Takeover, page 46
24. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952).
25. Schlesinger, Imperial Presidency, 153.
26. See, e.g., the Church Committee reports, http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/contents.htm.
27. The Nixon-Frost interview was republished in several places, including in the New York Times, May 20, 1977.
28. See, e.g., Richard Nathan, The Plot That Failed: Nixon and the Administrative Presidency (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1975).
29. On December 13, 1969, for example, Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, recorded in his diary a conversation between Nixon and Rumsfeld in which the president said he wanted the Office of Economic Opportunity reorganized so that “everything clears through one place and there is some degree of control.” Nixon also urged Rumsfeld to consider layoffs and “moved hard on cutting the OEO programs he doesn’t like, i.e., Legal Services, Head Start, etc.” H. R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries (New York: Putnam, 2004), 114–115.
30. Author interview with Paul O’Neill, January 9, 2007.
31. U.S. Code 42 (1970), § 2809.
32. See, e.g., Clark Holmes, “The Poverty Lawyers’ Work Is So Good, It Has to Be Stopped,” Washington Monthly, June 1970, 50; see also David Wilson to John Dean, memorandum re: “Office of Legal Services of OEO,” March 4, 1971, National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, John Dean Materials, Subject Files, box 53, folder: Office of Legal Services.
33. Holmes, “The Poverty Lawyers’ Work.”
34. Author interview with Terry Lenzner, October 3, 2006.
35. In October 1970, however, Rumsfeld did personally order Lenzner to shut down grants to programs in New Orleans, Dallas, and Los Angeles for allegedly violating Legal Services guidelines by, for example, providing legal assistance to a Black Panthers group. Taylor Branch, “The Ordeal of Legal Services: How Poor People Won in Court but Lost in OEO,” Washington Monthly, January 1971.
36. Lenzner interview.
37. Kascht, “The Dick Cheney You Don’t Know,” 93.
38. Lenzner interview. (One dispute from the late spring of 1970 serves to illustrate the mounting political interference in the Legal Services program—and Cheney’s growing role in carrying out Nixon’s agenda of imposing greater control over the antipoverty bureaucracy. It began when a Legal Services lawyer in Charlotte, North Carolina, filed a police misconduct suit against the city on behalf of poor black people. The local board for the Charlotte program fired the lawyer, violating the program’s rules against political interference. Lenzner promptly cut off federal funding for the Charlotte program to punish its board. A powerful Republican congressman from Charlotte, Rep. Charles Jonas, was infuriated by the loss of the grant for his district and met privately with Cheney to demand that it be reinstated. When Lenzner found out that Jonas was meeting with Cheney, the Legal Services director was angry that he had been cut out of the process. But Cheney told Lenzner to back off. A week after the Jonas meeting, on June 2, 1970, Cheney wrote: “Terry, you and I need to sit down and chat about Charlotte Legal Services at your convenience. Congressman Jonas called [Rumsfeld] again and we need to get squared away on what our position is so we can tell him the same story.” Over Lenzner’s strong objections, Charlotte got its grant back—without any new conditions on its board. After Lenzner figured out what had happened, he sent Rumsfeld a memo protesting the way Cheney had handled the Charlotte dispute. In the July 3, 1970, memo, Lenzner said the result “can only be a conclusion in the minds of those present that a decision, for political reasons, can be reversed simply by going to the 8th floor [where Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s offices were] and requesting it.” In the future, Lenzner added, he hoped that Rumsfeld would order Cheney to go through Lenzner’s office first before acting on his own. These memo excerpts are quoted in Paul Clancy, “Charlotte Legal Services Flap Got OEO Aide Fired,” Charlotte Observer, January 17, 1971, photocopy of article located in National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, John Dean Materials, Subject Files, box 53, folder: Office of Legal Services.)
39. Branch, “The Ordeal of Legal Services.”
40. Later, Nixon tried a more frontal assault: refusing to spend money Congress had appropriated to fund the agency. In response, Congress in 1974 turned the program into the Legal Services Corporation, a federally funded private nonprofit that would be better shielded from political interference. Twenty-two years later, a newly Republican-controlled Congress and Democratic president Bill Clinton imposed new restrictions on the Legal Services Corporation. The 1996 changes, which echoed what the Nixon administration had wanted to do without congressional involvement, banned LSC-funded programs from filing “class actions, challenges to welfare reform… litigation on behalf of prisoners, representation in drug-related public housing evictions” and for certain noncitizens—even if they used private donations for such activities. http://www.lsc.gov/about/lsc.php.
