Word: agnew
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After a White House dinner for a visiting dignitary that evening, at a small party also attended by Vice President Spiro Agnew, I received a phone call from the President. He said that the refusal to grant immunity would throw "the fear of God into any little boys" who might attempt to escape their responsibility by dumping on associates. Nixon asked out of the blue whether he should fire Haldeman and Ehrlichman; he was heartbroken, he said, even to have to ask the question. I was dumbfounded; if Nixon held that view, he must be in mortal peril. Not possessing...
...Agnew came in as I was putting down the telephone. In a somewhat contemptuous, unfeeling manner, Agnew said that Nixon was kidding himself if he thought he could avoid firing Haldeman and Ehrlichman. He would be lucky to save himself...
...Agnew's acid comment dramatized the ambivalent relationship that almost inevitably grows up between the only two nationally elected officials of our Government. Nixon never considered Agnew up to succeeding him. He occasionally said, only partly facetiously, that Agnew was his insurance policy against assassination. My impression that evening was that Agnew was not exactly heartbroken that his tormentors on the White House staff might be taken down a peg. Through the initial period of Watergate, Agnew remained conspicuously aloof. And when his own purgatory started, the White House, including Nixon, reciprocated by dissociating from him. Agnew...
Soon Nixon, not yet ready for a direct confrontation, telephoned. Infinitely ingenious, he had come up with an irresistible argument for Haig's appointment: it was designed to enhance my influence; it was aimed at, of all people, Agnew. Haig was essential, said the President, to keep Agnew from "trying to step into things. Well, Agnew can't-we just can't allow that to happen." It was mind boggling to think that a Chief Executive needed a high-powered chief of staff to control a Vice President who was in no position to "step into things...
While I was engaged with the Agnew resignation, Dinitz informed Major General Brent Scowcroft, who had replaced Haig as my deputy, that Israel's promised replacement equipment exceeded the capacity of the seven jets of the El Al air fleet. It was decided that Israel should be permitted to employ private air charter companies. That turned out to be a fiasco. No charter company was eager to court an Arab boycott or to risk its planes. The Defense Department could have brought pressure on the charter companies, but felt no urgency because it estimated that Israel still had stocks...