BILL BUCKLEY FIRING LINE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000200920007-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 19, 2012
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: January 1, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000200920007-5
K`...~ ~~rE:,gnEU READER'S DIGEST
January 1986
As a champion of
conservative causes,
he has been without
equal-in wit, energy
and entertaining
irreverence-for
more than 30 years
DURING THE 1980 Presidential
campaign, Ronald Reagan
joked to his old friend Bill
Buckley that he was thinking of
appointing him ambassador to Af-
ghanistan. "Only if you give me
fifteen divisions," Buckley retorted.
Buckley was, in fact, later sounded
out about a less whimsical job-
ambassador to the United Nations.
But he said no. He was having
much too good a time in the private
sector.
William F. Buckley, Jr., is a daz-
zling phenomenon, a kind of one-
man communications industry who
for over 30 years has probably done
more than any other non-politician
to advance the conservative cause-
as well as entertain a vast reading
public. With enormous zest and
energy, Buckley edits a biweekly
magazine, the National Review,
writes a three-times-a-week news-
paper column, presides over a
weekly TV talk show, "Firing
Line," delivers 45 lectures a year (at
fees ranging from $7,000 to
$12,000), and has had 24 books
published to date, including novels
(six best-sellers), memoirs, political
tracts and descriptions of sailing
adventures (he has twice sailed the
Atlantic to Europe). At odd inter-
vals he tosses off magazine articles,
plays the harpsichord, and skis in
Switzerland.
At 6o, Buckley is tall and lean,
with angular features and a mobile
face so expressive in argument-
eyes rolling or suddenly bulging,
lips pursed or tongue flicking
across lips-that at times he seems
animated by tics. What truly ani-
mates him, however, is the strength
and pungency of his opinions:
On Southeast Asia: "We set out,
in Vietnam, to make a resonant
point. We did not make it resonant-
ly. In international affairs, as in
domestic affairs, crime is deterred
by the predictability of decisive and
conclusive retaliation."
On the government rescue effort
of near-bankrupt Continental Illi-
nois National Bank: "On the one
hand, we favor deregulation of the
banking industry as economically
healthy for America. On the other
hand, we appear to be weaving a
security blanket which argues that
competition is ultimately meaning-
less because, when all is said and
done, government is there to pro-
tect against risk."
On the Postal Service's exhorta-
tions to use ZIP codes: "The only
instruction I would take seriously
from the post office these days is the
recommendation that I deliver my
own mail."
Despite the vigor of his conser-
vative convictions, Buckley is nota-
ble for his ecumenical personal
relationships. Many of his friends
are liberal-journalist Richard M.
Clurman, economist John Kenneth
Galbraith, columnist Murray
Kempton.
His friendship with Ken Gal-
braith, 17 years his senior, surprises
many, for the two are passionately
committed to political views that
place them on opposite sides of
most fences. But they are both wit-
ty, acerbic polemicists, capable of
the same hauteur toward their in-
tellectual inferiors, and each ad-
mires the other's skills. "The basic
_ 'a1
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fact about Bill Buckley," says Gal-
braith, "is that he is a very kindly
man. I find him one of the world's
more informed, diversely educated
and amusing people."
Early Rebel. Bill Buckley was to
the manor and the manner born.
He grew up in a large house in
Sharon, Conn., with nine brothers
acid sisters. His father, William F.,
Sr., was a lawyer, then an oil wild-
catter who made a fortune. Bill Sr.
was a dominant figure of awesome
moral authority, conservative poli-
tics and Catholic dedication. None
of the children rebelled against pa-
rental politics and attitudes.
After Army service in World
War II, Buckley, then 20, entered
Yale in 1946. His talent and high
spirits made him popular, and he
was elected chairman of the Yale
Daily News. Yet he soon made his
mark as a rebel. His editorials
inveighed against the left-liberal
ideology he saw all about Yale and
what he regarded as the anti-
religious bias of the faculty.
Buckley graduated in 1950 and
soon after married Patricia Taylor,
a witty young woman who came
from a wealthy Canadian family.
They have one child, Christopher,
who followed his father in becom-
ing a writer.
In 1951 Buckley published God
and Man at Yak, a scorching indict-
ment of his alma mater. The book,
denounced by the Yale establish-
ment, made its author a national
figure. Lecture invitations piled up.
He added to his following on the
right with McCarthy and His Ene-
mies, co-authored with his brother-
in-law L. Brent Bozell. It was
published in 1954-the year the
Senate voted to condemn Joe Mc-
Carthy for his conduct-and was a
vigorous, if unpersuasive, apologia
for the rambunctious Senator
whose delinquencies added a new
"ism" to the language. Buckley is
still unrepentant about the book.
In 1955, National Review made
its debut. Many on the right had
long deplored the lack of a conser-
vative journal of opinion. William
Schlamm, who had long labored in
Henry Luce's Time Inc. empire,
thought 29-year-old Bill Buckley
would be able to mediate the intel-
lectual quarrels of his elders, as 'he
lacked their emotional attachment
to past positions.
