Rapping for Carter's Ear

National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski's firm views on how the U.S. should deal with the Soviet Union are gaining ascendancy in the White House. TIME State Department Correspondent Christopher Ogden reports on the way the former Columbia University professor goes about his job.

At Columbia, students called him Vitamin Z. At the White House, inner-circle Georgians refer to him as Woody Woodpecker, because his Dagwood-style haircut gives him the cartoon character look, and because he keeps rap-rap-rapping for the President's ear. His friends call him Zbig, and their one-word description is energetic. He thinks fast, acts fast, talks fast. Critics would say too fast, too compulsively and too impulsively. Even his trim body, angular face and darting eyes convey an image of intense energy.

Brzezinski is the only senior White House official authorized to be chauffeured to work each day, giving him time to start on some 400 pages of intelligence reports and option papers that flow past him daily. He is often at his desk by 6:45 a.m., and ends the day at 8 or 9 p.m., after eating dinner alone at his desk. His only break is for lunch. Sometimes Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin, the only ambassador so favored, comes by for a noontime sandwich. The two doff their coats and eat at a small round table in Brzezinski's office. Essentially a loner with few real friends in the Administration, Brzezinski spends little time with cronies. He sometimes plays doubles tennis against Jimmy Carter, who is usually on the winning side.

Brzezinski holds a weekly staff meeting on Thursday afternoons in the Roosevelt Room. They sound more like postgraduate seminars in political science, economics and psychology than security briefings. The emphasis is on intellectual exchange. Brzezinski accepts criticism from his staff so long as it is not too blunt. He holds, but does not hog the floor. His 31-member staff is lean, and in some areas, such as the Middle East, the Far East and strategic policy, it is very good.

Highly intelligent and with a generous share of ego, Brzezinski does not suffer fools easily. He gives the impression he does not think there are many people around with better ideas than he has -- except for one notable exception: Carter. Asked from whom Brzezinski seeks counsel, one aide replied: "He listens to the President."

Brzezinski's greeting is usually, "Hi, how's life?" His humor is impish; when he was displeased with one Western leader recently, he turned the official's picture to face his office wall and thus "punish him." He can be arrogant, but he tries to defuse touchy situations in public by making self-deprecating remarks. He opened one press conference by declaring, "I will try to respond as best I can or as badly as I will."

Although Brzezinski outwardly almost jangles with controlled intensity, he seems troubled by two apparent insecurities. He appears uncomfortable with the Georgians, some of whom have disparaged him in the past, and he has a tendency to look over his shoulder at Henry Kissinger, with whom he is too often unfavorably compared.

Yet as he has become more public, Brzezinski's confidence seems to have grown. He is still thin-skinned about press criticism and tries to trace the sources of critical remarks, and he is not very comfortable with Congressmen and Senators. To remedy that failing, Hamilton Jordan has been brought into foreign policy decision making.

Whenever there has been what Brzezinski calls bite in U.S. policy toward the Russians, he has either proposed or welcomed it. For now, Carter seems to agree with the need for that bite, perhaps because he hears it advocated so often. Brzezinski sees the President from four to ten times a day. There are still no indications that he has tried to freeze out either Secretary of State Cyrus Vance or Defense Secretary Harold Brown. Both have their own private time with the President.

But Brzezinski has long had the President's ear. Events are helping him to keep it.

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