THE WASHINGTON POST

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000300380108-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 8, 2004
• Sequence Number: 108
• Publication Date: October 1, 1970
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

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By Joseph Goulden
PIRG T. AGNEW, both before and after
becoming Vice President, has been
a man of -table-thumping emotions.
Agnew is not a noted swearer-
his occasional freshets of profanity lack
the combinative ingenuity of Lyndon
Johnson and the several Kennedys, and
wouldn't cause -even a bishop to blush.
No, Agnew is a direct person, one who
shows anger with a spread-palmed
,y-, wwWHANIPPPppp on whatever flat
,surface. happens to be under hand. It is
a healthy, arcliphysical venting that rids
a man of anger and tension, and permits
a swift return to tranquility, once the
echo of the thunderclap dies away.
Spirts Agnew's smack the morning of
'September 25, 1968, was a real hand-
reddener. There he was, not even
through the first paragraph of the lead
editorial of his then favorite morning
newspaper, the Washington Post, when
he found the contumelious lines:
"Given enough time, Nixon's decision
('I seriously considered more than a
dozen able men') to name Agnew may
come to be regarded as perhaps the
most eccentric political appointment
since the Roman Emperor Caligula
named his horse a consul."
Spiro Agnew was still howling-figura-
tively, because men who slap desks can
be" furious and calm simultaneously-
three months later when he met Wash-
ington Post ,publisher Katharine Meyer
Graham at a dinner hosted by Niel Elfin,
Washington bureau chief of her News-
week magazine. "It really grated on him,
you could tell," Mrs. Graham recollects
now. "He must have referred to it ten
times during the evening. I suppose it
was a jolt to him, for this. was early in
his exposure to national politics, and he
wasn't used to this sort of criticism. He.
kept repeating, `Comparing me to a
horse. Really, that's getting pretty low.'
A politician's wrath at a newspaper
is normally one of Washington's more
transient events, yet the Caligula's Horse
Editorial-they pronounce it with capital
letters at the Post-is relevant here for
TAT
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tamed assault ever upon the media by a Southwestern President calls wise-ass.
national administration, with the Vice Organizational monstrosity though it
President complaining of "the monopo- may be, with the frequent elbowwaish man-
lization of the great public information ners of an oafish teenager, the Post does
vehicles and the concentration of more have a distinctive personality. And it
and more power over public opinion in' also faces the problem of writing for
fewer and fewer hands." Spiro Agnew what executive editor Ben Bradlee calls
veritably made the Washington Post a "100,000 policy makers and 100,000 poli-
household word in the tank towns and cy players."
restless suburbs of Silent iMajoritania? -Finally, the Post you read this morn-
-Second, some highly responsible ex= ing was produced in an office which, in
ecutives of the Post, Including Philip the past five years, has experienced a
Geyelin, editor of the editorial page, complete turnover of editorial and news
trace the Vice President's attacks right. direction. Power struggles-whether they
'back to Caligula's horse. Such an inter- occur in newspapers, in political parties,
pretation, if valid, gives Agnew only
shallow,' personalistic motivation for
what amounts to a no-holds-barred con-
frontation with the nation's press. It
should be obvious to discerning Ameri-
cans by now that Agnew is stalking
heavier game; were he angry over one
editorial, a letter to the man who wrote
it-Ward Just, one hears at. the Post-
would have been artillery enough. Yet
the Vice President's now famed "Alont-
gomery Speech" of November 20, 1969,
in which he first attacked the Post and
the New York Times, does contain a
or in humdrum insurance of ices-pro-
duce common results: changed proce-
dures and philosophies of doing business;
hurt feelings among the losers who are
still around; a mixture of exhilaration and
wariness among the winners. The Post's
key news editors are now without ex-
ception "Bradlee men," and Bradlee uses
a recurring word when' he talks about
.the Post. "Impact," he says, "I want to
have some impact on this town and this
country. I want to know they are read-
ing us. Impact."
peculiarly revealing sentence which sup- Bradlee's name is atop the editorial
ports Geyelin's theory. "It is not an easy
thing," Agnew said, "to wake up each
morning to learn that some prominent
man or institution has implied that you
are a bigot, a racist, or a fool."
-Third, the editorial's savage bite,
couched in the bon 7motese of a George-
town cocktail party, does much to ex-
plain why few people in Washington
are entirely neutral about the Washing-
ton Post. Whether it is a superior news-
paper is a question we shall . address.
Suffice to say now that the Post's atti-
masthead. Yet titles don't always equate
with power. 1 called Ben Bagdikian two
months after Bradlee made hire the Post's
national editor. 1 asked, "Who makes
the decisions at the Post? I-Vhy is it run
like it is?"
Bagdikian is an old acquaintance, and
he has an ebullient Armenian humor-
the sort which permits wen to speak the
most heretical of truths through jest-
and he replied, "If you find out, please
let inc know."
several. reasons. -1--j ....Y.,....., - ? -?- ? ??- L. i ne person wno controls the host,
dealing with its friends. And the line is
-First, of con a v 5,p~1 scent ownership of the
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the Post has esca a c to t I e most su - o on Post Company, and has
. tellectual calls sophisticated and a faded her name highest on the m asthead,