Raymond Speer
2007-02-25 17:50:28 UTC
1. Point of Divergence
Today is Friday, September 5, 1975, sixty degrees and clear on the day
that President Gerald Ford is scheduled to make a speech to the
California State Legislature. Ford's speeches is pap and platitudes and
it would never be remembered had Ford lived to give it.
Ford attends a breakfast sponsored by agri businessmen, then leaves
his hotel on foot for the state capitol that was right across the
street. Thick crowds line the way, and Ford works the rope, shaking
hands with citizens standing on the other side of a restraining line.
Midway to the capitol doors, there is a small red haired woman in a
bright red gown. Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Frome is 26 years old and
miserable because her messiah and lover, Charles Manson, is locked up
for life and she is not permitted visitation. The difference between our
timeline and this one is that _this_ Squeaky is a better student and
recalls that a gun needs a bullet in the chamber for a shot to be taken.
Here, the Manson Family's firearms practices shall not have been in
vain.
The next day, Jules Witcover will report that he stood maybe ten feet
from Jerry Ford. "Ford walked up to a young woman in a deep red gown and
matching bandanna. She reached under the gown, pulled a 45 caliber Army
Colt automatic from a leg holster and pulled the trigger. With three
seconds, Larry Buendor of the Secret Service had seized the woman's arm
preventing another shot, but there already was a big red blot on the
President's shirtwaist, and Jerry Ford stumbled and fell for the last
time."
In Rochester, NY, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller is the celebrity
present for the opening of a new hospital. Joe Persico, his aide, is in
a staff room when a member of Rocky's Secret Service detail runs to a
phone. The agent's questions are short and to the point: "What? Who?
When? Is that confirmed?"
Nelson Rockefeller was making small talk to local dignataries, when a
secret service agent whispered in his ear that the President had been
shot. The other Secret Service agents clustered around ocky as he went
back to the podium.
"I have just been told horrible news. President Gerald Ford has just
been shot in California. I do not know how well he is, but I think that
he can use all our prayers and well wishes today." Rocky then leads the
audience in a recital of the Lord's Prayer.
In years to come, it will be argued that this shows Rocky's deep but
unadvertised belief in God. Actually, it is a recitation of boiler
plate that Rocky used routinely in emergency situations.
In his armored limo, Rocky asks Persico: "What is the Manson Gang?" He
is headed to his jet. Persico, mindful of the precedent of November 22,
1963, has already ordered that a federal district judge be waiting at
the jet for the new President's swearing-in.
2. Rocky Says (I)
I never wanted to be Vice President of anything. Ford was desperate to
have me be his Vice President. He said: "I'm begging you" ---he used
those very words to me. Against my better judgment, I said yes.
No good deed goes unpunished. Sons of bitches in Congress insisted on a
fishing expedition on me and my family, not because anything was wrong
but they hoped they might find some dirt on me. It was disgusting, those
four months of investigation. They grilled my brother David as if I was
a gangster and he had buried bodies for me!
You know, when I first agreed to be Vice President, I thought it would
be an interesting job and I could make the country a better one. But the
way I was treated by Congress in seventy four took all the fyn out of
the job.
I won confirmation. There were maybe a hundred twenty lefties and right
wingers, and everyone of them voted against me. The representatives and
Senators in the middle pulled me through. The middle of the road is
where I draw my votes.
3. Joseph Persico (I)
Nelson Rockefeller let no one down at Jerry Ford's funeral in Grand
Rapids. His speech, which I wrote, was a prefectly acceptable tribute to
a decent guy.
But Reagan stole the show, with his lines about slipping the bonds of
earth and kissing the face of God. There is no doubt that Reagan had a
better delivery than President Rockefeller had, which is not to say that
Rockefeller was bad.
Yeah, the funeral could have been worse. Fortunately, Nixon did not
attend, claiming poor health, so there was no fear of pictures
associating Rockefeller with the disgraced ex-President.
4. Rocky Says (II)
I could see that Reagan was moving against me as early as Jerry Ford's
funeral. He was pretending that he and Jerry was close --- hell, Ronald
Reagan was one of the main reasons that Jerry wanted me at his side.
Governor Reagan could not start a war, President Reagan can, Jerry Ford
said that to my face.
I have no doubts, no doubts that Reagan would have run against Gerry
Ford for President. He would have tried to beat Jerry Ford even if I had
quit the Vice Presidency and been replaced with Bob Dole.
Reagan was alway power-hungry, but he hid that part of him from the
public.
I could not get a break my first month in office. I wasted a couple of
days hosting the foreign ministers of Israel and Russia --- Allon and
Gromyko --- who would agree on absolutely nothing. And Mayor Abe Beame
applied for billions of federal dollars to keep New York City solvent.
