You've been on the White House staff since the beginning of the administration, is that correct?

Yes, sir. I began November 20, 1968 in New York City during the transition period.

And your last day on the Domestic Council staff will be December 31.

It will be upon confirmation by the Senate for [my] new position as undersecretary of Transportation.

Yes.

...sometime close thereabouts?

I believe it was about the same time. We were the Counsel's office prior to that time and, upon the establishment of the Domestic Council by the reorganization plan, certain of the people that were on the White House staff Domestic Council before moved right onto Domestic Council rolls.

Your title prior to the time when the Domestic Council was established was what?

Deputy counsel to the President.

Deputy assistant to the President for domestic affairs and assistant director of the Domestic Council.

Yes, sir.

That's right.

First I was staff assistant to the counsel, when I was a deputy counsel to the President, the deputy assistant to the President for domestic affairs, and assistant director of the Domestic Council, and I also held concurrent titles as executive director of the Cabinet Committee for International Narcotics Control and White House liaison with the District of Columbia government. There was a hiatus between the first year when I did that role after Pat [Daniel P.] Moynihan and Dick [Richard] Nathan did it for a year. Then I did it for the last two, so I've actually done that three out of four years that I've been here.

No, they're in scrolls, rolled up [laughter].

All right.

...let us know. Starting first of all with your deputy counsel role, prior to the time with the Domestic Council, which projects were you assigned during that time prior, now, I'm thinking in terms of those that went on for...

On-going activities?

...a period of time. It's nothing that was given to you on one day and....

I guess the general responsibility was to be the President's policy man on law enforcement and narcotics control. This included working with the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, State Department, and the intelligence agencies that worked in these areas. I also had some on-going security responsibilities and personnel security responsibilities until the Domestic Council came into being, at which time I terminated that work. It was turned over to Alex [Alexander P.] Butterfield. These were on-going responsibilities. Also, I did the District of Columbia liaison role on an on-going basis from about July 1969 for a year, and then, as I said before, there was a hiatus when Dick Nathan did it for a year. Then, I came back for the last two. So, law enforcement, narcotics control, District of Columbia liaison, and then, towards the end of 1969, I picked up transportation responsibilities and, of course, the full gamut of transportation issues.

The law enforcement project, is there anything that you might say about that? Do you want to zero in on it?

Yes. By being a policy man, our job is to make ourselves as aware of the scope of the problem nationally and in the District of Columbia as we can. Secondly, to suggest policy options to the President for handling that problem. Thirdly, once he has made his choices, to develop legislation, programs, budgeting, to handle it on a specific basis. And fourthly, to implement those programs once the legislation has been enacted. An example would be our recognition that we had a serious problem in the District of Columbia of delay between the time of arrest and the time of trial, over a year in some cases. The policy options were, let's say, to set up a whole new court system, which would cut down the delay; to add judges to the current system; or a combination of the two. We opted for the combination. This office, in conjunction with the Department of Justice, drafted the legislation that went through the House and the Senate. It passed, I'd say, about eleven months after it was transmitted. We now have a new court system in the District of Columbia, many more judges than we had when we started. The delay has been cut down, with the objective being reached.

Now that's one example, but, taking that into narcotics control, we've done the same thing in passing a whole comprehensive law to bring together all of the authorities on narcotics law enforcement. This has been true internationally, domestically as well. So, that's generally the kind of work we do. We cut into it from the policy development phase: our problem definition, policy development, program development, drafting legislation, enacting the legislation, implementing the legislation once it's passed, staffing it with the people, and then pressuring and haranguing the people that are appointed to these positions to make sure that they reach the President's objectives. So, that's the full continuum of work. We have these general areas, but then we are like rifle shots in certain areas that we feel are most important.

The interest groups affected.

All right, the interest groups in [unintelligible].

