"I Like Him"

A few days after the disastrous U-2 affair, Nikita Khrushchev spotted U.S. Ambassador Llewellyn E. Thompson at a diplomatic reception in Moscow. The Soviet Premier strode up to Thompson, then deliberately stepped on his foot. "That is what your President did to me," said Khrushchev. A crowd moved in to watch the hostility and perhaps to join in. "Stop!" shouted Khrushchev. "It is not the work of this man. I like him."

Last week, after five grueling years in Moscow--a record for a U.S. envoy--slender (5 ft. 11 in., 150 Ibs.), baggy-eyed "Tommy" Thompson left for home and a new assignment as a special adviser on Soviet Affairs to Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Foy D. Kohler will arrive next month to take his place. Thompson's Moscow tenure had spanned the period from the short-lived honeymoon spirit of Camp David to the blowup at the Paris summit, to the Kennedy Administration's diplomatic "probes" over Berlin--altogether a mobile period, in many ways harder to handle than the rigidities of Stalinism.

Thompson has an ulcer--he kept a pitcher of milk and a package of graham crackers in his office--but curiously enough his health was never better. There is no more demanding job in diplomacy than representing the U.S. in what, ideologically at least, is enemy territory. The grimy, grey ten-story U.S. embassy is always under siege. From nearby apartments all visitors are watched. The embassy staff is permanent prey for Soviet plainclothesmen (even children's outings are sometimes shadowed by police), and telephone "bugs" in offices and homes are taken for granted. Though social contacts with Russian officials have become easier in the Thompson years, the tiny (about 200) U.S. diplomatic colony still lives and works in oppressive isolation.

Poker Style. The son of a Colorado rancher, Thompson joined the Foreign Service in 1929 (as vice consul in Colombo, Ceylon), first went to Russia in the Stalin era as second secretary of the U.S. embassy during World War II. That is when he learned fluent Russian and developed his methodical, meticulous, unruffled diplomatic style. As ambassador, he kept this style both at the conference and at the card table; in a running poker game with him, some resident U.S. correspondents lost $300-$400 a session.

The most characteristic feature of Thompson's tenure in Moscow was the growth of the U.S.-Soviet cultural exchange program. As an ambassador, this brought him new opportunities as well as new problems; almost anybody might turn up in Moscow, from Vice President Nixon to the New York Philharmonic, from Benny Goodman to Shirley MacLaine, all requiring Thompson's care. One of his few embarrassments came on U.S. Election Day 1960, when he was asked by U.S. correspondents visiting his residence which candidate he favored. Diplomat Thompson refused to say. "Why, Daddy," interrupted his nine-year-old daughter Jenny, "you know perfectly well you voted for Kennedy. You told me so."

Under both Eisenhower and Kennedy, Thompson's toughest, longest job has been protecting, without a misstep, the allied position in beleaguered West Berlin. Ever since November 1958, when Khrushchev issued his first ultimatum ordering Western troops to quit the city. Thompson spent endless hours explaining that--despite Kennedy's willingness to offer some concessions--the West would not be bargained or bullied out of Berlin.

Repetitious talk did not bother Thompson; he was used to it. He was U.S. High Commissioner and Ambassador to Austria during the era of the futile 379 meetings before Khrushchev abruptly changed his mind and agreed to sign a peace treaty giving Austria its independence.

Frank Talk. No such disposition to change his mind about Berlin was visible in Khrushchev last week . In the air corridors leading into the city from the West, Soviet MIGs buzzed U.S. planes five times within ten days; Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko told U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk in Geneva that Moscow intends to sign a peace treaty with East Germany. But Gromyko set no deadline, and chances are that when Moscow does sign the treaty, the Russians will retain some control in Berlin, since (the State Department reckons) the Russians would scarcely want to hand East Germany's Walter Ulbricht the power to provoke incidents with the West that might lead to war. Rusk told Gromyko flatly that the U.S. did not care what treaties Russia signed with whom, since the U.S. intended to remain in West Berlin just the same.

Last week Khrushchev unexpectedly invited Thompson and his wife to a farewell dinner at Khrushchev's private dacha. For three hours, they drank toasts, ate their way through eight courses including Siberian pheasant and Kamchaka crab, "more or less covered the waterfront" on diplomatic issues. "We have a very free and easy relationship," said Thompson. "He scolds me and I scold him."

With that. Thompson, who will be 58 this month, his pretty wife Jane, their three daughters, and a boxer named Valya climbed into a C-130B Flying Boxcar loaded with two tons of belongings and left for the U.S. Mission accomplished.

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