Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [444]
* As a consequence of this serious dispute, Greece withdrew its forces from NATO’s military command structure. They were readmitted in 1980.
† Nixon noted in his memoir that “Don Rumsfeld called from Brussels, offering to resign as Ambassador to NATO and return to help work against the impeachment among his former colleagues in Congress.” My guess is that Haig may have told Nixon this to try to lift his spirits.10
* Ford turned down contract offers to play professional football for the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers to attend Yale Law School.
* Senator Edward Kennedy was one of the harshest critics of the pardon, skirting close to accusing Ford of complicity in Watergate: “Do we operate under a system of equal justice where there is one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty? It is the wrong time and the wrong place and the wrong person to receive a pre-indictment pardon. And it has led many Americans to believe that it was a culmination of the Watergate coverup.” It was not the first or only time Kennedy was wrong. In 2001, Ford received the profile in Courage award from the John F. Kennedy Library, and Senator Kennedy praised him in quite different terms.24
* I was pleased to learn that I would be succeeded at NATO by the distinguished diplomat David K. E. Bruce. Bruce had been the head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Britain during World War II and had had the unique distinction of having served as ambassador to Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. Bruce’s appointment signaled Ford’s serious commitment to the alliance.
* Three weeks after I became chief of staff, I told the President he needed to meet alone with Schlesinger to get his “unvarnished” views on arms control negotiations with the Soviets before he issued guidance to Kissinger, who would be conducting the talks. I discovered a week later that Ford had decided to just call his secretary of defense and inform him of the guidance that he had given to Kissinger, who by then had already departed for Moscow.13
* There are conflicting reports on exactly when this event took place—Jude Wanniski states that it was in December 1974 and that Dick Cheney and I were both there. In 2004, Wanniski gave a different account on an internet blog. Memory can be a tricky thing. As it happens, my calendar indicates the dinner was on September 16, 1975, and I have a personal note about Art sketching the curve that night on a napkin.22
* Rockefeller considered himself the head of the Domestic Council, which Nixon had created in 1970. Theoretically, the Domestic Council would do for domestic policy what the National Security Council did for the President’s national security policy.
* The President was absolutely correct on this issue. At one meeting, Ford asked if anyone was in favor of giving New York City a bailout before it defaulted. I replied not just no—but hell no.36
* For example, one luncheon included Gertrude Himmelfarb, Edward Banfield, Herbert Storing, and Thomas Sowell.
* Ford once explained to me the reasons for his initial reluctance. When Nixon asked Ford to become vice president, Nixon told Ford that he wanted his favorite cabinet member, John Connally, to be the Republican standard-bearer in 1976, presumably after Nixon’s full eight years in office.
* Moore later said she was blinded by radical political views. Her concession would have been small consolation had she killed the President. She was released from prison in 2009.51
* Ford describes the scene in a similar fashion in his autobiography: “Kissinger and Rumsfeld were stunned by the sweeping nature of these changes. Both expressed doubts.”9
† President Ford had another reason for wanting me to take the post. He wrote: “Defense, I told Rumsfeld, was the