Salon.com > Stephen Talbot

The day Henry Kissinger cried

Thu, 05 Dec 2002 21:18:00 +0000

Just when I thought there could be no further desecration of those who perished on Sept. 11, George W. Bush appoints Henry Kissinger to direct an investigation of the government's failure to prevent the terrorist attacks. Honestly, it took my breath away. Even in a time of cynical politics, this is stunning.

I realize, of course, that Bush never wanted any kind of independent investigation to take place -- that the families of the victims compelled him to act. And if the administration's goal is to contain and limit the probe, to avoid embarrassing revelations about U.S. intelligence failures, then Kissinger is just the man.

Forget Karl Rove. This is our true Machiavelli, a statesman famous for conducting foreign policy with a twist of treachery and deceit. From the clandestine bombing of Cambodia to supporting Pinochet's bloody military coup in Chile, Kissinger is a man who has many secrets of his own to hide. Talk about a conflict of interest! How can Kissinger, at age 79, a lifelong member of the national security establishment, a presidential advisor who wiretapped his own colleagues to prevent leaks, suddenly become a truly independent investigator of the CIA, FBI and the White House? Who would ever believe him?

The mysterious bombing of an environmental activist

Thu, 23 May 2002 19:12:00 +0000

When I first met Judi Bari, she was lying in a hospital bed in Oakland, Calif., recovering from a bomb blast that ripped through her lower body and nearly killed her. As we spoke, she occasionally grimaced with pain, but she remained defiant in her purple Earth First T-shirt with a clenched-fist logo. She was incensed that the FBI and the Oakland police had arrested her and her colleague, Darryl Cherney, and accused them of knowingly transporting the pipe bomb that exploded in her car on May 24, 1990.

Now, a dozen years later, a federal court in Oakland is at last considering Bari and Cherney's lawsuit against the FBI and the police for false arrest and defamation. A verdict in the case, which went to the jury on Friday, is expected at any moment. Tragically, Bari herself is not around to see the trial's outcome. She died of cancer in 1997.

Sweet dreams, honey

Tue, 28 Nov 2000 20:00:00 +0000

Just in time for Christmas shoppers, Lynne Cheney's long-lost novel "The Body Politic" is arriving in bookstores in a new paperback edition, advertised as "a revealing look at what it might be like to be the vice president of the United States."

Let's hope, for her husband Dick Cheney's sake, that it doesn't reveal what his vice presidency will be like. Mrs. Cheney's fictional vice president, a 59-year-old Republican, dies in office of a heart attack. Her real-life husband is also 59 and has, of course, just survived his fourth heart attack. As one of her characters, a paranoid Secret Service agent, observes, "Life imitates art."

Well, perhaps "art" is too strong a word. "The Body Politic" is a poorly written, allegedly comic, satire about life in a Republican White House, coauthored by Lynne Cheney and Victor Gold, who served as Vice President Spiro Agnew's press secretary and coauthored President George Bush's "autobiography," the out-of-print "Looking Forward."

The war over vouchers

Fri, 26 May 2000 18:00:00 +0000

Under the cross, on a small table in the middle of St. Vitus Elementary School's main hallway, sits a display: a crown of thorns and two large nails which look more like railroad spikes.

These are trappings of Catholic worship, not the sort of thing you usually find in, say, a Baptist church or school. But the symbols of Catholicism don't particularly bother Janie Hays, a black, single mother who sends her daughter, Jasmine, to St. Vitus courtesy of a voucher. "We're Baptists," says Hays. But she doesn't mind that the school is Catholic because "if you think about it, there's only one God."

St. Vitus used to be a white ethnic enclave, an inner-city parish for the Slovenians who worked in the steel mills. Now, half its students are black.

This is what the school voucher program looks like in Cleveland. Catholic schools formerly devoted to serving their white, working-class communities are now conspicuously integrated by African-American Protestants. Same crucifixes, similar curriculum, changing clientele. Of the 235 students here, only about 70 are Catholic.

Days of rage (cont.)

Tue, 01 Sep 1998 19:00:00 +0000

My greatest transgression, it seems, was not including David Horowitz in my article and documentary about 1968. "Me, for instance," he volunteers when proposing the '60s veterans I should have interviewed. Talk about narcissism! And Horowitz doesn't even have the excuse of being a baby boomer.

It reminds me of the joke his former colleagues tell. Back in the '60s David had a reputation for being arrogant and self-obsessed. And now that his politics have flipped 180 degrees, he's still arrogant and self-obsessed.

Once a polemicist for the left, now a polemicist for the right. Some things never change.

Not that Horowitz hasn't made some valid points. His perspective on the revolutionary delusions and excesses of the New Left, after 1968, and his revelations of thuggery within the Black Panthers are important to understanding the full story of what happened to the protest movements of the '60s. In fact, if PBS or anyone else offers me funding to do more films on the '60s, especially the late '60s-early '70s period -- what Todd Gitlin calls "the days of rage" -- I would like to interview Horowitz and other ex-revolutionaries.

Newt's glass house

Fri, 28 Aug 1998 19:00:00 +0000

Newt Gingrich did a strange thing this week: He restrained himself.

