Cbs Radio Network news and former managing editor for the broadcast division of united press international, the boys on the bus was required reading. And i had the pleasure and the challenge of having on my upi team one of the boys, the legendary chamberlain of upi. A prospect. Sounds like a lot of you knew him. Looking forward to a terrific discussion this evening and now i have the pleasure of introducing the chair of the National Press club history and heritage team, the 87th president of the National Press club the your chief of the gaylord News Washington bureau for university of oklahoma, and a different mr. Gil klein. [applause] thanks so much, mike. The legacy of the club 112 year history as well as to explore the history of journalism especially in washington. We are pleased on april 27 a new book, new history of the club called tales from the National Press club is scheduled to be published by the history press. It explores the events that happened at the club that it had an impact on american and world history. This event tonight was proposed by our moderator, Edwin Grosvenor who was part of the great journalism family. For generations they publish National Geographic magazines, founded by his greatgrandfather Alexander Graham bell, who, by the way, invented the telephone. And it is to and publisher of the American Heritage magazine, a magazine that has inspired generations of young historians. Ed is also the publisher of 13 history excuse me, ed is also the author and editor of 13 13 history books and hes the thirdgeneration club member. Ed will introduce our distinguished panel who not only randa Campaign Chronicle by the book the boys on the bus but also covered president ial politics and many of the 12 elections have followed. We will have about an hour with our panel and then open it up to questions from the floor. I will pass on the microphone for you see you can consider question can be picked up by cspan. I ask you to ask succinct questions, and if you ramble, the microphone might disappear. Immediately after the program please join us for a reception for our guests. Ed, thanks much, much for doing this. The floor is yours. [applause] thank you, gil. And also congratulations on your book that just came out on lafayette square. I dont know how you found so many good history stories and amazing come great book. Welcome everybody. Were really pleased with this crowd. Were going to have a lively discussion tonight about political campaigns and journalism, specific about the experiences of our three distinguished panel members. When the boys on the bus book came out, a reviewer wrote it described a whole gaggle of political reporters, pundits, pontificated, network clamber boys, drunks, fornicators, hacks, hatchet men, commerce all crammed like monkeys with typewriters in the press bus, frenetically dogging the candidates are looking for a piece of the story, something to pay their best work on. That may be a little over the top, with the book really did provide fascinating window into how we learn about political campaigns and the people who bring those stories to us like that distinguish journalists on our panel. For most of you, they dont need an introduction but i will give brief ones anyway. Carl leubsdorf a lift as a columnist for the Dallas Morning News and was that papers Washington Bureau chief for nearly three decades. On the bus he covered the Montgomery Campaign for ap which given special status with reporters looking over his shoulder to see what his lead was the next morning Mcgovern Campaign carl is past president of the White House Correspondents Association where he had the distinction of being roasted by jon stewart. Karl published his memoirs entitled appropriately adventures of a boy on the bus. Tom oliphant you all know, tom was not as a kid on the bus. Even though he worked for the boston globe for four years, after the 72 campaign he helped manage the globes coverage of School Desegregation in boston which won a Pulitzer Prize tom was later a long time washington correspondent for the globe and reported on ten president ial campaigns. Hes been a frequent commentator on pbs and the networks known for his insight with and handsome bowties. [inaudible] is also written five books including most recently the road to camelot with curtis wilkie. Connie chung, last but not least, were so delighted honey has come down from new york to join us. A true pioneer pictures only the second female coanchor, to coanchor a a Network Newscast s part of cbs evening news and itf an anchor and reporter for nbc, abc, cnn and msnbc. Thats in the band. Couldnt hold a job. [laughing] kim krause and the book refers to connie disrupted, the cozy, clubby male world of the boys on the bus. By oversight of wellprepared. Brian early with microphone early and never hung over. [laughing] right. [laughing] was a real advantage. Alltel you about that. Anyway, i was wondering if each of you could tell us, just tell us briefly i you came to be on the campaign in 72 and your career at the time. You of course have given most of my cover and at least since that date i had joined the ap in 1960 out of columbia journalism school. I was assigned to the tampa bureau. Fortunately three days after i was assigned a spot opened up into new Orleans Bureau and i figured new orleans has to be more interesting than tampa. What i did know is there are about to desegregate the schools there and was about to get very interesting. The next three years i covered a lot of the desegregation, most of the legal end of it. June of 1963 after a brief tenure in new york i got to the Washington Bureau, courtesy of my bureau chief and