Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [106]
Parts of the administration were moving in different directions and at different speeds. The White House gears were grinding against each other, causing unnecessary friction in interpersonal relationships. This was not the fault of the individuals involved. I told Ford squarely that I believed it was the result of the way he had organized the White House.3
“This is not very encouraging,” Ford said.
“Well, hell, it’s not,” I replied. “But it’s solvable.”
With that, Dick and I took our departure.4
The President gave the draft memo back to me the next morning, a Friday. He told me he wanted to see Cheney and me Saturday morning, and then Kissinger and me later the same afternoon. He added that what he had in mind for that meeting would require that I get along very well with Kissinger.5
Later that evening, I told Ford that after our morning meeting he might not want to go ahead with whatever he was planning, since I was considering leaving the administration. Ford didn’t yet know that Cheney and I had decided we would attach letters of resignation to the finished memo.6 We wanted the President to know that we couldn’t serve him properly under the current circumstances.
Saturday, October 25, was a beautiful Indian summer day. Cheney and I went into the Oval Office shortly after eleven to review our completed memo with the President. We had pulled together a list of eight major issues we believed put Ford’s administration and reelection in jeopardy, including the President’s reputation as a nice person but an ineffective chief executive, administrative disorder in the White House, and a lack of clear priorities.
I set out specific suggestions to improve the running of staff meetings, the calendar, and scheduling—all issues that had caused the President headaches for the past year but which he had been reluctant to allow me to fix. Among other things, our memo outlined: possible scenarios for the upcoming presidential primary campaign and fundamental problems in the administration; problems with the workings of the National Security Council; and the need for better coordination with the speech shop and with the Vice President.
Because we wanted to underscore the seriousness of the memorandum and its recommendations, we included the following:
With that background, and because of our deep sense of these problems, the only way to conclusively make the case and demonstrate the importance we attach to the kinds of changes recommended, is to assure that there will be absolutely no question in your mind that anything said below would affect us in any way or be to our advantage….
Therefore, our resignations are attached.
There was nothing in the memo I had not said to the President a number of times before—and of course, he had seen an earlier draft on Thursday evening. But the weight of all of it together in a single memo, along with our resignations, got his attention. Ford did break into a broad smile as he read the P.S. I had attached at the end: “If you can take this load and still smile, you are indeed a President.”7
Ford handed the memo back to me and told us that he had to think about it. He went on to discuss normal administrative issues, as if this was any other morning meeting.8 Cheney and I left the Oval Office not knowing what would happen next.
A few hours later I went back in to meet with the President and Kissinger, as scheduled. Ford seemed relaxed and confident. We sat on the couches, he in his chair in front of the fireplace. After a few pleasantries, the President calmly announced he had decided to make some major personnel changes. He informed us he had decided to replace Bill Colby as CIA director with George H. W.