Dealing with the Russian Leaders

Washington's master Kremlinologist looks back

William Hyland calls himself a "faceless bureaucrat." But one of the few warm moments during Cyrus Vance's otherwise chilly visit to Moscow last March came when Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev recognized Hyland, a senior staff member of the National Security Council, as the only familiar face on the other side of the negotiating table. Brezhnev and his comrades had been dealing with Hyland since 1969, and Hyland had been scrutinizing the Soviet leadership for 15 years before that. His career as a Kremlinologist has spanned six administrations and carried him to the upper echelons of the CIA, the State Department and the NSC. This month Hyland, 48, retired. TIME Correspondent Christopher Ogden reports on one of the men who know the Russians best.

There have been many weeks when he spent more time with Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin than with his own wife. He has labored over the esoterica of SALT since the inception of those complex negotiations in 1969. He has logged more hours negotiating with Soviet leaders during the past decade than any other American.

Bill Hyland loves the work he is leaving. "Irritation and bad hours go with the job," he says with a smile. "If you think you made a difference, that's about as much satisfaction as you're going to get. It sounds sappy, but it makes up for a lot of hardship."

While many of his colleagues came into the world of espionage and policy as military intelligence officers, Hyland was a private and jazz trumpeter in the U.S. Army. He learned Russian in graduate school in Kansas City, MO. The CIA hired him in 1954 and put him to work studying Soviet military production. He rose to the directorship of the Soviet desk in the Office of National Estimates.

Shortly before the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, Hyland recalls, "I concluded the Soviets would not put long-range missiles into Cuba." That was one of his rare mistakes. In 1969 Kissinger Aide Helmut Sonnenfeldt recruited Hyland for the newly upgraded National Security Council, where Hyland worked primarily on arms control. "SALT succeeded better and more quickly than any of us expected," says Hyland. Nixon and Brezhnev signed a SALT I treaty as the capstone of their first summit in 1972. Kissinger celebrated his 49th birthday in a chandeliered Kremlin conference room, where he was presented a cake in which aides and uncharacteristically cooperative KGB agents had pretended to hide a bulky microphone. "It was the only laugh in the whole ten-day visit," recalls Hyland. "There was no sense of historic breakthrough, no feeling we were beginning a new era. We were just plain too busy."

In Hyland's view, Nixon was a tough and able bargainer. He would discuss one or two issues, set the general guidelines of U.S. policy, then leave, letting subordinates handle the details. "Avoiding the fray was a good tactic," observes Hyland, as "it is extremely frustrating negotiating with the Soviets because they insist on winning every minor point. There is endless haggling and bitterness. The atmosphere gets very tense over the nitpicking. The Soviets sometimes win the small point but lose the significant one. Still, it's a hell of a problem to turn them around. You can only trust them to pursue their own interests with great dedication any way they can."

In 1974 Nixon returned to the U.S.S.R. just six weeks before he resigned because of the Watergate scandal. "The Soviets knew Nixon was in deep trouble and pulled back," says Hyland. "We left Moscow wondering what was going to happen. We knew a promising relationship was falling apart."

Hyland gives Gerald Ford high marks for keeping detente--and SALT--alive at Vladivostok later that year: "Ford was good on SALT, and more willing to go into details than Nixon."

Hyland respects Brezhnev more for his political shrewdness than his native intelligence. He recalls how Brezhnev used to tease him during meetings, often pretending to steal Hyland's briefcase, full of top-secret papers. Hyland has listened with fascination as Brezhnev has recounted, without referring to notes, minute details of a negotiation held three years before. Another asset not shared by all Brezhnev's colleagues: "He can be frank without getting acrimonious."

By comparison, says Hyland, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko is a "clever tactician with great aplomb" who can change positions in mid-sentence with no explanation.

In Hyland's experience, the most reasonable Soviet to deal with is Ambassador Dobrynin, the affable 16-year Washington veteran who unnerves some Administration officials because he neither takes notes nor relies on an interpreter in even the most delicate and detailed discussions. "You just hope he hasn't missed the nuances, but you're never really certain what he reports," says Hyland.

Hyland worked for Kissinger for eight years, Zbigniew Brzezinski for only eight months. Not surprisingly, he feels much closer to Kissinger, who was a demanding boss but also became what Hyland considers a "personal friend." Hyland says the two men are surprisingly alike, sharing a basic ideological conservatism and similar global political outlooks. But "Kissinger plowed new ground," says Hyland, while "Brzezinski is working the same soil."

Hyland is helping Kissinger teach a graduate seminar at Georgetown University and write his much-publicized memoirs. The co-author of a 1968 book about the fall of Nikita Khrushchev, Hyland wants to do another about the Brezhnev era. He also has a plot in mind for a spy novel--about Soviet internal machinations and international intrigue, naturally. He has been researching it most of his adult life.

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