Kathryn Ryan IVs White House Corres. Helen Thomas

Monday, 28 May 2007, 5:05 pm
Article: Scoop Transcript

Kathryn Ryan IVs White House Correspondent Helen Thomas

Radio New Zealand National – Nine To Noon

Transcribed For Scoop by Rosalea Barker

White House Correspondent Helen Thomas - Source Image carlcoxphoto.com

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Published with Permission of Radio New Zealand National
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Kathryn Ryan:
Our feature guest this morning is the First Lady of the press in Washington. For more than 50 years, Helen Thomas, now in her eighties, has reported in Washington, the bulk of those years as a White House correspondent. She's covered every president since John F. Kennedy. Her career's included a long stint as White House Bureau Chief for the wire agency UPI. She then became a columnist for the Hearst Corporation's King Features Syndicate. She's written four books, including Thanks for the Memories, Mr President; Wit and Wisdom from the Front Row of the White House.

Now, that's an apt title, because it's from the front row that she delivered the first question at press conferences for so many years. And also for so many years ended with the tag line, Thank you, Mr President. Her latest book, Watchdogs of Democracy? The Waning Washington Press Corps and How it Failed the Public is perhaps indicative of her mood at this stage of her career, both in regard to the presidency of George W. Bush and the performance of the White House press corps covering it. Helen Thomas joins me now on the line from Washington.

Welcome to the programme.

Helen Thomas:
Thank you

Kathryn Ryan:
Can we start with this latest president, and do you know--I haven't toted them up--how many would it be? Do you know off the top of your head?

Helen Thomas:
Nine.

Kathryn Ryan:
Nine. This ninth and latest president that you've covered, George W. Bush, an administration which pretty much cold-shouldered you and a president who you reportedly described--perhaps not realising it would be reported--as the worst in American history. Was that your honest assessment of this presidency?

Helen Thomas:
That was my early assessment and it remains.

Kathryn Ryan:
Why?

Helen Thomas:
Why? Because I think that I cannot think of one redeeming feature. I think anyone who would want war and deliberately take this country into war under falsehoods cannot exactly be put on a pedestal. I want our leaders to understand where they are, what they're doing, and have some sense of humanity. I mean, we have been disgraced by torture. We've been disgraced by everything that has been tied to this war. We've killed thousands of innocent people. Bombed them. And to this moment, the leaders cannot explain why. One motivating reason--the only reason to go to war--is when you are attacked. That's under international law. So we're illegal and immoral and unconscionable.

Kathryn Ryan:
You've covered presidents during the Vietnam era. You've covered the Nixon White House. And yet your assessment is on this administration.

Helen Thomas:
Well, I was pretty tough on them, too, but they had some other sides, believe me. Johnson was magnificent on the domestic side. He rammed through, in the first two years on the tail end of the Kennedy assassination, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, voting rights for blacks for the first time in the South, federal aid to education at all levels, from Head Start for pre-schoolers to scholarships. Child maternal health. National parks. Public housing.

Kathryn Ryan:
And Nixon?

Helen Thomas:
Nixon went to China. He tried for some detente with the Soviet Union, and he did some things on the environment that were good.

Kathryn Ryan:
He also, it is argued, or some within his administration, potentially prolonged the Vietnam war.

Helen Thomas:
No question about it. He promised, he said when he came into power, when he was elected in 1968 that he had a plan to end the war. Four and a half years later, we were stilling bombing hell out of Hanoi, so there's no question there was a lot of deception there and he didn't want to be the first president, he said, to lose a war. As did Johnson. But we lost. We left Vietnam by our fingertips, clinging to helicopters.

Kathryn Ryan:
Quite literally. You took on the administration--this administration--over the proposed war in Iraq before other White House correspondents did. What is your assessment of the press corps coverage of the pre-war and early war Bush White House?

Helen Thomas:
My colleagues let the country down. They gave up their one weapon, which is skepticism. They took all of these falsehoods in stride and even when they knew it was so questionable, they didn't ask the questions. They saw it. They bought this whole business of going to be four days, a cakewalk, put on their trenchcoats, get embedded for four days, come home and live happily ever after and be great foreign correspondents. I know that's a very ruthless assessment, but they did not remember Vietnam. They didn't know you don't go thousands of miles away to kill people in their own country, or to get one man.

Kathryn Ryan:
Why didn't they ask the questions at the outset?

Helen Thomas:
The fear card was played very heavily. I think. After 9/11, everyone started pulling their punches. They didn't want to ask tough questions--this is my belief--because they didn't want to be called un-American, unpatriotic. So they remained silent when they should have been questioning very strongly, and the administration got away with it.

Kathryn Ryan:
If misinformation or inaccurate information is put forward, as was the case in the weapons of the mass destruction, some of the pronouncements there...

Helen Thomas:
And ties to Al Qaeda. And a threat from a Third World country to the world's only major super-power?

Kathryn Ryan:
Where does the responsibility lie in respect of misinformation: those who provide it or those who report it?

Helen Thomas:
Truth took a holiday on both sides, but I think it behoves the press to keep always pressing. You can't always expect the leaders to tell the truth, because they're trying to defend themselves, their own actions, and so forth. It's up to the reporter not to seek popularity but to try to find out the truth.

Kathryn Ryan:
You describe it in your book as "the waning Washington press corps". Does that mean that things have changed? That this is a performance below where the press has been in earlier times?

Helen Thomas:
No question about it. But I do think they're coming out of their coma now. I think the Katrina hurricane was devastating and they seem to have been unleashed by their corporate heads in New York, or whatever, they've started asking important questions, started showing some emotion, they were allowed to add to question the administration.

Kathryn Ryan:
How is the press corps managed? And I come back to Nixon, because it's hard to see officials or indeed press staff being more blatantly difficult in their handling of the press than in his era. How does that compare with now?

Helen Thomas:
I think that after Watergate, the very fact that two Washington Post reporters were able to uncover this. By the time the scandal had really forced the resignation of President Nixon, Washington Post had eighteen reporters on the story. So did the New York Times. So it was a big story, and so forth. After that, reporters who were at the White House and couldn't do the real investigative work but nevertheless were somewhat cowered and shamed in a sense, they realized that they should have been tougher, and they did get much tougher. They learned. It was an arena. It was no longer the White House press room; it was a real lion's den after they realised how they had defaulted.

Kathryn Ryan:
But there is a pattern, here, is there not? That there's a late entry to the game and then the press trying to make up for its earlier absences, if you like.

Helen Thomas:
Well, we're not supposed to be prosecutors, you know, in that respect. We certainly are to search for the truth, try to ask the important questions, and to make the leaders accountable. We're not supposed to have a dictatorship. We don't have one-man rule. We have to make the leaders explain and be accountable for what they do. Especially since they do it in our name.

Kathryn Ryan:
You mentioned the White House press corps having a slightly different role, and that's very interesting, because it was the investigative work of non-White House reporters that....

Helen Thomas:
That’s much easier for them. To be on the outside, following up people all day, and so forth. But not when you're on a wire service, as I was, with UPI. You're on a body watch. The President goes out in public, you go out in public. And so forth. So it's very different on a breaking news.

Kathryn Ryan:
But when we look at the quality of information that some journalists ran in respect of the Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction evidence, etc, it did not match the quality of information that Watergate got from a very senior official.

Helen Thomas:
Well, the war is still going on. But books are being written and have been written, and some of this is pretty astounding. How we were had.

Kathryn Ryan:
What I'm getting to is whether it is harder now to get those sources, to get information, to get people prepared to act--however you view their actions--in the public interest by using the press.

Helen Thomas:
I think it's more difficult when there's a war going on. I think you'll have fewer whistleblowers, per se, because they feel they're jeopardising the troops and they shouldn't open their mouths. So I think it is more difficult. But in the end, the truth will come out. This is one of the most secretive administrations that I've ever covered. All administrations are secretive. All presidents think they own information that should be in the public domain. Everyone is secretive in that sense, but these people are more so. And wartime gives them a much greater excuse of national security.

Kathryn Ryan:
In terms of the White House press corps, you made the point, the distinction, that that is about putting the questions to the president specifically, and I think I'm hearing you saying that that is happening now. But what happened in terms of your own treatment, in the early days of the Iraq war, when you were questioning President Bush over his decision.

Helen Thomas:
Ha! Persona non grata! I will survive. I didn't go into this business--and neither did you, I hope--to win a popularity contest. I feel my job is to ask the questions and let the chips fall where they may. And I don't expect to be kid-gloved or anything else.

Kathryn Ryan:
But they didn't take your questions any more, right? For how long?

Helen Thomas:
It's been a year, at least, now...

Kathryn Ryan:
Since you last asked a question?

Helen Thomas:
Last time I asked the President, What is the real reason you went to war? He said, the Taliban. I said, I'm talking about Iraq. He said, 9/11. I said, I'm talking about Iraq. So I never did get an answer. I think because the answer that he went to war—it may be the same way as Australia and so forth leaders--is that whatever the reason, it's not acceptable. Whatever it was. We were not attacked.