Yes, it touches everything. It's pretty much the only place here where you have the full gamut of individuals affected by the legislation or part of it. When we're, for example, on the interest group, we had a problem two years ago in explosives. There had been a number of bombings around the country, and we found, during the problem definition phase, that there was very lax security at storage points, construction sites, retail outlets, wholesale outlets for high explosives--"HE." So, we felt we needed to set up a regulatory scheme to better control explosives, and we invited the Explosives Manufacturers of America, which was the interest group or, let's say, sort of a parent guild of all the explosives manufacturers, to help us draft up a regulatory scheme, which it was in their interest to have the government pass anyway. So, they came down; they participated in it; they gave us very helpful suggestions in the legislation. They supported it on the Hill. It became law, added to S.30, an organized crime bill. They've been very helpful in setting up the regulatory scheme since then. So, whatever group is affected by the legislation, it's our job to contact them and get their views. Now, we might work through others on the White House staff, in Mr. [Charles W.] Colson's office, or John Ehrlichman's office, or somebody else. It's our job to marshal all of those sources.

In this discussion, you've been using the pronoun "we". Do you mean in fact that there are several of you that were working on
this,...

Yes.

...or were you more or less the project manager, so to speak?

I was the project manager, but I worked with a staff here. I have about five on the Domestic Council staff that work through me to John Ehrlichman and also the OMB [Office of Management and Budget] staff, and any task group or working group, I will ask an OMB man to be a representative on it. Often, the Departmental man will be sort of the specific project manager. In other words, it's under White House jurisdiction, but you'll assign the responsibility for following up and making all the precise checks himself. Unless we need to here, in a big meeting, that will be done by a Departmental representative. For example, in the explosives case, we did have a Departmental representative work this through from beginning to end. I think it was in the Department of Treasury.

Who are these Domestic Council people that funnel through you?

The ones that are currently now: Geoffrey Shepard on law enforcement; Dick [Richard N.] Nordahl (on the Domestic Council staff) on the treatment/rehabilitation/demand side of the narcotics problem--he also works legal services and OEO [Office of Economic Opportunity]; Charles Clapp, who does transportation policy and programming for me; Sallyanne Payton, who is my District of Columbia staff assistant--she works with the District government, the interest groups, the media, the Congress; and Walter Minnick, who is the staff director for the Cabinet Commitee for International Narcotics Control. He marshals all of the working groups in that Cabinet committee. In addition, there are two individuals in OMB with whom I had direct and daily liaison on District affairs: Mr. Ted [Theodore C.] Lutz and Mary Graham. Mary Graham, I think, is just leaving this week. But, the way District of Columbia affairs [is] handled, they work directly through me, rather than through the chain of command in OMB. DC affairs incorporates so many things: political feel, as well as programming and budgeting, that you can't separate out those that are doing the budgeting from those that are doing the policy and political work here, which is my job. So, I guess there are approximately seven, if you include those two, and I incorporate them as part of my staff. It's just the way that we're set up here. That's the listing of people, and the last man that works directly through me is Richard Harkness, who does all of my public information on the narcotics program, government-wide. He used to be with NBC News, and he's just a superb guy, just a superb guy.

Will any of these people be going to Transportation with you, that we ought to reach soon?

I've asked Ted Lutz to go with me, but he's in OMB right now. The others, there've been no offers extended just yet. We'll wait and see.

Jim [James] Clawson.

Jim Clawson.

...we're trying to get to these people, too.

Right. Ted is not on the White House staff, but he has been literally a White House member of the DC liaison effort, because he does all work directly with me and with John Ehrlichman, or whoever happens to have the problem.

Is there anything you could touch on in the area of narcotics control, or is this similar to the law enforcement thing? Did this span from beginning to end?

