Ask the Scholar
Document scope · 1 page
Scholar
Ask about this object, its catalog metadata, its source description, or the page inventory.
For page-specific OCR and visual context, open one of the page chats.
Source Description
This file contains:
Newsletter from Harry J. Cooper to members of the Lion's Club encouraging them to vote for RN for re-election. 1pg. [Newsletter], 10/16/1972
Newsletter from Harry J. Cooper to members of the Lion's Club encouraging them to vote for RN for re-election. 3pgs - Not scanned (duplicates) [Newsletter], 10/16/1972
Letter from Alfred W. Stoll (Whittier College Associates) to RN RE: maintaining better lines of communication and further suggestions thereof. 1pg. [Letter], 5/5/1969
Business reply card from Alumni Office, Whittier College labled "Suggestions for Whittier College Associates." 1pg. [Other Document], n.d.
Meeting minutes submitted by Darrell W. Ryan from Whittier College Associates Board of Directors Meeting. 2pgs. [Report], 3/20/1969
Letter from Alfred W. Stoll to RN thanking him for a $500.00 contribution. 1pg. [Letter], 5/13/1969
Letter from Don Vaupel to RN congratulating him as a 10-year Whittier College Associate. 1pg. [Letter], 4/26/1971
Whittier College Recognition Banquet brochure listing Ten Year Associates including RN. 2pgs. [Brochure], 4/23/1971
Memo from Sandy Fox to Marje RE: mentioning an attachment to Rose. 1pg. [Memo], 9/30/1974
Teletyped memo from Ron Ziegler RE: recent Jack Anderson column indicating President upset with care of his aunt. 1pg. [Memo], 9/4/1973
Teletyped memo from Rose Mary Woods RE: Anderson colunm indicating President disturbed with care of Mrs. Timberlake is witout foundation. 1pg. [Memo], 9/4/1973
Memo (author unk) to RN RE: preparing for the post-election transition. 30pgs [Memo], 8/15/1968
Memo (author unk) to RN RE: dealing with old administration. 18pgs. [Memo], n.d.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
26126123
label
WHSF: Returned, 6-1
core
doc
dtoType
document
citationUrl
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
26126123
sourceUrl
contentType
document
title
WHSF: Returned, 6-1
description
This file contains:
Newsletter from Harry J. Cooper to members of the Lion's Club encouraging them to vote for RN for re-election. 1pg. [Newsletter], 10/16/1972
Newsletter from Harry J. Cooper to members of the Lion's Club encouraging them to vote for RN for re-election. 3pgs - Not scanned (duplicates) [Newsletter], 10/16/1972
Letter from Alfred W. Stoll (Whittier College Associates) to RN RE: maintaining better lines of communication and further suggestions thereof. 1pg. [Letter], 5/5/1969
Business reply card from Alumni Office, Whittier College labled "Suggestions for Whittier College Associates." 1pg. [Other Document], n.d.
Meeting minutes submitted by Darrell W. Ryan from Whittier College Associates Board of Directors Meeting. 2pgs. [Report], 3/20/1969
Letter from Alfred W. Stoll to RN thanking him for a $500.00 contribution. 1pg. [Letter], 5/13/1969
Letter from Don Vaupel to RN congratulating him as a 10-year Whittier College Associate. 1pg. [Letter], 4/26/1971
Whittier College Recognition Banquet brochure listing Ten Year Associates including RN. 2pgs. [Brochure], 4/23/1971
Memo from Sandy Fox to Marje RE: mentioning an attachment to Rose. 1pg. [Memo], 9/30/1974
Teletyped memo from Ron Ziegler RE: recent Jack Anderson column indicating President upset with care of his aunt. 1pg. [Memo], 9/4/1973
Teletyped memo from Rose Mary Woods RE: Anderson colunm indicating President disturbed with care of Mrs. Timberlake is witout foundation. 1pg. [Memo], 9/4/1973
Memo (author unk) to RN RE: preparing for the post-election transition. 30pgs [Memo], 8/15/1968
Memo (author unk) to RN RE: dealing with old administration. 18pgs. [Memo], n.d.
citationUrl
collections
Richard M. Nixon's Returned Materials Collection
Returned White House Special Files
imageCount
1
hasImages
yes
source
import
hasTranscription
no
Source extras
naId
26126123
levelOfDescription
fileUnit
recordType
description
ocrSource
nara-archive
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
document
mediaId
6c0c8b2026a8e975
ocrText
Richard Nixon Presidential Library
White House Special Files Collection
Folder List
Box Number Folder Number Document Date
Document Type
Document Description
6
1
10/16/1972
Newsletter
Newsletter from Harry J. Cooper to members
of the Lion's Club encouraging them to vote
for RN for re-election. 1pg.
6
1
10/16/1972
Newsletter
Newsletter from Harry J. Cooper to members
of the Lion's Club encouraging them to vote
for RN for re-election. 3pgs - Not scanned
(duplicates)
6
1
05/05/1969
Letter
Letter from Alfred W. Stoll (Whittier
College Associates) to RN RE: maintaining
better lines of communication and further
suggestions thereof. 1pg.
6
1
n.d.
Other Document
Business reply card from Alumni Office,
Whittier College labled "Suggestions for
Whittier College Associates." 1pg.
6
1
03/20/1969
Report
Meeting minutes submitted by Darrell W.
Ryan from Whittier College Associates
Board of Directors Meeting. 2pgs.
6
1
05/13/1969
Letter
Letter from Alfred W. Stoll to RN thanking
him for a $500.00 contribution. 1pg.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Page 1 of 2
Box Number Folder Number Document Date
Document Type
Document Description
6
1
04/26/1971
Letter
Letter from Don Vaupel to RN
congratulating him as a 10-year Whittier
College Associate. 1pg.
6
1
04/23/1971
Brochure
Whittier College Recognition Banquet
brochure listing Ten Year Associates
including RN. 2pgs.
6
1
09/30/1974
Memo
Memo from Sandy Fox to Marje RE:
mentioning an attachment to Rose. 1pg.
6
1
09/04/1973
Memo
Teletyped memo from Ron Ziegler RE:
recent Jack Anderson column indicating
President upset with care of his aunt. 1pg.
6
1
09/04/1973
Memo
Teletyped memo from Rose Mary Woods
RE: Anderson colunm indicating President
disturbed with care of Mrs. Timberlake is
witout foundation. 1pg.
6
1
08/15/1968
Memo
Memo (author unk) to RN RE: preparing for
the post-election transition. 30pgs
6
1
n.d.
Memo
Memo (author unk) to RN RE: dealing with
old administration. 18pgs.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Page 2 of 2
L
HARRY J. COOPER. JR.
68 FLORENCE ROAD
RIVERSIDE. CONN. 06878
Let's Keep A Lion In The White House
Seven years ago, when I was District Governor, I inducted into
membership in my New York Host Lions Club a fellow Lion who three
years later was elected to our nation's highest public office. It
was Richard M. Nixon.
Our President first joined Lions International in 1959 as a member
of the Washington Host Lions Club. In Miami in 1963 and in Los
Angeles in 1965 he addressed our International Convention and those
of you who heard his messages then, know his true feelings about the
important things Lionism stands for. He believes in and supports
our great community service programs.
Next month, Lion Richard Nixon is seeking re-election to the Pres-
idency. He has regained international respect for America. He has
brought great dignity and prestige to the office of President. He
is deeply committed to the first object of Lions International -
"to create and foster a spirit of generous consideration among the
peoples of the world."
Now, more than ever we need a Lion in the White House.
We have a great President and you and the other members of your
Lions Club can help to re-elect him on November 7th. He deserves
our complete support.
Most sincerely,
Harry J. Cooper,
Past District Governor
Oct. 16, 1972
Lions International.
Formed
for the
Advancement
of
WHITTIER COLLEGE ASSOCIATES
ALUMNUS
WHITTIER COLLEGE
WHITTIER, CALIFORNIA, OXBOW 3-0771, EXT. 26
Whittier
College
Whittler,
California
President Richard M. Nixon
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20006
Dear President Nixon:
We believe communication is the key that unlocks the channels
of understanding, involvement, and personal interest -- so
RW
we're opening our own channels of communication.
Enclosed are the minutes of the latest meeting of your board of
directors. We are sending these, as a first step in building
awareness of Associate activities and concerns which are brought
to our attention. We want you to share these concerns and to
feel personally related to these activities, and we're sure you
share this desire.
Also we would like you to forward your suggestions on expanded
communications -- from the Associates board, from students,
administration, faculty -- from anyone whose opinions and
activities might be of interest to you. Let us know what you
would like to know and how you would like to hear about your
favorite campus area. Others will share your interest I'm
sure, and it will be a great help to us as we open new channels
of information.
A postcard is enclosed for your convenience, so why not jot down
some suggestions right now? We really need your help so we can
be more help to you!
Cordially yours,
Alfred Alfred W. Stoll '49
President
Whittier College Associates
Enc.
AWS/ac
Suggestions for Whittier College Associates
MINUTES
Whittier College Associates
Board of Directors Meeting
Thursday, March 20, 1969
The meeting was called to order at 7:26 p.m. following dinner in
the President's Dining Room by President A1 Stoll. There were 14
members present.
Dean Charles Montgomery was introduced and asked to speak to the
Board about the recent Black Students' Union activities on campus.
He commended President Smith and everyone involved on their
high level of co-operation and understanding in handling the
occurrence. He felt the demands of the BSU were reasonable, and
that all of the students and Whittier College in general will
benefit from the agreement reached on the demands.
The minutes of the December 5th meeting were read and accepted
as corrected.
FINANCIAL REPORT
Darrell Ryan reported that although actual funds received to this
point are below those of last year, if three large contributions
that are being solicited are received, the project goal could
still be achieved.
This year the schedule of fund mailings will be such that a
contributor will not be asked to donate again within a year from
the date they contributed.
Darrell said that many plaque seals were getting lost because they
could not be seen attached to the Associate Membership Cards, and
because the member did not realize that the seal was to be
affixed to the plaque. He said action would be taken to correct
this problem.
OLD BUSINESS
Membership Luncheons
Bud Jones reported that thirty-one new Associates have been gained
through these luncheons, many not Alumni of Whittier. The next
luncheon is scheduled within the next two weeks, and it is hoped
that every Associate will bring a guest and prospective member.
