The Kingdom and the Power (22 page)

This does not mean that
The Times
, in the winter of 1966, had complied with the government’s desire to suppress a series of articles on the Central Intelligence Agency; it did mean, however, that
The Times
felt obliged to have a former head of the CIA, John McCone, visit the
Times
building and read the articles before publication and suggest changes where the facts might imperil national security. Some of McCone’s suggestions were accepted, others were not. There was a little give and take on both sides, the
entente cordiale
surviving as it had to survive. The two forces were both committed to essentially the same goals, the preservation of the democratic system and the established order, and this kindred spirit at the top often filters down through the ranks toward the bottom: a minor government official immediately accepts all telephone calls from
Times
reporters; the mounted policeman on Forty-third Street looks after the illegally parked cars of his newspaper friends, and
The Times
looks after his horse; and the clerk in the courthouse can fix what a recalcitrant New York policeman will not. Mayor Lindsay will dance at a
Times
jamboree, and when Governor Nelson Rockefeller spots Clifton Daniel at a large cocktail gathering there is an instant smile, and within seconds they both edge their way to the patio and a very private conversation.

Times
reporters wishing to know what goes on within the hierarchy of
The Times
must subtly search for clues in their talks with government officials, ambassadors, Senators, those who move in the same circles as the Sulzbergers and other heirs of Ochsian power. It is remarkable how much the government knows and cares about the inner workings of
The Times
. When Turner Catledge was a reporter in Washington in the late Nineteen-thirties, he had been tipped off by both President Roosevelt and the Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, that he would be Arthur Krock’s successor, and Catledge undoubtedly would have been, had he chosen to remain in Washington.

For nearly a century, the presidents of the United States have tried to maintain warm personal relationships with members of the Ochs family, and while this has not always guaranteed flattering news coverage of the White House, it has at least enabled the President to know a good deal about the paper and about those executives whom he might one day wish to influence or charm or to whom he might wish to address a letter of complaint.

Lyndon Johnson, three months after he became President, visited the
Times
building and had lunch with eleven senior executives in the publisher’s dining room. (Dozens of kings, queens, and national leaders had been there previously, including Winston Churchill, who once paused during the meal to ask Sulzberger: “Do the resources of the great
New York Times
extend to a bit of mustard?”) President Johnson was an engaging guest. He ate everything on his plate, was complimentary of the shrimp and the roast beef. He told a few jokes and did not permit the luncheon to be interrupted by his calls even though, less than an hour before he arrived, he had received news of Cuba’s decision to cut off the water supply to Guantánamo. He sat between Arthur Hays Sulzberger and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, father and son, on a special upholstered folding chair that a Secret Service agent had placed there before lunch: the chair was lower than a normal dining chair, and wider. The table was set with gold-rimmed dishes and silverware embossed with
The New York Times
’ emblem, the eagle that adorns the masthead each day on the editorial page. The floral arrangements sprouted the national colors—red carnations, white roses, blue delphiniums—and they were set in transparent glass bowls so that the Secret Service men could be certain that they were bomb-free. After lunch, one of Johnson’s aides came in with a handful of telephone messages. Johnson excused himself and went out to the foyer and took one telephone call. Then he returned and told the others, some of whom he knew quite well from previous meetings—Catledge, Daniel, Oakes—the latest news about Cuba. Then he shook hands all around and headed for the elevator.

After the visit, Lyndon Johnson kept in touch with
Times
executives in various ways. Sometimes he communicated through intermediaries; at other times, Johnson himself picked up the telephone and called
Times
editor. One night at a dinner in Manhattan, there was a call for John Oakes. When Oakes answered, he heard Lyndon Johnson’s voice, in its most folksy drawl: “
John
 … 
Ah been thinkin’ about you
 …” Oakes could barely hear because of the noise of the party, and he was thoroughly confused by Johnson’s words, and all that Oakes could think of replying was, “
I … I’ve been thinking about you, too, Mister President
.”

Johnson finally got to the point of his call—he was making Thomas Mann, the Latin-American expert, an Assistant Secretary of State. Oakes agreed that Mann was a good choice, and an editorial favorable to Mann later appeared in
The Times
. Shortly afterwards, at another social gathering, Oakes was approached by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and was berated for publishing the Mann editorial. Mann’s wisdom on Latin-American and Cuban affairs had rarely impressed Schlesinger during the Kennedy years, but the vehemence of Schlesinger’s reaction to the editorial both shocked and startled Oakes, and he was very angry as he turned away from Schlesinger. It seemed to Oakes that Schlesinger was resurrecting much of the old hostility that President Kennedy’s people in Washington had felt toward Oakes a few years before; now, instead of being labeled anti-Kennedy, Oakes was being damned as pro-Johnson, which was untrue. Still, Kennedy’s aides did understand correctly the inner workings of
The New York Times
. They knew that if the editorials were negative, there was one man to blame—Oakes. They knew that the power in
The Times
’ News department was much more diffuse, and that it was sometimes more advantageous to gain the good will of a reporter than an editor, and it is possible that the administration of John F. Kennedy had handled the working press with more finesse than had ever been done before.

Kennedy himself was a masterful student of journalism. An omnivorous reader of newspapers since his days at Choate, Kennedy had on two occasions worked as a reporter, and he had often expressed the desire to own a newspaper after retiring from public office. Through his father, he had been introduced at an early age to many prominent journalists, and he developed a keen awareness of their vanity and style, their susceptibility to flattery and sensitivity to criticism, their delight in being on the inside of anything momentous or intimate. As a Senator he had sent notes of thanks to those who had praised him in print; as the President he was particularly adroit in his use of the press, timing his announcements to meet various deadlines, being gracious to friends, cool to critics, bestowing favors like a king.

