The Presidential Caper

The graceful, spacious mansion stands imposingly just off Manhattan's Fifth Avenue in the select neighborhood of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It bears a most impressive title: The Library of Presidential Papers. Yet it is a library without a librarian. About the only original presidential document there is a John F. Kennedy letter valued at $175 and apparently signed by his secretary. The building also boasts a presidential bedroom in which no President has ever slept or seems likely even to visit. The organization's letterhead carries a seal so similar to that of the President's that the State Department has protested. Despite these negative credentials, the "library" last weekend staged a symposium on the presidency at Montauk, N.Y., that attracted some high Government officials, past and present.

The five-year-old project is a monument to what hucksterism and tax-deductible fund raising can create in the way of illusions. It was conceived, promoted and almost executed by Henry O. Dormann, 38, who has said that he is a millionaire and whose closest association with scholarship is a book, A Millionaire's Guide to Europe (sample advice: "Hire yourself a private railway train"). The editor-owner of Servicio de Information Pan Americana, an obscure public relations service, and an operator in real estate and advertising, Dormann set up the library in 1965 for the grand purpose of collecting all possible presidential documents, either in original or microfilm form, and of providing New York headquarters for the President and his staff.

With no apparent basis, Dormann claimed the support of President Johnson. He also tossed the first names of Government officials around so freely that he persuaded prominent figures to lend their endorsements. More significantly, he managed to raise $800,000 by 1967, partly by leading some donors to believe that they would receive invitations to dine at the White House. Most of the money was spent on the mansion. Dormann even coaxed Manhattan's celebrity restaurant, "21," into helping to equip a lavish kitchen, ostensibly for sating presidential appetites.

A small point that Dormann and his sponsors seemed to miss was the fact that the Government, through the Library of Congress and the National Archives, already does an excellent job of attending to presidential papers. Moreover, microfilm of many such papers exists in more than 100 U.S. libraries, and copies of specific documents are available cheaply to scholars.

Dormann also began bumping into bona fide collectors, who were alarmed at his lack of expertise. A leading Lincoln scholar, Ralph Newman, who is a consultant to the Library of Congress, intervened at a time when the Johnson Administration was considering cooperating with Dormann. Newman warned the White House that Dormann "knew nothing whatsoever about the nature of the project he was attempting," and seemed to be using "our greatest office and name as a public relations device." As word of Newman's advice spread, Dormann discovered that neither Government officials nor university scholars would help him collect papers.

Undaunted, Dormann's board of directors pursued the project by allowing Dormann, who had become too controversial, to step aside while they searched for a man of some academic status. They selected R. Gordon Hoxie, 51, who holds a Ph.D. in political science and had served as chancellor of New York's Long Island University for four years. He also holds the unusual distinction of having had a branch of his faculty vote that he be fired as chancellor. L.I.U.'s trustees asked for his resignation in 1968. Hoxie helped to get Franklin National Bank Chairman Arthur T. Roth elected head of the library board. When Hoxie is not earning his $35,000 salary as library president, he is working on a history of Roth's bank.

Apparently aware that presidential papers would be difficult to come by and that serious students of the presidency are doing well without his institution, Hoxie now emphasizes the library's potential value to high school pupils. He has also turned to setting up a symposium to discuss aspects of the presidency. Hoxie took along Eisenhower Press Secretary James Hagerty when he went to Washington to line up speakers and guests. President Nixon's communications director, Herbert Klein, agreed to be the main speaker. Hagerty and Johnson's press secretary, George Reedy, accepted invitations to discuss "The White House and the News Media." Also signed up from the Nixon Administration were White House Aides John Ehrlichman and Charles Clapp. About two-thirds of the 150 invited guests turned out. Among the absentees were Ehrlichman and two of Lyndon Johnson's top White House assistants, Walt Rostow and Bill Moyers. Seemingly unimpressed by the proceedings, some participants left before the three-day event was over.

English Novels. Whatever the merits of the symposium, the richly marbled and mainly unused library still stands as an expensive testimonial to Dormann's sense of grandeur. On a visit last week, TIME Correspondent Neil MacNeil found that the sixth floor contains what was meant to be the presidential bedroom. Lacking Presidents who want to sleep there, it has been converted into a conference area called "The Teddy Roosevelt Room"; it has a moosehead. The fourth floor contains the library's microfilm collection; it occupies a single drawer and consists of copied George Washington papers. There are three study rooms there, but not a single book on their many shelves.

In the third floor reading room, there is nothing available to read. A "President's Suite," cum carpeted lavatory, and a "First Lady's Room" have been fashioned from the mansion's living quarters. There is also a meeting room for "the President's staff." The second floor is more resplendent. It contains a "Founders and Trustees Room" with real books--mainly decorative leather-bound volumes bought by Dormann.

Many are English novels; none deal with the presidency. The cabinets in the kitchen are emblazoned with the Presidential Seal. The only ghost of a library is a drawing room containing about 1,000 volumes, which relate vaguely to the presidency--and which can be found at most any good bookstore.

While still clinging to pretensions of a potential contribution to scholarship, Hoxie has now abandoned hope on the chimerical possibility that the building might serve Presidents as a New York base. "The sooner that's forgotten, the better," he said last week. For one thing, he notes, security is almost impossible there. An outside stairway even leads from the so-called presidential bedroom to a dark alley. Dormann, however, is irrepressible. "Maybe that's a dream," he says wistfully. "But it's a dream that I hope some day will come true."

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