Carter's Great Purge

"We've burned down the house to roast the pig." Borrowing this image from English Essayist Charles Lamb, an aghast White House official summed up the most extraordinary week in the White House since Richard Nixon resigned in 1974. In four days, Jimmy Carter dismantled the leadership of his Government by demanding the resignations of his top 34 Cabinet and staff aides. And then -the chairs of power theoretically empty -he set about firing those he deemed ineffective, disloyal, political liabilities, annoyances to his closest associates, or all of the above.

On an individual basis, each of the dismissals was not surprising; a few had been long expected. But the sum total of them, and Carter's wholesale slaughter approach, damaged the brave new leader image he is trying so hard to create. At the very announcement of the mass resignations, Washington was rocked by rumors, the dollar plunged around the world, and America's friends abroad asked ever more worried questions about what the President was attempting to achieve, and at what risk to America's stability. Across the U.S., a people who had at first been bewildered by the President's unprecedented ten-day "summit" at Camp David, then relieved by his forceful speeches on energy, which tried also to set a high national purpose, could only ask: Now what?

In the days leading up to his stunning shakeup, Carter had dropped hints about what he had in mind. At Camp David, he remarked to reporters that he was thinking of changing the "structure of my Cabinet." During his TV address on Sunday, he recalled the warning of one summit participant that some Cabinet members "don't seem loyal" and that there "wasn't enough discipline among your disciples."

But almost no one was prepared for what Carter set in motion Tuesday morning: the most thoroughgoing, and puzzling, purge in the history of the U.S. presidency.* His Cabinet had lasted intact longer than those of the great majority of Presidents: 30 months. It took him exactly 72 hours to rip it apart. Out went:

> Joseph A. Califano Jr., the sharp-witted, liberal and independent-minded Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. His replacement, subject to Senate confirmation: Patricia Harris, head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and first black woman in the Cabinet. Her successor at HUD has not been announced.

> Michael Blumenthal, the outspoken Secretary of the Treasury. Nominated to replace him was G. William Miller, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board since 1977. Miller will be succeeded temporarily at the Federal Reserve by Frederick Schultz, a former Florida banker and Carter crony, who was confirmed as a board member by the Senate only last week.

> James Schlesinger, the intelligent but somewhat arrogant Secretary of Energy. He will be replaced by yet another sometime Georgian, Charles W. Duncan Jr., who was the president of the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Company before becoming the Deputy Secretary of Defense in 1977.

> Brock Adams, the stubborn Secretary of Transportation. Carter has not yet settled on his successor, but his job will be filled temporarily by still another Southerner, W. Graham Claytor Jr., who was president of the Southern Railway Company until his appointment as Navy Secretary in 1977.

> Griffin Bell, the affable Attorney General, who for months had sought permission from his old friend Carter to return home to Georgia. Bell's wife gleefully told a friend in the Senate: "It's the best news I've had since coming to Washington." Griffin's proposed successor is his own choice: Deputy Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti.

By week's end Carter had not yet accepted any resignations from his White House staff, but he had in one single stroke, a promotion, drastically restructured it. New powers and the title Chief of Staff went to his top aide, 34-year-old Hamilton Jordan. The change eliminated the last vestiges of Carter's experiment with "Cabinet government" and a staff that he used to compare to the "spokes of the wheel," with himself at the hub. His original intention had been to give associates easy access to the Oval Office. Soon after the election, Press Secretary Jody Powell announced that Carter thought "it was not in his interest to have a single chief of staff," a title that had special political significance because the memory of Nixon Aide H.R. Haldeman was so fresh in the public mind. But the loose arrangement, almost inevitably, caused confusion. Jordan, a shrewd but erratic and disorganized executive, will settle all but the most serious disputes. He will also screen from Carter all but the most important decisions and the most essential visitors. Said a White House official bluntly: "This is the week that Hamilton Jordan took over."

