SATURDAY REVIEW: BOOKS

KISSINGER AT STATE,
NIXON AT BAY

The Illusion of Peace:
Foreign Policy in the Nixon Years

by Tad Szulc

Viking, 822 pp., $20

Reviewed by William Bundy

BETWEEN JANUARY 1969 and August 1974, American foreign policy was guided by two men, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, whose combination of experience and professional study perhaps exceeded that of any comparable pair of top American leaders at any time in our history. They took over in a time of national turmoil and reconsideration, with the cold war consensus of 1950–68 in ruins and a new and more complex world picture emerging, and their tenure was marked by the winding down of the Vietnam War, rapprochement with China, détente with the Soviet Union, a more active American role in the Middle East, and in general an explicit concentration on balance of power considerations. There were striking successes, equally striking excesses in execution, and at the same time large areas of neglect and error, some of which have come home to roost only since Nixon retired in disgrace to San Clemente.

Until now, the foreign policy of those
years has been presented in book form
largely by close observers who relied
heavily on Kissinger himself as their
source. Henry Brandon's *The Retreat of
American Power*, completed in the sum-
mer of 1972, is adulatory in tone, while
Marvin and Bernard Kalb's *Kissinger*,
completed in the spring of 1974, is
somewhat more balanced and vastly
more thorough but is still written as

though seen through the eyes of
Kissinger, then at the peak of his popu-
lar standing. The same applies to John
Newhouse's *Cold Dawn*, dealing with
the 1969–72 strategic arms negotia-
tions that led to the SALT I agreements,
and to Edward Sheehan's account of
the 1973–74 Middle East negotiations,
*Arabs, Israelis, and Kissinger*. More than
any other senior adviser or secretary of
state in our history, Henry Kissinger
had an eye not only to the care and
feeding of the press on a day-to-day
basis but also to the truth of Archibald
MacLeish's reminder that in the end,
historians control the reputations of
statesmen.

So both in timing and in substance, a
new and more searching account of the
period would seem to offer immense
promise. This reviewer has never met
Tad Szulc nor, so far as I can recall, ever
been in his line of inquiry. As a long-
time overseas correspondent for *The
New York Times* and as a winner of sev-
eral awards for his reporting on foreign
affairs, he would seem to be just the
kind of close observer—of wide experi-
ence and proven resistance to official
blandishments—who could best set up
the case for a more critical view of the
accomplishments and failures of Nixon
and Kissinger, making full use of the
post-1973 store of revelations in the
process.

Alas, after the not inconsiderable
chore of reading this 822-page book
carefully, I came away profoundly
disappointed. In terms of style, use of
sources, sense of setting, and synthesis
(or the lack of it), *The Illusion of Peace:
Foreign Policy in the Nixon Years* falls way
short of what might have been done.
As was once said of the Missouri River,
it is too thick to drink, too thin to
plow—and muddy to boot.

To begin with, the writing is very
hard going indeed. Szulc jumps from
one major topic to another with little
warning, and he follows no clearly visi-
ble organizational scheme except the
frail one of chronology. He crams in a
plethora of mechanical detail—who at-
tended what policy meeting, what for-
eigners were received at the White
House and when, the meaning of com-
muniqués long since dissected to a
fare-thee-well, just how Kissinger flew
to Peking and Paris without the press
finding out—to the point where again
and again one loses the forest for the
trees. Have we not had a surfeit of this
kind of reporting already? And must
Henry Kissinger always “race” from
here to there?

The effect, particularly in the latter
part of the book, is not only tedious but
somewhat like a set of diary notes
strung together. Szulc writes excellent
news dispatches and is one of the most
highly paid free-lance writers of maga-
zine articles, usually focused on some
significant scoop of his own. He has
also written useful books on Latin
America and on the politics of Czecho-
slovakia. But in dealing with the broad
sweep of world events, he seems out of
his element—Jan Steen attempting a
mural on the scale of Tintoretto.

Next, not only scholars but ordinary
readers with an interest in foreign af-
fairs will be annoyed by the absence of
any bibliography, footnotes, or source
references, even for public releases or
documentary material already in the
public domain. It is one thing to protect
confidential personal sources (though
in this area, Hugh Thomas on Suez and
John Newhouse on De Gaulle and the
Anglo-Saxons have shown how sepa-
rated footnote references to such
sources can be both discreet and

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Sygma

Nixon and Kissinger (1974)—Their "combination of experience and professional study exceeded that of any comparable pair of top American leaders at any time in our history."

informative) but another to omit sources that would enable the reader to check the provenance and context of the public material cited. The omission is glaring in a book that is to a large extent built around the theme of inordinate secrecy in government.

