Crazy Rhythm: From Brooklyn And Jazz To Nixon’s White House, Watergate, And Beyond [Paperback ed.] 0306810824, 9780306810824

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An eloquent memoir' New

York

Times

Book Review

Leonard Garment

cr^zy

rhythm

From Brooklyn and jazz to Nixon's White House, Watergate, and beyond with a

'I

new

epilogue by the author

zipped through Crazy Rhythm

in

record time and enjoyed every last page." Saul

Bellow

Jvhythm c razy %

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2012

http://archive.org/details/crazyrhythmmyjouOOgarm_0

^HYTHJVH My Journey from

Brooklyn, Jazz, and

Wall Street to Nixon's White House, Watergate,

and Beyond

.

.

.

LEONARD GARMENT

V4 DA CAPO PRESS

Copyright © 1997 by Leonard Garment Epilogue copyright © 2001 by Leonard Garment All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. Grateful acknowledgement is made to Farrar, Straus &. Giroux, Inc., and Faber and Faber Limited for permission to reprint "Long Sight in Age," from Collected Poems by Philip Larkin. Copyright © 1988, 1989 by the Estate of Philip Larkin. Rights throughout the United States are controlled by Farrar, Straus &. Giroux, Inc., and Faber and Faber Limited.

Designed by M. Kristen Bearse Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book

is

available

from the Library of Congress. First Da Capo Press edition 2001 Reprinted by arrangement with the author

ISBN 0-306-81082-4 Published by

Da Capo

Press

A Member of the Perseus Books Group http ://ww w. dacapopress .com

Da Capo

Press books are available at special discounts bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 1 1 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, for

MA 02142, or call (617) 252-5298. 12

3 4 5 6 7 8

9—05 04

03 02 01

To the memory

of

my friend John

Osborne, a

lucid and scrupulous reporter of the

Nixon

New Republic, who insisted that sooner or later must tell my own story

years for The

I

And

for

my wife,

Suzanne, a similarly

scrupulous journalist, for

me

who made

it

possible

to present a coherent account of a

sometimes incoherent

life

Only he who says "in has the calling of

-MAX WEBER,

spite of all" politics.

Politics as

a

Vocation

CONTENTS

Introduction

xi

1

THE GARMENTS GO WEST

2

GROWING UP STRANGE

33

3

NIXON GOES EAST

55

4

NIXON GOES TO COURT

79

5

THE LONG MARCH

99

6

THE NIXON WHITE HOUSE:

3

ARTS AND CRAFT

151

AND ISRAEL

7

NIXON, KISSINGER,

8

AMERICAN DILEMMAS

203

9

WATERGATE

245

10

GOING HOME

303

11

WORKS

339

IN

PROGRESS

Epilogue: Four Years Later

.

.

.

181

393

Thanks

409

Index

411

INTRODUCTION

This book

in part about Richard

is

White House story

A

I

know

years, but

it is

Nixon and Watergate and the

mainly about me. After

question frequently put to

another, has been:

How

that's the

me

over the years, in one form or

could you, a birthright Democrat and

become and remain not only

long liberal,

all,

best.

life-

a close professional col-

league of Richard Nixon, but his friend? Could

be anything more

it

than opportunism, with a touch of adventurism thrown in? The quintessential expression of this question

the steadfastly progressive article titled "Letter to

tration.

The

New

came

in a 1973 issue of

Leader magazine, where a cover

Lenny" asked me

to resign

from the adminis-

piece professed not just disdain but real perplexity over

would use the remnants of my reputation as a liberal to clothe Nixon with decency. My answer to this criticism then and later was a shrug. I had not thought very hard about Nixon and me. Now, though, I have a somewhat more serious answer to offer. What I have written is by no means a seamless account. It is the idea that

I

three separate but intersecting stories

involvement in Nixon's

— of my personal

political career,

and

life,

is

Nixon, even

a unifying element: Everything

my memories

of

is

what occurred before we met.

/

xi

my

post-Nixon comHouse years led me. shadowed by Richard

of the

bination of law and politics to which the White

But there

of

xii

way

Since the best

what happened, so,

INTRODUCTION

/

to tell

why something happened

to tell

have concentrated here on the "what." In doing

I

have been mindful of the speed with which

I

is

facts,

even those

closely and directly observed, change under the pressures of selfinterest

and

and uncertain memory, turning

then into myth, and finally

fiction,

residual truth that

passed for

first

may

That

reality.

say something is

an important part of what

why it

—

if

into a mixture of fact

we're lucky

more than what

— into

a

originally

the telling of tales has always been

means

to be

human.

I

have tried to be

Given life's confusion, to claim any would be at best pretentious and possibly The reader will encounter a number of tilted staircases

true to the texture of events.

more

certainty than this

fraudulent.

and cockeyed corners in the architecture journey,

I

Nixon's

life,

is

not another retelling of the endlessly retold tale

self-immolation in Watergate, and postresignation

struggle to restore his reputation.

own life.

memoir, but the

believe, leads to daylight.

This book of

of this

It is

Nor

is it

even a

full telling of

my

mainly about the accidental connections between two

social immigrants,

on the margins

of polite society,

with very

mixed, archetypal feelings about coming to terms with the world

around them. Our ways

— Nixon's and mine — of adapting inner need

had enough resonance to bring us together in was provisional but permanent. Without me, there would, of course, still be a big Nixon story. Without Nixon, there would have been no Garment story at least to outer circumstance a relationship that

—

not the one told in this book.

c razy

3lhyth m

H1H THE GARMENTS GO WEST

T

story of her courtship with that before

my

who "went

away."

father there

On

someone," she said

here's always

my father,

an Arthur.

When my mother she would always

was Arthur,

my

let

told the

us

know

mother's one true love,

the rebound, she wanted to get married ("to

My

defiantly).

father

was

clean, neat, nice-

He had good manners and a job. What more Romantic love was rarely part of the immigrant

looking, ambitious.

could she ask

for?

it was enough to find someone who looked like companion on the long road to assimilation. My parents' story was one instance of the fact that the unhappy immigrant Jewish families of my youth in Brooklyn were all unhappy in the same way. That unhappiness was testimony to the ineradicable costs of being uprooted; like so many immigrants and

marriage contract; a suitable

their children,

One

I

set out to escape

sign of the distance

our history, like that of is

my

many

and

was sent city of

to

for

us a vivid

tale.

family traveled to America

is

that

late-nineteenth-century immigrants,

riddled with blank pages. But

herself

it.

my mother,

Jennie Eckert,

wove

for

In 1903, just thirteen years old, she

America from her family's small farm near the Polish

Przmezyl to escape the escalating dangers in Europe. Under

the sponsorship of the

Hebrew Immigration Assistance

/

3

Society she

4 traveled in a crowded

/

Leonard Garment

wagon

across Poland to a train that crossed

Germany and deposited her on a packed steamer deHamburg for America. Her father, my grandfather the one photograph I have of him displays a neatly bearded Sigmund Freud lookalike was already in this country, the family advance man. He Austria and

—

parting

—

worked

as a teacher of languages (he

is

said to have

been fluent in

German, Yiddish, and Russian) and saved patiently to pay for his family's passage to safety. One by one, the Eckert children Jennie, David, Sasha, Bessie came to America and grew up to be the gentler side of my inheritance. My mother's mother, along with the other Eckert children and myriad relatives, decided to stay in what they thought was their homeland. All of them perished during World War II. Loneliness, fear, and physical misery were the elements of an ocean crossing in steerage, but my mother seemed to remember English, Polish,

—

—

little

about

to herself

this. Instead,

she offered to her children

— and doubtless

— a sentimentalized version of the experience. She told us

about Vienna, where she and her fellow refugees had paused on their

way

to

Hamburg. Misty-eyed, she rhapsodized about the beauty

of

the grounds surrounding one of the Hapsburg palaces. After Ellis Island,

my mother's father took her to the Lower East

From there she embarked on the immigrant rites moving from one job and one crowded family apartment Side.

polishing her English at night school. father,

whose

in Lithuania,

father

and

to another,

A friend introduced her to my

had brought him to

who was

of passage,

this

country from Poltava,

following the same assimilationist path.

After a short engagement, they were married on

March

16, 1917.

They began raising a family in Brownsville, an area on the undeveloped edge

of the East

New

York section

of Brooklyn,

between the

older part of the borough and adjoining Queens.

in

the early part of this century, Brownsville, adjacent to

still-

was the American counterpart of a semirural The streets were packed with hastily thrown together three-story wood tenements and converted farm buildings, a unsettled farmland,

European

shtetl.

jumble of ugly structures that looked like a Jewish Klondike. Yet the inhabitants milled around with pioneering excitement and en-

CRAZY RHYTHM

5

/

ergy that lent an agitated beauty to the chaos. Grocery stores, candy shops, fish and

meat markets,

delicatessens, horse barns, pool halls,

pawnshops, social clubs, and synagogues spilled helter-skelter

The clamor

over the place.

lighted the senses

of

sounds and smells

and de-

— the steady hum of swarms of peddlers and shop-

pers, excited shouts

from the children milling about underfoot,

mouth-watering food odors mingling with the

ra .icid air of a

push-

sweating market.

ing, shoving,

All of this buried itself deep in into focus later

on when

a

my memory but sometimes came

sound or smell or fragment

suddenly evoked the old scene.

wandering

afflicted

all

One

voice

I

can

still

of a

hear

dream is

the

street peddler crying, "I cash clothes" (in Yiddish, "alte

Zachen," or "old things"). I

was born

into this

community on May

11, 1924,

on

a kitchen

table in a three-room tenement apartment on Pennsylvania Avenue,

next door to the horse barn of the Sheffield Milk Company. (The father of

Norman

Podhoretz, a close friend

horse-drawn wagon vised by the

Garment

and midwife,

my father's

Two

fifty

for the dairy at the time.]

years later, drove a

My

birth

was

super-

family's all-purpose aunt, family counselor, large,

handsome

sister,

Sonia Swetlow.

brothers had preceded me: Charles, a redhead like

dark, small-featured,

my

Garment boys, and Martin, who was and handsome like my father. Marty was the

mother and the smartest

of the

"sickly" child in the family, born with dislocated hips and other

congenital ailments that required his life encased in cement.

When

my mother was still nursing him,

him

to

he was

spend the early months of four, the year

I

was born,

massaging him, and wheeling him

we moved from Pennsylvania Avenue to nearby Stone Avenue, where we shared the upstairs half of a small frame house with a doctor named around to doctors and physical therapists. Around 1927

Rosenfeld. Dr. Rosenfeld

was nominally

in general practice, but he

devoted most of his time to "female problems" tion,

My mother worked as Dr. I

— particularly abor-

then the conventional method of birth control

am

told

doctor's office

books.

I

also

I

was

among the poor.

Rosenfeld's part-time receptionist.

a good, quiet boy, given to

hanging around the

and browsing through the photographs in his medical in the procession of unhappily

must have encountered,

pregnant ladies, the

first

whispered and unanswered mysteries of

6

/

Leonard Garment

sex and marriage. In later years,

my

multiple abortions at the hands of sadness despite

was

ber,

all

a

The number,

the time that had passed.

I

remem-

with the decision on whether or not to abort

staggering,

determined by

mother told me about her own Aunt Sonia, and was not without

thumbs-up

or

my

thumbs-down from

father.

I

was

spared but proved a bitter disappointment, because after two boys

my

The most medically significant own youth occurred when I, age five, jumped off a

parents had yearned for a

incident of

my

girl.

high stoop on the dare of an older

and broke

woman

(maybe eight years

old)

my nose. lay in bed, happily accepting the day-and-night my mother and learning, unfortunately, that illness I

ministrations of

has

its

B

oth

rewards.

my parents were small,

good-looking people.

My mother was

hair, blue eyes, a farm girl's creamy white musing mouth, and a dimpled chin. Before me as I write is my parents' sepia-tinted wedding picture. They do not look like typical European Jews. They are dressed impeccably. My mother is bustily beautiful, my father darkly handsome. They appear confident and poised, a Typical American Couple. In fact, my parents' "American" looks and accent-free facility

striking,

with her red-gold

skin, a sweet,

with English played a large part in the family's relatively orderly adaptation to American surroundings. These same features caused

my

brothers and

me

considerable cultural confusion: Should

think of ourselves as Jews

both

or

Americans

first?

Why can't we be

first?

My father was all

first

we

obsessively fastidious about appearances,

his physical appearance.

Even when he was

first of

a beginner in the

dress-manufacturing business, his hair was always neatly cut and

combed, his expensive shoes shined each cured.

He wore

a long-sleeved shirt

on weekends, gartering the right length.

He bought

shirt to

day, his fingernails

and a

work and

keep his sleeves

at

mani-

home

at precisely the

better clothes than he could afford, includ-

ing stylish hats (straws in summertime).

more money, he spent

tie at

a great deal of

it

When

he began to earn

on expensive restaurant food

and popular entertainment. He became an aggressive check grabber and

a big tipper

— fancying himself,

and

in

thentic American-style "good-time Johnny."

time becoming, an au-

CRAZY RHYTHM But

appearance was the

if

core of that

life

was work,

land of opportunity.

He

Ozone

cheap ready-to-wear dresses

He

returned

home

of

my

father's

the real

life,

his personal pledge of allegiance to the

rose before

his contracting factory in

turers).

emblem

7

/

dawn

six days a

Park, Queens,

for the

New

week

to travel to

where he assembled

York "jobbers" (manufacour apart-

after dark, striding heavily into

ment with his evening paper, the World Telegram, tucked under his arm for a quick scan (I never saw him read a book] before a simple straight whiskey and dinner. It was boiled beef on Monday, "dairy" on Tuesday, delicatessen-bought cold cuts on Saturday. (Sunday was ad

lib,

perhaps stuffed cabbage or the packaged leftovers of a restau-

rant meal.) Talk at the table might be about

maybe a Kennedy

some

no Judge Hardy morality

civics lessons,

about the great issues of the day. In point of

much

talk at

factory in our free time.

I

the mindless drudgery of

hems

fact,

— but no Joe no talk was never

lectures,

there

all.

All three of us brothers were drafted to

the

factory problem,

piece of gossip about neighbors or relatives

work

in our father's

hated the place passionately, most of

my

basic chores

all

— cleaning threads from

of endless racks of dresses, hustling packages of

trimmings

and repaired dresses by bus and subway between the factory in

Queens and the manufacturers on Seventh Avenue.

I

buttoned up

thousands of dresses, frequently drifting into fantasies of unbuttoning them. Yet weekend and vacation-time work at the

Garment Manufac-

my

father's impressive

turing Co. did give

me

a

chance to observe

skill at inspiring his factory

women

to

crew

of

work not only quickly but

some

eighty Italian

men and

carefully, in order to avoid the

dreaded return of dresses for reworking. Giving equal and concentrated attention to

moved around

what seemed

like every task in the factory,

the floor nonstop, repairing a botched garment, recut-

ting a package of defectively prepared material, fixing a tle

on

a

he

sewing machine, rethreading a needle

for

one

broken shutof the older

Through the years, he had worked at every dressmaking specialty sewing machine operator, presser, pattern maker, designer, plant foreman and now could perform every one of these jobs expertly. He worked alongside his employees, coaxing the maximum effort from them by setting an example, working harder than

operators.

—

—

anyone

else,

and practicing

lip-biting diplomacy.

He

reserved his

8

/

Leonard Garment

angry outbursts for broken machines (and for his family ner

table).

my

was

I

him

never saw

lose his

temper

at his

at the din-

employees. This

domain. Here he was "Mr. Boss," respected by ev-

father's

eryone, including me.

At lunchtime, we took door to Miller's, an old

ham

a fifteen-minute break

German

delicatessen.

It

and went next

was usually

sandwich, coffee, and silence for both of us, and, for

his corrosive

which he

Murad

cigarettes.

He sometimes had

a

pad

a fresh

my father,

of paper

on

scribbled production notes, piecework rates, and remind-

example, that he had to

ers (of payoffs, for

inspectors).

Then

was back

it

make

to police

to the dress racks, the dust

and

fire

and noise,

the claustrophobic atmosphere, the crushing boredom. I

have one happy

memory

of the factory.

I

was four

or five years

not yet impressed into weekend work at the place, and one of

old,

those annoying kids

mother's delight,

who

are precocious public performers.

my father's indulgence,

had memorized some popular songs

mugged

my way

On

bility.

through

audience.

Jimmy

I

a handsome, black-haired

lifted

me

man

dence of Shirley Temple for Old a

I

horror,

I

sang and

audience suscepti-

was presented with

my

with powerful, hairy arms,

onto one of the work tables, where

and

which

my

the presser and I.L.G.W.U. representa-

tive,

Millie, Connie,

my brothers'

at the slightest hint of

a Saturday visit to the factory,

first large

and

of the day,

To

crowd

Young

Josie,

of other

I

workers

sang with the confiJosie, Little Tessie,

who had known me

was born. With this audience of Italian mothers, I was, natuhuge hit. The song I sang was a popular piece of Tin Pan Alley philosophy about prudence, "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," which became a kind of personal anthem for the rest of my life. When I was older, I swore I would get away from this braindeadening work as soon as I could and never return to anything like it. At the age of twelve I escaped to my first outside job, a summer of work at a nighttime golf driving range managed by one of my since

I

rally, a

cousins in the Sheepshead Bay area of Brooklyn, where, enclosed in a protective cage,

reveled in air,

picked up several hundred thousand golf

my freedom from

free to

smoke

the factory.

I

was

balls.

I

alone, out in the fresh

Chesterfield cigarettes bought loose for a penny

my father's Murads for me). I was also free from my most impressively unpleasant trait, a ferocious temper that

each (none of father's

I

CRAZY RHYTHM

9

/

generated premonitory waves of menace and anxiety even before

exploded into the open.

When I was

about

my father's

this,

vaguely associated his

I

temper was simply

it

my

a youngster,

to stay out of

main thought its way. Beyond

anger with hard work, business

fits of

worries, and a nasty disposition.

was

It

years, well after his death, before

an understanding of those titanic

like

father,

rages.

Lear, is a cartoon staple of ethnic literature. Yet for the anger.

Many immigrant men

were, like

my

smothered by obligations, undertaken voluntarily or forced

on them. They worked incredibly hard for

came to something The choleric Jewish

denouncing his sons as ''bums" and storming the neighbor-

hood heath like there was reason father,

I

them

to keep up it was still harder They raised their children to succeed as reward was to watch helplessly as their own ;

to edge ahead.

Americans, and their

old-fashioned ideas of respect, loyalty, discipline, and otherwise correct behavior

were defied or treated with condescension. They had while their sons never seemed to stop partying.

little

time

They

did not have the authority to coerce or time to persuade, so

for fun,

made the esNeed pushed fa-

they resorted to shouts of rage. These circumstances

trangement of fathers and sons almost inevitable.

way while

thers one

the culture pulled their sons in the opposite

direction.

More than anything

else,

I

think

it

was

this psychological isola-

tion from his family and the erosion of his energy by age, anxiety,

and

illness that progressively embittered

little social

out, or a

time to spend with us

ocean breezes

at

Coney Island on

trip

by subway

Writing this account,

must be

ory, so

either.

too

He had

very

to catch the

summer Sunday. That

a sweltering

it. I

found

I

could not

summon up

lection of a single serious conversation with

there

father.

— maybe a rare movie, a dinner

major family occasion like a

was about

my

my

father.

a psychological explanation for the hole in

brothers — who

the recolI

thought

my mem-

asked my My brother Charlie recalled my father saying he had realized,

late,

I

said

he barely spoke to them

that he should not have had children:

be a father and did not have the patience for

Bad memories are not the whole snapsnot of the Garment family,

I

He was

it.

Looking

at a

father, smiling, his

arm

story, of course.

see

my

not meant to

10

Leonard Garment

/

my shoulders. The photo reminds me of a cab him. We were coming home from a nasty piece of

draped fondly around ride

took with

I

nasal surgery

I

had

just

undergone. The Eastern Parkway potholes

aggravated the postoperative bleeding, and blood soaked through the gauze packing.

I

remember

my

father holding

me

and carefully

mopping the blood from my face. I know there were more such moments, but only a few small morsels of affectionate memory have survived his years of isolation and anger and the resentments

and amnesia they bred.

One

result of the

immigrant

father's

enraged explosions was to

drive immigrant mothers even closer to their children. These

women were a

complicated bunch.

My mother, for example, was an

angel of love and patience with her sons, working every day at her sacred mission of motivating us to excel in everything

was

a

warmly devoted

by hand, ruling our

acter

lives

by being indispensable.

into an occasional spot of trouble in school,

the teacher by

my

we

did.

She

guardian, hemstitching our clothes and char-

When

I

got

my solution was a visit to

charmingly manipulative mother (how could the

son of such a lovely

woman

be a problem?). Yet

my

mother was

something quite different to her husband. She gave him wifely measure, to

be sure, rising in the dark to feed

him and launch

his day,

caring for his needs, working at the factory in emergencies. But

met by

when

his tantrums of anger, she defended her maternal positions

like a lioness, raining

on his head the virtuoso abuse that has been

a survival skill of Jewish

My brothers and

I

wives and mothers

for

hundreds of years.

were not immune from the lash

of her tongue.

But the really bitter battles were between

my

and the sound

through thin apartment

of their exchanges, half heard

walls, was the most familiar nighttime sound of

Tihe er's

my childhood.

of us

we banded

had something

of

and gutsy

Charlie,

who

New

faced

together despite our intramural angers.

which the others were proud:

strawberry-blond, blue-eyed beauty;

ergy,

and mother,

Garment family feuds were not unceasing. When we

the outside world

Each

father

my

my moth-

father's ambition, en-

York manner; the brilliance

of

my

brother

skipped grades and graduated from high school at

teen; Marty's silky-smooth

good looks and,

ment, his athletic prowess;

my

popularity.

fif-

after his years of treat-

CRAZY RHYTHM Also, the family's battle lines were in

and

fluid as the coalitions at the

sometimes defended

11

/

some ways

my father in his battles with his

that she herself on occasion subtly initiated.

Marty but resented

their excluding

formed on them to

my

ment hangout

(the

complex My mother as

Congress of Vienna.

me

from

father, spilling the

sons

— battles

idolized Charlie and

I

their games, so

I

in-

beans about their base-

infamous Club Kent) and the card playing,

crapshooting, and other forbidden

activities that

took place there.

They punished me with fists and other blunt instruments, but he punished them only with words for despite my father's rages,

—

he never raised

a

hand

to

any

arguments with

frazzled by

of us.

my

My mother,

on the other hand,

father or the malfeasance of her

would administer inexplicable beatings to me, her favorite, with a clothes hanger. Her anger was usually occasioned by my absentminded loss of some costly piece of clothing, as when I left a new winter coat at the Utica Theatre and walked home in a snowsons,

storm to dinner and bed, the coat gone There were other instances

When

I

old,

my

hectic, noisy,

and packed with

and wandered

off to

I

passed, because

was

lost

—

to

when

I

next saw a

restless

my mother had me

my

crowd

grew

I

and didn't know

mothers. She began running, screaming I

me

jostling housewives.

accompanied by the store police and but then

maternal instruction.

mother took

look around, assuming that

on her magic radar screen;

must have

of forcible

Abraham & downtown Brooklyn department store. It was hot,

was four years

Straus, the big

forever.

Some time

it.

mother, she was

of volunteer fellow

my name — "Lenny,

noticed that she was having trouble moving her

Lenny" feet. In

her excitement she had broken the waistband of her old-style pink

bloomers, and they were trapped around her ankles. In the following short order, she

first

pulled off the bloomers and stuffed

shopping bag; ran to me, face

with tears and wet

terrific

lifted

kisses;

me

then put

xor years my mother would I

was

me down

slam in the head with her black handbag.

which was worse, the embarrassment

not

any sense, emotional or physical. "of age," thought he

was

them

in her

my me a

to her bosom, and covered

I

and gave

don't

remember

or the headache.

let my father come close to her in My brothers, telling me this when

entitled to find (or buy)

companion-

12 ship and

Leonard Garment

/

warmth where he

was driven

still

was

could. But the result

further from his wife, sons, and

things that might have offered

him some measure

that

my father

home, the only comfort in his

of

hard final years. Working like a horse, he was weighed

down by

heart attack, painful intestinal problems, and a run of other nesses, particularly an attack of Bell's palsy

partly recovered. For a

a

ill-

from which he only

man who prized his appearance so highly,

the

slackened face that the strokelike palsy produces had to be a special horror.

There was also his

set of

pink-and-white dentures soaking

overnight in a bubble-flecked glass of water on his night table a symbol,

I

now know,

of

prolonged physical misery and chronic

embarrassment. I

saw the

epic size of

my

father's frustration as

he lay dying

at

the Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn in 1951 of an intensely painful abdominal cancer that had spread through his stomach,

and pancreas. In his hospital room,

liver,

mistakenly tried to

I

lighten the atmosphere by doing a Catskill-type shtick for the other

My father did not think it was funny. Perhaps he felt I was making fun of his suffering or didn't care whether he lived or died. Maybe he was simply seething, as his life faded, at being surrounded by the cold, commonplace jokes of the living. That day he descended visitors.

into his final fury toward me.

died a few

So

months

my

last

memory

always been sorry that lessness,

He

refused to see

me

again, until

he

later.

I

my

of

father

couldn't

tell

is

of his familiar anger. I've

him

I

my

regretted

thought-

even though his wrath was really about something that

could not be eased by apologies for a haphazard blunder. In his old

and speechless bitterness,

I

stood as a surrogate for

many

things,

commonplaces like love and fun that had been permanently denied to him. He had made the best of a bad bargain. A proud man, he gave his wife the security she wanted; a responsible man, he gave his sons the chance to study and succeed. Though semi-estranged from his family, he worked unceasingly to especially his longing for

keep the immigrant parent's promise of a better I

know

M

this

now, but

it's

too late to

tell

life for

his children.

him.

y father's day was not wholly circumscribed by the factory and

the family table. After dinner he

would make

a

speedy departure to

CRAZY RHYTHM

/

13

the Parkway Democratic Club on Eastern Parkway and Utica Ave-

nue

for a couple of

hours of pinochle with the regulars, including

the Brooklyn Democratic leader, Irwin Steingut, and the local ocratic captain,

Dem-

Abe Beame.

Forty years after these games, in the winter of 1974,

New

when

came upon him in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, where he was sitting, alone and tense, waiting to meet with President Nixon to plead for federal assistance

Beame was mayor

of

York,

to his financially battered city.

I

I

introduced myself, and he instantly

remembered my father: "How could I forget Johnny Garment? He was almost as small as me. Also a wonderful pinochle player.' When Beame was finally summoned into the Oval Office, he mentioned this coincidence to Nixon who, always uncomfortable with strangers, called me in to join the meeting. When it ended, Nixon appointed me coordinator of emergency aid to New York. It was satisfying to become instant financial angel for my hometown. Those pleasant card games became, over time, only a minor form of my father's heavy gambling. His real excitement came from 7

—

betting the horses, at local racetracks or through bookies, and play-

ing in big-money crap games. At a Catskills hotel where ing in the

summer

of 1942,

watched

I

small-shot gamblers to the cleaners.

nated the betting

all

He

my

I

was workbunch of

father take a

forced the action and domi-

night long, like a real professional. Perversely

my

biggest family thrills

know whether he won or lost more

over the years. But in

proud of anything done well,

I

got one of

out of his performance. I

don't

the last year of his last

life,

terminally

and determined to have the

word, he took his savings (around seventy thousand dollars, real

money

in those days),

went alone

to

a final two- week fling at the tracks

we

ill

Miami

Beach, and lost

and craps

tables. After

it all

he

in

died,

spent years fighting the Internal Revenue Service to a draw,

insisting that John

Garment's money had not gone into a safe de-

posit box.

M.

father also introduced

after a

couple of successful years in business, he took the family for

.y

a

two-week vacation

Livingston Manor,

at the

me to America in better ways.

In 1934,

Waldemere, a fancy Catskill hotel in

New York.

14

I

was ten years

/

Leonard Garment Until then

old.

outside of family, school, and the

was the

my

I

had experienced very

little

Crown Heights neighborhood.

I

well-protected, well-behaved baby of the family. Diligent in

studies,

I

produced no skyrocketing displays

did well enough.

played

I

all

of scholarship

but

the street games of a Brooklyn kid

stickball, stoopball, softball, skating

through the basement, and a

primitive version of football in which a single runner was pitted,

The

seriatim, against everyone else.

punch, and gouge your lineup.

I

was

large

way

and heavy

was

idea

to run, kick, bite,

whole

as far as possible through the for

my age,

so this

became

my favorite

game.

Waldemere was the first time I saw a piece of America outside my gray and brown Brooklyn. Here were great green lawns crawling up gently sloping hillsides,- lakes, pools, tennis But the

trip to the

courts, softball fields, dressed-up vacationers

and their pretty young

daughters, bands and entertainers and comic tummlers, and, startling, incredible quantities of delicious

most

food served unendingly.

The Waldemere was a thoroughly assimilated Jewish resort. There was a gloss of weekend rabbis and kosher food, but this was essentially window dressing. My brothers quickly became the hotel's softball and basketball stars, and I was their cheerleader. My father placed his bets, enjoyed a strong

winning

cheerfully over the family table for the

first

streak,

and presided

and only time

I

can

remember. Amid all these American pleasures, a soul-deep humming began in me that never ended. I decided I really liked the Waldemere world. The next summer, my father provided for us again: This time my brothers and I were sent off to the Berkshires, to a coed camp called Camp Kee-Wah Camp Kee-Wah-Wee for boys and Camp Kee-Wah-Kee for girls. Like the Waldemere, the camp was nomi-

—

nally Jewish, but It

it

couldn't have been lower on the theology scale.

was run by two high school teachers named "Uncle"

Iz

Mones

and "Uncle" Dave Geiger. The counselors were pre-med, pre-dental, and pre-law students,

a collection of Philip

Morningstars. Kee-Wah was the

wardly mobile Brooklyn parents.

It

had most

Waldemere, except that the comics were

was awful exception).

(the

Rothniks and Marjorie

summer camp

of choice for up-

of the amenities of the

homegrown and

the food

midafternoon eucharist, a Fudgsicle, was the only

CRAZY RHYTHM Camp Kee-Wah was York. Hard by the

located on Lake

camp was an

Kee-Wah than the more

near Wingdale,

Marxism and the

of capitalism

were much

riches at night. But they

Ellis,

interracial resort called

catering to mid- 1930s friends of

They proclaimed the death

15

/

elite resorts

Camp Unity,

Soviet Union.

by day and feasted on

friendlier to curious kids

its

from

along the lake, which barred us

Camp

altogether from their grounds.

New

Unity featured the best

jazz

music within a hundred miles, supplied by the trumpeter Frankie

Newton and ing

my

Camp

his band, so the counselors

older brothers,

would

Unity with salacious

and senior campers, includ-

regularly go

lies to

AWOL

inflame their

and return from

little

wards back

at

Kee-Wah. There was in

fact

much

talk but little action

between males and

females at Kee-Wah (except for various forms of rubbing). The

clumsy embarrassment electric

young kept the sexes apart like an But the summer at Kee-Wah was one of those

dog fence.

of the

defining times that set lives in motion, not necessarily in a specific

what we enjoy doing and what we do and nature studies. By contrast, activity on the two-month agenda. I did so,

direction but by illuminating best. I

I

liked and

was good

failed at every athletic

at acting

much energy and good cheer, even panache, that laughter died down there remained some residual respect.

however, with so

when

the

My nickname, cap.

I

"Tubby," summarized

ran hard but slow.

cle races, but

my

I

my appearance and my handi-

couldn't get over the barriers in the obsta-

fingers bled

from

trying.

Swimming tests, summer. Though I

I

was prepared

were held

cheerfully at anything.

for instance,

the beginning of the

couldn't swim,

with the

self-identified

swimmers, jumped

in

when

to fail

I

at

lined up

the whistle

blew, and sank like a stone, rising and plummeting two or three times before the counselors, choked with laughter, pulled me ashore. In the big

summer show I was

cast as an overweight Fred Astaire

Won't Dance" (I couldn't). In the season's was made captain of the Red Team and led my troops to overwhelming defeat (having learned to swim, I appointed myself anchor in the swim relay,- handed a full-lap lead, I splashed wildly in place and brought my stunned teammates in last). But I

on crutches singing climactic color war,

"I

I

became popular by making people laugh and feel good about themselves. I was everyone's pal and used my excess weight to defend

16 the runts against the

Leonard Garment

/

rats;

enjoyed

I

my popularity

almost as

much

At the midyear camp reunion, when awards for outstanding performance were handed out, virtue triumphed over competence. To general astonishment, including mine, I was named as victory.

Ail-Around Sophomore, the turtle

had again beaten the

My

father

first

and sweetest award

of

my life. The

rabbit.

went bankrupt

that winter:

full-fledged clothing manufacturer,

Soon

after

becoming

camp

partner. So 1935

was the

ment

had learned many things about myself, and

boys. But

I

first

and

last

no additional camping to reinforce the of I

my camping career was

season at

lessons.

a stroke of luck:

might have gotten thin and

fast,

a

he was victimized by a predatory

If I

Maybe

for the Garit

took

the quick end

had kept going back,

turned into a rabbit, and married

Marjorie Morningstar.

Thus

fate decreed that

my

further dreams and fantasies

take place back in Brooklyn. Every Saturday afternoon,

I,

would

part of the

new movie-head generation, would take my place at the Utica movie house, a block from our apartment. Sitting in the darkened theatre, a secret watcher,

Wells's invisible

I

made

the movie stories

my own.

man, with Superman's X-ray

I

vision;

became H. G. I

had the wis-

dom and

longevity of the High Lama of Shangri-La (Lost Horizon). Sometimes the images were not so wholesome. One foul day at Winthrop Junior High School when I was eleven or twelve, I was caught red-handed with a bunch of "dirty" cartoon books that circulated among me and my fellows. They featured familiar Sunday morning cartoon characters Popeye, Olive Oyl, the Katzenjammer Kids in unfamiliar and exotic poses. The teacher summoned me, showed me the contraband now sitting in the desk drawer, and notified me that my mother would be told and actually shown the

—

—

stuff.

I

was deeply shamed and

Golden Boy world. fully for mercy.

speak, delivered

terrified:

figuratively fell to

I

This was the end of

my

knees and pleaded

my

tear-

Luck was with me: Pontius shrugged and, so to me into my own hands. Ever after I was warier

about the exposure of personal secrets.

A,.round this time

I

was discovering not

and the ego but adventures of the

spirit.

just pleasures of the flesh

My

life's first

serious pas-

CRAZY RHYTHM

17

/

religion

— not the usual

variety but an exotic offshoot of the conventional

Hebrew school

sion, starting

that

when

was age

I

eleven,

attended.

I

The Hebrew school

— the

cheder

from our building, at the corner of in the small apartment of

hoc

was

operation,- so,

ment was

I

fear,

— was

Crown

located about a block

were the

and Utica Avenue,

Street

one Rabbi Cohen.

It

was

a distinctly ad

rabbi's qualifications.

The

apart-

old and shabby and smelled like mold, as did the rabbi

himself. His living

room served

as our classroom,

and from the

adjacent kitchen poured the heavy, weird, sweet and sour smells of

Eastern European cooking. Around us, side by side with the lessons, the noisy (shrieking, actually) life of the

ceeded, while the rabbi

commanded our

attention by raining blows

on our backs whenever we confused the In that apartment

my

I

met

a

alefs

and the

bets.

young Hebrew teacher who gave

feeling for the spiritual side of

first

Hebrew Cohen family pro-

Minkowitz, and he was painfully

thin,

life.

His

me

name was David

handsome, with pale blue

somewhere in the middle distance. He was a naturally mysterious man, a kind of Jewish Jack Kerouac who had eyes vaguely focused

been "on the road"

for years all over

America, preaching a

self-

invented brand of evangelical Judaism. David went beyond the

numbing

rituals of

Hebrew school memorization. He had us

read

and discuss Old Testament passages in English and led us in a pro-

gram

of

improvised English prayer and preaching

— in

apartment and in public places like parks, courthouse corners,

the

Cohen

steps, street

and subways.

Eight or nine young boys took part in this activity for a year and a half.

Our

We

called ourselves "the Seed of

Abraham,

Isaac

and Jacob."

prayers and preaching, in English, were intensely personal,

filled

with exhortations to act charitably and

ethically.

We

prosely-

tized aggressively, contrary to Jewish tradition.

Deeply affected by our young leader and the way he opened the door to inexpressible things by leading us into the fallen world to preach righteousness,

I

stayed with David and our

little

band

of

preadolescent acolytes despite public abuse and embarrassment, the

my brothers, and the acute irritation of my father, who my sudden Jewish fervor was totally crazy. Even my

scoffing of

thought

mother, though loving and indulgent, was visibly upset

when

I

con-

18

my

fided to her

Leonard Garment

/

tentative plan to go to yeshiva and

become

a rabbi.

This was not exactly her idea of the American Dream.

She need not have worried. Shortly before

me

my

with his otherworldliness, committed the quintes-

sentially worldly act of

marrying Miriam, the

He moved

only) daughter.

under the sway

turned thirteen,

David Minkowitz, who had

religious activities suddenly stopped.

mesmerized

I

rabbi's lonely (and

into the rabbi's apartment and

came

The evangelical misOur little group fell apart. Years later, when I was practicing law on Wall Street in the mid-1960s and my name was beginning to appear in the press as one of his autocratic father-in-law.

sion ended. Puberty struck.

of presidential candidate Richard Nixon's advisers,

witz telephoned pale, thin,

me

and came to

my

I

He was

David Minkostill

ethereally

and sweet-mannered, but his zeal had been replaced by a

look of faded disappointment. His selling

office.

penny stocks

interested? No.

new

line of

for a small brokerage

We

work, he

said,

was

house in Manhattan. Was

were both embarrassed. The meeting ended

quickly, with salutations to the old days.

Yet the real reason

my

faith did not survive its early

ment by David Minkowitz had self

less to

do with the young

abandon-

man him-

than with the thinness of the Garment family's attachment to

Jewish religious practice. the faith

My father openly disliked the trappings of

— the long Sabbath and holiday ceremonies, the severe and

complicated rules of diet and daily conduct. More important,

tradi-

tional religious observance offended his assimilationist impulses.

Had he dragged himself from

Poltava to Brownsville and spent

fourteen-hour days working like a dray horse only to wind up in a

shabby shul, wrapped in an old

tallis,

mouthing words he

didn't

understand?

My

for

mother was no counterweight. She later blamed the fact that none of her sons was Bar Mitzvahed. But

was not wholly obstructionist

my

in these matters:

He

my father my father

did not object to

mother's lighting Sabbath candles or keeping a more or less

kosher

home

children to

or having big Passover family seders or sending the

Hebrew

school.

If

she had wanted Bar Mitzvahs for us,

she could have had them. But she didn't press the point and her sons didn't

much

This

is

care

— including me.

not to say

my

abandoned his Jewishness, endowed as he was with an

father hid or

though he could easily have done

so,

CRAZY RHYTHM

19

/

American name, courtesy of Ellis Island, a translation of the family name Pergament, meaning ''scribe." He also spoke plain American speech and had the face and manner of an Irishman.

He

was, how-

quick to a fault to spot and condemn anything that smelled

ever,

even slightly

of anti-Semitism.

He was

achievements

of Jews, especially

American Jews and most

aggressively proud ot the especially

American Jews who excelled in "non-Jewish" areas like prizefighting and baseball Abe Attell, Al Rosen, and Sid Luckman than Albert Einstein or Theodor Herzl. My father was prerather

—

pared to ride with the Cossacks, but not under false colors.

wanted

to get as far as

he could from the

He

but success for

shtetl,

himself and his sons meant not only to succeed on American terms

but to be recognized as Jews In fact,

identity at

When

who had

succeeded.

my father had contempt for Jews who retained no Jewish all.

He

called

them "govs"

or favor-currying "nebbishes."

he was in a relaxed mood, he would speak Yiddish with

mother and some guage.

It,

of our older relatives.

and the Jewish identity

it

I

my

enjoyed hearing the lan-

bespoke, adhered to

faded but indelible birthmark that would later

me

become more

like a

visible

in the peculiar light of presidential politics.

As

Americanism and ethnic pride, and was scornfully furious with the local Jewish mobsters. This was not just an academic issue around our house. I went to junior high school with the daughter of the infamous "Gurrah" Shapiro of Murder, Incorporated. She was

my

part of his combination of

father held the law in high regard

deposited at school each morning and picked up each afternoon by a long black limousine attended

by two large

(They didn't have to waste time changing

men

in black coats.

for funerals.) "Extortion-

murderers, animals. They should be shot on sight" was John

ists,

Garment's incautious judgment on Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro, Louis

"Lepke" Buchalter, and other such Brownsville neighbors

T„hough the God of Israel and pany,

I

whom

I

satisfied

that

I

missed the moments could share

it.

I

had parted

at least

of exaltation

of ours.

temporary com-

and the friends with

Having tasted transcendence, I was no longer collecting. It was not surprising

by stoopball and stamp

soon found people and activities to take up the spiritual slack.

Music came

first

— in

1937, to be exact,

when

I

was

thirteen.

20

Leonard Garment

/

The instrument of salvation was a clarinet, a fine and expensive Buffet, which my mother bought for me at Wurlitzer's, a chain store selling musical instruments

and lessons. She paid

for

it

over a period

monthly installments saved from her household allowance. (There was also a ukulele for a couple of months, but that of years in

doesn't count.) In a year or so,

My brothers,

I

added a Martin tenor saxophone.

hugely relieved that

religious phase, supported

paid attention to

me

my

music

had passed out

me

other than by hitting

were early and passionate collectors

New

I

of

project energetically

my

weird

and even

periodically.

of 78 r.p.m. jazz records,

They from

Orleans small-group jazz to Kansas City and Chicago styles

and the big bands that were causing great excitement in the 1930s.

They transmitted their enthusiasm to me, and I took to jazz quickly. I actually remember the first jazz record I ever heard the tune was

—

"Upstairs," with Stuff Smith and his band.

founding Bechet,

artists like

Henry "Red"

garden, Pee

Wee

Allen,

Russell, et

Jimmy Rushing, and

Duke

al.,

of the

mob

early idols

were

Ellington, Art

Billie Holiday.

of kids

Tatum, Jack Tea-

along with singers like Bessie Smith,

and Artie Shaw, the two great swing

was one

My

Louis Armstrong, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Sidney

who

Soon

it

was Benny Goodman

clarinetists of the late 1930s.

I

played hooky from school in March

1937 to hear and see the Benny

Goodman

Orchestra at the

New

My brothers were in the balcony at Benny Goodman's historic 1938 Carnegie Hall concert. My mother had her own reason for supporting my interest in the clarinet. One of her first jobs when she came to America was at the Wallenstein and Gershwin Restaurant on the Lower East Side, York Paramount Theatre.

where she worked

as a cashier

and served

as occasional babysitter

closeness of her relationship with George

The remembered Gershwin kept pace with

the growth of his reputation, and she

sentimentally connected

for the

Gershwin

family's

young

son, George.

felt

most popular work, "Rhapsody Blue," which opens with that famous long, showy clarinet glis-

to him, his music, and especially his in

sando.

I

old age

how to play this passage, and into my mother's failed to delight her and summon up all her old

soon learned it

never

Gershwin memories,

real

and apocryphal.

As for my father, he first viewed my interest in music with wary neutrality after all, I started to make money on club dates

—

a

CRAZY RHYTHM until

it,

like religion,

he came to loathe

it

21

/

became something more than

as another proof of

his conventional values. Before

was

I

contempt

was on bum.

fifteen,

achieving the status in his eyes of a certified

Then

a sideline.

my modernist I

Meanwhile, conscientiously practicing scales and

my way

for

to

exercises,

I

dreamed Benny, and memorized note for note those Goodman solos that were technically accessible to me. He was my lived Benny,

hero, the first great

Some

mythic

had returned

New

to

spoke to him for the

phone

figure of

my life.

— in 1976, when to practice law —

forty years after this initial infatuation

for you/'

York from Washington

Benny Goodman on the

time. "There's a

first

my secretary blankly announced. He

lunch at the Century Association so

him with what he

said

was an

we

I

me

invited

could discuss

my

to

helping

interesting legal matter. "Right

up

birthday party you put on at

Goodman growl. "You was at the Duke Ellington the White House back in 1969. What I

me now is

simple. You're a lawyer, and after your

your

alley,"

he put

it,

with a characteristic

may not remember," he want you

to do for

said

time with Nixon you must like

what happens

bia Records has a is

— "that

if

know

you don't

bunch

of

are really lousy,

did),

(I

I

all

I

there

is

to

know about

get rid of that kind of garbage.

my

tapes,

Colum-

—

his raw recordings, that want them ever released. I destruction." I asked, "Are you seri-

and

want you to arrange for their ous? Columbia will never agree own." "Well, will you try?" Naturally,

"but

masters" I

don't

to destroy

tried. Naturally,

any Goodman tapes they

Columbia

replied, in effect,

"Are

you crazy?" The company's counsel graciously allowed me to listen to parts of the Goodman inventory, which were wonderful. Some were actually released not long afterward with Benny's pleased consent. I've speculated that the tapes ploy

Benny's typically curious

another

name

to his

way

Rolodex

may have been

lonely

of doing things, in this case adding of reliable helpers.

Next came

a re-

quest for advice on prenuptial arrangements for his daughter, Rachel;

then other small personal projects; and,

me and my family

Back in 1937, despite talent;

I

finally, a friendship for

that lasted until his death in 1986.

was never

to

my

become

enthusiasm, one.

My

I

was no great musical was the best that

training

22

Leonard Garment

/

which was not very good. My ear was less had zero education in music theory. But I had

Wurlitzer's could provide,

than

and

first-rate,

mimetic

I

good sound, a strong sense

skills, a

of time,

and

lots of

musical energy. Through a kind of aesthetic chutzpah, the whole of

my playing was better than its parts,

and

at

times

What I loved most about

of inspired mediocrity.

achieved a form

I

the clarinet

was

its

incantatory voice, whether playing jazz blues or Jewish klezmer,

another sort of blues. In time,

I

came

warmer, more

to prefer the

sensual sound of the tenor saxophone.

loved everything about the jazz culture

I

— practicing, listening,

searching for the perfect reed, walking Brooklyn streets with musician friends singing the recorded jazz solos of

all,

of course,

loved playing

I

clumsy beginnings

at

pany the discovery

of secret

A he

other part of

The

we knew by

feelings stirred

heart.