The luncheons are informally held in the President's Dining
Room with President Paul S. Smith giving a brief insight into
Whittier as it is today.
Nominating Committee
Appointed by President Stoll to serve with him on the Nominating
Committee are Wayne Harvey, Bud Jones, and Myron Claxton.
Minutes
Whittier College Associates
Board of Directors Meeting
Page 2
NEW BUSINESS
President Stoll opened a discussion of the Board's responsibil-
ities to the College. A general discussion developed among the
Board members with an overall feeling that while financial
contributions given by the Associates are of primary importance,
efforts should also be made to encourage personal commitment
and involvement. The feeling was equally held that it is important
and necessary that the Associates be more aware of the activities
and needs of Whittier. It was suggested that a representative
of the Associates should act as a line of communications with
the Administration to see where the Associates could best help the
College. Similar exchanging of ideas between the Associate
Board, the Alumni Board and the Faculty Senate might also be
beneficial.
A committee served by Cal Callicott, Richard Spaulding, Wayne
Harvey, and Al Davidson was formed to further explore ideas on
strengthening the communication lines between the College and the
Associates, and how the Associates could best benefit the
College, the Alumni and the community.
Applauding the Associates' desires to be involved in helping the
College other than financially, Dean Montgomery made a request
that fifty families be found who would serve as host families
for the Whittier College foreign students next Fall.
A motion was made by Wayne Harvey and seconded to send a copy of
the Board Minutes of this meeting to all Associate members with
a cover letter from President Stoll as an initial step to keeping
them informed of the activites of the Board of Directors and to
foster an increased participation and interest in the organization.
The next meeting of the Whittier College Associate Board will
be early in June at Newport.
This meeting of the Whittier College Associates was adjourned
at 9:20 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Darrell W. Ryan
Secretary-Tfeasurer
Formed
for the
fyi
Advancement
of
WHITTIER COLLEGE ASSOCIATES
STATE
Whittier
WHITTIER COLLEGE
WHITTIER. CALIF 90608. OXBOW 3.0771. EXT. 221
College
Whittier,
California
May 13, 1969
President Richard M. Nixon
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington D.C. 20006
Dear President Nixon:
A sincere thank you for joining the Whittier
College Associates with your generous con-
tribution of $500.00 to our College.
The private college today needs the support
of concerned individuals such as you in order
to successfully fulfill its potential to develop
the individual and to promote understanding
and the advancement of our society.
Your financial support, an investment in the
future and development of Whittier College,
signifies a faith in today's independent private
education.
Again, we thank you.
Sincerely yours,
alped W. Rtall
Alfred W. Stoll '49
President
Whittier College Associates
AWS/ac
Formed
for the
Advancement
of
WHITTIER COLLEGE ASSOCIATES
Whittier
WHITTIER COLLEGE
WHITTIER. CALIF. 90608. OXBOW 3.0771. EXT. 221
College
Whittier,
California
April 26, 1971
fill
President Richard M. Nixon
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20006
Dear President Nixon:
It is a distinct personal pleasure and privilege
for me to congratulate you as a 10-year Associate.
Your continuing commitment to Whittier College is
significant in the ongoing development of this fine
college. Enclosed is a souvenier copy of the
program for the 1st Annual Recognition Banquet on
April 23 where you were honored. Also enclosed is
a 10-year button which goes in the upper right
hand corner of your Associate Plaque.
Thanks again for your generous assistance in
helping Whittier continue the outstanding quality
of education which has come to be associated with
this excellent college.
Sincerely,
Don Vaupel
Don Vaupel
President
Whittier College Associates
DV:It
WHITTIER
COLLEGE
Recognition Banquet
April 23, 1971
DETACH
AND
APPLY
TO
PLAQUE
Ten Year Associates
Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Agee
Judge and Mrs. Edward Guirado
Pres. Richard M. Nixon
Mrs. Bewley Allen
Mr. and Mrs. Morgan Halvorson
Mr. and Mrs. John L. Pearson
Mr. Cecil Baker
Mr. and Mrs. Clinton 0. Harris
Miss Marion Plummer
Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Ball
Mr. and Mrs. Wayne Harvey
Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Pressey
Mr. John S. Barnet
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph G. Hernandez
Dr. and Mrs. Carl L. Randolph
Mr. and Mrs. John P. Bertram
Mr. and Mrs. William Hockett
Mrs. James V. Robinson
Mr. and Mrs. Gene Bishop
Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Houghton
Dr. and Mrs. Homer Rosenberger
Mr. and Mrs. Roscoe Buckner
Dr. and Mrs. Howard P. House
Mr. and Mrs. Donald E. Shively
Mr. and Mrs. Norfleet Callicott
Dr. and Mrs. William Jones
Mr. Mynatt Smith
Mr. James Carlisle
Mr. John E. Kelly
Mr. and Mrs. William F. Soeberg
Mr. and Mrs. John Robert Cauffman
Mr. and Mrs. Charles B. Kemp
Mr. Richard Spaulding
Mr. and Mrs. J. Robert Clift
Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Kennedy
Mr. and Mrs. Alfred E. Stoll
Miss Loretta Cook
Mr. and Mrs. William F. Krueger, Jr.
Mr. and Mrs. Donald F. Stone
Dr. and Mrs. Charles Cooper
Mrs. Edmund Laport
Mrs. Allan T. Stover
Mr. Joseph P. Cosand
Mr. and Mrs. J. Albert Larson
Mr. and Mrs. Thurston E. Sydnor
Dr. James L. Cushingham
Mr. and Mrs. William M. Lassleben, Jr.
Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Tebbetts
Mr. and Mrs. Richard H. Deihl
Mr. and Mrs. Albert E. Madden
Dr. and Mrs. Robert R. Thompson
Mr. and Mrs. Everett Dietrick
Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Marrs
Dr. and Mrs. Clifford Thyberg
Mr. Charles H. Dillon
Dr. and Mrs. Max McPherson
Mr. and Mrs. Allen R. Tomlinson
Mr. and Mrs. Charles F. Eckels
Miss Betty Merritt
Mrs. George E. Trotter, Jr.
Mr. Lester K. Gates
Mrs. Jean B. Miller
Mr. Wallace R. Turner
Mr. J. Robert Gibbs
Mr. and Mrs. Tolbert Moorhead
Mr. Dwight L. Williams
Mr. and Mrs. Wood Glover
Mr. and Mrs. John A. Murdy III
Mr. and Mrs. Sam Yocum
Mr. Max Goldman
Whittier College FELLOWS
The Ahmanson Foundation
Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm Farmer
The Honorable John A. Murdy, Jr.
Dr. and Mrs. Carlos Bailey, Jr.
Mr. Leonard K. Firestone
Dr. W. Roy Newsom
Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth L. Ball
Firestone Tire & Rubber Company
Quaker City Federal Savings & Loan
Bank of America Foundation
Ford Motor Company
Association
Baumholder American Community
Mr. C. Raymond Galbraith
Rotary Club of Whittier
Scholarship Association
Getty Oil Company
The S and H Foundation
Dr. and Mrs. Frederick M. Binder
Mr. and Mrs. Clinton O. Harris
Mr. J. Stanley Sanders
Mr. and Mrs. Donald C. Bishop
Dr. and Mrs. Richard Harvey
Mr. and Mrs. Peter Sharpless
Mr. and Mrs. Gene Bishop
Hawaiian Trust Company, Ltd.
Mr. Richard H. Spaulding
California Community Foundation
Helm Higher Education for Los Angeles
John and Beverly Stauffer Foundation
California Congress of Parents &
Minorities, Inc.
Mr. Richard A. Thomson
Teachers, Inc.
Miss Mabel Hodson
U.S. Borax & Chemical Corporation
Senior Class of 1971
Hughes Tool Co./Aircraft Division
Dr. F. William Wagner, Jr.
Mr. and Mrs. J. Robert Clift
Kaiser Steel Corporation
Mr. Richard D. Willett
Mr. and Mrs. Richard H. Deihl
Mrs. Emma C. Lautrup
Sam Yocum, Inc.
Mr. and Mrs. Ray Dezember
Leach Corporation/Relay Division
Mr. Anthony T. Zee
1195 Club
BENEFACTORS
PRESIDENT'S COUNCIL
The Daily News
Mr. and Mrs. T. H. Clements
The John and Dora Haynes Foundation
William Randolph Hearst Foundation
PepsiCo Foundation
Mr. J. Robert Jordan
The Sears Roebuck Foundation
George H. Mayr Educational Foundation
Southern California Edison Company
Mr. and Mrs. J. D. Robinson
Southern Pacific Foundation
Dr. and Mrs. Homer G. Rosenberger
Dr. John Stauffer
Woman's Auxiliary of Whittier College
DETACH
AND
APPLY
TO
PLAQUE
NAME:
Sanford Fox
ADDRESS:
6579 Braddock Road
Alexandria, Va. 22312
REQUESTED BY: Sandy Fox
RN
INSCRIPTION
]
From
SANFORD L FOX
9/30/74
TO Marje-
I mentioned
the attached to
Rose - for some
future time.
Many thanks, Sandy
]
I
EXECUTIVE
PP5
Give Milytte Haur
Electingtor
MD003 #AC099(1245)(2-107620E247)PD 09/04/73 1245
ICS IPMRNCZ CSP
1973 SEP 4 PM 2 09
2135770111 TDRN PASADENA CA 40 09-04 1245P EST
PMS RON ZIEGLER PRESS SECRETARY, DLR
#HITEHOUSE
WASHINGTON DC 20500
11
RECENT JACK ANDERSON COLUMN INDICATING PRESIDENT UPSET WITH
12
OUR CARE OF HIS AUNT TOTALLY FALSE AS FAR AS WE KNOW AND WE
14
ARE REFUTING UNLESS YOU ADVISE US OTHERWISE. I SOUGHT YOU COUNSEL
15
16
BY PHONE
17
TRAVIS CROSS 213-577-0111 OR 799-7642
18
19
20
23
J
alt/called
21
RECEIVED
22
SEP 101973
Jarren
arren
24
CENTRAL FILES
25
26
2
3
4
5
6
The White House
1
2
Washington
3
4
WHB WHB011(1243) (2-107513E247)PD 09/04/73 1242
5
ICS IPMRNCZ CSP
1973 SEP 4 PM I 42
6
7
2135770111 TDRN PASADENA CA 38 09-04 1242P EST
8
PMS ROSEMARY WOODS, DLR
9
10
WHITEHOUSE DC 20500
11
RECENT JACK ANDERSON COLUMN INDICATING PRESIDENT DISTURBS WITH
12
13
OUR CARE OF MRS TIMBERLAKE IS WITHOUT FOUNDATION AS FAR AS WE
14 KNOW. AM PERPLEXED HOW BEST TO HANDLE FROM YOUR STAND POINT
15
AND OURS
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
TRAVIS Sfile CROSS 213-577-0111 OR 799-7642
FORM
23
24
25
26
August 15, 1968
MEMORANDUM FOR MR. NIXON
PREPARING FOR THE POST-ELECTION TRANSITION
Until November, you will be preoccupied with winning the election.
