The Kingdom and the Power (42 page)

Turner Catledge was personally acquainted with Mississippi’s Senator James O. Eastland. They were not close friends, but Catledge had known of the Eastland family from his boyhood days in Mississippi, and Senator Eastland’s father, Woods Eastland, had been the district attorney in Catledge’s district, and Catledge had regarded Woods Eastland in those days as a kind of hero. During a brief period when Turner Catledge thought that he might wish to become a lawyer, and when he wanted to conjure up an impressive figure that he might emulate, he invariably thought of Woods Eastland. While James O. Eastland had never stirred Catledge’s fancy in quite that way, Catledge was sure that he could go down to Washington during the investigation and have a warm, personal chat with the Senator and perhaps discover what it was that Eastland hoped to achieve by giving so much attention to
The Times
, and to cooperate in any way that he could.

Catledge arrived in Eastland’s office on a Sunday afternoon, and the Senator was affable and smiling, and he took Catledge’s hand and said, with sincerity, “
Hell
, Turner, I’m not trying to get
The Times
.”

“Well, what are you after then?” Catledge asked.

“Well,” Senator Eastland said, shrugging his shoulders, “nothing, really.”

And there was very little else that Eastland would add—it turned out to be a rambling, smiling, unproductive afternoon for Catledge, with Eastland indicating that he did not know what was going on, and that it was the subcommittee’s counsel, Julien G. Sourwine, who was spearheading the investigation. But when James Reston later interviewed Sourwine while writing a piece for
The Times
—describing the counsel as “squat, soft-spoken”—Sourwine insisted that he had never done anything without the permission of Senator Eastland, and certainly had never issued any subpoenas without authorization. Catledge did not really know what to think after concluding his talk with Eastland, except to remind himself that the Eastlands were planter types from the Delta, and in Mississippi it was said by some Mississippians that Delta people were a most
peculiar breed—they were property people, shifty as the seasonal cycles they lived by, social people who did not want to be caught treading on anyone’s toes, oblique people who talked one way, acted another, and were hard to know—or so it was said.

Those who knew Catledge during this period thought that
he
was becoming hard to know. He was often remote and vague. He had been separated from his wife in 1948 and was spending a good deal of time in Sardi’s bar, so much in fact that his picture was soon hanging on the wall and his name was on the menu (“Veal Cutlet Catledge”); and now, in 1955, he revealed to his friends a deeper sense of frustration and failure, and once he told them that he thought he might be replaced as the managing editor.

If Arthur Hays Sulzberger had ever given consideration to this, he kept it to himself. The only obvious change in Sulzberger’s attitude now seemed to be his decision to harden
The Times
’ position with regards to the Eastland subcommittee, and to take a somewhat softer line on the Fifth Amendment—although a second
Times
copyreader had since been fired, and an assistant to the Sunday “Book Review” editor had resigned under pressure, after seeking protection under that amendment.

But the opinion of John Oakes as expressed in his earlier memo to Sulzberger—“… If we handle each case on its merits, and if we make no declarations of Fifth Amendment policies …”—seemed to have influenced Sulzberger, Dryfoos, and Merz. And in a long editorial in
The Times
in January of 1956, Merz wrote:

Then, with an emotion that does not often penetrate
The Times
, Charles Merz ended his editorial with a paragraph that Sulzberger particularly approved of:

I
n the spring of 1957, in a trip that would produce both a journalistic coup and a wonderful excuse for being away from the office, Turner Catledge went to Russia. He had no idea beforehand that Nikita Khrushchev would grant him an exclusive interview, but the Soviet Union was still following its so-called peace offensive—“Party-Going in Moscow Is New Party Line,” read a recent headline—and so Catledge, reacting instinctively, sent cablegrams to Khrushchev and Bulganin, to Zhukov, Molotov, Gromyko, and others; and on the evening of April 28, he boarded a plane in New York for Copenhagen, then switched to a Russian plane, and landed the next day in Moscow. He was met at the airport by
The Times
’ bureau chief, William Jorden, who told him that a big reception, given by the Japanese Ambassador in honor of the Emperor’s birthday, was being held in a Moscow hotel. So they went—and it was there that Catledge met Khrushchev.

