The extraordinary
measures that the White House planned to undertake in
its war against crime depended heavily for their success
on the organization of public fears. If Americans could
be persuaded that their lives and the lives of their
children were being threatened by a rampant epidemic
of narcotics addiction, Nixon's advisors presumed they
would not object to decisive government actions, such
as no-knock warrants, pretrial detention, wiretaps,
and unorthodox strike forces-even if the emergency measures
had to cross or circumvent the traditional rights of
a suspect. To achieve this state of fear required transforming
a relatively small heroin addiction problem-which even
according to the most exaggerated estimates directly
affected only a minute fraction of the population in
1971-into -a plague that threatened all. This in turn
required the artful use of the media to propagate a
simple but terrifying set of stereotypes about drug
addiction: the addict-dealer would be depicted as a
modern-day version of the medieval vampire, ineluctably
driven to commit crimes and infect others by his insatiable
and incurable need for heroin. The victims would be
shown as innocent youth, totally vulnerable to the vampire-addict.
And the federal law-enforcement officer would be shown
as the only effective instrument for stopping the vampire-addicts
from contaminating the rest of society. The most obvious
medium available for projecting these stereotypes on
the popular imagination was television.
The plan to mobilize the media
developed in March, 1970. President Nixon had instructed
his chief domestic advisor, John Ehrllchman, to "further
utilize television as a too] in the fight against drug
abuse." Ehrlichman then turned the project over
to Egli Krogh, his assistant, and Jeb Stuart Magruder,
the deputy director of the Office of Communications
in the White House. Magruder, a thirty six-year-old
former advertising salesman and merchandise manager
for a department store, found initially that officials
in the various federal agencies resisted his plans for
a publicity hype of the drug issue. He recalled in his
autobiography, "The first meeting we called was
hilarious-I couldn't believe those people [in the federal
agencies] were working on the same problem.... We encountered
the usual hostility the White House people meet in the
bureaucratic world." But eventually "everyone
agreed that television was the single most effective
means to reach young people and alert them to the hazards
of drugs." On March I I the White House held a
press conference, and the memorandum by Magruder summing
up the "feedback" noted that the media interest
sparked by the press conference had been favorable....
We have been getting calls from all over the Country
... ranging from network television to rural weeklies
to professional journals.... A pod many of those calling
indicated enthusiastic support for the Administration
[press] programs and inferred [sic) that they would
be doing supportive and follow-up pieces, including
editorials,
The White House strategists,
however, were more interested in primetime television.
On March 18, 1970, Jeffrey Donfeld, the enterprising
assistant to Krogh, sent a memorandum to the White House
proposing that since "the President expressed his
desire to have more anti-drug themes on television,"
the president should personally attend a meeting of
television producers that Donfeld was arranging for
April 9, 1970, at the White House. Among those being
invited, Donfeld noted, were:
1. The vice-presidents in charge
of programming of the three networks.
2. The vice-presidents in charge
of continuity acceptance [who approve the contents of
the programs] of the networks.
3. The heads of production
of the six major television production companies.
4. The producers of select
programs which can accommodate narcotics themes ...
this group will represent at least 90 percent of prime-time
shows.
5. Television programming vice-presidents
of the three major advertising agencies.
Donfeld explained that the
day-long program would be held in the White House theater
and that the purpose of the meeting would be to stimulate
these producers to include in their fall programming
antidrug themes." In a March 19 memorandum John
Ehrlichman recommended personally that the president
meet the television executives in his office for a "photo
opportunity." On April 2 a detailed scenario was
drawn up for the meeting of the following week. "To
expedite the meeting and give It a little novelty,"
it recommended:
The Attorney General will just
be finishing his remarks before the group in the White
House theatre [at 9:30 A.M.]. At that time Steve Bull
[the White House assistant] would enter and hand the
Attorney General a note. The Attorney General would
then announce that the President has asked us to step
over to his office. Prior to that time, the men attending
the conference would not know when they would be seeing
the President. Therefore, the Attorney General's announcement
would be the first indication that they were about to
go over and meet with the President.
H. R. Haldeman approved this
spontaneous moment in the scenario; even though it broke
"the President's rule of not doing something before
10:00 A.M." After this minor success, Magruder
sent a background paper to Attorney General Mitchell,
stating:
We intend to make available
to the television industry information on anti-drug
themes that could be used in a broad expanse of appropriate
television programs.... The President thought that an
effort should be made to have one television series
with a drug theme analogous [sic] to the FBI Storv la
continuing series on ABC television].... As a consequence,
invitations to forty-eight persons who were responsible
for over 90% of prime-time television between 7:30 P.m.
and I 1:00 p.m. were sent over your signature on behalf
of a President greatly concerned over the drug problem.
