Kennedy (58 page)

The furor that followed this speech overlooked the fact that it had explicitly opposed either compulsory or voluntary censorship machinery, had recommended no legislation (as an earlier Eisenhower commission had done) and had, in fact, called for far greater public information through an independent and critical press. A committee of editors and publishers was designated to meet with the President, and for this meeting he had his staff prepare examples of harmful disclosures and alternative ways of cooperating to prevent them. But the committee members, to his suppressed surprise and indignation, said in effect that they recognized no special peril. The “constructive dialogue” for which the President had hoped was impossible, and the whole matter was dropped.

The second incident followed the Cuban missile crisis. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Arthur Sylvester, using terms the President felt were both unclear and unwise, spoke candidly and informally about news as a “part of the weaponry” available to the government in the cold war and Cuban crisis, including “the right, if necessary, to lie to save itself” from nuclear war—meaning the right to lie to our enemies in statements also heard by our citizens. We felt that General Eisenhower had said much the same thing on television some weeks earlier, but Sylvester’s words were attacked out of all context and proportion by a torrent of newspaper and Congressional critics. The President immediately asked me to draft a letter for Sylvester which explained his choice of language, admitted that it “should have been more carefully phrased and considered,” and emphasized his own and his department’s abhorrence of censorship. But Sylvester, with a show of spunk the President had to admire, refused to sign any letter that appeared to appease his accusers, and so the sound and fury continued.

At the time of the Cuban missile crisis the President also approved restrictions on Pentagon and State Department news contacts, stressing his willingness to drop them once they appeared to curb the free flow of essential news. At the same time he tried briefly to require all White House aides to clear in advance with Salinger all conversations with newsmen, and to report in writing on the subject matter of those conversations, but the rule was so rarely and so humorously observed that it soon fell into disuse.

Former Florida Governor LeRoy Collins, then head of the National
Association of Broadcasters, accused the administration of “news suppression” in the Cuban crisis, but the President had no apologies:

The crisis having eased, he added, the curbs did not seem to be too tight, inasmuch as Adlai Stevenson’s highly secret report on U Thant’s visit to Cuba, distributed in the State Department one morning at 8
A.M.
, was appearing in wire service copy by 10
A.M.
before Dean Rusk had seen the original report. U Thant’s understandable reaction “caused Governor Stevenson some pain,” said the President. “So I think that information has been flowing out, but if it isn’t, we will get it out.”

Having joined in the criticism of Eisenhower’s refusal to give Congress access to USIA “prestige” polls, he initially changed the nature of these polls and later authorized both their immediate availability to appropriate Congressional leaders and their public release at dates sufficiently later to prevent Allied embarrassment. When this led to an outcry that he was suppressing unfavorable findings, we arranged with a friendly legislator who rightfully had access to them to “leak” their very favorable findings to the press. The outcry soon stopped.

So long as the news was free, the citizenry informed and the channels of information open, the President regarded the whole “managed news” charge as a manufactured controversy of little interest. “We aren’t losing any votes on that one,” he said privately. “Does anyone think we’d be getting ‘belted’ every day if we could control it ourselves?” He was amused by a poll of newsmen declaring (1) that his administration worked harder than all others at “managing the news” and (2) offered more accessibility than all others to news sources.

The Presidential press conferences were one of Kennedy’s most effective means of communicating with the American people. Indeed, once he decided that they would all be directly transmitted, in full and without editing, by radio and television to all parts of the country, their primary purpose was to inform and impress the public more than the press. No previous President had tried it, and columnist James Reston, certain it
would produce some slip of catastrophic proportions, called it “the goofiest idea since the hula hoop.” But the President wanted the American people to see and hear his answers and opening statements as he gave them, without having to rely on newspaper accounts and headlines.

It was a bold but highly effective innovation. Some reporters, who could have filed stories quicker merely by watching television, wondered whose purpose they were serving, and some publishers may have objected to their reporters acting as performers for the benefit of the television industry. But “it is highly beneficial,” the President reassured them with a touch of sarcasm, “to have some twenty million Americans regularly…observe the incisive, the intelligent and the courteous qualities displayed by your Washington correspondents.”

Prior to almost every press conference, he protested privately and only half-seriously that he did not feel like facing the press—that he envied General De Gaulle’s practice of meeting correspondents only twice a year and accepting only questions carefully planted in advance to which the answers had been carefully memorized—that Salinger and the rest of us were launching him unprepared and unprotected into a hostile sea. He always returned pleased with his own performance, however, occasionally resentful of a nasty question, but eager to tune in to watch its rebroadcast, chuckling appreciatively at some of his own answers.

He was not unprotected and unprepared. For protection, he had his own skill in parrying and answering questions. And he was always thoroughly prepared. The day before the conference, which was usually fixed publicly two or more days in advance, Salinger met with the information officers of major departments to gather their materials on current issues. The State Department prepared a large briefing book, listing all possible questions and answers on foreign policy. The Council of Economic Advisers prepared a list of major questions and answers on major economic developments. All the weekly reports from the departments and agencies since the last conference were gathered. The President pored over this material, much of which was not too useful, and then breakfasted at 8:45
A.M.
on the morning of the conference with Salinger or his deputy from the Press Office; myself and Feldman from the Special Counsel’s Office; Rusk, public affairs Assistant Secretary Robert Manning and usually Under Secretary Ball from the State Department; Bundy from the White House foreign affairs shop; Walter Heller from the Economic Advisers; and the Vice President. On the basis of our own reading, Salinger and I prepared lengthy lists of possible difficult questions—usually far more difficult than most of those asked—and the breakfast was customarily spent reviewing those questions and their answers.

