“If” is the cruelest word in the English language, and looking back at the previous four years, we all had our “what-ifs” to contemplate: What if Carter had leavened his talented but inexperienced Georgia Mafia with an experienced chief of staff or senior White House adviser who knew Washington and its players? What if we had not launched a raft of comprehensive legislation in Congress at the outset? What if we had recognized earlier, as Carter did, that inflation was public enemy number one? What if the Iranian revolution had not occurred on his watch and doubled oil prices within a 12-month period? What if there had been an earlier choice between Vance and Brzezinski in dealing with the Soviet Union? What if Carter had followed his own instincts and not allowed the Shah into the United States for medical treatment? Or if he had withdrawn all the embassy personnel after the first aborted attempt by the radical students to overrun the American compound? What if the hostage crisis had been handled differently, with no Rose Garden strategy and more forceful action? What if the bold rescue misson had not been thwarted by a remarkable series of mishaps? What if Kennedy had closed ranks with Carter against Reagan? What if Carter had not left the campaign trail on the last weekend before the election only to receive another inadequate Iranian offer?
Counterfactuals always make an intriguing mental exercise, but they can never rewrite history, and Carter knew that better than anyone. He quickly put an end to such thinking, telling the November 11 senior staff meeting: “We need to stop analyzing our defeat. Everyone is blaming me, and we need to stress our accomplishments. The fact is we just got our ass whipped.” He also reassured us: “I feel remarkably good. I’ve handled the defeat well, and so has Rosalynn. The thing that hurts is the personal rejection.” He joked: “I would rather have had an endorsement and then not serve a second term! It’s a bitch of a job, and thankless, too.”1
Two days later at the final Democratic leadership breakfast, he graciously said he had an “overwhelming sense of gratitude for their support and also regret over a number of defeats. We tackled tough problems.… We need to tell an accurate history of what we did.” Senate Majority Leader Byrd, who lost his post due to the Republican gains in the Senate, said they shared a record of legislative accomplishment “but it continues to escape people. You did the best you could under difficult circumstances.” Speaker O’Neill, who had recovered from his election-night pique, also cited the legislative accomplishments and said: “My heart and my door are always open to you. History will treat you well.”2 I hope this book, which has been a labor of love over a quarter of a century, will contribute to making the Speaker’s hope a reality.
In a way Carter’s departure from office turned out to be one of his finest hours. He gave his farewell address from the Oval Office the night of January 14, 1981, while still struggling to free the hostages. I had worked on the speech with Jody and Gordon Stewart, his speechwriter,3 and took my older son, Jay, to listen to it with me in the Roosevelt Room. It was a tearjerking episode to hear Jimmy Carter address the nation for the last time as president. In terms reminiscent of what had propelled him from political obscurity four years before, he warned against Americans being “drawn to single-issue groups and special interest organizations” rather than the broader national good. He emphasized, in typical Carter form, three issues he singled out as difficult: the threat of nuclear destruction; the stewardship of the planet; and “the preeminence of the basic rights of human beings.” I believe he left a positive legacy in each of these three areas. He closed movingly by saying that “as I return home to the South, where I was born and raised.… I intend to work as a citizen, as I’ve worked here in this office as president, for the values this nation was founded to secure.4
* * *
But he was not done yet, and exercised the full powers of the presidency until Reagan walked into the White House as his successor. Workaholic to the last, the morning after the devastating loss he asked me to join Rubenstein and Jack Watson in drawing up an agenda of things he could do during his final months as president.
He asked me to meet with journalists for a “historical perspective of our achievements, as they write their assessment pieces.” Then he settled some scores. He asked me for a video copy of Reverend Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, a conservative Chrisitian news television program, which aired that morning; he had been told the show was so clearly political that the tax exemption of Robertson’s operation should be questioned as “gross and obscene and [transcending] the bounds of religious programming.” For good measure, he said: “Something needs to be done to stop the Moral Majority. Your Jewish friends should help protect the country from them.”5
Far from diminishing the Moral Majority, no less than Israeli prime minister Begin grew closer to it when Carter was out of office. After its founder, Jerry Falwell, visited Israel and expressed his hope that the country would continue to control the West Bank and the “Jews would acknowledge Christ as the Lord,” Begin gave him an award named for his own personal Jewish hero, Vladimir Jabotinsky. Thus Begin helped cement an alliance among Israel’s expansionist wing, American evangelicals who helped deliver the Republican Party, and conservative American Jews. Those bonds last to this day.
