by Martin Harwit
We did whatever we could do legitimately. But unlike the larger veterans’ organizations, which often engage public relations firms, we could not hire such image makers to promote our cause; we could not write articles asking supporters to contact their congressmen on our behalf; and we could not contribute money to political parties or election campaigns. These were powerful tools that those opposed to the exhibition had at their disposal. Even if they did not use all of them, the Congress knew they could be brought to bear.
In such a confrontation, the museum was also handicapped in other ways. A contest between a public and a private institution is uneven. The Air Force Association could and did use the Freedom of Information Act to demand copies of letters, reports, or memoranda written by the museum’s staff. It could and did leak many of these to the press. And, as Jack Giese, AFA chief of media relations, pointed out, they could and did add commentary of their own to suit their purposes. In contrast, the museum had absolutely no right to demand access to internal documents or any other materials generated by the AFA or other veterans’ organizations.
In an interview with a reporter, Jack Giese de-scribed his operations this way:
As AFA got information ... it was pumped immediately to Congress. ... It started broad. Then we got Blute and Johnson. The debate is going back and forth. ... I’m feeding (Washington Times reporter) Josh Young. I’m feeding (Washington Post reporter) Gene Meyer. ...
One of our strengths we have here—it seemed silly to some people—we had a printer on the third floor. We could have this material done at the speed of light. That is a resource government agencies don’t have. We could build packages depending on where the story was going. ... We had Blute, Johnson, all those guys. Kassebaum. As soon as we did something we fed them. We fed all levels. Any Joe Blow off the street. Any American who called got the same treatment as the media or anybody else. We’d send it to vets. We’d send it to high school students, teachers. Get the information out quickly and in a good readable manner. When dealing with the media or Congress ‘quickly’ meant Fed Ex the next day or courier-speed of light, get that information out to them.
I’d say we did a hundred copies of script one— the only one we could copy because it wasn’t copyrighted; ten renditions of clipping books, 50 at a time. ...
August [1994] was four to five couriers a day, four to five Fed Exes a day. ... August was the heat month. ... An unbelievable feeding frenzy. ... We broke down our messages into a single page. “It was an act of vengeance. We were portrayed as the bad guys.”— that was one of our sound bites. “Tell history the way history happened,”—stolen from Blute, who took it from a vet. Another one of our messages was, “We are worried that American youth will get a distorted view of what America did in the War.” ... Various sound bites like that.
I come on the Today show. I’ve got my sound bites, boom they go to him. He starts building a clock, talking about “Well, you have to understand,” ... He’s getting no points across. He’s doing a rational discussion. He does not know the media he is in.
If a reporter said, “I was looking in here and I don’t like the way it sounds, especially on the history,” we’d say, “Call Dick Hallion. See if he knows any historians.” If something would break, we would stop everything we were doing at AFA Communications until we got an approved message.
In the early summer of 1995, the AFA wanted to recapitulate the entire history of the Enola Gay con-frontation. They issued a press kit consisting of four volumes. One contained the five-hundred page first script of the exhibition. Two others, roughly as thick, reproduced much of the press coverage, respectively, from 1994 and 1995. The fourth and thickest volume comprised correspondence, memoranda, resolution, reports, and other relevant documents. The entire set runs some two thousand pages. Jack Giese estimates the AFA may have run off as many as a thousand copies for distribution. The cost must have been staggering.
With the AFA, the American Legion, the VFW, and any number of other, smaller veterans organizations willing and able to spend unmatchable time, man-power, and money the museum did not have the ability to compete adequately. This does not mean we gave up. On many days I gave interviews to two or three different media representatives; appeared on early morning TV shows; talked with reporters from all over the world; wrote articles; gave speeches; and worked with our public affairs officer, Mike Fetters, who took on the added task of manning the many radio talk shows. Together, we tried to present our view as coherently and disseminate it as widely as possible.
Defeat of a museum with a total staff of 280, by veterans’ organizations whose summed membership stands six million strong is not shameful. I like to believe we fought valiantly but were badly outgunned.
“Harwit’s book is a marvel—a primer on how living history
can be recorded. But skillfulness has its drawbacks. A less well organized
and well written book—one that lacked the extensive quo-tations from
original documents (which Harwit has meticulously collected from friend
and foe)— would not so completely reveal the tragic disso-nance between
the messages in those documents and Harwit’s inability or unwillingness
to recog-nize the signs and portents of disaster.”
From a review of An Exhibit Denied by Linda Rothstein in March-April
1997 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.