In My Time - Dick Cheney [39]
A much more serious staff problem was presented by Bob Hartmann. Bob was much closer in age to the president than either Don or I and had gone to work for him in 1966, after twenty-five years as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. His manner was brusque on good days and abrasive on bad ones, and if others found him difficult to deal with, that was fine by Bob. He was comfortable in that role and even cultivated it. Bob had been Ford’s principal advisor and speechwriter in the vice president’s office, and particularly in the latter position, had done some very fine work. Ford’s truly memorable swearing-in remarks and his statement explaining Nixon’s pardon were examples of Hartmann at his very best.
Unfortunately, when he wasn’t writing speeches, Bob’s contributions to the overall enterprise were mixed at best. His certainty that he was the man to continue running the show after August 9 led him to make a move that was admirable only in its audacity. Amid the confusion that followed Nixon’s sudden departure, Bob simply moved his things into the office directly adjacent to the Oval Office. The space, which included a door opening directly into the Oval Office, had been vacated only hours earlier by Nixon’s personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods. With that beachhead secure, Hartmann was hard to manage. He adopted the practice of stepping through his door into the Oval Office when the president was away. He would go through the inbox to treat himself to an exclusive look at all the presidential business and add new material as he saw fit.
One of our major management goals was to make sure that all the paperwork going to and from the president’s desk passed through the staff secretary’s office. This would enable us to keep records of everything the president had seen and signed and to make certain that documents given to him were circulated and vetted among senior officials. In addition, as another check, I reviewed everything going in and out of the Oval Office. But Bob’s connecting door gave him a way around the system. We discovered this when documents that the president returned to the staff secretary included some that no one else had ever seen before. Bob’s visits to the Oval Office could also be discerned in the appearance of some strategically leaked information in a newspaper item by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. Finding an internal memo whose drift he had not cared for, Bob simply conveyed its contents straight from the president’s desk to the appreciative hands of Washington’s most read columnists.
President Ford had a lot to attend to in late 1974, including the continuing controversy over the pardon, which he tried to tamp down by testifying before the House Judiciary Committee. I accompanied him to the Hill and sat with Jack Marsh in the hearing room in the Rayburn Building as the president told the committee members and the nation, “There was no deal. Period. Under no circumstances.” I hadn’t been involved in the debate or discussions leading up to the pardon, but it was—and remains—my firm conviction that he granted it because he believed it was the right thing for the country.
Also on his plate was the confirmation of a new vice president, a bad economy, and the unraveling of America’s effort in Vietnam. For him to move forward on these many fronts, it was clear to me that the chief of staff had to get a handle on the day-to-day operations of the White House, and that was never going to happen as long as Bob Hartmann remained just a few unobstructed steps from the Oval Office.
I urged Don to suggest to the president that he needed a private office where he could work and think in more relaxed and comfortable surroundings