Patrick O'Donnell Oral History

PM: Good morning. PO: How are you? PM: My name is Paul Musgrave. I'm special assistant to the director at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. It's March 10, 2009. We're in the National Archives Building here in Washington, DC, and I have the honor and privilege to be interviewing Patrick O'Donnell. Mr. O'Donnell, thank you for being here. PO: Happy to be here with you. PM: Let's start out with some, some biographical information. You were, you were born in New York City, correct? PO: Correct. PM: How did you end up becoming a [Georgetown University] Hoya? PO: Well, I guess just the normal way. It went through the, the various iterations in grade school, etc. My dad was a military officer, so we moved about every two years and I went to a great number of different schools throughout my earlier years, and then a friend of my dad's discovered me out in California in the ninth grade, where the graduates went into the orange groves, and convinced my dad to allow him to start a little mini scholarship for me to go to a good school. So, they transferred me from Riverside, California, St. Francis de Sales High School to Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and I finished up there and caught up with myself, because it was, I was in the dark ages of education, and I applied to Georgetown and, and got in, and my family's Catholic, and my mother was very Catholic, so she wanted me to go to a Catholic college, and we lived at Bolling Air Force Base at the time. My dad was at the Pentagon but we lived at Bolling Air Force Base right here in Washington, DC three separate times. So, it was kind of a local college for, from my parents' perspective, and I boarded, I lived on campus, but my parents were right there at Bolling, so I had, I had it both ways, and that's how I ended up there. PM: What was the student body like in those days? PO: Well, it was the gentleman of Georgetown. It was a different time. You wore a coat and tie to classes. If you were living in the dormitories and you were Catholic, you had mandatory Mass daily, or at least four days a week. You had to turn in a Mass card, and it was subject to disciplinary action if you didn't. As a freshman and as a sophomore, you were due in on weekends at 12, I think, on Friday night, and 1 o'clock on Saturday nights. It was very strict compared to the Princetons and Yales and other schools around the circuit where they were past that point, and if you were at the school, nobody cared what time you came in. So, it was pretty, pretty highly regimented. I probably needed that, and even in that environment, I got in trouble once in awhile. [Laughs] PM: You leave Georgetown, you get a law degree, and you stay in the district. Tell us about, tell us about being a Corporation Counsel or Corporate Counsel for the DC government, the District government? PO: Well, when I got out of law school, my parents had moved in the meantime to Hawaii. My dad took a post there. And so, during the summers, I was in Hawaii working in a law firm and intending to take the Hawaiian bar exam, along with the DC bar, the year I graduated, the summer I graduated. So, I took the DC bar in July of '59. That was the time my dad moved to Hawaii, and I moved out there with him and waited to see... No. I'm sorry. I've got that messed up. We moved in '59. I'd just got out of college in '59. So, I got into law school. I came home to Hawaii every summer, worked in a law firm, and stayed with my parents at Hickam Air Force Base, and then when graduation came in '62, I had intended to take the Hawaiian bar and the DC bar. So, I took the DC bar in June-July, went out to Hawaii intending to take it, I think it was in September, and they issue a ruling every year who was eligible to take the bar, and I was not eligible, because I had not lived there for a year, that was their residency requirement. So, that was a big stumbling block, and I decided, well, I'd stay in Hawaii 'til I find out whether I passed the DC bar, and luckily, I did, and I came back to Washington to accept a job offer with the Corporation Counsel, as opposed to staying in Hawaii, which I would have done if they would have allowed me to take the bar. Convoluted answer, but that's how I ended up at the Corporation Counsel's office, which is now called the Office of the Attorney General of Washington, DC. People didn't relate to the title Assistant Corporation Counsel. What did that mean? Now, it's Assistant Attorney General, the same people that did the jobs I did, and it fits much better, and it's this, it's the attorney for the city, and I think we had about a hundred lawyers. It was a big law firm, and criminal and civil and appellate and that kind of thing, and I went through all of those divisions for the six years I was there, and I wouldn't trade it for anything, because I was thrown into court like the second day. Go upstairs and try this case, here's the file. What? Don't I have to, don't I have to know something? That's what you went to law school for, get up there and try it. And those were criminal cases, minor criminal cases usually, and it, it was not, was not, wasn't a big deal, but you got your spurs real quick in the courtroom at that level. So, it was an invaluable experience that had me trying cases against senior partners where my classmates were carrying their briefcases into the courtroom when it got to be more serious, and that got me some, some visibility in the, in the law fraternity. PM: What kind of cases were you handling? PO: Oh, I did it all. I did civil. I started off in criminal, and then I did about, a short time, a year or so, in appellate, and then I did the rest of the time in civil litigation, which is all manner of cases. All of the zoning cases, all the regulatory cases involving the District of Columbia, all of the defense work when the District gets sued for, you know, any number of reasons many, many times a day. So, we had a big staff, because it was a big workload, and it was in the US District Court, and it was also in what is now known as the DC Superior Court. We were in both, and then the US Court of Appeals and the DC Court of Appeals. Great training ground for a young lawyer. PM: You do this for a couple of years. How do you get... PO: I did it for six years, yeah. PM: Yeah. Were you a Republican at that time? Were you active? PO: Well, sort of. My dad was military, so a little bit agnostic on the political side by necessity, but I felt myself conservative more than Republican, and then I got exposed more in Washington as I lived here and worked here that I decided I was a Republican. Didn't take an act of Congress. Didn't take me signing anything. I just said, "Yeah, I'm a Republican." PM: When did that happen about? PO: Oh gosh, you know, probably a couple of years into my working situation in Washington, and I got to be a little bit aware of what the power structure was in this city, and that the two-party system was alive and well here; although, most people in Washington were Democrats, but there was a Republican Party, and then Richard Nixon was, you know, running for president during that time and won. And so, that kind of was my segue way. PM: Well, I'm asking this, because your first job was somebody who was, you know, former, I guess, he was former RNC Chair and had been with the Goldwater folks in '64. Tell us a little bit about Dean Burch. PO: Well, Dean Burch was a family friend, as was Senator Goldwater. My father and Goldwater were very close personal pals, had been for years. I'd known Goldwater since I was in my early teens living at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs where my dad was then assigned, and I used to caddy for him. I knew his daughters, I dated his daughters, knew his son Barry. So, there was kind of a family relationship there, and, and then when I came into the White House under Timmons, one of my assignments was to be close to Senator Goldwater, make sure that we're doing everything we can to, to satisfy his needs with the White House, and that was one of the, one of the functions I did, along with Timmons. I didn't supplant, Timmons was my boss. I don't want to mislead you at all, but that relationship was a, was a good, solid family relationship, and I was at his funeral and loved him. PM: So, Dean Burch becomes FCC Commissioner? PO: Yeah, he becomes SC, FCC. PM: FCC. PO: Federal Communications Commissioner, Chairman, and he called me, and he said, "I need a good, young lawyer with litigation experience who has no axes to grind at the FCC, has no agenda." I said, "I have much less than that. I mean, I don't even know anything about the FCC. I know it has to do with radio and television regulation, but that's about it." He said, "Either do I." He said, "Why don't you come down here and be my legal counsel, and, and we will learn together." Because he came in cold too. He had no telecommunications or communications experience. So, I had the advantage of learning with him with, you know, a very good staff, who would brief us on the various issues, the burning issues of the Commission, and I and a few other of his key staffers would sit with him on these things. So, that was the best way to learn, because you didn't have to read all the cases, you didn't have to get in all the minutiae, to get the firm grounding that I needed to be helpful to him, but I went in there his knowing that I knew nothing about it, and him knowing that he knew nothing about it, but he didn't want some staffer from the Commission who already had his ties and links and prejudices and positions. So, it was a wonderful opportunity, and it took me out of straight litigation into this regulatory regime. It was a wonderful period. I was with him, I think, only for about a year and a half before I, before I went over to the White House, and I'll give you the background on that when and if you ask me. [Laughs] PM: Well, I want to talk a little bit more about the FCC, because this is an interesting and powerful body that I think was even more powerful at the time. What were the burning issues? What were the things you were learning about? PO: Well, cable, for instance, at that stage was in its infancy. It was called CATV, that's what we called it, and it had gotten to a level within the Commission that they had a senior person in charge of cable television, and it was kind of interesting to work through some of the local issues, which was frequently about local licensing and irregularities and that and fraud and abuse and criminal charges and whatever, as people fought for the local licenses around the country, and that was just one issue, but the others were just the basic regulatory issues facing the radio and television industry. For instance, if I remember correctly, FM was not doing well in those days, was hardly on the air. AM was not thriving, and people were thinking the radio industry is going to shrivel up and go away, TV will take over. As we know now 20-30 years later, the radio industry has burgeoned and prospered, and AM and FM and all that have, have done very well. That was in the days of the Fairness Doctrine, which the Democratic agenda now has to reimpose in a unveiled effort to shut up the Rush Limbaughs of the world, who are so successful, in a background where the liberal talk shows, radio shows, etc. don't have an audience, they just don't have an audience, they've been very unsuccessful. So, that's a forum for conservative thinking that is prospering, and the Dems don't like that. So high on the agenda in this administration, the Obama administration, is an effort