Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [66]
One could see why the piece was irresistible to critics. It was undoubtedly given to Anderson by an insider who didn’t like the reforms I was implementing to make OEO more efficient and leaner. There was only one problem: Anderson’s story was not true. In fact, as far as I could tell, not a word of that column was accurate, with the exception of the correct spelling of my name. Anderson had not bothered to make a simple phone call to confirm his facts or even to ask for a comment.
I had learned in managing Congressman Dave Dennison’s 1958 campaign how even the appearance of wrongdoing could be terribly damaging. A newspaper article, no matter how false, can stick to a public figure for decades. The old axiom about the press is that a politician should never engage in battle with an opponent that buys ink by the barrel. But I had to do something. So I dictated a four-page response that addressed the Anderson column point by point, including:
QUOTE: “Anti-poverty czar Donald Rumsfeld has wielded an economy ax on programs for the poor…”
COMMENT: 1969 FY expenditures were $1.7 [billion]. The Nixon Administration request for $2.8 billion…is still pending before Congress. That is not an “economy ax.”
QUOTE: “Expensive lamps now give a soft, restful glow to the walls that were once lit by fluorescent tubes.”
COMMENT: The fluorescent tubes are still there. Three lamps, GSA issue, are not in Rumsfeld’s office, but in the reception area on the 8th floor. There is not a lamp in Rumsfeld’s office, either expensive or cheap, restful or not restful.
QUOTE: “And as evidence of his new Cabinet rank, Rumsfeld has added the ultimate in executive status symbols: a private bathroom.”
COMMENT:…There is no private bathroom. There are two bathrooms on the 8th floor where Rumsfeld’s office is located—one for ladies and one for men. Rumsfeld uses the latter.7
After my secretary typed up my response, I invited Anderson to read it and to take a tour of my office. After he saw with his own eyes that his entire piece was false, I was under the naïve impression that he would correct his column with the same fanfare that his original column received. But, quite the contrary, he informed me that while he regretted the error, he had recently inherited his column from longtime columnist Drew Pearson. Anderson said he feared that if he admitted he had run a totally false column, some of newspapers in the syndicate for his column might drop it.* Obviously, he was more concerned about his paycheck than the damage the article did to me or the truth.
The episode was like a body blow and left me with a deep caution of the press. Years later, when I left government and moved back to Chicago in 1977, the Anderson story would still haunt me. Joyce and I would run into people who, while generally friendly and complimentary, wondered why I had built that fancy bedroom and private bathroom at the expense of the poor.
Our plan was to have OEO serve as a laboratory for experimental programs, not as an entity that managed large operations in perpetuity. For example, OEO had tried a number of innovative approaches to education. Under my predecessors, to their credit, OEO had launched an experiment providing school vouchers for parents. The plan had the support of my friend Milton Friedman.9 Friedman and I believed that school vouchers could lead to an improvement in public education by giving parents choices rather than forcing them to send their children to a particular school.10 OEO also had supported an experiment in performance contracting for teachers, an idea that was bitterly opposed by the politically active teachers’ unions.
I also served on a committee President Nixon established to encourage and guide school desegregation policies