A few steps taken now, however, can give you a headstart on meeting the
wholly different, and clmost impossible, demands that face a President-
elect.
There are only ten-plus weeks between election and Insuguration.
Within that period, and in many cases within the first few weeks of it,
you will face some of your most crecial docisions.
First, you will have to make a few dozen top appointments. You
will entrust the nation's fate and your own place in history to
men you may not know, after a selection process necessarily less
thorough than that of any professional firm, business organization,
or university.
Second, you must initiate the alterations in government organization
most critical for your objectives.
Third, you must formulate the substantive positions necessary to make
best use of the "honeymoon period," to engage the enthusiasms of a
divided nation, and to deal with early crises.
2.
The quality of your administration may be determined in the ten
weeks before you take office.
Advance preparations are therefore imperative. But there are two
problems. First, you and your immediate staff must give top priority
to. the campaign. Second, advance preparations might be misunderstood as
overconfidence of victory. (There would be little risk of such misunder-
standing if it were known that both major candidates were undertaking
advance preparations.) Both problems can be overcome df you entrust
these preparations to discreet and trusted personal advisers not immersed
in the campaign.
The four areas requiring advance work are personnel, substantive
program, government organization, and transitional arrangements.
I We recommend that you now ask at least one person to begin
identifying possible appointees for specific key positions. If his
activities are to be of real use to you, a personnel adviser must enjoy
your complete trust. He should have a wide circle of acquaintances and
possess good judgment about people and about the qualities needed for
effective government service. In addition, he must understand the
particular qualities demanded by particular positions. He must be known
to be a man of great integrity with no tendency to "play favorites."
Hopefully, he would be intimate enough so that you and he could discuss
specific individuals in candid detail. He ought also to enjoy the full
confidence of your staff.
It should be understood by the adviser and by any others who might
learn of his activities that he does not select, but only gathers names
3.
and information for you. This adviser might or might not be useful
in the post-election period when you may wish to entrust larger scale
recruitment to a different person, possibly one now more actively
engaged in your campaign. Two or three pre-election advisers, acting
separately, might be equally or even more useful. We describe in a
later section those key appointments which require decisions almost 1m-
mediately after the election. If you undertake this preliminary effort,
you will be much better prepared for that ordeal.
II We recommend that you request substantive studies on issues which
may be in crisis during the first three to six months of 1969, issues
likely to demand some early response from your administration, and issues
otherwise likely to be important in your first year program, particularly
those to be stressed in your Inaugural Address and other early messages.
To some extent, the campaign apparatus is now doing this, but additional
steps outside the campaign effort may be vital for three reasons: First,
there are issues which may be important to you as President, but which
are not important campaign issues. Second, campaign priorities usually
preclude the pursuit of issues 1n sufficient depth or concreteness to
provide for specific executive actions or legislative proposals. Third,
such an effort might enlist participants or consultants who would not be
available for the campaign itself. It is difficult to identify the issues
worthy of special pre-election inquiry, but we offer some suggestions in
a later section,
III We recommend that you solicit selected studies on government
organization. The success of your administration in carrying out your
4.
policies will depend primarily on the quality of people selected. The
division of responsibilities among executive departments and between the
departments and the White House Staff could, however, influence your
choices for particular posts. You may need to determine how you expect
to handle national security policy or welfare-urban-labor-transportation
problems even before you make your major Cabinet and Staff appointments.
Your personal preferences and working habits will determine the kind of
White House Staff that would best serve you and would bear strongly on. the
other questions as well. You will have little time to purque or even
discuss these questions before the election, but prior staff work in these
three areas at least (national security, urban problems, White House Staff)
should facilitate the actions you must take immediately after November 5.
You might, for example, wish to ask a man experienced in each area to
recommend sensible approaches that could be implemented within existing
statutory authority and thus be of immediate relevance to you. We offer
further observations later.
IV We recommend that prior to the election you prepare administrative
arrangements for the transition period. You will need someone to deal with
the old administration after the election, or, if President Johnson sug-
gests it, earlier. You and your appointees will also need advice on useful
past transition experiences and on methods of moving smoothly and efficiently
into power. These are clearly temporary functions. More generally, you
will need staff services other than those required during the campaign and
similar to those you will soon need in the White House. We would be pre-
pared to offer suggestions in a later memorandum.
5.
I
APPOINTMENTS
1. An impossible task. In the brief period between election and
Inauguration, you will have to select most of the several hundred top-
level appointees upon whom the fate of your administration will largely
depend. No President-elect can know beforehand more than a handful of
men qualified for these posts. Many of those he chooses will be
strangers. The number of appointments to be made, coupled with the
shortness of time, impairs the selection process. Further complicating
the President-elect's almost impossible task is pressure to reward faith-
ful service to campaign or party. The authors--who have never felt the
heat-believe that the dissatisfaction of disappointed office-seekers and
their supporters are transient and minor compared to the harm to the
country, and to the President, resulting from appointees of modest com-
petence or mere acceptability. The next President's responsibilities are
too grave to be entrusted either to the bureaucracy or to the merely
competent.
A. Large Scale Talent Hunt
2. You will need a large-scale talent hunt primarily for the several
hundred sub-Cabinet posts you must fill. For your Cabinet, you will
probably draw on your intimate advisers and other major political figures.
These sources in turn may suggest to you people whom you will want to use,
but whom you may know casually, if at all. It may be instructive to
6.
recall that the original Cabinets of your predecessors included men not
at all well-known to the President-alect. (Rusk, McNamara, and Day
fall into this category among Kennedy's 1960 appointees, George Humphrey
is the obvious example in Eisenhower's 1952 Cabinet.)
A well-conducted pre-and post-election talent hunt could turn up
prospects for Cabinet as well as sub-Cabinet posts. Its major targets,
however, would be potential sub-Cabinet Presidential appointees. In ad-
dition, your Cabinet and Agency heads might find the results of this
research of use to them in making their own important personnel selections.
3. A committee. Unless you have available an ideal recruitment
chief, you might proceed by appointing a small screening committee. This
method offers the advantages of multiple sources and multiple evaluations.
You might think in terms of three to five men of roughly equal
stature, Elder statesmen beyond personal ambition would be useful, but
they may be somewhat out of touch with younger generations. But also suf-
ficiently beyond ambition for these purposes are many persons established
in secure and relatively prestigious positions (such as a substantial
industrialist or financier; senior professor, or leading partner in a major
law firm). Your adviser or advisers--whether or not a committee is used--
need a wide personal acquaintance in industry, finance, the professions,
government, universities, etc.
You may wish to instruct your personnel advisers to consider not
only registered Republicans but also qualified independents and even
Democrats. (It is particularly important not to insist unduly on political
7.
credentials for younger persons, lest the opportunity be lost-as in
1953-1960- to draw new vitality into the party.) They should seek not
only the more senior people who would be appropriate Presidential apt-
pointees but the younger men who might be their deputies and assistants,
or who might be useful later in the administration.
The places to look are many. Among the more obvious sources are
(1) foundations, (2) boards of directors of national companies (and es-
pecially of the insurance companies that often expend considerable effort
to secure broadly qualified and public spirited national representation),
(3) metropolitan law firms, (4) major investment banking firms and other
financial institutions, (5) universities, and (6) such business organi-
zations as the Committee for Economic Development. The latter may be of
particular aid in identifying able middle-level corporate executives.
B. Seminars with Prospective Appointees
4. The traditional method by which Preaidents-elect have selected
appointees has been the private interview. In some instances, your
interests could also be served by arranging for a few seminars to be con-
ducted by small groups, including some possible appointees.
The format of such seminars should not be uniform. To one on
domestic and international financial matters, three to six men might be
invited; most would be "experts" in the sense of having qualifications for
appointment to the Treasury, Commerce, or the Council of Economic Advisers.
They could receive invitations and be given agenda a week or so in advance.
In an hour or two with such a group, you could inform yourself on complex,
8.
technical subjects, and at the same time obtain impressions of how these
men might perform as members of your administration.
In a less technical area, you might alternatively invite a few
possible appointees to join you in a briefing session conducted by repre-
sentatives of the departing administration. You could find it profitable
to see how these men interact with experts and with each other. This
device is available before the election as well as later, and it could
both extend the range of your knowledge and spare you some fruitless
private interviews.
C. Appointment Priorities
5. Earlier the better. To be ready to operate the government upon
its inauguration, the new administration must be formed as much before
January 20 as possible. The new appointées need time to familiarize
themselves with the fundamentals of their offices before assuming actual
responsibilities, to get to know one another, to extricate themselves from
their previous occupations, and to make the necessary personal moves. A1-
though it was once customary to announce the Cabinet on Inauguration Day,
major appointments should now be made as soon as possible after the election.
We have divided appointments into "immediate" and "less-immediate" cate-
gories and arbitrarily placed the dividing line at fifteen days after the
election. All major appointments should be completed by mid-December.
6. Superior positions first. It is generally preferable to name a
department's Secretary before naming its Assistant Secretaries. This
might seem obvious, but President Kennedy tried the opposite in order to
"plant his own men" in the departments and thus provide alternative
9.
channels to the departments. The Kennedy effort did not accomplish
that purpose but tended to impair effective working relationships within
the departments; the Secretary's position was made ambiguous both with
respect to his nominal subordinates and with respect to the White House.
That is not the way to make the departments effective entities (and es-
pecially not in State with its chronic organizational difficulties). The
President-elect should, of course, participate in selecting major depart-
mental appointees--especially the Deputy or Undersecretary. But we
believe he will achieve a more effective administration if he accords
the Secretary-designate some role in this process.
7. Criteria for immediate appointments, Before naming the positions
that should be filled immediately--a list that is meant to be suggestive
rather than definitive--we enumerate some relevant criteria. Prompt ap-
pointment seems required for positions with one or more of the following
characteristics:
(1) The agency 1s concerned with matters in which decisions are
required and in which wrong decisions may have disastrous consequences.
Here the appointee must be given the utmost time to prepare. (State,
Defense, and perhaps Justice)
(2) The agency is so complex, so ill-organized, or so poorly
staffed--or all of these-that successful mastery by the new administration
requires the longest possible preparation. (State, Defense, and, depending
on your plans, HEW, HUD, or Transportation)
(3) For these or other reasons, carly preparation must be under-
taken by second and third level Presidential appointees whose appointment
10.
requires some attention from a Secretary-designate.
(4) The agency is likely to be confronted by early urgent
demands for executive action or legislative recommendations such that
concrete agency preparations must begin at once. (Treasury and others)
(5) The position is so prestigious or of such controversial
policy importance that the leading political figures in the party are
regarded as contenders. Until such positions are assigned, the President-
elect will have difficulty obtaining impartial advice regarding the many
other posts he must fill.
(6) The position requires early appointment for psychological
or symbolic reasons. (UN Ambassador)
8. Early staff appointments. Your own staff needs for the transition
period must be attended to. Summarizing matters of great complexity, we
would suggest that you will need one accistant OI more for each of nine
functions. Since you will require permanent White House Staff to handle
all but two of these functions, you might appoint to your transition staff
men whom you are considering using in the same roles after January 20. The
transition period can then give you an opportunity to find out in advance
whether they have the special capacities needed to help you carry your
post-Inauguration responsibilities. The functions to be performed for you
both during the transition and later are:
a) Management of your calendar and of administrative arrangements
for yourself and your staff. This could be your permanent Appointments
Secretary.
b) Contact with the press and advice on public relations. One
11,
man usually performs both functions and he could become your permanent
Press Secretary.
c) National security liaison and advice--a role similar to that
performed by Rostow for Johnson, Bundy for Kennedy, and Gray and Goodpaster
for Eisenhower.
d) Liaison for and "translation" of military and intelligence
documents.
e) Personnel advice. There might be need for two persons: one
concerned with the general talent hunt and the other handling patronage
recommendations.
£) Oversight of task forces and similar substantive work. This
might be done by a general aide for policy and programs--by 2 man with
the breadth of jurisdiction (though not necessarily the powers) of a
Sherman Adams or Theodore Sorensen. This function could be divided among
several men who would also collect ideas and prepare initial drafts of
your Inaugural Address and later public messages. Actual assignments
depend, of course, on many factors including the distribution of literary
talent.
8) Special contact for Senators and Congressmen. This could be
done by your permanent Congressional liaison assistant(s
The following functions need to be performed only during the
transition and for a short time thereafter. You might assign them to men
whose wisdom you want but who, because of business commitments, age,
health, or some other reason, will not accept long-term appointments.
h) Advice on organization and reorganization.
12.
1) Advice on transition questions and transition contact with
the old administration.
Among decisions which you will have to work out before or
during the transition period will be some regarding organization of your
White House Staff, You will have to determine how much access each assis-
tant is to have and, for example, whether there is to be a staff coordinator
like Adams. You will have to decide whether your best interests will be
served by giving each assistant a strict functional assignment or by using
them to some extent interchangeably. Since the purpose of the White House
Staff is to give the President the extra eyes, ears, and hands he needs for
his incredibly difficult task, your decisions on these questions and others
related to them could have profound effects on your presidency. We hope to
describe the issues in greater detail in a subsequent memorandum.
9. Early appointments in the national security area. Most of the
following positions meet several criteria for early appointment: *
a) Secretary of State and two Undersecretarics. The qualities
you seek will depend in part on your conception of his office. See Par. 21
below. **
* Lest we presumptuously state the obvious, we relegate to the footnotes
our limited observations on the qualities needed for certain of ices.
** Also, we believe it important that the top team in State have the capa-
city to advise the President, to guide the Department, to deal with friends
and critics in Congress, and generally to explain administration policies
in ways that will maximize public understanding and support, Dulles, Herter,
and Rusk each possessed some of these qualities, but the lack of confidence,
communication, and team spirit at the top level of the Kennedy-Johnson State
Department is not a happy precedent.
13,
b) Secretary of Defense and Deputy Secretary. ***
c) Central Intelligence Agency Director. If you intend to
appoint a new Director during your first few months, he should be ap-
pointed early. You might wish to continue Mr. Helms, who is a CIA
official with, we understand, an excellent reputation. That course
requires no immediate action; you would simply have to ask him sometime
before Christmas to stay on and to announce that fact. (Either an in-
definite reappointment or & commitment of six months or so would seem
courteous in such a case.)
d) Ambassador to the United Nations. .If you wish to continue
the symbolic importance of this position and to fill it with a prominent
figure, then the appointee will have to be named about the same time as
the other high national security officials.
e) The JCS. The terms of both General Wheeler, the Chairman,
and General McConnell, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, will expire
in 1969. Following the precedent set by President Eisenhower, you could
indicate before Inauguration, or even in November, your choices for these
posts, or you could defer action. Your decisions both on individuals
and on timing will require careful consideration. These decisions will
be taken as indicative of many of your policies. They will also be read
as suggestive of your basic attitude toward the military establishment
and can influence the amount of cooperation you and your appointees
*** The prescription is easy to state: judgment and wisdom plus Clifford's
reputed ability to deal with both the Congress and the JCS and McNamara's
réputed analytical ability.
14.
obtain from the inner reaches of the Pentagon. Many complex issues
are involved, especially 1f, 69 a result of your decisions on Victnam,
or for other reasons, you were to contemplate asking the other two chiefs
to step down or to take other posts. (Admiral Moorer's term as Chief of
Naval Operations runs to 1971; General Westmoreland's as Chief of Staff
of the Army to 1972.) We are prepared to submit an additional memorandum
on this subject.
f) The field commander In Vietnam? We raise the question because
reconfirmation or replacement might have significant effects in Saigon or
Paris and on your concepts for the conduct of the war within Vietnam.
10. Early appointments in foreign operations.
a) The Ambassador to Moscow is an important bridge between the
two governments. Not only are his functions important, but he may also
be a symbol to the Ruscians of your adminintration's prospective atti-
tudes. Moscow is no place for an inexperienced academic or other amateur.
Unless early inquiries persuade you otherwise, you will want to consider
reconfirming the present ambassador as a symbol of continuity. If there
is to be a change, the new appointee must be highly qualified. In any
event, an early announcement would be desirable to permit the new ap-
pointee to consult fully with his predecessor.
b) Ambassador to Saigon. This post will remain important for
the foreseeable future. If you intend to continue the incumbent, 1t could
be wise to announce it early to preserve his effectiveness in Saigon. If
you make a change--perhaps necessary as a symbol of the popular mandate
15.
for change in Vietnam policy-the successor should have a maximum time
to prepare.
c) Paris negotiating team with North Vietnam. Your actions
here will appear to signal the direction of your policies toward the
negotiations and the war. You will want to consider with your Vietnam
experts the appropriateness or manner of changing the Paris team. If
you continue them for the near future as a symbol of a continued "tough"
negotiating position (if that would be its meaning), it would be advisable
to announce your decision quickly.
d) Ambassador to Paris. The country is important to us, but
its government is so highly sensitive and difficult to deal with that an
early appointment is advisable.
e) Ambassadors at large. These positions, as such, do not
require immediate attention unless you have particular functions in mind.
f) Most other ambassadorships can probably be deferred until
after Inauguration in favor of more pressing work. A few caveats are,
however, in order: (1) The State Department's views on the relative
urgency of other positions should be considered. Bonn and Tokyo, for
example, might be thought to require early attention, as might London,
Prague, Warsaw, Rio, or the special ambassadors to NATO and the OAS. (2)
The governments notreceiving immediate attention may feel slighted and
undervalued by the United States. To preserve feelings, you might dis-
patch special envoys to explain the delay and give assurances of our
interest. (3) Most ambassadors would be asked to continue (1) indefinitely,
16.
(11) for a few months, or (111) briefly. This will present few problems
for career officials who would stay or for political hacks who won't be
missed. Others may require gentle treatment 1f you wish them to remain,
(4) The longer such posts remain unfilled, the greater will be the
pressure for political appointments. Your Secretary of State-designate
could form an advisory committee to identify the ambassadors who should
be dropped quickly (former political appointees of modest quality), those
who should be retained (the best career people and those non-career
ambassadors who have served with unusual distinction), and to screen
names proposed for vacated poste.
11. Early "domestic" appointments.
a) Budget Director. This agency's name does not connote the
breadth of qualities required by the office. The Budget Bureau and the
White House Staff provide the President's principal protection against
departmental and congressional special pleading. Only with their help
can he make the executive apparatus serve his purposes. The Budget
Director should be the one man in government with an outlook virtually
as broad as that of the President, and he must be able to judge not only
costs but also relative importance among competing programs, The office
neads a man of wisdom and vision with understanding of many policy issues.
Though no particular professional background is vital, all testimony we
have taken suggests that economists have proved unusually effective in
this post. An early appointment is crucial to master the current budget
and to gain early use of the invaluable resources of the Budget Bureau.
17.
b) Secretary of the Treasury.' It 1s likely that the problems
of balance of payments, taxation, and the general state of the economy
will argue for a November appointment. If the economic front is guiet,
however, it may be possible to delay this appointment until December.
c) Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. This post
should be filled early 1f the Treasury 1s. The Department is a powerful
agency and its Secretary has tended to consider himself the President's
primary economic adviser. In any case, it may be useful to have the
Chairman of the CEA at hand from the beginning.
d) Secretary of Realth, Education, and Welfare and/or Secretary
of Housing and Urban Affairs. ** The new administration has two problems
in this area: it will encounter strong demands for action and legislative
recommendations to deal with the "urban crisis." Because it is important
* A Republican administration enjoys the presumptive confidence of the
financial community. Thus, your appointment need not be specially directed
to assuring them. But a different audience may need reassurance: your ap-
pointee should not only understand compensatory fiscal policy; he should be
able to speak the language and perhaps even appeal to the economists and
economic critics who do most of the popular and serious writing in this
area and who thus tend to shape the general reception of an administration's
economic program-often in the long-run as well as the short. This
"criterion" is almost certain to be satisfied by your CEA Chairman.
