WANDA M. PHELAN FILES, 1974-76

Wanda Phelan served in the White House press office at two different times during the Nixon and Ford administrations. From February 1970 to October 1974 she handled routine correspondence for press secretaries Herb Klein, Ron Ziegler and Jerald ter Horst. She returned to the White House press secretary's office on detail in August 1976 and worked as a staff assistant under Agnes Waldron. In this role, she maintained research files on the 1976 presidential election, concentrating on Jimmy Carter's background and statements, editorial opinion about issues and the campaign, and editorial endorsements supporting President Ford.

The Phelan files mainly cover her work in the fall of 1976. Her small chronological file of outgoing letters, August 1971 to July 1974, and a small file on media requests for interviews with President Nixon, March-July 1974, are the only materials which date from the Nixon administration. The material is routine, relating mainly to administrative matters such as notifying mailing lists of Herb Klein's departure from the White House or adding to President Nixon's collection of original drawings of editorial cartoons.

The files from Phelan's 1976 service in the press office relate almost exclusively to the presidential election. Included are transcripts of interviews and speeches given by Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale; briefing material prepared for some of President Ford's campaign trips; background on potential issues; newspaper editorials, campaign endorsements, and some related correspondence with the media; and extensive files of newspaper clippings and press wire stories concerning the campaign. Phelan apparently maintained these files to provide briefing material for the President and to verify facts on Jimmy Carter's career and the presidential campaign. Although much of the collection is routine in nature, the files provide a useful source for locating statements by the presidential and vice presidential candidates and for studying media coverage of the presidential candidates and the campaign. The research staff clipped articles and editorials from many of the daily newspapers around the country in addition to such national papers as the "New York Times" and the "Washington Post."

Some items date from November 1974 to July 1976 when Phelan was not serving on the White House staff. Apparently, Agnes Waldron brought some of them from the Editorial Staff research operation when she transferred to the press office in June 1976. Other files relating to correspondence with the media and presidential meetings with the media must have been inherited from other members of the press office staff.

Related Materials (December 1983)
Related materials include the other files of the press office staff (especially the Agnes Waldron files), the files of Charles McCall of the Editorial staff research office, and White House Central Files categories PL and PR.