Unknown: Three, two, one TN: Geoff, I wanted to ask you to recall that
period, if you could, between the fall of 1970 and the removal of the Indians in
June of '71. There are people in the government advocating action. GS: Oh yes. TN: But
nothing happens until June of 1971. GS: Yes. TN: How do you explain that? GS: Do you know Vince Lombardi's discussion
of the forward pass? He ran an on-the-ground offense, three
yards in a cloud of dirt, and what he said about the forward pass was only
three things can happen: catched, dropped, or incomplete, and two of them are bad.
So, only three things can happen, two of them are bad. The Alcatraz situation was
very much like that. It was loose. You couldn't get purchase on the island.
You normally, if you're really going to do something and you don't want to lose
police officers or soldiers, you have to have overwhelming force, and the
likelihood of a violent confrontation was great, and since it wasn't hurting
anyone, it was not an active boiling sore, it was it was difficult, but there was never any immediacy. Now, we got fed up at the end and we felt that the
the people, Len Garment and Brad Patterson whose job it was to deal with,
upset people, that they were losing credibility because this had gone on for
so long. The other thing that happened with the delay was public support for
the Indians faded. This lighthouse in the center of San Francisco Bay was rather
critical as a navigation aid that two tankers had collided under the Golden
Gate Bridge, and it was played that while it didn't happen at Alcatraz, it could've
because this key navigational aid was inoperative because the Indians had
broken in and wrecked the lighthouse. They were looking for confrontation, we wouldn't
give it to them, and to some extent delay postponed
the downside. So, in that instance, it worked. TN: But was
that an intentional policy choice or was that a consequence of just a lack of
consensus on what to do? GS: I think I would go in between. There was never,
Nixon keyed off, everything that he did, the action-forcing event. It was code. Why do
I have to decide this now? Why must I use my political capital on
this? And there was never a sufficient action-forcing event to go. It doesn't
mean the Department of Justice wasn't upset. The US Attorney out in San
Francisco was beside himself. It doesn't mean that there weren't advocates, but
remember when we created the Domestic Council, and at the same time we turned
the Bureau of the Budget into the Office of Management and Budget, we had
consolidated not just policy decision into the White House staff itself but
virtually every major decision. It followed communications. Your Cabinet officers no more announced what they thought. They needed to clear it first
And we have that today. We've had it with every presidency ever since but it
was new to Nixon. For your researchers, you need to go back and look at Reorganization Plan Number 2 of 1970, which, when introduced, lays out the
rationale for this, lays out what the President hope to accomplish by these
two major changes, but my view is the creation of the Domestic Council, now
it's called the Domestic Policy Council, and the Office of Management and Budget
where it wasn't most budget it was what you were supposed to do with the money,
the management, it's the foundation of the modern presidency, and it's the
consolidation into the White House. Well, before the Department of Justice
might have moved on its own, but no more, no more. This is a decision, we don't like
the President to be known as the decision maker. If it doesn't work, the
staff has to take the fall. If it works, the President gets credit,
but everything came to the White House. How far up it went within the White
House was a function of how confident people were. I don't have any way of
knowing, except on your tapes, whether Ehrlichman really discussed this with the President. Bud's memo that I drafted on
June 10th recommends to Ehrlichman that we move. I don't know if Ehrlichman went into the Oval Office, or outside the Oval Office, the tapes don't contain
everything, of how much base he felt he had to touch. That's an unknown to me from my vantage point. TN: Let's move to an
action-forcing event. November 1972, the Indians take the Bureau of Indian
Affairs, November 3rd. GS: Yes. TN: '72, this is right around, this is the end of the campaign right before Election Day. GS: Yes. TN: This is a problem, this is an occupation, the occupation of a federal building in the District of Columbia. GS: Yes. TN: What do you recall of that event? GS: Quite a confrontation. Five hundred Indians, the American Indian Movement, the Trail of Broken Treaties they're coming to
negotiate something, and then they decide not to leave. The bureaucrats were ready to
leave and the Indians weren't. And so, they took over. I don't know that they
came in to take over the building but they took over the building.
It was a confrontation, in your face, unacceptable.
Again, vast differences of opinion. I don't remember this. There's nothing I wrote on it. I looked in my my files. But they were there from the 3rd
to the 10th - uh, to the 9th, they left on the 9th. Let me start with the
end. Because I think the end is very, very instructive. In the end, we paid them
to leave. I don't remember whether it was a hundred bucks per family or five hundred, because the numbers have changed, but it was enough gas to get home, that was the
theory, but we bribed them to leave. Now, during
the course of the week, there was all kinds of things we could do to get them
out but, again, it was going to be a violent confrontation. The first choice
was Jerry Wilson, the District of Columbia Chief of Police. We say, "Well, go take them out. You're Chief of Police. You got five thousand cops," or whatever it
was, "go take them out." And he had been chief for a long time and had grown up in the department and he said, "Not on your life. We'll have dead bodies if I send in my police officers. They're, they're, they're
not, we don't know what they have or if they have rifles or something else. They may not even get to the front door before they get cut down." You know, we didn't have SWAT teams in those days, and he said, "Unless you want blood on
your hands before the election, you do not want to try to remove these people."
