The Kingdom and the Power (82 page)

And yet, despite this, his appointment was said to be imminent—and the word quickly spread through Washington. It circulated through the press corps and was discussed on the telephone by the disenchanted wives of
Times
men. Tom Wicker’s wife, Neva, thought that the treatment of her husband was disgraceful, and she expressed her feelings in a telephone talk with Reston and in a later one from Carol Sulzberger. Through all this internal clamor the Washington bureau continued its task of covering the news without interruption; but there was an eerie aspect to the reporting, a strange similarity between the pressures being put on
the bureau and the front-page stories that the bureau was writing during this first week of February, 1968: South Vietnam had just been unexpectedly assaulted—the Vietcong had attacked twenty-six of the forty-four province capitals in South Vietnam, determined to overthrow, according to Hanoi radio, the “puppet” government and its American allies. Washington was shocked by the news, and Tom Wicker, reporting the reaction at the State Department, Capitol Hill, and the Pentagon, quoted senators who described the reports as “embarrassing” and “humiliating.” But Max Frankel reported that the White House remained confident and resolute, with President Johnson vowing that “the enemy will fail again and again” because “we Americans will never yield.” James Reston, as bewildered as most people were in Washington about the Vietcong offensive, devoted his column to speculating on Hanoi’s strategy of terror; but days later—as the allies had counterattacked, sending jets streaking low over Saigon, Hué, and other cities in South Vietnam, tearing down what the allies had undertaken to defend—Reston’s column pondered the dilemma of the allied decision, asking: “What is the end that justifies this slaughter? How will we save Vietnam if we destroy it in the battle?”

This question was not unlike one that Reston had been asking himself with regard to the editors in New York. Should he stage a counterattack that might block Greenfield’s takeover but might also shake the entire
Times
hierarchy, causing a scandal that would damage the paper’s image in the eyes of the public? Or should Reston accept the higher decision in the interest of corporate peace and harmony?

Reston waited for a few days; then he left for New York.

In the newsroom, James Greenfield had already accepted congratulations from some reporters who had heard about his appointment to Washington. At first Greenfield was reluctant to comment. The official announcement had yet to be released from Sulzberger’s office, although Greenfield had heard that it was already written, and it was these few days’ delay that had somewhat worried him. When he had revealed his doubts to Rosenthal, he was quickly reassured that there was no need to be concerned—the decision was final, the publisher had endorsed it, Greenfield would become the new chief of the Washington bureau.

Greenfield felt better, but he was still reluctant to talk about it at any length to those who questioned him in the newsroom, and he was amazed when the word spread quickly and he wondered why people seemed so interested—not only newsmen, but government people in Washington had asked their journalist friends about his appointment, right in the middle of the bad news from Vietnam, and Greenfield had just received a call from a young lady who worked for the “Press” section of
Newsweek
.

“We have information that you’re to be the new bureau chief,” she began, and Greenfield, laughing softly, replied, “Oh, news really gets around,” adding: “Did you hear about it in New York?”

“No,” she said, “from an excellent source in Washington.”

“Well,” he said, “I’m in the middle of the foreign desk right now, and there are people around here who don’t know about it, and I can’t talk very well here …”

“Well,” she said, “can you tell me whether or not it’s true?”

“Yes,” he said, “it’s true.”

“When will it be announced?”

“Friday, I think,” he said, meaning Friday, February 9.

“I heard it would be announced on Thursday.”

“Oh,” he said, “well, maybe your sources are better than mine.”

The
Newsweek
reporter said that she would call him at noon on Thursday to arrange for an interview, and James Greenfield said that that would be fine.

On the fourteenth floor of the
Times
building ticks an old grandfather clock that had belonged to Ochs, and a bronze bust of Ochs stares across the wide corridor that one enters upon leaving the elevator. The ceilings are high, the dark wood is polished, and hanging from the walls are portraits of former homes of
The Times
and executives long dead. The receptionist is male, polite, soft-spoken; an individual with a long plain face and reddish hair who seems large and tall enough to redirect angry visitors from the street who occasionally intrude to complain about the state of the world, or about one of John Oakes’s editorial indiscretions against some distant sultan. But otherwise the atmosphere on the fourteenth floor is very calm and orderly, and the executives’ offices beyond the corridor are large, well-spaced, and quiet.

