Lesson Fourteen

Section One: News in Brief

Tapescript
1. State Department spokesman Bernard Kalb resigned today be-
cause of the Reagan Administration's alleged disinformation cam-
paign against Libya. The Washington Post reported last week that
the administration planted false information about Libya in an effort
to destabilize the government of Muammar Ouddafi. Kalb todav did
not confirm or deny that such a campaign tool,-- place, but he said re-
ports about it had damaged the credibility of the US. The State De-
partment would not comment on Kalb's resignation.

2. The State Department todav criticized the Nicaraguan govern-
ment for allegedly refusing to grant US officials access to Eugene
Hasenfus. He's the survivor of Sunday's plane crash inside
Nicaragua. State Department spokesman Charles Redmond. 'Our
representative was not received by the Nicaraguan government. And
we view this with the utmost seriousness. The rendering of consular
services is an essential part of the function of an embassy. The
Sandinista government has once again taken action to make that
function difficult and has raised the question of whether, indeed, a
US embassy can function normally within Nicaragua. We frankly
cannot accept the delay in granting consular access since the
Sandinista government has apparently gone to some lengths to pa-
rade Mr. Hasenfus before the press, and considering the fact that a
government spokesman stated clearly last night on American televi-
sion that access would be granted.' Meanwhile President Reagan
today denied that the downed plane allegedly carrying arms to
Contra rebels was operating-under official US orders. He also ac-

knowledged that the government has been aware that private
American groups and citizens have been helping the anti-govern-
ment forces in Nicaragua.

Section Two: News in Detail

Tapescript
Last week the Washington Post reported that top-level offi-
cials had approved a plan to generate real and illusionary events to
make Libya's Colonel Muammar Quddafi think the United States
might once again attack. Bernard Kalb's resignation is the first in
protest of that policy. A similar resignation occurred at the White
House in 1983 when a deputy quit to protest misleading statements
given to the press shortly before the American invasion of Grenada.
NPR's Bill Busenberg has more on today's announcement.
Bernard Kalb had been a veteran diplomatic correspondent for
CBS and NBC before being picked two years ago by Secretary of
State George Shultz to be the Department's chief spokesman, offi-
cially an Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. His brother, Marvin
Kalb, is still with NBC. Today, Bernard Kalb surprised his former

colleagues in the news media by,quitting over the issue of the admin-
istration's disinformation program. Kalb would not confirm that
there was such a program, but he said he faced a choice of remaining
silent or registering his dissent. And even though the issue appeared
to be fading from the news, Kalb grappled with it privately and de-
cided he had to act.
'The controversy may vaiiish, but when vou are sitting alone, it
does not go away. And so I've taken the step of stepping down.'
'rhe State Department has reportedly been involved in the
disinformation issue, but Kalb said his guidelines have always been
not to fie or mislead the press, and he has not done so. Kalb went out
of his way today to praise Secretary Shultz, a man, he said, of such
overwhelming integrity that he allows other people to have their own
integrity.
'In taking this action, I want to emphasize that I am not dis-
scriting from Secretary Shultz, a man of credibility, rather I am dis-
senting from the reported disinformation program.'
Kalb's comments suggested Shultz perhaps did not go along
with the disinformation program, but in public, the Secretary of
State has defended the administration's policies against Libya, say-
ing in New York last week: 'I don't have any problems with the little
psychological warfare against Quddafi." He also quoted Winston
Churchill as saying, 'In time of war truth i, --o precious, it must@ be
attended by a bodyguard of lies.' Shultz was asked about the
disinformation effort last Sunday on ABC.
'I don't lie. I've never taken part in any meeting in which it was
proposed that we go out and lie to the news media for some effect.
And if somebody did that, he was doing it against policy. Now hav-
ing said that, one of the results of our action against Libya, from the
intelligence we've received, was quite a period of disorientation on
the part of Quddafi. Sol to the extent we can keep Quddafj off bal-
ance by one means or another, including the possibility that we

might make another attack, I think that's good.'
In a sometimes emotional session with reporters today, Bernard
Kalb said that neither he personally nor the nation as a whole can
stand any policy of disinformation.
'@ I'm concerned about the impact of any such program on the
credibility of the United States. Faith, faith in the word of America.,
is the pulse beat of our democracy. Anything that liurts America's
credibility hurts America. And then on a much. r,.iuch, much lower
level, there's the' question of my own credibility, both as a spokes-
man and a journalist, a spokesman for a couple of years, a journalist
for more years than I want to remember. In fact, I sometimes pri-
vately thought of myself as a journalist masquerading as a spokes-
man. In any case, I do not want my own credibility to be caught up,
to be subsumed in this controversy."
The timing of Kalb's action today is likely to add to the contro-
versy over government deception. And it comes at an awkward mo-
ment for the Reagan Administration, just days before an imp rtant
pre-summit meeting with the Soviets in Iceland and in the wake of
official denials about a downed guerrilla resupply plane in
Nicaragua. One American was captured and others were killed in
that action, but officials have said the flight was in no way connected
with the US government. Kalb said his resignation today had noth-
ing to do with any other incident. I'm Bill Busenberg in Washington.