Well, yes, I think we can talk about that, in the international phase, particularly. We discovered early that all of the heroin consumed in the United States, for example, was manufactured abroad. The first year and a half we weren't quite sure how to approach it. We started up with unilateral efforts with the government of Mexico, with France, with Turkey, which we felt [were] the main source areas. Now, the way this works, I'm sure you're all aware, is that opium is produced in Turkey, and those pictures are taken in Afyon Province in Turkey. It's then converted into morphine base in that area, smuggled to France or other parts of Europe, where it is converted to heroin by the addition of acetic anhydride in clandestine sites, chemical sites. Then it is smuggled to this country by sea, by air, and most recently we discovered that, about a year and a half ago, that it was working its way to the United States through South America. Well, after the first year and a half, two years, of learning about the problem, we realized that this was not something that could be handled on, say, a three or four country basis, that the profits to be made from the sale of heroin in this country were so high that, even if we were successful in shutting down Turkey as a producer of opium and were effective in France in knocking off a number of the laboratories in that part of the world or immobilized a connection between France and the United States from, say, or from anyplace else in Europe and the United States, profits were so high that those involved in the traffic would move elsewhere. This is in fact what happened. Southeast Asia became a primary source for heroin, not necessarily that was smuggled to this country. A great deal of it was consumed by the US GI in South Vietnam and same in Thailand. We also found that there were very few controls in Afghanistan. Iran had very stringent controls; it was not a transshipment point.

So, what I'm sketching for you here is the way that we saw the problem expanding. I've used the analogy before that it was like squeezing a balloon on one side: if you squeezed it one side, it would bulge out someplace else. So, the President was presented with the problem and with our policy options, which were to continue to work just with these countries that we had worked with, or to develop a world-wide control effort, recognizing that it would take time before countries would became proficient at narcotics law enforcement. It would take time to penetrate these illicit organizations that were operating in Asia and South America, but that if we didn't start now that it could well get beyond us. The emerging trafficking patterns from Southeast Asia would sink to the same level that they had in Europe and be almost impossible to penetrate after a period of time. He made the decision in 1971 that our effort would be world-wide. He created the Cabinet Committee for International Narcotics Control, and we began a work with fifty-nine countries that we felt were involved directly or indirectly in the shipment of illicit narcotics to the United States.

Now, what this involves is sort of marshalling the effort in the State Department to ensure that each embassy in these fifty-nine countries are geared up to handle the narcotics problem. They need personnel, and they've been given personnel from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, which is in the Department of Justice. The Bureau of Customs is participating overseas; the Central Intelligence Agency is involved; the Agency for International Development (AID), and of course there is a State Department man who, in most embassies, is the narcotics representative, the key man on that embassy team. Each embassy has been required to formulate a narcotics control action plan for that country. They also work as regional units, so that the Embassy in Thailand will be the host Embassy for working with our embassy in Burma, Laos, South Vietnam, to marshal the regional resources. In the Middle East, the embassy in Iran may marshal them for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Lebanon. Or Turkey may became the hub for that regional effort there, with Lebanon involved with Turkey. In Europe it has been primarily France, because our intelligence showed that was where most of the refining was done. In South America we have centered our effort on Paraguay, because we found that that, because of its historical smuggling position in South America, where everything seemed to come in and out of Paraguay, that that was the natural place for narcotics to be smuggled.

We're very heartened, because one of our objectives that we set two years ago, to nail the key man in the world, was convicted by the US District Court in New York. We've spent a great deal of money, a lot of diplomacy, to get Auguste Ricord to the United States. It would be our job here to program our representatives, the ambassador, and Mr. Nelson Gross, who is the senior representative] in the State Department, is the senior representative; went to Paraguay and dealt with the head of state, told him how much we wanted him [Ricord], made it very plain--and I will not get into the national security aspects of this as to what we said would happen if we did not get Mr. Ricord, but the message was certainly understood, and we got him two weeks later.

So, beginning with that problem definition phase, getting the policy determination that it's a world-wide problem, and then implementing this programatically in each country, going for the legislation or the appropriations necessary to support this work, my staff and I have travelled. I've been to Asia and to Europe, and Walter Minnick, who works this problem for me now, is, has been travelling. He's been to Latin America, South America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. I have another staff assistant who works for Mr. Minnick, that is currently in South America. He's somewhere in Brazil, I'm not sure where it is. He's on a two-and-a-half week trip. So that's in the narcotics area generally, how we would work that, as the court system was worked in, say, DC law enforcement.

Yes.

This still is prior to the time the Domestic Council came into operation, or are these things--well, obviously, they overlap [unintelligible].

They overlap. They're--these are all on-going responsibilities.

