Overdrive

by William F. Buckley, Jr.

  A correspondent reacts to the column in which I register dismay that the documentary on the North American operations of the KGB is not being aired. What happened was that two young Canadian producers became interested in the KGB and were astonished to learn that no treatment of the KGB's operations had ever been aired, so they set out to do one, using Canadian capital together with money put up by ABC for an option to air it in America. But after the three-hour documentary was completed, ABC backed down—not giving a reason. The Canadian people asked me, through Bill Rusher, if I'd have a look;

  and so, mounting the cassette, one night I did so: and saw some of the meatiest spy stuff I'd ever seen on a screen, including reminiscences from one or two people who had worked with Alger Hiss within the Communist Party-pretty sensational fare. Also, a great deal about activities of the KGB in Hollywood.

  On impulse, I made a copy and a few days later when Ronald Reagan (Jr.) and his wife were staying with us, whence they were heading for Camp David, I pressed the cassette in his hand and said his father ought to see it. A few days later, El Presidente called to say how much he had been impressed by what he had seen. In the course of discussing it, it transpired that he had seen only the first hour, missing entirely the section on Hollywood, among others. I couldn't understand why the tape had been defective, but discovered the following weekend, on looking at it again, that the delay between the first and succeeding segments is about two minutes, giving the viewer the impression he has seen it all.

  I don't know whether Mr. Reagan ever got to see the balance, but it seems plain that the balance is never going to be seen by the American public, because although there was a fuss of sorts after the column was published, and although ABC said they would have another look at it, it hasn't been shown (it was broadcast locally in New York City the following spring). There is a preternatural fear among many Americans that to show what in fact the KGB does—i.e., to depict its workaday techniques of intelligence gathering, dissimulation, and disinformation—is to run the risk of being accused of McCarthyism. As a matter of fact, those Americans are correct. That is exactly the risk they run. . . .

  I give the name and address of the Canadian producer to my correspondent.

  A note from Howard Hunt. He lodged a libel suit several years ago against The Spotlight, a publication of the Liberty Lobby, of which a principal figure is Willis Carto. The Spotlight's distinctive feature is racial and religious bigotry. Howard writes, "So far Carto has avoided deposition by staying on the West Coast, allegedly; this delays my libel suit's progress." He says he has heard from Carto's lawyer that "Willis Carto ... is by coincidence a target of yours." More exactly, it is the other way around, Carto having attacked me and National Review for years, presumably upon learning that we thought the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion a forgery. We were finally ourselves forced to sue Carto (or, more exactly, counter-sue), and the stuff (depositions, motions) is in the hands of the judge—the slowest judge in history. (A few weeks later, Howard called me in high exultation to say that the jury had awarded him a judgment of six hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The Spotlight had alleged about Hunt, among other jocularities, that he would probably be implicated in the assassination of John Kennedy.)

  Howard was my boss during the nine months I spent in Mexico working for the CIA. He was always cheerful, opinionated (our biases were in sync), and bright, and we became good friends. Indeed, when his wife Dorothy, who was killed in the United Airlines accident a few months after Watergate, decided she would revert to Catholicism and bring her two daughters and her son with her, I was asked to become their godfather. We had, in Mexico, many amusing experiences together, but I remember most vividly the extraordinary speed with which Howard Hunt would write his spy thrillers. Every three or four months he would go uninterrupted from desk (at the office) to desk (at home), where he would begin typing. In seven to ten days his book would be finished. By company rules, the books could not be published until after they had been screened for security at CIA Headquarters; but after about Book 25, Howard received a note from the office of Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA, whom he had known from service in Germany, something on the order of: Howard, you write books faster than our staff can review them, so let's put you on your honor. From now on, provided you don't use your real name, we'll let you, until further notice, publish your books unreviewed by us, trusting you not to reveal any information that might hurt the United States.

