RONALD ZIEGLER: 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, has died after a heart attack.
Ziegler was also credited with saying that some early defences 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.
From the time the break-in was discovered through the turbulent period that ended with Nixon's resignation, Ziegler spoke for the president and was the target of the questions of increasingly sceptical reporters.
As the buffer between the media and the White House,he had an often thankless job and, in the words of Timothy Crouse, in his journal of the 1972 presidential campaign, performed his task by being "relentlessly evasive." Ziegler also announced to the nation many of the moves in foreign affairs, notably on China policy, the Middle East and Vietnam, that won praise for the former president.
He trained in advertising and PR, unlike many of his predecessors who came from the media, and to some 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 June 1972 break-in at Democratic national headquarters in the Watergate office building that came to dominate his career at the press-room lectern. Shortly after the burglars were arrested, he sought to fend off questioning with this assertion: "I'm not going to comment on a third-rate burglary attempt." Much later, on April 17th, 1973, following a ters presidential statement to the effect aides would now be allowed to testify to the Senate Watergate investigating committee and that they should not have immunity from prosecution Ziegler was left to face the press room. "On the eighteenth blow, Ziegler yielded," Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein wrote in their book All the President's Men.
" 'This is the operative statement,' he said. 'The others are inoperative,' " the book recounted.
Watergate could not be put to rest, and on April 30th, 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 Ziegler if he would apologise to the Washington Post for his criticism of its coverage. He said 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 Bernstein and Woodward, for what he once called "shabby journalism".
Katharine Graham, the newspaper's then-publisher, expressed appreciation and accepted the apology.
Ronald Louis Ziegler was born in Covington, Kentucky, 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.
Most recently, Ziegler had been chief executive of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores from 1987 until he retired in 1998 to his upper-storey apartment in San Diego overlooking the Pacific.In addition to his wife, Ziegler is survived by two daughters.
Ronald Louis Ziegler: born May 12th, 1939; died February 10th, 2003.