST

[L]

[LC]

422 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

NORWAY, OIL, AND FOREIGN POLICY. By John C. Ausland. Boulder (Colo.): Westview Press, 1979, 140 pp. $15.00.

Norway's oil provokes some interesting questions: relations with OPEC and IEA, the rate of development, the use of the resources to promote industrial development, and relations with the Soviet Union in the Barents Sea. This brief book by a former American diplomat who has long lived in Norway considers all these in an enlightening way. Not the last word, but an excellent survey.

LAW AND POLICY IN PETROLEUM DEVELOPMENT. By Kamal Hossain. New York: Nichols, 1979, 284 pp. $32.50.

To find and produce oil, developing countries usually need the help of foreign companies. To suggest what legal and organizational arrangements will both encourage exploration and give the government the largest possible return is the purpose of this study by a former Cabinet Minister of Bangladesh who is now at Oxford. His work, supported by the Commonwealth Secretariat, draws on the experience of ten quite diverse countries.

IMMIGRANT LABOR AND RACIAL CONFLICT IN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES: THE FRENCH AND BRITISH EXPERIENCE, 1945-1975. By Gary P. Freeman. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979, 362 pp. $20.00

Neither Britain nor France is typical of other countries in its relations to immigrant labor. Nevertheless, this well-documented study of the two countries' contrasting political reactions, economic policies and administrative methods adds a good bit to our understanding of what may well be a continuing and troublesome issue for rich industrial countries.

OBSTACLES TO MINERAL DEVELOPMENT: A PRAGMATIC VIEW. By John S. Carman. Elmsford (N.Y.): Pergamon Press, 1979, 200 pp. $17.50.

These papers by a Canadian mining engineer with some 20 years of U.N. experience deal bluntly and vividly with, among other things, the fallacies of *The Limits to Growth*, the deficiencies of foreign aid, the damaging changes in Canadian taxation, inappropriate technology, small mining and the prevention of ghost towns. Among many interesting statements, the most important is the drubbing he gives mining companies and host governments for attitudes and behavior which imperil future production.

CRITICAL FOOD ISSUES OF THE EIGHTIES. Edited by Marilyn Chou and David P. Harmon, Jr. Elmsford (N.Y.): Pergamon Press, 1979, 420 pp. $32.50.

Some general, some detailed, these very miscellaneous essays coming out of a Hudson Institute program deal with nutrition, technology, chemicals in food, farm policy, lifestyles, regulation and even energy.

The United States

Gaddis Smith

In every generation in this century, in the immediate aftermath of an epoch in American foreign policy, a commanding work by or about the President's most important adviser has appeared. In the 1920s we had *The Intimate Papers of Colonel House*, edited by Charles Seymour; in 1948 we had Robert Sherwood's

[LC]

BOOKS

# Writing—or
Rewriting—History

by Tad Szulc

## White House Years

by Henry Kissinger

Little, Brown, 1521 pp., $22.50

KISSINGER'S magnum opus on his role in the conduct of American foreign policy as Richard Nixon's White House adviser from 1969 to 1973 is a formidable manual of negotiating techniques and tactics, as well as an arresting gallery of portraits of the great world leaders with whom he dealt. It is not, however, a view of what Americans were led to believe was a grand Nixon-Kissinger strategy—and the reader is left with the impression that perhaps none really existed, and therefore the succeeding administrations had to start largely from scratch. A decade after Kissinger assumed office, the same fundamental issues and problems remain with us, historically unresolved.

Thus Soviet-American antagonisms are even more acute today in the context of SALT II and other confrontational situations than they were when Nixon and Kissinger launched détente with Moscow at the signing of SALT I. The United States extricated itself from the Indochinese war, but what we witness there now is endless tragedy and the ultimate triumph of the Moscow-supported Hanoi regime. In the Middle East, a measure of progress toward peace has been won by the United States, yet the fundamental deadlock cannot be broken. The relationship between Washington and its NATO allies is bogging down in misunderstandings. The oil crisis is worse than ever. The dialogue with the Third World is virtually nonexistent; the November occupation of the American Embassy in Teheran and the Soviet-Cuban challenges in Africa and the Caribbean offer dramatic examples of the American impotence to affect events. And, at home, the Congress goes on dictating foreign policy to the executive branch as it did in Kissinger's time.

That the essential problems are still on the front burner is, of course, a reflection of the fact that the world is increasingly intractable in terms of its

Kissinger's intent was History with a capital H, but the result is an apologia.

ANCHORAGE, ALASKA
TIMES
D. 44,961 SUN. 39,458

[LC]

NOV 3 1979

Betty Beale In Washington

Capital Crowd Chooses Kissinger's Book P

By BETTY BEALE

Henry Kissinger picked an historic dwelling as close as possible to the White House for the launching of his little 1,521-page tome, "White House Years." It was held at Decatur House on Lafayette Square.

Nancy Kissinger picked her most dramatic outfit — a voluminous Bill Blass mauve, wrap-around blouse of real leather with huge sleeves and a flounce above a super-slim black velvet skirt. She looked marvelous.

And everybody picked that reception over five others to go to. Some were right out of the pages of Henry's history of the first four Nixon years — Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, former Director of the CIA Dick Helms, Gen. "Westy" Westmoreland, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, Carter assistant Hedley Donovan, Gen. Vernon Walters, Elliot Richardson, Clare Luce, Joe Sisco, Joe Alsop, Chalmers Roberts, and the wife of one who appears frequently in the book, Evangeline Bruce, widow of David.

Publishers Little, Brown put on quite a spread for the man who's making millions out of an inside history, superbly written with amazingly objective and perceptive personality sketches.

Asked what he thought of the reviews of his book, Henry replied with the characteristic twinkle, "Nobody can appreciate me adequately. Some are approaching it. They could use a few more superlatives."

Just back from a European tour to promote the book by giving one press conference in each town, Kissinger told NBC commentator Richard Valeriani that he went to a dinner in Dusseldorf, Germany, "And they came with 100 books to give out, one to every person at the dinner. I thought it was my book, but when they asked me to autograph them it wasn't my book at all. It was your book, 'Reisen mit Henry.'" Valeri's book, "Travels With Henry,"

that came out months ago and is now translated into German, is about the Kissinger wit.

Henry autographed all the books anyhow, he told Dick, and they gave them away. Dick was delirious with joy. "He's been selling my book in Germany. It's wonderful!" he claimed.

Former Secretary of Transportation Bill Coleman told French Ambassador Francois de Laboulaye, "I have only one complaint about the Concorde. I could read only 50 pages of Henry's book between New York and Paris." Francois beamed.

Clare Luce was asked that day what she thought of the just-published letters of Eleanor Roosevelt to Lorena Hickok.

"I always felt very sorry for her," replied Clare, "because I thought she was a warm, generous woman — though I didn't agree with any of her politics, she was always very plesant to me — and everyone knew her married life was utterly miserable. She didn't have a married life and it was, of course, extraordinary to learn that she had had a very rich, full, apparently profoundly satisfying personal life. It all goes to show that we never know what the truth is about any of the great figures until 15, 20, 30 years later when they are dead and gone."

The mystery is — why didn't Hickok, who was the recipient of Eleanor's deep love, burn the letters, rather than preserve them to tarnish

Eleanor's reputation? Was she willing to assure herself a place in history?

Looking down the long, ex-candle-lit table at the man she was the other end, Secretary of Cyrus Vance said, "I thank you for the bottom of my heart for have done."

The man was German Ambassador Berndt von Staden who, I thought, was a lovely-looking wife, Wendy good-bye to Washington this week to return to Germany where she will sit at the right hand of Carol Helmut Schmidt.

The scene was a half French embassy where the tendance of Cy and Gay Vances great compliment to both Ambas-de-Laboulaye and his guest. With 138 embassies in 100 countries, the Vances can't attempt to cover that circuit. In his toast said von Staden had represented country with strength, wisdom and understanding of the problems others.

"Berndt," he said, "I can't say that we are strong, we're main strong ... We are doing our best to the Atlantic Alliance. You count on us to stand shoulder with you."

In his toast von Staden deeply believed that trust is the precious treasure in international relations and it is hardly possible to imagine a man to whom it is inspire more trust than you dear Cy."

Of such profundities are we all too often made, washed down to common course, with the finest of champagne.

Egyptian Ambassador Ghorbal was there and said Connally's Mideast plan, many valid points." He also told Frank Sinatra's concert Sphinx and Helen Boehm long tour of Egypt for 120 Ambas raised between them three of a million dollars for Jehan Faith and Hope Medical Publisher Raymond Masser's wife went on the Boehm tour for $75,000 outright for the center.

Antoinette de Laboulaye, sporting a new bright red evening gown that hung loose

HE LIKES THE TITLE

George Bush, former CIA head and presidential hopeful, smiles with his wife Barbara after being introduced as "the perfect candidate" at a Washington Press Club luncheon.

WAGO, TEXAS
TRIBUNE-HERALD
DAILY
MORNING 31,500

OCT 30 1979

# Let's Hear It From Henry

WASHINGTON — Henry Kissinger has written a four-pound book (1,521 pages) at a little over $5 a pound, which is in keeping with the inflationary trend of these days, but the view here is that it is the most remarkable insider's political memoir of our time.

That is really a rather modest compliment, for most books written by or for our highest officials usually make more money than sense, and are almost as deficient in historical perspective as they are in literary distinction.

Kissinger's "White House Years" is unusual in several respects. He wrote it himself — an original idea in this town. It is written in clear and muscular English prose — maybe because, as a German, he began, when he was an immigrant boy, with respect for the English language, and mastered its grammar, poetry, and even its subtle wit,

ALSO, KISSINGER almost avoided, but not quite, the temptation of most high officials and their ghosts to try to prove that they never made a mistake, or if they did, it was somebody else's fault. His explanation of the bombing of Cambodia, which contributed to the unbearable tragedy of that silent and amiable people and their children, has not convinced even his most devoted friends.

But that is only one part of Kissinger's report on his White House years. He has been almost recklessly frank in reporting, with the utmost precision, the problems placed before our country during the time when he was in the White House: the tangles and dilemmas and even the mistakes.

His story of the anatomy of this book is interesting. When Kissinger left the State Department after the election of President Carter, he went to Acapulco with a footlocker full of books. "You have to remember." he told me, "that I hadn't

James
Reston

read an unclassified serious book for eight years."

IN THE FOOTLOCKER, he had most of the presidential memoirs, beginning with General Grant's, which he still regards as the best. Also the memoirs of Churchill, de Gaulle, Adenauer — which he read in German — former secretary of state Acheson, and the books of the British prime ministers Eden and Macmillan.

"You understand," he said, "I'm not comparing myself to these people. I was merely looking for models. Macmillan impressed me very much, but the one who probably influenced me the most was de Gaulle... He was a good model because he defines and because he had a conceptual framework, a larger purpose and a gift of explaining how the particular problem of the day related to his philosophy and his goals."

In 1977 Kissinger spent about six weeks in Acapulco with his footlocker full of books. He lived in Puerto Marques, in a house owned by former president Aleman of Mexico. He agrees that this was not an unbearable hardship.

He had a staff of four researchers. They collected all the documents by subject and by year of his White House years, and these he read, "about 12-15 hours a day" from March until December of 1977. He then prepared a bibliography of the important documents, and by July began writing little essays on people — and these vignettes remain among the

real gems of his book. In December of 1977, after a bit of a struggle to get the whole book in focus, he began writing chapters.

"I wrote about a chapter a week," he says, and rewrote them four or five times. I would do one chapter in longhand, then Peter Rodman, who was my chief researcher, would check it for accuracy and another researcher, who was an expert on that particular subject, would double-check it."

THEN KISSINGER would send a finished chapter to two of his former State Department aides, Winston Lord and Bill Rogers, the former Latin American expert at State, and he would rewrite the chapter again, and submit this version to outside objective scholars.

In this sense, it is a remarkable achievement of reducing unbelievable diversity to some kind of identity that can be understood by a careful reader. Or even by a casual reader, for Kissinger has a gift of mockery, of laughing at the pretensions of Big Shots, including himself.

He has now finished six chapters of his second volume but is having a tussle with it. "You see, Volume One was sort of a linear thing in which we had a concept," he explains. "Volume Two deals really with catastrophe, the disintegration of executive authority... There really is a sharp break at Watergate.

The popular complaint these days is that nobody really knows what's going on in Washington, or how officials here reach decisions about the things that affect people's lives. Well, Kissinger has given about the best description of the process possible. If you can hold all 1,500 pages of it, it may break your back, and if you read it carefully, it may break your heart, but it is still worth risking both.

• 1979 New York Times News Service

[LC]

BRYAN, TEXAS
EAGLE
D. 16,250

NOV 3 1979

# Kissinger's 4-pound book a great insider's memoir

Kissinger's "White House Years" is unusual in several respects. He wrote it himself — an original idea in this town. It is written in clear and muscular English prose — maybe because, as a German, he began, when he was an immigrant boy, with respect for the English language, and mastered its grammar, poetry, and even its subtle wit.