There was widespread doubt in both the Administration and the Congress that Jordan was the right man for the job. One of his first acts was hardly encouraging. He distributed stacks of 30-question evaluation forms to Cabinet members, with instructions that they grade their high-ranking subordinates according to ability, performance and loyalty to the Administration. The forms were to be returned to him on Friday, so that he could begin deciding who at the sub-Cabinet level should be ousted.

Most of the departments tried to make the deadline, but there were three notable exceptions: Blumenthal said he would not fill out the forms. Adams said that he was ripping up his. Califano left his forms for his successor, Pat Harris. Said he: "I'm perfectly happy to evaluate people, but not on the basis of what time they go to work."

Everywhere, loyalty had be come the watchword. A President who had entered office promising that associates could speak their minds freely, both in the privacy of the White House and in public forums, had clearly heard enough. With the exception of Bell, Carter removed non-Georgian dissenters and replaced them with men who had already demonstrated their loyalty to the Carter team. In any other terms, Carter's purge accomplished remarkably little. It brought no new faces of distinction into the Administration. In effect, the President and his men had done little more than try to shift blame for their troubles to the Cabinet and draw up the wagons in a circle for the 16-month political siege that will end with the 1980 election. According to Califano, Carter specifically said that he "had to get the Cabinet and the Administration ready for the 1980 election." The White House denied it, but Califano stuck to his account.

Perhaps the most unfortunate element of the housecleaning was that it provoked new doubts about Carter's understanding of the Federal Government and about his own leadership ability. He apparently intended the mass resignations as a dramatic symbol of a fresh start, as Nixon had done at the beginning of his second term. But Carter's coup de theatre looked more like amateur melodrama. He could have fired the subordinates who displeased him with less trauma and far better effect on his image as an executive. But he nonetheless sought everyone's resignation, apparently not anticipating how the act would be perceived at home and abroad.

The international financial markets responded as they usually do to uncertainty: the price of gold went up, passing $300 an ounce for the first time in history. Among many political experts and professional politicians, including those of his own party, there was a sense that instead of setting the Government on his promised "new course," Carter had blundered into a new crisis. Said Tim Hagen, the Cleveland area Democratic Party chairman: "In baseball, you fire the manager. Here they are asking the players to quit." Sniped the Massachusetts Democratic Party chairman, Chester Atkins: "The mouse that roared is still a rodent."

Congressmen and Senators of both parties were upset. Said a Democratic congressional leader: "The wholesale resignations smack of p.r. gimmickry, misplaced machismo. I thought that he had his ship pointed in the right direction, but..." Said House Republican Leader John Rhodes: "It's crazy. It's just like what Richard Nixon did in "72." Others were upset about the targets of Carter's purge. Said Democratic Congressman Charles Wilson of Texas: "Good grief! They're cutting down the biggest trees and keeping the monkeys."

In bitter jest, Richard Conlon, staff director of the moderate-liberal House Democratic Study Group, sent out forms asking for an evaluation of the President's staff. Sample questions: How confident are you of the White House staffs judgment? How mature is the White House staff? Within a day, 160 forms were returned, filled out by House members and aides. According to Conlon, more than two-thirds of the returns listed Jordan as the least effective of Carter's aides. Said Conlon: "We did it as a spoof. The idea of a questionnaire is sophomoric."

On the floor of the Senate, Republican Leader Ted Stevens of Alaska offered an extreme and unfair comment. Said he: "Some of us are seriously worried that he might be approaching some sort of mental problem. He ought to take a rest." Majority Leader Robert Byrd leaped to his feet in defense. Said Byrd: "The President should not take a vacation. I don't want to leave the impression that the burdens have gotten to the President and that he ought to take a vacation."

Many impartial experts on the presidency were mystified by what Carter had done and the way he had done it. Said Marquette University Professor George Reedy, a former aide to Lyndon Johnson and author of The Twilight of the Presidency: "It sets people's teeth on edge. There is a kind of ruthlessness implied. It creates the impression that the President is trying to surround himself with yes men." Said another L.B.J. aide, George Christian, who is now a public relations expert in Austin: "It's a jolting thing to the country. To the public, it is more evidence of disarray in Government. A President is susceptible to errors when he feels besieged." Jonathan Moore, director of Harvard's John Fitzgerald Kennedy School of Government, argued that the request for resignations "diminishes Carter." Now, said Moore, "the President is out there alone, and he's naked as a jay bird."