** These are critical agencies for the new administration. This is the area
of key and explosive domestic challenges with the least assurance of "solu-
tion" In principle or legislation in practice. Innovations are necessary,
but innovations (e.g., the "negative income tax") may be costly and 1r-
reversible even though experience or later analysis may prove them unwise.
Yet, the pressure for action from politics and "the streets" will be enor-
mous. And it is a Republican administration in particular that needs to win
acceptance, trust, and confidence in this area. These agencies require at
least as much attention and care as are customarily assigned to the State
18.
to respond and because a failure to push affirmative proposals will
force it into an unhappy defensive posture, the new administration must
be ready to move. Secondly, a Republican President has a strong need to
demonstrate concern with poverty, urban decay, and associated problems.
An early appointment could dramatize your concern. Certain outstanding
appointments could induce opposition critics to "wait and see" and to
give the administration a chance "to prove itself." And the earlier the
appointments are made, the sooner you can begin to ask your administration
for results.
e) Secretary of Agriculture. There seems to have been a sweeping
partisan turnover of Agriculture personnel in 1961. If similar turnover
is to occur in 1969, the Secretary should be appointed early to allow time
for departmental recruiting and orientation.
12. Other appointments.
a) Attorney General, He is involved in matters that are in-
trinsically and politically of great importance: civil rights, criminal
and Defense appointments--and even more because the qualities required are
even rarer. It will be difficult to find the men who can manage the depart-
ments, who can delegate but not too much, who can both reign and rule, who
can react and appraise but who can also innovate and generate enthusiasm,
who can refrain from bucking every demand up to the White House, who have
sufficient idealism and clarity of purpose to demonstrate "concern" and
"commitment" and indeed to push for improvement but who are also suffi-
cient team players to accept intra-administration "defeat" without leaking
all or resigning in a huff. Whether such persons exist outside of heaven,
we cannot say.
* The Attorney General can be a much more important asset to an administra-
tion than is commonly realized. (1) Presidents may lament the subsequent
behavior of their Supreme Court appointees without appreciating the Frequent
19.
procedure, riot control, organized crime, the FRI. The course of the
campaign, in particular, may require an early appointment for symbolic
purposes. Nevertheless, the Attorney General has relatively less need
than, for example, the Secretary of Defense to master the technicalities
of ongoing problems, or to prepare for early crises (at least 1f riots
remain infrequent during the winter).
b) Secretary of Labor. Appointment before Thanksgiving would
source of their problem: they relied for advice on an Attorney General who
did not learn or appreciate the significance of an appointee's judicial
philosophy but who relied instead on others' conclusionary appraisals of
quality and political opinions. A President may have his most lasting 1m-
pact through his judicial appointments (including the lower courts); the
Attorney General will have a role in that process. It is important to have
an Attorney General who will do you and the nation credit in that role, To
do 80 with appropriate attention to Senatorial and other patronage requests
requires great judgment and finesse. (2) The Solicitor General's office
traditionally attracts brilliant talent from law firms and law schools.
With appropriate leadership from the Attorney General, the Department can
do the same both at the level of Presidential appointecs and below. This
resulting reservoir of high-powered talent can multiply the Department's
effectiveness and also serve, by loan or otherwise, other departments and
the White House. (3) The Attorney Ceneral's rectitude, vigilance, and
readiness to inquire can give you an important defense against corruption
within the government.
*This position has commonly been viewed as "labor's voice in the Cabinet. 11
When important matters are at stake, however, union leaders want to deal
with you and your representative. And, of course, neither management nor
Congress will respect a mere union labor spokesman, whatever his title.
To advise you, to serve as a buffer and (when appropriate) mediator on
industrial relations matters, to supervise the mediation services, and to
deal (as appropriate) with the National Labor Relations Board-your ap-
pointee must be tolerable to labor but probably not a union man. You
might find the right man in industrial relations; among respected art1-
trators, mediators, or umpires; or even in a Business School, Economics
or Law faculty.
20.
not seem necessary unless (1) there is or might be pressure for federal
involvement in important national strikes in progress or prospect before
March, or (2) you intend to take a very early position on "wage-push"
inflation.
c) Secretary of Transportation.* Nothing inherent in this post
requires that appointment be made in November rather than December.
There is a serious organizational problem on the domestic welfare
front. As one interim approach, you might insist that the Secretaries of
HEW, HUD, Labor, perhaps Transportation, and perhaps others form a sub-
group of the Cabinet and work very closely together to formulate and
implement policy. If that 1s to be done, it should be done from the begin-
ning and calls for roughly simultaneous appointments. Thus, if one is
appointed early, all should be. (Alternatively, if you intend to give one
Secretary primary responsibility for the overlapping welfare functions of
the several departments, he could be appointed early and the others late.)
* A trouble-avoiding holding operation may not be too difficult in this
department. It will not be easy, however, to find a man who can promote
innovation and cope with it in the effort to keep the country livable not-
withstanding its expanding and increasingly-concentrated population. More
common than creativity, but still rare enough to emphasize is the strength
to stand up to the special interests, such as the "highway lobby" or the
protagonists of the merchant marine or supersonic transports. He will also
have to consider the desirability of new steps to consolidate or coordinate
Executive Branch operations with those of the "independent" Civil Aero-
nautics Boards and Interstate Commerce Commission. Whether new steps would
be both wise and politically practicable is not clear, but your appointee
should be one who can both answer the question and carry out any necessary
steps.
21.
d) Postmaster General. Appointment before Thanksgiving is
not required unless you must take a position in your first few months
on the proposal of the recent Presidential Commission that the postal
service be performed not by a regular government department but by a
public corporation. If delay would impode reform, your appointee cannot
begin soon enough to appraise the substantive merits and political possi-
bilities of reform.
e) Secretary of Commerce. There is less need for appointment
before December. The basic question is whether you can make something
more of this post than it has been in recent decades. If you are consider-
ing merging the Labor and Commerce Departments, your appointees should be
made aware of this at the time of appointment.
f) Secretary of the Interior.* Again, early action may not seem
necessary.
&) White House Scientific Adviser. The "scientific community"
attaches great importance to this post and became very restive about
President-elect Kennedy's intentions until the post was filled in 1961. The
same sensitivity can be expected today. A strong and relatively early,
though not necessarily immediate, appointment can reassure this community
of your respect for them and help gain their respect for your White House
and thus facilitate the recruitment of top scientific talent in Defense
and elsewhere.
* In addition to the usual functions, it's worth noting that the man who
can cleanse our rivers, save our parks, and conserve our natural spaces
in the face of growing population will make a President's place in
history--and in the here-and-now as well if it doesn't cost too much.
And the man who can please public and private power partisans and keep
the oil and mineral interests off the President's back will be doubly
precious.
22.
h) FBI Director. Unless you are persuaded that you want Mr.
Hoover to continue, judicious silence about this post should give him
ample opportunity (which he might welcome in view of his age) to indi-
cate that he does not wish reappointment. If a new appointment is to
be made, it must receive the greatest care, for you cannot later remove
the Director without being charged with "political misuse" of an agency
that should be "above politics." For an agency long subject to single
control, there is reason to appoint an outsider who could look at the
Bureau with a fresh eye. At least, there should be no automatic presump-
tion that a present Bureau official would be better than a first-rate
urban police chief, an effective administrator not now in police work, or
an elder statesman who could serve for a short period, reassure the public
and give you a breathing spell in which to assert your control over this
important but currently semi-sovereign agency. Although your Attorney
General should probably have a voice in the appointment, its importance
requires your close attention.
i) White House liaison with the academic community. Your two
predecessors had resident academics in the White House presumably in the
hope of generating a sympathetic chronicle and a bridge to "intellectuals"
at large. The first function is unsure (compare Schlesinger with Goldman)
and the second silly. You reach "intellectuals" not by having a special
communicator for that purpose, but by the actions and statements of
your administration. By all means, do not neglect academics in your
operating and staff appointments. And, of course, their use in pre-
23.
and post-Inauguration task forces is both (1) an effective and easy way
to impress "intellectuals" and (2) useful on the merits.
13, Immediate action by new appointees. Many of your appointees
will need time--perhaps six to eight weeks--to extricate themselves from
other affairs. Even so, all appointees should be asked to begin immedi-
ately, if only on a part-time basis, not only to familiarize themselves
with their new jobs, but to confer with members of the outgoing adminis-
tration, meet the civil servants who will work for them, and learn the
routine of their agencies.
D. Political Criteria Generally; Holdover Personnel
14. Political considerations have an inevitable place in appointments.
Many excellent candidates will also enjoy excellent political credentials.
But not all those with political support will be worthy of important res-
ponsibilities.
a) Though judgeships need no special caveat since everyone
understands their importance, regulatory agencies do. They are often
viewed as convenient "dumping grounds" for persons of minimum qualifications,
the assumption being that a commission of five or seven members can carry 2.
few weak members. Often, however, most of the members turn out to be weak.
Even when this is not the case, the weak appointees vote, and not always
wisely. It has reached the point where well-qualified men frequently
decline to serve on regulatory commissions. To correct that situation, the
new President would need to instruct his personnel recruiters in unequivocal
24.
terms and, in order to induce a good man to join an agency, he may have
to give assurances that he will fill future vacancies with men of
similar high quality.
b) There are positions--often wasteful and unnecessary--of
some prestige that can be filled with persons of minimum quality without
undue damage to you or to the nation. A thorough (and secret) pre-
and post-election attempt to identify such positions would be useful
to you.
15. Some personnel and patronage advisers have, in past administra-
tions, appeared to insist on political credentials for every Presidential
appointee and for every lower position at the disposal of such appointees.
Such an approach will deprive your administration of valuable services and
will miss the opportunity to win independents to the Republican cause.