41. Barry Werth, 31 Days (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 20.
42. Bob Woodward, “Cheney Upholds Power of the President,” Washington Post, January 20, 2005.
43. The anger in Congress was so great that Ford would take the unheard-of step of personally appearing before Congress to testify about his decision to grant the pardon, swearing that there had been no “deal” to give him the presidency in exchange for the promise of a pardon for Nixon. Ford for years would say that he wanted to spare the country the pain of a long trial for the former president. Then, on his deathbed, he would change his story, saying that his decision—which probably cost him the 1976 presidential election—had been based mostly on his personal feelings of friendship with Nixon. “I looked upon him as my personal friend. And I always treasured our relationship. And I had no hesitancy about granting the pardon, because I felt that we had this relationship and that I didn’t want to see my real friend have the stigma,” Ford confessed on condition that his words not be made public until after his death. See Bob Woodward, “Ford, Nixon Sustained Friendship for Decades,” Washington Post, December 27, 2006.
44. Roy L. Ash to the president, memorandum re: “Freedom of Information Act Amendments (H.R. 12571),” August 12, 1974, Ford Presidential Library, Presidential Handwriting File, box 28, folder: Legislation (1).
45. See, e.g., unsigned and undated Office of Legal Counsel memorandum re: “Constitutional and Policy Questions Raised by the Senate Bill Amending the Freedom of Information Act,” Ford Presidential Library, Philip Buchen Files, box 17, folder: Freedom of Information Legislation (3); and “Fact Sheet on Freedom of Information Act Amendments” and November 13 cover letter identifying them as being by Scalia, Ford Presidential Library, O’Donnell and Jenckes Files, box 5, folder: Freedom of Information 10–12/74.
46. Ken Cole to the president, memorandum re: “H.R. 12471, Amendments to Freedom of Information Act,” October 9, 1974, Ford Presidential Library, Presidential Handwriting File, box 8, folder: Federal Government—Freedom of Information.
47. Veto message to the House of Representatives, October 17, 1974, Ford Presidential Library, Philip Buchen Files, box 17, folder: Freedom of Information Legislation (3).
48. A White House liaison to Congress clipped and saved a newspaper article that deemed the result a sign of the new president’s “humiliating” lack of clout in Congress. The tilt toward Congress was dipping so far that Rumsfeld soon felt compelled to emphasize at a staff meeting “the need for all staffs to be certain that they held firmly to the administration positions when talking to Congress—not seek to ‘get along’ at the president’s expense.” Lyle Denniston, “Diminished Clout on Capitol Hill,” Washington Star-News, November 23, 1974, Ford Presidential Library, O’Donnell and Jenckes Files, box 5, folder: Freedom of Information 10–12/74. (This newspaper closed in 1981, and there are no electronic archives for it. It appears that the headline on the clipping is actually a subheadline and that the full headline is missing, but its final word is “growing.”) Mike Dunn to Bill Seidman, memorandum re: “Senior Staff Meeting, December 13th, at 8:00 a.m.,” December 13, 1974, Ford Presidential Library, L. William Seidman Files, box 90, folder: Senior Staff Meeting 12/13/74.
49. Memorandum of conversation, January 4, 1975, Ford Presidential Library, National Security Adviser Memoranda of Conversations, box 8, folder: January 4, 1975—Ford, Kissinger, Rockefeller, Marsh, Rumsfeld, Buchen.
50. Handwritten memorandum, “CIA—The Colby Report,” December 27, 1974, Ford Presidential Library, Richard Cheney Files, box 5, folder: Intelligence—Colby Report.
51. Kascht, “The Dick Cheney You Don’t Know,” 93.
52. Rod Gramer, “Frank Church: Cerebral, Superior, Brilliant to Some; Cold, Misguided, Inconsistent to Others,” Idaho Statesman, July 20, 1980, quoted in “Frank Church: Idaho’s Man,” Idaho Oral History Project, Boise State University, http://idahooratory.boisestate.edu/Churchbio2.htm.
53. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, April 26, 1976.
