William Waldo Cameron Forum on Public Affairs - 5/3/1999
Thomas M. DeFrank
His reporting has been praised as "riveting" by The New Republic. The New York Times recently ranked him as one of the country’s best political writers. And former President Gerald R. Ford calls him "one of the finest journalists I have ever known. Everyone I know feels the same way: you are fair, trustworthy, and professional."
One of Washington’s most respected President-watchers, Thomas M. DeFrank is a veteran political journalist and author. As Washington bureau chief for the New York Daily News, he directs coverage of the nation’s capital for the country’s second-largest metropolitan daily newspaper.
He was Newsweek’s senior White House correspondent until 1995 and also served as deputy chief of the magazine’s Washington bureau for twelve years. Assigned to the White House since 1970, DeFrank has reported on the activities of Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. He is second only to Helen Thomas of United Press International in terms of longevity on the White House beat.
DeFrank is the co-author of Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms, the best-selling memoir of controversial Republican political consultant Ed Rollins published in August 1996. He also co-authored The Politics of Diplomacy, the memoirs of former Secretary of State James A. Baker III.
He’s also the co-author of Quest for the Presidency 1992, a critically-acclaimed, behind-the-scenes look a the Clinton-Bush election published in 1994.
DeFrank has appeared on several public affairs television programs, including Washington Week in Review, Larry King Live, The McLaughlin Group, CNN Inside Politics, Hardball with Chris Matthews, The Charlie Rose Show, The Phil Donahue Show, and C-Span.
DeFrank has been a student of the Presidency since 1968, when he took his first Presidential trip with Lyndon Johnson as a Newsweek intern. He traveled extensively with Richard Nixon from 1970 to 1972 and was assigned to cover Vice President Gerald Ford in the fall of 1973. A few months before Nixon’s resignation, he was reassigned to the White House and remained when Ford became President in August 1974. He was an eyewitness to both assassination attempts against Ford in 1975.
He has covered every Presidential election since 1968 and 15 Soviet-American summits beginning with the historic 1975 Ford-Brezhnev meeting in Vladivostok. He has traveled to all 50 states and 44 countries as the White House reported and is a former president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
DeFrank has reported on congressional and military affairs, and in 1973 covered the return of U. S. prisoners of war from Vietnam at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. He also reported extensively on the Persian Gulf war, traveling to Saudi Arabia with President Bush in November 1990 and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and General Colin Powell in December 1990.
He is the only news magazine correspondent to win both of the White House Correspondents’ Association awards for distinguished Presidential reporting. He has also shared in several other reporting awards, including the Overseas Press Club’s award for his reporting of the 1987 Reagan-Gorbachev summit.
DeFrank was on active duty at the Pentagon from 1968 to 1970 as a public affairs officer with the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Before joining Newsweek, he was a reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Bryan (Texas) Daily Eagle, and Minneapolis Star.
A native of Arlington, Texas, DeFrank is a 1967 high honors graduate of Texas A&M University, where he edited the campus newspaper, and has a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota.