1943. The Aftermath in Stalingrad

The Site of One of Hitler's Greatest Defeats

Soviet soldiers on the roof of a factory shop in Stalingrad in 1942 (Photo by Arkady Shaikhet – source)

Bill Downs first arrived in the Soviet Union to cover the Eastern Front on December 25, 1942. He and other foreign correspondents were taken to see Stalingrad shortly after the German surrender there in February 1943.

During their long journey, the group came across Axis commanders in Soviet captivity, including Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, whose 6th Army had just been encircled and defeated. The press group then entered the city, where they passed bodies strewn along the streets and came across the wreckage at Mamayev Kurgan, the site of some of the worst fighting of the Battle of Stalingrad.

Recalling the experience, Downs said: "There are sights and sounds and smells in and around Stalingrad that make you want to weep, and make you want to shout and make you just plain sick to your stomach."

This text has been adapted from a script cabled to CBS in New York. The passages in parentheses were censored by Soviet officials for military security or propaganda reasons.

Bill Downs

CBS Moscow

February 8, 1943

The Foreign Office press department summoned the foreign press corps with a mysterious 6 p.m. phone call. They informed us we were leaving for Stalingrad at 8 a.m. the next morning. The trip was extremely hush-hush, although it had been announced that fighting had ceased in Stalingrad the day before. We were warned to dress warmly and take five days' worth of food.

I rushed back to the hotel and collected hard boiled eggs, a slab of smoked fish, sugar, two loaves of bread, and most important of all, a liter of vodka, which is Russia's most important personal antifreeze.

The next morning I dressed with three pairs of wool socks under fur boots, two pairs of wool underwear, a wool shirt, two sweaters, a ski jacket, a fur hat, and a fur coat—and I was among the lightest dressed in the party. Someone told me it was a mild winter.

The five hour plane trip in a comfortable Douglas transport was spent recalling hundreds of stories of Stalingrad's four and a half months of concentrated hell, which was worse than Coventry's, Rotterdam's, Warsaw's, or London's—anything Hitler had been able to do to cities opposing him.

The Douglas landed at an obscure little airfield 50 miles north of Stalingrad on steppes which looked like the Texas panhandle or Dakota plains buttered with about three feet of snow. The biting northwest wind of the Kalmyk Steppe made me look down at my legs to see whether I was not wearing a bathing suit.

The airfield was a former fighter-bomber base located in the area where the northern arm of the Red Army's tremendous encirclement of west Stalingrad started. We sheltered in a group of a half dozen peasant farmhouses which formed a tractor station for the surrounding wheat country.

We wondered how in the hell the Russians were able to concentrate an offensive army in these treeless, hill-less steppes without German reconnaissance discovering their striking power. That's mystery number one—or mistake number one—which was one of the major factors for the German defeat at Stalingrad.

At nightfall we headed southward to another peasant farm village where we were liberally fed and tried to warm our freezing hands and feet, to the amusement of Red Army men and women who were interested in foreigners.

We traveled by bus some 60 miles to a point 35 miles directly west of Stalingrad, where the next day we were taken to the headquarters of the commander of the Stalingrad front, Colonel General Konstantin Rokossovsky, who now takes a place as one of the great generals of history. Rokossovsky passed us en route to Moscow, where he went to the Kremlin to be awarded the Order of Suvorov for Stalingrad. We herded into a small peasant house where chairs were lined up like in a classroom, with desks in the corner and a map on the wall.

In walked a medium-sized Red Army general, his breast lined with several medals, dressed in a simple uniform on which the Red Army's new epaulets had yet to be sewn. He is Lieutenant General Mikhail Malinin, chief of staff for the Stalingrad front and one of the men responsible for putting into operation plans for the encirclement of the German 6th Army.

Malinin looked 35, square-faced with hair in a short pompadour which stuck up like a schoolboy's. The only sign of age was the sprinkling of gray hairs around the temples. He picked up a stick with which to point to the map. He looked as out of place standing at the front of that schoolroom as a schoolteacher would have looked in a front-line Stalingrad trench.

Malinin started speaking slowly and deliberately and explained that he wanted to outline briefly the details of the Red Army's encirclement movement where it started.

"Hitler sent his best troops—the German 6th Army—against Stalingrad, containing his crack infantry, tank, and motorized divisions," he said. Continuing in the same matter-of-fact tone, he said that as German forces moved toward the Volga, they created for themselves a sort of second front on the northern flank, "and the task of the defenders was not to give up the city."

Red Army soldiers on the Stalingrad front patrol the snow-covered steppes (source)

Malinin has been in three wars—in addition to the Russian Civil War and the Finnish War, he fought on the Moscow and Smolensk fronts in this war. He formerly was on the faculty of a Red Army military school.

(Malinin said that "Russian resistance forced the Germans to continually send up reinforcements. During the month of October and the first part of November was the fiercest fighting. The Germans continued to pour in huge reinforcements. But by the middle of November there was a certain equilibrium of strength. The Soviet High Command took advantage of its own forces at this time and ordered an offensive aimed at destroying both the Stalingrad and Don front troops of the enemy.")

