Moscow, December 25, 1991

One positive consequence of the fall of the USSR, however, is that there will no longer be any Soviet institutions to bring charges against Gorbachev for violating the Soviet constitution.

Other members of Gorbachev’s staff have different concerns about retribution from the new crowd preparing to take over the Kremlin. Pavel Palazchenko worries about a comment he made to Ted Koppel on camera. He told the ABC interviewer that while he might not characterize the seizure of power by Yeltsin today as a coup d’etat, it is nevertheless “something that’s being done by democratically elected people in a less than democratic and fair way.” When it was broadcast on ABC television, a friend said, “only half-jokingly and perhaps quite seriously,” that he should perhaps ask the Americans for some kind of protection from Yeltsin.

As the last Soviet president ruminates about his past, a convoy of six white vans rented from Intercar is racing towards the Kremlin accompanied by the sirens and flashing lights of a police escort.

Having finished their televised interview with Boris Yeltsin in the Russian White House, the CNN crew has to get across town and set up transmission equipment in a very short time to broadcast Gorbachev’s last public act as president of the collapsing superpower and to complete the second leg of their exclusive coverage of the two leaders.

Senior CNN producer Charlie Caudill recalled a chaotic scene after the Yeltsin interview. “We break down all the equipment, load it into six vans, in thirty minutes. This is rush hour. We have to give ‘donations’ to the police and get a full red light screaming escort through the streets of Moscow. Tom and I are in the lead car. People probably think we are Yeltsin and Gorbachev.”⁸

The interviewers, Steve Hurst and Claire Shipman, find themselves hustled into a police car that races along at the back of the convoy, its emergency lights flashing in the dark streets. “I never in my life thought that an American like me would be in a motorcade like that,” said Shipman, who has often seen official cars speeding down the “Zil lane” in the center of the highway that would “kill anyone who got in the way.”

The CNN cavalcade comes to a halt at the Borovitsky Gate of the Kremlin. Yeltsin’s new guards are unsure of their instructions and several times check by telephone with superior officers as the crew wait impatiently to be admitted. Eventually an official car appears to lead the line of vans into the Kremlin, past the Armory and the Great Kremlin Palace and across Kremlin Square to the Senate Building.

It is 5:35 p.m. before the army of technicians gets to the third-floor corridor. There they are directed to Room Number 4, where Gorbachev will make his address. This is a mock presidential office, furnished to look like the real office sixty feet away along the corridor, and used only for television interviews. It is sometimes called the “green room,” as its walls are sheathed in greenish oyster damask above burr-maple paneling.

CNN has an agreement with Gosteleradio that they will join forces to transmit the resignation address together live. The unique arrangement resulted from a meeting Tom Johnson and Stu Loory had with Gorbachev a few days back, when they presented him with the same CNN book on the coup that they had given Yeltsin. They proposed to the Soviet president that they would broadcast his resignation address live around the world and interview him immediately afterwards. Gorbachev had listened politely and asked Johnson about CNN’s global reach. He jokingly inquired if the network’s “empire is doing well now—it’s not being dismantled, is it?” “At the present time it is not, Mr. President,” replied Johnson. “Well, it means you have structured your empire quite well,” laughed Gorbachev, “but be sure to give enough power to your republics!” Knowing that their rivals from ABC had got a head start, they pleaded that while ABC’s American audience was much bigger, their audience levels spike incredibly for major news events. Yegor Yakovlev later called the CNN executives to say that Gorbachev had agreed to the live broadcast of his final address and an interview immediately afterwards.

Caudill is horrified to find Russian TV technicians have brought in three big cameras, “like in the 1950s,” to transmit the pictures to both the Russian and worldwide audiences. He needs higher quality pictures. “No way are we going to use these,” he says. His technicians set up a state-of-the-art camera to route the pictures to their truck, and from there to Russian TV and on to a CNN feed, “an incredibly difficult operation.” Caudill has the extra pressure of having the company’s president breathing down his neck. Johnson says to him as they work frantically, “Caudill, you know this is your ass!”