JAMES BURNHAM
So NBC has pushed ahead of the other eager volunteers and signed up to supply and man the TV complex that will transmit the 1980 Soviet propaganda spectacular to the world audience. With the help, as is so frequent in these big Soviet deals, of a mysterious stranger (this time a German, with a name—Lothar P. Bock— like an alias in a Grade B spy thriller) who has a magic key that opens the relevant Kremlin door. (“The Russians have tremendous respect for loyalty,” he commented to an interviewer the other day.) Naturally Lothar expects, in the ancient tradition, that you will cross his palm for the service rendered. NBC evidently thought a front-end million plus several millions more in gobbets to come a reasonable trinkgelt. And don’t start mumbling something about Lockheed or ITT in this the Car- terian Age of post-Watergate morality.
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