James Keogh, 89; Nixon Speechwriter, Former Time Editor

James Keogh, 89, a former executive editor of Time magazine who served in communication roles through the troubled years of the Nixon administration, died Wednesday of respiratory failure in Greenwich, Conn., his family said.

Keogh, who lived in Greenwich, joined the Nixon administration in 1969 as a special assistant to the president and became head speechwriter about a year later. He also was director of the U.S. Information Agency, which advocates U.S. interests abroad.

Keogh used the information agency’s Voice of America broadcasts to explain the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation. “We try to make the point to our overseas audiences that what they are seeing and hearing is this free and open society working out a problem,” he once said.

Born in Nebraska in 1916, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Creighton University in Omaha and began his career at the Omaha World-Herald. At Time magazine, he was a national affairs reporter in 1951 and eventually rose to editor.

He wrote two books about Nixon, “This is Nixon” (1956) and “President Nixon and the Press” (1972).