On April 30, the president astounded the nation, or at least the world inside the Beltway, by announcing that he had reluctantly accepted the resignations of Haldeman and Ehrlichman and had fired John Dean, the counsel to the president who, we learned later, had talked to the president about “the cancer on the presidency” only a few days after the CEA members and their spouses had breakfasted with the Nixons.
The fact that the two men closest to the president were clearly implicated in the scandal finally did it; I just couldn't believe any longer that the president could have remained ignorant of what was going on. Developments during the weeks that followed made clear that many members of Congress had reached the same conclusion. A Senate Watergate Committee was formed, former solicitor general Archibald Cox was appointed by Attorney General Elliot Richardson as the Justice Department's special prosecutor, and the Senate committee began nationally televised hearings on May 18.
It was then that the country began to learn the concrete details of Richard Nixon's dark side. Bud Krogh, who had resigned his position as undersecretary of transportation a few days earlier, revealed his previous role as head of the White House “plumbers' unit.” This was the group that, after White House efforts to stop publication of the top-secret Pentagon Papers through the courts failed in 1971, had broken into the office of the author's psychiatrist, looking for material that might discredit him. John Dean told investigators, according to the Post, that he had discussed the Watergate cover-up with the president “at least 35 times.”2 In an allegation that has never been confirmed, Jeb Stuart Magruder stated that the president had known of and authorized the Watergate break-in in advance. All of these men, along with Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and many others, eventually were convicted and served jail time for their roles in the two break-ins and/or the cover-ups that followed.
As I listened to or read about these admissions, I asked myself what on earth could have motivated men like these—all of them highly intelligent, all on brilliant career trajectories, and many of them lawyers themselves—to engage in what they must have known were illegal activities. What were they thinking? Was it personal loyalty to the president? Had the president's own arrogance, his apparent belief that he was above the law and would never be caught, spread over those close to him as well? Did they believe that the “end,” so brilliantly articulated by their leader, justified the means? Were they so dazzled by the power and perquisites of their White House jobs that they couldn't stand the thought of having them cut short by scandal, leading them to create the much greater scandal of the cover-up?
Personal ambition didn't surprise or offend me. My father had described himself in a letter to me as “an ambitious bastard,” and that trait had been implanted in my own genes and upbringing both. And his passion for being close to power had been crucial in shaping the last half of his career. But honesty and moral courage were just as important a part of his makeup. He displayed these traits most conspicuously in his public defense of Robert Oppenheimer when the latter was wrongly accused of disloyalty and deprived of his security clearance. This was despite the fact that my father's political patron was the wealthy investment banker Lewis Strauss, who had masterminded the proceedings against Oppenheimer and was the chairman of both the Atomic Energy Commission and the Institute for Advanced Study's Board of Trustees.
With this example before me as I was growing up, and my own efforts throughout my life to emulate my father's honesty and fair dealing, despite all the books many of the men (and they were all men) involved in Watergate wrote later, their total loss of any moral compass remains a puzzle to me. I promised myself never to forget for a minute that all the trappings that went with life in the Executive Office of the President—closeness to the seat of power, the sense of actually influencing important decisions, a broad array of special perks—were ephemeral, belonged to the job and not the individual, and were no excuse for breaking the rules of decent behavior.
The most astounding revelation to emerge from the Watergate hearings was the July 13 statement to the committee by Alexander Butterfield, a former presidential appointments secretary. Under oath, Butterfield testified that the president had ordered a taping system installed in his office in 1971 and every conversation and telephone call since had been recorded. The president lost his battle to keep these tapes secret, and they provided much of the evidence that led, after a year of Chinese water torture revelations, to his resignation under the imminent threat of impeachment.
Well before Butterfield's mind-boggling revelation, sometime during the month of April, I finally decided I couldn't wait any longer to take a first step toward leaving the CEA, now that I suspected the president of being at the center of an enormous and expanding web of lies. I told Herb Stein that I was no longer comfortable as a member of the Nixon administration and intended to resign. Herb, a man of unimpeachable personal integrity but also a staunch Nixon loyalist, simply refused to believe that I was serious.
For months, I had been torn between my respect for the institution of the presidency, the enjoyment of my job, and my admiration for the administration officials who had put me there—CEA chairman Herb Stein and treasury secretary and economics czar George Shultz—and the mounting evidence of a cancer growing in the Oval Office that was destroying the credibility and dignity associated with it. Those of us who were part of George Shultz's domain, we learned later, were apparently walled off from the machinations and dirty tricks that were widespread elsewhere in the Executive Office of the President.