  I was present at the conference at which Howard and Dorothy reflected on noms de plume, where finally it was settled that he would write under the name "Gordon Davis." Four months later, Howard proudly showed me a copy (which had just arrived that morning from New York) of his latest paperback: "Appointment with Death. By Gordon Davis." I congratulated him and leafed through it. When I came to the last page, I read, "You have just finished another exciting spy mystery by Howart Hunt.'''' It was funny. But I groaned for Howard. If only that groan had resonated forward twenty-one years, warning against snafus, to that epochal night in June 1972. Or is that an immoral thought? I don't think so, really. I'd rather the burglary, however reprehensible, had succeeded, than that Watergate and the collapse of a foreign policy should have happened. Put it this way: If the Scotch tape at Watergate had stuck, maybe there wouldn't have been any boat people.

  The business about who in the CIA, past or present, can write what, came up as a First Amendment case when 1) Frank Snepp, formerly with the CIA, wrote a book about his last days in Vietnam; 2) he didn't show the book to Stansfield Turner, director of the CIA; 3) Turner asked the Justice Department to sue, adducing Snepp's pledge not to reveal any information developed while at the agency without first clearing it; 4) the court found in favor of the CIA, penalizing Snepp the whole of his income from royalties; upon which he appealed, and 5) ultimately the Supreme Court refused to overturn.

  Snepp accosted me at a social function a few months ago, asking how it was that I could write novels that contained knowledge gotten while I was at the CIA, and he couldn't. The differences struck me, then and now, as obvious: i.e., my CIA stories are imagined, save only an account of the training I received in 1951, which was accurately transcribed in Saving the Queen; while Frank's disclose events, during the months in 1975 preceding the great exodus, which enmesh dozens of people and, arguably, reveal CIA habits. Abstractly, however, he has a point.

  I told him so, and gave him a useful episode for his complaint inventory, even while acknowledging that clearly the context was humorous. I was lecturing to the CIA at Langley (I have done this only once), and was introduced, with some wit and jocularity, by Snepp's nemesis, the director, Admiral Turner, part of a small group with whom I had in 1972 traveled to the South Pole, so that it happened we were friends. I replied to his spirited introduction by revealing to the audience that our most recent exchange of communications had taken place only a month or two before. I was in Hawaii, and wrote to Turner, "Dear Stan: I seldom join committees, but this one, in which I was offered membership yesterday, I simply couldn't resist. I'm writing to ask whether you yourself shouldn't join it? It is called 'The Pearl Harbor Committee to Keep One's Eyes on the Russian Fleet.' " Admiral Turner replied that ex officio he was a member of that committee. "But I am also a member of another committee, which you presumably have never heard of. It is called 'The Committee to Keep One's Eyes on Former CIA Agents Who Write Spy Novels Without Having Them Checked for Security.' "

  Malum prohibitum, non malum in se—a distinction I cherish. Is it really wrong to go through a red light when there isn't a soul within miles of the intersection? I favor the rule that says you must stop anyway, because the habit of self-discipline can save your life, and more importantly, others' lives; but if I were a judge I'd hand down a lesser sentence than I'd have done to a man who went through the red light when there were children running about.

  Last spring, from Switzerland, I was moved to repay the debt I have felt to peanut butter. "I have never composed poetry
[I wrote in my syndicated column], but if I did, my very first couplet would be:

  "'I know that I shall never see/A poem lovely as Skippy's Peanut Butter.'"

  My addiction is lifelong, and total. I reminisced. "I was hardened very young to the skeptics. When I was twelve, I was packed off to a British boarding school by my father, who dispatched every fortnight a survival package comprising a case of grapefruit and a large jar of peanut butter. I offered to share my tuck with the boys who shared my table. They grabbed instinctively for the grapefruit—but one after another actually spit out the peanut butter, which they had never before seen and which only that very year (1938) had become available for sale in London, at a store that specialized in exotic foods. No wonder they needed American help to win the war."

