ABSTRACT
Ambassador Donald Rumsfeld first learned of the impending presidential transition of 1974 on a sunny beach in St. Tropez. He had been stationed at the time in Brussels as President Nixon’s ambassador to NATO and read about the final painful days of Nixon’s presidency in the International Herald Tribune. Rumsfeld soon heard that Vice President Ford’s office had been eager to speak with him about the Nixon resignation and upcoming transition. Vice President Ford told the New York Times that there had been no planning for a presidential transition, but transition planning had in fact begun secretly weeks earlier (Reeves, 1975). A long-time friend of Ford and former colleague at a Michigan law firm, Phillip W. Buchen, had been coordinating with a White House staffer, Tom Whitehead, and others for the inevitable ascension of the vice president. 1 The group discreetly met several times at the home of William G. Whyte, the main lobbyist for the United States Steel Corporation, who the Washington Post later called “one of the most influential behind-the-scenes players on Capitol Hill in the 1960s and 1970s” (Bernstein, 2010). Also present was a former Eisenhower administration official and Nixon advisor, Bryce Harlow, who had established the Washington government relations office for Proctor and Gamble in the 1960s and served as the company’s primary lobbyist. The informal group used their meetings to put together a fifty-page binder that set the initial plan for the early presidency of Gerald Ford and the work of the official transition team (Scranton & Whitehead, 1974).