Szulc's failure to cite his sources is not merely frustrating, it is also confusing. For he thereby obscures to what extent one is in fact getting new evi-

dence of importance, as distinguished from a rehash. My own impression is that most of his revelations have already appeared in print, but I cannot be certain without doing more research than any reviewer (or most scholars) should be asked to do.

There is to be sure a wealth of inside information in the book. Szulc was a superb investigative reporter before that term was invented. He has ob-

viously had good sources within the National Security Council staff and the CIA, in particular. But his overwhelming reliance on such "reporter's sources" at one extreme and on the public record at the other leaves out a whole layer of background knowledge and research in between. To one such as myself, once accustomed to reading government intelligence documents, it is as if a senior clandestine intelligence officer stationed in the United States were trying to write an overall national intelligence estimate, polishing the nuggets that he has collected and making them count for more than they are actually worth compared to other sources of information.

The problem of source emphasis relates directly to the book's major failure: synthesis and setting. Both the bias and the talents of the author are ill-equipped to pull together the material and set it firmly in the broad context of the times and problems with which foreign policy has to deal—and then arrive at persuasive historical judgments.

Take, for example, our rapprochement with China. In the section dealing with the year 1969, we get infinite detail on Ambassador Stoessel's opéra-bouffe pursuit of the Chinese ambassador in and out of receptions in Warsaw but not a word about the armed clash on the Ussuri River in March and only a few lines on the threats of armed, even nuclear, attack that emanated from Moscow throughout the summer of that year. It is too much to ask of a book completed in May 1977 that it should assess the recent melodramatic allegations by H. R. Haldeman about whether the Nixon administration did or did not head off a Sino-Soviet war at that time; for the time being, Kissinger's denials seem far more persuasive. But surely any serious student would regard the Ussuri clash as a landmark (with a clearly discernible relation to the Czech crisis of 1968 and to the Brezhnev doctrine justifying interference in other Communist nations) and would seek at least to provide the materials for judging how much of the initiative for rapprochement came from the Chinese side. Nixon and Kissinger probably deserve the high marks they have received from most observers (apparently including Szulc) for the style, sophistication, and (yes) secrecy with which they handled their dealings with China. But would not the substance of reconciliation have come about under any American administration at that time? Was not the time ripe in any event—as Michel Tatu of Le Monde perceptively predicted at least six months before the Kissinger

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"The tenure of Nixon and Kissinger was marked by striking successes, equally striking excesses in execution, and at the same time large areas of neglect and error."

### flight to Peking?

Another example is Szulc's discussion of the 1973 Middle East war. While almost cursively examining the war and the subsequent negotiations, Szulc is obsessed by the rejection by Israeli and American leaders of what he regards as categorical earlier intelligence of Egyptian plans. But were not such reports common currency, especially in that situation? Was there not a much graver failure of overall judgment, tied directly to the rapid rise in power of the oil-producing Arab countries over the three previous years? Szulc is right in charging that Nixon and Kissinger neglected economics and especially the change in the oil picture. But Szulc's own analysis lacks a depth of insight into the events of 1970-71, on which there is now abundant research available for a serious evaluation of the government's role in the first oil price rise. (Likewise, the vital economic events of late 1971 that ended the Bretton Woods system are dealt with very superficially.)

The same lack of context applies to the domestic American background. Szulc badly scants any real analysis of American public opinion on foreign policy or of the interplay between the President and Congress. Surely any serious student would wish to highlight and to analyze the impact of the landmark Nixon speech on Vietnam in November 1969—which combined a defense of the cause with the theme of gradual American withdrawal—and to examine the crosscurrents in American public opinion and the Congress that lay behind Nixon's ability, until Watergate, to hang on in Vietnam. Often acute in dissecting foreign politics, Szulc never comes to grips with American political forces—for example, that the name of the game in Vietnam was to not “lose” just before a presidential election, according to Daniel Ellsberg's thesis. Whatever its merit at earlier times, 1969–73 seems the perfect test period for that thesis.

