On the Right

Vienna, July 25—My brother, Murray Kempton, the distinguished New York columnist, finds absolutely hilarious (indeed he laughed until he cried) a conversation reported in a forthcoming book on the Nixon campaign. That conversation was between two aides to Mr. Nixon, one of them Frank Shakespeare, who had served as a vice president of CBS, the other Leonard Garment, a law partner in Mr. Nixon’s firm. The news had just come in that the Soviet Union had overrun Czechoslovakia and that Alexander Dubcek was reported to have been taken off to Moscow. Shakespeare, in discussing the crisis with Garment, insisted that the probability was that Dubcek had been taken off to be killed. Garment disagreed insisting that after all this is a different Russia from the Russia of yore. Shakespeare stuck by his guns.

Now the conversation as reproduced in the book is not to be understood as an exact transcription. I happen to know the two principals and they do not in fact talk to each other like Jane and Tarzan. Still, I reproduce the passage that Mr. Kempton has held up to us in horror:

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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Vienna, July 25—My brother, Murray Kempton, the distinguished New York columnist, finds absolutely hilarious (indeed he laughed until he cried) a conversation reported in a forthcoming book on the Nixon campaign. That conversation was between two aides to Mr. Nixon, one of them Frank Shakespeare, who had served as a vice president of CBS, the other Leonard Garment, a law partner in Mr. Nixon’s firm. The news had just come in that the Soviet Union had overrun Czechoslovakia and that Alexander Dubcek was reported to have been taken off to Moscow. Shakespeare, in discussing the crisis with Garment, insisted that the probability was that Dubcek had been taken off to be killed. Garment disagreed insisting that after all this is a different Russia from the Russia of yore. Shakespeare stuck by his guns.

Now the conversation as reproduced in the book is not to be understood as an exact transcription. I happen to know the two principals and they do not in fact talk to each other like Jane and Tarzan. Still, I reproduce the passage that Mr. Kempton has held up to us in horror: