RESEARCH General History

THE NIXON YEARS
Book revisits Watergate, Nixon and his effort to control media

Craig Chamberlain, News Editor
(217) 333-2894; cdchambe@uiuc.edu

6/1/03

Photo by Bill Wiegand Journalism professor Louis Liebovich has written "Richard Nixon, Watergate, and the Press," thought to be the first book to draw extensively on Nixon tapes released since 1996.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Thirty years ago this month, the nation’s attention was riveted on the Watergate hearings in the U.S. Senate, and the testimony there would help bring down a president.

But much was still not known at the time about the level of corruption and when it began, or about the degree to which Richard Nixon sought to control the press, says Louis Liebovich, a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the author of a new book.

In "Richard Nixon, Watergate, and the Press" (Praeger) – thought to be the first book to draw extensively on Nixon tapes released since 1996 – Liebovich argues that Watergate, or its equivalent, was almost inevitable from the first days of Nixon’s presidency. "Watergate was a misfortune ordained by marred White House logic, evident in the earliest Oval Office conversations," Liebovich says.

Unlike any president before him, Nixon came to office determined to go to war immediately with the news media and journalists, Liebovich said. He avoided news conferences and moved reporters’ offices farther from everyday activities at the White House. He also approved spying and wiretaps on journalists, the first of the wiretaps coming four months into his term (three years before Watergate).

"The Nixon White House tolerated no criticism … They reacted to every slight and sought retribution against those who did not fall in line," Liebovich said.

In the fall of that first year, Vice President Spiro Agnew began a high-profile attack on specific newspapers and networks, and their executives, accusing them of a liberal bias. It was "merely a ploy for Nixon and his people to regain control over what the nation’s media reported," Liebovich said.

Nixon was obsessed with his image, and directed his own press strategy, often in great detail. His orders were passed through Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, "the quintessential hatchet man," Liebovich said. "A review of Haldeman’s files shows that he (Haldeman) controlled press relations and communications strategy while taking his direction daily from the president." Nixon’s press secretary, Ronald Ziegler, and director of communications, Herbert Klein, were only "puppets."

The effects of Watergate linger in part because Nixon tried as hard to control history after his resignation as he did to control the media while in office, Liebovich said. Nixon and others in his administration claimed he had done nothing different from other presidents, and implied it was just politics and persecution by his enemies that brought him to resign.

"The more they made that argument, the more disenchanted people became," Liebovich said, "so in trying to save themselves, what they did in effect was to badly damage the presidency."

"We know now from the evidence that, despite all the explanations and justifications that were offered later, Nixon oversaw one of the most corrupt and immoral administrations in U.S. history, and we know that an abnormal preoccupation with the influence of the press was largely responsible for the most despicable of White House covert activities."