At Issue; 53; President and the News

The following program is from NET, the National Educational Television Network. The National Educational Television Network presents, at Issue, the President and the News. The White House in Washington, here news and information about the President and his administration originate. From here news is carried by the various media to every corner of the world. What is printed and often not printed is of vital importance. The White House has traditionally welcomed reporters. There are over 1400 accredited White House correspondents, both American and foreign. Their job is to get the news, but the news flow is ultimately controlled by the President. This sets up a natural conflict between the President and the press corps.

When reporters feel that the flow is down to a trickle, the conflict can become bitter. In the past few months, getting the news according to many Washington correspondents has been increasingly difficult. The newsmen are writing about it themselves. Alan Oton in the Wall Street Journal. Douglas Kiker, the New York Herald Tribune. James Deacon, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, writing in the New Republic. Roscoe Drummond, nationally syndicated columnist. Newsweek Magazine's press section. Marcus Childs, also nationally syndicated columnist in the New York Post. Peter Lizzagore, Chicago Daily News. Charles Moore, White House correspondent, New York Times. We'll hear directly from some of these journalists later in this program. To find out what news problems exist inside the White House, NET reporter Andrew Stern talked with former press secretary Pierre Salinger in Los Angeles.

Mr. Salinger, the press conference, the presidential press conference, has come in under a great deal of criticism in these last few days. How do you feel about this Washington custom and habit, or is it really a habit? First, let me say to you that the fact that there's a argument about the presidential press conference is not anything new. I think if you'll go back through the history of our president since they have been giving press conferences, you will find that these arguments have risen with every president. And the reason is because there's a basic issue at the heart of it, and that is the argument of who the press conference belongs to, whether the press conference belongs to the press or to the president. It is my view that the presidential press conference is exactly what it is called. It is the president's press conference. It is his prerogative to call it or not to call it. It is his decision of what kind of a press conference he should hold. And therefore, while the press on occasion may desire a different type of format, or a greater frequency of press conferences, it is basically the decision of the president

and how he's going to communicate to the American people. And those who argue that the presidential press conference is some kind of a substitute for the British parliamentary inquiry system, do not go to the heart of our own division of powers between the executive and the legislative judicial. The press conference simply is not set up as a substitute for the question period in the House of Commons. And so it is, as I say, the president's press conference, and I think we will have arguments over the years, but I think each president will try to meet the problem in the way that he thinks is best adapted to his style, his ability, and his desire to communicate. Well, now Mr. Johnson seems to have done well in many different kinds of press conference styles, but yet some reporters in Washington feel that they really miss the days in the State Department where there were regularly scheduled press conferences. Well, let me take that in two parts if I can. First of all, I played some part in the decision of President Johnson to hold a diversified

kind of press conferences. He's holding the day. The informal press conference in his office, the more formal, televised press conference. But the interesting thing is that some of the very reporters today who are complaining about the lack of a large, state department auditorium press conference for the president are the same ones who were attacking us in 1961 for holding that kind of a press conference. And by saying at that time that, by holding that kind of a press conference, we had removed the personal relationship between the president and the press, which had been, they felt it been an effector in, for example, the Eisenhower and Truman press conferences. And by moving to the State Department, we had made the president, we had removed them from the press. There was no more feeling of closeness between the president and the press. And now that we have press conferences, which are in a very close relationship, the argument is reversed. So again, I think it goes to what the president desires to do. What about the argument, which is being made that some reporters can't get to the press conferences because they're called for at the last minute? Well, first, let me say that there are today something like 1,400 accredited White House

correspondence. And I recall, I think, that the best press conference that we had in attendance with plenty of notice was 400. There are 800 that didn't care to come in the first place. The argument that they make is that the specialists, the so-called specialist and defense specialists in State Department matters without proper notice does not get to the press conference. That in a way, in my opinion, takes away from the reputation and the ability of those who cover the White House on a day-to-day basis. These are highly competent reporters. These are people who are in on everything that is going on at the White House on a day-to-day basis, and therefore well-equated with the issues that face the president, are well able to ask the kind of questions. Now, I can understand the disappointment of, say, one man, bureau people, who are unable on short notice to get there. That is a legitimate feeling, and I think that that is being accommodated from time to time. But again, I think it gets back to the president's desires. Now, what about this perhaps almost natural problem with the White House trying to withhold some information and reporters working very hard to get this information?

How did this work in the Kennedy administration? Well, let me say first of all that, and I was a newsman for 13 years before I went to the White House's press secretary. The view from the inside of the White House is far different from outside the White House. And the press secretary and the president and the people who work in the White House have coming across their deaths every day, thousands and thousands of words of classified information, a kind of information that gives them a total perspective on a situation. The press is always anxious to get the most possible. And the president has the responsibility, particularly in case of national security, to protect the national interests. This inevitably brings a conflict between the president and the press, because the president feeling as he does for the national interest and seeing it from his vantage point, which is a different vantage point from the press, approaches the problem in a different way, and therefore decides that certain information should not be made public. This conflict will always exist.

