Chapter II: Cheney & Rumsfeld
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CHAPTER II: Dick & Rummy
12:14 PM EST, Monday, May 5th, 1975
White House, Washington, DC.
President Ford with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld & White House Chief of Staff Dick Cheney.
While President Ford was building up foreign policy, domestic & other achievements, he had two particular Ford loyalists whom some were either fans of or afraid, scared, intimidated & deeply depised: the two young ambitious men I'm referring to are US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (who became US Defense Secretary in the Fall of 1974 after Ford abruptly removed then-US Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, naming him as US Ambassador to NATO) & White House Chief of Staff Richard Cheney, otherwise known to some folks as Dick & Rummy.12:14 PM EST, Monday, May 5th, 1975
White House, Washington, DC.
President Ford with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld & White House Chief of Staff Dick Cheney.
It was no surprise as Cheney & Rumsfeld always interjected themselves in Cabinet meetings, micromanaging Cabinet Secretaries to the point of annoyance; an example of this was when Rumsfeld aggressively lobbied President Ford to naming US Air Force Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft as National Security Adviser (effectively sending US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to multiple overseas trips).
Rumsfeld also undermined & clashed with US Defense Deputy Secretary William P. Clements, Jr., & they clashed almost over pretty much everything with Clements threatening to call press conferences if Rumsfeld had him removed & moved to a different department. In a personal PoV Clements summed up his time at the Defense Department:
"When I began working as Deputy Secretary of Defense under Defense Secretaries Richardson and Schlesinger, everything was going great, getting along great including working together. However, all of that changed in mid-August of 1974 when President Ford abruptly announced during a Cabinet meeting that he was naming Schlesinger as the new US Ambassador to NATO, replacing him with that jackass Rumsfeld as the new Secretary of Defense.
It became a fucking disaster as I strongly felt and to this day, Rumsfeld manipulated the United States Senate into a quick confirmation process to become Secretary of Defense, which he was confirmed in mid-September of 1974. Almost immediately, Rumsfeld and I quickly clashed on pretty much everything inside the Pentagon; the pencil-pushing jackass even tried to have me fired as Deputy Secretary of Defense by having his cronies leaking false information and all that nonsense bullshit!
My time serving under Rumsfeld was very unpleasant. However, I didn't want to let Rumsfeld alert the President that I was unhappy so, I decided to hunker down and keep pushing along doing my job....."
----Personal PoV from TX Governor William P. Clements, Jr., (R) May 16th, 1979.
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