Authentic Voice

THE WHITE HOUSE Authentic Voice (See Cover)

James Campbell Hagerty left his pale green office, walked 30 brisk steps down the hall, opened a door and took seven more paces to the desk of the President of the U.S. He had a case to make: Dwight Eisenhower had not held a news conference in eleven weeks, and White House Press Secretary Jim Hagerty knew that it was past time for another session of the great give-and-take.

In those eleven weeks President Eisenhower had suffered a stroke, recovered, gone to the NATO conference, joined Secretary of State Dulles in a heavily criticized television report on the NATO meeting, delivered his State of the Union message, written a letter to Soviet Premier Bulganin urging dramatic works of peace, sent his budget to Congress. This added up to an impressive amount of activity. Yet Hagerty keenly realized that it was not enough. Closely tuned to the press and newsmen, he sensed that the clamor for a news conference might soon take a politically unfavorable turn. Closely tuned to the man before him, he knew that the President was in fine shape to get across the feeling of vitality and familiarity with the affairs of the nation that Ike has made the trademark of his news conferences. Dwight Eisenhower listened carefully to Press Secretary Jim Hagerty--and agreed to meet with the press.

For the 125th time in five years, blue-eyed, stocky (5 ft. 9 in., 170 Ibs.) Jim Hagerty, 48, rolled up his sleeves and went to work preparing for a presidential news conference. He read through the script of the last previous press session; reporters have a disquieting habit of reviving old. unanswered questions. For two days he squeezed his memory for news developments that might become press-conference subjects. When the answers seemed to require extensive updating he called for help; e.g., he asked White House Science Adviser James Killian for a report on missile progress.

"Let's Go." By 7:30 o'clock on press conference morning. Hagerty had a full list of possible questions. He read it aloud at breakfast (ulcer-troubled Jim Hagerty drank milk instead of coffee) with senior White House staffers, who contributed information from their own special fields. Economic Adviser Gabriel Hauge was asked to knock off a fast explanatory memo on the budget, had it ready by 9:45 when Hagerty, White House Staff Chief Sherman Adams and other aides trooped into the President's office.

As always, Press Secretary Hagerty pulled up a chair directly across the desk from the President and began running down his list: "Mr. President, there is likely to be something on the economy . . ." From time to time other staffers chipped in with a word of advice or a piece of information. Their aim was not to put words in the President's mouth but to help him assemble relevant facts; they had long since learned that Eisenhower answers questions in his own way. On the question of Russia's demands for an international summit conference. Hagerty pointed out that last May Russia's Nikita Khrushchev had taken a position that was now close to the U.S. position; i.e., that a summit conference should be preceded by a working-level preliminary conference. (Secretary of State Dulles had dug up the Khrushchev statement and passed it to Hagerty by telephone just before the briefing.) It was an item that President Eisenhower could (and did) use at his press conference. At 10:27 o'clock, only three minutes before conference time, Hagerty concluded: "That's all I have." President Eisenhower, already on his feet, replied: "Fine. Let's go."

Forty-eight minutes later, press-service teletypes across the U.S. were clattering with news of the conference, copy boys were ripping off the white sheets of the Associated Press and the yellow of the United Press, and editors began making over their front pages. Jim Hagerty had done well; only two news-conference questions touched on areas that Hagerty had not anticipated. One was whether President Eisenhower planned to accompany Mamie to the May launching of the first nuclear surface ship at Camden, NJ. (Ike's answer: "I don't know anything about it.") The other was whether he planned to meet and discuss racial problems with New York's Negro Representative Adam Clayton Powell. (Answer: "I will have to look this one up.") In fact, Jim Hagerty's news judgment, as evidenced by his briefing, may have been better than the reporters': they asked no questions in the headline-making field of U.S. missile progress, for which Hagerty and Ike were thoroughly prepared.

"Let's Hear." Such judgment, backed by meticulous attention to detail, has made New Yorker Jim Hagerty by every standard the best--and most powerful--White House press secretary in U.S. history. Day in, day out, year in, year out, between presidential speeches and press conferences, during Eisenhower vacations and Eisenhower illnesses, Hagerty is the authentic voice of the White House and, to an extent rarely recognized, of the whole Administration.

To the U.S. public, Hagerty's voice sounds loudest when he announces White House plans and decisions--and in a republic where the manner of presenting policy can be almost as important as its substance, Hagerty's influence is great. "Jim has been largely responsible for the complexion of the Administration," says Sherman Adams, a man not given to gushing. "His accomplishments have been heroic."