This conflict always has existed. In fact, I remember when I took over the office of press secretary and I went down to Mr. Haggardy for the first time. It was a remarkably effective press secretary, worked with President Eisenhower. I asked him what the most difficult problem that I would have as press secretary would be. And he said, well, the toughest thing you're going to have to do is to separate in your mind those thousands of words you read every day which are classified from the information which is public knowledge in a rapid fire question and answer period at your two-day press conferences that you hold as press secretary. And I found that to be true. And in fact, I had one incident that occurred to me, which demonstrated how true that was where a piece of information which was not supposed to be made public, was made public simply because of a misunderstanding of the nature of that information. I'm referring to the incident in Paris in 1961 when I was with President Kennedy when he was with General De Gaulle. And I got a call from the K-2RSA where President Kennedy was staying and when another member

of the White House staff said, Secretary Rusk won't be here tomorrow. And I said, well, why? And he said, well, General Trujillo has been assassinated. Well, I said, it's very interesting, but he said it a very matter-of-fact way. He said in such a way that I thought it was public knowledge. And so I went downstairs about an hour later on the way to a formal dinner that General De Gaulle was giving, stopped in the press room, and the press, about a hundred newspaper men there. They asked a few confronted questions, and finally, somebody said, when is Secretary Rusk arriving? And I said, well, he won't be here tomorrow. And they said, why? Well, I said the situation of the Dominican Republic. He said, what situation of the Dominican Republic? Well, you know, the flag went up at that point, but I was going so fast I couldn't stop. I said the assassination of General Trujillo. About a hundred reporters tried to knock me down, getting the telephones, and I discovered that I had just announced the assassination of General Trujillo to the world. And of course, the terrible part about it, of course, the president was somewhat disturbed about it. You can realize it. I went over to the K-2R-C and he said, you know, the worst part about it is that General

Trujillo may not be dead. I said, Mr. President, either he is or I am. Can you give me some other examples where you have been directly involved in a new story or in the shading of a interpretation of a new story? Well, when you say the shading of a new story, certainly the Cuban Missile Crisis is a prime example of where security factors compelled us to adopt a certain policy with regard to the press. Now, that policy has come under some attack both at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and since and historical writings about it, and yet I maintain that the policy which was established at that time by the executive committee of the National Security Council and whose direction I worked during that crisis. That policy, in my opinion, was directly responsible in great measure for the success of our blockade against Cuba. And the decision that was made was that when the missiles were discovered by the U-2 planes over Cuba, that the United States government clamped a total secrecy ban on all information

about this until the top level officials of the United States government had had an opportunity to decide how they would respond to this threat from the Soviet Union. It took five days to do that. During that time, we had the tightest security the Washington has ever seen in my opinion. But I think the fact that we were able to catch the Russians flat-footed with our blockade and not as in many cases before allowed them to seize the initiatives from us in a very difficult situation, I think that that contributed to the success of the policy. Now, there are those who argue that that is not as permissible, but I think the part of the problem that we have to examine is that we run the greatest open society in the world. It is very easy to find out what's going on in the United States. We are competing economically, socially, politically, and sometimes militarily against the greatest close societies in the world, societies which can conduct all kinds of operations and seek it without anybody knowing anything about them.

So we are at a disadvantage initially, and when we attempt to compete with them and why we do not want to create a close society in the United States, we do not want to adopt their system. At the same time, I think there are occasions when the national security of the United States compels us to withhold information of this kind. Well, what about reporters who have special contacts within the government or who are so esteem in Washington that they have, through the years, developed these personal contacts and get special backgrounders? Do you feel that this is good or bad? Well, let's take again the Cuban Missile Crisis after the announcement by President Kennedy that we had imposed the blockade. When it was arranged for key policy-making officials of the White House, the State Department and the Defense Department to be available to reporters to background them on the situation, to bring them up the date, in my view, any enterprising reporter could get that information if he just went to those departments and sought out these people. Now, some reporters, you have to say, are more enterprising than others.

Some reporters have spent such a long time in the field that they have developed better contacts than others. And so the stories are not always equal, but I don't think that is basically the fault of the government. But now, whatever news comes out of the White House is always involved in the formation of public opinion in this country. So it doesn't become a very crucial matter as to how this news is released and exactly what the wording of that news is. Well, I think, in some occasions, the wording of an announcement is very important, particularly when you're involved in foreign policy, when you're involved in some kind of a relationship with other countries where you have a delicate balance with some other country and something that you're trying to accomplish. I can give you an example of a situation which came up where just the use of a single word influenced a situation. President Kennedy, as you know, met with Chairman Khrushchev and Vienna in 1961, while following

the meeting, President Kennedy, Chairman Khrushchev, Mr. Halarmoff, who was the press secretary of Chairman Khrushchev, and myself, met briefly in the U.S. Embassy and decided on the wording of one paragraph, which was to tell the press what had gone out at this meeting. It was the desire of the principles of this be statement. We then went, Mr. Halarmoff and I then went to hold a press conference to give out this statement. And incidentally, 1200 reporters at this press conference. And in the question and answer period, which followed, a question was asked to Mr. Halarmoff in which he used a word which was not in this particular paragraph that we decided on. It was a word which had interpreted in the way he intended to have it interpreted, would have given the impression to the world that the meeting was going very harmoniously and the things were being settled between President Kennedy and Chairman Khrushchev. And I was asked to questions whether I subscribed to the use of that word. And I said that I preferred to stay with the wording which we had read originally.

