Presswatch / Defaming Kissinger in Just 60 Minutes
Ledeen, Michael
"Presswatch / Defaming Kissinger in Just 60 Minutes" As of this writing, CBS News has yet to inform its viewers of the strong negative reaction to the 60 Minutes broadcast of 4 May entitled...
...Lighting came from candles or kerosene lamps, which sometimes hung in groups from wagon wheels...
...Afghanivtan and the Left: It was only a matter of time before we heard that the United States should step up the tempo of its unilateral disarmab y Michael Ledeen ment in order to get the Russians out of Afghanistan...
...Prostitutes, those frail sisters and soiled doves, operated in many barrelhouses, like Denver's Elephant Corral and the Alamo in Abilene...
...The Defense Monitor has much the same tone when it argues that deployment of nuclear missiles in Germany might only provoke the Russians...
...DEFAMING KISSINGER IN JUST 60 MINUTES As of this writing, CBS News has yet to inform its viewers of the strong negative reaction to the 60 Minutes b r o a d c a s t of 4 May e n t i t l e d "The Shah-Kissinger Connection...
...Gambling, from poker and roulette to jumping grasshoppers and fighting dogs, was an opportunity--more or less, depending on the honesty of the house--to "knock Dame Fortune on her ass...
...His answer, then, simply indicated that he was not in a position to judge, because he hadn't looked into it...
...Instead, we have the New York Times with a big front-page story on Sunday, 11 May, headlined: "Retarded People and Criminals loaded on U.S...
...CBS should have tried to get the fullest possible treatment of the s u b j e c t , r e g a r d l e s s of K i s s i n g e r ' s availability...
...And just as these fallen angels had 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1980...
...Along the same lines, the most chilling line of recent months comes from a New York Times editorial on 2 April, referring to the possibility that the d e f e n s e budget might be inc r e a s e d : "Even if the additional military spending could somehow be j u s t i f i e d . . . " Have Max F r a n k e l and his f r i e n d s looked at a map recently ? Se/fabuse department: The Times carried a curious story on its front page on 23 May, written by John Herbers, in which we learn to our astonishment that the American hostages in Iran have ceased to be newsworthy...
...What next--the Detroit Dairy Freeze...
...But this is hardly the point...
...Panther Piss I love you...
...And what have you accomplished...
...The real saloons are all gone now...
...The program began with Rather announcing that "Kissinger's name came up again recently when the president of Iran told an interviewer .that Kissinger had engineered getting the Shah out of Panama and safely into Egypt before the Iranians could get their hands on him for an interrogation...
...and oil paintings of voluptuous women...
...Don't give the man's track record for accuracy (about a borderline failure, I would say...
...Earlier, when white men first entered the West, the saloons were, well, functional...
...brass rails, spittoons, and towel hooks to accompany the bar (the towels were for wiping foam off your mustache...
...Wood or brick walls replaced canvas or adobe, and hide-covered windows gave place to glass...
...Panther Piss, Panther Piss, Spit it out and hear it hiss...
...TtaHtarianism and the press: Given the fondness with which so many of our journalists smash proAmerican tyrants from Iran to Argentina, one would hope for a bit of zeal in reporting on Soviet and Cuban evils...
...Real news department: On 16 May, Evans and Novak reported that the Sandinistas had reached an agreement with the Russians, during a mission to Moscow by Nicaraguan -leaders late in March...
...Appeasement seems the better course, evidently...
...Kissinger gave him a hard time, first saying he would appear, then changing his mind...
...If that is the case, the instigating decisions would have been made during the last high point of U.S...
...In the Old West everyone drank, and no one wanted to drink alone...
...One of these fancy women was Calamity Jane, so named because of what you contracted upon becoming personally acquainted...
...Along with the rotgut came other entertainments...
...Once upon a time, we would have welcomed the heroic survivors of Castro's prisons...
...From beginning to end, CBS News darkly hinted t h a t t h e r e was something covert going on between Kissinger and the Shah...
...There have been angry letters from Kissinger himself, and from at least two of the persons interviewed on the show, which was designed to show that the United States permitted (or encouraged) oil prices to rise in the winter of 1973 because K i s s i n g e r wanted the Shah to have some extra money to buy more weapons from us...
...The worst of it is that you never will belly up at those bars, either...
