A Remembrance: President Ford With Leonid Brezhnev In Helsinki And The Reporter Who Had Their Global Scoop But No Way To Tell The World

Philip Stone January 3, 2007

US President Gerald R. Ford, who passed away last week, had traveled to Helsinki in the summer of 1975 not only to sign what became known as the Helsinki Accords but also to negotiate with the Soviet Union’s Leonid Brezhnev on reaching a new Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty (SALT). And there was a young correspondent from United Press International, this writer, who along the course of those events came up with the scoop of the day.

Before the opening ceremonies of the Helsinki Accords, in Helsinki’s grand Finlandia Hall, Leonard Brezhnev traveled from the Russian black fortress-like embassy to the American embassy, which looked more like a Southern mansion located in a rich, pleasant Helsinki neighborhood, to continue negotiations to reach a SALT agreement.

Nobody expected much from those negotiations and after all the big show was going to be the opening ceremony in Finlandia Hall. But UPI had a policy there should always be a correspondent where the President was present, but Helen Thomas, the UPI White House correspondent, and all the other UPI correspondents in town for the meeting were all firmly ensconced in Finlandia Hall.

So they assigned their young Helsinki manager with whom they didn’t know what to do with anyway, to the Presidential detail – that is wait at the embassy until Ford and Brezhnev are gone and make sure nothing dramatic happens to them as they get in their cars.

For some reason the AP didn’t have a guy there and so there was this young correspondent all by himself standing outside the front door of the embassy with a couple of secret service agents for company waiting for Ford to come out and get in car.

But what happened next was really extraordinary. The front door opened and out came Brezhnev, without a jacket, his shirt sleeves rolled up, with Larry King-like suspenders holding up his pants, with Ford at his side (with his jacket on).

“Where’s the media,” Ford asked. “I’m it,” I replied. They looked at me, then one another and Ford said, “”Well, we had a very good breakthrough at the meeting this morning, but I guess we’ll talk about it at the conference.” With that they disappeared back into the embassy, reappeared a couple of minutes later (Brezhnev now with his tie tied tight and his jacket on, and they got in their respective cars to drive the 10 minutes to the conference center.

Now remember this was in the days of no mobile phones and here was a reporter with the scoop of the day but no way to get it to his editors. There was a marine guard whom I knew on duty at the embassy’s front door so I figured why not barge in and use the embassy phone to phone the UPI bureau at Finlandia Hall. But the guard, my friend, told me no way. Secret service was swarming over the embassy – Ford was staying there – and there was no way he was going to let me in.

So what to do? This was a residential neighborhood, no payphones on the corner. And then I remembered that a close friend in the media business lived in an apartment across the road. So like a mad dog I went charging up the five flights of stairs and banged like crazy on the front door hoping someone was there. The maid opened the door, she spoke no English, I no Finnish but with hands wailing I just barged in yelling telephone and the poor woman just watched in amazement.

I called the UPI bureau and Ray Moseley, then UPI European editor who later left for an illustrious career with the Chicago Tribune, answered the phone. Absolutely out of breath from the stair climbing I told them that Brezhnev and Ford had just left and… “What do you mean just left, I can see on the TV their motorcade is almost here.”  Under my breath I started saying unkind words about Mr. Moseley, but then I blurted out “Big break in the START talks” – to this day I don’t remember what the “big break” was  -- but that was the UPI bulletin and as is common with the agency that breaks the bulletin UPI owned that story that day.

Today with mobile cameras  –if only I had a camera to capture Brezhnev as he appeared with those sleeves rolled up – everything would have been different, but that’s the way it was done 30 years ago.

One other favorable Ford remembrance on that trip.  Mark Evans Austed, US ambassador to Helsinki, had been bugging the US Navy, the State Department and the White House for months that the navy should buy Finnish-made icebreakers. The ambassador was a high roller in Republican circles and even though Ford had been overheard to say that he had just about had enough of the icebreaker nonsense, he agreed to a meeting with Finnish President Urho Kekkonen on board an icebreaker.

Now one point about Ford was that he tended to physically stumble from time to time and the media always glorified in writing stories about that and of course having pictures were better. So the president going up and down a long gangplank was seen as fair game. “Even odds” as one reporter joked at the time.

So again, UPI had to give their Helsinki manager something to do I got assigned to the meting. Kekkonen, himself, was quite a character in his own right. He arrived early and greeted the large stable of press. But with time on his hands and reporters not really taking advantage to ask questions of the Finnish President, what was he to do?  Kekkonen suddenly spied one of his foreign ministry press attaches who was a really stunning Finnish blonde. He beckoned her over. He told her, “Stand there and turn around slowly.” Highly embarrassed and red-faced, and with Kekkonen staring intently, she did as she was told and after she had completed the 360 Kekkonen turned to the media beaming, “Ah, yes, Finnish woman!”  But then Ford arrived and that was the end of that.

The media was then ushered off the icebreaker and Kekkonen gave Ford the grand tour. Leaving the ship, and almost down the gangplank Kekkonen motioned to all the journalists below and asked Ford why they were there. Ford was heard to reply, “Oh, they’re waiting for me to trip down this gangplank and end up head-first.” Big laugh by both – it was absolutely true of course -- but it must be said Ford made it down the plank without any stumble. But he showed that part of his character of how he could joke about himself. The navy, by the way, never did buy the Finnish icebreakers.

Ford flew from Helsinki to Romania – guess who got assigned to that departure? Again I was the only one out there, accompanied by the secret service, but I always recall a conversation I had with one of those agents. I said they must really worry when the President travels to a communist country, as Romania was then, and the agent responded, “Oh, no, we love it when he goes to the communist countries. We know he is going to be absolutely safe there and no one will get even close to him. It’s when he comes to places like Helsinki and the public has real access that our job gets really tough.” There were two assassination attempts made on Ford during his 28-month Presidency.

One last story I had to cover on Ford’s departure. He left late so it turned out that Air Force One deviated from its flight plan and took a short cut over some Swedish territory that they should not have been flying over. Not that the Swedes have that many military secrets, but that flyover upset them enough that they actually scrambled a couple of jets. They later played down the incident as much as they could, but the military remained convinced the flyover was no accident and cameras were snapping away on Air Force 1.

What a great scoop that might have made – “Swedish jet fighters Shoot Down Air Force 1.”

ftm Follow Up & Comments