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Private Notes
As Mr. Buckley frames the question, "When last heard from, Congress had before it 59 separate bills designed to provide 59 varieties of protection for newsmen." These "shield laws" were politically explosive; the Pentagon Papers and the leaks that prompted President Nixon to authorize the Plumbers had been front-page news for much of his Administration.
Admiral Shepard's unequivocal answer to the title question is: Yes, it was worth the effort to send men to the Moon. Does that mean we should go back to the Moon again, or try to go on to Mars?
In Mr. Foot's previous appearance on Firing Line (#75), the themes were economic, and what principally emerged was Mr. Foot's absolute commitment to socialism. Here, discussing comparative British and American scandals (while Watergate was still less than half over, a British sex scandal had been dispatched in weeks), he is less predictable, and all the more interesting.
Sir Alec had been Britain's--the West's, really--point man at the Helsinki Conference (formally, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe), and he had spoken strongly on the need for the Soviet Union to offer more than "pious declarations" on behalf of freedom and to take positive steps towards "freedom of movement of people and ideas." However, many observers felt that he had not demanded enough in the way of concrete actions. Was Sir Alec being overly cautious, or was he being reasonable?
As Mr. Buckley recounts in his introduction, the Watergate hostilities, which had already been in the headlines for more than a year, had just escalated with the Saturday Night Massacre. Our guest had been fired for refusing to fire Independent Prosecutor Archibald Cox, and he here speaks knowledgeably about the legal and moral ramifications and the probable next steps.