Catledge saw Khrushchev standing in a large, crowded room, a jovial, smiling porcine man encircled by Japanese diplomats and journalists. Catledge also noticed in another part of the room the stocky figure of Nikolai Bulganin, president of the Soviet Council of Ministers, standing near several long tables on top of which were dirty plates, empty and overturned bottles, used glasses, and rumpled linen from what had obviously been a grand feast. Bulganin was also surrounded by people, but it was a
smaller crowd than Khrushchev’s, although Bulganin too was smiling, bowing to the Japanese, and behaving no differently, Catledge thought, than a Kentucky colonel at an after-Derby party.

Catledge’s bureau man, Jorden, who spoke Russian and a bit of Japanese, led him toward Bulganin’s circle and made the introductions. Bulganin bowed low, extended his hand, and welcomed Catledge to the Soviet Union. After a few more pleasantries, Bulganin proposed a toast. He turned around looking for a bottle, but the liquor had run out. Then an aide came running with another bottle of vodka, and Bulganin and Catledge raised glasses to mutual happiness and health. At that moment, Khrushchev appeared, bouncy and red-faced, and Bulganin introduced him to Catledge. This led to another toast. Catledge did not make his bid for the interview at this time, but it was a propitious beginning, and it was followed later in the week by more of the same. At one party, a Soviet official toasted Catledge by saying, “Here’s best to
The New York Times
,” adding, “Of course, what
I
think is best for
The New York Times
and what you think is best for
The New York Times
are greatly different. But here’s to the difference.”

After watching the May Day parade, and after sightseeing trips to Kiev and Leningrad, Catledge was informed that his request for an interview had been accepted by Khrushchev, who asked that Catledge appear at the Kremlin on Friday afternoon, May 10. Catledge went to bed early the night before. He already had a list of questions that he had previously prepared with the help of Salisbury and Daniel in New York, and Jorden in Moscow. Catledge arrived at the Kremlin at the appointed hour with Jorden and a press official from the Soviet Foreign Ministry. As they were ushered into Khrushchev’s office, Khrushchev bounced up from behind his desk, extended his pudgy little hand, and led Catledge to a long wooden table, seating Catledge in a chair next to himself.

Catledge, through an interpreter who sat at the head of the table, began by saying that he had not come to Russia to argue about anything, but rather to obtain Khrushchev’s views and to pass them along to readers of
The Times
. Catledge explained that he was in charge of the “factual” side of
The Times
, and had nothing to do with the “editorial” side, a distinction that Khrushchev could not understand, and he indicated somehow that it was a crazy
way to run a newspaper. But he motioned for Catledge to proceed with the questions, and the interview lasted for two hours. It was characterized by a friendly tone toward the United States, a hope for coexistence, a reminder of Soviet strength; it was a reaffirmation of Khrushchev’s demonstrated anti-Stalinism, which, through
The Times
, he was conveying directly to the capitalists on Wall Street and the politicians in Washington.

