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In November Brzezinski asked the President's brother to invite a Washington-based Libyan diplomat to the White House. The purpose of the meeting was to persuade the Libyans to press Khomeini on the release of the hostages. "It was a reasonable thing to do in very trying circumstances," Brzezinski maintains, adding that soon after—and perhaps because of—Billy's intercessions, Libyan Strongman Muammar Gaddafi did indeed send the desired message to Khomeini, although Gaddafi's appeal had no discernible impact on the crisis.
But the question remains: Why was it necessary for either the President's brother or his National Security Adviser to act as intermediary with a member of the Libyan embassy in Washington? Such contacts are routinely handled by the State Department. This case, like that of Brzezinski's dealings with Zahedi, left an inescapable impression that he was attempting an end run around his supposed colleagues in Foggy Bottom and the Foreign Service. As a result, Brzezinski was more mistrusted and even despised than ever at the State Department and among career diplomats—hardly a desirable attitude toward the official who is supposed to coordinate the various agencies of U.S. foreign policy.
Brzezinski also faces questions from the Senate panel on why, in late March, he warned Billy that one of his Libyan business deals—an attempt on behalf of the Charter Oil Co. to obtain additional quotas of Libyan crude—could be embarrassing to the Administration. Brzezinski knew about the deal because he had received from CIA Director Stansfield Turner a top-secret report based on intelligence sources who would be extremely vulnerable if their identities were revealed, or even guessed.
Once again Brzezinski has no regrets. "I would have been in a reprehensible position if I had sat on it," he says of the report. Besides, "no classified information was conveyed to Billy. He knew what he was doing." Justice Department officials, looking into the possibility that Brzezinski may have violated the nation's espionage laws, say privately they think there is little chance he will face criminal charges. But they question his judgment.
So do many others, on many other issues. A man of dazzling intellectual virtuosity and erudition, Brzezinski has sometimes seemed to be badly served by his brilliance. He is so deft at formulating fancy theories, and he so likes to hear himself spin them out, that he has tended to pay less attention than he should to making those theories work in practice—and, indeed, to figuring out whether they can work. Brzezinski was a principal author of the Carter human rights campaign, which has survived only in drastically modified, and more modest, form after its collision with Realpolitik in South Korea, Iran and the U.S.S.R. Early in the Administration he promoted the idea that the U.S. should relegate Soviet-American relations to a less central position in the seamless web of international affairs. Trouble was, the Kremlin refused to accept the demotion.