put in a good word for me. How long ago this was, this was six months before john kennedy was killed although the day that kennedy was shot i was due to come in at 10 30 p. M. When i called in and heard what happened i called and its it should become in a . They said dont come in at 10 30. You can set was a very significant at that point, but as the world war ii generation of journalists begin to retire and die off, spots begin to open up and in the mid60s i covered the house of representatives for two years, then i covered the senate for silver years, and in the 68 campaign i spent some of the campaign covering Hubert Humphreys campaign. By the time i considered to came around i was one of the main ap Political Writer along with walter mears, another boy who still is about in north carolina. I was assigned mostly to mcgovern. I covered mcgovern virtually the whole year, and after that i stick with the ap a couple years but i went to the Baltimore Sun at the end of 1975. I thought i would probably go to work for newspaper and they gave me a good offer to cover politics and the white house. And in 1981, a former editor of mine from the ap became the editor of the Dallas Morning News and hired me to be the Washington Bureau chief. As you correctly set i lasted 28 years as bureau chief and a retired ten years ago, but im still writing the column i wrote all those years. Thats how i got where i got. Tom . 1972 was my second of 11 president ial campaigns. I had covered bob kennedy and George Wallace in 1968, but 72 i started in New Hampshire where i met this one, im pretty sure. And so that was my second. Tom and i are actually about the same age but we didnt we shared the number of bits ago but thats off the record. Okay. But he had a lot more experience than i did. I had just started at cbs news, and i was in my mid20s. I had only been there a few months and i was suddenly assigned to cover George Mcgovern 72 president ial campaign. I was really surprised. But it was great but i was a cub reporter. The third string. In other words, usually there was a first string correspondent, and that was bruce morton primarily. He was smart and respected by even the print journal list. The print did not respect any television journalist, truly. I mean, we were, people who talk for a living, didnt think about what we were saying. We were glamour book boys. But bruce was good, and i think most people respected him. There was a Second String, and often that was david was very aggressive. And i would then be bumped out to third banana so i primarily covered for radio. That was my job. I obviously didnt know what i was doing, but i persevered. So theres a lot of interesting details in this book. What did you guys think when it came out . Just briefly, why do think think we are still reading it today . I was just happy my name was in it. [laughing] i didnt like the picture much but better than no picture. Im not really sure, i think it captures a time and a place that somehow kind of an romantic atmosphere about a part of it was the hunter tops inside of it. It. The Mcgovern Campaign was one of those things, he carried one state. He didnt do very well and yet there was a sort of a romance about it that Mcgovern Campaign bringing is almost up to the point where he died a few years ago. I dont think there was much has changed in some ways. In the boys on the bus Timothy Crouse says, he called jo crap the same we have to Pay Attention to what joe craft what Rural America centric really . Its a thing today, right . One of my favorite moments towards the end, what came to be known in our slang as big feet, columnist, the most Senior Network people, didnt come out all that much during the general perkins fact one of the things i learned about that part of the trade was how little those guys worked. Were you no. For some of us who had correspondent responsibilities in those days, arrival of the bigfoot was very much to be appreciated. Because the good ones would do your job for a day, and file, and you could rest so i was kind of nice. I remember toward the end, two of the most hawkish of the washington columnist, jill also and joe craft who was famous for his association with kissinger at that time, and the mcgovern people, god bless them, what kind of tough with that sort of thing. And i think they showed up thinking it was 1960 1960 and y would illegally be shown to the kansas plains and ushered up to have a drink the nominee, blah, blah, blah. It was cleveland and they told craft and mr. Allsup that they would be riding on what we called the zoo plane, which [laughing] connie can describe what the zoo plane was like. We were the press and there was an elite group becket law on mcgoverns plane, and it often part of the pool. But then there was the rest of us. We were this, the scum we were animals and not to be respected. Acted like it, too. Yes, we did. I think carl was a bigfoot. Well know, because he ap didnt have a bigfoot problem. We had a couple people who were on the plane every week. The main plane had about 40 journalist, all the major papers on. It was the backups and the tv crews and when you with a third person with an organization you ended up on the zoo plane. It wasnt only kraft and also, a funny story that shows in some ways things are not just one of the people who was exiled to the zoo plane was bob novak, another conservative columnist because mcgovern did like and think about and put them on the zoo plane. If you think anything has changed, i remind you of the story the other day about the npr reporter was not allowed to travel with secretary pompeo. Thats about what happened then. I traveled some with spiro agnew