to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine, and thereby, get rid of this annoyance of the very conservative talk shows, which are thriving, as you know. PM: Well, one thing that comes along about this time is the, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS. Were you involved in any of those? PO: No, no, had very little to do with that. I guess that was at that point, if there was any real serious liaison, I think it probably came through the telecommunications adviser to the President, who was at that time Clay Whitehead at the Department of Commerce, and Dean Burch and he used to work on issues together, but if I remember, and I don't remember, it didn't come across our desk much. We didn't focus on it much at the FCC. PM: What about licensing issues? Were those, you know, well, those are obviously very serious to the station owners and so forth? PM: Oh, well, yeah, I mean, that was the, that was the, the guts and business of the Commission, those license hearings and renewal hearings and, and charges against licensees of the public trust. Huge amount of business and time of the Commission was devoted towards those things, and a lot of the voting of the Commission was on renewal matters, whether to give a renewal or a conditional renewal or, or to deny a license to a, to a, to a former owner or to a new owner. That was an awful lot of what was going on. There was a very small bar, the telecommunications bar was a discrete entity that specialized in this area, and there were probably five to ten firms that dominated it. I think there are way more today. Dick Wiley, for instance, who came on after Dean as the general counsel at the Commission, you know, has a thriving practice at his law firm of doing telecommunications work, but the bar was quite small in those days in comparison to what it is now. PM: So, how do you go from the FCC to the White House? And this is? PO: Well, it was very simple and, and rational segue there. One of my jobs for Dean, in addition to being his legal counsel and kind of general jack-of-all-trades, was liaison with the White House, and on all manner of things from personnel to issues of the day, and I dealt a good deal with White House staff in that capacity, and from that dealing, they offered me a job to come over, and in preparation for the '72 campaign more in the telecommunications and communications area than in the legislative affairs area. I had, I had liaised with Chuck Colson, whose name you know, and I hope you've been able to interview him for this series, who was a very, very senior and powerful player in the White House staff at that point in time, and he had a huge organization called Office of Public Liaison. I think that was the name, that's the name of what it is now. I'm not sure it was that refined but we had a really well-oiled political machine that was getting out the word and the, on positions, etc. with, with the public, and, and I don't know how many we had, but we probably had at least 30 on the staff, which, in those days, was a big staff in the White House, with different duties and whatever. One of my major duties was the surrogate program using the Cabinet and sub-Cabinet and the heads of agencies and whatever to go out on behalf of the President in the public fora around the country, and in those days, it's totally different rules. It was perfectly legal to have the hosting organization pay for the official to go out into the field, air, travel, hotel, etc., that was totally legal. You can't do that anymore, that's been stopped, but for that reason we had an awful lot of people on the road all the time, and, of course, in those days, we didn't have the computers. Those lists were typed up, changing every five minutes. To go through and re- you know - recalibrate them was a was a big deal, and we had a very, very successful organization in getting out talking papers to the Cabinet and sub-Cabinet, and then arranging briefings for the same people, arranging briefings for outsiders, business groups, and whatever who would come in the White House and you'd have Henry Kissinger and Al Haig or a Cabinet officer come over and spend a couple of hours with them. That was great. It was a wonderful experience for me. It was a total change of pace from the FCC, but the FCC is what gave me the link where they offered me the job, and I went in to see Dean, and I'll volunteer this, when, when the, when the offer came, and I said, "I'm torn. I'm now to a stage where I can really help you on the substance, and I understand it now, and you understand it, and here I am leaving you," and he said, "Listen, I'm sitting in this seat because of a presidential campaign," meaning the Goldwater campaign, which he chaired. He said, "You've got my blessing. Go on over there, and as a matter of fact, I might be joining you sooner than you might expect." I said, "Might expect? I'm not expecting anything. What are you telling me?" and he said, well, they had been talking to him also about coming over to the White House, and, and he said, "I'll only go over if the circumstances are right," and then shortly thereafter, and by shortly, I don't know whether I mean two or three months or four five or six months, but pretty soon after I came over to the White House, Dean came over as Counselor to the President, and he had one of the jobs like Bryce Harlow had. It's Cabinet level, but without portfolio and without staff. I could get into that later, if you want, because I ended up being part of his staff, unofficially. PM: Well, how did the Counselor to the President positions work from the bottom up? I mean, we've heard from other people, you know, talking about Pat Moynihan or Arthur Burns, but this is a different experience. PO: Yeah, well, I mean, each one is different, and they're, you know, they're, they were based on the personality of the individuals and the disposition of the President. When I was there, it was Dean and, I forget whether Don Rumsfeld had that title or not. PM: He did. PO: He did have it, and, but it was a very special rank, and they sat in in the Cabinet meetings, and they had total access to the President, and usually, no staff. So that, you know, their strength was that they had this proximity, but their weakness was they didn't have any way to do the paperwork and get in the memo flow and whatever unless their secretary did it, and Dean had me doing a lot of things for him while I was working for Bill Timmons, and, and he'd say, "I need you to do this and this." I said, "Dean, I got a full-time job, you know, I got to do this." "Why don't you come with me full-time, and we'll do it together," and I said, "I'm flattered but I'm working for Bill, and Bill really needs the help on the Hill, and I need the visibility and the exposure to the members of Congress, so that they know me better maybe down the road when I might have to do some business with them." So, Dean finally got a guy named Chuck Lichtenstein, who was a terrific, terrific intellectual and political operative, who came over and did his speeches and did his political work and whatever. Now, he did that at the FCC prior to that. Then, he later came over to the White House, and I'm a little bit vague on that. I think I'm correct that he did come to the White House. You probably know better than I do, but my memory is that he followed Dean later after Dean was able to get that taken care of to allow him to have at least one key staffer, and Dean was an intellectually brilliant guy. I mean, he just was so fast and quick, and he had the political skills and the substantive skills, and as a, for instance, I would do, I would spend two or three days doing a three-page, single-spaced memo for him in detail about a license renewal or something, and he'd say, "All right, let's talk about it," and he'd pick it up on his desk and literally go through the pages like this, toss it on the desk, and say, "All right, let's discuss it." The first couple of times I would say, "You didn't read that." "Yeah, the hell I didn't. Test me." So, I would test him, and he had the ability to just absorb information like that, something that Nixon had also, just absorb it right off the page, and it stayed here. PM: Is that common among people at that rank or is it... PO: Not in my lifetime. Most of them don't have that skill at all. I mean, you know, you give somebody a three or four-page talking point thing to go out and talk to people, and they forget two of the three points. I mean, that's what my normal experience is with members of the House and Senate and that kind of thing, but Nixon, as with Dean, I mean, you gave him a talking point thing, and occasionally when I would do one of those meetings, and somebody would come in, and Nixon would work his own personality around the talking points, cover every one, almost do it verbatim, having spent 30 seconds taking a look at the briefing paper before, before the meeting. So, he had incredible intellectual ability to do that. That's a God-given gift. I don't think you can teach yourself that. PM: What was the difference between being, you'd been in government, when you went to the White House, for almost a decade. PO: Yeah. PM: What was the difference between being in the agencies, as we say, and then being in the White House? PO: Well, it was just no comparison. They were just like different worlds. I mean, being at the FCC, which was a bureaucratic organization, regulatory in nature, lawyers and filings and pleadings and papers and memos and memos and memos, and, you know, that's the way it was, and the same thing at the Corporation Counsel's office. It wasn't memos and memos but it was litigation 24/7. I mean, I was in court constantly, that's what our job was, and then, suddenly, I'm in the executive branch in the White House, which is a totally different feel. I mean, it's just, I can't compare it to anything I'd ever done or anything I did since that time. It was an awesome experience, eye opening, and again, not something I would trade in a million years, the experiences that I had and enjoyed. PM: What portfolio do you get when you come over? You're a staff assistant. PO: Yeah, Staff Assistant to the President. Just to gopher, you know, just a gopher. I was about 32 years of age, and, and, you know, I knew what my job was gonna be, doing the surrogate program for the campaign. There was a question whether they would have me do it from the White House or from the campaign, 1701 or whatever it was. PM: 1701. PO: 1701 Pennsylvania Avenue, and Colson and others decided that they needed me there in the White House. They had somebody else that was doing almost the same thing with the surrogates but for strictly political events. PM: Clark MacGregor, I think. PO: Well, Clark MacGregor was, he was more senior. They had a guy named, this was under, oh, the fellow that later went to jail, Jeb Magruder. PM: Jeb, yeah. PO: Jeb Magruder was kind of in charge of this thing, and they had a fellow named Cole. Darn it, I'm forgetting it. PM: Ken Cole? PO: No, not Ken Cole. Mark Cole, I think it was, who did the surrogate program, but he did political events around the country and I did more of the business events around the country, and frequently we would try and coordinate them, the reason being that the White House wasn't supposed to be doing these political things, but we would coordinate them where a spokesman or a Cabinet member would go to Chicago, and he would do one event for National Association of Manufacturers, and then he'd do one for the Republican Party of Illinois on the same trip, and we would double up on those frequently, but luckily, I stayed in the White