BY SHERRY CONOHAN
Staff Writer
CHRIS KELLY staff Helen Thomas (center), of Hearst Newspapers; Linda Deutsch, The Associated Press; and Fran Lewine, of CNN, participate in a panel discussion at Monmouth University. WEST LONG BRANCH — After more than four decades of covering the White House, Helen Thomas, 84, can tell you a thing or two abut the presidents she has covered.
The longtime reporter for United Press International, who now writes a column for the Hearst newspapers, became a familiar figure in households across America when she would end White House news conferences with the words, “Thank you, Mr. President.”
She calls President Kennedy, the first president she covered, her favorite. She is extremely critical of President Bush, the current target of her coverage, for keeping out of public view a lot of information that she believes should be in the public domain. Thomas also is critical of the White House press corps for not asking tougher questions of him, particularly on Iraq.
“I think the press rolled over and played dead,” she said during one of several appearances at Monmouth University during the day of Sept. 21. She held televised news conferences with both the general media and with the student media, participated in a panel discussion on “The Role of Women in Journalism,” took part in a book signing, and then spoke at a dinner to honor her as the first recipient of the Monmouth Award for Communication Excellence (MACE).
“We should be asking why did we go to war in Iraq,” Thomas said of the White House press corps. “Everything they (the Bush administration) said proved not to be true. … People don’t understand why we invaded the country.”
Thomas, who went to the White House in 1961, said she got to know Kennedy pretty well.
“We had much closer access,” she recalled. “The press corps was much smaller. You could walk alongside him.
“I thought that on the domestic side, Johnson moved the mountain,” she continued. “He accomplished the most with Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, voting rights for blacks for the first time in the South, extra aid to education at all levels from Headstart to college.”
Thomas said that “LBJ was fantastic,” except that the Vietnam War was his undoing. “We had to do the Bataan death march with Johnson, during the Vietnam War, walking around and around the South Lawn, and he would let his hair down and really start venting, literally. Then he would say, ‘It’s all off the record,’ ” she recalled. “But by this time we thought we knew what he was going through in terms of personal anguish.”
Thomas noted that one month after Johnson left office, he did an interview with CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite and said that the Vietnam War coming into everyone’s living room killed his presidency.
The “horrors” of covering the White House surfaced during Watergate and the administration of President Nixon, Thomas said, noting that everyone knew “the other shoe was going to fall” after that story broke, but it took a year to happen.
Thomas expressed dismay at the Bush administration for its secrecy in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and for pushing through the Patriot Act, which she said went too far. She deplored that the government can monitor e-mail or set up a wiretap almost on a whim or suspicion.
“What happened to having a warrant and so forth?” she asked. “All these intrusions have been almost unbelievable. A dark-skinned person on the street can be arrested. What we did at Guantanamo — keeping people one or two years, unable to contact their families, unable to get a lawyer — that’s not us.
“I’m not saying you don’t have to have tighter security at airports and borders, and so forth — nuclear plants, electrical plants, chemical plants,” she hastily added. “But I think the question of individual liberties — once they’re going, they’re gone for a long time.
“It’s our duty to be the real watchdogs of government,” she said of the media. “The press is the only institution in American society that can question the president on a regular basis and hold him accountable.”
Thomas said presidents are more distant now. “There are layers and layers of security,” she said. “The press corps is so much bigger and they’re (the presidents) more remote.
“Covering them is fascinating. You’re covering history.”

