Ken Clawson, Nixon's communications director, dies

Tuesday, December 21, 1999

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Ken Clawson, one of President Nixon's staunch defenders as director of White House communications during the Watergate era, died Friday at a hospital in New Orleans. He was 63.

Clawson suffered a heart attack, his wife, Carol, said. He had been in poor health since a stroke in 1975, the year after he left the White House, and had lived in New Orleans in recent years.

A former newspaper reporter, Clawson joined the White House in February 1972 as deputy director of communications for the executive branch. He became White House communications director Jan. 30, 1974, as the Watergate scandals were consuming the Nixon presidency.

"I'm just one of Richard Nixon's spear carriers," he said in a February 1974 interview, "and proud of it."

Clawson's name was associated with the "Canuck letter" that was sent to The Manchester Union-Leader in New Hampshire in 1972 and claimed that Democratic Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine had spoken disparagingly of French Canadians.

The letter was of doubtful origin. A Washington Post reporter later wrote that Clawson had bragged to her about being its author, but Clawson subsequently denied writing it.

Ken Clawson was born to a working-class family in Monroe, Mich., on Aug. 16, 1936. He attended the University of Michigan, became advertising manager for his hometown newspaper, then became labor reporter for The Toledo Blade in Ohio in 1963.

His labor reporting won him a Nieman Fellowship to study at Harvard in 1966, then a job on The Washington Post, where he covered the Justice Department before joining the White House.

He left the White House in November 1974, three months after Nixon resigned.

Clawson is survived by his wife, mother, sister, two sons, a daughter and six grandchildren.

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