When it comes to information flow from the White House in the last three years, Marlin Fitzwater has had mixed impressions.

Fitzwater, who served as press secretary under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, says the current Bush administration has been too secretive about its inner workings.

“I think this administration has been less than forthcoming in many areas of information,” he said. “I think they’ve been more protective than they should be.”

Fitzwater, 61, will be in Lawrence today to receive the William Allen White Foundation’s national citation, given annually to outstanding journalists. He will deliver a public lecture at 1:30 p.m. in Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union.

Fitzwater said he was especially concerned about the Bush administration’s decision to withhold information from top-level energy policy meetings from early in the administration.

At issue is whether Vice President Dick Cheney allowed lobbyists and campaign contributors to participate in meetings of the National Energy Policy Development Group. The White House has yet to release that information.

“I think that was a mistake,” Fitzwater said. “They should have been more open about it, and even after the fact should be more open about it.”

But Fitzwater isn’t completely negative toward the administration’s media and public relations. He praised the decision to allow embedded reporters to accompany troops during the war in Iraq.

“That was a remarkable experience that worked out well for everybody,” he said. “For the first time in 50 years, the government and the media worked out a program that increased access instead of restricting it. Government is always trying to tighten up and be more restrictive. The embedding program was a remarkable turn the other way.”

President Reagan, left, and press secretary Marlin Fitzwater meet in the Oval Office in this 1987 photo. Fitzwater is in Lawrence today to receive the William Allen White Foundation's national citation during White Day festivities at Kansas University.

He noted that MSNBC has used the embedded journalist philosophy during its coverage of the Democratic presidential campaign. The segments — dubbed the “The Campaign Embeds” — have one reporter with every candidate, with regional and national anchors putting the local reports in perspective.

Iraq decisions

Though Fitzwater served as a primary government spokesman during the Gulf War, he said he felt no personal vindication when Saddam Hussein was captured during the most recent war.

“I still think we did the right thing by not going after Saddam Hussein in 1991,” he said. “We did what we said we were going to do and what the (United Nations) authorized us to do. We defined the mission, we defined the end game, and we accomplished it. I’ve never felt any inclination that we should have gone after Saddam simply because we didn’t get him the first time.”

But the terrorist attacks of 9-11, changed Fitzwater’s thinking. He said there was no doubt in his mind that the Middle East’s terrorist network included Hussein.

“I think we were justified for going in there for no other reason than he was a Hitler in the making,” Fitzwater said. “With the number of bodies in mass graves, it took the type of humanitarian response we always say we should have done in Germany.”

William Allen White Foundation Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communications

WMD debate

Where the administration went wrong, Fitzwater said, was pinning so much of the war on the issue of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

“They made a mistake with this weapons of mass destruction issue,” he said. “It was an intelligence failure and not being careful enough with the information. They should have done a better job explaining the role of Iraq in the whole terrorism picture and the rationale of why Saddam Hussein had to be removed.”

Now, Fitzwater said, he’s not surprised the media has analyzed every word the Bush administration says on the weapons of mass destruction issue.

“It’s hard to get out of that,” he said. “You’re better off saying, ‘We made a mistake. We were wrong.’ If would be easier if it wasn’t an election year, with the opposition party expressing opposition to everything you say. If you work in government, you fear campaign years — the year of the election — for exactly that reason.”

New endeavors

Fitzwater, a native of Abilene, served in the U.S. Air Force and graduated from Kansas State University in 1965. He served as editor of the Lindsborg News-Record and worked for the Manhattan Mercury and Topeka Daily Capital during the 1960s. He was a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency from 1972 to 1980.

Fitzwater served as White House press secretary from 1983 to 1992, giving more than 850 media briefings. He is the only press secretary to serve under more than one president.

Today, Fitzwater spends his time writing novels. He published “Call the Briefing,” a memoir on his time in the White House, and “Esther’s Pillow,” a novel set in Kansas and based on a true story.

He’s currently working on a novel about a fisherman on the Chesapeake Bay and is a consultant for NBC’s “The West Wing.”

He is also involved in the Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communications at Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire, which opened last year.

Fitzwater remains friends with George H.W. Bush, seeing him about once a month. He also sees Nancy Reagan about twice a year, though Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease make visits with Reagan himself impossible.

Fitzwater and his wife live in Deale, Md., a fishing village of about 5,000 people.

“I discovered it when I had to get away from the pressures of the White House in 1988,” Fitzwater said. “I drew a line on the map, and it was the closest place from the White House to Chesapeake Bay.”