Ronald Ziegler Dies - The Washington Post

August 08, 2024

Ronald Ziegler, 63, who as President Richard M. Nixon's press secretary at first described the Watergate break-in as a "third-rate burglary," a symbol of his often-testy relations with reporters, died Feb. 10 after a heart attack.

Mr. Ziegler also was credited with saying that some early defenses mounted by the White House against Watergate accusations had become "inoperative," a term that came to be viewed as a prime example of euphemism in politics.

Mr. Ziegler's wife, Nancy, told the Associated Press that he died at his home in the San Diego suburb of Coronado.

From the time the break-in was discovered through the turbulent period that ended with Nixon's resignation, it was Mr. Ziegler's role to speak for the president and to be the target of the questions of reporters, who grew increasingly skeptical and even scornful.

As the buffer between the media and the White House, Mr. Ziegler had an often thankless job. In the words of Timothy Crouse, in his journal of the 1972 presidential campaign, Mr. Ziegler performed his task by being "relentlessly evasive."

In addition to his service as White House spokesman on Watergate, Mr. Ziegler announced to the nation many of the moves in foreign affairs that have won praise for the former president. He made announcements and responded to questions on the opening of relations with China and on efforts to deal with conflicts in the Middle East and in Vietnam. He also gave information on measures involving civil rights, strikes, welfare and taxes.

Mr. Ziegler was trained in advertising and public relations, unlike many of his predecessors, who came from the media. To some students of the presidency, this appeared to represent a growing effort toward professional image-polishing. He has been credited with coining the phrase "photo opportunity."

But it was the notorious June 1972 break-in at Democratic national headquarters in the Watergate office building that came to dominate his career at the press room lectern.

Perhaps inevitably, Mr. Ziegler seemed dismissive of media efforts to focus on the break-in and on the possibility that the White House had a hand in the act and in the attempt to conceal its ramifications.

Shortly after the burglars were arrested, Mr. Ziegler sought to fend off questioning with this assertion: "I'm not going to comment on a third-rate burglary attempt."

The matter could not be put to rest, and on April 30, 1973, Nixon made a televised speech conceding "a real possibility" that some of the allegations were true and that there had been an effort at concealment. The next day, a reporter asked Mr. Ziegler whether he would apologize to The Washington Post for his earlier challenges to its coverage. He said that he would.

"When we're wrong, we're wrong," he said, and added that he had erred when he scolded The Post and its reporters, particularly Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, for what he once called "shabby journalism."

Katharine Graham, the newspaper's then-publisher, expressed appreciation and accepted the apology.

This did not mean that relations between the White House and the media had entered a sunny new phase, however. Mr. Ziegler found himself beset as, for example, he announced such events as the resignations and sackings of Watergate investigators that became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.

The statement terming "inoperative" some of what the White House had said came about this way: The president made a terse announcement April 17, 1973, saying that he would now permit aides to testify before the Senate Watergate investigating committee and that they should not have immunity from prosecution.

The president then left the press room, leaving Mr. Ziegler to face the media. "On the eighteenth blow, Ziegler yielded," Woodward and Bernstein wrote in their book "All the President's Men."

" 'This is the operative statement,' he said. 'The others are inoperative,' " the book recounted.

Ronald Louis Ziegler was born May 12, 1939, in Covington, Ky., and graduated from the University of Southern California. He worked for the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency and participated in Nixon's unsuccessful 1962 gubernatorial campaign, then went to the White House with him in 1969.

Defending his boss to the end, on July 19, 1974, he called the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment investigation a "kangaroo court."

Less than a month later, on Aug. 9, when Nixon resigned and went to California, Mr. Ziegler went with him.

Working for Nixon had not been easy. Once, on a visit to New Orleans, Nixon shoved Ziegler, barking, "I don't want any press with me, and you take care of it."

Gerald Warren, a deputy press secretary under Nixon and President Gerald Ford, said of Mr. Ziegler: "Deep down, he was a wonderful person. He was placed in an awkward position as a young man. . . . It wasn't easy . . . but he did his best. And he was very loyal."

Most recently, Mr. Ziegler had been chief executive of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores from 1987 until he retired in 1998 to his upper-story condominium apartment overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

In addition to his wife, Ziegler is survived by two daughters.

Ronald Ziegler was press secretary from 1969 to 1974, contending with an increasingly skeptical corps of reporters until his boss's resignation.

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