NETWORK OF SPIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605750030-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 30
• Publication Date: September 1, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/06/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605750030-9
ArriCLE ~ NEW YORK TIMES
ON PAG$ ~~r-s+ir 1 September 1985
ESSAY -
William Safire
Network
of
Spies
. p
WASIaI 'MN
TV this. fall? win top
ratings this ? Answer: Ten one that comes up with
the must far-fetched spy thriller. .
ABC, suffering from. defer' of
older viewers, and expert in father-
som 'husband-wife detective teems,
will enter the Has with 'Father Spies
-Best,'! the warm, human, fast-paced
story of a typical American family of
espionage agents.
There will a sitcom (a comedy
watched in the Situation Room) revolv-
ing around the adventures' of an
ardhed-services family that augments
its pay by selling secrets for hard cash.
Sere. is private enterprise in action,.
without those ideological, hangups of
"The'11o6enbergs and other family-
spy series of a generation ago. Fea-
tured will be the studious father, errant
brother, madcap son and the dingbat
mother who. turns them all in.
CBS, ' in its romantic tradition of
"Dallas'!-and "Knots Landing," be-
lieves ,that-love and money conquers
all. Black Rock will soap up the
evening schedule with "Infiltrating
Each Other" (alternative title: "Los
Angeles")about an F.B.I. agent who
falls in-love with a beautiful.K.G,j ..
agent, wife of another Soviet opera-
tive; the K.G.B. husband, putting
duty before marital fidelity, urges his
wife to seduce the F.B.I. man, who in;
turn is willing to break a few rules of
his own in hopes of using this. poor
woman-to infiltrate the K.G.B. and
thereby. to become Director Web-
ster's Agent of the Month.' (Efrem
Zimbalist Jr. will not stpr.) ? .
NBC appealing in high styie to the
vid-yuppies with. heroes, who never
tuck in their shirts, will get a Miami-
Vice-like grip on its new series set in
Paris ' and Auckland, --Le DBparte-
ment de Mauvals' Tours" (originall,
titled -"Four Frogmen and a Girl,"
but "Frogman" was rejected-lest it
be talf6n as a- slur).
The central character of "Mauvais As the viewer punches the buttons
Tours" (that's French bar "dirty on his?remote-control dialer, leaping
tricks") is captain. Dominique, the from one ludicrously-fictional espio.
woman who puts the provocation in nage drama to the next, he will won-
agent provocateur. Clad in a bikini, der why every program this season
and accompanied by four handsome has a spy plot. What happened to the
old
rubber-fetishists, she is assigned to' ?. sitcoms and shoot. em-ups?
blow up Redwar; the boat common- The only people who know why spy
deered by crazed environmentalists plots aget re better TV prevalent today, are those
on-the-lam-to New Zealand. When the who reception than any-
plot misfires (marine explosions are body. Although the President's For-
always handled better by ABC), thecannot find out hyA
, the now Soviet
President of France appoints a pa-.
Embassy in Washington - sits high
friar tB.cover up our heroine's ex- atop -,Dobrynln's Hill" and its huge
ploits. But cool Dominique soon turns
from Jeanne d'Arc to John Dean and. 'antenna Pik UP every one of those
brings down the Government. spy programs loud and clear, along
PBS, devoted to law-key, .ponvio- with all our telepb ne ells.
lent drama and adept at capturing the While Westernerp vie for position to
nuances of nagging nannies, will ',"come the k of spies, the Rus-
present 13 weeks of subtle tuggings- dons-grab top innings on their own
'and-hauling between the East and web of deceit. NO
West German intelligence services.
"Schmeiley's Volken" is it leisurely
examination of the motives of a Bonn
counterspy chief (upstairs) and his
typing. pool (downstairs) in the
Federal Office for the Defense of the
Constitution., a nest or weinbrand-
besotted, debt-ridden euphemises. r -
Schmeiley, world-weary spyocrat,
defects to the East, burning 188 allied
agents' and demonstrating to NATO
that West German. intelligence re-
mains a security risk. The last chancel- .
for so embarrassed was forced to re.
sign; the current Chancellor, hero of
Bitburg, desperately seeks to push the
blame onto. a rightist political rival.
For viewers lost in -the complexities of
this espionage chess, Alistair Cooke
will explain everything.
Home Box office brings cable cus-
tomers in from the cold with an origi-
nal movie for television exploiting its
need for foreign locations to enhance
worldwide sales.
HBO's "Excuse My Dust" is set in .
the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Trusted
cleaning women, secretly equipped
with powder puffs supplied by the
K.G.B:, dust all the doorknobs and bed-
posts with a carcinogenic yellow pow-
der scented with Suivez-Moi.
Caught in the.act by American pub-
lic-diplomacy agents, the Russian
cleaning women refuse to sign an en-
vironmental-impact statement and
stick to their cover story: Their yel-
low K.G.B. follow-me powder leaves
f4 Spaso House furniture looking love-
lier longer than lemon-scented Pride.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/06/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605750030-9