Personal History

Now approaching her 80th birthday, Mrs. Graham has written her autobiography, ““Personal History,’’ to be published this month by Knopf. It is an unusual memoir. The subject actually wrote the book herself, with editorial help but not the usual ghostwriter. The book may strike readers as painfully, even embarrassingly, honest. Mrs. Graham was unprepared when she took over The Washington Post Company after her husband’s death. Her on-the-job training was erratic and slow, and she made many mistakes. But at critical moments she stood fast.

Taking over

In the summer of 1963, Mrs. Graham’s extraordinarily able husband, Philip, shot himself after a long battle with manic depression:

ON THE DAY BEFORE THE FUNERAL, THE BOARD OF directors of the company met. Fritz [Beebe, chairman of the board of the Post Company] suggested that if I felt up to it I should come to the office to say a few words to the directors, reassuring them that the company would go on and not be sold. I agreed, but was terrified. I thought about what to say, wrote it out, and even rehearsed. When the car arrived to take me downtown, [my 20-year-old daughter] Lally, in her nightgown and robe, hopped in and went along with me for comfort and support. I still have her touching and helpful handwritten notes on what she felt I should say–notes that she placed in my hands and which I relied on in what I said:

Thank them–all deeply involved–that gives you confidence.
There has been a crisis and still is one but you know they will carry on as they have over the past months.
never expected to be in this situation.
going off to clear mind and think about future.
no changes or decisions at this time. The paper will remain in the family, next generation.
and be carried on in tradition so well set.
further thoughts

It touches me still that this young girl, who was, if anything, more devastated than I, could scribble out this simple but correct sequence of thoughts and jump in the car in her nightclothes to put them in my hand.

I recall walking into the room where the all-male board was gathered. To a man they looked almost as stricken as I was. They also seemed to be looking at me hard to decipher what was there.

Phil’s funeral was on Tuesday, August 6, in the Washington National Cathedral, and was so big and so public that in a way it again shielded me from what was really happening. The children and I had all participated in deciding on the nature of the service and the selection of the hymns. President Kennedy attended. He came up the side aisle by himself after everyone was seated. The sun shone through the stained-glass windows, somehow illuminating him as he walked to his seat.

One jolt occurred when we left for the private burial. Others had been to the funeral home to make all the arrangements, but I didn’t know the details. I did know from Phil’s endless jokes that he had procured a plot in Oak Hill, the cemetery across the street from our house. It was extremely difficult to get in–the Dean Achesons, the David Bruces, and the John Walkers were all planning to be buried there–and Phil had developed an enthusiasm of an odd kind to be buried there, too. One night long before he became ill, he came home from a St. Albans school-board meeting and said there was a man on the board who was influential at Oak Hill and he was sure we could have a plot. He went on joking about it, saying that all I would have to do was to wheel him across the street. I was deeply upset when we pulled up in front of the burial site to find that this was not an exaggeration. His grave is directly in front of a little chapel right across the street from my house, where I can see it every day. I like this now, but in the beginning it disturbed me a great deal.

People came home afterwards–touchingly, people from all over. It’s funny how much you care who is there–and even somehow count the house at a moment like that. For friends to care and to come means something.

Two messages came to me from President Kennedy. The one I received on the day of the funeral quoted Prime Minister Macmillan saying that when Phil called on him that summer he had found him particularly attractive and interesting. The president then said, ““I thought the service today was appropriate and moving–especially the last hymn. Phil was so helpful to me in so many ways since I have come here. We shall all miss him greatly and I send you and the children my deepest sympathy.’’ Jackie Kennedy wrote me an eight-page letter, one of the most understanding and comforting of any I received. Just a few days after Phil’s funeral, Jackie gave birth to the baby boy who died.

These days–from Phil’s death through the funeral–that we all endured are as hazy to me now as they were then. If there is one regret I feel, one enormous failing, it’s that I was so overwhelmed that I wasn’t thoughtful enough or helpful enough with the children, whose trauma was even worse than mine. Phil was the bright, shining light in their lives. Each of the four had been through the months of his absence, only to get him back and then to lose him again.

Lally and Luvie [Pearson, wife of columnist Drew] at some point began insisting that what I needed was to get away from everything. They pressured me to go back to Europe with them, as did my mother by cable. I felt it would be impossible–even apart from the children, there was much too much to do, given the will, the estate, the company. Their rejoinder was that they had already packed for me and had my passport, and that I was going. I finally agreed to the plan. Bill and Steve bravely returned to their summer camps. Don stayed at his job with Scotty [Reston of The New York Times], living at home and spending a lot of time at the [Alfred] Friendlys’ [managing editor of The Washington Post]. I took off with Luvie and Lally the day after the funeral to join my mother’s chartered yacht at Istanbul.

That decision may have been right for me, but it was so wrong for Bill and Steve and even for Don–so wrong that I wonder how I could have made it. Would my younger boys have been better off going too? Would it have been better if I’d stayed home for them? This is, for me, the most painful thing to look back on. It’s hard to remake decisions and even harder to rethink nondecisions. Sometimes you don’t really decide, you just move forward, and that is what I did–moved forward blindly and mindlessly into a new and unknown life.

Mrs. Graham returned to take over her legacy–The Washington Post, NEWSWEEK and two TV stations. Neither the newspaper nor the magazine was as powerful or as profitable as they later became. Mrs. Graham writes of the difficulty of her first years on the job:

I HAD VERY LITTLE IDEA OF WHAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO be doing, so I set out to learn. It’s hard to describe how abysmally ignorant I was. I knew neither the substance of the business and journalistic worlds in which I was moving nor the processes through which these worlds operated. I knew next to nothing about business and absolutely nothing about accounting. I couldn’t read or understand a balance sheet. I remember my complete befuddlement and inability in the beginning to follow technical financial discussions. The mere mention of terms like ““liquidity’’ made my eyes glaze over.