Also, Kissinger almost avoided, but not quite, the temptation of most high officials and their ghosts to try to prove that they never made a mistake, or if they did, it was somebody else's fault. His explanation of the bombing of Cambodia, which contributed to the unbearable tragedy of that silent and amiable people and their children, has not convinced even his most devoted friends.

But that is only one part of Kissinger's report on his White House years. He has been almost recklessly frank in reporting, with the utmost precision, the problems placed before our country during the time when he was in the White House; the tangles and dilemmas and even the mistakes.

His story of the anatomy of this book is interesting. When Kissinger left the State Department after the election of President Carter, he went to Acapulco with a footlocker full of books. "You have to remember," he told me, "that I hadn't read an unclassified serious book for eight years."

In the footlocker, he had most of the presidential memoirs, beginning with General Grant's, which he still regards as the best. Also the memoirs of Churchill, de Gaulle, Adenauer — which he read in German — former secretary of state Acheson, and the books of the British prime ministers Eden and Macmillan.

James Reston

models. Macmillan impressed me very much, but the one who probably influenced me the most was de Gaulle. He was a good model because he defines and because he had a conceptual framework, a larger purpose and a gift of explaining how the particular problem of the day related to his philosophy and his goals."

He had a staff of four researchers. They collected all the documents by subject and by year of his White House years, and these he read, "about 12-15 hours a day" from March until December of 1977. He then prepared a bibliography of the improtant documents, and by July began writing little essays on people — and these vignettes remain among the real gems of his book. In December of 1977, after a bit of a struggle to get the whole book in focus, he began writing chapters.

Then Kissinger would send a finished chapter to two of his former State Department aides, Winston Lord and Bill Rogers, the former Latin American expert at State, and he would rewrite the chapter again, and submit this version to outside objective scholars.

The only point here is that, whatever anybody thinks about the decisions made in Kissinger's White House years, this is probably the most serious attempt ever made to explain the decision-making process, good or bad, and to illuminate the interplay of politics, personalities, the press, and even of accident on what is finally decided.

New York Times News Service

[LC]

LONG BEACH, CALIF.
INDEPENDENT
D. 03,008

OCT 30 1979

Kissinger's new book is a back and heart

25 Little Brown

WASHINGTON — Henry Kissinger has written a four- round book (1,521 pages) at a lit- tle over $5 a pound, which is in keeping with the inflationary trend of these days, but the view here is that it is the most remark- able insider's political memoir of our time.

That is really a rather modest compliment, for most books writ- ten by or for our highest officials usually make more money than sense, and are almost as deficient in historical perspective as they are in literary distinction.

Kissinger's White House Years is unusual in several re- spects. He wrote it himself — an original idea in this town. It is written in clear and muscular English prose — maybe because, as a German, he began, when he was an immigrant boy, with re- spect for the English language, and mastered its grammar, poetry, and even its subtle wit.

Also; Kissinger almost avoided, but not quite, the temp- tation of most high officials and their ghosts to try to prove that they never made a mistake, or if

they did, it was somebody else's fault. His explanation of the bombing of Cambodia, which con- tributed to the unbearable tragedy of that silent and amiable people and their children, has not convinced even his most devoted friends.

But that is only one part of Kissinger's report on his White House years. He has been almost recklessly frank in reporting, with the utmost precision, the prob- lems placed before our country during the time when he was in the White House; the tangles and dilemmas and even the mistakes.

His story of the anatomy of this book is interesting. When Kissinger left the State Depart- ment after the election of Presi- dent Carter, he went to Acapulco with a footlocker full of books. "You have to remember," he told me, "that I hadn't read an unclas- sified serious book for eight years."

In the footlocker, he had most of the presidential memoirs, beginning with Gen. Grant's, which he still regards as the best. Also the memoirs of Churchill, de

Gaulle, Adenauer — which he read in German — former Secre- tary of State Acheson, and the books of the British prime minis- ters Eden and Macmillan.

"You understand," he said, "I'm not comparing myself to these people. I was merely looking for models. Macmillan impressed me very much, but the one who probably influenced me the most was de Gaulle... He was a good model because he defines and be- cause he had a conceptual frame- work, a larger purpose and a gift of explaining how the particular problem of the day related to his philosophy and his goals."

In 1977 Kissinger spent about six weeks in Acapulco with his footlocker full of books. He lived in Puerto Marques, in a house owned by former President Ale- man of Mexico. He agrees that

this was not an unbearable hard- ship.

He had a staff of four re- searchers. They collected all the documents by subject and by year of his White House years, and these he read, "about 12-15 hours a day" from March until Decem- ber 1977. He then prepared a bibliography of the important documents, and by July began writing little essays on people — and these vignettes remain among the real gems of his book. In December 1977, after a bit of a struggle to get the whole book in focus, he began writing chapters.

"I wrote about a chapter a week," he says, "and rewrote them four or five times. I would do one chapter in longhand, then Peter Rodman, who was my chief re- searcher, would check it for accu- racy and another researcher, who was an expert on that particular subject, would double-check it."

Then Kissinger would send a finished chapter to two of his for- mer State Department aides, Winston Lord and Bill Rogers, the former Latin American expert at State, and he would rewrite the

chapter again, and sub- version to outside o scholars.

The only point here whatever anybody think the decisions made in K White House years, this ably the most serious atten- made to explain the decis- ing process, good or bad illuminate the interplay tics, personalities, the p even of accident on what decided.

In this sense, it is a re- achievement of reducing able diversity to some identity that can be un- by a careful reader. Or e casual reader, for Kissin- gift of mockery, of laughin pretensions of Big Shots ing himself.

He has now finished ters of his second volu- having a tussle with it. " Volume One was sort of thing in which we had a he explains. "Volume T really with catastrophe, t e gration of exe

James Reston

[LC]

[L.C]

MONTREAL, QUEBEC, CAN.

GAZETTE

D. 177,103

OCT 9 1979

diplomacy

when they met during the same
work in the evening together with a

ar
a

go
H
a
t
t

Kissinger tells of a talk that changed

By HENRY KISSINGER

Kissinger's
years in the
White House

"Henry Kissinger, a German-born Harvard professor, was secretary of state for U.S. President Richard Nixon. He was the executor — and often the originator — of U.S. foreign policy.

He has chronicled the inside story
of his diplomacy in "White House
Years." In this first excerpt from the
book, he tells of his early Washing-
ton days.

pulses were behind speech and gesture.
He spoke in a low, gentle voice. While
he talked, he sipped, one after another,
cups of coffee that were brought in
without his asking for them.

He had a massive organizational
problem, he said. He had very little
confidence in the state department. Its
personnel had no loyalty to him: the
foreign service had disdained him as
vice president and ignored him the mo-
ment he was out of office. He was de-
termined to run foreign policy from the
White House.

Nixon's fear of rebuffs caused him to
make proposals in such elliptical ways

There was a fanfare, and President-elect Richard Nixon appeared at the top of the Capitol stairs. He walked down the steps and took the oath of office in his firm deep voice.

My own feeling of surprise at being
there was palpable. The single most in-
fluential person in my life had been
Nelson Rockefeller, whose futile quests
for the presidency had been blocked by
Nixon.

Nelson Rockefeller. I am certain,
would have made a great president. He
possessed in abundance the qualities of
courage and vision that are the touch-
stones of leadership. But at the mo-
ments when his goal might have been

between New York and Cambridge. He
never made any effort to implement
it.

The next day I received a phone call
from Nelson Rockefeller. He had seen
the president-elect and been informed
that he could be of greater service to
the country as governor of New York
than as a cabinet member

'Screwed it up'

An hour later, John Mitchell's office
suggested an appointment to discuss
my position in the new administra-
tion.

realized, in 1960 and again in 1963, he
uncharacteristically hesitated.

A kind of aristocratic scruple res-
trained Rockefeller from pursuing the
prize with the single-mindedness re-
quired, and led him to exhaust himself
in efforts to make himself worthy of
the office.

In countries with aristocratic tradi-
tions — in Great Britain, for example,
until well after the Second World War
— an upper class moved in and out of
high office convinced that public re-
sponsibility was theirs by right. Merit
was assumed.

But in the United States, the scions
of great families are extremely sensi-
tive to the charge of acquiring power

foreign-born professor, and that profes-
sor was hesitating so that he might talk
to colleagues who, to a man, had voted
against Nixon and were certain to op-
pose him in the future.

I unanimously they urged me to accept.

Walt Rostow, President Lyndon
Johnson's security adviser, gave me an
office in the Executive Office Building
next door to the White House.

No president had striven so desper-
ately for approbation as LBJ, and none
since Andrew Johnson had been more
viciously attacked. LBJ had labored for

through the visible exercise of influ-
ence or wealth; they believe that they
must earn their office in their own
right.

Nelson Rockefeller never fully re-
solved this dilemma. After his untimely
death it was said that he failed to win
the presidency despite the fact that he
was a Rockefeller. The opposite was
more nearly true. He failed largely be-
cause he was a Rockefeller.

Obsessive desire

The contrast with the style of Rich-
ard Nixon could not have been greater.
In contemporary America, power im-
creasingly gravitates to those with an
almost obsessive desire to win it. Who-

ever does not de-
manically to the
whoever is afraid
will always be pur-
ever remarkable
tions.

With candidates
fice, as with athi-
pends upon timing
ability to seize the

The qualities re-
nomination for ti-
dency may have hit
the qualities neede

During my lon-
Rockettler. I had
tant to the White
days of John Kei

The Indianapolis Star
INDIANAPOLIS, IN.
D. 217,619 SUN. 357,706

[LC]

NOV. 4 1979

Egle

WASHINGTON COMMENTS

Everyone Went To Henry's Launching

By BETTY BEALE

Henry Kissinger picked an historic dwelling as close as possible to the White House for the launching of his little 1,521-page tome, *White House Years* — Deatur House on Lafayette Square.

Everybody picked that reception over to others to go to. Some attendees were right out of the pages of Henry's history of the first four Nixon years — Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, Soviet Ambassador Anatoliy Dobrynin, former Director of the CIA Dick Helms, Gen. "Westy" Westmoreland, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, Carter assistant Hedley Donovan, Gen. Vernon Walters, Elliot Richardson, Clare Luce, Joe Sisco, Joe Alsop, Chalmers Roberts, and the wife of one who appears frequently in the book, Evangeline Bruce, widow of David.

PUBLISHERS LITTLE, Brown put on a spread for the man who's making millions out of an inside history, superbly written with amazingly objective and sensitive personality sketches.

Just back from a European tour to promote the book by giving one press conference in each town, Kissinger told NBC commentator Richard Valeriani that he went to a dinner in Dusseldorf, Germany, "And they came with 100 books to give out, one to every person at the dinner. I thought it was my book, but when they asked me to autograph them it wasn't my book at all. It was your book, Leisen mit Henry."

Valeriani's book, *Travels With Henry*, that came out months ago and is now translated into German, is about the Kissinger wit.

HENRY AUTOGRAPHED all the books anyhow, he told Dick, and they gave them away. Dick was delirious with joy. "He's been selling my book in Germany. It's wonderful!" he exclaimed.

Former Secretary of Transportation Bill Coleman told French Ambassador François de Laboulaye, "I have only one complaint about the Concorde. I could read only 50 pages of Henry's book between New York and Paris." François earned.

The mystery is — why didn't Miss Hickok, who was the recipient of Eleanor's deep love, burn the letters, rather than preserve them to tarnish Eleanor's reputation? Was she trying to assure herself a place in history?

Looking down the long, exquisite, can-

The Perfect Candidate — that's the way George Bush, Republican presidential candidate, shown here with his wife Barbara, was introduced at a Washington Press Club luncheon.

dle-lit table at the man seated at the other end, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance said, "I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you have done."

The man was German Ambassador Berndt von Staden who, with his lovely-looking wife, Wendy, said goodbye to Washington this past week to return to Germany where he will sit at the right hand of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

The scene was a handsome French embassy where the very attendance of Cy and Gay Vance was a great compliment to both Ambassador de Laboulaye and his honored guest. With 138 embassies in Washington, the Vances can't attempt to cover that circuit. In his toast Vance said von Staden had represented his country with strength, wisdom and understanding of the problems of others.

"Berndt," he said, "I can assure you that we are strong, we will remain strong. We are dedicated to the Atlantic Alliance. You can count on us to stand shoulder to shoulder with you."

IN HIS TOAST, von Staden said, "I deeply believe that trust is the most precious treasure in international relations and it is hardly possible to imagine a man to whom it is given to inspire more trust than you do, my dear Cy."

on the Boehm trip, gave $75 for the center.

Antoinette de Laboulaye, a new bright red silk Dior e that hung loosely from padre Alas, those big shoulders her derness and figure.

"He's the perfect candid good teeth, a splendid hair patrician. He's 55. He's tall. He's a Phi Beta Kappa. He's (Big Man On Campus) at 35 five children. He's been married to the same woman called a Connecticut Yankee an ivy leaguer from Texas."

