Washington Press Club Foundation

Helen Thomas: Interview #1

December 8, 2005 in Washington, D.C.

Karen Frankel, Interviewer

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Q: This is Karen Frenkel, and with me is Helen Thomas. This is an oral history interview for the National Press Club Foundation Project on Women in Journalism. I would like to say that it is a great honor to be able to interview you.


Thomas: Thank you.


Q: I'm very excited about the assignment.


Thomas: Thank you.


Q: We've decided we would try as much as possible not to repeat the material in Miss Thomas's books, so the structure of the interview will refer to Front Row at the White House -- which is the second book --


Thomas: Right.


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Q: -- and Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President, the most recent, which is about humor in presidents. And the first book --


Thomas: -- was called Dateline White House, and I've written another book that could come out in the spring.


Q: Oh.


Thomas: It's mainly on the press.


Q: Okay. Well, then there will probably be some overlap.


Thomas: Right.


Q: Anyway, I wanted to start by asking you what has motivated you all these years, to report and be the first to know, and if you could talk about your feelings about journalism.


Thomas: Well, I think it's the greatest profession anyone could ever be in because you always have to keep learning. It lends itself best to anyone who has great curiosity, and I'm nosy. I'm allowed, now, to be nosy all my life, in my profession. Any profession that makes you feel it's an education every day, that you're always increasing your knowledge, and that you have to know things and have to keep reading and so forth -- I think all those things made me realize, from working on the high-school paper, right off the bat, that I had a one-track mind; that that was what

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really I wanted to be, and I think I was very lucky, early on, to pick a profession that I knew that I would love. I've never had any regrets. I've never known anyone in this field who has had to leave it, who has not looked back with great regret.


Q: Where do you think that curiosity came from, in your childhood and formative years? In your upbringing?


Thomas: Well, there was a big, big family. I don't know where it came from. All I know is I'm glad I have it, because I think there's a great impetus to seek out -- I think that journalists have a real important role -- to seek out the truth -- in so far as is humanly possible, so you sure need curiosity for that. I remember when I was maybe five years old and a friend came to our house, I kept asking her, "Do you have a boyfriend? Where did you get your dress?" She said, "You're so inquisitive!" I went to my older sisters and said, "What does that mean?" But I think most children do ask questions, and they become very annoying, I'm sure. I think I was a pain in the neck.


Q: When you were a young woman and you were working in journalism, I guess right after the war, or in the early '50s --


Thomas: Yes.


Q: -- can you describe what kind of resistance you encountered, as a young woman, in the profession?

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Thomas: Well, I was very lucky. I grew up in a family where no one ever told me it was a man's world, or that you had to pick a certain profession -- that it was best to be a teacher or a secretary or whatever, because this was your security. Never once did my parents ever tell me that. I certainly had no idea that it was really a man's world, and that I was certainly going into an area -- although I knew that there were not that many women doctors, not many women lawyers, etc. In working on the high-school paper, I encountered no real discrimination, once you're on it. But in the real world, I really realized that, at that time, women applying for reportorial jobs would mainly be assigned to the women's pages. What were in the old days women's pages now have become Style. So, sure, I knew there was discrimination, but, also, I was determined I wasn't going to let it deter me.


Q: When was your first encounter with it, where you realized, in the moment, that that's what it was?


Thomas: Well, I saw it all around me. I was very lucky, fortunately -- to others’ misfortune -- because it was the tail-end of World War II, and they had been drafting every young man who could breathe. If he had a pulse, he was going to war. So there were slots open to women, and I got a job as a copy-boy, then moved into cub reporting on the old Washington Daily News. Then I went on strike with about eight or ten other reporters, who wanted about $5.00 a week more, and we were all fired. It was a Scripps-Howard paper, so I went to the National Press Building and knocked on doors, and got a job with the Scripps-Howard United Press International. They called and the managing editor at the Washington Daily News said, "Give her a

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Thomas: Well, I was very lucky. I grew up in a family where no one ever told me it was a man's world, or that you had to pick a certain profession -- that it was best to be a teacher or a secretary or whatever, because this was your security. Never once did my parents ever tell me that. I certainly had no idea that it was really a man's world, and that I was certainly going into an area -- although I knew that there were not that many women doctors, not many women lawyers, etc. In working on the high-school paper, I encountered no real discrimination, once you're on it. But in the real world, I really realized that, at that time, women applying for reportorial jobs would mainly be assigned to the women's pages. What were in the old days women's pages now have become Style. So, sure, I knew there was discrimination, but, also, I was determined I wasn't going to let it deter me.


Q: When was your first encounter with it, where you realized, in the moment, that that's what it was?


Thomas: Well, I saw it all around me. I was very lucky, fortunately -- to others’ misfortune -- because it was the tail-end of World War II, and they had been drafting every young man who could breathe. If he had a pulse, he was going to war. So there were slots open to women, and I got a job as a copy-boy, then moved into cub reporting on the old Washington Daily News. Then I went on strike with about eight or ten other reporters, who wanted about $5.00 a week more, and we were all fired. It was a Scripps-Howard paper, so I went to the National Press Building and knocked on doors, and got a job with the Scripps-Howard United Press International. They called and the managing editor at the Washington Daily News said, "Give her a

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in the National Press Building. Through her intervention, we were able to -- because they allowed wives to come to the dinners and so forth, in a certain room -- and she was the one who got the reporters into the balcony, in 1956. But up to that time, we could go as a date, to the Club, but we certainly could not join as members, simply because we were women.


Q: What was the atmosphere like up in the balcony?


Thomas: Well, we weren't in purdah. We didn't have to wear veils. We did look down -- contemptuously -- at our colleagues, whom we knew we were going toe-to-toe with on some beats, and they could sit there, on the floor, having lunch, and we had to watch them. Often, they would have a major speaker. In fact, once the Attorney General -- I was covering the Justice Department, and he appeared at the National Press Club, and I couldn't sit down on the floor -- I had to be up in the balcony. So my AP [Associated Press] competitor had a big jump on me, could get right to him, and ask him a question. So there certainly were disadvantages, as there always are in discrimination, and that was true discrimination -- not for me per se, but for all women reporters.


Q: Was there much grumbling up there, because of that?


Thomas: Not up there, because we had to be quiet. But they wanted to be sure that we left. They were so afraid -- I mean, the joke was that we all wanted to go into the all-male bar, which was farthest from our desire. We wanted equality.


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Q: So I guess when you say you were "looking down on them," you were both physically and mentally looking down on them --


Thomas: Yes.


Q: -- as a way of coping with the cards being stacked against you.


Thomas: Yes. Well, there was a certain resignation -- acceptance -- "they're a club." But we realized also, if they wanted to call themselves a professional club, they should not have kept us out for so long. But it was true of all the clubs in this town -- Overseas Press Club, the Cosmos Club, which is made up of Nobels, Pulitzer Prize winners, great physicists, great poets, great novelists, and so forth -- all male. Three times, up to the 1980s, they voted against taking women in. Now they do take women in. So you can see how far into the twentieth century we went before --


Q: It took until the 1980s for women not to have to sit in the balcony?


