SECRET
Note for the Record
MR. ANTHONY GREY
Meeting with Mr. Long, General Manager of Reuters
Mr. Gerald Long came to see me privately on 28 February
about Mr. Grey. I handed him the letter from the Secretary
of State, for which he expressed his gratitude in appropriate
terms.
2.
I recounted in confidence our recent efforts to strike
a bargain with the Chinese, giving him a fair amount of
detail about the course of the covert exchanges but omitting
names. I did not conceal that we were pessimistic about the
outcome, but told him that I thought it would be premature to
conclude for some three weeks or so that our offer had
actually been rejected.
Mr. Long commented that all this
seemed very sensible.
3. He went on to say that he fully understood our difficulties
in Hong Kong. But as General Manager of Reuters his respon-
sibilities were to Mr. Grey
-
though as a private citizen he
would not wish to see trouble in Hong Kong. He thought that
Mr. Grey had been asked to suffer quite enough; and, if the
release of the eleven news workers in Hong Kong was,
believed, the Chinese price, he considered that we should pay
it. But it was certainly not his intention that Reuters
declare this publicly. To do so would in effect be to make
Reuters an instrument of Chinese policy.
He had the support
of his Board of Directors in this; and he had explained it
to the Reuters Chapel of the National Union of Journalists.
/4.
CIVED IN
Y No. 51
PARKLIN
SECRET
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