That was a signal, at least with the American correspondence and many of the others present, that things were not as rosy and harmonious as Mr. Halarmoff would have then believed. Now that is a kind, but I think that is a thing which was based on the facts and an attempt with being made there to perhaps put a hue on the meeting which was not present. Now the criticism has been made that sometimes the White House tries to influence news and the reporting of news. For instance, David Halberstam, who was the New York Times correspondent in Vietnam for several years, recently wrote about the fact that President Kennedy at one time had lunch with Mr. Salzburg or the publisher of the Times and suggested to him that perhaps Mr. Halberstam might be reassigned elsewhere. Well I think I have had many conflicts with Mr. Halberstam and I still harbor a deep feeling about his activities in Vietnam at the time that he was there. And they are based on the feeling that a reporter is there to report the news and not to create

it. Mr. Halberstam's mission in Vietnam was not to organize activities to bring an end to the ZM government, but rather to report the news that was taking place. Now Mr. Halberstam in some areas I think has a legitimate complaint. I think there were times when we did not handle the Vietnamese news as well as we should have. I think we had it to do over at that time. We would have done it differently, but at the same time I think that Mr. Halberstam was playing the role of a creator of the news rather than one of a reporter of the news. And I think that there is a line that has to be drawn in the newspaper profession. I think or any other communication profession. If you want to be a person to provoke action, then I think you should get out of the news bear business and seek some other occupation. But isn't it very difficult if you are among a handful of reporters and a particular story is not being reported that the story begins to take on other aspects and other characteristics? Well I think there are occasions when certainly when the lack of news or the lack of ability

to get news, drives reporters to the point where in some way or other they have to get around this by either creating it or finding it from sources who are not totally accurate. You have in any situation, for example, on policy, let's take Washington, for instance. Let's take a given policy which is now being decided on. Well maybe there are ten people involved in the creation of this policy. Each one has a piece of it, but they don't really know until they have the final assemblage what the other nine people are working on. Now it's very easy to get a piece of the whole action as you would say and come up with a completely erroneous idea of what the government intends to do, which is sometimes a case. So I think that probably in the long run a situation like we had in Vietnam, the best policy, and particularly when we were dealing with highly classified information and highly classified operations which were being conducted in Vietnam, the best course of action probably used to call in the reporters, tell them what you're doing in the way of classified material and just say this is information which we consider vital in the security of the United

States and we ask you to protect it. Now was this done for instance? Was it done with the New York Times bureau chief? Well it was done during some of the period in Vietnam and not done in other periods in Vietnam. I see. Do you think that it would have been better than to have done it? That is my judgment now, looking back consistently. What would you say in your years as a press secretary we've talked about probably one of the greatest triumphs? What would you say was the greatest failure in terms of press relations? Well I'd have to talk about something that was a great failure in every respect and that was the Bay of Pigs. I think the Bay of Pigs was a disaster as an invasion and certainly in the press aspects of the Bay of Pigs were a disaster. You would have to say that that was probably the worst thing we had. Do you feel that everybody learned a lesson about the Bay of Pigs? Well I think everybody did learn a lesson and a matter of fact I think that the success and the effectiveness of President Kennedy at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis can be directly traced to the experience that he had at the Bay of Pigs. Now every president comes in for a certain amount of criticism from the press.

How did President Kennedy react to criticism from the press? Well I think presidents are not immune to unhappiness over criticism and there's no president that I know and I've read the history of relations between presidents of press all the way back to George Washington. In fact I remember there was a great hall of blue and President Kennedy canceled his description to the New York Harrel Tribune. The fact of the matter is that George Washington canceled his description to a newspaper in Philadelphia so that this has been going on for some time. The fact that a person is president I think should not have to, should not take him out of the category of people who have a right to respond to criticism and President Kennedy did on occasion pick up a phone, call a reporter who we thought had written in an accurate story and tell them so. I don't think the president has the obligation to sit back and read information which is totally an accurate and not try to communicate the accuracy of the information to the person involved.

And so President Kennedy availed himself of that opportunity on some occasions. Do you think this helped their hindered his relationship with reporters? I think as actually if you look back and assess the whole era of President Kennedy I think his relation to the press will probably as good as any recent president. We had our flurries, we had arguments with the press over matters, we had arguments during the Cuban Missile Crisis but I think that the press generally respected President Kennedy got along with him and enjoyed their relationship with him. What would you say was the most important thing that you had to know about your job? Well I think the most important thing that at least evolved to me in the job was the absolute necessity of the relationship between the President and the press secretary. In fact the press secretary must be acquainted with what's going on at the White House. He has no position to handle his job really unless he is fully briefed on the matters that are going there.