One of the things that came to light in the course of the Watergate investigation was the existence of an enemies' list of high-profile people the president regarded as either hostile or untrustworthy. He ordered that people on the list were under no circumstances to be invited to the White House and, more ominously, tried to persuade Treasury Secretary Shultz to turn over to the White House confidential information from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) about their individual tax returns. When Shultz courageously stonewalled this request, the president reputedly told his aides to keep “Shultz's people,” who included the members of the CEA, in ignorance of the darker side of activities originating in the White House. If I hadn't been shielded from what was going on, I would surely have decided to quit, and translated that decision into action, more quickly.
Once I'd made up my mind to resign, I still hesitated to make the decision irrevocable by putting it in writing. This was partly because, between Ezra Solomon's return to Stanford in March and the time when his vacancy was filled in June, Herb and I were the only members of the council. My departure would have left Herb to carry out the duties of the three-member council alone, which would have been an enormous burden, particularly with the high level of activity in the two areas that were my major responsibility: the wage-price controls program and the international monetary system. Furthermore, Herb had recently suffered a hemorrhage that left him permanently blind in one eye. That he had lost half his eyesight but none of his sense of humor was demonstrated when the president called him in the hospital to commiserate with his misfortune. “That's okay, Mr. President,” Herb told us he'd replied, “half of what I see isn't worth reading anyway.”
I'd also hoped to be able to discuss with Herb the implications of my leaving for the functioning of the CEA. But once the nomination of agricultural economist Gary Seevers, then the special assistant to the chairman, to fill the vacant member's slot had been made public, and my repeated efforts to engage Herb in a serious discussion had failed, I knew the time had come to make my intentions official. On June 14, I wrote a letter of resignation to the president and left a copy on Herb's desk. Then he not only believed me but took my decision as an act of personal betrayal.
I might have had reason to feel morally superior if my letter to the president had been a bold, courageous statement along the lines of “I believe you are a crook, Mr. President, and I can't work for a crook.” In fact, though, I wrote:
Dear Mr. President:
&n
bsp; When I was offered and accepted appointment to the Council of Economic Advisers in February of 1972, it was with the understanding that, subject to your pleasure, I would remain until the end of the 1972–73 academic year. That time has now run out, and I am writing to tender my resignation from the Council on or about August 1, 1973, in order to return to my teaching post at the University of Pittsburgh for the 1973–74 academic year.
I take this step with the greatest personal difficulty and regret, knowing it will bring to an end a most exciting and rewarding period in my life. Few economists indeed have the privilege of practicing their profession in the service of their country and their President, and to have been able to observe and participate in decisions fundamentally affecting the economic welfare of our nation is an opportunity for which I shall always be grateful. I shall leave with the knowledge that I received far more than I could give, and learned far more than I could teach, and yet with the hope that I was able to make a useful contribution. I shall leave also with the hope that this will not be my last opportunity for government service.
These are difficult times. But when history gives its appraisal of the fundamental achievements of the Nixon Administrations, which have given our children—and children everywhere—a far greater chance to live out their lives in peace, I shall be proud to have been a part of them. It has been an honor and a privilege to serve my government in the position to which you appointed me and I shall always be grateful to you, Mr. President, for having given me the opportunity to do so.
Yours sincerely,3
Marina v. N. Whitman
The first paragraph of my letter wasn't entirely true. I had never, either to the president or anyone else, set a time limit on my tenure at the CEA. I reveled in my role there and would, I'm convinced, have found a way to stay on for another year had not the unraveling Watergate saga intervened. But, given my views about the moral culpability of Nixon's sycophants, why was the tone of my letter so polite, even friendly?
The language was partly a result of my determination to make the public announcement of my resignation a nonevent, even if the letter should leak to the press, as many such documents did. But it also reflected a genuine admiration for the Dr. Jekyll side of Nixon's actions as president. I was very much in tune with the progressive aspects of his domestic policies. More important, I genuinely believed, and still do today, that he had taken some major steps forward in foreign policy. He ended our participation in the Vietnam War—though after too much time had passed and too much blood had been shed—and his overtures to China and the Soviet Union were important first moves in bringing stability to a precariously unstable world.
The expressions of admiration and gratitude that filled my letter to the president were returned in his letter accepting my resignation.
Dear Marina:
Although I had known of your intention to return eventually to the academic world, I had not realized that the time was so near. Thus, while I will accept your resignation as a Member of the Council of Economic Advisers, effective August 1, I do so with the deepest reluctance. Your work here has been a source of high satisfaction, not only to me and to your associates on the Council but, also, to all your colleagues throughout government, and you will be greatly missed.
Keynes is reputed to have said that economists have not yet earned the right to be listened to attentively. I disagree, and your distinguished service on the Council more than justifies my position! The brilliance of your contributions to our economic policies cannot be overestimated, and the unprecedented growth our Nation has enjoyed during the past two years is a great tribute to the Council and to its Members. You have every good reason to be proud of the part you played, just as I have been proud and honored to have you as a key member of our Administration team.
