Breakfast with Godfrey

"It's awfully damned early to get up," says Alan Otten, Washington bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. "You get ragged and your wife gets irritable." But Otten continues to rise at 6:30 several mornings a month for "Breakfast with Godfrey." The lure is a chance to fire questions at a politician before the sleep is out of his I's.

Named after Godfrey Sperling Jr., news manager of the Washington bureau of the Christian Science Monitor, "Breakfast with Godfrey" has become a Washington institution. Since 1966, when he invited his old friend Charles Percy to lunch with a few fellow newsmen, Sperling has organized 121 breakfasts, including three last week. Invariably, they are held at 8:15 in the President's Room at the National Press Club. Only 20 reporters--the number that fits the table--are invited. Invariably, the guest finds that he is the main course as the newsmen grill him for 75 minutes.

Most of the nation's leading public figures have been on hand at least once. Among them: Hubert Humphrey, George Wallace, George McGovern, Henry Kissinger, Daniel Moynihan, Walter Reuther, Sam Yorty and John Lindsay. John Ehrlichman, paying his third visit last week, generated plenty of copy, including a Page One lead in the Washington Evening Star: "President Nixon's chief adviser on domestic affairs hinted today that the White House is considering seeking a ban on handguns in the District of Columbia." Peter Lisagor of the Chicago Daily News noted in his story that "Ehrlichman provided a rare glimpse into the President's attitudes and work habits."

Ground rules vary. A guest may talk on the record or he may use various camouflage devices like "an Administration" or "White House" source. "Basically, they're all on the make one way or another," says Lisagor. "The White House guys come over to scrub Nixon's image and get rid of any warts that seem to be developing. And we try to use them. But it's a little cozier than the usual kind of group." Adds Sperling: "The great advantage is that we can follow up questions and keep boring in. At White House and other news conferences, you don't get to ask the follow-up questions."

Most breakfasts produce at least ideas and occasionally major stories. HUD Secretary George Romney laid his housing program, Operation Breakthrough, on the Sperling table. Equally memorable are the breakfasts at which Spiro Agnew said Humphrey was soft on Communism and Bobby Kennedy agonized over whether to seek the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination.

A few newsmen, finding no openings around the breakfast table, have set up their own group in opposition. "We were really getting clobbered," recalls Jack Germond, Washington bureau chief for the Gannett newspapers. "So in self-defense we set up 'Political Writers for a Democratic Society.' We've had about eight or nine dinners, with people like Finch, Rogers Morton, Muskie."

But "Breakfast with Godfrey" remains the only morning session, and some think it has advantages. For instance, luncheon guests are more likely to cancel at the last minute because of business. Dinner guests might loosen up after a couple of drinks, but that can also have its drawbacks. "Unless the guy is real good," says Otten, "after an hour or so you find you're learning more than you want to know about penguins."

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