MEDIASCAN TRANSCRIPT PBS MACNEIL/LEHRER NEWSHOUR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000201140001-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 22, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: February 13, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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MEDIASCAN TRANSCRIPT
PBS MACNEIL/LEHRER NEWSHOUR
13 February 1984
Monday
ML01 PROGRAM MACNEIL: Konstantin Chernenko was named today to be the
INTRODUCTION new Soviet leader to succeed Yuri Andropov. Chernenko
called for peaceful coexistence with the West. We look in
detail at Chernenko the man, at the kind of leadership he's
likely to provide. And as President Reagan holds two
summit meetings on the Middle East, we hear the kind of
advice he's getting from Arab nations on Lebanon. Jim
Lehrer's off. Judy Woodruff's in Washington. Judy?
WOODRUFF: Also tonight, we'll tell you why the auto
industry is in good spirits these days, and how the airline
industry is going to be watched more closely for safety
problems. We'll hear a debate about a new Democratic
proposal to overhaul Medicare. SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY
(D-Mass.): We can save Medicare. And we can do so without
raising taxes and without cutting benefits.
WOODRUFF: And we continue our series of interviews with
all the Democrats running for president. Tonight, the
Democrat who says he's different.
ANNOUNCER: The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour is funded by AT&T,
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and this station
and other public television stations.
ML02 USSR/ANDROPOV MACNEIL: The 280 million people of the Soviet Union have
DEATH a new leader tonight, 72-year-old Konstantin Chernenko.
Chernenko was elected general secretary of the Communist
Party by unanimous vote of the Central Committee this
morning. He succeeds Yuri Andropov who died last Thursday.
Chernenko made his career in the shadow of the late
President Leonid Brezhnev, whose assistant he was for more
than 30 years. In his acceptance speech today, Chernenko
said peaceful coexistence was needed more than ever in the
age of nuclear weapons. Vice President George Bush arrived
in Moscow as one of some 100 world leaders who will attend
Andropov's funeral in Red Square tomorrow. On his arrival,
Bush said there was an important opportunity ahead to
reduce nuclear weapons and to increase cooperation between
our people. Bush is expected to meet Chernenko after the
funeral. Once again Igor *Kirolov, a veteran announcer,
appeared on Soviet television with important news, the
Central Committee of the Communist Party had elected a new
general secretary. KIROLOV: ...Chernenko.
MACNEIL: So it was Konstantin Chernenko who led the way
when members of the Politburo went to the House of Unions
in Moscow to pay their respects to Yuri Andropov, the
former general secretary and president of the Soviet
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Presidium. And it was to Chernenko that leaders of foreign
delegations from countries in the Communist bloc, the
nonaligned and the anticommunist alliance looked for clues
to the future policy of the Soviet superpower. And
tomorrow, Chernenko will be the chief mourner when Andropov
is buried in Red Square in a small cemetery between the
Kremlin wall and the tomb of Lenin, near his predecessor,
Leonid Brezhnev. Chernenko is the son of a Siberian
peasant family who has risen steadily through the Communist
Party ranks but who has never held government posts.
Little is known of his private life, even whether he is
married, and he's travelled very little outside the Soviet
Union. At 72, about eight months younger than President
Reagan, Chernenko is the oldest man ever to take power in
the Soviet Union. A robust-looking man, with his high
Slavic cheek bones and a shock of silver hair, Chernenko is
known to have had health problems, including a bout with
pneumonia last spring. The new Soviet leader differs in one
respect from the majority of his Kremlin colleagues. He
has published a number of articles and speeches on a broad
range of issues and has a new collection set for release
next month. Yesterday, the Sunday Times of London
published an article by Chernenko, written before
Andropov's death, commenting on the need to improve
Soviet-American relations. He wrote, 'Today, it is more
important than before to multiply our efforts toward mutual
understanding. We are in favor of an active and fruitful
dialogue with nations living under a different social
system to ours, the United States and Great Britain in
particular.' Chernenko echoed current Soviet public
statements when he said in his article that whether the
coming years will see cooperation or stiff confrontation
between the two great powers depends on the United States.
Judy?
ML03 USSR/ WOODRUFF: For a closer look at the personality and
CHERNENKO character of the new Soviet leader, we talked with Arkady
Shevchenko. Mr. Shevchenko is the highest ranking Soviet
official to defect to the U.S. In 1978, he left his post
as a U.N. undersecretary general. Before that, he served
as personal adviser to Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei
Gromyko. First of all, Mr. Shevchenko, how did Mr.