On the other hand, Historian James MacGregor Burns, author of the book Leadership, which was passed around by Carter's aides at the Camp David summit, took a restrained view. Said Burns: "The President has complete power to hire and fire. How he goes about it is his prerogative." To Burns the more important event was the Camp David summit. Said he: "The modern presidency requires a periodic stepping back, taking an overall look. The Cabinet changes are among the things that flow from that."

The shakeup, in fact, was the final act in a script that had been carefully worked out by Carter and his closest advisers at Camp David. The President arrived there on July 3, after the Tokyo summit, and began poring over a 107-page memo from his personal pollster, Patrick Caddell. It was a detailed compilation of long-term national trends -most of them bad for the Administration -and a series of recommendations for action. One was for Carter to call together various categories of Americans for consultations, which is a standard marketing-research technique. Caddell also organized Carter's visits to middle-class families in Carnegie, Pa., and Martinsburg, W. Va.*

Caddell's thumbprints also were on the energy speech that Carter delivered to the nation Sunday after returning to Washington. To one pollster the speech was structured much like a market report: "You lead off with a bunch of quotes to set forth the key thoughts. Then you go on to outline a plan of action drawn from what you have learned. It is basic pollster technique."

For that speech, as well as follow-up addresses the next day in Kansas City and Detroit, Carter earned good reviews for his newly assertive style of delivery. He was helped here by coaching from Image-Maker Gerald Rafshoon. Before Carter's Sunday night speech, he went to Rafshoon's quarters in the Executive Office Building to learn how to move his arms and clench his fist to show forcefulness. After the lesson, Carter ran through the speech and watched a videotaped replay, then practiced again, until he and Rafshoon were satisfied.

In his speeches, Carter blamed the oil mess on OPEC's price increases, Congress's lethargy, federal bureaucrats' isolation on the "island" of Washington -and himself. Said Carter: "I've made some mistakes as President. People said, 'Mr. President, you haven't been leading our nation,' and I've learned my lesson." Standing in shirtsleeves in Detroit, he told 2,500 members of the Communications Workers of America, almost pleadingly: "I will do the best that I can."

Carter's approval rating spurted eleven points in a New York Times-CBS poll, to 37% -the first upturn since a survey last March. Even critics who faulted his energy program as too timid regarded it as a much needed beginning (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS). Said Democratic National Chairman John White, who thought he saw the makings of a re-election winner in 1980: "I took down my 'for sale' sign this morning."

The President basked in the applause for a day and then, on Tuesday morning, he set in motion his astounding purge, undoing much of the good he had done himself. It began at a 9:30 a.m. staff meeting in the White House's Roosevelt Room. Said Carter to his senior aides: "I didn't come to pat everybody on the back. Every one of you knows what you have done right. But there has not been enough done right." He thereupon announced Jordan's elevation to chief of staff and shortly afterward left the room. Forty-five minutes later, Carter and Jordan strode into the Cabinet Room, where the twelve members and U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young were waiting. They knew that something big was up; they had already been told not to bring any aides. Said the summonses: "Principals only."

According to one participant, Carter opened the meeting by "scolding the members for disloyalty." The President recapitulated his Camp David decision about asserting new leadership. He said that he would be altering his own "life-style." He said that he had appointed Jordan chief of staff and that there would be Cabinet changes. In the tense atmosphere that followed, Jordan announced that he too was changing his "life-style." Uncertain whether he was joking, no one laughed. Carter went around the table, ladling out criticism and praise. He told Young that several people at the Camp David summit had severely faulted him for his embarrassing statements at the U.N. "On the other hand," said Carter, "Andy is responsible for improved relations with about 50 countries in the world. That outweighs the criticism."

