"This is the operative statement. The others are
inoperative."
- Ron Ziegler
When working in the office recently I gave some
facts in a matter to my son. He said to
me that those facts were different to the facts that I had previously given
him. I replied that these facts were the
operative facts; the others were inoperative.
In making that comment, I was facetiously paraphrasing Ron Ziegler, a
man unknown to my son but a true footnote to history.
Ronald
Louis "Ron" Ziegler (1939 – 2003) was White
House Press Secretary and Assistant to the President during the
administration of President Richard Nixon between 1969 and 1974.
When Ziegler became White House Press Secretary
in 1969 at age 29, he was the youngest Press Secretary in history. From 1974 he was also Assistant to the
President.
Fiercely loyal to Nixon to the end, he became a
buffer between the President and a hostile press corps as the developing
Watergate scandal began to bite deeper, eventually reaching into the White
House and ultimately even the Oval Office itself. In that time Ziegler became the public face
of the embattled Nixon administration and a source of public and journalistic
bemusement, his befuddled speaking style and constant changes earning him the
nick name of “Zig-Zag”. One magazine
called his style of speech “Zieglerrata”.
There is no doubt that he was tarnished by his
loyalty to Nixon, that he became the focus of anti-Nixon hostility and that his
abilities were overshadowed by his defence of the Nixon administration during Watergate. According Gerald Warren, a former deputy press secretary under
Presidents Nixon and Ford: "I think he was placed in an awkward position
as a young man. ... It wasn't easy for him, but he did his best and he was very
loyal. I don't think he ever showed the
great promise that he had, I wish that he had been able to tell his story to
the world."
Some Zieglerisms:
"This is the operative statement. The others are
inoperative."
–
April 17, 1973, retracting previous statements that had been
revealed to be false.
According to The Guardian, reporting the death of Ron
Ziegler in 2003:
During
his career as US President Richard Nixon's press secretary, Ron Ziegler, who
has died after a heart attack aged 63, delivered thousands of White House
statements. But the only one that reverberates down the years came on April 17
1973, and consisted of two short sentences: "This is the operative
statement. The others are inoperative."
This
pronouncement signalled the first breach in the wall of lies and evasions that
the Nixon administration had erected around the break-in at the Watergate
headquarters of the Democratic national committee in June 1972. After months of
press revelations and congressional investigation of official corruption, the
president had finally given in, ordering his staff to give evidence to the US
senate and lifting their immunity from prosecution. In response, his press
secretary simply junked all his previous statements on the issue.
"Certain elements may try to stretch the Watergate burglary beyond what it
is."
–
1972, referring to Washington
Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
'I
think we would all have to say, and I would be, I think, remiss if I did not
say, that mistakes were made during this period in terms of comments that were
made, perhaps. I would say that I was overenthusiastic at the time in my
comments about The Post, particularly if you look at it in the context of the
developments that have taken place. In thinking of it at this point in time,
yes, I would apologize to The Post. . . . When we're wrong, we're wrong.''
-
May 1, 1973, the day after H. R. Haldeman, the
White House chief of staff, and John D. Ehrlichman, the chief domestic policy
adviser, resigned over Watergate, when Ziegler was asked whether he would apologise
to The Post.
When
he started to add, ''But . . .'' a reporter called out, ''Don't take it back,
Ron!''
"If
my answers sound confusing, I think they are confusing because the questions
are confusing and the situation is confusing."
"The president is aware of what is going on in Southeast
Asia. That is not to say that there is anything going on in Southeast
Asia."
–
1971, answering a question whether allied troops were preparing to
invade Laos.
''I would feel that most of the conversations that took place in those
areas of the White House that did have the recording system would, in almost
their entirety, be in existence, but the special prosecutor, the court, and, I
think, the American people are sufficiently familiar with the recording system
to know where the recording devices existed, and to know the situation in terms
of the recording process, but I feel, although the process has not been
undertaken yet in preparation of the material to abide by the court decision,
really, what the answer to that question is.''
-
1974, a statement by Ziegler on the safeguarding
of the White House tapes, winning an award from the Committee on Public
Doublespeak of the National Council of Teachers of English.
"Devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an
orderly world (which) will remain as an example for free men everywhere.”
- 1970, in reference to the career of CIA security adviser Dan
Mitrione, killed in Uruguay, whose promotion of torture later became
substantiated.
Ziegler with Elvis Presley, 1971, at a meeting of the US Jaycees
Congress of Ten Outstanding Young Men.
Presley and Ziegler were two of the honourees.
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