Tulips bloomed brilliantly red, encircling the fountain on the North Lawn, as I passed by the White House on the Pennsylvania Avenue sidewalk on a spring morning in 1983. These were days when folks not only easily walked in front of the Executive Mansion, but the homeless, as well as protestors of curious ilk, set camp around-the-clock directly in front of the iron fence surrounding the White House Complex.
In my early twenties, I headed to work in the White House Office of Media Relations and Planning, located in what at the time was called the Old Executive Office Building, or OEOB. Subsequently, the massive structure, originally constructed for the War Department generations earlier, was christened the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, after the 34th President. The White House proper and the OEOB, fenced together, form the White House Complex.
Due to the extreme space limitations in the West Wing, the vast majority of the President’s staff officed in the OEOB. Television programs and feature films render an unreal image of the West Wing, making it seem a vast, bustling space. In reality, the West Wing possesses an almost serene quality, with narrow halls and walls decorated with photos of the President tending to the business of the nation. In my mind, the most accurate depiction of both the West Wing and the OEOB is found in the HBO comedy Veep, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Ronald Reagan, and his predecessors, instilled seamless decorum within the White House generally, and the West Wing specifically. Indeed, President Reagan’s sense of history was so profound that he always kept his suit jacket on when in the Oval Office, a homage to those men who served the nation before him and in reverence for the office of the Chief Executive. Years later, images of Bill Clinton lounging in the Oval Office in a sweat suit – not to mention the other alleged conduct – seemed somehow sacrilegious.
Located in a suite of offices on the east side, first floor of the OEOB, the Media Relations shop – White House offices are called shops – was charged with directly dealing with media outlets beyond the White House press corps. In 1983, these included television and radio stations, newspapers and magazines, across the country and around the world. The Media Relations shop produced the President’s television and radio appearances. The shop coordinated the media during presidential travels.
Richard Nixon’s “hide-a-way office” was part of the Reagan White House Media Relations suite. Remnants of Nixon’s taping system remained, no longer operational, nearly a decade after the date he choppered off from the South Lawn into political exile. The Watergate era “plumbers” operated a floor below, as would Oliver North and the Iran-Contra crew.
Media Relations was one of four press shops in the White House, the other three being the First Lady’s Press Office, the Vice President’s Press Office and the (best known) White House Press Office.
Consisting of seven senior individuals and several low ranking Munchkins, Media Relations was headed by a statuesque woman named Karna Small. With a mane of bouffant blonde hair, Small made daring dress decisions for the generally staid Reagan White House, including leopard prints and plunging necklines. Small was said to have caught Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s attention when she was part of a local broadcast news team in California, doing weather reports. Larry Speakes, the principal White House spokesperson, derisively referred to Small as “the weather girl” in his own White House memoirs.
Tense relations between Small’s shop and the White House Press Office headed by Speakes extended back over two years, to the time of the attempted assassination of President Reagan.
Prior to the attempt on the President’s life in March 1981, Small served as the principal deputy under Press Secretary Jim Brady, who was seriously injured and permanently disabled when shot by John Hinkley. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, some on the White House staff blamed Small for losing control of the West Wing press briefing room. On that afternoon, Secretary of State Alexander Haig mounted the podium in the briefing room to announce that he was “in charge here.” Others wondered whether anyone was capable of stopping Al Hair when he was intent on making a media statement. In any event, in the aftermath, a staff shuffle occurred which sent Small to Media Relations, a sort of White House Siberian exile, and Speaks to the Press Office as the principal spokesperson.
Although my own office was small – offenders in cells are allocated larger space – the view from my window included the main entrance to the West Wing, less than 50 yards away. A part of the proverbial platoon of entry level staffers, all White House shops included low ranking Munchkins like myself. The Munchkin moniker even made media mention when the actions of low level staffers were deemed to be the cause of something negative, even inappropriate, emitting from an Administration. When something went awry, fingers often point to a low ranking Munchkin.
No matter how diminutive, the Munchkins nonetheless set Dorothy on her march to the Emerald City in the cinematic classic “The Wizard of Oz.”
