Boris Yeltsin's White House visit - 21 June 1991

Suddenly so many things happening around the country, so much to go into that for once I'm spoiled for choice. But I think you'll understand if I choose first to dispose of an alarming item that provoked a positive invasion of mail, letters, letters of hysterical congratulation, letters of lively denunciation, Why baffling? Because I hadn't the faintest notion what all the cheers and sneers were about, until a friend in London sent me a cutting from The Times, no less.

I will quote the astonishing second paragraph before sending it out to be framed. It's a piece about something called The Reference Book of Tory Policy and Achievements, I don't know if that's the actual title. Elsewhere it's called The Tory Bible. This Bible it seems runs to 750 pages and it must be the repository of Tory doctrine and facts and figures and claims.

What brought my hunched up form bolt upright was a sentence from the deputy director of the party's research department, he says, "This guide seeks to convey clearly the measure of the Conservative achievement over the whole of the last 12 years". It's the identity of this deputy director of research that boggled my mind at least. It says, the guide's editor who was also deputy director of research Alistair Cooke, it doesn't say sic, or no relation, or fancy that in brackets, just lets it go. So, pending the receipt of a blushing apology from the paper I must assume there's another guy of the same name. And let me say that the guy who is now speaking, Alistair Cooke, I, am not a Tory, not a Socialist, not a Democrat, not a Republican, or a member informal or otherwise of any political party. I am a reporter and have been for over 50 years.

My own suspicion is that it's another Alistair but not another Cooke. About 20 years ago the same paper had a piece from its golf correspondent, written in the first week of April, trailing the master's tournament which is always held at that time of the year. The piece told clearly and movingly about how the immortal Bobby Jones, retired, still an amateur at the age of 28, having like Alexander conquered the known world of golf. How a parcel of rich friends bought 350 lovely acres in Georgia for Bobby to fulfil his heart's desire, to build his own ideal golf course. The piece went on to say that he called on a Scottish golf architect who's work he greatly admired, so he did. The renowned in golfing circles Doctor Alister MacKenzie, however that's not what The Times piece said, it said, "And so the incomparable inland course Augusta National came into being, thanks to the great skill of Bobby Jones and his collaborator Dr Alister Cooke." I cherished that cutting. And from time to time leave it around on my desk in case some young upstart might be visiting. I make a point of course of not indicating the error. Wow, said my young grandson years ago. "Oh, that," I said.

Well now, where to begin, I suppose the American event of most importance to Europeans was the visit to Washington of Mr Boris Yeltsin, it was his second visit and everybody has noticed the sharp and comical contrast between today and his first appearance here. That could hardly be called an appearance. Two years ago his arrival was an actual embarrassment to the administration. He was then seen as a rebel and a threat to the one leader in whom we rested all our hopes, Mr Gorbachev. In the fall of 1989 Mr Yeltsin was allowed reluctantly through the back door of the White House. He managed to meet 10 senators. On Thursday, he went in the front door, to bowings and salaams for his prearranged visit with President Bush. In the fall of 1989, he was privately looked on as something of a clown, a mountebank. On Wednesday hundreds of congressmen and most of the Senate lined up patiently to shake his hand the hand of the President of Russia.

Most of them I should guess very much aware that from now on there may be more than one Soviet leader they must meet and deal with. The press has remarked that in his public statements he struck a conciliatory note towards Mr Gorbachev, however, on Tuesday on a regular late night television news discussion programme he came right out with no quavers or reservations, "Gorbachev," he said, "makes half-hearted decisions first to the right, then to the left, he's inconsistent." "To a large extent," said Mr Yeltsin stretching himself, "I don't like him."

