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Sending The News To China

January 17, 2010 by Jon Hoornstra | Filed Under China, Richard Nixon, White House 

This article is Part II of a series on how RN received the news.

Few news summaries fell below 10 pages. In normal times, a short news summary ran perhaps 15, always single-spaced, and up to as many as 30 to 35 pages – in spite of constant efforts to keep them shorter. Even though some went long, we were reminded that the President actually read them and would use them as a day-to-day management tool, well beyond just keeping himself informed. Pages that carried notations by the President were copied and dispatched to the relevant Cabinet secretaries or agencies by the White House Staff Secretary with a request for a response. Occasionally a note was meant for our office, usually a compliment. Such notes reminded us that we had to get it right every day. Mort Allin explained the work ethic in place when I arrived.

“If you make a mistake because of something I say, I’ll apologize and we’ll move on. If the President makes a mistake because of something we put in his news summary, what will we do?” His eyes made clear there was no good answer to that question. We weren’t going to make a mistake.

Getting all the broadcast network reporters’ stories right was made possible because of the elaborate video taping and two closed circuit channels run by the Army’s White House Signal Corps office. We made heavy use of their instant replay ability for the nightly newscasts from ABC, NBC, CBS networks as well as the weekly shows, including PBS.

But China was different. It was a full day and 13 hours ahead of Washington. When we began to see our network news broadcasts at 5:30 p.m., it was the next day at 4:30 a.m. in Beijing and, presumably, the President was within an hour or so of rising from a night’s sleep.

The more critical element, however, was the sheer technical capacity of communications equipment to handle a steady stream of information from the U.S. to Air Force One to make sure the Old Man had the information he needed. We shared an electronic pipeline with others, so we pared the news summaries down into 3 or 4 page documents to avoid choking the system. We focused on the stories coming out of China or originating here about the trip. The process of dispatching short summaries continued day and night until the presidential party departed China.

Nixon’s grasp of U.S. news broadcasts while standing on Chinese soil didn’t go unnoticed. While in Beijing the President attended a performance of Chinese gymnasts. We watched in Washington, of course, and duly reported in the next mini-news summary that NBC commentator Joe Garagiola had described the performance as “truly outstanding,” along with a few other words of high praise. Nixon mentioned that to a Chinese escort the next day while touring the Great Wall. Standing nearby, paying close attention, was our venerable Barbara Walters, then an NBC regular.

“Mr. President,” Walters implored, ”how do you know what Joe Garagiola said last night – he’s in New York!?”

Nixon didn’t answer. But the temptation I felt to bargain later for a free lunch from Walters in exchange for the answer was enormous.



Comments

7 Responses to “Sending The News To China”

  1. DAVID PHILLIPS on January 18th, 2010 3:39 am

    TO THE AUTHOR = Were the reliable “Voice of America” transmissions used by President Nixon for his day-to-day activities?

    IRONICALLY = Under THEN current US law, the tax-paying PUBLIC could not receive such information transmitted abroad!

  2. Jon Hoornstra, Author on January 18th, 2010 9:42 am

    Author’s Reply: The News Summary Office did not provide VOA information to the President. Whether he was able to listen to VOA is unknown to me. Of course, the president had (as presidents still do) several sources of information, public and classified. Both the Pentagon and State Departments clipped, copied and circulated information published in various newspapers, for example. We need to hear from someone familiar with what the president’s eyes saw day to day.

  3. MK on January 18th, 2010 11:17 am

    I can speak to the question of Voice of America (VOA), since I worked for 14 years with the Nixon tapes and files as an employee of the U.S. National Archives. As it happens, my dad was a radio scriptwriter for VOA. VOA does not broadcast to a domestic audience. The Smith-Mundt act of 1948 prohibited that, in recognition of what some have purpose of its broadcasts. Whether you consider it outreach, public relations, or propaganda, VOA’s aim is to explain America to the world. As President, Nixon’s primary focus in terms of reporting was on how his administration’s activities came across to the voting U.S. public. Hence there was no need to include VOA material in his briefing papers. Keep in mind, since VOA’s purpose was to tell America’s story abroad, it did not operate as a journalistic entity that did its own investigative reporting. Its radio scriptwriters read the wire services and stories published in U.S. news media, then wrote their own foreign language script segments about the news of the day to be read by announcers for broadcast abroad. Since they drew on largely the same sources as Mort Allin’s operation, there would be no need for the President to see how stories were re-packaged for foreign audiences. That is not to say Nixon did not have a general interest in how America’s story was told abroad. However, his primary focus was U.S. voters and how they formed their impressions of his administration. Hence on on how domestic media covered his administration.

    A note for Mr. Hoonrnstra: I appreciate your taking the time to write about how the news summaries were put together. I was what might be called a beneficiary client of your work. As a federal employee, I worked for 10 years on identifying what was on the Nixon White House tapes and determining what could be released to the public and what required restriction. Keep in mind, we at the National Archives in 1977 took custody of nearly 3,700 hours of tapes for which less than 100 hours had been transcribed. So our first job was to determine the subjects of the various conversations. We put on our headphones in the late 1970s and just started listening. The next step was to identify and delete information requiring restriction for national security or privacy and other statutory restrictions.

