Not to mention that Connally won’t face a primary challenge from Reagan.
Texas Two-Step: Nixon nominates Connally as VP in 1973
- Thread starter wolverinethad
- Start date
Good point. I quite strongly suspect that if Ford had nominated volcker earlier, talked it otu with reagan and planned to do OTL reagan style high interests in a second term to prevent a primary challenge it would have meant he wins easily.
This means that 1976 in this timeline is Connally's to lose. Between being more charismatic than Ford, more thought out plans for the economy and no primary challenge from Reagan the Ds have quite the hill to climb for the 1976 election in ttl. Not impossible, obviously but more work than OTL. National Brotherhood week had late 70s reformed George Wallace winning in 1976. Maybe someone like that or Scoop Jackson could have a shot.
March 10, 1975
George Herbert Walker Bush, a mouthful of a name that represented both of the wealthy dynasties he was born to and the aspirational dreams of prior generations of New England society to be like the British aristocracy, double middle name and all, arrived back in Washington nearly a year after his dramatic exit from the Republican National Committee with a sense of…dread? He knew he wasn’t happy since then. George Bush loved politics. He just wasn’t very good at winning elections. Neither was his best friend, James Addison Baker III (technically the IV, but the original Jr. removed it from his name and bestowed it to his son and, well, you get the picture). The sharper observers in the political realm recognized that both men had a lot of skill and never found themselves out of work or demand, but it just had not translated well into success at the ballot box. Baker was still a registered Democrat, for crying out loud, but for a man like John Connally, who’d undertaken the same journey, it was points in Baker’s favor.
Baker, despite his very capable skill set, was ultimately the sidecar to whom Connally really wanted. George Bush hated Connally for being a more successful version of what he aspired to be, and Connally just sort of disdained Bush as a climber who couldn’t achieve on his own politically. Despite all of that, the two men had much to offer each other, and Ben Barnes was amongst the sharpest political operators to grace the state of Texas. He knew how to convince his boss, not that Big John needed much of that. He, too, knew that George Bush had done two things in his life very well with minimal outside assistance: he’d been a brave, skilled fighter-bomber pilot who survived ferocious combat with the Japanese, winning a Distinguished Flying Cross and a Presidential Unit Citation. Bush had also started his own oil company, becoming successful enough to get bought out by Pennzoil in the mid-60s and earning Bush a tidy million-dollar payout. And then there was the third thing. The deep secret that nobody knew except Bush, Connally, Richard Helms, Allen Dulles, J. Edgar Hoover, and Ben Barnes. George H.W. Bush had also been a contract operative for the CIA when running his oil company. His offshore drilling work put him into contact with all sorts of characters that the Agency had interest in, and Bush provided both information and, through use of the offshore rigs Zapata Offshore built, cover jobs for operatives to be inserted into Cuba at a time when the Agency was actively trying to kill Fidel Castro. He’d also been briefed on industrial espionage operations being conducted under the code name Southern Rig. The link was kept very quiet in the 1960s, because Prescott Bush was an influential senator and his eldest son being a CIA contractor would be a scandal. Dulles and Hoover were both dead, Helms was never going to talk, and the other three would be in the Oval Office soon. Baker was Bush’s best friend and had no idea about the CIA work. It said something about Bush’s character, and Connally knew how to judge character. He knew Bush was unfailingly loyal, regardless of personal feelings. He was a true patriot in every sense of the word. That suited the President's purposes.
Connally’s secretary let both men into the room. Connally stood as they came in, stepped out from behind the Resolute desk, and shook their hands. Barnes stood in the corner, observing the body language. Baker was relaxed, comfortable, while Bush was tightly coiled. The face looked placid, but his movements didn’t entirely hide his discomfort. Barnes sympathized a little with Bush. It’s hard to be in a room with a man that you don’t like but who holds your entire future in his hands. They all sat down on the sofas as David Hume Kennerly, the White House photographer, snapped the obligatory shots for posterity, and then a coffee tray was set out in front of them. Kennerly and the secretary withdrew, and the dance began.
The President was quick to the point. The Secretary of Energy, he said, was going to be an important and expansive position. Not only would it be responsible for creating and maintaining strategic oil reserves, helping encourage and boost development of new energy sources, and working to blunt the impact of OPEC, but he would also replace the Atomic Energy Commission as the civilian caretaker of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, with three deputy secretaries: one for policy, one for oversight of nuclear material, and one for new energy investment. Cabinet rank, insertion higher up in the line of succession, and the chance to build something from scratch. Connally said that despite their personal differences, George Bush had the intellect, the experience of building a successful oil company from the ground up, the knowledge of the various world players in the energy field, and plenty of contacts from his time as UN Ambassador. His existing security clearance had not yet expired, so it would just be a matter of vetting for the compartmented special clearance for nuclear weapons. The President continued on that he didn’t think there’d be any issue with that, and he was sure that the Agency would vouch for him. It was spoken very subtly, but Barnes swore he could hear the click inside Bush’s head when those words came out of John Connally’s mouth. Bush stammered his way through an acceptance, that he put the country first and always would, and of course he’d take the job.
