An Interview Is a Love Story

She has flown on a bombing run in Viet Nam and been wounded by gunfire in Mexico. She boldly interrogated Lieut. General Nguyen Van Thieu about the corruption of his regime, and she lured Secretary of State Henry Kissinger into describing himself as a lone gunslinger on a horse. She is Oriana Fallaci, 45, world-roving and world-renowned practitioner of the clawing interview. A small and frenetic figure in slacks and a faded maroon corduroy jacket, she swept into her Rome office from an Athens flight one recent morning, dumped her suitcases on the floor, answered a number of telephone calls (sometimes two at once), ordered a glass of Fernet Branca. Then she turned to TIME'S Jordan Bonfante and submitted herself to what many prominent political leaders already know to their sorrow and awe as a Fallaci-style interview.

Q. Who elected you the great and omniscient critic--what rights and qualifications do you have to criticize so many political leaders?

A. The right of being a historian. A journalist writes history in the best of ways, that is in the moment that history takes place. He lives history, he touches history with his hands, he looks at it with his eyes, he listens to it with his ears. Listen, Herodotus in his day was a damned f__ing journalist.

Q. It's been charged that you fabricate quotations. You've been called Oriana Fallacious.

A. Fallacious, that's just a vulgarity.

It's ridiculous. If I have the tape with the voice, how can they claim they never said what they did?

Q. In your interviews, you are sometimes downright insulting. Why do they sit still for you?

A. I'm never insulting, no, but I can be brutal. When I have a brutal question to put, I always say: "Now I'm going to put you a brutal question." I don't write that because it would be monotonous to read that each time. The questions are brutal because research of truth is a kind of surgery. Surgery hurts.

Q. They say that you work with your elbows, that you are aggressive and belligerent, that you throw tearful scenes, scream and cry.

A. Tearful? Me, tearful? You mean those big white things that come out of your eyes? Not me.

Q. You kick and scream, though, don't you?

A. Oh, yes, a lot. I scream and yell.

But no tears.

Q. What was your most unsuccessful interview?

A. The first one was with Bobby Kennedy, because you cannot interview a person who never watches you in your eyes. For more than one hour he watches his shoes. Each time I put a question to him he blushed. But there is an interview that is worse than that, and that is the one with Kissinger.

Q. You're not eating any words here, are you?

A. No, I swear on my mother, I always said it. I have never understood why the Americans have fallen in love with that interview. I haven't given any importance to the boutade [whim] he said about the cowboy. I thought it was cute, it was arrogant, it portrayed him. But the interview was bad because Kissinger is a very cold man, and he behaved coldly. I was disturbed by his way of receiving me.

He arrived and he said very nicely before he entered his room, "Good morning, Miss Fallaci." And then he entered his room and he started reading this paper, giving me his shoulders. I disliked that, I was discouraged. Oh, God, no, I said. Oh, la la la.

Q. Are you apologizing for that interview?

A. Why should I apologize? I put the right questions. He answered badly. Listen, the interview with [North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen] Giap was the worst of all. Pure shit. It's bad. He talked all the time and he wanted to show me how bad the Americans were and how good he was.

Q. Who has refused to talk to you?

A. Tito. Chou Enlai, not because he did not want to see me but because the Chinese never gave me a visa. I never saw Brezhnev or any of the Russians. The reason is that for 14 years I asked the visa for the Soviet Union and it was always denied. Finally when Aldo Moro, who was Foreign Minister at that time, went to Russia [in 1971], I made a scene at the Soviet consulate. I rang the bell for two hours. When my finger became red from pushing, I put the other finger. When the second finger was red, the third finger. I went on with the ten fingers, till the Soviet consul became absolutely hysterical. As soon as he opened the door I entered. I said, "I don't move until you give me the visa!" "Get out!" "I won't get out!" Finally, in total despair he said, "Oh, give me your damn passport, here is your visa."

Q. Others?

A. Now Franco--I have always refused to see him. When I was invited to interview Franco, I said, "I'm not going to shake hands with Franco."

The one I've tried very hard to see is Ford. And they are stupid not to agree to it. They are cutting their balls. They are wrong, honestly. I have no bad intentions. But Kissinger is behind it.

Q. Your toughest subject?

A. Haile Selassie [in 1972]. He was senile, arrogant and unintelligent. He despised women.

Q. How did he show that?

A. Even if I go to see the most important man in the world, I go with slacks. There I was instructed that I could not go to see His Majesty the Emperor with slacks. At first I said, "Would you tell His Majesty that either I go naked or I go with slacks?" But they gave me a dress. A woman had to be dressed as a woman. He didn't even want uncovered arms. The dress had to have long sleeves, like a nun.

Q. What particular techniques have you developed for an interview?

A. Each is a portrait of myself. They are a strange mixture of my ideas, my temperament, my patience, all of these driving the questions. I am what is called a leftist. I don't know the meaning of these stupid words nowadays--leftist, rightist, all shit--but for sure I care very much about freedom.

Let's take [Portuguese Communist Leader Alvaro] Cunhal. I go to this man who is a Stalinist, and who is doing these stupidities. From the first moment I yell at him, "Aren't you ashamed of what you are saying? For Christ's sake, don't you blush?" Can you imagine a journalist of the New York Times yelling at Cunhal? Never, not even if they chop his head off. I do it. When I make an interview, it's a parliamentary debate.

Q. What value do you give to objectivity?

A. None. What is objectivity? I hate the word objectivity. I always use the words honest and correct.

Q. Why do you provoke your subjects to such anger and emotion? Fellini called you a rude little bitch.

A. Yes, and I called him a dirty liar.

I provoke them because I get involved, because my interviews are never cold, because I fall in love with the person who is in front of me, even if I hate him or her. An interview is a love story for me. It's a fight. It's a coitus.

Q. Do you ever use sex, feminine attraction, as a weapon?

A. No, I have never done that in my life. When I go to these people, I am terribly serious, I'm dressed in the most anti-sexy way, often badly combed, no lipstick. You see, this is not only a matter of professional pride. It's also, let's say, a political choice, a form of advanced feminism.

Q. Here comes a brutal question . . .

A. Bravo! Go ahead, go ahead, pronounce it with love.

Q. Don't you actually relish war and conflict?

A. No, war is a vomiting thing. It's a disgusting thing. I was curious to see the war [in Viet Nam]. When I did, I got a profound nausea. There is only one thing, that when the danger is over and nothing has happened to you, you feel twice alive. Every piece of you, your nose, your hair, everything feels alive and you are so surprised and excited. It's very exciting, that, nearly like being drunk ... but I don't need war.

Q. I'm going to ask about your personal life. You aren't a lesbian, are you?

A. Oh, my God! Oh, mamma mia!

No, scusa, it's obvious I'm not a lesbian, but it's offensive to answer "No" be cause I feel guilty in something. My liberalism ends when we come to the queers and lesbians. I cannot stand them. And if I say it in a loud voice, they say I'm a fascist, a reactionary.

Q. Why are you so pessimistic about marriage, as you've been quoted?

A. In a marriage there is always a padrone, a master, and it is not necessarily the man. I believe in freedom.

Q. We've read that you've suffered a great deal, that you've had three miscarriages, that you cannot have children.

Is that true?

A. I never said that. This was at tributed to me by a dishonest woman journalist [New York Times Reporter Judy Klemesrud, who insists that Fallaci admitted to the miscarriages]. I was speaking about my new book -- Letter to a Child Never Born -- and the beauty and curse of being able to become a mother, and that you die a little less if you leave a child. I tried to put it in this very poetic way, and then she says, "So, you had three miscarriages!" She was big turd.

Q. Then it isn't true?

A. No.

Q. Do you hope to have a child?

A. Yes, I still hope. No, no, I have lost all the children I wanted to have.

And this book conies from personal experience, of course. It would be idiotic to deny that. Look, it's another issue like lesbianism. I've never had an abortion in my life. But I can't say so, because if I do, I'll be accused of taking sides with the priests.

Q. Finally, if you were to be convinced that God exists and you were to interview him, what would you ask?

A. Ai! Ai! Here, really, I can only answer with some verses of my friend [Greek Resistance Leader] Alexander Panagoulis. It's a poem that says:

I didn't understand, God.

Tell me again.

Should I thank you, Or forgive you ?

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