Ron Ziegler

The youngest at the podium — until 2025

Ronald Louis Ziegler was born May 12, 1939, in Covington, Kentucky. He grew up in Cincinnati, moved to California, and enrolled at the University of Southern California — where, between classes, he took a job at Disneyland as a guide on the Jungle Tour, later joking that it was good experience for his political career (Editor and Publisher).

He became the youngest White House press secretary in history when he joined Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign at 29, having first worked with Nixon as a press aide on his unsuccessful 1962 California gubernatorial campaign. He held the title until 1974, when he was named an assistant to the president (Editor and Publisher). For more than half a century that age record stood. In November 2024, 27-year-old Karoline Leavitt was named to take the press secretary role under President-elect Trump — “Previously that distinction went to Ronald Ziegler, who was 29 when he took the position in 1969 in Richard Nixon’s administration” (myRepublica).

The voice of a scandal

Ziegler spoke for the White House on historic events including the opening of relations with China and the Vietnam War, but his name is most commonly associated with the Watergate scandal (Editor and Publisher). The Associated Press called him “the pugnacious press secretary who famously called the Watergate break-in a ‘third-rate burglary’” — a line he stood by years later. Two days after the June 17, 1972, burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters, he told reporters: “Certain elements may try to stretch this beyond what it is.” He was routinely combative with the media and repeatedly dismissed the reporting of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they tied the scandal to top officials in the Nixon administration (Editor and Publisher).

He was a strident defender of Nixon until the public release of the White House tapes, which made clear that the president and his top aides had engaged in a vast cover-up. Ziegler would later say he had not been told about their efforts to hide the truth. He publicly apologized to Woodward, Bernstein, and their newspaper the day after the April 30, 1973, resignations of John Dean and aides John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman: “When we are wrong, we are wrong, as we were in that case.” He started to add “But… ,” and was cut off by a reporter who said, “Now, don’t take it back, Ron” (Editor and Publisher).

In a 1981 interview with The Washington Post, he defended both the phrase and himself: “I was right. It was a third-rate burglary. Who knew it was going to be anything more than that?” And he offered the line that, more than any policy statement, captured his years at the podium: “It’s necessary to fudge sometimes. You have to give political answers. You have to give non-answers. But I never walked out on that podium and lied” (Editor and Publisher).

Loyalty under pressure

His relationship with Nixon was close and at times physically charged. During a visit to New Orleans, Nixon shoved Ziegler and snapped, “I don’t want any press with me, and you take care of it.” On another occasion, Nixon told Ziegler that anyone in the White House who talked to Time reporters “should have their resignations requested within one minute” (Editor and Publisher). Yet Ziegler stayed with the president even after Nixon’s fall from grace: “I was the only one on that plane to San Clemente with Nixon when power changed hands,” he said. “I was there with Nixon in exile. … I’m proud of what I did as press secretary. I don’t feel the need to apologize. There are some things, however, I would have done differently.” Asked for examples, he said, “Well, I don’t want to go into that.”

His loyalty was remembered by those closest to Nixon. The president’s daughter, Tricia Nixon Cox, praised him as “a most capable and loyal public servant who served the White House and my father with distinction,” while his deputy press secretary Gerald Warren said, “Deep down he was a wonderful person. … It wasn’t easy for him, but he did his best and he was very loyal” (Editor and Publisher).

A legacy beyond the caricature

At his death, historian David Greenberg — author of Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image — argued in the Boston Globe that Ziegler deserved a more serious accounting than the fleeting obituary notices gave him. Thirty years on, Greenberg wrote, Ziegler was considered “as innovative and irritating in his deceptions” as the White House spokesman of that day, and “Ziegler’s passing deserves more reflection than the fleeting notices it has received, for his tenure betokened the arrival of a new era in the contentious relationship between presidents and the news media” (Poynter).

The shadow he cast also took stranger shapes. Former White House counsel John Dean, who helped expose the scandal, said in an e-book published on Salon.com that Ziegler — despite his complaints about Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting — was one of the people who may have been Deep Throat, the mysterious late-night source who gave Woodward crucial information. Woodward said he would not reveal Deep Throat’s identity until that person’s death; Ziegler said he believed Deep Throat was a composite of several sources, which Woodward denied. In All the President’s Men, Woodward and Bernstein wrote that Deep Throat did a mean imitation of Ziegler (Editor and Publisher).

After leaving government service, Ziegler held a number of private-sector positions, most recently as chief executive of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores from 1987. He retired in 1998 and divided his time between Alexandria, Virginia, and Coronado, California, where he owned a condominium overlooking the ocean. He died of a heart attack at his home in Coronado at 63, survived by his wife Nancy, his mother Ruby, and two daughters (Editor and Publisher).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not claim Ziegler was the first press secretary to use the White House Press Briefing Room (completed 1970), a detail found only on encyclopedia mirrors that were not read in full this session. It does not claim how many times he appeared before Congress, nor name film or TV portrayals of him, for the same reason. It gives his death as February 2003 as the AP obituary framed it (“died Monday”), rather than asserting an exact day from an un-read source. The Deep Throat speculation is presented as John Dean’s claim, not as fact. It does not cover Leavitt’s actual tenure as press secretary beyond the verified, sourced fact that she was named to the role, ending Ziegler’s age record.