Baker had already signalled his willingness to become the assistant attorney general in charge of the Antitrust Division at Justice, and so there was no real sales pitch needed. With Baker confirming his acceptance of the nomination, the four men made their way to the press room, where Marvin Kalb had been forewarned there might be a presidential drop-in. The press, though, had not received the same notice, and so when they spotted Connally entering, the whispers began, and then George Bush came through and the whispers escalated to loud murmurs. Kalb knew the moment the whispers started to wind down his answer he was giving Helen Thomas, and stepped aside for Big John. Connally took the podium and, without any written remarks, began his announcement. “Hello, everyone, I apologize for interrupting my friend Marvin here, but I have two nominations that I wanted to introduce to y’all before I send them up to the Senate later today. I’m sure everyone is familiar with Mr. George Bush here, but next to him is a longtime friend, Mr. James A. Baker III, my other nomination. Mr. Bush has agreed to be my first Secretary of Energy, a new Cabinet position for which I will be seeking funding from Congress for. The Energy Department will absorb the Atomic Energy Commission, oversee our strategic oil reserves, and direct investments into new sources of energy in which to reduce our dependence upon oil controlled by OPEC. As the events of 1973-74 demonstrated, the OPEC countries have aligned to hold hostage the policies of the free world when they disagree with them. It is shameful, and we are not going to idly stand by and just accept this as the new state of affairs. As you all know, I’m from Texas. Both of these gentlemen are Texans as well. We’ve all got experience in the oil industry, but the reason we need a Secretary of Energy is because our oil is not enough anymore to allow us to live up to our responsibilities around the globe. We could live off our own oil if we withdrew, but that would allow the Soviets to dominate Europe, and we cannot allow that. So, it is imperative to not only find additional sources of oil, like we have in Alaska, but also to develop other energy sources to reduce the need for oil and natural gas in our electricity and heating sectors. That is the job I am tasking Mr. Bush with, should the Senate confirm him, and I have the utmost confidence that he will succeed.
Now, Mr. Baker here is an experienced corporate attorney from Houston, and my predecessor considered making him head of the Civil Division at Justice just two short years ago. He’s been through the vetting process, he’s a man of integrity and intelligence, and as it happens, we’re about to have another opening at the Justice Department. The current head of the Antitrust Division, Tom Kauper, has expressed his wish to return to his professorship at the University of Michigan, and I asked him to stay on until such time as a replacement could be found. Now that Mr. Baker has generously accepted a job that will pay him far less than his current law partnership, Mr. Kauper is free to return to being the outstanding professor of law that he established himself as during the 1960s. I’ve got a few minutes to take questions, and then I have a meeting with Secretary Clements about the budget for the Pentagon.” Connally pointed at Tom Brokaw from NBC News. “Mr. President, this is a substantial announcement you’ve just made, not only the creation of a new cabinet agency, but also a secretary nominee. Have you been consulting with Congress about this?”
“Tom, I’ve had conversations with Speaker O’Neill, Leader Mansfield, and the chairs of the appropriations committees about this for a while. Admittedly, it had not been fully fleshed out when we discussed it, but they knew of my desire to do this, and agree with the need for a position that is dedicated fully to energy. Our ability to develop more sources of energy will help us keep inflation under control, and allow us to continue to make decisions based upon our best interests, and not what the nations in OPEC feel is in theirs. I am not saying we will stop buying oil from them, because many of those nations have friendly relations with us. I am simply saying if they decide that they want to punish the West for supporting Israel, for example, we should have the ability to absorb their approbation with a minimum of harm inflicted upon the American people.” Connally gestured to Jim Deakin, the president of the White House Correspondents Association and the correspondent from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the newspaper which launched Pat Buchanan’s career nearly ten years prior. Deakin asked Connally about the sizable contingent of Texans in the administration now at all levels, and whether that gave short shrift to other parts of the country. Connally laughed and asked if Deakin asked Nixon about bringing too many Californians into the administration either, or Kennedy people from Harvard. He noted it was the fourth-most populous state in the Union and growing fast. It was a major hub for transportation, housed numerous military bases, produced oil, was home to General Dynamics, NASA Mission Control, and two of the last three presidents. The President asked if Deakin felt left out and jokingly offered him the position of press secretary for NASA Administrator James Fletcher, so “Deakin could see all of the great things Texas has to offer.” The assembled press corps laughed at the obvious joke. “Okay, Helen…”
*****
Sitting at his home in San Clemente, Richard Nixon watched the special report on NBC about the nominations of Bush and Baker, and he fumed. He fumed at the White House for refusing his calls. He fumed at John Connally for betraying their friendship (while grudgingly admitting to himself that in politics, all friendships are ultimately transactional). He fumed that George Bush, who had helped turn political opinion against him with his grandstanding resignation, was now going to get a splashy Cabinet appointment. He fumed over the federal charges he was facing from the varied ITT scandals. His anger reached a fever pitch, and he picked up a large golf ball paperweight and hurled it directly through the color television in his study, which brought Pat running in and chiding him that if he wasn’t careful, he’d have a stroke that killed him this time. She made a call to their local television repair shop in town. It wasn’t the first time she’d had to do it, either.
Nixon picked up the phone and called Leonard Garment. While there was some crossover in duties, Garment’s primary job on the team was to keep Nixon on the reservation. Edward Bennett Williams, the premier criminal defense attorney in America, worked to extricate their client, the first president to be impeached and the first to seriously face criminal charges, from his predicament. The federal grand juries were hearing witnesses and reviewing evidence. The Nixon grand jury was seated in Washington DC, while the ITT one was under the auspices of the U.S Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Paul Curran, a dogged corruption investigator. The Nixon team had concluded that he would either be charged with tax evasion (although nobody had subpoenaed that information yet) or through the Hobbs Act. John Doar was nothing if not creative, and Williams could see the potential path to the charges Doar could bring using Hobbs. Nixon used the power of his office to extort campaign contributions in return for giving ITT favorable treatment. When ITT looked to be facing legal trouble for those extorted contributions, Nixon offered to prevent those charges if they assisted with the coup in Chile. It’d involve proving that the events were all linked, and on the surface it sure seemed that way, but Williams believed there was a way out of that.
ITT had come to the administration first.
After Allende was elected, ITT was worried about losing its operations in-country, and just as United Fruit had approached Dwight Eisenhower in 1954 about Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, ITT wanted the same thing, except they weren’t even waiting for Allende to act. They wanted to preempt any action on his part, first through sanctions, and then through action if sanctions did not work. That initial request became public far too quickly and was one of the driving forces behind Nixon’s formation of the infamous Plumbers the following year. Regardless, Williams thought that because ITT asked for preemptive help for a business matter that it wasn’t extortion, because the initial request itself was extralegal. That might get the indictment thrown out. Another idea was to ask for the indictment to be thrown out on the premise that using intermediaries for foreign intelligence operations was a common practice, and that since there was no law governing the CIA’s activities outside of the United States, the use of ITT to intervene in Chile was not illegal. The second argument would be tougher than the first to win, but it was there to use. Doar could sidestep that issue by getting a count for Chile, and a count for the “pay-to-play” where ITT donated $100,000 to the GOP in return for the White House assisting in their request. On its own, it was easily explainable for a prosecutor, and immensely difficult for a defense attorney to explain away.
There were additional fronts that Williams was still working on, such as getting the tapes excluded from trial because they were handed over to Congress in a political dispute. Had the President known they would be used for criminal prosecution, he never would have surrendered them. That argument might carry weight if the judge were so inclined, for prosecutors could not get a defendant to incriminate themselves through false pretenses. There were arguments that any such prosecution of an impeached president amounted to double jeopardy, a motion that argued the alleged crimes were political activity, not criminal, so on and so forth. Williams was a competitive man who absolutely hated to lose, and he was in the trial of his life. This would literally go down in history in a way that any attorney would kill to be a part of. Losing was not acceptable to a man who prided himself on beating the government. The longer he could tie up the prosecution, the better the chances that the country would be ready to move on, that the desire to pursue Richard Nixon would subside and public pressure would lead to the charges being dropped. Williams knew the political arena as well as anyone. He’d wanted Nixon driven from office, but that was accomplished. He could never hold power again. Williams did not want to see Nixon hounded into prison. The man had almost died defending himself. The thought astounded the veteran attorney at times, but having spent time up close with the man, Williams saw the humanity in Nixon and the forces that had fought inside of his head. Strangely, he understood him now. I must be getting soft in my older age. Ben would give me so much shit if he knew.
The trial, if and when it came, would be a battle over venue. Nixon, for jury selection purposes, comfort, et cetera, would want a venue in Southern California. DOJ would want D.C., because he was the President (and the jury pool would be highly slanted in their favor, based on how D.C. residents voted). Williams, who lived in D.C., might prefer to be there for his own sake, but what was best for the client took priority and that meant Southern California. DOJ would claim that the acts took place there and could only be brought there. Williams would counter that the President had meetings and conversations about official business in San Clemente and Key Biscayne on a regular basis, and they couldn’t possibly prove that he only discussed the issues in question solely in Washington. Venue would be a titanic battle, because it would set the tone for the rest of the case. If Nixon won on the venue motion, DOJ would be on the defensive. If DOJ won, Nixon would be facing one of the most hostile jury pools possible.
The security, Jesus, the security. Secret Service to keep Nixon safe, plus crowd control. It’d probably take a detachment of the National Guard. Would the Service members even want to protect Nixon from a bullet if someone took a shot at him like Reagan? Nancy Reagan still in a coma...okay, focus, Ed. Your client needs you to be sharp. Oh, and pray to God they don’t pursue him for his taxes. These tax dodges are much too thin for my liking.
