Politique Internationale/Travails With Arnaud
Taki
POLITIQ UE INTERNATIONALE TRAVAILS WITH ARNAUD T he summer of 1967 was a bad time for me. My first wife had suddenly arrived from Paris and had more or less caught me in flagrante with what was...
...The only positive note of that disastrous summer was the Greek political situation...
...Recorded entirely in idiomatic German by a team of top European broadcasters and journalists, Schau ins Land offers unique insights into the diverse landscapes and cultures of German speaking Europe: West and East Germany, Austria, and Switzerland...
...Each 45-minute edition features conversation about current affairs, travel, the arts and entertainment, as well as interviews and a sampling of today's best German popular music...
...So much so, in fact, that Gianni's wife got suspicious and rang up Kay Graham in Washington to check if Arnaud was the real McCoy...
...personnel...
...The Frog should have knownbetter...
...Whenever we would be in some hot spot of the world, say Cairo, he would order me to go out and photograph local color, as well as things like bridges, army barracks, and tank depots...
...To use a euphemism of sorts, I like to relax...
...Here I was bringing into the Agnelli household the first man I knew who had a tan and who didn't move his lips when he read, and Marella Agnelli took him for one of her dress designer friends posing as a scribe...
...I remember the festivities well...
...When I told her Arnaud was a writer, she said, "Oh, is that what he does...
...State Dept...
...It was like showing a large bone to a very hungry dog...
...wDIauFaRUm® offers the best in I I self-instructional foreign language courses using audio cassettes—featuring those used to train U.S...
...He probed and asked endless questions, and even got me to take him over to meet the King...
...Learn a foreign language on your own...
...namely my mistress...
...Throughout the seventies Arnaud consistently beat the opposition, getting more exclusives than Teddy Kennedy has had blondes, but in the end the fat men who decide such matters let Arnaud go...
...As an aid to comprehension, each program comes with a complete printed German transcription and an extensive German-English vocabulary section—ideal for students who want to improve their listening skills...
...Russian ^ Greek ^Danish ^ Finnish ^ Japanese ^ Spanish ^ German ^ Korean ^ Mandarin ^ Swedish ^ Hausa ^ French ^ Hungarian ^ Italian ^ Dutch ^ Other 4111ft NE =I ow Elm as INN I= MB MO MO =II MI • IMO MN City/State/Zip I am particularly interested in (check choices): I I OM MIN OMEN IM MIN SIM II= MM...
...he would yell at me—very early in the morning...
...A fter a while, having met lots of people who actually knew that Beethoven had not died in the Berlin blitz, I struck out on my own...
...He was the last of the foreign correspondents, and there's no argument about that, even from, his enemies...
...We have 130 courses in 47 1 languages, so we must I have what you need...
...You're just going to drop in on him like this, no appointment, no change of clothes...
...To get your copy: gre Call toll-free 1-800-243-1234 I or fill out and send this ad to Audio-Forum, Room K209 On-The-Green, Guilford, CT 06437 (203) 453-9794 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1987 37...
...He also went through my address book and took out every name that could be of use to him one day...
...Even the old man was impressed...
...What amazed me was the lack of publicity that other paper in the nation's capital gave the story...
...So he devised a scheme to make me responsible...
...She left when I finally decided to go to work...
...On my way back to our seaside villa, I told my wife how much I enjoyed meeting someone whose major preoccupation was not designer clothes...
...It has since become a tremendous money-loser...
...If I know my old friend Arnaud de Borchgrave, he'll be back in the news soon...
...I, needless to say, was furious...
...Gianni is an interesting man...
...Had a novelist like Woodward revealed that he was visited by emissaries from the French prime minister who offered bribes and threatened blackmail to withhold information, the story would have eclipsed the Iran scandal that broke a few weeks later...
...Perhaps the fact that the mistress was much older, and not anywhere near as beautiful as the wife, had something to do with it...
...I thought of him in November, when after his stunning coup of an interview with French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac (the one in which the craven Chirac accused Israel of complicity in the Hindawi terror plot), Chirac tried to pull a number on Arnaud in a gauche attempt to have him deny the story...
...Arnaud's reaction was typical: "You mean you didn't get any pictures...
...Arnaud has been described as a walking ulcer because of his constant need to keep busy and his energy that borders on the manic...
...My first wife had suddenly arrived from Paris and had more or less caught me in flagrante with what was still de riguer back then for any self-respecting Greek male, Taki Theodoracopulos is the European editor of The American Spectator...
...1987, Champs-Elysees, Inc...
...So I sailed around the Greek islands, having one last good fling...
...A friend of mine, Nico Farmakis, the first and most disastrous minister of information for the colonels, asked me to a dinner for a visiting American journalist...
...It all happened very quickly...
...Needless to say, I returned almost at once to the birthplace of selective democracy, preferring the authoritarian dictatorship of dumb but well-meaning colonels to the one the great unwashed flim-flam artists of the left were imposing upon an unaware Uncle Sam...
...AS1, P.O...
...America was going through as bad a time as I was...
...But there was trouble...
...Although at first Arnaud gave me the impression that there was no more to his life than the insouciant pursuit of the perfect tan—he did have the most magnificent one I'd ever seen, even better than on those aerobic airheads of Hollywood—I soon found out how wrong some first impressions can be...
...Please send my subscription to: Please send ^ Spring & Autumn ^ Spring only * Tennessee residents add 7.75% sates tax TO: Schau ins Land, Dept...
...He was very skeptical about the colonels...
...Having seen what Arabs do to a fellow when they outnumber him 200 to one, I ran straight for a police station and demanded to be arrested...
