Dick Cheney on Watergate and the Office of the President

that the organizational structure itself had caused Watergate and so the conventional wisdom that President Ford followed initially was he wasn't gonna have a strong chief of staff he was gonna have some cold spokes of the wheel and spoke so that we it was nobody was in charge at nine or ten senior people all reporting to the president we tried that for a few months and it didn't work nobody was in charge we'd end up with with the president double scheduled he being you know having a meeting with the NSC on Soviet arms control issues and forty wrote Aryans from Grand Rapids that show up in the West Wing lobby for their meeting with the president so we fairly quickly moved back to the chief of staff concept and that's when I took over after Rumsfeld left after about a year that's certainly the way I operated the the fact of the matter is as I look back on and reflect now most administration's sooner or later have come back and adopted what I described as the Haldeman method of organizing the White House I believe today the day that's the best way to operate but it was clear when he sat there and spent a couple of days with Bob Haldeman listening to him talk about the White House and so forth that he had spent an enormous amount of time thinking about it then he had come up with what I think is still the best way to operate as White House chief of staff with a strong central staff system that you need that in order to protect the president we tried to provide the president what he needs you might have some dispute controversy over how it was used or how it was applied in specific circumstances but I think that basic fundamental structure was was the right one and that sooner or later all administrations end up with something resembling that organization that presidency rested on something called the Brandeis brief but it doesn't it depend whether the president likes documents I mean that one that that system you need a president who absorbs by reading it likes to have things committed to paper no well Jerry Ford liked to did a lot on paper but he did a lot it was a verbal guy liked to have meetings where we talk about issues of George Bush does too but sooner or later we all end up now I think virtually every administration's had a chief of staff's in or later I remember they M the Carter people took over after we left Hamilton jerk going-away party for me as I was departing job the staff had a gathering where they gave me a gift the gift was a bicycle wheel mounted on a piece of plywood with every single spoke except one busted there's only one spoke left connecting the rim you know and they put a tag on the bottom of it said the rare form of management artistry the dispose of the wheel to rare form of management artistry is conceived by jury Ford and modified by Dick Cheney and I left that in that big corner office that the chief of staff occupies on January 20th of 77 setting up there on the table with a note pinned to it to Hamilton Jordan said dear Hamilton beware the spokes of the wheel were you the one that changed it then it wasn't Rumsfeld well Rumsfeld had started at two but my staff said you know that it's the way they made the tag Don had perceived that we weren't gonna get anywhere with the spokes of the wheel so he'd started that process before he left

Channel: Richard Nixon Presidential Library

Views: 18,762

Rating: 4.6049385 out of 5

Keywords: Dick, Cheney, President, Nixon, Watergate

Id: pNE3FdxhB9Y

Length: 3min 34sec (214 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 14 2012