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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient William J. Hopkins
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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient William Hopkins
WILLIAM J. HOPKINS
Awarded by
President Richard M. Nixon
June 2, 1971
During his forty years in the White House, under seven Presidents, William J. Hopkins has written a record of skilled and devoted service unique in the annals of the Presidency. Not only has he borne heavy responsibilities with great efficiency and uncommon good sense, but each new President in turn has learned to rely on him as a fount of wisdom, a reservoir of experience and a rock of loyalty.
Guiding each new administration through its initial steps, standing as a staunch friend to all, he has been, in the best sense, a selfless partisan of the Presidency, and of the Nation that these seven Presidents have been able to serve better because of the help that he gave.
Executive Clerk (EOP, The White House Office) Every office in the White House handles presidential papers, but one category of papers is so special that it is under the exclusive care of a staff that handles nothing else: these are the original copies of the documents that, signed by the President, represent his official public actions. Included among these documents are public laws, vetoes, executive orders, nominations, proclamations, commissions, pardons, treaties, reports and messages to Congress, and public directives to executive branch departments and agencies. For all such presidential papers, the executive clerk is just about the last stop before presidential signature. The office itself began in 1865, and the executive clerk and his small staff work in a room that is packed with history. In a corner of their suite hangs a picture of Maurice C. Latta, who joined the White House staff when McKinley was President and served in or at the head of the clerk's office for fifty years. Latta's predecessor, Rudolph Forster, served for forty-six years; and Latta's successor, William J. Hopkins, for forty. The incumbent, G. Timothy Saunders, is already a twenty-year veteran. In the clerk's card file of presidential appointees, the opening entry is dated 1911. While the clerk’s computer terminals blink with the urgency of the present, the surrounding shelves are crammed with the precedents of the past. The executive clerk's office does not just "handle" the cascade of presidential documents: it researches them. Each nomination, for instance, is checked against the law that authorizes the appointment; the paper the President will sign is carefully compared with the precise requirements of the statute. In the clerk's office are twenty loose-leaf volumes specifying the legal authority for each of the close to four thousand nominations or appointments the President can make. William Hopkins began the compilation in 1952; today, every page of every new law Congress passes is scrutinized for changes that may have to be made in the loose-leaf collection. As of August 1999, President Clinton had sent 3,108 civilian nominations to the Senate. Frequently there are communications to Congress that the President signs but does not present in person -- messages and treaties, for example. Drawing on a tradition of considerable antiquity, the executive clerk puts each such message into an envelope, pastes it shut with a melted glob of special red wax, and -- with a brass die -- imprints the presidential seal: the unique imprimatur of the envelope's origin. Each message is hand delivered to both houses by one of the staff of the executive clerk’s office, acting as "the secretary to the President." (Historical vignette: when delivering the sealed messages to the House and Senate, Forster and Latta wore formal attire -- coat and tails -- and rode up to Capitol Hill on bicycles.) A veto message will be similarly delivered to the house in which the bill originated. The aides who undertake such deliveries are the only White House staff officers permitted on the floor of either body. The aide must stand in the back of the chamber until recognized by the chair; the aide then comes forward, formally bows, and addresses the presiding officer: "Mr. Speaker, I am directed by the President of the United States to deliver a message in writing." "The aides," the executive clerk recalls, "have on occasion been literally hissed and booed -- usually good-naturedly -- off the floor of either house" when delivering an unpopular veto. Enrolled bills coming from Congress are no longer inscribed on parchment but on paper that is specially designed for durability; they are deemed "presented to the President" (the Constitution's language, article 1, section 7) when they reach the executive clerk’s doorway. The clerk keeps rigid watch over the ten-day clock that then begins to run; at the end of a congressional session, there may be two hundred bills waiting in the White House at one time. (Once one arrived without any room at the bottom for the President's signature; it was sent back for re-inscribing.) The clerk's office is the President’s "pocket" for pocket vetoes (bills left unsigned -- and thereby disapproved -- by the President after Congress has adjourned.) As of July 1999, President Clinton had sent 1,164 presidential messages to Congress, twenty-five of them vetoes. If, while Congress is in session, a veto is not received within ten days, an enrolled bill becomes law; on several occasions, veto messages have been rushed to the Capitol with less than twenty minutes to spare. The President is directed by dozens and dozens of separate statutes to send reports to Congress, some of them annually. Over the years, the cumulative total has come to be in the hundreds. As they research the newly enacted statutes, the staff in the executive clerk's office identify any new requirements for reports and determine which executive agencies are responsible for their preparation; they are especially watchful about expiring deadlines. When a report reaches the executive clerk's office on its way to Congress, it is first checked against the requirements in the applicable statue; the executive clerk's office then works with the staff secretary to arrange for an internal White House review. Once signed by the President, the report is delivered in the aforementioned fashion to Congress. Knowing, as they do, the exact status of each bill awaiting signature, the executive clerk and his staff field telephone queries from agencies and the public. A taped message recites to callers exactly which bills have been signed by the President on that day and which are on their way to the White House. On one day at the end of a congressional session, 2,400 calls were answered. The executive clerk's office continues to be the modern end of a 138-year White House tradition: its computer records, notebooks, library, and card files are, fortunately, not cleaned out the night before inaugural, but are passed from one administration to the next. [From Bradley H. Patterson, The White House Staff: Inside the West Wing and Beyond (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, pp. 360-62. Reprinted with permission by the Brookings Institution Press.]
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Medal History
