by Tom Brokaw
STEPPING INTO THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS as an outsider meant pedaling hard to establish credibility. Most days it was a matter of attending the White House briefing conducted by the amiable Gerald Warren, who had replaced Ron Ziegler as the daily briefer when Ziegler was initially dismissive of what he called “a third-rate burglary.” From the beginning, Ziegler had been an awkward fit as press secretary, an advertising man as the president’s connection to the White House press corps, mostly veteran newspapermen who had spent a lifetime in the trenches of hard-core journalism. Ziegler remained at the president’s side through resignation and the retreat to San Clemente, unaware, so far as I know, that Haldeman originally thought he should be replaced. By the end he had been press secretary, director of communications, assistant to the president, and presidential counselor.
As Ziegler’s successor for daily contacts with the press, Warren was a pipe-smoking, martini-drinking veteran of The San Diego Union, the flagship newspaper of the conservative Copley chain. As press secretary, he reflected the Republican party line in a straightforward manner and had a better feel for the interaction between the press and the White House.
At the time, networks were not allowed to videotape the daily brief except on occasions authorized by the press office. Official Washington was still a newspaper town. (At the Pentagon, the print clique was so strong that television cameras were not even allowed in the press room.) So Dan Rather, Tom Jarriel of ABC, and I would take notes with our print colleagues and transform them into broadcast style, which is more conversational.
We were rarely on the air during the day except for a “stop the presses” kind of story, which meant we had time to work the phones or compare notes with noncompetitive colleagues. When finished with reporting for NBC Nightly News, I’d retreat to the NBC booth shared with NBC’s peerless radio correspondent Russ Ward and make calls, looking for fresh material for the next morning’s Today show.
All of that changed when NBC became the first network broadcaster to add a cable outlet, with its voracious appetite for new material twenty-four/seven. Now our White House correspondents are in and out of the briefing room all day and evening, updating the narrative for MSNBC and NBC Nightly News, and they can do all of this on the run because of the advent of iPhones and email.
What has not changed is the limited or nonexistent window for lunch, especially for broadcasters. During Watergate, we were as captive to the unexpected as reporters are during the Trump administration. It was not unusual for White House correspondents to develop a kind of buddy system for journalistic and social reasons.
Shortly after arriving in the press room, a fellow midwesterner, Fred Zimmerman of The Wall Street Journal, a native of Kansas City, introduced himself. We were unalike in many ways. He was a chess master, a print journalist, droll, a cigarette guy. Chess and tobacco were not on my menu.
He was a print guy. I was a broadcaster, but we generally had the same take on a story line the Nixon team was pushing on any given day, and that led to an informal review of each other’s work. Do you think I have this right? What do you hear from the Hill on this latest move?
And about once a month we would try for a quick lunch at the Old Ebbitt Grill, a burger joint two blocks from the White House. It was a popular hangout for the young staffers from the nearby Treasury Department.
One day the room went suddenly dead quiet and all eyes turned to the front door. It was John Ehrlichman making an awkward entrance with his son, who appeared to be about ten years old. Here was a man who, a year earlier, had been one of the country’s most powerful figures as Nixon’s chief of domestic affairs, a White House power player of the first rank. Now he was nervously looking for a table, trying to be a good dad in a room full of people who knew he was going to jail. It was for me an indelible moment, a lesson in the fleeting nature of power abused. It also offered a split image: although Ehrlichman had been instrumental in organizing a raid on the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, at that moment he was just a bewildered father trying to please his son with a hamburger lunch.
Our occasional Fred and Tom lunches would always turn to the question we struggled with daily as the president or his staff tried out a new strategy.
“Fred, this makes no sense,” I’d point out.
Fred would cock an eyebrow and say, “Until you remember he’s guilty.”
Oh, yeah. That.
The John Dean testimony, Haldeman and Ehrlichman’s felonious accounts of presidential conversations, and Charles Colson’s “take no prisoners” style left little doubt for us that the President was involved.
But that judgment stayed between us. I didn’t go on the air at night and deliver the day’s White House line, then add, “Remember, he’s guilty.” Fred didn’t insert that opinion into his Wall Street Journal dispatches. We did not feel forced, as contemporary Washington journalists may, to react to every “omigod” message from the vast universe of social media—factual, mythical, malicious, or fanciful. In contrast to President Trump, President Nixon was seldom seen and rarely heard.
By late 1973, Nixon’s White House staff had been reduced to a handful of loyalists. They included chief of staff Al Haig, on leave from the Army; Ron Ziegler, communications director and, increasingly, a political adviser; Fred Buzhardt, a modest South Carolinian who had the difficult assignment of special White House counsel; Steve Bull, the president’s personal aide; Pat Buchanan, a longtime Nixon loyalist and a chief speechwriter; Diane Sawyer, who later became a major star on 60 Minutes for CBS and World News Tonight for ABC; Frank Gannon, a combination speechwriter and monitor of the popular culture; and Bryce Harlow, who’d worked in the Eisenhower administration and had come out of the private sector to help the president as an adviser and conduit to the press.