*****
Cabinet usually met on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but with such an important budget being presented to Parliament, the new Prime Minister, “Sunny Jim” Callaghan, felt it’d be best to buy Tony Crosland some additional time. As a former Chancellor himself, he knew quite well how one could get tripped up late in the game. It turned out that Callaghan’s instincts were on the money. Crosland had made an error, one that the Attorney General, Samuel Silkin, fortunately caught. The Attorney General in the United Kingdom is politically appointed but does not partake in political discussion, and therefore is rarely part of Cabinet meetings at Number Ten. For Budget Day, though, the AG is present since their own funding is part of the submission. Silkin said that the use of items held by the National Trust could not be diverted to government spending. The only way they could generate revenue from it would be to attach some sort of tourist fee; making it anything substantial would draw furious criticism from the Tories. Crosland was unhappy, and rightly so. He’d made a grave mistake, one that blew a hole in revenue projections. After debating the issue, Denis Healey suggested a flat 50p per adult fee, which could be inflation-adjusted in the future if necessary. Silkin interjected again to say that if they wanted to do that, they’d have to pass separate enabling legislation to allow for it. Crosland made the appropriate notes, as did Michael Foot, the Leader of the House of Commons. It’d been yeoman’s work to get this far, assembling a budget that had minimal deficit to it, and it was, to some extent, dependent upon best-case thinking. The tax proposition to bring the exiles back home, for example. What if they simply refused? Shouldn’t they require a minimum tax payment for all citizens? Tony Benn leaned into this, because he wanted much tougher legislation to enforce tax collection against rockstars he considered to be, for lack of a better term in the moment, useless wastrels.
It was Jeremy Thorpe who provided the support that salvaged Crosland’s scheme. Thorpe said that he felt the minimum tax was a fair plan, especially with the cap on the top rate being lowered dramatically, and he also agreed that it was “bloody selfish” for these rock stars and actors to leave their country to avoid taxes. Thorpe’s support for the minimum tax meant that the Liberals would back it, and that meant the votes were there to pass. It would be a modification of Crosland’s original plan, but this would take a voluntary carrot and attach some sticks behind it, such as property seizure, freezing assets in British banks, or even issuing a notice to Interpol for arrest if they continued to dodge the minimum tax. The solicitors would all get a little wealthier, and the Treasury would see a more stable revenue stream from the high earners. Whether it would be enough to stave off the IMF was a question not yet answerable, but it was a good start.
Thorpe then turned to the upcoming talks at Rambouillet. Kissinger had phoned Thorpe to lay the groundwork for his patron’s plan to tackle the inflation crisis affecting much of the world. Thorpe took a more relaxed approach than did much of Labour when it came towards economics, so Henry had left the call feeling very relaxed about matters. Thorpe proceeded to float Rockefeller’s idea to have Chrysler buy into British Leyland and share both manufacturing capacity and work to create engineering commonality. Callaghan and Healey nodded approvingly, while Michael Foot and Tony Benn began grumbling. Crosland seemed a bit displeased, though not as much as the leftists around this table. Foot, ever the polite professor-type, waited for Thorpe to finish before stating that he thought this was nothing more than a conservative plot to diminish the capacity of labour union power in negotiations. Foot said sharing engineering capability was one thing, but to allow Leyland to bypass any union action by placing orders in America meant the unions would have no power in contract negotiations. If manufacturing capacity could be divided, America could simply increase production to fill orders should a strike take place. Benn jumped in to point out that the whole point of creating British Leyland was to shore up British manufacturing, and this would undermine the entire purpose by denationalizing it. Healey, never one to let Benn simply make his case, retorted that British manufacturing had become a rather sorry excuse for quality these days, and that the economy was too fragile to let the unions have that much influence over it. Benn said that Healey would sell the country to the highest bidder and turn it into Belgium, weak and powerless. Callaghan rolled his eyes at the latest round in ten years of histrionics between the two, and when he tired of it, pounded the table just once with his big meaty fist. The row stopped immediately.
“Denis, Wedgie, I’d rather like to hear what our Chancellor of the Exchequer has to say on this matter, since it is properly a matter for him and not either of you.” Benn grimaced. He had dumped the “Wedgwood” from his name when he renounced his peerage, and he hated that most of these men still called him by the shortened sobriquet that the PM had just used.
Crosland leaned forward. “I very much would like to take advantage of this offer that the Americans have put forward, but I am also extremely hesitant to give them so much leverage over our country. We disagreed firmly with the Suez adventure twenty years ago, but the Americans absolutely destroyed our fragile economy. It was not the act of a friend. It was the behavior of a bully. They feel we’re incapable of doing anything hard ourselves, even though they were very late to assist this nation in either war, leaving Britain to protect the free world on our own until they decided it was a fight worth joining. Any agreement we make cannot and should not include a one-way transaction, where they simply acquire a stake in our largest manufacturer. I would agree to terms on sharing engineering capability and working to create commonality of parts wherever possible, but it cannot come at the cost of ceding any more of our sovereignty. If they want this deal, they can sweeten it—whether it be a discount on nuclear arms, a stake in their Alaskan oil fields, or a merger between Chrysler and Leyland where we are equally vested with them in the company, we must get more than just a paltry parts deal for this to be worthwhile. If not, we’ll sink into being a full-fledged vassal state.”