It is true that in a speech Mr Yeltsin made at a banquet in his honour at the Kennedy Center, he appeared to be backing up Gorbachev, but I think this was due in a key sentence to a mis-translation or rather not a mistranslation but an ambiguous translation of an English word, the interpreter said, "While Gorbachev stands for reform, while Gorbachev stands for democratic change", you at once wondered what Yeltsin stood for. I don't know the accurate Russian conjunction for "while", which carries two meanings in English; one, while he believes, meaning on the one hand he believes this, I believe that, what I'm sure Mr Yeltsin meant was the stronger meaning of while, which implies a threat. I'm positive what he was saying in Russian was "so long as Gorbachev stands for reform, so long as he stands for democratic change, so long as he stands for the independence of the republics, Yeltsin stands for Gorbachev".

The most bizarre encounter Mr Yeltsin had, or is likely to have, with an American came when he met a distinguished senator, Senator William Cohen of Maine, a kindly almost courtly man, possibly the last senator you'd expect to be a novelist, and a writer of spy thrillers. In his most recent work who do you suppose are two of the main characters, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. Senator Cohen standing before a beaming Yeltsin who'd just received a gift of a leather belt with his name carved on it, Senator Cohen earnestly outlined the plot of his story. Gorbachev doing just what Mr Yeltsin had complained about on his night-time television appearance, Gorbachev waffling from right to left and back again, is discredited and overthrown. Yeltsin is left as the actual or potential successor. Mr Yeltsin was launched on a great speech when he keeled over and died, his heart attack it came out was contrived by the KGB. Mr Yeltsin tilted a tolerant smile in Senator Cohen's direction until he fictionally dropped dead. "Ah," said Mr Yeltsin, "science fiction."

And extraordinary end, probably end to the case of Colonel Oliver North, remember Colonel North, Iran-Contra, the secret selling of arms out of Israel to Iran in the hope that Iran would release the Americans they'd held hostage. How President Reagan stoutly maintained the United States did not and never would trade with terrorists, how much of the money from the sale of arms was secretly diverted by a few presidential assistants, so it was charged, to help the rebels in Nicaragua. Even at a time when Congress had passed a law that forbad all aid from any agency of the American government. Well you'll remember there was a circus of a congressional hearing and then there was a trial, at which the jury threw out 10 of 12 charges and Colonel North was left to serve time, not in jail but in 1,200 hours of community service.

But Colonel North was not satisfied. He took his case to a federal appeals court which tossed out the whole case, saying Colonel North did not enjoy a fair trial that tainted evidence had been used against him. How say you tainted, my lord? Well, it looked very dicey at the time, it now appears that the government special prosecutor suffered a mortal blow from Congress, in that Congress made a fatal error when it subpoenaed Colonel North to testify before the committee investigation. The Colonel could legally constitutionally have refused to say anything, citing each time the privilege of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution which says no person in a criminal case shall be compelled to be a witness against himself. But the Congressional committee was so hungry for the Colonel's testimony in a case juicy with scandal, deceit, cover-ups, panicky shredding of documents, millions of dollars unaccounted for, that it fatally told Colonel North if he waived his rights under the Fifth Amendment he would be subsequently immune from criminal prosecution on any evidence given before the committee.

It should have been plain then but it wasn't that in that trial, a posse of the world's greatest lawyers could not possibly fumigate the trial testimony and see that it didn't breathe a syllable of the evidence given before Congress, of course there were overlaps and of course testimony was changed with the congressional hearings in mind.

Accordingly, the court of appeals threw out all the charges by overturning the Colonel's conviction. The Supreme Court let that decision stand. Yet Mr Walsh, the special prosecutor, asked for a hearing the other day. The judge was a brutal arbiter, he wondered why after five years at a public cost of $35 million why Mr Walsh wanted to go on. "We do not," the judge said, "countenance political trials in this country." Mr Walsh is nevertheless a dogged prosecutor, he wants in spite of the given verdict of the appeals court and the Supreme Court, he wants another hearing in September. "People," the judge said before he whisked out of the courtroom, "people lose cases." Mr Walsh can't bear the thought that he representing, he believes, the people, might lose his.

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