访谈录 2011-02-24&02-26 前国防部长与总统的那些事

We have a list here, presidents that you have known or have worked with. Let's go down the list. Dwight Eisenhower, how do you know Dwight Eisenhower?

-Well, I didn't. I met him and I was working in Washington when he was president. And when I ran for Congress in 1962, he was kind enough to allow me to sit next to him for about 20 seconds, while I had a picture taken.

-Pretty good.

-And it was very kind of him and it was a privilege for me.

-And in those days, that was a huge political gesture, was it?

-Indeed.

-And your impression of him as a president, how was he?

-Well, I read what the press said about him that he played too much golf and he had poor syntax. But I thought that he was a darn good president.

-Then John F. Kennedy.

-Charming, great sense of humor, kind of exciting because of his youth and served way too short a time.

-And in today's market, how would he have fared?

-He would have fared well, in any market.

-Then Lyndon Johnson. He, he always...as a kid, I wasn't sure why, but as a kid, he always frightened me. Was he a frightening man? Or, was he a warm...I don't know. You know he was big and imposing and...

-He liked to touch people. He, he will…No, no, no…

-Then I was right to be scared.

-No, he will grab your hand, put his hand on your arm, leaning to you and his earlobe was bigger than your ear.

-Yeap, he seemed bigger than like me.

-He was a great Senate majority leader.

-Richard Nixon, what happened there? I mean let's just take...it's impossible to do, but if we take Watergate out of the equation, what would we be saying about Richard Nixon now?

-Oh my goodness. He opened the door to China; he brought an incredibly fine group of people into government; he did things for the environment; he was a good strategist. And Watergate was a tragedy. And of course, at the end of it, when he resigned, he then went about writing books and discussing important issues and contributing.

-And was Watergate an anomaly or as they say, oh, it's a kind of thing everybody was doing and he just got caught?

-It's true that he taped people's conversations and previous presidents had done that. But in terms of the Watergate, I just don't know the answer what other presidents did, but he is the only one that ever had to resign and it was an amazing event in our country's history.

-You know this conversation is being taped as well. Give you a heads up.

-Now here we go. Here are many things about this next man and you that I did have no idea about. Gerald Ford, you know him from 74 to 77, roughly? Tell us about that relationship.

-Actually I knew him from 62. We serve in congress together. And he was the only president I worked for, that was a friend. Because we served together and I helped manage his campaign from minority leader. He was a fine man; he came in at a difficult time; the economy was terrible. And because he had such basic human decency, the reservoir of trust was refilled in our country and he deserves a great deal of credit for.

-What is this photograph depicting?

-Oh my goodness. We were in San Francisco, and this woman Sara Jane Moore was across the street. We came out of the building and the bullet went right by president Ford's head, right by my head, into the wall of San Francis. And fortunately, one of the men next to her saw her lift the revolver and pushed her hand slightly; and it didn't hit the president.

-And what did the group that we are looking at do after the shot was fired? Immediately after that.

-We pushed the president into the floor of the limousine and the secrete service man standing there and I got on his back. And car raced out of town. The assumption always is that there could be two attacks. So a secrete service rule is that when something goes like that, they move fast to get out. And we went about six blocks, and the president said, come on, Rummy, get off, you guys are heavy.

-Get off...