(This certain equilibrium which Malinin referred to represented the greatest fighting retreat in the history of warfare. It was one place where the Red Army for the first time definitely stopped an Axis advance on the southern sector of the Russian front since the Axis invaded Kiev eighteen months earlier.)

Malinin then explained the great pincer movement (which launched simultaneously on November 19 one hundred miles northwest and some distance southeast of Stalingrad. This blow was so well-timed that in the first four days the northern and southern forces each advanced 55 miles on schedule, and the threat of encirclement became evident.)

Malinin said "the German High Command apparently was unconcerned because they evidently planned to bring up a powerful group of reinforcements from Kotelnikovo anyway. However, the genius of this plan directed by Joseph Stalin foresaw this and even predicted that the Germans would attempt to relieve the group. Thus the Red Army prepared for it. The Germans did just what we thought they would do. They were engaged and routed at Kotelnikovo. We captured the original Paulus order to commanders not to receive Red Army emissaries who advanced under white flag to present an ultimatum. This order specified that this peace delegation was to be fired upon—the exact translation read 'to see emissaries off the premises with fire.'"

Malinin said that American and British equipment played very little part in the Battle of Stalingrad. "We had a small number of British tanks—Churchill tanks—but not enough to take into consideration when reckoning the entire offensive. Where they were used, they stood up well under test. No American tanks or planes were used in the battle. There were some American Dodge trucks, but they don't shoot."

The interviews ended and we filed out of headquarters feeling like we had just taken a college examination for a master's degree in history.

However, the Red Army moves fast, and they took us to a nearby village with a dozen or so scattered unpainted houses around which they posted heavy guard. The conducting Red Army colonel motioned us inside one house. There we found four German generals sitting around a table looking at each other, one in a sweater and the other three in full regalia. In the next room were four others standing and looking out the window, and sitting in the corner looking despondent was woebegone General [Romulus] Dimitriu, the onetime glorified Romanian general.

The Germans in the first room got politely to their feet, smiling sheepishly. These men were Hitler's super-generals, leading super-Aryans against an inferior tribe. The only sign of their "super-ness" now were the magnificent decorations of iron crosses displayed on their uniforms like pictures on a gallery wall.

The German generals of the first group included [Otto] Renoldi, Schlömer, Deboi, and Von Daniels. All fought in the last war and are damn proud of it. We were whisked through the room and had little chance to question them, but when they heard we were American correspondents, Schlömer and Renoldi began long conversations about how they like cigarettes of the American type and had used up their ration of Russian cigarettes. Not a single reporter responded to their hint to give them a smoke. I believe if anyone had, he would have been tackled by the entire press corps when we got outside. These generals were getting a Red Army officer's rations according to the Hague Convention, which is too much considering the kind of rats they are.

In the next room Von Drebber, who looks more like a college professor than a military man, dominated the group which included such nasty types as [Hans] Wulz, who is a small, bald-headed, potbellied Prussian who only managed to squeeze out an unenthusiastic "Heil."

Von Drebber, six feet four inches tall, was asked what primary factors led to his defeat. He drew himself up and politely replied: "The Russians struck from the north and south—we were simply sitting in the middle. We were surrounded, cut off with no munitions and no food."

We tried again asking why they didn't try to break out of encirclement. Von Drebber said: "At one time we could have broken the ring—but you will have to ask Marshal Paulus about questions of strategy."

He was asked if he had Hitler's permission to surrender. Von Drebber said: "I was ordered by Paulus to hold until I pushed back to a certain line. When I reached that line I surrendered."

Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, commander of the Wehrmacht 6th Army, and his adjutant Wilhelm Adam (left) are escorted to the Soviet 64th Army headquarters following the German surrender at Stalingrad, January 31, 1943 (source)

Then we asked Wulz, who is an artillery general, how Russian artillery compared to German artillery. He made a whining, inconsequential answer that "every army has good and bad guns, good and bad artillery—that's how it is with the Russian and German armies."

Schlömer, who was stationed in another house, said however: "The Red Army fought well everywhere we met them."

But the most revealing statements came from Von Arnim and [Fritz] Roske. Roske was asked how the Russians broke them down. Von Arnim interrupted: "That question is badly put. You should ask how we managed to hold out under such conditions."

Roske ignored Von Arnim's remark with a brief statement: "Hunger, cold, and lack of munitions."

However, the Russian colonel was anxious to show us the Red Army's prize exhibit and rushed us to a small farmhouse sitting apart from the others. We gathered outside around the doorway while a grinning Mongolian soldier—definitely non-Aryan—looked down on us.

The door opened and out came Paulus, poker-faced except for a tic which spasmodically twitched from eye to mouth on the right side of his face. He is 53 but looked 65, his face lined and yellowish—almost the same yellowish color of the frozen corpses of men he left lying in gutters in Stalingrad.

Accompanying him was his personal aide, Colonel Adam, a flat-faced Teuton who looked like a slightly overweight ball of concentrated Nazism, and Paulus' chief of staff, General Schmidt, who looked like he'd be happier running a Berlin butcher shop. All men were dressed in fur caps pulled down over their ears against the subzero cold. Paulus answered only two questions, which he appeared to do with effort. He said his first name was Friedrich and that he is 53.

