Of sitting in primarily to hear what was happening in areas that I'd be responsibile for and to have an idea of what went on in the meeting as it related to domestic affairs particularly.

Would you usually handle the actual press conference or briefings then [intelligible]?

Yeah.

Yes, it's very easy: I had a secretary.

No, the only points that had, the only parts of the day that were similar from one to another were really the preparation in the morning for the morning briefing. That was a focal point for each morning. Sometimes there'd be briefings in the afternoon, but usually there'd be a less formal press opportunity in the afternoon. The mornings for the most part--this isn't true of the entire two years--but for the most part of the two years, the mornings would start with a seven-thirty staff meeting in the Roosevelt Room. This was a very general discussion, a very quick and around the table discussion. INTERRUPTION So, after that meeting, which was [a] very general one in which people kind of just said what they thought would happen that day, we would generally have some time to review what the press had to say about things that day, read the President's news summary, just get involved a little bit in what the stories were that day as well as going over what it was that we had to dig it out in the way of statements or announcements or bills or positions or what it was. Around eight-thirty or nine o'clock we would generally meet with the Press Secretary to talk over both the problems and the items of information that we had to get out that day or that morning. Then the time from then on until eleven o'clock was spent in preparing, kind of a double preparation, preparing in my case domestic guidance for the Press Secretary. Sometimes questions and answers for him, sometimes rather lengthy discussions with guidance that he would use at his press briefings. Sometimes just a statement that was appropriate on a particular subject or issue.

This would go on until eleven o'clock or so, and then we would have a press briefing done by the Press Secretary. In many cases he would designate, if he weren't available, Jerry Warren to do the briefing and in fewer cases, but occasionally, he would ask me to do it, depending on the area, depending on the topic and so forth. So then they'd have the briefing going on for forty-five minutes to an hour. Following that, you'd have individual inquiries from the press either about the briefing or other things that they didn't want to raise at the briefing because they were particularly interested in the story and wanted to follow through on their own, that sort of thing. So you'd spend some time with the press, and by this time it was one o'clock or one-thirty. You'd begin to look through wire stories about the press conference itself in terms of how they were carrying, what had come out, and very often having to correct or call back and discuss, for example, something that had taken place in the briefing. There might be some confusion or some fact lacking.

Then generally around three o'clock we would have additional information, either a posting or a briefing, so that one had about a forty-five minute period to an hour period of preparing very quickly for that. This would be followed then by a brief opportunity to do some mail and take phone calls that had been coming in until that time until about four-thirty or so. Then it was necessary to, very often there were afternoon meetings of one kind or another. I used to have a meeting on a regular basis with a research woman who was just in here and with a couple of other people on the staff from the standpoint of--these were meetings during the time Congress was in session--from a standpoint of what had come out in Congress that day, what had happened in hearings, what had happened on the floor of the House or the Senate which we might have to address, be prepared to address the next day.

After that, preparation for the next day, which might be anything from reviewing speeches, drafts of speeches for press office input on Presidential addresses or, if they are in the domestic area, looking at materials for special briefings, fact sheets and this sort of thing, working with Domestic Council staff or people from the departments on materials that we were going to use in the briefing the next day. That would run generally until seven or so. At six-thirty you would start watching the news again, watching how things were handled and seeing what else had come up that might give you a clue as to what was happening the
next day. At seven-thirty you'd finish watching the news and then resume getting ready for the next day again and looking through the late afternoon papers, working in where you could such things as any speeches or statements or policies or getting ready for trips and preparing material on special events. This would go on until sometimes very late at night. That's the way it would go five days, sometimes six days a week. Weekend activities were pretty much confined, unless we were traveling, to press calls. Sunday evenings preparing for Monday morning, but during the day on Sunday primarily press calls on things for Monday's papers and television.

If we were traveling, it could be quite different. We might have briefings on Sunday, briefings on Saturday afternoon, postings, things of that kind, so that the travel weekends, although they always sounded very good, in terms of going to Key Biscayne or California, were a bit more hectic than Sunday activities. Any time, of course, that there was any Presidential activity, we'd be involved in that. Even if you were going out to dinner, you know, if he [the President] walks across the park to go to Trader Vic's, it's a news event; there're press involved, and he's had something to say. There are transcripts and mechanical things to do, even with the briefest social activity that the President might undertake. So, it's very hard to say what a typical day was like. I'm just suggesting what many of them were like, but events have a way of getting in the way of schedule, and there just were not too many that were alike in very many ways.

How much input did you get prior to...?

Some. He would be on domestic affairs; he would know better than most anyone else what the issues were and what the policies were. One might know in terms of what had been happening in the last few days, let's say that a certain question was apt to come up and so preparing some questions or reminding the people who were preparing questions for him on the staff that this would be a topic he would want to address. [That] would be part of it.

Yeah, just about every office.

Or refer...

Did the press office then [unintelligible] not get involved in say the efforts on Mr. Colson's staff to develop the communications systems in departments? [Unintelligible] the input which would be coming from the White House press office [unintelligible]....

Well....

From Chicago

...trying to get some of these people who are not [unintelligible].