...Thus, a detailed letter from Kissinger was s e n t t o Rather days before the broadcast, showing--at a minimum--that t h e r e were many things to be said in his favor, and that Rather's witnesses might not have told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...
...Pretty waiter girls," the sometimes partially attired nymphs in the hurdygurdy saloons, were good for a dance and often more...
...Great American Saloons...
...1 think the facts show clearly that they did not...
...The Union Oyster House...
...Oh well, it can't be helped, I guess...
...Nor did CBS attempt to interview the several people listed by Kissinger in his letter as being able to " s e t the record straight...
...Anybody around here remember Watergate...
...Viewing this high art was not always easy...
...Busting your tail on a horse was tiring, monotonous, dirty, and dangerous work...
...Boozing was socializing, and the place to socialize was in your local snake ranch...
...Kissinger did try to use his influence with the Shah to keep the prices down ? BalL" N o . Convinced...
...The front walls were fakes: double the size of the buildings themselves...
...Matos said: The Cuban authorities and their spokesmen abroad consider all prisoners who have c o n t a c t s with i n t e r n a t i o n a l a n t i - Castro organizations to be " t e r r o r i s t s . " But we know that those designated as terrorists are in reality prisoners who have struggled during their imprisonment, not to be combative or litigious, but simply to behave in a firm and coherent manner, and in order not to submit to threats and beatings...
...The exteriors of western jughouses were not something you'd miss riding through town...
...Little miss, Taste my kiss of Panther Piss...
...F u r t h e r points for f u t u r e use: D o n ' t let any spokesmen for " t h e o t h e r s i d e " on the program...
...This has taken place, according to H e r b e r s , because Jimmy Carter wants it to be so...
...But a pin to Messrs...
...mining and farming by George E r t e l were no picnics, either...
...Cite the allegation...
...I suppose you Easterners thought the Golden Arches walk-ups were high times...
...You never saw the real saloons...
...Instead, we find the usual claim that the Russians were only acting--if they have in fact acted at all in this field--in response to our evil initiatives...
...Germ warfare: There's been a fair amount in the press about the unfortunate accident at Sverdlovsk, in the Soviet Union, where anthrax seems to have killed a thousand or so citizens...
...You never painted your noses in Tombstone's Bird Cage, the Clippel" Shades Saloon in Butte, the Sazerac House of Virginia City, or the Long Branch-and no, you don't get points for watching "Gunsmoke...
...In context, however, it sounds like an expert pronouncing a judgment: Kissinger'did not . . . But that's the least of the problems with the 60 Minutes show...
...others mentioned by him, "are, of this date, unproven...
...I was in Rome last fall when Boris Ponomarev said in public that it would be a shame to see the Vatican blown to smithereens simply because the Italian government decided to accept American missiles on its territory...
...Ornate furnishings appeared: sixty-foot walnut, oak, and mahogany bars, shipped by rail from "The poem, "Panther P i s s , " as well as these other reminiscences of frontier boozing are artfully recorded in Saloons of the Old IVest by Richard Erdoes (Knopf, 1979...
...It's pure bliss...
...Neither notes that the NATO decision to deploy some five hundred Pershing and Cruise missiles came in r e s p o n s e to Soviet deployment of some thousand SS-20 missiles, aimed at Western Europe and used as political clubs by Soviet "diplomats...
...Both the Nation and the Defense Monitor--the former on 20 April in a short comment signed by Sidney Lens, the latter in an unsigned comment reprinted in the St...
...Many American experts think the "accident" took place in a plant manufacturing anthrax weapons for use against us and our allies...
...Two stories high, the saloon front was impressive--until you caught a profile...
...An oyster house...
...Ball did a lot of research on Kissingei-'s policies toward Iran, and thus the audience of 60 Minutes was undoubtedly moved by this exchange on the air: R a t h e r : . . . have you ever seen any evideface that Dr...
...Louis Post-Dispatch on 7 May--have now called for the United States to indefinitely postpone deployment of the TNF ( t h e a t e r nuclear force) improvements in Western Europe in r e t u r n for Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan...
...They fooled no one, of course, yet contributed to the carnival atmosphere the customers expected and enjoyed...
...None of the s u b s t a n t i v e contents of the l e t t e r were broadcast...
...That's the level of logic we saw on 60 Minutes, one of the most popular programs on American television...