House and worked out of that, because most of the folks over at the campaign went to jail for various, various reasons. I just didn't get exposed to that, and I didn't, didn't have that, that sword hanging over my head about misbehavior. We ran a clean shop in the White House, at least I thought we did. PM: How did the process work? I'm curious about how it was chosen that David Kennedy, this is too late, John Connally would be sent, instead of, you know, someone Maurice Stans? PM: Well, I mean, on the really big, major events they would talk about that at the senior level in the White House but basically, that was me, for most of the rest of it. I mean, I had all of these huge piles of invitations. The rejects from the presidential scheduling office were a starter, but once it got known that there was an office in the White House that entertained these requests, I was besieged, you know. I had, I had a tiny, I think I had two ladies working for me, one who later went on to become Dick Cheney's secretary, Kathy Berger, and another gal who was terrific, and I've forgotten her name and tried to remember it over the years to reach back and see if I could find her and say hello, but that was it. I mean, we just had two of us running this stuff, and I would send out memos by the thousands almost to targeted members of the Cabinet and sub-Cabinet. So, you, remember, you've got probably another two or three thousand people in Washington who are the sub-Cabinet, assistant secretaries and the like, to try and focus an individual with the need of an organization, and of course they all wanted Kissinger, and they wanted the secretary of this, this, and this, and we'd have to talk him into, hey, you're not going to get them, they've got other things going. How about the assistant secretary of commerce for trade, you know? And you'd try and sell at the lower level, and then the, the word was that I would invite the member, Cabinet member or sub-Cabinet member, and if we were getting a lot of turndowns for any individuals, and this came from Nixon's lip himself, lips himself, was, you know, let us know about it, and we will have a little talk with that person, because their job is to help get Richard Nixon elected, and then let your deputy run the department. You need to get out on the road, you need to be out there in the public eye doing editorial boards and speeches and television and that kind of thing. So, we were very, very busy. It was a huge, huge responsibility, and then we had to keep track of all the Cabinet officers and give a report once a week to, to Colson, in my case. Then Colson would share it with whoever he wanted to, but just having the ability to get their schedules on a master grid, you know, who do we have in Chicago today? You know, that kind of thing, and yeah, we've got three people in Chicago. Okay, quick, get word to them. They need to cover this in this speech, and this in that speech, and on top of that, sending out the talking points. We had a whole division of the Colson operation that prepared talking points on the issues of the day, and to get those to the people, which I sent out on a regular basis. Nowadays, it's all done by email but we were actually sending these pieces of paper out, you know, around the administration and with all of our spokesmen and whatever. So, there was a lot, lot of stuff going on. PM: And this is all contained within Colson's shop? PO: This was, yeah, this was pretty much Colson's, Colson's thing. Now, at that point, Herb Klein was the Press Secretary, and he did his thing, which was different than what Colson did in the overall, reach out, political thing. PM: How did, how were those missions divided? Because we've heard about the distinction between Herb's role and Ron Ziegler's role - Ron as the, you know, day-to-day Press Secretary, Herb as Director of Communications? PO: Well, the, the President wanted Herb Klein out on the road constantly. He felt that he was good, but we didn't schedule him, or we had nothing to do with his road trips. Once in a while, I would give him an event but, I mean, his staff did that, and his job was to be out there, and if he was around the White House too many days in a row, senior staff would either raise hell with Colson or with me or with his deputies and say, "Get Herb on the road. He's good on the road. He needs to be there, not sitting in the staff meetings." And so, he was out traveling constantly, and I think he enjoyed that. I mean, I think he, he was pleased being on the road. PM: Tell us about Chuck Colson. What was he like to work for? How did you meet him? PO: When I was invited, when I, when I was working for Dean, and I was doing the liaison with the White House, Chuck was the most frequently seen person on my part. I mean, I saw other people in the White House, but he was the one that really had his hands on the FCC and was trying to work closely with us. So, I dealt with Chuck on a day-to-day basis, along with his, one of his deputies. At the point, at that point, was a fellow named Henry Cashen. I don't know whether you've met him. PM: Actually, interviewing him this afternoon. PO: Okay, good. Well, Henry was kind of a right-hand man to Chuck, and he was the, the detail guy for Chuck in this area that I was involved in. So, I was working with them on a day-to-day basis. I was over there all the time. I was on the phone with them. So, I developed a pretty good working relationship, friendly and substantive, and then they invited me to come over, and that was a turning point in my career for the good. PM: What kind of, what was the atmosphere like in the Colson operation? PO: Oh, God, we had esprit de corps, you know. It was a very gung ho, full-bore, full speed ahead. It reflected his personality. He had endless energy and, and, and ability, and he knew what we were all were doing, you know. He knew every one of us, you know, what we were doing. Where's that thing I asked you for, you know, last Tuesday? You know, he was on top of it to that level of detail, and he dedicated his life, you know, to the reelection of the President. I mean, that was all that was on his agenda, and I got to love him. He was a good guy, was a wonderful guy, and the way the press portrayed him, and what happened to him was sad, but you know what? He came out with his head high. You know, he did the right stuff and he committed some mistakes but when he went to do that Christian fellowship in the prisons, we all were a little cynical, and, you know, this can't be real. What is it, 35 years later? He's still doing it. It's for real. I haven't seen him in a number of years. PM: This is a very different story from what you hear from people who are part of the Haldeman operation. PO: Oh yes. PM: Did you know enough about the two to contrast them? PO: Well, well, I did. I remember that Nixon, during the afternoons, would come across from the White House to the Executive Office Building, up those big stairs right adjacent to the ground floor entrance to the West Wing, and he had a big office suite there right below Agnew, who was directly above him, that was Agnew's main office, and that by happenstance happened to be right next to Chuck's office. So, Chuck would get on the phone with the President and, and promote him to do certain things, and, and sometimes, Haldeman was very unhappy with the President's decision on whatever those issues were. So, the word, the word was around the White House that when Colson is in there with the President, if he's in there, these are all unscheduled, these were just spontaneous, Chuck, come on over. Come on in, you know, one door down the hall, Haldeman was to be notified, and if he could possibly do it, he would leave his meeting and his schedule and come and sit in the meeting, because he thought that Chuck kind of catered to Nixon's dark side, and he didn't want to let that happen. So, that was a dynamic around the White House. I wasn't involved in the Haldeman operation. So, I wasn't, I didn't hear it from their side, but Chuck had pretty darn good access to the President, and that caused Haldeman some pause, and that's how it was handled. PM: When you say Nixon's dark side, what do you mean by that? PO: Well, I mean, Nixon had a temper. I mean, I, this is now, I was never with Nixon more than four or five times alone, so, you know, I'm doing the public knowledge and the word around the White House kinds, kinds of things, because I don't want to pretend that I was an intimate of his, but he had a temper, and he would react sometimes, you know, right shoot-from-the-hip. Do this, do this, and get this, you know, dot dot dot, you'd hear this, and then, I mean, Haldeman got to the stage where he could handle that stuff, and he would ignore some of those orders of the President, and, you know, talk to him the next day and say, "Mr. President, you know, we really can't do that." The President would say, "Yeah, you're probably right" or "I don't care, do it anyway," and Haldeman would filter that into reality, was what I would hear. Again, I'm not talking first hand. So, I think it was that dark side when Colson would suggest that maybe the President overreact to a certain crisis or something, where Haldeman would want to put the damper on that in order not to be doing silly things just because your temper happens to get up a little bit. PM: Did you work with John Ehrlichman or his staff? PO: Well, I worked with his staff, yeah. I didn't work with him directly. I mean, he and Haldeman were the super powers within the White House and, at my level, we never had anything directly to do with him, but with the whole Domestic Policy Council, which was a first-rate organization under Haldeman, who later was headed up by Ken Cole and then Jim Cannon, who took it over towards the end. He had come into the White House with... No, that's not right. He went to work for Howard Baker for a while, and then he came into the White House, I'm forgetting which was which, but Jim Cannon ran it. He had been a Time magazine executive so he, he was running the Domestic Council when I left the White House under Ford; so that came later. But anyway, Ken Cole succeeded Ehrlichman, and he had, if you take a look at that list of the Domestic Council players in that era, they all did, I mean, it was amazing the success stories of these people. Dana Mead and Jim Cavanaugh and, you know, on and on and on. I can't pull all those names off my hat but, out of my hat, but it was really a talented team, and they kind of ran the substance, and OMB played kind of a back seat role to the Domestic Council. OMB is always trying to be the lead on policy but in this, in this case, there was no question that Ehrlichman's operation ran policy, top to bottom. In later administrations and whatever, that job normally seems to get, gravitate to OMB, which the public knows very little about, but he had really a good, wonderful organization. PM: Let's talk a little bit more about the, the details of what you were trying to accomplish in the Colson, in the Colson shop. Because this is much more, it's not partisan political, but it is, you know, Colson is sitting there working to get the President reelected. PO: Yeah. PM: How were you trying to do that? Who were you targeting? PO: Well, I mean, it was across the board. We had, in the Office of Public Liaison, we had people assigned to the elderly, to the Hispanics, to the Blacks, to the governors, to the Senate, to, you know, every, every possible group you could think of had somebody on Colson's staff who had responsibility for that group. And so, it was, you know, we had, we were overwhelmed by things