But Hagerty's backstage role is equally important. Of all the White House staffers, Hagerty has the warmest personal relationship with the President (Ike most admires the efficiency of Staff Chief Adams, but there is little real camaraderie). At Cabinet and White House staff meetings, the President, having listened to arguments on both sides of an issue, is likely to say: "Let's hear what Jim thinks."

Moreover, as no man before him, Hagerty has placed the news systems of all the departments of Federal Government under his sure thumb: he holds regular conferences with departmental press officers, scans departmental news bulletins before they are released--and plays a key part in advising Cabinet members who have got themselves out on limbs and need rescue. Example: when Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson wrote a politically explosive letter to Harper's in praise of a 1956 article condemning farm supports, he and his staff tried to dodge the ensuing political shot and shell by composing a senseless semi-denial. Hagerty hastily called Benson by phone. "Ezra," said he, "you pulled a boner and the thing to do is admit it." Benson did.

Laughter from Ike. "Jim Hagerty," says a Washington newsman, "holds a lens ground to his own prescription over the White House--and outsiders have little choice but to look through it." Such broad influence carries with it heavy national responsibility. Hagerty more than meets it. He is a superb technician, down to the point of knowing by heart the strengths and weaknesses of the 30 regular newsmen on the White House beat as well as the deadlines of nearly all major U.S. newspapers. His loyalty to Dwight Eisenhower puts him in a position of trust, so that he can avoid blundering on points of policy. Although he frankly recognizes his job as that of making the President look good, he keeps both the confidence of the press and the public it serves by dealing in fact. In private Administration councils he does not try to influence policy as much as he tries to keep good policy from being damned by bad timing or inept presentation; when Hagerty snaps out with an "I like it" or an "I don't like it," he is not necessarily speaking of whether a policy is right or wrong. He is thinking of how it will look in print.

For all his skills, Jim Hagerty is an intensely human man with a good many human faults. First of these is a temper that can turn truly mean, resulting in words that are not easily forgiven. Says his wife Marjorie: "When Jim says he's sorry, he thinks the whole thing never happened. Other people don't always feel that way." When New York Herald Tribune Funnyman Art Buchwald parodied a Hagerty press conference during the Paris NATO meeting, Hagerty (whose ulcers were kicking up at the time) blew his stack. He denounced Buchwald. demanded that the Trib print the denunciation on Page One (which it was only too delighted to do). President Eisenhower, who has a famous temper of his own and seems merely amused by Hagerty's, merely said: "Simmer down, Jim, simmer down." Said Hagerty later: "I was so mad I could cry. The President read it and laughed. This made me madder."

Wounded-Bear Yell. Aside from temper, Hagerty tends to overmanage. His eight-member staff exists mostly to do his specific bidding, and on the infrequent occasions when Hagerty is away, things are likely to go wrong. Hagerty was in Paris preparing for the NATO conference when Ike suffered his stroke, and Associate Press Secretary Anne Wheaton, a competent woman who was Hagerty's own choice for the job, had neither the training nor the influence to prevent a memorable press foul-up.

In a place where leaking news to favored reporters was long considered the best way to do business (in Franklin Roosevelt's day, Press Secretary Steve Early could do little but wring his hands at the sight of braintrusters passing secret papers to press pets--a sight as familiar as the White House flagpole), Hagerty discourages contacts between correspondents and other White House sources. His standard reaction upon spying a leaked story in a newspaper is a wounded-bear yell: "Good God! Where do they get it? Where do they get it?"

Hagerty's remarkable success lies far less in his personal than in his professional perfection. And the key to Jim Hagerty is that, despite eight years, which made him a first-rate reporter, for the New York Times, he is not a professional newsman. He works the opposite side of the street. His boss is the President of the U.S. and his duty is to present Ike's words and works in the best possible way. Jim Hagerty, by instinct and training, is a professional presidential press secretary--and as such, he is the first of his kind.

