• October 07, 1974
• Vol. 2
• No. 15

Kissinger Finds His New Boss Has Fewer 'Hangups' Than Nixon

By Marvin Kalb, Bernard Kalb

Endurance. It is the single quality which best characterizes Henry Kissinger. Endurance, and as it now turns out, durability. The changeover at the White House has not affected the security with which he reigns as secretary of state, nor does it seem to have altered his frenetic way of doing business. A typhoon of ego-driven energy, he paces his seventh-floor office at the State Department with undiminished fervor. His jacket removed, his tie open, he jumps up from his desk, which is a mountain of reports and telephone messages. He is on the telephone, then off again. He constantly refers to black notebooks, checking a fact, then slapping them shut. "Where the hell is that report?" he barks to a subordinate. Not long ago one deputy had the temerity to call in sick. "Don't give me," intoned the secretary of state, "any of that dying swan stuff." Until recently, when he was agitated—which was often—he would pop chocolates into his mouth. Now his new wife Nancy has put him on a diet and taken away his candy.

Yet even though his own whirlwind routine has not been visibly disrupted by the fall of President Nixon, the volatile secretary of state has felt the impact of the jarring transition. The relationship he enjoys with President Ford is comfortable, but Kissinger's honeymoon with Congress has ended. First tainted by disclosures of his role in the wiretapping of 17 government officials and newsmen, his reputation has been further damaged on Capitol Hill by revelations of CIA intervention in Chile. No longer revered as the unassailable hero of detente, Kissinger has aroused the suspicions of some congressional leaders, who are beginning to question his frankness.

But if his relations with Congress have suffered, Kissinger has carefully nurtured his ties to the President. From the moment he realized that President Nixon's days in office were numbered, Kissinger began conducting private seminars for then Vice-President Ford. During that period, with Nixon's time consumed by Watergate, Kissinger was really functioning as the President for American foreign policy. Once Nixon departed, the seminars continued on a daily basis, with Kissinger acting much as Ford's tutor in international affairs. One of Ford's first acts as President was to write into his White House calendar a standing 9 a.m. appointment with Kissinger for every day of his Washington workweek. Determined to leave Ford with an indelible impression of his own worth and indispensability, Kissinger now spends hours each day at the executive mansion. Not surprisingly, Kissinger had worked at avoiding the White House during the final months of the Nixon administration.

In some respects, although Kissinger and Nixon shared the same intellectual view of the world, the secretary is more at ease with the informal Ford. And whereas Nixon was intensely concerned with receiving proper credit for his administration's foreign policy accomplishments, Ford is not instinctively jealous. Moreover, he does not present Kissinger with ticklish problems of personal bias. Whenever Kissinger wanted to discuss Cuba with Nixon, for example, he was constantly aware of the fact that the President disliked Cuban Premier Fidel Castro, that Nixon's valet was a Cuban refugee, and that the President's closest friend, Bebe Rebozo, was a Cuban-American. "You have to understand," Kissinger once said, "this man [Ford] does not have Nixon's hang ups on this subject."

Kissinger realizes, of course, that there will probably be no further acts of diplomatic derring-do comparable to his stunning secret trip to Peking, although few Washington observers would be surprised to see him surface in Havana for discussions with Castro. Rather, the Ford administration's painstaking progress toward détente, if that goal is to be truly achieved, will require the long hours and niggling diligence that are the Kissinger trademark. (In fact, those who know him best say one of the few developments that could prompt Kissinger to quit would be a sense that détente was a failure and that President Ford was about to engage the nation in a renewed arms race—hardly a likely eventuality.)

There are, to be sure, some members of Ford's White House staff who would like to clip Kissinger's wings. They argue, for example, that it is inappropriate for him to sit as both secretary of state and adviser to the National Security Council. But the President is apparently paying such detractors no heed. He recognizes the secretary's visibility at home, and values his influence abroad. Recently, as if to prove it anew, Ford used the United Nations as a forum to reaffirm his faith in his secretary of state. Kissinger has, Ford told the delegates, departing from his prepared text, "my full support and the unquestioned backing of the American people." Kissinger, naturally, was delighted, and after the speech, Ford presented him with the original text—complete with Ford's hand-written praise of the secretary, and underscored with the presidential signature.

MARVIN KALB and BERNARD KALB The Kalb brothers, both CBS newsmen, are authors of the current best-selling biography, Kissinger.