that we were doing. I mean, it was just get Nixon elected. That's above and beyond all. It's 122 days to the election, and a big sign up in his office, you know, clock's ticking, and, you know, what have you done for the President today? You know, what, when you get up in the morning, you need to start thinking about it and run all your ideas through Chuck, who was very receptive. I mean, he was very accessible and, and willing to hear from you on, you know, whatever ideas you had. Every now and then, he'd take you up on a new idea. I wish I could cite some of them for you. I can't even think of them now, but he was a great guy to work for, you know. He inspired his folks and I have nothing bad to say about him. I loved him. One interesting sidebar, though, is during Watergate, um, I was asked, I was interviewed by the FBI about any, any knowledge I had of what was going on in the thing, and I had none other than what I was reading, and they said, "Well, did you have a phone number extension such-and-such?" I said, "Yeah, that was, yeah, that was one of my extensions." "Well, you never talked to one of the lawyers," one of the lawyers who became famous in the Watergate, "you nevertalked to this lawyer?" I said, "No, I never knew him, never met him. Just, you know, I've heard about him since Watergate started," and they said, "Well, we have this series of calls from your number and to your number involving this lawyer." I said, "Gee, you know, I'm sorry, I don't know what that means. I had nothing to do with him. I never called him, never heard from him, whatever." So, they, they figured it out. Colson had an extension on his phone bank thing, you know, those old things with all those buttons in those days. My, my extensions were on his. And so, he decided just to use, use those numbers as he dealt with this guy. So, we unscrambled that egg, but it was, I'm thinking, "Am I in trouble here? What, did I have cause I don't remember, or what went on here?" PM: Well, I don't want to get too far, we're going to talk a little bit about Watergate, obviously, but I don't want to get too far ahead. How do you leave Colson's operation? I mean, Colson himself, you know, departs in early '73. PO: Well, I mean, it was over. PM: Right. PO: The election was won in '70, '72, and we were all required to send in letters of resignation to the President, from the lowliest staff assistant, right up through the upper levels of the White House, along with a "What do I want to do when I grow up, what would I like in this next administration, if anything," and I requested Legislative Affairs, because I had worked in that area. One of my jobs, also with Burch, was doing the legislative affairs for the FCC, and I was drawn to that, and Timmons was running that shop. And so, I said I'd like to do something in that area at the level of assistant secretary or deputy assistant secretary. Maybe inflated ideas about where I should be in the pecking orders at about age 33 or whatever it was. So, I was appointed to be deputy assistant secretary level. I was Deputy Assistant Attorney General, because it was at the Justice Department in the legislative operation, and I was pleased with that. I hated leaving the White House, because I loved being around there, but, you know, this was a different routine, and I ended up with a good job, a very good job, and did that under a guy named Mike McKevitt, who had been the congressman from Colorado who had been defeated that year, who came in to be the the Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs. At that point, it was Kleindienst who was the Secretary, and I got along with him famously. Just, I knew him well during the campaign, and I could bring in a piece of paper and say, "Need your signature." "I'm not gonna go to jail on this," but, you know, "you're not gonna get me in trouble on this?" "No sir," and he'd sign it, great. I had this good access, and then Elliot Richardson came in when Kleindienst had to leave under a cloud having to do with the Convention and ATT, ITT and what have you and... PM: Had you heard anything about the ITT case while you were in the White House with Colson? PO: Not really, no. I didn't really get exposed to that, but anyway, he was, he, Kleindienst, was very, very good to me. I've lost my train of thought here. PM: Elliot Richardson comes in. PO: Oh, Elliot Richardson comes in, and not only does he kind of take over the whole legislative operation, and we're down there doing mail, answering mail, kinds of things. I mean, he basically took all of our functions away from us to his own personal staff, most of whom he brought in with him when he became Attorney General, and I thought, "This is not for me," and I called Timmons, and I said, "This job has become nothing suddenly overnight," and I knew Richardson pretty well. I'd done a lot with him in the campaign, but his staff didn't want to pay any attention to me or Mike McKevitt, you know, a former congressman. And so, I said, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna go out and practice law. I mean, it's time for me to get out of here. This is, this is awful," and Timmons then said, "Well, I'm really surprised to hear you say that." He said, "I've just gotten permission to have an inside deputy in the White House, and I didn't think of you, because I thought you were happy over there, but would you be interested in having that job?" I said, "Yes. All right, give me ten seconds, I'll be over there." So, I came back to the White House as a Special Assistant to the President, Legislative Affairs in, in Tim, in Bill's office in the West Wing, and did that, you know, through the, you know, right into Ford, which I loved, and which was a great element, led a, led a great dimension to my career. PM: Well, let's talk about that, because this is important. I want to cover both the Nixon period and the Ford period, because, you know, this is obviously a very tumultuous period in White House-Capitol Hill relations. So, you're kind of thrown into the firing pan. It's August '73, I guess? PO: Yeah, that's about, yeah, that's, yeah, that's about right, and I think I was only at the Justice Department for six or eight months, you know, it was a pretty short period, and I was very happy to get out of there, because of Elliot Richardson. I was happy with Kleindienst... PM: If you stayed a couple more months then... PO: Yeah, we would have had another, that's right, who was to know that, but if in my, as I look back, the, the job with Timmons was the, just the best possible thing that could happen to me and my own self-evaluation of where I was in life, and Timmons was a wonderful guy to work for, and, you know, he just, he just gave me full rein doing whatever I needed to do for the cause, I mean, you, know, for the, for the President. So, that was a great, he had a terrific team: Tom Korologos and Max Friedersdorf and very small. I mean, it was basically Korologos doing the Senate with me as the number two, Max Friedersdorf doing the House with, I'm forgetting, Vern Loen and I'm forgetting who the other guys were at this moment, but that was it. Five people on the, on the street, if you will, up on the Hill. Three in the House, two in the Senate, and then me in the White House with Bill, and then Fred Weber, who had had my job, had the job that I went to. When Fred Weber left to become Bill Simon's Assistant Secretary at Treasury, I asked Bill if I could go up to the Hill, you know, do that job, rather than being internal. The reason was I was, I was in the middle of everything within the White House but I was totally internal. Nobody ever saw me or other by, other than by phone. I was talking to all the members on the Hill, but I was a name and a phone voice, and I wanted to get the personal face-to-face relationship with the members on the President's behalf while I was still in the White House. So, Bill assigned me to the Senate to be Tom Korologos' backup. Have you interviewed Tom yet? You should definitely. PM: We haven't, but I was going to ask, because we, obviously we can't interview Bryce Harlow. PO: Yeah. PM: But we did interview Lamar Alexander. PO: Oh, yeah, yeah. PM: About, about Bryce. PO: Well, Bill Timmons and Korologos probably know the Bryce stories better than anybody in town, you know, because he was really kind of Bill Timmons' mentor, and, and he was everybody's, meaning Bryce. I mean, Bryce took care of guys like me. I mean, I went into counsel with him many times just to get his advice on career stuff. So, what was your question? I've lost track. PM: Well, I was just going to ask you, I mean, was, was, because Bryce has come back at this point; he's a Counselor to the President. PO: Yeah. PM: Went out and worked for Procter & Gamble, and then came back for that period with Mel Laird. Was he involved at all with, you know, I'm sure he didn't have any day-to-day responsibilities but there were a lot of big things happening, you know, August to December '73? PO: Yeah, no, he was, he was involved in, in, into it all. I mean, you know, Bill did the day-to-day stuff but, I mean, Bryce was there, and then he was succeeded by... No, that's not right. I was gonna say Clark MacGregor came over. Clark proceeded Bill as the head of Legislative Affairs, former congressman from Minnesota, but Bryce was ubiquitous. He was everywhere in all issues, and his his letters, his personal letters to members of Congress, in my case, because those are the ones I saw, were just worthy of collection, because they were all personalized, you know. It wasn't, you know, I have your letter, you know, some staffer does it, you sign it. He put his own personality into these things. Where he found time to do that, because he had to dictate that stuff, I don't know, but that's the kind of guy he was. So, he was around, he was around all the time, and he was in and out of our meetings, and in and out of the Cabinet meetings, and he was just everywhere, and the most wonderful guy you'd ever met in your life, you know. Just a wonderful personality, and then when I left the White House, I'm just trying to think, oh I wanted, Rumsfeld, I had done his confirmation for Secretary of Defense, and I had run it out of the White House, and I wanted that job over there for Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs - Defense, and I lobbied Rumsfeld for it, and he had some people more senior than me, including Korologos, who turned it down, and a few others, and then he came back to me, but I was leaving - this is in Ford now so I'm getting too far ahead of myself, maybe it's irrelevant - but he called me after I left. I'd gone to GE, and he said, "I talked to the President, and he agrees you'd be good in that job, and we want you to do it." I said, "I just, just took this new job." I wanted that job, but now I've gone here. What am I going to turn around say I'm not going to take it?" Rumsfeld said something like that I can make a call to the GE people, they'll understand. You're not gonna be in any trouble, but I counseled with Bryce, and Dean was alive then, and I counseled with Dean, and they said, "Keep your, keep your job. Keep the GE thing. You made a commitment, you're gonna look like you're a scatterbrain. So, don't, don't take them, don't take the job." They weren't doing that against Rumsfeld, they were doing that for my career, but I kind of wish I had done that. I kind of wish I'd take that, wished I had taken that job just for the experience that it would have offered, especially under Rumsfeld, who was the greatest too. PM: Well, let's talk a little bit more about the day-to-day business of liaising between