Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [82]
On October 10, 1973, in a surprise announcement, Spiro T. Agnew resigned as vice president after he was charged with bribery. I had never had a particularly high opinion of Agnew’s performance, but even I was startled by the allegations of graft.
Soon thereafter, names began to come up as possibilities to replace Agnew. On Friday, October 12, I was in the ambassador’s residence in Belgium when I received a call from a reporter from NBC in Washington. He said he had information that I was going to be named vice president. I thought it was laughable. Then a college classmate of mine, Marty Hoffmann, who was serving as general counsel of the Department of Defense, called and told me the same rumor. After that, we received a dozen or so calls in rapid succession. The BBC said they had it on highly reliable authority that Rumsfeld was to be the nominee. A man from Senator Charles Percy’s staff then called and said my name was “all over the Senate.”4
A media frenzy was now underway, with wild rumors flying around every name suggested by almost anyone. Around 1:00 a.m. in Belgium, Armed Forces Radio reported that another widely mentioned candidate, Gerald R. Ford, was now out of the running. Then CBS, covering multiple bets, reported that the vice presidential nominee would be former Secretary of State Bill Rogers, former Secretary of Defense Mel Laird, or me. I suspected that my name was being thrown into the mix intentionally by Nixon or his staff to either heighten my vis ibility as a possible Senate candidate some day or, more likely, as a diversion—to make his announcement of someone else an even bigger surprise. Convinced it would not happen, I went to bed. Shortly thereafter, two or three cars with press people and cameras arrived and camped out in front of our house. This got Joyce’s attention. She nudged me. “Are you sure it’s not you?” she asked.
At 2:00 a.m. Brussels time, the cars outside our house started to disperse. In the East Room of the White House, after enjoying the guessing game that had surrounded his choice, President Nixon announced that he intended to nominate House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford to be vice president. I hoped Ford’s honesty and forthrightness would help to shake off the ugly mood from Agnew’s resignation and the Watergate mess, and reestablish the reputation of the administration.
The vice presidential speculation now over, my attention was on other things. In early October 1973, the Yom Kippur War had broken out. The war began when a coalition of Arab nations—led by Egypt—launched a surprise attack on Israel. As tensions rose, I received a phone call from NATO Secretary General Joseph Luns. The tall and imposing Dutchman was an adept manager of the range of personalities and priorities represented by the fifteen permanent representatives to NATO.
Luns told me he had received a call from the Italian ambassador to NATO, who had received a call from a foreign ministry official in Rome, who had received a call from an Italian senator, who had been called by an alarmed woman in his constituency. The woman had been awakened suddenly by lights and loud vehicle movements at a military facility near her home where American forces were stationed.5 They all wanted to know what was happening. Like them, I had no idea.
I phoned Washington and learned that our forces at the military facility in Italy were being mobilized by the President to assist with supplies for the Israelis. Though Italy, of course, was a NATO ally, Italy’s ambassador to NATO didn’t know a thing about it, nor did anyone else at NATO, including, quite obviously, Secretary General Luns and me. Ever since I had arrived in Brussels, I had stressed the importance of trust and consultation within the alliance, but here we had not lived up to our promise. It was an awkward episode.* But more than that, I saw it as a