Press leaks don’t worry Marlin Fitzwater

by Will Welch
Presidency and the Press

Former White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater told Presidency and the Press students today that he doesn’t worry about press leaks.

Julian Assange is infamous for the government secrets his site, Wikileaks, leaked to the public, yet Fitzwater isn’t fully thrown by the criticism of the media.

Though he was initially critical of Wikileaks and the exposing secrets it has unveiled, Fitzwater said, “I’m changing my mind.” Despite the nature of the released documents and confidential information, Fitzwater can’t see that anyone’s been affected by it. “If you’re telling the truth and it’s not hurting anyone, I can’t find anything wrong with it,” he said.

Fitzwater was involved in three investigations of leaks during his career at the White House. “Presidents hate leaks for all kinds of silly reasons,” he said, using a theoretical ribbon cutting ceremony to illustrate his point. He described a situation in which a president decides to contribute one million dollars to a school opening. He explained that the president would want to set everything in place before making the announcement. A premature leak wouldn’t allow the President to accept full credit for his contribution with a ribbon cutting ceremony, and for this reason, Fitzwater said he is “anti-getting excited about leaks.”

During the investigations Fitzwater was involved in, all three leaks were attributed to top aides to the President, none of whom were fired.

Fitzwater also discussed some of the more difficult elements of his job as Press Secretary. “A death is always the worst, especially a death resulting from military action,” he said when asked what news was most difficult to break. He cited the guilt of knowing that the loss was a result of government decisions as the source of the difficulty.

Yet he also mentioned there were many days when he found his job “incredibly rewarding.” Those days were the ones he felt he had truly served his country.

“Good things do happen,” he said.