The standing and gazing captured Nazis in those overheated peasant houses, as well as that bare peasant yard where Paulus was held, gave the same feeling one gets when looking in a snake pit at a zoo. But the obvious comparison that strikes when looking at German officers and German soldiers is that the officers are always well-clad while the soldiers are just the opposite. And standing there in that obscure peasant village, these much decorated gold-braided groups of Nazi bigwigs reminded you of a flock of sad-eyed peacocks standing with distaste in a hen run.

The conducting colonel loaded us into drafty buses for a 60 mile trip to Stalingrad. By nightfall the temperature dropped to 40 below, and we started out on a twelve hour, all night trip through snow to Stalingrad.

We would have made the trip sooner when we ran into a Russian supply column moving westward from Stalingrad toward new battlefields. There was a long black line of soldiers, horses, mobile kitchens, guns, and cars. It was an unbelievable sight out there in the steppes to come upon so many people slowly moving along the snow-choked road. But the most unbelievable of all was the sight of camels pulling sledges in three feet of snow.

As we made our way slowly along the road against traffic, a curious Red Army man came up to our bus, looked in, grinned and asked: "Deutschen Soldaten?"

When we explained we were Americans he immediately called all his comrades and soon there was a great crowd around our bus. We passed out cigarettes and someone made a speech with the general theme of friendship between the Soviet Union and the United States. Russians will make a speech at the drop of the hat, but it gave you a warm feeling overcoming even the steppe temperatures to get such a demonstration of friendship at two o'clock in the morning in the swirling snow and wind 30 miles east of Stalingrad on the world's bloodiest battlefield.

We arrived in Stalingrad at about 4 a.m. The driver seemed anxious to get there. We drove around for two hours. The only thing in sight were the dark ruins where we spotted fires which sentries cluttered around to keep warm.

Our driver finally pulled up to one of these fires, and when he got out he was crying. Our interpreter explained that the driver had once lived in Stalingrad and had not been back to the city since the battle. "He can't find any street that he knows," the interpreter explained. "He hasn't yet recognized a house."

This is because there were no houses. The streets were just auto tracks over ruins up and down through bombshell holes. This was the Red October factory district, parts of which changed hands a half dozen times during the fighting.

As the sun came up the scene of devastation was so great it made a lump in your throat. This was the worker's factory district's small homes. These homes were absolutely flat. Not even a gracious blanket of snow could cover the destruction they suffered.

Characteristic of all bombings I have seen in Britain, one of the most indestructible items of furniture in any home is the iron bedstead. It is the same in Stalingrad. The grave of every home is marked by charred headpieces of beds sticking up like tombstones over what was a peaceful home. Occasionally one could mark where a street once existed by looking closely at poles sticking six or seven feet out of the ground. These once were telephone poles which stuck ten to twelve feet up. Now they looked like blasted trees.

Sentries told us that, believe it or not, some civilians holed up in their basements and stuck through the whole bombardment. These included some women who did washing and cooking for the Red Army.

What these people suffered cannot even be imagined. When they were without food, they were forced to forage and risk bombshells. Horse meat was considered a delicacy, and sometimes bread. But they stuck through it, although many are not there to tell their story.

Soldiers of the Soviet 62nd Army walk past dugouts constructed on the banks of the Volga, 1942 (source)

At daybreak we were directed to the headquarters of the 62nd Army, which is credited for saving the city of Stalingrad. The headquarters is built into the side of a western bluff on the Volga near the bottom of a hundred foot high clay cliff. We were led up this cliff to dugouts—zemlyankas—small timber-roofed caves dug into the side of the cliff from where the Red Army held the Germans from establishing themselves on the bank of Russia's greatest river. Just three days earlier the Germans had been only 300 yards away from my zemlyanka. But I slept well—they are now fighting on a line 200 miles away.

Rising above the Volga bluff is Stalingrad's famous Hill 102, Mamayev Kurgan, which the Germans held and placed heavy artillery. The hill commands a view of the entire city as well as the Volga, over which the Red Army's vital supply lines are held. The summit of Mamayev Kurgan is only about a quarter mile from the Volga, and between it and the river are the Red October and Red Barricades factories. Beyond these plants is the high Volga bank wherein zemlyankas are located. This is where some of the bitterest fighting occurred.

We walked single file along a narrow path through the factory. There was little need to remind us the factory was mined, as every minute or so there was a shattering explosion of rock wreckage in a nearby district which Red Army sappers were de-mining.

The Red October factory once made steel for tractors and farm implements. With the war it switched over to tank armaments. After the Battle of Stalingrad the whole plant is now simply a junk heap. The Germans took almost the entire building after it was mercilessly shelled and bombed flat. The only portions of the factory still standing are extremely heavy girders which once held cranes. All other buildings are flat. There literally was not a piece of sheet iron roofing or shovel or piece of metal sticking four inches above ground which didn't have bullet shrapnel or fragment holes through it.

It was in this factory that we saw our first German dead. They were lying at the bottom of a large bomb crater with only their bare feet sticking up. Most of Red October's bodies had been cleaned up earlier.