There were nods all around the table. Even Tony Benn could agree with this line of thinking. Callaghan asked for a show of hands, and it was unanimous. Crosland would go to Rambouillet with a carrot and a stick. The stick would be behind his back, though. Jeremy Thorpe would not give Henry Kissinger the courtesy of a preview.
Baker, despite his very capable skill set, was ultimately the sidecar to whom Connally really wanted. George Bush hated Connally for being a more successful version of what he aspired to be, and Connally just sort of disdained Bush as a climber who couldn’t achieve on his own politically. Despite all of that, the two men had much to offer each other, and Ben Barnes was amongst the sharpest political operators to grace the state of Texas. He knew how to convince his boss, not that Big John needed much of that. He, too, knew that George Bush had done two things in his life very well with minimal outside assistance: he’d been a brave, skilled fighter-bomber pilot who survived ferocious combat with the Japanese, winning a Distinguished Flying Cross and a Presidential Unit Citation. Bush had also started his own oil company, becoming successful enough to get bought out by Pennzoil in the mid-60s and earning Bush a tidy million-dollar payout. And then there was the third thing. The deep secret that nobody knew except Bush, Connally, Richard Helms, Allen Dulles, J. Edgar Hoover, and Ben Barnes. George H.W. Bush had also been a contract operative for the CIA when running his oil company. His offshore drilling work put him into contact with all sorts of characters that the Agency had interest in, and Bush provided both information and, through use of the offshore rigs Zapata Offshore built, cover jobs for operatives to be inserted into Cuba at a time when the Agency was actively trying to kill Fidel Castro. He’d also been briefed on industrial espionage operations being conducted under the code name Southern Rig. The link was kept very quiet in the 1960s, because Prescott Bush was an influential senator and his eldest son being a CIA contractor would be a scandal. Dulles and Hoover were both dead, Helms was never going to talk, and the other three would be in the Oval Office soon. Baker was Bush’s best friend and had no idea about the CIA work. It said something about Bush’s character, and Connally knew how to judge character. He knew Bush was unfailingly loyal, regardless of personal feelings. He was a true patriot in every sense of the word. That suited the President's purposes.
Connally’s secretary let both men into the room. Connally stood as they came in, stepped out from behind the Resolute desk, and shook their hands. Barnes stood in the corner, observing the body language. Baker was relaxed, comfortable, while Bush was tightly coiled. The face looked placid, but his movements didn’t entirely hide his discomfort. Barnes sympathized a little with Bush. It’s hard to be in a room with a man that you don’t like but who holds your entire future in his hands. They all sat down on the sofas as David Hume Kennerly, the White House photographer, snapped the obligatory shots for posterity, and then a coffee tray was set out in front of them. Kennerly and the secretary withdrew, and the dance began.
The President was quick to the point. The Secretary of Energy, he said, was going to be an important and expansive position. Not only would it be responsible for creating and maintaining strategic oil reserves, helping encourage and boost development of new energy sources, and working to blunt the impact of OPEC, but he would also replace the Atomic Energy Commission as the civilian caretaker of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, with three deputy secretaries: one for policy, one for oversight of nuclear material, and one for new energy investment. Cabinet rank, insertion higher up in the line of succession, and the chance to build something from scratch. Connally said that despite their personal differences, George Bush had the intellect, the experience of building a successful oil company from the ground up, the knowledge of the various world players in the energy field, and plenty of contacts from his time as UN Ambassador. His existing security clearance had not yet expired, so it would just be a matter of vetting for the compartmented special clearance for nuclear weapons. The President continued on that he didn’t think there’d be any issue with that, and he was sure that the Agency would vouch for him. It was spoken very subtly, but Barnes swore he could hear the click inside Bush’s head when those words came out of John Connally’s mouth. Bush stammered his way through an acceptance, that he put the country first and always would, and of course he’d take the job.
