Norman Mayer - Reactions

Reactions

George Stephanopoulos, later White House Press Secretary and communications director under President Bill Clinton, was a 21-year-old intern at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace when Mayer stopped in his office several times to discuss nuclear disarmament. On December 8, 1982, Stephanopoulos made his first appearance on Nightline to discuss Mayer.

In the December 19, 1982 installment of his column "An Edge in My Voice," writer and activist Harlan Ellison discussed the incident, expressing great sympathy for Mayer's position and outrage at what he regarded as overreaction by law enforcement. Ellison, who claimed to have recognized Mayer's threat as a bluff as soon as he heard TV reports on the crisis, noted that, had the threat been genuine, the explosion of 1,000 pounds (500 kg) of TNT, even at such close proximity, would have barely damaged the Washington Monument's exterior and could not have possibly destroyed it. Ellison expressed his sadness over the unnecessary death of Mayer saying "Had there been a scintilla of compassion, rather than macho posturing, in any of the authorities handling the situation, it need not have ended as it did. But there were none... not on the part of the White House advisors who moved Ronald Reagan's luncheon out of the room facing the Monument. And not on the part of our noble President who, like Richard Nixon, saw what was going on and shrugged, and ignored his responsibility." The column was among several reprinted in Ellison's collections An Edge in My Voice and Edgeworks 1. A recording of Ellison reading the column is found on the CD On the Road with Ellison Volume 1.