There is obviously rèason to avoid highly partisan Democrats, but inde-
pendents and even nominal Democrats should be welcomed with open arms even
as Presidential appointees and especially at lower levels. And if academics
who supported Democrats are excluded from task forces and from consultation,
an important resource will be lost.
16. Continuing old officials.
a) At least one Presidential appointee in each agency should be
asked to remain for a few days after Inauguration in order to provide each
department with an "Acting Secretary" to perform the formal departmental
functions that cannot be performed by your appointees prior to their of..
ficial Senate confirmation.
25.
b) Some Presidential appointees in the outgoing administra-
tion are essentially career men of a quality you will wish to retain.
(This is especially likely in such departmental positions as the Assistant
Secretary for Administration--who will be useful for a few months at least.)
c) Some non-career officials of the outgoing administration
might be of such outstanding quality that you would want them to stay. Your
pre-md post-election personnel advisers should make the effort to identify
any such persons.
d) The preceding considerations are applicable with even greater
force to those non-Presidential appointees occupying positions that are at
the disposal of the new administration.
II
SUBSTANTIVE POLICY PLANNING
17. We have refrained thus far from mentioning the Bay of Pigs, though
that episode dramatizes the dangers facing an administration that takes
office ill-prepared for the exercise of power. We refer to it now because
it illustrates some problems almost certain to face you in your early
months in office.
(1) Elements in the bureaucracy will refurbish and attempt to
sell ideas studied and rejected by the previous administration or, as in
the case of the Bay of Pigs plan, represent as beyond the point of no
return programs about which the previous administration had, in fact, been
skeptical, reserved, or undecided.
26.
(2) Your appointees will be less willing than later to go
against what seems a consensus among departmental experts. As with the
Bay of Pigs plan, they may feel hesitant to express doubts. In other
instances, they may hesitate to question bureaucratic advice that some-
thing or the other cannot be done.
(3) Your appointees will be less prone than later to recommend
courses of action involving risks of public or Congressional criticism.
With each hoping for maximum accomplishments, each will be reluctant to
see you incur political costs except in behalf of his program. After six
months or so, your appointees will hopefully have become not only more
realistic but more conscious of how their departmental interests fit into
the whole program of the administration.
18. From mere mention of these problems, several obvious conclusions
emerge:
(1) Your appointees should identify as quickly as possible the
hobby horses of otherwise valuable and trustworthy men in the permenent
government. They should also make every effort to learn from their prede-
cessors the exact status of issues likely to arise between January and
July, 1969.
(2) Your appointees will need to acquire as much advance knowledge
as possible about higher-level personnel in their agencies and about the
major issues which they are apt to face In the settling-in period.
(3) To cope with the third problem, your appointees will need
better understanding than has been the case in the past of what the
President expects--of what you expect.
27,
This means that you will need to make a number of early
decisions about policy issues and to communicate these decisions as
clearly as possible to your prospective and actual appointees. These
decisions will concern not only policy positions, many of which will be
developed during the campaign, but also relative priorities, tactics to
be followed (i.e., a push for legislation, an effort first to stimulate
public pressure, or simple administrative action), and desired timetables
(e.g., some symbolic action on cities before the summer even if high
priority measures have to come later).
19. With this as prologue, we suggest below some of the more obvious
issues on which you might want to initiate serious pre-election study, with
a view to helping you make the tough decisions on policy and tactics which
you will want to make as soon as possible after November 5:
(1) A first group of issues would be those which could be In
crisis in early 1969: Vietnam, Thailand, Berlin and East Europe, the Middle
East, urban "ghettos," federal-state-local welfare programs, monetary
policies, threats to wage-price stability, and the balance of payments.
(2) A second group consists of issues with continuing or long
range ramifications requiring early decisions. This category does not
admit easy definition and is perhaps better described by example. General
defense and space programs, NATO, ABM, manned bombers, relations with Cuba
and Red China, long-range anti-crime policies, and relations with regulatory
agencies all illustrate in several ways matters upon which you may have to
make early choices that will set in motion programs lasting the length of
your administration.
28.
(3) A third group of issues would be in those areas in which
you plan early legislative proposals. You, of course, know what these
will be; any guesswork on our part would be irrelevant.
A considerable body of experience exists with regard to
task forces and how to get the most out of them. We would be happy to
prepare a summary on this subject if it would be of use.
III
THE IMPORTANCE OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
20, In a number of key policy areas your ability as President to
formulate, coordinate, and execute programs will depend on putting into
particular posts men who can do what you want the occupants of these posts
to.do. Given the number of high level officials that must be named soon
after the election, you might usefully have some pre-clection attention
given to the division of responsibilities most compatible with your purposes
as President. The following paragraphs will identify two major issues
bearing on your prospective appointments.
A. Responsibility for National Security
21. Prior to choosing your Secretary of State, you might well consider
the extent to which you will want your Secretary to be your principal
adviser on all foreign policy problems, including military, financial and
economic policy. This decision will affect both the qualities you will
seek in a Secretary, and the breadth of charter you will assign to the
National Security adviser on your own staff.
29.
You face many alternatives, each involving complex considera-
tions. We are prepared to develop a further memorandum on the subject.
a) Meanwhile, it is important to recognize that if you choose
to give your Secretary of State a broader mandate, the consequence will
be twofold: First, the Sccretary-designate must be a man who wants this
role and who understands what he has to do to perform It effectively.
Second, the State Department would have to recruit a staff of men able to
think of foreign policy not merely in terms of diplomacy, but in much
broader terms.
b) If State does not perform this role, such 8 staff must be
part of the White House or National Security Council staff under the
direction of a national security adviser. Thus, resolution of this
issue affects not only the requirements for a Secretary of State, but also
those for your national security adviser and their personal staffs.
22. In any event, there are perennial organizational problems within
the State Department which in the past have prevented it from being as
useful to the President as it might be. In particular, the relationships
among foreign service and non-foreign service men, the regional desks and
functional bureaus, and the foreign service on the one hand and program
groups such as AID on the other, need to be rationalized. The Secretary-
designate must understand that you care about the efficiency of State and
that he must address this problem, or at least entrust it, to an Under-
secretary with genuine delegated power. You will want to be sure that your
top team in State has the interests and resources to perform both the
policy and the management tasks.
30,
B. Organizing to Deal with Urban Affairs
23. The ability of the federal government to respond to urban
problems 1s reduced by the diffusion of responsibility and power in
this area among many governmental departments and agencies. No matter
how much responsibility is transferred to states or localities, the
federal government will remain concerned with inter-urban transportation,
assistance to local police, and other forms of grants-in-aid. Moreover,
the transfer of other responsibilities will require considerable study
and, at best, will take time, In short, the problem will continue.
24. The major issues here are whicther and to what extent federal
responsibility for doaling with urban affairs should be centralized,
and if so, whether the centralization should occur within the existing
departmental framework, within the White House or Executive Office staff,
within some other agency, or within a super-department created by merging
existing departments and agencies. Any such steps would, of course, affect
your personnel requirements for Justice, HUD, OEO, and White House assist-
ant(s) primarily concerned with urban affairs.
25. If you contemplate reorganization requiring Congressional action,
preliminary studies looking toward proposals for legislation might well be
undertaken prior to election. And if, as you have indicated, you are to
provide encouragement to the development of locally owned housing and
business in black communities and to enlist private industry in efforts to
rebuild the ghettos, then pre-election studies of how the White House could
MEMORANDUM FOR
MR. NIXON
DEALING WITH THE OLD ADMINISTRATION
Introduction and Summary
Relations between Presidents and Presidents-Elect of different parties
have always been delicate and often strained. Frequently the President's
natural disappointment at his party's defeat has been tinged with personal bitter-
ness because his administration and policies have borne the brunt of his succes-
sor 8 campaign salvos. Nor has graciousness been an inevitable characteristic
of Presidents-Elect. Even the most sympathetic historians of the New Deal find
little to applaud in F.D.R. 's cavaller treatment of Hoover in 1932.
Yet cooperation is essential for several reasons. At least part of the public
will be offended If either fails to show courtesy and consideration. National unity
is hardly served by permitting a hard-fought campaign to merge into post election
feuding. And, of course, much of the machinery for preparing a new President
for the transfer of power can be utilized only with the concert of his predecessor.
Thus it is in your interest that the interregnum be a time when old hatchets are
buried and the grinding of new axes postponed.
Both because he has more to gain and because the task is easier for him,
the burden of maintaining good will between Administrators falls to the President-
Elect. The outgoing Administration has valuable information, experience, and
MEMORANDUM FOR
MR. NIXON
DEALING WITH THE OLD ADMINISTRATION
Introduction and Summary
Relations between Presidents and Presidents-Elect of different parties
have always been delicate and often strained. Frequently the President's
natural disappointment at his party's defeat has been tinged with personal bitter-
ness because his administration and policies have borne the brunt of his succes-
sor 8 campaign salvos. Nor has graciousness been an inevitable characteristic
of Presidents-Elect. Even the most sympathetic historians of the New Deal find
little to applaud in F.D.R. 's cavaller treatment of Hoover in 1932.
Yet cooperation is essential for several reasons. At least part of the public
will be offended If either fails to show courtesy and consideration. National unity
is hardly served by permitting a hard-fought campaign to merge into post election
feuding. And, of course, much of the machinery for preparing a new President
for the transfer of power can be utilized only with the concert of his predecessor.
Thus It is in your interest that the interregnum be a time when old hatchets are
buried and the grinding of new axes postponed.
Both because he has more to gain and because the task is easier for him,
the burden of maintaining good will between Administrators falls to the President-
Elect. The outgoing Administration has valuable information, experience, and
2
advice that you and your team will want to tap. To make cordial advances, to
overlook minor irritants, to soothe the President's wounded pride - all these are
small prices to pay for such resources.
Pre-election Period. In order to exploit fully the opportunities for an effective
transfer of responsibility allowed by cooperation between the two Administrations,
you should consider the following actions:
- Appoint a counterpart to President Johnson's designee, Charles Murphy,
experienced in the operations of the Executive Branch and able to bargain with
Murphy on equal terms.
- Ask your designee to decide upon the requests to be made of the incumbent
Administration.
- Initiate planning for transition matters not directly related to relations with
the old Administration.
