The Kissinger Issue Heats Up

More and more, Henry Kissinger is becoming a domestic political issue. Ronald Reagan gets consistent applause when he charges that Kissinger's policy of detente is a "one-way street." While being attacked from the right, he is also getting hell from the left, either because liberals have abandoned their traditional support of detente or because they oppose his interventionist views in Angola and elsewhere. He is thus in the unusual position of being accused of being too dovish and too hawkish.

His relations with Congress are at their lowest ebb. Kissinger has just about given up hope of capping his career with a new Middle East breakthrough. Most important, the Secretary of State's great desire that a new Strategic Arms Limitation treaty with the Soviets could be signed this year is in grave jeopardy. Rumors swirl in Washington that he may quit in a couple of months. Says one of his aides: "Henry feels that the walls are closing in on him."

The most formidable walls are right within the White House because a fundamental change has taken place there since Kissinger visited Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow last month to negotiate a SALT pact. Politics have been injected into Gerald Ford's foreign policy. For the first time, his political advisers, notably Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have matched if not surpassed the Secretary of State in their influence on presidential decisions about SALT.

They are cautioning Ford that any new arms-control agreement, no matter how sound, would evoke cries of "sellout" from Ronald Reagan, Scoop Jackson and other skeptics of detente. Meanwhile, those who support detente would give most of the credit for a deal not to Ford but Kissinger. Says a SALT insider: "In any in-house debate on SALT, Henry can beat the military boys hands down, as long as you leave domestic politics out of it. But domestic politics are not left out of it any more."

The Secretary is finding that Rumsfeld is a more adroit maneuverer than Kissinger's old opponent James Schlesinger ever was. Says an insider: "Rummy is a dummy as a SALT scholastic. But he's politically savvy as hell, and he's going around town saying the U.S. can live without a SALT agreement this year, and Kissinger's deadline is just that--it's Kissinger's deadline, not the country's or even the Administration's."

Rumsfeld's position was supported last week by 16 conservative Senators, Democrats as well as Republicans, who sent a letter to the President urging him to go slow on SALT. "We ask that you instruct the Secretary of State that negotiations should continue without regard to ill-advised demands for an immediate agreement. Hurried diplomacy creates vulnerability and distrust, not arms control and understanding."

Fighting Back. On his Moscow trip, Kissinger was given little rein by the White House to develop initiatives.

Some detractors have wanted to put him on an even tighter leash. One campaign adviser suggested that if Ford visits the Middle East next month, he should leave Kissinger at home so the President would not have to share the spotlight.

This recommendation, quite astounding given Kissinger's role in the Middle East, will probably be rejected since it would undoubtedly cause the Secretary to resign.

As always, Kissinger is fighting back--for himself and his policies. Although troubled by the fact that his wife Nancy had to undergo serious surgery for an ulcer, Kissinger last week made a swing through the West, and the heartiness of the reception buoyed his spirits.

At the University of Wyoming, he told 10,000 students, "The people of this land remind me once again that America is not the cynical, confused and tired nation so many in Washington would have us believe it is." At his various stops he again complained of lack of congressional support for his attempt to oppose Soviet intervention in Angola, not because he wants to revive the old containment policy of the cold war but because he is seeking through tough talk to offset what he considers a damaging U.S. policy failure. (The Soviets promptly stepped up their personal attacks on him.) He defended detente and criticized Congress for interfering too much in the Administration's conduct of foreign policy. "It was clear the pendulum swung too far [toward the Administration] in the 1960s," he said. "It's equally clear it is now swinging too far the other way." While Congress can set basic policy guidelines, he feels it lacks the means for "executing a coherent, consistent, comprehensive policy." Kissinger could not resist taking another one of his digs at Congress that have earned him enemies on the Hill. How could Congressmen say he was disdainful of them, he asked, when "my friends say I've spent seven years in Washington concealing my contempt."

Asked whether he might resign, Kissinger replied that he had no plans to "follow Dr. Moynihan either to Harvard or out of Government" (see story following page). Though he realizes he will probably not be in office next year no matter who is elected, he wants to stay on the job for 1976. TIME Diplomatic Editor Jerrold Schecter reports: "Kissinger sees himself as holding the structure of the nation's foreign policy together, and he is in no position to hand over foreign policy to a successor now. He fears the impact of his leaving would contribute to the sense of drift; he will stay as long as he is effective."

For all the attacks on Kissinger, Ford has good reason to defend him. The Harris poll shows that Americans continue to believe it is possible to reach long-term agreements with the Soviets (by 44% to 39%) and favor SALT (by 59% to 14%). Louis Harris' latest polls of Republicans and independents indicate that by substantial margins they believe Reagan is better able than Ford to handle such domestic issues as inflation, Government spending and inspiring confidence in the White House, but Ford is far ahead in handling relations with Russia, China and Western Europe.

Thus on the campaign trail Ford plans to emphasize his capabilities in foreign affairs. Whether or not a SALT deal is signed, the President is committed to support detente. If he fails to defend it now, he may encourage isolationism and a return to the cold war--and lose the election as well. But to defend detente the President also has to stand up for its chief architect, Kissinger. Says a top presidential adviser:

"Ford can't let Kissinger become a political football among his opponents, and only the President can lead that fight."

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