For correspondents, the women in the White House press office and the staff of the presidential travel department were the prized ground forces. They were unfailingly cheerful and good-humored as they distributed schedules, typed White House press releases, and set up shop for the press in hotels and on charter planes—often on short notice, as when the president decided to go to, say, Key Biscayne for personal reasons or Paris for the funeral of French president Georges Pompidou.
We were altogether a movable feast, a mix of the president of the United States, his principal advisers, crack security teams, military aides, White House clerical staff, and print and broadcast journalists, along with their photographers and technicians. It sometimes felt like a separate military unit on the move.
Vice President Spiro Agnew railed against “damned lies” at a press conference proclaiming his innocence. Weeks later, he would resign in disgrace.
IN 1973, THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS was dominated by white males from the networks, big newspapers, and politically oriented magazines, such as Time, Newsweek, and The New Republic. The indomitable Helen Thomas of UPI, Frances Lewine of the Associated Press, and Sarah McClendon, a World War II veteran and syndicated journalist, were the only three woman regulars on the White House beat.
As the scandal widened, President Nixon was unable to shake the pursuit of investigators, and newspapers from around the world began shipping their best reporters to Washington. That was how I came to know Simon Winchester from The Guardian, a gifted and prolific nonfiction author and a cheerful and erudite companion. The Australians brought their tabloid-journalism style and new drinking games to the end of a long day, and pity the American who thought he could stay to the finish. At closing time they liked to raise a glass and say, “Here’s to one for the road,” followed by “Here’s to one for the ditch across the road,” followed by “Here’s to the field across the road and the ditch.” The BBC’s correspondent was a courtly Englishman who, no matter what was going on, left the press room and walked five blocks to a tearoom to have his afternoon cuppa.
Peter Lisagor of the venerable Chicago Daily News, p
robably the best all-around reporter and raconteur and a beloved member of the Washington press corps, was the class favorite. He had a genial manner, a shrewd fix on whatever policy and politics were in play at the time, an endless supply of Washington lore. Lisagor was a man for all seasons as a Washington correspondent. He was a regular guest on public affairs broadcasts, including Agronsky & Company, a panel program on PBS featuring newspaper correspondents analyzing the week’s news. Peter’s commentary was so engaging he was given the Peabody Award, a coveted journalism prize, for his broadcasting work. He liked to tell the story of the best advice he received as a young journalist: a Chicago editor advised him to walk down the middle of the street and shoot out the windows on both sides. He did just that without developing an oracle complex, a know-it-all attitude. And he had an endless store of political anecdotes that drew all of us to his side when he started recalling the early John Kennedy or Nixon years.
Shortly after arriving at the White House assignment, I managed to get some complicated stories on the air in a fashion that attracted Lisagor’s attention. He invited me to lunch at his club across Lafayette Square. Turns out, the invitation had not been prompted by journalistic excellence. He laughed and said, “Oh, hell, I brought you here because we need some new members and I figured you had an iron stomach for the food they serve up.”
Lisagor’s generation of Washington journalists included Hugh Sidey, Time magazine’s weekly essayist; John Osborne, a veteran magazine editor and writer who wrote a column for The New Republic called “The Nixon Watch,” a thoughtful series of essays that was admired for its mix of fact and interpretation; and Carroll Kilpatrick, a soft-spoken Alabama native, the Washington Post inside man while Woodward and Bernstein were reinventing Washington journalism outside the White House gates.
These veteran journalists were old-school—wise and courteous to a newcomer. They volunteered information on reliable sources and shared stories of other Washington scandals.
Shortly after arriving in Washington, I met Bob Woodward at a cocktail party and wondered whether from time to time he’d be available if I had questions on the White House line of the day against what he was discovering. He agreed and we remain friends.
It was the best of both worlds as Washington journalism was undergoing a generational shift.
(When Lisagor, a World War II veteran, died during the Ford administration, the president arranged for him to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, and the ceremony included the military tradition of a riderless horse. Peter’s wife said if she had known, she would have brought a pair of his Hush Puppies for the stirrups.)
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In California, Meredith and I had lived through the rise of Ronald Reagan as governor, Butch and Sundance, the Mamas and the Papas, the Beach Boys, Charles Manson, Mario Savio and Berkeley, O. J. Simpson as football star (not yet as murder suspect), and Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. I seldom wore a tie off the air except one night when instructed by a Malibu hostess. Henry Kissinger would be the guest, and our dress was expected to match the occasion. Henry was becoming a Hollywood regular.
With that as a backdrop, the move to Washington in August 1973 was jarring, especially for Meredith, who was giving up a house on the beach for a rental in the August heat of the nation’s capital. We quickly understood why, in the 1930s, British diplomats had received a tropical differential for surviving Washington summers, their home offices equating the capital’s climate with that of the Amazon.
Fortunately, John Chancellor was moving to New York, and his home on Woodley Road in Northwest Washington was available to rent. It was in a picturesque neighborhood with stately brick homes and towering oak trees. James “Scotty” Reston, the venerated New York Times columnist, lived next door; Daniel Schorr of CBS News and Douglas Kiker, my NBC News colleague, were across the street; Elizabeth Drew, then of The New Yorker, was around the corner. Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota lived a block away.