Post-election Period. Post-election customs are clear. President Johnson
will doubtless suggest an early meeting to set the tone of transitional cooperation
and lay the broad outlines of the actions you will take together. In summary -- to
be elaborated later - you will want to touch the following points:
--- Security clearances: You should make arrangements for expediting security
clearances for your appointees.
- Current and background information: You should seek access to such Admin-
istration information as daily intelligence reports, briefings and memoranda on
current problems, and appropriate "cable traffic. " You should also request other
information, to be described below, that may be difficult to obtain later or less
valuable unless studied In advance and acted upon early.
- 3 -
- National security and budget cooperation: You should plan for early and
close cooperation on national security affairs and the budget process.
- Orientation of appointees: You should arrange for the general orientation
of your appointees: briefing of new officials by the predecessors, access to career
staff and files, clerical and professional assistance, and perhaps ground-rules
to be established for an "open office" policy.
I. Pre-election contacts
1. It will be very much to your advantage to accept President Johnson's
invitation to begin discussions now about the transition. After Election Day you
will want as much cooperation as you can get from the outgoing Administration.
The more you get, the more effectively you and your appointees can govern after
January 20.
You cannot ask much prior to November 5. Whomever you designate to
negotiate with the Administration can, however, lay the groundwork for fulfilling
your many post-election requirements.
You must first therefore choose an individual to act for you in these nego-
tiations. President Johnson's appointee, Charles Murphy, is an affable but very
tough Southerner, long experienced in Washington. He acted for Truman in the
1952-53 transition, served in Agriculture and on the C.A. B. under Kennedy and
Johnson, returned to the White House recently as a Special Assistant, and reportedly
represented Johnson in Chicago during the democratic Convention. Your designee
must be able to deal with Murphy on equal terms. It seems essential that he possess
not only personal shrewdness and bargaining abilities, but experience in the total
operations of the Executive Branch, preferably In the Executive Office.
- 4
2. You should develop with your designee a catalogue of your transitional
needs. For both political and administrative reasons, these will fall into three
general categories: (a) services that can be performed, at least in part, by the
outgoing Administration prior to November 5; (b) post-election cooperation that
can be plotted and arranged prior to the election; (c) post-election services that
need not, or should not, be discussed with the Incumbent Administration until
after the election. In subsequent sections of this memorandum, we suggest
several cooperative efforts and services you may want to request and, where
important, try to indicate the time when action is most usefully initiated.
3. Although not directly related to dealings with the old Administration,
certain other transitional matters bear a short comment. In order to coordinate
later cooperation with the Administration and to make maximum use of interregnum
preparation, you should begin thinking about designees to perform two functions.
First, you will need some person(s) to direct and organize your transition activi-
ties in general. This man would conceivably play much the same role as Henry
Cabot Lodge did for Eisenhower In 1952-1953. Second, you may want to select a
transition planner, whose task will be to perform "think work" about the transition.
The services of Richard Neustadt for Kennedy in 1960-61 suggest the nature of his
responsibilities.
П. The Immediate Post-Election Period
A. Meeting with the President.
4. The President will probably contact you shortly after November 5 and
suggest an early meeting. In order to gain maximum lead time for the transition,
<<> 5
you should accept the earllest possible date. Preliminary negotlating at the staff
level can settle many details of agenda and format, which then need not occupy the
time of the principals. *
5. You and the President may wish to Issue a joint statement after your
meeting. The Ideal statement would leave everything open and yet obviate any
appearance of friction which might result If the President later feels compelled to
emphasize that his power continues unimpaired until January 20 or If you later
wish to disclaim responsibility for Interregnum Executive actions. A suggestion
follows:
The President and President-Elect had a full, friendly
and useful discussion. They and their associates will
cooperate in every appropriate way in order to insure
a smooth and effective transfer of responsibility on
January 20. They will continue to consult as they
think desirable and are confident that such coopera-
tion can be achieved without impairing the orderly func-
tioning of the Executive Branch in carrying out the
President S Constitutional responsibilities.
B. Principals tone shapes transition.
6. You and the President will have to take strong and positive action to
surmount the Impediments to effective cooperation that have traditionally charac-
terized transitions. Many in Government will feel that they and their policies
were treated unjustly during the campaign. Some new people will act as if they
*
For bargaining purposes, you will want these "White House negotiators" to be
aware not only of your various needs for the transition, but of their relative
priority. In addition, you will want to think about the general format of the
meeting. You may wish, for example, to request the presence of key members
of both Presidential staffs, either for purposes of coordination or In the hope of
exposing subordinates to the spirit of cooperation shown by the principals.
6
were already in office. New appointees have been known to assume that their
predecessors were fools or scoundrels or both and to show no regard for past
decisions, present reasons, or future insights. Some incumbents may attempt to
"sell" their policies to the new people. And the new people may feel that they are
being asked to commit themselves prematurely.
By frankly anticipating these characteristic attitudes, you can try to offset
them. Hopefully, BO will the retiring President who must set the example of
neither preempting his successor unnecessarily nor deferring all action in critical
areas. And if he, who has suffered campaign criticism, is willing to act respon-
sibly and constructively, his subordinates can be encouraged to do the same.
You, in turn, cannot be too emphatic In urging your appointees to take
advantage of their predecessors valuable experience in coping with their depart-
ments, their constituencies, and their particular Congressional committees. In
the past, incoming officials have forfeited much of the advantage to be gained in
tapping this source of Information and advice. In 1952, for example, Charles
Wilson neglected entirely to profit from the experience of Robert Lovett. Eight
years later, the Kennedy Administration retained General Andrew Goodpaster
through the transition period but made little effort to draw upon his experience.
Those of your appointees who served in the Eisenhower Administration would do
well to recall how little their own readiness to assist their successors was appre-
clated. If you can convince your appointees that the advice of former officeholders
is a valuable resource not to be wasted, you will have taken a major step toward
an effective and efficient transition.
-7-
III. Clearance of New Appointees
7. Arrangements must be made for Investigating the personal background of
your appointees for two reasons. First, some of your appointees will need the
immediate security clearances necessary for direct access to classified informa-
tion of the Johnson Administration. Nor will you yourself wish to entrust classified
materials to your people, either before or after the inauguration, without the assur-
ance of at least preliminary clearance. Second, you will probably want to continue
the practice of investigating all potential Presidential appointees -- regardless of
their need for classified data -- in order to assure yourself of their personal
suitability for high government office.
8. The timing problem: Investigations not begun before the election require
attention. Obviously, the process should be initiated as early as possible to avoid
the delays Incident to overloading the investigative agencies.
9. General procedure: (a) The reports on those needing pre-Inaugural
access to classified Information must first be examined by the Administration -
perhaps the White House itself -- which can then relay both its decisions and the
reports to you. Exposing such reports to the Administration may be politically
undesirable but is probably unavoidable. It seems unlikely that the information
thus revealed would be misused by the clearing officials. (b) Unless you receive
direct access to the Investigative agencies, reports on persons not in the preceding
category must also be channeled through the Administration. Here, however, the
Administration is merely a conduit to you; It has no need to examine the content of
the report. You should arrange for the Administration, therefore, to transmit to
you the unopened reports on persons not requiring pre-inauguration security
clearances.
- 8
10. In both the pre-election and post-Inauguration periods, the problem can
be mitigated through the use of temporary clearances. You will have to determine
the availability, limits, and conditions for such clearances.
IV. Information for the President-Elect and his designees.
A. Current information.
11. You should request the kind of military, diplomatic, and foreign intelli-
gence provided routinely for the President. Such information will give you back-
ground for decisions you will have to make after January 20th. Also it should help
you to establish early guidelines for distinguishing presidential from departmental
"business." And It may permit you to judge the form and adequacy of such informa-
tion for your needs.
12. You will, of course, need a staff to sit astride this information flow,
direct your attention to the matters most relevant for you, and otherwise absorb
and use this flow. * Let us emphasize that your most useful and significant Infor-
mation may come not via formal transmissions from the old administration but
via your own people working closely with incumbent counterparts -- as discussed
later in this memorandum.
13. You should request a channel for obtaining appropriate briefings and
memoranda on current problems for yourself and your people. The Administration
would probably offer some on its own initiative but you should clear the way for
making your own specific requests for information and analysis on both substantive
matters and on transitional and organizational topics. **
*
Your basic needs for a transition staff were noted in our August 15 memorandum;
a later memorandum will address itself to White House organization.
**
Whether you should seek authority to request data directly from the departments
or from departmental staff is discussed in a later section.
9 -
Details are not crucial in your initial dealings with the Administration; they
can be worked out later. What you must establish at the outset is the basic prop-
osition that the President-Elect is entitled to full access and that government infor-
mation should move freely to you and your designees. Whatever you can do to
create an atmosphere of willing cooperation and respect for the President B own
responsibilities will facilitate the flow of information.
14. One of your most difficult and critical problems during the transition
will be the gaining of mastery (Insofar as mastery is possible) over national security
affairs. You may want to request President Johnson to assign you one or more
career officials qualified to brief you during the transition period on military,
intelligence, diplomatic and related matters. The person(s) selected would be
appropriately cleared, sufficiently knowledgeable to Interpret and amplify informa-
tion received about substantive and agency problems, and sufficiently experienced
and senior to be respected by both sides for intelligence and discretion. Such a
person would know when it is appropriate to seek further information from the
staffs with which he is familiar and when not to do 80.
15. You might want to request access to some "cable traffic" into the White
House as a preliminary exposure to later responsibilities. Your personal staff
for national security matters, to take one example, could serve as an effective
recipient of this information to promote their own education and as a conduit to you.
B. Other information, especially from the White House and Executive Office.
16. You should ask President Johnson to arrange some way of giving access
(controlled by him) to national security materials that might be available, or
readily available, only in White House files which leave with the retiring President.
- 10 -
a) One aspect of this request is easily presented and justified:
Eisenhower-Khrushchev conversations were covered completely only In the White
House files which left with President Eisenhower. President Johnson would
doubtless agree that a new President must know what the preceding President said
to foreign officials.
b) Your request should, if possible, embrace a second and more
elusive matter: There might be "limited distribution" or other closely held docu-
ments or memoranda that are conveniently assembled only In White House files. *
c) Perhaps you can do no more than to (1) raise the problem, (2) express
confidence that President Johnson will do everything he properly can to make sure
that his successor is fully informed on significant national security matters, and
(3) leave the details to be worked out by your national security adviser(s) and
their Incumbent counterparts. This reinforces another point: Unlike President
Kennedy's adviser, McGeorge Bundy, who did not begin work until January or
assemble his staff until later, your national security staff should be appointed
early and begin performance as soon as possible.