Thus George Bush, Republican candidate, was introduced Washington Press Club. And things Bush said he was retired CIA people are helping "I emerged with my integrity" said the former CIA director.

IN HIS AUDIENCE were Protocol Henry Catto Jessica, who has bought the Journalism Review and will first monthly issue in January, simply carrying on the journey of her family whose me estimated to be worth between $200 million.

Her mother, Oveta Culp runs the Houston Post with son, Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby. has written for Texas papers full time to editing and writing which "will provide thoughtful discussion of The journalism, the impact technology of the '80s and role of the press in our lives."

The Secret Service has traumatic experience. You little identifying buttons through their lapels that get them in presidential areas? Well, we discovered that the buttons wearing that indicated each vasectomy.

Poor lads. They had noticed were showing increased had put it down to the macho look of perfect specimen hood: When the insignia — an circle with an arrow — was its true meaning, new buttons dered for all. That's where the part comes in. Everything going so swimmingly.

ANYHOW, YOU CAN see Gonzales, national director

D. 174,500. SUN. 218,641

NOV. 4 1979.

Buckley

[LC]

# Henry's book is a honey and a moneymaker

BY BETTY BEALE

WASHINGTON — Henry Kissinger picked an historic dwelling as close as possible to the White House for the launching of his little 1,521-page tome, *White House Years*. It was held at Decatur House on Lafayette Square.

Nancy Kissinger picked her most dramatic outfit — a voluminous Bill Glass mauve, wrap-around blouse of real leather with huge sleeves and a bungee above a super-slim black velvet skirt. She looked marvelous.

And everybody picked that reception ever five others to go to. Some were right out of the pages of Henry's history of the first four Nixon years — Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, Soviet Ambassador Anatoliy Dobrynin, former Director of the CIA Dick Helms, Gen. "Westy" Westmoreland, Gen. Present Scowcroft, Carter assistant Henry Donovan, Gen. Vernon Walters, Elliot Richardson, Clare Luce, Joe Isco, Joe Alsop, Chalmers Roberts, and the wife of one who appears frequently in the book, Evangeline Bruce, widow of David.

Publishers Little, Brown put on quite spread for the man who's making billions out of an inside history, superfly written with amazingly objective and perceptive personality sketches.

Asked what he thought of the reviews of his book, Henry replied with the characteristic twinkle, "Nobody can appreciate me adequately. Some of the approaching it. They could use a lot more superlatives."

Just back from a European tour to romote the book by giving one press conference in each town, Kissinger told ABC commentator Richard Valeriani that he went to a dinner in Dusseldorf, Germany, "And they came with 100 books to give out, one to every person the dinner. I thought it was my book, but when they asked me to autograph

Henry autographed all the books anyhow, he told Dick, and they gave them away. Dick was delirious with joy. "He's been selling my book in Germany. It's wonderful!" he exclaimed.

"I always felt very sorry for her," replied Clare, "because I thought she was a warm, generous woman — though I didn't agree with any of her politics, she was always very pleasant to me — and everyone knew her married life was utterly miserable. She didn't have a married life and it was, of course, extraordinary to learn that she had had a verrich, full, apparently profoundly satisfying personal life. It all goes to show that we never know what the truth is about any of the great figures until 15, 20, 30 years later when they are dead and gone."

The mystery is — why didn't Hickok, who was the recipient of Eleanor's deep love, burn the letters, rather than preserve them to tarnish Eleanor's reputation? Was she trying to assure herself a place in history?

LOOKING DOWN the long, exclusive, candle-lit table at the man seated at the other end, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance said, "I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you have done."

The man was German Ambassador

"Berndt," he said, "I can assure you that we are strong, we will remain strong. . . We are dedicated to the Atlantic Alliance. You can count on us to stand shoulder to shoulder with you."

In his toast von Staden said, "I deeply believe that trust is the most precious treasure in international relations and it is hardly possible to imagine a man to whom it is given to inspire more trust than you do, my dear Cy."

Of such profundities are Washington parties made, washed down, of course, with the finest of French champagne.

Egyptian Ambassador Ashraf Ghorbal was there and said of John Connally's Mideast plan, "It has many valid points." He also said Frank Sinastra's concert by the Sphinx and Helen Boehm's week-long tour of Egypt for 120 Americans raised between them three-quarters of a million dollars for Jehan Sadat's Faith and Hope Medical Center. Publisher Raymond Massey, whose wife went on the Boehm trip, gave $75,000 outright for the center.

Antoinette de Laboulaye was sporting a new bright red silk Dior evening gown that hung loosely from padded shoulders. Alas, those big shoulders

a BMOC (Big Man On Campus) at Yale. He has five children. He's been married for 34 years — to the same woman. He was called a Connecticut yankee first, then an ivy leaguer from Texas."

Thus George Bush, Republican presidential candidate, was introduced to the Washington Press Club. Among other things Bush said he was proud that retired CIA people are helping him now. "I emerged with my integrity intact," said the former CIA director.

In his audience were former Chief of Protocol Henry Catto and his wife Jessica who has bought the Washington Journalism Review and will put out her first monthly issue in January. Jessica is simply carrying on the journalistic tradition of her family whose media empire is estimated to be worth between $150 million and $200 million. Mother Oveta Culp Hobby still runs the Houston Post with help from son, Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby. Jessica, who has written for Texas papers, will devote full time to editing and writing for her mag which "will provide a forum for thoughtful discussion of TV and print journalism, the impact of the new technology of the '80s and generally the role of the press in our lives."

THE SECRET SERVICE has just had a traumatic experience. You know those little identifying buttons they wear in their lapels that get them in and out of presidential areas? Well, recently they discovered the buttons they were wearing indicated each had had a vasectomy.

Poor lads. They had noticed that women were showing increased interest but had put it down to the strong, silent macho look of perfect specimens of manhood. When the insignia — an incomplete circle with an arrow — was

Betty Be

association of Voluntary Service Inc., in New York, says, "The men wearing them have tomies but it's no guarantee they can buy one from us for $50 — which is even used on the British — is simply the medical emblem for a million men have had the process every year, she said.

MILWAUKEE SENTINEL
MILWAUKEE, WIS.

104,017

OCT 23 1979

Catholie

Kissinger book reveals a historian with few peers

By WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.

"WE MET FOR the first time at a reception given by the president for heads of delegations at the United Nations in September, 1969. Gromyko walked up to me and said: 'You look just like Henry Kissinger.' And I replied: 'You look just like Richard Nixon.' This took him a few seconds to hoist aboard, especially as his entourage was reluctant to laugh until he had given the signal. By the next year he had absorbed the style. When we discussed which entrance he should use for his White House meeting with Nixon, Gromyko said it did not make any difference; the guards would salute and let him through wherever he presented himself; who would stop the president? To make sure that everyone—especially his associates—understood that it was playtime, he gave a hearty laugh reminiscent of a street corner Santa Clause."

That was, as Kissinger writes, in 1969. After that he saw a good deal of Andrei Gromyko. In the interval between 1969 and 1972, Gromyko as Soviet foreign minister expedited Soviet policy which included sending vast material to Southeast Asia to underwrite a war of aggression against South Vietnam and to kill 50,000 Americans. In the Middle East, the Soviets came close to triggering an explosion through the stimulation of Iraqi appetites. In South America, the Soviet Union did its best to satellize Chile. In Cuba, the Soviet Union triggered a crisis over Cienfuegos. And, of course, there were the routine things.

THEN THERE was the summit in Moscow, in June of 1972. "During (that summit meeting) one of our Xerox machines broke down. Knowing the

KGB's reputation for Orwellian ubiquity, I asked, Gromyko during a meeting in the elegant St. Catherine's Hall in the Kremlin whether he could have some copies made for us if we held certain documents up to the chandelier. Gromyko replied without missing a beat that unfortunately the cameras were installed by the czars; they were adequate for photographing people but not documents."

It is a quite extraordinary experience to bridge high principle and diplomatic requirements. One must assume that at Nuremberg, diplomats cracked jokes with Hermann Goering. But there wasn't anyone around like Henry Kissinger to record the event — perhaps there wasn't anyone around (Winston Churchill was not at Nuremberg) whose capacity for irony, and even whimsy, whose phenomenal memory for piquancies, caught all of those fleeting illuminations from the prisms that dance right through wars and summit meetings and diplomatic banquets and press conferences.

A GREAT DEAL happened in the years 1969 to 1976, but not the least was the emergence of the most acutely observant, agonizingly revealing social and diplomat historian of the century. There is no apparent genealogical relation between the (brilliant, to be sure) dry-as-dust Henry Kissinger who years ago wrote from Harvard and the various think-tanks learned books and monographs, and the author of "The White House Years."

This immense volume is at once trenchant and grand; amused and amusing; in it are the suppurationts of tragedy and theROTIC joys of small diplomatic triumphs. Nothing is too subtle to divine (the

paradox of Chinese insularity and cosmopolitanism), or too trivial to notice (Chou En-lai took him to an opera, "the most stupefyingly boring three hours I ever spent. I forget the plot, but at the end, I think the girl falls in love with a tractor.")

Although one can hardly have expected a book by Henry Kissinger denouncing the career of Henry Kissinger, his critics will be astonished, at the frequency with which he criticizes his own judgment, or the frankness with which he reveals his own uses of guile. But when he believes he was correct (Cambodia, for instance), one comes upon a juggernaut. His handling of the Vietnam quagmire, the pressures on the White House, the tergiversations of Nixon's aides — and indeed of Nixon himself — the erosion of authority, the cowardice of so many academic "leaders" — he writes about the operations of government of the people by the people and for the people in language which has an eternal meaning for those who wish to meditate on the prospects of democracy.

On completing the Vietnam chapters, one is left with the feeling that, in fact, one never wants, ever again, to discuss Vietnam with anyone who has not read this book. One might as well discuss a rainbow with the color-blind.

My own judgment, frequently reiterated, is that the Nixon-Kissinger approach to foreign policy broke the American spirit. But one cannot say, with any assurance, that it wouldn't have happened in any case, and that, administered by different hands, we wouldn't have been worse off. But policies to one side, this is the most engrossing political narrative I have ever read.

Universal-Press Syndicate

[LQ]

MONTREAL, QUEBEC, CAN.
GAZETTE

D. 111.143

[L]

OCT 13 1979.

THE WORLD

# Nipping crisis in the bud

THE WHITE HOUSE YEARS

War between the Soviet Union and the United States came closer than ever in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. John Kennedy faced down Nikita Khrushchev, who agreed to withdraw Soviet missiles from Cuba. A similar crisis arose in 1970 when the U.S.S.R. built a submarine base at the Cuban port of Cienfuegos. In the final excerpt from his forthcoming book, "White House Years," Henry Kissinger tells how he handled a touchy situation.

By HENRY KISSINGER

T

THROUGHOUT most of the critical autumn of 1970 the Soviet Union was represented in Washington by a clever, amiable, and discreet but quite powerless charge d'affaires, Yuli Vorontsov. Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin had been recalled to Moscow for consultations.

At the end of July in San Clemente I received a call from Voronstov, who said he had a message for me as soon as possible after my return to Washington. We met on Aug. 4 and Vorontsov was bubbling with joviality.

He had come to convey his government's desire to reaffirm the Kennedy-Khrushchev understanding of 1962 with respect to Cuba. I was puzzled and said so. I was not aware of any special tension over Cuba.

Vorontsov was blandly reassuring. There had been news stories, he said, about U.S. plans to strengthen the defence of Guanamo naval base and alleged Soviet military activities in Cuba; he read me a note complaining about stepped-up subversive activities against Cuba by exiles operating from Florida.

It emerged that there was no formal under-

barges were of a type normally used for servicing nuclear submarines.

The composition of this task force was so unprecedented that something more than a courtesy visit seemed to be involved. The Soviet flotilla reached Cienfuegos on Sept. 9. On the following day the merchant tanker joined them. Daily U-2 flights were ordered to begin on the first clear day, which turned out to be Sept. 14.

The Cuban reaction to our daily U-2 flights showed that something unusual was afoot. Our first flight on Sept. 14 had to be aborted because MiG fighters scrambled after it. Another mission flying around the periphery of the island was also intercepted and forced to terminate its mission.

U-2 photography showed that in less than three weeks the Soviet Union had rushed to complete a fairly significant shore installation. Two new barracks and administrative buildings suddenly stood on Cayo Alcatraz, which had been barren only a month earlier. Recreation facilities had quickly risen on the island, including a basketball court and a soccer field.

I

N MY EYES this stamped it indelibly as a Russian base, since as an old soccer fan I know Cubans played no

THE MIDDLETOWN JOURNAL
MIDDLETOWN, OHIO
E. 10. 01 SUN. 26,819

[LC]

OV 4 1979.

