COVER STORY

In mid-June, on a weekday afternoon, I got word that John Scali had left word that I should telephone him. I knew Scali, though only slightly. We had traveled together-—or more accurately, simultaneously—to China 18 months earlier, I with the press corps covering Richard Nixon’s trip, Scali as a special consultant to the President. He had been many years with the Associated Press, and then diplomatic reporter for ABC. Men of power are attracted to Scali. During the missile crisis, the Soviet Ambassador asked him to communicate privately with President Kennedy. This he did, and the formula he transmitted proved to be the key to the settlement. Now he and Nixon are personal friends, Nixon having asked him to quit journalism and join the White House staff. My memory of him was of a professional, of salty tongue and disposition, slightly balding, with hard black hair, weather-beaten face, prominent nose, chain smoker, vigorous in manner and expression, yet with shy and inquiring eyes. When, asked John Scali, could he and I talk? My schedule was bad, and I suggested the following week. “That’s not soon enough.” We settled on the next morning, breakfast at his suite; the suite of the Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations, to which august position Scali had been rather inconspicuously appointed soon after the Nixon landslide. The curiosity, at the time, had been provoked not so much by the arrival of John Scali as by the departure of George Bush. Bush was known as a presidential favorite, of patrician cast, who had twice narrowly missed high elective office. When. in 1970 he lost, in Texas, his race for the. Senate, the President had named him to the UN, removing Charles Yost, a career diplomat whose continuation at the UN suggested less President Nixon’s devotion to professionalism than his indifference to the United Nations. It isn’t known what was the bargaining between Nixon and Bush, but it was felt that the designation of Bush suggested that Nixon continued to hold in esteem the office of U.S. Representative to the UN, even if he didn’t hold the UN in any great esteem. And, in any case, there were treacherous waters imminently to navigate. In a few months Nixon would be announcing his intention to travel to China. A few months after that, the annual attempt would be made by the bad guys to seat Mainland China, and to eject the government-in-exile in Formosa. No doubt Nixon felt more comfortable giving instructions to Bush than to Yost, on how nicely to balance political and diplomatic considerations.

It crossed the mind fleetingly that Bush was being punished, rather belatedly in the last weeks of 1972, for having failed to achieve the desired result in the General Assembly in the fall of 1971 on the China debate. But there was a better explanation, and it was comforting to feel that Mr. Nixon’s motives are sometimes altogether discernible. Bush was needed, as the clouds of Watergate began to gather, to head the Republican Party. His presence, prestige, his family connections (his father was Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut), his genial and incorruptible air (Bush has about him something of the air of Elliot Richardson, leavened with the feeling that he is capable of pushing you into the swimming pool with your clothes on) made him greatly needed on the morale front. His replacement by John Scali, who had never run for political office, nor had training in government, nor had any personal constituency, suggested a great and urgent need either to reward John Scali, or to situate at USUN (as they call it) someone who would work most directly the will of the President.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

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

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William F. Buckley Jr.

In mid-June, on a weekday afternoon, I got word that John Scali had left word that I should telephone him. I knew Scali, though only slightly. We had traveled together-—or more accurately, simultaneously—to China 18 months earlier, I with the press corps covering Richard Nixon’s trip, Scali as a special consultant to the President. He had been many years with the Associated Press, and then diplomatic reporter for ABC. Men of power are attracted to Scali. During the missile crisis, the Soviet Ambassador asked him to communicate privately with President Kennedy. This he did, and the formula he transmitted proved to be the key to the settlement. Now he and Nixon are personal friends, Nixon having asked him to quit journalism and join the White House staff. My memory of him was of a professional, of salty tongue and disposition, slightly balding, with hard black hair, weather-beaten face, prominent nose, chain smoker, vigorous in manner and expression, yet with shy and inquiring eyes. When, asked John Scali, could he and I talk? My schedule was bad, and I suggested the following week. “That’s not soon enough.” We settled on the next morning, breakfast at his suite; the suite of the Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations, to which august position Scali had been rather inconspicuously appointed soon after the Nixon landslide. The curiosity, at the time, had been provoked not so much by the arrival of John Scali as by the departure of George Bush. Bush was known as a presidential favorite, of patrician cast, who had twice narrowly missed high elective office. When. in 1970 he lost, in Texas, his race for the. Senate, the President had named him to the UN, removing Charles Yost, a career diplomat whose continuation at the UN suggested less President Nixon’s devotion to professionalism than his indifference to the United Nations. It isn’t known what was the bargaining between Nixon and Bush, but it was felt that the designation of Bush suggested that Nixon continued to hold in esteem the office of U.S. Representative to the UN, even if he didn’t hold the UN in any great esteem. And, in any case, there were treacherous waters imminently to navigate. In a few months Nixon would be announcing his intention to travel to China. A few months after that, the annual attempt would be made by the bad guys to seat Mainland China, and to eject the government-in-exile in Formosa. No doubt Nixon felt more comfortable giving instructions to Bush than to Yost, on how nicely to balance political and diplomatic considerations.

It crossed the mind fleetingly that Bush was being punished, rather belatedly in the last weeks of 1972, for having failed to achieve the desired result in the General Assembly in the fall of 1971 on the China debate. But there was a better explanation, and it was comforting to feel that Mr. Nixon’s motives are sometimes altogether discernible. Bush was needed, as the clouds of Watergate began to gather, to head the Republican Party. His presence, prestige, his family connections (his father was Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut), his genial and incorruptible air (Bush has about him something of the air of Elliot Richardson, leavened with the feeling that he is capable of pushing you into the swimming pool with your clothes on) made him greatly needed on the morale front. His replacement by John Scali, who had never run for political office, nor had training in government, nor had any personal constituency, suggested a great and urgent need either to reward John Scali, or to situate at USUN (as they call it) someone who would work most directly the will of the President.