Then came the Cabinet's collective offer to resign. White House aides insisted that the resignations had not been solicited. Still, the offers seemed to fit the President's Camp David script too closely to have been entirely spontaneous. According to one official, Carter did indeed start the process. His version: "Carter said, 'I would like all of you to submit pro forma resignations.' And then he indicated that we should get pro forma resignations from all of our appointees. At this point [Secretary of State Cyrus] Vance said, 'You don't want these in writing.' And everybody chorused that that would be Nixonesque. Vance said, 'You can take our resignations orally.'"

Attorney General Bell raised a lawyer's demurral. The resignations should all be in writing, he said, but he was overruled by the group. Treasury Secretary Blumenthal observed that the whole exercise was pointless because Cabinet members serve at the President's pleasure, and so Carter in effect already had their resignations.

In the middle of the discussion, another high official, Robert Strauss, suddenly strode into the room. Apparently not aware of precisely what was going on, he breezily offered a parody of Nixon's famous 1962 political retirement statement: "Well, Mr. President, I've already resigned. You won't have me to kick around any more." The assembled Cabinet members greeted Strauss's joke with frigid silence.

The meeting ended soon after Jordan passed out the evaluation forms. He first asked that they be filled out for every official earning $25,000 a year or more. When he was told that this would cover thousands of people in the Pentagon alone, he limited the evaluations to the deputy assistant secretary level, which still meant that several hundred people would be involved. Many of the Cabinet members left the room in dismay, asking themselves whether the evaluation forms were to be taken seriously.

At noon, Carter lunched privately with Rosalynn and briefed her on how the Cabinet session had gone. As usual, he sought her advice on the changes that he had in mind. Just what she recommended was not disclosed, but she was probably not reticent. Camp David summit guests have told of how surprised they were at the extent of Rosalynn's participation. Said her aide, Mary Finch Hoyt: "She has been very heavily involved in all aspects of the whole Camp David evaluation, and will be involved in all aspects of this evaluation."

That afternoon, Jordan again assembled the senior White House staff in the Roosevelt Room. This time, he sat at the head of the dark mahogany conference table, in the place where Carter had been seated that morning. Jordan announced the Cabinet's offer to resign, and said that some staff members had recommended that the senior aides do likewise ''to allow the President all the flexibility he needs." It was a suggestion that no one could refuse. Frank Moore, Carter's congressional liaison chief, spoke up: "We can do no less."

The public announcement of the proffered resignations produced a level of alarm and dismay that apparently surprised Carter and his inner circle. When the State Department reported that there was consternation in several overseas chancellories about what the effect might be on U.S. foreign policy, Carter authorized top aides to disclose that he would not accept the resignations of Vance, Defense Secretary Harold Brown and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Almost everyone else was left to sweat out the President's decisions.

The next day the White House was humming with nervous tension. Reported TIME Correspondent Christopher Ogden: "Jordan would pop into Powell's office. They would both dash out, cut through the Roosevelt Room and pop into the President's office. More aides than I have ever seen before stood in the corridors, mingling and watching others run back and forth. Frank Moore slipped into the Oval Office at 9:30. Two of the President's speech-writers huddled in a doorway. 'You tell me what's going on,' said one official as he left the West Wing. 'I haven't got the slightest idea what they are doing, and I was just in there.' "

There was similar tension in the offices of the Cabinet members. Pat Harris' staff had some anxious moments when she was summoned to the Oval Office. Asked Carter: "Was 10 a.m. convenient?" Said Harris: "Even if it weren't, Mr. President, I would be there." On her return to HUD, she told her staff: "There is no reason for any of you to be concerned as a result of what happened." Indeed not; she had just been promoted.

Some officials tried to relieve the pressure with gallows humor. Members of the Agriculture Department sent out invitations for a 51st birthday celebration, saying that "the party will be either for Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland, or it will be for Bob Bergland." It turned out to be the former: Bergland kept his job. (So did another Cabinet member who had been widely rumored to be due for replacement, Secretary of Commerce Juanita Kreps.) On Capitol Hill, when Blumenthal returned from a break during a hearing before the House Budget Committee, a reporter cracked: "At least you came back." Replied Blumenthal: "What did you expect? Defenestration?"