When you ask whether I do all these myself, the answer is "no". I obviously don't and can't. I'm not competent to do it, so it's a .... This staff has grown from just Ed Morgan and myself the first year, supported by Chuck [Charles E.] Stuart, who answered Ehrlichman's mail, to over thirty-five or thirty-six professionals. I've got seven who work here now, and I'm glad to see that they're going to stop it, because there's no end in sight. It's one of those things that they'll say, "Well, let him do it," and then after a while, it's not just a two-day job, it becomes something you're doing for three or four years. You have to have people that can think about it. So, I've been supported by all these in these on-going subject areas. It'll be nice to focus just on transportation for a change.

Yes. This, this work involves very close work with the mayor and the city council and with the congressional committees. I've worked very closely with Ancher Nelsen, who is the ranking Republican on the House District Committee, on virtually all aspects of the city's activities. The general areas are transportation--we have dedicated ourselves to building a subway in the District of Columbia, in the nation's capital, Virginia, and Maryland. There have been many obstacles on the way, but the work here involves clearly working with the Congress on this one, using all of our resources: the interest groups in the city, the board of trade, the federal city council, the mayor's office, and using the WMATA [Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority] people, other businessmen, doing all we can to get the appropriations that were necessary to get this thing going. Now, we hit a couple of snags, as I think has been public knowledge in the city over the last three years, but, at this point in time, at the end of 1972, we find that we have gotten all the DC appropriations that we have asked for.

We've never had any trouble with the federal appropriations. We have enacted a bond bill, which gave us authority to float bonds up to $1.1 billion to cover additional costs. We may have to do this in the future again. I perish the thought right now. The funding for the basic subway system is assured. Now it's our job to make sure that a lot of the safety features which might be ignored in the rush to build a subway are not put aside. We're trying to learn, for example, from the BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] system now as to what things not to do, how we can cover these things in advance. Now I will, this job here is a different job. I work directly with Jack [C. Jackson] Graham in WMATA, and we want him to build as fast as we want him to. We also want him to take every safety precaution that he can. To ensure that he takes safety precautions necessary, I work with the DC city council, and will encourage them to hold hearings to bring Jack Graham before that city council to make sure that those safety precautions that we'd like to have done from here are in fact put in place. So, in a sense, it's working both sides of it, but we feel that we're in a unique capacity here to make sure it gets done. There is no substitute for having as safe a system as we can. We've already killed two men in the construction of it.

In other areas, say in law enforcement, or narcotics control, street lighting, court reorganization, welfare reform, support for higher education--particularly Washington Technical Institute. You will remember that in 1969 the President decided to visit Washington Technical Institute up on Connecticut Avenue. He drove up there, he toured it, was very impressed with that kind of vocational education. Riding back in the car he said, "I want you to take good care of that school. It is a good program, that stands for what I believe in, which is to have much more dignity and respect associated with vocational education and the kind of trade that people just don't seem to be interested in too much these days." Well, as a result, we have supported Washington Technical Institute in finding a permanent site, which was on the present campus. There were some other options. Supporting them budgetarily, and supporting them in the construction of new facilities. I would have a staff person, in this case Ted Lutz and Sallyanne Payton, working directly with the head of that school. They would work with the Congress or Ancher Nelsen of the District government to ensure that the President's policies are reflected in program decisions, money, support. Welfare reform, the same thing holds true. I could go through each one of the issues, but I think that might take too much time. It's pretty much a general metropolitan series of problems that you get in any city.

You really spent most of your time with Nelsen, as opposed to [John L.] McMillan.

Yes.

I worked more with the ranking Republican. I would work with some Democrats--Brock Adams, and others. But, it was primarily working through Ancher Nelsen, not just because of party, but because, in fact, he is pivotal in the District committee, because of his associations with the moderate-to-conservative Democrats and with all the Republicans. Nothing would get through that committee that he oppposed. Even the chairman could move nothing through that committee without Ancher Nelsen. I think that the city and others have done well to focus on him. He's done a very good job for it, supported us terrifically.

This is a question that I don't suppose you have an answer for, but I'll ask it anyway. Of these three broad areas that you've talked about, do you have any idea how much time you might have spent on each of those over a period of time, let's say a percentage of each week, each month?