I was also uneducated in even the basics of the working world–how to relate to people professionally, how to tell them things they might not want to hear, how to give praise as well as criticism, how to use time to the best effect. I stumbled around the Post building talking to people, not realizing that I shouldn’t always start with the first person I encountered, or that people would try to use me for their own purposes.

When people were hostile to my arrival on the scene, I took it personally. Some of the executives didn’t know how to deal with a woman in their midst–particularly a woman who controlled the company. I didn’t understand sexism or anything to do with it–nor, in fact, did many of the men with whom I worked. And I was encumbered by a deep feeling of uncertainty and inferiority and a need to please, to be liked.

Ironically, at the same time I was wishing he were there, all that Phil had been made my job more difficult. His having done everything so well–and, as it seemed to the world, so effortlessly–made it even more daunting for me. Not only had I mythologized him, but others shared the same idolatrous view, which added to my confusion. Everyone would come in and weep on my shoulder about him.

A presidential Trip

Despite her insecurities, Mrs. Graham gradually began to learn and to enjoy herself. One of the rewards–and, at times, burdens–of her position was her access to top officials in the U.S. government and around the world. Lyndon Johnson, who had been close to Phil Graham, was eager for Mrs. Graham’s friendship–and The Post’s endorsement. When Mrs. Graham went to the Democratic convention in Atlantic City, N.J., in the summer of 1964, she was waiting impatiently for the president’s plane to take off so her own plane could as well, when she was swept along, LBJ style.

I WAS GNASHING MY TEETH WHEN LALLY SAID, ““OH, MA, let’s go see the helicopters land.’’ With the temperature at a steaming one hundred degrees inside the plane, I agreed. By the time we had run over to the fence, the president was out of the helicopter with Lady Bird and had started walking down the long line of the crowd gathered at the airport, shaking hands across the fence. Luvie, Lally, and I were at the end of the line, between two parked cars and the fence. I didn’t think the president would come down that far, but he did. He wasn’t really looking as he walked right past me, shaking hands automatically. I was wearing a bandanna around my sweaty head, a sleeveless cotton dark-blue dress, no stockings, and moccasins, so I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t recognize me. Involuntarily I exclaimed, ““Hi, Lyndon,’’ never having called him anything but ““Mr. President’’ since November 22. He stopped, looked surprised, and said, ““Hello, Kay, what are you doing here?''

““Waiting for you to leave,’’ I replied.

““Do you want a ride?’’ he asked.

I was so flabbergasted that I assumed absent-mindedly that he was going to Washington and asked if Lally and Luvie could come too. He said, ““Sure, but you realize we’re going to Texas?''

““Texas!’’ I exclaimed. ““I can’t go to Texas.’’ Steve was expecting me in Washington, and I had houseguests already waiting at Glen Welby; obviously I had to get home. Luvie kicked me hard in the shins and said firmly, ““Go.''

““Come on,’’ the president continued. ““Have you got a bag?''

““Yes, but don’t bother with it. I don’t want to keep you waiting, and I’d love to come.’’ Before I could turn around, two Secret Service men descended and asked where my bags were. Another one, who turned out to be the president’s chief agent, Rufus Youngblood, said, ““Follow me.’’ Rufus and I became friends, and he told me later that Johnson had said, ““Lift that woman over the fence.’’ Happily for me, Youngblood had pointed out that there was a gate and ushered me through it. Luvie had heard the whole exchange, but I only had time to say to Lally as I was whisked past her, ““I’m off to Texas.’’ Considering my two suitcases full of dirty, smelly clothes worn in the damp heat of Atlantic City, I believe no one ever started out for a state visit so inadequately prepared.

The president grabbed my arm and took me to the stairs of the 707. I hung back, waiting for him to go up, but instead he pushed me ahead of him into the jet. A reporter asked my name as we went up the steps, the door closed, and off we went.

Social Life

““On a personal level,’’ Mrs. Graham writes, she was ““lonely,’’ especially when she went to New York every week to visit NEWSWEEK. Though ““painfully shy,’’ she began ““going out a great deal. Social life quickly became spoiling and fun for me.’’ Her circle of acquaintances was large and dazzling; her arrival in society was confirmed by Truman Capote’s famous ““Black and White Ball’’ in her honor:

TRUMAN CAPOTE PHONED ME TO SAY HE WAS GOING TO give a ball to cheer me up–what he said would be ““the nicest party, darling, you ever went to.’’ My initial response was, ““I’m fine. It’s really nice of you, but I don’t need cheering up.’’ But Truman went right on talking of his plans, paying no attention to me. He explained that he’d always loved the Grand Ballroom at the Plaza, and also the Ascot scene in ““My Fair Lady,’’ for which his friend Cecil Beaton dressed everyone in black and white. He had decided to have everyone at the ball dress in black and white, too, and wear masks, which they would remove at midnight. I was to be the guest of honor.

I was puzzled by the whole idea and not sure if Truman was serious, so I didn’t think about it much, but when [my friend] Polly [Fritchey] and I joined Truman for lunch at ““21’’ soon afterwards, I realized that this party was more about him than about me. I think he was tired from having written ““In Cold Blood’’ and needed to be doing something to re-energize himself. I was a prop.

In any case, the excitement began to build. Truman’s ““Black and White Ball,’’ as it became known, was the height of my social life then–in some ways, ever. The gossip columns quickly went into action about who was and wasn’t asked for the November 28 event. In the weeks before the party, whole pages of magazines and newspapers were devoted to the young beauties from New York and around the world who would be attending–their dresses, their hairdos, their masks. Truman spent hours developing the list of invitees. At one point, he was quoted as saying, ““I decided that everyone invited to come stag had to be either very rich, very talented, or very beautiful, and of course prefer-ably all three.’’ The list included people from New York, Kansas (scene of ““In Cold Blood’’), California, Europe, Asia, South America; from stage and screen and the literary and artistic worlds; business executives; and the media world–all friends of Truman’s. The guests included Janet Flanner (The New Yorker’s GenEt, correspondent from Paris), Diana Trilling, Claudette Colbert, Frank Sinatra and his new wife, Mia Farrow, Glenway Wescott, Thornton Wilder, Katherine Anne Porter, Virgil Thomson, and Anita Loos. I was allowed to invite twenty couples from Washington.