There are matters of course in any government which are such a high security consideration that there's no need to tell anybody about them except maybe the President and a handful of people. But I think in the everyday business of the government there has to be that communication in order for the press secretary to adequately communicate to the press what's going on. Now one of the things that was instituted during the Kennedy administration was the background together with other people within the White House which sometimes did not go directly through your office. Could you tell us a little bit about this? Well there had been the policy in the past that contact with other members of the White House staff should go through the press secretary's office and he would arrange the appointments and so on. I decided that the best policy was for the press to go directly to the policy maker in the White House involved and talk to him without any need of my being involved in the situation. And we found that that worked very well. For example on foreign policy matters reporters could go and see Mr. Bundy and talk to him about it.

I think that the big point about all the discussion of management in the news and all that I think the big and important point is do reporters have access on any basis whatever to those in the government who make policy and I think it was insignificant that Scottie Restonou has been in Washington for an awful long time said early in 1963 as I recall that there had never been the accessibility of information on a background basis from policy makers in his lifetime or his experience and there was during the Kennedy administration. Now did this accessibility of news sometimes run contrary to White House policy? Well you have when you have that kind of a policy you're occasionally going to have a story come out which you particularly didn't particularly want to have come out at that time. I think you have to be able to put up with that in order to have that kind of freedom and that kind of open policy. You may be angered about it but I think if you start clamping down immediately on everybody that's involved in talking to the press then I think that then the people become a little gunshive talking to the press and that drives up the avenues of information.

Well if you could speculate for a moment the situation with the press in Washington right now is somewhat highly emotionally charged. Do you have any ideas how this is likely to resolve itself? I would just advise patience because I can recall days when it was emotionally charged in 1961 and 1962 and it'll be emotionally charged in 1970 and in 1975 and in 1980 and I think everybody has patience it'll work itself out. In Washington across the street from the White House four newsmen talk with moderator Julian Barber. Seated here with me is a panel of four veteran and highly respected Washington correspondents Ben Bagdickian of the Saturday evening post Douglas Kiker of the New York Herald Tribune Phil Potter of the Baltimore Sun and Alan Upton of the Wall Street Journal. Gentlemen I think we could best begin our discussion by permitting me to read back a paragraph to you Ben Bagdickian of an article you wrote recently for the Columbia Journalism Review.

You said the heavyweight champion has finally ended the waltz stepped back and poked the press in the chops. One year and six days after he entered the White House Lyndon Johnson ended his honeymoon with the press and began acting like a normal president of the United States. He criticized reporters he hinted they had endangered the national welfare and he politely told them to go to hell. My question is this if this is correct why? Well I think it's correct because Lyndon Johnson had just finished and the press had just finished a unique year beginning with the assassination and Johnson becoming president. And the months following that the whole country was in a wounded state and I think that the press was concerned with the problem of establishing the new president and continuity as was the president.

Following that there was the election and there are arbitrary rules of equal time which restrained some of the usual instincts of the press and that ended the first year and shortly after the election with Lyndon Johnson president on his own right. He had this press conference in which quite notably for the first time he expressed irritation with the press something that hadn't appeared in so public away before. So I think that it was he reached a normal state of conflict which every president will have with the press. Plus the fact now I think that he has a very difficult problem in Vietnam and this gets involved in problems of secrecy and the relations with the press. Well actually there was a one earlier period when we had a little separation there it was just a few months after he became president but then after that there was another period of goodwill especially over the campaign months and then after the campaign there was a second

period of a divorcement I think. I don't think the relationship of Johnson with the press has changed particularly since he became president. I can recall way back in the spring of last year before the election addressing a group in at the White House when he in a jocular way said the president reigns for four years and the journalist forever and ever. He was irritated with that time was something that had been written or said about him. I think it was a question of his pulling the ears of the beagles at that time or might have been the story about his fast travel on the Texas on the roads around the Texas ranch but there have been periods of when he's been irritated long before this press conference so which you spoke just as every president occasionally is irritated they're all very

sensitive to what critics say about him or what the press says about them. Well I think that's true that he has during the first year had periods of momentary peak but I think what we're going through now is a much more deep-seated and persistent and continuing thing and I think the reasons Ben gave are substantially correct I think a number of papers who ordinarily might be Republican and a number of columnists and editorial writers found the Republican alternative during the past campaign not very acceptable and so they became Democrats for the time and then after the election with the alternative removed they rushed to reassert their independence whether it was subconscious or conscious and so maybe they took a few extra pokes at him and in addition during that first year he was substantially moving along a program that had already been shaped out by Mr. Kennedy