As the interview continued, Khrushchev seemed to warm up even more, gesticulating freely, giving long answers; and while Catledge waited for the translation, he lapsed into reflections. Catledge tried to remind himself of the importance of the occasion—to impress upon himself that he was at this moment sitting at the very center of the international Communist conspiracy, in the presence of the chief engineer of the apparatus, a powerful little man who could influence the preservation of peace or the destruction of the world. Catledge could convince himself of this intellectually. He accepted this as a fact. But he simply could not
feel
it. Perhaps it was the lack of distance. This face-to-face meeting with communism’s number one man left nothing to imaginary free play, journalistic interpretation, televised hallucination, the whole gambit of informational gadgetry that could produce games of panic—that
did
during the McCarthy days cause national suspicion; that did during the bomb scare chase optimists into fallout shelters and others out of cities; that did during the Eastland hearings agitate the equilibrium of
The Times
itself. But in the Kremlin, where Catledge could hear Khrushchev’s breathing, could see his blue eyes and ruddy face and neck and workman’s hands—and know that, with proper attire, Khrushchev could fit that Saturday-afternoon scene in the courthouse square of some Mississippi town—here the menacing specter of Communist aggression that Catledge had been hearing about for years did not alert him, fascinate him, pacify or move him in any way—he could feel nothing, he had hit an emotional dead-spot; and months later, he would still be trying to analyze this lack of reaction.

As the interview ended, Khrushchev stood, shaking Catledge’s hand again and wishing him well. Khrushchev said he would like to continue the interview, but that he now had to go out to meet the Mongolian delegation. He did mention the possibility of visiting the United States, but added, with a chuckle, that he could not come as a tourist without being fingerprinted, and he did not like that. Catledge quickly pulled out his Defense
Department Accreditation Card to show
his
fingerprints on the back of it, explaining that no one in America took offense at being fingerprinted for such documents.

“Then you must be a criminal,” Khrushchev said with a laugh. Then Khrushchev walked with Catledge and Jorden and the Soviet press aide through the outer office into the main corridor, and there he left them, tipping his little hat as he waddled away, saying, “Off to see the Mongolians.”

While visiting other
Times
bureaus on his way back to New York, Catledge was quickly reunited with the reality of his own regime. One
Times
correspondent, an old friend, reminded Catledge of a promised raise in salary, a substantial raise, and Catledge said that he had not forgotten it. But the correspondent, suspecting perhaps that it would be a long time before he would again have the managing editor’s undivided attention, pressed the issue—and, after a few more drinks with Catledge, the conversation became very direct and personal, with the correspondent charging that Catledge, his old friend, had greatly disappointed and failed him. Then a rather unexpected thing happened, one that might have been triggered by Catledge’s travel fatigue or the liquor or other inexplicable factors—but tears now came into Catledge’s eyes, and there was a sudden release of open emotion, honesty, hostility, the admission of frustrations that he had felt in New York. The reason that the raise had not come through, Catledge said, was that the budget had been frozen by the publisher’s office. It seemingly was not Sulzberger’s decision so much as it was that of Orvil Dryfoos, who, at forty-four, had become president of The New York Times Company. Sulzberger was still the publisher, but he had not been feeling well this year, having some of the symptoms of the series of strokes that would follow; and, at sixty-five, he had decided to delegate more authority to his son-in-law and successor.

The Times
was still making an annual profit—in fact, the company had been in the black each year since Ochs had bought it. But the rising cost of newspaper production, and the recession in 1957, had cut into
The Times
’ profits, which were never as large as outsiders generally presumed, since the Sulzberger family had followed Ochs’s policy of reinvesting most of the profit back into the business. It had become one of the corporate jokes within
The Times
that most of the money earned did not come from publishing the greatest newspaper in the world but from the 42 percent interest that Ochs had bought in 1926 in a paper-making mill in Canada—
The Times
made more money producing paper without words than paper with words. The Spruce Falls Power & Paper Co., Ltd., of Toronto, which supplied two-thirds of
The Times
’ paper, had accounted for about 53 percent of The New York Times Company’s total profit in recent years. The rest of the company’s earnings came largely from advertising, although in 1957 this income had decreased, largely because of the recession, which caused a 24 percent loss in revenue from the help-wanted ads. Between 1956 and 1957, there was a $624,245 drop in profits, which meant that The New York Times’ net income after taxes had been only $1,462,814—an amount that
The Times
’ correspondent overseas could not accept as justification for withholding his raise, but Catledge was powerless to do anything about it now.