Oftentimes, I did not know my assigned tasks until the start of the workday. In addition to its permanently assigned responsibilities, the Media Relations shop was delegated a myriad of projects – problems and propositions circulated to the inboxes of staffers, day in and day out. One such matter landed on the desk of my immediate supervisor, Doug Elmets, who in turn dispatched it to my attention that spring morning.
A nearly always open door separated Elmets’ office from my own. Upon entering my own office, I overheard Elmets and another staffer discussing Olympic diver Greg Louganis. I stepped into Elmets’ office as the conversation turned to Louganis being a “fudge packer.”
A product of a tight Catholic upbringing, and a Kansas college run by Benedictine nuns and monks, renowned for worldliness I was not in 1983. I learned that morning that “fudge packer”was a derisive term for a homosexual, after having to ask what it meant.
Definition provided, my horizons marginally expanded, Elmets handed over to me a sheath of papers requiring attention. At my desk, I thumbed through the stack, nothing immediately jumping out as particularly interesting, let alone urgent.
Later in the day, as I worked through the pile, I came upon a letter requesting a meeting at the White House. Requests for meetings with everyone from the President on down were commonplace, a fair share routed to Media Relations. Sometimes such requests landed in the shop not because they involved an interview request, or something else directly related to the media, but because a member of the press suggested the contact. Such seemed to be the nature of the inquiry I scanned.
In skimming the correspondence, I discovered it was form medical researchers and activists, advising of a situation they believed possessed the potential to evolve into a global pandemic.
Dire communications crossed my desk with fair regularity. Many such missive proved not only outrageous but outlandish. Only a few days earlier, I fielded one involving an accusation that puppies were used by the Department of Energy in testing related to nuclear power (a false contention).
Reading the letter more closely, I learned that the medical researchers identified two clusters of patients – in San Francisco and in Manhattan – diagnosed with similar diseases. Previously healthy young men suffered from rare forms of cancer and pneumonia. All of the men self-identified as being homosexual. According to the researchers, the condition, dubbed as GRIDS or gay related immune deficiency syndrome, had a survival rate of zero percent. Everyone died.
The researchers requested a White House meeting, contending that GRIDS would spread, reaching epidemic proportions. On the heels of having the term “fudge packer” explained, I found myself faced with a request for White House involvement in a medical issue afflicting gay men in two major U.S. cities.
Even as a low ranking Munchkin, I could have run with the request, at least to some degree. I could have involved a shop down hall, the Office of Public Liaison, headed by Elizabeth Dole. Other internal possibilities existed. But, any White House option would have required at least some ongoing involvement on my part, including initially selling such action to my superiors.
The tone of the correspondence resonated differently in mind than did many other communications touting allegedly urgent matters, purportedly crisis situations. For a beat, I wondered whether at least a segment of society seemingly perched on the precipice of medical catastrophe. In the end, I reasoned the situation seemed limited to two small groups of gay men, in two specific cities.
Rather than take the reins, I recommended that the request for White House involvement be shuttled to the Department of Health and Human Services, a logical proposition. My boss made no objection and the referral occurred.
Called GRIDS in the early 1980s, the condition became known as acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS. Medical researchers ultimately ascertained AIDS resulted from the retro virus they identified as the human immune deficiency virus, or HIV. With extremely rare exception during the 1980s, HIV infection led to full blown AIDS which resulted in the onslaught of opportunistic diseases and ultimately death.
By the mid-1980s, medical researchers identified three common conduits by which HIV was transmitted: blood transfusions, shared needles of intravenous drug users and intimate sexual contact. Significantly, the disease control and management experts confirmed that HIV and AIDS were not confined to the make homosexual community. All people faced the risk of exposure.
During the 1990s, drug regimens developed that turned HIV infection from a virtually certain death sentence to a potentially manageable chronic condition. Concerted education programs also assisted in reducing the spread of the disease. However, these developments have not occurred in equal proportions across the globe. For example, 30 percent of the adults in some African countries are infected with HIV. In addition, from 1991 through 2007, the number of people worldwide infected with HIV increased from 24 to 33 million.
Persistent and oftentimes vitriolic criticism was leveled at the Reagan Administration generally, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan personally, for the initial lack of attention paid by the White House to the HIV and AIDS. Certain pundits, and more than a few self-styled AIDS activists, alleged the Reagans intentionally turned a blind eye to AIDS based on the proposition that the underlying virus initially only seemed to infect homosexual men. The argument went that the Reagan Administration only started to pay a minimal amount of attention when research revealed HIV and AIDS impacted beyond the male homosexual population.