You would have expected the notoriously ill-tempered speaker of the House to savage a wounded President Clinton after the president's humiliating Monica Lewinsky confession. In the heady days of the short-lived "Republican Revolution" (1994-95), Gingrich was an unleashed pit bull who never missed an opportunity to sink his teeth into the president's exposed flesh. But now Newt is subdued, his criticism of Clinton muted.

While House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt condemned Clinton's behavior as "reprehensible" and refused to rule out impeachment (later softening his rhetoric), Gingrich cautioned that the Lewinsky affair alone does not justify an impeachment inquiry. The Georgia Republican told the Washington Post that he believed only "a pattern of felonies" and "not a single human mistake" could constitute grounds for impeachment.

"I don't think the Congress could move forward only on Lewinsky," Gingrich said. Instead, Gingrich wants to return to Whitewater and other investigations of the president, even if Kenneth Starr's report to Congress is limited to Lewinsky.

The Year of Dreaming Dangerously

Wed, 22 Jul 1998 19:00:00 +0000

"Be realistic. Demand the impossible."
--Student slogan, May '68, Paris

There was a moment in 1968 when anything seemed possible. When suddenly, unexpectedly, it appeared that my deepest desires were about to be fulfilled.

It happened when Lyndon Johnson, that towering contradiction, announced at the end of a televised address to the nation, "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."

"I did a backflip," Tom Hayden recalls, "I was sitting in front of the television set and I fell over backwards."

Todd Gitlin, another veteran of the '60s, was equally astounded: "You're often amazed when things you devoutly wish for actually come to pass, and this was one of those moments. It felt like we had won."

I was a 19-year-old college student, staring incredulously at the flickering image of the commander in chief, when his words suddenly struck with the force of revelation. The war in Vietnam might actually be over! I might not have to make the fight-or-flight choice -- jungle combat or exile in Canada -- that had so tormented me, and thousands more like me.

Zorro vs. Tarzana

Tue, 30 Jun 1998 19:00:00 +0000

It's Halloween 1958 in suburban Los Angeles. With mounting excitement, a 9-year-old dons a black cape, fastens a plastic sword to his belt and slips a black mask over his pale face. Instantly he's Zorro, "the fox so cunning and free."

Pausing a moment before a mirror to adjust his black hat and affect the requisite cavalier smile, he grabs his empty bag and sets forth in pursuit of precious candy. His confidence reveals itself in an outlaw swagger, which he savors until he steps into the street and notices that fully half the boys in his neighborhood are wearing an identical costume. Without warning, this October evening has become "The Night of a Thousand Zorros."

Forgive me, but as soon as I hear the word "Zorro," I am instantly transported to that rude awakening of my childhood. It is the first time I can recall falling prey to mass marketing, having (inexplicably) forsaken the earlier Davy Crockett coonskin cap craze. I was a fashion victim, that fall's fashion for kids being a popular Walt Disney television series about a masked crusader in Spanish California of the 1820s.

living down beaver

Sat, 23 Aug 1997 15:15:00 +0000

when Richard Nixon ordered U.S. troops to invade Cambodia in April
1970, I was standing in front of the New Haven, Conn., courthouse,
surrounded by National Guard soldiers who had been issued live ammunition.
Like every other young radical on the East Coast, I had come to New Haven
to protest the arrest of Black Panther leader Bobby Seale. We were
smoldering with discontent, and our mood had not been improved by a dose of
police pepper gas the night before.

From the standpoint of ensuring domestic tranquillity, this was an
inauspicious moment for Nixon to launch his invasion. When Tom Hayden
suddenly announced what was happening in Cambodia, 20,000 of us
decided in a burst of participatory democracy to return to our campuses and
organize a national student strike. Forget New Haven, we would paralyze
the country! At my own nearby college the next day, my friends and I kept
interrupting a Grateful Dead concert to urge our fellow students to
boycott classes for the rest of the semester. Our appeals met with
success, but, to my eternal humiliation, a large poster appeared in the
student dining hall mocking my efforts. It read, "Strike? Gee, Beav, I
don't know."

The Bill and Bob Show: Must-see TV

Tue, 04 Jun 1996 09:21:00 +0000

From a command post deep in the leafy suburbs of Bethesda, MD, a former Washington Post reporter is plotting a fundamental change in the way presidential candidates campaign this fall. Paul Taylor's crusade -- free, prime time access to voters, unmediated by journalists -- might have seemed quixotic, but now appears on the verge of success. In October, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole may be speaking directly to us during breaks in "Seinfeld" or "ER." Not in 30 sec. pit bull attack ads, paid for by their respective campaigns, but in two-to five-minute segments provided free by the networks.
Just think: we could hear what the candidates are really trying to say, even if Dole keeps ending sentences with "whatever," and Clinton keeps stealing from the GOP phrase book.

Funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and aided by Walter Cronkite, Taylor has wrung major concessions from the networks -- "when you've got Uncle Walter on your side, anything's possible" --
although there is lingering resistance from TV executives who fear viewers will flee the room or switch to cable whenever Clinton, Dole or a third party candidate appear on screen. Some of the networks would rather provide free time in the midst of news programs, instead of cutting into prime time entertainment. "Nobody's got it exactly how I hoped," says Taylor, "but we've come a long way and I think we're gonna get there."