Helen Thomas, the opinionated White House correspondent who used her seat in the front row of history to grill 10 Presidents and often exasperate them, lost her storied perch on Monday in a flap over saying Israelis should get “out of Palestine.”
Ms Thomas, 89, who made her name as a bulldog for United Press International and was a pioneer for women in journalism, abruptly retired as a columnist for Hearst News Service. The announcement, in a terse statement by Hearst, came after videotaped remarks she made to an independent filmmaker spread virally through the Internet. She apologised, but White House spokesman Robert Gibbs denounced her comments as “offensive and reprehensible.”
Her press corps colleagues with the White House Correspondents Association issued a rare admonishment calling them “indefensible.”
Ms Thomas, a daughter of Lebanese immigrants, joined UPI in 1943 and began covering the White House for the wire service in 1960. Fiercely competitive, she became the first female White House bureau chief for a news service when UPI named her to the position in 1974. She also was the first female officer at the National Press Club, where women had once been barred as members.
“Helen was just a vacuum cleaner about information,” said author Kay Mills, who took dictation from Ms Thomas as a young UPI staffer and wrote “A Place in the News: From the Women’s Pages to the Front Page.”
“She made sure she had everything,” Mr Mills said. “She may have been covering Jackie Kennedy and a birthday party for one of the children, but I’ll tell you, the desk had every bit of information it ever needed.”
When the Watergate scandal began consuming President Richard M. Nixon’s presidency, Martha Mitchell, the notoriously unguarded wife of the attorney-general, would call Ms Thomas late at night to unload her frustrations at what she saw as the betrayal of her husband, John, by the President’s men.
Thomas retained her place on the front row of the White House briefing room after joining Hearst in 2000 and remained persistent to the point of badgering.
She aggressively questioned President George W. Bush and his press secretaries about the war in Iraq, which many of Mr Bush’s supporters said would make Israel safer by ridding the West Asia of Saddam Hussein. She gave President Barack Obama similar handling about Afghanistan.
This exchange occurred two weeks ago: “Mr President, when are you going to get out of Afghanistan? Why are you continuing to kill and die there? What is the real excuse? And don’t give us this Bushism, If we don’t go there, they’ll all come here,’ she said.