he was not coming through with many innovations he did not have many appointments of his own to make now he is putting forward his own program has a number of his own appointments to fill and this is a man who does not like advance notice of his plans and it is now an important matter to him that these plans not be disclosed and we have the whole new source of irritation of the press scooping the president. This also it is a matter of two forces living together with the executive branch of the government and the press. They are married to a true extent I think that when you say the press is mad at Johnson Johnson press that in a way we tend to think of the whole Washington press co I do not know how many thousands of people are here but actually this is a palace thing it is really the White House people to my mind people who cover the White House regularly and the president and I think right now if you took a vote in the White House lobby everybody would say well we have had enough of this let us just all be quiet about it for a while

and I suspect that the president has had more than enough of it. But the larger point is that I think two things contributed to this after the election the first thing is that I think the people who cover the White House regularly became very disillusioned because of the president's obvious intent not to be responsive to questions that we ask him in these informal press conferences time and time again to my knowledge at least in my opinion this happened. The second thing I think is the fact that the president's background is we found to be generally unproductive and generally pretty much the administration line without any real candid opinion given. Even misleading. Even well yes even misleading exactly on certain occasions and this sort of built up plus the fact that after the election he suddenly became very hard to get to and this all built up into a big pressurized force which led to this.

Well yes but I think really that London Johnson is a political craftsman and a political pro-Paraxalance and he is accustomed to dealing with the press and has been for many years in Washington why assuming this is true that the deteriorate the extent of the deterioration is what you gentlemen say it is some of you. Why has he permitted this to happen? Well yes I don't recognize the change as you say the press is a power in itself known to be in this country a hard diversity of powers has made it such it's sometimes called the fourth estate meaning the fourth branch of government and here's a smart politician who is very sensitive to alternative powers rival powers any good president is I can recall that president Kennedy three months after he was in an office said I'm reading more and enjoying it less. I made a similar proposition was President Johnson he said I'm reading less and enjoying

it more I've stopped reading my friends because I'm sensitive to what they say. But Phil hasn't having a couple of things happen which have made this different from the normal kind of conflict between the president and the press and when I talk about deterioration I don't really think it's terribly serious that the press is annoyed because this is almost irrelevant and I don't think that it's deteriorated in the sense that there is a national peril because of it but I think that there is something unusual about the president state because a number of things have come together the sort of thing I mentioned before plus the fact that well Lyndon Johnson is a political craftsman he'd been used on the hill to to dealing with manageable forces and he was a craftsman because he did manage them verse so well after he he was elected it seems to me that that he wanted to manage all of these forces in usual way on the hill he used to get angry at reporters but it wasn't a matter of national

import and after the election it seems to me that simply was less information available about evolving policy for example a new legislative program it was not comparable to what was available under Kennedy or under Eisenhower after the election almost nobody in the White House would talk about what kind of program was being considered to an extraordinary degree and I think this is one of the elements it makes for the attention now I think so it's a product it seems to me of his congressional background every president wants to be the guy who announces all the good news and let somebody else announce the bad news and Johnson is this to an extent far beyond anybody else but that's kind of the rules of the game but coming out of his hill background is is this a passion for secrecy because he developed the theory there that the talkers and the people who who threw their cards on the table

did not accomplish anything and the people who got things done were the people who kept everything close to their vest kept their ability to maneuver to compromise kept flexible and as you said Ben it was important but it was not the sum total of government when he was doing this Senate majority leader but now he is the president and he is he's carrying the same policy down and it seems to me this does have ramifications far beyond the peak of the press and the irritation into the public interest and into Johnson's own good I think there's another thing too I think that there is a far more personal relationship that exists between Lyndon Johnson and the press than is it ever really perhaps existed over such a wide area of the Washington Preschool Mr. Johnson always has been a man who wants intense personal relations with the people he works around when you write something that's extremely critical of him he takes it as a personal insult almost when you write something that's extremely flattering about him he takes it as a personal compliment I must say that

he is an exciting president I never covered another president but he's exciting to me because he reads the papers unlike president Eisenhower who didn't read the papers he does read you and so he knows what you say and he's exciting he's exciting to cover for this reason one other thing that I think should be said about the White House at complimentary and that is the fact that as long as I've been there and I've been there since the day he became president and as many critical things as I've written the staff as a whole has never been a frozen staff you can write a very critical story of the president and they greet you cordial the next morning they're always courteous I've never seen the president the morning after a story like this appeared but certainly the members of his personal staff this way but that's one element of it is it's an extremely personal relationship between you the reporter and the president he reads you when he wakes up in the morning and he gets mad at you all right he reads you to wake up in the morning and he and he very pleased about what you read General let me ask you this question and I don't intend it as a needling question but so far we've been talking about how the president reacts to you reporters white house reporters and how you react to him and his accessibility or

lack of it but let's talk about the public interest for a moment now we realize that is professional newsmen you are at the White House and in Washington to obtain news and get all the news you can to earn a living but how much of the public interest is at stake and how much does it matter that the public does not get the facts that you gentlemen think it should have well it matters a great deal I think all of us are aware that in creating the freedom of the press in this country the founding fathers did so precisely because they felt that the people had to have adequate information if they were going to make good judgments but the president must preserve his prerogative to that's that's assimilate only what he deems well that's quite right he has to judge what is in the national interest for him to pervade disseminate and I think some of this perhaps the very reason for this meeting we're having here tonight is because he has felt essential in the matter of Vietnam

