*[ Superpowers Conspiracy ]* Marchetti: (continued) I always wanted to go into much greater length on this but I just never got around to it. Suffice it to say that TIME magazine threatened to cancel a two-page magazine article they were doing on me and my book if I didn't cut a brief mention of this episode out of the book. FD: How was this operation initially set up? Marchetti: I don't know all of the ins and outs of it. I imagine what happened is that it probably started with somebody in the Soviet Politburo going to Khruschev and saying, ``Hey, behind the scenes we're having lots of trouble with the right-wing Stalinist types. They're giving Brehznev a bad time and they're trying to undercut all of the changes you made and all of the changes Brehznev has made and wants to make. Its pretty hard to deal with it so we've got an idea. Since you're retired and living here in your dacha why don't you just sit back and dictate your memoirs. And of course the KGB will review them and make sure you don't say anything you shouldn't say and so on and so forth. Then we will get in touch with our counterparts, and see to it that this information gets out to the West, which will publish it, and then it will get back to the Soviet Union in a variety of forms. It will get back in summaries broadcast by the Voice of America and Radio Liberty, and copies of the book will come back in, articles written about it will be smuggled in, and this in turn will be a big influence on the intelligentsia and the party leaders and it will undercut Suslov and the right wingers.'' Khruschev said okay. The KGB then went to the CIA and explained things to them and the CIA said, Well that sounds good, we'll get some friends of ours here, the TIME magazine bureau in Moscow, Jerry Schecter would later have a job in the White House as a press officer. We'll get people like Strobe Talbot, who is working at the bureau there, we'll get these guys to act as the go-betweens. They'll come and see you for the memoirs and everyone will play dumb. You give them two suitcases full of tapes (laughs) or something like that and let them get out of the Soviet Union. Which is exactly what happened. Strobe brought all of this stuff back to Washington and then TIME-LIFE began to process it and put a book together. They wouldn't let anybody hear the tapes, they didn't show anybody anything. A lot of people were very suspicious. You know you can tell this to the public or anybody else who doesn't have the least brains in their head about how the Soviet Union operates and get away with it. But anybody who knows the least bit about the Soviet Union knows the whole thing is impossible. A former Soviet premier cannot sit in his dacha and make these tapes and then give them to a U.S. newspaperman and let him walk out of the country with them. That cannot be done in a closed society, a police state, like the Soviet Union. The book was eventually published but before it was published there was another little interesting affair. Strobe Talbot went to Helsinki with the manuscript, where he was met by the KGB who took it back to Leningrad, looked at it, and then it was finally published by TIME-LIFE. None of that has ever been explained in my book. A couple of other journalists have made references to this episode but never went into it. It's an open secret in the press corps here in Washington and New York, but nobody ever wrote a real big story for a lot of reasons, because I guess it's just the kind of story that it's difficult for them to get their hooks into. I knew people who were then in the White House and State Department who were very suspicious of it because they thought the KGB... FD: Had duped TIME? Marchetti: Exactly. Once they learned this was a deal they quieted down and ceased their objections and complaints, and even alibied and lied afterwards as part of the bigger game. Victor Lewis, who was apparently instrumental in all of these negotiations, later fit into one little footnote to this story that I've often wondered about. Lewis is (was)... After all of this happened and when the little furor that existed here in official Washington began dying down, Victor Lewis went to Tel Aviv for medical treatment. He came into the country very quietly but somebody spotted him and grabbed him and said, ``What are you doing here in Israel?'' ``Well I'm here for medical treatment, '' Lewis said. They said,``What?! You're here in Israel for medical treatment?'' He said, ``Yes.'' They said, ``Well whats the problem?'' ``I've got lumbago, a back problem, and they can't fix it in the Soviet Union. but there's a great Jewish doctor here I knew in the Soviet Union and I came to see him.'' That sounds like the craziest story you ever wanted to hear. But then another individual appeared in Israel at the same time and some reporter spotted him. He happened to be Richard Helms, then-director of the CIA. He asked Helms what he was doing in Israel, and he had some kind of a lame excuse which started people wondering whether this was the payoff. Helms acting for the CIA, TIME-LIFE, and the U.S. government, and Lewis acting for the KGB, Politburo, and the Soviet government. Its really a fascinating story. I wrote about briefly in the book and it was very short. You'll find it if you look through the book in the section we're talking about. Publications and things like that. When I wrote those few paragraphs there wasn't much further I could go, because there was a lot of speculation and analysis. Around the time my book came out, TIME magazine decided that they would do a two-page spread in their news section and give it a boost. Suddenly I started getting calls from Jerry Schecter and Strobe Talbot about cutting that part out. I said I would not cut it out unless they could look me in the eye and say I was wrong. If it wasn't true I would take the book and cut the material out. But neither of them chose to do that. Right before the article appeared in TIME I got a call from one of the editors telling me that some people wanted to kill the article. I asked why and he said one of the reasons is what you had to say about TIME magazine being involved in the Khruschev Remembers book. I asked him, ``Thats it?'' I had talked to Jerry and Strobe and this was their backstab. This editor asked me if I could find somebody who could trump the people who were trying to have the article killed. Somebody who could verify my credentials in telling the story. I said why don't you call Richard Helms, who by that time had been eased out of office by Kissinger and Nixon, and was now an ambassador in Teheran. So this editor called Helms to verify my credentials (laughing) and Helms said, ``Yeah, he's a good guy. He just got pissed off and wanted to change the CIA.'' So the article ran in TIME. I think you're one of the very few people I've explained this story to in depth. FD: Did this operation have a name? Marchetti: It probably did but I was already out of the agency and I don't know what it was. But I do know it was a very sensitive activity and that people very high up in the White House and State Department who you would have thought would have been aware of it were not aware of it. But then subsequently they were clearly taken into a room and talked to in discussions and were no longer critics and doubters and in fact became defenders of it. FD: Let me make sure I am clear about the CIA's motivation... Marchetti: The CIA's motivation was that here we have a former Soviet premier talking out about the events of his career and revealing some pretty interesting things about his thinking and the thinking of others. All of which shows that the Soviet Union is run by a very small little clique. A very small Byzantine-like clique. There is a strong tendency to stick with Stalinisn and turn to Stalinism but some of the cooler heads, the more moderate types, are trying to make changes. Its good stuff from the CIA's point of view and from the U.S. government's point of view. This is what we're dealing with. This is our primary rival. Look at how they are. And Khruschev had to dictate these things in secrecy and they had to be smuggled out of the Soviet Union. Things like this are very subtle in their consistency. It's not a black and white thing on the surface. You might say, ``Well, what's wrong with that?'' What's wrong with that is that it is a lie. The truth would have been much more effective. Nikita Khruschev was approached by the KGB and Soviet Politburo to dictate his memoirs, which he did under their supervision, which means we don't know if he is telling the whole story or the complete truth because they had an opportunity to edit it. The Russians were so anxious to get this information out so that it could come back to the Soviet Union for two reasons. The first was to build international pressure. The second was to build up internal pressure against the Stalinists. They were so anxious that they were willing to make a deal with the CIA, and give us this material. So that we could then prepare a book. Which we did. Thats the kind of a government we are dealing with here. These are the kinds of people they are and the kind of lies they live.