page_title: Robert E. Thompson
section_title: Kennedy and Johnson administrations
hierarchical_section_title: Robert E. Thompson / Journalistic career / Kennedy and Johnson administrations
caption_attribution_description: English: President John F. Kennedy and his former press secretary Bob Thompson, (over Kennedy's left shoulder).
context_page_description: Robert Elliott Thompson was a top political writer and Washington journalist known for his sharp analysis and crisp writing of political affairs, who knew and covered every president from Harry Truman to George W. Bush. Over the course of a long career he rose through the ranks to become, among other things, a White House correspondent, publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and national editor and Washington D.C. bureau chief for Hearst Newspapers. He also worked as John F. Kennedy's press secretary in the late 1950s, quitting just prior to the then-Senator's presidential campaign.
context_section_description: In 1958 INS merged with United Press to become United Press International (UPI). In the transition many people lost their jobs, including Thompson. That same night he attended a party at Robert F. Kennedy's McLean, VA home Hickory Hill and while in conversation with then-Senator John F. Kennedy, the future President offered Bob a position as his press secretary. One of Bob's major contributions to JFK's 1958 senatorial reelection campaign was a movie he put together entitled "The U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy Story" that was broadcast on television in Massachusetts. Kennedy later said "it was the best thing (he) had in the campaign."
  Thompson once remarked in an interview that he had been grateful to Kennedy for the job offer "during a very dark night in my life," but he was "always more comfortable as a political observer than a political participant" and in 1959, despite Kennedy's presidential ambitions, Bob quit his staff and joined the Washington Bureau of the New York Daily News where he soon became their White House correspondent and was assigned to cover the new President, his former boss, John F. Kennedy. In 1962 he joined the Los Angeles Times and that same year, only days before the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, he published the first biography ever written about the President's brother, the budding United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, entitled Robert F. Kennedy: The Brother Within.
  Thompson did not to travel to Dallas with President Kennedy and the White House press corps in late November 1963, but when news of the assassination of John F. Kennedy broke, he left Washington almost immediately on a special plane chartered specifically for members of the press, where he met up with Miami Herald reporter and fellow Indiana University alumnus Gene Miller. Miller and Thompson had attended IU together and were fast friends. Bob Thompson spent the next two days mostly inside Dallas Police Headquarters gathering information and interviewing people such as the Dallas Chief of Police Jesse Curry, the President's suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and even Oswald's mother and wife. On the final day when Oswald was to be transferred from the police headquarters to the courthouse, Miller, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, felt that if anything were to happen to Oswald it would happen outside the station, where Miller decided to wait. Bob Thompson decided to wait in the basement where the prisoner would be brought through. As Miller had predicted, though wrongly about where, Jack Ruby stepped out in front of the reporters gathered around Oswald and fatally shot him. Thompson was witness to the whole thing standing only several feet away while Miller was still waiting outside. Years later Miller remarked about the incident, "So much for Pulitzer intuitions."
  In 1966 Thompson was promoted to Washington bureau chief for Hearst newspapers. His first meeting with the chain's editor-in-chief, William Randolph Hearst Jr., was rather comedic. At a luncheon set up to introduce him to his new boss, Thompson openly disagreed with an editorial position Hearst had taken. A colleague of his began kicking him under the table signaling him to be quiet. Undeterred, Thompson lifted the tablecloth, looked under the table and asked the man why he was being kicked. Far from annoyed, Hearst seemed to be won over by Thompson's honesty. That same year he also had the honor of being appointed as president of the White House Correspondents Association. He served as bureau chief through the end of the Johnson administration, during the height of the Vietnam War as the Capital convulsed in turmoil from protests and anger. In fact Thompson, who had logged hundreds of hours flying aboard Air Force One with both Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, accompanied LBJ on an unannounced visit to see the troops in Vietnam in 1966.
caption: President Kennedy and his former press secretary Bob Thompson (walking just behind Kennedy)
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