Mr. Agnew Gets Friendly with the Press, Then
Dickenson, James R.
James R. Dickenson which have consistently resembled those of the cobra and the mongoose, and are now at an all-time low. The Vice President is portrayed as more furious with the press than he has...
...The first school of speculation would appear to have the edge in this debate...
...There was little disagreement-or denial-about what the Vice President said...
...They spent more time, however, in a genuinely spirited and friendly give-and-take about the Vice President's problems with the press...
...As they left, the Vice President jocularly predicted that he would probably see something about the discussion in print in "about six months" ' nr so One of the rote an old hand in Washington, assured Mr...
...Most of the press managed to ferret out the story, motly in bits and pieces picked up second, third, fourth and fifth hand...
...The time was unusual...
...The story also quickly spread around Washington early Monday because the participating newsmen called their offices to inform their editors of the late-night meeting, its substance and its off-the-record status...
...A detailed examination of the incident provides an insight into the political perils of dealing with a nosy, gossiping, insatiably curious, competitive and enterprising press...
...Gold setting the ground rules: off-the-record...
...Agnew does nothing without the permission of President Nixon and that Mr...
...They finished up by discussing his 1972 prospects: his spot on the ticket had not been decided, he said, and he wouldn't go on if he would hurt Mr...
...Drinks were served, but Mr...
...Agnew Gets Friendly with the Press, Then...
...the Gannet papers...
...The first published account appeared Monday afternoon in the late editions of the St...
...and Newsday...
...So had the Los Angeles Times' Jules Witcover and David Kraslow...
...Reprinted from The National Obs-with permission...
...the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post wire service on its daily schedule notified its newspaper clients that the story- optimistically billed as "exclusive"-was on its way...
...A couple of the participants were not on the original list...
...These friends, in turn, told their friends in order to save them from getting beat on a story that was obviously going public...
...Nixon's assurance to supporters of Nationalist China that he is not abandoning it...
...The editors, also gossips, managed to spread the word to their counterparts in organizations which did not have reporters attending the meeting...
...President Nixon is reportedly-for the first time in his Administration-displeased with Ms Vice President...
...Agnew fears being dumped from the ticket in 1972 and is firing up this constituency in self-defense...
...By the end of the working day Monday, slightly more than twelve hours after the meeting adjourned, just about everyone in the press in Williamsburg had written something on the meeting-except, of course, the nine participants who to this day haven't written a word about their meeting with the Vice President...
...They interviewed some of the governors to whom Mr...
...Agnew had expressed the same sentiments and quoted them in their stories...
...Others are convinced that Mr...
...Scripps-Howard newspapers...
...for the most part the participants were understandably reluctant to talk...
...Some did the second best thing...
...A good share of the press knew of it and its general gist by noon Monday...
...the Chicago Tribune...
...the group gathered at 12:30 a.m...
...Not even your wife...
...The reporter knew his Washington press corps better than did the Vice President...
...The Vice President is portrayed as more furious with the press than he has ever been, and the press' attitude toward him ranges from incredulity to hilarity...
...But enough of them did tell bits and pieces to their close friends, which was enough to let the story out...
...For his part the Vice President can only nurse these new wounds inflicted by the media and speculate about why the participating newsmen would leak a story that finally put them at a disadvantage...
...The news lay in the public reports that the Vice President, one of the most politically loyal of men, disagreed with his chief on such an important and sensitive issue...
...Monday, 19 April, and broke up at 3:30 a.m...
...Agnew left the Governors' Conference the following day, the time of the meeting suggested that it had not been planned in advance and was a rush job to get it in while he was still in Williamsburg...
...the Baltimore Sun...
...Agnew had only a cold bottle of beer, fetched by Secret Service agents, and the meeting broke up with him repeating the ground rules-off-the-record...
...Witcover later sported a sardonic press badge that read: "Free the Williamsburg Nine...
...Louis picked up the Post-Dispatch story and transmitted it to papers across the country...
...Vice President Agnew's political future as No...