Those journalists whom he liked and trusted were admitted
to his court. They dined with him, played golf with him, were privileged observers of his New Frontier, were treated with an informality and charm that former presidents had not extended even to most publishers and star columnists. But the Kennedy manner was not comparable with the past. He had altered the social structure of the press establishment, creating his own system of stardom. By merely favoring a journalist in small ways, even a journalist of relatively minor talent, Kennedy could and did elevate the status of that journalist, and in a few instances such men became columnists or featured faces on television.

Kennedy’s willingness to give interviews on television, and his use of television for his news conferences, offended some veterans in the press corps. James Reston called the televised news conference “the goofiest idea since the hula hoop,” even though Reston’s career itself did not suffer during the Kennedy years. Reston, together with other good reporters and writers, was able to compensate for television and for any social absence at Kennedy dinner parties by working harder. Perhaps they also profited by not getting too close to Kennedy: they were able to judge him with more detachment and honesty without the fear of losing such a costly friendship, and they were capable of criticism—as Reston was a week before Kennedy’s death:

But one
Times
columnist who felt the Kennedy style adversely was Arthur Krock. The recognition accorded Krock by other presidents and their aides did not continue during the Kennedy years, and this both disturbed and disappointed Krock. He had been a friend of the Kennedy family for decades and had been very courteous in his coverage of Joseph P. Kennedy’s political career, earning
the elder Kennedy’s everlasting gratitude. Once, while the Kennedy family was in England, Arthur Krock received the loan of the Kennedy’s large villa in Palm Beach for a short winter vacation. When John F. Kennedy was writing his senior thesis at Harvard, he brought it at his father’s direction to Arthur Krock to see if the latter had any suggestions to make. Krock, very impressed with the manuscript, said that it could be published as a book. Together they went over the work, Krock’s role being that of a copy-editor. Then Krock secured a publisher and suggested the book’s title,
Why England Slept
, borrowing from Churchill’s earlier book,
While England Slept
. Joseph Kennedy, then the American Ambassador in London, proceeded to promote the book among his powerful friends. He got Henry R. Luce to write the foreword and he sent copies to such potential taste-makers as the Queen of England. The book sold eighty thousand copies in the United States and England, and John Kennedy, who was twenty-three when he wrote it, donated part of his royalties to the English town of Plymouth, which had been partially destroyed during the war, and he also bought for himself a new Buick.

When John Kennedy became President of the United States, Arthur Krock did not seek any preferential treatment, nor did he receive any. Krock was a proud and formal man, a hardened political conservative in a town now dominated by young liberals and the Jet Set, the Beautiful People, and what the writer Midge Decter would later call “Discothéque Radicals.” Since first arriving in Washington more than a half-century before, Arthur Krock had witnessed the comings and goings of every conceivable movement and madness, had heard all the new singing jingles created for old political hogwash—Wilson’s “New Freedom,” Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” Truman’s “Fair Deal,” and now it was Kennedy’s “New Frontier”—except that Arthur Krock, as a venerable member of the loyal opposition, was not being listened to now as he once had been. While Krock had been critical of the New Deal, Roosevelt had nonetheless given him an exclusive interview, an unprecedented honor, and it had won for Krock the Pulitzer Prize in 1938, his second such award. Although Krock had also been critical of Truman’s administration, President Truman, too, had been interviewed exclusively by Krock in 1950, and this would have earned Krock a third Pulitzer had not one member of the voting board objected to it. That objector was Krock himself. Mindful of the gossip that the Pulitzer awards had been influenced by
“logrolling,” among other factors not entirely noble, Krock believed that if the Pulitzer board awarded the prize to one of its own board members, it would lend substance to the gossip; so he offered a resolution barring any member of the awards group from eligibility, and the resolution was adopted.

But now, in the Sixties, Krock felt that such grand gestures and standards were a thing of the past. Now the social order had been overturned, the traditional Presidential news conference had become an electronic circus, and almost
anybody
could get an exclusive interview with the President—even Krock’s colleague Lester Markel.

Markel had merely telephoned Kennedy’s press aide, Pierre Salinger, and made an appointment. Markel spent forty-five minutes with Kennedy, during which he apparently did not charm the President. After Markel had left, Kennedy approached Salinger with a frown, asking, “What the hell was
that
all about?”

“What?”

“Markel didn’t come down here to interview me,” Kennedy said. “He came down to tell me what to do as President.”

The next time that Lester Markel called for an interview, Salinger put him off, explaining that there had been several
Times
men in to see the President recently—at which Markel quickly interrupted: “I do not wish to be treated as a
New York Times
man. I wish to be treated as an adviser to Presidents.”

Salinger did not back down, and neither Lester Markel nor any other
Times
editor became an “adviser” to the President during Kennedy’s tenure; although there was one
Times
man, a reporter, who did develop a close friendship with Kennedy, and this led to situations that were resented within
The New York Times
—and eventually this caused an incident that ended with the reporter’s quitting
The Times
.

His name was Bill Lawrence. Lawrence was a big, strong, toughtalking man who looked like an Irish plainclothesman. He was also a drinker, a womanizer, a good golfer, an aggressive reporter who could keep a secret—and John Kennedy was enchanted with him, which said as much about Kennedy as it did about Lawrence. The type of man that Lawrence was would probably not get a job on
The New York Times
today; but when Bill Lawrence was hired by
The Times
in 1941, a brash young bully of twenty-four, journalists were not so uniformly stylized and stamped out by schools of journalism. There was then more freedom and a more
romantic notion about the newspaper business, although the reporters of that time were generally less sober and perhaps also less responsible with their facts.