After The Fall

More than a generation has passed since my closest brush with history. What I did could have been accomplished by a number of folks with whom I worked, but I was selected to do the job. It wasn't heroic and to date has not warranted even a footnote in the saga of Richard Nixon, but someday a graduate student in political science or history may find it interesting. I kept no notes or records so, as it's entirely dependent on my memory, it will have to be discounted accordingly.

Since I do not overvalue my role in the change of administrations from Richard Nixon to Gerald Ford, I chose not to write about it before today. Another consideration is that most of the actors are dead and there is little need to protect anyone - not that there was before. Besides what I did and know is not likely to alter the record in a substantive way.

I was working in the Executive Office of the President as a management analyst in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during the summer of 1974. My primary job was to represent the Office (and by extension, the President) in the operations of one of the ten standard regions established by Mr. Nixon. I will write on this function more in a later posting as it, too, may be of interest to students of Mr. Nixon and his presidency.

You will recall - from memory or the historical accounts, depending on your age - that the pressure on President Nixon to resign was building rapidly as summer of 1974 approached. The cover up of the burglary of Democratic National Committee office in the Watergate office complex was collapsing on all fronts, and the administration was in disarray. As the legal and Congressional screws tightened, it became obvious from press and TV accounts that Nixon was through, and he soon quit rather than face impeachment. The images of his farewell in the White House and as he boarded his plane (formerly Air Force One) are very vivid in my mind's eye.

I recall being appalled by the President's behavior as the saga played out, but I was brought to tears by the poignant scenes that played out for the world to see as he expressed his goodbyes. It was a tragedy in the classic sense, and Sophocles could not have dreamed up a better plot or central character.

To digress, based on my family's experience as working class Irish Catholics during the Great Depression, I had been a life long supporter of the Democratic Party and its presidential nominees. As a career federal employee, I remember being quite apprehensive when Nixon won the election. But over the course of five years, I changed my mind about the president. It was apparent to me that he was no enemy of the career force, and I had the opportunity to thrive during his administration and began my shift to a more conservative political outlook.

So it was that Nixon departed into exile in San Clemente, California, never to be heard from again or so it was thought. But that wasn't the end of it. Apparently Mr. Nixon understood that he was no longer in office but giving up power was one thing but perks was another. From what I recall, it wasn't Nixon who was the problem but a number of those in his entourage who left for the West Coast with him. It seems that the General Services Administration (GSA) - the government's procurer and provider of internal goods and services - was being pushed by various aids to the former president to provide a level of service to him - and them - that didn't take into account the fact that he was no longer the top dog and, by extension, they were no longer big shots. On the other hand, the management and employees of GSA were quite conscious of the fact that a change in administrations had taken place, and they were resisting demands from them for a level of service reserved for sitting Presidents.

Not surprisingly, phones began to ring off the hook in my place of employment, The Office of Management and Budget, the nerve center in the federal government where administrative power is most exercised over departments and agencies. While not privy to what was happening, the rumor was that the then OMB Director, Roy Ash, and other senior officials were being bombarded with complaints from Nixon's staff to straighten out the GSA and get the goods and services flowing as they had before the fall.

It was my understanding that top GSA and OMB managers understood each other and were in agreement that the staff of the former president just didn't get it; they were disgraced and out of office and expected to be treated as if nothing had happened. There was no easy solution to the problem. No one wanted to call the former president and order him to clamp down on these over privileged and spoiled staffers, but a solution had to be found.

Paul O'Neill, who later became President of ALCOA and Secretary of the Treasury under President George W. Bush, was one of Ash's key aids. Paul and I had been trainees in the same agency and neighbors in Northern Virginia, and he was a very friendly acquaintance of mine. He was the one who came up with the solution to send me to San Clemente to handle the situation.

On the day that President Ford issued his pardon of Nixon, I arrived at the former Western White House, Casa Pacifica, in San Clemente, CA. I do not remember much of what happened in those first hours but I met early on with Ron Ziegler, Press Secretary to President Nixon who told me of the pardon and - I felt - tried to intimidate me right from the start.

