Henry in the Morning

Nearly a year ago, Henry Kissinger promised to give his next televised interview to NBC'S Barbara Walters. Yet every time the tigress of the Today show tried to collect, some international crisis intervened. "I kept trying to find out when, when, when," she recalls. Last week she found out. Kissinger agreed to sit still for more than an hour in the State Department's handsome Madison Room, and chunks of Walters' revealing taped interview with him appeared on Today for four consecutive mornings.

The interview was taped only four days after the Communist takeover in Saigon. Although Kissinger's aides suggested that his aim was "to make foreign policy understandable," he quite clearly had a second purpose: to show that the Secretary of State was alive and well and not (as some reports have had it) dejected by recent diplomatic setbacks. In fact, while Kissinger was voluble and engaging at times, especially toward the end of the session, at other points he seemed ponderous and even petulant. Fairly typically, one longtime Kissinger-watcher, Brown University Historian Stephen Graubard, judged it "not a vintage" performance.

Kissinger did manage to make some news, however. For the first time in public, he blamed Israeli intransigence for the collapse of peace negotiations in the Middle East. He admitted that "we probably made a mistake in Viet Nam to turn Viet Nam into a test case for our policy." He intimated that the U.S. may recognize the government of North Viet Nam before long, and he disclosed that the U.S. has made a number of recent diplomatic overtures to Cuba. With some heat, he denied reports that he was about to resign: "To leave in a period of turmoil, when people are looking for a sense of direction and when foreign nations are watching us--I think it would not be a service to the country."

Walters has now had Kissinger on the tube almost often enough to constitute a Henry-Barbara show. In 1970 she contrived to get Kissinger out of the White House basement for his first major televised session with any journalist. She also had him all to herself for half an hour of prime time following the Paris peace agreement in 1973. The two have in fact been fairly close ever since they met at a party five years ago. Walters tried not to let that friendship mar her reputation as a tough interrogator last week. Most of her questions were thoughtful and to the point, though she did not press Kissinger about his displeasure with the Israelis or probe his contention that Congress is largely to blame for South Viet Nam's fall. At one point, when Kissinger rephrased--and defanged--a Walters query about the validity of the domino theory, she cooed, "I like your questions much better than mine. They are clearer."

Castro's Call. Even before the first part of the Kissinger interview was shown last week, Walters was on her way to Cuba with 14 other reporters and Senator George McGovern, who had been invited there for an audience with Premier Fidel Castro. The Premier asked for "Barbara" by name when he first met the group, and she accompanied him on a Jeep tour of the countryside. Her filmed reports on Castro also appeared on Today.

Walters' drawing power has helped her outlast such quondam rivals as Sally Quinn, who last year returned to her old job as a Washington Post reporter after an unhappy stint on the CBS Morning News, and ABC'S Stephanie Edwards, who is stepping down this week as co-host of AM America. Walters' program now draws almost twice as many viewers as the other two morning shows combined. As long as she can offer the likes of Henry Kissinger and Fidel Castro in a single week, Today and its leading lady will continue their reign.

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