...Just don't ever let him talk you into taking pictures...
...log...
...No sooner had I landed than I was informed by my wife and father that if I didn't mend my ways by September I would find myself a bachelor, and a poor one at that...
...No one had hired me, of course, but I was having fun following Arnaud around the world and picking up tips...
...My position was still unclear, but I considered myself an unpaid, unofficial assistant to Arnaud, which in turn I felt gave me the right to announce to every gossip columnist I knew that I had been hired by Newsweek as a full-fledged foreign correspondent...
...When he realized that Keats I wasn't, he insisted I buy a camera and become a Capa...
...Or, if you prefer, give only the Spring '87 series for $69 * (7 editions...
...T wenty years later, I am still waiting...
...He was the first to leave, Cristina and I the last...
...For some strange reason the company PRESENTING chau ins Land, the new biweekly German language magazine on cassette...
...When I informed him that I was going to drop in on Gianni Agnelli up in Villa Perosa, Arnaud began to hyperventilate...
...Our .little visit ended in a couple of days, and two weeks later Arnaud had a cover story about Gianni, Fiat, and the problems of Italy...
...Arnaud had just finished doing a Greek story and was off to Rome early in the morning...
...It was a blessing in disguise, as these things usually are...
...But not to worry...
...Which he did almost immediately...
...Why don't you come with me...
...He told a friend of his that there must be more to me than met the eye because magazines hardly ever hired people who were illiterate...
...Bringing back Christian ethics is fine," he said, "but you've got to have more than just an old-fashioned creed...
...Order now and give the Spring & Autumn '87 series (a total of 14 editions) for just $118...
...Arnaud is too old a hand, and much too well versed at the duplicity of politicians, to fall for an old trick like the one Chirac tried to pull...
...This was just about the time he broke new ground by interviewing Nasser in Cairo, and then crossing the Allenby Bridge and chatting with Golda Meir...
...Cristina looked blank...
...Or better yet, to wait for the proverbial knife to fall...
...He said he'd call me when he returned, which, in view of the world media's hatred of the colonels, would be in no time...
...We'll send a new issue twice-monthly beginning the week of January 12...
...But not before about ten of those towel-heads had punched me around and broken the camera...
...Name Address Apt...
...I had absolutely nothing on my person except for my passport and wallet...
...In Tennessee and Alaska call collect: (615) 383-8534...
...This would enrage him almost as much as when I would not get out of bed in the morning, a useless exercise as I had—shall we say?—very little to do...
...Lyndon Johnson was in the White House, and worse, Ramsey Clark was attorney general...
...Although well versed in Latin men's ways, Cristina nevertheless took it rather badly, and remained angry for the rest of the summer...
...By then he had become an intimate of Sadat as well as Hussein, and had even managed to interview the Libyan version of Al Capone, Moammar Qaddafi himself...
...Cristina and I arrived late, the King and Queen of Greece were at the next table and commented on our tardiness, Farmakis danced ceaselessly with my wife, and I chatted non-stop with Arnaud de Borchgrave, then chief foreign correspondent for Newsweek (and today better known as the suave editor of the Washington Times and a rising star on "The McLaughlin Group...
...L ooking back, I am not sure why I got on that plane, but it must have had something to do with Arnaud dropping a hint that he could use an unemployed ex-tennis player with lots of good contacts...
...Worse, I had broken my arm inkarate competition, and could only splash around in the shallow end of my pool, not to mention that my father had once again cut me off...
...The problem ' was that even if I wanted to change—which I didn't—I was as qualified for useful employment as, say, a member of Britain's Royal House of Windsor...
...Sometime during the early hours I woke up and drove to the airport...
...Mind you, the wife evenby Taki tually took a walk, but for the opposite reasons...
...36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1987 made a profit every year until democracy was restored in Greece and the airline nationalized...
...Things, however, did not work out...
...Get the picture, get the picture...
...Sure," I told him...
...I bought a first-class, one-way ticket to Rome and asked to be seated next to Arnaud...
...Had I brought in Zipkin I would understand, but Arnaud...
...He always is, and for good reason...
...Once there, Gianni greeted us cordially and Arnaud immediately began pumping him for information...
...No sooner had I snapped the shutter than a howling Arab mob was after me, screaming that I was an Israeli spy...
...Which in Cairo I tried to do, once...
...Just about the time the colonels gave Andreas Papadoc a first-class, one-way ticket to Canada, my old man decided to give me one last chance and sent me to his New York office in charge of paper clips...
...Back in those good old days, Aristotle Onassis owned, Olympic Airways and his friends were well taken care of...
...It was front-page stuff all over the world, and I basked in Arnaud's glory...
...Not surprisingly, when September arrived I had nothing to show for it except an enlarged liver, and sailed back to Athens to face the music once and for all...
...Those infamous colonels had overthrown a provisional government in a bloodless coup, and the present Greek ayatollah was in the slammer...
...To order by VISA or MasterCard or for more information call: 1-800-824-0829...
...As Captain Renaud said in Casablanca, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship...
...Box 158067 Nashville, TN 37215-8067 Do not send cash...
...Abbie Hoffman, the convicted drug dealer, was the numero uno existential hero of American youth—and of the press—while Timothy Leary was openly preaching for the people to turn on, tune in, and drop out...
...The next time I saw Arnaud again was after the Yom Kippur war, which he covered from the Arab side and I from Israel...
...While Arnaud paced the room worrying if some head of state would call or not, I would flop out on the bed or sofa and read my books on Napoleon...
Vol. 20 • February 1987 • No. 2