Eighth

# SALT's traces go back to Kissinger

ge must be having its impact; although a number of views have appeared, I -- a read reader -- have yet to finish Henry Kissinger's 100-page epic, "White House Years" (Little, Brown). It is not easy reading. Mr. Dooley once suggested Theodore Roosevelt's book about the Polish-American War be called "Alone in Cuba." He said similarly suggest one in the World' as an appropriate subtitle to any. Nothing that occurred anywhere between 9-1973 is omitted.

In the light of the contemporary debate on the merits of the SALT II Treaty, it is particularly interesting to read Kissinger's discussion of the background of SALT I, signed by President Nixon in May 1972. As he indicates,

President Lyndon Johnson scheduled a summit with the Soviet leadership to discuss nuclear arms limitation for the fall of 1968.

In objective terms this was ingenuous: Brezhnev and Kosygin, who then seemed equal in stature, were not about to do serious business with a lame-duck president. If anything, they would use talks with LBJ to pressure his Republican successor. However, on this topic Johnson was quite irrational. In 1970, taking about the accomplishments of his administration, he said, "Johnny, above all we kept the lion in the cage."

He wanted to go down in history as the president who took the first great step to keep the nuclear lion permanently caged and, had the

Soviets not invaded Prague in August 1968, he would have announced his summit.

**MY POSITION,** in a sentence, is that while I firmly believe in arms control, I am convinced the regulation of strategic nuclear weapons can not be decoupled from other, so-called conventional, systems. To broaden this a bit, I feel that "linkage" is part of the essential package, that if we assume good faith in vacuum-packed negotiations on ICBMs and say "boys will be boys," as Moscow incites a Yom Kippur War or ships Cuban sepoys to Angola, we should be taken off for psychiatric care.

As I read Kissinger on this subject, I found myself nodding agreement. Indeed, he puts the case for cold-eyed

realistic negotiations with the Soviets far more eloquently than I, and shares, in kindly fashion, my skepticism of LB-J's evangelical initiatives. In view of the recent hassle between the White House and the State Department over who said what to whom about Brezhnev's attitude on modernization of NATO's nuclear forces, his description of State's effort to force Nixon into SALT negotiations is mordantly hilarious.

Moreover, Kissinger's argument for linkage is compelling. Indeed, just as I was about to leap from my chair and shout "Good Old Henry!" I suddenly realized the author was the architect of SALT I, the dreadful agreement that got us into the present mess, that led us quietly to nap while the Soviets emplaced those 308 monster SS-18s, modernized five more systems, and deployed the mobile national SS-20 which, with a third stage, three wrenches and a screwdriver can in half an hour be converted to an intercontinental SS-16.

SEN. SAM NUNN recently described our SALT negotiating posture by reference to a Marx Brothers movie in which Chico, threatened, puts a pistol to his head and says, 'One more step and I'll shoot.' What Kissinger had lovingly described is the careful, handsome design of this

pistol. By the time he finishes burnishing the stock and polishing the metal, you are likely to forget who is the target. This pride of craftsmanship in a suicide weapon is positively unnerving.

It also, of course, explains

Kissinger's amazing double-talk in his testimony on SALT II. A leading candidate for secretary of State can hardly observe "the SALT process is lunacy, and you can count on me to straighten it out" when in fact he set the lunatic

BETWEEN WASHINGTON STATE
AND OREGON TIMES STAFFICATE

'I DON'T KNOW WHY WE HAD TO IMPOR

FOCATELLO, IDAHO
IDAHO STATE JOURNAL
D. 10,267, AUG. 20, 1966

[L]

OCT 26 1979

# Vietnam era recalled in Kissinger's memoirs

By JOHN LEONARD

c. 1979 N.Y. Times News Service

WHITE HOUSE YEARS. By Henry A. Kissinger. Illustrated. 1,521 pages. Little, Brown. $22.50.

The first volume of Henry A. Kissinger's memoirs is longer than Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace," and we don't even get to Watergate. The question is, is it worth the time it takes to read it? The answer is yes. Of course, it is self-serving — especially on Cambodia and Chile and the "Christmas bombings" of North Vietnam in 1972 — but the principal purpose of almost any memoir is to serve the self.

Consider, first, the style. Kissinger's years in the White House and the State Department did not, miraculously, repress his impulse to write decent prose. If his irony shades often into sarcasm, at least he is acquainted with irony. Other memoirs of the first Nixon administration, not counting William Safire's, seem to have been written by ticker-tape machines after midnight on Wall Street, while nobody human was looking.

Pith counts. On the White House reaction to the shooting down of an American reconnaissance plane by the North Koreans: "It was as if someone had pushed a button labeled 'crisis management' and the answer that came up was 'nonchalance.'" On H.R. Haldeman, for whom government was basically an exercise in public relations: "It was risky to approach Haldeman, since he was likely to interpret any substantive concern as a sign of emotional instability."

Anecdotes help, too. From the gooney birds on Midway to

the hilarious textile negotiations with Japan to the flap about a nonexistent baby water buffalo to the meeting in the White House with a nun and two Catholic laymen who had been named unindicted conspirators in a plot to kidnap him. Kissinger has a lively eye and some charm. He will also deprecate himself, and, twice, admits fallibility: wiretapping may require "more stringent safeguards," and he should not perhaps have given the impression to journalists that he had opposed the Christmas bombings.

To be sure, buzz words abound. They include "linkage," "equilibrium," "ambiguity," "fashionable," "whip-saw," "rout," "honor" and "impotence." And there are occasional lapses into the sermonette, on such subjects as the history of Russia, India and Pakistan, and the motivation of the younger generation that opposed our "historical misadventure" in Vietnam. Nevertheless, the Dean Acheson who wrote "Present at the Creation" — and whom Kissinger admires almost as much as he does Zhou Enlai and somewhat more than he admires the shah of Iran — would not have sniffed at the style of "White House Years" and would probably have agreed with its geopolitics.

As for substance, how can we fail to be interested in the summit meetings with Mao Zedong and Leonid I. Brezhnev and Golda Meir and Eisaku Sato, the SALT talks and the secret negotiations with the Russians, the Chinese, the Germans and Le Duc (Ducky) Tho? Richard M. Nixon's initiative, so ably abetted by Kissinger, to open our relations

with China was a stunning success. Kissinger's "shuttle diplomacy," for a while anyway, kept the lid on in the Middle East. The only boring pages in "White House Years" are those devoted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and even Marcel Proust could not have made NATO interesting.

On the secret bombing and subsequent "incursion" of Cambodia, he disagrees with his formidable critic, the William Shawcross who wrote "Sideshow" after Kissinger refused to talk to him. On Chile, he is brisk: it was in our national interest to prevent Salvador Allende Gossens from remaining president of Chile "through a fluke in the Chilean political system," which fluke was Allende's having been elected by a plurality rather than a majority — a fluke which could happen even in the United States. On Vietnam, he makes it clear that the North Vietnamese wanted total victory, on the field of battle or at the bargaining table. According to Kissinger, we bombed them into a peace treaty, which treaty might have preserved a viable South if it

hadn't been for Watergate, to be discussed in Volume II. In the meantime, between Nixon's first inauguration and the Nobel prize-winning treaty, another 19,000 Americans died.

On the vagaries of Nixon — courageous, Kissinger tells us, "secretive and devious," lacking "in self confidence or largeness of spirit," and "beside himself" so often he must have been twins — Kissinger is shrewd and not altogether lacking in compassion. From the beginning, Nixon wanted to run his own foreign policy, and Kissinger was his Lone Ranger, carrying that policy around in his saddlebags, and Secretary of State William P. Rogers was kept constantly in the dark. Kissinger agrees that this was "a poor system," but, really, the State Department and the Department of Defense dragged their heels when they didn't agree with a presidential directive. Kissinger also allows as how there were a number of presidential directives he ignored, while waiting for the temperature in the Oval Office to cool down.

And he loved it — the helicopters and the motorcycle es-

corts, the sunglasses and the fake stomachaches, the handwritten messages carried by personal pouch from China through Pakistan to Washington, the conversations with Andre Malraux, if not with Oriana Fallaci. As a kind of Julien Sorel who went to Washington, he was Nixon's own Harvard professor, snatched away from Nelson A. Rockefeller. He tells us that the only time while he was in office that he couldn't sleep was on the eve of his flight to China.

[L]

Dallas Times Herald

D. 239,514 SUN. 932,067

T 21 1979

Henry Kissinger's memoirs reveal the style of

Michael Berryhill is a visiting professor in the journalism division at Southern Methodist University.)

MICHAEL BERRYHILL

TIME MAGAZINE has published three excerpted installments of Henry Kissinger's memoirs, Kissinger says that presidents are tempted to make breakthroughs in international relations through face-to-face negotiations.

Presidents are strengthened in thisaptation," Kissinger writes, "by an American public that finds it difficult accept the existence of irreconcilabil hostility and tends to see interna- tional relations in terms of the play of individual personalities."

But Kissinger's memoirs only serve further this misconception. They fear to have been written to order Time, which, more than any news organization, sees politics in terms of personalities.

The editors describe Kissinger as a man on "center stage" who sent "seis- shocks through chancelleries and the world," who is deferred to if he still strode the corridors of White House and State Depart-

ment." Larger-than-life media heroes never walk, they always stride.

As though to confer added impor- tance to the occasion, Time writes about the prepublication secrecy of the extracts as though they were state secrets. And Kissinger writes about state secrets as though he were writ- ing for Time magazine.

For example, Time breathlessly re- veals that its editor regretted having purchased a 24-inch safe to hold Kiss- singer's manuscript, when an 84-inch one would have been better. The pho- tocopying of the manuscript, done on weekends for security, almost over- heated the office machines. Security was tight, of course, not because se- crets were involved, but because mon- ey was involved. Time paid a bundle to buy the exclusive prepublication rights,

Kissinger reveals that his secre- taries had to carry manual typewrit- ers to prevent Soviet bugging, and that he often whispered out of doors for fear of microphones in the trees. And that he and Richard Nixon cele- brated the trip to China by dining on crab's legs and a bottle of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1961.

Kenry Kissinger

The dimensions of a safe, the name of a bottle of wine are bogus facts, not because they are untrue, but because they are irrelevant. They serve to tit- illate and distract the reader while creating an air of authenticity. Such

writing does not attempt to connect character with action because its hid- den function is to build an authorita- tive and self-important image of the writer, rather than to reveal the truth.

Kissinger regrets the notorious in- terview with Oriani Fallaci in which he compared himself to the romantic figure of the cowboy who singlehand- edly rides into town to face the en- emy. He admits to having been caught in a moment of "unusual pride not leavened by humility." He admits to being naive. And he accuses Fallaci of seeking "psychological, not factual, truth."

What is factual truth? Is it the kind of private jet Pompidou lent Kis- singer? (A Mystere 20.) Or that Brezhnev had ways of circumventing his locked cigarette case?

Truth is assembled by the selection of facts. It is an artifact of the mind and the imagination. Kissinger is as obsessed with psychological truth as Oriani Fallaci. He says that Richard Nixon, in a moment of pressure, smoked and twirled a pipe, and con- cludes that he was pretending to be Douglas McArthur.

Kissinger would like to be a striving for factual truth, but he not resist trying for psych- trut. He gives us Nixon's ne- ness with inferiors, and he sneaked out of the Nixon's re- the movie "Patton."

Kissinger does not stop at the chology of leaders; he charac- the personalities of nations a The Chinese are aloof and imp- by reason of centuries of cultur emence in Asia. The Soviets a respondingly insecure because have destroyed a traditional c weenin against the war in Vietnam ar- al reasons.

"Stimulated by a sense of gu- couraged by modern psychiat- the radical chic rhetoric of a suburbia, the young protesten- bolized the end of an era of faith in material progress," Ki- writes.

Kissinger seems to think that above the push and pull of ir- forces. He is willing to admit to of vanity and hesitation, but S

N. 270,023 SHL 279.1

OCT 22 1979

# Kissinger's engrossing book

By WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY

"WE MET FOR THE FIRST time at a reception given by the President for heads of delegations at the United Nations in September 1969. Gromyko walked up to me and said: 'You look just like Henry Kissinger.' And I replied: 'You look just like Richard Nixon.' This took him a few seconds to hoist aboard, especially as his entourage was reluctant to laugh until he had given the signal. By the next year he had absorbed the style. When we discussed which entrance he should use for his White House meeting with Nixon, Gromyko said it did not make any difference; the guards would salute and let him through wherever he presented himself; who would stop the president? To make sure that everyone—especially his associates—understood that it was playtime, he gave a hearty laugh reminiscent of a street corner Santa Claus."

That was, as Kissinger writes, in 1969. After that he saw a good deal of Gromyko. In the interval between 1961 and 1972, Gromyko as Soviet Foreign Minister expedited Soviet policy which included sending vast material to Southeast Asia to underwrite a war of aggression against South Vietnam and to kill 50,000 Americans. In the Middle East, the Soviets came close to triggering an explosion through the stimulation of Iraqi appetites. In South America, the Soviet Union did its best to satellize Chile. In Cuba, the Soviet Union triggered a crisis over Cienfuegos. And, of course, there were the routine things.