In the eastern wing, to the left from the elevators, are the offices
of Harding Bancroft and Lester Markel; and beyond, the rarely occupied office of Arthur Hays Sulzberger. The seventy-seven-year-old chairman of the board, confined to a wheelchair, usually spends his days in his Fifth Avenue apartment that overlooks the reservoir: there he lives with his wife, his servants, and a pretty young nurse who attends to his needs, and with two frisky papillons that please him as they jump around and sometimes infuriate him when they bite into his favorite pieces of furniture, causing him to bang his cane. But he would never part with them: one of the things that he most remembers about his childhood was that he had not been permitted to have dogs.

In the other section of the fourteenth floor are the offices of the younger top executives—that of Andrew Fisher, who sits behind a modern curve-shaped desk; and at the end of the corridor is the office of the publisher, an elegant suite that is filled with antiques and rather resembles the parlor of the elder Sulzbergers’ home—although, when Punch Sulzberger is present, he seems to dominate the large office with his informality. He often sits in his shirt sleeves behind the not very large antique table that serves as his desk, and he seems constantly in motion as he leans, reaches, stretches across the table toward the buttoned boxes and telephones that connect him with his business advisers, his editors, his pilot, or his secretaries across the corridor. The bookshelves around him are stocked with leather-bound volumes of enduring interest, but the books that he keeps close at hand concern the latest techniques of running a large corporation—books with such titles as
Management Grid
and
Management and Machiavelli
.

There is another office on the fourteenth floor, a comparatively small one, that is occupied by James Reston on those infrequent occasions when he is in town. On this cold, gray day in February, Reston had ostensibly flown up from Washington to attend a session of the Council on Foreign Relations, which meets at its headquarters on East Sixty-eighth Street, but the Council was far from Reston’s thoughts as he sat in his office shortly after his arrival. He did not have an appointment with Punch Sulzberger, but Sulzberger soon learned of his presence, and the publisher proceeded to walk down the corridor in his typically casual way to greet Reston. Sulzberger immediately sensed Reston’s mood, and the cause of his displeasure, but he nevertheless affected a lighthearted
attitude, exclaiming to Reston as if surprised: “Boy, you’re
really
upset by the Greenfield thing, aren’t you?”

Reston’s face told all. His skin was flushed, he seemed despondent, and when Reston spoke, his voice had the hard, distant, almost metallic timbre that characterizes his speech whenever he considers a situation to be very grave. A decision had apparently been reached, Reston said, in which “the younger men’s blood would flow—not the older men’s blood”—and then Reston added, quietly, “I’m with the younger men.”

Sulzberger did not know exactly what this meant. The older men apparently referred to Catledge and Daniel; the younger men were Wicker, Frankel, and others in Washington: but did this mean that Reston, joining the younger bureaumen, intended to ally himself with a mass resignation? Or was Reston merely registering his feelings in a vague but dramatic manner?

Sulzberger did not like being placed in this situation. The publisher of
The New York Times
employs very high-priced executives to smooth out difficult details in advance, to leave nothing to doubt, and yet here Sulzberger found himself face-to-face with Reston and not knowing what would happen if he insisted that Greenfield be sent to Washington. As he stood there, watching Reston, and as the two men later moved into Sulzberger’s suite, it seemed possible that nothing would happen; or perhaps half the bureau would quit and join the
Washington Post
, the
Wall Street Journal
, the
Los Angeles Times
. But Sulzberger was not so much perturbed by Reston as he was by Catledge and Daniel, and also with himself, for he had chosen to become personally involved when he had gone to Washington to speak with Wicker. Still, Sulzberger believed that Catledge and Daniel, the editors with final authority in the newsroom, should have been able to predict Reston’s ultimate move, and they had not, and now Sulzberger, not wanting to trigger the outcome himself at this time, merely listened.