  The volume of mail attracted by this column was extraordinary, most of it from p/b addicts, come out of the closet, and most of them with declarations as to which brand they were enslaved by. One letter interested me in particular, because it was accompanied by a case of peanut butter labeled "Red Wing." I tasted it skeptically—and forthwith put all competitors aside.

  It is quite simply incomparable. Charlton Heston, who had sent me a jar of his favorite stuff, just plain surrendered when I introduced him to Red Wing. But Pat told me her problem, and so I wrote to my benefactor, at 196 Newton Street, Fredonia, New York, "Dear Mr. Marcy: The manager of Grade A Market, a huge concern at which my wife does the shopping for our place in Stamford, Connecticut, (a) never heard of Red Wing, and would like to know (b) where he might order your product. Could you give me information on this subject?" He could, and he writes now to inform me that it sells under various names in various places—nearly always with the house label of the store selling it. But you can tell if it's the real thing, because the screw-on cover is yellow plastic.

  My "detail sheet," as they call it in the lecture trade, disclosed that no one would be at the airport at Tampa to meet me, that I was to hail a cab and direct it to take me to the Don CeSar Beach Hotel in St. Petersburg.

  There are advantages and disadvantages in being met for lecture engagements, of which this would be my forty-fourth (out of forty-eight) this year. If you are met, then there is no possibility of confusion. Moreover, during the car ride you will learn something about the social or political auspices of the speech, and such stuff is not only interesting but useful, particularly in angling the opening remarks of the talk. On the other hand, being met imposes social burdens which can be tiring. Not unusually, the forty-five minutes between arrival and deposit in the hotel are devoted to answering questions to which in any event you propose to devote yourself during the talk, and this lets a little air out of the speaker, who may very well need all the air he has.

  The airport at Tampa is proud of its automated trains that run you from the skirt around which the airplanes gather, one thousand feet into the terminal. Thus you avoid the long walks characteristic of so many airports. Florida is sunny and bright, this November 17, and, briefcases in hand, I locate a taxi. At the Don CeSar Beach Hotel there will be only one hundred people, invited to pay two hundred dollars apiece to attend a day-long program sponsored by Jack Eckerd, the retail drugstore entrepreneur who ran a losing race for governor of Florida in 1978. Fie has begun an educational institute which, in cooperation with Hillsdale College, is sponsoring today's event. There are several speakers, including Robert Bleiberg, editorial director of Barron's and a trenchant libertarian analyst; George Roche, president of Hillsdale College in Michigan and a keeper of the libertarian tablets; and Frank Shakespeare, formerly head of the USIA, with whom I was associated as a member of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Information, an ardent anti-Communist now serving as president of RKO General.

  Old friends these, and today I'll be speaking to men and women of kindred economic inclination, and they include Perry I. Prentice, former publisher of Time mag, who has written to tell me he hopes I will devote my talk to an examination of the principles of Henry George, as he knows me to be an admirer of George's single-tax theories. (H. George, 1839-1897, believed in taxing the rental value of land to protect society against land-grabbing speculators.)

  In his letter, Perry had been quite specific. "In these clippings [Prentice enclosed several] I think you might find it most interesting to note that Governor Graham [of Florida] and all but one of his cabinet members are big land owners who owe their personal fortunes to the way nearly 95% of all the land in Florida is almost tax exempt! And in the story headlined '70% of Pinellas' Property Taxes Are Borne by Residential Owners' I think you may find it worth your while to note that we 'rewarded' the Bank of Clearwater for giving us our finest buildings by piling a $335,000 land assessment increase on top of the $3,659,150 assessment on the new structure and we 'rewarded' the developers of Clearwater's finest shopping center by multiplying their land assessment from $960 an acre to $55,000 an acre, thereby piling a $2,720,000 land assessment on top of the $12,244,500 assessment for the new store buildings! . . . The President does not seem to realize that by far the biggest element in our overall inflation is the way land prices have soared far faster than any others to a total estimated at the census bureau at well over two trillion dollars, imposing twice as big a burden on our economy as the Federal debt." I agree, I agree. But I have discovered no way of interesting the general public in the subject.

