April 14, 2002

SHE is 81, and has spent about 59 years working as a journalist. We were lucky to be in Fresno, when Helen Thomas talked at the California State University about her work in Washington and the presidents she had covered. Her talk was one of the University lecture series.

Ms Helen Thomas is perhaps best known to the American public as the woman reporter who closed televised presidential press conferences with the familiar, “Thank you, Mr President.”

From John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton and now George Bush, Helen Thomas never met a US president who didn’t love her — at least for one day. “It’s always a love-hate relationship between the president and the press,” says Thomas, who covered eight presidents during four decades as a White House reporter for United Press International.

She commanded their respect and when they were on slippery grounds, they feared her; they knew any moment she would ask a searching question that would make them slip in the eyes of the public.

How pertinent it is to our country as well, when she said: “Presidents are friendly to reporters in the beginning, but then they start to think that information is their private reserve.”

Helen Thomas chose journalism as a career during an era when most women were encouraged to take up nursing or teaching. “I never realized it was supposed to be a man’s world,” she says. “I was raised to believe we could be anything we wanted to be. Nosiness drew me to newspaper work. I saw my byline in the high school paper and my ego swelled. I love the collegiality and atmosphere of newspapers. Plus, it’s a profession where you always have to keep learning.”

Upon leaving college, she served as a copy girl for the old, now defunct Washington Daily News. In 1943, Thomas joined United Press International and the Washington Press Corps. For 12 years, Ms Thomas wrote radio news for UPI, her workday beginning at 5:30 am. Eventually, she began covering the news of the federal government, including the FBI, HEW and Capitol Hill.

In November 1960, Ms Thomas began covering the then President-elect John F. Kennedy, following him to the White House in January 1961 as a member of the UPI team. It was during this first White House assignment that Helen Thomas began closing presidential press conferences with “Thank you, Mr. President”. Thomas was the only print journalist to travel with President Nixon to China during his breakthrough visit in January 1972. Since then she has been to China with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush. She has travelled around the world to cover every economic summit. After retiring from UPI in 2000 she became a syndicated columnist for Hearst newspapers.

Later, in a telephone interview with this writer, about Afghanistan’s future, she said “there should be peace, a democratic government, women should be free to choose their future, and of course economy should pickup.” Responding to a question if the Afghans could be tamed, Helen Thomas said, “peacekeepers should remain there as long as needed. Afghans should be made to understand what is best in their interest. They can follow their religion.”

As for Pakistan, Thomas said: “Pakistanis should go for democracy, Army should do what it is meant for and not to stage coup d’etat. America doesn’t favour military rulers.”

“What about, Gen Musharraf?”

Helen Thomas: “After September 11, it was pragmatic to support him.” She repeated, “the relationship is pragmatic. People in Pakistan should favour democracy to military.”

“But, the US has always accepted military rulers — from Field Marshal Ayub Khan to Gen Zia and now Gen Musharraf?”

“Pragmatism. But, I am for democracy and so the Pakistani-Americans need do the same.”

When asked about the US President’s wit, Thomas says Presidents Kennedy and Reagan had the keenest wit when it came to delivering one-liners. But for telling long stories that left listeners doubled over with laughter, no president could match Lyndon Johnson.

“Which US President she would grade as the best?”

Helen Thomas cited Lyndon Johnson as the best politician among the presidents she covered. “Nobody could match Johnson,” she says. “He knew where all the bodies were buried. In his first two years in office, he was able to pass a lot of landmark legislation, from Medicare and civil rights to public health and national parks.”

“There are days when you feel like you’re walking in where angels fear to tread,” she says, recalling what it’s like to hold a president’s feet to the fire. “You summon up your courage and go to the heart of things. You just try to move the ball a little farther down the court.”

Although the long hours covering news at the White House were often gruelling, Thomas said, “she never burned out”,

“Outrage keeps me going,” she says. “That’s my adrenaline. There are too many things in this world that are unjust or unfair. It’s not that I’m out to ride a white horse, it’s just that I’m in a position to put a spotlight on a lot of things.”

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