Shepherd to the Wordsmith

At an informal White House gathering last spring, President Nixon delivered himself of a paean to his press secretary Ron Ziegler. Nixon added that Ziegler had the second toughest job in the country. "The toughest job in the country," he said, "is, of course, being press secretary to the Vice President."

There is a barbed edge of truth in Nixon's jest. As the peripatetic Spiro Agnew sets out on yet another international jaunt, this time to Greece, Turkey and Iran, few men would envy anyone the task of handling the Vice President's press corps--small, hand-picked lot though they are.* Will Agnew make another gaffe like adversely comparing American black leaders to African dictators? Will he praise the Greek ruling junta as a force for law-and-order? Will he do nothing in Iran but play golf--or worse, just sit in his tent, as he often used to sit in his hotel room in Seoul?

Eloquent Ideologue. No, it is not an easy job to shepherd the flock following the wordsmith who, in his glacial contempt for newsmen, has included them among the "nattering nabobs of negativism." Says one Agnew intimate: "If someone were to advise the Vice President to close down his press office, leaving only a girl to answer the phone and say 'F-- you' to every query, Agnew would be perfectly agreeable."

Instead of such a girl, however, Agnew has as press secretary an eloquent right-wing ideologue named Victor Gold. Proudly admitting that Agnew is "not a guy who can be packaged," Gold, 43, performs his assignment with a frantic zeal that occasionally compounds his problems but is more often effective in smoothing things over.

During his last overseas excursion, for example, the Vice President kept repeating that foreign leaders were "appalled" at the publication of the Pentagon papers. Reporters asked whether that wasn't because the autocrats that Agnew was talking with were dismayed at the idea of so free a press. Gold thoughtfully replied that what the Vice President really meant was that heads of state were concerned that their diplomatic conversations with the U.S. might wind up in print. Agnew dutifully incorporated Gold's amendment into later speeches.

The Media Morphosis. Gold has stuck out his job since the 1970 elections (he had three predecessors) mainly because he believes in what he is doing. He grew up in New Orleans and attended Tulane University, where he wrote a column for the school newspaper. Says Gold: "I wanted to be the Westbrook Pegler of my generation." Instead he became a lawyer, a public relations man and finally, in 1964, assistant press secretary to Barry Goldwater. Even before he met the Vice President, Gold wrote a still unpublished book entitled The Enemies He Has Made: The Media Morphosis of Spiro T. Agnew, which analyzed Agnew's relationship with the press, to the disadvantage of the latter.

Gold shares Agnew's view that the press is too liberal. Where he differs from the Vice President is in his day-to-day dealings with newspapermen. His theory is that obstructionism is self-defeating. "Even if the Vice President is criticizing the press," he notes, "the only way to get it out to the people is to make it available to the press."

Born Ruffled. To that end, even though Agnew staffers treat correspondents on junkets as if they should carry little bells and cry "Unclean! Unclean!" Gold always sees to it that they have sufficient typewriters and telex facilities, and even cajoles Agnew into a press conference or two. Consequently, Gold is well liked by the press corps. He is not, however, the imperturbable conciliator that the job would seem to demand. Born ruffled, Gold has become more so over the years. Following Agnew, he darts nervously about, teeth clenched, brow furrowed, and he can be every bit as choleric as his employer.

Agnew uses Gold as a mouthpiece when he chooses to be absent, just as President Nixon uses Ziegler. But Ziegler is a master circumlocutor who can answer a question a dozen different ways without saying anything, whereas Gold is liable to blow up under persistent questioning. On the last trip, when the press badgered Gold about Agnew's preference for his hotel room over the swarming streets, Gold raged that Agnew was not the type to bring home a camel driver (like Lyndon Johnson) or cater to the "media maw." Gold, however, has a saving sense of humor. After a row with photographers on the Vice President's last foreign tour, Gold slackened the tension on the trip home by standing up in Air Force Two and announcing, deadpan: "The photographers will leave the plane via the rear exit at 1:50 p.m. The plane will land at 2:10."

* The traveling press party represents the Chicago Tribune, Copley Newspapers, the Columbus Dispatch, Hearst papers, the Richmond News Leader, the Hellenic Chronicle, the Nashville Banner, Mutual Radio News, and Associated Press.

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