The Washington Post

WP

1/17/83

C13

JACK ANDERSON

Kissinger Seen
Aiming Toward
A Comeback

Is Henry A. Kissinger, the self-styled lonesome cowboy of Richard M. Nixon's foreign policy, riding the comeback trail? Some Reagan administration officials say he is, and they're not pleased at the prospect.

As a protege of the late Nelson A. Rockefeller, Kissinger was regarded with open hostility by President Reagan and his conservative backers. The dedicated anti-communists around Reagan saw Kissinger, the principal architect of detente with the Soviet Union, as the personification of what was wrong with American foreign policy.

In fact, no one could have been further out in the political wilderness than Kissinger seemed to be when Reagan took over.

Besides the ideological differences, there was personal animus. The president's national security affairs adviser, Richard V. Allen, had no love for Kissinger, who had fired him from the Nixon administration.

Even Alexander M. Haig Jr., who studied high-level intrigue at Kissinger's knee in the Nixon White House, was careful to keep at arm's length from his old boss, at least in public. White House sources insist

that Haig kept in touch with Kissinger, but always on the Q.T.

Aside from the obvious risk of seeming to be close to Kissinger in the Reagan era, the sources said Haig was also deeply suspicious of the man who never made any secret of his lust for power. Haig reportedly worried that Kissinger wanted his old job back.

But the situation has changed dramatically since then. Both Allen and Haig are gone, replaced by two men with little experience in foreign policy: William P. Clark at the National Security Council and George P. Shultz at the State Department.

Shultz is not only an old friend of Kissinger from the Nixon days, but he's not the type to worry about Kissinger's ambitions.

The result is that, while Kissinger hasn't exactly been invited back into the State Department bunkhouse, he has at least been tying up his horse at the hitching post. In fact, Shultz has been quite open about his reliance on Kissinger and has invited him for weekend huddles on the Middle East.

"Shultz doesn't know many things about foreign policy," an administration source told my associate Lucette Lagnado. He added a bit sourly that the secretary's dependence on Kissinger is "a product of built-in incompetence."

Exactly how much influence Kissinger has had on Shultz—and on his

old critics in the Oval Office—is impossible to pinpoint, of course. But some see Kissinger's hand in Reagan's September peace initiative for the Middle East.

Sources say Kissinger has been meeting secretly with various Middle East officials to push the peace plan, and has also spoken with Reagan's chief shuttle diplomat, Philip C. Habib.

Those who dread the resurrection of Kissinger point to other associates in the foreign-policy establishment: Undersecretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas O. Enders and Robert McFarlane, Clark's deputy at the National Security Council.

Other old Kissinger buddies who are close to the administration, if not officially part of it, include Helmuf Sonnenfeld, William Hyland and Brent Scowcroft.

Kissinger, observed one administration source, "is everywhere—and very influential."

Opinions vary on the question of Kissinger's ultimate hopes. Most Kissinger-watchers assume he's working up brownie points against the day George Bush may need a secretary of state.

Meanwhile, Kissinger is reported-ly raking in big consulting fees at Kissinger Associates, as much for the entree he can give clients to those with power in Washington as for any foreign-policy expertise.

BIG GEORGE VIRGIL PARTCH

DENNIS THE MENACE HANK KETCHAM

# CHECKBOOK JOURNALISM
## Bounces at NBC

By Edwin Diamond

Shortly after leaving office, both Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger signed multi-year contracts with the National Broadcasting Company. Kissinger's contract called for him to serve as an "adviser-consultant" to NBC News; he would be available to appear in one news special a year, and would also do no more than eight interviews on international developments for the Today Show and the NBC Nightly News. For this work he would be paid around $1 million. Gerald Ford, his wife Betty, and their children also agreed to provide certain on-air services for NBC. Together, the Ford family would be

paid something like $1.5 million.

The name usually given such deals in the past has been "checkbook journalism"—in exchange for money, a news source agrees to sell his or her "exclusive" story. In the last few years, CBS News paid H.R. "Bob" Haldeman for an interview, and the story of the "world's first test tube baby" was hawked in the British newspapers. But whenever these freak shows go on, they create the same feelings of unease. The Ford and Kissinger arrangements, for example, came with more than the usual strings attached to them. Both men reserved their rights *not* to cover certain subjects, or to perform their services in certain restricted ways. These strings have proved to be nooses around the neck of serious journalism as far as the Ford and Kissinger projects are concerned.

For its $2.5 million—even at today's inflated rates, still a lot of money—NBC has gotten one program out of Gerald Ford (shown last April 26). This program followed months of negotiation after Ford rejected NBC's original idea of a program covering his first 30 days in office. Kissinger has also participated in one special, a 90-minute essay on Kissinger's high special views of Eurocommunism; called *Henry Kissinger: On the Record*, it managed to do something few other television news documentaries have ever done: *On the Record* scored the lowest ratings among the audience for the January week it was broadcast, while simultaneously offending scholars and specialists in the field of European studies. It was dull as television and deceitful as contemporary history—in short, a double turn-off.

Edwin Diamond, *WJR's* Senior Editor, is a senior lecturer in political science at MIT. He is the author of *Good News, Bad News*, published last November by MIT Press.

32 WJR January/February 1979

tification with the program. The ads are reviewed, Mahrer said, but he indicated that the underwriter is allowed considerable leeway. "This is a free country and a corporation can place any print advertisement it wants," he added.

Like the FTC, the FCC's concern with corporate advertising is restricted to its mandated jurisdiction. Consequently, the FCC gets involved mostly in cases involving possible violation of the Fairness Doctrine. The law basically requires a broadcaster to present both sides of a controversial issue of public importance.

"Unless institutional advertising expressly confronts an obvious and meaningful aspect of a controversial issue, the Fairness Doctrine would not normally apply," said an FCC official.

Milton Gross, chief of the FCC's political fairness section, said the ruling has not often been imposed. Yet, he recalled that in 1976, Washington's WTOP-TV, now WDVM, ran a series of television spots sponsored by Texaco on the diversification of oil companies. Acting on a complaint, the FCC ordered the station to make time available to an opposing voice, which it prudently did.

More than anything else, however, it was the House and Senate subcommittee hearings last year that focused public attention on the corporate advertising issue.

The House inquiry, conducted by Rep. Benjamin S. Rosenthal (D-NY), offered evidence that the IRS has been exceedingly tentative, if not remiss, in enforcing tax non-deductibility provisions relating to corporate grassroots lobbying. As defined by the tax code, grassroots lobbying is "any attempt to influence the general public, or segments thereof, with respect to legislative matters, elections, or referendums."

During the hearings, Prof. S. Prakash Sethi of the University of Texas, an expert in the field, suggested that a lack of clear-cut guidelines and vague definitions of what constitutes grassroots lobbying were partly responsible for the erratic enforcement. He proposed, for example, that "image/good will" advertising be treated as necessary business expenses and hence deductible, and that "idea/issue" advertising be classified as indirect or grassroots lobbying and hence nondeductible.

> "No one questions their right to speak. The question is, are they entitled to a tax deduction? Yes, if they are promoting their products. No, if they're pitching an ideology."

Another witness, Michael Cole, legislative director of Common Cause, advocated full disclosure of an organization's grassroots lobbying attempts, rather than restrictions on such activity. After all, Cole observed, grassroots lobbying is a vital part of representative democracy. Also, disclosure would make it easier for the IRS to carry out its enforcement functions.

Corporate reaction to the congressional hearings was that the inquiries alone would have the effect of inhibiting a free exchange of views. That being so, business leaders were properly outraged when the Abourezk subcommittee last year issued subpoenas to obtain internal documents from more than a dozen of the nation's largest corporations and some of their advertising agencies. The firms included Exxon, Gulf Oil, Mobil, ITT and Texaco, as well as the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association.

"They were up in arms about it but it didn't bother Abourezk," a subcommittee official reported. He said the purpose of the subpoenas was to try to find out whether the intent of the firms' advertising programs were political or commercial. The action, he said, was quietly taken, without splashy publicity, and that the subcommittee was careful to protect the rights and privacy of those subpoenaed.

Eventually, almost three filing cabinets of documents were compiled. There was no follow-up, how-

ever, since the documents were "hard to interpret," thus making it almost impossible to determine whether the firms were actually engaged in grassroots lobbying or merely glossing their corporate image. Nevertheless, it demonstrated the seriousness of the congressional investigation.

Now, with Abourezk gone, it is unclear whether the inquiry will be pursued or even if the subcommittee will continue to survive. However, as the subcommittee aide pointed out, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), is scheduled to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which the subcommittee is a part. "That," the aide said, "could make things very lively around here."