Most

by even

my

improvisation were of the type that accom-

modern musical form, yond words.

my

jazz.

my

a

powers

way

— that

old gnostic magic in a

of expressing ideas

"spiritual" life

discovery of politics. By 1937

my

and emotions be-

between 1937 and 1941 was family had

moved

to

Crown

Heights, enjoying the luxury of a five-room apartment in a building that boasted the ultimate elevator.

I

divided

symbol

of rising middle-class status,

my time among school, clarinet, and a new friend-

my first really enduring one, with a skinny,

ship,

gent schoolmate

named Frank

He was

shy,

hugely

intelli-

who became and remained my 1942. Frank's origins were much

Press,

best friend until our graduation in like mine.

an

the youngest of three sons of immigrant parents

— in Frank's case a struggling but warmhearted father and a mother who,

like mine,

dominated and sustained the home.

to each other in part because

we spoke

We were drawn

the language of similar child-

hood experiences. Kids like us didn't belong to real

We hung

that.

Jewish neighborhood, knowing that

Out There were

Yet even as

and

I

we

gangs,-

we were

too serious for

out in twos and threes within the boundaries of our

all

— having been incessantly warned

the dangers of the hostile non-Jewish world.

stuck to our

own

turf

and with our

own

kind, Frank

shared the experience of discovering a world of people and

CRAZY RHYTHM

/

23

beyond Crown Heights. The school where Frank met, Samuel J. Tilden High School in East Flatbush, was filled

ideas that lay far

and

I

with hundreds

of first-generation Jews, bright, ambitious, intensely

competitive kids

who were reminded

each morning over breakfast

of their obligation to justify the sacrifices of their parents.

Along

with the cornflakes came the constant assurance that the world was ours to conquer; wide-eyed with excitement,

we

set out to

do

just

that.

Frank and

I

ran ahead of the pack. Weighing a future in science,

history, or journalism, surprise,

was

run things

he led his classes in

popularity.

I

was

a

all three.

good student, but

— took me into school politics.

I

president of everything. After graduation,

My

major, no

my ambition — to

ran for and was elected I

had decided,

I

would

study law and proceed to save or at least change the world. In 1942, after graduating

from Tilden, Frank and

I

went separate

ways. Frank headed straight as an arrow into science and soon

dis-

tinguished himself as a world-class geophysicist. Except for one or

two

brief encounters,

we

did not see each other for thirty-two years.

we met accidentally in the White House staff dining was counsel to President Nixon; Frank was on a presidential science and education committee. He later became science adviser

Then, in 1974, room.

I

to President

Academy time had

Jimmy

Carter and, after that, president of the National

of Sciences. Friends again in

Washington,

dimmed our hopes and enthusiasms,

our friendship not at

When we

we found

that

but not by much, and

all.

finished high school in 1942, however,

in a very different direction

from Frank's.

I

left

my life moved

Tilden a seventeen-

model of Chamber of Commerce success: president of the student government and the senior class, member of the honor society Arista, and winner of a New York State Regents Scholarship, the American Legion Citizenship Essay Award, and graduation medals for this and that. But I was already drifting toward a full-time career

year-old

as a jazz musician.

.part

from loving the music,

The musicians

I

knew were

I

found jazz was great social fun.

comic, inventive improvisers of lan-

guage as well as of instrumental solos. The opportunities for casual

24

Leonard Garment

/

sex were rumored to be numerous.

The door was open to new experi-

ences with different sorts of people

— like playing with black musi-

cians at clubs in Bedford-Stuyvesant that were normally off limits to

white kids. The jazz

life

was

all

the street experiences, basement

and assorted had boasted about and from which I

clubs, rooftop parties, pool halls, gangs, card games,

nasty things that

my brothers

had been excluded.

My

musical jobs came during three summers in the

first real

worked in a four-piece band at the Branlip Hotel, a converted farm, where we slept in a below-ground meat storage room and where the warmish milk came straight from the cows (it tasted awful). Still, it was thrilling. Courtesy of the war, which had taken more mature musicians out of the running, I had gone from no-time to small-time. I had a job, a bed, and a salary: seven dollars Catskills. In 1939

I

a week.

At the tion.

met my first semi-serious girlfriend, Audrey, a shimmying lindy hopper who drove me to distrac-

Branlip,

sinuous, shaking,

I

She once persuaded

me

to give her a

hundred

dollars for

an

I later figured out), on the basis of what was impossible. I soon learned that she hadn't been pregnant; she just had to do some shopping. The next year, 1940, I was at S tier's Hotel, where our band

abortion, even though (as

we had

featured

done, pregnancy

my

neighborhood pal Terry Gibbs (ne Julius Gubenko),

drummer and xylophonist basis of tips

who bet

extraordinaire,

the horses on the

from Arty the headwaiter. Arty worked

who

York mobsters

fixed, or tried to fix,

horse

their action to various locations outside

races,-

New

for

some

New

they scattered

York City

to avoid

obvious concentrations of bets that would arouse suspicion or affect the offtrack odds. Terry

won enough money

that

summer

to

buy

an expensive, top-of-the-line vibraphone, with which he eventually achieved world fame as a jazz peer of Lionel Hampton. In exchange, Terry, along

had

to play

with

"My

for the affably

My

all

us nervous and envious nonbettors in the band,

Heart Belongs to Daddy" endless times on demand

menacing Arty.

last Catskills job

was

billed as

"Lenny Garment and His

Orchestra," nine pieces, at Harry Dinnerstein's posh Stevensville

Lake Hotel, which was actually located on Swan Lake, whose botit, was paved with the bodies of rivals of Murder,

tom, word had

CRAZY RHYTHM

25

/

was by then in the service, playing his drums and vibes, but the headwaiter was the very same Arty. Remembering Terry's success, most of us finally started betting. Unfortunately, Arty was embroiled that summer in a nasty jurisdictional dispute between two gambling rings. He was in deep Incorporated. Terry Gibbs

trouble, and, after a while, so

cycle of betting, losing, playing

were we.

We

fell

haplessly into a

"My Heart Belongs to Daddy," being

forced by no-longer-affable Arty to keep on betting and playing his song, losing our

summer

earnings and more, until, panicked by

thoughts of kneecapping or worse,

army

I

wired

my brother Charlie at his

training base, pleading for help. Back

came the funds

plus a

fraternal note: "Stick to bingo, fathead."

Matters did not end there. Such things never do. later, after

my bar exam,

for the usually

I

was

A decade or so

traveling around to former employers

automatic certifications of character necessary to

be admitted to the bar. But

my

former Catskills employer Harry

Dinnerstein sounded like John Garment: "You a lawyer? Hah. You're a total bum, a gambler, a trombanik, a useless fool."

I

had to

stay overnight at a nearby motel and spend hours the next day in

passionate pleading to persuade Dinnerstein to give

me his reluctant

sign-off.

Music also offered an opportunity to get out of the house, which was becoming bleaker. I had stopped going to my father's factory on weekends, which angered him. I started making a little money and giving some to my mother, which pleased her and made him even angrier. let

me

One

night, in a taste of

worse to come,

leave the apartment with

my

saxophone

my father wouldn't for a club date. In a

some forgotten reason, he said he owned the instrument because it was bought with money he had given my mother for fury for

My mother and my horn, but the

household expenses.

brothers intervened, and

nally escaped with

signals

had to

leave,

So during at

and

I

could

it

was

could

I

make

I

I fi-

knew

I

a living at music.

methodically shifted gears from law to music.

school, but not

anywhere. Afternoons

and

if I

all red.

my last year of high school at Tilden and my first year

Brooklyn College,

Mornings,

—

were

I

at night

it

was playing

spent at Local 802's cavernous hiring hall

at Nola's Studios in

hearsed and auditioned

much;

mid-Manhattan, where the big bands

new

re-

players. First playing occasional club

26 dates around the city,

Leonard Garment

/

I

moved on

to full-time jobs in second-rate

clubs on Fifty-second Street, the kind of places where the girls drank

watered champagne with the customers and sang "Blue Moon."

I

worked an occasional substitute job with better jazz groups, including a bracing two weeks with Bill Stegmeyer's Chicago Jazz Band at the Famous Door. The band was accompanying Billie Holiday, who appeared in the flesh, more or less on schedule, with her dog, gardenia, bad habits, and gorgeous voice. I worked with jazz virtuosos like

drummer Stan Levey and

Haig.

I

pianists George Wellington

was introduced, bug-eyed,

to the

work

of

new

and Al

jazz figures

who

like alto player Charlie Parker

and trumpeter Dizzy

were playing in Harlem

Minton's Playhouse and with Jay

at

Gillespie,

McShann's band.

One

afternoon at Nola's,

I

auditioned for Henry Jerome's

six-

was hired to play the jazz saxophone chair for a long run at the Pelham Heath Inn in the distant Bronx. So in mid- 1943, when I was nineteen, my double life of college by day and music by night ended, and I dropped out of school. teen-piece dance band and

My

Brooklyn College transcript records the evolution of

career. In

1941-42,

I

managed

a B average,- in 1942-43, a

In the first semester of the 1944 school year failures in

I

got

all F's,

C

my

average.

including

Hygiene (whatever that was) and, mystifyingly, in Music.

The record generously notes, "Honorable dismissal granted." These were the war years,- and while I did not become drafteligible until it was half over, from the start the war drew a line of uncertainty through the lives of

my

We

generation.

could

drift, in-

dulge ourselves, and suspend the making of serious plans and the

We

doing of serious work. it

was not the war

life

that

could simply

made me

let

events take charge. But

quit school.

The

pressures of

home

of music combined to destroy my ability on anything that required consecutive thought or

and the attractions

to concentrate

disciplined effort.

It

was

a relief to be finished

with the ambitions

of the square world.

Part of the pleasure

was the

ous world of the big bands.

— much used and first

I

ill

fitting,

I

thrill of

received

acceptance into the glamor-

my "own"

yellow band jacket

but a badge of professional standing. At

even liked the road trips, but that delight soon diminished

amid scenes

of grim,

exhausting journeys to what always seemed

CRAZY RHYTHM same

like the

place,

/

27

on what the author Elizabeth Hardwick has show business. Worst was the con-

described as the Via Dolorosa of stant, desperate effort to get

some

sleep

— on dressing-room tables smoke and

or bus station benches steeped in the sour smells of

stale

food. Still,

by

late

1943

I

began getting some small recognition as a

mainly because the

jazz player,

older,

drafted into military service bands.

Lookout House

seasoned musicians had been

While working

in Covington, Kentucky,

I

at

Jimmy Brink's

sat in at

an after-hours

"Herd." The bassist

Woody Herman's band, the first and booker for the band, Chubby Jackson, liked

my

largely imitative of the great saxophonist

some members

session with

playing;

Webster,

was

a

was

it

of

Ben

who had recently recorded with Woody's band. When there

temporary opening in 1944, between the departure

Musso and

the arrival of Joe "Flip" Phillips,

band. There jazz sound,

I

I

was invited

was, suddenly sitting in the middle of that

between the

alto saxophonist Ernie Caceres

of

Vido

to join the

immense

and the

star

It sounds like a dream come true. In fact, it was a nightmare, my first clear intimation of musical mortality. The saxophone leaked, my playing style (now an imitation of Lester Young) was not what Woody wanted, and the Providence audience was furious to find that Musso, their hometown-hero saxophonist, had been replaced by an unknown, pasty-faced kid from nowhere. Still, many years later, in the 1970s, when the political commentator and jazz writer Nat Hentoff doubted in print that a Nixon stalwart like me could have played with Woody Herman's band,

guitarist Billy Bauer.

William

was

Safire

able to launch a successful defense in his col-

umn, accusing Hentoff

of Stalinizing

me

out of

my

small place in

musical history. Shortly before the death of a debt-ridden 1987, the bandleader Les Brown asked

me

by the Internal Revenue Service

Woody's

home.

We

last

in

and best-loved

his daughter in the house,

kept

satisfaction of

my

Woody and repaying him

of

Woody Herman

to help challenge the sale

in part for all the mileage

and I

I

had the

made out

of

brief appearance with his band in 1944.

My velt's

next stop that year was

Blue Room, where

I

New

rejoined a

featured a platoon of trombones and

Orleans, in the Hotel Roose-

new Henry Jerome band

that

me playing subtone tenor saxo-

28

phone

solos.

I

/

Leonard Garment

played "111 Be Seeing You"

and had to recuperate every night by

maybe

five

thousand times

sitting in after

hours at French

Quarter jazz clubs, smoking a respectable amount of marijuana, sleeping on the beach at Lake Pontchartrain, and breakfasting on

chicory coffee and beignets.

was

I

fits of

starting to

behave strangely during those days. There were

euphoria, sometimes Benzedrine-induced. There were also

prolonged and paralyzing episodes of phantom "stomach trouble"

subway trains lay jackknifed inside me from neck to navel. There was manic behavior, along with various oddities of lifestyle associated with the jazz culture. Once, the band arrived after days of logistical screw-ups in the town of Dothan, that felt as

a long line of

if

Alabama, temperature 110 degrees, to play graduation.

I

personally

celebrated by

at the

Napier Air Base

drinking myself three-

quarters blotto and diving fully dressed into the

swimming

pool

Henry Jerome was, justifiably, furious. He began the next set by calling out "Body and Soul," which featured me from start to finish on the tenor saxophone. I manfully stood and played, between

sets.

soaked, sloshing noisily in

my

shoes,

my

precious yellow jacket

stained an indelible blue by ink that the pool water had liberated

from

my fountain pen.

was convinced that I was having a huge amount of fun especially when, out of nowhere, I was befriended by John Hammond, Benny Goodman's brother-in-law and a perpetual talent scout, who was in the service somewhere in the area. Having no Nevertheless

I

—

one else to discover,

Hammond

bandleader Teddy Powell to hire tured tenor sax chair,

Charlie Ventura.

I

left

discovered me.

me

to

fill

He persuaded

the

the band's heavily fea-

vacant by the drafting of the jazz star

was scheduled

to join the

band

at the

Raymor

Ballroom in Kansas City. This was I

stopped in

thought

my

my big musical break. Before leaving for Kansas City, New York for a routine draft board reexamination. I

congenital lower-spine cyst

a rejection. But in the

war

summer

would once again produce

of 1944, the rising

momentum of the

in Europe, the casualties in the Pacific theatre,

island-to-island

demands. Medical standards were eased, and instead Ballroom,

I

and the

final

push that was under way created large manpower

was soon ensconced

in the Infantry

of the

Raymor

Replacement Train-

CRAZY RHYTHM ing Center at

Camp

Joseph T. Robinson in Little Rock, Arkansas.

New

learned recently from a

took

29

/

Yorker profile that the musician

I

who

my place with Powell's band in Kansas

City was the great alto By opening the way for him, I wartime service had some lasting value.

(then tenor) saxophonist Lee Konitz.

can claim that

my brief

£"rom the moment I got by feelings

off

of desolation

the train in Little Rock,

and doom. This was not

I

was oppressed

irrational, since

death was the subject that our combat-hardened squad leader talked

He warned

about incessantly. sualty rates in the

for

us about the extraordinarily high ca-

areas to

we should

patched and said

would undergo

combat

which we would soon be

be grateful for the hellish training

dis-

we

seventeen weeks before shipping out to one of

the bloody Pacific islands.

Added

to this reasonable anxiety

men who were

was the

isolation

I

felt in a

me — a New

—

York Jew as I was to them. The Deep South and the Southwest were the main

barracks of

as strange to

whose unfriendly company I did not want to shave, shower, and shit, much less die. So the army and I more than disliked each other. But this was true of probably the places of origin of the group, in

great majority of draftees, to their circumstances.

but

I

was never

Fate, in the

intervened.

to

who, out

of necessity, gradually adjusted

possible that

It is

I,

too,

would have done so

;

know.

form

of a blistering

hot Sunday and a softball game,

The southern noncom

in charge of our

company, a

who particularly disliked New York "smartwe were to play by the hour, not the inning,

frankly hostile fellow asses," decreed that

and assigned the pitching spot to me. After what seemed

hundred innings, with most

of

my vital fluids

drained away,

I

like a fell to

the ground in convulsions, the literally unconscious beneficiary of

acute sunstroke. I

I

woke up

in the cool whiteness of a hospital ward.

recovered pretty quickly from the sunstroke, but just as quickly

my

chronic stomach spasms struck. As in the past, the condition

came and went

mysteriously.

As

in the past,

it

was diagnosed

vaguely and variously as an "incipient" ulcer or "spastic"

colitis or

"possible" diverticulosis.

But the internist in charge of

my

case decided

it

was

unlikely,

30

manpower

Leonard Garment

/

shortages notwithstanding, that

I

would ever be

in shape

storm Guadalcanal or Iwo Jima. After tests and interviews, a three-man board presented me with a medical discharge, my second to

"honorable dismissal" in two years. They also recommended that

I

more extensive psychotherapy than a combat training facilRock could offer. In my last couple of weeks in the army, I made my first friend there. He was seemingly the only other ethnic within miles, a large ex-prize fighter from Newark named Tony Perna who shared my urban ways and protected me from the local knotheads. Tony was about to be mustered out of the service and was in the hospital for some patch-up work on his Pacific combat wounds. His enthusiasm for my early discharge was like a father's joy at his son's summa explore

ity in Little

cum

laude.

My

brother Charlie, serving in the Eighth Air Force

Medical Corps in England, offered the same grunt's-eye view of the war, writing

me

not to leave

my hospital

Catch-22-style letters that urgently counseled

me

bed without a medical discharge clutched

firmly in hand.

So after some seven weeks in the army,

New

York with protector Perna.

directly into

combat

I

rode the train back to

My Camp Robinson platoon sailed

in a series of campaigns to retake a group of

small Pacific islands that had been overrun by the Japanese early in the war.

The American

predicted, extremely high like

me,

who went

casualties were, as our squad leader

to fight

of abstractions about

had

— made up of soldiers who were not lucky and were killed or maimed not because

freedom or patriotism but

just

because that's

where chance and pride took them. I should have been saluting them, but I was too relieved to be ashamed of my good fortune.

i

returned to Brooklyn to be met with bad news about

my

mother:

She was suffering incoherence and hallucinations and was slipping rapidly into a schizophrenic psychosis.

newly married,

told

me

My

brother Marty,

now

that before her collapse she had been asking

constant, bewildered, frantic questions about the stories emerging

from Europe concerning the slaughter of European Jews. There had been nothing but confirming silence from

who had remained

in Poland. Later

I

all

her family

members

learned that in 1941 the Ger-

CRAZY RHYTHM mans had occupied Przmezyl and the one in States

Jews

which

my

its

31

/

surrounding shtetls, including

mother's family lived. Mail to the United

was terminated. The area was declared "Judenfrei"

— in

they, too,

My

Some Jews fled were liquidated when 1943.

— free of

to adjoining Russian territory, but

the

German army moved

down-to-earth sister-in-law Sylvia thought

my

in.

mother's

symptoms might be something more mundane, like the stress of menopause and the absence of all her sons, whose departure from

home had left Jennie alone with John Garment. My father had no theories. He was simply devastated, finally forced to confront the depth of his dependence on her.

We

knew why

never really

her illness began. She was institu-

tionalized for three years and treated unsuccessfully with chemicals

and

we took my mother

electric devices. After

psychiatric havens, the Hartford Retreat,

I

to the first of her

returned to the family's

Brooklyn apartment and, out of financial necessity, lived there in a

with

state of silent half truce

place clean.

father.

I

shopped and kept the

My father took me to dinner most nights at a restaurant

on Flatbush Avenue

a block

Nothing had changed. table.

my

We must

from our building.

My

father's

World Telegram shared our

have said something to each other during those

scores of meals, but

I

don't

remember

a word.

Hartford and then to Katonah, the site of

ium, were silent as well.

and wait out

my

my

Our

train trips to

mother's

last sanitar-

My father's strategy was simply to hang on

mother's withdrawal from his

life.

Then, almost overnight, her illness ended. As my mother began emerge from her long psychotic holiday, the doctors said she needed more time and treatment before going home. Otherwise she to

was likely to relapse. My father angrily rejected this advice; he wanted her out immediately. My brothers and Sylvia argued with him while I stayed out of the way. But one evening, when I was alone with him in the apartment, he announced to no one in particular that, "goddamn it," he was bringing Mom home next Sunday morning, and to hell with his sons and the doctors. Words must have passed between us, but what I remember is that suddenly I was on top of him, throttling him, banging his head on the floor. I stopped in time to avoid a manslaughter charge but kept at

enough

to convince

him

that

I

was very

serious.

I

it

long

remember mut-

32

Leonard Garment

/

He was more

tering apologies; he didn't say a word.

startled,

I

think,

than hurt.

My mother finally came home a few months later. She lived on, my father until his death. Then she became a working partner with my brother Charlie in the dress quite sane, totally in control of

factory, until

he wearied

went into radio itor radio

writing.

of

pinking shears and ambient dust and

He eventually became editor of NBC's Mon-

My mother moved in with him and his wife,

show.

and settled into

a retirement of reading,

TV watching,

Alice,

and creative

complaining. At this last she was a true champion. Once Alice had a

came running into the house dripping you people doing to me?" my mother demanded

nasty gardening accident and

"What

blood.

are

in an accusing voice.

She could always be counted on to express her opinion

inci-

Once I wore an expensive new blue coat to a dinner party at Some people liked it, some (okay, most] didn't.

sively.

Charlie's house.

Finally

we

called

on

my

mother

to settle the question.

long look and delivered her judgment: it

and forget about

Wear

it."

She lived until the age

and dreaming

She took a

a blue coat, Lenny.

"It's

at the

of ninety-three, her last year spent dozing

Hebrew Home

for the

Aged

in Riverdale,

New

York. She had lasted long enough to see her sons achieve her ambitions for them.

When

I

came

to visit,

past or sat quietly; there wasn't that before

my mother's

bag and flew her to

death, Suzi

New

and

I

we mostly talked about the much to say anymore. Just

packed infant Annie in a baby

York so she could meet her grandmother.

Neither one of them seemed more than vaguely interested in the occasion. But

young.

my mother's

smile was

still

the same,

still

sweet and

2 GROWING UP STRANGE

s from

Camp

Robinson,

ments, sleeping a

and trying just

weeks

and panic tion.

I

drifted for a while

mother went followed. Back

I

— practicing my instru-

hanging out with a few holdout 4-F friends,

momentum of my predraft enthusiasm. But my mother was hospitalized, a collection of phobias states began making it nearly impossible for me to funcafter

Subways, trolley

was

a particular

cars, elevators,

and crowds became places

of

Waking was a problem. The stomach problem. Everything was a problem. The Camp a problem.

Robinson medical board had been

right:

I

really did

George had been a kind

need psychiatric turned to

my

of surrogate father-uncle-brother to

me

To figure out how and where to Aunt Soma's son George Swetlow.

attention.

cousin,

my

over the edge,

to regain the

terror. Sleep

was

lot,

hortly after

get

it,

I

was old enough to travel alone from our apartment in Crown Heights to his house on Eastern Parkway, near the Brooklyn Museum. There he had everything you would expect from a polymath like George, including a gymnasium, where he gave me from the time

I

lessons in boxing, wrestling, and philosophy.

George was a physician, both a neurologist and a psychiatrist.

He was skilled

also a trial lawyer, professor of medical jurisprudence,

amateur

rancher, farmer,

cellist, singer,

/

33

wood

turner,

and

34

Leonard Garment

/

Of medium height and bull-chested, he looked like a blueeyed Albert Einstein, with close-cropped white hair and a shaggy white mustache decorating a lined, craggy, deeply tanned face. author.

George Swetlow in of his standard

a crisp

white shirt and navy

navy-and-white polka-dot

bow

wearing one

suit,

was,

ties,

thought,

I

utterly dashing.

When George died suddenly me at an isolated fishing camp

thought so even into adulthood.

I

in his mid-sixties, the

news reached

in Maine,

the chords of family

awash

sounding

all

in a flood of tears

such as

death and have shed only once in

The death

I

if

I

found myself

had never before shed over any

all

the years since.

certificate said "coronary

have said "broken heart." For

memory.

aneurysm";

George was

might better

it

attractive,

he was also

enduringly miserable. In addition to his other achievements, George

was an Olympic-gold-medal neurotic who had been psychoanalyzed by the cream of New York psychiatry from Sara Bonnett, chairman of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, to the famed Gregory Zilborg. He was one of a new tribe of brilliant, successful, psychologically peripatetic American Jews who never seem able to

—

get their lives together. I

think George's agonies came in good part from his inability to

make up

his mind about assimilation. Should he go the whole way? Or should he cling to vestigial ties from his prehistory? Once, when he was in a "roots" phase, he conceived of a plan to bring the entire family back together in a traditional conclave, a circle that would

meet,

eat,

and share history and problems on

went through weeks

of preparation. Finally, the

He

a regular basis.

whole

colorful, con-

fused collection assembled in a large synagogue meeting

room

in

Boro Park. Handsome George, the family celebrity, generously and carelessly allowed himself to be elected

chairman

of the

founding

Dashe-Novak Family Circle (named after various At which point the ingathered relatives mostly Russians and Poles, some deeply religious, some not at all, with

meeting

of the

—

tribal branches).

their partially or start

wholly assimilated children, suspicious from the

about the purpose of George's mysterious intervention

—

spi-

raled into verbal, near-physical violence. It

had something arcane to do with the Brooklyn branch

family once again lording

it

of the

over the Bronx branch, or the Russians

CRAZY RHYTHM

/

35

over the Poles, or the Galicianers over the Litvaks, and before the

was over every ancient slight and hurt had been dragged noisthe open. The Balkans in Bensonhurst. Amid the furies, George's effort to discover his spiritual past came to an end. My father did not like George, partly because of what happened to my older brother Charlie. Charlie wanted to be a doctor and had the brilliant school record that would have guaranteed his medical night

ily into

career

— except

for the

quota system, then in force in

all

major

which limited the number of Jewish admissions. But George, the family influential, was a trustee of the Long Island College Medical School and assured my parents he could push Charlie in. Everyone counted on it, especially my father, whose greatest wish was to see Charlie a doctor. But at the crucial moment, George got into a disastrous fight with one of his fellow American medical

schools,

trustees and resigned

— reasonably enough,

from the board. Charlie didn't get I

now

see

in.

My father

— thought George had behaved

self-

indulgently and thereafter rarely spoke about George Swetlow with-

out the sarcastic Yiddish appellation the "grosse knocker" (big shot).

At the time,

made me sought

I

thought

my

closer to George, a

my

affection.

giance, shrugged,

My

George

father's hostility to

unfair,- it

grown-up who valued and openly

father bore

up under the

and kept on doing his hard job

loss of

my

alle-

of supporting us.

George's perpetual ambivalence was not helped by his perpetual

A half century ago it was believed

psychoanalysis.

that a daily dose

of self-scrutiny, administered indefinitely on the analyst's couch, was the best way to deal with modern problems like the loss of faith in God, community, and family. (We have since learned to make more modest claims for psychoanalysis such as, for example, that

—

it

provides useful insights into the transactions of daily

no more harmful than

midday

life, art,

and

bottom

in the fall of 1944,

the

first

kid on

sis,

three years of fifty-minute hours, five days a week,

by

sible

is

George naturally arranged

a generously as

low

rate

made

pos-

from the eminent Dr. Bonnett,

an interesting research subject, a kind of ethnic

rat.

Dr. Bonnett, an orthodox Freudian, tion.

nap.)

my block to undergo a formal Freudian psychoanaly-

who viewed me white

a

and

When I hit for me to be

politics

She thought her objective

for a

was

a counselor of adapta-

symptom-ridden, rough-edged,

36

Leonard Garment

/

reasonably bright Jewish boy of twenty was to help

more

him become

—

to civilize him and transfer his feelings from immigrant family to the maternal serenity of her richly elegant apartment and office at 895 Park Avenue. Reduction of a

gentleman

a storm-tossed

of anxiety

through assimilation was high on the analytic agenda;

but with me, as with George and most Jews undergoing this process, resistance to this kind of transformation turies of struggle to

was

fierce,

stoked by cen-

maintain a Jewish identity. The outcome could

never be more than a workable compromise. Still, for

those days before reliable antidepressants, the idea of

was physically brilliant. You were not merely permitted but ordered to break away from the world at regular intervals, stretch out for an hour on a comfortable couch, and say any damn thing that came to mind, however foul, incoherent, mean, angry, stupid, weird, or loathsome. It was worthwhile simply as an exercise in spleen venting; if you got some insights along the way to help you soldier through a nasty world, so much the better. For me there were no stunning revelations or therapeutic miracles. But Dr. Bonanalysis

nett's

sympathetic intelligence and the education of the analytic

me

process helped restore

to the ranks of the walking

became, once again, your average neurotic

The phobic symptoms were gone

wounded.

I

New Yorker.

in fairly short order,

and each

day on the couch at 895 Park Avenue I slowly went about unraveling

my

past and deciding

how

to

my

future.

make money was

Meanwhile, the only way

to play the

saxophone and

I

knew

clarinet,

and

what I resumed doing. My friend and former employer Henry Jerome was himself in a dark funk of layoff depression. I urged this is

him

to rouse himself

(I

organized yet another Child's

bomb

desperately needed the work), he did, and

new band

Paramount Restaurant,

for

a

him.

He

I

arranged a booking at

monstrous plaster and marble

shelter of a place, capacity fifteen hundred, directly below the

Paramount Theatre on Times Square. Largely because of

my

passion for

new

ideas,

what had been

a

conventional 1940s dance band playing friendly pop tunes in a friendly ble,

one

way soon became an innovative and of the first to use the Charlie

aggressive jazz ensem-

Parker-Dizzy Gillespie bop

"new" big-band sound. The change attracted musicians but not paying customers. Jerome was later quoted in Ira Gitler's oral history Swing to Bop: style as the basis for a

CRAZY RHYTHM

37

/

Lenny Garment, who later became Nixon's attorney, who had been with me since 1943, kept banging on my head. He was

He

really responsible for this progressive band.

and is

selling

me and, "Look what's happening,

kept selling

me

Henry," and "This

what's going to be the thing of the future. ..." Lenny Gar-

ment, Al Cohn,

And

Bill Vitale

— they were the big spokesmen. would

so [the radio announcer]

.

.

.

"Here he is, Henry Jerome and his orchestra," and they'd go, "Pow!!! Bomp-ba-dada, beelya, deelyop!" Well, the first time we went on the air we blew the limiter and the transmitter altogether. And I used to play Loew's State every year, and Jesse Kaye, the booker, came down and said, "My God, what's that, Henry?" and he .

.

say,

.

.

canceled us.

The

public

.

.

was not ready for it. But the musicians, to, say it was the start of it all.

any musicians you speak

Thus

my

first

contribution to cultural history threatened the

livelihood of fourteen musicians

$55 a week) and the sanity of

(at

Henry Jerome. But somehow the band played on and hung ally attracting a following of jazz fans

who

A

young

statistically significant

came

York neighborhood pal

pounds candy

number

part of jazz history, like

of self-taught

of

of

on, gradu-

kept us from being stars in that

Norman "Tiny" Kahn, an

mine

fired.

band beEast

New

since childhood, three hundred

drummer and composer,

killed early

by genes,

and amphetamines,- seventeen-year-old Johnny Mandel, a shy trumpet player turned trombonist and arranger, in later years bars,

composer for

"The Shadow of Your Smile" and the score and winner of multiple Academy Awards and Gram-

of songs like

M*A*S*H

mys; Gerry Mulligan, master

of the baritone

sax,-

and Stan Levey, a

young drummer

I came upon while playing at a jam session at the Downbeat Club in Philadelphia and brought to New York. Levey went on to play with Charlie Parker on the famous Dial recordings,

picked up Bird's worst habits, and narrowly escaped with his

life

by

leaving music for commercial photography.

There were others like Larry Rivers, ing; the

who made

who became

a

their public

major force in contemporary paint-

trumpet player Jackie Eagle,

until he struck

commercials Greenspan,

it

("It's

who

rich as the little a Miracle!"),

mark outside music,

who became a touring comic monk in the Xerox television

and the saxophonist-flautist Alan

helped with the band's payroll

anced) and spent intermissions reading

(yes,

the books bal-

Ayn Rand and

general eco-

38

/

Leonard Garment

nomics. Twenty years later Greenspan and

not having seen each

I,

bumped into each other on Broad Street in downtown Manhattan and I ended up introducing him to my law other since band days,

partner, the presidential aspirant Richard Nixon.

Then there was Al Cohn. If I had needed any further convincing I would never be a first-rate musician, listening to Al Cohn and alternating jazz solos with him night after night at Child's Paramount would have done the trick. In a typical bit of musical muscle flexing, Cohn would take a standard tune like "All the Things You that

Are,'

7

tempo, and play six or seven choruses, each a half step

set a

higher,

managing the

and altered chord pro-

clusters of accidentals

gressions without the slightest hitch in his improvisatory

was

It

ease.

Maugham's I was not about

depressing, of course. But unlike Somerset

concert pianist,

who took a bad review too

to shoot myself.

abandoning music, his place as

one

seriously,

There were other options in I

would begin

long before he died in 1988.

He and

Camp Kee-Wah

at

them. As for Al Cohn, modern jazz was secure

to explore

of the great contributors to

we had both been

soon, without

life;

discovered one night that

I

in 1935

— Cohn, who loathed

camping, mostly in the infirmary, where he worked on beginner studies in scoring, while

I

prowled the wooded precincts

recently found an old photograph of our

camp

class

for votes.

I

— and there he

was, right in back of me, both of us ten years old, staring quizzically

camera and the

at the

In

future.

important ways, jazz back then had very

For example,

it

had nothing

to do

with

little to

do with

race.

civil rights or racial justice

or anything remotely connected with social issues, at least as

we

have come to think and talk about these things. This was ten years before

were

Brown

still

Board of Education. Schools and neighborhoods segregated, while "the Negro problem," at least in the v.

middle-class Jewish

homes

I

knew

about,

about abstractions, stick figures, cleaning

was mostly

women

or entertainers.

With few exceptions, both blacks and black-and-white sues were invisible to Northern whites, including me.

The music business tional America,

table talk

political

is-

in the 1940s, like everything else in institu-

was comprehensively segregated. White musicians

CRAZY RHYTHM also looked

on black musicians

as a race apart

We

ent reasons from those of most whites.

blacks as "political equals"; instead the only sense that

/

was important

39

— but for vastly

differ-

did not condescend to

we thought them

superior in

which was not

politics but

to us,

musical invention. White musicians made large contributions to jazz in its formative

and flourishing

were created by the

likes of Jelly Roll

Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday,

Webster, and

Duke

years, but the great jazz styles

Morton, Louis Armstrong,

Coleman Hawkins,

Lester Young,

1920s and 1930s, including

my

idol,

Benny Goodman, derived

Fletcher Henderson's arrangements to give his thirties band

its spe-

sound and swing.

cial

These were the giants

of

my world.

Louis Armstrong and Char-

Parker were black Mozarts, and we, their acolytes, were agape at

their genius.

if

We

imitated not only black playing but the whole jazz

— the language,

aesthetic as

their

from black models. Goodman also depended on

style of playing

lie

Ben

Ellington. Legions of white musicians in the

the "cool" style, the hipness and humor,

being able to play the music of blacks required us to live their

lives.

So interracial progress in jazz produced a situation of even more than the usual ambivalence. This peculiar bind was manifest in a ritualized

form

of hostility, the "cutting" session, in

which

a black

jazzman, wielding a metaphorical knife, invited the hip white musi-

him away. (Something like black-versus-black playing, but when it did,

cian into the tent and then literally blew

happened in

this also

was an aesthetic competition, not a racial putdown.) Consequently, what white musicians could learn about blacks and black life from jazz was limited. It was nonetheless important the lesson that the great black jazz improvisers were the cultural equivalent not of athletes but of mathematicians. They were highly the exercise

—

disciplined in their training, capable of imagining and almost simul-

taneously playing perfectly organized musical compositions of im-

mense

intricacy

precisely correct:

sense of

mands

and beauty. Stanley Crouch's formulation

"Jazzmen supplied

how freedom and

of

a

new

is

perspective on time, a

discipline could co-exist within the de-

ensemble improvisation

.

.

.

the well-picked note on a

mo-

ment's notice." For a couple of decades, mainstream jazz was drowned out by

40

Leonard Garment

/

the pneumatic-drill noises of jazz screechers and rock-and-rollers. Classic forms, however, have a

turning to

its

from saxophonist

alities

Wynton

way

of surviving. Jazz is

now

re-

proper place in popular music, with assists by person-

Marsalis to

Clinton and jazz-classical trumpeter

Bill

little Lisa,

the saxophone-playing kid in the

Simpson family cartoon. The fly in the happy ointment is the current outcropping of argument over who, blacks or whites, should get credit for creating the jazz form. Such debate, the product of politics

a

way

and

its

polemicists,

is

modern multicultural

almost indescribably inappropriate as

to understand jazz history

and performance. Though race and

segregation have played significant roles in the jazz story, the pri-

mary exclusionary standards

applied by jazz musicians themselves

have always involved time and timbre, not

These notions after

I

of race,

abandoned the idea

structed

me

in discipline

color.

work, and creativity stayed with

me long

of a full-time career in music. Jazz in-

and standards and gave

me

at least

some

ease of access to people and places that might otherwise have

mained to

abstract or alarming. Perhaps the largest contribution of jazz

my education,

though, was to enable

also learned

lemma: This

is

me to improvise — to deliver

moment's

notice," at least occasionally.

something from the

jazz musician's perennial di-

that "well-picked note I

re-

on

a

an intensely individualistic

are usually chained

by the mechanics

art form, yet jazz players

of their enterprise to the tal-

A weak drum-

ents of others in their group, including the least able.

mer, for instance, will thoroughly demoralize his fellow players.

Most

organizations, in or out of music, face this problem to I

was

1945

my

degree.

in

mary

trained early to recognize

head began to clear and Dr. Bonnett achieved her

objective:

I

returned to Brooklyn College.

no great convincing from college

Though

to go back, the college did. After

that solid string of F's with

veteran

some

it.

life just

which

I

had celebrated

three years before.

My

I

pri-

required

was

all,

there

my

departure

status as a disabled

— one undergoing treatment, no less — mollified the admis-

sions office, and

I

was reinstated

I was on became ener-

as a part-time student.

probation, and the prognosis was not optimistic. But

I

CRAZY RHYTHM

and confident again, once more the beloved all-conquering boy.

getic

My

41

/

college transcript

became

a scorecard of progress; the straight

Fs of 1942-43 became straight A's in 1945-46. (I continued to have some trouble with Hygiene.) Still, there was no clear signal to tell me where my future lay and where I was to make my brilliant career. Finally the transforming event occurred: my random selection of a political science course, an introduction to constitutional law, taught by a Brooklyn

named Samuel

College professor

I.

justice

who had just pubSupreme Court chief

Konefsky,

lished a well-received biography of the former

Harlan Fiske Stone.

With

his gentle sweetness

and powerful academic

intelligence,

Konefsky would have been an inspirational teacher under any

cir-

cumstances. But Konefsky was also blind, which added a dimension of

drama

academic aura and to the classroom atmosphere.

to his

Conventional visual displays of personality counted

with

him,-

for

nothing

performance was everything.

Konefsky's principal assignment to us was to write a paper on the Interstate

Commerce Clause

Supreme Court on

in the

form

of

an opinion by the

a hypothetical statement of facts.

While not pro-

Commerce Clause, I sensed that whatever talent I had for the law would now be put to the test: Here was a scholar who would know me only by what I wrote and the way I defended it. So I gave it my lifetime-best shot. Day and night I foundly fascinated with the

plowed through huge amounts

Commerce

Clause, focusing particularly on the Court's recent opin-

ions. For a very short kid.

to

I

of stupefying stuff relating to the

time

I

was the world's Commerce Clause whiz

also studied the writing styles of the sitting justices in order

mimic

though

them,-

my ear was not good enough to allow me to

reproduce the sound of Charlie Parker,

I

could manage a pretty good

imitation of judicial prose.

Soon

after

visit

him.

told

me

that

lege, finish

on

to

again.

one

I

turned in the paper, Professor Konefsky asked

Upon I

assuring himself that

must become

had had no outside help, he

I

should leave Brooklyn Col-

my undergraduate work at an Ivy League

of the

On

to

school, and go

It was mother's love all over would become a great lawyer. On to the Harvard Law. On to the Supreme Court.

major law schools.

My course was set.

Ivy League.

a lawyer.

me to

I

I

42 Well, not quite.

I

Leonard Garment

/

had

to apprise

Konefsky

of

my

early Brooklyn

College transcript, which suggested an eccentric rather than a schol-

mind.

arly turn of

He thought

a bit, then decided to concentrate his

on Harry Carman, dean

Columbia College, where Konefsky had academic ties. Carman, a famed teacher, was also known as an administrator of broad-minded and generous impulses. Off to Dean Carman went Konefsky's letter: Take this boy, Harry, warts and all. He will do Columbia proud. It was an altogether terrific piece of persuasion and resulted in my being summoned to St. Luke's Hospital, where Dean Carman was recovering from a fracture. The distinguished and benevolent gentleman sat up in bed and guided me through a highly euphemistic letdown. Columbia has limited room and many applicants, he said. We are a national school, and we must, well, diversify the composition of the student body. Your transcript is also a bit of a problem. We are not efforts

of

—

free to follow

He was

our intuitions.

very kind, but

it

was

a definite

"no go." And while

I

can

not claim an exact recollection of the particular words he used,

I

have a photo-memory

day.

It

was

book that

lay

open on his lap that

do

a best-selling novel by the playwright Arthur Miller, Focus,

the story of a non-Jew learns

of the

some

who happens

bitter lessons

to look like a

about anti-Semitism.

book and did not miss the irony

I

Jew and thereby had read Miller's

of its juxtaposition in this hospital

room with Columbia's historic quota system for Jews, which Carman was explaining to me sotto voce. If I had had my wits about me, I would have said, "But, Dean Carman,

I

don't look Jewish." This wouldn't have gotten

me

into

Columbia, but Harry Carman would never have forgotten our meeting.

Back I went to Brooklyn College. With Konefsky's encouragement and George Swetlow's help, I plotted an alternative career strategy. I would go to Brooklyn Law School, where George was an adjunct professor, and eventually join him in the practice of law. The dean of Brooklyn Law School, Jerome Prince, shepherded me into the school

on

lowed veterans

to enter

a law-qualifying certificate, a shortcut that al-

New

York law schools

after

two years

of

undergraduate work. Without further Ivy League ado, and sans college decree,

I

began law school in 1946.

CRAZY RHYTHM

/

43

was by alphabet, which put me next and most egregiously obsessive worrier

Seating in the law school to Glasser, Leo, the smartest I

was ever

An

to meet.

observant Jew and an almost painfully

seri-

ous young man, Leo Glasser called to mind David Minkowitz, Frank Press,

and the days

of

my childhood.

Law Review and academic

Leo was editor

class leader,-

1

of the

Brooklyn

made my way through law

school on his heels, studying, eating, debating, and double-dating

with him. Leo elected to accelerate, finishing one term ahead

me, then joined the law school faculty and wound up teaching Conflicts of

Leo

Law

later

of

me

my final year.

in

became dean

of

Law School and is now a now as he was then. His last

Brooklyn

federal judge, as obsessive a worrier

major case as a judge, before he took the semiretirement of senior

was presiding over the successful prosecution of the mobster John Gotti. I had coffee with Leo in chambers the morning summations began, then watched some of the proceedings. Gotti looked terrific. Leo looked as if he were about to be led along death row to status,

a gas

chamber.

±\t

Brooklyn Law School

Law Review, first

said,

round

graduated

first

I

worked nonstop, became

in

my class in

of psychoanalysis. ("You haven't finished," Dr.

"but for

now

it's

time to get educated.") Looking back,

myelf lucky that Dean Carman turned of

me

editor of the

1949, and terminated

had put

me

great expectations.

me

into a high orbit, and

At Columbia and then

maintain

itself

at

Brooklyn Law School,

through the years of

Bonnett I

count

away. Konefsky's praise

I

felt

I

had

at a top

to justify his

law school,

might have been problematic, since the competition been tougher. But

my

this

would have

my high trajectory could

my legal education and beyond.

The law school years widened the network of friends whose lives would circle around mine for decades to come. There was Gloria Hellman, a smashing green-eyed redhead, Leo, then me. Gloria's brother Jerry

who

Hellman became

dated

first

a client, close

and major American filmmaker,- among his productions were Midnight Cowboy, Coming Home, The Mosquito Coast, and The friend,

Day of the

Locust.

A particular Law Review pal of mine was Beverly Lourd, bright,

44 attractive,

Leonard Garment

/

whom

and very middle-class,

I

chased around the office

furniture into a long-running, sporadic love

affair.

wing" influence, Beverly departed conventional

Under

politics

my

"left-

and joined

William Kunstler's law firm, then settled in San Francisco, where she became a lifelong lawyer for Black Panther-type defendants and a large assortment of radical groups.

from prison and his manuscripts

famous

to East

Coast publishers. Cleaver's

polemic Soul on Ice was dedicated to

racial

Another

She delivered Eldridge Cleaver

Law Review

Dreyfuss, a superior

editor and

mind and

quondam

her.

was Norman

pal

conscience. Decades later

I

found

myself working with his son, the actor Richard Dreyfuss, on a vision series, The Class of the Twentieth Century.

tele-

mention these

I

names to illustrate a fact about the world and culture in which I became entangled over the years. People and events curled around

me

each other and

like a double helix

— touching,

separating,

and

occasionally touching again, frequently in ways that had real conse-

quences.

It

was

like the genetic processes of life itself,

with accident

almost always the crucial solvent.

i n my last year of law

school,

I

was

students representing Brooklyn

selected to lead a

Law School

moot court competition, sponsored by City of

New

team

of three

in the first national

the Bar Association of the

York. Columbia, Yale, and other prestigious law

schools were also entered in the round-robin contest.

The hypothetical case involved a First Amendment issue. The two members of each team could participate in

rules stipulated that oral argument.