54. In 1976, as he was completing this report, Church ran for president. He won several Democratic primaries but eventually ceded the nomination to Jimmy Carter and contented himself with being the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman. His career came to an end in the 1980 election, when he topped a hit list of liberal senators whose reelection campaigns were targeted by out-of-state conservative funding. Accused of being soft on defense amid the conservative tide led by Ronald Reagan, Church lost his seat by less than a percentage point to Republican Steve Symms. Church worked for a few more years as a lawyer in Washington. His cancer returned, and he died in 1984 at the age of fifty-nine. Years later, after the 9/11 attacks, some conservatives would blame the Church Committee for making CIA officers too risk averse as they hunted for terrorists. “Frank Church: Idaho’s Man.”
55. Author interview with Jack Marsh, November 29, 2006.
56. Ron Nessen, It Sure Looks Different from the Inside (Playboy Publications, 1979), 58.
57. Memorandum of conversation, February 21, 1975, Ford Presidential Library, National Security Adviser Memoranda of Conversations, box 9, folder: February 21, 1975—Ford, Kissinger, Rumsfeld, Marsh.
58. Antonin Scalia, speech to the International Conference on the Administration of Justice and National Security in Democracies, Ottawa, Canada, June 12, 2007.
59. Untitled handwritten note, circa March 12, 1975, Ford Presidential Library, Richard Cheney Files, box 6, folder: Intelligence—Congressional Investigations.
60. Marsh interview.
61. Memorandum of conversation, May 14, 1975, Ford Presidential Library, National Security Adviser Memoranda of Conversations, box 11, folder: May 14, 1975—Ford, Kissinger, Bipartisan Congressional Leadership.
62. Peter Goldman, “Ford’s Rescue Operation,” Newsweek, May 26, 1975.
63. “The Mayagüez—What Went Right, What Went Wrong,” U.S. News & World Report, June 2, 1975, 29. For the timing of the radio broadcast and the release of the crew, see Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 567–570.
64. Goldman, “Ford’s Rescue Operation.”
65. President Richard M. Nixon to President Nguyen Van Thieu of the Republic of Vietnam, January 3, 1973, Ford Presidential Library, Richard Cheney Files, box 13, folder: Vietnam—Correspondence from Richard Nixon to Nguyen Van Thieu 10/72–12/72.
66. President Richard M. Nixon to President Nguyen Van Thieu of the Republic of Vietnam, October 16, 1972, Ford Presidential Library, Richard Cheney Files, box 13, folder: Vietnam—Correspondence from Richard Nixon to Nguyen Van Thieu 10/72–12/72.
67. Antonin Scalia, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, statement on executive Agreements (S. 1251 and S. 632), before the Senate Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, Committee on Judiciary, May 15, 1975, Ford Presidential Library, Edward Schmults Files, box 17, folder: Legislative Encroachment Testimony.
68. Philip Buchen to Jeanne Davis, memorandum re: “Senate Foreign Relations Committee Request for Presidential Correspondence on Saudi Arabia,” May 16, 1975, Ford Presidential Library, Philip Buchen Files, box 26, folder: National Security Chronological File (2).
69. National Security Council Memorandum for the Record re: “Executive Agreements,” May 17, 1975, Ford Presidential Library, Philip Buchen Files, box 12, folder: Executive Agreements (2).
70. Handwritten notes, May 29, 1975, Ford Presidential Library, Richard Cheney Files, box 6, folder: Intelligence—New York Times Articles by Seymour Hersh 5/75–6/75 (1).
71. Donald Rumsfeld to Richard Cheney, memorandum re: “WH 50988,” May 30, 1975, Ford Presidential Library, Richard Cheney Files, box 6, folder: Intelligence—New York Times Articles by Seymour Hersh 5/75–6/75 (2).
72. Richard Cheney to Donald Rumsfeld, memorandum re: “Status Report—New York Times Story of Sunday, May 25, 1975,” May 29, 1975, Ford Presidential Library, Richard Cheney Files, box 6, folder: Intelligence—New York Times Articles by Seymour Hersh 5/75–6/75 (1).
73. The available files do not reveal whether such private conversations with newspaper publishers took place. Richard Cheney to Donald Rumsfeld, draft memorandum, May 30, 1975, Ford Presidential Library, Richard Cheney Files, box 6, folder: Intelligence—New York Times Articles by Seymour Hersh 5/75–6/75 (1).
74. Philip Buchen to the president, memorandum re: “Release of the Colby Report,” July 7, 1975, Ford Presidential Library, Presidential Handwriting File, box 30, folder: National Security Intelligence (1).