I'd say narcotics and law enforcement together, I'd have to combine those, including DC law enforcement, that would be about fifty to sixty percent of my time. District affairs, about twenty percent of my time, and the remainder to other responsibilities in transportation, security, projects that I've been assigned on and off throughout the four-year period. So, I'd break it down about sixty, twenty, twenty, roughly there, with narcotics and law enforcement clearly being in the main focus.

Now, this last area that you picked up, transportation, is there anything that you want to touch on there?

Well, in transportation it's, I worked with the development of the national transportation policy, albeit indirectly, but had been in certain specific areas. Hijacking has been one that this office has focused on specifically--what you do about skyjacking. The program that was recently put into place by the Secretary of Transportation was worked over here as well as in the Department. We've, I've worked on the Amtrak proposal, which is the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, in setting up the basic grid. I've worked on highway legislation and operating subsidies as to what we do to permit more flexibility in the use of funds, federal funds, for both urban and rural transportation. Right now we are trying to determine what legislation we will send to the Congress this next year. As you're aware, the Highway Bill died in the House, so our job now is to find that kind of bill that will--I guess it's the George Allen theory--is the best defense that will minimize your losses, rather than see how many people you can persuade that it's a good idea. It's a good defense. And send that back up [in] February, maybe in late January.

There have been other areas, in aviation, in working with the airlines. I have worked with the people directly on the skyjacking and other questions. In mass transit, nationaly, what kind of grant program will be established. We helped write the original bill three years ago. So, again, as you look at the Department of Transportation, you see the Secretary's office and some assistant secretaries, but the real line responsibilities are in the modes. That's the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Urban Mass Transit Administration. Those four modes are the guts of the Department. You also have some peripheral work: in the National Traffic Highway Safety Administration, the St. Lawrence Seaway Corporation, which is a small unit that runs the St. Lawrence Seaway in conjunction with the government of Canada. And then above those modes you have, as I mentioned before, assistant secretaries, a general counsel, and an assistant secretary for administration and some of the peripheral units in civil rights and consumer affairs, and the rest. Now, my work with the Department really involves taking the primary issues, the big programs, the big policy options, working them through the White House as well as the Office of Management and Budget, getting the President's position on then, and then getting back to the Department as they present them to the Hill. That's it. If I go on too much at length, just stop me [unintelligible].

No, it's fine. I wonder, you know, I don't think we're going to stop a Domestic Council person to ask how the thirty-five professional person operation really operates. Maybe if you could sketch something about how Ehrlichman presides over this...

Right.

Well, as you know, well, maybe you don't know, Ehrlichman's main, I think, theory for running an organization like this is regular daily communication. Every morning Congress is in session, the Domestic Council top deputies met with the OMB top staff at seven-thirty AM in the Roosevelt Roan. That was a meeting where the congressional problems primarily of the day were aired--what we had to meet, what we were facing. Each of us had an opportunity to bring up something that might bear upon somebody else's work. We also had a chance to get some direct guidance from Ehrlichman at that point as to what the President was thinking about. Most recently Ken [Kenneth R.] Cole developed another innovation, which was the eight o'clock meeting, which followed the seven-thirty meeting, which preceded my eight-thirty meeting with my staff over here. The eight o'clock meeting was just for Domestic Council deputies, to get into more detail as to what each of us was doing, so that he could be that, sort of that marshalling point between the deputies and Ehrlichman.

The way it would work is, under the theory of management that we're generalists, in other words I'm an attorney; many of them are attorneys; John Whitaker has a Ph.D. in geology; I have a Ph.D. in government that works with me; the remainder are attorneys, except Ted Lutz has a Master in public administration. We try to, as I said, define the problem area that we're working in, and then to design a working group which spans the problem.