Waves from Wendell. Press Secretary Hagerty's father is a newsman through and through. He is James Andrew Hagerty (the middle names are different, and Jim dislikes having a Jr. hooked on), who left the little Plattsburg (N.Y.) Press for the old New York Herald, went on to the Times, where he became one of the fine political reporters of his day (he retired in 1954). Young Jim went to Columbia (A.B. '34) and followed his father to the Times. He worked the city's political districts and, in 1938, went to the State Capitol in Albany. There he was a big wheel in amateur theatricals, developed a taste for Scotch and soda and an enduring reputation as a two-fisted drinking man in Matt McCaffrey's saloon (because of his ulcers, doctors now advise against soda, but Hagerty cheats for the forthright reason that "I don't like water"). He also earned a reputation as an industrious, thoroughly competent reporter. In 1940 he joined his father in covering Wendell Willkie's presidential campaign.

With Willkie in Colorado, young Jim Hagerty first took up golf (he has a sure touch on the greens, but his body sway on the tee leads to flubs, which Frequent Partner Dwight Eisenhower calls "Hagerty Drives"). Hagerty was genuinely fond of Willkie. But his memories of the mismanaged Willkie train make White House Press Secretary Jim Hagerty, who has come to know more about running a tram than most railroad presidents, writhe in professional pain. The Willkie train often pulled out of wayside stations with reporters still standing on the tracks, and Wendell Willkie, thinking they were voters, waved farewell from the rear platform. When Jim Hagerty was press secretary to Tom Dewey a few years later, an officious Dewey aide ordered a train to move out while eight reporters were still rushing to clamber aboard. Hagerty dashed up ahead of the train, planted his foot on the track, forcing the engineer to stop. "They yelled like hell," recalls Hagerty. "But I knew my job."

Taking a Fling. That job began in 1943, when newly elected Governor Tom Dewey, looking around for an able newsman to serve as his press secretary, picked Jim Hagerty. Against the wishes of his father, who knew young Jim was crossing the fence from the working press, Hagerty accepted. Says he: "I thought I'd take a fling at it." Confident young Governor Dewey's press relations were atrocious at the time, and Jim Hagerty shared with most of the Albany press a marked coolness toward his new boss. He gradually came to like and respect Dewey, although he never overcame his extreme distaste for wading through manure on the governor's Pawling farm (it is City Boy Hagerty's misfortune to have worked 15 years for cattle raisers).

Slowly, almost despite themselves, Albany reporters found themselves writing stories favorable to Tom Dewey. At his press conference Dewey always announced the big news of the day before newsmen got a chance to ask questions (Dwight Eisenhower often follows the same practice), and Hagerty handed out releases explaining the details. "If it was late and you wanted to get home for dinner," recalls an old Albany hand, "you ended up writing pretty much what Hagerty gave you to write. The stories were always accurate and reasonable, and that made it easier."

Jim Hagerty saw Dewey through two successful gubernatorial campaigns, two unsuccessful campaigns for President, and, early in 1952, was part of the tough, experienced political organization that Dewey set to working for Dwight Eisenhower. Hagerty thumped the tub for Ike throughout the preconvention campaign and the general election. The day after Eisenhower's inauguration, Hagerty was sworn in as White House press secretary. The President discovered early in the game that he was hiring no sycophantic flack: Hagerty got stubborn about some since-forgotten point of press policy, and the Eisenhower temper flashed. After several minutes of colorful language, Ike paused for breath, regarded the uncowed Hagerty. Said he: "You don't scare very easily, do you?"

"You're Not Being Fair." Hagerty does not scare easily, but his problems were a stern test of fortitude. To be sure, his boss was a pressagent's dream, and Hagerty set about making the most of the Eisenhower personality--to the point of letting presidential press conferences be filmed for television for the first time. (Other Hagerty press-conference innovations: tape recordings for radio, and an end to the tortured old rule that required indirect quotations.) But if Ike was a public-relations natural, a good many other members of the Administration were not. Cabinet officers, out of the business world and unfamiliar with the ways of the Washington press, at first talked too much, got hurt, and began clamming up completely.

During an early Cabinet meeting, Hagerty talked for 30 minutes, advising Cabinet officers to loosen up, to sell their accomplishments, get on TV panels ("make some use of that free time"), and to defend themselves when necessary. He explained exactly what off the record means (some of them had got to thinking that a clever way to kill a story was to call in reporters and give it to them off the record). Says Hagerty: "I told them I didn't care who they saw, but that if they talked to a reporter, it was going to turn up in print some way or another. I said, 'You're not being fair to yourselves or to the reporters, if you don't understand that.' "

Joe McCarthy was in his raucous prime during the first Eisenhower years, and it was Hagerty who bore the brunt of refusing to respond to needling questions at his twice-daily press conferences. Actually, the decision to avoid a public brawl with Joe was the President's, but Hagerty, who loathed McCarthy, agreed completely from a public-relations standpoint. Says he: "You could only lift the junior Senator from Wisconsin to the President's level or--worse--lower the President to the level of the junior Senator from Wisconsin." After McCarthy's Senate censure, Hagerty suggested that Utah's Republican Senator Arthur Watkins, chairman of the special McCarthy-investigating committee, be invited to the White House for congratulations, which he was.