Magruder further explained,
"The individuals being invited think in dramatic
terms. We have therefore tailored the program to appeal
to their dramatic instincts. Your personal presentation
will be virtually the only 'straight' speech. The remainder
of the program will consist of audio-visual and unusual
presentations." The unusual presentations that
Magruder had planned were described as follows: "The
Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs will have one
of its special agents interview one of its undercover
agents"; "The Bureau of Customs will bring
in shepherd dogs to demonstrate how they are used to
detect concealed marijuana"; "The National
Institute of Mental Health will conduct a group therapy
session with addicts"; "The Department of
Defense will present a slide and film presentation depicting
the relationship of ... dissent and drugs." One
specific goal of this program was to "provide a
telephone number in Washington which television writers
[could] call in order to obtain information for inclusion
in their scripts, plus access to federal activities
(training sessions, Customs Inspection points) so that
their scripts would have a high degree of realism."
Finally, Magruder sycophantishly reminded the attorney
general, "National attention will properly be focused
on you as the principal individual in the Nixon administration
whose concern is with drug abuse." Mitchell agreed
to give the "straight" speech and announce
that he had just received an impromptu message from
the president.
John Ehrlichman got a slightly
different explanation for the purpose of this "White
House Theater." Jeffrey Donfeld stated in an April
3 memorandum, "The government has a difficult time
changing the attitudes of people.... Television, however,
is a subliminal stimulus." In other words, viewers
would receive a hidden, or subliminal, message, which
they would not be conscious of receiving but which would
all the same stimulate their fear of heroin addicts.
"If indeed television is a subliminal stimulus,"
Donfeld suggested to Ehrlichman, "you are urging
the producers to focus their creative genius to effect
changes in people's attitudes about drugs ... [and offering]
to guide them in presenting efficacious programs."
The talking points Donfeld prepared for Ehrlichman included
such instructions as: "Program content should be
carefully designed for the audience that is likely to
be tuned in at a given time"; "It would not
be accurate to portray the drug problem as a ghetto
problem .... It i,, a problem which touches all economic,
social and racial strata,, of' America"; "You
will receive a drug information kit.... Included in
that kit will be a telephone contact list so that you
or your script writers can call government officials
for clarification and additional information";
"Television subtly and inexorably helps to mold
the attitudes, thinking and motivations of a vast number
of Americans."
The remarks that the president
made to the television producers were prepared by Buchanan,
the speech writer who delighted in writing hard-line
speeches which closely paralleled the rhetoric then
being used in New York State by Governor Rockefeller.
In this "impromptu" speech the president warned
ominously that "the scourge of narcotics has swept
the young generation like an epidemic.... There is no
community in this country today that can safely claim
immunity from it.... Estimates of it are somewhere between
five and twelve million people in this country have
used illicit drugs." (When Buchanan redrafted this
speech for Nixon six months later, he increased the
estimates to "between twelve and twenty million
people", he thus added some seven million new drug
users to government estimates. The president then pointed
out to the television producers that "between the
time a child is born and he leaves high school, it is
estimated he watches about 15,000 hours of television....
The children of this country are your captive audience
for a good segment of their growing years in which their
whole future can be determined." Then he warned,
"if this nation is going to survive, it will have
to depend to the great extent on how you gentlemen help
raise our children." Finally, the advanced scenario
called for the president "spontaneously" to
summon the press to the Oval Office to photograph the
television producers.
The conference went precisely
as scheduled by the scenarists. The executives and producers,
rounded up for the president by John Ball,, of J. Walter
Thompson advertising agency (where Haldeman had formerly
been employed), met at the White House and were greeted
by the attorney general. At 9:30 A.M., In the midst
of his introductory remarks, Mitchell received an "urgent
message" from the president, summoning the television
producers to the Oval Office, where he delivered the
"off-the-cuff" remarks prepared by Buchanan.
The production then adjourned to the White House Theater,
where the German shepherds demonstrated how they could
sniff out marijuana in mail pouches. At lunch, in the
State Department dining room, John Ehrlichman added
drama by saying that the dogs had actually discovered
a packet of hashish during the demonstration. Afterward,
the forty guests were shown one and a half hours of
"shocking" films of narcotics addiction in
the president's private projection room. The carefully
staged demonstrations were highly successful, as Krogh
recalled. One television producer at the conference,
Robert Lewis Shayon, later commented, "Up front
in the fifth row I sensed that there was hardly a dry
eye in the whole hard-boiled crowd-so genuine, touching
and fraught with universal significance [was the program]."
Meanwhile, the advertising agency executives, who provide
sponsors for most of the programs on television, were
brought into the East Room by Jeb Stuart Magruder. To
their surprise they were greeted by the president himself,
who listened attentively as Magruder explained how the
advertisers could use their influence to encourage television
producers to incorporate the drug-oriented scenes, selected
by the White House, into their programming. Never fully
realizing the extent to which they themselves were part
of a production, most of the television producers and
executives left the White House that night believing,
at least according to subsequent interviews, that they
were part of a war on drugs.
"The producers loved it,
and in the weeks following they flooded us with letters
about new drug-related programs," Magruder later
noted, and added, "Shows like The Name of the Game
and Hawaii Five-0 added segments on the problem, new
series were planned, and dozens of documentaries were
produced." Such programs as The FBI, Mod Squad,
Marcus Welb M.D., Matt Lincoln, Room 222, The Young
Lawyers, and Dan August all promised to produce segments
on the narcotics problem. In addition, producer Jack
Webb began negotiations with the Treasury Department
for an entire television series called Treasury Agent,
which would give continuous coverage to the administration's
heroin crusade. On September 21, 1970, Magruder advised
Ehrlichman in a memorandum, "At least twenty television
programs this fall will have a minimum of one anti-drug
theme in it as a result of our conference" and
recommended in the following month that there be a "White
House Conference on Drugs for the radio industry."
The purpose of the meeting
with radio-station owners and managers would be "to
urge increased drug education programming and to curb
pro drug music and jargon of disc jockeys," according
to an October 13 memorandum for the president prepared
by Egil Krogh.
"This conference is a
continuation of the effort to enlist mass media's support
... to fight against drug abuse," Krogh further
explained. In the press plan for the conference he advised
the president that there would be "no press coverage
of your remarks to the group in the Cabinet Room, but
there will be press coverage of the German Shepherd
marijuana sniffing demonstration." To add weight
to the conference, Dean Burch, chairman of the Federal
Communications Commission, which regulates the broadcasting
industry, agreed to attend this meeting of seventy leaders
of the radio industry. The scenario further suggested
that "the President will have a colorful opportunity
to emphasize the stepped-up federal law enforcement
effort against illicit drug traffic and can praise the
initiative of law enforcement people" on news cameras
that would televise the event.
As scheduled in the press plan,
the White House conference on the radio industry began
promptly at nine, the morning of October 14, 1970, with
a speech by Dean Burch on "The FCC and Public Service
Time." He suggested that the Federal Communications
Commission would look favorably on licensees who provided
more time for antidrug commercials. Then came the same
dog show that had been prepared for the television producers,
complete with German shepherds, shock films, and demonstrations
of law-enforcement techniques. John Ehrlichman repeated
his lunch remarks. The president continued by telling
the radio owners, "We have brought you gentlemen
here today because we very much need your active help
to halt this epidemic.... Ninety-eight percent of the
young people between the age of twelve and seventeen
listen to the radio.... No one is in a better position
than you to warn our youth constantly against the dangers
in drugs." Again, according to White House evaluations,
the conference proved successful in injecting the drug
menace into radio programming. "Our costs were
minimal and the results, measured in terms of television
and radio programming, were remarkable," Magruder
concluded.
The media campaign continued
with the highly publicized Drug Abuse Prevention Week;
the National Drug Alert (to coincide with the opening
of school); high-level briefings for media executives;
drug seminars, in which dramatic law-enforcement stories
were given to newspapers; and a White House meeting
for religious leaders on the drug problem. By 1971,
responding to continual White House pressure, television
stations and sponsors had donated commercial time worth
some $37 million (at times which may have gone unsold
anyway) for administration messages about the war on
drugs, according to an estimate done by the Advertising
Council in 1972. In large part because of this massive
"subliminal stimulation" campaign in the media,
President Nixon could point out in his June, 1971, declaration
of a national emergency that "the threat of narcotics
... frightens many Americans." The generation of
fear had succeeded: even in cities which had few, if
any, heroin addicts, private polls commissioned by the
White House showed that citizens believed the drug menace
to be one of the two main threats to their safety.
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