Kathryn Ryan:
Come back to where I started, though, which is your being ostracised. To what extent did that affect your ability to do your job?

Helen Thomas:
It didn't at all. The fact that I can't ask the person a question doesn't deter me. I always keep hoping the other reporters will ask him, and I go to the briefings, White House briefings, and I pull their chain every day.

Kathryn Ryan:
And is that what it's about now? Pulling the chains?

Helen Thomas:
I've been very tough on them and ask them the questions and they are committed to stand up there and try to answer some. Some of the answers, of course, don't parse, but there we are.

Kathryn Ryan:
You're a self-declared liberal, which I think translates in New Zealand as probably having a left-leaning political bent. It has a slightly different meaning, the word "liberal" in New Zealand. But how much has that influenced your reporting and commentary over the years?

Helen Thomas:
I write a public opinion column. I'm allowed to think for myself.

Kathryn Ryan:
And how much can and should personal opinion influence political commentary?

Helen Thomas:
I hope it influences a lot of people. But I'm not running for anything!

Kathryn Ryan:
What about reporting?

Helen Thomas:
I would like them to understand why people think it's wrong to torture.

Kathryn Ryan:
Does the mainstream US press corps demonstrate political bias one way or the other?

Helen Thomas:
They do if you work for a wire service. I worked for a wire service, UPI, for 57 years. I was never, never, never accused of slanting anything. But I didn't bow out of the human race. I permitted myself to think, to care, to believe, but it didn't get in my copy. I was never accused of any bias. Although everyone knew how I felt. I wrote the stories straight, which is very easy to do.

Kathryn Ryan:
I'm speaking to Helen Thomas, long-serving White House correspondent. I'd like to go back now to your early life, if you would. You were a trailblazer as a woman in political journalism. How did your reporting career begin?

Helen Thomas:
I saw my byline in the high school newspaper, and I was hooked for life. My ego swelled, and I said, This is it! I started working on the school newspaper. I loved the ambience. I loved the sense of independence, that I could be nosey all my life.

Kathryn Ryan:
How did you make it happen? Because this was well before the era of there being many women reporters.

Helen Thomas:
Well, I had wonderful, wonderful parents, who couldn't read or write, but they made me understand that I was free to do anything I wanted to do in life, and could.

Kathryn Ryan:
So how did you break into the business, though?

Helen Thomas:
I went to Washington during the tail end of WWII and looked for a job. By this time, they were drafting every young man who had a pulse. If he was breathing, he was going to WWII, he was being drafted. So slots opened up for women that had never done so before. There'd been women reporters for 150 years, but very few and far between. I found a job with UPI.

Kathryn Ryan:
The wire service in those days, antiquated...

Helen Thomas:
United Press and then it merged with International News Service.

Kathryn Ryan:
But the wire service in those days, a different business from the computerised beast it is today.

Helen Thomas:
That's right.

Kathryn Ryan:
What were you doing every day? What was the reality of it?

Helen Thomas:
Covering Washington. Covering Justice Department. Covering health and education, welfare. All the tricky-track, and so forth. I went to the White House in 1961.

Kathryn Ryan:
And the president there was John F. Kennedy. Did you cover his campaign, in fact?

Helen Thomas:
Part of it. The tail end.

Kathryn Ryan:
Your views on Kennedy?

Helen Thomas:
The most inspired. My favourite president. Reach for the stars. He told us we could do anything, we could even go to the moon in a decade. We did it, but he didn't live to see it. He created the Peace Corps, signed the first nuclear test ban treaty, inspired young people to go into public service. Told them that it could be the crown of their career.

Kathryn Ryan:
Had he lived his life out, and faced all the hard things that come to any president, would he have had that same legacy?

Helen Thomas:
Yes, even more so. I think he grew in office, which not all presidents do. He learned from his mistakes. He learned from the Bay of Pigs to the Cuban missile crisis--that was a quantum leap in foreign policy. What you learn, you step back from the brink, as did Nikita Kruschev. Both had been in war; both cared about humanity. And both knew they had arsenals, nuclear arsenals, to blow up the world. But he stepped back.

Kathryn Ryan:
What you are saying is, there is substance and not just what was so obvious about John Kennedy, which was his charm and his political abilities.

Helen Thomas:
That's right. He had depth, and he believed that we all had greater possibilities. He said there's a universe out there that we have to explore. He kept learning. And he believed in education strongly. So, he grew.

Kathryn Ryan:
Who would you pick, then, as you work through these... we’ve mentioned Nixon, and so forth--as you work through these nine presidents, who else stood out to you? As, perhaps, the makers of significant eras.

Helen Thomas:
Lyndon B. Johnson for his contribution on the domestic side. He moved the mountain. He understood people's needs. He wanted to lay a foundation beyond which people in our country don't starve, lack for medicine, education, shelter. And he was there. But, of course, Vietnam was his denouement.

Kathryn Ryan:
And others?

Helen Thomas:
Jimmy Carter put human rights at the centrepiece of his foreign policy. He's won the Nobel Peace Prize. He continues to work for peace. He is in total demand all over the world to solve disputes, because both sides trust him. So he made a tremendous contribution to foreign policy.

Kathryn Ryan:
If we look at the modern presidents, Ronald Reagan is a character who tends to polarise. What is your assessment of his era?

Helen Thomas:
He moved our country to the right. There was a Reagan revolution. Social Darwinism: “Can't do it? Tough!” He was really out to destroy organised labour. At the same time, he worked on building up an arms race with the Soviet Union, which was down on its uppers and falling apart economically. So, I would say from that aspect, he was the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of the Cold War. But every president since WWII has had the same foreign policy, which was, really, to be in contention with communism. And at the same time, they kept their powder dry, basically. Which was good.

Kathryn Ryan:
Was he not in many ways a breakthrough in respect of his relationship with Russia, the detente, if you like, in the Cold War with Russia?

Helen Thomas:
I don't call it that. It was the same foreign policy except that Russia was really falling apart and the arms race probably was the last straw. And anyway, in fighting the Soviet Union, we kept our powder dry, we didn't do it with the barrel of a gun, basically, although there were some wars, of course. We did it through exchange students, exchange teachers, the Pope, blue jeans, rap music, the Voice of America. We spread the ideas. We were lucky enough to have Gorbachev open the window a little.

Kathryn Ryan:
In respect then, of George Bush I, you've observed father and son. Compare and contrast.

Helen Thomas:
Well, George Bush I understood foreign policy. He understood the limitations, also, of even a superpower. Foreign policy was his forte, I think. He was not great on the domestic side, but he knew enough in the first Gulf War not to go to Baghdad. He said, of all things--can you believe it? He said there would be a civil war, a religious war, and so forth. Of course, the Highway of Death also kept him from it. Which is where we were shooting down everybody who had their hands up trying to surrender. The Iraqis. At the end of that war. And that would not have played well in America.

Kathryn Ryan:
Is there not the theory, though, that in some ways George Bush II’s presidency is about completing the uncompleted work of his father's era?

Helen Thomas:
What is uncompleted? To go into someone's country and conquer it, and say, This is a big victory? What is the goal? What do you mean "uncompleted"? I know you're not saying it; everybody else says it.

Kathryn Ryan:
They're the same characters involved, many of the same players.

Helen Thomas:
So the job to do... well, it isn't our job to wipe out people in their own country. That is horrifying. It's brutal. It's cruel. It's unfair. Unjust.

Kathryn Ryan:
Let's keep working through this extraordinary modern era. The other one, of course, is Bill Clinton. I'm very interested in your take on his presidency.

Helen Thomas:
I think he did a lot of good in terms of the search for peace in the Middle East, Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and so forth. But I think he could have done more. And I think he will not wind up on Mount Rushmore. He lost his chance for greatness. You have to take more chances than he did.

Kathryn Ryan:
Keep going on that. What did he fail to do that might have earned him credit?

Helen Thomas:
He could have had a total universal healthcare plan, for one thing. Instead, they had some Pavlovian recipe which obviously didn't work and couldn't work. Easily shot down by the drug companies and by the AMA, the medical people, and so forth, who didn't want universal healthcare. That, among other things. But a lot of other things where he could have taken his chances. Just depends on what you want to accomplish as president. If you want to accomplish re-election, I suppose you do pull in your horns.

Kathryn Ryan:
As you look back over these nine presidents, what stood out to you about them as people? Did you have much personal access to them?

Helen Thomas:
You know, you have your nose against the windowpane. The personal access is you see them, you cover them, and so forth, but there's a big distance between really knowing them... Except, you know them by their actions and by their words and whether they live up to what they say they are, and so forth. So you make judgments all the time.

Kathryn Ryan:
You were on Air Force One, I think, when you did the China trip with Nixon. Have I got that right?

Helen Thomas:
Right.

Kathryn Ryan:
Back in '72. Did he have any contact with the press, as modern presidents would do--wander down and have a chat, or no?