in the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun were not allowed to go with them because they had liberals. That part is not changed. I will never forget mcgoverns plane. It was called the dakota queen two because he the first one was a world war ii plane. He flew Bombing Missions during world war ii, but anyway, the dakota queen two pulling away from the tarmac in cleveland and everybody waving byebye out the window at joe also and joe kraft. So for a lot of younger people to date it must be just difficult for them to fathom what it was like for us to file articles when there were no computers, no internet, no email, no cell phone. Not even a fax machine. We had a technologically advanced carl had more gizmos anybody else. It shows what a different world that was. For example, i remember coming back from south dakota after the summer sender mcgovern and senator eagleton had their famous meeting in the government had not announced or told anyone he was going to dump eagleton speedy will get to that story. This is a story about technology. The ap reported with me had written the store for morning papers. In those days we wrote separately for morning and afternoon for the wire. I said you give me your copy ill find a a phone because wet to mitchell, no filing centers. There were no cell phones. You had to find a pay phone somewhere where you could call your story in. I said you go with mcgovern, all find a pay phone. Sometimes the secret service regarding the payphones and you couldnt get to them. What did you do for radio on a pay phone . Unscrew it, yes. The receiver part, you had to be able to unscrew it and use your alligator clips to your reporter for a little phony reporter. It was really hard to unscrew. I mean, really hard. I think i recall being asked over to your yes. I am sore. But connie, film, you would have to get that back to new york well before seven so you would have to send your you sok in the morning. Yes. I had a notorious story. My husband told me you have to tell it because it just shows how aggressive and brutal you were, you know . She can be pretty aggressive. Little old me . I wasnt that way, was i . Ill just tell it to you quickly because its true. In those days you had to fly your film to a location where it could be indeed developed and fed, or unit, literally flown back to new york so we would take these rickety planes. Maury, i cant do this. I was always accused of trying to go around the big guy, whether it was the first string guy or the Second String guy. David said he was supposed to show me around, show me the ropes and everything, and i kept going around calling new york and trying to sell stories directly were for me to do. This time my father had a heart attack, and so they said you can come home. I said great. But since im flying to the location with the film, instead of having that kind to the report, why do i do it on the evening news . They went no. You are outrageous. It with all through the bureau and everybody was appalled. Groups, you know did you ever hear of Andrew Mitchell and chuck todd . Its cutthroat. Im sorry. Just one thing that i can add first of all, in the world of print they were portable typewriters, typewriters [talking over each other] i hadnt underwood that dated to the late 1930s and you had these little typewriters and you had to have paper. The tape recorder was just beginning to be miniaturized that you could hold it in your hand. In 1968, for print people, tape recorders were ridiculous because i just got in the way of taking note and whatever. But there was Something Different that is long gone because of the demise of monopolies in communication, but once you had a nominee, the candidates plane always had a guy from this monster called at t whose job was to make sure that whatever you stop there was a big, several rows of telephones that worked so we didnt have to fight for pay telephone space like a during the primary. And there was a Western Union guy and you could write your story. A couple of times i wrote stories in the middle of nowhere on i did once on toilet paper with a pin, and the Western Union guy would take it and there would be operators waiting at the next stop who would do the transmission. Very cool. At all of that is gone today. I wanted ask something to the point about life for connie. Because she really, one of the things about them that perhaps is different from now is this was at the dawn of the let women in age. In 1972 saw the arrival of three people. One, and absolutely sightless correspond as cbs2 was just marvelous especially in New Hampshire and laid at the convention, Michele Clark who was lost in a plane crash the last year. She was africanamerican, and when i was hired the equal Employment Opportunities commission was pretty great pressure on networks to hire women and minorities. And so cbs news, which was into the end of fall years, and still kind of is [laughing] hired four women in one fell swoop, and black woman, Michele Clark. Me, a chinese person. Lesley stahl, a nice jewish girl with blonde hair, and sylvia chase, i should start with blonde hair. [laughing] it looks like one of those tickets in the old new York Democratic party for you. You had one of everything. That was one of the woman, a third woman that youre in 1972 who broke through the wood been a print reporter for the hearst newspapers, and cast arrived on the scene also in 1972, lit up the set at the convention. With nbc. She is gone, sadly in the early 80s. Cancer. Thats really all there was. These, i mean, connie would go through a stonewall for a story. But then you saw the story and you realized, it was a generational th