Of course, I had nothing to do with that. For many years, I had warned
the world that John Lindsay was making pay promises to city workers that
were not supported by tax revenues, and I had done all I could to pull
back on Lindsay's extravagance.
None of that was mentioned when the right wingers told the story. They
acted as if I was the Sundance Kid to Lindsay's Butch Cassidy.
Rocky caused the problem = now Rocky wants to raise your taxes to bail
out New Yotk City.
I could have demagogued the issue -- no one had better right. I could
have refused to help the City surmount the Lindsay/Beame debts. But I
was responsible and put my reputation on the line for the City.
New York City got three billions in loans. And I got a million poison
pen letters, mostly west of the Mississippi, and all backing Reagan, who
had announced he was a canddiate for the Presidency in 1976.
The UN General Assembly defined Zionism as racist because Zionism says
Jews have more right to that land than Arabs do. So now it is like every
Jew is writing me, telling me that I ought to have kept that vote at the
UN from ending up as it did. I send Henry Kissinger to Madrid when old
dictator Franco died and I'm accused of distraching Kissinger from
real work by sending him to ceremonies for dead Fascists.
The only good news was that old William Douglas agreed to retire from
the Supreme Court. The old man had hated Jerry Ford ever since Ford
tried to get him impeached for accepting money for a gambling vacation
in Las Vegas, and he was not going to let Ford name his successor.
I replaced Douglas with a promising young conservative I hardly knew,
named Bork, and if that helped mend my fences with the right wingers,
the improvement was so slight it was an invisible repair. What does it
take for me to be accepted as an okay guy by conservatives?
The toughest drug laws in the country, in history? I did that. Planning
to run a giant pipeline through the parks and mountains of Alaska. That
was me too.
5. Donald Rumsfeld (I)
I know that a tax cut would have been proposed in federal taxes by
Gerry Ford if Squeaky Fromme had not killed him. I had been working on
just such a plan when the assassination occurred in Sacramento.
I only reported to Rockefeller once as chief of staff, and as soon as we
met he told me I was replaced by Rockefeller's chief of staff. I hung on
for a couple weeks of transition. But after I left the White House, I
got a call from some kid I never heard of. This kid wanted me to deny a
story that Ford had planned ten billion in tax cuts. The figure was
more like eleven billion in reduced taxes, I told my caller, and I was
not going to lie for anybody.
Nelson Rockefeller was a real pain as Vice President, and he settled
scores the second that Fromme promoted him to the Oval Office. As Vice
President, he had wanted to be like the de facto executive for Domestic
Affairs. He would let Kissinger handle foreign stuff while he ran the
country internally.
Not a bit of that fitted Gerald Ford's desires. But Ford was too nice a
guy to put Rockefeller in his place. I was the chief of staff, so I had
to be the man to tell the Vice President that he did not run the
Interior Department, and that he would not decide where Interstates were
to be built, and Secretary So and So did not appreciate his meddling
in this or that program.
Oh, yes, Rockefeller hated me like poison.
Rockefeller prodded Reagan into campaigning for the 1976 presidential
race. I remember Reagan asking: "Don, what is the problem that
President Rockefeller has with me? He ignores any suggestion that comes
from me or my friends, and he makes wisecracks against me in front of
the press."
My answer was, that is the way Rockefeller is.
6. Joseph Persico (II)
Rockefeller needed a vacation in early December 1975. The headlines that
week were on Ford's intention to ask Congress to slice more than eleven
billion dollars off taxes. President Rockefeller saw those cuts as
damaging and excessive , but now the right wing was complaining that the
President had destroyed Ford's great legacy.
As we flew over the Pacific to China, the President told me to look out
a window at the ocean far below. "America's prosperity and our future
depends on us always having the naval strength to patrol and control the
seas," he told me, his lips clenched in stress as he thought over the
problem. "Our Navy needs the biggest buildup it has had this century, at
least two hundred billion dollars in new ships and bases and
improvements."
President Rockefeller told me to write him speeches about the Freedom
of the Seas Bond Issue we were going to have. "The first hundred
million dollars will come from selling the bonds to Americans."
"The Japanese will buy twenty five billion in bonds," Rockefeller
continued. "Aren't they dependent on sea imports for oil?"
Europeans were to buy another twenty five billions in bonds, and the
last fifty billion would be paid by the OPEC countries. The American
Navy would grow to seven hundred ships and control the salt water
surface of the globe.
"Are we going to sell Freedom of the Seas bonds to the Chinese?" I
asked.
Nelson Rockefeller smiled and said: "No. Right now they don't have the
fluid currency. That will not change for maybe ten years."
