Legendary journalist criticizes Bush
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer
Legendary White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who has covered nine presidents in her 59-year career, was offering no niceties to the current one.
"My feeling is we should not go to war where we're unprovoked," she growled across a phone line from Milliken University in Decatur, Ill., en route to Hawai'i to participate in the Distinguished Lecture Series at the University of Hawai'i.
Helen Thomas will speak at the University of Hawai'i on Monday.
"They haven't proved a thing," she said, scoffing at Bush administration statements of pending nuclear capability by Iraq's Saddam Hussein that makes his country a threat to world stability, and has brought the United States to the brink of war.
"The fact that Saddam is allowing inspections, we should be happy about that," said Thomas. "I don't understand why we're itching to go to war. No one has ever said that Iraq has nuclear weapons. There's no good reason to attack a country that hasn't attacked us. We should demand an answer from him (Bush). It's not enough to assume someone is going to build a bomb, especially when countries around him have the bomb and we don't mention them."
More important, said Thomas, is concentrating on making sure there's no new terrorist attack on our country.
At 82, the irascible dean of the Washington press corps is still in the front row at White House news conferences — but said it's been months since Bush has had one.
"You can't get to him," she snapped.
"He doesn't hold news conferences. He's only had six so far."
On Monday at 7:30 p.m. Thomas will discuss her experiences and recent book, "Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President: Wit and Wisdom from the Front Row at the White House" in the Campus Center Ballroom at UH. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Over a career that began in the midst of World War II, Thomas has become a legendary role model for women journalists, a woman who has covered every president since John F. Kennedy, and became a fixture in a front row seat at White House press conferences. It was Thomas' "Thank You, Mr. President," spoken to Kennedy at her first press conference in 1961, that launched the tradition.
He's still her favorite president, she said, because he was the most inspired, and inspiring. "He gave us hope. He was a man of peace."
After joining United Press International in Washington, D.C., in 1943, Thomas rose in the ranks, becoming the wire service's first woman White House bureau chief in 1974. Two years earlier she was the only female print journalist to travel with Richard Nixon on his groundbreaking presidential trip to China.
As a torchbearer for women journalists, Thomas broke barriers. But it was an arduous task. Replying to a student who asked whether the fight for equal rights was difficult, she once snapped: "If young women ever ask me if I was discriminated against, I say, 'Where are you from, Mars?' We had to break down every door separately."
Thomas was born in Kentucky and graduated from Wayne University, breaking into political reporting in 1961 with Kennedy's election. She has circled the globe several times covering Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and now the younger Bush, and been at every economic summit. After retiring from UPI in 2000, she joined the Hearst newspaper chain as a columnist.
"Presidents come and go," commented Bill Clinton when Thomas retired from UPI two years ago, "but Helen's been here for 40 years now, covering eight presidents and doubtless showing the ropes to countless young reporters and, I might add, more than a few press secretaries. Without her saying 'Thank you, Mr. President,' at least some of us might never have ended our news conferences."
Speaking at Yale Law School three years ago, Thomas told students she'll never forget what one president said to her: "President Ford once told me that if God had created the world in six days, he wouldn't have been able to rest on the seventh — he would have had to explain it all to Helen Thomas."
During her Hawai'i visit, Thomas will speak to journalism students at Waialua High School about the importance of high school journalism programs. Waialua recently was awarded a $2,500 grant from the Newspaper Association of America Foundation to expand its program.
Thomas also will speak to the Media Council and host an open forum for journalism students and student leaders at both Manoa and UH-Hilo.