The point goes to the heart of Szulc's central interpretations of Nixon's Vietnam policy and of the true meaning and limitations of the Nixon doctrine (which the book describes in detail but without including its eventual, more precise definition). Did Nixon, as Szulc contends, really hope for something approaching “victory” in Vietnam?

Was he really misled either by field reports of progress or by the belief that the North Vietnamese would settle for anything less than an agreement that would leave their military forces in the south and the political deck stacked in their favor? Or was he attempting all along to conduct an orderly four-year retreat from an untenable position—a policy in some ways (including a strong element of duplicity) like De Gaulle's in Algiers? And if so, was the motive “just” domestic politics, to minimize the kind of backlash De Gaulle had had to master? Or was he moved, rightly or wrongly, by an overriding personal sense of the importance of preserving the image of American global power, as Jonathan Schell has argued of both Nixon's Vietnam policies and the domestic excesses that climaxed with the Ellsberg break-in and Watergate?

It is not that the book lacks statements of the author's conclusions concerning the Nixon-Kissinger policies and attitudes. Rather, it is that such conclusions—usually crisply stated and with sweeping denunciations and claims of sheer stupidity—not only come before the evidence is presented but are substantiated by only the most superficial analysis. If this is revisionism, it is revisionism without roots.

So in the end, the book tails off badly. Of course Nixon's claims of creating a structure of peace were grossly overdrawn. Of course his obsession with secrecy and deception was deeply corrupting as well as antidemocratic—of a piece with the crimes for which the House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend his impeachment. Yet it is striking that the one charge of deception most strictly in the field of foreign policy (the secret bombing of Cambodia) was in the end rejected by the committee and that Szulc never mentions this. One can accept much of Szulc's view of the damage done by these practices and attitudes without feeling that he has made any useful distinctions between what Nixon and Kissinger did and what was done by De Gaulle between 1958 and 1962 or by Franklin Roosevelt in 1940–41.

Moreover, there are many strong lines of criticism of the Nixon-Kissinger years that are hardly examined at all. Was their foreign policy really as systematic as its spokesmen (and Brandon) have claimed? Or was it not

deeply affected by personal antagonisms—to Indira Gandhi, to the Japanese leaders generally, to Makarios in the barely mentioned Cyprus debacle of 1974? Was not the obsession with viewing Third World events through the prism of American-Soviet rivalry—later so fatal in Angola—the direct outgrowth of an attitude that had been strongly manifest in the earlier years? Was not the United States when Nixon departed the political scene far down a path of unilateral action and of neglect of major allies from which only the saner policies of Gerald Ford and a mature Kissinger helped to rescue it?

Even such obvious targets as the Nixon affinity for dictators are badly shortchanged by Szulc. He portrays Park in Korea as a dictator in 1969—a time when both the press and opposition leaders were operating with substantial freedom—and then says nothing of the actual proclamation of martial law there in the fall of 1972 or of the parallel action of Marcos in the Philippines (which may actually have been encouraged by Nixon). The embrace of the colonels in Greece appears only in the epilogue, and nothing is said of Spiro Agnew or of certain Republican fund raisers of Greek origin. Chile is covered in detail, to be sure, but the full breadth of Nixon's indifference to democracy needs much more development than it is given here.

I have tried to review this book as the brief for the prosecution it obviously set out to be. That it provides substantial material for such a brief is undeniable, even though no careful scholar will be able to use that material without getting into the question of ultimate sources. But the real defects remain diffusion, disorganization, and lack of depth. Much more was wrong with the policies of those years than the overselling of détente and linkage, the systematic use of deception, specific errors, or bad handling of intelligence. The flaws went much deeper: In the end, they went to the roots of the policies themselves, which were inadequately adapted to a new and drastically changed world situation. I am afraid this particular brief will give the lawyers for the defense a much easier time than they deserve. ©

*William Bundy is the editor of Foreign Affairs.*

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# KISSINGERVISION: SEEING RED

## NBC Documentary On Eurocommunism Is Product of Network Ignorance

### Was Brinkley hooked on Kissinger's line?

BY ROGER MORRIS

It is a solemn, almost funereal scene. Dressed in dark coats, Henry Kissinger and David Brinkley are walking through a faded autumn in the garden at Versailles, delivering ominous warnings about the advent of Eurocommunism, terrorism, and the decline of the West. From a tease at the Berlin Wall, Brinkley has observed that, "The red flag flaps in the breeze all over Western Europe." Now, he begins the program at Versailles by asking, "Mr. Kissinger, why have the civilized, prosperous countries of Western Europe voted for commu-nism to the extent they have?" After some pondering, Kissinger concludes darkly that, "One has to say this is a moral problem...."

