Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [120]
While Kissinger emerged from the Ford cabinet shake-up unenthusiastic about losing his second hat as national security adviser, he characteristically found humor in his situation. While briefing congressional Republican leaders on foreign aid around that time, he joked, “I’ve been so busy figuring out what jobs I have left that I haven’t had time to study this.”1 In truth, President Ford’s surprise moves flummoxed the wily Kissinger—a man not easily flummoxed. So entrenched was his well-deserved reputation as a master strategist who could predict the actions of leaders like moves on a chessboard, that some people even assumed he had to be the one behind the Halloween massacre, to eliminate me as an obstacle in the White House.2 Surely, some reporters contended, Ford’s moves had to have been part of some grand Kissinger plan. And if it was not Kissinger’s plan, then it must have been Rumsfeld’s. Once again, the conspiracy theorists prevailed in the press, and the conventional wisdom didn’t give Ford the credit he deserved.
Privately, Kissinger thought it was “scary” to, as he put it, “monkey around with the whole NSC machinery when things are going reasonably well.”3 Kissinger, who had worked for Vice President Rockefeller and knew him to be his unfailingly strong ally in the Ford White House, at first believed Rockefeller’s assertions that I was behind his removal from the NSC post.
“The guy that cut me up inside this building isn’t going to cut me up any less in Defense,” Kissinger told Treasury Secretary Bill Simon immediately after the shake-up.4 If in fact Kissinger was angry, it did not last. Indeed, one of Ford’s stated reasons for moving me to the Department of Defense was that Kissinger and I were able to work together.
My relationship with Kissinger changed when I moved to the Pentagon. As secretary of defense, I was now a statutory member of the NSC. Since the days he had elbowed out Bill Rogers as secretary of state in the Nixon administration, Kissinger had become accustomed to making national security decisions with the President pretty much alone. As Kissinger knew well, my relationship with Ford went back to our days in Congress. I also wasn’t hesitant to express my views. Perhaps because Kissinger wasn’t either, the presumption, particularly in the press, was that we would be in constant conflict.
Though differences did exist, they were not many and they were on substance. One point of tension was unavoidable. Kissinger and I led institutions that were different in mission and makeup: One focused on sustained diplomatic engagement; the other focused on preparing for, deterring, and, when necessary, engaging in military conflict. Given the different perspectives, I thought it particularly important that Kissinger and I base our dealings on a common understanding of the facts and an open flow of information. This led to an early test of our relationship. As a former ambassador and State Department official, I knew that the distribution of sensitive cables sent to Washington from overseas posts would often be narrowly restricted by the Department of State, despite the fact that some needed to be read by a wider group of senior national security officials. I asked my staff to prepare a chart that tracked the flow of the restricted-distribution cables from the State Department to the Pentagon.5 The tracking chart made clear that the sensitive cable traffic to DoD had decreased precipitously.
With the chart in hand, I met with Kissinger and not too subtly suggested that he open the flow of information to the Pentagon. He knew well that information was power. Kissinger seemed, or more likely acted, surprised by the statistics and vowed to improve the situation. Still, there never was the free exchange of information that I sought. It was a sign that even our good personal relationship had its limits.
I knew I had to do all I could to persuade Congress and the public that the United States had to bolster its military capabilities if we were to deter the Soviets in the years ahead. We needed to ensure peace