I

concluded that the rules also allowed one person to

argue the case, and

but not purely

so,

I

gave myself that assignment. This was egotism

because

it

gave

me

a tactical advantage: All the

other teams split their arguments like proper gentlemen, thereby forcing each speaker to defer certain questions from the Court to

more knowledgeable

his

clumsiness and

won

partner.

I

was

freed

from

this forensic

the competition for underdog Brooklyn

Law

School against Yale.

The Columbia News printed the results and a photo of me. I it to Dean Carman with a note. I reminded him of what he had

sent told

me — that

being kept out of the Ivy League did not bar

my

CRAZY RHYTHM chances for a rewarding legal career

/

45

— and thanked him for his perway

spicacious advice. But the Bar Association, citing the creative

had interpreted the Brooklyn

rules, refused to

Law School on

name

engrave the

permanent trophy

its

as the first

of

I

pushy

winner

of

when

the associa-

tion revisited the issue sua sponte and put Brooklyn's

name where

the competition. This verdict stood until 1987,

it

should have been

Some people in with our victory.

all

along.

moot court audience were more comfortable Among them was Joseph V. Kline, senior recruiting the

partner of Mudge, Stern, Williams, and Tucker, a prestigious law firm. Kline

had come

final round.

The next

to hear day,

to talk about possible

was

two members

employment. After

offered a job at sixty dollars a

My life in the genteel,

of the Yale

he called and asked

me

team

in the

to visit his office

a series of interviews

week and accepted on

Gentile world of a famous old

I

the spot.

New York law

firm would begin in a few months. I

had finished

last quarter dirt of the

place

my

my long run from East New York and sprinted the

mile across the Brooklyn Bridge to Wall Street, the pay

goldeneh medina, the heartland

parents long ago held

and conquer.

I

thought

I

me

of

milk and honey, the

high on their shoulders to see

had made their dreams come

true, but,

seemed to change. To my I was still a bum, albeit a bum with a summa cum laude law degree. To my mother I was still a lovable airhead who had to be warned away from the edge of subway platforms. Stubbornly, uncontrollably, perversely, they could not give up their versions of original sin. Unhappiness lingered with the Garments like a

father, angrier than ever

oddly, nothing

with the world,

phantom relieved.

limb. So finally, in 1950,

Hugging

my

law

I

moved out

— sad, guilty,

saxophone,

degree,

clarinet,

torn,

and

MacDougal whose dubious comforts I shared with a longtime family friend, Martin "Red" Werner. It was a fifth-floor walkup that was far below the standard of the Garment family's ambivalence, Street in

I

settled into a tiny apartment at 110

Greenwich

Village,

tenement apartment in Brownsville.

My new place

had

a sink-and-

hotplate "kitchen," a bathroom at the end of the hall, and a

commu-

nal telephone five floors down.

But the view was a whole

lot better.

with restaurants, coffee shops, and the

The

little

street

below was lined

theatres and night clubs

46 of the

Leonard Garment

/

New York avant-garde. One block north sat the historic ProvA half block south were the bars of Bleecker

incetown Playhouse. Street. girls,

At

all

bohemian

hours, the sparkling

denizens of the Village and

life

— and

Washington Square Park.

steps away, congregating in

the pretty

New York University — were a few was

I

living in

the middle of America's Left Bank.

The arrangement seemed

Downtown

perfect.

I

had

and protected world

Street base, the solid, disciplined,

of

my

Wall

an estab-

lishment law firm (not to mention the steady income). Meanwhile,

on MacDougal jokes,

and

Street

jazz right

had

I

a round-the-clock arcade of creativity,

my window.

below

I

was finished with Brook-

lyn.

Or

so

I

thought.

The

was

fact

Brooklyn wouldn't leave me.

I

that

I

could leave Brooklyn but

found that wherever

I

moved,

I

still

thought of myself as a citizen of what Brooklynites regarded as the "center of the world." Later on

I

made my permanent home

there.

I

would sometimes get into the car with my children and trace the Garment family's moves from Pennsylvania Avenue to Stone Avenue to Eastern Parkway to Crown Street to Fenimore Street, visiting the special places in between the schools, shuls, pool halls, restau-

—

rants; the

Loew's Pitkin, the Utica Theatre a block from the

Crown

took the children to Coney Island, the most

Street apartment.

I

important place in

my childhood,

sional relief from the sweltering

where our family had found occa-

summer days

The best moment of that trip, eagerly, came when the BMT subway 1930s.

of the 1920s

the one train

I

and early

always anticipated

broke out of the under-

ground dark and heat and entered the open-air zone

of cool salt

breezes and the vast sunlit expanse of ocean and multicolored

amusement

parks.

The

old Steeplechase with

park-circling iron horses, the

Fun House and the Hall

its roller

immense, undulating

of Mirrors

were the

coasters and

sliding pond, the

stuff of

my early night-

time dreams and daytime fantasies.

Q

n Wall Street in 1950

icebreaker.

I

was one

I

found myself cast in the role of ethnic

of a handful of

Jews in

my

generation

squeezed through the keyhole of the tightly closed Gentile nity of Wall Street lawyers.

Numerous

who

frater-

other Jewish lawyers

fol-

CRAZY RHYTHM lowed

— for

47

/

instance, Joe Flom, later the founder of one of the

world's largest law firms, Skadden Arps Slate

Meagher

who

an adviser to the country's corporate moguls, as

my

& Flom,

assistant in the 1960s, defending against a takeover of the

Studebaker-Worthington Corporation. Flom would scribble "idea"

memos

Romanian

to

me

Henry Root

still

Stern, the

at

brilliant

night to a

was furnished with

restaurant where each table

But Flom was

come with me

during the day and

with pure chicken

filled

and

worked

actually

a pitcher

fat.

in

my

head

future as

of the firm,

began with Mudge, Stern.

I

was the elegant Episcopalian

who had founded the firm it later turned out, was a fellow member

grandson of the elegant Jew, Simon Stern, in 1869.

The younger Stern,

of the

psychoanalyzed

about

me

me

to Dr. Bonnett.

and actually made

When we

must take

My

and responsibilities

due diligence

first

call

met, he subtly cautioned graduate,

I

carried

— not unlike Jackie Robinson's.

care not to slide into second base with

my spikes high.

assignment was to help Stern prepare a defense of the

directors of the

The

first

a

Law School

that as a Jew and a Brooklyn

special burdens I

elite

BMT

subway system

in a stockholders' derivative

was actually tried by Harold G. Pickering, the firm's who would soon succeed Stern as head of the firm. Pickering was a grizzled, white-haired, scarlet-faced lawyer who was so much of the old school that he actually wore double-breasted suit.

case

chief litigator,

vests and a pince-nez.

The

case

was being

tried at a

Westchester County courthouse

near his country estate, so Pickering sent his wife to San Francisco for the duration

and we lived alone

at his place for six

morning, dressed in boots and mackinaws, ing dogs,

Punch and

we

weeks. Each

ran Pickering's hunt-

Judy, for a couple of heart-stopping miles.

after breakfast (prepared

by me) and a day

liquor store and picked up

at court,

we

a bottle of Jack Daniels,

Then,

stopped at a

which we

fin-

ished each night with soup and crackers around Pickering's bar,

becoming increasingly incoherent hearing.

On

the one day

hours, recovering from

got worse; later

came

I

took

as

off

we

prepared for the next day's

each week,

my initiation into

life

I

slept for

among

the

twenty

WASPs.

(It

trout fishing in freezing streams.)

Somehow we won the case, and I was off to the races, professionally speaking.

Given Pickering's somewhat advanced age and

all

48

Leonard Garment

/

that running around with

Punch and

Judy, he

mainstay, and in performing that function

were

in fact over

my

head. But

I

needed

a physical

got assignments that

I

stayed afloat and learned, sooner

than most young Wall Street lawyers,

how

to prepare

and

try

com-

plex lawsuits.

The most valuable education I got from Pickering was in the He would sit me down in his office for

discipline of brief writing.

hours

time during his dictation and re-dictation

at a

of briefs, all the

while chain-smoking, coughing, staring out the window, clearing his throat,

and compressing arguments down to their microscopic

core while his secretary, Fran Jones, and

waiting

I

sat in a zenlike daze,

— sometimes for fifteen minutes — until he squeezed out the

next word or phrase.

was an excruciating experience, but an essential corrective for verbal manic-digressive like me. Under Pickering's whip I became It

a

an acceptable artisan in a profession that paid large rewards

and personal

precision, hard work,

agility

for

and did not demand great

originality or perfect pitch.

We

eekends, on

that sustained

MacDougal

me — the

Street,

world

I

remained part

and

of Jews, jokes,

Rose, later the author of television's Twelve

of the culture jazz.

Reginald

Angry Men, was the

host of our crowd's hysterics. But "Doc" Simon,

now known by

his

formal name, Neil, was the real comic group leader during week-

New

ends in

Danny

York and summers on

Fire Island.

He and

gathered with other friendly Jewish fugitives

his brother

— kids like Mel

Woody Allen, Carl Reiner, and Mel Tolkin — around Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows writers' table at NBC, where they

Brooks,

exorcised their particular

demons with

caricatures, like Chasidic rabbis dancing

parodies, puns,

on

and crazed

tables at a Williamsburg

wedding. They made the comic archetypes of Jewish history into a

modern

art form.

In the I

summer of 1950 1 hung out with

shared a house with

the early 1940s

my

this

friend Jerry Leitner,

when he was

crowd on

whom

I

Fire Island.

had met in

president of the Brooklyn College Jazz

Club. Jerry's girlfriend was there; so was Grace Albert, to

whom

Gloria Hellman had introduced me and who would soon become

CRAZY RHYTHM my

first wife.

49

Simon, Reiner, and Brooks were nearby, along with

Greenbaum, writer

Everett

/

of Mr. Peepers,

and Mr. Peepers himself,

Wally Cox.

One played a

weekend supporting role, was

of our big

diversions, in

which

I

occasionally

to tape-record interviews of bizarre

people in strange situations, prototypes for Brooks and Reiner's

mous "Two-Thousand- Year-Old Man."

I

remember

fa-

a few: a golfer

supplying the whispered narration of himself putting the last hole of a big

tournament (Simon), a journalist conducting an in-depth man with the smallest private parts in the world, an

interview of the

interview with a drug-dazed jazz musician (me) whose vocabulary

word "like." An interview with mechanical madhouse where every-

consists largely, then entirely, of the

Doc Simon,

as the tenant of a

thing works backward,

is

gathering dust in

my

brother Charlie's

attic.

G,race

Albert was the daughter of two lawyers, Helen Hicks

Barnes of Boston (Hicks Street in Brooklyn Heights was

Irving ner,

was

named

and Irving Albert, whose forebears were out

a forebear)

a sweet, sad-eyed

speech

—a

product of

man,

New

in all things

of

after

Minsk.

— appearance, man-

York's immigrant world. Helen's

Christian Science family, by almost bizarre contrast, dated back to the sect's founder,

Mary Baker

have made her the librarian

Eddy, and Central Casting

of a

New

would

England Christian Science

reading room. She was a small, fine-featured, quiet, thoughtfully

She and Irving

intelligent, generous, devout, truly Christian lady.

met

at

New

York University Law School. Irving decided

not just Helen but her church; he chose

compromise. This was his answer Grace and her

sister,

material things

—

flesh,

marry

conversion rather than a

to his personal "Jewish problem."

Marianna, were raised in

to Christian Science beliefs, all

full

to

which

strict

adherence

literally rejected the reality of

bone, blood, food, sleep, and especially

disease and death. Readings, prayers, and consultations with Chris-

were prescribed to correct or mitigate the these "errors," eliminate illness, and obviate the need

tian Science practitioners

symptoms for

of

medical treatment. Mrs. Eddy did allow

for insufficiently devel-

oped individual belief by permitting optional use

of

medical inter-

50

Leonard Garment

/

ventions like eyeglasses and professional bone setting, but

was only

clear that this latitude ries of

ingrained

The

human

denial of

to reconcile

all

a concession to

hundreds

was

it

of centu-

ignorance.

universally observable

with the pursuit

of ordinary life

phenomena with

its

is difficult

ordinary plea-

The Albert home in Astoria, Queens, was a modest frame house, awesomely colorless and unornamented, a temple of silence sures.

and fundamentalist plainness. Grace once described

it

as "a coffin

with a kitchenette." Marianna, when grown, walked with a limp, the result of a childhood fracture

Both

anna

girls tried to

break away

left

untreated.

when

to Vassar to study journalism

they went to college, Mari-

and Grace

Northwestern

as a

speech and drama major. Marianna eventually became a Time

Inc.

staff writer.

to

Grace, after a miserable freshman year, dropped out of

Northwestern and joined

a

wartime U.S.O. troupe singing and

act-

ing around the country.

By the time

I

met Grace, her

father

had sustained

a

number

of

small strokes, which had gone undiagnosed and untreated because of

Mrs. Eddy's strictures.

He stumbled around

in speech

and

gait,

barely able to attend to his vanishing law practice. His daughters

could not persuade

him

to see a doctor. For treatment

he went to a

neighborhood Christian Science practitioner to flush out the

spiri-

tual shortcomings that clogged his cerebral arteries.

me

make a small exception for the sake of his children. We had lunch downtown and afterward sat and talked in the Trinity Church graveyard. He was neither offended nor It fell

to

to ask

him

to

my arguments, only grateful for his daughters' concern my friendly solicitude. Smiling, his eyes shimmering with tears,

persuaded by

and

he gently explained that

been his choice, his

life,

I

simply could not understand. This had his faith.

It

had sustained him, and he

—

would stay with it to the end which came soon enough and mercifully, from a cerebral hemorrhage. Some years later Grace's mother died, apparently though not provably (no postmortems permitted) from a massive abdominal cancer. She spent her last months in a Christian Science nursing home, with only the comforts of her faith to ease her way.

But untreated disease, by shortening

life,

also shortens pain

;

and

the ministrations of a practitioner, like hypnosis or autosuggestion,

CRAZY RHYTHM can have anesthetic

effects.

Helen's behavior was crazy.

whom

the terror of death

is

At the time,

I

51

/

thought that Irving and

Now, having seen

so

many

people for

worse than physical pain, I'm no longer

so sure.

Whhen

met Grace, she was working

I

as a secretary at the Ben-

& Bowles advertising agency and looking around for something

ton

better to do.

Her

boss, a sunny,

funny fellow named

mott, was in charge of a Procter

Love of

called

Life.

&

Tom McDer-

Gamble-sponsored soap opera

Grace became the show's production

assistant,

responsible for things like script distribution, rehearsal schedules,

and

props,

At night she supplemented her

coffee.

salary

and slaked

her ambition by singing in a seedy Greenwich Village joint called

Club Samoa, the same kind

of tacky nightclub

I

had

first

worked

in

as a jazz musician.

She was not a roaring success. She could sing well enough

had been winner

of

one

of those early

— she

Arthur Godfrey talent shows

— but she hated liquor, so the part of her work that involved drinking with the customers required nonstop dissimulation (via fake

drinks or a practice called "spitting back").

From her drinking companions she

world.

and acquired material

The work was

seem

made

who

her during those years recalls her sense of humor. There are

good-looking and intelligent people

ties in

abundance

it

are

judgment

drew

that

regular, the

so vividly alive. Everyone

lots of

have

monologues

hard to describe, through the blur of time, what

Grace, in her better moments,

knew

elicited sad

good, and the shows ran forever.

is

It

she liked this

for her desire to write soap opera scripts. This,

though, was a tough guild to crack:

money

Still,

— but few with the real

memorable.

of

was

gift of wit,

and those

this quality, the ability to

who

withhold

most people and things so as to extract the comedy, to her and held us together through thin and thin. It that she said funny things; she also had that much rarer

me

was not

just

kind of

humor

that produces laughter and understanding through

unexpected sideswipes

On

It

— Grace had both quali-

at the foolishness that

a bright, hot day in June 1951 at the

surrounds us.

Unity Club, a massive

old Victorian-style political clubhouse in the Park Slope section of

52 Brooklyn, Grace and us,

we would have

But of course

I

Leonard Garment

/

were married.

If it

wasn't. For the sake of

it

had been

left to

the two of

legalized our live-in relationship very simply.

my mother and Grace's aunt,

a large, domineering, party-loving lady,

we

agreed to a traditional

Jewish wedding, with a rabbi, a chuppah, a horde of relatives, and vast quantities of chopped liver, the

whole

affair

preserved forever

in three-dimensional photographs.

Grace and

I

got to select the entertainment, an all-star jazz

rhythm section including the

Chuck Wayne, drummer Ed

guitarist

Shaughnessy and bassist Eddie O'Brien from Stan Kenton's band,

and the bop pianist Al Haig from Fifty-second just before the

He mumbled

stoned.

to

I

can't

Wedding March." To which Grace

ting the cake,

Haig arrived

Grace and me, as he passed us standing

anxiously in the foyer, "Sweet Jesus, the

Street.

wedding, sprinting up to the clubhouse, thoroughly

I

shed

my

remember the

replied,

"Fake

it."

bridge to

After cut-

groom's role and played the tenor saxo-

phone.

We

sank every penny

wandering, six-week

of

our wedding

honeymoon

tour

all

gifts

and savings into a

over the Caribbean. The

memories mostly of disappointments. We returned home so broke that we had to sleep in our sporty new Hillman convertible at the side of a country road in upstate New York on our way to George Swetlow's farm, where a combined family reunion and final honeymoon blowout was old photographs of the trip are

all

smiles, the

scheduled.

So began to this

my marriage,

consecrated by religion,

handsome, preternaturally

sites, in

our case, did not really

jazz,

intelligent, gifted

attract.

and

jokes,

woman. Oppo-

We were more siblings

than

spouses, temperamental clones glued to each other by similarities.

We made our way through twenty-five hectic years on the edge holdwe were made on, is no guarpeople know early most for each other, but antee of a happy marriage. It was our destiny to learn the hard way. The source of Grace's wit, I soon found, and of her empathy for barflies and other marginal types, was that she was one of them. ing hands like riders on a roller coaster. Friends said this, as

—

Where her own maladies were concerned, no one not me, not the could give her more than occasional relief. kids, not all the doctors There seemed no way for her out of her box of loneliness and depres-

—

CRAZY RHYTHM

/

53

Only God knows why some people emerge from shell-shocked

sion.

childhoods in irremediably bad shape while others, from even worse

environments, come up smiling and strong. Grace and

I

explored

all

the routes of amelioration then available to try to break her free of

her depressions: work, travel, children, psychotherapy, house decorating,

medication

— everything,

suppose, except religion, which

I

our early forays into organized worship had discouraged. The pat-

was established early and never changed: Suffering together, sometimes in tandem, she much more than I, we limped along searching for the magic formula that would cure us. We had good tern

times, ran around and laughed a real,

lot,

played charades for fun and for

but at the end of the day, so to speak,

same gloomy houseguests waiting

find the

We

we always

returned to

for us.

settled into a small rent-controlled apartment

Street in

Greenwich

Village that

I

inherited from

Within weeks Grace sank into her

first

on Bank

my brother Marty.

postmarital depression and

—

went back into psychiatric treatment. I sank in my own way into a frenetic work routine, putting in long hours for six or seven days a week. Things went well for me: I was made partner in record time. Occasionally I emerged to suggest projects that might distract Grace, like writing freelance television scripts. This she did successfully for a time, selling three scripts in a

Jack and Cynthia

Lemmon

few months, two

for a

sitcom and one fictionalization of an

arson-murder case that was produced by Kraft Theatre under the

"Make Me a Fire." But Wally Cox comedy show Mr. title

abandoned writing, deciding

a

package of scripts she wrote

for the

Peepers was rejected, and she abruptly to "rest

up"

for a while.

She would

concentrate on conventional activities like keeping house, cooking, sewing, movies, and adopting a cat.

The

fifties

passed this way.

rose in the firm, and

spent

all of it.

I

tried cases, traveled

made more money. Anxiously

on business, carefree,

we

We lived a yuppie life long before the term was coined,

moving from Bank

Street to a spacious Central Park

with a high, glorious view of the Ninetieth Street

from peering out the windows

to

we

town house on Monroe Place

reservoir.

check the change

kept the blinds drawn. The light was too bright.

Brooklyn Heights, where

West apartment Apart

we moved to

of seasons,

We next

rented two floors of a classic Victorian and, with professional help, decorated

54

/

Leonard Garment

ourselves into near bankruptcy. Purple flocked wallpaper, glittering brass chandeliers, a warehouse of period furniture and bric-a-brac it

was appropriate for the apartment but awful for us. Our reaction mistake was to build our own uncluttered contemporary

to this

house in Brooklyn, designed by a couple

of

young

architects, Joe

and

Mary Merz. Grace and

I

later. Sara, as a

verbal, so the

sachems

infantile neurosis

started

did

we

when

We

(!)

of child psychiatry

concluded that she had an

and recommended analytic treatment, which

she was three and never really stopped. Only recently

learn that she has, and

lobe epilepsy,

of whom more was precociously

had two children, Sara and Paul, baby, had ghastly tantrums and

may have been born

which would account

for the early tantrums.

enrolled Paul in a private school,

a decidedly unpleasant atmosphere. to learn to read or write,

began to

with, temporal-

He

which turned out

have

hid in the closet, declined

stutter,

into psychotherapy with an analyst

to

and soon followed Sara

who conducted most

of their

treatment sessions with slices of pizza in order to create an atmosphere of "nurture."

We

tended our two kids lovingly but distractedly, surrounding

them with Caribbean nannies and other household large circle of bright,

to do

help.

— weekends in the country, jazz in the Berkshires,

in Maine and Canada, summering with the gang

weekend charade

We

had

a

funny, successful friends and a thousand things

parties at Reggie Rose's place.

fly fishing

at Fire Island,

We were rising eco-

nomically and falling psychologically.

Such was our general

state of affairs

when Richard Nixon

ap-

peared on the scene in 1963 and, like the deus ex machina he would later

prove to be in world

affairs,

transformed our

lives.

3 NIXON GOES EAST

ichard Nixon's

R;

been

.has

times. Frequently of events that

personality.

I

overwhelmed by the

detail,

history

early

told

a

thousand

though, are a handful

think played a central part in shaping his career and

How

much, no one can say

watched him closely over his

exactly, but to

last thirty political years,

one

some

who

things

stick out.

To begin with, there were Nixon's

parents: his mother,

Hannah,

dedicated to family and church, a Quaker pacifist, reserved, even distant,

more

a

moral force than

and his

a nurturing parent;

father,

Frank, a Methodist convert of convenience to his wife's Quaker faith, intelligent,

shouter,

a

opinionated, a collector of resentments, a chronic

self-described

according to

"populist" but actually,

Frank's cousin the author Jessamyn West, a closet socialist. Despite

the contrasts,

Hannah and Frank were united

in their tenacious

struggle against the hard circumstances of pioneer

raw edge of the worked from dawn to dark, and from Linda, at the

to

make

the

last great

a decent life for their family.

Nixon

family.

As

life

in Yorba

American migration. They

large failures to smaller ones,

Work was

a teenager, Richard

the central ethic of

Nixon began

his day in the

dark at four a.m., driving to Los Angeles to select the day's produce for the family store,

and ended

it

/

late at night

55

when

his chores

and

56

homework were awake

stay

done.

/

(I

Leonard Garment don't

know where he found

the energy to

listening to those "train whistles in the night.")

Richard was the third of five sons. Harold and Donald preceded

him; he was followed by Arthur and,

much

later,

Ed. Arthur, a

beautiful and sweet-natured boy, died suddenly of meningitis at the

when Richard was nine. Harold when Richard was

age of four,

the age of twenty-three,

died of tuberculosis at

twenty. Richard loved

young Arthur and idolized the spirited and handsome Harold, who was often described by Frank Nixon as the best and brightest of the family.

The deaths were an incalculably numbing experience for the surviving brothers, whose sibling love was the most powerful emotion of their young lives. Even before Harold died, his years of illness were devastating.

A

atmosphere

special

of disease

and death

sur-

rounded young Richard during the summer months, when he stayed with his mother and Harold in Prescott, Arizona. She partially paid their

way by nursing not only Harold but

lars,

boiling their bloody laundry, cleaning their

young tubercusputum cups, and

three other

attending to their other nursing needs.

During these years

of family separation, Richard's

Arizona found him working

at

odd

jobs,

summers

in

from stoop laborer in the

Prescott bean fields to barker at a local "saloon," returning at night to the grim, claustrophobic

munity It is

of gasping

said

atmosphere

of his mother's small

com-

consumptives.

by friends and family members that when each

of his

brothers died, Richard sank into a "deep impenetrable silence." In

was accompanied by Richard's fatalistic acceptance that he, too, would probably contract tuberculosis and die prematurely and awfully. Instead, Nixon went on to the case of Harold's death, the grief

prepare himself with grim intensity for whatever worldly opportunities

came

his way.

Acting was his choice.

He

first

career love, law his first serious career

passed up a Harvard scholarship opportunity because his

family could not afford the additional expense of school in the East;

then he proceeded to work like the proverbial horse College and

Duke

of the class at

as the

venue

University

Law It

Whittier

School, graduating near the top

both institutions and choosing for his first job.

at

was not

New York's Wall Street

to be. Lesser lights in his

CRAZY RHYTHM class

made

/

57

Nixon didn't; there was already something Then came World War II, a stint at the Office

the grade, but

off-putting about him.

of Price Administration in

Washington, marriage to

Pat, a

navy en-

listment and Pacific tour, and Nixon's return to Whittier, with a sackful of poker winnings, to practice law.

At

this point

two

crucial events occurred: First,

Nixon was

se-

lected by a group of conservative Republican California business-

men who were congressman

met

looking for a young veteran to run against

Jerry Voorhis,

a liberal

Democrat. Second, Nixon

his Machiavelli, the political tactician

Murray Chotiner,

hardheaded exponent of the campaign philosophy that is

a

politics

war.

Chotiner's influence on

Nixon should not be

exaggerated.

The

between the romanticized versions of social conditions Nixon had read and dreamed about and the real thing he encountered was grist enough for disillusionment. During the early part of this century, many young men like Nixon avidly consumed disparity

that

the inspirational writings of those years

— the Horatio Alger books,

religious pamphlets, novels of social protest like Jack

London, uplifting stories and

by heroic authors

articles in

magazines like

Nixon was raised on talk about heroism and political principle,- Frank Nixon railed at Teapot Dome and other instances of public corruption, and young Nixon vowed to become an honest lawyer who would expose and punish political sinners. But it was not long before Nixon discovered the Saturday Evening Post. In addition,

that success in politics usually required values quite different from

those represented in his adolescent readings and the idealism of his father.

Nixon's contempt for these highminded ideas and

their proponents followed.

Murray Chotiner merely reinforced the

lesson.

Then began over

fifty

Nixon that most Americans anti-Communist rhetorician and gut

the history of Richard

know well: Nixon

as

and 1950s, eviscerating campaign rivals Jerry Voorhis and Helen Gahagan Douglas,- the Hiss case,- the Checkfighter during the 1940s

ers speech; the vice presidency

under Eisenhower; the stoning in

Caracas; the Khrushchev confrontation.

the

main

great

part of

unknown

of

Nixon was on

his

way

to

his career and his apotheosis as the permanent

American

politics.

58

N

lixon's

/

Leonard Garment

eastward migration in 1963 was the result of circum-

stances that are also familiar. Defeated by a hair in his 1960 cam-

paign for the presidency against the incandescent John

F.

Kennedy,

Nixon returned to California for a brief interlude with the law firm Adams, Duque, and Hazeltine. He was persuaded that he could position himself for another presidential run if he became governor of California, so he went up against the incumbent, Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, in 1962 and was decisively beaten. Various factors worked against Nixon. Brown was a popular and of

skillful politician,

and the

state's

Republican organization had been

weakened by intraparty strife, especially in the primary race that Nixon had to run against Joe Shell, a Birchite candidate with strong Orange County ties. National issues also broke the wrong way, particularly the Cuban missile crisis, which occurred virtually on election eve, distracting attention from Nixon's stretch run.

These

factors aside, Nixon's years in

his California identity

Washington had diluted

and made him a distant and ambiguous figure

back home. In contrast, there was nothing fuzzy about Pat Brown,

who was

pure California and able to marshal

traditional

all

the elements of

Democratic support plus Nixon's independent and Re-

publican enemies. In the aftermath of the California defeat, his California prospects

and his longer-term

Nixon took stock

strategic situation.

of

He

departed for an extended vacation in the Florida Keys, then and later his favorite place for stock taking, took his solitary walks

beach, and

moved around

on the

the pieces of his career puzzle. To nearly

universal surprise, he chose to go to

At the time Nixon made

his

New York City.

move

east in the spring of 1963,

it

was generally believed that he had been persuaded by Elmer Bobst, his friend

and chairman

Company,

to leave California,

of the

Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical

abandon

politics,

and establish

a

new

Nixon family since 1960 and an important client of Mudge Rose, did urge Nixon to make the move and acted as matchmaker between Nixon and the law firm. But it was clear to me from the time of my first conversations with Nixon in 1963 that he had not the slightest intention of career in the law. Bobst, friend and adviser to the

CRAZY RHYTHM abandoning the profession decisive way.

/

59

of politics for the practice of

He had important

business friends in

law in any

New

York and

was prepared to give the law time and attention, but his heart and head would remain in politics. Nixon decided to move from California to the exotic precincts of

New

York City precisely to make a fresh

He knew he was an

location.

interesting and

newsworthy

in

political start in a

new

would be

old face in California but

New York. He also saw no near-term

future in national politics for a Republican candidate running against John Kennedy. New York, Nelson Rockefeller's territory, was a safe harbor against any party pressures to run in 1964 which would be a premature reentry for Nixon, an almost certain losing effort, and a death blow to his lingering hopes for national office. The move to New York also had a quality of surprise about it, a bold entry into the enemy camp. As we all came to know, Richard Nixon loved to do the unexpected, not only for its tactical value

—

but for the discomfort of the enemies provincial,

Nixon was drawn

Finally,

New

who

dismissed

him

as banal,

and predictable. to the big-time dazzle

and energy

York, the "fast track" where the best are tested by the best.

was exactly the kind

of place

Nixon had daydreamed about

of It

as a

youngster lying in bed listening to those train whistles in small, provincial places like Yorba Linda and Whittier.

Wh

hile

Nixon was

Mudge Rose as the answer Mudge Rose was much less rationally coming

rationally choosing

to his career question, to see its

need

that in 1968

for

someone

Nixon made

like Richard

Nixon. Thus

happened

his successful run for the presidency

a peculiarly appropriate base: a Wall Street

foreshadowed Nixon's

it

own

from

law firm whose history

Lazarus-like rise from the graveyard of

great ambitions.

After

its

founding in 1869, the firm grew and prospered with the

expanding city until Bisbee

A

& Stern,

fixture of the

counsel to a institutions

one

achieved eminence in 1930 as Rushmore,

of the three or four largest

New

number

—

it

York

New York law firms.

legal establishment, the firm served as

of large

companies, including major

the Chase National Bank,

its affiliate

New York

Chase Securi-

60 ties,

tem.

The Bank

On

of the

Leonard Garment

/

BMT subway sysRushmore wheeled

Manhattan Company, the

name

the side, the

partner Charles

and dealed in South Dakota mining properties, so enriching the community out there that it renamed the local mountain Mount

Rushmore.

Then came

the financial disaster of 1929 and a tumultuous Sen-

ate investigation

by the Pecora Committee into Wall

Street's finan-

Chase Bank. The fortunes

cial institutions, particularly the

law firm, tied as they were to Chase, plummeted. One

Mudge, contributed

senior partners, Alfred E.

when, in

a

moment

of Chase, to take the

more, Bisbee and shove

legal business that

it (or

of the firm's

to the firm's crisis

he told Winthrop Aldrich, the head

of temper,

Chase

of the

remained with Rush-

whatever language a gentleman used

to express this sentiment in 1940).

By 1949, when Mudge,

I

graduated from law school, the firm

Stern, Williams

&

front-running institution.

Tucker It

was

— was

in a

still

mood

alive but

— now

no longer a

to take chances

with

outlanders like me.

From 1950 firm's fortunes

when Nixon came

until 1963,

underwent

to

New

York, the

a gradual resurgence, thanks to a core of

young partners led by an extraordinary South Carolinian, Randolph Hobson "Bob" Guthrie, who took control of the semicomatose partnership in 1954. Guthrie's most conspicuous feature was his round,

dimpled, cherubic face. His eyes, edged with premature crow's-feet,

were constantly

active, crinkling expressively

and contributing to an aura

when he was

of restlessness that

whenever he spoke hung over him even

doing something like thumbing through routine legal

mind and

papers or a newsmagazine. Guthrie had a shrewd legal endless commercial cunning. His

town southern insurance tor, as was the fact.

manner was good-old-boy smallLaw Review edi-

executive, not Harvard

Early in Guthrie's career at the firm, he transferred from litigation to the corporate section

banks, was where the

— because that, as Willie Sutton said of

money

was. His professional passions were

pursuing clients, charging large leading national institution. set

A

out to create a professional

appetites.

fees,

and rebuilding the firm into

hunter of life

men and

that

matched the

"Boy" was his customary greeting

to

a

opportunities, he size of his

everyone

— partners

CRAZY RHYTHM and

clerks,

whites and blacks,

/

61

men and women,

as in "Boy, we're

goddamn law firm in America, make goddamn money, drink the most goddamn martinis, have the most goddamn fun. ..." It was my good luck that Guthrie noticed me early and chose me as his ward at the Mudge firm. He was impressed, he later told me, because I came from a working-class background, had knocked around a lot, was a "smart Jewish boy" there was a Jew at Harvard he admired hugely and displayed a near-freakish capacity to work going to be the biggest and best the most

—

—

long hours and

roll

up massive quantities

of billable time.

him toward

Guthrie's hungers and energies pushed his gut attraction

was

to the best. His blunt, idiomatic

ing about politics and people today, but he

would have him

was not anti-black

the big, but

way

of talk-

in perpetual trouble

or anti-Semitic or anti-anything

except mediocrity and bureaucratic jawing.

He was an

ardent ad-

vocate of intermarriage, Brazilian-style, to solve America's racial

problem.

He thought

fixing the country's social

ills

was

a "fine

was mining for treasure. Nixon described him to me as the only man he had ever met who was more like Lyndon Johnson than Lyndon Johnson. Between the time when Guthrie took over in 1954 and the early enterprise," but not for him: His business

After coming to

know

Guthrie, Richard

1960s, the firm expanded through good lawyering and shrewd smallish mergers.

It

rose from

below the

just

its

hundred lawyers occupied Exchange Building trappings

marginal status to a prosperous perch

level of the leading

— internal

at

five

20 Broad

elevator,

New

floors Street,

York law firms. Over a

of

the

with

all

New

York Stock

the usual status

numerous conference rooms, period

furniture, collector-quality ship prints, a look of purposeful busyness,

and a huge library displayed to

glass walls.

clients through floor-to-ceiling

The firm could now count on growing revenues from

corporate clients like Warner-Lambert, PepsiCo, General Cigar,

Stone and Webster Engineering Corporation, Studebaker-Worthington, Continental Baking, and El Paso Natural Gas.

Despite the

had good

air of success,

clients,

however, the firm seemed stuck.

It

good lawyers, and interesting business, but not

quite enough of each.

It

was

rarely engaged in the supercases

— the

highly publicized litigation or other corporate dealings that are the

62

emblem

/

Leonard Garment

excitement to be found in the handful York law firms. Something, or someone, seemed

of the professional

New

of frontline

to be lacking.

This is where Richard Nixon entered the story. Acquiring him was almost accidental on the part of the Mudge firm, but in answering Nixon's need for a temporary career the firm got

—a

public partner,

enough known tradition

is

someone with

what

a political or legal

it

name

&

especially well established in

Wardwell; Wendell Willkie,

New

York; examples are

who

E.

Dewey

Richard Nixon joined

Rose Guthrie

&.

Dewey when he

at

Alexander

at

Davis

ran for the presidency

against Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940, at Willkie Farr

and Thomas

well

above the legal mass. This

to raise his or her firm

John W. Davis, Democratic candidate for president in 1924, Polk

needed

Ballantine. This

& Gallagher;

was the club

arrived at the firm

— now

that

Mudge

— in 1963.

The firm changed its name to reflect this and other realities about its future: It became Nixon Mudge Rose Guthrie & Alexander. My contribution to this change was to lobby successfully for the retention of the Dickensian name of the long-dead Mudge as a symbol of continuity. The order of the names other than Nixon's was decided by drawing them from a hat. In 1966 the firm added John

name when he merged his municipal bond firm with The name then became Nixon Mudge Guthrie Alexander &.

Mitchell's ours.

Mitchell until Messrs Nixon and Mitchell went to Washington in 1969, one as president and the other as attorney general.

w.hen

the

news

arrived early in 1963 that Richard

Nixon was

moving to New York to join my firm, I was delighted. This might seem an odd reaction: Insofar as I was interested in politics, which was not very, I was a reflexive Nixon denigrator. But Nixon's answer to his career impasse seemed to offer an answer to the personal crisis in I

my own

had had

life.

a great

run as a

litigator.

I

tried large, conventional

cases, shareholder suits, takeover contests,fore regulatory

commissions.

My own

I

represented clients be-

farndyce and farndyce was

an interminable, interconnected series of criminal and

which

I

civil cases in

defended a Midwestern grain company against charges that

CRAZY RHYTHM

/

63

had mishandled and misappropriated Commodity Credit Corpora-

it

we

tion grain. First, in the criminal cases,

we owned

argued successfully that

the grain and therefore could not steal

we

civil cases,

it.

Then, in the

argued that our obligations in handling the grain

were limited because

was government

it

property. Improbably,

we

contended that the inconsistent criminal evidence should be kept out of the civil trials because of the different burdens of proof in the

two types

of cases.

I

will never forget the look

government's attorney

when

on the face

of the

the judge agreed with us. Ah, the maj-

esty of the law.

Almost claim of

construction fraud.

toned executives from the same social at

was a case involving a The two adversaries, high-

as long, for different reasons,

mammoth

set,

were especially indignant

having their honor impugned. Each ordered his counsel to "get at

the truth"

— that As

proceedings.

not to object to any question during discovery

is,

a result, pretrial proceedings

for years, in the course of

down from

exhaustion, and

Wilmington

trial

which

I

suffered a

my adversary,

went on relentlessly medium-sized break-

lawyer, had a sudden stroke and died.

settled. Miraculously,

we

Sometimes the cases were memorable not I

lightbulb in a dingy loft asked, I

my

couldn't.

straight

up

finally

for their legal interest

brought an antitrust suit to enjoin

the acquisition of a manufacturer of Titan missile parts.

An

We

kept the client.

but for the local color. Once

security clearance.

tough old

a distinguished,

F.B.I,

agent interviewed

on Fourteenth

Street.

me

I

needed a

under a naked

How did

I

explain, he

Communist magazine New Masses mind was blank. But that night I awoke and sat

subscription to the

My

7.

in bed like a cartoon character.

had a

I

jolt of

memory:

I

my Greenwich Village apartment to a college chum left-wing politics, a subscriber to New Masses and

had once sublet of militantly

everything else that would alert a

member

Pacing the room anxiously until dawn, so the earliest possible

moment — or

of the Hoover-era F.B.I. I

could

at least before

call the F.B.I, at

they called

me —

narrowly avoided a federal perjury investigation but never got security clearance. Later,

dent had to clear

when I entered the White House,

my

the presi-

me personally.

Sometimes the stuff was just funny. In an otherwise dull Commodities Exchange case I ran up against a Doberman of an assistant

64 U.S. attorney

named

Leonard Garment

/

Bernie Nussbaum,

who one

day pummeled a

witness of mine relentlessly until the lunch break.

When we

turned, Bernie got ready to do

first

was "Are you the same course not!"

Joe

it all

over again, and his

Blow who was here

this

question

morning?" "Of

exclaimed, getting into the spirit of the thing.

I

Whitewater erupted,

it

seemed

me

to

re-

When

the most natural thing in the

world that Bernie, by then counsel to the president, had given the F.B.I,

a specially hard time.

Two

friends of

mine owned Cue magazine,

a

New York publica-

tion that offered a seal of approval to advertisers

who

ran allegedly

gourmet restaurants. They learned that Colgate was going

name "Cue"

the

to a

new

and other unappetizing conditions.

New

an obscure

York

to give

toothpaste that would prevent bad breath

We sued to enjoin Colgate under one in the nation, that

statute, the only

per-

when similar names when someone else's use

mits infringement-of-trademark suits not just cause confusion between two products but of a

name

"dilutes" the impact of your trademark.

Colgate's multimillion-dollar ad campaign tracks.

The

trial

was stopped

involved solemn expert testimony about trademark

dilution through "cognitive dissonance," said to occur is

when a name

taken from one product and put on another, inappropriately

ent,

product

—

e.g.,

called Colgate's president,

skill

how

remote.

I

differ-

Chateau Neuf du Pape Foot Bath, Gucci Scouring

Pads, Steinway Toilet Seats.

street-smart,

in its

We

were doing well enough until

David Mahoney,

I

to the stand. Witty,

and informed, Mahoney explained with murderous

the prospect of the feared dilution was wildly, comically

knew we were dead when

sides' presentations, arose

the judge, at the

and cheerily bade us

all,

endof both "Happy mo-

toring."

Mahoney made his own personal trophy of the occasion script of his friends,

testimony bound in leather and distributed to admiring

which, years

By and

large

it

later,

was

included me.

great fun.

The scorecard

intangibles eventually resulted in for

Mudge

Rose, where

in recruiting gifted a strong

— a tran-

I

my

could exercise

young

litigators,

of wins, losses,

becoming

and

chief of litigation

my special skill and pleasure

supporting them, and building

department.

But after years of Wall Street law practice,

I

had run out

of

CRAZY RHYTHM steam. Most of

my

small-scale ambitions had been achieved, and

had that bleak midlife feeling that doing for the rest of

65

/

I

was doing what

I

would be

I

my life. No more changes, great goals,

surprises.

Trapped. I

couldn't have cared less that Richard

Antichrist of eastern liberalism.

ent

and the possibility

life

He was

Nixon was the

also an opening to a differ-

of salvation. Besides,

feelings about political issues, except a general

underdog.

My

real politics consisted of

focused work, and

(a)

I

had no strong

sympathy

for the

a fervent belief in hard,

a conviction that there

(b)

political

were no solutions,

only useful compromises. Nixon did violence to neither of these

what there was of it, took a backseat. met Nixon at a fall 1963 cocktail party given for him and Mrs. Nixon by my partner John Alexander. The Nixons had recently

precepts. So personal ideology, I

first

returned from a long overseas holiday trip and were settling into their

new home on

now

their neighbor).

Avenue (Governor Nelson Rockefeller was Nixon was completing the residency require-

Fifth

ments for admission to the New York bar, and the old Mudge Stern was being rechristened to mark his new role as head of the sort of prestigious

Wall Street law firm that had rejected him

graduated near the top of his

The

party, at the

typically

crowded

Duke

University

Law School

he

after class.

Alexanders Sutton Place apartment, was a

New

7

My memory of

York bash.

the evening

is

a

noisy blur of smiles, handshakes, and that extra decibel of excite-

ment

that

media.

marks the presence

One

of a

distinct impression

I

name

or face

retain

made famous by

from that

—

first

the

viewing

is

and Nixon was bigger than I had pictured him more of a physical presence. He had a very large head and a sunny smile that lit up his face, smoothed out his jowls, and transformed that

taller

bigger,

him, momentarily, into the antithesis of Herblock's scowling,

Nixon nose, well, it was there, the famous ski slope, but it seemed to harmonize with the rest of his head and was, in any event, a physical trademark without which stubble-faced caricature.

As

for the

Nixon would not have been Nixon. For

all

the half doubts and

partners had voiced about the

the party, most of signed.

The

them

mumbled

Nixon

disagreements that some

deal,

they were

all

present at

pleased, the others not-so-unhappily re-

enthusiasts varied in their motives

— some were ardent

66

Leonard Garment

/

Republicans, others saw golden business possibilities

me, the media-battered Richard Nixon was

as for

might open the door lives.

to a break

So whatever our

became members

all

extended professional family, our fortunes tied to

The a

opportunity

first

I

had

weekly partnership lunch

Schrafft's in

a

man who

from the predictable pace

we

politics,

— but for them

still

of our

of Nixon's

his.

with Nixon came

to talk alone

after

in the late fall of 1963, catered

by

our conference room at a long, candlelit table dressed

down

in linen for a formal meal.

The

partners sat

administered

new

twenty-dollar

treat, a crisp

bill

to a small self-

passed to each

diner as a reward for showing up and attending to his professional well-being. tle

custom

I

remember Nixon's

surprised reaction to this weird

The

of the inscrutable East.

Wall Street talk

— major

discussion, as usual,

litigation developments, rivalries

lit-

was

among

the associates, client news, formal reports on the firm's financial status,

and heavy-handed

jokes.

Nixon's office was a few steps

ence room. After lunch

I

down

the hall from the confer-

asked his secretary, Rose Mary Woods,

could have a chat with him. She told

me

to

knock and go

if I

right in.

was as if both of them were waiting for me. The office looked right for Nixon. Its size was spacious but not excessive. The furniture was comfortable but formal enough to discourage lounging around. Most striking was the careful collecIt

tion of political curios. Lined

up on the long table behind Nixon's

desk were elegantly framed, warmly inscribed photographs of

Queen world

Elizabeth, Jawaharlal Nehru, Albert Schweitzer, and other

figures. Scattered

around the room were a

menting a Nixon hole-in-one, hower White House, objets

his cabinet d'art

room

golf scorecard docu-

chair from the Eisen-

from places

Vietnam, and pictures of the family, including his mother, Hannah, on a separate table.

It

was

all

each case was something drawn from Nixon's very useful to break the ice with a visitor It

was easy

to picture

him conducting

father, Frank,

and

conventional, but in life.

And it was all know Nixon.

didn't

properly impressed guests, as

he did with me, around the personal private

who

Thailand and

like

museum

of his public

and

life.

During

this first visit there

tions that gave

me my

first

were several phone-call interrup-

view

of

Nixon's special

skills.

While

CRAZY RHYTHM

/

67

lawyers, politicians, and even normal folk often shift and slide

among

cording to their relationship to the

were

was

modifying their manner

different telephone personae,

of another order of virtuosity.

caller,

Nixon's telephone

The phone,

his favorite instrument of persuasion.