The underlying rationale was that as the leader of the American conservative movement of the 1980s, President Reagan harbored a deep seated animosity towards gay men and lesbian women. Some extremists went so far as to argue that Ronald and Nancy Reagan quietly believed gay men got their just desserts through the horrific diseases that attacked AIDS patients. Such contentions were unfounded in a number of ways.
First and foremost, nothing in the history of either Ronald or Nancy Reagan supports the proposition that they harbored an anti-gay agenda. No credible evidence supports the contention that the Reagans believed a minority segment of the population deserved death because of their sexuality.
The Reagans were products of Hollywood, a community with a notably higher percentage of homosexuals than the population of the country more generally. Indeed, Ronald Reagan served eight years as the president of the Screen Actor’s Guild, the paramount union in the entertainment industry.
The Reagans counted as close friends men in the industry ultimately outed as gay. The sexuality of these individual’s certainly was known to the Reagans well before the public at large gleaned that information.
During his tenure as governor of California, Ronald Reagan faced media coverage over the inclusion of homosexuals on his official staff. He hired gubernatorial staff members without regard to sexual preference as early as the late 1960s and early 1970s, well before his more liberal counterparts in elective office considered doing the same. He joined with Jimmy Carter and Harvey Milk in opposing a California initiative that would have barred homosexuals from teaching in classrooms.
Second, the persistent misconception that the Reagan Administration developed a definite strategy to intentionally keep the matter of HIV and AIDS research at arm’s length arises from another faulty premise. Many of those who proffer this theory fail to recognize the less than subtle differences between the “neo-conservatives” of the 21st century and the conservative movement of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, a movement led by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.
Although some attempt to rewrite the history of the late 20th century conservative movement, two primary pillars underpinned its strategies and objectives. First the conservatives of the Goldwater-Reagan era were fiercely committed to establishing and maintaining a strong national defense. Second, they were deeply dedicated to reducing the tax burden on the American people and reducing the size, scope and expense of government.
Social issues like abortion did play a role in conservative rhetoric. However, even a cursory review of speeches, debates, statement and political advertising from the time period demonstrates that social issues were far from the front burner unlike where the percolate on the neo-conservative agenda today. Indeed, the “country club” wing of the GOP – fiscally conservative, defense hawks, with moderate views on social issues – controlled the levels of power in the Republican Party until the early to mid-1990s, when the ascendency of the Religious Right took hold.
Finally, simple actions by people far from the seat of actual authority many times result in larger, oftentimes unintended or even unimaginable consequences. The germ of what grew into Watergate, and brought down the leader of the free world, started far down the proverbial food chain from Richard Nixon. The genesis of the Iran-Contra affair likewise germinated far away from the Oval Office. Indeed, both the Nixon-era plumbers and Oliver North’s crew plotted in the same suite of basement offices in the OEOB.
As mentioned previously, the Oz Munchkins were able to get Dorothy and Toto off and rolling to the Emerald City. Had they mistakenly directed Dorothy and her pooch down a different course, the ultimate outcome of her journey would not have been a return home to Kansas.
In the matter of the early White House involvement in what became the AIDS pandemic, a seemingly small decision by a person of slight stature in the hierarchy rolled a request for attention, if not intervention, away from rather than to the ultimate source of power.
Epilogue
About a decade later, I was asked to stand in for the Governor of Kansas when the AIDS Quilt arrived in the Sunflower State Capitol City of Topeka. The AIDS Quilt is a memorial to those men, women and children who died a result of AIDS-related complications, illnesses and diseases. Each section of the Quilt commemorates the life of one of these individuals.
Before making remarks to those assembled for the opening night event, I walked around the convention hall where the Quilt squares were displayed. The sheer number of pieces – and only a portion of the Quilt was displayed in Topeka – was overwhelming. The unique character of each square powerfully personalized the epidemic.
I logically understand that my decisions in a tiny White House office years earlier did not result in the most significant health care crisis in my lifetime. Nonetheless, I know in my heart that had I taken a different course in D.C., there would have been at least one less Quilt square on display that night in Kansas.
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