What Next for Pat Moynihan?

"Pat carries his own precipice around with him under his arm." With that somewhat surrealistic metaphor, an old friend describes Daniel Patrick Moynihan's habit of living close to the edge of trouble through his gift for overstatement and overreaction. But often the statements and reactions are deliberate. When a classified cable from Moynihan blasting the State Department surfaced in the press last week, it looked like the latest gambit in the intrigue between Moynihan and Henry Kissinger.

In his sometimes bracing, sometimes abrasive role as Ambassador to the U.N. (TIME cover, Jan. 26), Moynihan has long felt himself insufficiently supported by Kissinger and the State Department. In his "brief essay," sent to Kissinger two weeks ago as part of a year's end report, he complained that unspecified State Department officials were undermining his U.N. tactics. His aim, he contended, was to carry out a "basic [U.S.] foreign policy goal" by making it clear to nations voting consistently against American positions that they can expect to be forcefully rebutted by the U.S. and in some cases to receive less foreign aid. His cable protested that among bureaucrats at State, "the conventional wisdom" was that this approach would not work. State Department officials, as well as Western European and other delegates, had in fact argued that Moynihan's blasts at the Third World, especially the Africans, were only consolidating opposition to the U.S.

On the contrary, asserted Moynihan, he was succeeding in breaking up bloc voting at the U.N. "This mission does not expect such persons [i.e., the critics] to change their minds," declared Moynihan in the cable. "We do ask, however, that out of a decent respect for their profession they stop blabbing to the press what is not so."

By placing the lowest classification on the cable ("Limited Official Use") and asking that it go to all U.S. embassies round the world, Moynihan must have known that the chances of it becoming public were high. Though there were suspicions that Moynihan himself leaked the cable, the actual culprit was a State Department source friendly to Moynihan and his policies.

The ambassador also had to know that the cable would further antagonize Kissinger. Within the State Department, it was widely seen as self-serving. Said one observer, invoking a Norman Mailer book: "It should have been called Advertisements for Myself" Department officials feel Moynihan overstated his success in getting African nations to respond to his pressure. The indiscreet naming of specific nations and specific leaders* may have actually hampered the policy Moynihan advocates. U.N. watchers note, for example, that with Moynihan slated to assume the presidency of the Security Council this week, on its regular monthly rotation, a number of Third World nations have gone to some pains to avoid bringing up their business with the council during his tenure. Said a high State Department official: "His basic approach is wise, but he has overdone it."

What was Moynihan up to? Was he trying to protect himself against a State Department cabal? Did he really feel threatened by Kissinger's often unflattering private comments about him? Or was Democrat Moynihan trying to get fired, thus setting the stage for a martyred resignation so he could go after Conservative Senator James Buckley's New York seat this year?

If Moynihan had secretly hoped to goad the Secretary into taking public action against him, Kissinger disappointed him. Although in other circumstances any Secretary of State might well have felt justified in asking for Moynihan's head, Kissinger said soothingly. "Moynihan is doing an outstanding job at the United Nations, and he has the full support of the President, the Secretary of State and the Department of State." Kissinger later endorsed Moynihan's outspoken views by saying that the U.S. would regard the U.N. votes of other countries on issues of importance to the U.S. as signs of how they valued their relations with America.

The effect of the latest Moynihan flap was undoubtedly to weaken his position within the State Department and at the U.N., but to strengthen once again his personal position with the public.

Informal Polls. Moynihan's friends and critics alike suspect he wants to get into the Senate race. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug have a large organizational lead for the nomination, however, and former New York City Consumer Affairs Commissioner Bess Myerson, though not a candidate, has done well in the polls. Moynihan told TIME he had no intention of making speeches at the U.N. for the rest of his life, but he also insisted, "I am not running for the Senate and haven't the slightest intention of doing so."

Yet TIME has learned that Moynihan's personal attorney, Arthur Klebanoff, has been making informal soundings on Moynihan's Senate prospects. Moreover, former Democratic State Chairman Joseph Crangle said last week, "He could get broad support. I'm very high on him." In particular, Moynihan's backing of Israel in the U.N. could be expected to win him many votes from New York City's large Jewish population.

Those close to Moynihan insist that he has not yet decided whether to make the plunge into politics, return to Harvard (he reportedly must make up his mind by next week, or he will lose his tenure) or remain in his U.N. post. If he decides to go for the Senate seat, he faces another sizable, self-imposed precipice. Last October he declared on Face the Nation, "I would consider it dishonorable to leave this post and run for any office, and I would hope it would be understood that if I do, the people, the voters to whom I would present myself in such circumstances, would consider me as having said in advance that I am a man of no personal honor to have done so."

*Most notably, Moynihan reported that Somalia's Abdulrahim Farah, an Assistant Secretary General of the U.N., had agreed that U.S. threats of reduced foreign aid were an effective means of influencing African nations to refrain from endorsing the Soviet-backed faction in Angola.

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