Ike's Health, D4, Drew Pearson Films, Washington Merry-Go-Round.

Hello everybody. This is a report from a newspaper man who's had the privilege of knowing quite a few presidents in Washington and hopes to know a lot more. I've known most of them personally. I've watched them work. Believe I know a little bit about this complicated machinery we call government and what can happen to it when something goes wrong with the president of the United States. What happens to our prosperity, the stock market, to our hopes of peace, and our chances of war. I'd like to go back a little to the first president I remember who suffered tragedy in the White House, Woodrow Wilson. It was shortly after he came back from the big four conference in that he was stricken. At first his illness was concealed from the public. It was reported he had a nervous breakdown when actually he'd suffered a stroke and was partly paralyzed. And during his illness the country floundered without a leader, without a rudder. And I've always been convinced that it was it was this long illness, this lack of leadership which undermined the newly proposed peace machinery and started us downhill toward World War II. I'll be back in a minute to report on the crisis in the lives of other presidents. The man who succeeded Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, always looked the picture of health. No one would ever have dreamed that he was to die halfway through his first term. And no one has ever yet explained to the satisfaction of newspaper man who knew Harding and his robust zest for life why he died so though and suddenly. Some thought it was disappointment over the way his cronies had cheated in office and let him down. The next president who suffered tragedy was of course Franklin D. Roosevelt, who looked young and well when he took office at the age of 50. But three terms in the most backbreaking job in the world had definitely aged him when he ran again in '44, though the men around the White House concealed that age and that deterioration of health. FDR was made up by a professional makeup man when he appeared into before the public, just as President Eisenhower is today. And there's no question, as we look back on it, that the Democratic bosses who battled to nominate Senator Harry Truman for Vice President at Chicago, knew full well that their man, the Vice President, would end up being President of the United States. Of course, it's very unpleasant to warn that a man running for president may not live out his term. And there was strict wartime censorship which protected Roosevelt at the time, and it was difficult to find out the facts about him. But as I look back on it, I think we of the press were not as alert as we should have been. And that we should have realized then and since the terrible upheaval that comes in the life of the nation when the president must be replaced or is incapacitated in the middle of his term. Now, the two presidents I've discussed so far about whom the facts of health were concealed were Democrats. But let's see what happened in the case of a noted Republican. Now, I happen to have known President Eisenhower for a long time, dating back to 1932 when he was a major in the War Department. And back in 1948, I was perhaps one of the first to urge him to run for president. Later, when he still hadn't made up his mind in 1951, I collected 18,000 Christmas cards and sent them to Paris urging him to run. In other words, I liked Ike, too. But having resolved that the public must know the truth about every president's health, I reported on August 4, 1953 that Ike had a known heart condition. That was why he took long weekends golfing and fishing. That brought a very vigorous, almost bellicose denial from Jim Hagerty in the White House. Now, it never helps a newspaper man to get a White House denial. It It hurts him with his editors. But the tragic facts as they occurred on the night of September 24 in Denver show that I was right and Jim Hagerty was wrong. The president did have a heart attack. Now, what the American public has to be concerned about is whether we're getting the truth today or whether the same situation exists as did with Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. The best answer to that question is spelled out in official statements and dates. On February 13, a battery of five doctors announced to the world on television that the president would be able to carry on for another five to 10 years. They gave a complete medical report going into great detail. But one day later Dr. Paul Dudley White, leader of those five doctors, was confronted in Boston by another noted heart specialist, Dr. Samuel Levine of Harvard, maintained that no one could predict a heart patient's life. Whereupon Dr. White told newspaper men in Boston that his prediction on on Eisenhower's health had been very carefully hedged with such qualifications as uncertainties of the future. But the general American public outside of Boston did not see Dr. White's subsequent qualifying statement in Boston. Nor did they know that Dr. White himself, writing in the Annals of Internal Medicine in December 1951, had written "Fear, great pleasure, anger, the