"Tell Jim to Take Over." At 5:30 o'clock on the afternoon of Sept. 24, 1955, Hagerty was napping on the couch of his den at his Chevy Chase home on Reno Road when a phone call changed forever the dimensions of his job. It was from Assistant Press Secretary Murray Snyder at the President's vacation headquarters in Denver: Dwight Eisenhower had suffered a coronary thrombosis. The word that Hagerty was flying to Denver to take charge was soon relayed to the stricken President by Major General Howard McC. Snyder, the presidential physician. "Good," said Ike. "Tell Jim to take over."

Hagerty took over. For twelve weeks, both in Denver and during the convalescence at Gettysburg, Jim Hagerty controlled Administration news. His press conferences and medical bulletins began before 7 a.m. (to help the afternoon papers get a fresh lead), and, with the help of Heart Specialist Paul Dudley White, furnished the fullest, frankest information ever given the U.S. about the physical condition of an ailing President (some Administration leaders bridled at public discussion of the presidential bowels ; Hagerty ignored the complaints).

The decision to shuttle Cabinet officers like badminton birds between Washington and Denver was made by the White House staff as a whole. But Hagerty, who does not consider it his duty to stress the dark side of presidential life, certainly saw to it that the visiting dignitaries, and the routine papers they brought for the President to sign, were heralded in headlines. He produced them for interviews and at least once handed a Cabinet member a statement to read about how well Ike looked--before the man had even been in to see the President.

Remember the Major. Hagerty's skillful handling of the Denver crisis deepened his association with President Eisenhower. Before Denver, although holding profound respect for Hagerty's professional ability, Ike had referred to him as "my technician." After Denver the phrase was "my friend." More and more often Ike would pop his head out of his office, look around and inquire: "Where's Jim?" Says another White House staffer: "He just wants to know where Jim is because, I guess, he feels better when Jim is around." Usually Hagerty still has to check with the President before answering press questions on substantive issues. "But," he says, "I think I know the President's feelings and philosophy so well that many times I can speak for him without checking. Remember, you live with the man."

Part of living with the man is knowing how to approach him: Hagerty remembers that the President once told him: "When I was a young major in the Philippines, I worked for a general [Douglas MacArthur] with strong opinions. But when I felt it was my duty to argue, I never hesitated." Today, when Hagerty feels it his duty to argue, he asks the President: "Do you remember that young major?" Sighs Dwight Eisenhower: "Yeah. What is it now?"

Broken Logjam. Less than a year after the Denver coronary President Eisenhower underwent surgery for ileitis at Washington's Walter Reed hospital. Hagerty set up a special phone connection outside the operating room, had the report of a successful operation to reporters three minutes after the surgeons had finished and 16 minutes before the President was wheeled back to his hospital room. In 36 hours Hagerty held 14 press conferences, but he generally kept newsmen and doctors apart, was by no means so lavish with medical details as in Denver. Says Hagerty: "A presidential heart attack is the property of the people. But we did not consider the ileitis something that endangered the President's life."

What the ileitis did do was to throw even greater doubt on Dwight Eisenhower's availability for renomination, and for months the Washington press asked about little else. Hagerty knew when Ike was ready to run again, but he still had to fend off questions. Finally, at Gettysburg, Hagerty talked to Ike in a cattle pen near the gabled farmhouse. "How are things in the outside world?" asked the President. "They're driving me crazy about re-election," said Hagerty. "Let's break the logjam." replied President Eisenhower. "Jim, why don't you go back and grin at them?" Jim Hagerty did just that, and his grin made national headlines. It was confirmed a week later when the President subtly revealed his intentions to visiting Senate Republican Leader Bill Knowland and Knowland was allowed to break the news.