It Is conceivable, for example, that complete details of various contacts with
foreign officials on Vietnam matters may be so sensitive and restricted that full
information vital to the new President might not be readily known to carry-over
personnel or readily revealed by surviving files. In other cases, important
material might be contained In permanent departmental files but yet not readily
accessible because dispersed among voluminous other materials.
- 11 -
17. You should ask to see Task Force reports prepared for the President
and not yet released to the public. You could point out that work by thoughtful
people should not be wasted. You should, however, state your willingness to
accept any limitations imposed by President Johnson as to acknowledgment, attri-
bution, or quotation, and defer to his wishes regarding any reports which he might
Issue publicly himself or use in late messages and speeches.
18. You should ask for reorganization studies completed or underway in the
Budget Bureau or in the Departments.
19. You will want to specify certain useful personnel information that could
easily be assembled by the Bureau of the Budget: available Presidential and
Departmental appointments (to the extent not published elsewhere), expiring term
appointments, Presidential powers with respect to various classes of appointees,
personnel policy decisions that need to be made within the first three months, etc.
20. You should request the preparation of a memorandum on technical opera-
tions of the White House, office and mansion - budget, accounting, permanent
personnel, customs, etc. This should be supplemented by personal consultation
between incoming and outgoing officials. In addition, William Hopkins, the
Executive Clerk, is a great storehouse of information on these matters.
21. The preceding enumeration of reports must not disguise the Important
truth that your best source of information lies not on paper but in people. Present
(and former) members of the White House Staff are perhaps the most valuable
resource of all for a new Administration. The unique experience and responsibility
of Presidents seem to forge a common bond among them notwithstanding differences
12 -
of party or policy. Presidential staffs should find a similar bond arising from the
special institution they serve. The insights, experience, and occasionally the
negative example of incumbent and former staff members can be extremely Illum-
inating for new people. And a common loyalty to the Presidency should be enough
to encourage the future staff to seek and the present staff to offer candid discussion
of the Office and its problems.
V. Orientation of New Appointees.
A. National Security and Budget observers.
22. Since you will need to master, at the earliest possible moment, the
massive flow of communications and advice relating to national security policy,
you should give high priority to obtaining from the outgoing administration permis-
sion for your prospective Special Assistant(s) for national security affairs to work
with their incumbent counterpart(s), and, if possible, immediately nearby, hope-
fully In adjoining offices. If such an arrangement is not offered by President
Johnson, you should request it. The terms of your understanding with the outgoing
President should not preclude your designating more than one person for this
function. Even If you choose to centralize responsibility on your own staff, your
designee will want assistance to help in learning procedures, In mastering substan-
tive issues, and perhaps in examining files soon to be removed.
23. In addition, your Administration must become familiar - promptly and
in depth -- with the Budget Bureau and its current work on the 1970 budget. Apart
from intimate intra-Administration considerations of peculiarly partisan matters,
- 13 -
it would be helpful for your Director (or other designee) and a few key staff to
observe as much of the budget preparation process as they can absorb. In this
way, your appointees can understand the nature of current issues, can help you
make preliminary judgments about the issues you want to re-examine after
Inauguration, and can better handle the new or repeated departmental requests
confronting them in early 1969. Close cooperation during the transition period
has become traditional in Budget, and it is a salutary tradition. In the unlikely
event that the Administration fails to offer cooperation in this area, you should
request it.
B. General orientation of appointees.
24. To reiterate a key point, you will find no greater resource in the out-
going Administration than the expertise and experience of Its staff and appointees.
In the past, incoming officials have generally suffered to learn the same lessons
time and again because they have not profited from their predecessors' experience.
On the whole, this seems attributable more to mistrust of the predecessors rather
than to any unwillingness of the latter to be helpful. Of course, not everyone can
be equally helpful. Of course, much that is said will have to be discounted by
different interests and circumstances. But the fact is: outgoing officials are a
valuable resource that should be utilized by the incoming officials during the transi-
tion period.
25. You should press the old Administration to encourage Secretaries,
Under Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, Administrators, and other Presidential
appointees to receive their counterparts and to acquaint them with the administrative
practices and substantive issues of their agencies.
14
a) You can expect the office of each Presidential appointee to have
prepared an appropriate "briefing book" on administrative and substantive matters.
Even excessively voluminous and routinely bureaucratic products can be useful to
the appointee (or his special assistant). Even the routine product can identify such
basic information (often unknown to new appointees) as both the "hot" and recurring
issues facing the agency, the identity and arguments of important interest groups
concerned with each issue, and the relevant Congressional considerations.
b) On such topics, you should advise your appointees to seek the views of
the incumbents. The direct exchange can be more sharply focused and more candid.
c) Furthermore, you should recommend that your appointees ask outgoing
officials (on a discreet and informal basis) for their views on the agencies career
people. (We would hope that some information of this type would have been gathered
In the pre-election period.) The new official with a different policy outlook may
react differently, but incoming and outgoing officials will often have a common
reaction - independent of policy - to a subordinate 8 qualities. In time, the new
people may learn, as did their predecessors, that a subordinate Is analytical,
concerned, diligent, articulate, concise, skeptical, discreet, or the opposites.
While the new official will not want to be bound by the predecessor's opinions, the
latter's views can accelerate the process of testing and appraising. And, of course,
subordinates are most useful to one who knows what discounts and premiums to
apply to their work.
26. Some incumbent officials may value their successors or their agencies
sufficiently to open their offices to their successors, letting them read much of
the paper traffic and to observe conferences and meetings with subordinates and
- 15 -
outsiders. Whether any particular official makes such an offer will depend upon
his work and working habits and the mesh of personalities. This assumes that the
"open office" approach occurs to him both as a possibility and as one to which the
President would not object. It follows, therefore, that if the President makes no
mention of the subject to you, you should diplomatically suggest its usefulness.
You should urge him, If agreeable, to authorize such cooperation perhaps by
mentioning it In a Cabinet discussion of transitional arrangements. Some such
approach as this is almost imperative in the State and Defense and perhaps else-
where, depending on your plans.
27. These approaches are not without this danger: such one to one interaction
between incumbents and new appointees may unconsciously and uncritically tend to
freeze existing patterns of organization, allocations of responsibility, or ways of
seeing problems. We see two possible countermeasures: First, you can make
your appointees conscious of the issue, demand critical thinking about it, and warn
that organizational arrangements are subject to review and revision. Second, it
may be possible to postpone the appointment of some Assistant Secretaries in
those departments which can be efficiently managed at the outset without the full
complement of Assistant Secretaries. If so, your primary appointees would have
more time for a thorough personnel search and for a careful review of effective
organizational possibilities within the department.
28. Pre-inauguration access of appointees to the departmental staffs will
probably be opposed by the old Administration which might fear a premature
transfer of staff loyalty. Because no categorical rule can cope entirely with
- 16 -
individual and departmental variations, such contacts are best left to be worked
out agency by agency. At the Presidential level, you should limit yourself to two
requests:
a) Your study groups and task forces may feel particular need for access
to relevant departmental files and experts. Fully knowledgeable outside experts
are, to be sure, often available. But where this is not the case, the government
experts may be essential for thorough appreciation of the data and correct analysis.
You should specify these situations as clearly as you can and request access rele-
vant to them. (They will be relatively few in number.)
b) You should seek agreement in principle that agencies lend a suitable
"expert or two" to the new officials or task forces when they request them and
when such aid can be provided without disrupting the current work of the agency.
29. General pre-inauguration access to files (as distinct from staff) might
be rejected altogether if sought at the Presidential level. Since permanent depart-
mental files will be available later, the Administration may hesitate to grant early
access. You should ask no more than authority to make arrangements on a case-
by-case basis with each department. In light of your hopes to include younger men
in the intimate workings of Government, you might seek permission to designate
relatively junior persons -- prospective special assistants to high officials --- to
study relevant files and other background information which they can later bring to
bear in giving post-inauguration assistance to their chiefs. In other situations,
such work might make it possible to delay the appointment of some Assistant
Secretaries, as discussed earller. This technique could prove extremely valuable
- 17 -
in selected offices where orientation of new appointees is difficult. Possible
examples are the Secretariat and a few other offices in the State Department as
well as I.S.A. and Systems Analysis In Defense.
30. You should arrange quite early to have at least one incumbent official
remain as Acting Secretary in each Department. He will exercise formal statutory
power until the new Secretary and his team are confirmed (which might not occur
on Inauguration day or the next).
31. There are certain technical areas where you may expect a briefing from
the Administration. If one is not offered, you should request the following informa-
tion:
a) To what extent will departmental office space be available? In 1960-
61, ten new officials were housed in State and two in each of the other Departments.
To accommodate any larger number might well prove disruptive but if an "open
office" policy is In effect, new officials would have to be housed nearby. In other
situations location may not be crucial If adequate information is available.
b) What funds are available to the President-Elect under the Transition
Act for personnel, supplies, consultants, travel, and office space?
c) To what extent can the varlous departments help to absorb the
expenses of transition by lending office space and clerical and professional
assistance?
VI. The Handling of Crises
32. If a crisis arises during the transition and the response of the President
will have major continuing consequences (e.g., American response to a Chinese
Invasion of Vietnam), the President will doubtless want to consult you since yours
will be the longer burden.
- 18 -
You probably have little choice but to assume that the President acts in
good faith when he calls upon you. The public would expect you to consult with
the President in a time of national emergency. You will have been receiving and
digesting information before and after the election; your confidence in the data
will be proportional to the variety of your sources. Nevertheless, you may
hesitate to share the responsibility, even symbolically, without clearly adequate
information or time for deliberation, without decision-making authority, and
without the inescapable mandate of office.
No one can tell either principal his duty. This much is clear: the President
can see that you are kept fully informed and Invite you to express your views. You
may wish to decline and in most cases this is a real option. However, there may
be a crisis of such proportions that silence or the standard formulations of concern
are inadequate responses. Then If you have a clear policy view, there is every
reason to state It. Beyond this we do not venture.