The de-mined path through the factory led across wreckage and craters. We passed a German dugout in perfectly good condition, clean and well-kept. Beside it stood a sentry, and a sign on the door warned: "Keep Away—This Booby Trap."

The path ended at the most forward-line trenches the Germans held at the factory. These lines are on a small hill facing another factory building which still had two walls standing. The Russians held positions in the factory building which I paced, measuring twelve yards. It was here that some brilliant conversations between warring men occurred. This Russian factory position once manufactured consumer goods. Red Army men did their fighting here among dishpans, skillets, and shovels that littered the floor.

Soviet soldiers fighting in the destroyed Red October factory during the Battle of Stalingrad, January 1943 (source)

The only ordinary looking battlefield we saw was Mamayev Kurgan. This hill is terraced in a series of five foot shelves, and there was a recently planted apple orchard with young saplings about four feet high. There is absolutely no cover, and looking down it from German gun positions are trenches. It appeared that a single squad of machine gunners could hold against advancing infantry forces indefinitely.

Correspondents had trouble even walking over the slick snow uphill in broad daylight. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like for the Soviet soldiers who only a few weeks earlier negotiated slopes under a hail of bullets, artillery shrapnel, and dive bombers. The only statement on the subject I could get from a former Red Army man was a private who grimly admitted: "It was tough."

But once they took positions atop the first ridge a really tough job still awaited. The Germans for weeks held two almost impregnable fortresses atop the hill. They were two circular water tanks about ten feet apart. The tanks were about 50 feet in diameter, dug 30 feet into the ground with about 15 feet of reinforced concrete surfaces sticking above ground. Around the tops these Germans threw earth embankment, forming a shell-proof, bomb-proof position virtually impregnable—until the Red Army decided to take it.

The battlefield before these two fortresses was like any battlefield of the First World War. There were wrecked tanks, smashed Russian and German helmets, empty shell case remnants, and smashed guns. There were bodies which had not yet been cleaned up. There were pieces of mortars, bombs, grenades, and strips of machine gun bullets.

The Russians finally took position by digging trenches up to the fortresses and then launching an infantry assault from there. Tanks were no good, only bayonets, grenades, and Tommy guns were effective in the final clean-out.

The southern part of the eastern slope of the hill Mamayev Kurgan in Stalingrad in 1943 right after the battle. A destroyed Renault UE Chenillette, a French armored carrier used by the Wehrmacht, sits in the foreground (source)

But the greatest shock came when we entered the city of Stalingrad proper. The way Stalingrad is laid out is strip factory districts stretching northward along the Volga, with worker's districts connected by bus and streetcar lines. These settlements were marked by wreckage. Streetcars which ran between community centers now stood burned out, wrecked on what was left of their tracks. Store shops along Communist Street—which is the main highway connecting these settlements—now only had a few walls left. About every quarter mile on Communist Street the Germans built barricades eight feet high, consisting of two fences built five feet apart and filled in with dirt bricks and rubble from nearby houses.

As we approached the city center with its modern buildings, there were more and more signs of increased fighting. Around the ground floor windows, many of which were sandbagged with apertures for machine guns, there were countless chinks made by bullets or holes made by shells.

As we neared the town square called "Heroes of the Revolution" we could see bodies in doorways or behind barricades or lying on sidewalks. Fragments of letters and photographs from home, all written in German, littered streets—letters from Berlin and Hamburg starting out with "Mein Lieber Karl," or Heinrich or Heinz.

There was not a single manhole in Stalingrad's streets with a cover. Germans and Russians not only used the city's basements, housetops, and alleys for battlegrounds, but the sewers as well. Snipers were known to crawl through sewers and come out behind German positions to create panic.

You could almost arm a full division with equipment lying about Stalingrad's ruined streets. Grenades clutter gutters. Full machine gun belts lie across sidewalks, and mortars are a dime a dozen.

Veterans of the Stalingrad fight said it was not uncommon to find Russian and German soldiers locked in each other's death grip during the height of the fighting. That was the way these two armies locked in the city of Stalingrad fought until the Red Army proved itself more powerful and skilled and brought the Wehrmacht to its knees.

Returning to my zemlyanka after this trip through Stalingrad, I went to the headquarters kitchen to ask for a drink of water. The Red Army girl dipped some out of a bucket with a tin cup. The water was cold and clean and good, and I told her so: "Your vodka and wine are great but nothing is better than this water."

She threw back her head and replied: "It ought to be. It's Volga water. It's got Russian blood in it."

1967. Polarization in Congress

The 90th Congress Set to Begin Session

"Opening day of the 90th Congress," January 10, 1967 (source)

Bill Downs

ABC Washington

January 3, 1967

In just a week from today the new 90th Congress of the United States will be gaveled into session, and already Washington columnists and reporters like myself are looking for an ear-catching name for it.

Considering the gains made by the Republicans in last year's off-year elections, the GOP leadership might want to label it the "nifty 90th," which just might possibly produce the man and a program which could defeat the majority Democrats in 1968.

According to what the new Congress does—or does not do—to the Johnson Administration's program, the Democrats might end up calling it the "nefarious" or the "naughty 90th," or perhaps even the "nasty 90th Congress."