Brad Patterson tells me we sent him over to negotiate and it put his life in
jeopardy because they weren't gonna let him leave after the negotiations. I, of
course, wouldn't go in. I was in charge of law enforcement. Law enforcement had worked with Alcatraz. Why wouldn't it work here? Demand answers. Well, if the
Chief of Police is reluctant to go in, how about the Army? They've got a SWAT team. And so, we talked to the Army about, you know, bringing in armored personnel
carriers and, you know, there's this law, it's called the Posse Comitatus Act,
and it says you can't use the Army for domestic disturbances unless all
kinds of conditions, and we didn't meet them. You know, civilian rule is at
risk, and all and, you know, the police hasn't worked, and the other thing
the Army wanted, strangely, the Army said, 'If we do something, we do it with
overwhelming force. We don't just send up an armored personnel carrier to the front
door and off lead five or six guys in the cameras, we bring a thousand guys.
Because overwhelming forces,' under the Bush Administration we call that 'shock
and awe,' 'we don't lose soldiers if the opposition realizes they are so
outgunned and so outnumbered, resistance is useless, or we don't go in.'
Well, we didn't need that either, you know, we did not need that kind of
confrontation. So, in the end, and the election must have occurred
so whatever publicity there was, they were paid off and they left. We
discovered two things, just to show you how you accumulate wisdom. One thing was they
kept all the kids on the top floor where there was a library and they turned it
into a nursery. The other thing, close to the library were five-gallon jerry cans of
gasoline discovered up there. Now, you could conclude from this that some
people in the organization were willing to torch their kids and have a absolute
massacre to make the point. You could conclude well,, it was just a fluke that the
gas was up there near the kids. Certainly the parents of the kids didn't know the
gas was up there, they wouldn't let the kids go up there, but with 500 people,
you have crazies who want the confrontation so badly they don't care
who gets hurt and if we had rushed the building we would have had not just a
couple of dead bodies, we would have had a massacre and it would have been highly, highly-- We would talk about it, it would make the Kent State situation look like a
birthday party, and wiser heads prevailed. It was handled to the great credit of
all but, to me, most credit goes to Jerry Wilson because he was the one who said
to this eager White House staff and folks who wanted to deal with this,
deal with this right now, let's go meet the confrontation. The same attitude that
let the moratoriums come in and let the protesters come in and go out prevailed
on the BIA. Now, the other thing there was 700 thousand dollars worth of
damage. They trashed all the records. The building was closed for a year. I mean,
the government cost of tolerating this was immense.
I still think it was the right decision. I have to tell you I did not think it
was the right decision at the time. Before Jerry Wilson spoke up, I was a fire
eater. I mean, I really thought we needed to do
something and Jerry's Jerry was very persuasive and as events turned out, he
was very correct. TN: But did you have a series of crisis meetings? Is that how
this goes? GS: Oh yes, oh yes, and always at the White
House. I mean, because the White House was going to make the decision. The Secretary
of the Interior was not going to make the decision, and the DC Police in those
days, the President appointed the mayor. So, it was our District of Columbia. We
appointed the Chief of Police. We really thought highly of the Chief of Police. TN: So, it was an extension of federal, the the Chief of Police was an extension of federal power? GS: Absolutely. TN: Okay. GS: Absolutely. TN: Did you have a sense from Ehrlichman what he
preferred at the time? GS: No, I have no memory of John participating in the
meetings. It would have been Bud who was orchestrating the meetings and Bud would
have talked with John off-camera. TN: Because Bud has told us that
Kleindienst wanted action. GS: Wouldn't surprise me a bit,
wouldn't surprise me a bit, but the the way the place worked, John would meet
with the staff but John very rarely sat in on the meeting with outsiders. He
would with a Cabinet officer, but pretty much you needed that extra layer of
thought and protection before you got to John. So, there were relatively few - not
confrontational meetings - let's call them fact gathering meetings and airings of
opinion where John participated personally. It was Bud or Ed Morgan or John Whitaker
who did that and then they would reduce it to writing for John to discuss with
the President. TN: Was the Interior Department's representative a Harrison Loesch at these Indian meetings? The meetings-- GS: I'm sure Interior was represented. There was, you had to. It was their building.
So, it wasn't, it wasn't going on behind their back.
I don't remember Dick Kleindienst being at the meetings, but I have no specific
memory. It would be much more likely, it would be his deputy Harlington Wood.
TN: I was thinking of who might be the Interior... GS: Well it could have been the
Solicitor, it could have been that the deputy assist, the Deputy Secretary.
It certainly was not- I think -Wally Hickel was still there. TN: No, no, no, no. GS: Who would've the Secretary have been at that point? TN: Well, I was thinking more of who was in charge of Indian Affairs in 1972.
