Power Game (133 page)

50.
Jack Kemp, interview with the author, March 24, 1986.

1.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, quoted in Richard B. Cheney and Lynn V. Cheney,
Kings of the Hill
(New York: Continuum, 1983), p. 172.

2.
John W. Finney, interview with the author, January 13, 1985.

3.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., interview with the author, January 2, 1986.

4.
Both Speaker O’Neill and his close aides, Ari Weiss and Kirk O’Donnell, emphasized this point repeatedly in several interviews with the author.

5.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., interview with the author, October 16, 1985.

6.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr.,
The New York Times
, May 16, 1986, p. A35. He said many of the same things in 1981 and throughout his decade as speaker.

7.
Kirk O’Donnell, interview with the author, December 12, 1986.

8.
Dom Bonafede, “For the Democratic Party, It’s a Time for Rebuilding and Seeking New Ideas,”
National Journal
, February 21, 1981.

9.
The Washington Post
, May 8, 1981, p. 1.

10.
Richard Bolling, interview with the author, January 15, 1986.

11.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., interview with the author, November 6, 1986.

12.
Norm Ornstein, interview with the author, January 20, 1986.

13.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., interview with the author, November 6, 1986.

14.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., addressing the House Democratic Caucus, May 5, 1981.

15.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., interview with the author, October 16, 1985.

16.
Ibid
.

17.
Dan Rostenkowski, speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, February 17, 1981.

18.
Rather inconsistently, O’Neill contended both that the 1980 election had not been a mandate for conservative fiscal policies but only a repudiation of Jimmy Carter, and also that the
nation’s mood was so conservative in 1981 that even Carter would have had to carry out much of Reagan’s program. In an interview with the author on November 6, 1986, he said, “If Jimmy Carter had been reelected president that year, you would have had a tax cut, number one; you would have had increases in the military, and you would have had cuts across the line in the budget.”

19.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., interview with the author, November 6, 1986.

20.
Kenneth Duberstein, interview with the author, February 3, 1986.

21.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., interview with the author, October 16, 1985.

22.
Richard Bolling, interview with the author, January 15, 1986.

23.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., interview with the author, January 2, 1986.

24.
Christopher Matthews, interview with the author, August 7, 1985. Also,
The New York Times
, June 17, 1985, p. 1;
The Washington Post
, June 17, 1985, p. A1 and p. B1.

25.
This account comes from aides to both President Reagan and Speaker O’Neill in background interviews in June–July 1981. A slightly different version appeared in Hedrick Smith, “Coping with Congress,”
New York Times Magazine
, August 9, 1981, pp. 12 ff.

26.
Thomas E. Mann, interview with the author, December 22, 1986.

27.
Christopher Matthews, interview with the author, August 7, 1985.

28.
Joe Foote of Southern Illinois University and former press secretary to Carl Albert, reported that O’Neill’s TV appearances from 1979 to 1985 averaged 120 annually, compared to forty for Albert and thirty for McCormack. Robert C. Byrd, the Senate majority leader in 1977–80, had eighty.

29.
Kirk O’Donnell, “Political Agenda for House Democrats,” memorandum to the speaker, August 4, 1981.

30.
This account comes from one of the participants, who asked not to be identified.

31.
This account comes from interviews with O’Neill, Bolling, Ari Weiss, Howard Baker, Jim Baker, Stockman, Ken Duberstein, Kirk O’Donnell, Christopher Matthews, and Tom Griscom. Also see Martin Schram,
The Washington Post
, May 2, 1981, p. A1.

32.
David Stockman, interview with the author, January 7, 1986.

33.
Ibid
.

34.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., interview with the author, October 16, 1985.

35.
Jim Wright, interview with the author, December 18, 1985.

36.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., interview with the author, October 16, 1985.

37.
Kirk O’Donnell, interview with the author, December 12, 1986.

38.
Thomas Foley, interview with the author, March 22, 1986. O’Neill recalled to the author on October 31, 1986, that in early 1981 Haig had said, “We oughta be in Nicaragua … with our troops. No
contras
or anything else. They weren’t around in those days.”

39.
Poll by Louis Harris, October 29–November 1, 1986, before the Iranian arms scandal was disclosed.

40.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., interview with the author, October 16, 1985.

41.
Les Aspin, interview with the author, January 10, 1986.

42.
Albert Gore, Jr., interview with the author, January 10, 1986.

43.
Ibid.
, and Albert Gore, Jr., “The Fork in the Road,”
New Republic
, May 5, 1982.

44.
Henry Kissinger, “A New Approach to Arms Control,”
Time
, March 21, 1983.

45.
R. James Woolsey, interview with the author, January 8, 1987.

46.
Les Aspin, interview with the author, January 10, 1986; and Brent Scowcroft, interview with the author, March 3, 1986.

47.
Brent Scowcroft, interview with the author, March 3, 1986.

48.
Thomas Foley, interview with the author, January 7, 1987.

49.
Norman Dicks, interview with the author, March 21, 1986.

50.
Les Aspin, interview with the author, January 10, 1986.

51.
Norman Dicks, interview with the author, March 21, 1986.

52.
Ibid
.

53.
The Washington Post
, January 3, 1983, p. A13.

54.
William Cohen, interview with the author, January 13, 1987.

55.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., interview with the author, October 31, 1986.

56.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., interview with the author, October 16, 1985.

