In My Time - Dick Cheney [27]
Rumsfeld had given Bradley the task of finding him an all-purpose assistant, a job I was certainly interested in. Since my peremptory hiring I’d had the opportunity to spend some time with Rumsfeld, and it turned out that our different personalities and temperaments actually worked well together. He was certainly a tough and demanding boss, but no tougher or more demanding of others than of himself, and that was a quality I greatly respected. Beneath the gruff exterior he was as thoughtful as he was focused, and he had developed an intensely loyal team of which I already considered myself a part.
Bradley interviewed a number of people, and at the end of that process, I had the job. Since Rumsfeld was not only OEO director, but also an assistant to the president, I now had a desk in the West Wing of the White House. There was nothing fancy about my White House office. It was more like a closet, and I shared it with Don Murdoch, another Rumsfeld assistant. But a desk in the West Wing was a prime piece of Washington real estate, and I’ll confess I was pretty proud of it.
I now started each morning with Rumsfeld at the White House. While he attended the senior staff meeting, I got a head start on his day. Then we were driven over to the OEO building, where we worked until early evening. Then it was back to the White House for a few more hours before we headed home, he to what had to be Georgetown’s smallest row house and I to the apartment in Annandale.
When I moved onto the federal payroll at OEO, I had to fill out a number of very comprehensive forms. One of them asked about prior arrests, and I listed my two DUI incidents in 1962 and 1963. Apparently this had raised no alarms at OEO, but when the FBI conducted the usual full field investigation for anyone who would be working in the West Wing, red flags went up.
Rumsfeld called me into his office and asked if it was true I had been arrested twice. I said I had. He asked if I had put the arrests on the original form. I said I had. He asked his secretary to bring the file in, and he studied the form closely. Then he closed the file. “Okay, that’s good enough for me.” There were plenty of young people with outstanding records that Rumsfeld might have turned to once he became aware of the blemishes on mine. But he stood by me, and I have never forgotten that.
IN SEPTEMBER, KENTUCKY GOVERNOR Louie Nunn vetoed renewed OEO funding for an antipoverty program in the mountainous eastern part of his state, charging corruption and claiming that federal funds were being used to entrench the local Democratic Party and the Turner family that controlled it. Nunn, a Republican governor, had been an early and strong supporter of Nixon, and the White House naturally wanted to be responsive. But the program was in the home district of Democratic congressman Carl Perkins, one of the most powerful men in Washington and chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, which authorized OEO’s budget. Moreover, the Turners weren’t the kind to buckle under pressure, as I learned when Rumsfeld sent me to Breathitt County to see if I could figure out what was going on.
Treva Turner Howell, whose parents had established the Turner dynasty, took me around to show me all the good works OEO was funding. At the end of the day she drove me back to her house, sat me down at the kitchen table, and poured us both stiff bourbons. With great charm and even more insistence, she restated her case, reminded me of Chairman Perkins’s interest in her work, and indicated that as far as corruption was concerned, she had the goods on Louie Nunn.
OEO funds were, without doubt, strengthening the political hold of Breathitt County’s Democratic machine, headed by Jeff Davis Howell, Treva’s husband, and while it could be argued that this was improper, my job was to find out whether it was illegal. When I got back to Washington and Rumsfeld wanted to know whether the program was corrupt, my answer was: possibly, but there doesn’t seem to be enough evidence to charge illegality. That was enough for him. He overrode Governor