Washington's flap is eternal, and no sooner had Ike made his availability known than a storm brewed about Richard Nixon as his running mate. Harold Stassen, who was supposed to advise the President on international disarmament, urged dumping Nixon in favor of Massachusetts' Governor Christian Herter. Hagerty, who liked Nixon and thought he was the strongest candidate for Vice President, consulted the President, issued a statement pointedly reading Stassen out of the official Eisenhower family in his fight against Nixon. Later, when Nixon announced that he wanted a second term, Hagerty again went to Ike, came out to describe him as "enthusiastic" about Nixon's decision. When Stassen's dump-Nixon campaign fell completely flat, he publicly blamed Press Secretary Jim Hagerty for knifing him. "You're goddam right I was shooting him down," says Jim Hagerty. "It's no secret that I was for the Vice President for renomination." It is no secret that Eisenhower was for Nixon, too.

Bending a Rule. The exertions of the winning 1956 campaign, piled on top of the President's two illnesses, dampened the Administration's drive in the second term--and made Jim Hagerty's job that much harder. Although the slowdown was yearlong, it got talked about most during the President's frequent vacations and long Gettysburg weekends. Hagerty struggled valiantly and, to a point, successfully in stressing work over play. He took with him on trips briefcases full of executive orders, appointments, etc., and parceled them out daily to make news under the Augusta or Gettysburg dateline. He encouraged feature stories on the Army Signal Corps' elaborate setup to keep Ike in close touch with Washington. He produced Cabinet members in wholesale lots. (Does Hagerty really call for Cabinet members? Says he: "Maybe sometimes I do.") He did anything and everything, in short, to keep the subjects of golf and fishing far down in the daily stories about the President.

Yet for all his efforts, bad news kept piling up. Russia's Sputniks circled the globe and, beyond recognizing them as fine news copy, Hagerty shared in the White House's early so-what attitude. For all his freedom to argue in White House councils, he sat silent during a press-conference briefing when Dwight Eisenhower said he intended to tell newsmen that Sputnik I made "not one iota" of military difference. The extent of Hagerty's contribution to immediate post-Sputnik urgency was to bend an old rule. Wary lest he disclose top-secret security information by a slip of the tongue, Hagerty has always declined to attend National Security Council sessions. He is reluctant in the extreme to hand out even the barest information about the officials who do attend. But after Sputnik I, he not only trumpeted the news that members of the long-neglected Scientific Advisory Committee were attending NSC conferences, but arranged for reporters to meet the scientists as they emerged.

Speedup from Slowdown. The Administration tried to regain the foreign and domestic initiative with the NATO heads of government meeting, and Hagerty was in Paris settling the preliminaries of press coverage when the White House phoned to report that Ike had suffered a chill. Hagerty instinctively suspected worse, took off from Paris' Orly Field in zero-zero weather to fly back to Washington. He was just in time to rescue Associate Press Secretary Anne Wheaton, who, cut off from direct communication with the President's doctors, had managed to confuse Ike's cerebral hemorrhage with some sort of coronary disease.

Hagerty brought order, set up an unorthodox press conference for the Vice President at the White House, at which Richard Nixon expressed optimism about the President's health. But Hagerty was touchier than ever before about giving out medical details. He came under strong criticism for making the President sound perfectly chipper within hours after his seizure; that blame was unjustified, since Hagerty's natural desires had squarely coincided with fact. Five days after the stroke, Hagerty drove the 84 miles to Gettysburg with the President. The long, close conversation ranged from the Civil War to World War II--and to Ike's hopes for the NATO conference. "I knew then," says Hagerty, "that he would go to Paris if he could possibly move." And the voice of the White House promptly started making announcements along that line.

Out with Ike. The NATO sessions speeded the presidential pace, and, although there have been a few stumbles, the forward momentum has not since stopped. Jim Hagerty can be expected to make the most of that fact. His schedule is killing: he has had only 17 days' vacation since the President's heart attack; he leaves his home by 7:30 a.m. and rarely gets back in time for dinner with his wife; last Thanksgiving, when the younger of his two sons came home from college, Hagerty saw him only for minutes. Even a professional presidential press secretary cannot long stand that gaff, and Jim Hagerty has made it clear that he will leave the White House when Dwight Eisenhower does.

Hagerty has been accused at times of doing his job too well, of creating the image of a President more vigorous than he actually is, and thereby lulling the U.S. into a false and dangerous sense of complacency. But Press Secretary Hagerty cannot by the nature of his job manufacture a presidential record. He can only reflect what President Eisenhower does in its best light. In his ability to do just that, James Campbell Hagerty, first of the professional presidential press secretaries, may never be surpassed.

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