The Wars of Watergate (35 page)

Although the President reflexively continued to talk about his enemies in the media, White House officials believed that their assault had had positive effects. The way to change opinion, Nixon told Haldeman, “was to make it less unfashionable to be with us.”
²⁸
The campaign fit Nixon’s personal, proven formula for contempt and intimidation, to force the “enemy” to
bend over backward to appear fair—the same tactic that worked in the 1968 campaign.

Sometimes the Administration’s attacks on newsmen had both comic and chilling overtones. Most television reporters were treated benignly compared to their brethren in the print media. But CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr seems to have been singled out for special attention. Allegedly on the grounds that Schorr was being considered as Assistant to the Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, Haldeman requested an FBI check of his background in August 1971. The FBI questioned Schorr himself as well as the CBS Washington Bureau Chief and officials in the CBS New York headquarters. Sometime after answering questions, Schorr asked that the check be terminated, telling the FBI that he was not interested in any government position. After receiving a preliminary report, the White House also asked the FBI to stop, claiming it did so on its own because it no longer was interested in hiring Schorr. Ziegler also said that the report had been destroyed. The whole affair was bizarre. Schorr, of course, as the President subsequently admitted, was not being considered for any position. “We just ran a name check on the son-of-a-bitch,” the President told aides. Haldeman later acknowledged that it was a “fair assumption” that the President would use any unfavorable material.
²⁹

Schorr’s tale is notable for the Administration’s clumsiness and heavy-handedness. John Hart, Schorr’s CBS colleague, was victimized by a process far more subtle, and perhaps more pernicious. He, too, had caught the President’s eye. Hart, Nixon told Haldeman, had been “a violent, anti-Administration commentator for years.”

Hart had spent six months in South Vietnam in 1966–67. He then returned to the United States and covered Robert Kennedy’s 1968 primary campaign. After Kennedy’s death, he was assigned to Nixon for the nominating convention. He followed Nixon through the campaign but then became host on the network’s
Morning News
. During that stint, Hart went to North Vietnam in September 1972. In Hanoi, he realized that his hosts staged events for him and carefully supervised his schedule. Despite repeated requests, he could not see American prisoners of war. Still, Hart went on reporting and filed twenty-two stories in a three-week span. His reports were earmarked for Walter Cronkite’s
Evening News
broadcasts, but unknown to Hart while he was abroad, Cronkite stopped carrying them at about midpoint.

Hart was convinced that the bombing of the North was fruitless and would not change the fanaticism of the North Vietnamese, whom he labeled “Calvinist Communists.” When he returned, he planned to do a documentary on his visit, but Richard Salant, head of CBS News, “cross-examined” him at length over his inability to get more information on the POWs and his
failure to report more unfavorably on the North. Instead of doing a documentary, Hart appeared on only a few late-night spot reports. He believed that he had lost the confidence of his bosses. He later realized that he had covered the story as a journalist, not as an “American journalist.” One of his colleagues emphasized how important it was to preface or conclude his reports with reminders that “these people were Communists.”

On October 16, 1972, Hart received a letter from Frank Shakespeare, Director of the United States Information Agency—on official stationery and with a franked envelope—complaining about his lack of objectivity. Shakespeare specifically cited Hart’s reports from North Vietnam of having heard “frequent laughter,” praising the people’s “richness of hospitality,” describing the full attendance at a Catholic mass, noting the display of “forgiveness” toward American pilots, filming bomb-damaged hospitals and churches, and describing North Vietnam’s Premier Pham Van Dong as a man of “energy and wit.” “Where, John, was the balance?” Shakespeare demanded. Why hadn’t Hart talked about the invasion of the South, the refugees in the South, the dictatorship in the North, the North Vietnamese troops in Cambodia and Laos? Why did Hart thank his hosts for their hospitality and kindness? Shakespeare’s assault wavered between being comical and sinister. He berated Hart for being “technically factual” while not playing it “straight.” There was no fairness, he thought; indeed, Shakespeare thought it wrong to report at all from the enemy’s capital. Why, Shakespeare concluded on a chilling note, was Hart so careful not to criticize the Hanoi government?

The same day the Internal Revenue Service wrote to Hart, saying that his tax returns would be examined. When he later called the IRS as requested, they told him they had never notified him that they would scrutinize his returns.

Hart also responded to Shakespeare, sending him complete transcripts of his broadcasts and politely noting that he regarded the criticisms as serious. Indeed, they were, Shakespeare retorted—and the transcripts, he said, left him only “puzzled and depressed.” He charged that Hart had offered a “skewed impression” of both North Vietnamese and American actions.

Meanwhile, Richard Salant wrote to Shakespeare, defending Hart. Whatever Salant’s immediate support, however, Hart received less as time went on. At one point, Salant reportedly told him he needed “rehabilitation.” Was Salant under pressure? Perhaps Shakespeare, a former CBS vice president, still had influence at the network. Certainly, Shakespeare’s belief in the bias of television news could be traced back to the 1968 campaign. In any event, frustrated with his lack of work, Hart left for NBC in 1975.

John Hart later interviewed Charles Colson, who admitted that he had been in contact with CBS executives regarding the correspondent’s broadcasts. Colson recalled that the White House was “up the wall” over the
reports. He told Hart that he “was bitching and moaning” to the network’s leaders, “and they were kissing my ass.” Hart’s conclusion was obvious: the Administration’s pressures had played havoc with his position at the network, which was never the same afterward.
³⁰

Jeb Stuart Magruder’s memo on influencing the news media suggested that the Anti-Trust division of the Justice Department be used to intimidate broadcasters. In April 1972, the Justice Department filed suit against the networks, claiming they had monopolized the production of prime-time entertainment programming. The networks responded that the suit was without merit and would have the effect of turning control of television programming over to advertising agencies and motion-picture producers. The timing of the suit seemed to fit the Administration’s ongoing antimedia drives and seemed particularly appropriate to the onset of the 1972 campaign.