Carter's first victim was Califano, who was called to the Oval Office Wednesday evening. The President's Georgia Mafia gave Califano good marks for administering HEW, but accused him of being a big-spending liberal, a "slick operator" and "not a team player." Said a Carter aide: "Competence alone is not enough. There has to be loyalty." And not only to Carter; Califano had been at odds with Hamilton Jordan almost from the beginning. Califano has been faulted for not enthusiastically supporting Carter's bill to create a Department of Education separate from HEW. His case also was not helped by his antismoking campaign. It upset Carter's supporters in tobacco-growing North Carolina, where cars are plastered with bumper stickers that proclaim: CALIFANO IS DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH. Nor did the Georgians overlook Califano's long friendship with Ted Kennedy.

After Carter told Califano that his resignation had been accepted, the President said: "Your performance has been superb. The department has never been better run." The following morning, when Califano brought his formal resignation to the Oval Office, Carter joked: "I assume you don't need help in getting a job." Indeed not. Califano is expected to return to his $500,000-a-year Washington law practice. He did not go gently into that good night: in his letter of resignation, he took a swipe at Carter's reluctance to support major new spending on social problems. Said Califano: "It has been a deeply enjoyable and satisfying experience to administer so many of the programs enacted into law under President Lyndon Johnson," in whose Administration Califano served as an adviser on domestic affairs.

Next came Griffin Bell, who had long been asking to leave. His departure was no surprise. Third was Michael Blumenthal, who was making up his mind to quit in any case. He was fed up with his endless fights with Carter's aides over economic policy. Blumenthal has long felt only contempt for them, particularly for Jordan. A self-made millionaire, Blumenthal looked down on most of the other White House staffers as kids who came from campus to campaign to staff and lacked practical experience. One exception: Domestic Adviser Stuart Eizenstat, even though he and Blumenthal were at constant loggerheads.

The White House brief against Blumenthal was chiefly disloyalty: too frequently his aides leaked to reporters Blumenthal's policy recommendations to Carter. The memos usually urged the Administration to pursue a tough, conservative economic policy. White House aides felt that Blumenthal's staff was constantly criticizing Carter for his economic policy decisions. They never forgave him for the investigation into Bert Lance's finances by the comptroller of the currency, who is a member of the Treasury Department. The President's men also complained that Blumenthal was no help in winning support for Administration policies in Congress or in the business community. Finally, 1 1/2 months after Blumenthal was officially designated the Administration's chief economic spokesman, he lost Carter's personal confidence. Said a Treasury official: "When Mike would get going on his ideas, the President's eyes would glaze over."

The departure came at another turning point in Blumenthal's life: on Tuesday night he had a farewell dinner with his wife at Washington's Jockey Club; their marriage of 27 years had broken up, and she was moving to Ann Arbor, Mich. It was her birthday. On Wednesday, Blumenthal moved into a new $200,000 condominium at the Watergate. Next day Carter told him that he had to go because of conflicts with the White House political staff. Said the President: "You've done a splendid job, but I want your resignation." Blumenthal replied that he was "as happy to leave as I was to come" and spent the rest of the session arguing that his successor, G. William Miller, should have full authority over economic policy and should not have to report to the President through Chief of Staff Jordan. Asked later at a press conference whether he had been defenestrated, Blumenthal replied that he had not. Said he: "I took advantage of an opportunity to get paroled with time off for good behavior."

On Friday morning, Carter accepted Schlesinger's resignation. Still seeming to smart from his firing as Defense Secretary by Gerald Ford in 1975, Schlesinger was at pains to point out in his letter of resignation that he had told Carter before the Tokyo summit that he wanted to quit. Schlesinger regarded himself as a political liability. He also was obviously tired of what he called the "onerous and miscellaneous responsibilities falling to the lot of the 'energy czar.'

