‘Cool Contempt’ Ordered : Long Before Watergate, Nixon Saw Press as Foe

WASHINGTON —  Richard M. Nixon regarded most reporters as enemies long before the Watergate scandal engulfed his presidency, ordering his aides to treat them with “cool contempt” and, in certain cases, to make sure “their calls simply don’t get returned.”

Nixon’s personal files, opened to the public Thursday by the National Archives, show that he frequently brooded about his perceived problems with the press, and fired off memo after memo to Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman or Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler demanding retribution.

In 1970, Nixon dictated a lengthy memo for circulation to his senior staff in which he estimated that more than 65% of the press corps “begin with a strong negative attitude” about his presidency.

“They cannot be won by handling their logistics well or by treating them ‘fairly,’ ” Nixon said. “We should never react to this group and should treat them with the courteous, cool contempt which has been my policy over the last few years.”

‘Totally Against Us’

In one “Eyes Only” memorandum to Haldeman, dated April 14, 1972, Nixon assailed veteran Time magazine columnist Hugh Sidey and the late John Osborne, then a columnist for the New Republic. “What we have to realize,” said Nixon, “is the cold fact that both Sidey and Osborne are totally against us. They are not honest reporters.”

Nixon said both men had spoken of him “in the most vicious derogatory terms” in “the place where you really find out what the people think--the Georgetown cocktail parties. The evidence on this is absolutely conclusive. You do not need to ask me where I got it.”

Nixon went on to order that Sidey and Osborne “be cut off in as effective a way as possible. This means that their calls simply don’t get returned etc.” The President also demanded that their articles be dropped from White House news summaries “to keep our busy people from reacting.”

Sidey says he was unaware of any such presidential edict at the time. “He was so difficult to get to anyway,” Sidey said.

‘Bad-Mannered . . . Vicious’

Sidey said Nixon’s remark about Georgetown puzzled him, since “if anybody isn’t, or wasn’t, on the Georgetown cocktail circuit, it’s me. I’ve been living in Potomac, Md., and I spend my spare time with my family.”

On June 2, 1971, Nixon fumed to Haldeman that he had taken Ziegler’s advice and played the “good sport” at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, only to find at his next news conference “the reporters were considerably more bad-mannered and vicious than usual. This bears out my theory that treating them with considerably more contempt is in the long run a more productive policy.”