GS: Well, I, that, that may not even have been high enough up. TN: Was Bobbie, was Bobbie
Kilberg there? GS: Bobbie would have been included. Bobbie and Brad or or Len. TN: Because she
was the one who was also going into the building. GS: Yes, she was. Bobbie was on the Domestic
Council Staff. She was a White House Fellow with me, my year, but assigned to
the Domestic Council. I have accused her, but she disowns this, of majoring in
Indian law when she was at Yale Law School but she said no no no, she didn't
do that, but she had a abiding personal interest in Indian Affairs and was
terribly influential in how Indian how the government's policy toward Indians
was changed. We-- I think you've got it on tape with her but the the word was
"assimilation." The policy of the United States government for the previous fifty
years was we work our way out of the Indian problem by dispersing them into
society, moving them into the cities, breeding this breeding Indians away. The
Indians took it badly. They liked the reservation, they were a separate nation,
and had reached treaties with the United States, ignored in a lot of extent but
but still treaties, and under Nixon, with Bobbie and Len and Bret's input, and
I think with Walt Hickel's input, the policy of assimilation was abandoned
and the government said, 'Look. We've entered into these treaties. We need to
treat these people as a separate nation and help them. They want to stay on the
land, let them stay on the land,' and that, I believe, remains until today, except
sometimes the land includes casinos. TN: I'm always interested in how people change their minds. You talk about your own thinking during the BIA occupation. GS: Mm-hm. TN: Did you change your mind at that time about the the utility of an aggressive
action? GS: I think it was the discovery of the gasoline that caused me to have a
massive re-evaluation of the use of government power when you're involved
with violent or near violent dissidents. Waco, Texas people died. Ruby Ridge, people
died. I think it was the guy's wife up in Montana where there was they were trying
to take somebody who was a fugitive. This is unfair but the Oklahoma City bombing
was on the anniversary of Waco. I mean, it was, you know. There are
people on all aspects of the political spectrum that can convince themselves
that this particular issue is worth dying for, on a given day, but a week
later they may not feel that strongly, and you want law and order. The nation
was headed toward anarchy. Nixon was elected on a law-and-order platform. You
needed to reassert governmental control. Today, I may be wrong, but I was
thinking about this on the train down, the idea of a hostile takeover is pretty
remote. There aren't people sufficiently upset today that I think they would do
it but if you get into a situation where it becomes common
place and it became commonplace because of the opposition to the war, those
tactics spilled over into lots of other things, then the government response, the
use of power has to be carefully constrained. Now, I was young. I believed
in law and order. I was responsible for law enforcement. I think it's terribly
important that the idea that you won't be punished not be allowed, and in
the American Indian Movement, the BIA take-over, they were not punished. They
were paid off. But under the circumstances, upon
reflection, that was, cooler heads prevailed. That was the wiser decision. It
hurts. Sometimes, there's no right decision but as you said when we opened
this topic, that was a decision that had to be made. We needed to get them out. We
needed to get them out without bloodshed. TN: Let's talk about some more dogs that
don't bark. In other words, things that don't happen that we're pleased didn't
happen or on reflection. You come into the Domestic Council at a very
interesting and important time in civil rights and this is the period of
desegregation... GS: Yes. TN: Which happens peacefully. GS: Yes. TN: To what extent, given your portfolio, were
you involved in watching, collecting information, and watching
to be sure that desegregation was going to happen peacefully in the fall of 1970?
Do you remember any having any role in that? GS: Yes, absolutely uninvolved, absolutely totally uninvolved. That was Ed Morgan's policy responsibility. He worked across the hall,
chitchat, I think I did a couple memos, I'd have to go back and look, but I didn't I
wasn't involved. He had John Ford Evans, Jim Falk and Dana Mead, Dana Mead
was a White House Fellow who stayed over, were on Ed's staff, and and there was
there was discussion about - because there was litigation going on at the same time -
about appeals, whether the government would move in and support and how it was done,
but that was not civil rights was not considered a law enforcement issue, appropriately. So, we, you know, it's it's
almost like in the NSC. I'd open the paper in the morning and there would be
something about foreign affairs and I would say to myself, "Oh good. That's
somebody else's problem. I have, my plate's full." TN: I just wondering if there were any racist groups that you were, you know, concerned about that they perhaps would try to cause trouble. GS: I just, yes, but it was not on my beat. That was all Ed Moore. Ed was a
lawyer, it was Ed Morgan's responsibility. TN: Did you do work on the hijacking problem?
GS: Yes, yes I did. That was we used the word terrorism but
it was first called skyjacking or hijacking and, if you remember, it was
relatively benign. It was people trying to go home,
go home to Cuba or go home to someplace in Africa, or there were takeovers of
planes in Europe, and they were it was one or two, and then it got to be a
couple. So, if you go through the memos, and I haven't gone through them recently
but I have a very clear memory, we start talking about what we can do, what's
appropriate. We included OMB because there was monetary ramifications
and the Department of Justice and,, I think Treasury because of Customs and, of
course, the FAA which, you know, you don't want guns going off in the
airplane. It's hard to shoot anyplace on an airplane and not puncture
the skin of the airplane and then you have bigger problems than you might have.
The airlines preached accommodation. This is before real terrorists so
accommodation worked. There's a series of meetings where we put these
magnetometers in, you know, and the issue was how do you pay for them, what's the
disruption, what are the airlines going to do. And in the end, by
by Executive Order, it was not legislation the President authorized the
the placement of these magnetometers. Well, it just tore the airports
apart. They weren't ready for them. Lines grew. You know, two and three hour
lines as people had to go through. Airport security people told us they
found dozens of guns in the potted palms, that the person come the airport, used to
carrying a gun, discover the magnetometer, and dump the
gun. They didn't want to miss their flight, they dumped the gun. Interestingly,
elderly ladies, elderly minority ladies carried guns in their purse because it's
personal protection. Don't know if they know how to use them. They're small calibre
guns but they felt safe because they didn't believe the police could protect
them. The other thing we did, we patted people down and we discovered massive
amounts of cash were leaving our country. The people moving the cash out
wouldn't check it in their bag, it wouldn't make it, so they'd carry it on themselves,
and when they went through the magnetometer, got patted down, they
discovered cash. So, the IRS established this situation where if they discovered
that, they would immediately close the tax year for that individual and do an
audit, and when we were going to do away with that, the Treasury came to us and
said, "Please don't stop doing this. We had no idea how much money was
leaving the country, we think improperly." Yeah, we just, there was no way to find
this out but you can't take, you would never put it in the mail,
you'd never check it in your luggage, you'd carry it on your person, and we are
discovering lots and lots of people. Tended to be successful entrepreneurs,
sometimes doctors, but these were high-end people. These were not mules,
these were high-end people. We did a lot of this, too, in connection with
drug abuse, trying to trying to suppress drug abuse, but they're-- All of that
development and those initial policy decisions
started out we had a Cabinet Committee on Terrorism that was making those
choices. I don't know how good the magnetometers were in those days but the
real prevention was the idea you couldn't take anything through and that
got around real quick because of the delays. TN: There was also wasn't there also, again, it was outside your purview, NSC would have
done this but there were discussions with Cuba which led, through the Swiss, to
an agreement with Cuba so the Cubans wouldn't accept the hijackers.
GS: Aah-ha. Aah-ha. No, that would that would have gone through the NSC not us, but the
there might have been an NSC person in the group when we were making the
decisions. The real hang-up, from our point of view, was the Department of
Transportation and OMB because of the cost and we allowed the airports to
raise the landing fee by a buck a head which paid for this because the
government, without a bill, couldn't pay for the magnetometers. We imposed this. I
remember what we did. It was, you know, we've got to solve the problem. What do
we do? We told the FAA that the airport will lose its safety certification
unless and until it puts in these magnetometers. So, the federal government
doesn't have pay for it but the airports didn't have the money either. You know,
this is a new idea. How do we do it? So, we gave them permission. We said, "We will not
oppose your increase in the landing fee by a buck a head." In fact, they made a
little bit of money. So, they're very enthusiastic about putting it in,
and it was this constantly going on. The creativity with regard to what the
existing laws are, what the President's power is, and the need to do something.
TN: People watching this will know about 9/11 and TSA and federalization of
it. GS: Yes. TN: You're at the beginning. GS: Yes. TN: Why didn't you federalize it then? Was
there some talk about... GS: The cost. Oh, pure and simple cost. Even after
9/11, the Bush Administration didn't want to do this. They wanted to have the
airports to it with private contractors. The difficulty that the Bush
Administration got itself into, it's not any my business, but the private
contractors were doing such a poor job that they lost the battle on creating
this new federal agency but now, I mean, you've got a huge federal agency and
the federal agency will never be replaced. It's very, very hard because you
get this iron triangle of a special interest and congressional relationships
of monetary effort and the fear of the public. TN: Do you remember the debate with the Defense over Air Marshals, Sky Marshals? GS: Yes, I do, obliquely.
It had to do with the weapons, they didn't have guns that could
shoot without bringing the plane down and who were you going to train, where
did they work, I mean, were you going to put-- Maybe the idea was we're going to
put Defense personnel on those planes but the, and the question was whether
you disclosed, but, you know, if you have one hijacking per 1,000 flights or per 2,000
flights, putting somebody on every plane is impossible. We don't know how many
Sky Marshals there are today. That's part of the benefit, it's kind of a random
thing but in we had the same expense issue and that era. TN: Do you remember some of the action-causing events some of the hijackings that actually move this
process policy discussion along? Because there had been hijackings throughout the
'60s. GS: Yes. TN: Do you remember a Southern Air hijacking that took three days and... GS: That landed and took off a bunch of times? TN: Yes, yes. GS: I don't remember it by name and until you brought it up, I wouldn't have, but there
had to be a threatening situation where it didn't work out easily.
It's possible nobody would take the plane, it's possible the
passengers weren't released, that there was a whole lot more danger. And remember, frequently, they would say 'Let the passengers off, we'll fly you wherever
you want.' Sometimes, they would do that and and the pilot would jump out the
pilot's window. You know, in the old days, the pilot's window opened and then the
individual would be on the plane and nobody on the plane but the individual.
That stopped working and there were, I think it wasn't just one. I think there
was an increase in frequency where we finally had to do something.
