Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [129]
On December 10, 1976, I had a second meeting with the President-elect. He asked to come to the Pentagon to meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He brought with him Senator Walter Mondale, the vice president–elect.
We provided Carter and his designated national security team with a topsecret briefing on Soviet capabilities. Our briefing had given many people, including a number of Democrats, considerable pause about the Soviet Union and its intentions. But if the briefing had a similar effect on Carter, he hid it well. After the session was over, the President-elect asked that I stay behind for a few minutes, along with Chairman Brown and the members of the Joint Chiefs.
When the room was cleared, Carter told us with a sense of excitement that he had received an “unprecedented” communication from the Soviets about their interest in an arms-control agreement. What led Carter to consider the contents unprecedented he did not say. Carter then informed us that he wanted negotiation rather than confrontation with the Soviet Union. The President-elect asked the members of the chiefs to give him a detailed appraisal of the flexibility he would have in negotiations with Brezhnev.13 While I thought it appropriate that he was so straightforward with the chiefs about his intentions, focusing on how much the United States could concede to the Soviets struck me as worrisome, especially in light of the briefing he had just received.
My impression of Carter in action was of a new president determined to change much of what had been done in the Nixon and Ford years. It seemed his approach would be that faucets on were to be turned off, and vice versa. It was not an uncommon start to a new administration but it could be costly for the country if carried to an extreme. An example of this tendency was Carter’s prompt canceling of the B-1 bomber program, the construction of which I authorized as one of my final acts as secretary of defense. This supersonic, swept-wing replacement for the aging, workhorse B-52 bomber carried a high price tag, but its flexibility and its capability to serve our country’s needs for many decades convinced me it was a sound investment.*
Soon after Carter’s inauguration, Joyce and I went with Dick and Lynne Cheney on a brief vacation on the island of Eleuthera in the Caribbean. After the hectic years following our meeting at Dulles airport in August 1974, we were starting to unwind. It was a pleasant transition for us all. We played tennis, boated, and spent time in the sun talking about life. Cheney grilled steaks and made chili.
After a long and tumultuous journey, we were out of government and unemployed. Our thoughts turned to the future. Though President Ford urged me to stay involved in politics, I was ready to move into the business world.15 Dick was thinking about a number of possibilities, including elective office. The only thing I knew for sure was that Joyce and I were heading home to Illinois.
PART VII
Back to Reality
“Washington, D.C. is sixty square miles surrounded by reality.”
—As quoted in Rumsfeld’s Rules
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
NOVEMBER 18, 1983
Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd was one of the forty-five sons of Ibn Saud, modern Saudi Arabia’s founder. Fahd had ascended to the throne only a year earlier. One of the wealthiest men in the world, he received me amid plush furnishings, floors of marble, and walls etched in gold.
I had been the CEO of G. D. Searle & Co., a pharmaceutical company, for nearly five years when I took a leave of absence to serve as President Reagan’s Middle East envoy. In that capacity I went on a mission to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where I sought the ruling family’s assistance on the crisis in Lebanon.
As we began our official talks, the Saudi king’s servants brought tea out to us in the ornate formal throne room.