I had a French dress–a Balmain design, copied at Bergdorf Goodman. It was plain white crEpe with slate-colored beads around the neck and the sleeves. The mask was made to match, also at Bergdorf’s, by Halston, who was then still making hats. The only direction I gave Halston was to remind him that I was five feet nine inches tall and didn’t want something that would stick up too far. I also told him that Truman and I would be receiving the partygoers, so I couldn’t have a mask on a stick that had to be held. I had begun going to the salon of the hairdresser Kenneth when I was in New York, but no one knew me there; I didn’t have anyone special who did my hair, and I had never had makeup put on. I certainly didn’t know how to put it on myself! I was leaving Kenneth’s the night before the ball when a woman who worked there said, ““We’re so busy, Mrs. Graham, with the hairdos for the Black and White Ball. Have you heard of it?''

““Yes,’’ I replied. ““It seems funny, but I’m the guest of honor.''

She gasped and asked who would be doing my hair. I wasn’t sure, and I knew I had no appointment for makeup at all. She swung into action and insisted that Kenneth himself do my hair. In fact, she led me to him straightaway, and I was given the last appointment at the very end of the next day. I sat watching while he pinned curls all over the beautiful Marisa Berenson’s head, one by one. Finally, he got to me, and the wait was worth it: I wound up looking my very best. Of course, in that company, compared with the sophisticated beauties who blanketed the ballroom, my very best still looked like an orphan.

Why was I the guest of honor? Who knows? Truman and I were good friends, but we were on a less intimate basis than he was with Babe Paley or Marella Agnelli, probably the two most famous beauties in the world. In discussing who was more beautiful, Truman once said, ““If they were both in Tiffany’s window, Marella would be more expensive.’’ He was also great friends with Slim Keith and Pamela Hayward and Lee Radziwill. In the end, however, when he had fallen out with so many of his friends, he never turned on me as he did on most of them. I think he felt protective of me. Truman knew I didn’t lead the glamorous kind of life that many of his friends did; he may have given the party for me primarily so that I could see it all up close, just once. I also think I was appropriate for the occasion because I really was a sort of middle-aged debutante–even a Cinderella, as far as that kind of life was concerned. I didn’t know most of these people or their world, and they didn’t know me. He felt he needed a reason for the party, a guest of honor, and I was from a dif-ferent world, and not in competition with his more glamorous friends. One of Truman’s biographers, Gerald Clarke, conjectured: ““She was arguably the most powerful woman in the country, but still largely unknown outside Washington. Putting her in the spotlight was also his ultimate act as Pygmalion. It would symbolize her emergence from her dead husband’s shadow; she would become her own woman before the entire world.''

Women’s Rights

Mrs. Graham’s education included consciousness-raising on the role of women. She admittedly grew from ignorance:

EVEN MORE REVEALING OF MY OLD-FASHIONED attitudes was an interview I did with Women’s Wear Daily as late as 1969. Overall, the piece reads perfectly sensibly, except on the topic of women in the workplace, about which I was grossly insensitive. The report portrays me with the editors in the unconsciously sexist way then taken for granted:

… Kay Graham joins in the by-play, but does not dominate it, preferring to let the men, an assertive group, play the starring roles. It is a small slice of her life, one in which assertive, strong-willed men have played a major part . . .

““I rely on Fritz’s [Beebe, chairman of the board of NEWSWEEK and chairman of The Washington Post Company]–and other men’s–judgment in every decision.’’ . . .

““I think being a woman may have been a drawback for the job–unless you’re a career woman, which I wasn’t.’’ . . .

My generation of women really didn’t have the seriousness to work. Girls now are more serious about their careers.’’ . . .

““Would I urge that a woman be appointed to an executive job? I haven’t really been faced with that. But I think it’s a matter of appropriateness. I can’t see a woman as managing editor of a newspaper …

““I guess it’s a man’s world … In the world today, men are more able than women at executive work and in certain situations. I think a man would be better at this job I’m in than a woman.''

The day the Women’s Wear piece appeared, Elsie Carper, the longtime Post reporter and editor, and my friend, marched fiercely into my office and said–in response to the last line–““Do you really believe that? Because, if you do, I quit.''

Pentagon Papers

The Post’s leap to true national prominence came in 1971, when the paper, along with The New York Times, defied the Nixon administration to print the Pentagon papers, a classified history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The Post Company had just gone public, making it extremely vulnerable to the threat of legal action by the government. When the Post obtained the papers on June 17, Mrs. Graham, who was giving a party that night for a valued employee, was faced with making a momentous decision:

MANAGING EDITOR GENE PATTERSON’S JOB THAT day was to run the newsroom as though nothing were happening. But the people in the newsroom are as good at sniffing out something happening right in their midst as they are at following stories outside. No one could help noticing the absence of Chalmers Roberts, Murrey Marder, and Don Oberdorfer [the reporters on the story] as well as Ben Bagdikian, Howard Simons, and Ben Bradlee [the editors]. Certainly, something was up. Gene stopped by Ben’s house on his way to my party, and then walked up the hill to my house. As I was receiving guests, he pulled me aside and gave me my first warning of what was to come, saying that he believed the decision on whether to print was going to be checked with me and that he ““knew I fully recognized that the soul of the newspaper was at stake.''

““God, do you think it’s coming to that?’’ I asked. Yes, Gene said, he did.

By now, crucial time was passing. The deadline for the second edition was fast approaching. The Post’s general manager Jim Daly had come up to me twice at [Post vice president and business manager] Harry Gladstein’s party, worrying about when we’d get the story and be able to put it into print, and asking if I had yet heard from the other house. I was strangely unconcerned and said I was sure they were just finishing and we would get it in time.

