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Show 154 The San Francisco Examiner ran an Associated Press story about Johnson's order, but it did not carry other stories related to the national monument expansion or the proposed national parks in Utah.469 The paper did publish news related to the Senate confirmation hearings for the new Secretary of the Interior where the monument expansion proposal was discusscd. 4 70 Five days after Johnson left office, Deseret News reporter Gordon Eliot White wrote an account that included how he reported the story. The headline read: "BehindScenes Story of Parks Land Grab." When White arrived at the point in the chronology where President Johnson deviated from his prepared State of the Union address, the journalist inserted himself into "the inside story of how 7.5 million acres of public domain, state and private land were almost - but not quite - put into the national park system by a stroke of President Johnson's pen": This reporter left the House gallery and began asking people who should have known, what did the President mean? Was Utah involved? No one knew. This reporter pressed the Interior Department for details, but none was forthcoming. At Udall's suggestion, Sen. (Henry] Jackson mentioned the proposal in more detail in the Interior Committee's hearing on Gov. Walter J. Hickel, the controversial Interior Secretary·designate. Most of the reporters at the session were more interested in Hickel than in monuments and only the De.~eret News reported the story and that Sen. Bible hadn't been told about the plan. When questioned, Sen. Moss had said he knew about it but none of his previous proposals were involved. He couldn't say more and Sen. Jackson "may have spoken out of tum," he added .. 469 Associated Press, "Johnson Adds 10 l'arks,"' Sm, Fra11cisco Examiner, January 20, 1969, 6. United Press International, '"Oil Leases Snag Vote on llickel," Sa11 Francisco E.rnminer, January 19, 1996, Al4. 470 |