He left with a plea that the nation act quickly to meet the energy crisis. Said Schlesinger: "This nation will in the 1980s face shocks with regard to energy present and future supply for which we are not yet prepared in an emoional sense. What we must be concerned about is a revolution of declining expectations." Could he himself have done more to push this message in his nearly two years as Energy Secretary? Replied Schlesinger: "My high school physics teacher told me, 'The more I teach, the more I am impressed by the infinite capacity of the human mind to resist the introduction of knowledge.' It takes a while to sink in."

Last to leave was Transportation Secretary Brock Adams, and he departed in a fury. Ham Jordan had always personally disliked Adams, a former Congressman from Washington who has considered running for the Senate. Jordan assured him that he would be kept on, but only if he fired Deputy Secretary Alan Butchman, who Jordan thought was "too low key." Jordan also asked that Assistant Secretary Terrence Bracy be sent to the White House for a "talking to." Said Adams: "I was not going to do that."

In public, Adams professed that he had not decided whether to stay. First, he said, he had to reassess the new setup at the White House and the Administration's commitment to "mass transportation and moving Detroit toward a fuel-efficient automobile." When Powell showed Carter a news account of Adams' comments, the President turned livid. He icily instructed Powell to tell reporters that "I haven't had a chance yet to talk to Secretary Adams, but I will in the very near future." Adams showed up at the White House Friday morning but did not wait to be fired. Said the plain-spoken Adams afterward: "I made clear my position. I quit... A Cabinet officer must work directly for the President -not for the White House staff." Butchman and Bracy also resigned.

As the week wore on, Carter acted as if a great weight had been lifted off him. Looking out of a White House window on Thursday evening, he spotted some people pressed up against the iron fence along Pennsylvania Avenue. In his shirtsleeves the President went out to see them. As the crowd broke into a verse of one of his favorite hymns, Amazing Grace, Carter climbed the fence to greet them. Friday afternoon, at a two-minute press conference, an unsmiling Carter defended his Cabinet changes as being "all constructive" and said that there would be no further firings. He added: "I need the full support of the American people in the future."

By the weekend, the shaken capital was still groping for a satisfactory explanation of Carter's approach to the firings. His top aides insisted that his mass Cabinet changes, like the Camp David summit, was Carter's way of getting back to the unconventional political style that had worked so well for him during the 1976 election. And so was his attack on the Washington establishment as an "island." Said an aide: "Our biggest mistake has been to operate too traditionally. Policies and programs are not enough. We knew it. We based our campaign on that. But when we got in, we ignored it."

With his ratings plunging in the polls and the 1980 campaign almost upon him, Carter decided to return to his roots. His decision was fortified in part by Caddell's own polls. They reported that Americans had lost confidence in the future, and that it did not matter who was President because the country was spinning out of control. Carter decided to charge back into the national consciousness, said the aide, figuring that "a challenge like energy can be used to pull ourselves together" -both as an Administration and as a nation. The first step was taken Sunday night, when Carter acknowledged the problems and appealed for support. But Carter almost surely misjudged the next step.

He thought that by acting quickly and swiftly dismissing the officials who displeased him, he could project a decisive, take-charge image. Said Hamilton Jordan: "He felt it was better to do it without hesitation so there would not be a cloud of uncertainty and apprehension over some departments for weeks and weeks." Instead, the President's unprecedented purge, and the degree of political motivation that seemed to be involved, raised still more questions about his own leadership instincts. qed

* In 1841 five of President John Tyler's six Whig Cabinet members resigned to protest his veto of a bill establishing a national bank.

* The White House acknowledge last week that the Seceret Service did not run a background check on the guests at either gathering. Carter's host in Carnegie, Machinist William Fisher, 29, who was selected by local Democrats at Caddell's request, is a reformed alcholic who received a suspended jail sentence for setting a small fire in a motel last March. Said Fisher. "No one asked me about any trouble I may have had."

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