Known and Unknown (20 page)

I phoned Washington and learned that our forces at the military facility in Italy were being mobilized by the President to assist with supplies for the Israelis. Though Italy, of course, was a NATO ally, Italy's ambassador to NATO didn't know a thing about it, nor did anyone else at NATO, including, quite obviously, Secretary General Luns and me. Ever since I had arrived in Brussels, I had stressed the importance of trust and consultation within the alliance, but here we had not lived up to our promise. It was an awkward episode.
^*
But more than that, I saw it as a sign that the strain of Watergate was affecting the White House. I doubted the administration would have made such a misstep if we had been in top form.

Predictably, the Soviet Union sought to capitalize on the difficulties of its principal adversary. Under the leadership of General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviets were playing a double game across the globe. They pursued a sizable military buildup at home and engaged in aggressive activities in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, all the while proclaiming their desire for peace and détente. Many in the West, and many NATO members, accepted the Soviet's rhetoric at face value. Some in Western populations seemed willing to blame their own governments, and particularly the United States, as the real source of the tension and instability in the world. With Soviet encouragement, millions around the world marched in protests—they marched not against Soviet aggression but against the United States and other NATO nations.

Yet even in Western Europe, for all the complaining about America among the elites, the United States still held a special meaning. One Belgian friend told me privately that when his daughters were pregnant, the best thing he could do for them was to arrange for them to be in the United States around their delivery times so his grandchildren would at least have the option of being American citizens. Notably, but unnoted, was the fact that nobody was clamoring to get visas to give birth in the Soviet empire.

At the end of 1973, Joyce and I decided it would be a good idea for our children to get a glimpse of the kind of oppressive societies that NATO was defending America against. So, over the New Year holiday, we took a train with our children and our friends, John and Carolyn Twiname and their children, behind the Iron Curtain to Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia. As the American ambassador to NATO, I was not unfamiliar to the Soviets. In some communiqués they referred to me colorfully as “Nixon's running dog.” To avoid diplomatic awkwardness, I traveled to Czechoslovakia as a private citizen.

We could all feel the change of mood as we crossed the border from a free and prosperous West Germany into Czechoslovakia. Outside the windows we saw massive steel barriers placed to deter Western tanks. Communist officials came onto the train, unapologetically went through passengers' bags, tossed aside the contents, and left us to repack our luggage.

After arriving at the train station in the town of Pilsen, we went to the hotel we had been assigned to by the Communist authorities. We were followed as we walked around the city, which was gray and grim. Store windows revealed sparse stocks—a shoe store with only a handful of pairs of shoes in the window. Religion being disfavored in the Communist bloc, a church we visited was nearly empty, save for a few elderly women in babushkas, praying in silence.

For our New Year's Eve dinner we went to a neighborhood restaurant. We were having a good time, and as the evening progressed many of the patrons began singing and dancing. People came over and danced with our son and daughters. I sang what I remembered of a Czech folk song I had learned from the co-captain of our high school wrestling team, Lenny Vyskocil, whose relatives had come to America from Czechoslovakia.

At one point the bartender pointed to a man he said wanted to meet me. Trying to avoid the attention of the authorities who were observing us, the man led me toward the men's room. I took my son, Nick, with me, thinking that he might provide some cover. For all I knew the man might be going to tell me he wanted to defect.

When I found him in the bathroom, I couldn't understand a word he was saying. He became animated and started taking off his shirt.

“What in the world is going on?” I wondered.

Once he was bare from the waist up, he turned to show me his back. There was a tattoo of what looked like a Pacific island with a palm tree and an American flag on it.

I left the room unclear about his message. The bartender told me that the man had wanted to see me because as a boy he had been befriended by an American soldier during World War II. The American had been killed later in the war, and the Czech, valuing his friendship with that soldier, had the tattoo put on his back in honor of his lost friend. And he wanted at least one American to know how he felt about our country.

I returned to our festive table, where everyone was continuing to have a good time with the Czech patrons. A bit later, the room grew quiet. The music stopped. People moved away from us. Apparently a Czech or Soviet security official who had not been pleased with the festivities had signaled that the evening was over.

Joyce tugged on me. “We should go,” she said.

It was a sad farewell to a wonderful New Year's Eve, with friendly people repressed by their puppet government and their Soviet overlords.

 

T
he following June, President Nixon came to Brussels for a major NATO summit with the other fourteen heads of state. This turned out to be his last trip abroad as president. As he came down from Air Force One, I greeted the President and his delegation at the foot of the stairs. It had been some time since I had seen Nixon. He appeared to be in a pleasant mood, and I wondered if he was simply grateful to be out of Washington and away from the Watergate problems for a while. The foreign arena was a break for him, and it was the forum in which he was usually at his best.

I escorted him and Secretary of State Kissinger to an airport reception hall, where I had assembled the senior American officials and staff from the U.S. NATO mission. I thought it might boost Nixon's morale to meet some friendly Americans and, at the same time, give our hardworking staff a rare opportunity to shake hands with the President.

Roughly three quarters of the NATO staff assembled were American military officers or senior enlisted personnel. The rest were some of the Defense and State Departments' finest civilian officials. Nixon went down the line and graciously shook hands and exchanged brief pleasantries with each of them.

After his greetings to them, I left with Nixon and Kissinger and climbed in the President's limousine. We rode in the backseat and headed to the American ambassador to Belgium's residence, where Nixon would be staying while in Brussels.

Once in the car, away from the press and cameras, Nixon's face fell. His mood changed.

