Baying at the Moon

"Damn it," said David Susskind last week, "I don't think I'm a wild egomaniac destroying Western civilization. I did my best with Khrushchev."

That he had. The question was whether Susskind's best was good enough, as he faced the Premier of the Soviet Union for some two hours on TV's Open End (recognizing that he was overmatched, Susskind had asked Khrushchev if he would meet with a panel of experts, but K. refused). It could not have been a more incongruous interview--or a more fascinating sideshow--if Rumpelstiltskin had been interrogating Jimmy Hoffa, and about as much useful information resulted.

Dressing Down. Susskind managed to bring up nearly every subject of East-West difficulty from Berlin to the Congo, trying to avoid questions that would--as he put it later--"open a dialectical can of peas." But the peas soon spattered all over the screen, because Susskind insisted on talking to Khrushchev not as a reporter but as one statesman to another, and because he loaded his imprecise questions with long, patriotic declarations clearly designed to demonstrate Susskind's own political soundness (pressure against the show from all sides, including general dicta from the State Department, had produced the kind of "hysteria" in which he got caught, Susskind explained later). Now and again Susskind was flip, as when he delivered the now-famous line, "You are baying at the moon," and Old Moon-Shooter Khrushchev gave him a naughty-boy dressing down, beginning by asking Susskind's age (39) and suggesting he had much to learn.

Despite its shortcomings, the program gave a long, detailed close-up of the Russian, his face alternately basking as if in sunlight and marinating in some quick-starting annoyance. Sipping his favorite Georgian mineral water or brooding while the interpreter did his work, K. sat impassively, his round head filling the TV screen and looking like an oversized bead in a gun sight. What Susskind later described as Khrushchev's "physical amiability" was constantly evident, as he nudged, elbowed, fingered his squirming interviewer.

Good Eyes. During commercial breaks, the Open End station (New York area's WNTA-TV) ran advertisements for Radio Free Europe, showing barbed wire, a symbolically gagged resident of a satellite country, etc. When a Soviet aide passed a note into the studio telling Khrushchev what was going on, he waited until the next station break, then raged about "trickery"; suddenly, he broke into a smile and said, "Do what you like, enjoy yourselves, we will win, we will win." Susskind later apologized, said he knew nothing of the commercials.

Taking the debatable position that Khrushchev should not have appeared on the show at all, the Wall Street brokerage firm, Sutro Bros. & Co., a longtime sponsor of Open End, canceled its commitments to the show. Susskind's final muddled reaction to Khrushchev: "The guy is one part Santa Claus, one part doctrinaire, one part demeaning uncle." Khrushchev's reaction to Susskind: "You have good eyes. I could negotiate with you."

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