No. The telephone callers were--to the extent that we could and thought of it--were documented. Who'd called, we would have a record of that in case we needed to get back with somebody or follow something else they were interested in, and but it was [a] matter of trying to remember who was interested in what and which people were doing stories on which topics and not in any formal way.

These were just logged in rather than having any memo of [unintelligible] those conversations?

Although they frequently do not use [unintelligible].

Specific issues? In which...?

[Unintelligible] there any [unintelligible] Press Office?

No, I won't be. I'm returning to private life. I shouldn't say private life; I'm sure it will be public in some way. This question we were talking about--information and the press--interests me very much. I may be doing some writing and some talking about that and hopefully, when I have some time, some studying of it as well. I should study first and talk after, but the schedule just doesn't work out that way. [I] just really want to have some time, after a very intensive experience, to enjoy the city a little but and to have some free time and to catch up on an awful lot of things that I haven't been able to do in the last couple of years. As I'm sure everyone says in these interviews when they leave, it's a very intense experience, very good one, very intense one. It doesn't permit any other kind of life beyond the one that one has in the job. At least, I think it's true of our office inasmuch as things do happen around the clock and they do happen on Sundays and we travel a lot. I counted back the other day for somebody, who thought I was exaggerating, and found out in two years I had had five Sundays off and that was it; no vacation period and two one-and-one-half day periods for Christmas in each of two years, one period in each of two years. Somehow it's just not enough.

Do you have a permanent address or [unintelligible]...

Yeah, I do have now but....

Yeah, well, I can't promise for the next ten years; I no longer make plans for that duration. My Washington address, I don't know if you have it.

No, I think not. I mean, so much as my experience has contributed to my ideas on things, I suppose it will. No, I don't like the kind of writing that people do when they leave places like this for the most part. I think a lot of it is very self-serving, I think if it's not responsibily done, historically well done, I don't think it is worth very much. I'm not going to write what I think about the world in four hundred pages and that sort of thing, my view from the White House, two years at the White House, that sort of thing. I just don't like that; I don't think it makes very important contribution to things. Some writing about, about information, starting at the public, a lot of the public need to know and what kind of information it gets and what the process is by which it gets information: I'd like to do some things, and I've been asked to do some pieces on that and some talking about things related to that. So I'm going to do these, and eventually I would like to do some things along an academic line.

I think that, I've always felt that a part of high school, somewhere in a high school curriculum, should be an understanding of the news-making process: sort of what it is that is required to make news, how news is handled and hopefully without any bias in whatever I do. I think it is very important, inasmuch as one is using these materials all the time as a part of one's study of contemporary affairs and civics and that sort of thing, that there be a course, a journalism course for non-journalism students which looks at the news-making process. You know, we're always asked if we have any news. We're the wrong people to ask; the press kind of decides what's news. We have a feel for what they will use and we have a feel how to relay things in a way that will get their attention, might not be attractive to them but at least will get their attention. We think we have an idea of that; it doesn't always work. A very little of what the government says or what people here say or do is communicated in the press. They're limitations of time, limitations of space, and those limitations are always dealt with in about the same way, a kind of predictable way. I think some of these things might be interesting as either a book or some ideas for a curriculum in this process for people who are not journalism people but who would like to know about it: how we get the information we get and some of the factors, what the dynamics are of that process. That's the first kind of thing I want to do and then later on do something historical, and after that I have three or four more that I want to work on.

Yeah, but I think they all need to be well-done, need to have some time between the experience and the writing. I think it takes some time to digest.

I don't like an awful lot of the things that people do when they leave jobs that they think were important, and they get together a lot of photographs and some of the amazing things that happened. There's one, I won't cite it, but there's one fellow who wrote a book, he worked for a President one time. He's written this amazing book, and he's never where the action is. He talks about each of the major events, but one of the things that goes through the book is that wherever the major event was, wherever the crisis was, he was somewhere else, but he talks about that day and where he was when it happened. It's not particularly exciting and not particularly useful. Even though I think I've been where the action was on a number of occasions, I don't think any real purpose is served just by getting out a lot of personal views on that sort of thing. Most of what has happened, most of what happens in the White House, I think a great deal of what happens, is written about. I think people would be surprised: as far as events and major issues and major positions, there isn't much that isn't covered one way or another or won't be by the time that all of the people [who] have worked here get though writing books. But how it happens, the how of it, I think is more interesting and less, less written about. Those are some of the areas that I have some interest in. You get to do the whole thing, you get to write the whole history of it, the administration. That's a big [unintelligible].

What are the gap areas? What are those things that are hard to get, hard to... ?

Well, we don't go out and say we're going to document this particular policy area. That's really not our job at all. A lot of people have a lot of misconceptions about Archives. In many ways [the National] Archives is really established as more of a passive institution.

Most of all it gives us an opportunity at times to make other people who are actually doing this aware of the value of the papers, if it is papers, or just aware of the value of documentation. Many people feel, once an issue has been, gone through the Congress or whatever, there's no need to keep the first draft...

Yeah, yeah, I can see that.