Overdrive (8 page)

Norman Lear says a lot of things, and encloses some material, but concretely tells me I was wrong in saying that he, Lear, had produced a great extravaganza on behalf of Jerry Brown during the 1980 primary campaigns. His efforts had been in behalf of John Anderson. 1 answer: "Dear Mr. Lear. That was a silly mistake I made, and I apologize for it. I remembered the large spectacular in favor of Jerry Brown and it was only after receiving your letter that I researched my memory to find it was Mr. Coppola who put it together, not you. Thanks for the enclosures. I will let you know when I feel threatened. Cordially."

My classmate McKinney Russell—we had come to know each other better in Moscow in 1971—writes to me pleasantly from Rio. He had to give cover in the embassy to Henry Kissinger for three hours, until a hostile crowd dispersed. In the course of the affair he met my son Christopher, who is traveling with Vice-President Bush as speechwriter. In Moscow, you are not allowed to designate anyone on your staff as the "Cultural" Affairs officer (sometime, somebody in the Kremlin decided that any such designation implied that there was less than sufficient culture already in the Soviet Union), so McKinney was called something else, though that was the job he executed. His special genius is in language. A few years ago he returned from a three-week vacation in Sweden speaking the language fluently. In Rio, he is probably moonlighting by teaching Portuguese.

A correspondent reacts to the column in which I register dismay that the documentary on the North American operations of the KGB is not being aired. What happened was that two young Canadian producers became interested in the KGB and were astonished to learn that no treatment of the KGB's operations had
ever
been aired, so they set out to do one, using Canadian capital together with money put up by ABC for an option to air it in America. But after the three-hour documentary was completed, ABC backed down—not giving a reason. The Canadian people asked me, through Bill Rusher, if I'd have a look;

and so, mounting the cassette, one night I did so: and saw some of the meatiest spy stuff I'd ever seen on a screen, including reminiscences from one or two people who had worked with Alger Hiss within the Communist Party-pretty sensational fare. Also, a great deal about activities of the KGB in Hollywood.

On impulse, I made a copy and a few days later when Ronald Reagan (Jr.) and his wife were staying with us, whence they were heading for Camp David, I pressed the cassette in his hand and said his father ought to see it. A few days later, El Presidente called to say how much he had been impressed by what he had seen. In the course of discussing it, it transpired that he had seen only the first hour, missing entirely the section on Hollywood, among others. I couldn't understand why the tape had been defective, but discovered the following weekend, on looking at it again, that the delay between the first and succeeding segments is about two minutes, giving the viewer the impression he has seen it all.

I don't know whether Mr. Reagan ever got to see the balance, but it seems plain that the balance is never going to be seen by the American public, because although there was a fuss of sorts after the column was published, and although ABC said they would have another look at it, it hasn't been shown (it was broadcast locally in New York City the following spring). There is a preternatural fear among many Americans that to show what in fact the KGB does—i.e., to depict its workaday techniques of intelligence gathering, dissimulation, and disinformation—is to run the risk of being accused of McCarthyism. As a matter of fact, those Americans are correct. That is exactly the risk they run. . . .

I give the name and address of the Canadian producer to my correspondent.

A note from Howard Hunt. He lodged a libel suit several years ago against
The Spotlight
, a publication of the Liberty Lobby, of which a principal figure is Willis Carto.
The Spotlight's
distinctive feature is racial and religious bigotry. Howard writes, "So far Carto has avoided deposition by staying on the West Coast, allegedly; this delays my libel suit's progress." He says he has heard from Carto's lawyer that "Willis Carto ... is by coincidence a target of yours." More exactly, it is the other way around, Carto having attacked me and
National Review
for years, presumably upon learning that we thought the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion a forgery. We were finally ourselves forced to sue Carto (or, more exactly, counter-sue), and the stuff (depositions, motions) is in the hands of the judge—the slowest judge in history. (A few weeks later, Howard called me in high exultation to say that the jury had awarded him a judgment of six hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
The Spotlight
had alleged about Hunt, among other jocularities, that he would probably be implicated in the assassination of John Kennedy.)