It was a lovely June day, and the party for Harry spilled out of the house onto the terrace and the lawn. I was making a toast to him and going full blast about how much he had meant to the paper and to me personally when someone tugged at my sleeve and said with some urgency, ““You’re wanted on the phone.''

I protested that I had to finish the toast, but the response was, ““They want you now.’’ I finally got the idea that it was really important, wound up the toast quickly, and took the call in a corner of the library. I was sitting on a small sofa near the open door, and Paul Ignatius [the Post’s president] stood near me. Fritz [Beebe] was on the other end of the line. He told me about the argument between the lawyers and the editors over whether to publish the next day, outlining the reasoning on both sides, and concluded by saying, ““I’m afraid you are going to have to decide.''

I asked Fritz for his own view; since he was so editorial-minded and so decent, I knew I could trust his response. I was astonished when he said, ““I guess I wouldn’t.''

I asked for time to think it over, saying, ““Can’t we talk about this? Why do we have to make up our minds in such haste when the Times took three months to decide?''

At this point, Ben and the editors got on various extensions at Ben’s house. I asked them what the big rush was, suggesting we at least think about this for a day. No, Ben said, it was important to keep up the momentum of publication and not let a day intervene after getting the story. He also stressed that by this time the grapevine knew we had the Papers. Journalists inside and outside were watching us.

I could tell from the passion of the editors’ views that we were in for big trouble on the editorial floor if we didn’t publish. I well remember [editorial-page editor] Phil Geyelin’s response when I said that deciding to publish could destroy the paper. ““Yes,’’ he agreed, ““but there’s more than one way to destroy a newspaper.''

At the same time that the editors were saying, seriatim, ““You’ve got to do it,’’ Paul Ignatius was standing beside me, repeating–each time more insistently–““Wait a day, wait a day.''

I was extremely torn by Fritz’s saying that he wouldn’t publish. I knew him so well, and we had never differed on any important issue; and, after all, he was the lawyer, not I. But I also heard how he said it: he didn’t hammer at me, he didn’t stress the issues related to going public, and he didn’t say the obvious thing–that I would be risking the whole company on this decision. He simply said he guessed he wouldn’t. I felt that, despite his stated opinion, he had somehow left the door open for me to decide on a different course. Frightened and tense, I took a big gulp and said, ““Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Let’s go. Let’s publish.’’ And I hung up.

WATERGATE

Watergate was a severe test for Mrs. Graham and The Washington Post. The scandal was first unearthed when a pair of young Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, began looking into a break-in at Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate in the summer of 1972. Told by Woodward’s legendary source, ““Deep Throat,’’ to ““follow the money,’’ the reporters revealed a secret fund at the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP, pronounced ““Creep’’ by some) to gather intelligence on the Democrats. Furious, Attorney General John Mitchell famously threatened, ““Katie Graham’s gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer!''

I WAS FEELING BELEAGUERED. THE constant attacks on us by CRP and people throughout the administration were effective and taking their toll. During these months, the pressures on the Post to cease and desist were intense and uncomfortable, to say the least. But, unbelievable as the revelations were, the strong evidence of their accuracy is part of what kept us going.

Many of my friends were puzzled about our reporting. Joe Alsop was pressing me all the time. And I had a distressing chance meeting with Henry Kissinger just before the election, at a big reception of some kind. ““What’s the matter? Don’t you think we’re going to be re-elected?’’ Henry asked me, seeming quite upset. I assured him that I could read the overwhelming polls as well as anybody and hadn’t the slightest doubt that Nixon would be re-elected. Henry later told me that, although he was never part of any actual discussions that related to threats, he knew Nixon wanted to get even with a lot of people after the election. Maybe this was his way of warning me. In any case, the implications in Henry’s exclamation added to my tension.

Readers, too, were writing me, accusing the Post of ulterior motives, bad journalism, lack of patriotism, and all kinds of breaches of faith in our effort to get the news to the people. It was a particularly lonely moment for us at the paper. Other organizations were beginning to report the story, but we were so far ahead that they couldn’t catch up; Woodward and Bernstein had most of the sources to themselves. The wire service and AP sent out our stories, but most papers didn’t even run them, or buried them somewhere toward the back pages. [Post managing editor] Howard [Simons] used to get on the phone to his editor friends around the country to tell them they were missing a big story. Because an exclusive story usually remained so for only about twenty-four hours before every- one jumped on it, I sometimes privately thought: If this is such a hell of a story, then where is everybody else?

Bearing the full brunt of presidential wrath is always disturbing. Sometimes I wondered if we could survive four more years of this kind of strain, of the pressures of living with an administration so completely at odds with us and determined to harm us. As I later wrote to Isaiah Berlin, ““The idea of living with that gang in the White House whacking at you for four more years was depressing beyond words.’’ I couldn’t help speculating about what condition we’d all be in–including the paper–at the end of it all. The best we could do while under such siege, I felt, was to keep investigating, to look everywhere for hard evidence, to get the details right, and to report accurately what we found.

Helping spearhead the Nixon administration’s counterattack was Sen. Bob Dole, then head of the Republican National Committee. In his speeches, Dole quoted Mrs. Graham as saying she ““hated’’ the president:

THAT FALL, AFTER THE ELECTION, PARTLY IN RE-sponse to the escalating campaign we felt was being waged against the reputation of the Post, I began to make more speeches defending the press in general and the Post in particular. One of the first big ones was to the San Francisco Commonwealth Club, quite a conservative group. [Deputy editorial-page editor] Meg [Greenfield] led the team that worked on the speech, which was a strong defense of freedom of the press. I was in something of a panic about the question period to follow the speech, worrying that I would be quizzed on the minutiae of the Watergate story and not know all the players or the various events relating to it. Meg gave me a chronology of the complicated events that had been put together by the Democratic National Committee, and I took it with me to study on the plane on the way out. I settled into my seat for the cross-country flight and began to look over this document, but promptly fell asleep. I woke up as we landed, at which time the man across the aisle from me leaned over to say, ““Hello, Mrs. Graham, can I help you with your bag?’’ I looked up into the eyes of Senator Dole and was immediately frozen with fear that he had seen me studying the Democratic Party-prepared document, since this was not long after his accusations that we were reporting Watergate because I hated Nixon. However, either he hadn’t observed it or else he was being polite, but he was very friendly, helped me off the plane, and did indeed carry the bag for me. We talked pleasantly, and I finally worked up my nerve to say, ““By the way, Senator, I didn’t say I hated Nixon.’’ ““Oh, you know,’’ he casually replied, ““during a campaign they put these things in your hands, and you just read them.’’ His reaction amazed me, dismissing so lightly something that had had such a powerful effect on all of us at the Post, especially me.