The setting adds to the sense of foreboding and peril. They chose Versailles, Brinkley would later explain, not to suggest the pomp or politics of the *ancien regime* (though there are traces of both in the program), but because the Grand Trianon was "open." "looked good," and was one of the few recog-nizably European places where a former Secretary of State of Mr. Kissinger's repute can still walk safely these days. There seemed no better backdrop for Henry Kissinger: On the Record. NBC's much-advertised, 90-minute, prime-time documen-tary broadcast January 13. No program of the season seems to have stirred such heated reaction on all sides as Kissinger's debut in the role of a handsomely paid NBC "consultant." Much of the criticism was inevitable. In hiring the guttural au-thority who once served presidents and premiers, NBC ac-quired, as well, Kissinger's equally famous stigmata.

Yet the deeper flaws and failures of the program belonged as much to the banal weakness of television journalism as to the machinations of Henry Kissinger. If the substance of the presentation was often slanted, or simply wrong, as some crit-ics charged—and indeed it was—that could be traced not only to Kissinger's formidable presence, but to how the program was conceived and produced by NBC. Obscured by all the gossip about Kissinger were far larger and more troubling questions about the capacity of a television network to ana-lyze a vital and complex subject like Eurocommunism, ques-tions about the responsibility of some of the most powerful people and organizations in journalism.

Kissinger's own distortions on the program were real enough. For the most part, his performance deserved the pub-lic rebuke it got, most notably from his old Harvard colleague,

Roger Morris was an aide to Henry Kissinger on the National Security Council. He is the author of *Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy* (Harper & Row).

Stanley Hoffmann, whose letter, signed by 11 other European affairs specialists, appeared in *The New York Times* on Janu-ary 27. The audience was treated to a running Kissinger com-mentary that largely ignored important distinctions among the various communist parties and their political environments in Western Europe, the widespread torpor and corruption of the governing parties which account for so much of the rise of Eu-rocommunism, and the tenuous dependence of the commu-nists on a broader, non-ideological electorate which supports them only to the degree that they observe democratic consti-tutions and maintain relative independence from the Soviet Union.

The former Secretary of State also neglected to discuss his own government's recent CIA intervention on behalf of right-wing clients in Portugal, Italy, and Spain—another pertinent piece of the story of radicalization in Europe. Part of Kissin-ger's contract with NBC, according to network Vice President Nigel Ryan, was the right to excise any such national security "secrets." should they come spilling out inadvertently. As it was, of course, there was no such problem for this show.

What Kissinger's commentary did reveal—though most viewers hardly could have appreciated it—was a model of the sort of briefings he frequently gave Nixon, Ford, or assorted Senators in other times. There, in prime-time, was the selec-tive history, the innuendo, the weary cynicism that used to wow them in the White House.

But not even Secretary Kissinger in the Oval Office com-manded the visual aids he now had at his disposal, courtesy of NBC, which bent still further the slant of his analysis. From Brinkley's opener at the Berlin Wall through later maps and stills, there was impressive embellishment for the simplistic, often misleading, and dangerous portrayal of Eurocommu-nism as synonymous with "Russian conquest." "Oddly enough," as Brinkely explained to the accompani ent of a NATO exercise film, "European countries now voting for Communism are members of a military organization set up to protect them from it" (italics added).

And there was Kissinger, soberly explaining the resem-blance of Eurocommunism to the East European takeover af-ter the war, with film footage the NBC script calls "stock Hungarian uprising, street fighting, and tanks." It was all free of untidy complications like national or historical differences, or the presence and absence of the Red Army, or the fact that the tragic Hungarian revolt was led in part by popular, local communists who were reaching for internal freedom and in-ternational neutrality and who were summarily executed by the Russians for their heresy. Presumably, NBC didn't have "stock" footage on that part of history.

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These omissions made all the more conspicuous the absence of any effective rebuttal to Kissinger's views. To the degree that other realities intruded on Kissinger's view of European politics, it was in the suspect persons of Communist Party leaders answering NBC correspondent Garrick Utley's pointed questions, or Italy's Christain Democratic Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti telling Brinkley in 60 seconds that the communists may or may not be democratic. Despite NBC's assertion that several scholars and public figures with sharply contradictory views were interviewed and filmed for the program, no other responsible, non-communist authority appeared to discuss Eurocommunism in the program.