the White House and Capitol Hill, because this is a two-way street. It's not the case the White House can dictate something, and it's also, you know, not the case that the Hill can dictate. What's it like? What are the, what are your responsibilities? What are the issues that come up? PO: Well, you have to think back to that date. We were a distinct minority on the Hill. I mean, we were nowhere. We had no really power whatsoever. So, we had to deal with, with the leadership in... PM: And this is Hugh Scott. PO: Say it again? PM: Hugh Scott. PO: Hugh Scott in the House, and, I mean in the Senate, and... PM: Jerry Ford. PO: Jerry Ford, yeah. Of course, Jerry, this is a continuum for me, because Jerry came back to the White House, and we worked with him there, and Jerry Ford, from what I understand, I didn't work the House side directly, but he came to the leadership meetings and things we would sit in. He was terrific. Hugh Scott was difficult. He wasn't necessarily on board with the President and, as a matter of fact, when Watergate came around, he told Korologos and myself, "Maybe it'd be just as well that you don't come to my offices anymore," you know. You know, it was, that was kind of the relationship. So, it wasn't the same as Ford but we had to work with the majority, and the chairmen of the various committees, and that's the only way we got anything done. So, we spent an inordinate amount of time with the Democrats, and that would get the Republicans irritated at the White House. "Well, why aren't you paying attention to us?" The real answer is: you don't have the votes. We can't get anything out of the Republicans, so we have to work with the Democrats. We worked with the Republicans plenty but you know what I mean. The focus and the priority was with the leadership, the Democratic leadership. Our day-to-day job was to be on the Hill. Timmons would give us hell if he found us midday in our offices. He said, "Your job is up there, you know. You need to be there," and that was before radio and TV covered the floor proceedings, so you had to have, you know, you had up close proximity to the floor. We had, Korologos and I, had the little special VIP diplomatic gallery assigned to us, and we were up there a lot. Any special votes or anything like that, key debates, we're up there doing longhand notes and, by the way, that was just against the rules of the House and Senate to take notes up there. So, we had to get permission from the leadership, you know, special permission to take notes, doing it very discreetly so people didn't see you doing it, but so, we were up there, you know, seven and eight hours a day, and then in evening debates and stuff, we were up there throughout the whole thing, in the hallways meeting with the Senators coming in and out of the, off the floor, getting phone calls from Timmons and the leader - Timmons, basically. 'Here's the latest. You need to see Senator so-and-so. Tell them not to offer that amendment. The President is going to be furious at him, or beg him to offer this amendment...' and then people coming back and forth with paper, you know, documents, amendments, and whatever, up to the Hill. So, it, totally different era than now where it's all done by email, and it's on the media, and you, you know, you have exposure to it. You can sit in the White House and do just about as good a job as you could by wandering the halls, but by wandering the halls, you established relationships with key people in addition to the members, you know, the Chiefs of Staff. In those days, we called them administrative assistants. Now they're chiefs of staff, the same thing, but you really got to know the staffs well by being around all the time, you know, day in and day out. Doesn't happen that way now, and now, I think that five that what we had as the core working group up on the Hill of five is now probably twenty-five, you know. It's too big. It's, the individuals have lost their personality and their special status with the members, and it's a different person every day, and you could talk to George Bush's people that were in the Congress when George Bush was in the White House, and how did the White House Liaison office work? Did they have one? I don't remember ever talking to anybody in the White House public, not public, Legislative Affairs office. They were not strong the way we were with Timmons, and we were so much smaller, but we had our own personalities and recognition by the members as having access to the President, having the President's ear, and then you'd have meetings every now and then with Nixon, much more with Ford, where Nixon would say, you know, "Mr. O'Donnell's gonna be my man on this point," you know, "just let, just call him, and he'll report to me." Well, I never reported to Nixon once in my life directly. I did it through Timmons, you know, always. So, anyway, that was the day-to-day situation, you know. You have an early-morning meeting with Timmons at 7:30 or something; Timmons would go to the, timing is vague on me, but say it was seven o'clock senior staff meeting of the senior White House staff. Then, Timmons would come out of that and meet with us, say it's 7:30, and then, "Go," and, you know, we'd be up there all day long, and we had the little pager devices that we would wear on our belts, which is the beginning days, these were high-tech, and those would go off, and they were orally, you know, "O'Donnell call Jones, O'Donnell call Jones." You'd be like, out loud, you'd hear this thing, and that's that's how you'd do it. Korologos was in once with Senator Eastland, who was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and this thing's going off, and he's, "Goddamn, you're spying on me!" Timmons said no, I mean Korologos said, "No, it's just a, you know, it's just a device for messages." He said, "No, no, goddamnit. I don't want you bringing that thing in here. They're spying on me." So, Tom gave it to the Senator. He said, "Have your guys check it out. It's just a paging device," and then he came back a few days to get it. Senator said, "I threw it out." [Laughs] In those days, they probably cost $1,000. Um, but constant back and forth, and Bill was the consummate leader from headquarters. I mean, he was on that, on that phone all day long, you know, taking notes and coordinating our assignments and putting them together with the senior White House staff for synergy and, and uniformity and that kind of thing. So, he mostly stayed at his desk while the rest of us were up there on the Hill. PM: Were you doing arm twisting or were you just gathering intelligence or both? PO: Oh no. No, no, no. We were lobbying the members, you know. We were 'educating', I think is the word you want to use, but, no, we were doing very heavy with the members, face-on-face, and then we had all of their private numbers, you know, and through the White House staff, you know, at night and frequently call so-and-so at 10 o'clock at night, you know, President needs to know what he thinks about this subject. We would do those things. That was easy because of the White House switchboard. I mean, you could just say, "Get me so-and-so," but we also had some private numbers, private, private numbers, where we could call members, but it was, you know, it was 24-hour-a-day job, you know. We came in on Saturdays, worked through Saturday to the point that, you know, it was, you weren't, you, it was understood when you went home at two o'clock in the afternoon or three o'clock in the afternoon on a Saturday afternoon, but at night, you know, frequently 10, 11, you know, whatever it was. So, it was a very demanding job, but very enjoyable, and it's a young man's job, you know. I wouldn't want to do that today. PM: Did you work on the Ford vice presidential nomination? PO: Oh, yeah, yeah. I had a lot to do with that. I mean, I was kind of the immediate guy at the table when that was decided in Timmons' office with, you know, Ford and some of his people he brought around, and I did, I did a lot of confirmations in those days because Korologos was too busy to do them, so I handled an awful lot of them. So, I, I started the ball rolling and was very much involved in that and worked very closely with Jim Cannon, who came with Ford and later took over the Domestic Council. I was trying to get that sequence in my mind, and a number of other people like Richard Peer-- Parsons, who was the head of, what is it called? PM: AOL Time Warner. PO: AOL Time Warner. PM: Now, it's something else. PO: Yeah, and he was a young guy who Rockefeller loved, but yeah, I was very much involved in that confirmation process. PM: So, how do, you know, how do you go off and sell somebody to be Vice President? Especially in '73 where, you know, there's, you know, Agnew has just resigned. So, it's not... PO: Well, I mean, that was beyond my purview. I was just in the meeting after the decision had been made where we sat down with, with Rockefeller and talked about how it's gonna be and what's gonna have to happen on the Hill and that he's gonna have to see an awful lot of members, and I remember one vignette where he needed to meet with Goldwater. The President wanted him to meet with Goldwater, and they'd had some friction, politically, over their careers, and Goldwater said, "Oh, you know, to hell with it. I don't want to meet with him. I'm not gonna vote against him but I don't, you know," and I said, "Senator, they really need you to do this. Would you do it?" He said, "Okay, I'll do it, but I don't want any press. I don't want any goddamn phalanx of cameras and microphones in my face. I want to do it at a secret arrangement." So, we did it somewhere other than his office, in some hearing room or something. And we're going down the hall, I'm with Rockefeller, and we're going down the hall, and they're 8,000 cameras and media people there at the door of this room. Somebody had leaked this thing going on. So, Goldwater was furious and he didn't come to the meeting. He, somebody told him there's press all over the place, and he chewed my butt out. I think he chewed Timmons out too, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I think, I think that, I'm just trying to put it together, and then they ultimately got together. They did meet in some private circumstance, but that was just one little vignette that I remember that kind of blew up, because somebody, somebody leaked it. PM: I'm just wondering, you know, Senator Goldwater didn't have a reputation for suffering that kind of... PO: No. No, no, no. He had a short fuse and would let you know about it. I mean, another occasion we had him at one of the conventions, and he was gonna give a speech, and he forgot his credentials, and they held him up, they, they wouldn't let him in at the perib-- at the perimeter around, I forget where this was, and they wouldn't let him in. And so, he said, "Screw it, bye," and they're looking for him; he'd gone back to his hotel or something, and he said, "I don't need it. Goddammit, they wouldn't even let me in. The hell with you." And so, they had to beg him, you know, "Please, Senator, it was a, you know, a local rent-a-cop, you know. They didn't know. Their job is 'I don't care who he is. You don't let anybody in here without credentials.' So, the guy was doing his job, you know. He doesn't know any better." So, but he, he was given to just, "I don't need to put up with this nonsense. See you later. I'm out of here." PM: Well, there were some other real personalities on, in the Senate, especially at this point. We've already talked about Goldwater, obviously, and Eastland. You've also got John Stennis. PO: Stennis, yeah, who, who was just a wonderful, wonderful guy, and he loved Tom Korologos, and up to the point of his older years, he would see, actually this happened with Stennis and Eastland, they would come up to Tom after a vote or something and say, "How did you vote on this one?" [Laughs] But Stennis was a wonderful gentleman, and we worked with him a lot, day in and day out, and he was at the White House all the time, and the President liked him. I mean, what was not to like about John Stennis? He was an honest guy and he was totally loyal to the President, and Korologos will tell you this story, but I'll tell it to you too. The President decides to invite Eastland and Stennis down to the White House - this story's gotten around, maybe you've heard it - for a drink after work one day in the middle of Watergate, and he's going to explain to them his position on Watergate, and he starts to, starts about three times, and Stennis, Eastland interrupts him, "Don't worry, Mr. President. We're with you a hundred percent. We don't need to hear all the details. We're gonna be with you. He said, "Well, guys, I'd really like you to hear this." So, after about the third time, Stennis interrupts Eastland, he says, "John, would you be quiet and let the boy speak?" [Laughs] So, they were a unique couple of guys and we were good to them. I mean, you know, when they needed some special attention from the White House, we were there, you know, to do whatever was within reason, frequently traveling, you know. They'd be at a meeting, Stennis was so good about it, he say, "I don't want to upset anything but I need to get to Mississippi tomorrow morning at eight o'clock. Do you think you could give me a lift?" and then you'd have to go through the White House staff, the mechanism, and you'd get turned down. That was the deal. There was a military aide who was told to turn down all these requests for special transportation. Then, you had to appeal it up to the Chief of Staff, and you had to go through it every time, you know, rather than say, "Hey, you know, let's just go. We're gonna give him a plane when he needs one." So, we'd take it up, and Rumsfeld, and whoever was the Chief of Staff at the time would... PM: Al Haig too, I imagine. PO: Ultimately say, "Yeah, fine, he could have the plane. We're gonna fly him down there," and, but they were special guys those two guys, and there were some other, others there. You'd have to say the names to me right now, because they're not rushing to my mind, but there were some special guys, Sparkman, who's chairman of the Banking Committee at the time. He was a wonderful old gent, loved the President. PM: It seems like there was as many Democrats who liked the President as Republicans. PO: Well, yeah, those conservative Southern Democrats. I mean, you know, they were, they were, they were Nixon fans, in great part. Not all of them, of course, but, so, we had a lot of friends there, I mean we were dealing in the minority, but we had a lot of friends who were chairmen of the committees of jurisdiction, which helped a lot. McClellan of Arkansas, who was chairman of the Appropriations Committee at the time. He loved Nixon and he loved us. He loved Tom and me, and we were in his office all the time, and you know, we developed these personal relationships, which was very helpful to our mission, you know, to have access to these, I mean, I can walk into McClellan's office any time of the day and say I really need to see him, and I'd be in there, you know. Try to, as I try to do that as a lobby, lobbyists today, try to see the chairman of the Appropriations Committee - get in line, pal, you know. PM: I'm just thinking, this is kind of unique, because both Senators Humphrey and McGovern were still in the Senate. Did you have to work with them or their staffs? PO: Humphrey, we worked with all the time. I never worked with McGovern. That must have been Tom's job or something, but we worked with Hubert Humphrey constantly. He couldn't have been, he couldn't have been better, and he did the foreign aid package for us every year, and he would always say, "This is the last year. I'm not gonna handle it anymore. I'm catching more heat from my own people." "Oh, Senator, one more time. The President really needs you." "Okay," and he'd tell his secretary Ursula, "Ursula, make a note. This is the last time I'm doing this," and, but he always would do it. He was a wonderful personality. PM: Just to go back to John Stennis, for a second. You come in 6-10 weeks before the idea of the "Stennis Compromise" is floated. Did you hear anything about that or was that conducted? PO: No, no. We were in meetings when that was discussed in the, you know, the legislative team, because it involved him, and I forget who gave birth to that idea, and we thought it was a wonderful idea, but it didn't fly. You probably remember more about the details about how that got shot down, but... PM: There was actually a lot of confusion on the details, which is, depending on who you are. PO: We trusted him totally, and I think the Democrats were saying he's too old and he's too, you know, beyond his prime to be trusted with this job. We can't just let him, and he probably would have, he probably would have said, "Hey, nothing wrong with these tapes," and that would have been that. But he did, Stephens had, Stennis had a favorite pet project called the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway down through the South, and it was a huge public works project, billions of dollars, and it was Mississippi and the surrounding states, and all the members were very much in for it, and Stennis caught a bullet one day out in front of his home, and he went to the hospital, and there was some fear that he, he might, he might die, and Korologos was in visiting him, and he said, "Tom, I don't care. If I die, I want you to make sure the President remembers his commitment that Tennessee-Tombigbee gets built." He said, "Yes, sir. I'll tell the President personally," and I think he did. I think he actually told the President personally on that one. PM: Did it get built? PO: It got built, it got built. It really did, against huge opposition, 10-12 years of lawsuits. Every single court in the country it went to, I think, including the Supreme Court, and it ultimately got done. I got hired by the authority that was doing it after I got out in private practice. Stennis said to these folks, "Mr. O'Donnell's gonna be your new lobbyist," [Laughs] and they said, "Really?" and he said, "Yes, I'll leave the room. You can talk over the business." This was in his office, and they hired me. [Laughs] You know. That's the kind of guy he was. I think partially they hired me just in case the thing went down, they could blame me. When it got done and was finished, my name never came up. It was everybody else taking bows, but it was just one of his pet projects and, you know, he wasn't gonna let Nixon forget that he had committed to that. PM: Did you have any dealings with Senator Buckley? PO: Yeah, but not close. PM: His election had been a project for the President, which is why I'm asking. PO: Yeah, and I forget what year he came in. Did he come in '70? PM: '70, I think. PO: '70. He was always... PM: He had Agnew going back and forth - PO: Yeah. PM: - making speeches for him. PO: He was a decent and a nice guy in our dealings with him. I didn't, just, I didn't deal with him much. Tom must have done the dealings with him, and then he later got a judgeship, many years later, I guess. Is he still on the bench? I've lost track. PM: That I don't know. PO: Yeah. PM: I think he's of an age, so. PO: Yeah. PM: I'm asking these questions because there's, we've talked to several members of the House Judiciary Committee but, of course, many members in the Senate have moved on, in one sense or the other, and I'm just trying to get a sense of what the reaction of the body was to Watergate, especially because you come on before the Saturday Night Massacre, and then you're there through what everybody, and through in this case assumes. PO: Through all that stuff. I was there for all of that stuff, when we had Bork in the office, and, you know, the whole, the whole number, and when we took the transcripts up to the Hill, which the thinking within the White House was this was gonna solve the problem. This is going to show that Nixon was innocent. We're reading them, Korologos and I are literally reading these in the car going up to the, we had not seen them at all, going up to the, up to the Hill to distribute these to the leadership. "What?" and we're reading some of this text saying, "How is this gonna save our bacon? I mean, this doesn't make any sense," and, of course, it didn't, and it was the beginning of the end. Old John Connally told Nixon, "You know, you should have a burning out there in the, on the front lawn, for national security purposes, of all those White House tapes and say, 'That's it, guys. There are too many sensitivity things here.'" He probably would have survived had he done that but he thought, he, Nixon thought, this was going to be fine. And so, it was, obviously it wasn't, and that was, that was the end, but we were up there, Korologos and myself, and a lot of doors closing in our faces, at that point in time, including Hugh Scott that I mentioned, and then when when Ford came in and the doors opened again, Korologos and I didn't go back to Hugh Scott's office after that. We didn't, he wanted us to use that as his, our base of operations, which was handy. There were extra desks and phones, but we didn't go back in that same capacity. PM: President Ford wanted you to go? PO: Well, no, no, I mean, Hugh Scott wanted us to come back. He'd thrown us out when Nixon was in trouble, then when Ford came in he said, "Okay boys, you're welcome to come on back to my office," and we just, we kind of felt that was an act of disloyalty, and we didn't use his office as our central staging area up in the Senate anymore. I think we used, I think we used Ted Stevens' office. I think he was then the minority, minority whip. I think it was Ted Stevens, but we used his office, which was much smaller, but we found a place to sit and make phone calls. See phone calls was a crucial thing in those days, no cell phones. You needed a place to sit down at a phone. PM: Well, I'm just thinking of Ted Stevens, because by the end, he was walking around the Senate with his Blackberry. PO: Oh yeah, he became a high tech, he became a high tech guy. I cry a few tears for him. I'm so sorry what happened him, and I think he's going to be totally, you know, absolved on this thing. I talked to the lawyer Brendan Sullivan, and I asked him, I said, "What, what are the chances on appeal?" He said, "Probably 95% reversal or a new trial." He said the behavior of the Justice Department was absolutely atrocious. They did every unethical thing they could do to get that conviction. So, he'll come back like old Secretary Donovan did under Reagan after they dragged his name, where do I get my reputation back, you know, when they reverse the case? PM: So, the members, the Saturday Night Massacre did not affect the members as much as the tapes, the tapes transcripts did? PO: Yeah, no, the Saturday Night Massacres, if I remember correctly, that was just the refusal to fire... PM: Elliot Richardson and Ruckelshaus. PO: Elliot Richardson and Ruckelshaus, and then Bork did it, but, I mean, that was all that was. I mean, they talk about a massacre - it sounds like it's so earth-shaking, but, I mean, basically, the firing of those guys was a big deal but those tapes really sealed the, sealed the fate, I