57.
Frank Fahrenkopf, quoted in
The Philadelphia Inquirer
, May 30, 1985.

58.
Dan Rostenkowski, interview with the author, January 3, 1986

59.
Henson Moore, interview with the author, December 18, 1985.

60.
Dan Rostenkowski, interview with the author, January 3, 1986.

61.
Ibid
.

62.
This account comes both from Rostenkowski and from high Treasury Department officials.

63.
Dan Rostenkowski, televised speech to the nation, May 28, 1985.

64.
Dan Rostenkowski, interview with the author, January 3, 1986.

65.
John Sherman, interview with the author, October 19, 1985.

66.
Dan Rostenkowski, interview with the author, January 3, 1986.

67.
Thomas Downey, interview with the author, November 5, 1985.

68.
James A. Baker III, interview with the author, February 25, 1986; and Dan Rostenkowski, interview with the author, January 3, 1986.

69.
Dan Rostenkowski, interview with the author, January 3, 1986.

70.
Marty Russo, interview with the author, December 16, 1985.

71.
Dan Rostenkowski, interview with the author, January 3, 1986.

72.
Marty Russo, interview with the author, December 16, 1985.

73.
Dan Rostenkowski, interview with the author, January 3, 1986.

74.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., interview with the author, November 6, 1986.

75.
Ibid
.

76.
One Washington humor group, The Capitol Steps, captured the mixed parentage of the tax bill. To the tune of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidoshus,” they sang, “ReaganPackwoodRostenkowskiTaxSimplification.”

1.
Ronald Reagan, nationally televised campaign speech, October 19, 1980.

2.
Alexander M. Haig, Jr.,
Caveat
(New York. Macmillan, 1984), p. 12.

3.
Stuart Alsop,
The Center
(New York: Harper & Row, 1968) pp. 97–98.

4.
George P. Shultz, “The Abrasive Interface” in
Harvard Business Review
, November–December 1979, p. 93.

5.
This line of analysis is well developed in an excellent book by Morton H. Halperin,
Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy
(Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1974). Halperin’s experience as a Pentagon policymaker and as a national security deputy to Kissinger in the Nixon years gave him ample opportunity to develop his theories firsthand, and they are as sound today as when they were written.

6.
Michael Pillsbury, interview with the author, June 28, 1985.

7.
James Sterling Young,
The Washington Community
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), pp. 221–222.

8.
Stanley J. Heginbotham, “Dateline Washington: The Rules of the Games,”
Foreign Policy
, vol. 53, Winter 83–84, pp. 157–172.

9.
John W. Vessey, interview with the author, June 30, 1987.

10.
The version given the author by a top national security official in three separate interviews, February 12 and 13, 1986, and June 29, 1987, was that Reagan had actually issued an order for American planes to attack, but Weinberger denied that in an interview with the author, March 28, 1986. “There was no order to me of any kind, has never been an order to me by the president that hasn’t been carried out and carried out immediately,” Weinberger said. Vessey also said he knew of no “execution order” or advance planning for a joint raid with the French.

11.
George Shultz, interview with the author, January 27, 1986.

12.
Morton Halperin in
Foreign Policy and Bureaucratic Politics
develops an analysis of the conflicting attitudes of careerists and in-and-outers. His experience as a former Pentagon and
National Security Council official in both Democratic and Republican administrations has made him a superb student of bureaucratic game playing. In an interview with the author, January 29, 1987, he admitted: “I almost called my book on foreign policy,
Games Bureaucrats Play
. But it didn’t sound serious. It sounded too cute.”

13.
Leslie Gelb, “The Mind of the President,”
New York Times Magazine
, October 6, 1985, p. 21.

14.
This narrative is compiled from the accounts by three participants, each of whom spoke on condition that they not be identified.

1.
Robert C. McFarlane, “McFarlane on Why,”
The Washington Post
, November 13, 1986, p. A21.

2.
Henry A. Kissinger,
White House Years
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), p. 47.

3.
In
Our Own Worst Enemy
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), I. M. Destler, Leslie H. Gelb, and Anthony Lake use the analogy of cabinet barons and staff courtiers, in examining the power struggle between the national security staff and the secretary of State. See especially chapters iv and v.

4.
Ibid.
, p. 265.

5.
Richard Nixon, quoted by Jack Anderson, “Kissinger. One-Man State Department,”
The Washington Post
, October 18, 1974, p. D19.

6.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Deciding Who Makes Foreign Policy,”
New York Times Magazine
, September 18, 1983, p. 62.

7.
Ibid.
, p. 55ff.

8.
Martin Anderson, interview with the author, February 11, 1987.

9.
Joseph Coors, interview with the author’s researcher William Nell, February 11, 1987.

10.
Robert C. McFarlane, interviews with the author, March 20, 1986, and June 30, 1987.

11.
Edward Teller, interview with the author, February 13, 1987.

12.
James Watkins, interview with the author, February 18, 1987. The interview is the basis for the following narrative.

13.
This account is based on interviews with four participants in the meeting, General Vessey, and General Meyer, Admiral Watkins, and one other official who asked not to be identified.

14.
John W. Vessey, interview with the author, February 15, 1987.

15.
E. C. Meyer, interview with the author, February 22, 1987.

16.
Robert C. McFarlane, interviews with the author, June 29, 1987, and July 3, 1987.

17.
Dr. George Keyworth, interview with the author, February 16, 1987. The subsequent account of Keyworth’s involvement is drawn mainly from this interview.

18.
Richard DeLauer, interview with the author, March 19, 1986.

19.
James Watkins, interview with the author, February 18, 1987.

20.
E. C. Meyer, interview with the author, February 22, 1987.

21.
John W. Vessey, interview with the author, June 30, 1987.

22.
Richard Perle, interview with the author, December 5, 1987.

23.
John Poindexter, testimony before the Joint Congressional Committee investigating the Iran-
contra
operation, July 15, 1987 (hereafter, the Iran-
contra
hearings).

24.
Oliver North, Iran-
contra
hearings, July 8 and 10, 1987.

25.
John Poindexter, Iran-
contra
hearings, July 17, 1987.