For example, when you're dealing with something, well, let's take an example. Let's take DC transportation. You obviously have to have a representative from the Department of Transportation that's working in that area; somebody from the Urban Mass Transit Administration, which will fund two-thirds of that program; someone from the District government who has responsibility for transportation would be a part of that working group. We might need a legislative draftsman, so we would ask somebody from the office of legal counsel in the Department of Justice, to join it. Ted Lutz may be appointed the chief of that, because he spans all of those various areas. When it gets into congressional work, we would ask Dick [Richard K.] Cook or someone from Bill [William E.] Timmons's office to join it, and, if we needed a lot of public information support, somebody from Herb [Herbert G.] Klein's office may well join it. If it became an emergent public issue, somebody from Ron [Ronald L.] Ziegler's office would be primed to respond to questions. It's our job to put that working group together with those individuals that touch each of the substantive areas that may come up in its process.

Also, as you get into, say, the public information phase, to plug in those experts or those people that have to be able to respond. We've tried to remain out of sight here as much as possible, but there have been times when I've had to respond directly as to what the President was thinking or doing. I might have at any given time anywhere from twenty to twenty-five working groups going. Some are standing working groups--the Cabinet Committee for International Narcotics Control. They'll work through some of those individuals, but each one of those, the way the Domestic Council functions, really work through one of the deputies, or the assistant directors. Ken Cole sits at that sort of executive officer level. He's got about seven deputies, all of whom have these working groups going at the same time. [With] simple multiplication you could get up to a hundred to two hundred that're going. Some, of course, are on-going, long-term and he's not going to read the stuff every day. Others, as you get into a particularly acute stage on the Hill, may be all that he's doing for a week. It pretty much varies. It's a loose congeries of associations that are inter-relating, working through us. That's the on-going management task of the Domestic Council and I think describes best how we operate.

Well, the first two, two-and-a-half. We haven't had it for four. It's, we did it sort of spasmodically before that, and I'd say the pattern was set by Ed Morgan, as a matter of fact, the first year, when welfare reform was a key area, but there was no structure in terms of designing that legislation that met all these various elements. So, Morgan was given the job to chair that working group. He did a magnificent job. He had Dick Nathan from OMB, and he had another gentleman, Bob [Robert E.] Patricelli, from the Department of HEW [Health, Education and Welfare]. The three of them were the core group, but they would expand it and bring in someone from Justice, and another one from Justice, as their needs expanded, somebody else from HEW, more congressional relations types, the interest groups, until he became the chairman of that group. In turn, whatever the subject area, that becomes generally our modus operandi. Ken Cole might say it doesn't work that way, and I would bow to his superior wisdom [laughter]. He's lived at it at a different level than I have. That's the way I operate the Domestic Council.

Yes.

What happens during the course of the day from that point on, Bud, is there any routine, any scheduling at all that you more or less can plan on from one day...

No.

...or one week to the next week?

No. I try not to, I try to see all my staff during the week on something, yes, but, in terms of when or where, I might have to see Walt Minnick, say, four times in one day, depending upon the problem. When we were getting Auguste Ricord out of Paraguay, for example, the questions were: who pays for the jet to go pick him up, who pays for security, what happens if something goes wrong, are they armed, do they shoot him if he tries to escape, all sorts of small peripheral issues, some of which we shouldn't handle, incidentally. I've got sort of a bug on making sure that operational decisions are made by operators, not by policy people, who are inherently incompetent to make those decisions, from shooting out tires in a plane to anything else. That's something I would hope to take to my new responsibilities. But, there is no pattern. I may know the day before or two days before what's coming up, have meetings set up. For example, this week, there'll be some meetings on the Hill; internally, the District government, which I can know two or three days in advance, but there are no fixed meetings other than those two in the morning. I happen to believe it's important to have some reference point each day from which you can start. The seven-thirty meeting, while I didn't like dragging out of bed every morning to come here, and I'm not sure anybody else did. Nevertheless, it served the purpose of giving a sense of cohesion, of a community effort, and, in retrospect, I think it was a good idea. I assume that that will be picked up in same other form with Roy Ash, who may not want to do it that way in the future.

