Television: Veni Vidi Video

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East German cameramen, looking for good propaganda shots of warlike Westerners, got a lensful last week. Hurrying up the Friedrichstrasse, they photographed a mob of armed U.S. soldiers, some wearing bulletproof vests, swarming on the East-West line. The importance of the American mission was emphasized by the presence of two colonels, one light colonel, a major, a captain, two lieutenants, several Jeep-mounted machine guns, a Jeep-mounted 106-mm. recoilless rifle. Could this be the real thing? Not exactly. In the middle of the armed mob was old Veni Vidi Video himself—Jack Paar.

With him was shard-voiced Comedienne Peggy Cass, taping a TV show with U.S. officers and soldiers as guests. Maintaining his most serious facial expression —his Marlon Brandenburg look—Paar stole sidewise glances across the border into curtainsville, wondering whether the

Reds would liven up the show with one of their water-throwing vehicles (they did not). Paar had decided earlier that ''because the Berlin crisis warrants sober consideration, we intend to treat it just that way." Back home on Capitol Hill. Congressmen snorted "shocking" and ''intolerable"; the Pentagon split all five sides and promptly removed one Berlin-based officer, admonished a second. Quipped Paar, "All I can say is it's going to get a hell of a rating for that show."