The Man with the Wry Eye

By Hugh Sidey

THE PRESIDENCY

Up until now, Henry Kissinger may have had more fun than almost anybody else on this earth.

Hard work--sure. Moments of anger and frustration--certainly. But for the most part, as he has gone about his remarkable rounds he has produced a lot of peace, and injected quite a bit of good sense, all the while casting a wry eye over the singular doings of mankind.

A growing worry in Washington is that President Nixon, to ease his own crisis, is allowing his Secretary of State to drift into the Watergate mess, a situation that would bring Kissinger's resignation if it impaired his effectiveness. But even that problem has not yet dampened Kissinger's special style.

When it seemed that millions of people would give their left arms for tickets to the World Cup soccer match, Kissinger came up with some choice seats without any strain. He ordered his jet to take a detour for one game, and was lifted by Luftwaffe helicopter to the playing field. When he got to his hotel in Munich for the finals, there was a call waiting for him from Elizabeth Taylor. "She wanted to get a briefing on the European Security Conference," he said, the old Kissinger grin growing wide above his chins.

The other night Kissinger devoured roast goose in a Bavarian restaurant. The discreet Secretary surveyed the bosomy waitresses, and after some hasty calculation observed that if those particular girls had not served the dinner, the hosts would have had to increase the guest list by 30% just to fill the room.

A few days before, he had stood fascinated on the lush grounds of the Black Sea dacha of Leonid Brezhnev as the Soviet Communist chief demonstrated the collapsible glass wall around his Olympic-sized swimming pool, which Kissinger was repeatedly asked to swim in. Kissinger has listened to Brezhnev "order" him to Siberia for failing to yield enough in negotiations. His comeback: "I should be a member of the Politburo since I meet with you guys so much." Kissinger came away from a negotiating session with the Soviets and said, "I would do anything for caviar --and I may have."

Usually Kissinger travels in a 707 jet that is just as big and just as plush as Nixon's. The Secretary's bulletproof limousine precedes him by air, as does a crew of advance men. Almost any service can be obtained for the Secretary in almost any place, his fame preceding him with amazing results.

He called for a massage in Israel recently. "You can say anything you want to about Jewish intellectual attainments," he reported, "but that guy almost killed me." When he asked the masseur what he thought about disengagement with Syria, the man said he was for it. Then Kissinger asked him how many kilometers he thought Israel ought to give up, and the masseur hammered the Secretary a little harder and said, "Absolutely none."

Reporters discovered only recently that Kissinger is fascinated by soccer, and as a boy in Germany played goalie until he broke his hand. Then he shifted to forward. Somebody asked him if he had been fast. Kissinger thought a moment. "I wasn't so fast, but I was tricky."

Like Nixon, Kissinger has found that sports and politics have much in common. So a while back when East Germany was still in world soccer contention, he sidled up to a Soviet bigwig. "I'll bet I know one team that you don't want to win," said the smiling Kissinger. "East Germany, because if they win they will be more trouble than ever." The Russian roared and slapped Kissinger on the back for displaying such wisdom in the ways of this wacky world.

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