高级英语听力 lesson 14

Lesson Fourteen

   Section One: News in Brief

   Tapescript

   1. State Department spokesman Bernard Kalb resigned today be-

   cause of the Reagan Administration's alleged 1 disinformation cam-

   paign against Libya.  The Washington Post reported last week that

   the administration planted false information about Libya in an effort

   to destabilize the government of Muammar Ouddafi.  Kalb todav did

   not confirm or deny that such a campaign tool,-- place, but he said re-

   ports about it had damaged the credibility of the US.  The State De-

   partment would not comment on Kalb's resignation.

   2. The State Department todav criticized the Nicaraguan govern-

   ment for allegedly refusing to grant US officials access to Eugene

   Hasenfus.  He's the survivor 2 of Sunday's plane crash inside

   Nicaragua.  State Department spokesman Charles Redmond.  'Our

   representative was not received by the Nicaraguan government.  And

   we view this with the utmost seriousness.  The rendering 3 of consular 4

   services is an essential part of the function of an embassy.  The

   Sandinista government has once again taken action to make that

   function difficult and has raised the question of whether, indeed, a

   US embassy can function normally within Nicaragua.  We frankly 5

   cannot accept the delay in granting consular access since the

   Sandinista government has apparently 6 gone to some lengths to pa-

   rade Mr. Hasenfus before the press, and considering the fact that a

   government spokesman stated clearly last night on American televi-

   sion that access would be granted.' Meanwhile President Reagan

   today denied that the downed plane allegedly carrying arms to

   Contra rebels was operating-under official US orders.  He also ac-

  knowledged that the government has been aware that private

  American groups and citizens have been helping 7 the anti-govern-

 ment forces in Nicaragua.

Section Two: News in Detail

 Tapescript

      Last week the Washington Post reported that top-level offi-

 cials had approved a plan to generate real and illusionary events to

 make Libya's Colonel Muammar Quddafi think the United States

 might once again attack.  Bernard Kalb's resignation is the first in

 protest of that policy.  A similar resignation occurred at the White

 House in 1983 when a deputy quit to protest misleading statements

 given to the press shortly before the American invasion of Grenada.

 NPR's Bill Busenberg has more on today's announcement.

      Bernard Kalb had been a veteran diplomatic correspondent for

 CBS and NBC before being picked two years ago by Secretary of

 State George Shultz to be the Department's chief spokesman, offi-

 cially an Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs.  His brother, Marvin

 Kalb, is still with NBC.  Today, Bernard Kalb surprised his former

  colleagues in the news media by,quitting over the issue of the admin-

  istration's disinformation program.  Kalb would not confirm that

  there was such a program, but he said he faced a choice of remaining

  silent or registering his dissent 8.  And even though the issue appeared

  to be fading from the news, Kalb grappled with it privately 9 and de-

  cided he had to act.

       'The controversy 10 may vaiiish, but when vou are sitting alone, it

  does not go away.  And so I've taken the step of stepping down.'

       'rhe State Department has reportedly been involved in the

  disinformation issue, but Kalb said his guidelines have always been

  not to fie or mislead the press, and he has not done so.  Kalb went out

  of his way today to praise Secretary Shultz, a man, he said, of such

  overwhelming integrity that he allows other people to have their own

  integrity.

       'In taking this action, I want to emphasize that I am not dis-

  scriting from Secretary Shultz, a man of credibility, rather I am dis-

  senting from the reported disinformation program.'

       Kalb's comments suggested Shultz perhaps did not go along

  with the disinformation program, but in public, the Secretary of

  State has defended the administration's policies against Libya, say-

  ing in New York last week: 'I don't have any problems with the little

  psychological warfare 11 against Quddafi." He also quoted Winston

  Churchill as saying, 'In time of war truth i, --o precious, it must@ be

  attended by a bodyguard 12 of lies.' Shultz was asked about the

  disinformation effort last Sunday on ABC.

       'I don't lie.  I've never taken part in any meeting in which it was

  proposed that we go out and lie to the news media for some effect.

  And if somebody did that, he was doing it against policy.  Now hav-

  ing said that, one of the results of our action against Libya, from the

  intelligence we've received, was quite a period of disorientation on

  the part of Quddafi.  Sol to the extent we can keep Quddafj off bal-

  ance by one means or another, including the possibility that we

  might make another attack, I think that's good.'

      In a sometimes emotional session with reporters today, Bernard

  Kalb said that neither he personally nor the nation as a whole can

  stand any policy of disinformation.

       '@ I'm concerned about the impact of any such program on the

  credibility of the United States.  Faith, faith in the word of America.,

  is the pulse beat of our democracy.  Anything that liurts America's

  credibility hurts America.  And then on a much. r,.iuch, much lower

  level, there's the' question of my own credibility, both as a spokes-

  man and a journalist, a spokesman for a couple of years, a journalist

  for more years than I want to remember.  In fact, I sometimes pri-

  vately thought of myself as a journalist masquerading as a spokes-

  man.  In any case, I do not want my own credibility to be caught up,

  to be subsumed in this controversy."