The closing chapter of the Carter presidency was one of his most productive spurts, the equal or better than that of any departing president in a postelection congressional session, when he was the lamest of lame ducks. At a senior staff meeting, he laid down a marker threatening to veto any bill passed by the outgoing Democratic Congress cutting taxes because it would add to the deficit and inflation, and link him to the Kemp-Roth movement. “I want to leave a record of fiscal responsibility; let Reagan make the tax cuts,” he said.6
He signed the hard-fought Alaska Lands Act, which in a single stroke of his presidential pen doubled the size of our National Park System and protected huge wilderness areas from being despoiled by mining and drilling for oil and gas. He signed another postelection bill he championed that created the Superfund, significantly paid for by the chemical industry, to clean up the worst industrial wastelands.
Nor did he throw up his hands and dump the fate of the Iranian hostages in the lap of his successor. Carter worked to the last moment of his presidency for the agreement permitting the hostages to be released in the first minutes of the Reagan administration, and he sequestered Iranian funds for Americans with claims against Iran. And with a largeness of spirit rare among politicians, he quickly accepted the recommendation his rival Ted Kennedy made through me to appoint Kennedy’s former aide Stephen Breyer to an appeals court judgeship that eventually brought him to the Supreme Court. And in an act of bipartisanship virtually unknown in today’s polarized politics, Breyer won the support of archconservative, incoming Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Strom Thurmond, and his Republican colleagues.
LAST HOURS
Early on the morning of Inauguration Day, January 20, 1981, Rafshoon and Ham looked down from the Queen’s Bedroom on the second floor of the White House Residence and saw the president and First Lady greet Ronald and Nancy Reagan as they entered the White House for a traditional tea, before proceeding to the Capitol for the ceremony. The two Carter aides then made their way to the Situation Room in the hope that the hostages would clear Iranian airspace before noon. Two phone lines were open, one to the CIA station in Algiers where Christopher was negotiating, the other to Phil Wise, the president’s appointments secretary, who was on the inaugural platform with Carter hoping to tell him the hostages were released before the swearing-in, so Carter could announce the good news. It did not happen, the last indignity Khomeini imposed on Jimmy Carter.
Ignoring a warning from Ham’s personal secretary, Eleanor Connor, they remained until 12:25 p.m. As she came in to warn them that the Reagan staff people were coming through the South Gate, the two were unceremoniously escorted out of the West Wing for the last time by a Marine guard. He was none too happy that they had literally worn out their welcome because that delayed his own meeting with the
new Reagan crew.
In the brief time between the formal end of the Carter presidency and their belated departure down the hallway between the Situation Room and the White House Mess, they were bemused by the speedy removal of all the Carter photographs and their replacement by framed pictures of Reagan. When they arrived at Andrews Air Force Base to board the plane taking Carter back to Georgia, we were all waiting in our seats to accompany him on the final journey. Ham called the Situation Room on the plane’s secure phone to find out what had happened to the hostages. The duty officer said: “I am sorry, Mr. Jordan, I cannot tell you,” to which Ham replied he was calling from a secure phone. The officer softly said: “Yes, Mr. Jordan, but Mr. Carter is no longer president.” The finality of the transfer of power sank in.7
* * *
As is the custom for a president leaving for home on the inauguration of his successor, Carter boarded a Boeing 707-SAM 27000, designated not as Air Force One but as a Special Air Mission, since he was no longer president. He gave a thumbs-up, indicating that the hostages were free, boarded the plane, and was flown to Georgia’s Robins Air Force Base. He gave an emotional speech in the Plains town square for several hundred people. We then walked to his home and presented him with a gift from the staff: a carpentry set to make furniture and other things, which Rosalynn felt he would like. Then Rafshoon, his son, Scott, Anne Wexler, and I returned to Washington on the same plane.