"We do not accept the charge that there was no rebuttal," said one NBC executive, adding that, in any case, the program "is called *Henry Kissinger: On The Record*," it set out "to present his view," and it had no obligation to air opposing interpretations or questions. The same Kissinger cachet at home and abroad that made him such a costly and prestigious commodity for NBC also gives him extraordinary public authority that may, in itself, require special attention to the issues of fairness and balance. For millions of Americans, and later, Europeans, Kissinger spoke on the program as the sole American voice (along with Brinkley, an "authority" in his own right) on issues vastly more complicated or debatable than the presentation even hinted.

In any event, NBC's rationale excuses neither naked errors of fact nor the neglect of other relevant issues, whatever Kissinger thought about them. Brinkley, for example, declared the French Communists ready to nationalize everything—"down to the corner store selling pots and pans"—a charge so plainly false it hasn't even been made in a French political campaign.

Only once in 90 minutes, amid appropriate commercials by Sperry Rand and GTE, was there the slightest mention of the billions of dollars invested by U.S. corporations in Europe. In the last segment of the program, and then only in answer to a question from a docile, suitably respectful audience of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, Kissinger explained that Soviet domination of Europe would make the U.S. position "extremely complicated," not only militarily, "but also from the point of view of economics." There was after all, he concluded, "the structure of relationships." No more was said.

Beyond the unmentionable economic issues were other awkward, unanswered questions. Does it really matter if the people of Italy choose to go communist? Does the United States really expect to fight a conventional land war in Europe? Are Portugal and Spain vital to the U.S. national security? Henry Kissinger once told a meeting of the Forty Committee on Chile, "I don't see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible." Should this be our attitude toward Eurocommunism?

"All we ever hoped to do," Brinkley said in an interview, "was to tell some substantial number of people what was happening in Europe." "What was happening in Europe," however, was mainly what NBC saw through the peculiar prism of its own varying ignorance, naivete, and tyranny of routine.

Not far into the production of the program, NBC was, apparently, well over its head intellectually, a victim, in part, of Kissinger's political exploitation and, in part, of its own inherent weaknesses. According to several sources, the show took shape early last summer in meetings between Kissinger, Brinkley, Executive Producer Stuart Schulberg, and producers Thomas Tomizawa and William Cosmas. After ruling out topics like the Middle East, in which Kissinger thought him-

Kissinger and Brinkley at Versailles: "The star charmed, cowed, and ruled the press, much as he used to go 'off the record' in the rear of a 707 on the way to Damascus."

self too recently involved, the group agreed on Eurocommunism. Kissinger and Brinkley thought the topic "important," and the producers saw it as "hot," given reports that Italian and French Communists might soon enter their governments.

Sources describe Kissinger in these first meetings as circumspect, but "implicitly heavy." "He was not overbearing," said one, "but you could also say that NBC showed him proper deference." Kissinger's role, as Brinkley described it, was to be "himself," which was "all he was willing to do and all we wanted." He would do no interviews and not be a reporter. In Brinkley's words, "He was not a member of our news staff."

By the time the production crew reached Europe in the fall, the collapse of the Socialist-Communist coalition in France had made the topic less urgent—at least for the producers—and it was decided, with Kissinger's approval, to reduce the footage devoted to Eurocommunism in favor of new segments on terrorism and the question-and-answer session in Chicago.

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More telling than this shifting with the news of the moment, however, was the apparent impact on Brinkley and some of his colleagues of their first brush with European communism. The NBC group was briefed before departure, a process remembered by one beneficiary as "once over lightly, if at all."

Whatever their preparation, the NBC team seems to have embarked from New York with what one source called acidly "the Tom Wicker theory of European communism— the assumption that the Italian and French parties are Hubert Humphrey and Teddy Kennedy liberals in disguise."

But upon discovering that communists in the flesh were given to street beatings, local graft, Soviet subsidies, and other frailties—"The Italian CP didn't even have a decent position on abortion," said one participant—Brinkley reacted with all the zeal and alarm of the newly converted. The *coup de grace*, so to speak, seems to have come from the Communist Mayor of Reims, ("a proud, ancient, traditional French city") who used tax money to bus senior citizens to Party gatherings in Paris.