Though Mrs. Graham was held responsible for the Post’s stories, she tried not to intrude into the editorial process. She trusted Bradlee to handle Woodward and Bernstein. Still, her worries–and her curiosity about Deep Throat–finally surfaced at a lunch in January 1973.

BY EARLY 1973, I WAS GROWING INCREASINGLY ANXIOUS and thought I ought to meet with Woodward and Bernstein in addition to the editors. Surprisingly, to this point–seven months into the story–I had had hardly any contact with the reporters. So, on January 15, Bob and Howard and I sat down to lunch together (Carl was out of town). Characteristically, Bob went right downstairs to the newsroom afterwards and made extensive notes about what we’d said –even going so far as to write down what we ate, the main course being eggs Benedict, which led to our future reference to this gathering as the ““eggs-Benedict lunch.''

My apprehensions about the whole Watergate affair were evident. ““Is it all going to come out?’’ Woodward reported that I asked anxiously. ““I mean, are we ever going to know about all of this?’’ As Bob later wrote, he thought it was the nicest way possible of asking, ““What have you boys been doing with my newspaper?’’ He told me then that they weren’t sure all of it ever would come out: ““Depression seemed to register on her face. “Never?’ she asked. “Don’t tell me never’.''

It was also at this lunch that Woodward told me he had told no one the name of Deep Throat. ““Tell me,’’ I said quickly, and then, as he froze, I laughed, touched his arm, and said that I was only kidding–I didn’t want to carry that burden around. He admitted that he was prepared to give me the name if I really wanted it, but he was praying I wouldn’t press him. This luncheon was reassuring for me–or at least I gave the appearance of being reassured–but I remained nervous. Looking back, I’m surprised I wasn’t even more frightened.

Toward the end of February, a civilsubpoena was served on five of us from the Post, and we were ordered to appear in the U.S. District Court to testify on our sources in the Democratic Party’s civil suit against the Committee to Re-elect the President. The subpoena required that we produce a whole host of material, including documents, papers, letters, photographs, tapes, manuscripts, notes, copies, and final drafts of stories about Watergate. As Ben Bradlee put it, they asked us to bring ““everything except the lint in our pockets.’’ My name was misspelled, but I was subpoenaed, along with Woodward and Bernstein, Howard Simons, and another reporter, Jim Mann, who had worked on a few of the early Watergate stories. Our lawyers decided to give me some of the reporters’ notes. Bradlee had reassured Bernstein and Woodward that we would fight this case for as long as it took, adding:

. . . and if the Judge wants to send anyone to jail, he’s going to have to send Mrs. Graham. And, my God, the lady says she’ll go! Then the Judge can have that on his conscience. Can’t you see the pictures of her limousine pulling up to the Women’s Detention Center and out gets our gal, going to jail to uphold the First Amendment?

That’s a picture that would run in every newspaper in the world. There might be a revolution.

At some point, Woodward had met with Deep Throat, who told him that the subpoenas were part of a response induced by Nixon’s rampage against the Post, and that he, Nixon, would use the $5 million left over from his campaign ““to take the Post down a notch.’’ ““It will be wearing on you but the end is in sight,’’ Deep Throat told Woodward.

Watergate made heroes of Woodward and Bernstein–and attracted the attention of Hollywood. Actor Robert Redford bought their book, ““All the President’s Men,’’ to make into a movie. Mrs. Graham at first joined in the newsroom joshing and teasing, telling a group of circulation managers that she had been assured that ““my role will be played by Raquel Welch–assuming our measurements jibe.’’ But in fact, she was worried about putting the reputation and image of the newspaper in the hands of a movie company. ““In many ways,’’ she writes, ““the idea of a movie scared me witless’':

TO HELP CALM MY NERVES AND PROVIDE SOME ASSUR- ances that the producers had every good intention, Bob and Carl brought the Redfords to breakfast at my house in May of 1974, just as plans for the movie were getting under way. I should have been pleased and interested to meet Redford, but we didn’t get along, thanks partially, I’m sure, to my own defensive crouch–the result of my concerns, however real or imagined. He knew how much I wanted to keep a low profile both for me and for the paper. On the other hand, Alan Pakula, the director, and I became great friends and have remained so.

Redford later gave an interview describing our meeting at breakfast:

It was brittle, that’s the best way I can describe it.

She was gracious but tense. There was a definite tight-jawed, blueblood quality to Graham that cannot be covered by any amount of association with Ben Bradlee or other street types . . . She said she did not want her own name or that of the Post used. I told her that was impossible.

She was a public figure and in its own way so was the Post. I respected her for not wanting her privacy invaded . . . but we weren’t interested in her personal life.

And I was puzzled. If she wanted to maintain so low a profile, why did she keep making speeches and accepting awards?

Ben sent me a copy of this acerbic interview, to which I responded, ““I don’t want to be too neurotic but it re- inforces paranoia, no? . . . He’s got a point about my ambivalence, which was and is real.''