Whatever it's called will not depend solely on the Republicans nor on the Democratic senators and representatives alone. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt's first New Deal, Congress has been divided by economic and social issues that cut along party lines. It's no longer enough for a man just to gallop the Democratic donkey or Republican elephant into Congress. Just as important is the question of whether he rides hardest on the right or leans furthest to the left of the saddle.

In other words, the political divisions in the new 90th are not only designated by party label. The members will also find themselves branded with either the conservative or liberal mark.

If you think this is confusing, just wait. The problem of identification of the members of Congress is even further complicated by the fact that no grassroots Solomon or professional politician has emerged here or anywhere else who can give a hard and fast definition of what exactly a liberal or conservative is, because the definitions must change with the times and the issues confronting each new Congress.

For example, some of Capitol Hill's leading so-called liberals today are sounding like America First right-wingers of twenty-seven years ago on the question of US Vietnam policy. On the other hand, some Congressional conservatives would seem to be committing political heresy by backing government efforts to improve the quality and quantity of US education and aid to the nation's elderly.

Consequently, as of now there's no dependable way to draw up a form sheet for the new 90th Congress, because until they get themselves on the record with a series of key votes, you cannot tell the players by their states or numbers—only by their actions.

There is one thing to watch for in the new, nervous 90th after it gets underway. Look to the membership and strength of what's called the "conservative coalition." The Republicans and Democrats who belong to this nebulous voting cartel usually deny that such a thing exists.

Whether it's organized or not, the so-called conservative coalition is usually made up of Democrats from the Deep South, plus Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas, and right-leaning Republicans which form a majority of the GOP membership on some key issues. The landslide vote which swept Lyndon Johnson into office in 1964 pretty well cut the GOP props out from under the bipartisan conservative group and enabled the Democratic administration to push through the president's sweeping Great Society program.

However, the Republican gains last November appears to have rejuvenated the old GOP-Dixiecrat voting cartel, which can only mean difficulty and trouble for the Johnson Administration's free-swinging domestic programs and policies.

Poetically, a rose by any other name is just as sweet. In politics it's different. We'd bet that before the new Congress is many months old, the White House will be calling it the "noxious, no-good 90th"—and that will be just a starter.

This is Bill Downs for ABC in Washington.

1969. "Agnew Demands Equal Time"

The Power of Television News

Vice President Spiro Agnew speaking with reporters in Baltimore after pleading no contest to tax evasion charges on October 10, 1973, the day he resigned from the vice presidency (Photo by Frank R. Gardina – source)

From Time magazine, November 21, 1969, pp. 18-22:

AGNEW DEMANDS EQUAL TIME

The networks had been forewarned of the subject matter of the speech—including the line that read: "Whether what I've said to you tonight will be seen and heard at all by the nation is not my decision, it's their decision." Hence "they," the three television networks, had their cameras warm and waiting when Spiro Agnew arrived to address the Midwestern Regional Republican Conference.

For 30 minutes—carried live in the dinner-hour news slot by the networks—Agnew inveighed against the commentators and producers who control the flow of information and comment to the nation's television viewers. "A small group of men," said Agnew, "numbering perhaps no more than a dozen anchormen, commentators and executive producers, settle upon the film and commentary that is to reach the public. They decide what 40 to 50 million Americans will learn of the day's events in the nation and in the world." Such vast and unchecked power in the hands of a "small and unelected elite," the Vice President claimed, has served to distort traditional rhythms of "normality"—"our national search for internal peace and stability." Gresham's law, he said, "seems to be operating in the network news. Bad news drives out good. Concurrence can no longer compete with dissent. One minute of Eldridge Cleaver is worth ten minutes of Roy Wilkins."

No Censorship

In attacking TV—broad and inviting target that it is, Agnew was aiming at a larger foe. For network TV to many Americans is symbolic of the Eastern Establishment, of glibness and superiority, of unwelcome change, of dissent and division. Still, some of Agnew's criticisms were entirely sensible. He asked a great many questions that have troubled others about the nature and source of TV's power, its influence on America, its effects for good or ill. The speech was more professional and better drafted than almost any he has delivered—thanks to fitting in the White House speech shop. There were, for example, no such gems as "an effete corps of impudent snobs." If the prose was somewhat more finished than in some other recent Agnew performances, the tone was still truculent, occasionally intemperate and bullying. "I'm not asking for Government censorship or any other kind of censorship," he protested. But he noted pointedly that television stations are being subject to federal licensing.

Agnew began by attacking television's postmortem analyses of Richard Nixon's Nov. 3 Viet Nam speech. "President Nixon delivered the most important address of his administration," said Agnew. "His hope was to rally the American people to see the conflict through to a lasting and just peace in the Pacific." But no sooner had Nixon finished his painstakingly prepared address, the Vice President complained, than "his words and policies were subjected to instant analysis and querulous criticism."

Agnew did not name names, but the White House seems particularly incensed by the correspondent who "twice contradicted the President's statement about the exchange of correspondence with Ho Chi Minh." That was CBS's Marvin Kalb. Despite Nixon's claim that Ho was intransigent, Kalb ordered that "the Ho Chi Minh letter contained some of the softest, most accommodating language found in a Communist document concerning the war in Viet Nam in recent years."