think. PM: Did it get harder to conduct ordinary business? PO: Yeah, I mean, you know, everything was all Watergate, at that point. We were still doing our job and there were appropriations bills and things of that nature but the whole government was preoccupied with, with the Nixon matter. Now, that's why I still support Jerry Ford to this day for pardoning him, you know, and getting it off the front page. You know, it's over, don't let this thing drag on for five more years in court and all those kinds of things, and that probably hurt Jerry Ford very badly in his re-election, and his not re-election, his election, when it came up, you know, because, because of that pardon. PM: Was there a sense within the White House that the President, I mean, did you feel the President growing more distant? PO: Well, yeah. We saw a couple, I mean, I, Timmons' office was then, then where the Vice President's office now is in the West Wing. So, and when I was sitting there in Timmons' office, the President would come by, and one time, the Secret Service, not the Secret Service, the FBI showed up towards the end, and they were monitoring the offices and making sure documents weren't being taken out and that kind of thing, and Nixon came down the hall and he, he either pushed or had a verbal assault on an FBI agent, you know. It was, you know, he'd lost his cool, and I don't know whether this got reported or not, but, I mean, it was, there it was right outside our door, where, you know, 'Get out of my way' or something like that. So, you, you know, things were tense, there's no question about it, and then I had a younger brother, Terry O'Donnell, who, I don't know whether you want to talk to him. He became, well, that's the Ford administration, I'm sorry. He was Ford's body guy. He had the job that Steve Bull had with, with Nixon. You've probably interviewed Steve. You know, Steve is a wonderful friend and good guy. PM: What was the sense like, what like, I'm sure Bill Timmons would have chewed you out if you were having too many meals in the mess, but what was the sense like among the, the junior staff, the staff assistant, special assistant level, as Watergate drew on? PO: You know, I, I don't recall exactly a tenor or a particular sense. Everybody was fully aware of what was going on and frightened to death that this could be the end but I never heard any whispering, you know, this is over and what a son of a gun he is and we should quit and that kind of thing. Everybody was totally with Nixon, you know, 100 percent supportive of what he was doing and that he was a good President. So, we didn't have scuttlebutt or people, you know, rabble-rousing in the ranks. I never saw any element of that at all. PM: When.. PO: And we would have a regular, you know, there was a circular table down in the White House mess that hold, held about 12 people or so, and we would frequently come back from the Hill to have lunch there, and, you know, so we were, we were in the scuttlebutt of what was going on, and I just didn't, I didn't see any of that attitude. PM: Did you think that Nixon was going to pull through? PO: I, yeah, I was hopeful right up to the end, until I really started reading those transcripts, and, you know, and that was a 20 minute ride. I just came to portions. Korologos is saying, "Look at this," and I'm saying, "Look at this. Oh my god, you know, what does this mean?" But I was hopeful and, you know, semi-optimistic all the way through that we were gonna get through this thing, but it wasn't to be. PM: When did you realize, I mean, were you in the, were you in the East Room? PO: Yeah, yeah. Well, it was in the Roosevelt Room when he said goodbye to the colleagues that, before he resigned the next day. We were there working, that was in the Roosevelt Room, where he said, "Guys, I let you down. I'm so sorry," and left the room. PM: What was that scene like? PO: Oh, it was a tearjerker. It was a tearjerker. Everybody in the room had broken out in tears. Trent Lott was there. He was a young member of the House, I don't, I can't remember why he was there, because he wasn't in leadership, but he was there. PM: He was on Judiciary. PO: Oh sure, yeah, and he was a strong supporter, but, yeah, that was a sad event. We were there that night and the next day when, you know, he gave it the [makes peace signs] on the steps of the helicopter, and off he went. Then we went down into, to put an element of humor, we went down to that 12-top table, Korologos and myself, and all these White House staffers are sitting around there, and he said, Korologos says, "What are all you Nixon guys gonna do?" [Laughs] As if, you know, he wasn't one of them. Great memories. PM: What was that afternoon like? PO: Well, it was a pall. I mean, you know, we, we went, we went into the mess and had lunch, and then everybody went off and did their own things. You didn't see anybody the rest of the afternoon. I don't remember what the heck we did, whether we went back to the Hill or not. I don't even remember what day of the week it was. It was a work day, I guess, it was a regular weekday. August 4th or August 9th? PM: 9th. PO: 9th. We went back to our offices, at least, and commiserated amongst ourselves, and then, of course, we immediately had the, the, you know, the Vice-Presidential thing come up and all that works. So, we were working right through it. PM: Why did they settle on Rockefeller? PO: You know, that's, that again is outside my pay grade. I just, he was just served up. 'This is the new Vice President designee. Your job is to help him get confirmed.' That was that. Job which I enjoyed, and then, by the way, when, when, when Rockefeller had his last meeting with Ford before it was decided that he was not going to be on the ticket in '76, I happened to run into him in the White House lobby, West Wing Lobby, and he said, "Patrick, I've been looking for you." Obviously, he hadn't. He'd just come out of the Oval Office, but he said, "I got to make some quick calls to the Hill, to some leadership." He said, "You know all the members." He said, "Let's sit down right here in the corner of the West Wing lobby." We sat, phone there. He said, "You call these guys and tell them I'd like to speak to them. I need to tell them," and he told me what happened. So, that's what we were doing in the lobby there, calling the leadership, where he would tell them that the plan was for him not to be on the ticket, and that he was comfortable with that and da dat dat dat dat dat. And then, Jim Cannon came in, who was kind of his chief aide. He happened to walk through, he didn't even know anything about it. He said, "What are you guys doing?" He said, "Well, I'm calling up people, let them know I'm not gonna be on the ticket." Cannon goes, "What!" So, he sits down with us while Rocky is having these conversations with various leaders. Little vignette of history that was dear to my heart. PM: I'm just thinking the historical irony of a Goldwater family friend being in... PO: Yeah, being in that thing. PM: With Rockefeller. PO: But I had been a classmate of Rockefeller's son Steve. So, when we first met each other, that kind of was a bonding agent. He liked that. And so, that, you know, in addition to having the job of doing work on his, on his nomination, was the family tie, and we had a nice few laughs and a few warm moments about that. PM: Had you ever run into John Dean, because of the Barry Goldwater affair? PO: Oh well, you know, after the fact, you know, because Barry Goldwater stayed close to John Dean, and I think they're in business together today. PM: They wrote a book together, yeah. PO: Yeah, but I think they're doing, they did some real estate things like that. So, and I was pretty close to Barry Jr. and sometime during the following years, Barry called me. He wanted a job in the administration, I guess this was in the Reagan administration, and could I help him get the job, and that he'd refresh my memory that he and Dean were good pals and still were good pals, and I knew Dean pretty well, you know, while we were at the White House and stuff, and I liked him before he became a traitor to the President. But, um. We dated the same, same young ladies back in those days. We were all single, I might hasten to add. [Laughs] PM: Did you have a purple convertible too? PO: No, but I did, he called me one day shortly after I came on, on duty there for Colson. His office was right down the hall in the EOB. He said, and he was Counsel to the President then, young guy, and he said, "You probably don't remember me, do you?" and I said, "John, I, you know, I've seen you around, I think, but I don't remember it." He said, "Well," he said, "I used to date Karla Hennings," who was the daughter of then-Senator Hennings of Missouri, Democrat, and I said, "No kidding." I said, "I used to date her too," and he said, "Well, yeah, I know that." He said, "You had a big party," at a, at a house, a bachelor house I had in Georgetown, "and she brought me as her guest, and that's, I remember meeting you." Now, Dean had a hell of a memory. He really did. I mean, I totally drew a blank on remembering, and luckily, I treated it well, and I said, "Well, that's wonderful. I love Karla. Whatever happened to her?" and he said, "Well, I married her." [Laughs] I went, "What?!" and he said, "Get a hold of yourself." He said, "We're divorced now," and "Wow!" I was startled. Of course, then he married Maureen. That's all history, all of that, that stuff. I haven't seen him in years. I haven't seen John in years. PM: I want to ask about the difference between legislative relations for President Nixon and legislative relations for President Ford. PO: Well, it was a totally different game. Ford being a Hill creature and having worked with us, the Timmons team, he immediately embraced us and, and trusted us and whatever. As a matter of fact, he had a, he had an advisor, Governor Scranton of Pennsylvania, former Governor Scranton, came in during that little transition period and did a little quick study of the White House staff and made recommendations about how he should handle the new White House staff. One of the recommendation, recommendations was get rid of the Timmons organization. They're tainted. They're, you know, they're spoiled goods, and, and Ford's reaction was, "That's the one group I know." He said, "I know those guys, I know every one of them. I know them and trust them, and not gonna happen, Governor. Let's hear the rest of your, your recommendations," but if he'd had his way, we would have all been just dismissed summarily, but he was very much more warm and outgoing than, than Nixon was. He took an interest in us. He really knew our names. He knew who we were, and, and we talked him into having a congressional day maybe once a week, for which for two hours we would run through a bunch of members, maybe three minutes to four minutes per meeting. Nixon would never do that. So, we were able to run a lot of members through, rank-and-file leadership, you know, we would decide, Timmons and his staff would decide, and, and that's where Ford really gave us status, because, you know, whoever was the staff guy for that meeting was the only one in the meeting. So, it was Ford and I remember with Mark Hatfield, who had, he covered more subjects in four minutes, and he was so organized. He had it all, little cards. He'd hand the President a card and, and whatever, and the President said, you know, "Pat O'Donnell will be working with me on this, and so stay in touch with him," and blah blah blah, but now with Ford, I actually did report on some things directly to him, but as far as, as Hatfield