It

I

ac-

skills

started to learn,

him from

separated

the disturbing emanations of another person's physical presence,

enabling

him

pose his eyes

on

to concentrate

his

words without having

and coordinate his hands

to comharmonize with them. He

to

adjusted his conversational style to his audience and objective.

The

rambling start-and-stop and the hem-and-hawing spiked with profanity in the Watergate tape transcripts that provoked so ror

were always part

much

hor-

They way through an un-

of Nixon's conversational technique.

were his improvisational method

of feeling his

what the what Nixon himself had in

certain conversation, probing, testing, targeting, gauging

other fellow really had in

mind

(or

mind).

At our

meeting he waved away

first

my

repeated offer to duck

out during his phone conversations. Hoisting his polished black shoes to the desktop, he settled into the appropriate voice and manner for "Ray" or "Bob" or "Tom," lining up a sequence of calls

through Rose Mary Woods. that he

See

was putting on

how many

very good at

Even

all

after

time favor

me

a little

"languages"

I

can speak with ease, even

I'm not

if

that Wall Street jargon around the luncheon table.

we knew each with one

the phone rang;

was mesmerizing. It was also clear show for me: Here's how I work, Len.

It

it

was

other well, Nixon would from time to

of these demonstrations.

my

old friend Jerry

One day

Hellman

in 1964,

calling

from

Hollywood. After years of working as an agent, he had managed to

up his own film company and had produced his first film, The World of Henry Orient, with Peter Sellers. It was a modest success.

set

For his second, crucial, film, Jerry picked

Connery had agreed

was the quintessential old-style against the establishment working always

—

uncompromisingly determined

young Walter Reuther and the film's director,

at the throat of

Irvin Kershner,

ner Bros., the producing studio.

was

tight

Fine Madness. Sean

to star. Jerry

independent producer grain,

A

On

to

have his

artistic

way, a

Hollywood's Henry Fords.

were

now

He

fighting with War-

the day Jerry called, his voice

with anxiety: "Jack Warner has taken

A

Fine Madness

68

away from me,

Len.

Leonard Garment

/

need help." The film was in postproduction,

I

the editing and fine-tuning stage in

stroyed and the time

when

Warner liked

ner, as Jack

which

a

movie

is

made

or de-

the big fights take place. "Colonel" War-

to be called,

had

just

seen the

first

rough

cut and realized that he was financing a black comedy, not a James

Hellman and Kershner were discharged, barred from maybe hyperbolically, maybe not that the guards had instructions to shoot on sight. Jerry remembered seeing Bond the

thriller.

and told

lot,

—

—

Richard Nixon's photograph prominently displayed in Jack Warner's

My

inner sanctum, affectionately dedicated to "Colonel Warner."

me

Nixon to intervene, which I did. Nixon told me to bring Hellman to the office; Jerry took the red-eye from Los Angeles that night. By noon the next day we were sitting with Nixon at 20 Broad Street, and Nixon was on the phone to Colonel Warner, making the case for reinstatement of "my brilliant young friend, Jerry Hellman" who, said Nixon, "I expect will friend pleaded with

to ask

—

have a large place in tally

my

political future." Warner, startled

and

to-

nonplussed, said the whole thing was a "terrible, terrible mis-

understanding"; the "rotten apple" was not Hellman but director Kershner.

Hellman should hasten home to Hollywood and finish would welcome him back "with open

the movie. Warner himself

arms." It

was

a striking display of Nixon's still-formidable political

A Fine Madness turned out would have been if left untouched by the studio, but considerably better than it would have been without Nixon's cameo intervention. Jerry later told me that when he made his third film, Midnight Cowboy, which won an Oscar for Best Film, prominent among the early congratulations was

power and

a nice, cost-free favor to

to be a fine

a

warm

B

movie

me.

— not as good as

it

personal note from Jack Warner.

ack on that day of our

first real

meeting,

my

talk with

Nixon

was unusually personal. I told him about the high hopes I held for him and the firm and described the boredom and depression I had been feeling about

(maybe that

I

my

work.

to get a sense of

was

a birthright

how

I

felt

I

had

to disclose

my own politics

ideological he really was], so

Democrat, that

I

I

told

him

had voted and worked

CRAZY RHYTHM

/

69

against him, and that as recently as the previous year

fund-raising party for

Bobby Kennedy

in

my

I

had hosted a

He

Brooklyn home.

He was happy to work with people of a political from his own who were willing to speak their mind. He had access to "more than enough" Republicans, many of waved all

this away.

worldview

different

whom had "less

than scintillating" ideas.

found myself more

at ease with Nixon in that first conversawas with most of my longtime partners, and for a reason: We both wanted it that way. To me, Nixon was a figure out of history, still powerful and at the same time down-to-earth, candid, I

tion than

I

my

receptive to

Nixon saw me

offer of friendship

and assistance. For his

as a useful ally in his adaptation to

part,

Wall Street and

the law firm's culture and an eager potential participant in his plans

Those plans had already been well formed

for a political future.

in

the quiet of his mind.

So after

made my

I

openly about his

amount

own

personal speech, Nixon relaxed and spoke

He thought he

feelings.

of business for the firm.

Lambert,

Don

could develop a

There were Elmer Bobst

of

Kendall of PepsiCo, and other possibilities.

spend his time doing his dutiful best

for his partners.

fair

Warner-

He would

But he wasn't

going to "whore around," for example by lobbying Congress on be-

He

half of clients.

travel, occasionally

intended to keep in touch with public issues,

speak out.

He was not going to forfeit opportuni-

public service.

ties for

He thought

that

what was

right for

him would

also be

good

for

who were scrappers, We he said, not children of the elite but people who had fought to make their way in the world ("like you and me"). He thought the most impressive man in the firm was Bob Guthrie, a small-town southern boy who had made good on his own. That was the model, he said, of the kind of person he admired, a man with ideas who didn't flaunt the firm.

should search for young lawyers

his brains, a fighter

and

risk taker, a "natural."

Nixon

also spoke

admiringly about Dick Ritzel, whose father had chauffeured the sort of rich people

trusts

whom

the son

now

counseled as head of the firm's

and estates department.

Nixon's less-than-polished emotions came clear at the point during our conversation v.

Time

Inc.

The

when I

plaintiff,

Jim

was handling, Hill Guthrie's old roommate from

described a case Hill,

I

70

Leonard Garment

/

Harvard Law School, had been the subject, along with his family,

an offensive Hills

article in Life

wanted

magazine. Angered by the publicity, the

and apology

a retraction

of

—

or,

failing that,

damages.

Guthrie had turned the firm loose to help the Hills by representing

them on

a contingent-fee basis against Life's publisher,

Guthrie assigned the case to me. By the time

with Nixon about

it,

the

trial

had taken

I

had

Time

Inc.

my conversation

place, the Hills

had won a

record verdict, and the state court appellate process was underway.

Nixon

listened carefully to

my

description of the case.

zine wasn't out to injure the Hills, he remarked;

good goddamn about them.

it

The maga-

just didn't give a

was only interested in selling its goddamn magazine. That's what makes it so infuriating, he went on.

All that fancy First

It

Amendment

talk

— just a

lot of

pious "bullshit"

while they exploit the hell out of you.

I

took

it

practice. of

upon myself

to help

Within the firm

I

Nixon

fit

into the firm and its law

could see that there were three schools

thought about the odd couple

we made. The

older partners were

me was Most of the younger partners, Republicans, were in awe of Nixon and saw me as someone who might get them a piece of the political action. The more liberal young lawyers, a smaller group, narrowed their eyes at the Nixon-Garment association: What's all the hustling about? But they didn't actually ask. If they had, I would have happily said, "Hey, guys, relax. This is Main Chance Farm." As part of my Nixon project, I arranged to introduce him to the local bar. A few months after he joined Nixon Mudge, I arranged a "meet Richard Nixon" party for area lawyers and judges. Brooklyn was then home to a far more significant legal community than it is now, when much of the borough has become a wastedelighted that a youngish (thirty-nine), energetic type like

drawing Nixon into law and the business

of law.

land of poverty-blasted housing and barren crack-infested spaces and

many to

of its

lawyers have gone over the

Nassau and Suffolk counties.

66 Court Street,

now

side,

following their clients

In the 1960s, the office building at

converted into apartments, was a vast arcade

of law firms and solo practitioners. I

asked two friends to help

me

put the evening together.

One

CRAZY RHYTHM who had

was Leo

Glasser,

School.

The other was

71

/

Law Law School

continued as a professor at Brooklyn

now

Jerry Leitner,

a Brooklyn

professor and Brooklyn trial attorney. Leo and Jerry were sturdy

Democrats, as were almost

assembled

for

me

;

all

the

men on

the

list of

invitees they

Republican officeholders in Brooklyn were a

rar-

was understandably anxious about the turnout. What if only a handful of the one hundred plus invited dignitaries showed up? It would be an embarrassment for Nixon and a disaster for me. Between the mailing of invitations and the date of the party, history intervened. John Kennedy's death on November 22, 1963, had the ironic consequence of restoring Richard Nixon to life as a national political figure. The two men had been locked in combat just three years earlier,- now Nixon, spared Kennedy's fate, was seen as the survivor. Something of the triumphant Kennedy lived on in the defeated Nixon a collection of memories, a kind of physiity. I

—

an unexpected metaphysical reward

cal closeness,

member

living

more

of a historic duo.

of a celebrity.

for being the

Kennedy's death made Nixon

As Kennedy passed

into history,

Nixon pushed

forward. In mid-January, just before the party, the Gallup organization

published a poll designed to gauge the impact of Kennedy's death.

It

showed, among other things, the order in which the Republican

and

party's rank

file

preferred various national Republican figures.

Nixon led the pack, and among party leaders his strength was even more pronounced. A solid 30 percent of Republicans around the country were holding fast to this man. There was a base for another national campaign.

Nixon's

visit to

Brooklyn was a large success. Both floors of our

apartment were packed. family and friends.

Many

had

of the invited

felt free to

bring

The guests were old political hands and underrally. The reception was alive with the

stood that the party was a noise, sweat,

time

I

and excitement

watched Nixon

that there are

two

of a

major political event. For the

in his natural element.

distinct types of

human

I

are politicians than

with friends

who

and

being, politicians

nonpoliticians. Politicians are happier in the

who

first

began to understand

company

of

enemies

are nonpoliticians.

I

be-

lieve anthropologists call this species affinity. Jerry Leitner

knew

all

the judges, so he

managed the introduc-

72 tions,

moving each

/

Leonard Garment

arrival along to

slapping and political hellos.

Din

Nixon

filled

for the ritual of back-

the place. Cars choked the

usually quiet street. Neighbors, curious about the commotion,

peered through the ground-floor windows and were invited in to

meet Mr. Nixon. As with all successful

political events,

everyone enjoyed the

sense of being part of something important, even those

know

who

didn't

Most of them, of course, as history-hardened politicians, knew exactly what the "something" was, and they let me know: Beetle-browed, battle-scarred Nixon might yet become president of the United States. Whatever it was that potential presidents have, Nixon had it. By now most of us have grown blase or worse about aspirants to quite what.

we were informed by Theodore

the presidency. Back then, though,

H. White's warmhearted dramatization of the previous presidential

campaign. The presidency seemed the ultimate place of drama and power, and the idea of suddenly being so close to a

man who might

become president was intoxicating. I was not the only one intoxicated. A guest that night was the famed criminal lawyer Samuel Leibowitz, who had bravely and defended the Scottsboro boys in the 1930s.

skillfully

Now

a Brook-

lyn criminal court judge, Leibowitz had grown aggressively sour and

pompous:

"I

know

was leaving the

all

your

tricks, counselor,"

party, Leibowitz

was

his style.

As he

suddenly stopped near the door

and, in front of his Democratic colleagues, delivered a loud-voiced

farewell speech to Richard Nixon.

It

summarized Nixon's

strengths, his entitlement to the presidency,

assertion that

Election

Chicago.

Day It

Nixon had been in 1960

was

political

and the concluding

blatantly cheated out of his due on

by the chicanery

tasteless bluster

— but

I

of Mayor Richard Daley of saw that most of the assem-

bled Democrats were vigorously nodding their heads in agreement. I

was viewing what I now recognize

otherwise rational people class celebrity. (In the

when

Oval

I

without a

trace.]

overwhelms

they are in the presence of a world-

Office, in the presence of

have seen every vestige

president,

as the hysteria that

of sanity

an actual

and independence sink

Eventually the house emptied out. The booze was depleted, the food gone. Grace's

little

meatballs,

it

turned out, were a great idea.

CRAZY RHYTHM Nixon explained

/

73

that politicians like small but substantial foods

that they can spear with toothpicks so they can eat, drink, talk, and circulate without juggling plates It

sit

was now

seven-thirty,

upstairs in the family

and Grace.

Leitner,

We

and

cutlery.

and Nixon accepted

room

for a

New

invitation to

while with Leo Glasser, Jerry

could have a bite of food and drink and

gossip about his Brooklyn coming-out party in

my

— his

foray

first political

York since 1960. Nixon started the conversation with

a

small tour d'horizon, built of well-honed anecdotes and assessments

Khrushchev and De Gaulle. Then he summarized his views on the role of Asia in world affairs. We were a tiny audience, but the

of

presentation was as careful as

if

he were on Meet the

Press. (Did

Horowitz need a vast crowd when he practiced piano?) Nixon questioned us closely about the judges he had just met.

How

were

New

York's state court judges selected?

political chores did lawyers

Which way was "up" cleaner

was

Who were

in

What kind

have to perform to get on the

New

York

politics?

of

list?

The Nixon vacuum

work, sucking in whatever tidbits our

at

they?

little

group

could offer while he chewed hungrily on his food and sipped a scotch highball. o'clock, Nixon got ready to call a cab. Jerry said his was coming to drive him into Manhattan for dinner at the Plaza Hotel with friends, and they would be delighted to drop Nixon uptown. But Jerry wanted Nixon to know that Jean was very pregnant two weeks overdue, in fact, and she couldn't get into their sports car, so the car she'd be driving was pretty awful, an old family jalopy. No problem, Nixon said. Jean arrived, and off they

At eight

wife, Jean,

—

.

.

.

went. Late that night, Jerry called to

Nixon

told the Leitners that he

lyn Heights but had never seen

had

tell

me what

had happened.

heard a great deal about Brook-

much of it except for political rallies

George Hotel. Could he have a quick look around the area before heading for Manhattan? So the Leitners circled around to at the St.

Court Street and pointed out the landmarks: the ancient courthouses, the commercial buildings

crammed with law

they headed over to the famous Heights promenade

offices.

for a

Then

quick view

Manhattan skyline, cruised past some of the old brownstones on Montague Street, and headed onto the Brooklyn Bridge. of the

74

/

Leonard Garment

was no lighting on the bridge, and at night it was pitch dark except for the beams of passing cars. Halfway across, the Leitner car came to a shuddering stop. It was dead. It would have to be towed and was of no further use that evening. Anxious about his perilously pregnant wife and his famous passenger, Jerry tried to flag a ride. He failed. Nixon stepped out and took over, and the waving man's familiar face quickly brought a cab to a startled stop. Jean was transferred to the taxi for the trip to Manhattan. Nixon wanted to stay with Jerry and the broken-down car until help arrived, but Jerry persuaded him that his higher duty was to provide safe escort for pregnant Jean which he uneventfully did. The morning after, Nixon said to me in the office that his luck was as miserable as ever: "Think of the coverage if Jerry's wife went into labor on the bridge." I'm almost sure he was joking. A couple of days later Nixon sent a note to the still-pregnant Jean with a copy of Six Crises, dedicated to "Joshua and/or Janice Leitner." The note said, "In view of our little crisis last Thursday night, I thought that Joshua (or Janice) might like to have a copy of my account of some other crises I have experienced during my life. ..." Two more votes In those days there

—

for

Nixon.

Ahe day after the party,

talking to Nixon,

I

made my first

tion in his thinking about the presidency.

I

interven-

reported the praise

heaped on him by the Brooklyn Democrats and noted the large number of unsuspected supporters he had in that presumably unfriendly I then went off the deep end by flatly predicting that he would become president of the United States. I was not speculating on possibilities but announcing his fate with Delphic certainty. Even now I wince a little to think of how aggressively I turned my

borough.

member of the know that in a

cards over and declared myself a founding

Nixon campaign team.

tent

outburst

I

had said exactly the

Richard Nixon. Nixon,

waved denial.

had

Little did

man

my effusiveness my intention was

right,

I

nonexis-

mystical

crazy thing to the mystical

of destiny,

had found his prophet. He

off

with a deprecatory remark but not a

If

to seal

my

collaboration with Nixon,

I

just scored a ten-strike. I

remember

this

moment with some

clarity,

which

is

no

sur-

CRAZY RHYTHM prise. But,

it

appears, so did Nixon.

his election to a second term, of thanks, suitable for

75

/

Nine years

later,

Nixon wrote me one

shortly after

of those letters

framing and office display, that presidents

send their campaign helpers. But this particular letter had a remarkably precise reference to our conversation the morning after the party in Brooklyn:

What

really put the icing

lyn!

remember when

I

I

on the cake is that we carried Brookyou in your home in Brooklyn

visited

and you said that we had more friends there than we realized, I thought you were being a bit over-optimistic, to put it mildly, but again you proved to be right. I give you all the credit for that achievement.

Which would have been a nice conclusion to my tale except for one thing: Nixon did not carry Brooklyn in 1972. It was close, but no

cigar.

There was yet another footnote

come,

to

this

one connected

with Judge Leibowitz's comment about Mayor Richard Daley's "theft" of Illinois in the 1960 election. In 1987, the

met

Washington lawyer Edward Bennett Williams and

lunch to discuss a case in which

for

a while,

Williams changed the subject.

each other reasonably well and been on

when Williams

1950s,

I

we were co-counsel. After He and Nixon had known

fairly

good terms during the

number of political figures, Nixon presidency the relation-

represented a

including Joe McCarthy. During the

ship soured for various reasons, particularly Williams's representation of

The Washington Post and

publisher, Katharine

his

close ties to the Post's

Graham, and the Kennedy

family.

But the years had passed, and by 1987 the battles with Nixon

were old business and starkly irrelevant

to Williams,

who was now

sick with metastasizing cancer and in the middle of a long, surgery-

strewn struggle to stay

alive.

At our lunch, Williams was enjoying

a

quiet time between episodes of hospitalization and chemotherapy.

He

told

me

his illness

had made him think about problems

of sur-

book by Robert Sam Anson about Nixon's post-resignation struggle to live and recover a measure of national respect. Williams said he realized that the man he most

vival.

He had

just read Exile, a

76

admired among Nixon. Could could

sit

I

all

Leonard Garment

I

was the unsinkable Richard them so they

his contemporaries

arrange a meeting between the two of

together, have a drink, put the past behind them,

and talk

a little bit, survivor to survivor? I was not surprised at such a request and did not doubt Nixon would agree to a meeting. He was almost invariably

By then that

warm and

generous to past adversaries, like a litigator after a bitter

courtroom contest or a soldier in the aftermath for

to

of a

bloody war. As

Nixon's former enemies, they usually found themselves welded

him by

the smoke, noise, and pain of combat.

New York on June 4, 1987, for lunch with Manhattan restaurant, Le Cirque. We made a Williams's New York apartment so he could shower

Williams and

Nixon

I

flew to

at his favorite

brief stop at

and change. He came out

for a

moment

railroad tracks crisscrossing his chest

We cisely

arrived at the restaurant

first.

to

show me

the surgical

and abdomen.

Then Nixon walked

on time. As the two shook hands while standing

at

in, pre-

our corner

table

by the door, the action and talk in the packed, noisy room

came

to a total stop for

For three hours, salad,

Dover

an instant, like a freeze-frame photo.

we consumed

sole, souffle,

the standard

Nixon banquet

and white wine. I listened and drank while

they talked. Their political memories were sharp. There was no opining about war and peace or national political trends. Instead, old neighborhoods were revisited and old friends exhumed. Tales

were told about departed kings

like

Lyndon Johnson, Jack Kennedy,

Senator Richard Russell, Ike. There was some ruminating about Watergate: Williams speculated about the course of events tapes had been burned, and Nixon, forgetting that he hadn't

them talked well.

had Edward Bennett Williams

a lot about "old Joe

I

was

if

the

there, regretted

at his side.

The two

of

McCarthy." Both had known him

Both reflected on the way he had stumbled on some correct

ideas about

communism but made such

a corrupt

mess

of

it

that his

name would forever be a synonym for political persecution. And so the conversation went no talk about sickness,

—

campaign against death that both

summing up

men were

or the

waging, just a quiet

of a quarter century of life in the arena of politics that

both loved.

Then

the subject of

Mayor Daley and

Illinois

came

up. Williams,

CRAZY RHYTHM a magnificent storyteller, told

/

77

how he had gone

out to Chicago, at

Daley's request, for a final visit to the dying man. tion ended, said Williams, Daley

bedside and whispered, "Ed, this

what you Nixon?"

think. Will

There was his throat

a

God

their conversa-

beckoned him closer is

the

forgive

dramatic pause

As

moment

me

to his hospital

to tell

me

honestly

for stealing Illinois

at the table. Finally,

and deadpanned, "Interesting, Ed, but

from

Nixon cleared

Illinois just

wasn't

to do it. I needed two more states and it wasn't there, so was no point worrying about Illinois." Nixon probably knew that Williams's whole Daley story was pure apocrypha: The mayor was in a terminal coma by the time he was taken to the hospital. It didn't matter. There was a sweet, balm-spreading quality to this final peace conference between two of the fiercest warriors of twentieth-century politics. For the moment, their meeting seemed more important than what actually happened in that presidential campaign long ago.

enough

there

j*4H NIXON GOES TO COURT

rue to his word, Nixon devoted

T:

good part

a

of his

time to the

practice of law. In fact, the episode that created a close working

between the two

of us was our collaboration as coTime Inc., whose jury verdict in the was being appealed by Time Inc. when Nixon arrived at

relationship

counsel in the case of Hill Hills' favor

v.

the firm. in the Hill case that Nixon made his first appearance Supreme Court. Though the Court reversed the verdict and ordered a new trial, the principle we urged eventually became governing law. The case also established Nixon's professional creIt

was

before the

dentials as an appellate lawyer of distinction and thus served the collateral

purpose of polishing his

The events 1952,

when

new

public persona.

that gave rise to the case began

on September

9,

three convicts escaped from the federal penitentiary in

Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

A few

days

later,

they invaded the

home

James and Elizabeth Hill in a Philadelphia suburb. The convicts held the Hills, their three teenage daughters, and their twin sons, of

aged four, as hostages for nineteen hours. Except for the captivity itself,

and

the convicts behaved in a decent, even gentlemanly,

left

manner

without doing additional harm to the family. Ten days

they were apprehended in Manhattan.

/

79

later,

80 In the

/

Leonard Garment

immediate aftermath

the convicts were

still at large,

press interest in the incident.

had been acts

of the Hills' ordeal, especially

while

there

was

Some

speculated openly that there

of sexual violence

a great deal of public

and

toward Mrs. Hill and her teenage

daughters. But the Hills tried to keep the publicity to a

minimum;

they emphasized the absence of violence and otherwise declined

comment. They later moved

to Connecticut

and took pains

the family from reminders of the bizarre episode. requests for interviews and offers of

Almost two and of Life carried a

perate Hours.

to shield

rejected all

for their story.

a half years later, the February 28, 1955, issue

review of the

The

payment

They

new Broadway melodrama The Des-

review, part of

what

Life labeled a

story, described the play as a "re-enacted"

"True Crime"

account of the

Hills'

nowhere suggested that the play was fictionalized. It was accompanied by photos of the Hills' former home: The magazine had rented the house from the new owners, transported cast memordeal and

bers from the play to

photographed them

what was described

at the site in

as the "actual" house,

scenes from the play.

Some

and

of the

large photos vividly depicted scenes of violence of the sort the Hills

repeatedly said had not occurred during their captivity.

Thus the

factual relationship

between the Hill incident and The

Desperate Hours was extremely thin. What made The Desperate

Hours

melodrama was

a gripping

liberal

use of bloody violence,

drunkenness, profanity, sex, and heroism. These elements were the antithesis of those in the actual Hill captivity. But because of the Life feature, curiosity

in the Hills'

and speculation about the incident

up

flared

new community.

That was when James Hill phoned his Harvard Law classmate

Bob Guthrie

My

first

to ask for help

step

was

filed suit. In pretrial

and Guthrie assigned

me

to the case.

to ask Life for a retraction. Life refused.

discovery

we found

We

that the Life feature and

the consequent reemergence of the Hill family into the public eye

were the result

of a

common

sort of journalistic coincidence:

The

tryout of The Desperate Hours took place in Philadelphia, near the

neighborhood where the Hill incident had occurred.

ment

editor,

Tom

the idea for a review with an unusual

We

Life's entertain-

Prideaux, heard about this coincidence and got

also found out that in the

"news"

view

angle.

of Life's editors, the

maga-

CRAZY RHYTHM

81

/

"True Crime" format required that a highly explicit connection be made between the Hill incident and the Desperate Hours

zine's

review. Accordingly, a series of drafts of the feature's text

showed

gradual tightening of this relationship, until in the

published

version, Life said categorically,

who

"Americans

all

final,

a

over the country"

"read about the desperate ordeal of the James Hill family" can

"see the story re-enacted in Hayes' Broadway play based on the

book." arguments, responded to the Hills' suit by

Life, in pretrial

as-

serting that the article, notwithstanding disputes about its accuracy,

was protected by the

Amendment. To this claim the Hills central theme was a fabrication. As such, it

First

replied that the article's

was not constitutionally protected; instead, its false depiction of the Hills was an actionable invasion of their privacy for purposes of commercial exploitation.

The enough

trial of

New

Hill

v.

Time

Inc. ran for

two weeks before

a pleasant

York State Supreme Court judge named Arthur Klein

and a conventionally confused

jury.

Both

I

and

my

calmly compe-

tent trial assistant,

Don

why the Hills were

so bothered by the Life article. Life's account did

Fordham Law night school graduate and later the senior partner of Mudge Rose, saw what our job was. We knew the judge and jury might well wonder Zoeller, then a recent

not insult them. So what was

had

to get the jury as angry as

all

the fuss about?

we were

at

Time

We saw

Inc.,

that

we

and help them

see the issue not as libel but as an act of commercial exploitation,

an invasion of the privacy So

we

readily conceded at the trial that Life

deliberately to feel

of private persons.

harm

the Hills.

had not

set out

Who the Hills were, how they might

about being drawn back into the public eye and identified as

victims of the kind of ordeal portrayed in Desperate Hours

— these

questions were the furthest thing from Life's editorial mind. That

was our point: To the squadron of Life staffers and editors who spent weeks meticulously devising, editing, and polishing their article, the Hills were simply names in the news, one-dimensional journalistic props, not flesh-and-blood people. In short, we bet our case on the

theme of ice-cold institutional indifference. We showed the jury how the editing process had worked.

tainment editor

Tom

Prideaux's

first draft

Enter-

had described the play

as

82

/

Leonard Garment

"somewhat fictionalized" account. A Life researcher, aware that was pure fiction, put a question mark over the word "somewhat." But the senior editorial hand in the process disre-

a

the drama

garded the warning, drew a slashing line through the qualifications,

and made The Desperate Hours into a reenactment.

A Life researcher testified that the idea of photographing violent scenes from the play in the Hills' former

home was

considered by

the Life staff to be a "good gimmick." Another Life researcher testified that

came

it

to checking

story, files

was her job to check — with a check mark over — each fact in the story; but she admitted that when literally,

it

every word

whether the play was

was

1955, a

a

before the Life feature, in

In the researcher's

play with the idea." Prideaux had

why he

which Joseph Hayes, the

said, "Instead of researching

cases" of hostage taking, "I found

deaux

it.

New York Times article about the play, written in January

month

author of the play, had cific

"reenactment" of the Hill

a

she simply took her editor's word for

it

any

of the spe-

my imagination Hayes. We asked Pri-

best to let

met with

was

hadn't asked Hayes whether the play

in fact

about the Hill incident. Prideaux said authors are not necessarily the best judge of what inspires them, adding, "It would have been a

waste

of time." In perhaps the trial's

tic insensitivity,

crowning

moment

of journalis-

Prideaux testified that since there was a "connec-

tion" between the Hill incident and The Desperate Hours, Life "it

was an obligatory thing

And

that, kiddies, is the

chillingly large punitive

Mrs. Hill did not

felt

to do, to point out this connection."

kind of unguarded hubris that produces

damage

testify,

verdicts against the press.

though she was present and was

intro-

duced to the jury so that no one could suggest she was being hidden

away

lest

she

somehow damage

testified that she

had

the Hills' case.

Two

psychiatrists

sustained lasting injury from the distorted

come through the original hostage incident well but had fallen apart when the Life article brought back her memories, transformed them into her worst nightmares, and presented them to the world as reality. Mrs. Hill's therapy had publicity of the Life article. She had

included the treatments.

administration of thirty electroconvulsive shock

The doctors

a psychological

tinderbox. Life,

testimony, attributed Mrs. Hill's lingering.

was and would remain calling no expert to refute this symptoms to menopause and ma-

testified that she

CRAZY RHYTHM The

jury returned an

award

83

/

compensatory and

of $175,000 in

punitive damages, the largest invasion-of-privacy award in the

had wanted

state's history (several jurors

$500,000).

The next morning, I was

to

award

as

actually dismayed that

much

as

The New-

York Times did not feature a page one story about the miraculous

triumph

of the people over the press that Zoeller

and

had wrought

I

in the dismal precincts of Foley Square.

On

appeal, the state courts affirmed the

judgment

of liability.

Time Inc. then filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court's decision to hear the case established that large public

issues

were involved.

an attractive picture

— of

Nixon,

It

summoned up what seemed

also

I

apparently passed from the political scene,

one

of the nation's largest

suggested to Nixon that he argue the appeal, the clients

joined in the request, and

Nixon

me

— for the case and for Richard Nixon's future

who had

defending the right of privacy against publishers.

to

Nixon eventually agreed

to do so.

At

first

believed, not unreasonably, that he ran a large risk by this

some of his oldest ideological enemies now sat on would have their knives out for him. But he also saw emergence as a Supreme Court advocate could become part

decision, since

the Court and that his

of people's perception of

him

as a

"New

Nixon," a disciplined advo-

cate respectful of constitutional principles, not the bitter politician

lashing out at journalists in his famous "last press conference" in California in 1962.

Moreover, the Hills were sympathetic middle-class mother and father

and that

of their five children.

have the best possible vehicle abuses of privacy.

If

who

litigants,

an average

genuinely valued their privacy

Arguing on their behalf, Nixon would for expressing his feelings

he did his professional

best,

about press

how badly

could he

lose?

Ni

ixon's preparation for his

Supreme Court argument began

in

1965 shortly after the Court agreed to hear the case. Just the previ-

ous year, in the landmark case

New

York Times

v.

Sullivan, the

Supreme Court had decided that a public official suing for libel was meet extremely high standards of proof. The Hill case involved the first post-Sullivan look by the Court at the competing claims of individual privacy and institutional press freedom. Nixon obliged to

84

Leonard Garment

/

could not afford to stumble before his old political adversaries or be

seen as doing nothing more than continuing his war against the press by other means. This

marked to see

his career,

how he met

someone

as

was

such as had periodically

a "crisis"

and during 1965 and 1966

I

had the opportunity

The "how" was a type of preparation that even detail-crazed as I was had to recognize as stunningly it.

meticulous.

Nixon began by reading and the Hill

trial record,

committing

virtually

background material, including federal and

ties of

law review

articles,

He

way through

read his

fessors

to

memory

the state court decisions, and copious quanti-

and philosophical writings on the First

and philosophers such

Amendment

state case law,

libel

and privacy.

analyses of law pro-

Alexander Meikeljohn, Thomas

as

Emerson, William Prosser, and Edward Bloustein. The famous

Nixon yellow tions,

accumulated,

legal pads

and preliminary

filled

with summaries, ques-

As his grasp of the memoranda on fine points

lines of oral argument.

issues tightened, requests

that needed elaboration.

came

He

to

me for

scribbled endlessly on drafts and galleys

Supreme Court briefs. As the day of argument approached, there were almost continuous question-and-answer drills, simulating a court argument, with his law firm colleagues. He worked of our

particularly hard grinding his points

down

was almost

left

preparation

obsessive,-

he

to their essentials. His

nothing to chance. His

behavior was a sign not only of professional pride but of his determination not to

let

recent defeats drive

him from

M,

the public arena.

.uch of Nixon's preparation for his argument took place

margins of his political and personal trips to clients' corporate

to

have

a

companion

life

board meetings.

to protect

— lunches,

on the

dinners, and

On airplanes, Nixon liked

him from being badgered by

well-

wishers. At the start of a flight, before burying himself in his notes

and yellow pads, he would instruct otherwise leave

On

one

trip

him

me

to

answer his questions but

alone.

during which

I

performed

my

mixed function

of

debate coach and security guard, Nixon was scheduled to speak in

Miami to directors of a company called Investors Diversified Services. The evening before the speech, we went to the nearby home

CRAZY RHYTHM of

85

/

We

Warner-Lambert's Elmer Bobst for drinks.

dined at a local

country club with Bobst and his wife, then got into a car for a drive to the place

home

where we were scheduled

in a Miami-area

to

spend the night, a new

development. Nixon took one

real estate

look at the place, and his always-operational political instincts and suspicions told

him

that in the

pect to get pictures of

photograph

him

in the

morning the developers would exhouse in order to use his name and

He

for publicity purposes.

ordered the driver to take us

back to the Bobst home, about forty miles away. after midnight, the gates estate.

we

and

go." So over

we

"Come

went, two

on,

New

come back Garment.

him

for

at

over the

It's

York lawyers, briefcases

We were able to get into the pool house, which We turned out the lights like kids at summer camp.

all.

beds.

arrived,

high wall surrounded the

told the driver to

seven-thirty a.m. and then said,

wall

A

were locked.

What now? Nixon

When we

had twin

That night Nixon talked until he fell asleep. He told me his consuming interest was foreign policy. He talked about world affairs at length and said he felt his life had to be dedicated to great foreign policy purposes. This man, fiercely determined to stay in the political life for

which he was

in

many ways

so

ill

suited, told

driven to do so not by the rivalries or ideological of

me

he

felt

commitments

domestic politics but by his pacifist mother's idealism and the

profound importance of foreign

That was the

money, belonging his idea of a

among even

affairs.

Nixon

night's theme.

golf

were

just

not

worthwhile existence. He had lived "in the arena,"

great public events, and that

if it

said that accumulating

and playing

to exclusive clubs,

meant "a shorter

life" for

he would do anything, make any

was where he wanted to stay, him. In particular, Nixon said

sacrifice, to

be able to continue

using his talents and experience in making foreign policy. "Anything," he added, "except see a shrink."

When I woke up

the next morning, Nixon had

speech. Bobst appeared, unsurprised to find

Nixon must have

told

him about our

left to

me on

make

his

the premises,-

adventure. Bobst and

I

sat

by

the pool from breakfast through lunch and had a long, surprising conversation.

Some

son, a thoughtful,

of

it

was about

Bobst's

life.

He was

a minister's

kindly man who looked like Mr. Magoo and spoke

in a formal basso profundo voice that

managed

to

make

"hello"

86

sound

/

Leonard Garment

like a portentous public

pronouncement. He was known as a and had played a large role in

stickler for ethics in corporate life

funding cancer research.

spoke

We

He was

deeply interested in China and

morning about

at length that

some about

also talked

its

power and importance.

Bobst's hopes for Nixon.

By now,

Bobst was convinced that Nixon would be president and told

me

Nixon had often talked about what Nixon would do in He said he and Nixon felt that "the most important thing" to be done in foreign affairs was to "bring China into the world." But the two of them disagreed on what to do about Vietnam. Bobst thought it was an unmitigated disaster from which the United States must quickly withdraw. Nixon insisted that the U.S. position in Vietnam was that of a "cork in the bottle," and pulling the cork quickly could have unknown, even catastrophic, consequences. As Bobst talked, however, it became clear that the real issue between them was merely whether to get out quickly or slowly. Nixon, said Bobst, accepted that Vietnam could not be "won" and that we would eventually have to withdraw. I was not destined to find out any more about Nixon's foreignthat he and

the White House.

policy vision, at least on that

Nixon returned

On

trip.

to his yellow pad.

I

the flight back to

New York,

did the eating and drinking for

both of us and browsed through a paperback. There were no questions,

no more summer-camp confessions.

N,ixon continued

his intense preparation for the Hill

through the morning of April 27, 1966,

him from

the lawyers lounge in the Supreme Court just before the 7

Court was scheduled to convene. He was yellow pads.

hand on

argument

when I anxiously summoned

me

When and

I

tried to

said,

move him

"Never rush into

slowly to our assigned seats, as

if

still

flipping through his

along, he laid a restraining a public place."

We

strode

to the strains of "Hail to the

Chief." At precisely 10:00 a.m. the nine justices appeared silently

from behind their red velvet curtain and quickly took their Chief Justice Warren called the

he called the appeal in Time

first case.

Inc.

v.

Then, shortly

after

seats.

noon,

Hill.

Time's lawyer, Harold Medina, argued that the Life article was basically an accurate depiction of the connection

between The Des-

CRAZY RHYTHM

87

/

per ate Hours and the real Hill case. Therefore the piece was a com-

ment on the news and, as such, was constitutionally protected. Nixon's main effort was to demonstrate that the magazine had consciously presented the fictionalized play as a "re-enacted" ac-

count of the Hill incident: The depiction of the

was

a deliberate falsification,

home

former Hill

justify the use of the

Hills'

involvement

an admitted "gimmick" designed to

the magazine's review of the pla^.

as a

"True Crime"

Nixon argued

site for

that Life's article

satisfied the stringent constitutional test for publishers' liability.

This was Nixon's

sounded

first

argument in any appellate

like a polished professional of the bar

court, but

he

— his footing confi-

dent, his language lawyerlike, his organization clear.

He had

true

"bottom," responding to dozens of tough questions. The Court obviously relished the performance. John MacKenzie, editorial page writer

on the law

for

The

New

now

the senior

York Times and then

covering the Court for The Washington Post, wrote that Nixon's presentation was "one of the better oral arguments of the year."

According to Bernard Schwartz's biography of Earl Warren, Super Chief, at a

Court luncheon shortly

after the

argument the

justices

expressed surprise that Nixon had done so well. Bruce Allen Mur-

Abe Fortas notes that soon after the argument, Nixon had made "one of the best arguments that he had heard since he had been on the Court" and that, with work, he

phy's biography of Fortas said that

could be "one of the great advocates of our time."

Nixon and

I

came away from the argument

feeling

we had

Hugo

Black, a

scratched out a narrow majority of justices. Justice

Amendment

had been hostile during the argument. By contrast, forceful statements on privacy by Justices Warren and First

absolutist,

Fortas were encouraging

— but, after some thought, not surprising.

two men had been in the political arena and knew firsthand how fierce and lacerating the press could be when it fastened on a target. They would see that for private persons, such unwanted and false exposure could be, in Nixon's words,

Nixon observed

that these

"as traumatic as a physical blow."

We flew back to New York at little after

dawn. Aboard the plane, Nixon continued working.

parted at La Guardia. fell

the end of a day that had started a

I

went home, drank

into an exhausted sleep.

a couple of vodkas,

We and

88

I

my

arrived at

work

Leonard Garment

/

at

about ten the next morning and found on

desk a five-page, single-spaced

from Nixon. Upon

memorandum

addressed to

me

Avenue apartment, Nixon had dictated a tape of detailed, self-critical comments on his argument and an assessment of points he would now handle differently. Rose Mary Woods had transcribed the tape early the next morning. It remains the most instructive example of Richard finally arriving

back

Nixon's tenacity and discipline that

I

at his Fifth

have ever

read, including the

papers he produced in his presidential and postpresidential years.

There was no reason

for

Nixon

reargued (rearguments were case

was

over. Nixon's

to believe that the case

rare).

As

far as

we were

would be

concerned, the

memorandum was a pure exercise in intellec-

tual self-criticism:

Leonard Garment

TO:

April 28, 1966

FROM:

Richard M. Nixon

Now that the case is over,

here are

some

of the points

deserved more emphasis in the oral argument.

.

.

I

believe

.

THE FACTS I

think

it

would have been most

effective after

my

completing

analysis of the LIFE pictures to turn to Justice Fortas and to

have directly replied to the question he asked Medina as to whether there had been some "rather ugly incidents" in the play. Medina as you recall answered that question in the negative. I could have briefly recounted in a most effective way the murder of the trash man, the killing of two of the and the constant convicts, the wounding of the boyfriend use of profanity in its ugliest form throughout the play. .

.

.

.

LIFE'S

.

.

RESPONSIBILITY

should have read that dramatic interchange in the record where you asked Prideaux if he had read the green [editing]

I

and he answered, "Yes."

I

file

could have then followed that up by

asking the Justices to read the contents of the

which

file

included Hayes' story as well as the current news events and

then to reach their

own judgments

as to

whether

.

.

.

any one

CRAZY RHYTHM of

them would have proceeded

to

/

89

"assume that the play was

a

re-enactment of the Hill incident." LIFE'S I

MOTIVE

think

it

would have been helpful

to give the

to the true nature of the right of privacy

from defamation.

.

.

.

What I intended

Court an idea as

and how

it

to point out

permitted was that as distinguished from

libel

hurt the plaintiff through the use of falsehood

.

is

.

.

differs

time

if

intent to

completely

irrelevant in the tort of privacy.

Nixon's

memo concluded with an analysis of the constitutional

underpinnings of the right of privacy.

He

predicted the problems

inherent in a free-floating rationale for a general right of privacy, stated in Griswold

first

v.

Connecticut (1965). In that case, Supreme

Court justice William O. Douglas, writing

for the majority, could

not cite any specific constitutional foundation for a general right of privacy, but

claimed that such a right could be inferred from

constitutional "emanations" and "penumbras." Griswold's

dled language brought

vacy

issue.

new

mud-

confusion to the discussion of the

pri-

Nixon, in his midnight memo, wrote:

THE CONSTITUTIONAL NATURE OF THE PRIVACY RIGHT .

.

.

This kind of analysis,

if

followed to

its

conclusion,

is

both

inaccurate and potentially dangerous from a Constitutional standpoint. In Griswold,

it

was

essential to find that there

was

a "Constitutional right to privacy in marriage" since the issue

there

was the power

of the state to impair that right.

had been found that the

right of privacy in marriage

Unless

it

had

Constitutional status, the Connecticut statute could not have

been declared unconstitutional.

Here the question is not the power of the state to infringe on a right but the power of the state to recognize and implement a right.

-L

he

memo

showed two things nagging

tionist soul. First, light factual

at

Richard Nixon's perfec-

he believed he had missed opportunities to high-

arguments that would have helped place the Hill case

90

Leonard Garment

/

farther outside the zone of constitutional protection defined

York Times

Sullivan.

v.

More important, he

by

New

regretted his failure to

more precise expression to his shrewd insight that Douglas's weak reasoning in Griswold was going to get the

give fuller and Justice

Court into deep and dangerous constitutional waters.

Griswold

later

became the key authority for the Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade-, and Griswold's confusion,

decision on abortion in

criticized by both liberal and conservative scholars, has seriously undermined the legitimacy of Roe. In 1987, more than twenty years after the

Griswold decision, the confirmation hearings on the nomi-

nation of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court reverberated with the

problem that Nixon saw coming.

M.

.ay

and most

of June passed

without word from the Court.

On An

we had disappointing news: come down restoring the case to the docket for rearguthe fall. Nixon interrupted his cross-country campaigning

June 20, the last day of the term, order had

ment for

in

Republican candidates in the 1966 midterm elections, a crucial

part of his burgeoning presidential effort, and set aside three

weeks

of arguments. Reargument was another smooth, professional performance by both Medina and Nixon. I thought Nixon was even better and more relaxed this time. But the attitudes and apparent lineup of Court opinion had changed, from our point of view for the worse. As the questions and comments by the Court proceeded, it seemed clear that only the chief justice and Justice Fortas were

to focus intensively

on October 18 and

on the altered array

19, 1966,

holding fast to their earlier sympathies for the Hills' claim.

Xhe

decision

came down on January

9,

York State court and remanding the case

was 5-4, with Justice

1967, reversing the for a

new

New

The vote

five justices writing separate opinions.

Brennan wrote

for the majority, holding that the trial

judge's charge to the jury did not instruct the jurors

tional clarity under the

Sullivan,

trial.

which required

now

operative rule of

New

with constituYork Times

a finding that the challenged material

published with legal malice

— that

is,

with knowledge of

v.

was

falsity or

CRAZY RHYTHM

/

reckless indifference to the question of truth.

was written by

Justice Fortas, joined

91

The

principal dissent

by Chief Justice Warren and

Justice Clark. This dissent argued that the trial court's charge, while

not a "textbook model," nevertheless satisfied the Sullivan standard.

When

I

learned about the decision via a phone call from the

clerk of the Court,

I

called

Nixon

at his

apartment.

He

listened,

asked one or two questions about the authorship of the opinions,

and then

said, "I

always

appeal against the press.

knew I wouldn't be permitted to win a big Now, Len, get this absolutely clear: I never

want to hear about the Hill case again." Without a pause, he turned to some business involving the 1968 presidential campaign.

D libel

was ies

uring the years after Hill,

I

had the lukewarm comfort

law turn around. The ironic to stimulate debate in

effect of the disturbing Hill result

law school

articles

and case commentar-

over what arguments private people should be able to

cases like Hill. In 1974, in the libel case of Gertz Inc., Justice

of seeing

v.

make

in

Robert Welch,

for the Supreme Court majority was applicable only to public figures, not to Under Gertz, the Hill family would have won

Lewis Powell wrote

that the Sullivan rule

private individuals.

Supreme Court. Another decade passed. In late 1985 there appeared a book by Bernard Schwartz titled The Unpublished Opinions of the Warren Court, in which Schwartz analyzed major Warren Court cases in in the

light of previously secret draft opinions

randa.

and

justice-to-justice

Anthony Lewis, reviewing the book for The

memo-

New York Times,

noted that the most acrimonious political struggle described by

Schwartz was the clash between Justices Hugo Black and Abe Fortas over Time Inc.

v.

Hill.

Midmorning on a Tuesday in January 1986 I got a phone call from Richard Nixon. "Did you see Tony Lewis's review in Sunday's Times 2 Why don't you check it out? Maybe we'll find out what .

really

happened in that case."

the subject to It

1966,

me

in

twenty

It

was the

first

time he had mentioned

years.

turned out that at the Court's private conference on April 29,

two days

after the first oral

argument in the

case, the vote

was

92

/

Leonard Garment

6-3 to affirm the judgment in favor

of the Hills.

The

chief justice

assigned the drafting of the Court's opinion to Fortas.

Few

in

Washington who knew Abe Fortas on the day he was

appointed to the Court would have marked

He came from

press.

high-quality work.

He won

he was editor-in-chief velt

New

violinist

a scholarship to Yale

of the Yale

Dealer. After World

Law Journal,

War

II

flourished financially and politically. forces in

he

Mem-

set

Law

for

School, where

and became a Roose-

up a law practice with

Thurman Arnold and

He was prominent

in the anti-

Washington in the 1950s and argued

of civil rights cases pro bono. v.

an enemy of the

with a large capacity

the famed trust-busting attorney general

McCarthy

as

a lower-middle-class Jewish family in

boy and talented

phis, a brilliant

him

The most famous was

a

number

the 1963 Gideon

Wainwright, in which the Supreme Court constitutionally guar-

anteed a right to counsel for indigent defendants in serious criminal cases.

Fortas also viser,

became the quintessential Washington

and confidant. His most important

insider, ad-

client in this respect

was

Senate Majority Leader and later President Lyndon Johnson. In 1965

Johnson appointed Fortas to the Supreme Court sincere objections

— over Fortas's very

— at a Johnsonian press conference called without

knowledge or consent. Thus was Fortas launched on a

Fortas's

judi-

cial career.

newcomer to the Court, Fortas was a strong, confident figure. His first year was a great personal success. The New York Times law reporter Fred Graham called him a "promising member of 'the club' " who was fast becoming "a power on the Supreme Even

as a

Court." U.S.

among

those

News &) World Report said he could be "counted who will set the tone and style of the Court in the

future."

One member

of the Court,

Hugo

Black, violently disagreed.

Black had overcome his prior membership in the

Ku Klux Klan

to

gain his Court appointment from Roosevelt in 1937 and, ever since,

had worn the mantle

of the Court's liberal. Black disliked every-

thing about Fortas. Fortas's biographer Bruce

Murphy

says Black

saw Fortas as a "pretender to the throne of leadership" on the Court. Schwartz's book portrays Black's intense antipathy to Fortas as even

more than

that,

and

in fact rather mysterious:

It

was apparent

al-

CRAZY RHYTHM

/

93

most from the day Fortas joined the Court and intensified sharply was simply what it appeared to be:

thereafter. Perhaps the aversion

the ideological absolutist Black's detestation of the political pragmatist Fortas.

Perhaps Black saw in Fortas a descendant of his ancient

adversary Felix Frankfurter, a proponent of the doctrine of balancing

competing constitutional

interests, a

philosophy deeply offensive to

it was something was ultimately determined the outcome of Hill.

Black's fundamentalist soul. Perhaps

ever

o

it

ver the years, Fortas's attitude toward the press had

hostile, partly

of

because of his bruising encounters with

else.

What-

grown more it on behalf

Lyndon Johnson. And in the Hill case, Fortas was truly stirred by saw to the Hill family. Nixon's presence in the case

the injustice he

was incidental

to Fortas:

Whatever political baggage the former vice

president might be carrying, he also happened to be bearing the right message. Fortas, a political professional, also

skilled

admired Nixon's

performance under pressure. Fortas produced a coruscating

sixteen-page majority opinion draft in the Hill case. "Needless, heedless,

wanton and

deliberate injury of the sort inflicted

by

Life's

picture story," he said, "is not an essential instrument of responsible

journalism." Fortas also wrote a passionate defense of privacy, what

Schwartz

by

a

calls "as

member

broad a statement of that right as any ever

made

of the highest court."

Fortas's choice of strong language turned out to be imprudent.

Hugo Black welcomed

the broad scope, intensity, and attendant

They presented him with an opportudown to size. But for this job Black needed time, and he found a way to get it. Fortas, because of critical comments from various justices when his draft opinion was first circulated, found it necessary to make revisions. Black wrote what Murphy

weaknesses

of Fortas's draft:

nity to cut Fortas

calls a

"petulant" note to Fortas, insisting that because of the

changes, Black, too, needed extra time

allowed

—

— more than the current term

to rewrite his response. Fortas agreed to reargument of

the case in the Court's next term.

Meanwhile, Black continued his campaign against said to other justices that Fortas's draft

ment opinion he had

seen in a

was "the worst

Fortas. Black First

Amend-

dozen years" and added that

"it

94

would take him

all

/

Leonard Garment

summer

the greatest dissent of his

to write his dissent,"

life."

The day

which "would be

before the reargument of

the Hill case, Justice Black answered Fortas's sixteen-page

randum

of affirmance

sixteen-page

by distributing

memo of his own,

made

an opposing

a blockbuster denunciation of Fortas

most

and, as promised, one of the

to his colleagues

memo-

forceful statements Black ever

of his judicial philosophy. For instance, Black said,

I am unable to recall any prior case in Court that offers a greater threat to freedom of speech and press than this one does.

After mature reflection this

.

.

.

Black's lobbying and his extraordinarily hyperbolic

dum, timed

for the eve of

memoran-

reargument, had the intended

effect,

fi-

nally garnering the votes for a majority.

The irony is that after all the speculation about how the Court would respond to Richard Nixon, personal antagonism toward him had no effect on the case's outcome. The two justices who most detested Nixon's politics, Warren and Fortas, were unshakable defenders of his position in the Time Inc. v. Hill case. Instead, the personal clash that determined Hill's outcome was the animus between Black and Fortas. In the course of their battle, Fortas's oldstyle liberal, pluralist notion of press

weighed against other values gave way

which was much

larger

freedom as a value to be

to Black's idea of press rights,

and more uncompromising in

its

claims.

iJ ullivan and Hill symbolized the politics of the time and prefigured the country's politics in the subsequent decades. Sullivan's

enormous expansion

of press

freedom occurred in part because the

case involved chilling restraints imposed by a southern court and jury in the middle of the civil rights revolution. Hill

the

way

it

was

was decided

in

partly because of the pro-press enthusiasm so re-

cently generated by Sullivan. At the same time, political activists were becoming more generally antagonistic toward the government

and other traditional bastions tagonism and asserted

On

of

power; the press mirrored this an-

more power

for itself in expressing

it.

the other side of the cultural divide stood citizens starting

CRAZY RHYTHM to be offended

/

95

by what they saw as the arrogance

of journalists

intellectual elites in riding heedless over the interests

more ordinary folk. The beginnings Richard Nixon president in 1968.

of

and

of

of this cleavage helped elect

In the years that followed, the division deepened. For journalists, children of Sullivan

and

and values

Hill,

many

Watergate made the idea

any press restraint anathema. This view led journalists

to use

Sullivan in a self-aggrandizing and ultimately self-destructive way.

They acted out limit;

as

if

many

they thought the First Amendment's writ ran with-

The resentment engen-

citizens thought otherwise.

dered by what was viewed as the superciliousness of the press and other such elites surely played a role in forming the country's increasingly conservative disposition during these years. a relationship

that

is

now

It

also led to

between the press and other American institutions

seriously awry. Post-Watergate

norms

of journalistic

behavior have generated widespread popular anger, and court decisions and jury verdicts reflect the growing sentiment. Thus, today

the press finds itself in an environment so hostile as to threaten the liberty that

In a

Hugo Black was

so sure he

more concrete matter,

Hill took her

own

life in

It is

should be noted that Elizabeth

it

I

can give

and unwanted publicity

Mrs. Hill's untimely death; suicide assertions.

securing.

August 1971. Since James Hill gave

permission to discuss this matter, say that the false

was

is

my view of it.

I

of the Life article

me

do not caused

too mysterious an act for such

not unfair, however, to say that troubled persons,

clinging to their psychological integrity in an increasingly invasive

world, suffer with special acuteness

when

they are forced into the

community attention. In many cases them more than just transitory embarrassment

spotlight of negative

their or-

deal brings

or a gen-

eral sense of

put

it

resentment

at a trespass.

It

brings, as Justice

Hugo Black complexities and particularities of Abe

But this sort of reasoning rubbed a righteous the

Harlan

in agreeing with Fortas, "severe risk of irremediable harm."

wrong way,

just as the

jurist like

Fortas provoked in Black a vast resentment.

morning in 1970, a year or so after I joined President Nixon's White House staff, Abe Fortas came to see me. He said his XZyarly one

96 visit

had nothing

Leonard Garment

do with law or

to

which

policy area for

/

I

politics. It

had White House

concerned the

His mission, Fortas explained humorously and

whether some way could be found

to

deftly,

was

to see

permit musicians to deadhead

and other large musical instruments on airplanes that had

cellos

excess space.

point out to

Still

me

an accomplished

violinist,

he was

at pains to

that he could hold his fiddle in his lap and

therefore not self-interested on this issue. said,

arts, a

responsibility.

Would

I

was

help out? Sure,

I

but don't hold your breath while the Civil Aeronautics Board

decides whether to waive

its

rules against such practices.

By then Fortas had resigned from the Court amid scandal. In made himself a lame duck by announcing he would not run for reelection, he tried to appoint 1968, after President Johnson had

Justice Fortas to the post of Chief Justice.

The nomination was

blocked by revelations that Fortas had received a private honorar-

ium while on

the Court and had, to boot, given Johnson a great deal

of strictly political advice.

Then in May 1969

a Life

magazine

article

revealed that Fortas had accepted a substantial honorarium from the financier Louis Wolfson, Securities

who was

then being investigated by the

and Exchange Commission. Fortas was forced

Court altogether. To the end

off the

of his days, according to his biographer

Bruce Murphy, he maintained to friends and colleagues that the Life

had been Time

article

Inc.'s

punishment

of

him

for his role in the

Hill case.

When

Fortas

came

to see

me

in 1970

I

had never met him but

did feel a personal tie because of the Hill matter.

mentioned the tas. In all his

so

much

was offer

a

case.

As we

chatted,

This produced a surprising outburst from For-

time on the Court, he

said,

no case had affected him

or so deeply offended his sense of fairness and equity. "It

bad result and terribly unfair to the Hill family," he

you

I

my apologies for not being more

said. "I

effective."

Fortas and I became something between acquaintances and friends. He could be a shrewd and merry counselor (or a cold and difficult man if he chose), and from time to time I called on him for

saw why President Johnson couldn't break his habit of turning to Fortas for counsel, even when Fortas had ascended to the supposedly cloistered life of a Supreme Court justice. Fortas's last big piece of advice to me came after Nixon was driven from office, advice.

I

CRAZY RHYTHM and

was

it

that

97

/

should try to persuade President Gerald Ford to

I

pardon his predecessor. In the

months

after

on the complex

flected

me

he gave

that recommendation,

condemnations

Fortas's various public

of Richard

political style they shared.

extraordinary gifts and each

was

would

praise the other in private while attacking in public

versa.

During the 1968

Each

— or vice

nomination as chief

jus-

Bruce Murphy says, Nixon encouraged other Republicans to

tice,

attack but

would not himself attack Fortas

plicit issue in the

was

re-

man had

Each

a bundle of contradictions.

fight over Fortas's

read

I

Nixon and

free

when

or

make

Fortas an ex-

1968 presidential campaign. Fortas, meanwhile,

with his praise of Nixon's

skills as

an advocate

— that

is,

who viewed such

talk as a mark of Not so in public, where Fortas would follow convention and bury Nixon rather than praise him. For each, it was a matter of audience. And this method of conduct-

speaking to other lawyers,

professionalism and sophistication.

ing political business contributed to both men's undoing. In

December

to return to

He was

New

at his

1974,

when I was

leaving the Ford administration

York and practice law, Fortas asked

charming

best.

As we

finished,

he

said,

me

to lunch.

"You know,

I

have a tiny law firm but an interesting practice over in Georgetown,

freedom to do as much or as little as I want. Would you like become my partner?" I told him I was honored, pleased, and tempted, but I had had enough of Washington and was determined to go back home. "You'll lots of

to

return," he said, grinning elfishly. "Washington

fun."

is just

too

much

h5H THE LONG MARCH

T

he concept

first

Nixon come-

of a

back was born

for

me

in that

long conversation in Nixon's office at 20 Broad Street in 1963.

Later there

would be the masses

of a presidential

of people

and elaborate machinery

campaign. But in the beginning there were just two

men whose needs and skills happened to fit together, in a multidimensional jigsaw puzzle.

me

I

recruited

case; concurrently,

he recruited

for his next assault

on the White House.

the

"New Nixon"

crowd.

By

had developed

ful

than simple legal

this

time

I

another and getting prises

to help I

him

the

Nixon

pieces

first

to the Hill

build a base

thus became the

camp

first of

a talent more amorphous and usewas good at introducing people to one them to work together in complicated enterskill:

I

— assembling human trains, tracks, and switches, even when

was not sure where I wanted to go. So, like the band manager I still I started rounding up a crew of disparate individuals with the talents to compose a Nixon campaign and the inclination to abandon normal lives for a plunge into the great unknown. The process of booking the right mix of players went forward from 1963 up to the day of Nixon's formal announcement of his second campaign

I

was,

for the presidency in

The

core of

February 1968.

Nixon veterans from campaigns

/

99

past

— people like

100 Peter Flanigan,

Maury

Lodge, Pat Hillings

through 1968,

/

Leonard Garment

Stans,

Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John

— was pretty much in place by 1965. From 1965

helped recruit

I

Frank Shakespeare,

new

people:

Martin Anderson, Roger Ailes, and Kevin.

own

on's

writing recruits

were

Finally, there

Tom

Evans, John Sears,

Gavin, Harry Treleaven, Alan Greenspan,

Bill

Phillips,

who

joined Nix-

— Ray Price, Pat Buchanan, and

joint draft picks

Bill Safire.

me — preemi-

by Nixon and

nently our law partner John Mitchell. After individual testing, each player fitted into a particular slot,

into a fairly efficient

passed muster was

campaign team. Nixon guided the whole opera-

tion along its course. Unlike me, he in too soon. So day after day he details, calling

who

and the disjointed collection was woven

had

a strategy: not to get locked

mused and muttered,

fussing with

here and there, soaking up information, reacting to

events, doubling back, breaking

away occasionally

for a foreign trip

or business meeting, ceaselessly tinkering, bobbing, weaving, and

maneuvering

at his disciplined chess player's

pace toward the 1968

endgame. This time, Nixon must have must be no screwup.

N,ineteen

sixty-four

and

said to himself over

was the year

in

which Nixon

over, there

tested and edu-

cated

me in presidential politics. The process was informal and indi-

rect.

Between

with him on

litigation

little

or

no

assignments notice.

I

would have

tutorial visits

There was no agenda,

sional exchange of biographical fragments or

some

just

an occa-

casual luncheon

gossip about the comings and goings of 1964's Republican presidential

contenders

— Barry Goldwater, George Romney, Nelson Rocke-

Charles Percy, John Lindsay.

feller,

During these meetings Nixon mostly listened with patience to

my

opinions, and incitements to Republican

adolescent sense of mission,

I

riot.

Rediscovering

I

ripened into something that might be useful.

duced

me

inside

game

me

to his political family

He

me

out

also intro-

— in order to give me a sense of the

more important, have the Nixon professionals look whether could play some kind of campaign role.

and,

over to see

my

offered exhortations with the certi-

tude of the authentic amateur. Nixon was prepared to wait until

stoic

increasingly uninhibited presentation of ideas,

I

CRAZY RHYTHM First in this

secretary.

"New"

family was Rose

/

101

Mary Woods, Nixon's executive

Rose played mother hen to the whole budding brood

of

Nixonites, shuttling the players in and out or on and off the

meet needs and priorities Always on duty, single-minded in

idiosyncratic schedule of "the boss" to that only he and she understood.

her devotion to Nixon and his family, Rose held the organization together from the

first

days at 20 Broad Street,

when

the incipient

operation consisted simply of him, her, and a Rolodex as big as the Ritz.

Woods grew up in working-class, Irish Catholic Chicago and became Congressman Richard Nixon's secretary almost as soon as he arrived in Washington.

My

guess

is

that she never thereafter

passed a single day distracted from her devotion to her boss. Rose

was the litmus

test of

Richard Nixon's guarded feelings toward the

world around him. She flashed signals of acceptance and sounded bells of If

alarm that mirrored the man's mercurial moods and feelings.

you could read Rose Woods, you could read Nixon. If you crossed If you crossed Rose, there was no court of

Nixon, you crossed Rose. appeal. I

liked and admired her from the start, partly because she re-

sponded so generously to

my

eagerness to be part of the Nixon

was her usual

entourage. "Don't bother to knock; go right in"

sponse

when

I

requested a

moment

of

because she was funny, smart, and

warmth, golden-red

much

of

Rose and

I

remained

Her

I

also liked her

lively personality,

and creamy white skin reminded

hair,

my mother that

Nixon's time. loyal.

I

felt

re-

me

so

not only needed but at home.

warm

friends until one dismal Watergate

day in 1973. She had come under suspicion for playing a part in the

famous 1872-minute tape president,

her

own

I

lawyer. Worse,

"Love, Len."

people

o

gap.

As harried and nervous counsel

to the

wrote her a curt note telling her she would have to get

We

who have

I

signed the chilling, one-sentence epistle

have since made up, but in the incomplete way

of

suffered a failure of trust.

ther old-timers from Nixon's

opportunities arose. In 1964,

life

mine

as

was heading

to

casually filtered into

when Nixon heard

I

California to take depositions in a case, he suggested that

Bob Haldeman, then manager

of the

I

look up

Los Angeles office of the

102

J.

Thompson

Leonard Garment

/

He had been with Nixon in 1960 and 1962 campaigns and knew him well. We met over

Walter

the

lunch.

Haldeman

he had to do staff

it

advertising agency.

said that

differently.

if

Nixon

He had

tried again for the presidency,

to be

and using his time. He had to

more

selective in organizing

key: looking good, rested, prepared, and, above are conventional

In the

same

all,

cool.

campaign formulae; then they were

year,

I

when Nixon asked me

was headed

was the Today these

realize that television

fairly fresh.

for Seattle in a utility-rate case

same routine with John

to go through the

Ehrlichman. Ehrlichman's views were like Haldeman's, but Ehr-

which he displayed in telling me about his and Haldeman's loony adventures in campus politics and with Nixon. Later I would see that wit turn knife-like, when some unfortunate White House staffer dropped the ball. Both men were friendly, intelligent, interested in Nixon and 1968 and noncommittal. They had already been through their struggles and disappointments with the Nixon-managed efforts of 1960 and 1962. They wanted to know whether Nixon could change lichman had a

fine wit,

—

his personal style, assemble a

new

staff,

and learn

to delegate au-

thority.

Around the same time, I met Bob Finch, the third California veteran that Nixon asked me to see. Finch, whose natural warmth and decency emerged from under ter,

that

all

the hard-boiled political chat-

was closest of the three to Nixon. Finch encouraged my belief Nixon was something more than the sum of a bunch of nasty

cliches.

making a run for the nomination in 1964. A Republican lawyer named Sherman Unger, who had been a Nixon advance man in 1960, was egging him on

Nixon began toying with the

idea of

though, in fairness to Unger, political cause and effect were impossible to sort out

where Richard Nixon was concerned. Haldeman,

Ehrlichman, and Finch were dubious about the on-and-off flirtation

with the idea

emerge

of a

1964 run:

It

was

either too soon for

as a national candidate or too little

campaign

effort.

Anyway,

it

was

and too

him

to re-

late for a real

clearly the conservatives' year to

run and Lyndon Johnson's year to win. But in 1964 the skeptical Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Finch

were not yet part of Nixon's organization.

It

was therefore Nixon

CRAZY RHYTHM who had

alone

to

/

103

keep himself from antagonizing Republican con-

servatives by challenging Barry Goldwater in the spring of 1964.

He

pulled himself back from the brink with inches to spare, announcing his support for Goldwater's

can convention in

A

nomination shortly before the Republi-

July.

few weeks before the Republican convention, Nixon had

vaguely instructed me, "Just go out there and get the

feel of it."

I

was booked into a room in a downtown motel in San Francisco, where there was actually nothing for me to do except hang out, look Republicans assembled en masse, sample the

at the

food,

and

visit the suite of

for a small

rooms rented

Nixon delegation

and a former Nixon press

They were

in

that included

secretary,

town ostensibly

city's

splendid

at the Saint Francis

Herb

Hotel

Haldeman, Ehrlichman,

Klein.

for reasons of nostalgia

and be-

cause Nixon was to introduce Goldwater to the convention after

was completed. But they were

the nomination for the future.

And who

could say?

also there to prepare

Maybe something

unpredictable

would happen in the combustible atmosphere that surrounded Goldwater's imminent triumph over the Republican establishment. We gathered in the Nixon suite to view the convention on television and await Nixon's arrival from I,

the lone

New

newcomer but nonetheless an

York, watchfully instant

member

alert.

of the

mowas even more wondrous

inner circle of a presidential candidate, was fascinated by every

ment

my sudden plunge into politics. It

of

because this was a time

power

to

The

when

politics

promise a transformation

and government

of national

still

had the

life.

televised convention proceedings started with a ninety-

minute reading

of the platform, a stupefying ritual that allows

for kibitzing, conniving,

and

ended abruptly when,

during

President

speech to his fellow Republicans, he thetical,

swipe

at the press.

time

tension building. This fake serenity

made

Eisenhower's

farewell

a passing, almost paren-

A commotion started in the Goldwater-

Horns honked, whistles blew, and clenched fists were thurst angrily at the surrogates for all media, the news booths that floated near the ceiling of the huge amphitheatre with their taunting CBS, NBC, and ABC logos. An animal roar shook the Cow

packed

galleries.

Palace.

Animal

roar

number two took

place soon afterward, while Nel-

104

Leonard Garment

/

son Rockefeller was speaking in support of a resolution to condemn Birchite extremism.

The Goldwater

in a sustained frenzy of rage,

troops in the galleries exploded

and the convention chairman's gavel-

ing and pleading had not the slightest effect. Rockefeller stood there, grinning, tickled pink. All along, his only

Goldwater

train

had been somehow

into riotous misbehavior that

hope

for derailing the

provoke the Goldwaterites

to

would demonstrate

their craziness to

Now it was happening. Haldeman jumped up and off

the convention delegates and the country. In our suite at the Saint Francis,

went our

Cow

the

band, sprinting to waiting cars for a dash out to

little

Palace to see whether a miracle might occur. During the

communications buff Haldeman moni-

six-mile, six-minute ride,

tored the continuing tumult on a tiny portable television first

I

had ever seen.

ment was

My

When we arrived in the hall,

set,

the

the frenzied excite-

in full storm.

still

first live

view

of a political

convention was a stunner.

Ablaze with night-baseball lighting, the floor was a packed crowd of delegates, banners, balloons,

tion paraphernalia.

It

was

newsmen, and every kind of convenThe galleries

hectic, but not riotous.

packed with Goldwater partisans were another worldly cry of anger poured from the rocking,

mass

and

of bodies,

by sheer noise,

sound

this

rolling,

other-

undulating

went on and on. If history could be changed was the moment. I couldn't remember a crowd it

compare with

to

An

story.

it

except for the

Bobby Thomson's miracle home run

pandemonium

at the

that followed

Polo Grounds in Septem-

ber of 1951.

This time, no miracle occurred. The Goldwater marshals, spread out

among

tors

watching the melee on

the delegates and linked by walkie-talkies to coordina-

TV

in vans outside the hall, kept tight

control of the floor. Gradually the uproar ran subsided, and the exciting

vention resumed and ran

The

final

moment

political history

moment

its

of

its

course, the din

of possibility passed.

The con-

predictable course.

excitement and most enduring piece of

came when Goldwater

uttered his famous accep-

tance-speech declaration, "Extremism in the pursuit of liberty

no

vice."

Animal

roar

number

three. In

an instant Goldwater

whatever minuscule chance he might have had to win

is

lost

the presi-

dency. But his deliberately incautious declaration also ignited conservative fires that are

still

burning.

CRAZY RHYTHM A

105

/

would have noticed that during Goldwater's felo-de-se, Richard Nixon was almost literally sitting on his hands. Just minutes earlier, Nixon had introduced the nominee to the delecareful observer

gates in a pick-up-all-the-marbles "unity" oration painstakingly crafted with an eye to the inevitable

opportunity

i

would present four years

Law Review colleague

well-known

name

radical lawyer in

from the

Nixon group,

so

I

divided

I

November and

the

my

old girlfriend and

late 1940s,

who was now

San Francisco under her married

of Beverly Axelrod. Beverly

were the only people

rod,

in

later.

had stayed in touch with Beverly Lourd,

Brooklyn a

it

outcome

knew

my time.

and her husband, Marshal Axelin San Francisco apart

Mornings,

I

from the

drifted alone

around

the convention meetings and lobbies, "getting the feel of things."

went sightseeing with Beverly, who showed off the city I hung out with the Nixonites at the Saint Francis. Afterward, Beverly would take me to meet her friends, mostly civil rights activists. We would listen to jazz, drive around, and debate politics. I was something of a carnival freak to Beverly's friends a Nixon "insider" who was a pal of Mother Courage. But the spirit was not hostile,- our disagreements stayed civil and friendly. Thus when Beverly asked me whether I could get her and Afternoons like a

I

proud parent. Evenings

—

her friends passes to the big show,

These

I

—

still

Cow

Palace so that they could take in the

a sucker for a left

hook

— agreed.

tickets, plus others similarly inveigled out of

unwary

Republicans and secret sympathizers, were used to stage nationally televised civil rights demonstrations in the

Cow

convention plaza. They were actually more like

Palace and the

riots,

marked by

noisy interruptions, manhandling of demonstrators, screams, forced ejections, arrests.

It

finally

began to occur to

something more problematic than

me

that Beverly

was

just a particularly energetic do-

gooder.

Looking back

— the

at the convention,

I

can see that the two incidents

torrent of right-wing hate during Rockefeller's speech and

Beverly's notion of a legitimate civil rights

demonstration— mark

the ideological boundaries of a time in the country's political his-

Categories were established at San Francisco that have stayed drawn since then. There were the swelling demands for justice, tory.

106

/

Leonard Garment

along with an expanding notion of what justice demanded, and there

were the anxieties and angers

of millions of southerners and, later,

middle-class whites. This fault line was blurred for a while by Goldwater's failed presidential candidacy. But, like the cleavages exposed

by Sullivan and

B,•ack

time

Hill, in

it

from the convention,

I

became

clear.

hunted

talent. In

1965

I

recruited

Tom Evans out of a playground sandbox in Brooklyn Heights, we were both

babysitting our toddlers on the weekend.

Arrow Collar handsome, the Korean War, and

of the

quintessential

a leader of

WASP,

New York

where

He was

a Silver Star hero

Republicans for Nixon

in I960, an act of considerable bravery in Nelson Rockefeller's well-

policed domain. Evans joined

my litigation department and became

the informal administrator of Nixon's 1968 campaign.

John Sears, another of

my litigation assistants,

was

a baby-faced

made prematurely old by hard times and famHe had a penchant for after-hours metaphysical musings concrete genius for politics. I brought him by Nixon's office

Catholic intellectual ily tragedy.

and a

when he was

being interviewed for a job at the law firm. Nixon

spotted Sears 's talent in roughly four minutes and drafted him, in 1965, as his full-time political assistant.

Nixon's

first

personal pick, hired in 1965, was the conservative

Buchanan, an energetic young

editorial writer Pat

his typewriter keys as

man who

they were a platoon of Jane Fondas. Nixon

if

soon balanced Buchanan with a moderate, Ray Price, the editorial-page editor of the recently defunct Tribune. Bill Safire, a of

bashed

New York

publicist,

who had been

New

York Herald

became the balance wheel

what would be the most celebrated writing threesome

in presi-

dential history. I

remember

my

first

meeting with

Safire, in 1965, at

Nixon's

suggestion ("You'll like him. He's with Rockefeller now, but he's

smart and funny and important to turned out to be a wisecracking grain

manner and

and

start fights.

funny.

He was

gossip about

New

a taste in clothes

thick rubber-soled shoes

He

us, so get to

know

him"]. Safire

Yorker with an against-the-

— garish plaid sports jackets and

— that seemed designed to cause heartburn

was, as Nixon described him, smart,

feisty,

and

also full of instruction, puns, and inside-baseball

New

York politicians

like Rockefeller, John Lindsay,

CRAZY RHYTHM

/

107

Rogers, Jack Wells, and Len Hall, as well as about Nixon's pros-

Bill

pects for 1968.

Each

of the three writers picked

by Nixon had

a different style,

and each was willing to blend his words with those when Nixon wanted a bouillabaisse.

During a lunchtime

stroll

on Broad Street in 1966

who

me to lunch at the Bankers Club

commodities futures and

his interest in

Richard Nixon's. In due course

larly

Greenspan and

One

took

I

I

remember

had a number clearly

I

ran into

my

Henry Jerome's band, Alan

old saxophone-playing colleague from

Greenspan,

of the others

I

to talk about

political futures, particu-

introduced the two men.

of talks during that

— a long dinner at

mating time.

Oscar's, a darkly over-

decorated and overpriced French restaurant on one of the narrow side streets that snake

around the Wall Street

area.

Even then,

Greenspan was impressively obscure, uttering perfectly formed sen-

money and finance that were largely unintelligible to me. What came across clearly, though, was his feeling for the poetics tences about

of

an arcane

historical

enues,

topic, the federal budget.

Talking about such stuff as

numbers, fixed commitments, anticipations

and the small area

for

of future rev-

discretionary federal

Greenspan brought the bewildering subject

briefly to life

spending,

with the

nice metaphor of the budget as the "central nervous system" of

America's

politics.

He helped me understand how

an economist, like the fingers of a

clinician,

the trained eye of

can detect hidden

strengths and pathologies in the country's economic entrails. I

appreciated the fact that over the years Greenspan, like me,

—

had made a useful connection between art and politics in his case, between music and numbers. After meeting Greenspan and hearing the budget spiel, Nixon was also impressed and asked him to join Arthur Burns, a Columbia University economist, as one of Nixon's informal advisers.

Greenspan

later

brought a young colleague (everyone was young

named Martin Anderson to see me. Anderson, like Greenspan an Ayn Rand acolyte, was a Columbia University economist who had just published a critical study of federal housing pol-

in those days)

icy,

The Federal Bulldozer. He became

and drafted a blizzard

director of our issues staff

of position papers,

some

of

which, like the

proposal for an all-volunteer army, later became law.

A

stray event brought us another important amateur.

One

of

108

Leonard Garment

/

Rose Mary Woods's many duties was to supervise the twice-daily mail delivery and see that it was not only processed and answered but read with care, so that the important stuff did not wash away in

Woods

the effluvia. In 1967 Rose as chief assayer of odds It

was

spotted a nugget and sent

it

to

me

and ends.

from William Gavin, a thirty-one-year-old high

a letter

school teacher. "Dear Mr. Nixon,"

May I offer two

it said,

suggestions concerning your plans for 1968?

Run. You can win. Nothing can happen to you, politically is worse than what has happened to you. Ortega y Gasset in his The Revolt of the Masses says: "These 1.

speaking, that

ideas are the only genuine

All the rest

himself

feel

is

why you

This

be.

and not as

are

effect,

with the

Leftist or

Run. You will win.

tell

me

that here

was some-

not only understood the weird metaphysics of Richard

Nixon but was in's

would have them

suggestion was enough to

first

who

one

does not really

are the only political figure

way they

vision to see things the Rightist kooks

He who

without remission. ..." You, in

lost, is lost

are "lost"; that

the ideas of the shipwrecked.

ideas,-

posturing, farce.

is rhetoric,

able to

cram

it

into a one-paragraph microchip. Gav-

second suggestion was also striking:

A

2.

tip for television: Instead of

wooden performances

those

why not have live press conferences your campaign on television? People will see you daring all, not asking and answering phony "questions" made up by your

beloved by politicians

.

.

.

as

staff

I

invited

Gavin

to visit

me

had expected to see a Wall Street

was surprised pinstriped

New York. He later told me he WASP in a blue pinstriped suit and

in

to find a street-corner type like himself (in a blue

suit).

Gavin was

a pleasant-faced

ble Irish Catholic sensibility.

He

young man with

reminisced with

Whyte's on Fulton Street about the experiences bred strangers

He

who

loved mainstream

me

we

a visi-

over lunch at

shared as city-

jazz.

agreed to send me, as the spirit

moved him, anything he

CRAZY RHYTHM

/

109

wanted to say about the campaign. Several hundred one-liners later, Gavin was invited to a Christmas party at the Nixon apartment on Fifth Avenue and was startled by Nixon's memory trick of greeting him as "the one-liner man." A few months later I brought Gavin into the campaign full time as a speechwriter and luncheon companion.

He

contributed,

among

other things, the elegaic "I see a

Miami

face ..." portion of Nixon's acceptance speech in

Beach.

After that he rode in Nixon's personal campaign plane, landed in

work as all-purpose House Republican Minority Leader Bob Michel. He pro-

the administration, and eventually went on to assistant to

vided Michel with speeches, policy advice, and, of course, one-

A

liners.

jazz fan,

he became a one-man congressional lobby

for

Willis Conover, the Voice of America's voice of jazz.

x\nd

that

was how the campaign machinery was put together

part Lego set until

and part jigsaw puzzle, one piece attached

one day the contraption shuddered to

to another,

life.

months before the 1966 elections, Nixon's time was mainly spent on the road, campaigning and gathering due bills from In the

candidates and Republican party leaders. Because of the "loser" tag

had

that he carried after his defeats in 1960 and 1962, he at electioneering this

Nixon

to

do well

time around.

also intended to play the role of president-in-exile, pre-

paring for the call to return from the tional leadership.

He wanted

New

York wilderness to na-

to establish himself as counsel to the

Republican party, not just campaigning for his client-candidates

all

over the country but appropriating to himself authority to shape national strategy. So he alternated his trips to East Illinois,

with

visits to

European and Asian capitals and meetings

with foreign and defense policy In this connection

Anonymous,

strategists.

Nixon once took me

to

lunch

at the

Recess

Club, on Broad Street, with Hungarian physicist Edward Teller. Teller brought along his impressive ego, near-impenetrable accent,

healthy appetite, and stock of pseudoscientific, mostly commercial ideas about the untapped resources of

could

make

New

Zealand, which he said

their developers filthy rich. After lunch,

Nixon and

I

110

Leonard Garment

/

Mudge

deposited Teller in a taxicab and walked back to the Nixon offices.

I

remarked

on

like epaulets

to

Nixon about the

large piles of dandruff sitting

Nixon

Teller's shoulders. "That's not dandruff,"

said solemnly. "It's Strontium 90."

In jet planes crossing the country slide into the certainty that

my

was

I

on solo business

to fulfill

my own

On

mother's) early ambitions for great achievement.

litigation load,

became the all-around campaign

I

headlong into everything.

read, wrote,

I

and talked

my

recruiting and proselytizing, extracting from ates the last drop of political assistance

trips,

(not to

I

would

mention

my

top of

pest,

plunging

politics nonstop, litigation associ-

and bringing coffee and

confidence each day to the handful of Nixon troops scattered around

20 Broad

Street.

I

had stumbled on one

of the world's surest

homeo-

pathic cures for depression.

During those years Nixon's personality. for better or for

I

came

He seemed

worse

know more

of the

odd pieces

of

never to forget a political face or

— a friend or enemy. He had experienced virtu-

ally every sort of political ity to retrieve bits of

to

circumstance and had developed the

information from this crowded past and

useful connections like an advanced computer.

As

abil-

make

a result, the

mo-

ment someone opened his or her mouth and began to say something Nixon knew exactly where the speaker was heading and where the speech would end. From courtesy or necessity, Nixon had to hear his visitor out. The waiting made him acutely uncomfort-

political,

— to the point of visible pain, verbal discontinuity, and a pro-

able

found aversion to having

were absolutely

He came

political conversations at all unless they

essential.

to prefer talking

with

diate family, fellow sports buffs,

new

just a

few people, like his imme-

and foreign leaders

information to pass along. Also

among

who at least had

his preferred

compan-

ions were trustworthy, politically sentient (and largely silent) listeners, to

whom

he could

draft

and

redraft his ideas via the rambling,

repetitious, stream-of-consciousness

world would

He found

later

become

monologues with which the

familiar.

the tape recorder another useful device for recording

events, impressions, and ideas, and for translating written speech drafts into texts bearing the

his closest friend

cadence of his

was the always

own

available,

speaking voice. But

always compliant,

al-

CRAZY RHYTHM ways

silent

yellow pad.

not only enabled

It

plined conversation with himself;

111

/

him

to conduct a disci-

also served as a kind of door

it

through which he could walk and shut out the world.

When Nixon

took out his yellow pad and unscrewed his pen, you

knew

was

it

time to move on.

These idiosyncrasies were

few results

just a

Nixon had somehow

process by which

how to make the much such an intensely private man

disparate parts of his personality work.

more tinkering

of the mysterious

in order to transform

figured out I

knew

there had to be

into a successful public figure. I

On

remember other anomalies during those

early

comeback

years.

one bizarre occasion on the road, in Minneapolis, Nixon was

due to make an evening speech to the Hennepin County Republican faithful.

When we

avoid the crowds around the elevator

We

banquet room.

were locked in

Nixon decided to and walk up the stairs to the

reached the convention

ducked into the

hall,

stairwell,

then found that

— and locked out, behind soundproof

fire doors.

we

We

ran up, down, and around for ten minutes, trying to find someone to rescue us.

Here was

my first real-life political test, and — drenched

in sweat, close to panic

—

I

was

hopeless. Nixon, the crisis veteran,

me

kept his cool (barely) and asked ground-floor door with our arrived.

My

fists

to help

him bang away on

while shouting for rescue.

career as an advance

man was

It

the

finally

ended. Only afterward

wonder why a veteran politician like Nixon would duck a crowd of admirers and thereby risk disaster. or so I I was dismayed when Nixon was foolishly suckered thought into making careless "Old Nixon" lapses. Once when did

I

—

—

campaigning in

New

Jersey he gratuitously urged that Rutgers, a

state university, discharge Professor

Eugene Genovese

for

having

wondered how he could do something so stupid; but of course it was quite deliberate. Nixon was simply playing to a constituency slightly different from the Friends

made

of

a pro-Viet

Cong

Leonard Garment.

I

speech.

was

I

later to learn that

he delighted in

lumpen "tastelessness." their fucking sophistication," Nixon would say. In time, other elements of "complexity" would make him an object ing the

media with

ing admiration by

acts of

many

irritat-

"So much this

for

and

of grudg-

intellectuals.

After the Genovese incident, Safire, Sears, and

I

drafted a re-

112

Leonard Garment

/

demptive speech, which Nixon delivered

managed both

University of Roch-

to

maintain his position on Genovese and

a general defense of

academic freedom. President Eisenhower

ester. It

mount

at the

wrote Nixon a

letter saying the Rochester speech was too liberal. Nixon pointedly sent a copy of the letter to Safire and me. Another time, at a press conference after a speech to the Boys Clubs of America, Nixon repeated the ludicrous charge by the organization's public relations man that the Marxist DuBois Club had ripped off the Boys Clubs' prestigious name. On my way to work I read Nixon's comment in the New York Post and rode up in the

elevator filled with fantasies of barging into his office with

God's

name

could you do

it?

years of hard work!" But

I

"How in

You've just gone and pissed away two

mumbled complaint

settled for a

to

who shrugged off the incident: "Well, Len, that's what hapwhen you listen to one of those damned press agents. Don't worry, it will pass." So it did, and — so brief is public memory Nixon,

pens

faster

than

moments

had thought

I

of

happy

reflexive satire,

and

The Nixon

possible.

nostalgia, there finis.

The press

haters had a few

of columns of was now the cheerful "New

were a couple

line

Nixon," not the old reactionary from California.

new image of Nixon's brought me unanticipated experiences. One day in the summer of 1966, the black comedian Dick Gregory asked to see Nixon — God knows why — but settled, agreeably, for me. He wanted to say nothing in particular but a lot about everything to someone who was prepared to listen. This burgeoning

more continuous hours touching, transcendentally strange monologue

This

I

did for twelve or

of a brilliant, funny,

that alluded to war,

poverty, race, space and time travel, extraterrestrial

life,

extrasen-

sory perception, fasting, running, yoga, prebirth and postmortem infinity, karma, communication among animals, flowers, and trees,

and the correct approach to the use

of drugs.

Grace and the kids were on Cape Cod ory and

I

met

in

my

living room,

backdrop of clouds, planes,

birds,

it

we

ate,

Gregory

stars.

I

still

summer, so Greglight,

from

late-

respectfully decline to

we managed

when we tumbled

talking, both of us famished,

ately seeking a diner.

for openers.

skylight provided a

and changing

drank, and/or smoked, but

until early the next morning,

Street,

for the

whose huge

afternoon sun to middle-of-the-night say what

That was

to stay at

out onto State

two men desper-

CRAZY RHYTHM

113

/

After that, nothing about the whirlwind of sixties nostrums

could surprise or shock me.

in spite of all my running around,

I

was marginal

to Nixon's role in

the 1966 congressional campaigns. People of different temperament

from mine had to do the careful job

of scheduling

Nixon through

the nooks and crannies of the various races. His principal helpers

were Rose Mary Woods, John

Sears,

John Whittaker, and Pat Bu-

chanan. They picked targets, assembled schedules, arranged transportation, did advance

work

for local rallies, distributed speeches,

press releases, and newspaper columns, and attended to the growing

mountain

of political detritus that

Bill Safire

there.

But in the

role in a

campaign

was, as usual, in and out final

momentum produces.

— an

idea here, a phrase

days of the campaign, Safire played the key

drama that had

as big a part as

any in Nixon's successful

pursuit of the presidency. In 1966 Nixon's opportunities

were Lyndon Johnson's headaches

— crime, inflation, and the Great Society. By contrast, the situation in

Vietnam was

difficult for the

hawkish Nixon

to exploit. Nixon's

opportunity on Vietnam, and the campaign team's sun,

came when

moment

in the

the October Disease, that presidential compulsion

to pull a last-minute rabbit out of a hat, struck President just before the congressional elections.

A

Johnson

conference of Asian na-

tions was scheduled for mid-October in Manila, and Johnson announced that he would attend. The resulting Manila Communique was published in The New York Times in October 1966. Before the day was over, Safire read the document, spotted an opening, and went to work. He typed out a critique of the communique, identi-

fying as

its

weakest point the proposal

for

"mutual withdrawal,"

arguably premature, of U.S. and North Vietnamese troops from

South Vietnam. The Viet Cong would be

left in place,

and, Safire

argued, they were fully capable of destroying the Saigon govern-

ment. Next, Safire drove to

New

campaigning there with Buchanan.

Jersey to see Nixon,

who was

Safire collected additional

com-

ments from the two of them, then withdrew to a New Jersey hotel and dictated to Rose Mary Woods a "Letter to the President," concluding with a series of questions about the Manila Communique. Nixon vetoed the "open letter" idea as too gimmicky, but he

114

/

Leonard Garment

agreed with the substance of Safire's

draft.

much Nixon

After

fid-

dling and Safire redrafting, there emerged another draft, "Appraisal of

Manila." But what to do with Safire

The to

New

knew Harrison

was

Salisbury, the assistant

York Times, and pulled out

run the

there

it?

full text of

a

all

managing editor

the stops to persuade

of

him

Nixon's "Appraisal." Salisbury told Safire

chance the text could be run, but only

was delivered

if it

before that day's afternoon deadline. For the next four hours, great

excitement seized the area around Nixon's law-firm

watched Nixon,

Safire,

and Buchanan work over the

redraft pages. Secretaries ran

The next day

back and

in the Times, backing

forth.

up

office.

final text

I

and

Messengers hovered.

a page

one story about

Nixon's response to the Manila Communique, was the

full text of

Nixon's "Appraisal." It

rare for the full text of anything, including presidential

is

speeches, to run in The

New York by

a full statement, particularly political professionals

son read The

is,

New York

"This

it

When

the paper does run

is

fit.

message to

very important." President John-

Times in his White House bed

the morning and had a purple

he had

Times.

a private person, the

First

he had his

publicly, in a televised press conference.

fit

first

thing in

privately.

Then

Although the true

was the Times, his public only be Richard Nixon. So Johnson denounced Nixon target of his presidential rage

target could bitterly

and

at length as a

"chronic campaigner [who] never realized what was

going on even

when he had an

official office. ..."

The Johnson staff cringed. Mrs. Johnson cringed. The country cringed. Nixon and his people were stunned by this monumental break. Nixon, of all people, was now cast in the unaccustomed role of public-spirited underdog,

charitable

My

words

of

manfully biting his

sympathy

lip

while offering

to a "tired" President Johnson.

only contribution during this historic episode was to put

Nixon together with Mike Wallace, who chartered a plane and flew to New Hampshire to get fresh Nixon footage for CBS News after Johnson blew up. I also suggested, via Rose Mary Woods, that Nixon gently allude to his 1962 press calamity: "I know what it is to be under pressure and control for a

Nixon

tired,

and

moment."

at his

pious best.

how

easy and

human

it

is

to lose

CRAZY RHYTHM There was

now

daylight,

and Nixon ran

had made him national leader

was now not

of the

115

/

for

it.

Lyndon Johnson

Republican party; the coming

bunch of congressional and state contests but "Johnson versus Nixon." Nixon was chosen by the Republican National Committee to deliver the Republicans' televised election-eve speech on November 5, 1966. If the Republicans did as well as he expected on Election Day, he would get double the election

just a

credit.

Xhe

1966 elections were a triumph for Nixon beyond his expecta-

Republican gains were bigger than predicted, and the candi-

tions.

Nixon had campaigned

dates

On

for

won pretty much

across the board.

election night, about forty staffers, volunteers, and friends were

invited to

As

York.

watch the returns

results

came

in a suite at the

Drake Hotel

in

New

Nixon, sequestered in a bedroom, kept a

in,

brought to him by John Sears. Nixon occasionally emerged to share his growing excitement with the group: "Have you seen those numbers? We're on the move. Have another drink on the house, everyone." Calls came in from grateful tally of the state-by-state results

winners

— including

Governor-elect Ronald Reagan,

who had

trounced Nixon's 1962 nemesis, Governor Pat Brown. Nixon

just re-

laxed enough to place a call to Walter Cronkite, on the air for CBS,

and conduct a

live

assessment of the election's significance.