  Most speeches, at least in my case, are prewritten. One can't write forty-eight different speeches in a year—and if one did, they wouldn't be very good. I learned in conversation with my son of the harrowing schedule maintained by the Vice-President. George Bush has accepted as many as eight or ten speaking engagements in a week, and half of these may call for major speeches—e.g., before the American Bar Association, or the American Enterprise Institute. Christopher has to set out, day after day, and come up with a fresh speech. A pity. It isn't as if the Vice-President's speeches were reported in the daily press in such detail as to preclude his giving them more than once. A not entirely explicable imperative is at work here, in sharp distinction from the well-known, and universally accepted, tradition of campaign speeches that are sometimes given, unchanged, eight times per day by the candidates; seven days per week; thirty days per month.

  My own feeling is that a prepared speech should be polished, to which end I tend to write mine out. For that reason the question period is useful, to demonstrate to the audience that you can also think extemporaneously. A useful combination—not applicable, obviously, to special occasions, of which there will be one the day after tomorrow, when what is said has to be prepared ad hoc.

  St. Petersburg is a substantial drive from the airport, and I am greeted by several old friends, but having arrived a little late I have missed the bloody mary and so, seated at lunch, I petition the waitress for a glass of wine, which she tells me is only available at the bar, a statement the residual meaning of which is that she is too busy to go to the bar, but obviously the guest isn't. At any rate, the wine is fetched up by a kindly volunteer, and I listen to George Roche speak with some excitement about the progress of his beloved Hillsdale, and the January launching of the institute at Shavano in Colorado. George's new director of development is John K. Andrews, Jr., whose name flickered briefly in the news in 1973 when he resigned his job as a presidential speechwriter with an unprovocative statement in which he nevertheless hinted at his discontent with regnant moral practices. John is highly literate, deeply religious, and a profoundly convinced conservative. He contracts to send me material on the forthcoming conference in Shavano for National Review. I am led to a press conference before the speech, where most of the questions have to do with David Stockman and his exchanges with the assistant managing editor of the Washington Post for the Atlantic Monthly; that and the huge size of the projected federal deficit. The local paper handled it all as follows:

  St. Petersburg Beach—A. vintage William F. Buckley Jr. wowed business, educational and political leaders with an hour of biting political anecdotes and hard-lin
e conservative economic philosophy here Tuesday. . . .

  The 55-year-old New Yorker tossed five-syllable invectives [animadversions?] and rhetorical subtleties to the pinstriped crowd, interspersing his anti-government theme between appropriate rounds of laughter and applause.

  Well, it does sound rather gooey, doesn't it? On the other hand it was, really. In my life, on the average, perhaps fifteen percent of the public appearances I've made have been before audiences that profoundly agree with me (mostly I have spoken at colleges). But such time isn't, I think, wasted; not for the lecturer, certainly not for those lectured to. The lecturer can detect, by the inflections of the audience's behavior, what it is that works, what doesn't particularly work; what is readily communicable, what isn't. And the audience can hear arguments, analyses, and adornments by someone who believes pretty much as they do and is presumably worth listening to. What isn't so easy to forgive is the adapting of one's views to the inclinations of the audience. I spoke early in the year at a Friends of Israel fund-raising banquet in Toronto, having been asked to address general themes of foreign policy, which I did. The first questioner asked how was it he had paid one thousand dollars to listen to a speaker who only spent a few minutes on Israel? I answered that I hadn't contracted to speak only on Israel, that if I had been asked to, I'd have declined, inasmuch as being myself a friend of Israel, I didn't think myself equipped publicly to devote an entire hour to the subject without first giving the subject more time in preparation than I had; I wouldn't want to damage Israel by making less than the best case out for it. So it goes.