His own extensive reading, and his participation in every level of government, was his best preparation. On most of the questions which Salinger or I read off, he simply nodded for the next one, a signal that he felt confident he could handle that subject. On others, he asked questions of those present or directed that more information be obtained. His answers were never written out or practiced—he simply wanted to feel comfortable with each possible subject. Our discussions frequently produced humorous answers, which were usually too barbed for his serious consideration but which at times I could detect him deliberating as he listened to an actual question at the conference. “It is dangerous to have them in the back of my head,” he once told me, and he predicted from the tone of our discussion one morning that the press conference that evening would become “The 6 O’clock Comedy Hour.”

In actuality his own humorous responses, nearly all of them spontaneous, were both funnier and more appropriate than any we suggested. He poked fun at many subjects, but particularly his Republican detractors. Refusing to comment on various charges by Nixon and Goldwater, he expressed “sympathy” for the “problems” they were encountering. Told about a Republican resolution that he was a failure, he observed drily, “I am sure it was passed unanimously.” Asked if he had any judgment on a series of Republican leadership seminars, he wondered aloud who could be supplying them with leadership—“But I’m sure they’ll have a varied program.” Equally often he laughed at himself. Told that the appearance of a Band-Aid on his finger would surely cause inquiries from viewing editors, he explained, “I cut my finger when I was cutting bread—unbelievable as it may sound.”

At times, on more serious matters, he would threaten during the breakfast to speak some harsh truth or opinion that caused shudders in the Department of State. “If I followed your advice on every topic which you want me to avoid answering,” he said one morning, “I would stand up there with nothing to say.” Later, when it was suggested that he might be asked about a recent stream of astonishing remarks former President Truman had volunteered on such subjects as taxes and racial intermarriage, President Kennedy observed, “Compared with Truman’s advisers, you fellows don’t have any problems.”

Often Bundy, Salinger and I spent most of the hours between the breakfast and the conference, usually held at 4
P.M.
, securing additional information or working on his opening statements, which also had been reviewed at breakfast. The President preferred to have from one to three opening statements or announcements of importance for each news conference, not to take time away from the questions but to provide some focus for them, and to make use of this rare opportunity and sizable audience. Pending bills in particular were pushed in this form
rather than in a long speech. During a sensitive world crisis an opening statement of policy might also be used to ward off further questions on that subject.

From 3:00 to 3:40
P.M.
we usually met with him once more as he dressed in his bedroom, reviewing last-minute changes and developments. Then he would hurry out with Salinger, muttering once again that he felt doubtful and defenseless about the whole thing.

Regular press conferences—and, equally important, the preparation for them—had many values. “It’s like preparing for a final exam twice a month,” the President commented. These sessions kept him, and his staff, on top of everything going on in the government, in the press and in the public mind, instead of concentrating on a few crises. They enabled him to fix a deadline for the announcement of various projects. They gave him an opportunity to articulate the administration’s policy for everyone in the administration, and I always detected a greater sense of direction and pride throughout the Executive Branch following a particularly good press conference. They provided him with a low-key excuse to speak directly to Congress and to foreign governments. They enabled him to dominate the front pages, for which Congress and the Republicans were competing.
⁴

Above all, the televised press conferences provided a direct communication with the voters which no newspaper could alter by interpretation or omission. “We couldn’t survive without TV,” remarked the President one evening, as he watched a rebroadcast of that day’s conference.

For these reasons, after abandoning the idea of weekly news conferences in the crisis-filled year of 1961, he finally decided, partly as a matter of self-discipline, to subject himself to regularly scheduled news conferences at intervals of one to three weeks even when he felt there was insufficient news to supply them. Even then he took some delight when a trip, a holiday or the substitution of other press activities led to a longer interval, and during the Cuban, Berlin and race relations crises he did not hesitate to avoid news conferences for seven- or nine-week stretches. Nevertheless, in thirty-four months in the White House, he held sixty-three formal televised news conferences in Washington as well as numerous other special Presidential question-and-answer sessions. No one of these was either called, or canceled once called, because of any sudden emergency.

On very few occasions Kennedy received advance word, usually
through Salinger, that a particular question would be asked, and on even fewer occasions, no more than a dozen in three years, he arranged to plant a pertinent question in advance. While his own preparations were designed to anticipate as many questions as possible, the twenty to twenty-five questions raised in each conference invariably included at least one not remotely foreseen in the several dozen topics we had reviewed. Nor did he attempt to select only friendly reporters in singling out one of the many on their feet after each answer. He often seemed to point more to his right than to his left, but this had no hidden ideological significance.

Many of those with whom he was most friendly asked unfriendly questions, to which he never objected. He preferred hard, controversial questions to soft, generalized queries. The sharper the question, the more sharply he felt he could answer. He listened patiently to long statements concealed as questions and engaged in no direct debate with reporters. Often he was champing to give his answer before the question was completed.

At no time did he lose his dignity, his temper or his control of the situation. He made a few misstatements of fact but no major blunders. His answers were almost always brief. Some of the best were no more than a sentence or even a word. Would he comment on the possibilities of a neutron bomb? “No.” Was he certain the Soviets really put two men in orbit? “Yes.”