Baker had already signalled his willingness to become the assistant attorney general in charge of the Antitrust Division at Justice, and so there was no real sales pitch needed. With Baker confirming his acceptance of the nomination, the four men made their way to the press room, where Marvin Kalb had been forewarned there might be a presidential drop-in. The press, though, had not received the same notice, and so when they spotted Connally entering, the whispers began, and then George Bush came through and the whispers escalated to loud murmurs. Kalb knew the moment the whispers started to wind down his answer he was giving Helen Thomas, and stepped aside for Big John. Connally took the podium and, without any written remarks, began his announcement. “Hello, everyone, I apologize for interrupting my friend Marvin here, but I have two nominations that I wanted to introduce to y’all before I send them up to the Senate later today. I’m sure everyone is familiar with Mr. George Bush here, but next to him is a longtime friend, Mr. James A. Baker III, my other nomination. Mr. Bush has agreed to be my first Secretary of Energy, a new Cabinet position for which I will be seeking funding from Congress for. The Energy Department will absorb the Atomic Energy Commission, oversee our strategic oil reserves, and direct investments into new sources of energy in which to reduce our dependence upon oil controlled by OPEC. As the events of 1973-74 demonstrated, the OPEC countries have aligned to hold hostage the policies of the free world when they disagree with them. It is shameful, and we are not going to idly stand by and just accept this as the new state of affairs. As you all know, I’m from Texas. Both of these gentlemen are Texans as well. We’ve all got experience in the oil industry, but the reason we need a Secretary of Energy is because our oil is not enough anymore to allow us to live up to our responsibilities around the globe. We could live off our own oil if we withdrew, but that would allow the Soviets to dominate Europe, and we cannot allow that. So, it is imperative to not only find additional sources of oil, like we have in Alaska, but also to develop other energy sources to reduce the need for oil and natural gas in our electricity and heating sectors. That is the job I am tasking Mr. Bush with, should the Senate confirm him, and I have the utmost confidence that he will succeed.
Now, Mr. Baker here is an experienced corporate attorney from Houston, and my predecessor considered making him head of the Civil Division at Justice just two short years ago. He’s been through the vetting process, he’s a man of integrity and intelligence, and as it happens, we’re about to have another opening at the Justice Department. The current head of the Antitrust Division, Tom Kauper, has expressed his wish to return to his professorship at the University of Michigan, and I asked him to stay on until such time as a replacement could be found. Now that Mr. Baker has generously accepted a job that will pay him far less than his current law partnership, Mr. Kauper is free to return to being the outstanding professor of law that he established himself as during the 1960s. I’ve got a few minutes to take questions, and then I have a meeting with Secretary Clements about the budget for the Pentagon.” Connally pointed at Tom Brokaw from NBC News. “Mr. President, this is a substantial announcement you’ve just made, not only the creation of a new cabinet agency, but also a secretary nominee. Have you been consulting with Congress about this?”
“Tom, I’ve had conversations with Speaker O’Neill, Leader Mansfield, and the chairs of the appropriations committees about this for a while. Admittedly, it had not been fully fleshed out when we discussed it, but they knew of my desire to do this, and agree with the need for a position that is dedicated fully to energy. Our ability to develop more sources of energy will help us keep inflation under control, and allow us to continue to make decisions based upon our best interests, and not what the nations in OPEC feel is in theirs. I am not saying we will stop buying oil from them, because many of those nations have friendly relations with us. I am simply saying if they decide that they want to punish the West for supporting Israel, for example, we should have the ability to absorb their approbation with a minimum of harm inflicted upon the American people.” Connally gestured to Jim Deakin, the president of the White House Correspondents Association and the correspondent from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the newspaper which launched Pat Buchanan’s career nearly ten years prior. Deakin asked Connally about the sizable contingent of Texans in the administration now at all levels, and whether that gave short shrift to other parts of the country. Connally laughed and asked if Deakin asked Nixon about bringing too many Californians into the administration either, or Kennedy people from Harvard. He noted it was the fourth-most populous state in the Union and growing fast. It was a major hub for transportation, housed numerous military bases, produced oil, was home to General Dynamics, NASA Mission Control, and two of the last three presidents. The President asked if Deakin felt left out and jokingly offered him the position of press secretary for NASA Administrator James Fletcher, so “Deakin could see all of the great things Texas has to offer.” The assembled press corps laughed at the obvious joke. “Okay, Helen…”
*****
Sitting at his home in San Clemente, Richard Nixon watched the special report on NBC about the nominations of Bush and Baker, and he fumed. He fumed at the White House for refusing his calls. He fumed at John Connally for betraying their friendship (while grudgingly admitting to himself that in politics, all friendships are ultimately transactional). He fumed that George Bush, who had helped turn political opinion against him with his grandstanding resignation, was now going to get a splashy Cabinet appointment. He fumed over the federal charges he was facing from the varied ITT scandals. His anger reached a fever pitch, and he picked up a large golf ball paperweight and hurled it directly through the color television in his study, which brought Pat running in and chiding him that if he wasn’t careful, he’d have a stroke that killed him this time. She made a call to their local television repair shop in town. It wasn’t the first time she’d had to do it, either.
Nixon picked up the phone and called Leonard Garment. While there was some crossover in duties, Garment’s primary job on the team was to keep Nixon on the reservation. Edward Bennett Williams, the premier criminal defense attorney in America, worked to extricate their client, the first president to be impeached and the first to seriously face criminal charges, from his predicament. The federal grand juries were hearing witnesses and reviewing evidence. The Nixon grand jury was seated in Washington DC, while the ITT one was under the auspices of the U.S Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Paul Curran, a dogged corruption investigator. The Nixon team had concluded that he would either be charged with tax evasion (although nobody had subpoenaed that information yet) or through the Hobbs Act. John Doar was nothing if not creative, and Williams could see the potential path to the charges Doar could bring using Hobbs. Nixon used the power of his office to extort campaign contributions in return for giving ITT favorable treatment. When ITT looked to be facing legal trouble for those extorted contributions, Nixon offered to prevent those charges if they assisted with the coup in Chile. It’d involve proving that the events were all linked, and on the surface it sure seemed that way, but Williams believed there was a way out of that.
