Sid Davis Oral History Interview – 2/10/2003 Administrative Information Creator: Sid Davis Interviewer: Vicki Daitch Date of Interview: February 10, 2003 Place of Interview: Washington D.C. Length: 76 pages Biographical Note Davis was a journalist, a White House correspondent (1959-1968) and Washington News Bureau chief (1968-1977) for the Westinghouse Broadcasting; director (1977-1979), bureau chief (1979-1980), and vice president and bureau chief (1980-1982) for NBC News; and a senior Washington correspondent (1982-1987) and director of office programs for the Voice of America (1987-1994). In this interview, he discusses the 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy’s assassination and Lyndon B. Johnson’s swearing in, and the press coverage of the White House, among other issues. Access Open. Usage Restrictions According to the deed of gift signed on April 5, 2004, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. 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Sid Davis Table of Contents Page Topic 1 1960 West Virginia Democratic primary 5 John F. Kennedy (JFK) and Richard M. Nixon’s 1960 presidential campaigns 9 JFK/Nixon 1960 presidential debates 13 Nixon’s character 15 JFK’s character 16, 45, 50, 68 JFK’s relationship with the press 18 Bay of Pigs: April 17-19, 1961 19 Cuban Missile Crisis: October 1962 24 JFK’s knowledge of history 25, 30 JFK and civil rights 26 Televised live presidential news conferences 28, 52 Television’s impact on political campaigns 29 JFK’s election: November 8, 1960 32 JFK’s assassination: November 22, 1963 35 Lyndon B. Johnson’s (LBJ) presidential swearing in on Air Force One: November 22, 1963 37, 43 Press coverage of JFK’s death and his body’s White House return 41 JFK’s funeral and the nation’s grief 45 Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy 47 Edward M. Kennedy 48 The Kennedy family in the White House 51 Press’ travels with JFK 53 JFK’s American University speech: June 10, 1963 55 JFK and space exploration 58 JFK’s staff 60 JFK and RFK’s toughness 61 JFK’s selection of LBJ as his running mate 63 JFK and LBJ’s relationship 64 1968 presidential election 65 Kennedy family curse 66 JFK’s 1961 inauguration 67 JFK’s press secretary office 69 Female journalists and the White House in the 1960s 71 Suggestions of people to interview 76 Davis’ admiration of JFK Oral History Interview with Sid Davis February 10, 2003 Washington, D.C. by Vicki Daitch For the John F. Kennedy Library DAITCH: Why don‟t I just set up the tapes by saying that my name is Vicki Daitch, and I‟m talking with Sid Davis. It‟s February 10, 2003, and we‟re talking about Mr. Davis‟s coverage of John F. Kennedy [John F. Kennedy]. So let‟s just sort of start at the beginning. You covered him as a senator? DAVIS: No, I actually did not cover him as a senator. My first encounter with Kennedy was at the primary in 1960 in West Virginia. By that time I think he had already, I don‟t know if he‟d won Wisconsin yet or was going to win Wisconsin. But the question, the religious question, was a big one in West Virginia, which is largely a Protestant state and semi-Southern to some extent. Of course most of the advance coverage said that Kennedy was going to have a hard time because he was a Roman Catholic, and a Catholic had not been elected president up until then. So, the press‟ focus on the religious question was very big in West Virginia. Of course everybody‟s clamoring to get interviews with him. At the time, I was a correspondent with Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, and I‟d just been in Washington—at that point I‟d been here about nine months or less, and didn‟t know the town that well. I would be covering politics in the „60 campaign. I covered various primaries, but I had not covered one where Kennedy was going to be involved, and this was my first big one. It was around May 1st because it was the time of the shooting down of the U-2 by the Russians, and I had just.... I remember the day that I went to West Virginia, they sent [-1-] me over to the State Department to cover a hurried background briefing on an innocuous subject that had nothing to do with the U-2. But they were trying to leak a cover story to us saying a N.A.S.A. [National Aeronautics and Space Administration] weather plane was missing. It turned out to be the U-2 spy plane. The incident created a crisis between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. I was late getting to West Virginia because I had to cover this thing at the State Department. I got there late that night. The very next day we started following Kennedy around the state. It was pretty obvious to me that he was very popular in West Virginia, and I was not buying the religious argument. I saw that as a straw man. It made him look like the underdog. And, of course, if the Kennedy staffers built that up enough and he won, then it was going to look like he‟d climbed the highest mountain. We had arranged, Westinghouse Broadcasting Company had arranged for an interview with Kennedy, and I‟d never seen him up close. Jim Snyder [James Snyder], who was the bureau chief at Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, myself, and another reporter, Jerry Landay [Jerry M. Landay], who had worked at WBZ- Boston, which at the time was owned by Westinghouse Broadcasting Company. So the three of us covering the primary were staying at the Kanawha Hotel. It‟s named after the river, the Kanawha River, or the Kanoi River. In Charleston, West Virginia, they call it Kanoi, I think. In any case, we were staying at the Kanawha Hotel, and we had an interview scheduled with Kennedy the next afternoon after I‟d arrived from Washington. The thing that struck me was how many people were trying to get interviews with him and how busy Kennedy‟s people were. He was no longer what you‟d call a regional candidate. He was now pretty much a national figure. He‟d established himself pretty well in the primaries by that time, by May. I‟d read about Kennedy in Life magazine, and the picture spreads on the Kennedys were pretty broadly spread across the United States. Jack and Jackie [Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy] were a glamorous couple, glamorous wedding, the whole thing. So he was a prominent figure in my mind, as a journalist, and also as a celebrity. And I was struck by how thin he was. We were up on—I forget what floor of the hotel at this point 40 some years later—but we were up on one of the floors of the hotel waiting to get an interview with him, and we were in line with a bunch of other outfits that wanted interviews. So he came out of one room. He was moving back and forth from room to room across the hall. He was trying to get ready for an appearance that night. When I saw him, I saw him in his skivvies, his undershorts. And it struck me how thin he was. He was skinny. He was not overweight by any means. But he just looked like a scrawny kid, really, even though he was 43. That may have been partly from the war injuries, the wounds, or whether he had Addison‟s or not, I don‟t know. But anyway, that struck me, and I said to someone, “Do you realize he‟s just a kid?” And they said, “Well, yeah.” But anyway Jim Snyder and Landay.... I had to go and cover something, so I just got to shake his hand in the hallway as he was moving back and forth across the hall.