One by one the senior members of the who was alone, stretched out on

staff

Nixon,

were invited

to visit

the bed, a phone in one

a highball in the other. For each visitor there was a perword of thanks and encouragement. For me, the message was warm, but what I remember best was the strange part. Nixon, by

hand and sonal

then reasonably well oiled reflectively, "You're

know how

don't

all

knew

didn't take

never going to

make

it

to do the trick), said

in politics, Len.

his assessment but merely tucked

the other things

I

that history's successful politicians are natural

ing back, I'm grateful that did. It

saved

You

just

me

hand

liars;

lying in

in stride piano. Look-

Nixon reached that judgment He would have done

a lot of trouble.

away Nixon

it

did not understand about myself.

politics is a basic skill, like a strong left

he

much

to lie."

was bothered by

I

with

(it

as

soon as

better had

116 he realized that he,

with

/

Leonard Garment

too, fell short

when

it

came

to dissimulating

skill.

A,.mong

which

the political advice with

I

continually pelted

him he should shore up his president-in-exile posture by resisting demands for comments on political trivia. He should, I said, avoid overexposure. Nixon went me one better: The Sunday before the 1966 elections, during a CBS interview, he announced Nixon,

I

told

one of his "moratoriums" least six

— this time a "holiday from politics for at

months."

What

this

meant was

Governor George Romney, would be allowed

larly the front-runner,

time to put their

that other presidential candidates, particu-

feet in their

famous in the great

mouths while Nixon dined with the

capitals of the world, letting pictures

with prime

ministers take the place of boring or dangerous words about the

economy and Vietnam. He went to Israel. A

cocktail reception

only one prominent invitee showed up

was given

— an

for

him, but

Israeli general

named

Itzhak Rabin, whose empty schedule and polite curiosity earned

him

a place in Nixon's

"Friends."

permanent memory bank under the heading

A couple of years afterward,

to the U.S., did not find

relationship with the

it

Rabin, as Israel's ambassador

difficult to establish a close

working

newly inaugurated President Nixon. Rabin's

successes in Washington, in turn, contributed to his eventual selection as prime minister of Israel.

Xor

the remainder of 1966 and into early 1967,

final stages of the presidential

tional activities

we

geared up for the

nomination contest. Some organiza-

went smoothly:

Political managers, local leaders,

and money would be there when needed. But Nixon a

commander-in-chief

for his

Army

of the

still

had to find

Potomac. This search

most important, almost obsessive, concern. He knew that his biggest mistake in 1960 had been running his own campaign. It demoralized his nominal managers, sent confusing signals to his organization, and exhausted Nixon himself. Worse, al-

became

his single

though Nixon was highly disciplined when analyzing abstract

CRAZY RHYTHM

/

117

he was deeply ambivalent when faced with personal decisions. He made costly mistakes when he listened to his inner voice, issues,

which did not always have

his best interests at heart.

One

consequence of Nixon's 1960 performance was that the

wanted most

critical

men

he

1968 national campaign, like Bob Haldeman

for the

and John Ehrlichman, refused to join until they were convinced that Nixon had kicked the habit of grabbing the controls at critical

moments. So Nixon tried to find a heavyweight manager, but with no luck. From time to time he would voice his frustrations to me. I would hear about the former attorney general

man

the early Eisenhower days, a

Bill Rogers,

Nixon's pal from

with acknowledged

ability to

mediate debates between Nixon and Nixon and to make binding

campaign decisions. Rogers was now senior partner

of

Rogers

Wells, a prosperous Wall Street law firm. "Rogers won't take

it

&

on,"

making all that money. And would kill him." Then there was the former Republican national chairman Len

said Nixon. "He's the best, but he likes his wife

Hall: "Well, Hall has finally decided he's going

hopeless candidate." "I

think we're lucky.

tried to

I

It

with

Romney —

comfort Nixon on the subject of Hall:

sounds to

me like he's getting old and out of

touch." So Nixon continued his scouting and tryouts through 1967. Dr. Gaylord Parkinson, a Reagan

and went

manager from

California,

came

former congressman Bob Ellsworth of Kansas,

quickly,- the

very smart but too nice a

man

for the job,

was temporarily thrown

into the breach.

Even

man who Nixon

as

Nixon was

recruiting

eventually took charge

in 1968

walked

among the usual suspects, and made victory possible

unobtrusively into the

the for

campaign through the

Nixon Mudge. John Newton Mitchell was the senior partner of a prominent New York municipal bond firm, Caldwell Mitchell & Trimble, which merged with Nixon Mudge at the end of front door of

1966. Mitchell

was

a

Fordham Law School graduate who had never

run a political campaign, but he had campaigned successfully for legal business and produced billions of dollars of state and municipal financing for a blue-chip

list of clients

that included governors,

may-

ors, and investment bankers around the country.

His national prominence was based on his knack for devising

118

new ways

of raising

money through

his satisfied customers ler,

for

whom he

Leonard Garment

/

was

New

the use of public credit.

One

of

York's governor, Nelson Rockefel-

invented the "moral obligation" bond

instrument that produced huge amounts of

money

— a financial

for Rockefeller's

pet projects and even huger headaches for the future generations of

New Yorkers who had to live with the unsecured state

debt thereby

money for public projects, Mitchell was steeped in operational politics. He could look at a map and tell you the names of the individuals who exercised political power down to the precinct level, for these were the people accumulated. Because of his experience in mining

whose cooperation he needed for his financing work. Mitchell announced that he was coming to our expanding law firm in order to build a bigger bond practice, which he did, but I think he came primarily because of the larger possibilities of a political partnership

with Richard Nixon,

who he knew, from

his life in

the heart of American politics, had a substantial chance to president. This prospect,

I

thought and

still

believe,

become was exciting to

the publicly unexcitable John Mitchell.

Most Americans who were alive in the 1970s remember at least vaguely what John Mitchell looked like. His most prominent feature was a pipe clenched between his teeth. Slightly paunchy, slightly bald,

with a fine

motion by

rolling

Roman

nose poised over jowls that were set into

his characteristic chuckle, Mitchell passed unno-

ticed in a Broad Street crowd. His raised his voice, preferring

ment. ger.

A

An

old hip accident

manner was

made

He

rarely

to express disagree-

limp that looked like a swag-

for a

small neurological injury produced a hand tremor that he

concealed by constantly holding,

down

controlled.

throw-away sarcasms

filling,

scraping,

and tamping

his pipe. (His wife, Martha, also contributed to the tremor.)

There was an engaging informality and disarming modesty

manner about John Mitchell But

it

that

made me

like

him from

of

the start.

required the determination of a dentist to draw secrets out of

him, particularly instance, the

if

they showed

commander

that included John

F.

him

in a

of the Pacific

good

light.

He

was, for

Theatre Naval Squadron

Kennedy's PT-109. His demeanor and history

drew powerful people into his

orbit.

He exuded

professional competence, a quality as rare as

hyperventilated atmosphere of politics.

it

a calm, confident, is

valuable in the

CRAZY RHYTHM Though most

campaigns have many and mothers, Nixon's selecting Mitchell as campaign man-

fathers

ager

119

/

was

tion, the

my

of the events in political

idea. Five years later, after the

he remembered the process:

who had

me

newly reelected Nixon sent

1972 presidential elec-

a nostalgic letter in

"I also recall that

you were the one

the brilliant idea that John Mitchell could take over the

campaign in 1968,

a job

which he was superbly

fitted for

he carried out with such distinction." In retrospect, is

which

not clear just

how

and which

of course,

it

brilliant the idea really was, particularly for

Mitchell.

remember the Mitchell moment. It was the end of 1967, and in Nixon's office. He was nattering to me about the perennial campaign manager problem. Suddenly the lightbulb clicked on over my head and I announced, "The answer to our problem is sitting twenty feet away from us, in the next office, a guy who looks, walks, and sounds like a campaign manager, knows more about I

we were

than

politics

all

the other guys you've been talking about, and his

name is John Mitchell." Nixon reacted by doing something he did only when he heard a fresh thought about politics — in other words, very rarely. He abruptly stood up shot up, actually and started

—

—

pacing the room. Mitchell. But of course. The purloined

letter.

We

talked briefly about Mitchell's qualifications, particularly the fact that his

membership

not need

much

"But will he do "Certainly.

in the

law firm ensured

loyalty, but

Nixon did

instruction or argument. it,

Len?"

My guess

is

he had precisely this in mind when he

agreed to merge." "All right, sound it

him

do

it

gently.

Then

we'll see

how

goes."

The occasion came at

out. But

New York's

fact,

a

few weeks

later at a black-tie dinner held

University Club to celebrate, some months after the

the merger of Mitchell's firm with ours.

It

was

a robust event,

loaded with food, drink, big talk, and high hopes. Responding to an

exuberant toast to his future, Nixon

said,

"And

if I

become

Presi-

Garment goes on the Supreme Court." Promises, promises. Toward the evening's end, I spotted Mitchell weaving his way

dent,

followed him. There, standing in the next

to the

men's room.

stall,

popped the question: "Say, John, how would you

I

I

feel

about

120

managing

a presidential

back and

said,

Leonard Garment

/

campaign?" Pipe

"Are you out

of

in

mouth, Mitchell leaned

your fucking mind, Garment?"

was Mitchell's way of saying yes. The rest of the story is in all the books. Nixon assigned Mitchell the test of assembling the team for the primary in Wisconsin which turned out to be natural terrain for Mitchell, who had recently done bond work in the state. He displayed his formidable political and administrative skills. That was it, though the formal announcement that Mitchell would run the campaign was not made until shortly before Which,

learned,

I

—

the primaries.

Mitchell was right for the job because he was not a

man to suffer

interference with his professional prerogatives from anyone,

included. This

was what Nixon wanted. Mitchell was

professional equal, or better, inside the firm, and he

Nixon

also Nixon's

made

clear

would not hesitate to return to full-time bond work if his leadership was undermined or his public autonomy as campaign manager impaired. Ultimately, John Mitchell's failing was that despite his modest manner, he was not really a modest man. Although he talked selfthat he

deprecatingly, he

had

a fatal belief in his ability to handle

even remotely related to long

lists,

politics.

thirty to forty items,

He was

in the habit of

any job

making

and giving each the same degree

of

attention. Mitchell thoroughly confused the substantive complexities of

governing with the roustabout world of operational politics

and thought he was master It is

him

to

of both.

true that just after the 1968 election,

become attorney

when Nixon asked

general, Mitchell resisted.

though, was not any doubt in Mitchell's

mind about

The

capacity to serve as the nation's chief law enforcement rather, the

official;

wife's emotional sta-

Nixon, thinking he needed Mitchell to run the Justice Depart-

bility.

ment

problem was his concern about his

reason,

his professional

as

much

as

he needed him to manage the campaign, deployed

everyone, including me, to overcome Mitchell's resistance.

Nixon succeeded and Mitchell so.

He

been

did

many generous and

silent.

got in over his head, tragically

useful things about

which history has

But he was asked to serve as political adviser to a very

political president

and

at the

same time

responsibilities of an attorney general; he

fulfill

was

the constitutional

given, in other words,

CRAZY RHYTHM the task of reconciling irreconcilables. as

121

/

He was

not nearly so tough

most people (including himself) thought, and

no match

for his

the small

army

own bad Chuck

of

end he was

in the

judgment, his president's worst

side,

and

Colsons, Gordon Liddys, and John Deans

scurrying around the halls of the Nixon administration.

in

1967 Nixon's campaign picked up speed, and

who would

profundity, dispensed to anyone

and the times have

finally

come

together."

my

all-purpose

was "The man This was so in ways I listen,

did not understand back then.

The

years of Nixon's

comeback constituted one

of the

most

confusing times in American history. They had some of everything: assassinations of national leaders, wars, the

Pill, pot,

peyote, LSD,

tions,

women's rights, communications and sexual revolucampus demonstrations and violence, fire and death in the

cities,

generational convulsions, and the splendor of a

civil rights,

flight.

Abbie Hoffman and the

loony, long-running seminar

rest of the

manned space

Chicago Seven gave a

on public disorder

in Judge Julius Hoff-

of Black Power — Stokely, Huey, — scared the wits out of white America. There was no short-

man's courtroom,- the exponents

and Rap

was happening, but mumbling about "national

age of social commentators to explain what

most

of us stood around,

mouths

agape,

crack-up" and a "crumbling center."

As it happened, the campaign years 1967 and 1968 were the most frenetic of the 1960s, as much Marx Brothers farce (particularly the

stateroom sequence in

A

Night at the Opera) and Greek

tragedy as conventional presidential politics. In the eye of the storm,

Nixon clung unwaveringly to his centrist strategy and made adjustments only when the need was compellingly clear. I, on the other hand, ran around like Chicken Little on speed. I continually inveighed against the campaign's passivity and ure to react decisively (and, as would ically) to events.

I

lobbied for

its fail-

have been the case, catastroph-

new programs and

big speeches and

wrote excited memoranda on breaking news and long-range ects.

Years

later,

proj-

during one of those famous taped conversations

with Nixon, Ehrlichman described me, with clear overreactor."

I

suppose

justification, as a

"nu-

my principal contribution was to intro-

122

duce a leavening touch

/

Leonard Garment

of disorder to a tightly corseted enterprise.

we now know, Nixon needed

Perhaps this was no small thing; as

everything available to win the presidency, including at least one strange soul like me.

in

month

January 1968, a

candidacy, the

New

activities of the

before

Nixon formally announced

York newspaper Newsday ran an

"New Nixon"

York apartment,

of the

Nixon stands

in the

young men. He

proud of his harvest, and looking line of

New

of that team. In the photo,

front of an Indian-file line of

is

avuncular, happily

— well, sort of "New." First in the

determinedly cheerful campaigners

is

me; then Ray

Martin Anderson, Dwight Chapin, Pat Buchanan, and

A

his

on the

team. The piece was accompanied by

a large photograph, taken in Nixon's

younger principals

article

smaller photo shows the Washington campaign

Tom

staff,

Price,

Evans.

including

John Sears, Bob Ellsworth, former Fortune magazine writer Richard

Whalen, and a quiet fellow named Drew Mason.

The point

of the

sembled a fresh be

new and

or other

staff,

photo and the

article

was

that

Nixon had

as-

and that everything about his campaign would

spontaneous. There was no John Mitchell in the picture,

heavyweight elders

And no decidedly nonspontime the Newsday picture was

of the effort.

taneous media technicians. At the

Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were still on the West Coast, waiting to see how the preliminaries came out. One man in the picture, Dick Whalen, was another city boy recruited by Nixon to the writing staff. A thirty-six-year-old Irish Catholic from working-class Queens, Whalen already had a distintaken, Bob

guished career in political and economic journalism. Stubby, energetic,

and opinionated, Whalen peered out

at the

world through

thick glasses that were anything but rose-colored. Unlike

Whalen was not in

common

a close friend of mine, but

besides our urban bloodlines.

the Vietnam

felt

War was

dealing with the Soviet

Price,

Most important, we both

hopeless, distracting the country from

Union and preventing us from coming

terms with domestic problems caused by ture,

we

Ray

had important things

to

deformities of race, cul-

and economics.

Whalen's intelligence and passion seemed well suited to devel-

CRAZY RHYTHM

123

/

oping a campaign rhetoric without cliches and appropriate to the us. We both wanted Nixon to think and more seriously about matters of substance, and Whalen, even more than I, refused to roll over and take no for an answer. So we worked together well and closely. The strategy was simple: I did the downfield blocking while Whalen supplied polished and forceful

storms whipping around talk

campaign prose that reflected

One day

his angers

September 1967

in

I

and

beliefs.

read a newspaper account of a

speech given by Daniel Patrick Moynihan to the board of the Americans for Democratic Action.

It

caught

my eye

because

it

was

titled

summer of urban riots and a spreading backlash that had already made George Wallace a significant actor in the politics of 1968. The speech, read 'The

Politics of Stability," a subject of relevance after a

twenty-five years

argued that

it

later,

stands up extraordinarily well.

was past time

for liberal

Democrats

Moynihan

to recognize their

responsibility for dealing with the national crisis of stability and to

make

alliances with political conservatives

cern. Liberals, in

who

shared this con-

Moynihan's view, had to divest themselves

of the

idea that the nation, especially its cities, could be run from agencies in Washington.

And

they had to overcome their destructive conde-

scension on the issue of race, which took the form of "sticking

up

for

and explaining away anything, however outrageous, which

Negroes, individually or collectively, might do."

Moynihan concluded with eerie prescience that the time had come for confronting the realities of black and white. "It will not be pretty,"

he

said,

but

if

liberals did not lead

stances, the direction of events [is]

more

would

fall

under these circum-

to those

"whose purpose

to destroy than build."

Moynihan's fellow Democrats were not prepared to liswas happy to do so. I wrote to Moynihan and expressed

In 1967 ten,

but

I

interest in the speech.

reading text, which

I

Nixon recommending

He

sent

me

a cordial note

and a copy

of his

turned over to Whalen. Each of us wrote to that he use his

coming speech

to the National

Association of Manufacturers to echo and elaborate on Moynihan's ideas.

N.A.M. speech, which argued that the failures of 1960s liberalism stemmed from the fact that people had despaired of their individual efforts and turned to government to

Whalen

drafted Nixon's

124

Leonard Garment

/

protect them; the results were disappointing and deeply flawed.

Nixon

called

on the business community

to recognize the serious

threat posed by the nation's social crisis and to begin dealing with

the economic needs and aspirations of the urban poor in a systematic

way. The speech contained not a single applause line and was

When Nixon

received in pin-drop silence.

finished,

he was

literally

cheered by the large crowd of usually stolid businessmen.

The speech helped organize Nixon's thinking about and made him more comfortable talking about them. portant effect, however,

was

to establish the link

social issues Its

most im-

between Nixon

and Moynihan that eventually brought Moynihan to the White

House

urban adviser. Less than a year

as Nixon's

after the

N.A.M.

Nixon was asking Moynihan's private advice on his inauguand Moynihan, echoing the words that first brought him to Nixon's attention, was telling him, "The black poor desperately need to be reassured that you have no intention of running away from the great goal ... of a free and open society in which equality of opportunity for blacks increasingly has the outcome of equal speech,

ral address,

achievement as well." Nixon's inaugural address contained that message.

Xhe

subject of race

was one

of the large internal footballs of the

campaign. Despite the objections of hard-liners, Nixon addressed racial issues in

calm and sober terms, though there was no shortage

of law-and-order boilerplate.

The most heated

internal debate about

race took place just after Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968,

when Nixon had

to decide

whether

to attend the funeral.

Most

of

his political strategists, as well as President Eisenhower, opposed his going, fearing the loss of southern delegates. Bill Safire,

Ray

Price,

Dick Whalen, and

I

were

Nixon, whether for moral or political reasons, had to to him. Safire

campaign

of

reminded him 1960

when

of

one mind:

go.

We

talked

damage he had sustained in the was jailed: Kennedy responded,

of the

Dr. King

Nixon did not, and Nixon's friend walked out of the campaign, along votes. Nixon ended the discussion telling him the "libs" had carried

and supporter Jackie Robinson with masses

of potential black

by phoning John Mitchell and the day.

He would

attend the

CRAZY RHYTHM funeral

/

125

—but would not march in the postfuneral procession. When

the event finally took place, he went to the funeral and began the march, then quietly dropped out as the parade turned a corner.

The other favorite debating topic was Vietnam. In late February 1968, Nixon asked me to get the writers together to start thinking about a Vietnam speech. Whalen and I thought Nixon should start talking about the end of our involvement in the war,- Price and

Buchanan thought otherwise. But soon to judge the

all of

us agreed

was

it

still

effects of the recent Tet Offensive, not to

too

mention

too risky to try to outfox Lyndon Johnson.

Volunteers turned up with offers to help Nixon find a of

One was Nixon's

Vietnam.

friend

way out

Elmer Bobst, who since 1965

had been urging Nixon to separate himself from the war. Another individual

who appeared in

1967 was Roger Hilsman, President Ken-

nedy's assistant secretary for Far Eastern Affairs and

now a professor

Columbia University, who visited with Whalen and me over drinks at the Biltmore Bar and offered a detailed "peace with honor"

at

strategy for Nixon.

was no

there

We

passed Hilsman's ideas along to Nixon, but

reaction.

Then, in mid-March 1968, Nixon decided to make a radio speech outlining a

new

position on Vietnam.

plan to reduce the American

He would

commitment without

present a

severing

it,

while drawing the Soviet Union into negotiations on a broad agenda that

would include Soviet assistance

was scheduled

we were

day,

for delivery Saturday night,

notified

The speech At noon that

in ending the war.

March

30.

by the networks that President Johnson had

asked for television time for Sunday night. Nixon naturally canceled his

own

speech. Johnson, in his televised address, outlined his

peace proposal for Vietnam

would not run

— and

own

added, as a postscript, that he

for reelection in 1968.

For Democrats, Johnson's announcement turned the world upside

down,

along,

at least temporarily.

But the Nixon campaign rolled

and Nixon's nomination was a certainty before the Republi-

can convention opened in Miami Beach in mid-July. The convention's

only dramatic event was Nixon's selection of Spiro

his running mate. John Mitchell saddled Pat

the depressing assignment of drafting Agnew's seconding his

"audition"— and then trying

Agnew

Buchanan and

to explain the choice of

as

me with speech—

Agnew

to

126

We

the world.

gave

ters progressively

penchant

it

Leonard Garment

/

our loyal

The convention

of alliteration

poisonous prose,

for politically

slum, you've seen them

viz., "If

to

make mat-

and his peculiar

you've seen one

all."

saw the unveiling

also

man-Ehrlichman operation shift of authority

Agnew proceeded

all.

worse with his love

— an abrupt,

of the hard-nosed Halde-

though probably

from the happy and anarchic

little

essential,

band that had

run the campaign from 1966 through the 1968 primaries. Dick

Whalen had

a nasty nose-to-nose

with Ehrlichman over access to

Nixon's carefully guarded floor in the Doral Hotel, one of those

"Fuck you, fella"/"Up yours" exchanges. After Miami,

felicitous

when

the troupe flew to Mission Bay in San Diego for campaign

was

planning, there

who

Mitchell,

a dinnertime run-in

between Whalen and John

gave Whalen a boozy rerun of Ehrlichman's lecture

on "dime-a-dozen writers." The next morning told

me

he was packing

of second-raters

it in:

The

at breakfast,

crowd was

California

men

and automatons, dangerous

Whalen bunch

a

without serious

political convictions.

He was

part right, part wrong. There

Californians, and besides,

were

no one ever won

enough second-raters and automatons

a

all sorts

cords

my

parting words to

In

is

that

I

main

the

i f was

at

after

Whalen

re-

our breakfast: "The trouble with

you care too much. You're

any event, a half hour

window,

him

the

to ensure that things get

done. In his campaign memoir, Catch the Falling Flag,

you, Dick,

among

campaign without

really a

our breakfast, from

saw him marching up the

Jew

my

at heart."

second-floor

path, suitcase in hand, toward

gate and out of the campaign.

the story

Whalen the courtesy title of Jew, was more complicated when it came to identifying myself

as one.

had never

glibly ready to extend to

I

all

I

lost

my

sense of Jewish identity, even through

the WASP-saturated years on Wall Street; but the Jewishness

had

for the tropes

and

hidden by

and

sensibility,

nothing at

all to

do with organized Jewish

life.

As

twitches of "polite" anti-Semitism that

with law firm

The

Six

clients,

Day War,

I

shrugged them in 1967,

I

and

regularly encountered

off like

changed

was

I

a thoroughly acculturated style

that.

mosquito bites. At the time the war

CRAZY RHYTHM

127

/

was the only Jewish senior adviser on Nixon's camMurray Chotiner, who was anathema to liberal Jews (which was to say almost all Jews) and was locked away in the took place,

paign

staff

campaign

I

besides

closet.

When the war began, Nixon was in refresher trips to foreign places. Israel,

and through friends in

ary there.

Nixon sensed

He had

New York

Egypt on one of his frequent already scheduled a visit to

helped organize his

I

itiner-

would bring

that Israel's preemptive strike

the war to a quick end, so he flew to nearby Greece and perched there to wait

it

Thus he was the first prominent foreign political He was given the run of the arranged a number of war-related additions to his

out.

figure to visit Israel after the war.

country, and

schedule.

I

When

Kennedy Airport ence.

I

he returned to the United to brief

him

crowded

for his

also brokered an invitation for

ence of American Jewish leaders

States,

Nixon

I

drove out to

airport press confer-

to address a large audi-

at the Pierre Hotel.

Nixon's speech at the Pierre was an anecdote-spiked political

on Israel's newsworthy places and personalities as he encounthem immediately after the drama of the war. He riveted the overflow audience. The meeting's chairman, the famous old Zionist figure Dr. Emanuel Neuman, praised Nixon's sympathetic analysis and described him as a new and vigorous leadership "voice" on Mideast issues. This was an unusual success for Nixon, who had report

tered

never been exactly the beau ideal of American Jews.

whether

my

but

it

was shock,

eyes

figures, the

pleasure, or a

brimmed over

Jewish uncles of

at the sight of all these

my

I

don't

know

more primitive emotion,

still

paradigmatic

childhood, receiving Richard Nix-

on's sympathetic account of Israeli courage

and

skill

with such unre-

strained admiration and affection. For Richard Nixon, yet!

A new now

responsibility

was thereupon added

to

my

duties:

Nixon's informal liaison to American Jews and to

I

was

Israelis.

I

held this shadow portfolio for the remainder of the campaign and

during the years of the Nixon presidency.

I

was suddenly back home,

albeit part time.

These bubblings

of race, religion,

paign prefigured the work

House

I

was

later

and culture during the camassigned to do in the White

— working with the French nutritionist Jean Mayer on food

programs, coordinating civil rights

efforts, listening to

Vietnam-

128

Leonard Garment

/

generated fury, dealing with Jews and

Israel,

working with

Through designation by Nixon and self-anointment,

artists.

was the cam-

I

paign emissary to alien worlds, that conglomerate of minority interests that

most mistrusted

they could be

won

the edge of their hostility.

me

to do.

had

I

I had no illusion that was a political point in blunting This was something my history qualified

or hated Nixon.

over, but there

access,

I

knew

the signals and language,

distinguish the serious people from the hustlers, and

I

could

I

really liked

the job.

B

ut what occupied most of

my

another task altogether. As part of a

hand

in the early

development

less-than-benign industry of

time during the campaign was

my role in the Nixon effort, of the

modern

I

had

new, more powerful, and

political advertising.

Here

is

the whole blameworthy story:

Once John Mitchell was in place in the spring of 1967, the next step for Nixon was to launch a media campaign strong enough to bring victory in

come

New Hampshire and other primaries and thus over-

the 'loser" image for good. To do

image

as a sharp-edged,

so,

he had to

fight his press

Uriah Heep-type television performer, a

brooding and unpleasant private personality.

When

I

first

force that there

got to

was

public image that years in public

I,

know Nixon,

a disjunction

it

struck

between the

me with particular man I knew and the

as a liberal

Democrat, had retained from Nixon's

He was

odd-looking, to be sure, but also an

life.

intelligent, interesting, self-deprecatingly witty

even further:

He knew

return to public

name and

life. It

this contrast

would be

would give him,

man. Nixon saw

a political asset in his

in addition to his 99 percent

face recognition, the capacity to surprise

— to set the low

public expectations against his large private abilities and permit the press to discover, gradually,

the

"New Nixon"

some

running again

realities that

for president.

as well as the media's general fascination

hunger

for fresh copy,

they would dub

The passage

of time,

with novelty and perpetual

would enable Nixon

to use his defeats, trau-

mas, and exaggerated defects to give his comeback campaign ning

a run-

start.

So Nixon practiced law, traveled the world with his family,

CRAZY RHYTHM played elder statesman, and smiled a

He

lot.

129

/

chatted engagingly on

television about the "great issues," played the piano,

and joked

about himself in public with Jack Paar and Johnny Carson.

He made

himself pleasantly and selectively available to the press. Before long,

"New Nixon"

there were mostly

This was

all

quite

silly,

stories.

because the Old and

New

Nixons were

simply different parts of a densely complicated personality. But

he displayed

creasingly neutral audience.

Nixon was

takes,

now

with greater discrimination and advantage to an

it

A

in-

disciplined student of his past mis-

finally figuring out

how

to get

some breaks from

the press.

At that point Nixon asked advertising. In his view,

I

me

to put together the campaign's

had the requisite

credentials:

I

worthy, politically ignorant, and an energetic recruiter. perience in persuasion saxophonist). Missing

(trial

among

was

trust-

had

I

and show business

lawyer)

ex-

(jazz

these were any professional qualifica-

was exactly what recommended me. Nixon wanted me to look around without a lot of fixed notions and locate some experienced people who would work under my directions for the job, but this lack

tion with

peeves

him and

— Price,

the

men who

Buchanan,

already

Safire,

knew

his predilections

and

and me. Nixon's guidelines were

simple: Don't hire an advertising agency. They're dinosaurs and they

devour money. For now, keep It

sounded to

me

like

it

small, creative, informal.

he wanted

me

to re-create the

Modern

—

and that is essentially Jazz Quartet or the Harlem Globetrotters what happened. The first media professional that Nixon and I brought into the campaign was Frank Shakespeare. He was not only an experienced television executive, in restless self-exile

from high-level conflict

CBS, but a staunch political conservative with passionate about ideological politics and modern television.

through the

list of

at

beliefs

He had run

candidates for 1968 and found that Reagan and

Nixon were the only ones who made sense to him. He prudently concluded that Reagan was untested, so Nixon was his choice. In July 1967, through William

television for

F.

Buckley, Shakespeare arranged

They talked politics and ninety minutes. Nixon then asked him to call me

a meeting with

Nixon

at

20 Broad

about a role in the campaign.

Street.

130

At our

first

/

Leonard Garment

meeting, lunch courtesy of

CBS

at "21/'

I

found that

Shakespeare had a set of forcefully articulated moral and philosophical principles

and the look

a place in a political

man with bigger things

of a

campaign organization.

mind than His unfurrowed brow in

and bland, pleasant Holy Cross face were illuminated by an intense blue-eyed gaze that suggested passions more complex than those of

commonplace ambition. We quickly became the closest of friends. The excitement of winning the presidency allowed us to put aside little

differences like ideology

persists to this day,

At our

religion,

deepened by time and

initial lunch,

and our odd coupling

age.

Shakespeare delivered an illuminating two-

hour lecture on the impact forming not only

and

politics,

of

he

modern

said,

but the

television.

way

and used information. Understanding the nature

would be

It

was

trans-

the culture received of the

medium

especially crucial to Nixon's 1968 campaign, for televi-

all media. The first thing we was examine Nixon's previous filmed appearances and had to do determine what format would present the best of Nixon to televi-

sion,

if

misused, was the crudest of

sion viewers.

Shortly afterward, a few of us

Evans, and

watched

me — assembled

in a

six or seven hours of

— Shakespeare,

CBS

Ray

Price,

Tom

screening room, where

we

TV appearances that Frank had film library. We saw that Nixon

Nixon

requisitioned from the company's

—

stump speaker lawyerlike, earnest, intense, perspiring, forced was Nixon at his absolute worst, all wrong for the cool television medium. On the other hand, Nixon more or less at ease, talking informally, one on one, was close to the "personal" Nixon whom the

—

we found Ray

surprisingly congenial.

Price wrote a

memo

of the group's

recommendations on

Nixon's use of television. "The greater the element of informality

and spontaneity," he goal,

said,

"the better [Nixon] comes across." Our

he went on, was "to remind supporters

strengths,

of the candidate's

and to demonstrate to nonsupporters that the Herblock He summed up, "It's not the man we have to

images are fiction."

change, but rather the impression." Price, Shakespeare,

and

I

agreed in the early

summer

of

1967

that the format for Nixon's television advertising and the center-

piece of his campaign should be question-and-answer sessions with

CRAZY RHYTHM panels of local citizens, which

on

local television.

My

the details. at the

J.

We now

we would

/

131

film, edit,

and broadcast

needed a professional team to develop roommate, Red Werner, worked

MacDougal

Street

Thompson

advertising agency as a copywriter.

Walter

mentioned that

his boss,

He

Harry Treleaven, had once dabbled in Re-

publican politics, having prepared the successful 1966 congressional

campaign

young Texas

of a

leaven and

had met and spoken

I

named George

politician

briefly in the spring of 1967, but

he did not seem eager to take on the Nixon campaign.

my

August holiday with

The

last

Bush. Tre-

I

left for

an

family out at Amagansett, on Long Island.

me down

day of the vacation, Grace sent

to the

beach with

them out of the way while she finished packing. came upon Treleaven sitting on the sand, drinking a beer,

the kids to get

There

I

and staring out

at the

We

afternoon sun.

breaking surf that sparkled in the

late-

chatted again about the Nixon campaign.

We

agreed to meet back in the city to talk seriously. If

there

is

such a thing as a genius

Treleaven had

and

it.

quiet and private man, he

almost to a disabling

self-effacing

lican

A

for political advertising,

fault.

Harry

was unpretentious

He was

and vaguely Christian Science, but he seemed

vaguely Repub-

to care intensely

only about things like good taste and good work. Treleaven was one

He

enjoyed the manipula-

tive aesthetic of advertising's words, pictures,

and music in the same

of those people obsessed

intense

way he enjoyed

ocean waves

at

it."

I

beyond

craft.

the late-afternoon light bouncing off the

Amagansett.

sional judgments

out of

with their

He

rarely tried to explain his profes-

saying, "I don't

remember Harry

paign, a smallish, fine-featured

know why,

in the final

weeks

I

just get a kick

of the 1968

man with thinning gray hair,

cam-

in stan-

dard button-down shirt and Brooks Brothers gray, raindrops dripping off his

nose from a sudden storm on Sixth Avenue, straining to

me, through the wheeze and cough

of

tell

chronic asthma, something

more important than life itself about a dinky sixty-second campaign spot he was reworking with the filmmaker Gene Jones for the tenth time. I remember thinking, "Another obsessive nut." But that's what I loved about him. On November 21, 1967, Treleaven delivered what he called his first

stab at a

Nixon

advertising strategy.

permanent guide. Cuteness, obliqueness,

It

turned out to be our

slickness,

"gimmicks that

132

/

say 'Madison Avenue at

Leonard Garment

work here/

"

were

He also had a correc-

out.

tion for the rest of us:

"New Nixon"

It's

not a

It's

the old

Nixon with

now

that's

at

the top of the polls.

his strengths looking stronger

negatives blurred by the years. ... In short,

the voters that's fore,

it's

and his

the attitude of

new — not Mr. Nixon. The advertising, therenew image — because

should not strain to create a brand

the old one's doing pretty well.

In the fall of 1967

Nixon was

.

.

.

in Philadelphia being interviewed

on The Mike Douglas Show. There he discovered twenty-six-yearold Roger Ailes, a product of Cleveland, Ohio, and even more a product of the television era. Ailes had already been the producer of

Mike Douglas's

nationally syndicated

show

for three years, super-

vising five ninety-minute programs a week. These

shows covered

the wit, wisdom, and sentiments of both prominent and ordinary

people on every conceivable issue and gave Ailes a fingertip familiarity

with America's

TV soul.

Nixon first met Ailes when the two chatted in the makeup room before Nixon's appearance. Nixon ritually complained about

man

a political system that required a

but a fact of American

life.

forget about 1968. Ailes

Unless Mr. Nixon accepted this he could

went on bluntly

to detail the things

had done wrong on television in 1960 and his problems in 1968.

asked

me

to get

him

how he

Within days, Nixon told

to

"gimmicks" to be was not a gimmick

to use

elected president. Ailes replied that television

New York,

he was interested in joining the

me

Nixon

should address

about Ailes and

him around, and see if campaign. Midway through the introduce

primaries in 1968, Ailes took charge of Nixon's television.

My own

role in the

and quality control. office

sure

I

media operation was

assembled the operating quartet in one large

and ran the enterprise

we

hiring, backslapping,

like a

listened to one another's

newspaper

city

room

— making

phone conversations, attended one

another's meetings, kibitzed, joked, shared pastrami sandwiches,

and embellished one another's campaign gossip.

It

was, for me, the

best part of the campaign, joyful in fact, close to the camaraderie of a

small jazz group and a deliverance from the routines of Wall Street

CRAZY RHYTHM law practice.

I

was back

the editing process

in

show

133

/

business.

I

particularly enjoyed

in the color-filled high-tech studios with

itself,

bearded technicians, hip jokes and jargon, and banks of monitors flickering in glass-paneled control rooms. Nixon's head

forward or backward in a blur as

we reviewed

would speed

his videotaped an-

swers, shortened some, and snipped out others altogether, dropping

them down the chute In Hillsborough,

of history.

New

nation's first primary.

Nixon.

He handled

houses, and

It

Hampshire,

was

we

filmed material for the

fairly close to the conversational

questions from locals in schoolrooms,

community

centers, all

with an old-timer's

ease.

fire-

The

traveling press corps protested their exclusion from these sessions

and ran

stories about our manipulative secrecy, but

we got the mate-

we wanted and aired five-minute sections that were relaxed and When Ailes joined us, he created a more formal setting for these interviews. He presented Nixon in a press-conference format

rial

informal.

that

combined elements

— though

of informality

with distance and suspense

Nixon Nixon The press was

the chances of a case-hardened politician like

stumbling seriously over any question was near zero. In

was

especially effective against hostile questioners.

fact,

allowed to watch the shows on monitors in a separate studio and to interview the panelists and audience after the show.

These shows were the main part

of our advertising

They were supplemented by conventional

campaign.

print advertising

and the

one-minute spot commercials that were Treleaven's special passion. feature, his voice, over photographic monAmerican political scenes to present Nixon's views on his principal campaign themes Vietnam, law and order, race, the economy. The spots were politically ineffective, their messsage blurred by all the soft imagery and artwork. But they pleased Treleaven and were acceptable to Nixon, who hated sitting in a studio shooting and reshooting commercials but was willing to sit in his apartment

Harry used Nixon's best tages of

—

study reading short scripts into a tape recorder.

By present-day standards, these spots were straightforward and noncontroversial. We did one attack spot, which juxtaposed a smiling Humphrey at the chaotic Democratic convention, accompanied by "Happy Days Are Here Again" background music, with scenes of violence, poverty, and war. The Democratic campaign organization

134 protested,

/

Leonard Garment

and Shakespeare and

instantly yanked the commercial.

I

The Democrats, though, were no slouches at this game. My favorite 1968 spot was an anti- Wallace ad made for the Humphrey campaign by Doyle Dane Bernbach. In it, a voter pulls the lever for the Wallace-LeMay ticket and the voting booth blows up.

Our ad

group's heroic period did not last long.

convention and the Mission Bay meeting cal

managers pushed us

aside.

At the Miami

just afterward, the politi-

Giving inescapable evidence of this

Nixon invited me to join him, his family, Rose Mary Woods, Ray Price, and Bob Haldeman in the presidential suite for a network filming of the presumptive nominee watching television during the shift,

convention delegates' balloting.

We

sat there,

mute, conscious of

Mike

Wallace's film crew.

being singled out for the eye of history by

We knew we

were there because we were the only people

campaign who

moment had

at that historic

in the

absolutely nothing

to do.

The

television group operated mostly

on automatic

pilot after

we ran excerpts from Nixon's convention address, in line with Treleaven's theory that we should run whatever seemed to work until people got sick of it or new commercial the convention. For weeks

spots were ready for airing. Meanwhile, Kevin Phillips

demographer whose hiring

I

recommended

scanning a manuscript Phillips had handed

—a

me

in lieu of a resume,

something called "The Emerging Republican Majority"

room near Mitchell and me, consulting

little

vast

memory bank and telling us, on the basis

knowledge lar

of voting sensitivities,

where

young

to John Mitchell after

— sat in a

his printouts of his

and his

house-by-house

to air or not to air particu-

commercials.

Then, in October, Humphrey began breathing down Nixon's neck.

Humphrey gave

a dovish

Vietnam speech

that started Democratic holdouts

labor got off

its

"Old Nixon"

hands.

stories.

The

moving back

in Salt

Lake City

to him. Organized

press began concentrating once again

Southern Democrats

who had

on

vented their

spleen by supporting Wallace in the early weeks of the campaign

now

started returning to their traditional

A

friend of Shakespeare's

umentary

for the

Democratic home.

from CBS had produced a cut-rate doc-

campaign that

told Nixon's life story through old

family photos and a Nixon voice-over narration. Getting Nixon to

CRAZY RHYTHM piece of sentimentalism,

sit for this

/

135

about death and struggle and

all

lessons learned from the early days in Whittier,

was worse than

pulling teeth, and he refused to look at the finished product. His

family viewed the film and thought

were forbidden to use

it.

was "too personal/'

it

We

everything into the breach.

it.

—

if

Nixon family's

the

made

necessary to throw

it

were reluctantly allowed

to use the

Graham personally approved

friend Billy

So on a rainy Saturday afternoon in late October, Graham,

misery from the

fling in

we

But in the closing days of the campaign,

Nixon's mysteriously disappearing lead

film

so

joined

flu,

me

snif-

in an otherwise deserted

TV

studio on Manhattan's West Side, peered into a Moviola editing machine for a half hour, and then, from a public phone in the hallway phoned Nixon, campaigning somewhere out in America, to assure

We

him

ran

it

documentary was

that the

nationally, day

sands of dollars, in the

With two days close to call.

and night,

tasteful

enough

at a cost of

to be aired.

hundreds of thou-

desperate days of the 1968 campaign.

final,

to go, the polls indicated that the race

was too

We assembled in Los Angeles to prepare for two crucial

two-hour election eve telethons. Roger Ailes, the meshugganer, had gone

off

with some friends

for

an existential leap out

of

an airplane,

his first try at parachuting, to break the tension of getting ready for

the climactic

TV

("We'd be better sniffed.)

production. off

if

He

tore several tendons in his foot.

he broke his goddamn neck," Treleaven

Directing the four hours of telethons with his foot in a

bucket of ice and his head in a Percodan of the

campaign that

fog, Ailes did his best

work

night.

So did Nixon. During the half-hour break between the eastern

marathon performance, Nixon called me into his dressing room. He was wrapped in a bathrobe and towel, eating a cheese sandwich, and looking like Rocky between rounds. and western portions

He asked

for

there, Dick."

in

one

my

of his

comments.

Which he

did,

I

gave

him

sage advice: "Just hang in

comment he made answers about "getting down to the

except for a strange

of his final glazed-eye

nut cutting."

That wrapped up the advertising and the campaign. The next morning we returned to New York to see what all our efforts had produced. In a sense,

we

never found out.

No

one knows whether the

136 telethon, the else the

"man

/

in the arena," the "self-portrait," or anything

Nixon ad group

No

Leonard Garment

did significantly helped

Nixon win the

helped Nixon make a TV presentation in was more effective than its counterpart in 1962, because it was more natural than the sharp-edged

presidency.

doubt

we

the 1968 campaign that

1960 or

image

campaigns. This has to be counted a plus, since

of the earlier

every advantage had to be exploited and every disadvantage blunted

Nixon victory. everything Nixon and the

in a race like the one that produced such a paper-thin Still,

once Nixon's lead began shrinking,

media group did

stem the downward

to

most illuminating

is

the fact that

drift failed to

work. Perhaps

Nixon had about 43 percent

of the

national vote in the spring of 1968 and 43 percent on Election in

November

Day

1968.

Clearly, the overall effect of the advertising

was not

large

com-

pared with the real determinants of the election's outcome: the tur-

bulence of 1968, Lyndon Johnson's prolonged interference with the

Humphrey campaign's freedom and

turnoff,

on Vietnam, voter turnout

of action

and other subterranean complexities beyond the control

of

Madison Avenue.

I

think this

way

—

would have regarded or, more accurately, disregarded the Nixon advertising effort but for foe McGinniss's book The Selling of the President, which bestowed fame, fortune, and legendary status on the Nixon advertising campaign and its perpetrators, the members of our media quartet. The book argued that the "New Nixon" had been created and is

the

history

—

sold to

America by

a group of manipulators

— Frank

Shakespeare,

Harry Treleaven, Roger Ailes, and me. McGinniss called us the to adapt the manipulative techniques of

first

commercial advertising on

a large scale to presidential politics.

Joe

McGinniss dropped into the Nixon campaign

way. As McGinniss himself 1968, after

tells

the traumatic blows

Bobby Kennedy assassinations, he

Humphrey

agency,

of the left

his

Martin Luther King and

column

at

The Philadel-

book about presidential cam-

He asked an acquaintance if

haphazard

the story in his book, in July of

phia Enquirer for a while to write a paign advertising.

in a

at

Doyle Dane, the

he could follow the agency's people around.

CRAZY RHYTHM

137

/

His sophisticated friend answered with a horrified no. McGinniss figured,

what the

hell,

and called the Nixon camp. He explained his

project, he says — and, to his surprise, Treleaven and

said yes.

I

No

questions asked, no ground rules imposed. Years

what

McGinniss

later,

different story about

told the writer Janet

how he had

Malcolm

people, he said to her, "were almost touchingly naive.

'Oh, gosh, really

— a book?

felt

no obligation

sinister,

me

and

said,

They

said,

he told Malcolm,

to apprise us of those facts.

were talking about what they were doing," he to

some-

Yeah, sure.' " McGinniss hated Nixon

and thought we were doing something but

a

gained entree. The Nixon

'What do you think

"And when they

recalled,

"and turned

of that?' I'd say, 'Yeah, that

if it was done effectively." In other words, Malcolm McGinniss was an "enemy infiltrator."

looks good,'

sums

up,

But whatever he

said, the fact is that

we

foolishly allowed our-

selves to be lulled by his friendly assurances and our

own gullibility

— plus at least a touch of vanity (we secretly liked the idea of having a "historian" write about our office

keys to a

sworn enemy

man who, we

of our

momentous

efforts).

So

we

gave the

learned afterward, was on record as a

campaign. In mitigation, this was long before

investigative journalism

became

a blood sport.

McGinniss, no doubt holding his breath and pinching himself every night at his good luck, spent his days in friendly com-

panionship with the four Nixon

sympathized with our gestions,

naifs.