Yes, I think they will. I understand that all my documents go to the Library, all the files except personal files. In those, now, a lot of this is done orally. I mean that I will get reports from Jerry Wilson that say crime's down in April and here's the way the index looks, and that's great. The documentation may well be the memorandum to the President recommending that he meet Jerry Wilson and a group of his top policemen to congratulate them on dropping crime from a high of two hundred and two point four crimes per day in November of 1969 down to an average of ninety-seven per day in the first three months of '72. That's documentation of the objective that was set up in the campaign in '68. I wouldn't have a paper that would say the President had the following objective and purposes, we did the following ten things, the objective was reached as of April 1972, mission accomplished. It doesn't work that way. It's a process, and I suppose [if] I learned anything about government, [it's that] there are no static points, there are no plateaus, there's no place you can say, "It's all done. I've accomplished, I've succeeded, I can go do something else." It's constantly going on, constant pressure is necessary, constant innovation. The problems change, you have to be able to change [snaps fingers] like that. My mind's been changed many times around on issues from the beginning. But I do think that anybody that would look at those files, in the DC legislative area, and Mr. Shepard's files, and Mr. Minnick's files, and Miss Payton's files, and put it together will have ample, probably I would say they'd be surfeited with documentation as to what we've been doing.

No.

...central files.

They each have their own, that's right. I felt that, for their ease of work, they'd have to have that. Now there might be duplicates, or I'll get a copy of something that touches, say, law enforcement in LEAA [Law Enforcement Assistance Administration] projects and goals (by LEAA I mean the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration). That goes immediately to Shepard. I don't even want to look at it until he's had a cut at it. If I did, if I had to read everything first, it just wouldn't work. So he keeps the master in his file. He might do a paper back to me, or a note, and we communicate a lot by just quick typewritten notes. Some of it's very sensitive; I'd rather that it not be written down in a memorandum. But, in the bulk substantive areas, I think that the record is such that in those files, as well as in the public record, they can see what's been accomplished or not accomplished, as the case may be. There's a lot of that.

Has anyone been assigned these responsibilities of yours, upon your departure from here?

Not yet. I think Mr. Shepard will probably pick up the law enforcement and narcotics portion. Transportation is still an open question, as is the District of Columbia. It's, each person has to sort of fit the pattern that he does best, himself. A lot of the stuff that I've done is just because I started out with it, and there was nobody else. I mean, we were strapped for people. So, it was whoever came through John's [D. Ehrlichman] door first, [he] said, "OK, this is yours." It wasn't something where a priori we thought, "This man is a specialist" and work this problem out. I just lurched through at the wrong time, I guess [that] is the best way of saying it.

Are there any magazine or newspaper articles that touch upon your activities or responsibilities in a way that you think is accurate, to the degree that they could be accurate?

There haven't been any in-depth articles. There've been some stories in newspapers. The Chicago Tribune had some story, they had a story about me by Aldo Beckman, which described my work when I was in civil disorders and civil disturbances....

No, I haven't made that. I've been protected from that. It's....

Haven't had to protest that. Let's see, the [unintelligible], well, my local paper in Seattle had a short squib a couple of weeks ago in the general areas, just describing the things that I get into, but in no depth. There was some, a paper, let's see, the Washington Post had something three years ago [unintelligible] when I started working in District affairs, just some of the things I do and touch upon. I'll be honest with you. I've done all I can to avoid media coverage. It's never been useful for people that are working in these jobs to do that, so I'd have to say that the answer is "No", by design. I'm grateful that it didn't happen.

No.

Well...

Well, that's something that just is a hobby. I'm sort of embarrassed about that. I didn't realize that they were going to go to all that fuss, but it was a.... That is a good program--I encourage everybody to jog. I think it's good for then, as a matter of fact.

Yeah.