was concerned, that made me, it gave me status that I didn't have in his mind's eye up until that point, and he was very flexible with the Hill. I mean, he wanted to do well by the Hill, and he was much more willing to take calls from members and, and that kind of thing. So, it was a great sigh of relief, you know, after the tension of the the final days of Nixon, to have this warmth and the members up there embracing you, "Great, Jerry Ford is a wonderful pick." The honeymoon lasted 30 days until the pardon came through, and then the tensions built up again but it was night and day sort of the attitude of Ford, and, and that permeated through the White House. So, we, as the legislative staff, had more stature and recognition as a real result of Ford being in the White House than Nixon. Not speaking ill of Nixon, but he wasn't warm and cuddly, and he didn't reach out to junior staffers, you know. He barely knew you existed, and, and that's just the way he worked. PM: What was it like, there's the, in the early days of the Ford administration, there was a, the hub-and-spoke, which I believe also lasted about 30 days. PO: Which, which, say that again? PM: Hub-and-spoke that... PO: Oh. Oh, with, with, with, well, that was, that was Rumsfeld. PM: Well, Rumsfeld got rid of the other spokes. PO: Yeah, well, that's right. He said, "We're all spokes, and we're all equal, but I have the biggest spoke in the wheel kind of a thing," and that wasn't going to work, you know. I remember one incident where Jerry Ford was in with somebody, and Kissinger came, and he needed to see the President immediately, and my brother was then Ford's body guy, he was the Steve Bull, and he said, "Well, Mr. Kissinger, he's in with so-and-so, and you can't go in there," and he barged in anyway, and he got a couple of very cross words from Ford, you know, like, "Henry, can you see that I'm busy here?" you know, "Please." He went out just red and, you know, flummoxed, and, "How dare this happen to the great Kissinger," but you couldn't have people have, everybody has access. Somebody's got to be the boss. So, that thing got narrowed down real tight, and, and Terry had a session with Rumsfeld. When Rumsfeld came in, Terry was already in place, because Al Haig had put him in that job. And so, he would have been Ford's body guy for the short amount of time, and then Rummy becomes the Chief of Staff and, "Who's this guy Terry O'Donnell?" and suddenly, Terry has a second aide following him around with the President, you know, and Terry's thinking, "Obviously, there must be some plan. This guy is going to take my job," and Ford called Terry in and said, "Terry, you like this job?" "Yes, sir. I love it. It's a wonderful honor to be able to do this." He goes, "Who's this young man that's following you around all the time?" He said, "Well, he's working for Mr. Rumsfeld. I guess they want to be sure they have a backup," and he said, "Do you want to keep the job?" "Yes sir," he said. "Okay." The next day, the guy wasn't there. He was not there anymore, and I counseled my brother to get out and meet with Rumsfeld off-campus. Just have a drink or something with him, because Rummy is a tough guy, and, you know, down the road, if he doesn't like you, he's gonna get you anyway. So, they had a face-on-face meeting, and Terry said, "Listen, Don, you know, I saw that guy, and the President made the initiative, and, hey, I'm your guy, you know. Short of the President, you're my boss, and I will report everything to you, and I'll be a loyal lieutenant," and that, they shook hands on it, and that, that established the relationship. Because I think if they hadn't had that meeting, ultimately, he would have been off the staff. PM: What was it like moving from Rumsfeld to Cheney? PO: Well, it was a kind of seamless, you know. I mean, Cheney was so much a part of Rumsfeld and vice versa, you know, and Rumsfeld created Cheney, as you know. Back in that, those early days with Colson, he and I were both staff assistants. He was staff assistant to Rumsfeld, and I was staff assistant to Colson, and, and his career kind of went straight up, where mine didn't necessarily do that, but Cheney was a relaxed guy and easy to work with in those days, and that carried on. Then he, when he came back to be Chief of Staff, he needed somebody really good to be his secretary. My secretary ended up as his secretary. So, she was able to keep me in pretty close touch with, with, with Mr. Cheney when I needed to do that, if I was having a hard time, but it was, it was smooth. It was, you know, it was very easy, and Dick was very good at it. I mean, he just, he was like he was an old-timer, and what was he, 34 years old when he was Chief of Staff? PM: 34, 35. PO: And then he was, either he or was it, he or Rumsfeld was the youngest Secretary of Defense. PM: Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld was the youngest and the oldest. PO: Yeah, and I worked on both those confirmations. The earlier one I did myself. The other one I just helped out on. So hard to believe that that many years took place. PM: Well, let me just ask you about that quickly. The second Rumsfeld confirmation, was that a tough sell? PO: You know, I don't remember the details so, so well, but I think not, you know. I wasn't running it at that point. That was under Reagan? PM: Bush, Bush 30, Bush 43. PO: Yeah, I'm just forgetting the details but I don't recall it being a tough sell, nor was the first one, and I think he was a great Secretary of Defense. I think he was a great political operative, and it's a shame what the media and the left has done to Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. They have made them into demons when they were both very competent, smart, effective, political operators. Darn crying shame. But what I started to say, Rumsfeld created Cheney, politically, because Cheney was his staff assistant, and then, you know, helped that career bounce up several times. PM: I want to ask you about one, well, Ford has the great Cabinet reshuffle. Schlesinger is out, Rumsfeld moves up. When did, when was there a sense that Jerry Ford had made the presidency his own? PO: Gosh. I don't, I can't give you an opinion on that. We were doing our basic job. It was much easier under Ford. We were much more liked, even after the pardon was issued. So, for our day-to-day stuff, it was a plus, you know, throughout the Ford period compared to what it was with a long period of Watergate and the final days of Nixon, but, I mean, it was pretty much the same situation, different Cabinet officers, but I didn't ever notice any huge change in the dynamic of how the Cabinet worked or how the President, the presidency worked with its Cabinet and with its staff. There was nothing I noted of particular interest. If you have anybody specific in mind, we didn't have many new Cabinet officers, though, in that period, I don't think. PM: I think it just feels like more in retrospect, because there was, I think there was a new Attorney General. I think Saxbe, Saxbe leaves, Levi comes in. PO: Oh yes, Saxbe, that's right. I did Levi's confirmation. That was one, I lived with Levi on that whole thing, and, but... PM: What was that like? Because there had been a rough run of attorneys general there? PO: Yeah, well, he was very well received. He was an intellectual, and there wasn't a lot of, you know, there wasn't a lot of resentment to him as I, as I recall. One vignette that you might get a kick out of or might be interesting, I did George Bush's confirmation for CIA. PM: Oh, tell us about that. PO: You remember he was selected by Nixon, but Nixon was gone. Ford decided to go forward with him, if I remember correctly, and I lived with George Bush for, gee, three and a half weeks. I mean, literally, day and night as we did the rounds, just he and myself. No staff. We're walking the Hill, you know, having the meetings with the various members of the committees of jurisdiction and whatever, and we finally got word that the leadership would not allow him to be confirmed unless the President made a commitment that he wouldn't be on the ticket in '76, and I was in the office with George Bush and the President. I think we were alone, I think it was just the three of us, when I was telling the President that this is the, this is the quid pro quo that was given to me. I think it was by senator from Connecticut, help me with his name, former Labor Secretary...Ribicoff. I think it was Ribicoff. I could be wrong on that, but that, you know, this is the price, you know, and the President needs to made, make this, make this decision, and Ford's instinct was, "I'm not gonna have them pound me that way. I'm not going to submit to extortion. The hell with that," and, and Bush kind of goes, "Mr. President, I know I'm not going to be on the ticket, and, you know, I'm gonna be sort of out here all by myself if you decline, and I don't mind you making that commitment." He gives him a, "That's all right with you, George?" like, "What's wrong with you?" He said, "All right, okay, fine. Let them know that we'll do that," and that's, that's how the confirmation took place. We went back, and I'm almost certain it was Ribicoff that we gave the word to that that was going to be acceptable. PM: So, this was the, this was not the Republican leadership making the... PO: No, this was the Democrats. They were, they were deciding what the, what the bill was on this thing. They were not gonna confirm George Bush. You see, he had been the head of the Republican National Committee, you know, and CIA's notoriously nonpartisan. So, they had, they had some basis to say, 'This doesn't make any sense at all. We're not going to put a political operative in CIA.' And so, it happened but there was a price to pay, and I don't think there was ever any real thought that George was gonna be on the, on the ticket. I didn't know about it, certainly, if he was. PM: I was just curious, because of the way the ticket ended up if maybe there had been a Republican move to keep him off in '76. PO: Uh. Well, I think there were some sources, forces that maybe would rather be sure that he wasn't on the ticket, but that's all, was all speculation. I don't know anything about that. PM: Well, I want to ask you if there's any, any vignettes or any thoughts that we haven't captured here this afternoon that... PO: No, I've given you a few of them as they just came to mind. I don't have any that I was thinking about that you should know. Yeah, I just don't have any, any further things. They were just, you know, there was a story a day. I mean it was just, it was a great ride, and the exposure and the, and the friendships. We just had a big dinner about a month ago, a former Nixon White House senior policy staff. It's mostly the Ehrlichman people, and they have invited people like Timmons and me and Korologos and some others, Bruce Whelihan, who was in the press shop, to join them, and it's been a wonderful thing, and Cheney is a pretty regular show up at those and Rumsfeld and, you know, we have a great once-a-year luncheon, and you ought to get a list of that, the attendees at that thing, because they're all updated with current addresses and all that thing. I have a list of which I'd be happy to give you. But it's, it puts everybody where they are in the world right this minute. PM: Absolutely. Mr. O'Donnell, thank you very much. PO: Thank you. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Channel: Richard Nixon Presidential Library

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Length: 93min 2sec (5582 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 30 2021