The Press: The Working Press

From the moment W. Averell Harriman, special foreign correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance, arrived in Moscow last May, the Red carpet went out. His hosts assigned him one of their top interpreters. Vasily Vakhrushev, who last year guided Adlai Stevenson around the Soviet states. Chauffeured official ZIS and Zim sedans were placed at his disposal; interviews with party leaders—including a 90-minute tete-a-tete with Khrushchev—were easy. Barriers melted away, and the safari toured industrial areas in Siberia and the Urals hitherto closed to capitalist rubbernecks.

Ghostly Guide. As the Soviets were well aware, this was no ordinary newsman. Besides the N.A.N.A. accreditation, Reporter Harriman had other credentials:

1) indubitable capitalist (multimillionaire, onetime railroad board chairman);

2) Ambassador (to Russia); 3) Governor (New York); 4) a man of such towering clout in Washington that former Secretary of State Dean Acheson personally toted his passport application (for a planned trip to Red China) to the State Department for approval. What’s more, Harriman had brought along a collaborator almost as impressive: Charles W. Thayer, brother-in-law of ex-U.S. Ambassador to Russia Charles E. Bohlen and himself a career diplomat (including four years in Russia) turned freelance writer (Bears in the Caviar, The Unquiet Germans). Thayer’s job was to act as combination guide and ghost.

This involved yeoman duty for both correspondent and aide. Missing not a chance to make propaganda hay, the Soviets turned out big crowds to cheer at every stop. Harriman addressed an open-air rally at the new Siberian iron-mining town of Rudny, several times spoke over local radio stations, was everywhere interviewed by Russian newsmen. Jotting it all down in separate notebooks, Harriman and Thayer spent long hours each evening disputing their impressions. When at last an article was ripe, Thayer would retire to hammer out a first draft behind a locked door, later return to defend it in heated argument over whether “entered a door” should be “went through a door,” whether the Angara River was “blocked,” “breached” or “dammed.” Finally, he would dictate the approved version over a fading phone line to Moscow, for transmission to N.A.N.A. newspaper clients.

Warmly Welcomed. In six weeks the process produced seven articles under the Harriman byline; e.g., on Yalta (“Seldom, I am told, has an American been more warmly welcomed”), on peace (“I have been received everywhere as an American who symbolizes our wartime alliance”), and Soviet penal reform (his hosts showed him only their showpiece prison outside Moscow).

At a windup press conference last week in Moscow, Harriman gave out next to nothing of his visit with Khrushchev. Instead, he defended, with practiced diplomatic finesses, the integrity of the U.S. exhibit in Moscow’s Sokolniki Park. “We would be stupid to present anything except for what it is represented to be.” Then, only slightly chastened by Communist China’s polite refusal to grant him a visa, Reporter Harriman headed for Paris —where all good foreign correspondents go for rest and rehabilitation—before undertaking his next journalistic assignment : a textpiece for LIFE Magazine.