Special Venom

Another commentator, said Agnew, "challenged the President's abilities as a politician." That was ABC's Bill Lawrence. A third was berated for claiming that Nixon "was following the Pentagon line." That was ABC's Bill Downs. "Others," the Vice President said, "by the expression of their faces, the tone of their questions and the sarcasm of their responses, made clear their sharp disapproval."

The speech had a special venom for Averell Harriman, former negotiator at Paris, who has consistently criticized Nixon's war policies. ABC had lined up Harriman for an interview after the Nixon speech. The choice was biased in a sense; it clearly indicated that ABC meant to criticize the President. Yet Agnew spoke not merely of Harriman's being "trotted out" to offer "gratuitous advice," but sharply impugned his peace efforts. While he was in Paris, said Agnew, the U.S. "swapped some of the greatest military concessions in the history of warfare for an enemy agreement on the shape of the bargaining table." That line has an Agnewistic demagoguery about it that led some to think the Vice President wrote it himself and inserted it into the speech.

The "greatest concessions" involved the U.S. bombing halt in exchange for a tacit agreement with North Viet Nam to stop attacks on South Vietnamese cities as well as military operations in the DMZ, and acceptance of the South Vietnamese government at the conference table. Since then, Hanoi has not entirely adhered to the first two points. But if the Nixon Administration really believes that Harriman made the worst deal in the history of warfare, would it not be reasonable to resume the bombing?

In another questionable passage, Agnew conjured up a comparison of Nixon to Winston Churchill, who "didn't have to contend with a gaggle of commentators raising doubts about . . . whether Britain had the stamina to see the war through." In fact, Churchill had his share of critical commentators. More important, the Nazi threat of total war against Britain and the entire Western world simply cannot compare to the threat posed to the U.S. by the enemy in Viet Nam.

Rhetoric aside, Agnew did touch on a major phenomenon. It is the strange, pervasive love-hate relationship that Americans seem to have with TV—the force that entertains them, unifies them by making them simultaneous witnesses to great events, and yet also brings them words and images they resent. Most often, of course, they are words and images beyond the control of the distant and suspect networks; they are the inevitable result of social upheaval, of change, or war. But in challenging the qualifications and motives of the TV news commentators and producers, Agnew brought to the surface questions that have been in the mind of every American who has ever tuned in a news program. Who are these men? What are their prejudices and backgrounds? Since they broadcast from Washington and New York, are they dedicated members of the Eastern Establishment or what Author Theodore H. White calls the "opinionated Mafia"? How do TV news commentary programs come to be? Do they need outside control? Agnew touched on several major features of TV news:

• INSTANT REBUTTAL: "The President has the right to communicate with the people who elected him," said Agnew, "without having the President's words and thoughts characterized through the prejudices of hostile critics before they can be digested." It is true that a commentator can assure himself of a vast automatic audience by following the President on the air, and the instant rebuttals or analyses are often feeble. But in the case of the Viet Nam speech, reporters had an hour to study the text before Nixon spoke; they were also briefed on the contents by White House advisers so that they were not speaking entirely off the cuff in their critiques. Besides, the President's right (purely customary) to use television whenever he chooses is an extremely powerful weapon—some think too powerful. Says CBS's Eric Sevareid: "I think the networks should consider having all three of the major networks carrying a presidential speech at the same time live. Perhaps that is a kind of monopoly position given to a political leader that he ought not to have." Some argue that a President, controlling the U.S. Government's vast information network and releasing only what information he cares to, should not be allowed to air his official pronouncements without some balancing criticisms.

• EDITING REALITY: More worrisome than the influence of individual commentators is the effect that can be achieved by the selection of film or tape footage. In this way TV producers can more or less edit reality. Television, even more than other media, has a bias for action and excitement. A small disturbance at a cross-section can, when it fills a TV screen, suggest an entire city in riot. Similarly, during the Newark riots of 1967, TV reporters and their audience were duped into believing that a church assistant was a minister and prominent black spokesman. Hundreds of charges of distortion were brought against the networks for their coverage of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, but a Federal Communications Commission investigation found "no substantial basis" for them. If the influence of TV were as irresistible as Agnew claims, and if TV reporting of Chicago was so prejudiced, why did a majority of Americans nevertheless support Mayor Richard Daley and his police? Still, the power of television to decide which event and which part of an event to cover is awesome, and must be kept under scrutiny. On the evening newscasts a few hours before President Nixon's Viet Nam speech, both NBC and CBS carried film of atrocities committed by South Vietnamese troops.

• INSTANT FAME: TV, Agnew charged, can create issues overnight and turn nobodies into national figures. But Agnew's own examples suggested that this process has limits. He mentioned Stokely Carmichael; in Carmichael's case, notoriety happened, at least in part, for complicated psychological reasons having to do with white guilt. Agnew also mentioned George Lincoln Rockwell; in his case, only minor notoriety resulted, and only assassination transformed him into a national figure.