...The organizations represented were the major wire services, Associated Press and United Press International...
...Those not invited had their own obvious motive to get the story...
...His remarks about China weren't new...
...Since Mr...
...Nixon's re-election prospects...
...This turn of events grew out of the Vtee Prfisirtpnt's relations with the nress Agnew's reported misgivings about the Administration's emerging China policy...
...they appealed to Mr...
...other reporters, by long tradition, are free to ignore the rules...
...There were ties of long friendship at work last week and-few can doubt it-a willingness on the part of some to embarrass a man who has been exceptionally antagonistic to the press...
...After small talk, Mr...
...The Associated Press, for instance, had its top political reporter at the meeting but, bound by the rules, he couldn't write a line about it and could only stand by helplessly as the AP transmitted the Post-Dispatch story...
...2 man on the Republican national ticket next year is probably shakier than it was a few weeks ago...
...The Associated Press bureau in St...
...Some participants argue that he is concerned about the propaganda harvest Communist China reaped from its Ping-pong diplomacy, and, being an honest and direct man, Mr...
...Nixon reportedly takes great pride...
...Agnew brought up the subject of China and the group pursued this for about an hour...
...And Mr...
...The professional and congenital needs of newsmen to know what's happening makes them possibly the worst gossips of all...
...Still another theory, held by a Machiavellian school, holds that Mr...
...Some of those present told their close friends about the meeting at breakfast a few hours later...
...The Richmond Times-Dispatch...
...Agnew could speculate on one other thing: the rule of thumb that, in Washington, particularly, if you don't want something known, you just don't tell anyone...
...the Washington Star...
...Soon those editors were phoning their reporters in Williamsburg demanding that the reporters find out what happened at the meeting...
...It's a good question, and best answered by the suggestion that the news business exists in part because of a powerful human urge to tell what you know, particularly if you're in the know...
...Agnew is open to charges of undermining the President's policy of easing relations with Communist China...
...He had reportedly expressed his views in National Security Council meetings and in private meetings with the Republican governors here...
...Agnew that it would probably be considerably sooner than that...
...A corollary of this speculation is that Mr...
...The meeting began with Mr...
...It started when Mr...
...Several of the participating reporters were under severe pressure from their editors to go ahead and write the story after it became public, but all refused...
...In the Byzantine twistings of Washington press ground rules, off-the-record means nothing can be written or printed about the conversations by those present...
...Agnew's calculation was off by about 5 months, 29 days and 12 hours, give or take a little...
...There was a lot of speculation, however, on the reason he said it...
...The Vice President was also concerned, according to these accounts, about the press coverage of the U. S. Ping-Pong team's visit to the Chinese mainland...
...Agnew's statements are Mr...
...At issue is the clutch of news stories that came out of the spring meeting of the Republican Governors' Association in Williamsburg, otherwise a prosy little ffatherino- the stories of the Mr Recorded Live at Williamsburg Mr...
...Agnew's press secretary, Victor Gold, asked a group of nine reporters to meet with the Vice President to have a friendly drink and exchange views...
...Agnew's criticism of a new policy in which Mr...
...Louis Post-Dispatch, whose enterprising political reporter, Tom Ottenad, had nailed the story down early...
...At least one reporter was awakened from a slumber...
...Agnew believes he has his own constituency of conservative Republicans and that this was his way of reassuring them that the Administration was not abandoning Nationalist China...
...The irony is that these developments stemmed from a genuine attempt by Mr...
...they were included just because they happened to be in the hotel lobby with some of the chosen...
...Agnew to narrow the gulf between him and the press...
...The Catch-22 of the ground rules for off-the-record conversations is that they bind only those present...
...Gold to lift the ground rules, but the Vice President, embarrassed and furious by this time, refused...
...He feared that it added up to a propaganda coup for the Chinese Communists, which could have the effect of undercutting U. S. support for Nationalist China...
...two days after the ruckus the Administration let it be known that the President was unhappy with Mr...
...Agnew expressed it candidly...
Vol. 4 • May 1971 • No. 6
