The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--And Divided a Country (14 page)

Ailes, who had just turned thirty, was unafraid to step over men nearly twice his age. The letter revealed not only ferocious competitiveness, but also a palpable belief that enemies sought to harm him.

F
rom the earliest days of the administration, Nixon had transformed the White House into a laboratory to incubate ideas that would strip the establishment media of its power, ideas that would inform Fox News decades later. New fault lines over civil rights, Vietnam, and the women’s movement had cleaved the culture. Nixon intended to exploit this rift, turning his Silent Majority against the big-city newspapers and the broadcast networks, whom he saw as being on the side of liberals.
“The press is the enemy,” Nixon told his aides. “They are all against us.”

On June 3, 1969, Haldeman had ordered Herb Klein to prepare a report on the political biases of the network anchors covering the White House. “The President is very concerned about the general attitude of a number of the television newscasters and commentators who are deliberately slanting their reports against the Administration’s position,” he wrote.
A few hours later, Klein responded with a memo categorizing more than two dozen commentators and reporters. (“Bill Gill—a sensationalist who is more negative than positive.… Dan Rather—more favorable than he was prior to the election.… John Chancellor—sometimes negative.… The most vindictive is Sander Vanocur. You know him. He is in Saigon.”)

The idea of “balance” took hold inside the White House.
“I have discussed television balance with Reuven Frank, president of NBC News, and Dick Salant, president of CBS News,” Klein told Nixon in a memo on October 17, 1969. “I have made them aware of the fact that we are watching this closely,” he wrote, referring to the networks’ perceived political bias. Klein mentioned that the White House could deploy the power of the FCC to revoke their broadcast licenses if they did not change.

Ailes volunteered for Nixon’s war with the media, offering his services for some of the administration’s most brazen propaganda campaigns.
In June 1970, he participated in an aborted project to produce a covert White House–directed documentary, secretly financed by the Tell It to Hanoi Committee, to rebut a CBS program critical of the Vietnam War. The idea was abandoned when it became clear that any leak of the White House’s involvement in the project would embarrass the administration.
Ailes told Nixon aide Jeb Magruder to keep him in mind for such films in the future. “If you decide to go ahead with something like this at a later time,” he wrote, “be sure to let me know as far in advance as you can and we’ll try to put it together.”

The White House had even bigger plans than one-off documentaries to try to influence the agenda of the national news media. It was developing a blueprint for its own television news service which would produce administration propaganda packaged as independent journalism. Ailes championed the project, titled “A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News.”
In the summer of 1970, a highly detailed fourteen-page memo circulated around the White House outlining the plan, which Haldeman later named “The Capitol News Service.” “For 200 years, the newspaper front page dominated public thinking,” the memo began. “In the last 20 years that
picture has changed. Today television news is watched more often—than people read newspapers—than people listen to the radio—than people read or gather any form of communication.” The memo explained why: “People are lazy. With television you just sit—watch—listen. The
thinking
is done for you.”

The plan’s stated purpose was to “provide pro-Administration videotape, hard news actualities to the major cities of the United States.” To pull it off, the White House would produce favorable political stories in Washington and rush the videotapes by airplane to local markets, thereby avoiding “the censorship, the priorities and the prejudices of network news selectors and disseminators.” The top forty markets would have three same-day departures from Washington. A fleet of trucks traveling a total of 1,195 miles per week would pick up the footage from airports and deliver it to local broadcast stations. To illustrate the plan’s effectiveness, the memo sketched out how it could work for four specific GOP senators, including Bob Dole. “Senator records statement between 8-9AM,” which would result in a “Sample Arrival Time Home Market [of] 4PM … Makes the TV News Program At 6PM.”

Ailes sent Haldeman a marked-up copy of the memo with his enthusiastic feedback. “Basically a very good idea,” he wrote in the margin. What was striking was that,
just a few months earlier, in his interview with
The Boston Globe
, he cast himself as an idealist, warning of the hidden dangers of propaganda. He had told the
Globe
that he wanted to work on a concept he called “Truth television … where people can distinguish between fact and fiction on television, where entertainment and life and opinion are separate.” He noted that “twenty-nine percent of the nation relies on television as the only source of news. This is extremely dangerous, when the major news story of the day is done in 2½ minutes. Right after the printing press was invented, people believed everything they read. Television does the same thing. It can be lies and bull.”

But in private, with the prospect of a lucrative assignment on the table, he was an eager propagandist, encouraging the White House to think even bigger.
“It should be expanded to include other members of the administration such as Cabinet involved in activity with regional or local interest.—Also could involve GOP governors when in D.C.,” Ailes wrote. He seemed unconcerned about the ethics. “Will get some flap about news management,” he wrote. Though the plan struck some in the White House as too audacious and expensive to pull off, Ailes possessed
none of these inhibitions. “If you decide to go ahead we would as a production company like to bid on packaging the entire project,” he wrote Haldeman.

The Nixon White House never moved forward on the Capitol News Service plan. Instead, they studied long-term strategies to harness technology that would help build a counter–media establishment. One of the most promising was the one Ailes would later master: cable television. White House memos asserted that cable, with its capacity to carry an array of diverse channels, would be “the most effective and most lasting approach” to strip the broadcast news divisions of their power.
A prescient 1973 document prepared for Haldeman noted that cable news was a development that was “ten years or so” away “for significant impact.”

B
y November 1970, Bill Safire was advocating dumping Ailes for Bill Carruthers, an in-demand television producer who had recently opened his own production company. Even though Carruthers was “liberal compared to us,” Safire encouraged hiring him. “He has much less emotion than Ailes does; he has more control,” Dwight Chapin wrote, recounting Safire’s thoughts. “He is probably a better producer than Ailes but he does not have as much flair as Roger.… You’ve got to consider the question of Flair versus ability and Safire buys ability.”