TN: Something else that happened but just before you arrived, but... GS: I won't have any memory about it at all.
TN: Oh, then I won't ask you. Not gonna, thank you very much.
Do you have any recollection of how much of a concern the Weathermen Underground
were? GS: Huge concern, Weathermen Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, remember
Patty Hearst was kidnapped, the breaking into the armories and taking of assault
rifles. No, it was it was a huge concern about who they were, what they were doing.
We had trials. We had fugitives. You know, we couldn't, the-- When you're in full
rebellion mode and you won't cooperate in our judicial system, it's almost
impossible to have trials because the individual starts screaming obscenities
at the judge and it frequently turns out the judge isn't up to that kind of trial.
Who's the lawyer? William... TN: Kunstler GS: Kunstler! Kunstler ended up as the
diabolical defender and perfected ways, much like Saul Alinsky perfected
ways of street protest, Kunstler perfected ways of avoiding convictions,
making the government the issue or the, particularly with inner city juries, the
two observations and then when you have this degree of upset it's very very hard
on law enforcement. The police, in the great scheme of things, are responsible
for maintaining and restoring order not for gathering evidence to prosecute So,
you have massive upsets. They hurd everybody that's arrested into the
stadium, you know, they keep them there for 24 or 48 hours, people are screaming
about their rights, and then you process them out but you almost never prosecute
because you can't make a case under the exacting standards of our criminal law,
which says I'd rather let a hundred guilty people
go free that convict one individual that's innocent. Well, under that
situation, you aren't talking about group crimes, you're talking about an
individual, but in violent city and public confrontations, the prosecution
frequently doesn't work. So, the police don't, aren't able to do it. The
government is frustrated in how you, how you enforce when a substantial part of
your own citizenry is rebelling. The other interesting thing, I didn't
work on this at the time but, for the most part, all juries are liberal because
federal juries exist only in large cities and when they draw the jury pool-- Take, take Philadelphia. They don't bring people in from Wilkes-Barre
to sit on that jury, that's a hardship. They draw the jury from in and around
the city of Philadelphia, which tends to result in urban people sitting on the
jury and urban areas tend to be more liberal. So, for the most part,
particularly where you have a rebellion amongst poor people, you have a more than
ordinarily sympathetic jury. District of Columbia might be an excellent example
because it traditionally delivers an 85% Democratic majority. That's the
voting pool from which the jury is selected. If, by some fluke, you were able
to run some of these trials out in Utah or Idaho, even then you're hard-pressed
to get above a 60% majority. You get different verdicts but that's just not
it's not possible for the federal government. So, you've got police who are
far more interested in maintaining order and a jury system that doesn't seem to
work for mass upset. So, so, it's hard to really crack down on large street
protests. TN: Were you at all involved in working with the FBI on these kinds of
issues, of ensuring that the White House had the kind of information it needed in
advance of protests? GS: No, the only thing that I did that blew up that involved
the FBI occurs in the course of the President's run for re-election in 1972,
and just to recount it, a memo was sent that I signed that said the President's
going to these places, we need to know if there are law and order issues, and it
was sent as a teletype by the FBI to FBI field offices, and and responses
collected back, and that became public and everybody ran for cover because it looked like you were using the FBI for political purposes. This
figures rather prominently in Pat Gray's book "In Nixon's Web" because it blew up
on his stay, and it's one of the few times my memos have become public. The
memo was written to the Deputy Attorney General, which is perfectly proper. He's a
political appointee. The President has a perfect right to say 'I need to be
informed before I go to these places if there are issues that I should be aware
of.' The mistake within the Department of Justice was it descended to someone in
the FBI who sent it out to the field offices. It should not have gone. But it
gives you the example of, to answer your question, in all of the time I was on the
White House staff, I never met with the FBI except a courtesy interview with J.
Edgar Hoover before he died and maybe a meeting with Pat Gray on a ceremony, you
know, where we're coming in to see the President in the Oval Office. All the substantive
work we did was with Presidential appointees at the Department of Justice.