Thomas: Until the Cosmos Club -- No. No, we got into the National Press Club in 1971, and I had been president of the Women's National Press Club, and when [Nikita S.] Krushchev was coming to town they made this one exception, because we really protested and made a big hullabaloo out of it. We got to Eisenhower, through his press secretary, so we had a meeting at the State Department with the president of the National Press Club, and for the first time in history they allowed thirty newspaper women to sit on the floor and have lunch with their male colleagues, when Krushchev spoke before the National Press Club, his one appearance

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before the press. It was a very exciting historical era, the beginning of co-existence, so every woman reporter wanted to be there, and that's when Khrushchev made his famous "We will bury you" speech. I sat at the head table, because I was president of the Women's Press Club. But after that -- that was a one-shot deal. We were never allowed, until 1971, to totally join.


Q: Was it because of your leadership, as president of the Women's Club? Was it on your initiative that it occurred?


Thomas: For this one time?


Q: Yes.


Thomas: No. Well, I certainly was very adamant on it, and I was certainly interested in foreign affairs. But it was a cabal. A lot of the women, a lot of the other officers of the Club, we all joined in, and sent a cable to Moscow saying, "We would certainly like to invite you to our club." So the Soviet ambassador went to the State Department and said, "Well, what shall I do? We've got the National Press Club, the Women's National Press Club, Overseas Press Club, American Newswomen's Club, and so forth." "Of course, you're going to the National Press Club," and we said, "Of course, he's not." We were very adamant. So we fought it out. That was one time.


Q: One time. Why do you think -- ?

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Thomas: There was a lot of resistance on the part of men. It was their club -- not just the Press Club, but all the clubs in this town. When they would let the women in for certain occasions, you would go in the side door or the back door.


Q: Oh, my god. That I'm really shocked to hear. So then you had to try again, and exert pressure all over again, for another, I would say -- what? -- ten years?


Thomas: Well, from '59 to '71.


Q: Longer. So what took so long? How many women were there in the press corps?


Thomas: We had a big club. We had at least 100 women.


Q: Against how many men?


Thomas: Well, in the Press Club, of course, it was much bigger, and a lot of those women had retired, basically, but they were still members of the Club. We'd had newspaper women for at least 150 years, so it was not exactly unique. But they were few and far between. We had no television, no cable, and so forth.


Q: You know, it's hard for me to imagine how you could have tolerated it for so long. Why did it take twelve years? Was there just a sea change, where the timing was right?

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Thomas: We fought, and we staged all kinds of demonstrations. Then, for the Gridiron Club, a group of women staged what they called the Counter Gridiron, and they got every VIP and told them not to appear at the Press Club. It was a very effective boycott. Then they would give an event with all kinds of fun games, entertainment, food, and so forth, on the night of the big Gridiron dinner, which was white-tie, with the president, and the Cabinet, and the Supreme Court, and when they started boycotting it, it began to gel. Then I became the first member -- woman -- to be taken into the Gridiron Club. This was in 1975.


Q: So 1971, when you were all admitted, was really the second feminist movement's peak.


Thomas: It was a turning point for us.


Q: That was the height of -- Betty Friedan's The Female Eunuch [sic] had come out, and Germaine Greer --


Thomas: We were feminists and working for equality long before she came on the scene. Her book was very effective, but it didn't mean anything to me. I had been fighting since I was born. Not to diminish her role, but from the moment I stepped into the real world, I was fighting for equality.


Q: I ask that because I was wondering how many of the women you were with were covering the feminist movement.


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Thomas: That came later on. A lot of the young women did. But the women I was with were feminist suffragists. We were suffragists. [laughter] We were so happy we got the vote.


Q: So before you, who would you say broke through into the world of Washington politics and political coverage?


Thomas: Oh, there were so many women. There was Dorothy Thompson; Doris Fleeson; May Craig. There was a whole roster at the Press Club of the women who were heads of the Women's National Press Club. They were wonderful, magnificent reporters. Great reporters. And they wrote hard news, too.


Q: You knew them personally?


Thomas: Oh, yes. A lot of them I did. Not all of them, but I knew a lot of them. And Mrs. [Anna Eleanor] Roosevelt would have news conferences just for women reporters, to try to give them a leg up, during the late '30s, '40s, while she was First Lady.


Q: Could you tell me about some of these women, whom you particularly admired, who might have been role models for you?


Thomas: None were role models for me. I didn't have that kind of contact. I just knew what I wanted to be. I was glad they were there, and they certainly had made their mark, a lot of them -- like Dorothy Thompson, like Doris Fleeson had columns,

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and May Craig, and so forth. There were so many great newspaper women, really. They were much more mature than what you'll see today, and they had knocked around. They really knew how to cover crime, politics, and so forth, but they didn't get the kind of breaks. Some of them did. Some of them made the breakthrough and really became outstanding-- Margaret Higgins, in the Korean War, and so forth -- but you could name them, really, on a couple hands.


Q: And they had by-lines?


Thomas: Oh, yes.


Q: So they were highly visible, and the public had no problem reading --


Thomas: No. But they were so few and far between, and there was still discrimination against women. Well, women in medicine and law found the same thing. Science, even today, as we know --


Q: [Interruption] I guess you were following Eileen Shanahan, who was with the New York Times.


Thomas: I wasn't following her. She worked with me, starting out. She came on later than me.


Q: I mean watching the discrimination case that was filed with the New York Times -- could you talk about your perception of what was going on there?

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Thomas: Well, it took so long for all these things to gel. The same thing with the AP -- ten years. I wasn't watching it blow by blow, but I knew some of the women involved. It came time when it should have been done. I'm so surprised it took so long.


Q: I guess there must have been a feeling of solidarity.


Thomas: Oh, absolutely.


Q: How did the women in the Women's Press Club help one another, against the resistance?


Thomas: We stood together, but when you are a newspaper woman, you are alone. You are independent. You have your own stories, and so forth. There's a camaraderie, and certainly in the clubs I think, there is, how shall I say? A bonding. But as a reporter, you're always alone, really. You're doing your own thing. So we all were very supportive of the things that we knew about in terms of discrimination, but it was every man for himself, really, in our field.


Q: That must have made it that much more difficult, because you needed to have some solidarity with your competition.


Thomas: Well, we knew that they were sympathetic, but you still have to do it yourself.

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Q: Right. Okay. I wanted to talk to you about your decision to retire from UPI [United Press International].


Thomas: I didn't retire, I resigned.


Q: Oh. Would you tell me about that, please?


Thomas: Well, what's the difference? Retirement -- I'll never retire. I haven't retired yet. I resigned from UPI.


Q: I'm sorry. I thought you had decided you weren’t going to work anymore.


Thomas: Oh, no, no. I decided I wasn't going to work for UPI anymore.