When the U.S. hostages in Iran were released, there would be one last bittersweet ride on Air Force One, when Reagan generously asked the former president to fly on the presidential plane to greet the hostages. So Chief Flight Steward Charlie Palmer and his crew left early the next day, January 21, with Mondale and others who had worked on the hostage deal, and picked up Carter in Georgia for the flight. They landed at Rhein-Main Airbase in West Germany and from there went to the Wiesbaden U.S. Air Force Base Hospital. Many of the hostages tearfully embraced the former president; others, angry at their long captivity, did not.
On the way home Palmer had occasion to sit down with Carter. He recalled flying with Richard Nixon back to Yorba Linda, California, after his resignation. He commented that Nixon hardly communicated with anyone during that raw time. By contrast, Carter had formed a warm friendship with Palmer. By now they had flown hundreds of thousands of miles together, and almost from the beginning Carter affectionately called him “Charlie.” On this final flight together, Palmer proposed that he and the former president join in a champagne toast to celebrate the release of the hostages he had sought for 444 days. Little could Palmer, Carter, the country, or the world know that some of his most important accomplishments still lay ahead, through his leadership at the Carter Center in eradicating diseases in Africa, monitoring elections, and promoting human rights and democracy. For all these and his Middle East diplomacy, Carter would be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Palmer handed over the tulip-shaped glass with the presidential seal, and together they drained their glasses.8
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This account of the Carter presidency would not have been possible without the confidence that Jimmy Carter bestowed on me to formulate policy during his presidential campaign, and then to serve as his chief domestic-policy adviser in the White House, where I also joined in many foreign-policy decisions. It was the greatest challenge of my life. Although President Carter has been unfailingly helpful with a number of interviews and discussions, and accorded me access to selected personal notes since I began my research in 1981, this is in no way an authorized or official biography. It is my own account of what I observed on the road to the White House and inside the cauldron during the four years we served there. It is heavily based on my own notes and interviews with colleagues and others, whose views are cited or incorporated, and were not always complimentary. At no point did either President Carter or Vice President Mondale seek to influence my narrative or review any part of the book, even though they must have been aware that my inquiries would lead to some information or opinions that would not necessarily be flattering.
From the start, my wonderful wife Fran (of blessed memory) believed in and encouraged this project; my public service with Jimmy Carter shaped our lives and those of our sons, Jay and Brian. I honor her life and our work together and will always mourn her passing. I wish she could have been able to read this account of the administration, in which she felt so invested.
For the substance of this book, I am immensely grateful to Lawrence Malkin. As with my two previous books, Larry has been more than a highly skilled editor and demanding critic; with his wide-ranging experience as an author and journalist for major newspapers and magazines, he has also been a mentor, adviser, and collaborator in helping shape and give voice to this book. Together we have waded through draft after draft of the manuscript to prepare it for publication.
I also deeply thank my publisher, Thomas Dunne, for his perseverance and support and for providing the excellent editorial assistance of his colleagues, Stephen S. Power, Janine Barlow, and Peter Joseph. At St. Martin’s Press, we all benefited from the work of John Morrone, the senior production editor; Sue Llewellyn, our tireless copyeditor; Michelle Cashman for marketing; our publicist, Rebecca Lang; the book’s designer, Steven Seighman; and Rowen Davis for his book jacket capturing the optimistic Jimmy Carter I knew. My agent, Ronald Goldfarb, brought me to Tom and his colleagues; Ron’s sound judgment has been instrumental in finding publishers for three of my books.
Over decades of work, I am grateful to some 325 individuals who were willing to sit for time-consuming interviews, some several times for return visits, leading to over 350 interviews. They include those from inside the administration and outside observers, Republicans as well as Democrats. I benefited greatly from the dedicated assistance of Jay Hakes, David Alsobrook, and, more recently, David Stanhope and his colleagues at the Carter Presidential Library, who helped find key memoranda to the president along with his contemporaneous notes and comments, plus a trove of valuable information in the Evening Reports sent each night to the president by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance or Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher, as well as the Weekly Reports to the president from his National Security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. The staff of the Library of Congress was always helpful in promptly accessing my own documents already deposited there. Louise Fischer of the Israeli Foreign Ministry Archives supplied cables of my meetings with Israeli officials, which were expertly translated by Katja Manor in Jerusalem.