I worked, in the beginning, I'm very, very junior, the first thing I did was a
bill signing the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. We signed it at the
Department of Justice. So, I did all the advance work - no, there were advance team,
I did all the substantive work having to do with how that would
operate. The advance team did its own thing, the Secret Service did it own
thing, but when the President leaves the White House, you know, there have got to
be 200 people involved and even going to a department. We, I worked extraordinarily
closely with the Deputy Attorney General Larry Silverman because then I was
associate director and and his three direct reports all the time, and that's
how you related to the Department of Defense. They found out information
within the Department of Defense -excuse me, the Department of Justice, to bring back to you, but
you'd never reach down to the FBI. It was run in a certain way under J. Edgar
Hoover and in a different way under Pat Gray, and then under Clarence Kelley, the
Kansas Chief of Police. TN: Now, at the very top level, thanks to the tapes, we have a sense of
the President and John Ehrlichman's frustration with J. Edgar Hoover. GS: Yes. TN: Did
that, did any of that filter down to your level? Did you sense that Bud
Krogh was frustrated with... GS: Oh hugely, hugely. The Kennedys were terrified of
J. Edgar Hoover. I think he reached retirement age under Jack Kennedy and that was
exempted. He should have been let go under Lyndon Johnson. He wasn't. There was
the rumor that politicians believed that he had these secret files. Turned out he
did have these secret files. You had 2,000 agents and they were the eyes of
the night and you're dealing with human beings, and Hoover loved human frailty,
and he would collect and distribute, and he, it appears,
seems rather obvious in retrospect, he grew more and more senile on the job, and the agency had, it was a dictatorial agency. He was the only director
the FBI had ever had, and whatever Hoover said was absolute law. Well, power
corrupts and toward the end, the FBI was not run properly. It would have
been far better if he had retired when he reached retirement age. You'd have new
leadership and different points of view. The FBI held on to terrible ideas
as the nation moved beyond it. Remember, you you could only be a male, you had to wear
black shoes and white shirts, and it was kind of the equivalent of IBM who had,
you know, mandatory dress code, and you curried favor and you got increased
by crime stats, and he became far more concerned about embarrassing the agency.
So, he ignored organized crime, denied it existed, and concentrated on bank robbers
because the banks were federally insured and you could clear bank robberies, and
the crime stats looked good, and it was safe. He wouldn't get
involved in drugs because he was afraid there was so much money in drugs that it
would corrupt his agents. He didn't want a corrupted agent and there were other
federal agencies. Now, but BNDD [Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs] was created because the FBI wouldn't do
it, and he really allowed organized crime to to grow and
fester without involvement. I mean, it was, history's view of the later years of J.
Edgar Hoover is very harsh. The view within the White House, at the time, was
you couldn't work with him. He wouldn't do. You know, it just, you
didn't want to involve the FBI because involving the FBI men it got
reported directly to Hoover, and Hoover would pick up the phone and call Nixon,
and, you know, we had systems to prevent that. So, you couldn't have open discussion.
Let me go back about two things, if I could. TN: Sure.
GS: Ehrlichman, I think, was a brilliant choice to head the Domestic Council.
He was an open mind. He's been denigrated savagely over
Watergate but he felt he wasn't involved at all and could be confrontational in
return. We were not bound by any constraint in our concept of public
policy. We, there was the Marijuana Commission. We debated within the staff,
with our experts, with the treatment people about whether we should give up
and legalize it, what would happen. It wasn't that we couldn't go there. We
could go any place we wanted on intellectual inquiry and debate and
gather facts. Other people on the White House staff that worked for Bob Haldeman
or Henry Kissinger, because I see it as three, you worked ultimately for
one of the three, you could have been a fourth tier person but one of the three.
They'd hang around outside Ehrlichman's office to run into him in the hallway to
share an idea, because John was the only person who could look at an idea and
have it staffed. As we said, our job was to get the government out of the way of
good ideas. So, it was intellectually open and
intellectually honest, and, I think, you will find, to a person, his staff
adored him. I mean that it was, it was fun to work there.
You were not denigrated. You worked hard but your input was respected and,
you know, you had to do quality work or you didn't stay, but it was, it was an
adventure, a quest to figure out the proper role for government
and how it functioned in a free society. TN: What happened in the marijuana-- Well, we know that marijuana was not legalized. GS: Yes, it's true. TN: But, I mean, how close, how
ripe was that issue? GS: Well, I remember, remember I was law
enforcement and I was talking with Jerry Jaffe, Jerry was head of treatment,
head of the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention, you know, what
about this, and he said, "Look. We could do it. It's not overtly harmful. It's harmful
but we have two other things that are certainly equal - smoking and drinking - but
I'll tell you this, if we legalize it, we'll never get rid of it. It will become
the third narcotic or drug that we tolerate and there's no reason to expand
from two, because the two are bad, oo expand to a third. It is entirely
possible this is a fad, that it has to do with rebellion against the government,
against the Vietnam War, and that this will pass, but if we legalize it, it won't."
Now, the Marijuana Commission was coming in under Governor Shafer and they
had a report. Well, Nixon didn't want the report. He didn't want the publicity
because the Marijuana Commission was ambivalent. And so, the real issue was
what do we do? You know, here these people are, and the resolution, it's so typical
of how the White House works and how a President works, the President met with
Governor Shafer, brought the cameras in, he presented the report, the President didn't
meet with a full commission it was just one of those things that happened. He did
something else more important that day. So, it wasn't the lead story on the news. It was never heard from again. The report was never heard from again. It was just
thank you, we've accepted it, any more good ideas, and that
push to legalize went away. There's still substantial use. There's an ongoing
controversy over the medical uses. There's this conflict between state and
federal law. The issue still sits there but I don't think the issue boils. I
don't think this is a huge, pressing issue about which people are willing to have massive organization and massive parade. It's kind of a one of those
things were a small group would love to have it. I think, at least with regard to
the Nixon Administration, that issue was diffused, partially because, at the time,
it was felt any abuse and the fun of rebelling starting with marijuana led
into a culture that would guide you to heroin, and heroin was terrible and
unthinkable and devastating. TN: Bud has told us about some work he did on the problem of drug abuse among soldiers. GS: Yes. TN: And a trip that he takes out to Southeast Asia.