Over the next hours, I met a large number of people on the Coast Guard Station which was the host facility for the Nixon group. I remember being quite confused about who - aside from the celebrities - was with the former president and those who were with the GSA on site.

Most of the names have been forgotten in the intervening years, but the Nixon people with whom I interacted over the next five or six weeks included Ziegler, Major Jack Brennan, USMC - the president's military aid, Diane Sawyer - now of TV fame who was working with Ron, and Steve Bull - Mr. Nixon's personal aid and executive assistant.

Rightly or not, I soon focused in on Steve Bull as my principal point of contact. During this period, from my perspective, he was far closer to the boss than the others, and I inferred that he was speaking for Mr. Nixon and that the others represented their own interests. Steve was also very supportive of my mission and seemed not at all hung up on the lack of perks that I gathered were most galling to Messrs. Ziegler and Brennan. I soon began avoiding that pair to the greatest degree possible.

As I went about my business, I interviewed the top GSA managers on site. I was very impressed with their competence and their willingness to cooperate with me. Although it was obvious that they were very gun shy about the Nixon staff, especially the two I'd spotted as being difficult. They also harbored bad feelings toward Nixon's staff based on what they told me was very difficult behavior on the part of the president's people over the entire five and a half years they were in power.

It was evident that the two camps were at loggerheads over how the entourage would be treated. It has been many years since I reviewed the legislation on former presidents, and I'm not going to waste time on this except to say that former chiefs are granted many perks and significant resources during their lifetimes. But Nixon was different in both public perception and in the eyes of GSA managers. Nixon had been disgraced and deserved little of the honors granted former leaders.

On the other hand, President Ford, as far as I could determine, wanted nothing more than to calm troubled waters and to get the government and the nation back on a healthy footing. So the problem became focused for me. We had a small group of people who wanted all or more than all of the perks due them as staff to the former president, and we had an agency full of people who didn't like these people at all and who wanted to assure they got the minimum of assistance. My job was to find the appropriate middle ground.

To the best of my recollection, I never called my bosses for guidance during the entire period I was in San Clemente and was bound and determined that I would create peace between the warring gangs. The Administrator of GSA and one of his key aids flew out and we all danced around the subject. After a long session, I convinced them - that's my story and I'm sticking with it - that the only way to settle the problem was for the GSA folks from top to bottom to stop pouting and start treating the Nixon people like they were any other agency of the government seeking goods and services. By this time, they seemed ready to start acting properly. I pledged to them that I'd get the Nixon folks on board with the same proposal.

One day in the midst of my ordeal, I struck up a conversation with Diane Sawyer. She was very nice and a very attractive young woman. We were in viewing distance of the work stations of a number of the clerical staff, and I commented something along the line of it was very sad to see how demoralized the staff was and how hang dog the members appeared to me. I indicated that I could empathize with their situation of having served the most powerful figure in the world and but who were now suffering the angst that was permeating the air. We parted and I thought nothing more of the incident.

Within minutes, however, I was summoned by Ron Ziegler. As I entered his office I found him in a wild purple rage -at me. He accused me of undermining Mr. Nixon with the Ford Administration in general and with top OMB and GSA managers in particular. He wildly shouted that I was reporting to Washington that the staff in Casa Pacifica was sitting around doing nothing. His ranting continued for perhaps ten minutes before I could get a word in edgewise.

To say that I was embarrassed, shocked and worried would be an understatement. Here, just as I was beginning to make headway with my mission, I stood accused of being a traitor to those I was supposed to be helping, according to the apoplectic Ziegler. It took me some minutes to gather myself. Ziegler had me off balance - a great 'gotcha' - and showed no signs of allowing me to regain my equilibrium.

