Larry Speakes

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Larry Speakes (1976)

Larry Speakes (* 13. September 1939 in Cleveland , Mississippi ; † 10. January 2014 ) was an American journalist who during the tenure of US President Ronald Reagan as a White House Deputy Press Secretary for six years Acting spokesman of the White House was.

Life

Studies and professional activities

Speakes, the son of a bank manager, graduated from school with a degree in journalism from the University of Mississippi and was an editor for daily newspapers in the state of Mississippi in the mid-1960s . He became the press secretary of James Eastland , a US Democratic Senator from Mississippi , in 1968 .

In 1974 he became press secretary to President Richard Nixon's special advisor during the Watergate affair hearings . After Nixon's resignation, he became Assistant Press Secretary to President Gerald Ford . During the US presidential campaign , he served as press secretary for Bob Dole , Ford's Republican Party 's running mate for the office of US Vice President. After Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected president, Speakes joined the Hill and Knowlton PR agency in Washington, DC

Acting Press Secretary of the White House

After Ronald Reagan's victory in the 1980 presidential election , Speakes was a member of his transition team, before he was Deputy Press Secretary of the White House after Reagan took office on January 20, 1981.

He became Acting Press Secretary of the White House after White House Press Secretary James Brady was so badly injured in the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981 by John Hinckley, Jr. that he was left-sided largely paralyzed, had amnesia and his Difficult to control emotions while speaking. Officially, Brady was Reagan's press secretary throughout the entire term. In practice, however, he was never active as such, but the tasks were taken over by Speakes until 1987 as White House Deputy Press Secretary .

In his first press conference, he looked to the questions of the journalists by surprise, was particularly in demand as he, who leads the official duties of the US government during the operation of the President, as Vice President George HW Bush not from visiting in Texas to Washington, DC returned was. His answer "I cannot answer that question at this time" led to an angry reaction from Foreign Minister Alexander Haig , who entered the press room and made the memorable - and constitutionally incorrect - statement: “At the moment I have control here in the White House until the upcoming return of the Vice President, with whom I am in close contact” ('As of now, I am in control here in the White House, pending the return of the vice president and in close touch with him '). Indeed, Haig should have known that in the absence of the Vice President, the constitutional successor to the President of the United States would lie with the Speaker of the House of Representatives ; as Foreign Minister, Haig was only fourth in the ranking.

Speakes was also often not informed on later occasions, for example during the US invasion of Grenada in October 1983 when it became obvious that President Reagan and the inner leadership of the government had left him unaware of this military invasion and did nothing about this ignorance to dub. Speakes later said that this lying by the president and his leadership group was the low point of his tenure.

Retirement from Government Service and Memoirs

After leaving the government service Speakes in 1987 Executive Vice President for Public Relations of the financial services institution Merrill Lynch .

He wrote his memoirs in 1988 under the title Speaking Out , in which he stated that he gave reporters edited information so that President Reagan is better represented. This created a storm of indignation within the media.

In Speaking Out he revealed that the widespread within the media comments that Reagan at the Geneva Summit (1985) to the Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party , Mikhail Gorbachev , made actually come from him and an employee. This included the sentence: “There is a lot that separates us, but I believe that the world breathes easier because we talk together here” ('There is much that divides us, but I believe the world breathes easier because we are talking here together '). Speakes stated that he included and disseminated these statements because he feared that the US could otherwise lose the fight in public relations against the Soviet Union . He also divulged that he had invented a Reagan awarded at Quote after a Soviet fighter plane , a Boeing 747 of Korean Air Lines on shot down on Sept. 1, 1983 on the flight 007 had. However, according to the memoir, in hindsight it was clearly wrong to take such liberties out to invent this quote.

Speakes' revelations caused such an uproar that he was forced to resign from Merrill Lynch in 1988. He then worked for Nortel public relations and then for the US Postal Service , before retiring in 2008.

Helen Thomas, a longtime United Press International (UPI) correspondent , wrote of his work in her 2000 memoir:

“If Speakes was informed, he could be helpful. If he was cut off from the information, what was happening could be embarrassing and annoying. I once told him, 'You don't tell lies, but you leave a big hole in the truth.' "
'When Speakes was informed, he could be helpful. When he was cut out of the loop, what resulted could be embarrassing and infuriating. As I once told him, "You didn't tell a lie, but you left a big hole in the truth". '

Speakes died of complications from Alzheimer's disease , which he had suffered from since July 2009.

Publications

  • Speaking Out , Memoirs, 1988

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Speakes, Larry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American journalist and White House spokesman
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Cleveland , Mississippi
DATE OF DEATH January 10, 2014
Place of death Cleveland , Mississippi