Chernenko get to where he is? Is it because he was an
assistant to Mr. Brezhnev? ARKADY SHEVHENKO (Former Soviet
Official): He get to where he is now just because there
was no other person in the group of the old man (sic) in
the Politburo who is really qualified and can occupy the
post of the general secretary. The major problem in the
Politburo was not at differences over the policies, over
issues of domestic or foreign policy. I think that they
more or less agree on all that. But the problem was
whether to have a new man from the new generation, either
Romanov or Gorbachov, who are much more younger and belong
to other generations or among the old people.
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WOODRUFF: Well, is there any one thing about him that
stands out that particularly qualifies him for this post?
SCHEVCHENKO: Because he is the only one in the old
generation people--there are six now--people in the
Politburo who are over 70, all of them. And he's only one
who's a member of Politburo and secretary of the party and
the only one who is a professional party man, a party
functionary all his life. All the others, Gromyko,
defense, the foreign minister, Ustinov, they all are not
really have a party career (sic). And party wanted their
men to be at the head of the party.
WOODRUFF: Tell us a little bit about his traits. I mean,
how intelligent is he? SCHEVCHENKO: You know, I can say
that he is not bright intellect. He is less intellectual
and less intelligent than Andropov. There's no question
about that. He's not stupid, but.... And his strength is
that he knows extremely well the party work, the party
apparatus, how to manipulate with posts in the Central
Committee. And his real strength lies with the man, or the
real party level in the publics, in the regions of the
Soviet Union.
WOODRUFF: So he has contacts throughout the country?
SCHEVCHENKO: Exactly. And the last years of the, when
Brezhnev was sick and for quite, several years....
WOODRUFF: Yeah. SCHEVCHENKO: Actually he was number two
man in the Central Committee. And he decides where the
great influence.
WOODRUFF: So, he.... My question was why, then, if he had
these positive qualities, why did he lose out to Andropov?
SCHEVCHENKO: Oh, he lose to Andropov for the simple reason
that the majority, an old, old guards in the Politburo
disliked him, are resentful of him because of two things:
first, that he was a party man all his life, and, but he
has no direct experience neither in economic management nor
(sic) in foreign policy. He dealt with the party affairs,
manipulation of the party, but never occupied himself in
dependent posts, let's say, as a head of a region in the
Soviet Union like most of the party men.
WOODRUFF: So you're saying they lacked respect for him?
SCHEVCHENKO: They have a lack of respect for him because
Brezhnev was pushing him. He was, when he was a general,
he was a chief of the general department of the Central
Committee and the secretary of the Politburo. But men
like.... Yeah, but men like Ustinov or Gromyko considered
him as, you know, like, you know, as a small player.
WOODRUFF: A small player. What kind of a leader....
Based on what you know, what kind of a leader do you think
he'll be? Will he be strong and forceful? SCHEVCHENKO: I
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think that he would not only be the leader who is the
oldest leader which occupies the post of the general
secretary of the party. But he will be a leader with less
authority and with more limitations than anyone in the
whole Soviet history, because the people who resent him in
the Politburo, they will place on him so many limitations,
they will not allow him to move without their decisions.
WOODRUFF: What, how do you expect him, then, to put his
mark on policies and decisions coming out of the Soviet
Union? SCHEVCHENKO: No, he will put definitely some mark.
But I would say that the rule of collective leadership, or
group of the Politburo which has been running the Soviet
Union already for a long period of time, would be even more
stronger (sic). And Chernenko as a functionary of the
party, he realize and understand that very well.
WOODRUFF: Do you have a sense of what the Soviet people
think of him? SCHEVCHENKO: You know, he's so dull and, as
a man, and like the older Soviet leaders who always invent
the jokes about their leaders, there is no jokes about him.
The only one, recent one which I heard the other day, they
say, you know, with the Andropov death we have one bastard
less in the Politburo, but we have a new one, which is the
same.
WOODRUFF: All right. Thank you, Mr. Schevchenko. We'll be
back to you. Robin?
MACNEIL: For a look at how the Chernenko appointment might
affect relations with this country, we talked to
Arnold\Horelick, director of the Rand UCLA Center for the
Study of Soviet International Behavior. Mr. Horelick was
the CIA's top intelligence expert for the Soviet Union from
1977 to 1980. He joins us tonight from public station
KCET, Los Angeles. Mr. Horelick, do you agree with Mr.
Schevchenko that Chernenko is going to be a leader with
less authority and more limitations than any in Soviet
history. ARNOLD HORELICK (Soviet Policy Analyst): I think
that's probably true, although in the long run, that can
change. It has happened a number of times in the past that
leaders who took office lacking authority, lacking much in
the way of reputations, turned out to be rather formidable
leaders of the Soviet Union. But I think the problem...