excitement of an athletic contest such as viewing a football game or a boxing match on television, or even listening to one over the radio, have caused innumerable deaths in patients with serious heart disease. Such patients should avoid nervous strain. Now, here's another date, May 13th. When the president announced he'd had a top-to-toe physical examination, and the doctors had found a normally functioning digestive tract. He made no mention of any chronic digestive trouble, or was this mentioned in the previous full official medical report? Yet, on June 10th, after the president was stricken with ileitis, just 1 month after the May report, Dr. Snyder bluntly told newspaper men that he'd had ileitis before, and that he had a history of chronic digestive trouble. And that was why the doctors have been able to make their quick 3:00 a.m. diagnosis and operate at that time in the morning. Only a few hours after the operation, Major General Heaton, commander of Walter Reed Hospital, announced that the president would be able to run again. And he made the statement before the president was even quite out of the ether. General Heaton also stated that the president's life expectancy had been improved. This brought statements from some of the leading specialists of the nation, Dr. David Rutstein of Harvard, Dr. Samuel Gaines of Polyclinic Hospital in New York, and others, that ileitis is a chronic disease that recurs about 50% of the time, even after a patient has been operated on. Following this, newspaper men, doing their best to give the truth to the public, asked for another press conference with General Heaton and the other doctors to inquire further about the prediction of increased life expectancy. But Mr. Hagerty, who had promised full and complete medical information, finally made it clear on June 19th, that there'd be no further statements from the doctors and no chance to examine them. I'll be back in just a minute with some final conclusions about the health of our presidents. As I said earlier, I've known General Eisenhower a long time and I've had very pleasant relations with him. I especially remember a luncheon in New York at which I predicted as early as 1948 that he would be president of the United States. He didn't know quite how to take that prediction and I don't think he really believed it. He reacted rather in a humorous sort of way. He's a swell guy to get along with. And I sincerely hope and pray today that whether in or out of the White House, General Eisenhower's health will improve and he'll be spared to his wife and his family and his country for many years to come. And despite some of the medical facts, this actually can be the outcome. But my newspaper man's obligation to the public is considerably different from a doctor's. A doctor has an obligation to his patient. He takes an oath and is bound by the law in many states, including the District of Columbia, not to reveal anything about his patient without his patient's consent. A newspaper man, on the contrary, is morally bound not only to seek out the truth but to publish it, especially when it affects the well-being of the nation. I think most newspaper men have tried hard to do this despite some of the obstacles in their path. And I believe some doctors, including Dr. Irving Wright of the Cornell Medical School, former president of the American Heart Association, tried to do this when he testified before the Senate very frankly that anticoagulants, which he said are still being given to the president, can be quite dangerous. I also believe that the editors of Look magazine tried to tell the truth when they reported in great detail how Mrs. Eisenhower did not want her her husband to run again. How his brother Milton had no idea he could ever run again. And how Chairman Leonard Hall carefully, deliberately convinced Eisenhower. This Look magazine incidentally, the publisher is one of Ike's best friends Mike Coles is rather interesting. Hall at the moment, it said had not the faintest hope that Ike would ever run again, but suppose he should concede that fact to the public. Immediately, he knew the GOP would founder on the ambitions of a dozen men. So, Hall boldly told the incredulous newspaper man that they had that there'd been no change. Ike was still his candidate, he said, for '56. He repeated his remarks in Washington. Some people wondered if Leonard Hall had gone off his rocker, according to Look. Hall never wavered from that first public statement in the months ahead. Gradually, he erected a psychological framework, and gradually, Ike came to believe that it was quite natural that a man who had had a heart attack should run again for president. I've seen the same thing happen to other presidents. Seen the little group around them persuade them, impel them to run again regardless of the consequences, chiefly because the men around the White House, whether Democrat or Republican all always want to keep themselves in power even at the expense of the life of their chief. That's why I have repeatedly urged that a non-partisan, impartial group of doctors be appointed to examine the health of both candidates and report to the American people. >> Amen. Amen.