Capitol Ideas / Another Ventriloquist's Doll
Bethell, Tom
government is the nature of Francois Mitterrand and of French socialism. From Paris last month Patrick Wajsman, the brilliant columnist for Figaro, scoffed at Dr. Mitterrand's new economic program....
...Arm Cuba...
...as with so many converts Mitterrand will be fervent and dogmatic...
...Since the precise description of any possible Soviet response would immediately expose as false the idea that such a response would be contrary to our interest, it seemed to me suggestive (of something or other) that Mr...
...He is telling usor his sources are telling us...
...Diplomats here...
...But, according to Prof...
...It is simply There, one of the great unalterable facts of life, as it were a great historical, inevitable Force-implacable and dangerous, very dangerous to oppose (as we found in Vietnam...
...As with other Gelb stories, the first Tom Bethell, The American Spectator's Washington correspondent, holds the DeWitt Wallace Chair in Communications at the American Enterprise Institute...
...Gelb at the Times's Washington bureau, and told him that it rather looked to me as though he was smuggling his own opinions onto the front page of the paper, in a piece which is more news analysis than news, but not so labelled...
...It may be significant that Mr...
...6 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1981...
...then on again to the State Department under Cyrus Vance, and from there to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and then back again to the Neu York Times...
...I have often thought that what is alarming about an arms race to foreign policy commentators such as Gelb is not that we might lose it...
...But read them carefully, or not at all...
...foreign policy positions are going to be congenial to him, they must first of all be congenial to the Kremlin...
...Gelb's story in a little more detail...
...Gelb nowhere relays this information from Soviet officials or diplomats here to New York Times readers...
...he said...
...Firmness...
...It is worth thinking about this for a moment...
...defense spending...
...So I asked him about it...
...thus when he fails to use quotes he establishes in the reader's mind (by a clever sleight of hand) the idea that the unattributed opinion, uncordoned off by quotation marks, is a truth so generally and widely accepted that he does not have to separate himself from it...
...moving from the Department of Defense to the Brookings Institution (he was one of the authors of the Pentagon Papers), to the New York Times...
...Let us look at Mr...
...In foreign policy and in domestic policy, the French government is going to pursue the absurd...
...I assured him that I would quote the entire passage in question, so that readers could judge for themselves...
...it is impossible to tell which, just as it is impossible to tell whether these sources are friend or foe-that ''if President Reagan does not alter his hard-line policies,'' (to quote Mr...
...I asked him if he knew what any such response might be...
...Menacing Russian bears are flourished at the outset, but they turn out to chimerical...
...Let us turn now to the substance of Mr...
...there's not a great deal the bears can do without strengthen ing the hand of the ''hard-liners'here (and we wouldn't want that, would we...
...economy has far more vitality to it than the Soviet economy...
...We should never forget that the U.S...
...So it seems the story could very easily have been "played" somewhat differently...
...He went on to inform me that ''quotes are very rarely used" when quoting-or rather paraphrasing-anonymous sources, and further 'one does not have to put comments in quotes to distance oneself from them...
...I don't know why Mr...
...thing you notice is that it is terribly difficult to tell (except for a couple of brief interludes of explicitness) whose opinions are being quoted and whether or not these are the opinions of people who have the best interest of the United States at heart...
...some diplomats," "Soviet officials and diplomats," "other experts," and "a number of Administration officials.'' We also hear from Professor Seweryn Bialer of Columbia University, and former Kissinger aide Helmut Sonnenfeldt, who have a number of comments directly or indirectly attributed to them...
...but that we might win it...
...Why not...
...Try to figure out whose voice you are hearing, that of the puppet, or the ventriloquist...
...Bialer in the next paragraph: "The Soviets decided to keep some semblance of a relationship with the new Administration...
...Soviet officials continue to tell diplo mats here and private visitors to Moscow of "real dangers" and 'possible confrontations'' that lie ahead if President Reagan does not alter his hard-line policies...
...Why not just build up our own military force, and subject the Soviet economy to an intolerable strain in trying to catch up...
...Invade Afghanistan...
...There must be a balance of military force between the two superpowers," Gelb has written elsewhere...
...Gelb...
...He had read the Gelb article and he said: ''What Gelb is trying to do, undoubtedly, is disguise the fact that he is talking to all his old pals from the Carter years-people like Marshall Shulman, no doubt, and one or two of Gelb's old deputies who are still hanging on at the State Department...
...C A P I T O L I D E A S ANOTHER VENTRILOQUIST'S DOLL For the student of rhetoric, it is always a pleasure to come across one of Leslie Gelb's articles on the front page of the New York Times...
...Mr...
...That's preposterous...
...Gelb failed to mention any such response in his article...
...What are these "real dangers" and "possible confrontations" exactly...
...I called up Mr...
...Bialer was then quoted as saying something else very interesting: "They [Soviet officials] believed that the Reagan Administration was serious about an arms buildup, and they were terribly afraid of an arms race they could ill afford...
...What then is this frontpage story supposed to be about...
...The story managed to convey a sense of Soviet distaste for the Reagan administration's foreign policy...
...predicted moderation from Mitterrand, Wajsman says, have ignored that Dr...
...He was Gelb's deputy when he was director of the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs under Cyrus Vance...
...Gelb...