MACNEIL: Would Kruschev probably...? Would Kruschev be an
example of that? HORELICK: Khrushchev would be a very
good example of that. Certainly he seemed overshadowed by
*Malinkov, who seemed much the cleverer and better placed
of the two. Indeed, if we go back in Soviet history to the
Lenin succession in the '20s, Stalin seemed like a gray
mediocrity to his colleagues in the '20s, certainly
overshadowed by Trotsky. And so it's happened numerous
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times in the past that the gray clerks have turned out to
be very substantial leaders. There...
MACNEIL: But.... I beg your pardon. Go ahead. HORELICK:
I'm sorry. In my judgment, though, the issue in
U.S.-Soviet relations and in East-West relations,
generally, is not going to turn so much on the
personalities and the leadership abilities of the new
Soviet leaders, Chernenko now and whoever might succeed him
in the future, but really on larger structural differences
between the United States and the Soviet Union that impede
progress much more, it seems to me, than the health or the
status of the Soviet leaders.
MACNEIL: So would you quarrel, then, with the statements
that are coming out of Vice President Bush and the White
House spokesmen that this is a moment of opportunity and
everything which would seem to imply that the difficulties
with the Soviet Union were somehow of Andropov's making?
HORELICK: Well, I don't think the latter is true, although
I do think we have a small window now, perhaps now and for
the next few months, that if the impasse is to be broken,
if the arms control negotiations are to resume, be resumed
this year, and if a high level diplomatic engagement is to
take place this year, it probably will have to happen
sometime in the next few months. Certainly it will have to
happen before the United States becomes deeply engrossed in
our national elections, when anything that the president
does in this area would then become suspect as
grandstanding and where the already great distrust of the
Soviets for President Reagan, I think, would be impossible
to overcome. So that if we are to make any movement in the
short run, it probably has to be now. But I don't think we
should underestimate the seriousness of the real conflicts
of interest that have kept the United States and the Soviet
Union at loggerheads over these past few years.
MACNEIL: Will Chernenko have the authority to take any
initiatives to significantly improve relations with this
country? HORELICK: I don't believe that the problem, even
during the period of Andropov's illness, when the Soviet
Union was clearly governed by, intermittently, by himself
and mostly by a committee, a committee in which Chernenko
probably played an important role, I don't think that that
was the principal impediment to a breakthrough in
U.S.-Soviet relations. And I don't think that it's a lack
of authority on Chernenko's part that stands in the way. I
believe that the United States and the Soviet Union are
presently out of phase with each other, both strategically
and tactically. We want different things. We have quite
different interests, both in the short and in the middle
run. The strategic difference between us is that the
United States.... This administration, when it took
office, saw the world correlation of forces or, in our own
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terminology, the strategic balances, as having turned very
much against us during the 1970s. Not only in terms of the
strategic nuclear balance and the conventional balance in
Europe, but in general I think this administration saw the
Soviet Union as having seized the strategic initiative
politically and militarily around the globe. And the main
priority of this administration from the beginning, and I
believe to this very day, is to arrest those trends and, if
possible, to reverse them. That doesn't mean negotiations
to stabilize what the administration regarded as an
unsatisfactory situation, but it means unilateral efforts
on the part of the United States to alter it. Conversely,
from the Soviet point of view, exactly the opposite is the
case. They are resisting and, I think, will continue to
resist administration efforts to undo the tremendous gains
of the 1970s.
MACNEIL: And a, the fact of a new leader being the
figurehead of the Soviet leadership is not going to make a
major difference, is what you're saying? HORELICK: No, I
don't think that that's a crucial difference. Although I,
as I said, there may be a small opportunity in the next
couple of months, if the tactical out-of-phaseness (sic) of
the two sides can be overcome, to at least begin the
dialogue again. That would require that the Soviets have
an opportunity to get back into negotiations with us
without appearing to have been humiliated, and for the
United States to resume negotiations without having to make
large one-sided concessions in advance, merely to get the
Soviets to the table.
MACNEIL: Well, Mr. Horelick, thank you. Judy?
WOODRUFF: Mr. Schevchenko, you just heard Mr. Horelick
describe very basic, serious differences that are ongoing
between the United States and the Soviet Union. How do you
think Mr. Chernenko's leadership fits into that picture?
Do you agree with the picture he has just painted?
SCHEVCHENKO: I would say, first of all, that I perhaps
would disagree that Chernenko would be fitted in the
category of Stalin or Khrushchev. He is not that kind of a
man, or Trotsky, or something.
WOODRUFF: You mean the earlier.... SCHEVCHENKO: He
cannot be compared, with his intellect and with his ability
as a politician, with the people of Khrushchev's stature or
even Stalin's stature.
WOODRUFF: You're referring to Mr. Horelick's earlier point
that these gray clerks became... SCHEVCHENKO: Yes.
Earlier point. Now...
