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"In your country, children are killed in a church for the sole reason that their color is different," K. snapped back. Before anyone could make the obvious retort—that murder at the Wall, unlike murder in Birmingham, is an act of the government—Khrushchev was off on something else.
A New Way to Cheat. Loosening up as it progressed, the interview closed in an exchange of banter, with Khrushchev maintaining that capitalists controlled the U.S. Government. "Who was McNamara before he became Secretary of Defense?" asked Nikita. "He was president of Ford Motor," answered G. Keith Funston, president of the New York Stock Exchange. "He's one out of ten in the Cabinet. Why not talk about the others?"
"What was the occupation of your former commander in Germany?" demanded K.
"General Clay is now with Lehman Brothers," said Avco Board Chairman Kendrick R. Wilson Jr. "He's an army officer who made good," added Funston. Khrushchev raised a pious eyebrow: "You have 190 million people. Why don't they all make good? Certainly they have not trespassed against God."
To Wilson's assertion that the American people, through the stock market, own much of U.S. business, Khrushchev laughed. "Capitalists are very astute to have thought that up," he said. "It's a new way to cheat people." He went on to describe the "parasitic" state of capitalism, where the coupon clipper "can live a life of luxury, drinking, carousing, or changing wives," then eased off. "I'm your host here," he concluded, "so please don't put me in the position of going into each individual here and asking where he directs his activities and so forth, how many wives he has. One of your fellow capitalists—Rockefeller—is losing in prestige because of that."
A Sense of Frustration. Next day, the jovial mood changed. At the traditional Red Square parade celebrating the anniversary of the Revolution, the Russians displayed a squadron of finned, 50-ft.-long rockets, which they insisted were anti-missile missiles (the birds looked more like beefed-up versions of the Soviet SA-2 antiaircraft missile, and Western observers thought that at most they could be the equivalent of the U.S Army's Nike Zeus). At the Kremlin reception later, Khrushchev's toasts were so heartily anti-Western that U.S. Ambassador Foy Kohler finally asked: "Where is the Spirit of Moscow? I haven't heard any toasts I could drink to."