ITT had come to the administration first.
After Allende was elected, ITT was worried about losing its operations in-country, and just as United Fruit had approached Dwight Eisenhower in 1954 about Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, ITT wanted the same thing, except they weren’t even waiting for Allende to act. They wanted to preempt any action on his part, first through sanctions, and then through action if sanctions did not work. That initial request became public far too quickly and was one of the driving forces behind Nixon’s formation of the infamous Plumbers the following year. Regardless, Williams thought that because ITT asked for preemptive help for a business matter that it wasn’t extortion, because the initial request itself was extralegal. That might get the indictment thrown out. Another idea was to ask for the indictment to be thrown out on the premise that using intermediaries for foreign intelligence operations was a common practice, and that since there was no law governing the CIA’s activities outside of the United States, the use of ITT to intervene in Chile was not illegal. The second argument would be tougher than the first to win, but it was there to use. Doar could sidestep that issue by getting a count for Chile, and a count for the “pay-to-play” where ITT donated $100,000 to the GOP in return for the White House assisting in their request. On its own, it was easily explainable for a prosecutor, and immensely difficult for a defense attorney to explain away.
There were additional fronts that Williams was still working on, such as getting the tapes excluded from trial because they were handed over to Congress in a political dispute. Had the President known they would be used for criminal prosecution, he never would have surrendered them. That argument might carry weight if the judge were so inclined, for prosecutors could not get a defendant to incriminate themselves through false pretenses. There were arguments that any such prosecution of an impeached president amounted to double jeopardy, a motion that argued the alleged crimes were political activity, not criminal, so on and so forth. Williams was a competitive man who absolutely hated to lose, and he was in the trial of his life. This would literally go down in history in a way that any attorney would kill to be a part of. Losing was not acceptable to a man who prided himself on beating the government. The longer he could tie up the prosecution, the better the chances that the country would be ready to move on, that the desire to pursue Richard Nixon would subside and public pressure would lead to the charges being dropped. Williams knew the political arena as well as anyone. He’d wanted Nixon driven from office, but that was accomplished. He could never hold power again. Williams did not want to see Nixon hounded into prison. The man had almost died defending himself. The thought astounded the veteran attorney at times, but having spent time up close with the man, Williams saw the humanity in Nixon and the forces that had fought inside of his head. Strangely, he understood him now. I must be getting soft in my older age. Ben would give me so much shit if he knew.
The trial, if and when it came, would be a battle over venue. Nixon, for jury selection purposes, comfort, et cetera, would want a venue in Southern California. DOJ would want D.C., because he was the President (and the jury pool would be highly slanted in their favor, based on how D.C. residents voted). Williams, who lived in D.C., might prefer to be there for his own sake, but what was best for the client took priority and that meant Southern California. DOJ would claim that the acts took place there and could only be brought there. Williams would counter that the President had meetings and conversations about official business in San Clemente and Key Biscayne on a regular basis, and they couldn’t possibly prove that he only discussed the issues in question solely in Washington. Venue would be a titanic battle, because it would set the tone for the rest of the case. If Nixon won on the venue motion, DOJ would be on the defensive. If DOJ won, Nixon would be facing one of the most hostile jury pools possible.
The security, Jesus, the security. Secret Service to keep Nixon safe, plus crowd control. It’d probably take a detachment of the National Guard. Would the Service members even want to protect Nixon from a bullet if someone took a shot at him like Reagan? Nancy Reagan still in a coma...okay, focus, Ed. Your client needs you to be sharp. Oh, and pray to God they don’t pursue him for his taxes. These tax dodges are much too thin for my liking.
*****
Cabinet usually met on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but with such an important budget being presented to Parliament, the new Prime Minister, “Sunny Jim” Callaghan, felt it’d be best to buy Tony Crosland some additional time. As a former Chancellor himself, he knew quite well how one could get tripped up late in the game. It turned out that Callaghan’s instincts were on the money. Crosland had made an error, one that the Attorney General, Samuel Silkin, fortunately caught. The Attorney General in the United Kingdom is politically appointed but does not partake in political discussion, and therefore is rarely part of Cabinet meetings at Number Ten. For Budget Day, though, the AG is present since their own funding is part of the submission. Silkin said that the use of items held by the National Trust could not be diverted to government spending. The only way they could generate revenue from it would be to attach some sort of tourist fee; making it anything substantial would draw furious criticism from the Tories. Crosland was unhappy, and rightly so. He’d made a grave mistake, one that blew a hole in revenue projections. After debating the issue, Denis Healey suggested a flat 50p per adult fee, which could be inflation-adjusted in the future if necessary. Silkin interjected again to say that if they wanted to do that, they’d have to pass separate enabling legislation to allow for it. Crosland made the appropriate notes, as did Michael Foot, the Leader of the House of Commons. It’d been yeoman’s work to get this far, assembling a budget that had minimal deficit to it, and it was, to some extent, dependent upon best-case thinking. The tax proposition to bring the exiles back home, for example. What if they simply refused? Shouldn’t they require a minimum tax payment for all citizens? Tony Benn leaned into this, because he wanted much tougher legislation to enforce tax collection against rockstars he considered to be, for lack of a better term in the moment, useless wastrels.
It was Jeremy Thorpe who provided the support that salvaged Crosland’s scheme. Thorpe said that he felt the minimum tax was a fair plan, especially with the cap on the top rate being lowered dramatically, and he also agreed that it was “bloody selfish” for these rock stars and actors to leave their country to avoid taxes. Thorpe’s support for the minimum tax meant that the Liberals would back it, and that meant the votes were there to pass. It would be a modification of Crosland’s original plan, but this would take a voluntary carrot and attach some sticks behind it, such as property seizure, freezing assets in British banks, or even issuing a notice to Interpol for arrest if they continued to dodge the minimum tax. The solicitors would all get a little wealthier, and the Treasury would see a more stable revenue stream from the high earners. Whether it would be enough to stave off the IMF was a question not yet answerable, but it was a good start.
Thorpe then turned to the upcoming talks at Rambouillet. Kissinger had phoned Thorpe to lay the groundwork for his patron’s plan to tackle the inflation crisis affecting much of the world. Thorpe took a more relaxed approach than did much of Labour when it came towards economics, so Henry had left the call feeling very relaxed about matters. Thorpe proceeded to float Rockefeller’s idea to have Chrysler buy into British Leyland and share both manufacturing capacity and work to create engineering commonality. Callaghan and Healey nodded approvingly, while Michael Foot and Tony Benn began grumbling. Crosland seemed a bit displeased, though not as much as the leftists around this table. Foot, ever the polite professor-type, waited for Thorpe to finish before stating that he thought this was nothing more than a conservative plot to diminish the capacity of labour union power in negotiations. Foot said sharing engineering capability was one thing, but to allow Leyland to bypass any union action by placing orders in America meant the unions would have no power in contract negotiations. If manufacturing capacity could be divided, America could simply increase production to fill orders should a strike take place. Benn jumped in to point out that the whole point of creating British Leyland was to shore up British manufacturing, and this would undermine the entire purpose by denationalizing it. Healey, never one to let Benn simply make his case, retorted that British manufacturing had become a rather sorry excuse for quality these days, and that the economy was too fragile to let the unions have that much influence over it. Benn said that Healey would sell the country to the highest bidder and turn it into Belgium, weak and powerless. Callaghan rolled his eyes at the latest round in ten years of histrionics between the two, and when he tired of it, pounded the table just once with his big meaty fist. The row stopped immediately.
“Denis, Wedgie, I’d rather like to hear what our Chancellor of the Exchequer has to say on this matter, since it is properly a matter for him and not either of you.” Benn grimaced. He had dumped the “Wedgwood” from his name when he renounced his peerage, and he hated that most of these men still called him by the shortened sobriquet that the PM had just used.
Crosland leaned forward. “I very much would like to take advantage of this offer that the Americans have put forward, but I am also extremely hesitant to give them so much leverage over our country. We disagreed firmly with the Suez adventure twenty years ago, but the Americans absolutely destroyed our fragile economy. It was not the act of a friend. It was the behavior of a bully. They feel we’re incapable of doing anything hard ourselves, even though they were very late to assist this nation in either war, leaving Britain to protect the free world on our own until they decided it was a fight worth joining. Any agreement we make cannot and should not include a one-way transaction, where they simply acquire a stake in our largest manufacturer. I would agree to terms on sharing engineering capability and working to create commonality of parts wherever possible, but it cannot come at the cost of ceding any more of our sovereignty. If they want this deal, they can sweeten it—whether it be a discount on nuclear arms, a stake in their Alaskan oil fields, or a merger between Chrysler and Leyland where we are equally vested with them in the company, we must get more than just a paltry parts deal for this to be worthwhile. If not, we’ll sink into being a full-fledged vassal state.”
There were nods all around the table. Even Tony Benn could agree with this line of thinking. Callaghan asked for a show of hands, and it was unanimous. Crosland would go to Rambouillet with a carrot and a stick. The stick would be behind his back, though. Jeremy Thorpe would not give Henry Kissinger the courtesy of a preview.
Am interested to see how far this goes. From what I've read about Connally, Nixon like dhim quite a lot.
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dcharles
Banned
Riffing on the Kissinger quote -- there are few people I can think of in recent history with such keen awareness of the people around them and such little self awareness as Kissinger.
Hey all, just wanted to let people know that I nominated this timeline for a Turtledove in the Cold War to Contemporary category if anyone would like to second it 