The Anti-Trust Division had a longstanding concern with various network practices, particularly the networks’ attempts to control original productions for their programming schedules. Would they broadcast only programs which they had produced or in which they had a financial stake, or would independent, outside producers have access to programming slots? Clearly, the networks preferred to use their own shows as much as possible, but how much of that pattern of preference constituted monopoly? Enough, apparently, to satisfy the Anti-Trust Division. It had been investigating the questioned network practices since the 1950s, years before Magruder’s memorandum and wholly apart from the Nixon Administration’s political agenda. Herb Klein and other Administration officials realized the downside potential of the suit. But the Anti-Trust people had their way—undoubtedly supported by key Administration officials who could only see an upside to the controversy.

The networks predictably based their case on political reprisal and demanded access to Nixon’s papers in order to substantiate their charges. As the litigation unfolded, however, the defendants found that the government could not make the President’s papers available, and on November 26, 1974, a federal judge dismissed the suit without prejudice. But once the papers could be perused for evidence, Attorney General William Saxbe reinstituted the action several weeks later. The case dragged on, and eventually, in May 1980, the networks signed consent decrees limiting their control over production and agreeing to change their practices. In short, the allegations of antitrust violations had merit.
³¹

That the government’s suits against the networks in 1972 might have merit was a fact overshadowed by the powerful evidence of the Administration’s hostility toward the media. That image was the message. The suit, not the accompanying recitation of charges and evidence of network management wrongdoing, was what made an impact.

The Nixon Administration’s war on the media was more than image, however. In October 1972, before real assaults distracted him, the President directed his aides not to talk to the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
,
Time
, or
Newsweek
—the
Los Angeles Times
still was acceptable, but that soon changed—and to exclude their reporters from social functions. Heavy artillery was also put in play. In the heady days following the President’s November 1972 electoral triumph, Clay Whitehead, the Director of the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy, boldly called on local television stations to refuse to carry “biased” news accounts from the networks. He warned local managers that dissemination of news involved their greatest responsibility; in this light he asked whether “station licensees or network executives [would] take action against this ideological plugola?” The question was more than rhetorical: failure “to correct imbalance or consistent bias from the networks” would make local broadcasters “fully accountable” at license-renewal time.
³²
As the President moved to his second term, he had every intention, it seemed, of continuing the media war.

Richard Nixon’s presidency paralleled the rising importance of the media. As a young politician, and later as President, Nixon always understood the necessity of using the media for his success. Use meant control—control not only of the flow of information, but of the nuances and conclusions drawn from that information. Such total control was impossible, however, given the fragmentation and disparity among the media. And the inability to wield control only frustrated the President and alienated him the more.

Did the Nixon Administration conspire to discredit the press? Did the President and his aides foster the “us-against-them” mentality with respect to the news media that eventually boomeranged with such devastating results for the President in his second term? Did the President himself encourage and direct the campaign against the media? The President’s friend and former aide, William Safire, long ago concluded that the answer to all the questions “is, sadly, yes.”

In the best of times, Richard Nixon remembered. Following his re-election, he instructed Haldeman to work with Buchanan to prepare a monograph entitled “Things They Would Like to Forget.” He remembered that commentators and columnists had solemnly predicted World War III at the time of the Cambodian invasion; that at the same time they had predicted the collapse of summit preparations; that they had predicted his defeat in 1972; that they were certain that George McGovern would capture the youth vote and that Nixon would “blow the lead.” Thirteen years after he left the presidency, Nixon joined forces with McGovern’s campaign manager to commiserate about the slings and arrows of the media. Journalists demand the right “to ruthlessly question the ethics of anyone else,” Nixon told
former Senator Gary Hart in 1987. “But when anyone else dares to question
their
ethics, they hide behind the shield of freedom of speech.” The media leaders refused, he complained, “to make the distinction that philosophers throughout the centuries have made between freedom and license.”
³³
Time had not healed that old sore.

Friday, June 16, 1972, was a fairly typical day for the President. He conducted a Medal of Honor ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, discussed welfare legislation with several advisers, met his Cabinet, and then received a visit from Mexican President Luis Echeverría. As he did routinely, Nixon held a long meeting with John Ehrlichman and a shorter one with Oval Office assistant Alexander Butterfield, and, on various occasions throughout the day, he met with his principal aide, H. R. Haldeman. That afternoon, he boarded his plane, the
Spirit of ’76
, and flew to the Bahamas, accompanied by the Haldemans, Press Secretary Ron Ziegler, the White House doctor, and some press representatives. The President’s friends Bebe Rebozo and Robert Abplanalp joined him there. They swam together, had dinner, and watched the movie
The Skin Game.

Several hours later, in the early morning of the seventeenth, police arrested five men in the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee in Washington. A security guard discovered an apparent burglary in progress and notified the local police. When captured, the suspects had several cans of Mace, carried lock-picking devices, and wore surgical gloves. One had a portable radio receiver. The police also found camera equipment and telephone-bugging devices. Because of the possibility that the federal Interception of Communications statute had been violated, the D.C. police called in the FBI. Preliminary investigations on the scene led Bureau agents to believe that the burglars were in the process of installing the listening devices in the Democratic offices. Shortly after the arrest, an attorney showed
up at police headquarters, stating that he represented the men in custody. The suspects, however, had refused to make any telephone calls, and the lawyer would not tell agents how he had learned of their arrest.