My friend Robert Novak, the conservative columnist, asked where we were living. When I said, “Woodley Road,” he scoffed, “You have to pass a saliva test for liberalism to live in that neighborhood!”
Although I’d been coming to Washington for a number of years, I had no full appreciation of the tribalism until we moved in. The social rituals were similar, but the turf was delineated. Georgetown was the home of Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham; of Averell Harriman, the wealthy railroad heir, ambassador to the Soviet Union during World Ward II, former Governor of New York, now an elder statesman of the Democratic Party.
Meredith and I were accustomed to California’s more casual form of entertaining, but we had an early lesson from our friends George and Liz Stevens, who bridged California and Washington. George had grown up in California as the son of a famous father, George Stevens, Sr., the director of celebrated films such as Shane and Giant, and come to Washington to run the film division of the United States Information Agency under President Kennedy.
He married Liz, a member of a prominent Virginia family, and together they moved to California, where George started the American Film Institute. They returned to Washington and George established the annual Kennedy Center Honors gala, a celebration of America’s legendary artists in film, music, dance, and stage. Liz was an active organizer for the Democratic Party. When we arrived in Washington, they invited us to a welcoming dinner in their Georgetown home.
It was much more of a dress-up affair than we anticipated. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, was a chatty guest in a long dress and represented how far we’d come from our Southern California circles. The lively conversation, gossip that transcended partisan lines, and warm hospitality put us at ease and formed the foundation of a Stevens-Brokaw family friendship that continues to this day.
Averell Harriman’s wealth, political standing, and marriage put him atop the liberal Georgetown infrastructure. He was married to the legendary Pamela, once Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law and the purported lover of, among others, William Paley of CBS; Edward R. Murrow, the immortal CBS News commentator; Gianni Agnelli, the Italian auto baron; and Baron Elie de Rothschild. Pamela had had an earlier affair with Harriman, and when her marriage to Broadway producer Leland Hayward ended with his death she reconnected with Harriman, and together they became a marquee power couple.
Pamela was born to the roles of courtesan, wife, hostess. Unfailingly charming, she presided over the Harrimans’ Georgetown home with grace and political savvy.
Somehow we got onto Pamela’s radar screen and were invited to dinner as one of the new young couples in town.
Two tables of eight with finger bowls, rows of silver, excellent wines, and entrées served by the graceful house staff. Guests were usually a mix of Democratic VIPs—Senators Gaylord Nelson, Hubert Humphrey, Ted Kennedy, or former defense secretary Robert McNamara, or Bob Strauss, the Texas power lawyer, along with Georgetown pundits like Joe Kraft.
Meredith was impressed by how Pamela smoothly broke all the new feminist trends by taking the women upstairs for their own post-dinner tête-à-tête, a much livelier, richer session than what the men downstairs were experiencing. Once the men had cigars lit and brandy glasses filled, Averell would introduce a topic for discussion, and it was almost always global or economic, seldom Watergate.
Joe Biden and I have often laughed about the night when he was the rookie senator and was asked what to do about the energy crisis brought on by Saudi Arabia. As he launched into a kind of campaign oration, he reached for an object in a bowl in front of him and began nervously tossing it back and forth in his hands as if it were a baseball. When the session was over, Ted Kennedy walked over to him and said, “Nice job, Joe, but next time leave things where they were. That was a Fabergé egg you were tossing around.”
One of our Northwest Washington neighbors invited us to a “casual” Sunday night supper wher
e the wine was first-rate, the sterling was heirloom, and the guests were our age, preppy, and, as I learned, Republicans. When I made an offhand remark about a White House gaffe, the host took me aside and, chuckling, said, “We’re on the president’s team. I work in the administration.”
It was a useful reminder that there was a wide band of GOP public servants doing their duty without being worried that the FBI would come calling. The host was Richard Fairbanks, whose great-grandfather had been Teddy Roosevelt’s vice president. Over the next forty years, Dick served his country in what TR liked to call the arena—as a diplomat, specializing in the Middle East, and as an entrepreneur creating new programs for public service and the environment. He also worked in congressional relations in the Reagan administration. Richard never lost his enthusiasm for new challenges for the public benefit. Sadly, he died of a brain tumor in his early seventies, but I often think of him as someone who worked in the Nixon administration for the public good, not as an obsessed disciple of Richard Nixon.
There are remnants of the Washington dinner-party circuit. The always enterprising Sally Quinn, journalist and widow of hall of fame Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, regularly opens her Georgetown home to authors with new books and for celebrations of birthdays for friends. But the black-tie-and-long-gown evenings of political power brokers have gone the way of four-term senators.
In fact, while Meredith and I enjoyed the occasional glittering social occasion, the seven-day-a-week demands of my job, and for Meredith the twenty-four/seven responsibilities of being mother to three daughters ages four, six, and eight, were daunting. Somehow she managed with grace, good humor, and time to also pursue her role as an instructor in ESL, English as a Second Language. Before long she was admired for her many personal qualities and not as “the wife of….”
