US-USSR nuclear deal kept quiet

In the long ago, I met a distinguished journalist, already silver-haired and tottering slightly – if he's still around, he must be about 130. He'd been a foreign correspondent for the absolutely top London newspaper when such men were close to the seats of power but never said so.

I imagine that his heyday must have been in the decade before the First World War and it's a sign of how drastically the seats of power have moved across the globe to mention that he was probably the ranking English correspondent and yet had only one spin to the United States for, I think, a post-war Washington conference on making the Germans pay up the reparations that were imposed at Versailles. 

In those days his job kept him moving between all the great capitals of power, namely between Berlin, Rome, Paris, Vienna, St Petersburg, Budapest and his home base of London. To instruct a very junior journalist on how he should go about his job, he said it was essential to get to know the ranking ambassadors in each country and, if possible, the foreign secretaries, to win their confidence so they could tell you things in private, which of course you wouldn't dream of publishing, the main point being, he said, that they could stop you writing nonsense by way of expanding hints and rumours into wild and asinine speculation. 

I tried to learn this lesson and used it, I hope to everybody's benefit, not least the newspaper readers, during the Second World War. Let me give you one example, not by way of foolish boast, but to show that this old man's practice was based not only in good sense, but in a sense on the journalist's part of responsibility, both to the newspaper reader and to the people who made the news. 

There's no need to be a greybeard to remember that during the 'back to the wall' days of 1942 and '43, there was a tremendous campaign in the press of Britain and America to mount the invasion of Europe which had been promised for so long and, it seemed to most of us, postponed for too long. The main goad to the Western allies was, of course, the Soviet Union which was suffering atrocious losses on the Eastern front and accusing us of saving our skins at the expense of millions of Russians. It was, to put it conservatively, an uncomfortable period. 

Well, when this 'Second Front' propaganda was at its height, I remember feeling that the Allied war command must be as anxious as the rest of us to invade France, but must know something that made it risky or impossible just then. This was so big an issue that, as I'd learned long ago with many other comparatively minor issues, it was little use going to the press relations officers of the armed forces or the information officers either of the state department or the British in Washington. If there was a private explanation that was also crucial, only a handful of people in London and Washington would know it. So I decided the thing to do was to vault over the heads of the press officers, who no doubt at the time thought me pretty snooty, and try and arrange brief meetings with three top men then in Washington. Notice I say 'meetings' and not 'interviews.' Any interview intended for publication that you could get during the war was not worth the ink that printed it. 

It was then that this old journalist's rule stood me in good stead. Before they'd see you they must be absolutely sure that you would honour their confidence and use what they said, as the old man said, 'to stop you writing nonsense for months to come'. Well, now, or as they say in Washington 'at this point in time' there's no harm in identifying these top people to whom I had access. One was then the British ambassador to Washington, Lord Halifax. He was friendly enough but he'd been brought up and been at the Foreign Office at a time when all reporters, even the most grammatical, were anathema and to be held at arms' length as potential mischief-makers. So he was polite, even talkative, but if he knew the reason for the delay in the Second Front, he wasn't going to reveal it. 

The second man was one I had warmer relations with, Air Marshal Tedder, General Eisenhower's future deputy, who was then in Washington. And it was through him, indeed with him, that I went to see the third man. He was, of all the allied soldiers, the main conductor and supplier of men and materiel on all the allied battle fronts – the trim, laconic and rather forbidding figure of General George C. Marshall. He was forbidding because if he had any small talk he must have reserved it for his wife and closest friends. He spoke always briefly and to the point and he looked at you with ice-blue eyes and, in the first few minutes, decided whether or not you could be trusted with the unpalatable truth. He had the assurance of the other two that blab off with one of those fatuous egotistical pieces that begin – 'President Ford (or Muhammad Ali) told me today' – where the reader is left to draw the true inference that President Ford, or Muhammad Ali was confiding also in 200 other reporters stacked against the rafters. Or worse, that I would print what was said in confidence before a time, like now, when the information would be useless to friend or foe. 