Needless to say, you leave public life with my heartfelt thanks and warmest good wishes for continued success in the years ahead. And on behalf of our fellow citizens, I do indeed share your hope that at some future time we may prevail upon you to return once again to government service.
Sincerely,
Richard Nixon4
The president may have been distracted by Watergate, but his gracious letter gave no hint of it. In contrast to the nefarious actions against personal and political adversaries that were being conducted in secret, the civility that characterized verbal and written exchanges in official Washington, even among people on opposite sides of the political aisle, seems unimaginable today, when shrill partisanship and universal mistrust dominate public discourse. Ironically, Watergate itself did a lot to create this poisonous atmosphere.
Only once, in the many times I testified before one congressional committee or another, did a member of the committee address me with anything other than the utmost politeness. That was when Herb and I were scheduled to testify before the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) on the Economic Problems of Women. At the last minute, Herb was called to the White House to talk to the president, and I was left to face an angry Martha Griffiths, a Democrat from Michigan, who was presiding. Representative Griffiths was annoyed partly because Herb had chosen to respond to the president's summons rather than hers and partly because she objected to the fact that our testimony, in the form of chapter 4 of the 1973 Economic Report of the President on the Economic Role of Women, was descriptive rather than prescriptive and failed to recommend specific policies to alleviate discrimination against women in the workplace. Venting her spleen on the council member who sat before her, she said bluntly that I was in no way an adequate substitute for the chairman of the CEA. I knew better than to take her remarks personally, but they still stung.
More typical was the behavior of the chairman of the JEC, Senator William Proxmire, Democrat of Wisconsin. Even when he was castigating the administration for the performance of the US economy, he was careful to point out his respect for the reputations and expertise of the individual members of the CEA. But the acme of graciousness was reached during my last appearance before the JEC on August 1, 1973, shortly before my resignation from the CEA became effective. Another Democrat, Representative Henry Reuss, took note of my imminent departure.
I…say farewell to Mrs. Whitman, who is leaving for the university in a few days, I understand. You will remain forever green in my mind for the great job you did in helping close the gold window on August 15, 1971; a good piece of work. You are Mrs. Phase II as far as I am concerned.
That was one time when controls were well administered, so may the angels sing when you go back. We really appreciated you and your work so much.5
Senator Jacob Javits added, “To which we all say amen.”6 And the courtly Senator John Sparkman of Alabama chimed in: “May the angels sing while we are weeping.”7 Senator Proxmire ended this remarkable exchange by noting wryly, “We may not have economists on this committee, but we have poets.”8
I accepted these plaudits with a gracious smile, but inwardly I felt they were not entirely deserved. The relative success of Phase II had owed more to the amount of slack that existed in the US economy at the time than to the brilliance of our execution. As the country moved back toward full employment, Phases III and IV were progressively less effective and the program gradually faded away, ending entirely in mid-1974 without having made a dent in the long-term trend of price increases. I could take solace in the fact that my original skepticism about controls had been justified, and that my CEA colleagues and I had done our best to minimize the harm they did to the American economy. But I couldn't escape the reality that for nearly two years I had been the public face of a failed program.
The push for trade liberalization and changes in the international monetary system that I had worked so hard for at the CEA, on the other hand, were both important and essential, underpinning twenty-five years of healthy growth in international trade and investment. The so-called Tokyo Round of multilateral trade negotiations, which the administration was preparing for when I left the CEA, ended six years later, having spawned significant tari
ff reductions and new regulations restricting a variety of nontariff barriers to trade. Building on this success, the high-water mark of trade liberalization was reached in 1993, when both the Uruguay Round, the most ambitious round of multilateral trade negotiations to date, and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were completed and the World Trade Organization (WTO) was established.
At the time, the US proposals for a new international monetary architecture developed by Paul Volcker and advanced by many of us in the administration appeared doomed to failure. They were overtaken by events, and the world has been operating ever since with an ad hoc mixture of pegged, freely floating, and managed floating exchange rates, very different from the orderly system we had tried to bring into being. But the two main ideas of the Volcker Group proposal rose from the dead in September of 2009, becoming the focus of intensive discussion at a meeting of the leaders of the Group of 20, the leading industrialized and developing countries. One was the need for countries with the biggest surpluses, as well as those with the largest deficits in their payments balances, to adopt policies that would reduce the imbalances on both sides. The other was the desirability of gradually reducing the dominance of the US dollar as the primary currency in surplus countries' international reserves, by increasing the acceptability of other assets in this role.9 There has been little progress so far on implementing these proposals, but the need to move forward on them is widely recognized.
Martian's Daughter: A Memoir Page 21