Referring to the NATO staff members he had just met, Nixon snapped, “They're a bunch of fairies.” The President apparently had assumed that the NATO staff was composed of State Department people. His White House prized “machismo and toughness”—as Chuck Colson once described it—and Nixon tended to view people in the State Department as lacking grit.
⁶

I was taken aback by Nixon's mood and derogatory comment. Only a moment before he had seemed friendly to the staff I had worked so hard to recruit from both State and Defense. They were fine public servants, and I felt protective of them. So I spoke up and told the President that he was mistaken.

“Those folks are mostly military,” I said. “They just didn't have their uniforms on.” They were exactly the kind of hardworking people Nixon tended to appreciate.

Of the small numbers who were from the Department of State, I noted, “They're fine folks. I handpicked everyone, and they are doing an excellent job for the country.” Nixon looked out of the window, his face sullen. Perhaps in private, with people he knew, he allowed the strain of the events in Washington to show. When we arrived at the ambassador's residence, the President got out of the right side of the car. Back in public, he was smiling and cordial again. I moved to get out from the opposite side. As I exited, Kissinger followed behind me. He grabbed my arm, gently tugging me to the left side of the car. When he was sure the President was out of earshot, Kissinger said to me quietly, “Rummy, we don't argue with him anymore.”

 

A
few weeks later, Nixon's second chief of staff, Al Haig, called me from the White House.
⁷
During the last months of Watergate, he, as much as anyone, held the administration together. The phone reception was weak, and I heard a clicking noise throughout the conversation. Maybe it was just a sign of the times, but I had the impression that someone might be listening in.
⁸
Haig asked if I might consider returning to the White House to serve again as a counsellor to the President, to help out. It was becoming an all-hands-on-deck moment. I knew, however, that returning to Washington was the last thing I wanted to do. I had been at NATO for fourteen months at that point. I valued my relationships with my NATO counterparts and felt I was contributing something useful for our country and the alliance. I told Haig it wouldn't make sense for me to come back so soon.

Belgium undoubtedly seemed a world away to those in Washington mired in Watergate, but NATO was also embroiled in a serious crisis. Two of our NATO allies, Greece and Turkey, had a long history of differences over Cyprus, an island inhabited by both Greeks and Turks. Their disagreements had come to a boiling point during the summer of 1974, when Turkey invaded Cyprus. The dispute posed a difficult dilemma for the alliance.
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NATO was established as a military alliance to deter and defend its member states against external threats—not conflicts between its members. Because Washington was consumed with Watergate, I received little or no guidance during much of the crisis.

I was being urged by Secretary General Luns to assert the weight and influence of the United States to help resolve the issue; he may have assumed that I had the authority to do that, and also undoubtedly hoped that the United States had the capability to step in and calm those ancient and intractable differences.
⁹
That was not the only reason I declined to return to Washington when Haig called. It wasn't at all clear what I could conceivably do. At the end of our phone call, Haig told me he understood my reasons for not returning to Washington, and as far as he was concerned the matter was settled.
^†

As a result, I was not present at the White House less than three weeks later, on August 8, 1974, when President Nixon announced his resignation. Nor was I present to see that now famous wave Nixon gave as he prepared to board Marine One—smiling, with his arms raised in an awkward swoop, and his fingers curiously signaling “V” for victory.

I had, however, seen a similar wave by Nixon some years earlier when he gave a speech in San Jose, California. It was an episode that had stuck in my mind. Outside the large hall there was a sizable gathering of angry anti-Vietnam war protesters held back by a fence. As Nixon came out to get in his car in the motorcade, they shouted at him and waved hostile signs.

Instead of getting into his car, Nixon climbed atop something so he could be better seen by the mob. Then he had made the same gesture that he made as he left the White House—the same forced grin, the same swoop of the arms, the same “V” for victory.

The message was clear, both times: Richard Milhous Nixon was determined not to let his opponents get the best of him.

 

I
n the years immediately after Nixon's resignation, there was a sense among a number of us that we had emerged from a shared disaster. When Bill Safire sent me the book he wrote about his days in the Nixon administration,
Before the Fall
, he inscribed it: “To Don Rumsfeld—fellow survivor.”

Another survivor of Watergate, in a way, was Richard Nixon himself. Anyone who saw and felt the physical impact on Nixon of Watergate and the long impeachment process, capped by his resignation, exile, and subsequent serious illness, had to be surprised by his truly amazing comeback. But he was a most unusual human being. He seemed unable to accept defeat. Instead, he went to work using his impressive strength and fine mind to contribute to the national and international dialogue on important public issues.

I don't know to this day how to reconcile the man I knew with the tragedies that he inflicted on himself and the nation. Like the man, the Nixon era defied easy definition. His administration provided vital support for a range of initiatives that variously won support and opposition from both sides of the aisle—welfare reform, block grants to states, the all-volunteer military, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to name a few. The man loathed by the left and elites nominated the Supreme Court justice who authored the majority opinion in
Roe v. Wade
. The Republican leader targeted with loud and sometimes violent demonstrations by thousands of young Americans pressed successfully to give eighteen-year-olds the right to vote. The cold warrior who came to prominence as a fierce anticommunist and a scourge of Soviet spy Alger Hiss made a historic overture to Communist China and pursued détente with the Soviet Union. The public figure who would suffer the ultimate political disgrace also won one of the greatest electoral triumphs in American history less than two years before. The man who so often seemed introverted and lonely, and served by a small cadre of strongmen, also brought into his orbit a truly impressive and diverse array of talent who would affect the course of America for many decades thereafter.

On a personal level, the Nixon presidency changed the course of my life. Nixon offered me my first opportunities to lead large government enterprises in both the domestic and economic areas, and eventually to participate in our nation's foreign and national security policy by representing our country overseas. Moving out of the legislative branch of our federal government to serve in the executive offered a new and completely different view of government, one that informed my public service in the decades that followed.