But I quickly realized that he was playing a false premise to a fair-thee-well and just had to resist him no matter how embarrassing it might be to me. I was not working for the Nixon folks, I was there to settle them down. By this time, Ron was threatening to call Roy Ash and have me recalled to Washington immediately. I had just enough presence of mind to call his bluff. I knew that I was right, but I was more than a little frightened. To be turned into Ziegler's agent would have been ridiculous and would have ruined my mission.

I told him that I was sorry if he thought my observations were injudicious and that I had never made them known to Washington. I was in this job alone and would do it to the best of my ability. If that wasn't sufficient, he was told to make the call as I was sick of the whole affair and was willing to chance being recalled in disgrace.

My apologetic non-apology gave him sufficient room to find an out and we moved on. Naturally, my conversations with Ms. Sawyer and Mr. Ziegler were far more formal and circumspect after that cheap effort to undermine my mission.

Over the next day or so I wrote the definitive manual of how the office of THIS former president would request goods and services from the GSA and how the agency would respond. I gave copies to Steve Bull and the GSA managers. Everyone seemed satisfied. I kept a copy but lost it in the years ahead. Perhaps it still exists somewhere

When I received the call to arms, I was told by my boss, Dick Feezle, that my assignment would be for the indefinite future, maybe up to six months. But everything seemed to settle down and after some four to six weeks (I can't really remember), I declared victory and headed home.

As nothing was ever heard again from the Nixon crowd or the GSA on the matter, my mission was a great success.

EPILOGUE

President Nixon was quite successful in rehabilitating his persona and died in not nearly the level of disgrace that might have been had he passed away shortly after the resignation.

I saw and heard Mr. Nixon almost every day I was in San Clemente, but I never met him. Each morning, I'd hear him greet the guards outside my office window. His booming voice was unmistakable. I was amazed that he could pull himself together to chat with the officers in a time frame so close to the resignation.

Steve Bull gave me a tour of the presidential office, and I have interesting but completely unimportant stories about that too. To me, Steve was the good guy and steadying influence in what was transpiring during those extraordinary days.

Diane Sawyer became rich and famous and a great success in broadcasting.

Ron Ziegler moved on, if not up, and had a middling successful career as a lobbyist and association executive.

I lost track of all of the others.

It took me months to recover from the assignment. During my stay in San Clemente, I had become nearly as paranoid as the exiles themselves. It was not a job that I bragged about much during the intervening years.

While in California, I stayed at the San Clemente Inn. This hotel had been the social and political center for the presidential entourage and the hangers on while Nixon was in Casa Pacifica. There were pictures of all of the beautiful people and the great parties on the walls throughout the place. But while I was there, the pall that had descended on the inn was heavy indeed. I've never been back, so I have no way of knowing if business and the atmosphere recovered. But as I recall, it closed after a few years.

Deep Throat
The GSA managers in Casa Pacifica never hesitated to criticize the Nixon staff. One of their constant complaints was that GSA staff was considered sub-human by the entourage. This manifested itself in many ways but one common means was by leaving important - if not highly classified - papers on their desks when they departed for the day or for play. This was interpreted by the managers as disrespectful to the intelligence of the staff since it was inferred that they were not smart enough to understand what was in the documents.

While these managers and I had no clue on who might be "Deep Throat" of Woodward and Bernstein fame, this lack of respect for the brains of ordinary government employees always left me with a miniscule feeling that the ultimate source of the downfall might have been a little cleaning lady with far more on the ball than that for which she was being given credit.

A couple of interesting hearsay points. The GSA managers on site were not reluctant to describe to me their feelings toward some of the famous members of the entourage and a couple of them are worth passing on. Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were the two most important and powerful staffers to President Nixon. As you know, both served time in prison after the fall and both were much feared within the government during their days in power. On site in Casa Pacifica, Haldeman was despised by the GSA folks, but, contrary to what I had expected, Ehrilchman was much admired and respected as a kind and gentle man in his dealings with low level staff.

I had an ordinary life as a mid level federal manager and a great retirement in which I wrote historical novels

The End.

Wildbill944