to maintain a high degree of flexibility in response to unknown provocations and that this may be the reason why he's reluctant to make a statement that presses more and more demanding about our course and our policy and our position out there he doesn't want to get frozen into positions isn't a normal gentleman for reporters to always complain about the way news is disseminated as George Reed he said recently if a reporter is satisfied he isn't doing his job then how do you respond to that well I think all of us feel that same way is that you're never satisfied because you're never know enough about the things you're trying to find out but and I think this dissatisfaction is something quite apart from personal peak or it can be I suppose no president really believes he's doing the wrong thing and as a matter of fact they usually try to do the right thing and I suppose every president finds it incomprehensible that all right-minded Americans wouldn't agree with him and wouldn't try to help him and as a matter of fact the press frequently makes

his job much harder because they are not willing to take his word on what should and should not be known they don't necessarily put the same construction on events that he does although his knowledge is superior but this is the way it has to be because it see the every president has been irritated for this basic reason he's got responsibility for policy but on the other hand the press can't take this same responsibility because it then becomes an instrument of government and it seems to me that this it's defensible not simply because it's it's an opposition but as an away it's the innocent eyes the public eye and while the press undoubtedly has its own selfish motives for pushing for information it also has a defensible public motive because it's an exaggeration of public feelings it is an exaggeration but I think in the case of Vietnam for example that many people are confused of what we're doing there and so that the press is pushing on this now sometimes there's the emphasis isn't isn't representative it may be the press may be distorted in the amount of attention it gives to things but I don't see any help for this

but this conflict also goes far beyond the area of Vietnam and national security as you said earlier it goes into the question of the legislative policy it goes into the question of appointments and these are areas where the public's interest is substantial if the president is considering three different people for an appointment to the federal power commission which passes on utility bills and oil and gas matters it might be desirable both for the public and for the president for the public to know who these people are and to have some idea of their orientation before a nomination is finally submitted and everybody gets frozen in if we have an education bill in which very directly the church state controversy is posed it seems to me it's better for the public in the long run for this to come out at an early stage have an adequate debate then to have some little gimmicky approach that is tried that it slipped through before anybody really knows

what's happening isn't this part of the basic conflict that it really in terms of getting its programs through it isn't better for the president to have this out because the president wants his policy completed and handled before there's a lot of controversy I was going to Julian's question of is there a public interest you know I think they're clearly is yes but Alan this question of appointments you know very well that no president has ever wanted the press to know who he was considering for one reason is if he's considering three men and if he offers it to one and he turns it down he doesn't want number two to know it was offered to number one first because that would diminish him and you know that no president no president has ever let out who he was considering for a public appointment I know that no president wants this out but I've never heard of any previous president and this is the fourth president I've covered who has killed an appointment because it did leak out in his events and I know for a fact that the president the president Johnson has done that president if a man is a good man for the

job he is still a good man for the job with the New York Times or the New York girl Tribune or the Wall Street Journal happens to print his name before the president's ready to release it. I think a perfect example of the way the president would like to operate with the press is the example of the appointment recent appointment of Marvin Watson's presidential assistant the president told us quite early on a background basis after some speculative stories have been written he said yes I intend to bring watching to the White House as soon as he gets a few personal affairs straight out with his company and so forth and he subsequently has I often think what he would like to do is to bring the press into its complete into his complete confidence tell us quite a bit on the condition that we would write what he says to write when he says to write it now this quite obviously can't be and I think that that he simply must realize this this whole business of premature leaks I think has gone really a bit far and this whole thing I remember and Phil you remember too we were both covering the same story there was a story published an

anticipation of a speech that the president was to make before the Associated Press in New York saying that he planned to ask Russia to join him in a cutback of fishable material so it's an extremely accurate story it came out on Saturday the president called a press conference he said there's been a report that I planned to do this and he said told us this was entirely false and Monday he came out and asked for well though it isn't that the old gimmick trial balloon here in Washington which you get from many agents I don't know those to be the facts but I even assume that they are you said I knew this but I didn't know this conceivable to me that in the course of delicate negotiations one does not want his prior information and advance of the signed agreement but that could destroy an agreement destroy an negotiation I think there's always a matter of national security involved in these things but the big point is is where does national security cross with personal political security and that's a great question and there's a question we have

to and we don't know judge for ourselves many times but it seems to me that there has that he he the president has been loose sometimes in his language and sometimes using his credibility unwisely because in the case the Marvin Watson appointment at that November 28 press conference which he unloaded on the press he had a six or seven sarcastic remarks to make and one of them was the fact that they were they were reporting that those speculation that Watson would come to Washington and this was based on a banquet in Texas attended by half a dozen poolers from the White House staff in which a number of speakers including John Connelly said Watson is about to leave us and broad public hints and on the basis of this there was speculation and the president then at his November 28 conference ridiculed this kind of speculation well Watson is today in the White House right down there and it was it was it seems to me a legitimate assumption by the press that this was a possibility and this was what was printed well I think it's