If Greenfield took charge as planned, Reston said, it would have the grinding, disintegrating effect of a buzz saw in Washington, and it would severely damage
The Times
both from within and from without. While Reston had nothing against Greenfield personally, he nonetheless saw Greenfield as an “outsider,” and he asked Sulzberger to contemplate how it would look in the capital if
The Times
abruptly moved Greenfield in over the heads of such men as Wicker and Frankel—it would subject
The Times
to the charge that it did not trust the men that reported the activities of
the government to run its own bureau. It would discourage the loyalty that New York sought from the bureaumen, and it would so damage
The Times
’ reputation that the very best men on other newspapers, and the brightest students in the universities, would not aspire to work for
The Times
. Reston’s discussion with Sulzberger shifted back and forth in mood and approach—at times he reasoned with Sulzberger, at other times he implored him, and he also dramatized the Greenfield episode as a battle of the generations: the old versus the young, and, as always in Reston’s philosophy, there was the reminder that youth must be served.

When Reston left, Sulzberger found himself confronted by perhaps the most disturbing decision of his career. If he rejected Reston’s appeal, he might lose Reston and those who worshiped Reston; but if he sided with him, then he would be reversing his own decision, and his own word would mean relatively little in the future. Sulzberger planned to spend the rest of the day and the evening thinking about it. Reston would be spending the night in a New York hotel, and they would meet again on the following day. Sulzberger had time to consult with a few executives who worked outside the News department—Harding Bancroft and such vice-presidents as Ivan Veit, whom he sometimes regarded as the publisher’s confessor. And Sulzberger would consult, too, with his family—his wife, Carol; his sisters, Ruth, Marion, and Judith; and, of course, his mother, Iphigene.

Tom Wicker at this time was in New Hampshire writing about the forthcoming Presidential primary: Richard Nixon had just announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination and Robert Kennedy was yet unwilling to compete against President Johnson. Finishing his work in New Hampshire, Wicker flew to New York hoping to learn more about his own future. He had been very depressed since his dinner meeting with Sulzberger the week before, and Wicker had become embittered days later on hearing it rumored in Washington that he had been forced out as the bureau chief. If Sulzberger had not discouraged him from announcing his own resignation immediately after the decision had been made in New York, he would have been able to yield his position with a bit of grace and dignity; and from New Hampshire he had telephoned Sulzberger to protest the manner in which the Washington
situation was being handled in New York. Sulzberger had listened with understanding, and then had asked Wicker to call Catledge and to repeat the complaint, which Wicker did, getting no great satisfaction. Now, a day later, Wicker was in New York.

It was noon as he arrived; the executives would all be out to lunch, so Wicker decided to get something to eat himself before going to
The Times
. He walked into the Century Club, which is on Forty-third Street two blocks east of the
Times
building. He had recently been made a member of the Century, an exclusive men’s club composed of many prominent authors and editors, historians, social critics, and editorialists; this was his first visit, and he felt awkward and very much alone as he entered.

In the lobby he was greeted by a porter-polite Negro wearing a white jacket, and then he ascended marble steps to find himself within oak-paneled rooms with high ceilings, and here and there men sat at tables speaking quietly over their preluncheon drinks, and in the library were other men in large soft leather chairs reading the
Wall Street Journal
or
The New York Times
. Wicker ordered one martini, then another, before proceeding to the floor above, where he discovered the dining area—a long communal table in one room with small tables nearby; and in other rooms were other tables occupied by quiet-spoken men forsworn to avoid all talk of business.

He felt the soft warm waves of martinis flowing within him as he ordered lunch, sitting at a table opposite an ancient little man who appeared to be ninety years old and who explained that he had once edited a magazine. While Wicker conversed hazily with the old gentleman, his gaze drifted around the room, and the rooms beyond—all the tables were occupied by strangers, with one exception. At one table, seated across from Eliot Fremont-Smith, was Harrison Salisbury.