Well, General Marshall was, as usual, direct and then courteously indicated that the door was there for your departure. He said the problem of mounting the invasion of France was simple, but nonetheless heartbreaking. He said we couldn't possibly invade France until we could be absolutely sure of a continuous chain of supply across the English Channel and that couldn't be guaranteed until we were beginning to win the war in the Pacific – until, in a word, we could release ships bottoms from the Pacific. 

The solution, when it came, was not provided by any military or naval genius, but by that old, bald bullfrog of a Californian, a construction man, Henry Kaiser, who knew nothing about building ships, but, nevertheless, mass-produced them with interchangeable engine parts, welded the sections and bingo! Whereas the first of these mammoth tubs, the so-called 'Liberty' ships was produced in 245 days, Kaiser eventually was assembling one every four days and, by the end of 1943, there were enough for them to spare for Europe, first to fatten the lean food supplies of Britain, and then to replace transport ships in the Pacific and so guarantee that continuous supply line across the Channel. 

I've told you about the solution before we knew what it would be. General Marshall himself, before the war was over but when the allied armies were swarming confidently over Europe, published an account of the problems that delayed the invasion in an official report and said what I've told you. But, so far as I know, it was never picked up to explain and defend the long wait for D-Day. By that time when the invasion was successful, the protesting newspapers had moved on to other indignations. 

That's the way it is with the press. More so, I think, today, when the great thing is not to find out and know when to hold your tongue, but to attempt to find out and, failing success, spill everything anyway – truth, rumour, guesswork, aspersion. I believe it's much tougher today to be a politician in power than it ever was. I'm talking, of course, about those countries that have a free press. Once a juicy rumour is out, it becomes tedious and expensive for the victim to challenge it – interminable for him to challenge it legally – and for most of us, a tasty rumour is much more memorable than the dull aftertaste of truth. 

I thought of this old, famous journalist, his name was Wickham Steed, when I picked up the New York Times on Thursday and saw the seemingly dry headline, 'Ford Postpones Formal Signing of a Soviet Pact' and the subhead said, 'Campaign Issue Seen.' Now what could the presidential campaign have to do with the Americans and the Russians signing a treaty that actually sets a limit to the size of underground nuclear explosions done for peaceful purposes? Don't we all want peace? Could anything be more acceptable to the voters than even a strong hint of a promise of peace? 

Understand, the American and Russian officials, some of them did meet in Washington and they did sign the treaty. The New York Times lead sentence began, 'The United States and the Soviet Union "quietly" initialled a treaty today' – the stress on 'quietly' is mine. But it must be the first time since the chief American delegate took up the control of atomic energy before the United Nations in 1946 and began the 30-year debate with the immortal sentence, 'We face a choice between the quick and the dead'. It must be the first time that any American official, from the president down, has wanted to keep the control of nuclear energy quiet. Every President since Roosevelt has boomed out after the most tentative nuclear agreement with the Russians, 'Peace, peace! This administration will not cease to work by day and night...' etc. etc. 

What the White House postponed – till when it didn't say – was a full-blown, formal ceremony planned for Friday at the White House and the Kremlin, two affairs which would of course have made a big show on television and in the papers. Why quietly? 

Well, some of the president's men were reported, though not identified, as saying that after President Ford's defeat in the Nebraska primary, 'he was' – and I'm quoting – 'nervous about giving Ronald Reagan's supporters something new to criticise.' Now it's a fact, other officials said, that the formal ceremony was never planned for Friday and it's perfectly true that the official texts in English and Russian have not even arrived in this country. I think this is true – a dull, grey reason for the postponement. What we want to believe is that the president is scared witless by the sudden triumphant surge of Ronald Reagan and won't do anything to suggest that he, Ford, is a peace monger. The truth about this inflammatory rumour will probably come out when neither Ford nor Reagan is in the White House. 

Cheer up, comrades! After November 2, it may be possible again to report nothing but the truth.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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