"I found that offensive," said Brinkley. "Politics is politics, but I thought that was dirty pool." All in all, he concluded, it was "a pretty bad show," and he set out to get "the message across."

So it went. Schulberg, with the acquiescence of both Tomizawa and Cosmas, is reported to have cut out takes of Kissinger critics and contradictory views. The cuts were made on the basis of political judgment and considerations of "coherence," according to one source. Some critics would not appear, Brinkley said, and others were unusable. The rest did not seem worthwhile. "because they were saying the same thing, he said. "It got to be repetitive." (NBC scarcely had a problem with "repetitive" opposition to Kissinger: there

was none at all.)

There are conflicting versions of how much Kissinger himself edited the final product, if at all. Aides and friends at least urged him to do so in his own interest. But Kissinger didn't need to use a heavy hand. The final product—the result of his own stardom, the intellectual shallowness of his network colleagues, and the general fecklessness of the whole process—was a program, like one of those old meetings of the National Security Council, in which Henry Kissinger reigned supreme.

Well, not quite. When it was over, when the criticism poured in, Kissinger was reported to be "dismayed" and "dissatisfied." "He insisted on other points of view being on the air and suggested other names," said one source. He had certainly known, went the story, that a "polemical, one-sided program" would only damage and eventually eclipse his message. It was not so different, after all, from having plausible opposition to knock down at the NSC—a William Rogers or Melvin Laird—for the sake of appearances and credibility.

For its part, NBC recoiled nervously, not unlike a government suddenly besieged by a scandal and snoopy reporters. While several participants spoke candidly about the program, others seemed plainly frightened. Disconcerted assistants anxiously deflected calls. Producer Cosmas, who has since left NBC for what executives call "unrelated circumstances," could not be located by his former office. When asked to describe how the Kissinger documentary was assembled, one participant said simply, "You're putting me in a very difficult position."

As for the official company view, NBC was "pleased with the program," according to a public relations officer. "It was a group responsibility," said Vice President Ryan, following "routine" and "usual

hierarchical" procedures. It might all sound like an announcement from the People's Republic of China, he joked, but that's the way it was at NBC.

Some of the criticism of the program was carping and missed the important points. What scarred the program was not the gardens at Versailles, or Kissinger's regal habits, or the network's blatant use of a political celebrity to rejuvenate laggard ratings. In Henry Kissinger: On The Record, the star charmed, cowed, and ruled the press, much as he used to go "off the record" in the rear of a 707 on the way to Damascus or in the State Department auditorium. But here, as in those other settings, the larger cooptation had taken place long before.

To deal with Henry Kissinger and with demanding intellectual questions, NBC put forward men skilled in the techniques of their trade and their own organizational survival. It was not an equal match. The program depended on people obviously unprepared and, worse, casually unaware of their deficiency. NBC, like any other television network, was vulnerable to politicians of Kissinger's caliber—much as the lawyers and bureaucrats who ran U.S. foreign policy were subdued for eight years by the stardom that propelled Kissinger onto NBC's payroll.

Would the network have felt no need for rebuttal, for factual completeness, if it had been Spiro Agnew: On The Record? But the harsh truth is that NBC did not know the difference when it came to Eurocommunism. And the ignorance seems accepted at the top in an earnest, almost resigned amateurism. "It wasn't scholarly and serious," said Brinkley in defense of the show. "That's hardly possible on TV anyway."

"I'm no red-baiter," protested several participants in the show. But none seemed able to conclude from the experience that different people,

bred to different organizational habits and skills, might have approached the program very differently—or at least, on discovering their first benign misconceptions of European communism, might have paused to examine the subject with more care. But it was as "routine" to warn the American people of their dire discovery, to go along with Kissinger's loaded brief, as it was to view the show for what was "hot."

There is no remedy for this institutional inability of television news to cope with the increasingly intricate issues in public affairs, particularly in foreign policy. Programs like this one on Eurocommunism require far more than telling a story or rehashing wire service copy. Like most big organizations, NBC instinctively demands the suspension of independence, intellect, and discrimination of those climbing the corporate ladder, and then more or less gladly suffers the resulting loss in those who reach the top. The fault, however, is not in the medium, or even in Henry Kissinger, but in the organizational ethic and mentality that breeds people so unaware of the responsibilities their technology has placed on them.

As for Eurocommunism, the damage may well be done. For the too many viewers who take their Kissingers and Brinkleys seriously, the public perception of a Red Menace in Europe may affect not only U.S. policy toward Europe, but also wash over into crucial debates on the Panama Canal, strategic arms limitation agreements, and other issues where sensible policy is hostage to myth and suspicion. And if, in a year or so, Brinkley's shocking Communist mayor of Reims wins his "dirty pool" and becomes Minister of Interior in Paris, if we must ask then in rage and fear and confusion, "Who lost France, or Italy, or Portugal," NBC will have had its share in our national mindlessness.

Washington Whispers.

Carter Sends a Signal to Israel's Begin ... Days Numbered
For UMW's Arnold Miller? ... Washington's Biggest Egos

Just before their scheduled White House meeting, President Carter sent this private signal to Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin: The latest upsurge of fighting in the Middle East would not deter Carter from putting pressure on Israel to withdraw from occupied Arab lands and to accept some form of Palestinian homeland.

Watch for moves within the United Mine Workers to remove President Arnold Miller from office before his term expires in 1982. Sentiment is growing for the union's executive board to call a special convention to fix a date for a new election.

National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger are said by a White House aide to have the most self-esteem in the administration. He adds: "If you locked the three of them in a room for a day, they would suffocate each other with their egos."

Space aboard "Air Force One" for Carter's South America-Africa trip is at a premium, but among those assured of seats is a team of interpreters. Purpose: Give them an early look at presidential speeches to avert foul-ups like the one at the Warsaw airport on the last overseas journey.

Henry Kissinger is rated by Secretary of State Vance as the "most loyal man in town" when it comes to supporting the administration in foreign affairs. When the former Secretary of State is invited to meet visiting diplomats, he consults Vance to insure that it causes no embarrassment to the administration, arranges to get briefed on U.S. policy beforehand and promptly tells the State Department about his discussions.

California Republicans are jubilant about their election prospects in November. Reason: The latest Field Poll showed both Carter and Governor Jerry Brown slipping badly—seen as a sign of a Democratic decline.

Though they have been publicly lukewarm to the idea, both Senator Russell Long and Representative Al Ullman, influential chairmen of congressional tax-writing committees, are expected by colleagues to join those clamoring for a cut in Social Security taxes. As one lawmaker put it: "When the chips are down, they like to be on the winning side."

Entry of David Marston, the U.S. attorney who was fired by the Carter administration, into the Republican gubernatorial race in Pennsylvania means that the three leading GOP candidates are all former prosecutors who made their marks rooting out corruption. The others: Arlen Specter, who was Philadelphia district attorney, and Richard Thornburgh, who was U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh.

Rumors of an impending shake-up are keeping White House staff members on edge. But most top-level advisers feel safe, because, as one said: "Carter just hates to fire anybody."

It was by design that administration people were excluded from talks that led to the latest tentative coal-strike agreement. Both union and industry negotiators became so distrustful of government intervention that they decided things would go more smoothly if only they were involved.

The White House has warned the Kremlin that scheduled visits to Moscow by three Cabinet officers will be called off if Soviet dissident Anatoly

Shcharansky is harshly treated at his trial on charges of being a CIA agent.

Disputes between agencies are a major reason for White House delays in sending Congress its proposals for major new programs in urban policy, nuclear licensing, crime, water resources. Preoccupation with Panama Canal treaties has kept the Carter team from settling the disagreements.

Democrats in Minnesota are so badly split that pressure is mounting on Senator Muriel Humphrey to help preserve party unity by running in November for the remaining four years of her late husband's term.

Friends say that West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt resents being given advice on how to run his country's economy by a U.S. President who, he feels, is doing a poor job of handling the American economy.

House Speaker Tip O'Neill bluntly told South Korea to allow congressional investigators to question former Ambassador to the U.S. Kim Dong Jo about passing money to lawmakers, or risk losing U.S. aid.

The new 15 percent limit on outside income a member of Congress can earn is hindering both parties' attempts to attract candidates to oppose incumbents. Recruiters often find it easier to tap people under 30 who have not made a financial bundle or those over 50 who have.

From a top White House aide: "The President can be so tough and intimidating that only three people have the stature to tell him to his face he is wrong—Ham Jordan, Jody Powell and Vice President Mondale."

18

U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, March 27, 1978