He

laughed

difficulties, offered judicious

at

our gibes,

and helpful sug-

shared our meals, memoranda, meetings, and private

Nixon taping

sessions,

and inconspicuously jotted down notes on

everything he saw and heard in a small reporter's notebook. Eventually he

1969, one

wove

it all

into

The

Selling of the President, published in

of that year's super bestsellers.

Treleaven cial things."

is

introduced in the book as a

Frank Shakespeare

is

man who

"loves

artifi-

runner-up to Nixon as archvillain

of the book, God's angry conservative.

McGinniss quotes remarks

by Roger Ailes:

Let's face

it,

Nixon is dull. Think he's a They look at him as the kind of kid who a book bag. Who was 42 years old the day he was

a lot of people think

bore, a pain in the ass.

always carried

138 born.

They

/

Leonard Garment

figure other kids got footballs for Christmas;

Nixon

He'd always have his homework done and he'd never let you copy. Now you put him on television, you've got a problem right away. He's a funny-looking

got a briefcase and loved

guy.

He

it.

looks like somebody hung

him

in a closet overnight

and he jumps out in the morning with his suit all bunched up and starts running around saying, "I want to be President." I mean this is how he strikes some people. That's why these shows are important. To make them forget all that.

Snaking through

anecdotage

all this

McGinniss's

is

real argu-

ment: In I960, television cost Nixon the presidency by portraying

him

accurately. So in 1968,

Nixon was determined

to control his

television and project a new, false image. His professionals created

panel shows with controlled audiences and

TV spots conveying pre-

planned impressions. But Nixon disliked television, and the old pols gradually took over the campaign and shoved aside the

The "Old Nixon"

new men.

gradually broke through the media cocoon con-

structed for him. His big, early lead vanished; he barely won.

own

In fact, McGinniss's tising

campaign portrays

it

description of the 1968

Nixon

adver-

as a relatively innocent affair. "It

run," says McGinniss in the book, "by

men who

was

shared [Nixon's]

vision" and thought they were revealing the genuine Nixon. This

was

a candidate

looked his best settings.

edge

who did have ideas about when fielding tough issue

public policy and

McGinniss reported these things but refused

them

who

questions in rehearsed to

acknowl-

in his judgments, because his professed concern about

the use of television in politics actually ran a distant second to his hatred of Nixon.

The hatred made

his

book into an internally

contradictory mess.

As Kathleen Jamieson puts political advertising,

in her authoritative 1984 study of

Packaging the Presidency, "McGinniss seems

what he accuses Nixon's admen of doing Nixon creating images that do not comport with reality." The campaign of 1968 was in fact the last gasp of the old poli-

to be doing to to

it

Nixon

.

.

.

—

it was not the start of something new. But the thesis of the McGinniss book was greeted with storms of praise. It perfectly fit the journalistic Zeitgeist of 1968, which loved the identification of a corrupt Nixon with corrupt television and corrupt advertising. tics,-

CRAZY RHYTHM And

139

/

because the McGinniss book was so popular,

part in producing precisely the

phenomenon

it

much moralistic steam. It introduced into dom the idea that television advertising so

it

played a major

had excoriated with

the conventional wis-

techniques were

all-

powerful and absolutely essential to a modern political campaign. It

convinced candidates that they had to buy large and expensive

quantities of air time and hire expensive

media

and

tele-

Roger Ailes, for example, had planned to return to network

tele-

strategists

vision consultants.

vision production in 1969 but

was swamped with

offers to

run cam-

paigns in the 1970 elections. He, and scores of others like him, set up campaign consulting firms, and a new industry was born. Campaigns began phasing out other types of campaigning, like volunteer activities, that used to involve more people in politics. Political television advertising, once out of the closet, became more cynically manipulative and corrosively negative. It also created an insatiable demand for campaign funds. It helped produce a political culture that is nastier, meaner-spirited, and emptier of ideas than it once had been. Thus McGinniss accelerated the deformation of American politics by creating a self-sustaining myth about the power of political advertising. The press, by and large, wanting to believe that television and Nixon were capable of the worst, accepted McGinniss's argument uncritically and thus helped make it come true.

N

ixon wrapped up his final telethon in Los Angeles. His

answer

we

of the

show ended

the 1968 campaign

last

— or so we thought as

drove back to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, slightly

numb

but

exhilarated and thirsty.

The

festivities

had only begun when someone, probably the

media consultant Ruth

Jones,

mentioned the idea

of "drive time,"

radio commercials that could catch people in their cars on Election

Day.

Why hadn't heard

I

about this sooner? The party recessed, and

David Eisenhower was roused from his bed and brought to my suite. Still in his pajamas and rubbing his eyes, David read a bunch of thirty-second and ten-second spots into a portable tape recorder.

Elsewhere in the

suite,

Ruth was booking national

radio time.

The

140

/

Leonard Garment

commercials would run everywhere in motoring America the next day.

At

was nothing

there

last,

left to do.

had driven myself and everyone around

I,

me

always happiest when to distraction,

I

was now

able to go to sleep.

The next morning we boarded the flight

back to

New

Tricia,

Nixon's big

jet,

for the

York. Floating high over the country, the entire

campaign family was together

for the first time, sealed off

from the

voters five miles below in an airborne metaphor of the separation

on Election Day between the candidate and the country. For the first time that year, we were merely observers; the process was on its own. that takes place

After

groups

some booze and nervous

babble, the functional staff

— writers, media, advance men, secretaries — trooped forward

to Nixon's

compartment

for

not-unhappy farewell. Then

thanks and, for us media advisers, a

we

gradually settled into our

own

pri-

vate thoughts, drawing apart, thumbing through magazines and

A TV

newspapers.

set in the staff

compartment began giving fuzzy

accounts of voting turnout in places like Kansas and

New Hamp-

shire.

At mid-point

in the flight,

somewhere over heartland America light in the West re-

between Mississippi and Indiana, the golden ceded, and the dark from the East

approaching home. cities

made

Down

fell

over the cabin.

We

were

below, lights twinkling on in towns and

the countryside look like a vast theatre just before the

curtain goes up. Everyone on the plane

became

a poet in that quiet

final hour.

We

Newark

landed at

Airport in a blaze of excitement and tele-

A car took me to Brooklyn Heights, where Grace was We voted, then went to the thirty-fifth floor of the Waldorf-

vision lights. waiting.

Astoria to watch the returns. Tonight the future had arrived, and stopped.

At midnight next few hours

I

hospitality suite lts,

I

sent Grace home; it was going to be close. For the watched the returns with Frank Shakespeare in a

down

the hall from Nixon. Rockefeller, Jacob Jav-

Strom Thurmond, and other

political figures

came and went,

but Nixon was not ready to see anybody. Bob Haldeman, John Ehr-

lichman, and campaign aide Dwight Chapin monitored the television next door to Nixon's suite. Mitchell, Finch,

and Chotiner

CRAZY RHYTHM audited reports from the

field.

won. At about

that he had

/

141

At about three a.m. Nixon concluded he rounded up a dozen of us, includ-

four,

ing Mitchell, Haldeman, Rose

Mary Woods,

Finch, Price, Buchanan, and me, plus newcomer-old-timer Bryce Harlow, to wait out the

expected victory.

Relaxed and convivial

at first,

Nixon

joked, rambled, ribbed,

smoked

reminisced, drank a couple of beers, ate a sandwich,

and occasionally sent Mitchell or Haldeman states. After a

final result

while an anxious

was

just

to get details

mood descended on

a cigar,

on open

the group.

The

hanging there, like a post-term baby. Texas

would be no official result was even more ominous: Mayor Richard

reported "mechanical difficulties"; there until morning. Illinois

Daley was

.up to his traditional trick,

withholding votes from his

Chicago vote cache until the downstate results revealed the

which would then be made up by hook

or,

more

deficit,

by crook.

likely,

This could be a stomach-churning reprise of 1960.

was supposed

I

to be part of the effort to stop

Mayor Daley's

traditional chicanery. In early 1968, during the primary season,

Nixon asked catchy

me to assemble a group of volunteer lawyers under the

name "Operation

Eagle Eye" to thwart a replay of the 1960

vote snatch by the Daley organization.

saw some lawyers and publicize

up

it;

that night

who were

cans

my mission.

what but

I

I

I

flew to Chicago and briefly

local press to set the operation in I

was supposed

to

meet with

to provide logistical support. But I

I

motion and

local Republi-

totally

stopped by the popular Irv Kupcinet

gummed

Show to make

thought would be a brief pitch for the "Eagle Eye" operation,

ended up camera-trapped for three hours in Kupcinet's "conver-

McGovern, Gore Vidal, Alan Lomax, Allard Lowenstein, and Kupcinet himself on all of Nixon's positions Vietnam, race, youth, economic policy, and on and on. My miserable performance would have been even worse had sation pit," debating with Senator George

—

it

not been for periodic interventions by McGovern,

who understood

the sweat-soaked predicament of an amateur and rescued ever

I

It

was about to sink out of sight. was just as well that I was trapped before the

me when-

cameras,-

1

knew

zero about the perpetration or prevention of voting fraud. John

Mitchell and his Chicago apparat took up "Eagle Eye" in a more professional manner. Finally, as

we

sat

with Nixon through the dawn hours in the

142

Leonard Garment

/

Waldorf, waiting for the centipede to drop the final shoe labeled Illinois,

we saw

the fruits of Mitchell's work. Mitchell's strategy to

counter Daley had been to arrange the withholding of a large cache of Republican-controlled votes in

downstate

hour

Illinois. So,

after

hour, John Mitchell and Richard Daley dueled, each withholding his

ultimate weapon as the sun rose over a still-sleeping America.

About eight a.m., Nixon, out of patience, told Mitchell to place a call to Mike Wallace, who was live on CBS television, and challenge Daley to release his votes. We watched the TV screen as Mike took Mitchell's

and put Mitchell's challenge to Daley. The

call

nois votes were released, the state

Humphrey

Shortly

went

conceded.

after the election,

and campaign team

I

was

invited to join the president-elect

for a celebratory first flight

(Lyndon Johnson's postelection treat Instead,

I

had

We

a glorious

evening in

two hustling

over lunch at Whyte's on

Yom

Shakespeare to Mike's room

spoils in

sunny

politicians.

Florida,

Mike

— from our

first

meet-

New

York Jews wisecracking Kippur, through my visit with Frank

at

Roosevelt Hospital in 1968, where

candidate Nixon's offer to

spokesman, with plenipotentiary powers, presidency.

— displaying both

New York.

reminisced about the campaign years

ing in the mid-1960s,

we conveyed

on Air Force One

Nixon) to Key Biscayne.

and condescension toward ordinary

While the Nixon team divvied up the I

for

kept a dinner date with Mike Wallace

fidelity to a friend

and

Illi-

around noon,

to Nixon, and,

make Wallace for the

his press

campaign and the

Mike was then recovering from a hemorrhoidectomy life to an old joke: "Tell Mr. Nixon he really knows

and so gave new

how

to hurt a guy,"

weighed our his chances

offer

with

he

a berth

60 Minutes. Nixon's journalistic maverick,

early vision of

said,

He

on an experimental CBS news show called

offer to Wallace,

was

for

me

who was

well

known

my

as a

convincing evidence that Nixon's

his candidacy and presidency was vastly

from the one that emerged

By keeping

grinning and grimacing in his pain.

but eventually said no, electing instead to take

different

later.

postcampaign dinner date with Wallace rather

than heading for Key Biscayne,

I

was expressing something more

CRAZY RHYTHM

/

143

me are drawn to mountain climbing not by the intellectual or moral virtue of the enterprise but by the primitive joy of striving and succeeding: Nothing rivals combat as a way of organizing life's conventional and depressing aimlessness. Thus, than a desire to reminisce. Aggressive types like

activities like litigation, politics, or

when

the four-year sprint for the presidency was done,

serene.

No

law firm or

would

fall

plans, ambitions, or thoughts about

I

felt

.

.

.

Washington or the

much of anything else. My future would emerge. Things into place.

Nixon would

see to

it.

After

all, I

had been

with him from day one. I

also

had

a concrete reason to believe there

between Nixon and if I

wanted

was

a special

bond

me that ensured a place for me in his presidency

it.

went on the road, I rarely saw Nixon. His airborne managers, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, wisely exercised control over every minute of Nixon's dawn-to-dark schedule. He would occasionally phone me to shmooze when he was back in New York over a weekend or refreshing his tan at Key Biscayne; those conversations were, I'm sure, True, once the presidential campaign

indistinguishable from scores of similar calls he

would make

to

other friends and advisers.

But during the dark times of October, as Nixon's lead steadily shrank, he made nighttime calls to me of a very different sort. They would come to my home, between midnight and two a.m. or even later. Sometimes Nixon himself was on the line. Sometimes it was Ehrlichman, announcing, "The old man wants to talk with you for a bit." Nixon would usually apologize for the late hour, ask after my family and the morale of the New York staff, how John was doing with Martha, some such thing. Then began what was less a conversation than a monologue, centered on his anxieties of the day. These were mostly about his narrowing margin over Humphrey and the impact of an expected bombing halt in Vietnam. The Democrats are going home, Len, he'd say. The Wallace vote is

hurting us. Watch for an

Don't

let

your people panic.

I

L.B.J,

stunt right before the election.

would

offer

an occasional opinion, but

he didn't need that from me. What he wanted was reassurance. I was Nixon's chief optimist and good-luck charm, the man who had declared,

way back

in early 1964, that he

was destined

to be presi-

144 dent.

Leonard Garment

/

Then Nixon would

procession of sad and

drift further, into a

lonely thoughts, mingling past and present, that needed to be expressed, not necessarily heard.

grow

The monologue would

less clear, slower, indistinct,

and

gradually

finally end, often in

midsen-

There would be silence and then a dial tone. Together with Grace, I worried over these calls. She was no

tence.

stranger to nocturnal

phone

John Mitchell's wife, Martha, was Martha would invariably call on nights late dinner meeting and assure Grace that calls:

a frequent telephone visitor.

when John and I were

at a

two husbands were catting around town somewhere. Grace and I were the least surprised people in the world when Martha started to reach out and touch everyone in Washington with her bizarre phone communications. But the Nixon calls were more serious. Was he drinking? Was the pressure too much? Could he be cracking up? Then the next day would bring news that Nixon was back on the trail, alert, lively, crisp, making everything perfectly clear. I would feel a sense of relief their

at grave

danger averted.

Nearly twenty-five years

later, in

Ehrlichman over dinner in Santa

phone ing

calls

little

were some kind

1991,

Fe.

I

was

1

with John

visiting

asked him whether those

of hallucination.

routine," Ehrlichman answered.

"That was an

At the end

interest-

of a long

cam-

paign day on the road, he said, Nixon's imperative need to get some

The usual solution was a Secoto me. I was the friendly, disem-

sleep ran into his chronic insomnia.

and

nal, a stiff drink,

a

phone

call

whom

Nixon could unload his daily deposit of anxieties until he was finally carried away by alcohol, sedation, and exhaustion into the Land of Nod. It was more cries and whispers

bodied presence to

than train whistles in the night, but

i neffable

it

served

feelings of closeness or no,

it

I

me

sooner or

I

Key Biscayne,

after the I

was no

did not see or hear from Nixon,

now

men who were

him

ensconced in the Pierre Hotel with the assemble his administration.

purpose.

happened that

president-elect and his party returned from

longer part of the inner circle.

its

helping

reasoned that he would get around to

later.

Meanwhile,

I

was interviewing minority candidates

for jobs in

CRAZY RHYTHM

145

/

new administration. My young assistant Christopher DeMuth knew James Farmer, the former president of the Congress of Racial the

Equality (CORE], and had worked in Farmer's campaign against Shirley

Muth

Chisholm

for her Bedford-Stuyvesant congressional seat.

me

introduced

Department

at the

to Farmer,

of Health,

who became an

man

me

asked

to

assistant secretary

Education and Welfare.

Moynihan sound him out.

the idea of bringing Pat

De-

I

also raised

into the administration. HaldeI

met him

for the first

time

at

the Laurent Restaurant, where a long and rollicking dinner ensued.

Moynihan said he was willing to be secretary of transportation. But that job was already committed to Governor John Volpe of Massachusetts, so Moynihan and Nixon fashioned an alternative: Moynihan would become Nixon's adviser on urban affairs and director of a new Urban Affairs Council in the White House. An Israeli diplomat named Shlomo Argov, searching for a friendly face in the administration-to-be, took

lunch

at the Plaza Hotel. It

humor

(he

knew

me

to

an orientation

was one third history, two thirds Mideast Soon afterward, the gloriously elo-

his customer).

quent Argov was named deputy to the

zhak Rabin. During our years

new

in Wasington,

ambassador,

Israeli

Argov was

It-

my working

colleague and a close family friend.

.ZAjid so

it

went

little of that,

in those postelection days

while

I

—a

little of this

read newspapers, talked to the press, visited

with law firm colleagues, lunched with Ray Price and

and waited

to hear

finally arrived,

like I

you

to

I

from Nixon about

and the

come

realized that

call

future.

Pierre:

law partners had wanted filled.

me

But

The

Bill Safire,

great day

"Mr. Nixon would

My heart beat a little faster. In the cab,

had no idea what I wanted to

had already been announced

Department were

my

came from the

right over."

still

and a

do:

John Erlichman

as counsel to the president, the job to have, I

and the top

believed

my

slots at the Justice

Nixon would know what was

best for me.

The it

was

Pierre

had been chosen

as transition headquarters because

close to Nixon's apartment a few blocks up Fifth Avenue.

Nixon's office at the hotel was a comfortable

Woods

suite,

with Rose Mary

perched outside, buried in paper as usual. Nixon was relaxed

146

and warm,

as

briskly to his

Mitchell.

we had

first

it.

last

met and

same

the

Martha.

It's

Leonard Garment

order of business

"We have

your help. won't do

if

/

talked that morning.

old problem, Len," he said, "and

need John as

I

He went

— not Leonard Garment but John my

I

need

attorney general, but he

He's worried that Martha can't handle the Washington

pressure. You've got to talk to

him and make him understand how

is. He trusts your judgment on things like this." I would give it my best. Now it was my turn: Len, Nixon said in more or less these words, I've been thinking a lot about what you should do. I want you to come to Washington (good!) and move into the firm's office there (what?). You'll be right across the street from the White House,I'll see to it that you have a White House pass, attend meetings, handle personal assignments for me that I don't want to run through the bureaucracy (what does that mean?). You will be part of my

important this said sure,

I

kitchen cabinet

(oy!).

You've reached an age and level in the firm

where you can start accumulating some real money for Grace and the children (who cares?). Get a nice house. Entertain in style. Learn the ropes. In no time you'll be the "Clark Clifford of the Republican party."

That

last

phrase

is

verbatim.

Beginning with fellow Missourian Harry Truman,

whom

he

served as political adviser, confidential messenger, and organizer of presidential poker parties, Clark Clifford of

came

to signify a rare

kind

Washington insider power. His influence was only marginally by the comings and goings

affected

and members

of Congress.

sionally within the last secretary of

Mainly from his law firm perch, occa-

government

defense

of presidents, cabinet officials,

itself

— Clifford

— he

was Lyndon Johnson's

exercised his unusual talents,

combining impeccable connections and

a penetratingly

shrewd

handsome Savile Row package. His only notable stumble took place when he was eighty years plus and became a player in the B.C. C.I. scandal.

grasp of law and politics,

Me, It

a

ball,

in a

all

tall,

Republican Clark Clifford? Fat chance.

wasn't until later that

Nixon was After

all

offering

I

understood what troves of influence

me. At the time,

I

was puzzled and embarrassed.

the years of devoted exertion, after bringing the bat and

recruiting the players, and renting the stadium,

the only guy

left sitting

how

on the bench when the game

could

I

be

started? But

I

CRAZY RHYTHM thanked Nixon

and

for his thoughtfulness

147

/

the room, feeling

left

downcast.

Over the

years,

wondered about Nixon's

I

me from his new administration.

But after finally talking to most of

the participants in the early personnel decisions,

various paranoid theories

I

exclusion of

initial

I

know

that the

invented were wrong. Nixon saw

a freelance operator, a political naif

who had

me

as

never displayed any

aptitude or appetite for the actual politics of governing. Probably

my

casual decision to pass up his invitation to go to

and stake out

my

claim reinforced his opinion. So he probably

thought he was doing what was best for me. After life

he had lived up until then, he was offering

have thought was

have been,

if I

Key Biscayne

a career scenario

made

all,

in light of the

me what

in heaven.

And

he must

so

it

could

had been more sophisticated about power in Washing-

ton and less determined to be where the most obvious action was.

went

I

law

Washington, moved into Nixon's immense former

to

overlooking his

office

new

public quarters across Pennsylvania

Avenue, and temporarily shared a suite Frank Shakespeare, Agency.

I

now

New

returned to

Washington

parties,

York

of

Economic Opportunity, to

for family

weekends, went to gala

naming me

a tough spot to

fill

aspirants.

At one

director of the Office

because the nominee

have both an interest in social issues and a willingness to

drastically

downsize

this artifact of the

Burns,

who had been named counselor to

to the

White House

great

Watergate Hotel with

and kept on interviewing job

point consideration was given to

had

at the

director of the United States Information

men

about the

of public

new

for

War on

Poverty. Arthur

the president, had

me over

an interview lunch. Dr. Burns, one of the

life,

soliloquized through

most

of the

lunch

administration and the old problems, his white hair

much like a children'sconcentrating. He gently probed my

perfectly parted in the middle, looking so

book owl that

I

had trouble

general politics, then finally asked

mission and don't

priorities.

know much

I

what

sis to

community

the one thing

legal services

thought about O.E.O.'s

answered something

about the place or

its

kept in business for political reasons. So trim the

I

like,

"Well, Arthur,

programs, but I

it

I

has to be

would improve the

staff,

action programs to the bone, and shift emphaI

know

produces results for poor people: the

program."

Gong! Wrong answer. Though Burns was too polite to say

so,

148

Leonard Garment

/

was just what he wanted to avoid. O.E.O.'s legal services program was one of the new administration's biggest political headaches, because it had promoted a proliferation of class-action this

communiThe friendly

lawsuits designed to achieve political change for whole ties rather

than case-by-case legal

relief for individuals.

lunch ended on a distinct "Don't

The

finality.

command

you" note

call us, we'll call

of

congressman Don Rumsfeld was drafted to

Illinois

the O.E.O. battlefield and skillfully handled the job with

the help of a senior deputy

named Dick Cheney. Rumsfeld was

succeeded by Frank Carlucci. All three later became secretary of defense, a logical progression.

White House expert on the suade Nixon, for his

And I

ultimately became the reigning

legal services program, helping to per-

last bill signing in office, to create

an indepen-

dent Legal Services Corporation.

my

Apart from failing

general moping. Each day

first federal job I

had what

I

interview,

I

did a lot of

my

thought of as

wretched

breakfast across Seventeenth Street from the White House,

little

news about

my

where

I

cruits,

and assistants who were now running the world. Aching with

envy,

dragged myself one block to

I

read the

various campaign colleagues,

re-

my grandly inappropriate office,

from which I had an unobstructed bird's-eye view of the White House buildings and grounds. I ached some more. Nixon kept his word about making me an "insider." I got my White House pass. Word went out to the press that I was consulted by the president on various important matters of state (not so). I went to White House meetings. But the meetings were mostly public relations conclaves. My contacts with the president himself were virtually nonexistent, and my assignments, mostly from Bob Halde-

man, were what

I

saw

as peripheral odds

minority hiring and the

much was zero. party.

cally

I I

still

had next

On

and ends, in areas like

the Washington legal front, not

business productivity hovered around

to be the Clark Clifford of the Republican

to

no idea

of

what Clark

Clifford did. Periodi-

flew back to Brooklyn and drove Grace and the kids crazy.

Finally,

took

My

happening:

was not going

I

arts.

me

one weekend, Bob Guthrie,

to his

home

in Hilton Head,

my Mudge

Rose mentor,

South Carolina, and urged

my losses: "Face it, boy. You're not meant for Come home and start doing something you know how to cut

me

Washington. to do."

Time

CRAZY RHYTHM was running

me

out. Clients

was news

Then, on find a page

May

149

were already beginning

to call

me, asking

them with government agencies whose very

to intercede for

existence

/

to

me.

24, 1969,

I

picked up The Washington Post to

one story headed president's idea man: outsider with It was a combination of friendly leaks and not-

inside ties.

unfriendly speculation, painting

be

me

as

what Nixon wanted me

to

— the Clark Clifford of the Republican party: There are times in the White House when the discussion among President Nixon's staff reaches a point where someone will say: "What does Len think about this?" So someone will pick up a phone, dial 298-5970 and get Leonard Garment. Garment's name appears on no White House roster. Yet ... in the course of a week, he talks to the President two or three times by telephone. He has visited the President four or five times on unannounced calls since the Administration took office and he has seen the President socially uncounted .

.

times.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Mudge Rose stantially.

morning

.

.

.

.

is

in a position to increase its business sub-

"They must have a partners' meeting every on what new business to take," a competing

to decide

lawyer says.

That was

it.

If I

did not take action,

my

fate as a

maladapted

—

—

was sealed. Within hours or was it minutes? was on the phone to Peter Flanigan, the highest-ranking of my personal friends at the White House. "Peter," I said, "I'm either going eminence

grise

into the government, back to

New

York,

or,

sooner or

later, off to

hung up, then quickly called back: "The president would like you to join the White House staff." Nixon had at first offered me what he thought was a generous piece of the spoils of office. Now I finally had my hands on the only jail."

Peter

spoils

I

could understand, a real job in the administration.

6 THE NIXON WHITE HOUSE: ARTS AND CRAFT

W:

hen

I

to the

lic-service intentions

went across the street White House, my pub-

were mixed: an appetite

for activity, a flight

from law practice, continued competition in the assimilation sweepstakes, curiosity about the mysteries of presidential power, ambi-

tion to share in that power, and a formless desire to do something

"useful." But

were not so

I

see this only in retrospect; at the time,

clear to

me. Thus, when

I

my

motives

finally crashed the

White

House party, I was left with the problem of what to do. The president had given me all the trappings of a high-ranking assistant, but no specific responsibilities. I would have to invent a job out of what was available in the distant swamplands of Republican

such as civil rights, fews, and cultural affairs, activities no sane and reasonably ambitious person in my position would

politics,

that

have touched in 1969.

The process thing. Since

I,

of invention

was

slow.

Nobody pushed me

to do a

though "special consultant to the president," had

nothing special to consult about,

I

just sent

him

acres of policy

—

was not part of any organized staff activity no surprise, since the most constant inner-circle activity in the upper reaches of the White House was muscle flexing. Haldeman and Ehrlichman were not your conventional political operators. They were formida-

memos.

I

/

151

152

Leonard Garment

/

bly intelligent and bristled with energy and self-confidence. These qualities proved to be essential to Nixon's acquisition of

and exercise

power. Despite his political skills and tunnel-digging determina-

tion, Nixon was surprisingly soft in the clinch, whether the issue was dropping staffers or bombs. He needed tough, cold-blooded ex-

ecutives to put his plans into play.

The relationships among Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Kissinger, and Nixon were singularly devoted to the breeding and tending of power. They were not friends, not even a little. Indeed, if the members of Nixon's German general staff shared an emotion, it was an intense dislike of Nixon, which he returned. But without a lot of piety and false idealism to get in the

of governing in the early

way, this strange quartet did a better job

Nixon years than most

of their predeces-

sors or successors.

tal

Haldeman and Ehrlichman were not ideological or temperamentwins. Haldeman usually greeted me in the White House, half

and half derisively, as "Lenny Government," so amused was he to find a dim-witted Democratic do-gooder on the team of political knife wielders that Nixon had assembled. affectionately

Ehrlichman, by contrast, took suggested that

I

might provide

on's darker side,

who

susceptible ears. But

a

he had

moderating balance to the agitators

of Nix-

much

when Ehrlichman idle, if

I

spent

my

and continue

told

and

I

to go see

which

know how

and nowhere so

watch the

my search for a proper relationship

it

seems

I

did not

I

just as idle

to "secretly"

the spring of 1969, strange as

Nixon,

bothering a

benign, chatter.

was

me

felt foolish

time feeling mostly relieved that

again, a secure setting in

in

polite,

chatter in the Oval Office

benign. So

Ehrlichman told

later,

seized any opportunity to pour poison into his

thought he was merely being

busy president with

him

me

about things in general. Years

hoped

seriously and occasionally

the president and drop in to chat with

call

I

me

to our

I

had, once

great

show

to the world.

own

disillusioned

decade, Washington glowed with drama and expectation; the White

House was center but

its

stage.

It

was and

is a

surpassingly dangerous place;

serene setting, in a small private park fenced off from the

surrounding urban hubbub, makes presidents and their to find this out.

staffers

slow

CRAZY RHYTHM They take good

you

153

/

White House. You always get a smart salute from the uniformed marine tending the door. In the basement are dining rooms, kitchens, darkrooms, a barbershop, an exercise room, and facilities for sandwiches, soda, and hanging out. care of

at the

The meticulous care given White House inhabitants is epitomized by the White House telephone operators, legendary for their ability to handle crushing

waves

of

phone

calls

during real or manufactured

national excitements and to locate anyone, anytime, anywhere in

who

the world. Everyone

has worked in the White House has a

favorite operator story. Once, for five years,

client of

I

when

had been out

I

had to locate the head

of a large

government

of

investment house, a

my law firm, because a hospital on whose board he sat had

been seized by a sudden labor

crisis.

He was on vacation, on a yacht

somewhere in the Mediterranean. Unreachable. I called the White House and asked, not thinking to identify myself, "There's a crisis. Could you please locate Mr. X?" "Yes, Mr. Garment," the operator answered instantly, and proceeded to do her

The main

floor of the

West Wing

is

job.

the prime real estate in the

White House, fought and wept over by the White House cause of

its

proximity to the president,

the middle of the

web

of offices

and

who

sits a

facilities.

few

feet

staff be-

away

in

Across Executive

Avenue, whose parking spaces are as precious as the West Wing's main-floor offices,

is

the massive Old Executive Office Building

(O.E.O.B.). Its inhabitants

— people in the Office of Management and

Budget, the Office of the Vice President, the National Security

Council, the Council of Economic Advisers, the speechwriting

and such

staff,

— always feel a bit declasse compared with their West Wing

brethren. In this building there are news-clipping collectors, television

news watchers, ters, painters,

letter answerers,

spooks and counterspooks, carpen-

bodyguards, cooks, physicians, a bowling

ing facilities, and

God knows what

else.

The

bank-

alley,

long, dark halls, the

to accommodemands of the building's inhabitants, the attic spaces and secret rooms add to a sense that the O.E.O.B. is secondarily a working building and primarily a place to play hide-and-seek. No wonder

nooks and crannies sliced up by partitions in attempts date the

some White House prying eyes

actors

saw the building

as a sanctuary

from

— a good place to organize an undercover operation or

hatch a conspiracy. The Watergate plumbers used

Room

193,

on the

154 O.E.O.B. 's basement

mented

Leonard Garment

/

floor,

command

as the

center for their de-

activities.

During President Nixon's White House

years,

he worked in the

immediately to the

left of the O.E.O.B. 's entrance. The Oval by contrast, was where he ceremonially presided. Word was put about that Nixon had chosen his O.E.O.B. office to make his

suite

Office,

the building feel less second-class, but the evidence

staff in

he actually preferred this

office.

Here he had his comfortable

ture, his favorite

brown plush easy

of pipes, photos,

and memorabilia, his musical sound system

eventually,

some

this office that

is

that

furni-

chair and ottoman, his collection

of his less aesthetic taping

equipment.

It

— and, was

in

John Dean delivered his March 21, 1973, "cancer on

the presidency" oration to Nixon. In

fact, Bill Safire

has written that

at the very moment Dean was talking, Safire, who had resigned and was leaving the White House, paused at the office door for a moment, undecided whether to go in and say one last good-bye to Nixon. He passed up the chance, thus missing his opportunity to alter history or become an unindicted co-conspirator. I was assigned to a spacious and sunny O.E.O.B. corner office just down the hall from Nixon's suite. I had a connecting room for two secretaries and one for a staff assistant. My office bore the weird number I88V2, testimony to the hopelessness of the efforts to make the building fit its inhabitants. My next-door neighbor was Charles

Colson. For the six years

Nixon ness.

I

spent on the White House

staff of

and, briefly, President Ford, the day began in

A

Chrysler sedan

driver at the wheel,

President

predawn dark-

— warm in winter, cool in summer, an army

The

New

York Times, The Washington Post,

and the White House news summaries on the backseat

— waited at

my

home. We drove north, up Route 95, over the Key Bridge, past the dawn-shrouded shape of the Lincoln Memorial, along a silent Constitution Avenue, through the southwest gate of the White House, and up to the basement door of the West Wing. The White

House day

officially started

with a seven-thirty a.m. senior

staff

meeting over coffee in the Roosevelt Room. Haldeman, Ehrlichman,

and Kissinger had already met president's problems for the larger Roosevelt brief staff reports.

Room

in

day,-

Haldeman's

office to sort out the

then Ehrlichman convened the

meeting, proceeding around the table for

CRAZY RHYTHM Ehrlichman, as

it

155

/

suited him, could be charming, brusque,

He was always

knowledgeable, or painfully acerbic.

funny,

in

charge. His heavy dark eyebrows did their familiar fidgeting dance as

he called the

shut

down

roll,

cut off speeches, handed out assignments, and

the meeting at eight a.m. For months,

my

occasional

contributions to these meetings consisted mainly of puns

— which,

while modest, were not altogether without redeeming value. of the administration's persistent problems, for instance,

inability to obtain the

the Federal Lapin. staff

Home

One

was

its

much-desired resignation of the chairman of

Loan Bank Board, a gentleman named Louis of taxpayer-financed time were devoted at the

Huge amounts

meeting, day after day, to the Lapin Dilemma. Finally

I

sug-

gested that people should resign themselves to their problem; as

they

all

knew, "Lapins make lousy leavers." Groans, but no more

Lapin complaints.

Many table at

who

of the figures

gathered around that early-morning

one time or another during the Nixon years are

now

well

known: Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Don Rumsfeld, Al Haig, Mel Laird, Peter Flanigan, Bryce Harlow, Herb Stein, Dick Cheney,

Ann Armstrong, Caspar

Weinberger, Frank Carlucci, Paul O'Neill,

Arthur Burns, Elizabeth Dole, Jim Schlesinger, Scowcroft, Virginia Knauer. Sprinkled training were

public figures only tion,

and

among

more anonymous worker bees,

when

a

Bill

these eminentoes-in-

few

institutional loyalty,

a defective sense of self-interest

Timmons, Brent of

whom became

White House

combined

to get

isola-

them

a

moment of Watergate fame and possibly a not-so-fleeting jail term. Some of these were eminently decent young men, like the lawyers Egil "Bud" Krogh and Ed Morgan, who performed their staff fleeting

assignments with energy and

skill

— Krogh

in law enforcement,

—

Morgan in school desegregation only to have their lives desperately messed up while carrying out assignments for Nixon, Ehrlichman, or Colson. For Krogh, it was the Ellsberg break-in,- for Morgan, the backdating to the

Nixon's deed of vice presidential papers

government.

Ron but

of

Ziegler,

who had no

who managed to be close as

a glove to the president

operational assignments and escaped Watergate mi-

raculously unharmed, was occasionally at the Roosevelt

Room

meeting, but more frequently he sent his deputy, Jerry Warren.

Chuck Colson

also sent a deputy,

presumably having better

(i.e.,

156

Leonard Garment

/

worse] things to do with his mornings. Murray Chotiner, charter

member

of the original

Nixon

appearance.

He was one

could pass for particular for

my

and throwback

political family

Nixon's most controversial years in

made an

politics,

to

occasional

shrewd landsman who any middle-aged Jewish uncle with a paunch in of

favorites, a

—

my uncle Abe Garment,

a waiter in the Little Oriental

Restaurant on Pitkin Avenue in Brooklyn.

Then tant,

there

was Harry Dent, formerly Strom Thurmond's

assis-

now a White House political adviser and the operational execu-

tive of Nixon's "southern strategy."

eventually became Harry's

I

informal counterpart, proponent of the Nixon "northern strategy."

To become

Nixon had promised a great deal to the South; office, he had the power and desire to deliver considerably less. Nixon's idea was that Harry and I would battle out issues of politics and race hand to hand, by fair means and foul, thereby miraculously achieving a functional balance that would be tolerable president,

now, in

to southern conservatives

and northern

liberals. It

was, shall

we

say,

not easy, necessitating John Mitchell's famous dictum, "Watch what

we

do, not

what we

say."

House mess for breakfast and hard-core gossip. Then the staff went off to bully cabinet officers or jolly members of Congress, plan arms After the morning meeting, people went to the White

negotiations and covert operations or fiddle with the federal budget

and U.S. economy.

I

usually drifted back to

drink more coffee, scribble those

memos,

my

calls,

tion,

to

staffers.

I

visit

and

speechwriter

placed and answered phone

talked to reporters and supplicants for White

and had

content to

finish the daily

weekly media, case the O.E.O.B. and West Wing, chums, and kibitz with policy

office,

House informa-

lots of lunches.

Gradually, a job took shape along the lines of

my babbled speech

me for the

directorship of the

Arthur Burns when he interviewed

Office of

Economic Opportunity.

I

gradually

became White House

counsel to power-impoverished parts of the federal government, ident advocate for the great

budsman

for the

unwashed

of the executive branch,

res-

om-

door-pounding outside world. Word got around.

Business boomed. It

day

I

boomed,

in fact, in places

got a letter, bucked to

me

I

didn't

even

know

existed.

One

by the president himself, from an

CRAZY RHYTHM

157

/

impressive-sounding group of scientists operating out of

Miami

under the respectable corporate name of Vanguard Research,

Inc.

They wanted White House support

Na-

for their application to the

tional Science Foundation for a grant to help find the

Snowman — or, more

precisely, not the

Snowman

Abominable

himself, a Russo-

Asian denizen, but the North American Sasquatch (aka

There was a seconding

who

Bulletin,

testified that

from the editor

letter

of

Bigfoot).

The Bigfoot

while he had not actually seen Bigfoot,

he had found "tracks as well as hairs and feces that cannot be fied as belonging to

to tell

any known creature."

him about some people

tried to be helpful.

I

I

stifled the

knew who might

fit

identi-

temptation

the

bill,

and

I

But the National Science Foundation had other

priorities.

With all this activity, I soon needed a helper. Morris Liebman, an eminent Chicago lawyer of my acquaintance and a man-aboutpolitics, was a compulsive matchmaker. He introduced me to Brad Patterson, the executive director of the President's

Commission on

Equal Opportunity. Before working with me, Brad had served as a National

War College

lecturer,

deputy cabinet secretary, and execu-

tive assistant to Sargent Shriver at the Peace Corps.

whom

and by

policy

was formed

He knew how

in the federal government.

If

he

didn't know a policy-relevant fact, he knew how to get He knew precisely how papers moved everywhere in the government: in what sequence, through whose hands, and the home phone it

quickly.

was trusted by every professional in Washington. He was the reason I was able to cover a large number of policy areas without getting into public

numbers

of the people attached to those hands. Brad

trouble.

As I went tary

along,

I

enlisted other individuals: an incredible secre-

named Eleanor Conner, Carol Harford

for cultural

pickup teams of executive branch and volunteer

ments

like school desegregation, fair

issues,

staff for assign-

housing, and reform of Ameri-

can Indian policy. But, as actors say

at

Hollywood award ceremonies

about their producers and mothers,

it

was Brad Patterson who made

it all

possible.

work was not

As

a result of his help, settling into

hard. Indeed,

it

was

experienced in moving from private to public

lems were back home.

my new

line of

the least of the difficulties life.

My

I

major prob-

158

D

Leonard Garment

/

uring the great distraction of the Nixon comeback and cam-

paign years, the difficulties in

home

wasn't back

in

New

my

marriage seemed to abate

York often enough

problems, at least for me. Now, though,

it

staying in Washington, and the question of

for there to

— or

I

be any

was clear that I was what to do about the

It was not that Grace and I did not most ways we did, famously. But both of us were depressives who had concluded that by marrying we could at least cheer each other up full-time and who wound up making things progressively worse for each other, full-time. I had access to various

marriage had to be confronted.

get along; in

kinds of temporary plans to

make Richard Nixon

was stuck with

when

and,

work,

relief:

psychiatry, keeping house, looking after the kids,

they could walk and

When

psychiatrists.

travel, friends, psychiatry, crazy

president of the United States. Grace

she finished her chores,

bedroom, close the door,

And

lie

them to their own she would go to the

talk, ferrying

on her bed, and weep, night

remember

after night,

winter weekend bunch of us my went to the Music brothers, their wives, and some close friends Inn, a lodge near Lenox, Massachusetts. These were people Grace knew, liked, and was easy with. She joined us for a cheerful-jokefilled breakfast the first day, then went to our room and never came inconsolably.

not only at home:

in the 1950s, before the kids

I

were born, when

a

—

a

—

out.

I

made

the conventional excuses about "illness." For three days

she slept, stared at the ceiling, and cried.

One

of her doctors later described

quality of her depression.

Grace as "anhedonistic,"

clin-

But this description missed the true

ically incapable of pleasure.

When

she wept,

it

was never about anylife, which no one

thing in particular except for one thing, a lost

could return to her.

As long

as

I

was

living in

stay stuck in this rut.

New

My going to

York,

it

was

Washington

clear that in 1968

we would

changed the

Once there, I returned to Brooklyn infrequently; Grace came down only for the inaugural, and with the kids for a weekend. began to assess the marriage more abstractly more clearly, thought, than before. I was logical, disinterested, and lawyerlike: equation.

—

I

the time had come.

It's

now

or never. Break

it off; it

I

will be best for

CRAZY RHYTHM everyone. Grace tried;

is

159

/

sealed in cement, paralyzed. Everything has been

nothing works. Force her to

act.

Free her, free yourself, save

two lives. The kids will survive. Show some guts. Do it now. I worked out various speeches in my head based on this argument. It got to the point where I was pretty good at imagining the scene

my

the quiet talk, Grace nodding her head as she absorbed

ments and accepted getting

details in

my

my

was The warm,

logic, smiling, relieved, grateful that

out in the open, finally making her deal with

it all

I

it.

—

head were blurred, but the feeling was clear

argu-

civilized, friendly, nice.

summer

So one weekend early in the

of 1969,

I

returned to

Brooklyn Heights to talk to Grace about a separation. Once home, stalled as long as

to

Washington,

I

I

could.

On Sunday afternoon, before heading back me out to the backyard,

asked Grace to walk with

out of earshot of the kids, for a

We

serious. "

sat

on some

border around our willow in Brooklyn.

two

It

talk.

mumbled about "something

I

railroad ties that tree.

formed

a large, square

This was not just any tree that grew

was full-grown and

by the

forty feet high, acquired

We had it carted in mammoth roots and branches

of us joyously, expansively, crazily in 1965.

by truck from tied

I

a Scarsdale nursery, the

back in bundles. Six perspiring workmen accompanied the

pushed

it

tree,

through our garage opening, and carried out the pyramid-

building operation necessary to plant

posed to be the

first

turned out to be the

it.

The willow

tree

was sup-

stage of an ambitious landscaping plan but

last,

because

we ran out of money. The tree was

all

our expectations and misadventures, the oversized

projects lovingly

and confidently launched because they transiently

a

reminder of

excited our imaginations, the ceaseless efforts

out solutions for problems

The

tree

was

soon as

was

I

began

had been

lots of

my rehearsed spiel,

and

crying.

all of us,

That was

to search

good times. So

I

knew, as

I had picked the wrong spot. was thinking about the house, something about Washington giving

talking about separation, but

the tree, the kids. Grace said her,

we made

couldn't define.

also a reminder that with all the craziness, head-

aches, and tears, there

I

we

that I

a chance for a fresh start. She began crying. that.

We would

hugely relieved, wondering

how

family. And, give or take a

I

all

go to Washington.

I

I

began

flew back

could have thought of leaving

few bad moments, the next

my

six years

160

/

were relatively happy ones

Leonard Garment probably the best of Grace's

for all of us,

life.

was back on our old

I

house.

I

went over

street in

Brooklyn Heights recently,

and Mary Merz, the architects

iting our friends Joe

big for a city backyard.

Its

infected tooth. But

Later in the

and a client

of

Mike owned

a

it

served

summer

my

its

it

had begun to choke the

had

to be extracted like

Michael

old law firm,

Straight, a friend of

made an

offer

to rent

it?

The

mine

couldn't refuse.

I

It

was

present tenants, a young C.I.A. officer, Fred

its

and his family, who had been assigned to

Hitz,

an

purpose.

of 1969,

house in Virginia called Green Spring Farm.

being vacated by

gate,

turned out that the tree

It

roots

adjoining underground structures, and

vis-

Brooklyn

house and, peering through the

to the old

could see that the willow tree was gone.

was too

of the

offer carried uncertainties.

Africa.

Would

There was no

I

like

lease, be-

cause Straight was in the process of giving the property to Fairfax

County as part of a complex land and rezoning swap. The tenancy was not only terminable on thirty days' notice but subject to rights of access for the Straight family. I would be part tenant, part house sitter. Still, when I saw what I would be getting for a manageable rent, my eyes popped. It was seven acres of gorgeous landscaping, with access to a bass pond, a grass tennis court, and horse barns.

There was even a nice old caretaker couple, John and Mary Quast,

— actually, a kind of fairy-tale cottage near the

who

"lived in a shoe"

pond

— and looked after the property.

The house

itself

also the history of the

After

all

the sturm

way

a tidy

of the previous year,

Farm. In August, without prior notice, lighted eyes. Everything about

ment

was

two centuries. was good to be of Green Spring

a part of Virginia lived for

und drang

it

able to surprise Grace and the kids with the glories

it

I

unveiled

it

to their de-

spelled "fresh start" to the Gar-

family.

Indeed, "fresh start"

people are drawn to

back

is

the reason,

I

Washington — why

they leave, often return. life"

was

brick Colonial built around 1780; the history of the house

little

It is

came they

to realize,

come and

why many stay

or, if

where the "real its own wounds,

a place of fresh starts,

home is suspended. Washington inflicts somehow life in political Washington

of course, but

of a perpetual open-air theatre

whose

has the quality

curtain rises with The Wash-

CRAZY RHYTHM ington Post and

falls

161

/

each evening with the eleven o'clock

TV news.