unwise for the president to say that this is ridiculous for you to to say when he knows this is in the works and I think the next time he complains about perhaps a much more serious a problem for him in in release of information that it he will decrease his credibility. I think it guessed it sometimes Ben I think his complaints are ill taken sometimes I think they may be well taken he was also distressed because someone reported that he was disenchanted with J. Edgar Hoover and was looking around for a replacement is there any evidence at all that that he really did do this I don't think so. Well on the other hand there was a plain conflict if not a conflict at difference J. Edgar Hoover told 18 women reporters that president Johnson told me that I could remain director of the FBI as long as he is president. He stated that publicly at the Rose Garden. Well except when they asked George really this he said I'm not going to comment on it. Well that's one of the problems of course is the fact that the White House press office virtually gives out no information at all. I think that you run into two problems you this town just now as far as I can see really either one or two things happen people won't talk at all

are they'll tell you very guardedly after you found out something from another source please don't print this it might change our plans. The president I think has come pretty close closer than any of us ever imagined he could to actually producing a leak proof administration there aren't many leaks these days. Well he's going to run into two dangers it seems to me. The first danger is that people loyal to him aren't going to leak and that leaves it open to the dissident to the dissatisfied to the fired to the people who've been rejected and the second thing is in the question of appointments is it quite obviously if you want to destroy your enemy if you know that the president won't appoint a man if it's been leaked to advance you simply say that Joe Dokes is going to be appointed a ambassador to exville. I think the point is that for the president there are some very very serious problems for his own welfare. I think there's the one that Ben mentioned of his destroying his own credibility you get a wolf wolf effect if he in a series of backgrounds he talks about how the budget is going to go up and up and up and

then he comes in with a budget that doesn't go up. There's two years in a row. It does us two years in a row. People are going to stop believing it but they're going to stop believing other things that he wants them to believe too and the problem of appointments and the problem of morale around town. I think this feeling of secrecy, this feeling of many people that they are not participating in the process that everything is being very closely held is turning out to be very bad for morale and is compounding his problems of attracting new talent from the outside. And the long-range Douglas Cater who is now on his stuff in his book on the fourth branch of government refers to the press as performing the very valuable function of serving as a conduit of information to the rest of the administration not just to the public at large but to the bureaucracy itself. We're not performing that function anymore because we don't know and as a result the bureaucracy doesn't know. And those lonely acres that the president talks about behind that big

iron fence as a result of this could restrict and restrict and restrict because if the president will come to strangeness to his own administration if you get a situation where you've got a let's say a second level sub deputy secretary saying to a reporter will you know our situation here and you really got an isolated White House and you've got a president who perhaps loses control of his own executive branch that's very dangerous. Well Phil it's been said publicly that you are perhaps closer to President Johnson than many of your colleagues at the White House and it's also been charged that Mr. Johnson makes use of pet reporters giving them the straight news and relegating other information to George Reedy who is restrained from giving answers to questions of important public concern. Is that a valid charge? Well obviously I don't think so. I've known him for 15 years and and Phil a part of maybe some of his favorites. I'm sorry. Nobody's pet.

I didn't mean that we've used the cut report I directed it Phil. We've had an acquaintance of 15 years. I certainly don't regard myself as a pet. I've probably written as critically about him as any person that any newsman of my acquaintance said what I think and continue to do so. The soundlinger pointed out that it is the president's privilege and indeed his duty to use the press as he sees fit in order to communicate. You gentlemen would not and by use I don't mean manage but to use the press in order to communicate to the extent of his desire to communicate. I don't think Mr. Sallinger put it quite that way. I think what he did say was that every president was going to develop his own format for meeting the press. That's not in keeping with his own personality. None of us would deny him that right. I don't think but what we say is an effect that we also have our duties and our obligations and where the rub is coming is that Mr. Johnson we feel would deny us our rights and our obligations and our

duties. Good gracious you've got a situation where day after day the White House press office two daily briefings Mr. Reedy gives them and he's asked two dozen questions and you get two dozen in effect no comments. You get absolutely no information. You have a presidential press conference a dozen questions asked and you get virtually no information. The White House staff is afraid to open its mouth really. They absolutely will tell you nothing and this is provided through the administration so that nobody will tell you anything. So you've got to close downtown for new so that the only person that can speak is the president and the president's not speaking and that really is a situation just now. I'm not just talking about Vietnam. I'm talking about the most mundane of things. He simply is an old-fashioned Southern politician. I'm a Southern myself and he runs. He's running the president's in the executive branch from under that Texas hat. And as it's been said before tonight he's always one who has played things pretty close to his best for the simple reason that he feels that if he makes his aims and his and his programs

