ercise political control over the civil service personnel system. The majority of the careerists had come in during the Democratic years when many domestic social programs were expanding and defense allocations decreasing. Nixon's New Federalism was designed to reduce the power of the federal bureaucracy and its careerists, bypassing them and sending funds directly to the states.
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The tensions between the White House and the bureaucracy were intensified as many of Nixon's new federalism proposals called for a reduction in the number of categorical grants, the consolidation of various departments and agencies, and the elimination of federal bureaucratic discretion in various grant-in-aid programs. . . . [Thus,] many of Nixon's domestic programs could be interpreted as posing direct threats to the careers [and power bases] of many federal executives. (Cole and Caputo 1979, 400)
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Cole and Caputo's 1979 study of supergrade political and career officials traces how this administrative strategy created a ''fundamental shift in bureaucratic-presidential relations" to redirect the loyalties of the senior-level bureaucracy (Cole and Caputo 1979, 401). Malek's specialty, direct attack on the career bureaucracy, shines here in its own way: if no vacancies were identifiable, the PAS should create them. The so-called Malek Manual provided specific guidelines for how to do it:
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 | | "There are several techniques which can be designed, carefully, to skirt around the [difficult problem of firing established career executives]. You simply call an individual in and tell him he is no longer wanted . . . you expect him to immediately relinquish his duties. There should be no witnesses in the room at the time."
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| | If this "frontal assault" (the manual's own terminology) were not successful, the manual went on to suggest transferring unwanted personnel to regional offices, described by the manual as "dumping grounds." "If you have an employee," the manual advised, "who was born and raised in New England and is currently serving in your Boston regional office, and his record shows reluctance to move far from that location, a transfer accompanied by a promotion to an existing or newly created position in Dallas might just fill the bill." If the transfer technique failed, the manual recommended other "special assignments" as well as other techniques. But the point was clear: where no positions at the senior career levels were open, political executives were instructed in the art of creat-
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