Then there was the summit in Moscow, in June of 1972. "During (that summit meeting) one of our Xerox machines broke down. Knowing the KGB's reputation for Orwellian ubiquity, I asked Gromyko during a meeting in the elegant St. Catherine's Hall in the Kremlin whether he could have some copies made for us if we held certain documents up to the chandelier. Gromyko replied without missing a beat that unfortunately the cameras were installed by the tsars; they were adequate for photographing people but not documents."

It is a quite extraordinary experience to bridge high principle and diplomatic requirements. One must assume that at Nuremberg, diplomats cracked jokes with Goering. But there wasn't anyone around like Henry Kissinger to record the event—perhaps there wasn't anyone around (Churchill was not at Nuremberg) whose capacity for irony, and even whimsy, whose phenomenal memory for piquancies, caught all of those fleeting illuminations from the prisms that dance right through wars and summit meetings and diplomatic banquets and press conferences.

A great deal happened in the years 1969 to 1976, but not the least was the emergence of the most acutely observant, agonizingly revealing social and diplomat historian of the century.

There is no apparent genealogical relation between the (brilliant, to be sure) dryasdust Henry Kissinger who years ago wrote from Harvard and the various think-tanks learned books and monographs, and the author of "The White House Years."

THIS IMMENSE VOLUME is at once trenchant and grand; amused and amusing; in it are the suppurations of tragedy and the erotic joys of small diplomatic triumphs. Nothing is too subtle to divine (the paradox of Chinese insularity and cosmopolitanism), or too trivial to notice (Chou En-lai took him to an opera, "the most stupefyingly boring three hours I ever spent. I forget the plot, but at the end, I think the girl falls in love with a tractor.")

Although one can hardly have expected a book by Henry Kissinger denouncing the career of Henry Kissinger, his critics will be astonished at the frequency with which he

[LC]

TULSA, OKLA.
119,290 JUN. 224,613

[L]

OCT 23 1979

# Kissinger's Book

By WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, Jr.

"WE MET for the first time at a reception given by the President for heads of delegations at the United Nations in September 1969. Gromyko walked up to me and said: 'You look just like Henry Kissinger.' And I replied: 'You look just like Richard Nixon.' This took him a few seconds to hoist aboard, especially as his entourage was reluctant to laugh until he had given the signal. By the next year he had absorbed the style.

When we discussed which entrance he should use for his White House meeting with Nixon, Gromyko said it did not make any difference; the guards would salute and let him through wherever he presented himself; who would stop the President? To make sure that everyone — especially his associates — understood that it was playtime, he gave a hearty laugh reminiscent of a street corner Santa Claus."

That was, as Kissinger writes, in 1969. After that he saw a good deal of Gromyko. In the interval between 1969 and 1972, Gromyko as Soviet Foreign Minister-expedited Soviet policy which included sending vast material to Southeast Asia to underwrite a war of aggression against South Vietnam and to kill 50,000 Americans.

* * *

THEN there was the summit in Moscow, in June of 1972. "During (that summit meeting) one of our Xerox machines broke down. Knowing the KGB's reputation for Orwellian ubiquity, I asked Gromyko during a meeting in the elegant St. Catherine's Hall in the Kremlin whether he could have some copies made for us if we held certain documents to the chandelier.

Gromyko replied without missing a beat that unfortunately the cameras were installed by the Tsars; they were adequate for photographing people but not documents."

It is a quite extraordinary experience to bridge high principle and diplomatic requirements. One must assume that at Nuremberg, diplomats cracked jokes with Goering. But there wasn't anyone around like Kissinger to record the event — perhaps there wasn't anyone around (Churchill was not at Nuremberg) whose capacity for irony, and even whimsy, whose phenomenal memory for piquancies, caught all those fleeting illuminations from the prisms that dance right through wars and summit meetings and diplomatic banquets and press conferences.

* * *

THIS immense volume is at once trenchant and grand; amused and amusing; in it are the suppurations of tragedy and the erotic joys of small diplomatic triumphs. Nothing is too subtle to divine (the paradox of Chinese insularity and cosmopolitanism), or too trivial to notice (Chou En-lai took him to an opera, "the most stupefyingly boring three hours I ever spent. I forget the plot, but at the end, I think the girl falls in love with a tractor.")

Although one can hardly have expected a book by Henry Kissinger denouncing the career of Henry Kissinger, his critics will be astonished at the frequency with which he criti-

His handling of the Vietnam quagmire, the pressures on the White House, the tergiversations of Nixon's aides — and indeed of Nixon himself — the erosion of authority, the cowardice of so many academic "leaders," — he writes about the operations of Government of the people by the people and for the people in language which has an eternal meaning for those who wish to meditate on the prospects for democracy.

On completing the Vietnam chap ters, one is left with the feeling that, in fact, one never wants, ever again, to discuss Vietnam with anyone who has not read this book. One might as well discuss a rainbow with the colorblind.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C.
OBSERVER AND TIMES

Dated: October 1, 1979

[LC]

OCT 21 1979

# Kissinger Story Worth The Effort

By JOHN LEONARD

Anecdotes help, too. From the gooney birds on Midway to the hilarious textile negotiations with Japan to the flap about a nonexistent baby water buffalo to the meeting in the White House with a nun and two Catholic laymen who had been named unindicted co-conspirators in a plot to kidnap him, Kissinger has a lively eye and some charm. He will also deprecate himself, and, twice, admits fallibility: wiretapping may require "more stringent safeguards," and he should not perhaps have given the impression to journalists that he had opposed the Christmas bombings.

KINGSPORT, TENN.
TIMES-NEWS
SUN. 42,166

[LC]

OCT 2, 8 1979

Kissinger's Memoirs Demonstrate Insight

WHITE HOUSE YEARS, by Henry Kissinger; Little
Brown ($22.50)

Henry Kissinger confesses early in the first volume of his memoirs to intellectual arrogance and admits to a reputation for being never burdened with any excess of humility.

Even in the unlikely event they had never heard of him before, readers of this account of Kissinger's first four years in the Nixon White House will find little to argue with in that personal self-estimate.

No one in all these 1,521 pages comes off quite so well, quite so benignly wise and ultimately triumphant, as the formerly obscure Harvard professor who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for an illusory ending of the Vietnam War.

Nonetheless, though it is at least as self-serving as most Washington memoirs, Kissinger has put together a genuinely brilliant, eloquent, educational, dramatic account of those frantic, dangerous, world-changing years when former President Nixon and he confronted Vietnam, the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, the India-Pakistan War, the 1970 Middle East "war of attrition," Soviet attempts to install a submarine base in Cuba, the first SALT (strategic arms limitation) treaty, the first summit trip by a U.S. president to Moscow, Nixon's historic journey to China, and seemingly ceaseless other crises and bold adventures in foreign affairs.

At the same time, those who the polls say are losing faith in government may be further disheartened by the Kissinger book, which presents a dismayingly unseemly and unedifying record of petty political finagling, cynical "public relations" manipulations, and astonishing bureaucratic infighting and indiscipline.

There are no great revelations in the book. Its fascination and value lie rather in Kissinger's insights into the character of the players on the world stage, the intricacies of diplomacy, how the game is played.

Thus Kissinger's own eminence as Nixon's national security adviser traces to the president's deep and long-standing hostility to the Eastern establishment and the State Department, which he considered to be infested with his liberal, Ivy League, striped-pants enemies.

Hence, Kissinger writes, Nixon was determined to keep personal control of foreign policy in the White House rather than the State Department, and to that

ministration's later disaster over Watergate. "Nothing is more askew," Kissinger writes, "than the popular image of Nixon as an imperial president barking orders at cowed subordinates." Actually, according to Kissinger Nixon on "hated to give orders — especially to those who might disagree with him," rarely disciplined anyone, and constantly shrank from showdowns.

Over time, Kissinger says, this led to a "fragmented administration" in which almost everyone "looked out for himself" and in which, in turn, "lay one of the root causes of Watergate."

As with nearly everyone else in the book, Kissinger cannot resist taking potshots at his old boss, picturing Nixon as devious, banal, gauche, even to the point of observing trivially that Nixon's pants legs were always a "trifle short." He also suggests, with minimal subtlety, that on at least three occasions Nixon drank too much, including once at the Moscow summit and once in China.

On that last occasion, after many toasts in mao-tai, a potent Chinese brew, Kissinger reports that Nixon got so carried away he made a toast of his own which sounded very much like a proposal for a U.S.-Chinese defensive military alliance.

"Luckily," Kissinger observes sniping, "by that hour the press was too far gone itself" to notice.

In the end, though, Kissinger's overall judgment on Nixon is sympathetic and positive. This "lonely" and "tormented" man, "so ungenerous in some of his motivations," Kissinger writes, "had navigated our nations," Nixon's conspicuous acts of rare courage and "forced himself to rally his people to its challenge."

Even now, nearly a decade later, the Nixon-Kissinger handling of the Vietnam peace negotiations, the 1970 invasion of Cambodia, the "Christmas bombing" of 1975, and the remain the most emotionally charged controversies of Nixon's first term.

Nixon's determination to run foreign policy from the White House led to endless bureaucratic war with Republicans and the State Department — and to the unprecedented secrecy in which Nixon and Kissinger conducted policy, mostly through secret "back channels" that bypassed the State Department and everyone else.

— Reviewed by RAYMOND COFFIN
Chicago Tribune

JACKSON, MISS.
D. 10,777

OCT 23 1979

Est. 1979

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY

Kissinger's Book
Is Quite Frank

"We met for the first time at a reception given by the President for heads of delegations at the United Nations in September 1969. Gromyko walked up to me and said: 'You look just like Henry Kissinger.' And I replied: 'You look just like Richard Nixon.' This took him a few seconds to hoist aboard, especially as his entourage was reluctant to laugh until he had given the signal. By the next year he had absorbed the style. When we discussed which entrance he should use for his White House meeting with Nixon, Gromyko said it did not make any difference; the guards would salute and let him through wherever he presented himself; who would stop the president? To make sure that everyone—especially his associates—understood that it was playtime, he gave a hearty laugh reminiscent of a street corner Santa Clause."

That was, as Kissinger writes, in 1969. After that he saw a good deal of Gromyko. In the interval between 1969 and 1972, Gromyko as Soviet Foreign Minister expedited Soviet policy which included sending vast material to Southeast Asia to underwrite a war of aggression against South Vietnam and to kill 50,000 Americans. In the Middle East, the Soviets came close to triggering an explosion through the stimulation of Iraqi appetites. In South America, the Soviet Union did its best to satellize Chile. In Cuba, the Soviet Union triggered a crisis over Cienfuegos. And, of course, there were the routine things...

This immense volume is at once trenchant and grand; amused and amusing; in it are the suppurations of tragedy and the erotic joys of small diplomatic triumphs. Nothing is too subtle to divine (the paradox of Chinese insularity and cosmopolitanism), or too trivial to notice (Chou En-lai took him to an opera, "the most stupefyingly boring three hours I ever spent. I forget the plot, but at the end, I think the girl falls in love with a tractor.")

Although one can hardly have expected a book by Henry Kissinger denouncing the career of Henry Kissinger, his critics will be astonished at the frequency with which he criticizes his own judgment, or the frankness with which he reveals his own uses of guile. But when he believes he was correct (Cambodia, for instance), one comes upon a juggernaut. His handling of the Vietnam quagmire, the pressures on the White House, the tergiversations of Nixon's aides—and indeed of Nixon himself—the erosion of authority, the cowardice of so many academic "leaders,"—he writes about the operations of government of the people by the people and for the people in language which has an eternal meaning for those who wish to meditate on the prospects of democracy. On completing the Vietnam chapters, one is left with the feeling that, in fact, one never wants, ever again, to discuss Vietnam with anyone who has not read this book. One might as well discuss a rainbow with the colorblind.

VALLEY ST
D. 19,430 S. 19,430

OCT 23 1979

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.

# Kissinger's New Book
Engrossing

"We met for the first time at a reception given by the President for heads of delegations at the United Nations in September 1969. Gromyko walked up to me and said: 'You look just like Henry Kissinger.' And I replied: 'You look just like Richard Nixon.' This took him a few seconds to hoist aboard, especially as his entourage was reluctant to laugh until he had given the signal. By the next year he had absorbed the style. When we discussed which entrance he should use for his White House meeting with Nixon, Gromyko said it did not make any difference; the guards would salute and let him through wherever he presented himself; who would stop the president? To make sure that everyone — especially his associates — understood that it was playtime, he gave a hearty laugh reminiscent of street corner Santa Claus."

Then there was the summit in Moscow, in June of 1972. "During (that summit meeting) one of our Xerox machines broke down. Knowing the KGB's reputation for Orlando ubiquity, I asked Gromyko during a meeting in the elegant St. Catherine's Hall in the Kremlin whether he could have some copies made for us if we held certain documents up to the chandelier. Gromyko replied without missing a beat that unfortunately the cameras were installed by the tsars; they were adequate for photographing people but not documents."