GS: Yes. TN: In 1971. Tell us what staffing
you did for him on the drug issue. What did you work on on drug issues? GS: I worked on enforcement. The treatment that he did and the use of Jerry Jaffe and the
visits to Vietnam because, you remember, it was the nightmare of these addicted
soldiers returning and being released into society, and they did that under the
treatment auspices. Now, there's another narrow film
that Bob DuPont put together that you filmed of the folks on the
treatment side who had a reunion and discussed and debated what they had done,
and there's just magnificent footage on that. I was invited and I show up on
the film, briefly, only to say that because treatment was buttoned up, those
of us on the law enforcement side could push as hard as we wanted because
treatment was available. And so, we were very supportive of a treatment option, it was methadone and methadone maintenance, but the the stuff that
you're talking about was all off my watch, it all had to do with Jerry
Jaffe's expertise and he and Bud and Jeff Donfeld. TN: Now, international
enforcement was also off your watch. Or did you participates in...? GS: I participated some. We were responsible, overall. We harnessed the Department of State, we
harnessed the CIA. The CIA people said, 'You know, this is really, we're pleased to
help because most of the stuff we do, you never know whether it worked or not and
if we can we never get credit if it works but our operatives love helping
suppress the international narcotics trade because it makes their home safe
here and,, you know could be their kid who's shooting up next time.' Heroin was not
constrained to the ghetto. So we did, at one point, I did all three. After Jeff Donfeld left, I did law enforcement, treatment, and international suppression,
and then Walt Minnick took that over, and initially, Walt worked with me on
international, and then he went over to the Office of Management and Budget with
a team of people that continued to work on international. TN: Did you work on
developing the relationship with Turkey, which was so important? GS: Not at all. Not at all. I was not involved in that. That's all Bud and after Bud, it's gonna
be all Walt Minnick. TN: This is an era also when the Golden Triangle-- GS: Yes.
TN: is discussed-- GS: Yes. TN: and the concern about Southeast Asia as a source not simply of addicts because-- GS: Yes. TN: of the poor servicemen would come back with
this, but the fact that opium and is coming out of there. GS: Yes. I did two trips.
For the most part, I didn't travel. I was paid on site to write memos. I didn't
know the international nearly as well. I took one trip that followed the opium
trail through Turkey to France, French Connection to the United States. I'm in
the poppy fields of Turkey. There are pictures of Shepard in the poppy fields
You know, the farmers were taught they were growing medicine. This was a good
thing because codeine is, even today, cannot be faked synthetically; and for cough, racking, hacking cough there's nothing better than codeine. The
difficulty was the government after encouraging everybody to grow opium
poppies, Papaver somniferum, they didn't buy up the whole crop, and the other
folks were willing to buy pay cash. And so, though the change started, but it was it was the government's fault in the first place. They had too much gum
opium. That trip occurred coincidental with the Watergate break-in. So, the
visual proof that Shepard was uninvolved is Shepherd in the poppy
fields, and then we went from there to watch the labs in in Marseilles and
the smuggling coming from there into the United States. A separate trip to
Southeast Asia to talk to the folks in Southeast Asia who were suppressing. We
went into Thailand because that's where the Bermuda-- the Golden Triangle came
out, and we went up on the border of Burma and where
Drug Enforcement agents are working with Thai military to suppress these warlords
who are making all this money off this terribly fertile opium crop. TN: Are you
there when the French Connection is busted up? GS: No. I can't tell you, I've
enjoyed the movie, but I just can't tell you with the dates. TN: Because Auguste,
because Bud Krogh told us about Auguste Ricord. GS: Yes. TN: Who was actually in Paraguay.
GS: Yes, but that's not the French Connection. The French Connection in the movie comes
in from France. TN: Yes. GS: Auguste Ricord was the great drug lord of Paraguay and a guy - boy, it's going to take me a moment to com up with - with, Nelly Gross. Nelson Gross, active in New Jersey politics, was appointed the principal
person at the Department of State to negotiate with countries. State was
involved and included, and this is under Bud not under me, but Nelson Gross went
down to Paraguay and, I think, in the most undiplomatic way possible basically
said the government would fall if Auguste Ricord wasn't turned over to the
United States. He was captured by the Paraguay army, put on a plane, and we flew him back to try him in the United States. It was extraterritorial. It's been
done before. When we took, when Reagan took over Panama, Noriega was found,
brought to the United States for trial. It's probably a bad precedent but
it certainly disrupted the the pipeline coming up from South America. You know,
South America, it's not codeine it's cocaine and there's massive amounts of it, and it's become a far more popular
drug, and, I think, today a far greater concern. Let me take a step back.
This is Shepard on drugs, which is always scary. The La Brea Tar Pits. TN: Yes.