Q: Can you say anything more about why?


Thomas: Oh, it was a bridge too far when the Moonies took over, when Reverend [Sun Myung] Moon -- so that was it. I couldn't work for them, but I certainly didn't want to bow out of the field. I would get another job.


Q: Did you see evidence of editorial control?


Thomas: I didn't know whether there would be. All I knew was that I would not work for that man. Never.

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Q: And then Hearst came along and wooed you.


Thomas: Yes. Within two weeks, practically, I was back to working again.


Q: You had said, in one of your books, that you felt that it was important for all reporters, for all members of the press, to operate as if they had their own Hippocratic oath; that it was important to do no harm when you report. I was wondering -- it's kind of loose today. Do you think there should be something more formal for journalists to follow?


Thomas: No. When a journalist makes a mistake, it is so transparent, and the retribution is so fast, that you don't need that kind of thing. It's ridiculous. All I know is, your mistake is on the front page every day, or whatever. Our report card is on the front page. So I have seen, most of the time, very few -- maybe Jack Kelly, with USA Today, got by for a long time, longer than usual, in fabricating a story. But the others are quickly exposed. I think it's the nature of our business that you can't last long. Too many people know too many things, and now we have these extra people -- the bloggers, and so forth -- and also a very ultra-right -- what will I call them? Critics? Whatever -- who are deliberately out to demonize the liberal press. They want to call everybody a liberal, who disagrees with them. So I don't think you get by with too much if you make a mistake. You don't survive, on a paper, or on television or radio. It's very intolerant of those kinds of mistakes.

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Q: I can recall about four or five incidents like the one with Jack Kelly. There was one in the '80s, I think with Janet Cook at the Washington Post --


Thomas: Yes. Those stand out like sore thumbs because they were rare.


Q: Then there was one at the Times recently.


Thomas: Yes, Jason Blair. Of course, the top scion of the Times had to resign because of that. You can see what the retribution is -- with Blair. Then, of course, the phony ones, and being paid, and so forth -- Armstrong Williams, promoting -- there have been a lot of transgressions lately, but easily found out, I think.


Q: Why do you think that's been happening? It seems to me -- I was a kid in the '60s and I don't recall anything like that. Is it correct that that's happened more now?


Thomas: Oh, I think it's much more so. We became a celebrity business. Everybody wanted to go into the media, so-called, and I think they never understood that we did have ethics and standards, and we still have them, even though there has been such an explosion in the information world. Everybody with a laptop thinks they're a journalist, and they want to get into the act. But a blogger is not a reporter. A blogger is not a journalist. They're just simply expressing themselves. So it's very, very difficult now to find out what is really accurate, and what is the truth, because everybody's on the wire.

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Q: It's very disturbing, because the public doesn't really seem to discriminate very much.


Thomas: That's right. Well, the whole Swift Boat business, and all these things where they can attack you and you don't even know you're being attacked, but you have to defend yourself against this kind of thing. It's gotten much more dangerous, really, in that respect. But, at the same time, I think that our profession is still maintaining the high standards, which is to seek the truth, and to print and broadcast only the truth -- as far as you can find out. But so many things go wrong, and can go wrong. I think there's a lot of jealousy of our profession. A lot of people want to be in it, but don't really want to pay the dues that we paid. I mean, to be on TV twice is to have a celebrity. You could write for a newspaper for fifty years, and your friends and family know your by-line and are very happy to see it, but it's nothing like on TV. They've seen you twice -- "Haven't I seen you somewhere before?" You gain a certain celebrity-hood. And if you're on often, your celebrity-hood grows. That doesn't mean your talent grows.


Q: I'm a little unclear, though. When you say there's jealousy -- whose jealousy?


Thomas: I think the critics, the media critics, are a little bit envious. I think they want to cut you down to size -- especially if you have a different opinion. I write an opinion column now, so I get it with both barrels.


Q: Is it a weekly opinion column that you write now

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Thomas: Two a week.


Q: Are you getting a lot of mail?


Thomas: Oh, yes. E-mail, and very angry -- because I'm very liberal. I've always been a liberal, I'll always be a liberal. When I was writing for a wire service, I didn't let my opinion get into my copy, just the facts. But now I'm supposed to have an edge, and have an opinion.


Q: Do you think that the role of journalism is to inform or to educate the public, or both?


Thomas: Both. They're almost synonymous, in that respect. I guess if you have an opinion column, you might want to persuade to your point of view.


Q: What do you think accounts for the rise in popularity of the Rush [H.] Limbaughs and the [William J.] O'Reillys?


Thomas: The Reagan revolution. The women's movement hit a plateau in the Reagan administration, when women started going back to their homes. There was a real conservative bloc against women, and it was Open Sesame for the haters on the ultra-right to take over -- Social Darwinism: "Can't make it? Tough. Survival of the Fittest." And, "We’ve got to get rid of 'big government,' those big social programs, that take care of the poor, the sick, the maimed.” They're all riding around in their gold Cadillacs. Terrible. I think it opened the way for those kinds of critics,

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then the attacks on the press. Well, everybody has always wanted to attack the messenger -- Democrats, liberals, and the right -- but the right really made the press their nemesis. And, anyway, they started making money out of attacking the press. Attacking became a big business. Look what happened to PBS! There isn't a liberal hut left, hardly, except for Al [Alan S.] Franken on Air America. They have wiped out the liberal thought in the broadcast business -- Bill [D.] Moyers. [Daniel I.] Rather was a straight reporter, but he also was considered on the liberal side, and they had to go after him. [Phillip J.] Donahue -- everybody who had any -- annoyed them.


Q: You say they went after the so-called liberal press because they could make money.


Thomas: That’s a non-sequiter. They found out it was big business to attack the press, and to attack liberals. Who's paying these people? The [Richard M.] Scaifes and so forth, keeping these people alive, and so forth. It's a big business.


Q: But if the public were not ready to tolerate it, then they couldn't make money.


Thomas: Well, they don't have much alternative. You turn on the television, you turn on the radio -- you don't have many choices. The conservatives were able to buy up a lot of cable. The big corporate heads in New York -- who owns NBC [National Broadcasting Company]? GE [General Electric]; Viacom for CBS [Columbia Broadcasting System]. Disney. It’s amusement. What pays off? What gets the audiences? Attack, attack, attack gets audiences.

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Q: So the audiences like the attack.


Thomas: I don't know. I don't listen to them. Never.


Q: So are you suggesting that there's the military-industrial complex -- because, after all, it's GE that owns NBC, on the one hand --


Thomas: I would say that they fired a lot of people in the news division. In the old days, [William S.] Paley and [David] Sarnoff, yes, they wanted to make money. They did make money. But they kept the news division separate, independent, and they did not expect to please the shareholders with huge profits. All that has turned now. The corporate heads think in terms of, "Will this make money?" I never thought that news -- news is a business, true, but it was never supposed to be taking care of Wall Street. I’m speaking so generally, but what I'm saying is that there has been a tremendous chance. Before, I think there was much more respect for straight news. Family-owned newspapers, and so forth. We've been reduced, now, to one-newspaper towns. New York had twenty. Every major city had two to three, most of them three newspapers. Now it's all reduced to one, monopolies. They were family-owned, which was great. They didn't expect to make their money from the newspapers, either. But now they’re buying and selling stations as if they were hotcakes, and they have no interest, really, in serving the community or the news -- a lot of them. There may be some still around, I'm sure, to try to preserve the ethic of the profession.