Maybe the reason so little good fiction has been written about Washington is that Washington life itself has so many elements of makebelieve and improbability.

Take Green Spring Farm, for instance. In 1969, when Fred Hitz departed, Mike Straight needed a tenant and I needed a house. At the same time, Mike and I were working together on a federal arts project. Five years later, in 1974,

when

had narrowly escaped the

I

taint of Watergate, personal scandal nevertheless threatened

and the cause was Green Spring Farm. In the summer

Washington Monthly, an influential article suggesting that the

liberal

me

of 1974,

The

magazine, published an

Green Spring Farm lease was

heart" contract and that the quid pro quo for

a "sweet-

my low rent may have

arts job that I had arranged for Mike was lucky for me that this was Watergate endgame time; Washington had more exciting things to worry about, so this scandalette vanished without a trace. Fifteen years later, in 1989, I was

been the high-level federal Straight.

It

back in Washington and bought a house.

We

found that our next-

door neighbors, and soon our good friends, were Jim and Debbie Fallows, just returned from Japan. Jim had been a speechwriter for

Jimmy

Carter; he

was

Washington editor world, he

is

now

at that

time a noted writer on politics and

of the Atlantic

the editor of U.S.

Monthly. (Moving up in the

News

et)

World Report.) Going

through old files one day, preparing to write this memoir, I came upon the yellowing pages of the Washington Monthly article on the scandal of Green Spring Farm. The author was, naturally, Jim Fallows. That's Washington.

T,.he arts project that Mike Straight and it

happened,

my

first

White House

Nixon

arts policy. In 1969, this idea

tually

it

is

as

enterprise: I was developing a seemed an oxymoron, but even-

a large

amount

of

undeserved

credit.

The

foregoing

not an exercise in modesty, real or feigned.

illustration of

or

were working on was,

took shape and became a serious accomplishment, for

which I received assertion

I

an interesting

fact of public life:

Many

of the

It

is

an

worthy

unworthy things you actually do in government will escape nowhile you will frequently be praised,

tice or proper attribution,

162

Leonard Garment

/

blamed, or given a place in history for activities with which you

have only

a glancing connection.

Early in 1969, while

I

was

still at

Washington, Peter Flanigan asked for

me

Roger Stevens, the chairman

the

Mudge Rose

offices in

one day to find a replacement

of the

National

Endowment

for

the Arts (N.E.A.). Stevens, Washington's all-purpose panjandrum of culture,

in place?

was a popular figure. So, I asked, why don't we leave him Nixon wants a couple of Democrats in his administration,

really no big deal. Flanigan knew and respected was important to show that Republicans could do more in government than manage defense and economic policy. I began my hunt by enlisting the help of Michael Straight, who was extremely knowledgeable in the arts. Straight had written skeptically in The New Republic about the way the N.E.A. was distributing its microscopic allocation of federal funds. N.E.A. policy was idiosyncratic, Straight argued: Money was spent on things like individual prizes and artists' housing in New York City, when the emphasis should be on systematic support for arts institutions and for

and the N.E.A. job Stevens, but said

is

it

expand the base

efforts to

of constituent

and congressional support

for federal arts funding.

Straight's argument made sense to me, in light of the little I knew about the infant Endowment, founded in 1965. In their first few

years,

both the N.E.A. and

dowment

for the

rhetoric and not

much

of

gauzy

European institutions that admin-

when Nixon endowments was about $15 elevating the American soul.

for the fine arts. In 1969,

office, the combined budget of the

million, a scruffy

But Mike and

I

sum

for the task of

had time on our hands and

We began to patch Nixon.

I

knew from

My

—

how he

liked to surprise people,

though he certainly enjoyed confounding

assumptions about him

— but

also

from

a belief in the

wisdom of Wee knew that Nixon, like many historical leaders, was a connection between great cultures and great

strategic ain't."

make the endowments into main contribution was knowledge of

the campaign

not just out of perversity his critics'

a license to tinker.

together a plan to

significant institutions.

there

elite

government support

istered

organization, the National En-

hard cash. They were nothing more than

stunted imitations of the

took

its sister

Humanities, were surrounded by clouds

I

also

Willie Keeler: "Just hit

'em where they believed civiliza-

CRAZY RHYTHM and that patronage

tions

Finally,

knew

I

and

of the arts

governments strengthened

163

/

letters

by aristocracies or

this connection.

the least likely fact of

all:

Nixon was a closet what was good

aesthete and had strong, traditional views about

or bad in painting, music, architecture, and writing.

worshiped great performers bitually turned the classical

volume up on

his

music or Richard Rodgers

plain prose of his political dreams.

was

a vulnerable

customer

home phonograph and as

A

cynic might say that Nixon

for a couple of cultural shingle

months and probably years

of

Nixon was left. He would

thunder on his

mollify his liberal adversaries and dilute their anger.

we made

agree

I

if

small, to

had an intu-

the case that a dollar of intervention in the

would buy multiple

arts

salesmen

all this.

do well to use whatever offsets were available, even

if

played

an accompaniment to the

There was also an operational argument in

ition that

hero-

and me.

like Straight

facing

He

— Rudolf Serkin, for example — and ha-

dollars of political peace,

Nixon might

— as long as we could provide him with a prudent initiative in

capable hands.

Here

my

expertise ended. For the rest,

I

turned to Straight,

Nancy Hanks. was the model of an American aristocrat. He was rich, Leslie Howard-handsome, elegant, quiet, self-effacing. He played tennis every day, drove beat-up cars, wore tattered shirts with perfectly tailored suits, and had faultless manners to match his unfailingly generous disposition. He was born in Southampton to Willard Straight and Dorothy Whitney Straight and grew up in a Charles MacWhorter, and

Mike

Straight

family steeped in money, culture, and liberal politics, with friends like Franklin Roosevelt

came and

a pal of John

and Felix Frankfurter. At Cambridge he be-

Maynard Keynes. Later he was part of Ben Cohen 's speechwriting team in the Roosevelt admin-

Tommy Corcoran

istration,

and

later still

commentator, figure, fore,

collector,

an economist, novelist,

art critic, political

and patron. He was a dauntingly complex

cursed mainly by not really having to do anything and, there-

being compelled to try everything

— like

my

cousin George

money and without the ethnic angst. The second member of our arts planning group was Charlie

Swetlow, but with

MacWhorter,

a lawyer

with

AT&T and one of Nixon's oldest politi-

164

an

cal friends. Charlie,

who

bus or plane

Leonard Garment

/

elfin figure,

was the man on the campaign

provided the candidate and the press with bits of

local political color,

which he drew from

a vast trove of information

he had collected, the way kids collect baseball cards, over a lifetime of volunteer political activity in the

Republican party, starting with

service during the 1950s in Richard Nixon's congressional office.

Over time

became

it

clear to

political secret agent

causes

— the

arts,

who

me

that

Mac Whorter was

the type of

patiently accumulates credits for large

opposition to Vietnam

— by

doing small errands

for the mighty.

The

third central figure

was Nancy Hanks, president

of the As-

sociated Councils on the Arts, a handsome, energetic, and exuberant

woman who

had worked

for years

with the Rockefeller family on

their various public policy projects.

Mike, Charlie, Nancy, and

I

publican suspects, looking for a

went through the usual

new

list of

Re-

N.E.A. chairman. There were

the very rich, the very distinguished, the established patrons

— each

whom, fortunately, declined, principally because the total Endowment budget was less than what they spent on their household

of

help. Finally,

candidate,

on

I

looked around and saw, perched there, our perfect

Nancy Hanks

herself. After characteristically insisting

of

Management and

my surprise, New York's Jacob Javits,

Nancy's Republi-

a list of ironclad guarantees

from the Office

Budget, she said yes.

Then, to

can home-state senator, whose consent was necessary confirmation, said no.

He had

his

own

proceeded, for the

first

and

last

Senate

candidate: John Walker, the

retired director of the National Gallery of Art I

for her

time in

my

— and he was serious. Washington

years, to

outmaneuver Jack Javits. I sent word that if the nominee couldn't be Nancy, it would be not John Walker but Mike Straight, the only

Democrat Nixon would accept as chairman. Mike seemed ambivalent but agreed to go along with the ploy, predicting that Javits would fold and withdraw his opposition to Nancy in order to avoid being responsible for the naming of a Democrat as chairman. When Javits relented, and I called Mike to tell him, he seemed not only genuinely pleased but relieved. Nixon

named Nancy chairman

at a

September 1969 press conference

in

San Clemente, pledging his personal support for the expansion of the federal cultural effort.

CRAZY RHYTHM

Mike should be named deputy chairto him about the mechanics of Senate conhe informed me that his F.B.I, clearance would not be

Nancy and I agreed man. But when I talked firmation, routine.

I

165

/

that

learned part of the reason then, part

later.

when Straight was at Cambridge hobnobbing with Keynes, he also knew Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess, who were agents of the Soviet Union. They recruited Straight into the Communist party, then instructed him to break publicly with the party, In the 1930s,

go underground, return to the United States, and find ways to gather

information in important places. After going home, Straight

first

worked

as

an unpaid volunteer

in the State Department, then got his job as a speechwriter for F.D.R.

He

says he never had access

to, let

alone transmitted, any classified

information, but he did not break decisively with his

Communist

past.

In 1951 in Washington, with the Korean

War

on, Straight

came

—

upon Burgess, who was in the British Foreign Service the Far Eastern Affairs Section, no less. Straight settled for delivering a warning: "If you aren't out of government within a month, I swear I'll turn you in." In May, Burgess disappeared, soon turning up in the Soviet Union. Straight

might never have come forward with his

story.

But in

Kennedy created an Advisory Council on the Arts to lead to an arts endowment. White House aide Arthur Schlesinger called Straight and said Kennedy planned to name him the first chairman of the new endowment. Straight felt compelled to tell his story to the F.B.I. where his first interrogator was a sympathetic young agent, Jimmy Lee, the son of his mother's head gardener and to British intelligence services, which had long 1963, President

that

was meant

—

—

suspected Blunt, by then Sir Anthony, of espionage. In 1964 Blunt,

informed that Straight had told the whole

story, confessed.

That explained why, in 1969, Straight seemed reluctant

named to the job

the high-profile chairman's job and happy

would go

to Nancy.

I

checked with the

when I

F.B.I,

to be

told

him

about making

him deputy chairman, and they had no objection: I later learned that since 1963, when he first went to the F.B.I., Mike had been helping and American intelligence pursue Soviet espionage agents. most matters, Straight's politics were predictably liberal. But while he was at the N.E.A., whenever he encountered an attempt to British

In

166

manipulate the ging, as

it

Leonard Garment

/

arts for political purposes,

he turned

fierce

were, on any reminder of the rallying cry of his

weapon." Hardened by

nist years, ''Art is a

— gag-

Commu-

Mike did more Endowment clear

history,

than anyone else during those years to keep the of the shoals of politics.

o,nce

was

the Hanks-Straight team

F

in place, they proceeded to

exploit the president's promises. Their strategy

would emphasize the provision tutions, proven art works, of support

would

of support for

was simple: They

mainstream

arts insti-

in turn

and clearly qualified grantees. This type

promote constituent and congressional

support for a steady buildup in the arts budget. As for the White

we began by

House, it

doubling the arts budget, then compounded

Nancy

year after year, as

captivated Congress, budget officials,

governors, mayors, and the press, while 1976, arts

was

Mike watched

when Nancy finished her second term as

the store. By

chairman, the federal

budget had grown from $8 million to almost $90 million and still

climbing.

Apart from intervening with budgeteers like Cap Weinberger

and Paul O'Neill, taste that

my

from time

role

to

was

to play fireman in controversies of

time Nancy sent along

for handling.

These

problems were comparatively small, since Nancy and Mike, to avoid explosions on the right, had drawn a tight net around the grant process. But occasionally

I

helped. For instance, there

mense Alex Liberman sculpture Adam, an

was the im-

abstract configuration of

red-painted metal 29 feet long by 26 feet wide that graced the front of the classic

House.

Corcoran

Adam

Museum

across the street from the

White

drove Nixon slightly crazy whenever he stepped out

onto the White House grounds for a caught a glimpse of

He knew he could

it.

"Get

it

out of

not just order

order an invasion or a

bombing

moment

of tranquillity

and

my sight," Nixon implored me.

its

removal, the

way he would

run. In a matter like this he could

order himself blue in the face and nothing other than public embar-

rassment would

result, unless

someone outmaneuvered the endI talked to Nancy and Mike.

lessly resistant federal bureaucracy.

They

quietly arranged for the National Park Service to

relocate

Adam

the edge of the

to

remote Hains Point,

Potomac

River.

lift,

a patch of green

load,

and

and

trees at

CRAZY RHYTHM

/

167

Not long afterward, on an evening's cruise down the Potomac on the presidential yacht Sequoia, we rounded a bend in the river and all of us, Nixon included, suddenly saw Adam. I cursed my bad luck and held my breath. Nixon, though, nodded his head to no one in particular and said, "This is where it should have been in the first place."

A good moment for the arts,

a better

one

for craft.

Also instructive was the completion of the Hirshhorn Museum,

stymied by resistance from the snobbish Washington

arts establish-

ment, which was appalled that a national museum on the Mall would bear the name of the nouveau immigrant art collector, Abe Hirshhorn. Nixon, no fan of the modern art that made up Hirshhorn's gift to the country, would happily have seen the project go down the drain. Moynihan and I thought Hirshhorn's priceless gift had to be saved. Working with movie mogul Taft Shreiber, a friend of

both Hirshhorn's and Nixon's, a major Republican contributor,

most

of

—

modern art we assembled a board owned important collections of modern

and an admirer

whom

of

major contributors to the political campaigns

of

of directors, art

and were

Richard Nixon.

Moynihan agreed to be the museum's chairman. With these inducements, Haldeman and Ehrlichman were able to persuade Nixon to sign the authorizing documents. The Hirshhorn Museum rose from the near-dead and joined the ranks of the great Smithsonian muse-

ums

that line the approach to the Capitol.

The problem then as

it

of politics

and obscenity in the

aches in the area, ours were minor.

Film

arts bedeviled us

does today, but compared with the country's current head-

Institute, a federally

ally assisted

On

one occasion the American

funded organization located in the feder-

Kennedy Center, scheduled State of Siege, a Costaof an American hostage by leftist a Latin American dictatorship. It seemed to me crazy run a film extolling terrorist murder in a federally

Gavras film about the killing terrorists in

or worse to

funded

facility.

Institute, that list of

I

I

told

my

friend George Stevens, the director of the

intended to withdraw the president's

name from

sponsors of the film's benefit premier and that

noisily.

I

the

would do so

Stevens calmly canceled the film, publicly announcing his

judgment that running

a pro-assassin

an assassinated president was

Most torio that

painful

less

movie

at a center

named

for

than appropriate.

was the dispute surrounding Mass, an antiwar

ora-

Leonard Bernstein wrote to celebrate the opening of the

168

Kennedy Center

Leonard Garment

/

me

in 1970. Bernstein invited

the dress rehearsal, where,

down

front in the

to sit

with him

empty Opera

at

Hall,

I

listened to both his splendid creation and his fervent plea that

I

persuade the president to attend the gala premiere. to Bernstein a

week

why

it

was impossible

I

tried to explain

to persuade Richard Nixon, after

of antiwar protests, to dress

up in black

tie to

attend an

handsome head leaning in close to mine, his arm around my shoulders, was singing passages in my ear and pleading, "Lenny, Lenny, don't you realize how important this is?" I was of two minds: No and Definitely No. Bernstein, whose Mass so inextricably mixed art and politics, would not simply could not comprehend why Nixon would mix art and politics. Never before or since have I seen the impenetrable wall between the two worlds so clearly. antiwar protest set to music. Bernstein, his

—

—

There were scores

of

such skirmishes; Endowment panels were

even then capable of recommending remarkably foolish grants publicly accountable institution. But for the

most

part,

for a

Nancy and

Mike, particularly Mike, contained or smothered pernicious aberrations.

Within the private

arts world,

an unarticulated consensus

took shape to spare the nasty words and save the delicate child.

There were genuine satisfactions in running interference

for fed-

One of the best moments came on a trip to Europe with my pal Ron Berman, a sturdy Renaissance scholar who was the chairman of the National Endowment support of culture in those years.

eral

the Humanities.

for

A

middle-distance runner from Brooklyn

(which got him his scholarship to Harvard), Berman kept a tight grip

on his Endowment's programs, concentrating on

libraries,

archives, university presses, televised histories like

academic

The Adams

Chronicles, and the acquisition of talented program managers like

Roger Rosenblatt, Just before

invited me,

him

I

who headed

decamped from Washington

still

in

December

1974,

Ron

the government's official culture maven, to join

at festivities in the

bronzes.

Ron's education section.

Louvre celebrating an exhibit of Assyrian

We walked through the exhibit,

then sat

down

to

an

official

lunch. There, Assyrian bronze curators and other Middle East art

Ron condescendingly on the ABC's of the bronzes. Ron proceeded to his reply a breathtaking tour de

experts lectured

After lunch,

force, including

—

everything from a contextual analysis of the his-

CRAZY RHYTHM toric

and aesthetic antecedents

pact on the plastic

arts.

of the

bronzes to their general im-

proudly hugged

I

169

/

him

after the event,

proclaiming an epic victory for Erasmus Hall High School.

N.lancy Hanks died

in 1983 at the age of fifty-five, after an ex-

tended battle with cancer. By then, a fin-de-siecle sadness hovered over the once-exuberant federal arts project.

The

seeds of this disap-

pointment had been sown during our own years in charge

Endowment. Nancy, with her passion

for

of the

growth, persistently

sought to enlarge the arts constituency by doing what politicians do

money with

best: doling out

get

more and more money.

tive forms, political arts,

and

less

Side

less discrimination in order to

shows

— experimental and provocacategories — gradually

new and exotic grant

edged into the main arena, attracting crowds of trouble from increasingly vocal enemies. Ironically, Nancy, the establishment politician,

was the figure who allowed the arts endowment to become a bazaar in which proven artistic excellence had to elbow its way through crowds of mediocrity and sensationalism. And Mike Straight, who had learned about art and politics the hard way, was the one who repeatedly warned Nancy (and me) that she was buying peace in her time with a sacrifice of quality that would ultimately threaten the Endowment. He was dead right.

B (

y the time

returned to Washington in 1980 to practice law, the

I

endowments were

in serious trouble, the result of a loosening of

standards during the Carter administration, the growing power after

1980 of politicians gether,

and the

who wanted

to destroy the

activities of visual artists

endowments

alto-

who seemed bent on paint-

ing an even bigger bull's-eye on the N.E.A.'s heart. There were

incessant controversies over grants and subgrants, involving works

such as a virulently political AIDS mural featuring Cardinal John

J.

O'Connor, a photo composition

New

York's

titled Piss Christ

featuring a crucifix in a container of artist Andres Serrano's urine,

and a theatre work involving symbolic excrement spread over

formance

artist

Karen Finley's body and

These cases were

insigificant in

a

yam

per-

thrust in her vagina.

number, but the aggressive defense

170 of

them by

Leonard Garment

/

the elite arts

community symbolized

for

many

(me, for

one] a descent into infantile chaos of the once-disciplined, tightrope-

walking federal nate

effort to

sponsor aesthetic excellence and dissemi-

to the nation. In 1989-90,

it

when Congress debated extending

the endowments' authorization, these controversies paralyzed the

proceedings.

up

set

litical

To quiet the

a bipartisan

noise, the administration

and Congress

commission, Washington's usual solution to po-

embarrassment. John Brademas, the president of

New

York

University and an original congressional draftsman of the Endow-

ment

was named one of the commission's cowas the other. There were ten additional appointees

legislation in 1965,

chairmen.

I

Republicans, Democrats, left-wing liberals, and right-wing conservatives, a heterogeneous

and

group of arts

fiercely opinionated

afi-

cionados.

We

held public hearings and private debates for two months,

then amazingly and unanimously agreed on recommendations: The N.E.A. should be reauthorized and should place no specific restric-

on the content

tions

work

of the

it

funds. But the

Endowment's

grant-making procedures should be drastically changed to curb craziness and conflicts of interest

tic

message, sub silentio:

If

you liked

among

artis-

grant panelists.

The

but on your

own

fecal art, fine,

time and not with federal money.

Though

between public support private support for art

dom and

of expression"

arts

work arts

Endowment, some drawn validated American art treasures and

there are signs of recovery at the

things are hard to change.

If

for

still

structural distinctions are not

in the aesthetic laboratory,

and inexorably. But the

consensus for the

saxophone and

my clarinet.

Wh

in the

was

fail

— not

arts will survive.

Somewhat saddened,

I

"free-

as a substitute for the hard, compromise-filled

of sustaining a political

hile

if

keeps being reflexively brandished by the press

community

experiment will fade and

survive.

and

so will

I.

all at

arts,

then the federal

once, but gradually

The nation After

Nixon White House,

I

all,

I

will certainly still

have

my

played the latter more

than the former. The clarinet seemed a more credible instrument to

whip out casually

for a

"spontaneous" display of middle-aged

CRAZY RHYTHM virtuosity.

By

contrast, the tenor

171

/

saxophone

—a

monstrously

large,

shaped looping product of Adolph Sax's fevered dreams premeditation.

membered

I

had the world's best chance

to strut

— bespeaks

my

dimly

re-

White House on April 29, 1969. The evening was the cultural high point of the Nixon administration, though not because I played clarinet. We were giving a black-tie presidential stuff at the

Duke

dinner to celebrate the seventieth birthday of

Ellington. Willis

Conover, jazz impresario of the Voice of America, had been trying

some time

White House. He MacWhorter about an Ellington party, then brought the idea to me. I thought it was wonderful and passed the idea on to the White House social secretary, Lucy Winchester, who concurred. Voice of America would record the proceedings and, though forbidden to broadcast them in the United States, would transmit them to the rest of the world. That evening, amid the fragrance of budding White House magnolias and the waning but still-ambient warmth of the presidential honeymoon, many of the great figures of American jazz gathered to pay homage to Ellington in words and music. During dinner the for

to arrange a jazz evening at the

talked with Charlie

"Strolling Strings"

from the U.S.

Army band played Ellington songs.

After dinner, a band of America's best played a concert of Ellington

compositions specially arranged by Gerry Mulligan. Joe Williams

and Mary

Mayo

sang.

"Edward Kennedy

.

.

.

Nixon presented the Medal [stage pause] Ellington"

of

Freedom

to

and played "Happy

Birthday" on the piano in his usual key of G. Ellington bestowed his traditional four kisses (two for each cheek)

on

a startled Nixon, then

It was one of most relaxed public occasions of Richard Nixon's life. At midnight, Nixon bid his guests a buoyant good night and invited everyone to stay on for a jam sesson and dancing. As the ebullient crowd milled around the East Room waiting for the chairs to be cleared, Nixon sent word that I should bring the pianist Earl

improvised a charming song, "Pat," for Mrs. Nixon. the happiest,

"Fatha" Hines upstairs to the family quarters for a nightcap. Hines

and Nixon artist,

sat

around

for a while, reminiscing. Hines, the pioneer

talked about the early joys of his long

political utilitarian, told

life

in jazz. Nixon, the

about what he learned from the years of

piano lessons and practicing he endured as a kid. By the time Hines

and

I

got back downstairs, the chandeliered East

Room had

been

172

/

Leonard Garment

transformed into the old Cotton Club. Improbable couples had

formed

men

— Duke

Ellington with Rose

Mary Woods,

de Lavallade with George Shultz

music

of

— and

the dancer Car-

were dancing

Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan, Clark Terry,

Jim Hall, Dave Brubeck, Billy Taylor,

J. J.

to the

Bill Berry,

Johnson, Urbie Green, and

rhythm section from the Marine Corps band. Years would pass before Benny Goodman forgave me (very briefly) me,

accompanied by

for not instructing

him

a

to bring his clarinet; but

if

he played,

how

I? It was a night of rare amity. This was not exactly a crowd Nixon fans, but the Host Syndrome frequently transforms guests, the Stockholm Syndrome does hostages, into admirers or even

could of

as

adulants until time restores their equilibrium.

Which

did in this

it

Frank Stanton, head of CBS, offered to finance a recording of

case.

the event, to be distributed in the U.S. as well as abroad, with the

proceeds going to a fund for musicians. But

all

the evening's per-

formers had to consent, and one would not: Fervently against the

Vietnam War, he did not want

to give

away any form

of aid or

comfort to Richard Nixon and Nixon's White House.

w, r

illis

to the

Conover and

Moscow Film

carried a film print of the Ellington concert

I

Festival in mid- July 1969.

U.S.I.A. delegation charged festival.

The

to President

flight to

with presenting American works

we

at the

flew to London, where, for the long

Moscow, we boarded an Aeroflot

flight attendants,

like a

of a

Mike Straight; Jack Valenti, aide Johnson; TV commentator Nancy Dickerson; and the

like entering Russia itself.

more

were part

delegation included

designer Mollie Parnis. First

was

We

no fungible

No

plane. Entering the plane

sleek interior design, no svelte

airline food.

The

plane's cabin

was

dimly remembered, overdecorated room in

my Aunt

Coney Island apartment, crowded with

furniture,

Bessie's cavernous

old rugs, the smell of cabbage and potatoes cooking, and hefty neigh-

bors in babushkas helping out with household chores.

was going back home At the Moscow

.

.

.

way,

airport,

way

I

felt like

I

back.

hours passed while our baggage was

scrutinized and passports were transferred from one bureaucratic to another. The main focus of official interest was my clarinet, which Willis Conover had suggested I bring so I could play with

hand

some

of his jazz

musician friends. Indeed, some Russian musicians,

CRAZY RHYTHM

173

/

looking like ersatz hippies, had appeared at the airport to welcome presence only added to the bureaucrats' suspicion.

us; their

were these odd-looking day

meeting an

jobs)

American

Why

and engineers (for these were their American delegation? Why was an

scientists official

politician carrying a clarinet case?

I

doubt that these mi-

croscopic pre-glasnost mysteries were ever cleared up to the Soviets' satisfaction.

Eventually

There were lit floor,

we made

stout, silent

Pentagon-length corridors stretching to the horizon, nonex-

istent civilian

communications, and an ever-present sense

microphones, and

ears,

way to Moscow and the Hotel Rossiya. watchwomen behind desks on every dimly our

satellites tracking

versation. Late that night,

him

to nearby

Mike

of eyes,

our movements and con-

Straight invited

me

to

Red Square, an immense, dramatically

accompany

floodlit, cob-

blestoned space over which loomed the towers and turrets of the

Kremlin.

We

stood there silently, watching the goose-stepping Red

Guards. Straight's just

how

mind seemed

far

away

;

I

didn't

know, back then,

far.

Political

management dogged each

step of the festival.

On

the

second evening, our delegation visited the Cafe Pechora, Moscow's

main

jazz club

musicians

on Kalinin Prospekt, where I played with the Russian

who had met

us at the airport. All of them were fine

much

instrumentalists.

They

from records,

the current bop tunes. So

all

did not speak

English, but they knew,

we had

the kind of eu-

comes with an unexpected coupling. The K.G.B. agent assigned to cover Russian jazz types and known, congenially, to all of them swung along with the music, occasionally jotting a confidential note on his little spy pad. ("Korsky out of tune," I imagined him scribbling. "Also, too many choruses on phorically good time that

—

—

'Stella

by

Starlight.' Firing squad.")

Conover

recalls that the

Russian musicians were vastly unim-

my official connection with the president of the United States. It was my ancient, minuscule association with Billie Holiday

pressed by

and Woody Herman that bowled them

Th.he

trip to

Moscow was more

appointed to the delegation,

we

left for

Moscow, though,

I

When

a private citizen.

I was By the time

had been in government

for a couple

was I

over.

than a cultural still

lark.

174 of

months, and some

Soviet

trip. In

asked that

I

Leonard Garment

/

assignments had been tacked on to

official

early July, Israeli defense minister

be sent to Israel for a

my

Moshe Dayan had

and National Security Ad-

visit,

Henry Kissinger had decided I should go there after Moscow. I was to meet the Israeli leadership and get acquainted with the political configurations so that I would be equipped to carry private communications to the Israelis from Nixon and Kissinger. More specifically, while I was in Moscow I was to meet with Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Sisco, who would be in Moscow on official business. Sisco, who was in charge of U.S. Mideast diplomacy, would give me a private message to carry to Prime Minister Golda viser

Meir. Kissinger also briefed

my

me

meetings with Soviet

on what

I

should and should not do in

The Russians, Kissinger exwith a newly elected president,

officials.

plained, would, as they always did

search out opportunities to gather whatever information they could

about Nixon's policy inclinations and personality. The press had

me as a friend and adviser of Nixon's since 1963; the Russians would therefore check me out carefully. If the chance comes your touted

way, Kissinger told me, convey the impression that Nixon

what "crazy"

— immensely intelligent, moments

enced, to be sure, but at

is

some-

well organized, and experi-

of stress or personal challenge

unpredictable and capable of the bloodiest brutality. Today, anyone familiar with Nixon's foreign policy

But in June of 1969, as

strategy.

White House basement, surprise. Still,

Our

I

I

knows about the "madman"

sat in Kissinger's office in the

his instructions

were more than

a small

what I was supposed to do. was already at the film festival when something

got the drift of

delegation

happened that suddenly intensified high-level Soviet interest in me. In the early

summer

of 1969, well before the festival, the president's

urban adviser, Pat Moynihan, had recommended to Nixon the ation of a

commission on national

modern presidents

goals.

find irresistible:

presidential reach, an offset to the

It

This

is

cre-

the kind of project

provides an aura of vision and

crummy,

dog-eared, day-to-day

business of real politics. Nixon said yes. But presidential counselor

Arthur Burns disliked the idea intensely. In

han and Burns agreed on approximately like putting

a

compromise, Moyni-

a director for the effort:

Homer Simpson

me. This was

in charge of the space

CRAZY RHYTHM program. But

175

/

my friend Moynihan believed he could direct the study

through me, and Burns thought

Thus

the project off the ground.

did not have the expertise to get

I I

them thought, the

was, each of

perfect choice.

By July

our film festival delegation was in Moscow. That day

14,

the International Herald Tribune carried a front-page story, widely

which Nixon publicly announced the White House press conference, Moynihan, with characteristic rhetoric, described the group's charter in cosmic terms. It would study and report on emerging trends in demography, education, economic growth, envi-

Moscow,

distributed in

in

creation of the National Goals Research Staff. At a

ronment, technology assessment, and the use of social indicators to identify America's emerging social needs. tive

arguments

for a national debate

It

would present compara-

on how

growth without jeopardizing the quality

of

to achieve long-range

life.

And the

staff's direc-

would be Leonard Garment. What Soviet officials saw was a Five Year Plan, with me in charge of it. I must be not just an amiable friend of President Nixon but a man who would wield massive power over the American future. So Georgy Arbatov, a senior adviser to General Secretary Leotor

nid Brezhnev and director of the then-powerful for

United States studies, sent a message to

sador, Jacob

Beame

said

Beame, asking I

me

must accept the

to

me

Moscow

through our ambas-

meet with him and

invitation.

He

Institute

his colleagues.

also said he

would send

along a couple of the embassy's best note takers, so that the meeting

would be accurately recorded and reported

Moscow

Suddenly the lighthearted

to the State

cultural trip

Department.

had turned into the

kind of nightmare where you find yourself addressing a

large,

august

audience with your pants around your ankles.

What

to do? Well,

I

first

told our ambassador that

I

wanted

complete informality and so would go alone. (Nobody near us/to see us or hear us

.

.

.)

We want

bunch.

You

can't

do

that,

Beame

to safeguard you.

We

replied.

They

are a tricky

have already agreed with

Arbatov that they will have no more than

five people present.

We

want to match them. I stood my ground, asserting the dispositive power of a presidential assistant. I have my reasons, I said mysteriously.

the

I

go alone or not at

Moscow

Institute,

all.

At the appointed hour,

I

appeared at

an old Russian house decorated with the

176

Leonard Garment

/

familiar Russian trimmings.

The conference

table

was covered with

mineral water, Russian soft drinks, cigarettes, and

no vodka. The Soviet delegation was

noticed,

fruit.

Sadly,

I

of course not the five

people promised to our embassy but eight or ten chunky, impressive-looking professionals, including

what I'm sure were

several

K.G.B. veterans.

pray that the newly opened Soviet archives never disgorge the

I

Institute's notes of that

my

cast before there.

meeting and reveal the pearls

of confusion

interrogators during the three or four hours

Arbatov led

off:

Why was

I

was

I

the world's major anti-Communist

power, with a Republican, free-enterprise administration, undertaking a major project that contemplated economic and demographic

Was this not an admission And so on.

central planning?

contradictions?

The clutch

of Soviet technicians

cenrated and serious, to hear

plunged can,

in.

of capitalism's internal

and spies leaned forward, con-

my response.

took a deep breath and

I

Since they spoke fluent English but not fluent Ameri-

began with an idiomatic, convoluted introduction that would

I

have made doubletalk

artist

Al Kelly proud.

I

talked very

fast.

I

told

my life — my Russian father, the family's struggle out of poverty, working in the dress factory, my religious awakening, the early interest in socialism, then music, then law, my pasthe whole story of

sage into the dangerous questions,

I

and "There

American culture. Addressing Arbatov's gems like "All circles can be squared"

offered aphoristic is

no such thing

as contradiction, only a constrained

remembered from Marxist

grasp of complexity." Phrases dimly ature infiltrated

My

I

gained strength.

Kissinger about after

I

I

They muttered

had not forgotten

to each other in

my instructions from

making the Russians think Nixon was

had talked

for

for the kill.

crazy.

Actu-

an hour and a half they were already

thinking he must be loony to have

time to move in

liter-

semideranged discourse.

Soviet hosts began to wilt.

Russian.

ally,

my

I

as an adviser. Now it was my years of work and friend-

me

reviewed

ship with Nixon. Arbatov and company's adrenaline machines started

up again.

States that

I

said things about the president of the

would have turned every

eign Service white with fright.

hair

Nixon

is,

on every head I

United

in our For-

observed with clinical

cheer, a dramatically disjointed personality, capable of acts of generosity

and thoughtfulness but equally capable of barbaric cruelty to

CRAZY RHYTHM who

those

more than

engage

him

in tests of strength.

is also, I

and media enemies. At his

of political

full of

core, I said, he complex contradictions,

sionary but,

when necessary,

a coldhearted butcher. So

man

talk. Scribble, scribble.

threw

Finally

it

was

And

predictably

a strategic viit

went. Talk,

me

Arbatov and his fellows bid

over.

Mouth. They had reason fully productive.

is

in,

hands

was, as jazz musicians say, cooking.

I

adieu, delighted to have found that Mr.

I

He

a little paranoid because of years of bashing at the

unpredictable, a

thing

177

/

so

to believe the

warm

a

also Mr. Big

meeting had been wonder-

had been. Because, strange

it

said about Richard

Bumble was

Nixon turned out

to be

to say, every-

more

or less true.

me

in Washing-

After that meeting, Arbatov occasionally called

our meetings, of which Henry Kissinger's National Security

ton,-

Council

staff

had

to be notified in advance,

ally uninformative.

submarine

when we

But

facilities at

were cordial and mutu-

discovered the Soviets building

Cienfuegos in Cuba, Nixon and Kissinger

clamped down on such meetings.

One day

during this

crisis of detente, Kissinger

lunch date with Arbatov

lunch with Arbatov," he "O.K.,"

I

Hay Adams

I

had a

Hotel. "Don't go to

said.

said. "I'll call

"No," Kissinger I

at the

learned

said.

and cancel."

"Don't

call.

Stand him up."

could picture the Soviet America-watcher sitting in the lobby

Hay Adams, gradually getting the idea. The National Goals Research Staff was terminated

at the

after just

one report because John Ehrlichman decided to create a Domestic

The report, Toward Balanced Growth: Quantity with Quality, was assembled by Professor Raymond Bauer of Harvard with minimal participation by me. Bauer worked wonders with little money and a skeleton staff, skillCouncil that would subsume

fully anticipating

its

functions.

emerging issues such as consumerism, environ-

mental degradation, and U.S. population movements. The report was received by the press with a marked lack of interest. The group's burial was also a quiet one, sparsely attended.

ML

.eanwhile, back in

okay, but not as

much

Moscow, the film

festival itself was, well,

fun as an evening at the Cineplex Odeon

and a Chinese meal. Crowds

of plain-dressed

thousands

filled

an

178

immense

Leonard Garment

/

triple-tiered theatre to see the entries.

Spontaneous enthu-

siasm greeted only the Ellington film, which was shown to

house

Russian

of

free spirits at a

small side-street theatre reserved

middle

for unofficial screenings. In the

a full

my

teriously disappeared from a closet in

my

of all this,

hotel room.

clarinet I

mys-

spent a day

making anxious inquiries. Officials spent a day shaking their heads. The next afternoon I returned to my room and found the clarinet sitting on my bed. All it lacked was a "kosher" stamp from the K.G.B.

Toward the end asked

me

me,

should bring

I

embassy building.

to go to the it

along.

I

official called

and

had a sweater, he told

embassy and was taken

There I was ushered into an ice-cold Plexiglas room-

to the top floor.

had

If I

arrived at the

within-a-room called the "Bubble." that

embassy

of the festival, a U.S.

was reserved

It

meetings

for

from Soviet listening devices. The cold

to be protected

temperature was related to the antibugging equipment and the room's windowless construction. There, with a handful of State Department associates, was Joe

whom

Sisco,

Kissinger had told

Moscow. Sisco was partment

He was

style.

He came

mal.

me

would be hearing from

I

smart, cheerful, almost aggressively infor-

quickly to the point:

I

was

to go to Jerusalem

and

carry a message personally to Prime Minister Golda Meir and to

He

me two

one

else.

like

top secret and eyes only.

arcane a

placed before

I

read the message quickly,-

commentary on Secretary

it?"

I

"You

asked.

sit

said. "It doesn't leave this

it

was an

William Rogers's plan

of State

I'm not good State

down

officials

amused by

amateurism.

It

Jesus,

I

it

word it

for

for

is

something

who were

this latest

sitting

example

around the table look-

of befuddled

White House

was, fortunately, too cold to perspire, and

to read the

through

do

contents," Sisco

thought, this

I

settled

to

memo-

message over and over.

Sisco finally broke the silence: "Look, rize

its

I

for

Especially under the watchful eyes of the several

at.

Department

ing at me,

here and memorize

room."

no

pages plastered with warnings

Middle East settlement and other related matters. "What do

with

in

from standard State De-

a refreshing departure

you don't have

word. Just get the gist clear in your head and run

me." That done,

I

was ushered out

of the diplomatic

space capsule, out of the embassy, and into Mideast history. Stand-

CRAZY RHYTHM ing in the bright

summer

the message and folded

my

pack

for

USG

advises the

sunlight,

them

I

I

a

179

few cryptic notes about

my wallet.

into

first visit to Israel.

made

/

I

would soon have to my head, "The

kept repeating in

GOI (small Yiddish joke) that little cooperation is Moscow on subject matter and venue for negotiations expected from

in the near term. ..."

Wheels up and

off to Israel,

had been stranger than any festival.

But

it

was only

I

reflected that

of the fiction

a taste of things to

I

my

true-life

had seen

come.

I

week

at the film

was headed

for a

place where the blood flowed in the open, not in the underground

chambers garten to

of the Soviet secret police. first

grade in

my political

And I was moving from

education.

kinder-

John and Jenny Garment's wedding picture, 1918. My father, formal and fastidious, stares into the future. My mother looks down the camera's throat with the confidence that carried us

through our storms of adaptation.

Sonia Swetlow, the Garment family's all-purpose aunt,

midwife, and flaming feminist.

Posing with her large portmanteau,

which held the

tools of

her gynecological practice,

Sonia announced her identity.

was ever an Uncle was gone before I was born, and was never If

there

Sonia, he

replaced.

Me

at five, in

my sailor's

by the camera, the hooded operator, and the

best, excited

first

George Swetlow, cousin and pseudo-stepfather, around the time

he was black-belting

gymnasium on

his I

grew

a

me

around

Eastern Parkway.

mustache

in his

memory

(and to eover up the side effeets of ;i

lot of

dental work).

flood of experience.

. ii

I'll

{il

*

*« ii 11 •i

—Marty, my father, me, my mother, —in a rare moment of domestic bliss at the Waldemere Hotel,

ABOVE: The Garment family Charlie

BELOW: Camp Kee-Wah, 1935. Bosom buddy Lennie Puretz second from left) made a cameo

Livingstone Manor, Catskills, 1934. I

am is

in the

on

bottom row, second from

my left.

Al Cohn

(third row,

left.

appearance for this photo but mainly hid out in the infirmary, studying music and preparing for jazz greatness.

ABOVE: At

the 1939 World's Fair with Frank

High School. As the world teetered on the edge of war, the two of us confidently, ignorantly planned

Press, the smartest kid at Tilden

our brilliant careers. LEFT: In Little Rock, Arkansas, 1944, with Perna. in

BELOW: At

New York,

new band

Ljk

1944, getting

ready. I'm

far right is

my protector, Tony

Nola's Rehearsal Studios

on the

Henry Jerome's far left.

On the

Alan Greenspan, before he

acquired his federal reserve.

ABOVE:

Jerry

his Oscar for

Hellman

kisses

Midnight Cowboy,

judged Best Picture of 1969.

RIGHT: Auburn-haired, green-eyed Gloria Hellman introduced me to her brother,

Jerry,

Grace Albert,

BELOW:

then to her friend

whom

I

married.

Grace, shortly after

our marriage.

Why Are These Men for Nixon?

The one-word answer headline: excitement.

©

1968

SUSSMAN/NEWSDAY,

UPI/BETTMAN

From

left:

Eugene

Filmmaker Nixon

Jones,

advertising director Harry

Treleaven, me, and a

technician in Jones's editing studio, reviewing a

campaign

commercial, joe McGinniss is

probably skulking

off-

camera but within earshot, making notes.

to

the question in this 1968

ABOVE:

In February 1969, President

Nixon had

partners to dinner in the President's Dining

For Nixon I

it

was an occasion

am on Mrs.

is

and gratitude,

if

White House. not excitement.

left,

other end of the table

On

Mudge Rose law

at the

with John Mitchell on her right. Two seats to the firm's extraordinary leader, Bob Guthrie. And at the

Nixon's

Mitchell's right

of nostalgia

his

Room

his right

is

.

.

.

BELOW: Grace

is

on President Nixon's

John Mitchell's redoubtable wife, Martha.

left.

March

1969, the East

Room

White House, around midnight, on the happiest of the

occasion of Nixon's presidency, the seventieth birthday party he

gave for session

Duke is

Ellington.

the band, dancing,

Woods.

A jam

beginning. In front of is

On my right

Rose Mary Dizzy

is

Gillespie.

Russia I

am

in 1970,

somewhere between Moscow and

not singing "White

director frank Shakespeare and

None

of the

KCB

Tbilisi,

and

Christmas"; I'm trying to explain I

left

our fur hats back

freezing.

why USIA

at the hotel.

agents in attendance offered us theirs.

ABOVE: The atmosphere was

cordial in this

May

1970 meeting, but Roy

Wilkins, one of the last of the country's heroic black leaders, told us that failures of

nationalism.

white leadership were spurring

BELOW: The Cabinet Room,

a

July

movement toward 8,

presenting his historic Indian reform proposals. reveling in the

moment. Most

of the

my left —with,

I

am

at the

black

Nixon

lower

is

right,

work on the proposals was done by

Bobbie Kilberg, sitting against the wall at the seated on

1970. President

left,

characteristically, his

and Brad Patterson,

back to the camera.

ABOVE: Nixon's

Here, on first

May

22, 1973,

I

am handing out

copies of President

statement on Watergate, a highly legalistic document.

But where's Waldo? Hint: The top of

my balding head is partly visible at

BELOW: Order has been restored in the White House pressroom. Under Ron Zeigler's watchful gaze "Does

the center of the media melee.

Len actually believe what Nixon's

Mrs. Meir sent

me

May

this

—

he's saying?"

—

I

explain the inexplicables of

22, 1973, statement.

Bedlam resumes.

photo around the time of

Nixon's resignation. Our friendship was one of the permanent prizes of

my

life,

outlasting the

pains of Watergate.

DOONESBURY

by Garry Trudeau

J0 *T

AS YOU CAN

ARE MANY FRANK ANP

LEONARD, AS MY COUNSEL, 1 WINK IT'S

I ; *

\

ABOUT TIME YOU TOOK A LOOK AT THESE TRANSCRIPTS OF THE SECRET TAPES,.

WHICH ONE'S

THAT?

^I/JELL,

SEE, THERE-

CANDID REMARKS MUCH. IF

TAKEN OUT OF

CONTEXT, MI6HT CR0ATEA FALSE IMPRESSION. N

RI6HTf

JOHN,

HOU/S THE COVER-UP

A600D EXAMPLE'

/

YESSIR. IT

COULD BE MISINTERPRETeD.

By the time this eerily prophetic cartoon appeared September 1973, jokes were the least of my problems. DOONESBURY © 1973 BY G. B. TRUDEAU.

REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

tTon' ccB 0NB

HER/SON PA6ETSW.

60IN6?" /

in

yg,

In the Third

Committee

of the

United Nations, the electronic voting

teller

has just announced the passage of the Zionism-is-racism resolution. I

am in the U.S.

delegate's chair. Pat

about to cross the floor to embrace

Moynihan, standing behind me, is ambassador Chaim Herzog.

Israeli

Moynihan and I leave the White House after a battle with

in the bureaucratic wars

Henry

Kissinger.

to look cheerful.

I

urged Pat

He

did.

press therefore declared

the winner

The him

—a temporary

condition, ap/wide world

PHOTOS

ABOVE: This was one of seemingly endless occasions on which Bud McFarlane testified during Iran-contra. My contribution as his lawyer was to look suitably serious. Kenneth jarecke/contact press IMAGES INC. BELOW: President George Bush was indeed a friend. During this meeting I made two suggestions: that he should say more about the post-Rodney King riots that had just occurred in Los Angeles (he did)

10

and that he should keep Pat Buchanan out of a prime-time spot at the Republican convention (he didn't).

len c^tfrment^ with bat wisher,

Y