I was in John Ehrlichman's law firm in Seattle, Washington. Just to give you my career somewhat from college. I graduated in '61. In the latter part of '61 I signed up in the Navy and was in the Navy on active duty from February of '62 through June of '65. Then I went to law school at the University of Washington in Seattle from 1965 to 1968. During law school I worked with Ehrlichman's law firm in Seattle. I also did some work in South Vietnam while I was in law school, on land reform, which is in the bio, which became sort of an obsession with me, and still is. Then, right after law school, of course I'd been working in the firm for a long time anyway, the people there, John Ehrlichman was a tour director. I wanted to join. He said, "No, stay there. You don't know what's going to happen." So I stayed in the firm, and then, about five days after the election, he came back to the firm and gave me about three or four days to clear it up and get to New York. So, it's been a close association with him professionally, back to 1965 when I started law school. But, I've known him since 1950, so it's about twenty-two years. And a matter of fact, a lot of people that have come to work on the staff are here because people have known them and trusted than for a long period of time. That's the way the President has picked his staff, and I have done that somewhat the same thing with mine. It's no specific expertise in any one area at all. [I] sometimes wish I had it, but I don't. I'm a practicing attorney for awhile, and that was it.

Who has been your secretary for most of the time here, Bud?

It's divided in two parts. I started with Stephanie Wilson for the first six months of '69. Then, Miss Jane Dart, now Mrs. Jane Campbell, who married John Campbell, was my secretary for two years. Mrs. Saundra Greene has been my secretary up to the present, so I've had.... Jane left in preparation a few months before she decided to get married [unintelligible]. Anyway, I've had two secretaries for the bulk period of time.

At some future point, as Jack mentioned earlier, we'd like to get back to you possibly and talk with you in more depth about some of these projects. Do you have any idea where we might be able to correspond with you, or where mail might reach you, after being forwarded from here to here to here?

Well, you have my home address. I will, I hope I can stay there for awhile in the Department of Transportation for the foreseeable future, hopefully.

Washington State Bar Association.

Washington State Bar Association would be one. All my sisters in Seattle, which I don't expect to be moving for some time, their addresses, which I can give you. Those'd be the ones.

Given the passage of some time, and the end of the administration. I think the later it is, you [can] be a lot more candid, and the time perspective helps put things into better shape.

That's right. I would say that the forest is very unclear to me right now. I see lots of trees, and so I think you're right, that being at [unintelligible] would help.

Dropping crime in the District of Columbia. That's been the most satisfying. It's the one that he pledged himself to, he gave us, the President gave us unlimited backing to do what we could. We have of course increased that police force by two thousand men; we've lit the city in a much different pattern than it was lit four years ago; we've gone in narcotics treatment from a hundred and fifty two-and-a-half years ago to over four thousand today; we have a new court system. We have a different climate in the city. This isn't black or white, where the Afro paper in the District of Columbia encourages the citizens to be tough on crime. The mood has changed. The mayor's position changed somewhat. It became respectable to oppose crime--it wasn't just the police were there to brutalize the citizens. The fact that there has been such a drastic reduction, I couldn't say that any one thing was responsible for it. I think the cumulation of these programs, the policy, the shift in mood, the support we got congressionally for all of these activities, and the President's unstinting backing on all of it led to the result. Just pretty much made it clear to me that, with similar programs around the country, something can be done about it. Now that in turn has been built into the impact program from LEAA in lead cities, where the same thing has been attempted. I think that's been the most satisfying because you can see just each day when there are a hundred less serious crimes occurring on that day, that means that there are a hundred fewer people that are either being robbed, raped, killed, burglarized, or what have you. That to me is a very specific human payout of government programs, and it's not just government programs. This is something where there was a community shift in mood in Anacostia. Young kids got involved in this. Mothers got involved, teachers. It was just, you began to see a whole different attitude. Now, the problem isn't licked, and the fear is pervasive. There are loads of problems remaining, and I'm not sure what the other programs should be, but at least we've seen it happen in one city. I think that you can continue it if you have people with that presidential backing, continue to be innovative and creative and not ever let down. I guess the one message that I've learned from the President is never, never give up; never let down. The pressure is always on; you're never through. As I said, there are no static points, no stop points; you're constantly moving. Otherwise, I think you can lose the momentum that we've set up, and that would be, I think, a tragedy. So that's number one. I wouldn't even know what number two is, that's so transcendent to me.

No, it was a very good response and a very enlightening one. We'll look forward to caning back and perhaps talking to you in a bit more detail about [unintelligible]. Thank you.

Now you know everything I know [laughter].