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Q: So I hear three factors: The decline in family-owned media, where there's a personal stake in the desire to educate or inform the public, and then it's protected by --


Thomas: -- an interest in the community --


Q: -- accountability, the community.


Thomas: -- and not trying to become billionaires.


Q: Then there's the entertainment aspect you alluded to, with Disney and ABC [American Broadcasting Company], and then you--


Thomas: -- which is superseding the real intent for news. Unless you have a 9/11 or the start of a war or something, where you have something cataclysmic -- then you have some real performance. But, I don't know --


Q: And the third thing being the GE and bottom-line oriented corporate ownership.


Thomas: Absolutely.


Q: You mentioned 9/11. I'd be interested to know what you thought of the coverage of 9/11 generally, but also, from your point of view, what you thought was going on with the White House response.

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Thomas: Well, I think it was very debilitating for the press corps at the White House. I thought the coverage was very good in New York and so forth, but what happened to the reporters was everybody had to put their flags on their lapels, and they lost their way. They rolled over and played dead. They were fearful of being called unpatriotic and un-American. They should have been challenging. They should have been trying to find out more and so forth. I think the fear card was played to the hilt, and reporters just submitted to that kind of atmosphere of not wanting to rock the boat and so forth. Then it segued into the war, where questions that were penetrating would be considered jeopardizing the troops. So you had a terrible quiet in the press room, when people should have been very challenging, demanding. Going into the war, in the run-up to the war, I think the press let the country down. They should have demanded -- demanded -- proof from [George W.] Bush on all of these things. Well, Congress did, too. They rolled over and played dead, too.


Q: Why is it so easy now to accuse someone of being unpatriotic when they ask a question, and getting away with that accusation?


Thomas: Because I think there are these ultra-right critics out there, watching the press. There's a certain amount of subtle fear that is in the atmosphere; of not wanting to step over the line, otherwise you'll be considered -- well, [Ronald W.] Reagan and [George H. W.] Bush I demonized the word "liberal." They didn't say it, they hissed it, and soon they made it into a four-letter word on the national scene. "You're a liberal?" People were afraid that they would be considered a liberal or anything else. So this is all part of a pattern that, I think, has been so detrimental to our

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country. Because what is a liberal? A liberal cares about his fellow man. He is his brother's keeper. He believes, like Lincoln did, that government should do for the people what they cannot do for themselves. Nobody in this country should starve, or lack for medicine, or shelter. This is what a liberal cares about.


Q: It almost sounds like a very Christian kind of way of approaching your fellow man. The words have been kind of twisted.


Thomas: Totally. When "liberal" is demonized -- FDR [Franklin D. Roosevelt] was a liberal; LBJ [Lyndon B. Johnson] was a liberal, domestically, and so forth. They tried to put that foundation, wherein people are not supposed to suffer for ordinary food or medicine, in this country. It's so rich, the country is.


Q: Does it seem to you like this kind of demonization of other kinds of thinking and points of view -- despising pluralism in our society -- does it seem to you like the [Joseph R.] McCarthy era?


Thomas: That was, you know, a basic, small cancer, for Washington-New York-Hollywood. I don't think it affected people so much as it did the artists, and that was a horrible period. But I think now it is just all-encompassing, in the whole country; that the whole attitude is scary. We have lost our way in terms of -- you put it very well. The very fact that you could have the acceptances of different points of view, and so forth. Now I think that 9/11 really made us into monolithic thinkers, so afraid to deviate for fear we would be considered off-the-wall.

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Q: How does it make you feel to see something that was a small and horrific time, with McCarthy --


Thomas: I loved the '60s, not the '50s.


Q: I would love to come back to that, but if I could just ask this question --


Thomas: Okay.


Q: How does it make you feel to see something so large and all-encompassing, on such a scale, with perspective --


Thomas: These people -- the Patriot Act is so frightening. They can grab you off the street, and you could never be seen again. It's [Franz] Kafka! It's the-end-justifies-the-means. Can you imagine the Secretary of State defending torture? Not in those words, per se, but definitely sending people off to another country, to be interrogated?


Q: It's appalling.


Thomas: To be treated like -- no information is worth that. A lot of the detainees have been killed. I mean, they have died under the torture. Who wouldn't? There's a certain amount of pressure you can take, physically or mentally. We have shamed our country. [laughs] You're getting the lecture now. I really do think. So this is worse than McCarthy. McCarthy was horrible -- the blacklisting, the fear. There was

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fear everywhere. You were afraid to say anything, lest you be considered a communist. But it was not that contagious, all over the country. It hit Hollywood, it hit New York, and Washington, in certain segments. It’s no question it was all-pervading, in the sense that you had loyalty oaths and so forth. It was fascist, really. But this is worse, because it's so widespread, I think, in terms of the total control of the country. And no challenging. I mean, you have a Congress that's been so acquiescent.


Q: You say that you write a liberal column, and one of my questions was going to be, is there really this so-called "liberal press" anymore? Because I find that there are not enough even moderate voices speaking out. Do you feel alone, with your colleagues?


Thomas: Well, they have another columnist here, Marianne Means who writes liberally. She's not as liberal as I am, but she's very liberal. I certainly do feel like I stand out like a sore thumb, mainly because, in the briefing room -- I'm sure they'd like to kick me out, because “You're a columnist, you're not a reporter!” and this and that; because I'm sort of grandmothered in, I guess, and I make these asides.


Well, this is what they had, on the drum-up to the war. Every day [Lawrence] Ari Fleischer came out, for two years, and then Scott McClellan, before we invaded -- we invaded March 19, 2003 -- so from 9/11 to that day, "Saddam Hussein-9/11; Saddam Hussein-9/11; Saddam Hussein." It was the [Paul Joseph] Goebbels repeated. [laughs] Is it any wonder that anybody would think? Right from the White House, the official podium, this was the message. Then the president said no, there was no tie between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Well, by this time, you can imagine.

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And is it any wonder that the polls said the American people -- So that was the drum-up to the war. That's part of the whole spin-up.


[END TAPE ONE, SIDE ONE; BEGIN SIDE TWO]


Thomas: There aren't many liberals in the press room, no. And there certainly aren't many liberal columnists left. I think everybody got scared, really. They didn't know what really is the atmosphere, or how much your bosses would tolerate.


Q: Do you think that Karl Rove and spin-masters have become more sophisticated over the years you've been covering the White House?