GS: When they excavate, you know, that's out in Hancock Park in LA and they have the
bones of all these mammals who got stuck in the Tar Pits and it starts with
little animals and then bigger predators, you know, the birds and everything gets
stuck and then the foxes and the wolves and the coyotes going to get them and
they get stuck and then the horses and the mammoths go in, but as they
excavate the La Brea Tar Pits, they find the most peculiar phenomenon. It comes in
waves, that it's not a whole bunch of horses, wild horses or a whole bunch of
mammoths, there's a generational gap and it's almost that the animals could
communicate and if you saw your mom go in and get stuck, you wouldn't go in but
you had real trouble telling your kids. Yes, lots of things in life like that, real
trouble telling your kids. Well, heroin's like that. In the beginning,
there's this, apparently, not having shot up myself, there's this incredible high and
after that, it's people trying to duplicate that first time because it was
so phenomenal, but and it doesn't seem like you're gonna get addicted but when
you get addicted, it's just terrible and it strings you out and you you, in order
to maintain your habit, you encourage others to get them addicted and
everything else. Well, after a while, everybody sees and it fades and then
people forget and it comes back and it's possible today that it's coming
back, which would just be devastating. Cocaine doesn't seem to do that. It just
seems to be here all the time. Difference in drugs. TN: What role was the
DEA playing at home or was it just primarily working overseas? GS: Well, the evolution of that is a real example of bureaucratic politics. In the
beginning, there was BNDD, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, run by
John Ingersoll a career bureaucrat, and the White House wanted to do more on
drugs and more on law enforcement and John didn't. John, when you had a
meeting, John could always tell you why that wouldn't work. I mean, it was nothing
short of incredible. It was almost as bad as dealing with Herbert Hoover, with a
J. Edgar Hoover. I mean, you just didn't want to include and John, he he wouldn't play
with the White House staff. He was not responsive. His counterpart at Customs,
which is in the Treasury, was very responsive. Myles Ambrose. 'Of course we
can help, of course we can do that.' Now, Customs at the borders has
unique laws because, technically, you're not yet inside America. So, the
Constitutional restrictions on search and seizure don't apply. So, Customs can
run rampant through your luggage and anything else on a whim. They can just
open up everything. So, their laws were terribly helpful. Myles Ambrose was
enthusiastic and supportive. John Ingersoll was not and John got left
behind, absolutely left behind, and then the
White House orchestrated the creation, I think it became legislation, but they
started it with a drug czar on the White House staff, it was Myles Ambrose, and
then that evolved. The way they got that put properly was it evolved into the
Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA, that replaced BNDD and had the
responsibility but it also had White House support, more budget, everything, and
Ingersoll today, if you interview him, is very bitter, very bitter about his
treatment and the way policy evolved. TN: And BNDD was also in Treasury, was it? GS: No. No, it was at Justice. It was just, because the FBI wouldn't do it. So...
TN: And thus, the whole issue goes to Treasury thanks to Myles... GS: Well, not quite, thanks to the person. TN: Yes. GS: Customs, which is smaller but has better laws,, BNDD which is at the Department of Justice, internecine warfare between
Treasury and Justice. White House sets up the law enforcement agency on the White
House staff, takes the head of Customs to do it, and he becomes the drug czar. He accompanies the President on his trips, and then we get legislation that puts
him in charge of it back at the Department of Justice and we flush John
Ingersoll. He's just leading a band with nobody
behind him. I,t's not Treasury that won it's the individual and Customs who was responsible, who accommodated a new administration far better, was far
more enthusiastic, and displayed more leadership on an issue that was very important. TN: But in the end,
DEA goes to Treasury, doesn't it? GS: No. No, DEA is still at the Department of Justice. TN: At Justice. GS: Yes, even today, even today. TN: Okay, so he went, thank you, so he went
over. GS: Yes. TN: And BNDD just... GS: Was organized as a part of the, it became
DEA with other things, other laws, more people, but it was headed by Myles
Ambrose. It's why you think of it as going to Treasury. TN: Yeah.
Let's finish this part of the interview and then, after the break, we'll move to another issue. GS: Sure. I would just-- TN: Would you like to... GS: To conclude. Yes, I'm an advocate, Nixon had what I believe is the most creative domestic policy. I think his Foreign Affairs victories
stand on their own but he had a very, very creative domestic policy. I think
scholars will come to believe that but if you if you study presidencies, Stephen Skowronek has this unbelievable analysis of presidencies over time and his issue
he thinks the presidency is best at causing change but the success has to do
with whether the president serves at the beginning middle or end of a regime and
what's most important is a regime and it would be unfair to summarize Skowronek but he's
got good books. Picture a moon dial on a clock. That's the beginning,, the fullness
and the decline of a regime. If you're President at the very beginning and you
cause change with the regime, it's brilliant, and he felt that
Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan fit
that. If you come second and you're to perfect the regime, you fail
because you can't be perfect, and his best example is Lyndon Johnson. If you come at
the end of the regime, you're just a failure. Herbert Hoover.
Jimmy Carter. But woe unto you if you're an aberration and you're elected and you
really aren't a part of the regime, and Skowronek's point is those Presidents
get impeached and he develops Nixon and Carter that - excuse me - Nixon and Clinton,
that Clinton was still in the Reagan era but there was...
