Correspondents' Correspondence

...Aides always trail in their wake...

...Cultural Operators Rome-with everything in today's Italy becoming increasingly politicized, there is probably no reason why the Venice Biennial-a leading cultural event subsidized by the central government and the city's promotional budget-should be an exception...

...Speaking of Economy, here is Question Four: Now that the President has ordered a reduction in the use of government limousines, how do you tell who's really important in Washington...

...Artists, after all, are being called "cultural operators" and the interdependence of art, politics, culture, and sociology is being stressed to the hilt...

...Answer: Watch them walk those corridors of power we all hear so much about...

...To enter the place, you need, first, an appointment...

...Let's go back to the Pentagon for Question Three: What is at ground zero of that building, one of the world's key military targets...

...The building alongside the White House contains the news scanners and such operations as the "Office of Comment" (the staff section that handles incoming calls from people wishing to express opinions on the Panama Canal, Bert Lance or whatever else might be in the news...

...This is part of the "Communist complex" that has plagued Italian Socialists for 56 years: Despite a record of heartbreaking failures, the conquest of power by a united Left remains their ultimate goal...

...True, war plans and nuclear secrets are under heavy guard 24 hours a day...

...At a recent press conference held here, Ripa di Meana explained that the Biennial was not taking sides...

...It went on to stress the following points: First, Argan's stand coincides with the Soviet news agency Novosti calling the artists invited to Venice "renegades who are on the payroll of Western, anti-Soviet propaganda and espionage organizations" and with Literaturnya Gazeta dubbing them "rotten garbage...

...That's an only-in-America touch, and we need hardly add that the most popular item sold there is the very economical Penta-burger...

...By contrast, no word is too severe for the Christian Democrats, with whom the Socialists have shared power in Center-Left governments on and off for 12 years.-silvio F. Senigallia Capital Questions Washington-Question One: What is easier, to saunter unannounced into the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or into the room where workers scan the nation's newspapers to prepare President Carter's daily news summary...

...In 1975, Biennial President Carlo Ripa di Meana, an amiable and urbane Socialist party (PSI) politician who reportedly moved away from the extreme Left following the Soviet repression of the Hungarian Revolution, played it safe...

...Thus Rome's mayor is referred to as "dear comrade Argan...

...Ripa di Meana's idea is unquestionably sound...

...The show would go on...

...Each President since then, for reasons of his own, has been unwilling to lift the restrictions...

...They always carry a sheaf of papers...

...And while you probably won't get to see the secretary of defense himself, a friendly assistant will gladly take your name and tell him you dropped by...

...On the other, no one has yet stolen the Chief Executive's daily newspaper digest or the contingency plans for the annual White House Easter Egg roll...

...You need no special pass to get in, only your feet...

...What is disturbing, however, is his extracautious stance...

...In this city that is the equivalent of having a hall pass in high school...

...Someone does that for him...

...The Socialists were immediately up in arms, denouncing this maneuver as a step toward the "historic compromise"-whose achievement would deprive them of whatever bargaining power they have left...

...It may also explain why you see so many stacks of papers in the government coffee shops...

...The document recalled that Argan himself had stated in the past that "the Biennial must be a political undertaking, for nonpolitical art cannot exist," and chided him for hiding behind an esthetic argument...

...And his unwillingness to draw the obvious inferences about Communism and culture at the same time that members of Prague's Charter 77 are being persecuted and sentenced to jail terms seems dictated more by cowardice than it does by objectivity...

...A partial exception is the President...

...Thus, some of Washington's least sensitive operations are the most heavily guarded...

...Their fears proved groundless...

...The President, of course, does not generally carry a sheaf of papers...

...If you don't know where the chairman's office is, an attendant will give you a map...

...Answer: A hamburger stand...

...Second, the issue at stake is not so much the quality of an artwork as the connection between freedom of expression and democracy...

...Not all Socialists are that pusilanimous...

...A few weeks after Ripa di Meana's press conference, Argan, during an official visit to Moscow, reiterated his opposition to the exhibit, this time basing it on esthetic grounds...

...The Pentagon is what is known here as an open building...

...This year's program, to be held in mid-December, is far more exciting and ambitious...

...Question Two: How did this state of affairs come about...

...The higher the officer, the more aides in tow...

...In those days, correspondents frequently wandered into the EOB at noon to eat lunch in the cafeteria there...

...The Pentagon makes its own...

...On the one hand, this may seem a waste of manpower...

...In contrast, any attempt to enter the Executive Office Building (EOB), home of most of the President's middle- and lower-level assistants, is bound to meet with frustration...

...An irritated Johnson decided they didn't deserve the privilege, so the entire building was placed off limits and guards were posted at every entrance to make sure it stayed that way...

...It is billed as an "exhibit of dissent," and some of Eastern Europe's leading dissident artists, writers, musicians, etc., have been invited to Venice to show their works and participate in seminars and round table discussions...

...The theme then was Chile's crackdown on freedom in the wake of Salvador Allende's overthrow...

...The Socialist attitude toward the Biennial is instructive...

...High power types never prowl the corridors alone...

...When I asked him at a press conference, for example, whether the Communist mayor of Rome and noted art historian, Giulio Argan, still opposed the "exhibit of dissent," which he had been quoted as calling "another Solzhenitsyn parade," Ripa di Meana's disingenuous answer was that he was too busy to read the papers...

...Severi notwithstanding, it reveals that although any hint of collusion between the Christian Democrats and Communists will draw instant critical fire, the Socialists continue to be very careful where their own relations with the Communists are concerned...

...But the offices of all the top civilian and military officials, as well as those of their underlings, are open to whoever comes around...

...Given the current Belgrade review session of the 1975 Helsinki treaty, there is a need for an exhibit focusing on the creations-and predicament-of intellectuals who have dared to defy totalitarianism...

...Finally, regardless of Argan's negative evaluation, the Italian public is entitled to acquaint itself with Joseph Brodsky's poems, and Jan Kadar's and Viktor Nekrasov's writing...

...Another journalist's query on whether Solzhenitsyn had been invited to Venice met with the reply that it was impossible to break through the writer's American seclusion...

...The lower echelons walk alone, though never empty-handed...

...He not only has an entourage of aides behind him but security men also fan out ahead and around him, like destroyers around a battleship...

...Answer: the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs...

...He was promptly, albeit politely, taken to task by Socialist Municipal Councilman Pier Luigi Seven in an open letter distributed to the press...

...Answer: because Lyndon Johnson once got mad at White House reporters...

...Someone brings him his coffee, too, which means he doesn't have to worry about having the proper identification to get into the EOB cafeteria.-bob Schteffer...

...Orthodox intellectuals had been invited, too-through official channels-to demonstrate that the project is not motivated by polemical aims but by the desire to clarify the role of nonconformist men of culture and the problems they face...

...second, a special pass to get past the armed guards...

...For a time, it appeared that opposition might come from government-read, Christian Democrat-quarters, where financial difficulties were cited along with a possible strain on relations with the Communists...

...it means you are en route to important business...

...and often a staff escort...

...In fairness, it must be noted that while Argan's was not the only Communist voice raised against the Biennial, the party leadership has not tried to block the project...