Today is Friday, September 5, 1975, sixty degrees and clear on the day
that President Gerald Ford is scheduled to make a speech to the
California State Legislature. Ford's speeches is pap and platitudes and
it would never be remembered had Ford lived to give it.
Ford attends a breakfast sponsored by agri businessmen, then leaves
his hotel on foot for the state capitol that was right across the
street. Thick crowds line the way, and Ford works the rope, shaking
hands with citizens standing on the other side of a restraining line.
Midway to the capitol doors, there is a small red haired woman in a
bright red gown. Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Frome is 26 years old and
miserable because her messiah and lover, Charles Manson, is locked up
for life and she is not permitted visitation. The difference between our
timeline and this one is that _this_ Squeaky is a better student and
recalls that a gun needs a bullet in the chamber for a shot to be taken.
Here, the Manson Family's firearms practices shall not have been in
vain.
The next day, Jules Witcover will report that he stood maybe ten feet
from Jerry Ford. "Ford walked up to a young woman in a deep red gown and
matching bandanna. She reached under the gown, pulled a 45 caliber Army
Colt automatic from a leg holster and pulled the trigger. With three
seconds, Larry Buendor of the Secret Service had seized the woman's arm
preventing another shot, but there already was a big red blot on the
President's shirtwaist, and Jerry Ford stumbled and fell for the last
time."
In Rochester, NY, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller is the celebrity
present for the opening of a new hospital. Joe Persico, his aide, is in
a staff room when a member of Rocky's Secret Service detail runs to a
phone. The agent's questions are short and to the point: "What? Who?
When? Is that confirmed?"
Nelson Rockefeller was making small talk to local dignataries, when a
secret service agent whispered in his ear that the President had been
shot. The other Secret Service agents clustered around ocky as he went
back to the podium.
"I have just been told horrible news. President Gerald Ford has just
been shot in California. I do not know how well he is, but I think that
he can use all our prayers and well wishes today." Rocky then leads the
audience in a recital of the Lord's Prayer.
In years to come, it will be argued that this shows Rocky's deep but
unadvertised belief in God. Actually, it is a recitation of boiler
plate that Rocky used routinely in emergency situations.
In his armored limo, Rocky asks Persico: "What is the Manson Gang?" He
is headed to his jet. Persico, mindful of the precedent of November 22,
1963, has already ordered that a federal district judge be waiting at
the jet for the new President's swearing-in.
2. Rocky Says (I)
I never wanted to be Vice President of anything. Ford was desperate to
have me be his Vice President. He said: "I'm begging you" ---he used
those very words to me. Against my better judgment, I said yes.
No good deed goes unpunished. Sons of bitches in Congress insisted on a
fishing expedition on me and my family, not because anything was wrong
but they hoped they might find some dirt on me. It was disgusting, those
four months of investigation. They grilled my brother David as if I was
a gangster and he had buried bodies for me!
You know, when I first agreed to be Vice President, I thought it would
be an interesting job and I could make the country a better one. But the
way I was treated by Congress in seventy four took all the fyn out of
the job.
I won confirmation. There were maybe a hundred twenty lefties and right
wingers, and everyone of them voted against me. The representatives and
Senators in the middle pulled me through. The middle of the road is
where I draw my votes.
3. Joseph Persico (I)
Nelson Rockefeller let no one down at Jerry Ford's funeral in Grand
Rapids. His speech, which I wrote, was a prefectly acceptable tribute to
a decent guy.
But Reagan stole the show, with his lines about slipping the bonds of
earth and kissing the face of God. There is no doubt that Reagan had a
better delivery than President Rockefeller had, which is not to say that
Rockefeller was bad.
Yeah, the funeral could have been worse. Fortunately, Nixon did not
attend, claiming poor health, so there was no fear of pictures
associating Rockefeller with the disgraced ex-President.
4. Rocky Says (II)
I could see that Reagan was moving against me as early as Jerry Ford's
funeral. He was pretending that he and Jerry was close --- hell, Ronald
Reagan was one of the main reasons that Jerry wanted me at his side.
Governor Reagan could not start a war, President Reagan can, Jerry Ford
said that to my face.
I have no doubts, no doubts that Reagan would have run against Gerry
Ford for President. He would have tried to beat Jerry Ford even if I had
quit the Vice Presidency and been replaced with Bob Dole.
Reagan was alway power-hungry, but he hid that part of him from the
public.
I could not get a break my first month in office. I wasted a couple of
days hosting the foreign ministers of Israel and Russia --- Allon and
Gromyko --- who would agree on absolutely nothing. And Mayor Abe Beame
applied for billions of federal dollars to keep New York City solvent.
