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Yet for all his efforts, bad news kept piling up. Russia's Sputniks circled the globe and, beyond recognizing them as fine news copy, Hagerty shared in the White House's early so-what attitude. For all his freedom to argue in White House councils, he sat silent during a press-conference briefing when Dwight Eisenhower said he intended to tell newsmen that Sputnik I made "not one iota" of military difference. The extent of Hagerty's contribution to immediate post-Sputnik urgency was to bend an old rule. Wary lest he disclose top-secret security information by a slip of the tongue, Hagerty has always declined to attend National Security Council sessions. He is reluctant in the extreme to hand out even the barest information about the officials who do attend. But after Sputnik I, he not only trumpeted the news that members of the long-neglected Scientific Advisory Committee were attending NSC conferences, but arranged for reporters to meet the scientists as they emerged.
Speedup from Slowdown. The Administration tried to regain the foreign and domestic initiative with the NATO heads of government meeting, and Hagerty was in Paris settling the preliminaries of press coverage when the White House phoned to report that Ike had suffered a chill. Hagerty instinctively suspected worse, took off from Paris' Orly Field in zero-zero weather to fly back to Washington. He was just in time to rescue Associate Press Secretary Anne Wheaton, who, cut off from direct communication with the President's doctors, had managed to confuse Ike's cerebral hemorrhage with some sort of coronary disease.
Hagerty brought order, set up an unorthodox press conference for the Vice President at the White House, at which Richard Nixon expressed optimism about the President's health. But Hagerty was touchier than ever before about giving out medical details. He came under strong criticism for making the President sound perfectly chipper within hours after his seizure; that blame was unjustified, since Hagerty's natural desires had squarely coincided with fact. Five days after the stroke, Hagerty drove the 84 miles to Gettysburg with the President. The long, close conversation ranged from the Civil War to World War II—and to Ike's hopes for the NATO conference. "I knew then," says Hagerty, "that he would go to Paris if he could possibly move." And the voice of the White House promptly started making announcements along that line.
Out with Ike. The NATO sessions speeded the presidential pace, and, although there have been a few stumbles, the forward momentum has not since stopped. Jim Hagerty can be expected to make the most of that fact. His schedule is killing: he has had only 17 days' vacation since the President's heart attack; he leaves his home by 7:30 a.m. and rarely gets back in time for dinner with his wife; last Thanksgiving, when the younger of his two sons came home from college, Hagerty saw him only for minutes. Even a professional presidential press secretary cannot long stand that gaff, and Jim Hagerty has made it clear that he will leave the White House when Dwight Eisenhower does.