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Transition 1968/1969 Pres-Elect Period Nov '68 – Jan '69 [4 of 10]: President & Staff
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Transition 1968/1969 Pres-Elect Period Nov '68 – Jan '69 [4 of 10]: President & Staff
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White House Staff Member and Office Files (Nixon Administration)
Alexander P. Butterfield's Files
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RICHARD NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY
DOCUMENT CONTROL SHEET
ITEM REMOVED FROM THIS FOLDER
A RESTRICTED DOCUMENT OR CASE FILE HAS BEEN REMOVED
FROM THIS FILE FOLDER. FOR A DESCRIPTION OF THE ITEM
REMOVED AND THE REASON FOR ITS REMOVAL, CONSULT
DOCUMENT ENTRY NUMBER
3
ON THE DOCUMENT
WITHDRAWAL RECORD IN THE FRONT OF THIS FILE FOLDER.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum
To: PRESIDENT-ELECT RICHARD M. NIXON
Date: November 23, 1968
From: Theodore H. White
RE: Press Policy
I
Bob Finch has suggested that I send you a few quick
reflections on White House information policy. Thus I make
bold to do so, out of some ten years in and out of the
White House Press offices.
Every President must have a policy on information. And
whatever he does, no matter how innocent, he will be accused
of "manipulating the press." All Presidents have been so
accused, and so will you; the tradition runs back to the
attacks on George Washington and further. Julius Caesar
was also so accused when, as elected leader, he published the
world's first newspaper the "Res Diurna", to rouse the voting
masses against a reactionary Senate.
Of all governmental information systems, my experience
over the years is that ours works best. Nonetheless it is
now obsolete and should be reorganized. No Chief of State
elsewhere operates with so slim a staff at his disposal to
explain his policies. In most of the western capitals I
have covered, there is an established Ministry of Information,
headed by a Minister of Cabinet Rank; indeed, in our own
government, the Pentagon disposes of hundreds of information
officers; State Department has scores. But the President of
the United States operates with a corporal's guard.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum
2
The problem in reorganizing White House press services
are two:
a) definition of functions
b) sheer physical space
Let me speak to the first of these problems; I am not
familiar enough with the housekeeping of the White House
area to be able to speak competently of the second.
II
The title of White House Press Secretary can mean all
or nothing. It can become as meaningless as it became in the
last two years of the Johnson administration or as meaningful
as it was under Hagerty, Early, and Salinger. But whatever
the title of your top man in information you must, yourself,
accept him as a man of cabinet rank; he must enjoy your full
confidence; he must have access to all meetings of the cabinet,
to the National Security Council in times of crisis, to your
meetings with the Congressional leadership. Whether or not
he is taciturn or talkative, your information man must always
know what is going on at the top level of government. This is
the first requirement. For the purposes of this memo I shall
call him your Secretary of Information.
The second requirement, I believe, is that he have across-
the-board policy authority over all other information officers,
the Assistant Secretaries of Public Affairs in Defence, State,
CVOA, USIA
Justice, etc. This should not be day-to-day supervision; it
should be an authority clearly to be invoked and best invoked
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum
as senior partner of the community of information. In times of
crisis, for example, as when the Regular Army must intervene in
a race riot, the information services of the Defence Department
must take policy guidance from the President's Secretary of
Information, who, in turn, takes guidance before from the President.
The President's personal briefings his press conferences, to
give another example, should usually be preceded by an earlier
meeting at which the Secretary of Information calls the
Assistant Secretaries of State, Defence, Justice, etc. to inform
him, or join with him in informing the President, of the
questions and problems which the media are pressing on their
attention.
The Secreatry of Information should not be an easily
available figure on a day-to-day basis. He should, like the
Secretaries of Defence, State and Treasury, be available only
on a now-and-then basis to senior members of press and media for
discussions of major problems; he should be able then freely to
discuss policy, the President's thinking, the President's view
of the present and future.
He must have an awareness of history-- i.e,, he must know
what the difference is between a technical release of information
and a statement of policy. One of the sad footnotes of the
Vietnam war was that the announcement of the entry of our
troops into combat was made by Robert McCloskey, a career
civil servant and news officer in the State Department-- not
by the Assistant Secretary or Secretary of State, or the
President himself. When the nation goes to war and faces a
crisis, the Secretary of Information must decide how the news
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum
is broken. He should be your chief personal adviser on when
and how you speak to the nation. The Secretary of Information
must be a truthful man; he cannot afford ever to lie or deceive;
and the actual operation of the White House news mechanisms
should fall, under his supervision, to others.
III
Of the White House news mechanisms, I have the following
to say:
There should be a chief White House news executive-- call
him Press Spokesman or what you will. And he must be much
better and more generously staffed. Under him come the
following functions, some already recognized, some which should
be created and staffed from egg:
#The spokesman should, himself, give the twice daily
briefings to the regular White House press corps-- his range
of announcements being whatever you and your Secretary of
Information decide: appointments, minor or major; movements;
visits; guest lists, etc. His direct clientele are the news
agencies, the news magazines, the daily papers.