       The timing 14 of Kalb's action today is likely to add to the contro-

  versy over government deception 15.  And it comes at an awkward mo-

  ment for the Reagan Administration, just days before an imp 13 rtant

  pre-summit meeting with the Soviets 16 in Iceland and in the wake of

  official denials about a downed guerrilla resupply plane in

  Nicaragua.  One American was captured and others were killed in

  that action, but officials have said the flight was in no way connected

  with the US government.  Kalb said his resignation today had noth-

  ing to do with any other incident.  I'm Bill Busenberg in Washington.

Section Three: Special Report

 Tapescript

     The history of Jews in Poland is not always thoroughly 17 told in

 that country.  And tlte story of the World War 11 freedom fighters in

 the Jewish ghetto 18 of Warsaw is one of the saddest chapters.  The

 ;Nazis took hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths, and seven

 thousand more died defending the area when the Gdrmans invaded.

 Dr. Merrick Adelman is one of the very few who survived.  A book

 called Shielding the Flame is his story.  It was written in Poland ten

 years ago by Hannah Kroll.  It is now available in this country in

 English.  Yohannes Toshimska is one of the translators.  She says that

 Merrick Adelman's view of the ghetto uprising is regarded as

 unconventional.

     "He doesn't use the language, or even he doesn't have the atti-

 tude people usually have to the holocaust 19 and to the ghetto

 uprisings.  One thing he's consistently talking about is the fac@t that

 people thought was the arms in the ghetto.  It wasn"t heroic; it was

 easier than to die going to the train cars.  And that people who parti-

 cipated in the ghetto uprising were actually, in a sense, lucky.  They

 had arms; they could do something about what was going on while

 those hundreds of thousands who were led to the train cars were

  equally heroic, but their death was much more difficult.'

       "Dr.  Adelman was stationed ... he was working in a clinic; he

  was not a doctor then; but he was working in a clinic that was nearby

  the train station where the Jews were taken to go off to the concen-

  tration camps.'

       'Yes.  He had an amazing position.  He was standing 20 at the gate

  to the Hmflat Platz, which was the place from where the Jews were

  taken into the train cars.  He was a member of the underground in

  the ghetto, and he was choosing the people who were needed by the

  underground.  They were perhaps one or two in many thousands of

  them led every day to the cars.  And he would pick these people up,

  and then young girls who were students at the nurses' school would

  disabilitate these people.  He describes in the book, it's a very power-

  ful scene, how these girls, who were wearing beautiful clean white

  uniforms of nurse students, would take two pieces of wood and with

  these two pieces of wood would break legs of the people who were

  supposed to be saved for the Jewish underground.  But the Germans,

  to the last moment, wanted to maintain the fiction that people who

  were taken to the trains were being taken for work.  And obviously a

  person with a broken leg couldn't work.  So breaking a leg would

  temporarily save that person from being taken into gas."

       'So he saw in all, I believe he says four hundred thousand peo-

  ple, go aboard the train.'

       "'Yes.  He stood there from the very beginning of the extermina-

  tion action to the end.'

       'With regard to what you were saying earlier, there's a dialogue

  that develops in the book between an American professor who

  comes to visit the doctor many years later, and is critical of what

  happened.  He says of the Jews, 'You were going like sheep to your

  deaths.' The professor had been in World War 11; he'd landed on a

  French beach, and he said that 'Men should run, men should shoot.

  You were going like sheep.' And Adelman explains this, and let me

quote him.  'It is a horrendous 21 thing when one is going so quietly to

 one's death.  It is infinitely 22 more difficult than to go out shooting.  Af-

 ter all, it is much easier to die firing.  For us, it was much easier to die

 than it was for someone who first boarded a train car, then rode the

 train, then dug a hole, then undressed naked.' That's difficult to lin-

 derstand, but then Hannah Kroll says that she understands it be-

 cause it's easier for people who are watching this to understand,

 when the people are dying shooting.'

      ' It is something probably easier to comprehend because the

 kind of death most of the people from the ghetto encountered is just

 beyond comprehension.'

      'Explain the context of the title for Shielding the Flame; it comes

 up a bit later on.  It has to do with the reason that Dr. Adelman be-

 comes a physician, a cardilogist, after the War,     is that he wants this

 opportunity to deal with people who are in a life-or-death

 situation.'

      'He says at some point that what he was doing at Hmflat Platz

 and what he was doing later on as a doctor is like to shield the flame

 from God who wants to blow this little tiny flame and kill the

 person, that what he was doing during the War and after the War

 was, in a way, doing God's work or doing something against God,

 even if the God existed.'

      "Do you think this book is oing to be accessible to the Western

 reader reading it in English?  It is a bit free in form and in style.  It

 lacks a chronology; certain details are not there or are pre-supposed

 that one knows.'

      'This book is a little bit like a conversation of two people who

 aren't that much aware of the fact that someone else is listening to it.

 And they don't care about this other person who might be listening

 to it.  They don't help this person to follow it.  I had a hard time even

 when I read it for the first time in Polish.  However, for me, it has

 magnetic power and, despite the confusion, I always wanted to go

back and to go on.'

     Yahannes Tashimska, the translator, along with Lawrence

Weshler, of Shiel(iing the Flaiiie by flatiiiah Kroll.