known in advance somebody will find a way to thwart them. He was this way in the Congress and he will be this way in the president. And the other thing is of course there's a natural conflict between the press and the president or the press in the Congress. We're out to probe and pry and ferret out every secret that we can properly so it's our job and we're doing it in the interest of the public. And politicians, good politicians obviously are not going to want us to probe and pry into their negotiations before they've achieved their objective. Well it isn't, well I agree with you and isn't a reflection of this. The controversy over whether or not the president ought to hold the big formal pre-announced press conferences. Now Pierre Salinger has said quite correctly that some of the people complaining now that there aren't such conferences used to complain three years ago that these conferences were meaningless. And I think in retrospect I think that they had a value quite apart from the role the press played in them and the relationship with the president

and the press. At first of all if the president declined to answer he declined really under the television cameras where everybody could see. And secondly that is second. The first thing I think it was a great instrument of public education on how policy is developed and how government is working with the president of the United States as the chief actor as he ought to be. And this is what's missing now I think not so much that the big conference will allow more people to go there are arguments for it but again it's the president prerogative to pick a format that's natural for him. But I think there is a need people do want it for example to hear what the president would say if someone asked him why are we in South Vietnam. And I wonder too if it might not have the effect of the president anticipating this and therefore crystallizing policy maybe a little bit more sharply than he might otherwise. I quite agree with you I think you ought to go regularly scheduled press conference. I think what a lot of people don't realize is how difficult it is

to get news out of the White House. If you cover the congress as I did at one time there are always senators on the committee who oppose each other or within a senator's office there are people that you can talk to. In the Pentagon there are opposing views but the White House that you've got a staff which quite properly is directed towards the personal service and personal loyalty. One man and furthermore they're barricaded behind doors so that to get to them even to talk to them you have to go through the telephone to the secretary send a message finally get them back to you on the telephone occasionally get them out the lunch they're very busy men so that it's very easy for a president in this White House to close the curtain if he so does that. I think this is true the difference between the downtown and the Hill is great but in previous administrations it seemed to me one difference was that you could go out into the bureaucracy you could if you couldn't get it at the White House you could go to the Department of Health Education in Welfare or you could go to the Justice Department or the State Department and there would be people there

who A had a pretty good idea of where the administration was heading and B were willing to tell you about it because they thought it was the public's right to know. Now they're afraid to tell and they don't know any how because they haven't heard. It seems to me there are a remarkable number of officials at a well a sub cabinet level anyway who really don't know and I don't see how you can really develop an effective policy in program unless people understand it and it's evolution and know enough about it. They will know of course when it's completed but part of the part of the effectiveness of these people is to know it from its roots up. Well this is one reason why I think that he ought to give regularity scheduled press conferences. It takes place one or two a month because this would be a medium through which everybody in the government as well as the general public and the press would learn what's on his mind. I'd like very much to see him. Remind you to. George Reedy will tell you quite rudely that a White House reporter does not have

difficulty in getting to the president and that a legitimate request from a newsman to see the president more often than not is honored. Well the thing is is that to give an example a concrete a concrete example we're told at the White House that the president in response to the $6 ton galvanized sheet steel rays that the steel makers put on is having the Council of Economic Advisors study this. They've been studying it since the first of the year and it promises to be a historically long detailed report. The point being that nobody really thinks that a serious study is being made. We're also told that that the president is reorganizing the White House. He's reorganizing not the executive branch but the White House the executive office buildings in a revolutionary way. Nobody believes that either was a matter of fact it's so. He really is doing this a fantastic study. The point being that there's a danger in not being believed when something is really quite true and accurate and very important. In any case even though even though you can get to

him and he's quite accessible and he's had innumerable impromptu press conferences in his office but in these and many times he's not on the record or he can be on the record for part of the time part of its for background part of its author record. I don't think this is a substitute of valid substitute for the on the record called in advance news conference and I don't say that he ought to have them every week but I think they we ought to have a great many more than we've had. I don't think we've had very many. Gentlemen in closing let me ask you this question. I assume that most of us most Americans would agree that Mr. Johnson probably will be with us for eight years. What do you anticipate the press and the president's relationship will be in future years and what would you do if tomorrow you could change the present situation then? I think inevitably the relations will become more workable because the president has too much of a stake in

keep in using the press to reach the public and the public has too much of a stake in finding out what the president's thinking about and what he plans to do and if I had one thing I think would improve that situation would be the reinstitution of a periodic announced press conference on the record. I think that things have bound to loosen up because I don't think the president can really hold the executive branch to his to his breast. I would hope most of all that that a feeling of mutual respect and tolerance could grow up and understanding could grow up between the press and the press and the president in the next few years. Phil? I want access to all the news that I can get and I would like to see him hold great many more announced in advance on the record press conferences. I think I'm probably the most pessimistic. I think they'll be ups and downs but I think his habits are too deeply ingrained for basic change and I think perhaps the brightest

spot will be a gradual loosening up of the staff as they get a little more secure in their relationship with him. Well, gentlemen, thank you very much for a most stimulating and provocative discussion. Then, back Dickeon of the Saturday evening post, Douglas Kiker of the New York Herald Tribune, Phil Potter of the Baltimore Sun, and Alan Utton of the Wall Street Journal. This is MET, the National Educational Television Network.