75. Jack Marsh to the president, memorandum re: “Claim of Executive Privilege,” November 13, 1975, Ford Presidential Library, Presidential Handwriting File, box 31, folder: National Security Intelligence (8).
76. The following February, on Antonin Scalia’s advice, Ford asserted executive privilege to prevent FBI agents and Western Union officials from testifying about a program in which the telegram agency had been turning over cables to the government without warrants. Memorandum of conversation, November 21, 1975, Ford Presidential Library, National Security Adviser Memoranda of Conversations, box 16, folder: November 21, 1975—Ford, Kissinger; Antonin Scalia to Philip Buchen, memorandum re: “Claim of Executive Privilege with Respect to Materials Subpoenaed by the Committee on Government Operations, House of Representatives,” February 17, 1976, Ford Presidential Library, Presidential Handwriting File, box 31, folder: National Security Intelligence (13).
77. Gerald Ford, A Time to Heal (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 324. In 2004, however, after Cheney became vice president, Ford would say that his old aide had changed since the days of their close working relationship. “He was an excellent chief of staff. First class,” Ford told Bob Woodward. “But I think Cheney has become much more pugnacious” as vice president. Ford said he agreed with Colin Powell’s claim that Cheney seemed to have developed a “fever” about the threat of terrorism and Iraq. Bob Woodward, “Ford Disagreed with Bush About Invading Iraq,” Washington Post, December 28, 2006.
78. Quoted in James Bamford, “Bush Is Not Above the Law,” New York Times, February 1, 2007.
79. Philip Buchen to the president, memorandum re: “Intelligence Legislation Proposed by the Justice Department,” February 13, 1976, Ford Presidential Library, Philip Buchen Files, box 26, folder: National Security Chronological File (6).
80. Philip Buchen to the president, memorandum re: “Intelligence Legislation Proposed by the Justice Department,” February 13, 1976, and appendix A (note from the attorney general), Ford Presidential Library, Philip Buchen Files, box 26, folder: National Security Chronological File (6).
81. Philip Buchen to Richard Ober, memorandum re: “Draft Preamble for NSCIDs,” March 17, 1976, Ford Presidential Library, Philip Buchen Files, box 26, folder: National Security Chronological File (6).
82. Philip Buchen to the president, memorandum re: “Legislation on Electronic Surveillance for Foreign Intelligence Purposes,” March 15, 1976, Ford Presidential Library, Philip Buchen Files, box 26, folder: National Security Chronological File (6).
83. Cheney also took a greater leadership role in handling intelligence matters inside the administration, and to advance a tougher stance on the Cold War that he had been developing even before becoming chief of staff. In June 1975, for example, when Vice President Nelson Rockefeller’s commission on CIA activities inside the United States came out with its report detailing many abuses by the agency, most ignored the report as a whitewash when compared with the more aggressive investigation the Church Committee was undertaking. But Cheney thought Rockefeller had gone too far, scrawling on the cover of his copy a question indicating that he thought the vice president had blundered in describing the CIA’s conduct as illegal. “Does criticism of CIA hurt V.P. with conservatives?” Cheney wrote to himself. Later, after taking the lead in Ford’s 1976 election campaign, Cheney helped convince Ford to drop Rockefeller as his vice presidential nominee and replace him with the more conservative Senator Bob Dole of Kansas. Cheney used his position to steer the Ford administration toward his own hard-line views about the Soviet Union. Undercutting Kissinger’s policy of détente, Cheney pressed for a sharper confrontation with Moscow. For example, Cheney urged Ford to meet with the dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn in order to demonstrate that despite détente, the United States’ relationship with the Soviet Union was not “all sweetness and light.” See, e.g., Richard Cheney to Donald Rumsfeld, memorandum re: “Solzhenitsyn,” Ford Presidential Library, Richard Cheney Files, box 10, folder: Solzhenitsyn, Alexander; Jack Marsh to Richard Cheney, memorandum, September 23, 1976, Ford Presidential Library, John Marsh Files, box 76, folder: Cheney, Richard 8/76–9/76.
84. He added, “Although he kept a low public profile, Cheney had accumulated as much control as some of the better-known chiefs of staff. Some reporters privately started calling him the Grand Teuton—a complex pun referring to his mountainous home state of Wyoming and the Germanic style of his predecessor, H. R. Haldeman.” Nessen, It Sure Looks Different, 248–249.