Thomas: I think they had the advantage of fear, an atmosphere of "darkness at noon," so they were able to get by with anything. They could say anything. In this administration, everyone walks in lock-step. They all are on-message. The press secretary, who I think should wear two hats, be responsive to us, and so forth, sees himself as an advocate. So everything is their message from the White House and few challenges, because people don't even know how to challenge or what to say. You've got to say, "Well, prove that," and then they can go on to the next question. One day Scott McClellan said, "We're in Iraq and Afghanistan by invitation." I read that in the transcript; I wasn't there when he said it. I came in the next day, and I said, "Scott, I've been reading that you said we were in Iraq by invitation. Would you like to correct that incredible distortion of American history?" [laughter] "Well! They're a democratic people. They're a democratic state!" And I said, "If they asked

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us to leave, would we?” "No." [laughs] I get by with all that stuff every day, and I'm pulling their chain. It’s fun.


Q: Well, you know, when reporters fail to ask probing questions, tough questions, we're told that they fear that there will be reprisals, that they'll be cut off --


Thomas: No access. Yes.


Q: -- no access. That doesn't seem to have stopped you.


Thomas: Well, I don't have any access. I cover the briefings. I still have my front-row seat there. I must say, when I go to the White House, I look to see if it's still there, every day. I'm becoming the enfant terrible. But for news conferences, he won't call on me, and they put me in the back row. [laughs] Sometimes I don't go. I don't want to be a prop.


Q: But when you say you have no access, you mean that --


Thomas: What I mean is, I don't even try to talk to these people, because I know they don't want to talk to me. But other reporters do. I don't know what motivates them, or whether they feel that if they ask a tough question they would be cut off. I don't think they feel that way. But, certainly, in the White House, they have to feel that you're a friend, and they know I'm not.

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Q: I heard that as a result of your question to Bush, about the separation of church and state, they had put you in the back row.


Thomas: Well, that was my first question to him, and it threw him for a loop, because a couple weeks after he became president, first term, he dropped into the press room, being very affable, and started an informal little impromptu news conference. Every reporter asked about the impending tax cuts. When it got to me, I said, "Mr. President, why don't you respect the wall of separation of church and state?" Well, there's a video that looks like I shot him. He pulled back. "I do." I said, "No, sir, you don't. If you did, you would not have a religious office in the White House. You're secular?" I'm putting it on. "You're secular?" He said, "I am secular." And I said, "Well, I just think --" Well, that afternoon, I got a call from Ari Fleischer. "What's the idea of blind-siding the president?" I said, "What do you mean?" "Well, you asked him --" I said, "That was a legitimate question." But anyway, I'm persona non grata with these guys. It doesn’t matter.


Q: Are you the only one who raised the question about church and state, or even faith-based initiatives?


Thomas: They set up this office -- it's terrible. They put funding of religious charities on a par with government social programs across the board that apply to everyone. In my speeches I say, "Atheists pay taxes, too." This kind of money should not be going -- if you want to give to a Catholic charity, be in the Catholic charity, then let the congregations do it, as we always have. It should not be from the White House. It should not be in government. No, I don't believe in that -- proselytizing and so

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forth. The Salvation Army will only hire people who have a certain religion, and so forth. And there have been so many intrusions and breakdowns. The breakdown of that wall is very important, I think, in terms of our democracy, and, truly, the way our country -- the things we cherish about it -- the legitimacy. These people have done it, starting from Reagan on. The country went to the right, it became very conservative, and that's what it is today.


Q: When you challenge the president, as you have, in the little dialogue you just replayed for me, and other examples in your books, you usually start your question with a couple of sentences, a kind of preface, one or two sentences and then the question -- you get sort of an answer, and then you challenge, you probe.


Thomas: Yes. They don't allow follow-ups, which is bad. He comes in with a list of names -- I've never seen this done before -- of who he's going to call on. They're all designated by the insiders. "This is who you call on." It's true that when I was with the wire service, the wire services, UPI and AP, got the first two questions. So you had an automatic question. But when they called on the rest of the reporters, they didn't have a list of who we should call on, who would be friendly.


Q: I have to say, I remember seeing one press conference where I thought that the president knew what questions were going to be asked. Have they gone that far?


Thomas: I don't think so. I think the reporters have more integrity than that. But you can pretty well tell. They're prepped. With Reagan, it was almost like he was studying for a Ph.D., going into the tank. So they know the questions that the re

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porters have been asking. They know what the headlines are of the day. So they can pretty well predict what's coming up.


Q: So it's a way of knowing what questions will be asked, by the history of the reporters.


Thomas: Well, also what is happening, and also the briefings day after day after day, when certain reporters are asking -- there's one Indian reporter who's always asking about India and Pakistan. The black women reporters are always asking about blacks, civil rights and -- they pretty well know.


Q: So they can take the time up with questions from people who they know are not going to ask the questions that are of main interest to the American people.


Thomas: Right. They don't want to be taken off guard, or hit between the eyes. No.


Q: So what's the farthest out on a limb you've gone to get a story, when you've encountered this kind of resistance?


Thomas: I don't understand that question. How do you mean?


Q: Well, I was just thinking -- How do you work around it, when there are these walls being thrown up?

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Thomas: Well, I'm not in the business of having to get scoops anymore, or getting the kind of exclusives. I'm writing opinion, so I'm reading papers and trying to observe around.


Q: I meant in the past.


Thomas: In the past? Oh, well, then I had friends in other administrations, people I got to know and who would level with me. I think when you give your word of trust, of confidentiality, that you certainly should stick by it, and protect your sources. But I haven't gotten into trouble, like Judy [Judith] Miller and the others, because I've never had any great exclusives on that score -- war and peace.


Q: I wanted to ask you your opinion about what's been going on with the pressure of Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper, and the grand jury testimony, and the fact that she went to jail. Having anonymous sources is somewhat controversial. I wonder what you think about how far she went, to wait to get the go-ahead from him.


Thomas: Well, I think she was very legitimate. I signed two petitions to get her out of jail. I thought she was very noble to go, because, clearly, she could have probably worked around it. The others didn't want to go to jail. That's good. They really didn't, and they were able to work out something. But I thought she showed a lot of guts to do that. But there's no question that she should have been more perceptive about the defectors, who gave all these stories about the weapons that didn't exist. But part of the fault, certainly, lies with her editors. They should have said to her, "Judy, how many sources do you have on this, and who are your sources?" So I think

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that all the editors at the New York Times were very upset with themselves. But I thought, in the aftermath, for them to take it out on her was horrible.


Q: But some people would argue that an experienced investigative reporter like her should have been more discerning. You said, very nicely, that she could have been more "perceptive." But she seemed to have almost been, some people say, promoting the weapons-of-mass-destruction argument.


Thomas: I think she was used. No question she was used. I think she trusted, too much, her informants, and should have been much more curious as to why they were passing on this stuff, and just being a transmission belt for them. No, there's no question that she made a mistake in that respect, I think. But you always think, "There but for the grace of God go I." You think, "Oh, well, I've got a big scoop here," and you don't realize, also, that somebody might be using you.


