The Virginian-Pilot
                            THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT  
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Sunday, December 3, 1995               TAG: 9512040187
SECTION: COMMENTARY               PAGE: J2   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JOHN A. FAHEY
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   93 lines

THE COLD WAR SOVIET AMBASSADOR TELLS HOW HE BECAME A WASHINGTON INSIDER

IN CONFIDENCE

Moscow's Ambassador to America's Six Cold War Presidents

ANATOLY DOBRYNIN

Time Books. 672 pp. $30.

Anatoly Dobrynin, Moscow's ambassador to the United States for an unprecedented 24 years of diplomatic service, became a conduit for secret back-door negotiations. Dobrynin was the youngest, at age 43, to serve as Soviet ambassador. He tells his fascinating story in In Confidence: Moscow's Ambassador to America's Six Cold War Presidents.

Arriving in Washington in 1962, Dobrynin assumed control of a confidential channel between Kennedy and Khrushchev that previously had served as little more than a mailbox. The new ambassador converted the channel into one for top-secret exchanges between the heads of state. Dobrynin also used the channel as his own private pipeline to inform the Kremlin of the thinking, intentions and plans of most important power brokers in Washington.

The affable Dobrynin had a special talent - the knack of currying favor and gaining the confidence of the top echelon in the capital. No one seemed immune to Dobrynin's charms.

Lyndon Johnson gave Dobrynin his personal telephone number to avoid going through Walt Rostow, Johnson's national security adviser. The Soviet ambassador freely strolled the corridors of the White House west wing, where on one occasion Johnson told Dobrynin in strict confidence that he was not going to run again for president. The ambassador also had free run of the Department of State, where he habitually entered the basement garage until Alexander Haig put a stop to this practice late in Dobrynin's tour.

In contrast to Dobrynin's free access to the White House and the State department, his counterparts, as Thomas J. Watson Jr., President Carter's U.S. ambassador to Moscow, writes in Father, Son & Company, were shunted aside and had little access to the Kremlin.

Dobrynin's friendly and disarming manner impressed President Reagan to such a degree that when Dobrynin finally departed his post, Reagan naively asked, ``Is he really a Communist?''

While all Washington luminaries confided in Dobrynin, Henry Kissinger more than any other succumbed to his charisma and on countless occasions met privately for hours with the Soviet ambassador. Dobrynin covers Kissinger's revelations in detail in his book, but doesn't report the unpleasantness that Kissinger must have experienced when the National Security Agency intercepted a Dobrynin secret cable to Moscow. The message contained Kissinger's advice on how the Kremlin should deal with President Carter during SALT II talks.

Dobrynin's meetings with Kissinger were not as private as he relates here. Chagrined CIA agents observed many of Kissinger's meetings with the Soviet ambassador. In December 1980, noted newspaper columnist Jack Anderson wrote that Kissinger's meetings with Dobrynin ``bordered on treason.''

Dobrynin was privy to American high-level thinking, but surprisingly the Kremlin kept him completely out of the loop. Moscow failed to inform him of its plans to station nuclear missiles in Cuba. He was not informed in advance by his leaders of their intention to invade Czechoslovakia. Although he was in Moscow when a decision was made to invade Afghanistan, Dobrynin was not consulted. Yet he was so well accepted in Washington that when a crisis was on the horizon, six presidents asked for his advice.

In Confidence has little humor, but Dobrynin relates one amusing incident. In his early years in 1945, he accompanied Foreign Minister Molotov and Soviet Ambassador Zarubin by train to San Francisco. Seeing Molotov in the train window, a Chicago crowd started booing. Molotov asked what booing meant and was told by Zarubin that it was an American way of greeting. Molotov accepted the explanation, but seemed puzzled about strange American ways of greeting foreigners.

Dobrynin's book reveals that Secretary of State William Rogers and Presidents Ford and Carter have good reason to believe the wisdom of the Russian proverb, ``It's worse to have a foolish friend than an enemy.'' Kissinger cautioned Dobrynin not to tell Rogers about the foreign policy issues that Kissinger was discussing with him. Kissinger also criticized President Ford's failure to use the real assets of foreign policy.

The author is often touted as a master diplomat who facilitated exchanges of ideas and information directly and privately between the White House and the Kremlin. Dobrynin comes across in the book as a clever diplomat who likes the United States, but at the same time is a Russian patriot who never relinquished his loyalty to the Soviet Union. In social gatherings Dobrynin was treated like one of the inner capital circle. He owes a large debt to the Washington power brokers who should have heeded Winston Churchill's advice, ``Don't discuss anything with the monkey while the organ-grinder is in the room.'' MEMO: John A. Fahey is associate professor emeritus of foreign languages and

literature at Old Dominion University.

by CNB