    We created descriptive finding aids called tape survey (or subject) logs of each conversation on the tapes. As necessary, we did research as we listened to the tapes. I found it helpful to establish what the President had seen that day or recently, what topics were in the news, how proper names were spelled. As I worked with the tapes (of which I heard about 2,000 hours during the course of my career at NARA), I spent a lot of time walking back to the stacks and pulling copies of the Annotated News Summary and the News Summary to see what had crossed Nixon’s desk. We also used the Diary Diary and various staff members’ summaries of meetings with the president. As you probably know, Nixon and Haldeman spent some time trying to figure out how best to capture in staff memoranda to the file the color and flavor of meetings, not just the topics discussed. We Archives’ employees benefited from your work, as have historians who have used some of the materials we marked for public disclosure.

  4. MK on January 18th, 2010 11:20 am

    Two corrections to the above:

    Strike “what some have” in “The Smith-Mundt act of 1948 prohibited that, in recognition of what some have purpose of its broadcasts.” I split what had been one sentence into two and left in some unneeded words there. Also Diary Diary should read Daily Diary.

  5. DAVID PHILLIPS on January 19th, 2010 9:48 am

    THANK YOU to all contributors, for helpful explanations and expansions!

    While on Okinawa (1963-1965) dring the Vietnam War’s JFK(YESX, he did try to win that war ‘on the cheap’!) and later LBJ massive (post Nov ‘64 election build-ups, I did week-end volunteer work at the Armed Forces Radio & TV Service (Ryukyu Islands) —

    – then had as my regular shift schedule on the Saturday early morning (Okinawa time) that JFK was killed in Dallas, TX.

    During that traumatic day of broadcasting, Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRTS based in Hollywood) NEVER DID broadcast to us on that weekend!

    INSTEAD, we were (1) “ripping and reading” wire services teletypes, then (2) shifting between short wave transmitters from a Christian-based radio network in Campbell, CA and the VOA transmitter in Delano, CA.

    At one point, I got a very anxious call from US Air Force’s F-102 “alert aircraft” at Naha Air Base (south island) asking “What the heck was going on”?

    The nuclear “GO” codes were being frantically changed, BUT nothing had come in from the USAF Security Service to explain why!

    The President’s death in Dallas was explained to our pilots – then all became clear!

    From that point on, “USAF alert birds” — at both NAHA Air Base and KADENA Air Force Base — began listening to AFRTS on a regular basis — sort of like watching CNN in ‘war rooms’ today.

  6. MK on January 19th, 2010 6:42 pm

    You’re welcome, Mr. Phillips. Glad to help. Your story about Armed Forces Radio Service was very interesting, I appreciate your sharing it. I don’t know if my showing up to reply cut Mr. Hoornstra off from further communication with you here. I formed the impression from his comment to you that he was inviting others to weigh in. Perhaps he was expecting to hear from other former Nixon staffers. A former government archivist who had worked with Nixon’s tapes and papers should be welcome here but even after 18 months of reading this blog, I still haven’t figured out whether such people are part of the intended audience.

    There’s a reason I wonder about that. In case you haven’t heard, the Nixon Foundation had a rather rocky relationship with the National Archives back when I still worked as an archivist. I don’t know whether that still is the case. I do test the waters from time to time, so to speak. When I see an author write here whose essays I haven’t commented on before, if the topic relates to something I know about, I try responding to see if he will reply. Most do not. Opportunities for exchanging insights and perspectives largely are passed up.

    The man who established this New Nixon site a couple of years ago, John Taylor, actually engaged with people who read his postings. He had wide ranging interests and seemed people oriented. (He now works full time as a minister.) He also posted under other authors’ essays on this site. His good efforts kept the ball roling among authors and readers, to some extent although not all joined in. I think Mr. Taylor had a great idea for the blog as originally envisioned. It could have been a great outreach tool (two-way) for the Nixon Foundation.

    Had Mr. Taylor been able to continue his association with TNN, I think it could have been built into an interesting, inclusive town square where historians, archivists, history buffs, and former Nixon staff could meet in the virtual world and exchange ideas and impressions. But it was not to be. Mr. Taylor has been gone for about a year now and the gates to the town square largely seem locked. We outsiders peer in from time to time but there are few chances to mingle. I hope I didn’t ruin your chances of hearing from Mr. Hoornstra by chiming in. I did enjoy hearing your perspective here.

  7. Jon Hoornstra, Author on January 19th, 2010 7:10 pm

    To all who react to the series on the News Summary – clearly I speak only for myself, but I am very pleased to see your responses. It is valuable when responders also add useful information to the larger picture of the Richard Nixon presidency. I think we have some good additions to the pool of knowledge here. Thank you. There is more to come in the series, so please don’t let your ink wells run dry.

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