Q: Do you believe the stories we've been hearing about how the news room at the Times has turned against her because she's been so difficult and possessive about her stories?


Thomas: I don't think it was vengeful. I think some of them might have been happy, that they might have had their little friction with her, but I think when they began to realize the importance that her stories -- I mean, to be at the New York Times and be on the front page is top of the mark in journalism. And I think that they defaulted themselves by not scrutinizing the copy more. So I think she was getting it, and she admitted she shouldn't have done that, but I think there was a little bit of self-guilt

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there, too. I don't know. I'm not a psychiatrist, but I think it was very rude and mean. First they put her on a pedestal, then they knocked her down, or seemed to. Some of their self-justification was -- I don't like to see anybody hurt like that. But she's holding her head up, I must say. She's fighting back, which is good.


Q: You have sometimes said in your books that you got a tip for something that you ended up following. Can you say, generally, who these kinds of tips were from? You say now that you have no access. But you must have been cultivating people, aides in the White House, for years.


Thomas: I wasn't very good at that, but some people did trust me and would call me and tip me off to things, a few times. I certainly did not make breakthroughs on a lot of big stories, but once in a while something would come your way-- someone from the inside, in the White House, who wanted something out, usually a whistleblower. You wish you had known more of them, because they really are upset about something that they consider an abuse of power, or the abuse of the American people. I wish we had more whistleblowers, and I would like to know them all. [laughter] Pass it this way!


Q: What do you think about the use of anonymous sources? Is it happening more now?


Thomas: I think you have to. I think you have to. I think otherwise we would know nothing, if you can’t protect people. Whistleblowers are treated like pariahs. They're treated badly. They lose their jobs, they can't support their families, and so forth.

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No, I think they need protection, and I think there should be a federal shield law. It's true, it would give us an extra privilege, but I think we should have it. And I think the people would be better off the more they know, because of what we know, and what we're able to find out. People shouldn't have to lose their jobs to tell the truth, and expose malfeasance.


Q: You said something very interesting about President Truman. He had the attitude that the press helped him to get a sense of what the public was thinking.


Thomas: And what's going on. Bush has had twenty-one news conferences in five years. That's a long time between drinks and, obviously, it wasn't conducive for him. Because he would at least know what was on people's minds. I don’t know if he reads papers or not. He says he doesn't, but he should, if he doesn't.


Q: You just made me think of something you said in your book, the third book, on presidents and humor. You said that Americans have always wanted their presidents to be charismatic. You're not clear on how much they want their presidents to have a high IQ.


Thomas: That's true.


Q: So what do you think of a president who says he doesn't read the papers, his staff tells him?

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Thomas: I think it's very sad. I think it's in line with our perception of him, which is a lack of intellectual curiosity. And I think that's sad, because what you want a president to do is ask all the questions, and to be able to face the truth. And to be able to admit they're wrong, and do something about it.


Q: You know, when you were writing about Reagan -- and I bring up Reagan, because some of the things you observed about his administration I find reminiscent in this administration. I wonder if you do, too. The reason why I ask that is because everything seemed so scripted then, and now we have these so-called "talking points." I just wonder if you see a pattern there in these two presidencies.


Thomas: Oh, I think there is a lot of similarity. I do think Bush tries to emulate Reagan in many, many ways. A lot of the same people are around. Definitely, the M.O. is there, putting on the charm, and so forth. Yes. But Reagan had been in politics, and he'd been six times president of the Screen Actors Guild. He had done commentaries on foreign affairs, and, of course, communism really was his nemesis, and so forth. But he was much more attuned to what was going on than this president.


Q: Well, I have the impression that you thought that when [Edwin] Meese and [James] Baker switched jobs, without telling Reagan --


Thomas: Oh, it was shocking.


Q: -- and then, later, Reagan thought it was a good idea --

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Thomas: Well, his aides always thought they were smarter than Reagan. They thought they knew more, etc. With this president, he thinks he's president! He can't stand anybody to leak anything. He wants everybody in lock-step, onboard, part of the team, and he really is a mama's boy. He doesn't want men telling him what to do. I think he can take it from -- There's a rumor now that he's only talking to four people: his wife, his mother, Karen [P.] Hughes, and Condoleezza Rice. I don't know if it's true or not, but I do think he takes umbrage at somebody telling him what to do -- the father figure, and everything else.


Q: That's interesting. Where I was going with my question about Reagan was different. I had the impression that --


Thomas: He was not dumb, in my opinion. No.


Q: But I had the impression that you thought he was not in charge. Because they went and did this switch in jobs, and didn't discuss it with him.


Thomas: Well, I think in many ways he delegated. He always had this plaque -- "It doesn't matter who gets the credit --" on his desk. He delegated a lot of responsibility, which he shouldn't have done. And I think they took a lot of privilege, which they shouldn't have done. They certainly should have let him know when they were shooting down some planes. And I also had this feeling that they thought they were smarter, but they weren't. He just wanted the big picture. He didn't want to be bothered with the tricky-track. Jimmy [James E.] Carter was accused of being the opposite; of "Who's using the tennis court?" and that kind of thing. Micro-managing.

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Q: Do you think W. is in charge? Or is it [Richard B.] Cheney and Rove, in your opinion?


Thomas: I think they dare not do anything they don't tell him about. I think he's very possessive of being president, and so forth. But, at the same time, he's very beholden to them for their advice, because he doesn't know what to do. He's scared to death that he won't be considered "in charge." They started subduing Cheney early on in the administration, in terms of -- when people were saying, practically, "Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister" -- they kind of cut him down to size. They wanted everybody to know who was president.


Q: Okay. I'm going to save some of the questions I have about the current president for tomorrow. Maybe we can return to some of the journalism discussion we were in earlier.


Thomas: Okay.


Q: I remember asking you, over the phone, if you would care to comment on the revelation of who Deep Throat turned out to be, and whether or not the kind of investigative work that [Robert U.] Woodward and [Carl] Bernstein did in the '70s could be done today, in this climate.


Thomas: I don't think newspapers are willing to put the money out. The Washington Post had eighteen reporters on this story. I think if it's big enough they may do it,

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but there's lots of -- In fact, there are very few newspapers anymore who have any investigative reporters. It's sort of a dying art. Some have, but, unfortunately --


Q: But you have said that we-- "we" the press; I included myself there, because I'm also a journalist-- are the only check, really, about what the president --


Thomas: Right.


Q: --who he’s accountable to.


Thomas: Absolutely. That's why I think the job is so, so important. People don't understand. You could have a king, you could have a dictator, unless they're being questioned. As it is, this one is hardly ever accountable, for anything. He hardly ever explains, or has been put on the spot at all.