After the end of the Carter administration, the Brookings Institution appointed me as a Guest Scholar for several months, which gave me a start on indexing over five thousand legal pad pages of contemporaneous notes of all meetings and telephone calls in which I was involved, and beginning to shape the book. Carolyn Keene, my secretary for 35 years, was invaluable in helping to organize my legal-size notepads and my interviews, arrange (along with Teri Mancini) for their transcription, and organize the work of several young researchers, while we were at the law firm Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy, then later at Covington & Burling LLP. As the project advanced and my writing began in earnest some three years ago, and deadlines loomed, I am especially grateful to Tim Hester, the Managing Partner at Covington, who granted a leave of absence from my law practice for several critical weeks. The documents staff at Covington transcribed my later interviews, and a number of Covington legal secretaries were helpful, including Pat Adams, Laurina Holte, and Hattie Blackshire. Special thanks go to my current legal secretaries, Michalene Katzer, who helped put my interviews into a format that made them more accessible, and especially to Patrice Jones, whose research skill and remarkably selfless work were indispensable in locating information in my files, interviews, and online.
I have used a talented group of research assistants for each of the major topics. In the early years of the project, Rachel Kogan (Habib), Andrew Schwartz, Stephanie Epstein, Helayna Minsk, Josh Liberson, Mark Brzezinski, and Caroline Lubick Goldzweig did exce
llent research on several of the topics in my book.
My longest serving and most dedicated research assistant was Lisa Lubick Daniel, who was with me from start to finish, with special emphasis on some of the most complicated subjects—Iran, the Middle East peace process, and energy. In addition, during the final two years, I benefited from essential research and review of my early draft chapters by Sarah Boddy (women’s issues, political issues); Michael Blumenthal (airline deregulation); Amy Fisher (economy and taxation); Ruben Karchem (New York City and Chrysler); Shana Krauss (environment); Peter McFarren (Panama Canal Treaty, Latin America, Rhodesia, Horn of Africa, human rights in Latin America, and the Mariel Boatlift); Alexandra Memmott (defense policy, human rights toward the Soviet Union, SALT II, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the neutron bomb and intermediate nuclear weapons in Europe, Angola, and Vietnamese boat people); Randi Michel (China); and Alex Somodevilla (health, education, and welfare reform). A special note of appreciation goes to Marion Ein Lewin, whose patience, support, kindness, and helpful suggestions during the last phases of this project were vital.
In the end, I bear sole responsibility for the facts, analysis, opinions, and judgments expressed in President Carter: The White House Years.
Stuart E. Eizenstat, Washington, D.C.
NOTES
*Please note some of the links referenced throughout this work may no longer be active.
All references to Pad numbers in the notes refer to my legal pads, on which in date order from the beginning to the end of the Carter administration, and in some instances from the campaign and transition, I recorded in chronological order and in virtual verbatim form, all meetings and conversations in which I was a part.
Citations from Congressional Quarterly are cited as 1977 CQ Almanac, 95th Congress, 1st Session … 1977, Volume XXXXIII, Congressional Quarterly, Inc., Washington, D.C.; 1978 CQ Almanac, 2nd Session …1978, Volume XXXIV, Congressional Quarterly, Inc., Washington, D.C.; 1979 CQ Almanac, 96th Congress, 1st Session … 1979, Volume XXXV, Congressional Quarterly, Inc., Washington, D.C.; 1980 CQ Almanac, 96th Congress, 2nd Session … 1980, Volume XXXVI, Congressional Quarterly, Inc., Washington, D.C. Citations from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum can be accessed at www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov; I have been greatly assisted by David Stanhope, director of the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum ([email protected]) and Sara Mitchell ([email protected]).
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