Sarah Silenced

The presidential press conference was more than half over when a stocky, blonde woman reporter finally got the floor. "Sir," began Sarah McClendon, Washington correspondent for a string of 14 dailies in Texas and New England, "two well-known security risks have recently been put on a task force in the State Department to help reorganize the Office of Security." John F. Kennedy's face froze. Before Mrs. McClendon could go on, he interrupted her. "Well, now," said the President coldly. "Who?"

Not a bit flustered, Newshen McClendon named William Arthur Wieland and J. Clayton Miller--two State Department aides who, far from working in the sensitive Office of Security, hold routine administrative jobs in State's Office of Management. As Kennedy well knew, neither man had ever been considered a security risk. Taut with anger, he proceeded to tell Sarah McClendon just that. "I would say that the term you've used to describe them is a very strong term, which I would think that you should be prepared to substantiate." He hoped, added Kennedy, that the two men could perform their jobs "without detriment to their characters by your question."

Beyond Chivalry. Brassy Sarah McClendon did not begin calling attention to herself by needling Presidents until Dwight Eisenhower, by opening the presidential press conference to direct quotation and requiring reporters to identify themselves, gave her an irresistible chance for self-promotion. After the conference moved into the big audience medium of TV, Sarah found her true metier.

She got under Dwight Eisenhower's skin with great regularity. In 1958, after Mrs. McClendon had begun an inquiry into the potentially "dictatorial" character of Ike's Pentagon reorganization plan, the President broke in angrily to ask: "Have you read the law?" When Reporter McClendon said she had, Ike hotly retorted: "No, you haven't, I don't think." On another occasion, exasperated beyond chivalry, Eisenhower demanded whether she was "asking a question or making a speech." Once he inquired of Reporter McClendon--who, in identifying herself, used to name one paper after another--"Do you get fired every week and join another paper the next week?"

Beyond Ignoring. Texas-born Sarah McClendon, 49, plays the role of President-baiter by both temperament and design. As a cub reporter in Tyler, Texas, she once picked up a telephone and clobbered a clergyman who was pummeling her editor for running an uncomplimentary story. This same pugnacity has characterized her behavior in Washington. When Sarah rises at presidential press conferences, it is not just the President who winces; an almost audible shudder runs through the room. Typically, Sarah arrives early, so as to get a seat down front, bounces up and down with a persistence that both Eisenhower and Kennedy have found impossible to ignore.

After her losing joust with Kennedy. Reporter McClendon fell unnaturally silent--inspired, perhaps, by word from State Department Legal Adviser Abram Chayes, who said that her statement to Kennedy was "defamatory on its face." Besides, what was the point in more talk?

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.