Perhaps Agnew's most telling charge was that the TV "elite" consists of only seemingly well-informed, possibly unqualified people whose backgrounds and credentials are virtually unknown and who think alike: "To a man, these commentators and producers live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of Washington, D.C. or New York City. Both communities bask in their own provincialism, their own parochialism. These men read the same newspapers, draw their political and social views from the same sources. Worse, they talk constantly to one another."

The Vice President was echoing a journalist who closely followed the election of President Nixon, Theodore H. White. Reacting at least partially to unfavorable reviews of his book, The Making of a President, 1968, White attacked the "increasing concentration of the cultural pattern of the U.S. in fewer hands. You can take a compass with a one-mile radius and put it down at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 51st Street in Manhattan and you have control of 95% of the entire opinion- and influence-making in the U.S." On William F. Buckley's TV program, Firing Line, White suggested breaking up the networks. "Let's say we can rear back and pass a miracle bill. We would say only one national network can have its headquarters in New York City, one must be in Los Angeles and one must be in Chicago."

Agnew's proposals were not nearly so Draconian, but singled out "a dozen announcers, commentators, executive producers" who control TV news, and superficially he got the number right.

Walter Cronkite in the late 1960s

Right and Wrong

His complaint of sameness among the commentators also gains a certain superficial support from their biographies. Many are from the Midwest, most break into journalism on small or middle-sized newspapers, most are Democrats or Independents. But TV's top commentators are in fact remarkably different in their approaches to life and their jobs.

Because of his professional manner and general conservatism, ABC's Howard K. Smith probably stands out most distinctly. A supporter of U.S. involvement in Viet Nam, his hawkishness deepened after his soldier-son was gravely wounded in the war. Walter Cronkite also believes in U.S. commitment in Viet Nam, although he feels that it has developed serious flaws. Basically, he is an optimist. Poverty? Pollution? Problems of the aged? In his fatherly, concerned way, Cronkite feels that "we've got a pretty good democracy going in this country; it works pretty well. If the people really want to do those jobs badly enough, they'll get a Congress that wants to do those jobs badly enough."

After the Chicago convention, however, Cronkite developed at least one gloomy streak in the form of a premonition of censorship. "People are beginning," he said, "to mistake us for the stories we're covering." Those who were charging TV journalists with biased reporting were "doing so for political reasons, for the most part." Even mere reminders that TV stations were licensed amounted to censorship, he felt. "When they talk about public responsibility in the news, they're talking about censorship." And, he added, "they'll come to newspapers next. They won't stop." David Brinkley, "liberal, but not very," is just as pessimistic about the Federal Government, "a clumsy, heavy-footed bureaucratic monster out of contact with the American people."

No one could be further from effete snobbery than Chet Huntley. Deeply—almost lyrically—affected by his childhood in Montana, he is quite simply puzzled and troubled about America. When he was a child in the West, he says, "Our idealisms were be kind to your neighbor. You respected your father and your mother, you exercised thrift and you saved—you saved for a rainy day." Today, "we really don't know ourselves. We haven't had time in the past 60 years to stop and get acquainted with ourselves. Our youngsters have idealisms which are somewhat grander in proportion—namely, the brotherhood of man and world peace, and those are difficult to get into action."

Thoughtful, deliberate Eric Sevareid probably comes closest to the liberal intellectualism that is anathema to Agnew. Yet, even he shares an Agnewesque distaste for "professional intellectuals. They tempt me to agree with Eric Hoffer, who said that intellectuals must never be given power because they want people to get down on their knees and learn to love what they really hate and hate what they really love."

Agnew's most dangerous point is that newscasters ought to reflect majority opinion, rather than their own best judgment, and that this somehow would make them objective. Almost to a man, broadcasters reject objectivity as a goal and insist that they are fair. An objective man, says David Brinkley, "would have to be put away in an institution because he's some sort of vegetable." ABC Anchor Man Frank Reynolds was quoted by Agnew as saying, "You can't expunge all your private convictions," and during the 1968 campaign charged Richard Nixon with a suppressed "natural instinct to smash the enemy with a club or go after him with a meat ax." Av Westin, executive producer of the ABC evening news, puts the industry's case in its best possible light. "My politics are more conservative than Vice President Agnew would have people believe, but that doesn't matter. My job is to keep my politics and those of others off the air. You can't always be objective because you bring your experiences to things—so you try to be fair. We are on guard. We are not infallible. We try."

Typical of the kind of trying that goes into a news program is the Huntley-Brinkley Report. The first staffers arrive around 9 a.m., and shortly thereafter film crews are ordered out on the likeliest stories. Each morning Executive Producer Wallace Westfeldt attends a meeting with the NBC news brass, including President Reuven Frank. "But no one," says Westfeldt, "ever tells us what to run or what not to run." But, of course, certain prevailing assumptions, a certain atmosphere, almost unconsciously dictate decisions. Through the day, film arriving from all over the world is run off and edited. Late breaking footage can be put on the line from one of the affiliated stations.

Around 3:30 p.m., Westfeldt decides the first "rundown," the order and length (down to the second) of the stories. An hour or so later, a couple of writers begin to rap out Huntley's copy, mostly from the A.P. wire. Brinkley generally writes his own. Westfeldt has final film cut and say; he doesn't touch Brinkley's prose, but he sometimes overrules David on the priority of items. New, updated copy sometimes is slipped to the anchor men during commercial breaks.

