Endogame; Inside Story of Salt II C.3

Endgame is the inside story of the climactic phase of the strategic arms limitation talks, the suspenseful and secrecy-shrouded negotiations that produced the most important and certainly the most controversial diplo matic agreement of our era. Strobe Talbott, diplomatic correspondent of Time magazine, takes us behind the headlines of the past two and a half years to explain what the SALT II is, how it came about, what is at stake in this extraordinary attempt by the world's super powers to limit their arsenals for Armageddon.

Talbott concentrates on the fast-paced, very human story of how the leaders of two nations tried to reconcile their political responsibilities with an effort to attain international security and peace. Here is Jimmy Carter's idealistic but disastrous opening move on the SALT chessboard shortly after his inauguration; Cyrus (the Gray) Vance's attempts to counteract the influence of the combative Zbigniew Brzezinski; the enigmatic De fense Secretary and supreme technocrat Harold Brown maneuvering around dovish chief negotiator Paul Warnke and hawkish, stubborn Stansfield Turner of the CIA; and the initially mistrusted veteran Soviet envoy Anatoly Dobrynin who (with Vance's subtle help) ultimately established himself as the negotiations' indis pensable Russian. The major and minor figures in this complex and compelling drama play out their roles in scenes normally closed to public viewing-in the un derground "Situation Room" of the White House, the heavily guarded, lead-lined, bug-proof "vault" deep inside the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, in Vance's hide away study atop the State Department in Foggy Bottom and at the negotiating tables in the Kremlin and by the shores of Lake Geneva.

The breakdowns and the breakthroughs, the at tempts at intimidation and reconciliation, corridor gossip and formal negotiations are all here in this remarkable synthesis of journalism and history.