It is a quite extraordinary experience to bridge high principle and diplomatic requirements. One must assume that a Nuremberg, diplomats cracked jokes with Goering. But there wasn't anyone like Henry Kissinger to record the event — perhaps there wasn't anyone around (Churchill was not at Nuremberg) whose capacity for irony, and even whimsy, whose phenomenal memory for piquancies, caught all those floating illuminations from the prime-

NEW ORLEANS STATE-ITEM
NEW ORLEANS, LA.
D. 117 783 SUN. 108.838

OCT 20 1979

# 'White House Years': engrossing political narrati

## William Buckley

"We met for the first time at a reception given by the president for heads of delegations at the United Nations in September 1969. Gromyko walked up to me and said: 'You look just like Henry Kissinger.' And I replied: 'You look just like Richard Nixon.'

"This took him a few seconds to hoist aboard, especially as his entourage was reluctant to laugh until he had given the signal. By the next year he had absorbed the style.

"When we discussed which entrance he should use for his White House meeting with Nixon, Gromyko said it did not make any difference; the guards would salute and let him through wherever he presented himself; who would stop the president? To make sure that everyone—especially his associates—understood that it was playtime, he gave a hearty laugh reminiscent of a street corner Santa Clause."

"Every nickel and every peanut have been traced into and out of the warehouse, and no funds were unlawfully diverted in either direction."

—Special Prosecutor Paul J. Curran, in summary of his six-month investigation into alleged financial wrongdoing involving the Carter family peanut warehouse business.

## QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Gromyko replied without missing a beat that unfortunately the cameras were installed by the tsars; they were adequate for photographing people but not documents."

emergence of the most acutely obserant, agonizingly revealing social and diplomat historian of the century.

upon a juggernaut. His Vietnam quagmire, to the White House, the Nixon's aides—and in himself—the erosion of cowardice of so many ers,"—he writes about of government of the people and for the people which has an eternal name who wish to meditate of democracy.

On completing the V one is left with the feeble one never wants, ever Vietnam with anyone this book.

One might as well do with the colorblind.

My own judgment, terated, is that the approach to foreign American spirit.

But one cannot say, ance, that it wouldn't any case, and that, different hands, we worse off. But policie is the most engrossing tive I have ever read.

© 1979 Universal Pr

DES MOINES, IOWA
D. 224,886 SUN. 11:379

OCT 21 1979

# The Lone Ranger's pithy story

WHITE HOUSE YEARS, by Henry A. Kissinger (1521 pages, illustrated); Little, Brown, $22.50.

By JOHN LEONARD
© New York Times

THE FIRST volume of Henry A. Kissinger's memoirs is longer than Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace," and we don't even get to Watergate.

Consider, first, the style. Kissinger's years in the White House and the State Department did not, miraculously, repress his impulse to write decent prose. If his irony shades often into sarcasm, at least he is acquainteed with irony.

Pith counts.

concern as a sign of emotional instability.”

Anecdotes help, too. From the gooney birds on Midway to the hilarious textile negotiations with Japan to the flap about a nonexistent baby water buffalo to the meeting in the White House with a nun and two Catholic laymen who had been named unindicted co-conspirators in a plot to kidnap him, Kissinger has a lively eye and some charm.

He will also deprecate himself, and, twice, admits fallibility: Wiretapping may require "more stringent safeguards," and he should not perhaps have given the impression to journalists that he had opposed the Christmas bombings.

To be sure, buzz words abound. They include "linkage," "equilibrium," "ambiguity," "fashionable," "whipsaw," "rout," "honor" and "impotence."

Nevertheless, the Dean Acheson who wrote "Present at the Creation" — and whom Kissinger admires almost as much as he does Chou En-lai and somewhat more than he admires the Shah of Iran — would not have sniffed at the style of "White House Years" and would probably

THE ONLY boring pages in "White House Years" are those devoted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and even Marcel Proust could not have made NATO interesting.

On the secret bombing and subsequent "incursion" of Cambodia, Kissinger disagrees with his formidable critic, William Shawcross, who wrote "Sideshow" after Kissinger refused to talk to him.

On Chile, Kissinger is brisk: It was in our national interest to prevent Salvador Allende Gossens from remaining president of Chile "through a fluke in the Chilean political system," which fluke was Allende's having been elected by a plurality rather than a majority — a fluke that could happen even in the United States.

Americans died in Southeast Asia.

On the vagaries of Nixon — courageous, Kissinger tells us, “secretive and devious,” lacking “in self-confidence or largeness of spirit,” and “beside himself” so often he must have been twins — Kissinger is shrewd and not altogether lacking in

P. Rogers was kept constant dark.

Kissinger agrees that the poor system,” but, really, Department and the Defense dragged their heels didn’t agree with a p

[LC]

TOLEDO, OHIO
CATHOLIC CHRONICLE
W. 57,647 (C)

OCT 1 9 1979

Bryantles

Kissinger is
full of praise
for Paul VI

BOSTON (NC) — Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said Pope Paul VI understood today's moral dilemmas better than almost any leading figure he met.

In his memoirs, "White House Years," to be published soon by Little, Brown, Kissinger recalled his impressions of Pope Paul VI whom he visited with then president Richard Nixon in September 1970.

Kissinger called Pope Paul "one of the most sensitive and thoughtful men I encountered in my public service."

"The holy father headed a Church thrust into ferment by the tremendous reforms of his predecessor," Kissinger said. "But John XXIII had died after shaking up the existing framework; he had not yet settled on the ultimate direction his changes would take.

"This was left to Paul VI. He had served in the Vatican diplomatic service for many years; he understood very well that change can gain its own momentum and transmute the intentions of reformers. Saints prevail by the purity of their motives; institutions are sustained by durable standards.

"Pope Paul had wide and informed knowledge of international affairs," Kissinger continued. "He and Nixon reviewed the world with general agreement. At one point Nixon was waxing eloquent about the leftward trend of priests in Latin America. The holy father interrupted him gently, with a smile: 'As a matter of fact, Mr. President, this is even more of a problem for us than it is for you.'"

WALL STREET JOURNAL
DALLAS, TEXAS
D. 167,392

[Lc]

NOV. 2 1979.

# Henry Kissinger on the Main Events...

By THOMAS J. BRAY

Shortly after Richard Nixon's election in 1968, Henry Kissinger was invited to meet with the President-elect. The purpose of the meeting was vague and the conversation during the encounter was limited to generalities. Several days later came another call, this time to meet with John Mitchell. As Mr. Kissinger recounts it:

> "I found John Mitchell seated behind his desk puffing a pipe. Self-confident and taciturn, he exuded authority. He came straight to the point: 'What have you decided about the National Security job?' 'I did not know I had been offered it.' 'Oh, Jesus Christ,' said Mitchell, 'he has screwed it up again.'"

In this strange fashion, after a hurried conference with the President-elect to straighten things out, began Henry Kissinger's years as the President's man on foreign policy. Now we have the first volume of Mr. Kissinger's memoirs of those years. "White House Years," which covers the period 1968 to 1972. It is massively long—1,521 pages—and expensive even by today's inflated standards—$22.50. There will be suspicion that Mr. Kissinger and Little, Brown & Co., the publishers, are substituting fame and bulk for careful thought and focused writing.

The suspicion would be unjustified. "White House Years" is a stunning book, probably the most revealing and skilled account of modern great-power diplomacy ever written. It is deftly organized, for the most part well-written and, as one would expect from an insider during the Nixon years, full of good stories. As strange as Mr. Kissinger's appointment as National Security Adviser was, it was only the beginning of a very strange partnership indeed.

## Behind-the-Scenes Yarn

But Mr. Kissinger hasn't simply stitched together a behind-the-scenes yarn of how ideas, events and individuals interact to shape policy. Mr. Kissinger appears to be after something far more ambitious: a major inquiry into the nature and art of statecraft.

It's not clear yet where this will take him. We must await the second volume for a fuller view of what Mr. Kissinger is really up to. He nowhere in this volume spells it out. But the underlying theme comes through strongly. In his consideration of the events and leaders with which he had to deal, he returns again and again to the question: Why do some leaders seem to understand the real choices before them and find it possible to act decisively, while others indulge in a politics of "sentiment" that clouds their minds and skews their priorities with impossibly idealistic notions

which threatened to paralyze the U.S. world-wide. The politics of sentiment was turning a legitimate questioning of the limits of American power into a paralysis of will.

But the question raised by Mr. Kissinger may be seen in a far wider context than Vietnam. Realpolitik vs. morality is a tension that must be faced by each succeeding generation of leaders in a democracy, not least by our own, as we seek a balance between human rights and legitimate national self-interest. This continued tension insures that "White House Years" will continue to be read as a classic of statecraft, even by those who disagree with Mr. Kissinger's applications of it.

It does not hurt, of course, that Mr. Kissinger knows how to tell a good story. Several aspects of "White House Years" stand out: the gem-like profiles of foreign leaders; the sense of complexity Mr. Kissinger is able to impart about the conduct of world affairs; and the narratives of the SALT and Vietnam negotiations, where Mr. Kissinger does not spare us the mind-

usually after weeks and months of stalling, it couldn't be signed soon enough for the Russians. Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko would grow particularly edgy. "The only time this master negotiator would be tray any emotion was in the last phase of a negotiation after the agreement was in essence complete. Then Gromyko seemed to be seized by an undefinable terror that his opposite number might pull some last-minute trick on him. He would seek to rush through the signature.... Perhaps he feared the obloquy of his colleagues if their complicated decision-making should have proved in vain."

Towards his own master, Richard Nixon, Mr. Kissinger is understandably ambivalent. As he puts it toward the end of this volume: "What extraordinary vehicles destiny selects to accomplish its design."

All the curious elements of the Nixon persona are here: the statesman of clear vision, the impulsive risk-taker who had to be repeatedly restrained, the cold-hearted Christmas bomber who simply couldn't bring himself to give a direct order to a

> Mr. Kissinger hasn't behind-the-scenes yarn. He thing far more ambitious: nature and art of statecraft.

> simply stitched together a appears to be after some a major inquiry into the na-

numbing detail but manages to keep our interest.

His favorite statesman was Chou En-lai, whose vision and willpower enabled him to pursue the opening to America despite potentially deadly internal ideological struggles. "Urbane, infinitely patient, extraordinarily intelligent, subtle, he moved through our discussions with an easy grace that penetrated to the essence of our new relationship as if there were no sensible alternative." He was a man that the cerebral Harvard professor and his chief, who hated small talk but loved grand geostrategic abstractions, could feel comfortable with. Mr. Kissinger's account of his secret trip to China shines.

The negotiations with the Chinese also give Mr. Kissinger the opportunity to reflect on diplomacy: "Of course, Chou and I used each other; that is on one level the purpose of diplomacy. But... only the amateur or the insecure thinks he can permanently outmaneuver his opposite number. In foreign policy, one must never forget that one deals in recurring cycles and on consecutive issues with the same people; trickery sacrifices structure to temporary benefit."

subordinate, the veteran of the political jungles aquiver with personal insecurity. After successfully conducting an important NATO meeting, Mr. Kissinger is implored by Mr. Nixon "to recount his conspicuous role in the day's events over and over again."

One would think, from reading this book, that in Mr. Nixon's eyes the real enemy was not the Russians or the North Vietnamese but the American bureaucracy. Mr. Nixon's feelings on the subject can't be news to anyone who followed the Nixon administration, even from afar. Still, the virulence of the warfare between the Nixon White House and the federal bureaucracy comes as a shock.

One of the big gainers from Mr. Nixon's virtual paranoia on the subject was, of course, Mr. Kissinger himself. William P. Rogers, formerly Eisenhower's Attorney General and one of Mr. Nixon's few friends from that era, was chosen by Mr. Nixon to be Secretary of State precisely because he knew so little of foreign affairs. "... It guaranteed that policy direction would remain in the White House," notes Mr. Kissinger. It also guaranteed Mr. Kissinger's ascendancy in foreign policy and the subsequent humiliation of Mr. Rogers, who wasn't even told in advance of Mr. Kissin-

cost Mr. Nixon, nor ernmental confusion job. It is a weak point that he doesn't explain of all this, at least in the way he does in his book."

Mr. Kissinger of his complicity of subordinates after secret Cambodia be unrelated to the clarity at the Nixon bombing even start self reports that Mically savvy Secret- dicted it couldn't be

## Pulling His Punch

And one wonder- ger, who at age 50 ambitions, doesn't punches. His discu- manhandling of an ample, seems unch- tial. In fairness, the Mr. Connally's cur- rent to Mr. Kissinger, the subject. If so, he even less forgiving gold convertibility run be viewed as h effect on world af peace agreement.

If less than can Mr. Kissinger in an eloquent fault. his characterization the former Kenn- "Had he lived in riod... Bandy wo the high offices of perience matched judgment equaled

But these are qu- estions about worked out by M- ger and implemen- singer. Was the li- Vietnam too cleve- Kissinger while in an order from M- gambit? Did we pl- we find that Chir- card? Was "Viet- charade or could gress hadn't shu- South Vietnam?