Buckley was agreeable, and con-
servative luminaries such as James
Burnham, Whittaker Chambers,
John Chamberlain and Max East-
man joined the effort. A total of
$350,000 was raised to start the
magazine, plus a pledge of $100,ooo
from Buckley's family. Despite a
current circulation of 120,000, the
magazine has been running annual
deficits of $450,000 to $550,000 in
recent years. Buckley gets a salary
from the National Review, with the
magazine receiving the income
from his lectures, column and TV
program.
CIA Switch. With Buckley's
growing success as a conservative
spokesman came other ventures. In
1962 he started his newspaper col-
umn; it now appears in over 300
papers. In 1966 came "Firing
Line," in which Buckley presents a
variety of guests in lively debate.
This hour-long show is today an
institution on more than 200 PBS-
TV stations. In 1981 a throng of
former guests gathered for the
show's 15th-birthday party at the
New York Yacht Club-among
them Henry Kissinger, Vernon
Jordan, Jr., William E. Simon, poet
Allen Ginsberg, ex-Yippie Jerry
Rubin, Betty Friedan and Theo-
dore H. White, not to mention
Watergate alumni G. Gordon Liddy
and E. Howard Hunt.
In the midst of the festivities,
Ronald Reagan, who had also been
a guest on the show, telephoned
with his congratulations. "Thank
you, Mr. President," Buckley
boomed jovially, then added, "By
the way, I have Gordon Liddy and
Howard Hunt here. Do you have
any instructions?"
Buckley came to novel writing
late in life, at age 50, with publica-
tion of Saving the Queen. His notion
was to pull a switch on the standard
espionage thriller, in which the ten-
dency is to equate the CIA or Brit-
ish intelligence with the KGB. "I
decided to write a book in which
the good guys and the bad guys
were distinguishable," Buckley ex-
plains. "I further resolved that the
good guys would be-Americans."
As his hero, Buckley created
Blackford Oakes, an urbane, liter-
ate young man who went to Yale
and was later recruited by the CIA.
So, indeed, was Buckley, who in
1951 served in Mexico under How-
ard Hunt.
"My admiration for the mission
of the CIA," Buckley stresses, "was
never confused with any evaluation
of its overall effectiveness." After
leaving the agency, he noted in
National Review: "The attempted
assassination of Sukarno has all the
look of an 'operation' by the CIA:
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everyone got killed except the ap-
pointed victim."
Wit as Weapon. The speed of
Buckley's mind-and output-is as-
tonishing. "He can write as fast as
he types," says Dick Clurman. If
pressed, Buckley can turn out a
newspaper column in 20 minutes. I
once asked him how much time his
novels required. "The first draft of
the last one took too long-45
days," he said.
Buckley fears boredom. "I
would not cross the street without a
magazine or a paperback, in case
traffic should immobilize me for
more than ten seconds." In transit
between his sprawling Connecticut
sea-front home (complete with in-
door and outdoor swimming pools)
and his New York City duplex, he
is chauffeured in a stretch limou-
sine, in effect a motorized office
with telephone, dictating machine,
portable computer and two or three
briefcases of correspondence.
While he has a crowded sched-
ule, Buckley still leaves time for
fun. A guest at a dinner party he
gave for Henry Kissinger received
an invitation with the suggestion at
the end to "bring your copy of
Seymour Hersh's book for Mr. Kis-
singer to autograph"-referring to
the uninhibited assault on Kissin-
ger by the former New York Times
writer.
Although politically typecast
early in life, Buckley delights in
being unpredictable. He astonished
many of his supporters in 1972
when he came out for decriminaliz-
ing pot smoking. He dismayed fans
even more when he endorsed the
ratification of the Panama Canal
treaties during the Carter Adminis-
tration. Early in 1978, on "Firing
Line," he took on Ronald Reagan
in a two-hour debate on the subject
of the canal. "If Lloyds of London
had been asked to give odds that I
would be disagreeing with Ronald
Reagan on a matter of public poli-
cy," he said, "I doubt they could
have flogged a quotation out of
their swingingest betting-man."
Among the concerns closest to
Buckley's heart are U.S.-Soviet re-
lations and the danger of a nuclear
exchange. "Conservatism cannot
retreat from its traditional posi-
tion-that some things are worth
dying for," he has said. "All our
strategic wit must be summoned to
prevent such an exchange, but the
deepest reserve of that wit is the
willingness to say, acquiescently,
that yes, rather a nuclear exchange
than the sale of our souls to the
Faustian monsters who sit unsmil-
ing behind their hydrogen missiles."
If wit is indeed a weapon in this
struggle-and all the others that
confront this country-then Amer-
ica stands well-armed, thanks to
Bill Buckley.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000200920007-5