Howard was my boss during the nine months I spent in Mexico working for the CIA. He was always cheerful, opinionated (our biases were in sync), and bright, and we became good friends. Indeed, when his wife Dorothy, who was killed in the United Airlines accident a few months after Watergate, decided she would revert to Catholicism and bring her two daughters and her son with her, I was asked to become their godfather. We had, in Mexico, many amusing experiences together, but I remember most vividly the extraordinary speed with which Howard Hunt would write his spy thrillers. Every three or four months he would go uninterrupted from desk (at the office) to desk (at home), where he would begin typing. In seven to ten days his book would be finished. By company rules, the books could not be published until after they had been screened for security at CIA Headquarters; but after about Book 25, Howard received a note from the office of Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA, whom he had known from service in Germany, something on the order of: Howard, you write books faster than our staff can review them, so let's put you on your honor. From now on,
provided you don't use your real name
, we'll let you, until further notice, publish your books unreviewed by us,
trusting
you not to reveal any information that might hurt the United States.

I was present at the conference at which Howard and Dorothy reflected on noms de plume, where finally it was settled that he would write under the name "Gordon Davis." Four months later, Howard proudly showed me a copy (which had just arrived that morning from New York) of his latest paperback: "
Appointment with Death
. By Gordon Davis." I congratulated him and leafed through it. When I came to the last page, I read, "
You have just finished another exciting spy mystery by Howart Hunt.''''
It was funny. But I groaned for Howard. If only that groan had resonated forward twenty-one years, warning against snafus, to that epochal night in June 1972. Or is that an immoral thought? I don't think so, really. I'd rather the burglary, however reprehensible, had succeeded, than that Watergate and the collapse of a foreign policy should have happened. Put it this way: If the Scotch tape at Watergate had stuck, maybe there wouldn't have been any boat people.

The business about who in the CIA, past or present, can write what, came up as a First Amendment case when 1) Frank Snepp, formerly with the CIA, wrote a book about his last days in Vietnam; 2) he didn't show the book to Stansfield Turner, director of the CIA; 3) Turner asked the Justice Department to sue, adducing Snepp's pledge not to reveal any information developed while at the agency without first clearing it; 4) the court found in favor of the CIA, penalizing Snepp the whole of his income from royalties; upon which he appealed, and 5) ultimately the Supreme Court refused to overturn.

Snepp accosted me at a social function a few months ago, asking how it was that I could write novels that contained knowledge gotten while I was at the CIA, and he couldn't. The differences struck me, then and now, as obvious: i.e., my CIA stories are imagined, save only an account of the training I received in 1951, which was accurately transcribed in
Saving the Queen;
while Frank's disclose events, during the months in 1975 preceding the great exodus, which enmesh dozens of people and, arguably, reveal CIA habits. Abstractly, however, he has a point.

I told him so, and gave him a useful episode for his complaint inventory, even while acknowledging that clearly the context was humorous. I was lecturing to the CIA at Langley (I have done this only once), and was introduced, with some wit and jocularity, by Snepp's nemesis, the director, Admiral Turner, part of a small group with whom I had in 1972 traveled to the South Pole, so that it happened we were friends. I replied to his spirited introduction by revealing to the audience that our most recent exchange of communications had taken place only a month or two before. I was in Hawaii, and wrote to Turner, "Dear Stan: I seldom join committees, but this one, in which I was offered membership yesterday, I simply couldn't resist. I'm writing to ask whether you yourself shouldn't join it? It is called 'The Pearl Harbor Committee to Keep One's Eyes on the Russian Fleet.' " Admiral Turner replied that ex officio he was a member of that committee. "But I am also a member of another committee, which you presumably have never heard of. It is called 'The Committee to Keep One's Eyes on Former CIA Agents Who Write Spy Novels Without Having Them Checked for Security.' "

Malum prohibitum
,
non malum in se—
a distinction I cherish. Is it really wrong to go through a red light when there isn't a soul within miles of the intersection? I favor the rule that says you must stop anyway, because the habit of self-discipline can save your life, and more importantly, others' lives; but if I were a judge I'd hand down a lesser sentence than I'd have done to a man who went through the red light when there were children running about.

Last spring, from Switzerland, I was moved to repay the debt I have felt to peanut butter. "I have never composed poetry [I wrote in my syndicated column], but if I did, my very first couplet would be:

"'I
know that I shall never see/A poem lovely as Skippy's Peanut Butter.'
"

My addiction is lifelong, and total. I reminisced. "I was hardened very young to the skeptics. When I was twelve, I was packed off to a British boarding school by my father, who dispatched every fortnight a survival package comprising a case of grapefruit and a large jar of peanut butter. I offered to share my tuck with the boys who shared my table. They grabbed instinctively for the grapefruit—but one after another actually spit out the peanut butter, which they had never before seen and which only that very year (1938) had become available for sale in London, at a store that specialized in exotic foods. No wonder they needed American help to win the war."

The volume of mail attracted by this column was extraordinary, most of it from p/b addicts, come out of the closet, and most of them with declarations as to which brand they were enslaved by. One letter interested me in particular, because it was accompanied by a case of peanut butter labeled "Red Wing." I tasted it skeptically—and forthwith put all competitors aside.

It is quite simply incomparable. Charlton Heston, who had sent me a jar of
his
favorite stuff, just plain surrendered when I introduced him to Red Wing. But Pat told me her problem, and so I wrote to my benefactor, at 196 Newton Street, Fredonia, New York, "Dear Mr. Marcy: The manager of Grade A Market, a huge concern at which my wife does the shopping for our place in Stamford, Connecticut, (a) never heard of Red Wing, and would like to know (b) where he might order your product. Could you give me information on this subject?" He could, and he writes now to inform me that it sells under various names in various places—nearly always with the house label of the store selling it. But you can tell if it's the real thing, because the screw-on cover is yellow plastic.

 My "detail sheet," as they call it in the lecture trade, disclosed that no one would be at the airport at Tampa to meet me, that I was to hail a cab and direct it to take me to the Don CeSar Beach Hotel in St. Petersburg.

There are advantages and disadvantages in being met for lecture engagements, of which this would be my forty-fourth (out of forty-eight) this year. If you are met, then there is no possibility of confusion. Moreover, during the car ride you will learn something about the social or political auspices of the speech, and such stuff is not only interesting but useful, particularly in angling the opening remarks of the talk. On the other hand, being met imposes social burdens which can be tiring. Not unusually, the forty-five minutes between arrival and deposit in the hotel are devoted to answering questions to which in any event you propose to devote yourself during the talk, and this lets a little air out of the speaker, who may very well need all the air he has.

The airport at Tampa is proud of its automated trains that run you from the skirt around which the airplanes gather, one thousand feet into the terminal. Thus you avoid the long walks characteristic of so many airports. Florida is sunny and bright, this November 17, and, briefcases in hand, I locate a taxi. At the Don CeSar Beach Hotel there will be only one hundred people, invited to pay two hundred dollars apiece to attend a day-long program sponsored by Jack Eckerd, the retail drugstore entrepreneur who ran a losing race for governor of Florida in 1978. Fie has begun an educational institute which, in cooperation with Hillsdale College, is sponsoring today's event. There are several speakers, including Robert Bleiberg, editorial director of
Barron's
and a trenchant libertarian analyst; George Roche, president of Hillsdale College in Michigan and a keeper of the libertarian tablets; and Frank Shakespeare, formerly head of the USIA, with whom I was associated as a member of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Information, an ardent anti-Communist now serving as president of RKO General.

Old friends these, and today I'll be speaking to men and women of kindred economic inclination, and they include Perry I. Prentice, former publisher of
Time
mag, who has written to tell me he hopes I will devote my talk to an examination of the principles of Henry George, as he knows me to be an admirer of George's single-tax theories. (H. George, 1839-1897, believed in taxing the rental value of land to protect society against land-grabbing speculators.)