Henry Kissinger storing a sense of the conduct of a But how lasting is it? It makes it clear that gate for future se- hope to institution- institutions were

This volume ends with the sign- accords. Mr. Kiss- neither elated nor-

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.
NEWSPAPER

OCT 2 8 1979

# Kissinger's Memoirs Are Worth The Reading Time

By JOHN LEONARD
N.Y. Times News Service

Anecdotes help, too. From the gooney birds on Midway to the hilarious textile negotiations with Japan to the flap about a nonexistent baby water buffalo to the meeting in the White House with a nun and two Catholic laymen who had been named unindicted co-conspirators in a plot to kidnap him, Kissinger has a lively eye and some charm. He will also deprecate himself, 'and, twice, admits fallibility: wiretapping may require "more stringent safeguards," and he should not perhaps have given the impression to journalists that he had opposed the Christmas bombings.

To be sure, buzz words abound. They include "linkage," "equilibrium," "ambiguity," "fashionable," "whipsaw," "rout," "honor" and "impotence." And there are occasional lapses into the sermonette, on such subjects as the history of Russia, India and Pakistan, and the motivation of the younger generation that opposed our "historical misadventure" in Vietnam. Nevertheless, the Dean Acheson who wrote "Present at the Creation" — and whom Kissinger admires almost as much as he does Zhou Enlai and somewhat more than he admires the shah of Iran — would not have sniffed at the style of "White House Years" and would probably have agreed with its geopolitics.

On the secret bombing and subsequent "incursion" of Cambodia, he disagrees with his formidable critic, the William Shawcross who wrote "Sideshow" after Kissinger refused to talk to him. On Chile, he is brisk: it was in our national interest to prevent Salvador Allende Gossens from remaining president of Chile "through a fluke in the Chilean political system," which fluke was Allende's having been elected by a plurality rather than a majority — a fluke which could happen even in the United States. On Vietnam, he makes it clear that the North Vietnamese wanted total victory, on the field of battle or at the bargaining table. According to Kissinger, we bombed them into a peace treaty, which treaty might have preserved a viable South if it hadn't been for Watergate, to be discussed in Volume II. In the meantime, between Nixon's first in-

And he loved it — the helicopters and the motorcycle escorts, the sunglasses and the fake stomachaches, the hand-written messages carried by personal pouch from China through Pakistan to Washington, the conversations with Andre Malraux, if not with Oriana Fallaci. As a kind of Julien Sorel who went to Washington, he was Nixon's own Harvard professor, snatched away from Nelson A. Rockefeller. He tells us that the only time while he was in office that he couldn't sleep was on the eve of his flight to China.

Kissinger

Minneapolis Tribune
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.

D. 225,415 SUN 6:06 5:93

OCT 30 1979

Reading Kissinger is worth the risks

By James Reston

New York Times Service

Washington

Henry Kissinger has written a four-
pound book (1,521 pages), for sale at
a little more than $5 a pound. The
price is in keeping with inflationary
trends. But the further view here is
that the book is the most remarkable
insider's political memoir of our
time.

That is really a rather modest com-
pliment, for most books written by or
for our highest officials usually
make more money than sense, and
are almost as deficient in historical
perspective as they are in literary
distinction.

Kissinger's "White House Years" is
unusual in several respects. He
wrote it himself, an original idea in
this town. It is written in clear and
muscular English prose — maybe
because, as a German, he began,
when he was an immigrant boy, with
respect for the English language and
mastered its grammar, poetry and
even its subtle wit.

Also, Kissinger almost avoided, but
not quite, the temptation of most
high officials and their ghosts to try
to prove that they never made a mis-
take or, if they did, it was somebody
else's fault. His explanation of the
bombing of Cambodia, which con-
tributed to the unbearable tragedy of
that silent and amiable people and
their children, has not convinced
even his most devoted friends.

His story of the anatomy of this book
is interesting. When Kissinger left
the State Department after the elec-
tion of President Carter, he went to
Acapulco with a footlocker full of
books. "You have to remember," he

told me, "that I hadn't read an un-
classified serious book for eight
years."

In the footlocker, he had most of the
presidential memoirs, beginning
with Gen. Grant's, which he still re-
gards as the best. Also the memoirs
of Churchill, de Gaulle, Adenauer —
which he read in German — former
Secretary of State Acheson, and the
books of the British prime ministers
Eden and Macmillan.

"You understand," he said, "I'm not comparing myself to these people. I was merely looking for models. Macmillan impressed me very much, but the one who probably influenced me the most was de Gaulle.... He was a good model because he defines and because he had a conceptual framework, a larger purpose and a gift of explaining how the particular problem of the day related to his philosophy and his goals."

In 1977 Kissinger spent about six
weeks in Acapulco with his footlock-
er full of books. He lived in Puerto
Marques, in a house owned by for-
mer President Aleman of Mexico.
He agrees that this was not an un-
bearable hardship.

He had a staff of four researchers.
They collected all the documents by
subject and by year of his White
House years, and these he read,
"about 12 to 15 hours a day," from
March until December of 1977. He
then prepared a bibliography of the
important documents, and by July
began writing little essays on people
— and these vignettes remain among
the real gems of his book. In Decem-
ber 1977, after a bit of a struggle to
get the whole book in focus, he be-
gan writing chapters.

Then Kissinger would send a fin-
ished chapter to two of his former
State Department aides, Winston
Lord and Bill Rogers, the former
Latin American expert at State, and
he would rewrite the chapter again,
and submit this version to outside ob-
jective scholars.

The only point here is that, whatever
anybody thinks about the decisions
made in Kissinger's White House
years, this is probably the most seri-
ous attempt ever made to explain
the decision-making process, good or
bad, and to illuminate the interplay
of politics, personalities, the press
and even of accident on what is fi-
nally decided.

In this sense, it is a remarkable
achievement of reducing unbeliev-
able diversity to some kind of identi-
ty that can be understood by a care-
ful reader. Or even by a casual read-
er, for Kissinger has a gift of mock-
ery, of laughing at the pretensions of
big shots, including himself.

He has now finished six chapters of
his second volume, but is having a
tussle with it. "You see, Volume One
was sort of a linear thing in which
we had a concept," he explains.
"Volume Two deals really with ca-
tastrophe, the disintegration of ex-
ecutive authority.... There really is
a sharp break at Watergate.

"The turmoil of the first term, bad as it was, was a debate about national policy and America's role in the world. The turmoil of the second term was the personal struggle of Richard Nixon and really had no relationship to the policy we were trying to pursue...."

The popular complaint these days is
that nobody really knows what's go-
ing on in Washington, or how offi-
cials here reach decisions about the
things that affect people's lives. Well,
Kissinger has given about the best
description of the process possible. If
you can hold all 1,500 pages of it, it
may break your back, and if you
read it carefully, it may break your
heart, but it is still worth risking
both.

[Lc]

Sunday Capital-Journal

TOPEKA, KANSAS

CATH. CUM. TROD.

NOV 4 1979

# Kissinger's big book launched at

By BETTY BEALE

WASHINGTON — Henry Kissinger picked an historic dwelling as close as possible to the White House for the launching of his little 1,521-page tome, "White House Years." It was held at Decatur House on Lafayette Square.

Nancy Kissinger picked her most dramatic outfit — a voluminous Bill Blass mauve, wrap-around blouse of real leather with huge sleeves and a bounce above a super-slim black velvet skirt. She looked marvelous.

Washington
letter

Just back from a European tour to promote the book by giving one press conference in each town, Kissinger told NBC commentator Richard Valeriani that he went to a dinner in Dusseldorf, Germany, "And they came with 100 books to give out, one to every person at the dinner. I thought it was my book, but when they asked me to autograph them it wasn't my book at all. It was your book, 'Reisen mit Henry.' " Valeriani's book, "Travels With Henry," that came out months ago and is now translated into German, is about the Kissinger wit.

Henry autographed all the books any-
how, he told Dick, and they gave them
away. Dick was delirious with joy.
"He's been selling my book in Ger-
many. It's wonderful!" he exclaimed.

Former Secretary of Transportation Bill Coleman told French Ambassador Francois de Laboulaye, "I have only one complaint about the Concorde. I could read only 50 pages of a book between New York and Francois beamed.

"I always felt very sorry for her," replied Clare, "because I thought she was a warm, generous woman -- though I didn't agree with any of her politics, she was always very pleasant to me -- and everyone knew her married life was utterly miserable."

"She didn't have a married life and it was, of course, extraordinary to learn that she had had a very rich, full, apparently profoundly satisfying personal life. It all goes to show that we never know what the truth is about any of the great figures until 15, 20, 30 years later when they are dead and gone."

'The mystery is — why didn't Hickok,

who was the recipient of Eleanor's deep
love, burn the letters, rather than pre-
serve them to tarnish Eleanor's reputa-
tion? Was she trying to assure herself a
place in history?

Looking down the long, exquisite,
candle-lit table at the man seated at the
other end, Secretary of State Cyrus
Vance said, "I thank you from the bot-
tom of my heart for all you have done."

The man was German Ambassador Berndt von Staden who, with his lovely wife, Wendy, said good-bye to Washington this past week to return to Germany where he will sit at the right hand of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

The scene was a handsome French
embassy where the attendance of Cy
and Gay Vance was a great compliment

to both Ambassador de
his honored guest. With
in Washington, the V-
term to cover that cir-
vance said von Staden
his country with streng-
understanding of the p-
ers.

"Berndt," he said, "I
that we are strong, v
strong... We are de-
at Atlantic Alliance. You
to stand shoulder to
you."

In his toast von Staden
ly believe that trust is
cious treasure in inte-
tions and it is hardly p-
ine a man to whom it is
more trust than you do,

[c]

THE SUN
BALTIMORE, MD.
ORNING
DAILY NEWSPAPER

[LC]

OCT 23 1979

# Longer than 'War and Peace'

## First volume of Kissinger's self-serving prose is worth reading

By John Leonard

The first volume of Henry A. Kissinger's memoirs is longer than Leo Tolstoy's 'War and Peace,' and we don't even get to Watergate.

The question is, is it worth the time it takes to read it? The answer is yes. Of course, it is self-serving—especially on Cambodia and Chile and the “Christmas bombings” of North Vietnam in 1972—but the principal purpose of almost any memoir is to serve the self.

Consider, first, the style. Mr. Kissinger's years in the White House and the State Department did not, miraculously, repress his impulse to write decent prose. If his many shades often into sarcasm, at least is acquainted with irony. Other members of the first Nixon administration, not counting William Safire's, seem to have been written by ticker-tape machines after midnight on Wall Street, while no human was looking.

Pith counts. On the White House reaction to the shooting down of an American reconnaissance plane by the North Koreans: "It was as if someone had pushed a button labeled 'crisis management' and the answer that came up was 'nonchalance.'" On H. R. Haldeman, for whom government was basically an exercise in public relations: "It was risky to

Anecdotes help too. From the geoney birds on Midway to the hilarious textile negotiations with Japan to the flap about a nonexistent baby water buffalo to the meeting in the White House with a nun and two Catholic laymen who had been named unindicted co-conspirators in a plot to kidnap him, Mr. Kissinger has a lively eye and some charm.

To be sure, buzz words abound. They include "linkage," "equilibrium," "ambiguity," "fashionable," "whipsaw," "rout," "honor" and "impotence." And there are occasional lapses into the sermonette, on such subjects as the history of Russia, India and Pakistan, and the motivation of the younger generation that opposed our "historical misadventure" in Vietnam. Nevertheless, the Dean Acheon who wrote "Present at the Creation"—and whom Mr. Kissinger admires almost as much as he does Chou En-lai and somewhat more than he admires the shah of Iran—would not have sniffed at the style of "White House Years" and would probably have agreed with its geopolitics.

As for substance, how can we fail to be interested in the summit meetings with Mao Tse-tung and Leonid B. Brezhnev and Golda Meir and Elsaku Sato, the SALT talks and the secret negotiations with the Russians, the Chinese, the Germans and Le Duc (Ducky) Tho? Richard M. Nixon's initiative, so ably abetted by Mr. Kissinger, to open our relations with China was a stunning success. Kissinger's "shuttle diplomacy," for a while anyway, kept the lid on in the Middle East. The only boring pages in "White House Years" are those devoted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and even Marcel Proust could not have made NATO interesting.

On the secret bombing and subsequent "incursion" of Cambodia, he disagrees with his formidable critic, the William Shawcross who wrote "Sideshow" after Mr. Kissinger refused to talk to him. On Chile, he is brisk: it was in our national interest to prevent Salvador Allende Gos-

sens from remaining president of Chile "through a fluke in the Chilean political system," which fluke was Allende's having been elected by a plurality rather than a majority—a fluke that could happen even in the United States.