Helen Thomas:
Oh, sure. They do. It was a very, very exciting trip. Probably one of the most that I ever had in covering the White House. Because we had a 20-year hiatus of no relations, no diplomatic relations with China. The average American knew very little about what was happening in China. New Zealanders knew much more. CIA knew something. People living in Hong Kong, India, and so forth knew some of the transformation of China into a communist society, but the average American didn't really know that much. So it was like landing on the moon for the reporters who went there. Everything was a story. How they looked. What they wore. What they ate. It was a gold mine for reporters.

Kathryn Ryan:
To come back to the contact with presidents, then, you have made it very clear throughout this whole interview what you see as your role, and it sure as heck is not hobnobbing and chatting with them, right?

Helen Thomas:
I don't... I would hobnob if I had the chance. Better to get to know them! I believe that's okay. I think it's very important to know who has the power to push the button and blow up the world.

Kathryn Ryan:
It's interesting, that, because I'm thinking of some of the big media magnates who did have close access to the presidents--the likes of your Phil Graham's running the Washington Post back in Kennedy's era, in particular. What role the relationship between those senior media owners and editors and the various White Houses?

Helen Thomas:
I don't think a real journalist can be co-opted or bought in that sense. I think the more you know, the better off you are.

Kathryn Ryan:
So, the fact that there may have been close personal contact and discussion of policy between media owners or senior editors is not a problem?

Helen Thomas:
That's okay by me. Especially if they can tell us what they’ve learned.

Kathryn Ryan:
In terms of the powers and the way Washington operates these days, we've looked at the press--and I guess it's limited powers, in many ways. In terms of the lobby system, which has been very much under scrutiny for many years, has that got worse, if you like, has it got out of control?

Helen Thomas:
It's very powerful, I would say. Special interests who will pay to promote their causes. But I don't think it's out of control. It probably could be much more regulated, but I don't think that is the main fault of our system right now. I think secrecy is... I think we should know almost everything. Maybe not some top national security secret, but everything else, we should know. And what is being done, as I say, in our name.

Kathryn Ryan:
Will there ever again be a president who tape records every conversation he has in his office? Possibly not.

Helen Thomas:
I hope so! Who knows! We might find out they all tape record. So far, I think, they're playing it very cool. Anyway, they say enough to appall you.

Kathryn Ryan:
On record.

Helen Thomas:
Oh, my goodness!

Kathryn Ryan:
Let me ask you for some predictions, from your long experience.

Helen Thomas:
Don't ask me who's going to win the election, because I don't know. My crystal ball is very murky.

Kathryn Ryan:
Are you a disciplined reporter who only reports on what they see and not speculates on what they haven't yet seen?

Helen Thomas:
Nope. When I write an opinion column, I can go for broke.

Kathryn Ryan:
Why won't you speculate? Is it just too tight?

Helen Thomas:
I think too many are running now, and I don't think it's so fluid, if I can use that word. I don't believe there is a shoe-in yet.

Kathryn Ryan:
Is this on the Democrat side?

Helen Thomas:
Either side. I don't think the Republicans have a prayer. Not if they continue on the road they are. Unless there is a miraculous turnaround, I don't see how a Republican can get elected. But on the other hand, I'm very prejudiced on that score.

Kathryn Ryan:
I think we detected that! In terms of the issue, then, it depends who wins the Democrat nomination.

Helen Thomas:
I think that it's coming down to Hillary Clinton and to Barack Obama.

Kathryn Ryan:
Which means your first black or your first woman president. Does either really matter?

Helen Thomas:
I think that it shows that diversity has finally come into its own in the US, and it will be very interesting.

Kathryn Ryan:
Helen, I can only imagine, with an indication of what wire agencies are like and an indication of what political seats of power are like, that you've done little but work all these years. Is that true? Do you ever regret committing an entire life to this the way you have?

Helen Thomas:
Hell, no! I love my job. Don't you? Love yours?

Kathryn Ryan:
I've got to be honest with you, I intend to retire before I'm in my eighties.

Helen Thomas:
I know what you're hinting at. I love my job. I want to die with my boots on. Is there anything wrong with that?

Kathryn Ryan:
I think not.

Helen Thomas:
Why do I have to apologise for being alive?

Kathryn Ryan:
You don't have to apologise for being alive. I'm just curious. Will you ever retire, or is it just too much fun?

Helen Thomas:
I love my work, and I love being a part of the whole scheme of things. I mean, you can participate in society, you feel you're making a contribution when you're informing people. How can a democracy work otherwise?

Kathryn Ryan:
Thank you so much for being with us today. That is Helen Thomas, these days a syndicated columnist with the Hearst Corporation's Kings Features Syndicate and for many years, bureau chief for the wire agency UPI. A woman who's seen and certainly passed opinion on nine US presidents.

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