Q: What do you think it will take for that to happen? For a while I thought --


Thomas: Early on I used to get these calls: "How dare you? Who in the hell elected you? Why did you ask those questions? You are mean. You're this. You're that. Why don't you retire?" Now I get calls -- "Where are you? Where's the press? How come you people aren't asking this?" They see all this televised, and they think of the questions that should be asked, and they're shocked. They think the press has just fallen down on the job.

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Q: When we spoke on the phone, the effects of the hurricanes, and the public's good perception of the reporting we saw about the disaster in New Orleans, seemed to be fresher and started to look like the press had gotten some --


Thomas: That was the turning point. I think they came back to their senses, and dropped some of the fear card. Because they were getting the go-ahead from the corporate heads. "You can show emotion now. You can be a human being now. You can ask the tough questions now."


Q: You don't think it came the other way? From the reporters in the field? It came from the top?


Thomas: Well, I think they became more daring, yes, because it didn't rock any boats in terms of -- but they got a basic go-ahead from the top side.


Q: Why, all of a sudden?


Thomas: Well, because I think that was such a horrendous domestic crisis, and you had to find somebody to blame. There were so many faults along that they finally really had to challenge the president. Things were so bad, and they could hear the people griping all over: "Where's the government? Where are the cars? Where's the help?"


Q: Was the White House having press briefings in the middle of all th

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Thomas: They were trying to say what they were doing, but they were getting the feedback, too. Then Bush was running there every five minutes. He made more trips to the flood areas. I don' know how many times he went to Louisiana, Mississippi, and so forth.


Q: At least four or five times, I think.


Thomas: That's right. At the very high-profile times.


Q: But you attend all of the White House briefings, every day, still. Right?


Thomas: When I'm in town and he's in town. I do speak occasionally. But yes, I try to go every day, when he's there, and when there's a briefing.


Q: Were you there during that period of the hurricane?


Thomas: Yes, most of the time.


Q: What kind of stuff were they telling you?


Thomas: Well, they were telling us what they had done, what FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] was doing in terms of how many troops were getting there, the National Guard and this and that. You know. How much food was being sent. All the actions that they said Homeland Security and FEMA were doing.

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Q: Did you feel they were more forthcoming in the crisis?


Thomas: Well, you certainly felt that they wanted to show you that they were active, and doing everything possible in a humanitarian way that they could.


Q: I was going to say, did you feel they were more forthcoming than usual? Because of the intense need for damage control? Because of the head of FEMA and his incompetence?


Thomas: Probably part of that. But also, it wasn't touchy, like the Iraq war. It was a very human thing, and they felt that they had the upper hand, where the president was going and showing so much concern, and sent everybody down there. He had moved a mountain, providing all this money, and so forth. Sure I think they felt, definitely, they could put their best foot forward, and they were proud of what they were doing after.


Q: How do you know, as a reporter, when you did have access, and you were asking your questions at conferences -- how did you know when you were being lied to?


Thomas: Because they weren't offering any proof. When [John F.] Kennedy announced that the Cubans had Soviet missiles, he showed them on television. These people had no proof of anything. From the moment Bush set foot into the White House, I knew he wanted to go to war. Suddenly, on the radar screen, out of nowhere, after twelve years, every day we were getting “Saddam Hussein, Saddam Hussein, we have to have a regime change, we have to have--.” And we said, "What

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is this? What did he do? Where is the threat? What is this all about?" Well, you knew you were being brainwashed. You knew they were trying to establish it. No, I didn't trust anything they were saying, at all. Because I saw there was such a concerted attempt to brainwash us and to propagandize a cause.


Q: But they were not taking your questions, right? Because that was after your question --


Thomas: No, they took my questions. But by this time, [Paul H.] O'Neill and Richard [A.] Clarke and everyone were saying -- they were looking for a cause. Bush took the counter-terrorism guy aside and said, "Find me a reason to go into Iraq." In Woodward's book, he said that the war council on 9/12, day after 9/11, [Donald H.] Rumsfeld -- They knew by this time it was [Osama] bin Laden, it was foolproof, they knew who did it, they knew basically, generally, where he was, and Rumsfeld said, "Let's bomb Iraq." That was all on the agenda. Project for a New American Century. You're aware of that? That was it. The agenda. The neo-cons, for the last dozen years or more, have been trying to sell that. They tried to sell it to Reagan, they couldn't do that. They tried to sell it to Bush I, they tried to sell it to Clinton and couldn't. They sold it to this man, the neo-conservatives. They're backing away from it now, but they had an agenda. [Paul D.] Wolfowitz, Douglas [J.] Feith, William Kristol, Rumsfeld, Cheney, [R. James] Wolsey.


Q: What do you think the agenda is?

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Thomas: Take the whole Middle East. Take the oil. Take the geo-political position. Get your permanent bases in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and all the "stans" surrounding China and Iran, for the next war, the Third World War -- if necessary. Have control of the oil. Empire. It's not going to work. They've already flunked. They'll be lucky to get out.


Q: Have you written what you've just told me?


Thomas: No, but everybody knows it. The Project for the New American Century -- all you've got to do is call it up on your internet. They've made no secret of that.


Q: But the American public thinks it's all about the Christians vs. the Muslims. So they don't know.


Thomas: I do think he's messianic. I do think there is a certain crusade in Bush, in his own mind. He has put a religious taint on it. There's no question about that.


Q: Do you think that's a smokescreen for the agenda?


Thomas: No, I think it's all part of the same parcel. The neo-cons certainly don't resent him building up this wall against the radical Islamic people, because they're the ones who would be thwarting this. But it's not going to work. Too many people are dying.


Q: Why have you not written about it in your columns?

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Thomas: It's my opinion. I don't have any fool proof, except that it is written down, and it's very clear that we had no reason to go into Iraq. They didn't do anything to us. They didn't threaten us. [laughter] I am perfectly willing to go after any country. I think it was right to go into Afghanistan. Get bin Laden, get those people. But Iraq? It's so far-fetched. But he wanted to upstage his dad. He was told, "If your dad wouldn't go to Baghdad --" Because his dad warned that there would be urban fighting in Baghdad; that there might be some resistance.


Q: So you really do buy some of what I read in a book called Bush on the Couch, where it shows that he has a very cool relationship with his father --


Thomas: Oh, yes.


Q: -- and he's in competition with his father.


Thomas: Oh, yes, I do buy that. I don't think that was the number-one thing. I think getting Saddam and getting the oil, and getting a geo-political -- getting empire in the Middle East, I think all those were much more -- but there is a certain amount of ego here. "I'm the president now, and I'll act and do what you didn't do." Dad knows that and handles him with kid gloves, because he knows how sensitive -- he wants to prove he's president. He knows that. That's subjective and my observation, but just the way they act together, you can tell. There's a certain amount of deference -- "I'm the president." It's funny. [laughs] Oedipus.

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Q: I know that you are an Arab American, that your family came from Lebanon, and you --


Thomas: Really from Syria, but then it became Lebanon, after World War I, when oil was discovered by the French and the British. They got all these mandates from the League of Nations and took over all these. So Lebanon, then, was sort of cut off from Syria and made into a separate country. But the part my dad and mother came from -- Tripoli -- was on the Mediterranean. It was part of west Syria, originally.