On Vietnam, he makes it clear that the North Vietnamese wanted total victory, on the field of battle or at the bargaining table. According to Mr. Kissinger, we bombed them into a peace treaty, which treaty might have preserved a viable South if it hadn't been for Watergate, to be discussed in Volume II. In the meantime, between Mr. Nixon's first inauguration and the Nobel Prize-winning treaty, another 19,000 Americans died.

On the vagaries of Mr. Nixon—courageous, Mr. Kissinger tells us, "secretive and devious," lacking "in self-confidence or largeness of spirit," and "beside himself" so often he must have been twins—Mr. Kissinger is shrewd and not altogether lacking in compassion.

From the beginning, Mr. Nixon wanted to run his own foreign policy, and Mr. Kissinger was his Lone Ranger, carrying that policy around in his saddlebags, and Secretary of State William P. Rogers was kept constantly in the dark. Mr. Kissinger agrees that this was "a poor system," but, really, the State Department and the Department of Defense dragged their heels when they didn't agree with a presidential directive.

As a kind of Julien Sorel who went to Washington, he was Mr. Nixon's own Harvard professor, snatched away from Nelson A. Rockefeller. He tells us that the only time while he was in office that he couldn't sleep was on the eve of his flight to China.

New York Times News Service

ORLANDO, FLA.
SENTINEL STAR
& 490,272 SUB. 206,160

[Lc]

OCT 28 1979

# Yes, Kissinger's 'White House Years' is worth the time

## White House Years

By Henry A. Kissinger
Little, Brown, $22.50

sermonette, on such subjects as the history of Russia, India and Pakistan, and the motivation of the younger generation that opposed our "historical misadventure" in Vietnam. Nevertheless, the Dean Acheson who wrote "Present at the Creation" — and whom Kissinger admires almost as much as he does Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai) and somewhat more than he admires the shah of Iran — would not have sniffed at the style of "White House Years" and would probably have agreed with its geopolitics.

As for substance, how can we fail to be interested in the summit meetings with Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) and Leonid I. Brezhnev and Golda Meir and Eisaku Sato, the SALT talks and the secret negotiations with the Russians, the Chinese, the Germans and Le Duc (Ducky) Tho? Richard M. Nixon's initiative, so ably abetted by Kissinger, to open our relations with China was a stunning success. Kissinger's "shuttle diplomacy," for a while anyway, kept the lid on in the Middle East. The only boring pages in "White House Years" are those devoted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and even Marcel Proust could not have made NATO interesting.

On the secret bombing and subsequent "incursion" of Cambodia, he disagrees with his formidable critic, the William Shaweross who wrote "Si-

And he loved it — the helicopters and the motorcycle escorts, the sunglasses and the fake stomachaches, the hand-written messages carried by personal pouch from China through Pakistan to Washington, the conversations with Andre Malraux, if not with Oriana Fallaci. As a kind of Ju lien Sorel who went to Washington, he was Nixon's own Harvard professor, snatched away from Nelson A. Rockefeller. He tells us that the only time while he was in office that he couldn't sleep was on the eve of his flight to China.

JOHN LEONARD
New York Times

Henry
Kissinger

The Home News

NEW BRUNSWICK, N. J.

D. 87,205. FEB. 72, 016

OCT 28 1979

MEMOIRS TO BRING MILLIONS

# Kissinger reaps financial coup

By JAMES L. ROWE JR.

Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
News Service

NEW YORK — Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's memoirs, probably the most sought-after manuscript of the decade, will bring the former Nixon administration official as much as $5 million.

The memoirs, which formally went on sale in book stores this week, represent one of the most lucrative properties in publishing history.

To the giant media conglomerate Time, Inc., however, the venture represents one of the largest amounts risked by an American publisher. Three Time subsidiaries — Time magazine, publisher Little, Brown and Co. and Book of the Month Club — bought up all important North American rights. All told, sources estimate, the three Time subsidiaries spent close to $3 million.

To recoup their investments, both Book-of-the-Month and Little, Brown are putting high price tags on the 1,521-page volume, which must become a huge best seller to make money. Publishing sources said that at the least, all of the books now in print would have to be sold for there to be a profit.

Kissinger owns the worldwide book and serialization rights — the memoirs will appear in 17 languages. Foreign publication will bring the former secretary of state another $2 million, or more, it is estimated.

All contracts in the United States were signed before Kissinger had put

so much as a word on paper, according to his agent, Marvin Josephson. Neither Josephson, nor any other principals, will confirm exactly the amounts Kissinger is getting.

Little, Brown has priced the volume at $22.50.

Book of the Month, which acquired

rights to the book before the club was bought by Time in late 1977, will charge its 1.75 million members $17.95 for the book, the highest price it ever has set for a single-volume main selection.

The club far exceeded the $85,000 it usually guarantees an author and publisher for a main selection but it is not known by how much.

More than a dozen publishers wanted the Kissinger book. Both Newsweek and Time sought serialization rights and Book of the Month Club and Literary Guild wanted the volume.

"Let's face it," said one publishing source. "Kissinger is charming, controversial and brilliant and was at the center of one of the most controversial administrations in American history. It was a seller's market from the start."

Josephson, who heads up one of the largest talent agencies in the nation, personally handles only two clients: Steve McQueen, the actor, and Kissinger.

"And he drove the best bargain ever without a manuscript or even an outline," said Ralph Graves, editorial director of Time magazine, which bought the right to serialize 35,000 words of the 750,000-word book, for an estimated $450,000 to $500,000.

Kissinger caused a stir late last year, when he decided he could not contain his memoirs in one volume and decided to write two books — one covering his years as Nixon's foreign policy adviser, the other his tenure as secretary of state.

HENRY KISSINGER
...memoirs in two volumes

[LC]

The Washington Book
VOLUME IX, NUMBER 16
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER

# Kissinger: The Imperial Self In the Arena Of History

WHITE HOUSE YEARS. By Henry Kissinger. Little, Brown. 1,521 pp. $22.50

By TOWNSEND HOOPES

IT HAS BEEN REMARKED THAT Henry Kissinger's life and career have progressed upward because he has been able, at each critical juncture, to transform himself into something else —to rise to each occasion, to meet each test of new circumstance and new opportunity. A traumatized teen-age refugee from the Nazis in the late 1930s, he was by 1945 the American sergeant in charge of a small town in occupied Germany, imposing the Al- lied will by manipulating the ingrained habit of former SS offi- cers to obey orders. A frumpish, ponderous professor when he arrived in New York in the mid-1950s to write a book under the auspices of the Council on Foreign Relations, he emerged as a suave establishment figure, a special protégé and later a valued friend and adviser to Nelson Rockefeller. A man who had cuttingly criticized Richard Nixon, both publicly and privately, and was the object of special suspicion within the Nixon entou- rage, he became the one oasis of distinction in the desert of that mediocre and squalid administration.

With publication of the first volume of his memoirs—*White House Years*—Kissinger seems, at least in one sense, to have done it again. As a work of literature, this is an elegant and im- pressive book. One recalls the dense, convoluted, abstract prose of earlier Kissinger books, from which the reader could extri- cate himself only with the aid of a machete. Philip Moseley, di- rector of the Russian Institute at Columbia, who edited Kissin- ger's *Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy* for the Council on Foreign Relations, admitted to cutting it by a third in six weeks, and was sure he could have improved it further with more time. Kissinger was furious, but not at the time in a position to resist, In contrast, this book is a pleasure to read. The writing ranges from clean, sure narrative reporting to gemlike definitions of complicated diplomatic situations and philosophic observations that occasionally rise to the level of majesty. The reader is pro- pelled by a powerful and lucid intelligence—sardonic, cynical, manipulative even when self-deprecating, yet always compel- ling. The encapsulated portraits of foreign leaders are sensi- tively observed and skillfully drawn (by comparison, most ad- ministration figures come off as thin and two-dimensional, con-

LARAMIE, WYO.
BOOMERANG
D. 7,000 SUBL. 7,000

[LC]

SEP 25 1979

Gus.

# Kissinger Book Depicts Nixon
As Insecure and Suspicious

NEW YORK (UPI) — In the first installment of his memoirs, Henry Kissinger says Richard Nixon, insecure and suspicious, deliberately chose William P. Rogers as his Secretary of State because of Rogers' ignorance of foreign policy.

Kissinger confirms what the State Department gradually learned during his eight years of ascendancy: from the beginning, it was planned that the "untrustworthy" State Department would be excluded from foreign policy making.

Kissinger quotes Nixon as describing Rogers a "one of the toughest, most cold-eyed, self-centered and ambitious men he had ever met."

According to Kissinger, in excerpts of his book "White House Years" in the current issue of Time magazine, Rogers' toughness would "give the Russians fits" in negotiations and would also keep "the little boys in the State Department" in line.

Kissinger writes: "Few Secretaries of State can have been selected because of their Presidents' confidence in their ignorance of foreign policy."

It appears that Kissinger, while he was talking with other leaders and other members of the administration, was making notes on their personalities for his memoirs. Some of them are brutal, some of them are kind, but all appear to be frank snapshots from a unique point of view:

— Nixon. "Meeting new people filled him with vague dread, especially if they were in a position to rebuff or contradict him...He had very little confidence in the State Department. Its personnel had no loyalty to him; the Foreign Service had disdained him as Vice-President and ignored him the moment he was out of office

"He felt it imperative to

beagle who has endured the inexplicable foibles of his master, yet bent them to his own will."

—Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin. "Dobrynin was free of the tendency toward petty chiseling by which the run-of-the-mill Soviet diplomat demonstrates his vigilance to his superiors: he understood that a reputation for reliability is an important asset in foreign policy."

—Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev. "No one reached the top of a Communist hierarchy except by ruthlessness. Yet the charm of the Chinese leaders obscured that quality, while Brezhnev's gruff heavyhandedness tended to emphasize it.

"The Chinese, even amid the greatest cordiality, kept their distance. Brezhnev, who had physical magnetism, crowded his interlocution.

"He was a mixture of crudeness and warmth, at the same time brutal and engaging, cunning and disarming."

— Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin. Kissinger tells of Kosygin's fury when a Soviet airplane that was to carry the American party failed to start. Kissinger writes, "Kosygin stormed on the plane and said,

"Tell us what you want to do with our Minister of Aviation. If you want him shot on the tarmac, we will do so."

"He looked as if he might be serious. I attempted to ease his embarrassment by speaking of the wickedness of objects. When one dropped a coin, I said, it always rolled away, never toward one. Kosygin was not to be consoled by such transparent attempts to shift responsibility.

"This is not my experience,' he said, fixing me with a baleful glance. 'I have dropped coins which rolled toward me.'"

— Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai). "His command of facts, in particular his knowledge of American events and, for that matter, of my own background, was stunning...I had no illusions about the system that Zhou represented. Yet when Zhou died, I felt a great sadness."

— Chinese chairman Mao Zedung (Mao Tse-tung). "Tall and powerfully built for a Chinese, Mao fixed the visitor with a smile both penetrating and slightly mocking, warning by his bearing that there was no point in seeking to deceive this specialist in foibles and duplicity of man."

[Lc]

WEST COAST REVIEW
OF BOOKS
HOLLYWOOD, CAL.
BY D. WORTH

NOV

1979

White House Years

$22.50. ★★★★★

AS SECRETARY OF STATE, Henry Kissinger changed the course of the world and his memoirs here are more candid than we could have hoped to have. Kissinger, no doubt, felt that if he were going to do his memoirs, he'd better be forthright about it. There are no pulled punches which is a commendation to the man. It is ridiculous in this small space to attempt to encompass everything Kissinger puts down, but there are specific references to what was accomplished and lost in the Nixon administration. Perhaps the book's strongest suit is the author's thorough understanding of the Nixon regime, and of the man, himself, and that is what is so remarkable about this book. Kissinger has a full understanding of every move, and the consequence of every move. He saw Nixon as a "withdrawn and elusive" man, but "desperately wanting to be told how well he'd done." The strategies in Europe, in China, in Vietnam with the frustrations of trying to bring North Vietnam to the negotiating table, with a military regime that felt they should fight with restraint, having been given so many restrictions during their offensives that as Kissinger said, at the time, "our commanders have had it drilled into their heads that we want a minimum of activity and that they will receive rewards for getting out fast. They are not aggressive enough." And, "I agreed with Nixon that we had to carry the war to North Vietnam; only this could force a conclusion of the war." Yet, he and Nixon disagreed on strategy. "Nixon saw in diplomacy a sign of potential weakness; I considered it a weapon." When peace again returned to America, Nixon was less than ecstatic. "What extraordinary vehicles destiny selects to accomplish its design," Kissinger says. "This man, so lonely in his hour of triumph, so ungenerous in some of his motivations, had navigated our nation through some of the most anguishing periods in its history." Yet, perhaps the only thing missing here is Watergate, Kissinger obviously considered that strictly an internal affair and so it is omitted. We would have wanted his views of the White House during that period, to agree or disagree with the assessment in Woodward and Bernstein's *The Final Days*, but what we have is more than enough. The book is a personal triumph for Kissinger as were his days as Secretary of State. R.T.