Letter from Washington

For weeks secretary of state Henry Kissinger shuttled back and forth between Syria and Israel, devoting all his formidable energies to disengaging two small nations on one front of a multifront war. Meanwhile, critics say, back at the State Department, all action on all other foreign policy problems ground to a halt. Mr. Nixon seems determined to go to Moscow this summer and obviously would like to bring back another arms control agreement to wave in the face of the House Judiciary Committee. But according to some officials, Mr. Nixon’s recent participation in strategic arms policy meetings (especially the questions he asked) clearly revealed that his Watergate preoccupation has left him dangerously out of touch with the complex issues. This leaves him particularly at the mercy of Mr. Kissinger’s briefings. Mr. Kissinger has been too busy to do his homework on this subject, and is at the mercy of the arms control advisers he took with him from the White House when he moved to the State Department. These are the people who helped fashion the 1972 Interim Agreement on offensive weapons, which left the U.S. in a position of clear inferiority in numbers of missiles.

Exactly two years from now reporters and political opponents may be saying about Senator Charles Percy (R., Ill.) what reporters and political opponents were saying exactly two years ago about George McGovern. “How did we underestimate him so badly?” Percy’s unannounced but remarkably public campaign for the 1976 GOP presidential nomination was supposed to take him to 32 states this year. He may have reached that goal by Labor Day. He has hired the Washington consulting firm of Bailey, Deardourff & Eyre, Inc. to manage his campaign. This firm specializes in support for moderate Republicans.

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For weeks secretary of state Henry Kissinger shuttled back and forth between Syria and Israel, devoting all his formidable energies to disengaging two small nations on one front of a multifront war. Meanwhile, critics say, back at the State Department, all action on all other foreign policy problems ground to a halt. Mr. Nixon seems determined to go to Moscow this summer and obviously would like to bring back another arms control agreement to wave in the face of the House Judiciary Committee. But according to some officials, Mr. Nixon’s recent participation in strategic arms policy meetings (especially the questions he asked) clearly revealed that his Watergate preoccupation has left him dangerously out of touch with the complex issues. This leaves him particularly at the mercy of Mr. Kissinger’s briefings. Mr. Kissinger has been too busy to do his homework on this subject, and is at the mercy of the arms control advisers he took with him from the White House when he moved to the State Department. These are the people who helped fashion the 1972 Interim Agreement on offensive weapons, which left the U.S. in a position of clear inferiority in numbers of missiles.

Exactly two years from now reporters and political opponents may be saying about Senator Charles Percy (R., Ill.) what reporters and political opponents were saying exactly two years ago about George McGovern. “How did we underestimate him so badly?” Percy’s unannounced but remarkably public campaign for the 1976 GOP presidential nomination was supposed to take him to 32 states this year. He may have reached that goal by Labor Day. He has hired the Washington consulting firm of Bailey, Deardourff & Eyre, Inc. to manage his campaign. This firm specializes in support for moderate Republicans.