Q: I know that you hang out at Ayesha's, is that how you pronounce it?


Thomas: Right.


Q: So you must hear a lot about the Arab American community here.


Thomas: Yes.


Q: What do they think about the Middle East being this kind of target?


Thomas: They think -- well, you know -- when Bush calls [Ariel] Sharon a man of peace -- their idea of Sharon, who presided over a few massacres, and so forth, of Palestinians -- I mean, Bush is just very, 100%, pro-Israeli. So they're very unhappy about that, but they live with it. They've never had an administration that is in favor

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of the Arabs, really, because they don't have the votes. They don't have money. They don't have the political clout in this country.


Q: I'm surprised that they see it in terms of only Israel -- or that that's the first thing that came to mind, in your response. Because I would think that they would deeply resent this kind of American neo-imperialism in all of the Middle East.


Thomas: Well, now they're worried. But the original sore point was through the creation of the State of Israel and the displacement of the Palestinians. So every Arab has a certain feeling about that.


Q: I'm asking -- I wonder -- don't they feel that their Arab brethren are constantly being invaded. If you're a Syrian, and you see the Iraqis suffering extraordinary tolls --


Thomas: Yes, but I'm telling you what the original feeling was, and the realization that America was never going to side with them. The Jewish influence here, in terms of -- they participate. They're the intellectuals in our country. They're the professors. They really put their money where their mouth is. They're into politics, and so forth, so there's no way that Arabs, in this country, could offset that in terms of even -- and they don't want to. I think they have no interest in that. Most of the immigrants in this country were Christian, and they were anti- -- my mother -- if you had mentioned Mohammedan, who was the Muslim, she would go up in smoke, because they were fleeing from the Sultan, the Turkish -- Ottoman Empire, when they emigrated.

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Q: I know your family is Christian. I was distinguishing in my mind --


Thomas: For Arabs, I think they're reconciled. They certainly reconciled to the State of Israel. But, at the same time, they want justice for the Palestinians. They don't want the whole West Bank taken over, and the Israelis did annex Jerusalem, which I think should be international, an open city.


Q: But why is it that they're not offended by the Middle East becoming this kind of colony?


Thomas: Oh, they are. They are. But they can't do anything about it. They don't have that kind of power. This is the horror of bin Laden. In my opinion, he was a very ambitious man. He wanted to depose the royal family in Saudi Arabia. He feels he was not treated right by them, even though his father became a billion-billion-billionaire in Saudi Arabia. He was really a Yemenite. Bin Laden became part of a radical group, and he thought he should win. So he was trying to get rid of the Americans in Saudi Arabia, and get rid of the royal family. So that's the part of that. No, I don't know any Arab who enjoyed the invasion of Iraq, and they did feel sympathy. And when they see Al Jazeera, and they see the Iraqis being killed, and the children and the mothers and everything. El Arabia -- the two television stations they U.S. keeps trying to suppress. They don't allow the Al Jazeera in Iraq. There's a lot of feeling, but they don't feel they can do anything about it.

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Q: I'd also like to ask you about what was being said in the Arab community, Christian and Muslim, here in Washington, when 9/11 happened, and there was such fear in the American public, and there was tremendous hostility expressed toward --


Thomas: Anyone with dark skin was being swept up. In Dearborn [Michigan], you can imagine how they felt. The kids were afraid to go to school, because they knew the Arabs were being demonized.


Q: This is in Michigan, where you're from, that you're describing.


Thomas: Yes, and all over. In Virginia, they have lots and lots of Arabs and Palestinians. So it was very hard for those families to adjust. Even though they knew they were in America, and in America you have certain civil rights. They certainly felt a certain shame and blame for what happened, because they were all Arabs.


Q: Christian and Muslim Arabs alike felt shame?


Thomas: Well, I think that -- yes. I do think there definitely was an empathy there, and a feeling that they were all being blamed in the same way. But the Lebanese Christians are pretty arrogant. They probably added more antipathy to the Muslims. There's always this tremendous -- They got along in Lebanon, some way, somehow, in these different sections. But there's still a lot of antagonism. They had civil war, and they had everything.

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Q: I have one last question, because it's almost 5:30. You had mentioned at the very beginning, when we were talking about your family, and I asked you about your inquisitiveness, you mentioned that your family had left Lebanon, but it was Syria before, and that your parents were very liberal about what a woman could do.


Thomas: I am amazed, in retrospect. I didn't know it at the time. I just thought they let me be what I wanted to be, which was sort of incredible, because all the ethnic families and so forth wanted their daughters to get married. I don't know. They were very different.


Q: Were they different from the family that stayed in Lebanon and Syria?


Thomas: My mother never told us to get married. Maybe she didn't think it was a great idea. [laughs] She had nine children. She had one sister with fourteen.


Q: Where did they fit in? Were they just oddballs in their own community?


Thomas: No, no. They were very close, always went to church on Sunday, the Greek Orthodox church, and they had a lot friends. Some way, I don't know -- I think I got into the looser part. I was third from the bottom. I think the older ones got it a little stricter, but not that strict. I never once heard my parents say, "You have to do this, you have to do that, for security and so forth." They wanted us all to go to college, but it was the Great Depression, so we didn't go to the ivy leagues, and I wouldn't have qualified under any circumstances. But the whole thing is, they understood what education was, and I'll be forever grateful.

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Q: So they were just very unusual.


Thomas: I think so. Now, when I begin to think about it I think, gee, on one side --


[END TAPE ONE; BEGIN TAPE TWO]


Thomas: We were just trying to be American, and we thought Americans are free, right? You can do anything you want to do.


Q: Why did they leave?


Thomas: Why did they leave?


Q: Yes. Why did they come here?


Thomas: My father came at the age of about fifteen or sixteen. He had two brothers who had preceded him, and they probably wrote, "Come to America." I don't think they told him the streets were paved with gold, but still, it was the time of immigration. He came in the 1890s. Then he went back to Syria and married my mother, I think in 1903 or 1906. I'm not sure which. And he came here. Came back to Kentucky.


Q: Oh, first he came to Kentucky.

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Thomas: Yes. That's where I was born, in Kentucky. But when I was four years old, we moved to Detroit, because there was a big auto boom -- $5.00 a day for the workers. My dad never went into the auto factories, but he did have a grocery store.


Q: So there wasn't something about the culture there that they wanted to get away from?


Thomas: Well, I think definitely that my father was thinking in terms of opportunity. And the Ottoman Empire was pretty restrictive, and they were trying to take people into the army, of course. But my dad was too young for that.


Q: I see. Well, I promised we would stop at 5:30, so I have to keep my promise --


Thomas: Right.


Q: We'll call it a day?


Thomas: Okay.


Q: Thank you so much for your time. We'll pick up tomorrow on videotape, where we left off today.