...Better yet, we should all read the interview with Huber Matos printed in the Italian magazine I1 Leviatano back in January...
...Chicago or around the Horn from England...
...Saloon keepers then had to install iron bars in front of the panes to protect them from the butts of horses crowding under the covered boardwalks during rainstorms...
...You've led your audience to conclude t h a t somehow Kissinger has managed to cover the horrible deed with his cleverness, but that CBS is going to nail him from one day to the next...
...Evans and Novak for digging out this important story...
...This language reminds one of the phrases invoked so piously by the leaders of East European Communist parties prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain in the mid-forties, just as American press coverage in general of Central America tends to echo the same desperate optimism that was to be found in our coverage of Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia more than 30 years ago...
...One would expect that this news would appear in every major story on Nicar a g u a . . , but for the most part, we hear of hopes that the Sandinista regime will remain democratic and "independent of the two blocs...
...I have been unable to reach former Treasury Secretary William Simon (the author of one of the letters in question) but I did talk to George Ball, former Under Secretary of State...
...George Ertel is a market analyst living in Roselle, Illinois...
...To be s u r e , R a t h e r has every reason to feel put upon...
...The Times editorial staff should be made to write 100 times on its blackboards the headline of the same date in the Washington Post: "Cuba: Slogans Mock Realities...
...Tents, Kansas sod houses, and Arizona adobes also served the purpose in their time...
...Just like mental defectives and criminals went to Auschwitz and the gulags...
...If so, you'd better go back to the chapter on creative videotape editing, because Ball now says that he never looked into the question of oil prices at all...
...A number of officials and public opinion specialists cite the Iranian situation as an example of how even a weakened President has the power to set the context, and the degree, with which the public i s s u e s are discussed THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1980 27 around the country...
...Rather then added that the charge, along with Micbad Ledeen is Executive Editor of the Washington Quarterly...
...Boats in Cuba...
...At the end of the month you needed time out, not time off, and saloons provided the escape: camaraderie, excitement, immediate gratification, high stakes and fast action, sex, distraction, and edification...
...Characteristic of these early snake ranches were leaky roofs, windows of elk hide, the outdoors for plumbing, and wooden planks for bars...
...a potbellied stove...
...But on reviewing the subjects previously celebrated here, I begin to wonder...
...Nothing is left but tourist traps and the memories of the few remaining old-timers who regularly irrigated themselves on Old Towse, Skullbender, White Mule, and Panther Piss...
...Arnold's of Cincinnati...
...In their best days, the saloons were glorious and enchanting places...
...This is a good technique: Find a source--even one as demonstrably unreliable as Mr...
...And don't let Kissinger sneak any facts onto your air time unless you can get the man himself to submit to interrogation...
...Abolhassan BaniSadr--willing to make an allegation...
...Eventually gas-lit chandeliers were installed in the more profitable watering holes, and, as electricity became available late in the century, light bulbs illuminated the interiors...
...Then say that the allegation is " o f this date unproven...
...Finally, the Times should remember the list of Nobel prize-winners who have been called mentally defective, from Solzhenitsyn to Einstein...
...chemical-weapons procurement...
...He did try to get Kissinger to go on the show, he did delay broadcast for a week when Kissinger said he might go on the program, and he did urge Kissinger to appear, right up to the last minute...
...Some were set up in covered wagons...
...And their claim that Kissinger--either because of a deal of some sort or just because of a commonality of interest--didn't do anything to try to stop the oil price increase, in order that his friend Reza Pahlavi could buy a few more weapons from the United States, is so bizarre that it reminds me of a schoolboy's riddle that we used to ask in the fourth g~ade: "Why is Santa Claus like a motorcycle...
...Should we apologize to the widows of Sverdlovsk ? [] SALOONS OF THE OLD WEST I am told that this is the place to talk about Great American Saloons...
...It is said to include military programs...
...Answer: "They both have beards . . . except for the motorcycle...
...backbar mirror and shelves for displaying bottles and paraphernalia...
...Yet the august Scientific American does not mention the event in a long study of "Chemical Warfare and Chemical Disarmament" published in its April issue...
...When the frontier towns prospered from mining or cattle, so did their saloons...
...The whiskey mills were, after all, havens...
...A buildup in Russian supplies, both of chemical weapons and of protective equipment, is said to have taken place in the late 1960s...
Vol. 13 • July 1980 • No. 7
