Propaganda Offensive

At his desk in the U.S. embassy on Tchaikovsky Street in Moscow one afternoon last week, Ambassador Llewellyn E. Thompson Jr. got a telephone message from Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Would 6 o'clock that evening be all right for the first preliminary talks about a summit meeting? It was. Thompson put on his coat and Homburg, got into his Cadillac, went off to confer with Gromyko. Time of conference: 35 minutes. Next day Britain's Ambassador Sir Patrick Reilly heard the telephone's ring, also got 35 minutes with Gromyko. France's Ambassador Maurice Dejean got 25 minutes.

"The purpose of these talks is to bring our views closer," said Gromyko, adding not one word of explanation for calling in the Western powers separately instead of together, as previously understood, or for kicking off good-will parleys by trying to split up the allies. "This does not constitute a start of the negotiations," said Ambassador Thompson, but he was too diplomatic to complain.

"The Growing Madness." Next day Gromyko called in not the Western ambassadors but the world press, and before its representatives he dropped a propaganda bombshell. Gromyko charged the U.S. with sending Strategic Air Command jet bombers, loaded with nuclear bombs, "across the Arctic areas in the direction of the borders of the Soviet Union." He announced that the U.S.S.R. was submitting the charge to the U.N. Security Council as "a dangerous provocation against peace." Basis for complaint: a lurid, you-are-there style of report by United Press President Frank Bartholomew about how SAC's bombers had been launched "not once, not twice, but many times," toward "an enemy target," before recall by SAC's Fail Safe safety procedures (see next page). The story was old hat, but its timing was right for Gromyko to latch onto. Said Gromyko: "The government of the U.S.S.R. demands an immediate end to the practice."

When the down-with-SAC outcry got back to Washington, the official spokesmen chorused cold denials. Said Presidential Press Secretary James Hagerty: "Mr. Gromyko's statements are not true." Said the State Department in a formal statement: "It is categorically denied that the U.S. Air Force is conducting provocative nights." Said the spokesman for the U.S. delegation to the U.N.: "We have always been willing to discuss any charges made against us. Witness the fantastic accusations directed at us--potato bugs, germ warfare and others--all proved to be absurd and untrue."

But Gromyko's point was rather aimed--as his dealings with the Western ambassadors seemed to be--against the unity of the allies. Said Gromyko: "Reckless flights of American bombers extend the fearful shadow of atomic war to the British and the French, to the people of Western Germany, to the peoples of all countries who have been bound hand and foot by military commitments to the U.S. and who have allowed American atomic and rocket bases to be built on their territory. One must be blind not to see in our time the dangerous consequences."

The Deep Respect. At his press conference in Washington earlier in the week, Secretary of State Dulles had noted defensively that Soviet propaganda was having "a kind of field day" over Russia's unilateral suspension of nuclear tests, especially in newly independent countries that "haven't had the opportunity to become mature in these matters." From British Labor Party Leader Hugh Gaitskell--"Stop the nuclear tests and start the talks"--to Canada's Tory Prime Minister John Diefenbaker--"My hope is that the free world will discontinue the tests"--many maturer folk were flipflopping too. But Gromyko's charge against SAC was too wild for credibility.

Said Britain's Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd: "I cannot imagine how they expect business to be done in this way ... to deliver a violent attack on the U.S." Said Rome's independent-center Momenta-Sera: "Everything shows Moscow's intention is to increase international tension in order to get the maximum from a top-level meeting convoked in haste." Another key point, put to the United Press by a Western diplomat in Korea: "There is much feeling that Russia's move will actually strengthen the U.S.'s hand in Asia, because it shows previously doubtful Asians that Russia has a deep respect for U.S. striking power."

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