"I'll Check It Out"

Traditionally, a President makes himself accessible to a few reporters whose influence, usefulness, or even friendship gains them favored status. Jack Kennedy nightcapped his Inaugural at the home of Columnist Joseph Alsop; Lyndon Johnson in the early days regularly called in James Reston of the New York Times for private chats and personally leaked stories to Drew Pearson. Richard Nixon has changed all that. He follows a methodical formula for the impartial treatment of members of the Washington press corps: he is equally remote from all of them. He grants no private interviews, and, until two weeks ago, had held no public news conference since the middle of June. Under orders and by inclination, Nixon's White House advisers are not much more communicative than, say, the average CIA spokesman.

That leaves reporters with Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler, 30, whose approach to disseminating information is as conservative as Barry Goldwater's politics. Twice daily, Ron Ziegler faces 40-odd questioners in the crowded White House briefing room. His aim is the straightforward presentation of the news that the White House wants presented --no more, no less. That usually means explaining that a program is under discussion, a decision has not yet been made, an event is being planned. The reporters want to know why, what it all means, who said what to whom. Ziegler rarely tells them. Last week it took reporters two full days to extract from him the admission that the President had had a say in the dropping of charges against the Green Berets accused of murder--even though it was obvious that no such decision could have been made without Nixon's approval.

A sample--and all too typical--of Ziegler dialogues:

Q. Is General Hershey's replacement under consideration by the White House?

A. There is no information that I have that would lead me to respond to that question in the affirmative.

Q. Was the decision also made prior to Friday's meeting to resume the B-52 bombings?

A. I think I made it clear that when we were discussing the B-52 matter --the decision to delay flights of the B-52s for a period of 36 hours--that it related to the fact that the decision, when it was made, related to a period of 36 hours, and there was not a decision point after the decision to delay the flights for 36 hours to again order the resumption.

"I don't expect him to leak secrets," says one correspondent. "But he doesn't explain when he could, or give the feel of things he sat in on." Ziegler's performance is due in part to the tight leash that leads from his neck to the Oval Office. As sometime policymakers themselves, Eisenhower's James Hagerty and L.B.J.'s Bill Moyers were allowed latitude in talking to the press. But this is Ziegler's first big Government job. He left a Los Angeles advertising firm to work on the campaign and after Nix-en's victory, moved his wife and two daughters to a colonial-style house in suburban Virginia. He sits in on many top-level meetings, but he has little, it any, say about what will be made public. That seems fine with him. "Nobody wants to know what Ron Ziegler thinks about anything," he says. "The worst thing a press secretary can ever do is shoot from the hip. I'd rather say, 'I'll check it out' " --is one of his frequent responses to delicate questions.

Some reporters claim that Ziegler has become overcautious because he fears repeating past mistakes. Often, the errors seem due to the fact that officials do not keep him well enough informed. Once deciphered, his B-52 answer proved to be a denial that there had been a decision to start bombing again. Five minutes later he had to reverse himself. Last May, hours after he denied knowledge of a meeting between Attorney General John Mitchell and Chief Justice Earl Warren to discuss the Abe Fortas affair, the Justice Department released news that the two had talked.

That Grin. A certain distance between reporters and the press secretary is probably inevitable. "There can never be a total meshing," says Ziegler. Yet he is personally popular with newsmen, who consider him a decent fellow in difficult circumstances. As a technician in planning the care and feeding of reporters on presidential trips, Ziegler is rated four stars. The smallest details--down to what sort of wardrobe is necessary--are handled with the smoothness that characterized the Nixon campaign.

Moreover, no one accuses Ziegler of creating an affability gap. Over cocktails, or throwing a football around at San Clemente, reporters find his company a pleasure. His easygoing nature is a rarity among White House staffers, and even his most muffled answers are often accompanied by a disarming smile that makes him look like a twelve-year-old playing a prank. "In the Johnson days, we would have screamed credibility gap," says Don Bacon of the Newhouse newspapers. "You can be mad as hell at him, but the son of a gun breaks into that grin, and you forget it."

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