The Kingdom and the Power (71 page)

Wicker himself had been deeply upset during this period not only by his own inner frustration but by the effect that it was having on his staff. The bureau, until Broder’s resignation had seemed to lend veracity to its complaints with New York, had considered itself voiceless, unrepresented, or misrepresented in the
Times
hierarchy. Reston had seemed to be building a stronger relationship with Sulzberger, as the publisher himself was becoming more independent, but Reston did not wish to intercede too often or too quickly for Wicker.
Wicker
was the bureau chief, the hope for the future, and Reston preferred biding his time in the background while Wicker attempted to deal with the bureau’s problems, to build his own relationship with the Sulzberger family, and to build up confidence in himself. Hearing from Reston, as Wicker had in July of 1966, that New York had decided to retain him as the bureau chief, had been encouraging news for a while, but the pressure from New York had not subsided. Two weeks after Broder had quit, it seemed that another
Times
man, a man admired and respected, was destined to resign. This reporter, who had been covering the Senate ethics committee’s investigation of Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut, had become so repulsed by the bullpen’s frumpishness and haggling that he demanded that Wicker take him off the assignment. In a memo to Wicker the following day, the reporter wrote:

We can make mistakes down here, and when we do, we should be hauled up short. But what takes the sap out of a reporter who is doing his level best to make the Washington report worthy of his idea of The Times is that all-too-apparent lack of confidence.…

T
he anticipation of Harrison Salisbury’s departure from the newsroom was based strictly on rumor, to be sure, but even rumors have a kind of special validity within
The New York Times
. One reason is that seated around the newsroom much of the day are some of the most inquisitive men in the world, reporters and deskmen who can observe a series of seemingly insignificant details—an overheard word here, a gesture there, a minor change in pattern—and piece them together into a revealing conclusion. They also have ample time to devote to this since the staff is large, and there are always some people sitting around minding other people’s business. Another factor is that nearly everything of interest either occurs, or is contemplated, in this one big open newsroom or in the adjoining smaller room, Daniel’s office, meaning that anyone making an inordinate number of entrances or exits through Daniel’s door—including Daniel, en route to Catledge’s back office—will not escape attention.

During the winter of 1966, as the rumors of Salisbury’s being “kicked upstairs” became even more persistent, Harrison Salisbury sat calmly at his desk against the south wall of the newsroom composing a letter to a Communist friend who might be able to help him obtain a visa for North Vietnam. This story intrigued Salisbury—the scene in North Vietnam, a big story unreported so far by any American journalist because none could get visas. The
story from South Vietnam, on the other hand, was somewhat stale with repetition, Saigon having become the capital of journalistic overkill, a stage for many American actresses and politicians wishing to blend their sincere concern with maximum personal publicity, and the television reporting from there was becoming surrealistic: a young commentator, microphone in hand, stands in the jungle describing the war drama while a helicopter hovers overhead, rifles crackle, and a platoon of Marines march past the television screen but do not look into the camera. But North Vietnam had yet to be invaded by the circus of American communications, and in his long career Salisbury had proved to be a master at slipping into places that had been forbidden.

He did this by keeping up unceasing barrages of cables, calls, and letters to hundreds of influential people around the nation and the world—diplomats, dictators, bankers, propagandists—appealing to their vanity, urging their help, timing his own moves occasionally to coincide with moments when these people might also think it beneficial to have stories published in
The Times
. In 1957 Salisbury managed to get into Romania and Bulgaria, two countries which had barred
Times
correspondents since 1950, and he also was admitted to Albania, where no American correspondent had been since the end of World War II. (Salisbury later sent a Christmas card to one Albanian who had been very helpful during his visit, and that man has been neither seen nor heard from since.) In 1959 Salisbury was permitted into Mongolia, where only one other American newsman had been since before World War II, and in that year he also got back into Russia, which had barred him during the previous five years because of a series he had written on Russia for
The Times
in 1954, winning a Pulitzer Prize. He regained his admission to Russia when, as Anastas Mikoyan toured the United States in 1959, Salisbury followed him and wrote stories that so pleased Mikoyan that he produced a new visa, being unaware of the controversy caused by Salisbury’s previous articles. Later, after Salisbury had got to Russia and was at a reception one night talking to Mikoyan, a voice from across the room suddenly called out, “Mr. Mikoyan, beware! You don’t know to whom you are talking. That man has written slanderous things about the Soviet Union.” Salisbury turned in surprise, as did Mikoyan. It was one of the Soviet foreign office men who deal with the press. The man came closer and repeated the remark. There was an awkward silence. Then Mikoyan said quietly that he knew
who Salisbury was, adding that Salisbury’s reporting during his trip to America had been very objective.