Regardless what action Congress takes, the problems connected with corporate advertising will not fade, because many of the factors which generated its growth are still present. Higher prices and gasoline shortages certainly will not help. As it is, corporate executives are in somewhat of a bind. Many would like to burrow in their board rooms but are aware that today there is a high risk in a low profile. And despite all the furor over First Amendment guarantees, they have been warned that it will not be their salvation if their credibility is in tatters.

Furthermore, it remains uncertain whether advocacy advertising is the answer. Famous advertising executive Leo Burnett has been quoted as saying, "Institutional advertising is something like peeing in the pants of a blue sergeant. It gives you a nice warm feeling. But no one else notices it."

Burnett maintained that a company's image "is the sum total of the company's words and its deeds, as the public perceives them . . . if corporate advertising is contradicted by a company's deeds, it is worse than useless."

If members of the corporate community need a further reminder, then perhaps they ought to recall what Henry Ford II said a few years ago: "We've got to rebuild consumer confidence. I think we have to go back and ask ourselves who destroyed consumer confidence, who eroded the public's esteem of business and businessmen. If we think about it long enough, we find ourselves in agreement with Pogo of the comic strips, who said, 'We have met the enemy and he is us.'"

January/February 1979 WJR

31

Bad as all this may be, it still doesn't exhaust the bad news. The Ford-Kissinger checkbook arrangement has left the image of NBC News badly compromised, at least among people who follow these matters. It indirectly contributed to the departure from NBC of NBC News President Richard Wald, who, to his credit, tried to keep some of the journalism in the checkbook-journalism venture. It also contributed to the closing of an NBC News bureau, and cost some NBC people their jobs (the $2.5 million had to come from somewhere). Beyond NBC, the Ford-Kissinger arrangement has created nagging fears in other news organizations, for if a news operation with the reputation and resources of NBC News can be so misused and abused, what might happen to other organizations with less standing than

NBC.

A reasonable question, then, for anyone who cares about broadcast journalism is: How and why did this happen? The answer goes back to those first contracts, which set the style for everything else that followed.

**The Contract:** As best as can be determined, NBC News people themselves had little to do with the arrangements that brought the Ford family and Kissinger aboard. The contracts were the work of Edgar H. Griffiths, president and chief executive officer of RCA, NBC's parent company, and of Herbert Schlosser, then president of the NBC network. Griffiths, RCA's third executive officer in the last three years, was concerned about NBC's lagging ratings in the competition with CBS and ABC; he is considered a man who

wants very quick results that translate into fatter profits and higher dividends (and a firmer purchase on his own job). Schlosser has been a social acquaintance of Kissinger; he occasionally lunched or dined with him, in Washington or New York (at some tables, Henry Kissinger is considered a war criminal, at others, a prize catch; we are *where* we eat).

Griffiths was the hungrier of the two men, hungry for ratings, and in a position to do something about his hunger, though not necessarily the right thing. In fact, some time after the Ford-Kissinger arrangements were made Schlosser was fired by the impatient Griffiths, who brought in Fred Silverman as the new head of NBC. Schlosser was sacrificed on the alter of the holy ratings, but the network's ratings position has not noticeably changed. (No one expected they would. The Fall, 1978 programming schedule, the work of others, was in place when Silverman came aboard. His own program decisions are just beginning to affect the so-called "second season"—replacements and scheduling changes made in December when the fall mistakes and horrors are mercifully cancelled.)

If Griffiths ever expected good ratings from the Ford and Kissinger arrangements, then he went about it in a peculiar way; the terms of the Ford-Kissinger contracts that Griffiths approved just about insured bland, punchless, low-rated programs. Gerald Ford, for example, cannot be asked by NBC about Richard Nixon or the Nixon pardon; that took care of the First Thirty Days idea. One NBC official says that Ford's book publisher, Harper & Row, is actually the party with veto power over what can or cannot be discussed by Ford. Whoever holds the power, it isn't NBC News.

While Ford has been coy about sitting still for NBC's cameras, he found time to give a major interview to *Fortune* magazine, to become an advertising spokesman for the Franklin Mint and to travel about the country sounding very much like a presidential candidate in 1980. If he is, of course, then NBC will run afoul of FCC regulations—which call for airing all sides of political issues and for equal time for all candidates—when it tries to put him on the air as nominating time approaches. The Kissinger contract will present similar difficulties as 1980 approaches, and

Illustration by Glenn Mosser

January/February 1979 WJR 33