I was already worried about the ef-fect of the use of the Post’s name when I opened a magazine one day and read that the movie would be filmed in the Post’s city room. Within minutes, I was on the phone to Bob Woodward [who with Bernstein had made millions off the book and movie]. I exploded with outrage at the idea of our newsroom as a backdrop for the movie. Among all the evils I was imagining was how little work would get done under such circumstances. Bob told me he’d never heard me so angry. In the end, we didn’t allow filming in the newsroom; Redford’s people had arrived independently at the conclusion that it would be too disruptive for them as well. Instead, an exact duplicate of the Post’s newsroom, including the stickers on Ben’s secretary’s desk, was created in Hollywood (for a mere $450,000, it was reported), and in the interests of authenticity, several tons of assorted papers and trash from desks throughout our newsroom were shipped to California for props. We did cooperate to the extent of allowing the filmmakers to shoot the entrance to the newspaper building, elevators, and certain production facilities, as well as a scene in the parking lot.

At one point, I got a message from Redford that they had decided not to shoot the one scene in the movie in which I was portrayed. I was told that no one understood the role of a publisher, and it was too extraneous to explain. Redford imagined that I would be relieved, which I was, but, to my surprise, my feelings were hurt by being omitted altogether, except for the one famous allusion to my anatomy. The next I heard from Redford was a phone call saying he was sending a prelimi- nary print of the film for us to see, and that we could still ask for changes, which I felt was a charade. In March 1976 several of us went to the viewing in Jack Valenti’s screening room at the Motion Picture Association. Because we were all so nervous, we sat in pockets around the room. When the movie ended, there was dead silence. Finally, Redford got up and said, ““Jesus, somebody say something. You must have some reaction to it.’’ Then there was a lot of nerv- ous babble.

In fact, I loved the movie.

PRESIDENTS

By the late ’70s, her greatest battles won, Mrs. Graham had become an institution in Washington. At her house in Georgetown, she gave dinners for statesmen, politicians and media figures. But keeping peace with the White House was not always easy:

I ALSO FELT STRONGLY THAT IT WAS PART OF MY JOB TO keep up with people in and out of office. It was all in my day’s work to get to know those in government and help them know journalists. Many of my dinners involved members of various administrations over the years and could be described as political, although they were always nonpartisan, or at least bipartisan.

I have been friends with many presidents from both political parties, but any relationship, even an old one, can grow strained when you become–as I did–a symbol of a major newspaper and magazine and the target of presidential displeasure. This occurred with Johnson, Nixon, and Bush, but, curiously, not much with Reagan. Ford was professionally friendly. Except for entertaining the Clintons on Martha’s Vineyard when they were there on vacation, I have had little contact with them;they have been polite but are of a younger generation, so it’s perfectly natural.

Those who come to Washington as president and who haven’t lived here and known the city (as had, for example, Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and even Richard Nixon) seem to have a skewed idea of socializing between people from the press and people from the administration. There are those in both groups who feel that we shouldn’t see each other except in working situations. Though I recognize that this issue of friendships or relationships is a touchy one, I take a different view. A hands-off approach may be best for those who are covering people in the government, but for a publisher I feel sure openness is best. I consider it the role of the head of a newspaper to be bipartisan and to bring journalists together with people from government. I think that an easy relationship is constructive and useful for both sides: it helps the publication by opening doors, and provides those who are covered in the news with the knowledge of whom they can suggest ideas to, complain to, or generally deal with. When people don’t feel easy enough to call, they just sit there grinding their teeth. I fear unspoken anger. Especially, people who may disagree on politics must still be able to communicate, and it’s crucial for all of us in the press to listen to all sides.

I had met the Reagans several years before they came to Washington as president and First Lady. Truman Capote told me he had gotten to know them in the course of some research he was doing on death sentences, in which he had become interested after writing ““In Cold Blood.’’ ““Honey, I know you won’t believe me, but you’d really like them,’’ Truman told me in his falsetto voice. Truman was right: we got along well and began a long friendship that puzzled many people in Washington.

Our last dinner at my house was in November, after the election, in 1988, just as the Reagans were getting ready to leave Washington for California. Security surrounding the president had gotten much tighter. Although my door sits way back from the street, I was asked to put up a tent so that the president could get out of his car concealed from view. When I brought them in, I was told not to take them into the living room, because by then it was too crowded, but I simply ignored this and did so, and they were both quickly surrounded by well-wishing friends. The throng created one minor problem when someone knocked against a glass, which spilled a drink with ice on the floor. I was dumbstruck at seeing the president of the United States down on his hands and knees in the middle of the crowd, picking up the ice. On the phone the next day, Nancy told me this reminded her of something that had happened in the hospital after the assassination attempt. The president, who was not supposed to get out of bed, went to the bathroom and spilled some water on the floor in the process. When attendants came in, he was on his hands and knees wiping it up. Asked why, he said he was afraid the nurse would get into trouble.

The natural arm’s-length relationship between the government and the press always takes on an even more adversarial nature during any presidential campaign. The election year of 1988 was no exception. There were the usual stresses and strains with both Bush and Michael Dukakis, his Democratic opponent, and there were some unusual ones. Both candidates, of course, complained about our coverage of their campaigns. Both visited the paper for editorial lunches, but our troubles with each of them mounted sharply, as did our editorial dismay at their campaigns.

I had known George Bush for years, not intimately but pleasantly. My father had invested in the oil company Bush had started as a young man, and I liked both George and Barbara and thought of them as fine moderate Republicans in the tradition of his father, Sen. Prescott Bush, whom I had also known. I hadn’t seen much of them in the previous eight years, when he had served as vice president, but was well aware that he had been loyal to Reagan, politically as well as personally.

Newsweek, however, had gotten on the wrong side of the candidate when it published–the very week Bush had announced his intention to run for president–a cover story on the vice president titled ““Fighting the Wimp Factor.’’ The ““wimp’’ label had been a thorn in the Bush campaign flesh since that time. The profile of Bush had been fair and complete, but the effect of the word ““wimp’’ crying out from the cover on newsstands everywhere was hard to overcome.

