The Unknown Known Page #5

---

"here was the vote.

The ayes were this.

The nays were that.

Here were the amendments,

and here's what I did

and why I did it."

And then when I went

in the executive branch,

I would want to clarify

my own thinking,

so I would try to put it down

on paper and edit it,

and I'd go through

three, four, five drafts,

getting it the way

I really wanted it.

I would do it

for communications to my staff.

I wanted them to know

what I was thinking.

Did you imagine

that they would produce

this vast archive?

Oh, it never crossed my mind.

I never knew

what I was gonna do next.

The only thing I've ever

volunteered for in my life...

one was to go in the Navy,

and the other was

to run for congress.

The other was to get married.

You look at being

married to the same woman

all those decades...

when you're 20, 21, 22,

what did you know?

Both of us were young

and unformed.

How in the world

can you be that lucky?

How did you propose?

Imperfectly.

I was getting ready

to leave for Pensacola.

About 10:
00 in the morning,

I said to my folks,

"I'll be back.

I'm gonna go down

and see Joyce."

I asked her to marry me.

I didn't get down on my knees.

I didn't do anything fancy.

I didn't want to get married,

but I sure as heck

didn't want her

to marry anyone else.

And I was correct.

It was a good decision.

It just hadn't been

part of my plan.

Director of the

office of economic opportunity

was Rumsfelds first job

for Richard Nixon.

Later, when O.E.O. Seemed

headed for extinction,

Mr. Nixon named him director

of the cost of living council.

After friction developed

between Rumsfeld

and H.R. Haldeman,

Rumsfeld requested a change

and was sent to Brussels

as the U.S. ambassador

to the north Atlantic

treaty organization.

He got out just in time

and survived Watergate

with reputation intact.

A person who works

that hard to become president

had to believe that

everything he did or thought

would be useful to preserve.

He puts in place

these recording devices,

like other presidents had,

and then he'd go about

being himself,

and sometimes

he'd let his hair down

and say things in ways

that he might not have said

had he remembered

that each second of the day

that it was being recorded.

All of us say things

we shouldn't say,

that on reflection,

we wish we hadn't said.

I expect he just felt that

on balance,

everything was worth preserving

because he was

an historic figure.

Did presidents after

Nixon make recordings

in the White House?

The only president

I was close enough to

to answer that question about

was Gerald R. Ford,

and I can assure you he did not.

My guess is that people

tend not to fall

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes