Excerpt: October 1974 - Downstairs at the White House

There were other big events in October. The Watergate cover-up trial of five top Nixon aides and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, one of the most famous horror movies of all time, both opened on October 1. Some people thought they were the same thing. The Senate Appropriations Committee reported that former President Nixon’s transition to private life was costing taxpayers $7,350 a day, or the equivalent of $37,000 a day in current dollars. That did not go over well with the public. At the same time, the former President’s lawyers asked Judge John Sirica to quash subpoenas ordering Nixon to testify in the Watergate cover-up trial due to illness. The former President had been hospitalized for thrombophlebitis, an inflammation of the veins in his left leg, and a blood clot. Six hours after emergency surgery to remove a blood clot in Nixon’s thigh, he went into shock from internal bleeding. Although his vital signs were stable after a blood transfusion, he remained on the critical list as the month ended. Mail started to show up for a guy named Dick Cheney, the Deputy Assistant to the President for White House Operations. Cheney, of course, later became U.S. Secretary of Defense and Vice President of the United States. I spoke with him at a reception about 20 years later and proudly mentioned that we had worked together in the White House. He said that he didn’t remember me at all. Happy Rockefeller, the wife of Vice-President-designate Nelson Rockefeller, had a double mastectomy two weeks after Mrs. Ford’s surgery and spoke widely about her treatment as well. President Ford had nominated Rockefeller, the former Governor of New York, to succeed him on August 20. At the time, his confirmation was stuck in political mud. Rockefeller, the grandson of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller whose wealth was estimated at nearly $400 billion in 2017 dollars, was finally confirmed in December. I shook hands with “Rocky”, as he was known, as he passed from the Oval Office to the press briefing room on the day he was nominated. Still thinking that the Vice Presidency was cool, I tried to get a job in his office. Despite making it clear that I would have run over my grandmother to be on the Vice President’s staff again, it never worked out. Nonetheless, I got to know his secretary, Ann Whitman. She and Rosemary Woods were friends, although I had no idea what the connection was. Chatting with Mrs. Whitman on the phone one day, I casually asked what she had done before she went to work for Governor Rockefeller. “Oh, I worked here,” she said very matter-of-factly. “Oh, what did you do?” I asked, equally matter-of-factly. “I was President Eisenhower’s personal secretary,” she replied. Stunned into uncharacteristic silence, I could hear the blood drain out of my face. Suddenly, however, the connection between Ann Whitman and Rosemary Woods made sense. When Ike was in the Oval Office, Miss Woods had been Vice President Nixon’s secretary “Gee, that was a long time ago,” I said tactlessly. As nice as Mrs. Whitman was, I don’t think those words helped my candidacy much. Along with everything else, the November elections were coming up. In the wake of Watergate and the Nixon pardon, high inflation, and a deep recession, the GOP was expected to lose a lot of seats in the House and Senate. That put President Ford in the eye of the storm to rally Republican voters. It also created a lot of chatter about the President’s incredible stamina among the guys I knew in their late fifties and sixties. The President was 61. It wasn’t uncommon to hear that he’d had breakfast at seven in the morning, worked all day, boarded Marine One for Andrews Air Force Base in the late afternoon, flew off to a campaign event in Air Force One, gave a speech, shook hands with well-wishers, and then flew back to Andrews, landing on the South grounds by helicopter at midnight. He might stay in the White House the following day but go back on the road the next. At 19, with the equipment nature gave me hardly out of the box, the schedule the old guys called grueling didn’t sound bad to me at all. When I said that, one of them shot me the bird. Now that I’m that age, I understand why.

About the Author

Don Stinson is a graduate of American University and a former newspaper executive. A truly insignificant member of the White House staff during Watergate, he frequently loitered outside of the Oval Office.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he worked with newspapers in Russia, Slovakia, and Poland to establish a free and independent press. His accomplishments included being held hostage in a smelting plant, sleeping in an insane asylum guarded by sheep herders, and fighting a goat defending a lavatory door on Russian airliner Aeroflot. The goat won.

He (Don, not the goat) is also the author of Rookesby: Urgent Warning, an Amazon best-seller in the Human Rights Law and Leadership categories.

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