WOODRUFF: ...outstanding? SCHEVCHENKO: ...as far as the
policy is concerned, I was, agree with most that has been
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said here. And I really do believe that there are
objective, basic factors which dictate, even for the Soviet
leadership, improvement of the Soviet-American relation,
irrespect (sic) to who is the leader, irrespect (sic) to
what kind of the man Chernenko is, because there are other
people in the Politburo. And Soviet Union leader really
need a respite, the Soviet leadership understand (sic) that
they need a better relation with the United States.
WOODRUFF: So you agree with Mr. Horelick that there..?
SCHEVCHENKO: Yes.
WOODRUFF: ...may be this window of opportunity...
SCHEVCHENKO: Yes. And there is....
WOODRUFF: ...and that there may be a reason for the
Soviets to take advantage.... SCHEVECHENKO: I agree there
is a window of opportunity and the very one thing with the
Andropov death, they can.... Soviet leadership might very
well have an excuse that, you know, this is commitments to
walk out from arms control talks, the shooting down of the
airplane, or so on and so forth. It was Andropov's...
WOODRUFF: All right. SCHEVECHENKO: ... commitment where
we can now start a little new fresh.
WOODRUFF: All right. Let me ask Mr. Horelick about that.
You hear the point Mr. Schevechenko's making. What do you
think of that, Mr. Horelick? HORELICK: I think what is
important, first, is for the Soviet leadership to become
persuaded that it is better to address some of the basic
U.S. strategic concerns that have been at the heart of the
negotiations over the last couple of years, even at the
cost of making some concessions to those concerns, rather
than face unilateral U.S. efforts to protect them in a
totally unregulated environment in which the net outcome
might be worse from the Soviet point of view. If the
Soviets are prepared to address some of those American
concerns, the United States might conceivably be prepared
to settle for marginal gains over the situation that we
have had in the heretofore and abandon some of the more
ambitious objectives. And it's on the basis of that kind
of compromise, it seems to me, that a resumption of
negotiations might be possible.
WOODRUFF: Would you agree with Mr. Schevechenko's point
that there may be a reason right now for the Soviets to be
looking for an opening for improvement? HORELICK: Yes.
But I think there is a very major difficulty. From the
Soviet point of view, maintaining anxiety in the West, in
Europe in particular, but also in the United States, about
the situation that obtains as a result of the absence of
negotiations is what the Soviets count on in order to
change basic Western negotiating positions. On the other
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hand, the administration's interest now is in starting
negotiations, even if they are inconclusive, because the
appearance of negotiations is crucial for the
administration, both in terms of domestic politics and in
terms of alliance cohesion. And the Soviets are not going,
to want to enter negotiations without feeling quite
confident that the outcome of the negotiations will be to
their substantive advantage. And that's a signal that is
going to be very, very difficult for the United States to
give them in advance.
WOODRUFF: All right. Thank you, Dr. Horelick, Mr.
Schevchenko. This is a subject we'll be coming back to
many times. Robin?
ML04 MARINES/ MACNEIL: The White House said today that all U.S. troops
LEBANON could be out of Lebanon within 30 days, except those needed
to guard the U.S. Embassy. White House spokesman Larry
Speakes said President Reagan agreed with the plan drawn up
by Defense Secretary Weinberger and would approve it if
other members of the peacekeeping force agree. The plan
will be announced later this week when Vice President Bush
has conferred with the British, French and Italians.
ML05 LEBANON/CIVIL MACNEIL: In Lebanon, French peacekeeping troops helped
CONFLICT open a crossing point in the Green Line dividing the
embattled halves of Beirut today, permitting a Red Cross
convoy with relief supplies to enter Moslem west Beirut.
President Gemayel, who has come up with a new political
plan, told an interviewer, 'We are on the threshhold of
reaching a solution that could save all of Lebanon.' Saudi
Arabia's official radio urged the factions to end the
crisis and added that Lebanon was quote, 'not for President
Gemayel alone,' a reference to the desire of Moslems to
have a bigger share of power in Lebanon.
MACNEIL: In Washington, President Reagan met with King
Hussein of Jordan to discuss new strategies for dealing
with the situation in Lebanon. Afterwards, Mr. Reagan
sounded optimistic. PRESIDENT REAGAN: In these times of
trial, disillusionment would be easy. But my meeting today
with King Hussein has reaffirmed to me that the good and
decent people of this world can and will work together, and
that progress can be made toward the perplexing problem of
peace in the Middle East.
MACNEIL: Tomorrow, the president meets Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak and they will be joined by King Hussein for
lunch. For some insight into the views the Egyptian leader
will share with President Reagan, we turn to his chief
foreign policy adviser, Osama\El-Bas, who's chief of the
Egyptian Cabinet and first undersecretary at the foreign
office. Mr. El-Bas was part or the group which hammered.
out'the final wording of the Camp David accords and has
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