Section Three: Special Report

Tapescript
The history of Jews in Poland is not always thoroughly told in
that country. And tlte story of the World War 11 freedom fighters in
the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw is one of the saddest chapters. The
;Nazis took hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths, and seven
thousand more died defending the area when the Gdrmans invaded.
Dr. Merrick Adelman is one of the very few who survived. A book
called Shielding the Flame is his story. It was written in Poland ten
years ago by Hannah Kroll. It is now available in this country in
English. Yohannes Toshimska is one of the translators. She says that
Merrick Adelman's view of the ghetto uprising is regarded as
unconventional.
"He doesn't use the language, or even he doesn't have the atti-
tude people usually have to the holocaust and to the ghetto
uprisings. One thing he's consistently talking about is the fac@t that
people thought was the arms in the ghetto. It wasn"t heroic; it was
easier than to die going to the train cars. And that people who parti-
cipated in the ghetto uprising were actually, in a sense, lucky. They
had arms; they could do something about what was going on while
those hundreds of thousands who were led to the train cars were

equally heroic, but their death was much more difficult.'
"Dr. Adelman was stationed ... he was working in a clinic; he
was not a doctor then; but he was working in a clinic that was nearby
the train station where the Jews were taken to go off to the concen-
tration camps.'
'Yes. He had an amazing position. He was standing at the gate
to the Hmflat Platz, which was the place from where the Jews were
taken into the train cars. He was a member of the underground in
the ghetto, and he was choosing the people who were needed by the
underground. They were perhaps one or two in many thousands of
them led every day to the cars. And he would pick these people up,
and then young girls who were students at the nurses' school would
disabilitate these people. He describes in the book, it's a very power-
ful scene, how these girls, who were wearing beautiful clean white
uniforms of nurse students, would take two pieces of wood and with
these two pieces of wood would break legs of the people who were
supposed to be saved for the Jewish underground. But the Germans,
to the last moment, wanted to maintain the fiction that people who
were taken to the trains were being taken for work. And obviously a
person with a broken leg couldn't work. So breaking a leg would
temporarily save that person from being taken into gas."
'So he saw in all, I believe he says four hundred thousand peo-
ple, go aboard the train.'
"'Yes. He stood there from the very beginning of the extermina-
tion action to the end.'
'With regard to what you were saying earlier, there's a dialogue
that develops in the book between an American professor who
comes to visit the doctor many years later, and is critical of what
happened. He says of the Jews, 'You were going like sheep to your
deaths.' The professor had been in World War 11; he'd landed on a
French beach, and he said that 'Men should run, men should shoot.
You were going like sheep.' And Adelman explains this, and let me

quote him. 'It is a horrendous thing when one is going so quietly to
one's death. It is infinitely more difficult than to go out shooting. Af-
ter all, it is much easier to die firing. For us, it was much easier to die
than it was for someone who first boarded a train car, then rode the
train, then dug a hole, then undressed naked.' That's difficult to lin-
derstand, but then Hannah Kroll says that she understands it be-
cause it's easier for people who are watching this to understand,
when the people are dying shooting.'
' It is something probably easier to comprehend because the
kind of death most of the people from the ghetto encountered is just
beyond comprehension.'
'Explain the context of the title for Shielding the Flame; it comes
up a bit later on. It has to do with the reason that Dr. Adelman be-
comes a physician, a cardilogist, after the War, is that he wants this
opportunity to deal with people who are in a life-or-death
situation.'
'He says at some point that what he was doing at Hmflat Platz
and what he was doing later on as a doctor is like to shield the flame
from God who wants to blow this little tiny flame and kill the
person, that what he was doing during the War and after the War
was, in a way, doing God's work or doing something against God,
even if the God existed.'
"Do you think this book is oing to be accessible to the Western
reader reading it in English? It is a bit free in form and in style. It
lacks a chronology; certain details are not there or are pre-supposed
that one knows.'
'This book is a little bit like a conversation of two people who
aren't that much aware of the fact that someone else is listening to it.
And they don't care about this other person who might be listening
to it. They don't help this person to follow it. I had a hard time even
when I read it for the first time in Polish. However, for me, it has
magnetic power and, despite the confusion, I always wanted to go

back and to go on.'
Yahannes Tashimska, the translator, along with Lawrence
Weshler, of Shiel(iing the Flaiiie by flatiiiah Kroll.

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