Of course, I had nothing to do with that. For many years, I had warned
the world that John Lindsay was making pay promises to city workers that
were not supported by tax revenues, and I had done all I could to pull
back on Lindsay's extravagance.
None of that was mentioned when the right wingers told the story. They
acted as if I was the Sundance Kid to Lindsay's Butch Cassidy.
Rocky caused the problem = now Rocky wants to raise your taxes to bail
out New Yotk City.
I could have demagogued the issue -- no one had better right. I could
have refused to help the City surmount the Lindsay/Beame debts. But I
was responsible and put my reputation on the line for the City.
New York City got three billions in loans. And I got a million poison
pen letters, mostly west of the Mississippi, and all backing Reagan, who
had announced he was a canddiate for the Presidency in 1976.
The UN General Assembly defined Zionism as racist because Zionism says
Jews have more right to that land than Arabs do. So now it is like every
Jew is writing me, telling me that I ought to have kept that vote at the
UN from ending up as it did. I send Henry Kissinger to Madrid when old
dictator Franco died and I'm accused of distraching Kissinger from
real work by sending him to ceremonies for dead Fascists.
The only good news was that old William Douglas agreed to retire from
the Supreme Court. The old man had hated Jerry Ford ever since Ford
tried to get him impeached for accepting money for a gambling vacation
in Las Vegas, and he was not going to let Ford name his successor.
I replaced Douglas with a promising young conservative I hardly knew,
named Bork, and if that helped mend my fences with the right wingers,
the improvement was so slight it was an invisible repair. What does it
take for me to be accepted as an okay guy by conservatives?
The toughest drug laws in the country, in history? I did that. Planning
to run a giant pipeline through the parks and mountains of Alaska. That
was me too.
5. Donald Rumsfeld (I)
I know that a tax cut would have been proposed in federal taxes by
Gerry Ford if Squeaky Fromme had not killed him. I had been working on
just such a plan when the assassination occurred in Sacramento.
I only reported to Rockefeller once as chief of staff, and as soon as we
met he told me I was replaced by Rockefeller's chief of staff. I hung on
for a couple weeks of transition. But after I left the White House, I
got a call from some kid I never heard of. This kid wanted me to deny a
story that Ford had planned ten billion in tax cuts. The figure was
more like eleven billion in reduced taxes, I told my caller, and I was
not going to lie for anybody.
Nelson Rockefeller was a real pain as Vice President, and he settled
scores the second that Fromme promoted him to the Oval Office. As Vice
President, he had wanted to be like the de facto executive for Domestic
Affairs. He would let Kissinger handle foreign stuff while he ran the
country internally.
Not a bit of that fitted Gerald Ford's desires. But Ford was too nice a
guy to put Rockefeller in his place. I was the chief of staff, so I had
to be the man to tell the Vice President that he did not run the
Interior Department, and that he would not decide where Interstates were
to be built, and Secretary So and So did not appreciate his meddling
in this or that program.
Oh, yes, Rockefeller hated me like poison.
Rockefeller prodded Reagan into campaigning for the 1976 presidential
race. I remember Reagan asking: "Don, what is the problem that
President Rockefeller has with me? He ignores any suggestion that comes
from me or my friends, and he makes wisecracks against me in front of
the press."
My answer was, that is the way Rockefeller is.
6. Joseph Persico (II)
Rockefeller needed a vacation in early December 1975. The headlines that
week were on Ford's intention to ask Congress to slice more than eleven
billion dollars off taxes. President Rockefeller saw those cuts as
damaging and excessive , but now the right wing was complaining that the
President had destroyed Ford's great legacy.
As we flew over the Pacific to China, the President told me to look out
a window at the ocean far below. "America's prosperity and our future
depends on us always having the naval strength to patrol and control the
seas," he told me, his lips clenched in stress as he thought over the
problem. "Our Navy needs the biggest buildup it has had this century, at
least two hundred billion dollars in new ships and bases and
improvements."
President Rockefeller told me to write him speeches about the Freedom
of the Seas Bond Issue we were going to have. "The first hundred
million dollars will come from selling the bonds to Americans."
"The Japanese will buy twenty five billion in bonds," Rockefeller
continued. "Aren't they dependent on sea imports for oil?"
Europeans were to buy another twenty five billions in bonds, and the
last fifty billion would be paid by the OPEC countries. The American
Navy would grow to seven hundred ships and control the salt water
surface of the globe.
"Are we going to sell Freedom of the Seas bonds to the Chinese?" I
asked.
Nelson Rockefeller smiled and said: "No. Right now they don't have the
fluid currency. That will not change for maybe ten years."