#He should have a deputy of almost equal rank solely
concerned with television, and the servicing of television both
in its daily mechanical needs and its long-range projects.
#There is need of another deputy, preferably a
French-speaking American with past service abroad, who can
entertain and answer questions of the foreign press. It is
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library,andMuseum
the foreign press that reaches the huge constituency of our
allies abroad, hitherto ignored, and our enemies. Most foreign
newsmen in the United States are underpaid, aspiring youngsters,
lonely Africans or Asians, or old hacks grateful for the
smallest kindness. But some of them are men of great dignity;
and the senior correspondents of the French, British and Russian
press are men of vital importance. Such men will work out
their own relations with your White House press spokesman and
with your Secretary of Information. And they should not be
restrained from doing SO,
There is need of some former magazine editor on
this White House staff to service the needs of the hundreds
of magazine writers and free lancers who see the White House
as a storehouse of all sorts of feature material and who have
all, hitherto, been so completely ignored by the White House
press services. As newspapers decline and magazines across
the country take their place, the importance of such free
lance reporters grows. They have particular needs in the
servicing of "soft news" or "slow news" which the White House
press spokesman in his crush of daily pressures cannot
possibly meet.
#There is, also, a future need, not necessarily
immediate, for servicing the scholarly and book journalism
of the country. Politics have become a participant sport in
this country; historians and political scientists are now as
common as county sheriffs; and all of them, however ignorant,
write books or articles on politics and the White House. They
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum
reach specialized but critical audiences. There should be a
man to receive them, study their needs, then pass them on
either to the press spokesman, the Secretary of Information or
lesser sources, depending on whether their mission seems a
major, or a frivolous one.
#Lastly, the matter of the press aide to the First
Lady. I know nothing about covering First Ladies, or what the
girl-correspondents want; I can barely distinguish black faille
from black lace, an oyster fork from a fish fork. (I had never
heard the word "crewel" until you held up Julie's medallion on
TV.) The press aide to the First Lady is, I hope, someone with
whom she feels personally comfortable; but she should also be
responsible to the press spokesman at the same time, and coordinate.
IV
There are then, the matters of housekeeping and access.
#The present press quarters of the White House are
mean, cramped and impossible to work in; although Johnson has
done more to improve them than any other President in my
memory, they are still inadequate. The press has had direct
access to the White House going back far beyond the days of
Abraham Lincoln; by now, their own numbers create their own
plague.
I do not know how to solve the problem of space for the
press in the White House; there is no such press area at the
Kremlin, or at Ten Downing Street, or at the Hotel Matignon.
Our system has just grown up this way; perhaps the East Wing
could be used as the base of the press and the press spokesman;
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum
or perhaps such good working conditions could be made available
at the Executive Office Building that the press would prefer to
work there. Obviously, you must export this housekeeping problem
to your Secretary of Information, of Press Spokesman, who should
assemble the heads of the various White House press associations
and chiefs of the TV nets to work out a solution.
#Access: Every President since time out of mind
has been plagued by leaks from the White House. Some have
tried to cut off all access to the White House staff except
for appointments arranged by the press secretary. This has
never worked. If there is a discipline to be placed over the
White House staff, you must do that internally; no press
secretary can or should attempt to impose it on the press. If
you cannot trust your men to know when to hold their tongue
and when to talk, when to give an appointment and when to
deny one they should be fired. But an attempt to close leaks
by placing the internal White House staff off limits to all
press will backfire.
/There is finally your attitude to the entire
mechanism. The Secretary of Information, or Press Spokesman,
can reach every major news agency and television net by
instantaneous hookup for your message. If you touch the web
of communications it will not only quiver in response, it will
occa@sionally over-react. Some Presidents have abused their
position at the center of web-- either by summoning the press
too quickly to attention, or by jack-rabbitting it out of bed
(2nd denouncing it.
in the middle of the night, or by alternately kowtowing to iti
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum
I believe that the tradition of the Nixon campaign of 1968 was
an excellent one; we were well-treated; we were respected; none
of us have grievances.
The communication mechanism consists of human beings,
professionals trying to do a job. They do not have to be
cultivated, nor does a President have to lift his shirt to show
them his belly-scars. They need only a fair, even opportunity
to get at the news that comes from the White House.
Press conferences are a necessity; by now, the President's
year-end conversations with the three big TV nets have become
a tradition and a useful one; occasional Presidential interviews
with major members of the American press, and rare ones with
leaders of the foreign press, can be invaluable to you in
making your thoughts known. Any opportunity to circumvent the
working press by dealing over their heads with their publishers
and executives, to their exclusion, will ultimately backfire.
The support of publishers and executives in the media can be
immensely valuable and need not be excluded. But the daily
stream of reporting from the working press and mediamen is what
sets the climate of public opinion. The President needs not
their affection, but their respect which, I think, he has won
this year and which, I hope, he retains.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum