A Too-Special Relationship

"I have not had unfortunate experiences with the press."

That is one point Henry Kissinger made at his extraordinary news conference in Salzburg that no journalist will dispute. In the 5 1/2 years that he has been shaping U.S. foreign policy, the Secretary of State has never lacked a large and enthusiastic following in the press and public. They have applauded his statecraft spectaculars, been entertained when he stepped out with starlets, and generally turned to him for relief from the sullenness and secrecy that have characterized much of the rest of the Nixon Administration.

Thus there was an odd ring to Kissinger's petulant suggestion at Salzburg that he had been getting a raw deal over his role in wiretaps (see THE NATION). Until the issue is settled, the only incontrovertible fact in the affair is that it has prompted open questioning of how the press has handled the supersecretary. Says Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh, whose New York Times story on the taps fanned Kissinger's wrath: "I don't think Kissinger has been subject to the same scrutiny that other officials have. I think he should be treated the same way everyone else is in this town."

Indisputably, a kind of special relationship has developed between a usually admiring press and a courting Kissinger over the years since he unpacked his books in the White House basement in 1969. If Kissinger feels that he has been gored on the taps, there are plenty of other episodes in which the press has let him off lightly. Two leading examples:

P: Kissinger's celebrated declaration 13 days before the November 1972 presidential election that "peace is at hand" in Viet Nam was not widely questioned in the press until well after the President had won his landslide victory. As it turned out, the secret negotiations had broken down badly, and peace was not to come until January 1973. But the matter was quickly forgotten in the euphoria following the ceasefire.

P: When Nixon put U.S. forces on alert early in the Middle East fighting last fall, Kissinger told the White House press corps that he could not discuss the drama then but would explain shortly. The explanation never came, and few reporters ever took him to task for it.

Kissinger has often talked of his relations with the press in terms of mutual trust. As he told ABC News' Ted Koppel recently: "If you mislead the press consciously and you're caught at it, your credibility is destroyed forever." Kissinger set out to secure tight control over the press with his very first National Security Council staff meeting in 1969. He alone, he told his aides, would deal with newsmen. Roger Morris, a former Kissinger assistant, recalls in an article in the current Columbia Journalism Review that he and his NSC colleagues "were authorized to explore secret negotiations, even to edit the ceaseless outpour of Kissinger's diary. But none of us was trusted to deal with that most sensitive and perilous phenomenon of them all--a journalist."

Kissinger went out of his way to make himself accessible to reporters and editors at "deep background" briefings --but almost always on a not-for-attribution basis. One newsman familiar with the Kissinger style is Clark Mollenhoff, Washington Bureau Chief of the Des Moines Register and Tribune, who had baited the Secretary on the taps issue at his Washington press conference. "He sits you down and tells you what he thinks you want to hear, then asks what you think," says Mollenhoff. "It's very clever and very flattering."

The talks with Kissinger have been indispensable to reporters in an otherwise hostile Administration. Yet sometimes a Kissinger briefing edges closer to what is known in White House parlance as "stroking." During the Viet Nam War, for example, Kissinger would tell Hawkish Columnist Joseph Alsop that the North Vietnamese understood only force, and Eastern Liberal James Reston that he was straining to keep the Pentagon hawks at bay. Aboard his Air Force 707 on an early round of his Middle East peace shuttle, Kissinger would shuffle to the press cabin in the rear to tell the 14 reporters in his entourage that ALSTEAD the negotiations were, on successive days, 75%, 90% and nearly 100% completed. Though the figures were highly arbitrary, they were reported, and many of the newsmen felt that the momentum they generated helped get the talks moving. Says Westinghouse Broadcasting Correspondent James Anderson, "He played us like a violin."

To be sure, the press has generally been a willing instrument. At times, reporters seem even more preoccupied with Kissinger's image than he is. All it took was a few well-publicized dates with such Hollywood lovelies as Mario Thomas and Samantha Eggar to establish Kissinger as a "secret swinger." When Kissinger's role is less engaging, newsmen tend to look the other way. The press scarcely dwelt on Kissinger's embarrassing 1973 interview with Italian Journalist Oriana Fallaci, in which he saw himself as a "cowboy--alone astride his horse." There was little journalistic wincing, either, over Kissinger's extravagant remark at Salzburg that he hoped his diplomatic efforts would mean that "perhaps some mothers can rest more at ease"--a thought that would have brought derision had it been uttered by Nixon.

Lately, Kissinger's mystique and accomplishments have become the object of a kind of revisionist press. The strongest current example is former New York Timesman Tad Szulc's sometimes harsh account of Kissinger's Viet Nam negotiation in the current Foreign Policy (TIME, June 10). In Kissinger's defense, Columnist Marquis Childs complains that to cross-examine Kissinger about wiretaps in a press conference is to act as if "diplomacy should be treated like the police beat." But if the taps flap helps make journalistic skepticism respectable again where Kissinger and his considerable achievements are concerned, the special relationship between the press and the peacemaker might be healthier for all concerned.

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