and-film-world, so eager to secure thenwidest publicity to leftist manifestations—althoughnmuch less alert to recognizenthe richest literature of the day, thenRussian and Iron Curtain novels. True,nunlike in Italy and France, communists,nsocialists and moderate center are notnlocked in deadly conflict on these shores.nWe enjoy (.’) a lukewarm leftism whichndoes not spell out its identity, but isnnevertheless more paralyzing for thennation’s mind than the vigorous controversiesnopposing communists and variousnshades of anti-communists (horribilenu, even rightists and self-confessednreactionaries!) in France. Just to remainnwith the new philosophers: could wenimagine among America’s young intelligentsia,nso deficient in imagination, annAndre Glucksmann who raised his voicenin 1975 against Alvaro Cunhal then”Stalinist bastard” [crapule stalinienne)nin Portugal, turned publicly against then”red bourgeoisie” in France, finallynagainst Mao when the monster kickednthe dust.’ Could we imagine an AndrenGlucksmann in America saying andnwriting these things—then being pub­nIntelligent Men Under Self-HypnosisnDaniel Schorr: Clearing the Air;nHoughton Mifflin; Boston, 1977.nby Edvi’ard J. Walshnjjaniel Schorr would probably benthe first to concede that his youthfulnfascination with the news business asnthe impassive, coldly objective reportingnof events was incredibly naive. Nonreporter can detach himself totally fromnhis surroundings, as Emile Zola provednin the last century. If he could, hisndispatches would be unreadable. It’s fairnto say that Schorr’s book is readable, withnreservations. His intent in Clearing thenAir is to defend his causing to be publishednin the pseudo-undergroundnnewspaper Village Voice the secret reportnof the House Intelligence Committee onnthe Central Intelligence Agency, innFebruary, 1976, and to describe thenevents which preceded and followednhis action.nBut Clearing the Air does not justifynits title. To be sure, the author spills a lotnof intimate details about his professionalnlife; about CBS News, his employer ofntwenty-odd years; about the links betweennthe CIA and the news organizations. Bitsnand pieces of this make mildly titillatingnMr. Walsh, an officer of the U.S. IndustrialnCouncil, is a student of the contemporarynliterary scene.nreading, as do the “human interest”nstories in the Sunday papers, but most ofnit is banal, and unimportant to Schorr’snpurpose. Why he feels compelled tondevote nearly one-third of the book tonthe tediously overreported details ofnWatergate is a mystery: he was there, wenknow; every Washington reporter was.nBut the reference to Watergate, thoughntiresome, does have a point, from Schorr’snperspective. He sees himself as a maverick,na God-honest direct and relentlessnreporter in a show-biz profession. AndnCBS’s Watergate coverage ended on ansoft note, he believes, when fellow commentatorsnDan Rather and Eric Sevareid,nresponding to direction from corporatenhigher-ups, went easy on Nixon, with an”bring us together” theme, rather thannprobing the defeated president’s lastminutenmaneuvers to slip out of Washingtonnwith his evil deeds only partlynuncovered. Schorr’s hard-line recommendationsnwere ignored, and Sevareid stillnwon’t speak to him. He felt shunted asidenwithout a sensational story; Nixon’snresignation stole this thunder. He longednfor controversy: it arrived, in the formnof revelations about abuses by the CIA.nIn considering Schorr’s cataloguingnof misdeeds by the CIA, it must be freelyndeclared that some of them were pernicious,nand even heinous: the experimentationnwith hallucinogenic drugs onnnnlished and becoming a counter-revolutionarynspokesman on television.’n1 rue again, we do not have communistsnhere of Georges Marchais’ stripencommanding a Stalinist party with a halfa-millionnmilitant thugs. But does ournone-sided knowledge industry (university,nmedia, publishers of textbooks, founda-n•tions) not possess a surer monopoly ofnmind-manipulation than the Frenchnsalesmen of the gulag-regime? Thentranslation of the nouveauxphilosophes’nworks may be a test case. Dnunsuspecting employees; the assassinationnattempts on foreign leaders; thendomestic political dirtywork. Some werenplain stupid—for example, the projectndesigned to convince the Cuban peoplenthat the rebirth of Christ was imminent,nand that Castro was the Devil Incarnate.nMore seriously, the Agency bungled innassessing Soviet expenditures on weapons,nand on the likelihood of war in thenMideast in 1973.nBut Schorr’s book is not an attempt tonreflect thoughtfully on the dangers ofnreal CIA excesses, or to consider meansnof curbing them in the future. He is anpolemicist operating out of Washington,none of a crowd; his book panders selectivencliches, such as “the public’s right tonknow,” while instinctively disparagingnothers, for example, “national security.”nHis thinking is a consummate blurringnof distinctions. He asserts, in a speechnthat “Americans were leaning towardsndisclosure,” and later, that “[the EthicsnCommittee’s] subpoena produced a surgenof sentiment for an unfettered press”—npersonified, to Schorr, by those whontestified in his behalf: Dan Rather, ofnCBS; Mary McGrory of the WashingtonnStar; Carl Bernstein of the WashingtonnPost; I.F. Stone, radical governmenthaternof yore; and Seymour Hersh of thenNew York Times.nThere is no evidence, other than thenassertions of Schorr and his colleagues,n13nChronicles of Culturen