What followed was not untypical: the Bush people distanced themselves from Newsweek reporters. Finally, in September 1988, a meeting was set up at the vice president’s residence, between [editor] Rick Smith, [Washington bureau chief] Evan Thomas, and me from Newsweek, and Bush, Jim Baker, and Craig Fuller, Bush’s chief of staff. Bush claimed that the whole story had been wildly distorted by playing up the word on the cover, for which he accurately blamed the editors. His family, whom he’d asked to cooperate on the story, was naturally upset and angry and had advised him that further cooperation with the magazine, in any but a technically correct manner, would only prove the point: that he was indeed a wimp.

I earnestly tried to explain about the complicated newsweekly process, until Bush, without relenting, said that Rick Smith and Jim Baker should talk. As the vice president and I walked toward the door, he whispered to me in the nicest possible way, ““We’ll work it out, but don’t tell them.’’ Rick did get together with Baker and managed to clear the air enough so that we could do the necessary background reporting, but the issue never really died and was compounded by others.

We–that is, reporters and editors from both the Post and Newsweek–had, of course, also met with Dukakis. Throughout the winter and spring, he had made a poor impression in several areas, but especially in national-security policy. His campaign manager called me late in the campaign and said the candidate would like to meet with several of us informally. I went with a group from the Post and Newsweek, hoping we would see a side of Dukakis we hadn’t seen before and get to know him a little as an individual. We all sat around his hotel room and he talked, but nothing new was said and nothing personal about his views was revealed.

Despite Bush’s campaign, which I disliked, I voted for Bush; I thought Dukakis too inexperienced to govern. It was my only Republican vote for president. After Bush was elected, our relations were unexpectedly cool if not hostile throughout the four years of his administration. I rarely saw him and Barbara, except occasionally in long receiving lines. Perhaps my amicable relations with the Reagans, and with George Shultz, for whom the Bushes had no love, compounded our problems. These cool or antagonistic relationships are part of life in Washington and are accepted as such, but I often think how self-defeating they are and how much better polite professional relations would serve political figures and journalists in situa- tions like this. I agreed with a charming message I got from George McGovern after he had been defeated for the presidency. He recalled making some bitter remarks about a couple of our columnists at a dinner party, but wrote me:

I have regretted that outburst and I have also established that the maximum time I can carry a grudge is about three months. This note is simply to say that I have now forgotten all campaign grudges. It is just too difficult trying to remember which people I’m supposed to shun.

With rare exceptions, I feel strongly that McGovern’s rule is an appropriate one for all of us. The longer I live, the more I observe that carrying around anger is most debilitating to the person who bears it.

title: “Personal History” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-04” author: “Frank Phillips”

Flying Away With LBJ

I was gnashing my teeth when Lally said, “Oh, Ma, let’s go see the helicopters land.” With the temperature at a steaming one hundred degrees inside the plane, I agreed. By the time we had run over to the fence, the president was out of the helicopter with Lady Bird and had started walking down the long line of the crowd gathered at the airport, shaking hands across the fence. Luvie, Lally, and I were at the end of the line, between two parked cars and the fence. I didn’t think the president would come down that far, but he did. He wasn’t really looking as he walked right past me, shaking hands automatically. I was wearing a bandanna around my sweaty head, a sleeveless cotton dark-blue dress, no stockings, and moccasins, so I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t recognize me. Involuntarily I exclaimed, “Hi, Lyndon,” never having called him anything but “Mr. President” since November 22. He stopped, looked surprised, and said, “Hello, Kay, what are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you to leave,” I replied.

“Do you want a ride?” he asked.

I was so flabbergasted that I assumed absent-mindedly that he was going to Washington and asked if Lally and Luvie could come too. He said, “Sure, but you realize we’re going to Texas?”

“Texas!” I exclaimed. “I can’t go to Texas.” Steve was expecting me in Washington, and I had houseguests already waiting at Glen Welby; obviously I had to get home. Luvie kicked me hard in the shins and said firmly, “Go.”

“Come on,” the president continued. “Have you got a bag?”

“Yes, but don’t bother with it. I don’t want to keep you waiting, and I’d love to come.” Before I could turn around, two Secret Service men descended and asked where my bags were. Another one, who turned out to be the president’s chief agent, Rufus Youngblood, said, “Follow me.” Rufus and I became friends, and he told me later that Johnson had said, “Lift that woman over the fence.” Happily for me, Youngblood had pointed out that there was a gate and ushered me through it. Luvie had heard the whole exchange, but I only had time to say to Lally as I was whisked past her, “I’m off to Texas.” Considering my two suitcases full of dirty, smelly clothes worn in the damp heat of Atlantic City, I believe no one ever started out for a state visit so inadequately prepared.

Guest of Honor

Truman Capote phoned me to say he was going to give a ball to cheer me up-what he said would be “the nicest party, darling, you ever went to.” My initial response was, “I’m fine. It’s really nice of you, but I don’t need cheering up.” But Truman went right on talking of his plans, paying no attention to me. He explained that he’d always loved the Grand Ballroom at the Plaza, and also the Ascot scene in “My Fair Lady,” for which his friend Cecil Beaton dressed everyone in black and white. He had decided to have everyone at the ball dress in black and white, too, and wear masks, which they would remove at midnight. I was to be the guest of honor.

I was puzzled by the whole idea and not sure if Truman was serious, so I didn’t think about it much, but when [my friend] Polly [Fritchey] and I joined Truman for lunch at “21” soon afterwards, I realized that this party was more about him than about me. I think he was tired from having written “In Cold Blood” and needed to be doing something to re-energize himself. I was a prop.

