Legendary White House correspondent Helen Thomas, age 92, now a weekly columnist for the Falls Church News-Press, picked up her official U.S. government issued press pass from the Senate Dirksen Building facility Tuesday, joining News-Press owner Nicholas Benton and staffers Jody Fellows and Nick Gatz in obtaining passes.
The pass, officially issued by the Sargeant at Arms of the U.S. Senate, is routinely treated as a precondition for passes to other agencies and arms of the federal government in Washington, D.C. Thomas, after covering the White House and Washington, D.C. for 50 years, was forced to relinquish her press pass when she was fired by the Hearst Newspapers last July. Benton hired Thomas in January, convinced that the controversial comments she made leading to her firing last summer were aimed as a political lobby, and not a class of persons.