Salisbury had been trying to get into North Vietnam for nearly two years. In the summer of 1966 he had even traveled around the periphery of China in a personal appeal, hoping to get down into Hanoi or up into Peking, but at every point he had been rejected. In August he had returned to New York, resuming his duties as an assistant managing editor, but continuing his private campaign with cablegrams and letters to anyone he thought might have influence in North Vietnam. When he learned that the North Vietnamese people had made a martyr of an American, Norman Morrison, who in 1965 had burned himself to death in front of the Pentagon while protesting American policy in Vietnam, Salisbury quickly got in touch with Morrison’s widow and asked that she write a letter to the North Vietnamese authorities in his behalf. She did. Months passed. Salisbury heard nothing.

In November of 1966 Salisbury became fifty-eight years old. He had been aware of the talk about him in the newsroom, and he had known of Catledge’s feelings that Abe Rosenthal should be moved up to gain experience as an assistant managing editor and Daniel’s possible successor in the future. But what was not yet known around the newsroom was that Salisbury had no intention of yielding his position without gaining another one that would justify his considerable talents. He was
not
going to be kicked upstairs. If higher management considered him an ideal choice to head
The Times’
expanded Book Division, then Salisbury had grandiose plans for that department. He had privately discussed the project on occasion with Catledge, Sulzberger, and Ivan Veit. Salisbury saw worthwhile opportunities for
The Times
in the book business, and if he became affiliated with it he expected virtual autonomy, being answerable to the publisher, of course, but not necessarily to Sulzberger’s high-echelon advisers. When there was reluctance on the part of Sulzberger, Catledge, and Veit to Salisbury’s approach, Salisbury decided that he would remain where he was. He was a tenacious man. He had spent much of his career writing about Russian purges and plots, power politics and executive intrigue, the ups and downs of commissars, and he was a master at bureaucratic gamesmanship. He was also supremely confident in
himself. He had prevailed during long years of loneliness, had struggled as a writer, had successfully written fiction and nonfiction, was a respected journalist, lecturer, and linguist—he would never starve. He was a loyal
Times
executive but not a supplicant, not the sort who could be quietly eased out and made to accept a high position in limbo, being pacified by the faith and conviction that it would all be handled gracefully in the press release: “making full use of his broad experience” and “wider vistas” and so forth. If Catledge thought that Salisbury was so easily disposed of, Catledge had something to learn, although the executive editor was not unlike many
Times
men in his lack of insight into Salisbury. Even when Salisbury was being warm, friendly, and open, which he was capable of being, he seemed to be functioning on more than one level; no matter where he was, part of Salisbury remained remote and unreachable.

Harrison Salisbury came by his independence naturally: he was born within a tight, close family that lived in a large, well-kept Victorian house that stood rather conspicuously in the middle of a slum in Minneapolis. The impoverished people who surrounded the Salisbury home in the early 1900’s were Orthodox Jews who had escaped military conscription in Russia; they had migrated first into Canada, later moving in large masses down into northeastern Minneapolis, causing the usual panic and quick property sales in the neighborhood, and soon only the Salisburys were left with these strange striving people who denounced an authority thousands of miles away.

Salisbury’s father, an insular man, was not disturbed by the change in the neighborhood’s character since he generally avoided all neighbors regardless of their origin. His interest centered only on his family and the house itself, which had been owned by
his
father, a physician, a distinguished member of this old American family of freethinkers. The first Salisburys had come from England in 1640 as craftsmen and farmers, and many had fought against the Indians in King Philip’s wars in New England. By the early 1800’s, Salisburys had moved into Buffalo, and one of them kept a
detailed journal of the War of 1812, observing in person some of the sea battles on Lake Erie. A brother of this man had begun a print shop and bookstore in Buffalo, and founded a newspaper, the Buffalo
Gazette
, and had a son, Guy Salisbury, who was a fine editor but a heavy drinker, and one day in 1869 he fell into Buffalo Creek and drowned.