In any case, the excitement began to build. Truman’s “Black and White Ball,” as it became known, was the height of my social life then-in some ways, ever. The gossip columns quickly went into action about who was and wasn’t asked for the November 28 event. In the weeks before the party, whole pages of magazines and newspapers were devoted to the young beauties from New York and around the world who would be attending-their dresses, their hairdos, their masks. Truman spent hours developing the list of invitees. At one point, he was quoted as saying, “I decided that everyone invited to come stag had to be either very rich, very talented, or very beautiful, and of course preferably all three.” The list included people from New York, Kansas (scene of “In Cold Blood”), California, Europe, Asia, South America; from stage and screen and the literary and artistic worlds; business executives; and the media world-all friends of Truman’s. The guests included Janet Flanner (The New Yorker’s Genet, correspondent from Paris), Diana Trilling, Claudette Colbert, Frank Sinatra and his new wife, Mia Farrow, Glenway Wescott, Thornton Wilder, Katherine Anne Porter, Virgil Thomson, and Anita Loos. I was allowed to invite twenty couples from Washington.

I had a French dress-a Balmain design, copied at Bergdorf Goodman. It was plain white crepe with slate-colored beads around the neck and the sleeves. The mask was made to match, also at Bergdorf’s, by Halston, who was then still making hats. The only direction I gave Halston was to remind him that I was five feet nine inches tall and didn’t want something that would stick up too far. I also told him that Truman and I would be receiving the partygoers, so I couldn’t have a mask on a stick that had to be held. I had begun going to the salon of the hairdresser Kenneth when I was in New York, but no one knew me there; I didn’t have anyone special who did my hair, and I had never had makeup put on. I certainly didn’t know how to put it on myself! I was leaving Kenneth’s the night before the ball when a woman who worked there said, “We’re so busy, Mrs. Graham, with the hairdos for the Black and White Ball. Have you heard of it?”

“Yes,” I replied. “It seems funny, but I’m the guest of honor.” She gasped and asked who would be doing my hair. I wasn’t sure, and I knew I had no appointment for makeup at all. She swung into action and insisted that Kenneth himself do my hair. In fact, she led me to him straightaway, and I was given the last appointment at the very end of the next day. I sat watching while he pinned curls all over the beautiful Marisa Berenson’s head, one by one. Finally, he got to me, and the wait was worth it: I wound up looking my very best. Of course, in that company, compared with the sophisticated beauties who blanketed the ballroom, my very best still looked like an orphan.

Why was I the guest of honor? Who knows? Truman and I were good friends, but we were on a less intimate basis than he was with Babe Paley or Marella Agnelli, probably the two most famous beauties in the world. In discussing who was more beautiful, Truman once said, “If they were both in Tiffany’s window, Marella would be more expensive.” He was also great friends with Slim Keith and Pamela Hayward and Lee Radziwill. In the end, however, when he had fallen out with so many of his friends, he never turned on me as he did on most of them. I think he felt protective of me. Truman knew I didn’t lead the glamorous kind of life that many of his friends did; he may have given the party for me primarily so that I could see it all up close, just once. I also think I was appropriate for the occasion because I really was a sort of middle-aged debutante-even a Cinderella, as far as that kind of life was concerned. I didn’t know most of these people or their world, and they didn’t know me. He felt he needed a reason for the party, a guest of honor, and I was from a different world, and not in competition with his more glamorous friends. One of Truman’s biographers, Gerald Clarke, conjectured: “She was arguably the most powerful woman in the country, but still largely unknown outside Washington. Putting her in the spotlight was also his ultimate act as Pygmalion. It would symbolize her emergence from her dead husband’s shadow; she would become her own woman before the entire world.”

Pentagon Papers: Betting the Future

Managing Editor Gene Patterson’s job that day was to run the newsroom as though nothing were happening. But the people in the newsroom are as good at sniffing out something happening right in their midst as they are at following stories outside. No one could help noticing the absence of Chalmers Roberts, Murrey Marder, and Don Oberdorfer [the reporters on the story] as well as Ben Bagdikian, Howard Simons, and Ben Bradlee [the editors]. Certainly, something was up. Gene stopped by Ben’s house on his way to my party, and then walked up the hill to my house. As I was receiving guests, he pulled me aside and gave me my first warning of what was to come, saying that he believed the decision on whether to print was going to be checked with me and that he “knew I fully recognized that the soul of the newspaper was at stake.”

“God, do you think it’s coming to that?” I asked. Yes, Gene said, he did.

I protested that I had to finish the toast, but the response was, “They want you now.” I finally got the idea that it was really important, wound up the toast quickly, and took the call in a corner of the library. I was sitting on a small sofa near the open door, and Paul Ignatius [the Post’s president] stood near me. Fritz [Beebe] was on the other end of the line. He told me about the argument between the lawyers and the editors over whether to publish the next day, outlining the reasoning on both sides, and concluded by saying, “I’m afraid you are going to have to decide.”

I asked Fritz for his own view; since he was so editorial-minded and so decent, I knew I could trust his response. I was astonished when he said, “I guess I wouldn’t.”

I asked for time to think it over, saying, “Can’t we talk about this? Why do we have to make up our minds in such haste when the Times took three months to decide?”

I could tell from the passion of the editors’ views that we were in for big trouble on the editorial floor if we didn’t publish. I well remember [editorial-page editor] Phil Geyelin’s response when I said that deciding to publish could destroy the paper. “Yes,” he agreed, “but there’s more than one way to destroy a newspaper.”

At the same time that the editors were saying, seriatim, “You’ve got to do it,” Paul Ignatius was standing beside me, repeating-each time more insistently-“Wait a day, wait a day.”

I was extremely torn by Fritz’s saying that he wouldn’t publish. I knew him so well, and we had never differed on any important issue; and, after all, he was the lawyer, not I. But I also heard how he said it: he didn’t hammer at me, he didn’t stress the issues related to going public, and he didn’t say the obvious thing-that I would be risking the whole company on this decision. He simply said he guessed he wouldn’t. I felt that, despite his stated opinion, he had somehow left the door open for me to decide on a different course. Frightened and tense, I took a big gulp and said, “Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Let’s go. Let’s publish.” And I hung up.