Ailes would have one more chance to save his relationships.
On November 19, he met with Haldeman at 10:45 in the morning to discuss his future. Ailes lobbied to be appointed television adviser. He said he would open an office in Washington and make the head of the office available to the White House full-time. He also stressed that he liked the Capitol News Service idea and thought the White House should move ahead on launching it. Haldeman asked Ailes to write another proposal outlining how Nixon should use television in the run-up to the ’72 election.

The day before Thanksgiving, Ailes sent Haldeman a twelve-page proposal titled “White House Television—1971.” It was written in his now characteristically blunt, dramatic tone and revealed the breadth of Ailes’s understanding of how television could transmit a political message. “In my opinion,” Ailes began, “Richard Nixon is in danger of becoming a one-term President. Further, he is in danger of leaving office, even if he is re-elected, with a stigma of leadership failure much as President Johnson did: not because of what he has done—his accomplishments are many—but because of what the people ‘think’ he has done,
and because of the way he sounds and looks to them.” Since
Selling of the President
had been published, Ailes had attacked McGinniss’s thesis repeatedly in interviews, saying television couldn’t artificially mold an image. Now he was arguing to do just that. “To follow a leader,” he wrote, “people must feel that
he is better than they are
and not subject to anger or hatred quickly.” Ailes said he knew what he was talking about because of his background. “It is important for you to know that I am not just echoing the eastern liberals when I express my concern and that I spent twenty five years in Ohio and know something about the silent majority.”

Ailes also offered strategic advice: Wedge issues like busing and the war had banked much of the electorate. Now it was time to tack to the center. “The silent majority will automatically back the President because it has no place else to go,” he wrote. “I think a good issue to drive a wedge between the Democratic leadership and the news commentators is Nixon’s welfare plan. The only ones more frightened by the welfare plan than the conservatives are the liberals. If the President makes no major speeches but quietly visits Capitol Hill to press for this and at the same time calls in a group of ‘liberal’ reporters to discuss the plan, the commentators will be forced to applaud him and point out Democrat obstructionism.” Ailes also demonstrated he was on-board with dirty tricks. “To guard our flank I would like to see us get one of our people inside the Wallace organization immediately,” he wrote, an acknowledgment that George Wallace’s candidacy could siphon off Nixon votes, especially in the South. “I’ll discuss this in more detail in person.”

As in 1968, Ailes recommended using television to soften Nixon’s image and project cool confidence. “America’s position can be compared to a teenager who is experimenting with trouble, tempted to really go bad, but still crying out for a father to step in and lead him home. Mr. Nixon must take on the father’s role,” he wrote. While he did not recommend reviving the Man in the Arena concepts for ’72, a similar warming effect could be achieved through the right interview setting. Ailes suggested that David Frost interview the president “either at Camp David by the fireplace or walking around at the Western White House” because “he is recognized internationally as the best in-depth, humanizing interviewer.” Ailes pitched himself in the role of packager: Westinghouse would fund the production and Frost would follow Ailes’s directions. “I know him well and would approach him directly to set the ground rules and production controls.” Ailes explained that Nixon could outline his
intention to do future television broadcasts to communicate his plans to the American people, for which he included suggested scripts for the interview:

In addition to the Frost interview, Ailes pitched a network film special “to air late in 1971 just prior to the 1972 election campaign, which would show a human, working President with an incredible schedule.” If the networks balked at a White House–produced movie, Ailes suggested getting his friend, CBS correspondent Mike Wallace, on-board “and myself maintaining production control using the correspondent just to introduce the program and do a little narration where necessary, letting the film speak for itself.”

The memo rattled off a list of ideas big and small. Better celebrity guests at White House events (“I know the talent business very well and can be useful here”). More physical contact between the president and Pat Nixon (“If he put his arm around her in public or held hands with her when walking once in a while, it would do much to endear him to women all over the country”). More religion at the Christmas tree lighting ceremony (“I suggested they drop Santa Claus and big name stars all together”). More jokes (“If a reporter keeps pressing him on something the President should smile and say something like, ‘I believe I’ve answered that and if you ask me again I’m going to give your home phone number to Martha Mitchell’ ”).

Ailes concluded the memo by reiterating he wanted to remain an outside consultant. “By signing a large yearly PR contract with the RNC or a ‘fat cat’ firm, I can include the full time man from my DC office and produce the major things myself.… Per diem work doesn’t allow the flexibility we both need.”

Haldeman ultimately sided with those who felt Ailes brought too much baggage to the job.
He hired Carruthers and a young assistant named Mark Goode instead.
The White House worried that Ailes would react unpredictably to the news. “I have a gut feeling that we are bordering on disaster if we do not get Roger Ailes in and squared away soon,” Dwight Chapin wrote to Haldeman two days before Christmas. “If we
handle Roger in the proper way and quickly, I think we can avoid any bad feelings.”

“Get Roger down,” Haldeman scrawled on Chapin’s memo.
A meeting was scheduled for December 28, 1970.

A talking paper outlined scripts that Haldeman could use. “Roger,” one suggestion read, “I want to be completely honest with you. As you know, we have felt the need for a full-time man here at the White House for a long time—to supervise our TV on a daily basis—and our efforts here have met with little success. I don’t see anything developing on this need in the near future.” Another script called for Haldeman to talk about Ailes’s outside conflicts. “You and your operation have developed into a TV political consulting business. It is obviously successful, but it is a different animal than what we need here.” It was also suggested he comment on Ailes’s relationship with Nixon. “We have not been able to build the relationship between you and the President which we had hoped to see. It is no one’s fault. We face this sort of thing every day. There are different directions that we can go which I think you can explore and which will continue to reap you rewards.”