Vote by Channel Selector

By what authority does this "small band of commentators and self-appointed analysts" (Agnew's words) shape the presentation of the news each evening? As in any business, their rise depends on intelligence, talent and merit. But TV is not just business; it is show business. Top commentators are in the $200,000-a-year bracket because they draw audiences. Thus, even though Agnew calls them "unelected," TV newscasters and commentators are more elected than any other newsmen in America. Every night the viewer votes with his channel selector; the Nielsen rating company tabulates the results. Just now, CBS's Walter Cronkite is ahead of Huntley-Brinkley 26 million viewers to 21 million. Despite Agnew's presumption that silent-majority viewers would prefer an alternative to CBS-NBC dovishness, viewer-voters leave Frank Reynolds (who publicly questioned last month's moratorium) and hawkish Howard K. Smith far behind, with an audience of 10,500,000.

There are many power centers in a free society—foundations, corporations, the print press—whose top executives are not "elected" and have no political constituency. Many people are legitimately concerned about the responsibility and power such men wield. One answer is that they represent an important counterweight to the sometimes excessive power of Government; another is that their influence is limited by competition and diversity. In TV, greater diversity is undoubtedly possible through proper financial support of the fourth, public network and a larger number of local stations.

Broadcasters' Greed

Agnew's implication that TV newscasting and commentary do not draw enough critical attention belies the facts on every hand. A new awards committee, supported by the Alfred I. du Pont Foundation and Columbia University, last week published a tough, 128-page critique entitled Survey of Broadcast Journalism 1968-1969. Prepared by a jury of five people who know their TV well,* the report indicted the industry for dereliction of its duty to the American people—although not in the sense meant by Agnew. Among its conclusions: broadcasting is far behind print in investigative reporting, "documentary programming hit a new low" and reporting of the 1968 election campaign did not adequately inform the electorate. In a personal postscript, Sir William Haley kissed off much of U.S. news coverage as "meretricious, superficial and spotty." The survey hammered at what it called "the real cause of the crisis in broadcasting": broadcasters' obsession with private profit rather than public service. "A theologian would call it greed," the jury dryly observed, and they included advertisers who shied away from sponsoring public-affairs shows as well as local station managers who did not deign to carry them.

Theoretically, at least, the agency to deal with these shortcomings already exists: the Federal Communications Commission. Its control of the broadcast industry would seem to be an infringement of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press, but it is excused on the grounds that there are so few available broadcast channels and they are therefore public property and must be used in the public interest. Stations are licensed and bound by written rules covering everything from transmission wattage to obscenity. Political candidates are guaranteed equal time with rival candidates, and a citizen may rebut a "personal attack" from anyone appearing on a TV station.

If the FCC finds that a station is not operating in the public interest, it can revoke its license or refuse renewal. The FCC does not license networks, but since each network owns at least five TV stations, the commission can exercise considerable influence over them.

It never has. Over the years, most commissioners have gone into or served as lawyers for the broadcasting industry once they left the FCC. Even if they had been eager to bite the hand that promised to feed them, the commissioners never had sufficient funds to monitor stations properly. Only lately, under the prodding of Nicholas Johnson and a few other activist commissioners, has there been a change. Last January Boston station WHDH-TV lost its license for several reasons, including the other media interests of its owner. And last August, an FCC hearing examiner recommended the suspension of a Los Angeles station's license for "dreadful" programming and because it "miserably failed to serve the public interest." Around the country, groups of concerned citizens are challenging the license renewals of stations for reasons such as racial bias, local media monopoly and unfair reporting.

Final Takeover

But the broadcast lobby is one of the most powerful in Washington, and Senator John O. Pastore of Rhode Island, chairman of the Communications Subcommittee, has introduced a bill to protect a broadcaster's license from public challenge unless it has been previously revoked. In effect, the Pastore bill would grant owners a permanent license. Commissioner Johnson called the legislation "the final takeover by broadcasters," and warned that it meant further emasculation of the FCC. Nixon's appointment of Dean Burch and a Kansas broadcaster named Robert Wells to the FCC has been interpreted as a pro-industry move. On the face of it, Agnew has rallied the nation's citizens against shabby television practices. But unless Agnew and his boss give equal time and attention to the defeat of the Pastore bill, the gesture will prove to be hollow.

Still, Agnew's attack on TV drew wide support, and it did quite a lot for him politically. He is undoubtedly a more considerable figure today than he was three weeks ago. During last year's campaign he blamed the press and TV for ridiculing him. Since then, he has provided by his own experience a perfect rebuttal of what he accusingly said about TV in his speech—that without justification, it can bring an obscure figure to prominence overnight. If Agnew, by his public speeches, had not compelled the networks to pay attention to him, he would still dwell in vice-presidential obscurity. Spiro Agnew owes his office to Richard Nixon, but today he is also a creation of the media.

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* Sir William Haley, former director-general of the British Broadcasting Corp.; Author-Critics Marya Mannes and Michael Arlen; Richard Baker, acting Dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and his predecessor, Dean Edward Barrett.