The Unknown Known Page #4

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that he had the neon sign

on his forehead.

"Mr. President,

I care a great deal

about you as a person

and about your success.

I care deeply about the country

and believe

it is vitally important

that you be re-elected.

The morale is low

in the White House

because of the organizational

approach you have tolerated.

The job you need done

cannot be done

unless major changes

take place."

Dick Cheney and I

both attached our resignations

to the memo.

There wasn't anything

in the memo

I hadn't talked to him about

four, five, six times.

I decided that putting it down

in one place,

deciding to resign,

causing him to register

how strongly we felt about it.

He ended up separating

the positions

of secretary of state

and national security advisor,

which Henry had held

both of them.

And he made

several other changes.

Put George Herbert Walker bush

in the central

intelligence agency.

He wanted to make a change

at the Pentagon,

asked me to become

secretary of defense,

then my deputy, Dick Cheney,

to become chief of staff.

Of course, this becomes

known as the Halloween massacre.

Oh.

I guess it is.

You know, a narrative

gets built out there

over a period of time.

Big personalities

going at each other.

In fact,

it's perfectly understandable.

They represent

different institutions,

and they have

different perspectives.

But it gets written up

in the media

as though it's jealousies

and personalities

and that type of thing

as opposed to

different perspectives.

When Shakespeare wrote history,

it was all character defects,

jealousies,

misunderstandings,

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

In Shakespeare,

it's the motivating force

of history.

Maybe Shakespeare got it wrong.

Well, you know,

it was a different time.

He was dealing

with different issues.

Maybe he had it right.

Maybe it just was different

later.

Nelson Rockefeller has taken

himself out of consideration

as a vice presidential candidate

on president Ford's ticket

next year.

Rockefeller has

little choice in the matter.

Rumsfeld's calculated plan

to pave his own way

as a running mate

for president Ford.

Donald Rumsfeld has

been mentioned for months

as a possible vice presidential

running mate with president Ford.

...in congress think

his new job

as defense secretary is a means

of putting Rumsfeld

in the running

for the vice presidency.

Donald Rumsfeld

takes over the Pentagon

but also keeps most

of his personal influence

with president Ford.

...the shake-up

took place.

The consensus is that Rumsfeld

again emerged the winner.

Rumsfeld's

conservative influence

at the White House

will be carried on

by 34-year-old

Richard Cheney,

who said in his office

this afternoon,

he'll be running things

just like don did.

In November 1975...

I became the youngest secretary

of defense in history.

It's important, I suppose,

to go back

and set the background

for this occasion.

Henry Kissinger had the job

of fostering Detentes,

a lessening of tension

with the Soviet Union.

The more talk there was

about Detentes

and the more

these negotiations went on

and the more people sat around

clinking champagne glasses

with great big smiles,

and the world saw all of that,

the congress

and the American people

would not be in favor of

increasing defense investment.

It was really fundamental

differences of approach.

Weakness, historically,

tends to prove to be provocative

and create instabilities

in wars and conflicts.

Strength on our part

will contribute

to peace and stability

in the world.

I'm not saying with certainty

that the Russians are coming.

I'm saying the trends are here.

I'm not saying

the Russians are 10 feet tall.

I'm saying they used to be 5'3".

They're now 5'91/2",

and they're growing,

and we're not.

To be brand-new

in the department of defense

with a presidential campaign

going on,

my task was to meet with members

of the United States congress.

Small, intimate setting

where I could take

a classified briefing

and show them

the overhead photographs

that were highly classified,

that were top secret,

let them see for themselves

what the Soviet Union was doing.

I would get 6 or 8 or 10 of them

and bring them down

to the Roosevelt room,

which is right

across from the oval office

in the west wing

of the White House.

Not in the Pentagon;

In the White House.

In the White House, absolutely.

If you have a meeting

in the White House

in the Roosevelt room,

and the president stops by

and says hello to 'em,

it is much more memorable

for them.

I had a major fraction of

all the United States senators

and all the members

of the congress

come in to those meetings,

you know, night after

night after night.

When you would show

these photographs to people

from satellites

or from a u-2,

people were amazed by them.

In addition, we prepared a

unclassified series of charts.

One was on U.S./U.S.S.R.

Military manpower.

Another one had U.S. and Soviet

military investment...

Intercontinental

ballistic missile developments...

Changes in

strategic force levels...

Warheads, megatonnage,

estimated production rates.

No one statistic

was determinative.

What was important is,

what were the trend lines?

Did it come as a surprise

that Carter beat Ford in 1976?

He started out way behind.

If it had gone on

another week or two,

he might very well have won.

The republican

national convention

begins here tomorrow, and most

of the players are in place.

Everybody's playing the

vice presidential guessing game.

One big question remains.

Who will be Reagan's

vice presidential choice?

The Republicans are

floating some of the rumors

in an effort to keep...

the list includes former

ambassador George Bush,

who gave Reagan his

toughest primary battle,

or the defense secretary,

Donald Rumsfeld.

The questions about

Rumsfeld are whether his ties

to republican big business are too close

and whether he's too ambitious

to fit in

playing second fiddle to Reagan.

There is the picture

of Donald Rumsfeld

as Machiavelli,

and that you managed

George H.W. Bush

into the CIA

as a way of destroying

his presidential ambitions.

It's utter nonsense.

He had to know the truth.

And why he would

promote that idea...

he must have believed it

for some reason.

I suppose it's kind of

more fun for somebody

to be able to say

they were pushed,

rather than they tripped.

Reagan was up a floor above.

I was with my wife, Joyce.

I had a man glued at my hip,

ready to tell me

if governor Reagan called

and wanted me

to be vice president.

The press was filled

with this excitement

about the possibility

of president Reagan

selecting Gerald R. Ford.

I was stunned at the thought.

It's like sticking four hands

on the steering wheel.

You're gonna end up

putting the truck in the ditch.

My phone rang.

It was governor Reagan.

He said, "don,

I want you to know

that I've decided to have

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