The Plot to Kill CBS

The central character of Playhouse go's opening show last month (TIME, Sept. 29) was a polished, elderly tyrant named Joseph Stalin, who lived in a palace called the Kremlin. His courtiers--named Beria, Malenkov, Molotov and Khrushchev-hated Stalin and hungered for his power. Together they plotted his death, and it turned out to be an easier job than they had supposed. Stalin suffered a stroke, and, as the CBS camera dollied in for the climactic closeup, Khrushchev dramatically refused him any aid.

Moscow really had little to complain about. Worse charges than a simple little murder have been brought against Russia's masters, and, as acted by old Matinee Idol Melvyn Douglas, Stalin nearly emerged as a grand old man. But New York Times Critic Jack Gould thought the cloak-and-daggerotype--which mixed painstaking research with fantastic guesswork--an insult to a government "with which this country maintains formal, if very strained, diplomatic relations." The Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. agreed. "Smiling Mike" Menshikov called the play "a filthy slander against the Soviet Union . . . incompatible with international standards." With that, he fired off a protest to the State Department.

State took the protest "under advisement" and left it there. But CBS last week was told by the Russians that its Moscow bureau had become "unnecessary." CBS Moscow Correspondent Paul Niven got two weeks notice to clear out. Lamented CBS Vice President (in charge of news) Sig Nickelson: "The injury to CBS News is less than the injury to the American public, because this action destroys one more channel in the flow of firsthand information."

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