...Had Gelb called Brezhnev "the Soviet dictator" his editors undoubtedly would have changed it back to "leader," no THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1981 5 doubt with a reminder that dictators live in Argentina, and not, repeat not the Soviet Union, never mind the fact that the Soviet Union is the most completely militarized and dictatedto society in the world...
...Gelb thinks this, however, because of course he himself puts comments in quotes when it suits his taste to do so...
...As Gelb writes in a later paragraph: Six months ago, the standard line of Soviet officials and diplomats was that a hard-line Reagan foreign policy would lead rather quickly to increased Soviet activity against the United States...
...That's what the Left calls ''simplistic'' thinking, I know, but it is interesting to see the thought endorsed by the Kremlin (according to a professor...
...I fully expected to hear the familiar accusation of "McCarthyism" coming over the line, but the diplomatic correspondent forbore...
...An example might be David Gompert, who has stayed on as deputy assistant secretary of State for European Affairs under Lawrence Eagleburger...
...This of course is understandable...
...Reagan at any time"-but this is hardly Mr...
...Wajsman, who also edits the respected foreign policy quarterly Politique Internattonale, believes that the combination of socialist economic and foreign policy delusions will mean disaster for France and great problems for the Western alliance.' The optimists who so wrongly have 'See Wajsman's "Surviving Together," published as the European Document in the February 1981 American .Spectator...
...They talked specifically of a fundamental reassessment of policy that would be made at the Communist Party Congress in February...
...Gelb here subtly makes the point that President Reagan has a hard-line, immoderate policy toward the Soviets...
...Wajsman calls the new regime the Republic of Professors, and last month's economic message made his pessimism more credible than the blab of the optimists...
...As far as I can detect, Communism in Gelbese is something that is neither characterized nor deplored...
...Gelb's article...
...Gelb's exclusive characterization of the man...
...Here are some of the attributions in the story: "Diplomats from Eastern and Western Europe," "Soviet officials," "diplomats here and private visitors to Moscow," "Administration officials who specialize in Soviet affairs," "non governmental experts," "Soviet experts" (meaning "expert Soviets" I wonder...
...As I say, Gelb's articles are always well worth reading...
...Who does ''they'' refer to...
...The Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev" also puts in a dignified appearance-we learn that he "continues to let it be known that he would be prepared to meet with Mr...
...But Gelb also managed to convey the idea that he shared in this distaste...
...Menace Poland...
...Moreover, even if he yearned to be sober, sobriety would not be possible...
...Gelb is one of those people who have been circulating about Washington for years, moving in and out of government as the opportunity arises or the vagaries of electoral politics dictate...
...Prof...
...his pen ever at the ready, turning out a stream of articles about the "diverse realities," the complexities, and sometimes even the simplicities (on the Right) of foreign policy and diplomacy, and usually managing to convey the impressionwithout of course ever saying any such thing-that if U.S...
...But it is clear that this would be very unsatisfactory from the Soviets' point of view, because it would undermine still further the carefully nurtured idea that the Soviets are basically a peace-loving lot, interested primarily in detente, international trade, and the gaiety of nations...
...Perhaps, however, such a view of the world would be rather uncongenial to Mr...
...That's a nonsense statement...
...Gelb immediately became rather huffy when I suggested this...
...He achieves this effect by his failure to put "hard-line" and ''moderate" in quotation marks, even though at other points he does establish a separation between him self and what his utterly mysterious sources are saying by putting "real dangers" and "possible confrontations'' in quotes...
...Let us take a look at Gelb's most recent effort-an article published on by Tom Bethell July 27 on the front page of the New York Times under the headline: "Soviet Is Said To Wait And Watch As Reagan's Policies Take Shape...
...And so it appears to me that the story could have been written a little differently, as follows: "Soviets Back Down in Face of New U.S...
...The Times always calls him a leader...
...Also, notice the obfuscation in that second paragraph...
...His position may be said to be anti-anti Communist...
...Any number can play at the Unattributed Source game...
...What might the Soviets do in response to increased U.S...
...Oh dear...
...But let me at least label the ideology of my interviewee: He is resolutely antiCommunist...
...Or private visitors to Moscow...
...His party abounds with dogmatists lost in the lore and the abstractions of their great cause...
...They could of course invade another country...
...I decided to call someone I know, a Senior Administration Official, and asked him about Gelb's article...
...This accusation has a rather foul smell to me," Gelb went on, trying to take the offensive...
...But why must there...
...Very interesting...
...No," he said, "because they don't mention them...
...But at the same time, they continue to express the hope that the ''realities'' of domestic economic troubles and pressure from allies will force Mr...
...Gelb), then ''real dangers'' and "possible confrontations" lie ahead (to quote Soviet officials who have been talking to diplomats who have been talking to Mr...
...Here are the first two paragraphs: Washington, July 26-Diplomats from Eastern and Western Europe have concluded that, for the time being, Moscow has settled on a wait-and-see strategy toward the Reagan Administration rather than stepping up the level of confrontation as Soviet officials were suggesting at the beginning of the year...
...Soviet officials...
...Gelb's data would have justified such a lead...
...Reagan to moderate his course...
...Mitterrand is a late convert to socialism...
Vol. 14 • September 1981 • No. 9
