Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [445]
† President Ford had another reason for wanting me to take the post. He wrote: “Defense, I told Rumsfeld, was the place he ought to go. With his experience and ability, he could convince Congress to appropriate necessary funds for the military.”10
* In 1963, I had spoken out against President Kennedy’s appointment of Paul Nitze to be secretary of the Navy when I was in Congress. I had read of some of the recommendations of a panel he had chaired, which I considered too conciliatory toward the Soviets. After I learned that he had been asked to chair the committee specifically to try to improve the recommendations, I apologized to him. We became warm friends.13
* Bush obscured the situation somewhat in his own book by putting the allegation in the words of an unnamed “former House colleague,” who told him, “‘I think you ought to know what people up here are saying about your going to the CIA…. They feel you’ve been had, George. Rumsfeld set you up and you were a damned fool to say yes.’” By repeating the myth instead of setting the record straight, Bush in effect endorsed it.15
* Bush contended that it was President Ford’s decision to exclude him from consideration for vice president. Bush is quoted as saying, “I told Ford I’m not going to do that, but if you want me in this job enough you will make the caveat.”20
* In a 1977 interview Rockefeller said, “The third thing that I have no proof of but I have no way of explaining the event that ensued except by surmising what I will say to you and that is that Rumsfeld had something on the President that he could use and that the President for whatever reason did not want to come out. And therefore it was virtually if not in actual fact a blackmail situation.”26
* By the next day Kissinger had cooled down. After a meeting with the President, he said, “Don, I want you to know that I believe you handled the matter last night just right…. We would have ended up in a pissing match within the government, and we don’t need that.” He concluded saying, “I owed you that and wanted you to know it.” Kissinger could be a fierce bureaucratic battler, but he also was a man of integrity who would admit when he had erred.8
* As was tradition for nominees, I was introduced to the Senate Armed Services Committee by the two senators from my home state: Senator Charles Percy, a Republican from my old congressional district, and Senator Adlai Stevenson III, a Democrat. I had known Senator Percy for many years, and Senator Stevenson was the son of the man who had so sparked my interest in public service some two decades before.
† Ford was so angry that he uncharacteristically started questioning the personal fortitude of members of Congress. I cautioned Ford against that kind of rhetoric. I told him that was the kind of thing LBJ would say. “There is something about that chair,” I said, pointing to the one behind his desk, “that makes presidents begin to act and talk in a way to make them seem tough.” I urged Ford instead to approach his critics like Eisenhower did—in sorrow rather than in anger, and to rise above them rather than to sink to their level.3
* Around the time I was born, a New York Times reporter, Walter Duranty, won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Stalin era. Some of his articles were headlined: “industrial success emboldens soviet in new world policy,” “red army is held no menace to peace,” and “stalinism solving minorities problem.” Duranty’s reports from Moscow denied allegations that Stalin’s regime had starved its citizens—“There is no famine or actual starvation, nor is there likely to be”—and offered uncritical reporting on Stalin’s show trials of political dissidents (“You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs”). Though much of the reporting proved to be false—and precisely in line with what Stalin wanted the world to believe—Duranty’s Pulitzer has never been revoked.8
* Helms later said he voted against my confirmation to register his protest against President Ford for firing Schlesinger instead of Kissinger.