Appointment of David R. Gergen as Assistant to the President for Communications

The President today announced the appointment of David R. Gergen to be Assistant to the President for Communications. Mr. Gergen has been serving since January as Assistant to the President and Staff Director of the White House.

Under this reassignment, Mr. Gergen will be filling a new post at the White House that will place him in charge of the White House Press Office, the Office of Communications, and the Speech-writing Office.

Mr. Gergen, 39, came to the White House staff from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, where he had been serving as a resident fellow and managing editor of Public Opinion, a magazine he helped to cofound. He is currently on leave from AEI.

Mr. Gergen has served on the White House staffs of two previous Presidents. In 1971 he joined the staff of President Nixon and in 1973-74 served as a Special Assistant to the President and chief of the White House writing and research team. In 1975, after a year at the Treasury Department under Secretary William Simon, he returned to the White House under President Ford and became Special Counsel to the President and Director of the White House Office of Communications, a post he held until early 1977.

Mr. Gergen is an honors graduate of both Yale University (A.B., 1963) and the Harvard Law School (1967) and is a member of the D.C. Bar Association.

He was born and raised in Durham, N.C. He currently resides with his wife Anne and two children in McLean, Va. Mr. Gergen was born May 9, 1942.