Ron Nessen, who, as President of President Gerald R. Ford, from 1974 to 1977 promised a new era of opening after the Watergate scandal but had an often difficult relationship with the White House press, died Wednesday in Bethesda, MD. He was 90 years old.
His death was confirmed by his son, Edward.
A former correspondent of NBC Service and NBC News, Mr. Nessen joined the White House at an extraordinary time: President Richard Mr. Nixon, faced with the indictment for the crimes of Watergate, had arrested; Vice-president Ford had replaced and forgiven him; And a nation and its press, tired of lies and deceptions, looked at the new president and his spokesperson with various degrees of suspicion.
He barely helped that Mr. Ford’s first choice as a press secretary, JF Terhorst, resigned after a month, claiming that he could not support the president’s decision to forgive Mr. Nixon, saving him from criminal accusations and prison terms met by other civil servants in the Watergate case, as well as by young men who had elected military service in Vietnam as a question of consumption.
Trying to restore confidence after two years concealment that started with a break -in in the offices of the National Democratic Committee in Watergate Complex in Washington, Mr. Nessen said that his first loyalty would be to the public. He promised to “have as much news as possible” and he said to his former colleagues: “If I lie to you or mislead you, I think you are justified to question my continuous usefulness in this work.”
He added: “I am a Ron, but not a ziegler” – a reference to Ronald L. Ziegler, the press secretary of Mr. Nixon, who had been widely criticized for having retained the information and deceiving the press during the Watergate scandal.
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Source: www.nytimes.com – All rights belong to the original publisher.
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