National Press Club’s Hickman plays host to history

A blue three-ring binder more than two inches thick with pages of names and dates records how one retired federal worker in Washington helped shape the news and became a witness to history.

The notebook lists the “Newsmakers” at the National Press Club, where Peter J. Hickman has hosted hundreds of princes, presidents, prime ministers, actors, spies and even a terrorist or two over the past 16 years. Thanks to Mr. Hickman, no official visit to Washington seems complete unless the foreign dignitary meets the press on the 13th floor of 529 14th Street NW.

“I’ve had 146 heads of state, heads of governments or heads of something else” among 1,000 news conferences under his tenure, Mr. Hickman said over a recent lunch at the club.

Among the most memorable: a March 4, 1997, appearance by Yasser Arafat on the day the Palestinian leader met with President Clinton.

Mr. Hickman said he noticed tension between the U.S. representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization and a top aide to Mr. Arafat before the press conference started.

“They were snarling and snapping at each other in Arabic,” he said, adding that Mr. Arafat remained quiet during the dispute.

The Palestinian leader, considered a terrorist for much of the late 20th century, had received the Nobel Peace Prize three years earlier, along with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, for their efforts to achieve Middle East peace.

Mr. Rabin was assassinated in 1995 and Mr. Arafat died in 2004 after a prolonged period confined to his quarters in the West Bank by Israeli troops. Mr. Peres is currently president of Israel.

Mr. Hickman, at 78, remains the ringmaster of a circus of political performers from across the globe. He once organized a press conference with 10 prime ministers simultaneously and remembers their limousines creating one of the biggest traffic jams on 14th Street.

He hosted a newsmaker with a Norwegian leader who had to be protected against threats from environmentalists over Norway’s whaling policy.

Mr. Hickman is also a regular on the diplomatic party scene, where he shows up smartly dressed with a jaunty silk pocket square in his jacket and an attractive young woman, often of East European origin, on his arm.

“There’s something about Slavic women,” he said, adding that he will continue dating for “as long as I can.”

“I’m 78 going on 40,” he added.

Mr. Hickman was born in Dallas in 1931 and, although a D.C. resident for nearly 40 years and a committed Redskins fan, still oozes with Texas pride and pities anyone not born in the Lone Star State.

“If a man is born in Texas, he will tell you. Otherwise, don’t embarrass him by asking,” he said, quoting what passes for a Texan proverb.

Mr. Hickman set out to see the world at age 20 when he joined the Navy. His career as a newsman started by chance because, he said, he had no other skills the Navy needed.

“I was just a deckhand,” he said. “But I could type. I was literate. I could write, which set me off from some of the others.”

He served through the Korean War and joined the U.S. Information Agency (USIA). As a foreign service officer, he was stationed in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the late 1950s and early 1960s, just as the United States was getting into the Vietnam War. He returned to Saigon as a press attache from 1963 to 1965.

Mr. Hickman has frequently entertained the obvious question about his assignments in Southeast Asia at a time when the CIA was becoming heavily involved there. Was he a spy?

“I’ve been asked that question before. But if I told you, I’d have to kill you,” he said, with what looked like a mischievous wink.

Other assignments took him to Tokyo and later to Panama, where he found his posting a little boring after the excitement of a war zone.

“Panama was a big letdown. Nobody was trying to shoot me,” he said, although he noted an incident when he was walking with the U.S. ambassador one day. “Someone threw a brick at me, but it was intended for the ambassador.”

In Washington, Mr. Hickman worked his way through the bureaucracy under four presidents — Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan — and met young political whiz kids who would later wield real power.

During the Nixon administration, he was a top assistant at the Office of Economic Opportunity. The director was Donald Rumsfeld, who later served as defense secretary twice — under Gerald Ford and George W. Bush. Another adviser was Dick Cheney, a future defense secretary and vice president.

Mr. Hickman worked the press as a public affairs officer at the departments of State, Defense and Commerce, at the Federal Energy Administration and General Services Administration, and ended his career at the Agency for International Development.

After retirement, he segued to the Press Club and the Newsmakers’ Committee.

In addition to hosting Mr. Arafat, Mr. Hickman organized several press conferences with Gerry Adams, the leader widely associated with the Irish Republican Army. Mr. Hickman also hosted a real British spy, Sean O’Callaghan, an IRA killer who had turned on the group.

In 1996, he introduced a British Labor Party leader who was then relatively unknown in Washington. Next to the name, Tony Blair, Mr. Hickman noted, “Next likely prime minister.” That same year, F.W. de Klerk, the last leader of an apartheid government in South Africa, and Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who would be assassinated in 2005, met the press with Mr. Hickman.

In 1999, Mr. Hickman arranged a news conference with Hugo Chavez, now the anti-U.S. president of Venezuela, to discuss the topic of “democratic change” in South America.

One of his most celebrated news conferences was on April 6, 2001, when Sean Connery appeared at the press club to talk about Scottish independence and National Tartan Day, a Scottish-American celebration created by Congress.

The Scottish actor, who defined the role of James Bond and was once voted the world’s sexiest man, drew a crowd of more than 300.

“They were mostly women,” Mr. Hickman said with a smile.