One LBJ-era Fellow describes the president, sketching air attacks on White House napkins. "I recall him pounding the table and saying through clenched teeth, 'You can't kill bicycles with B=52's.'" Another recalls challenging defense secretary Robert McNamara on the Pentagon's annual Vietnam budget. "Here was a numbers man and he didn't know the biggest number in the budget. That's when I turned against the war." A Fellow in the Nixon White House explains the roots of the president's little-known sympathy for Native Americans. Nixon's "Whittier College football coach was a Native American...and he idolized this man." A Fellow who worked for then press spokesman Jody Powell talks about how President Carter's honesty weakened his presidency because it left him "fighting with one hand tied behind his back."
White House Fellows offers fresh glimpses of history from some of the 450 men and women who have come to Washington as White House Fellows, serving as full-time assistants to senior White House officials and Cabinet officers. Fellows draft speeches and policy papers, conduct briefings, coordinate federal programs, and occupy what O'Toole calls "front-row seats in the theater of history."
The year in Washington is designed to strengthen the Fellows' commitment to national service and their ability to contribute to their professions and their communities. Fellows have gone on to make lasting contributions to their occupations and communities. Former Fellows have served as members of both houses of Congress and the Cabinet, presidential advisors, senior officials in state government, chief executives of Fortune 500 corporations, heads of non-profit organizations, and leaders in law, education and medicine.
The volume will appear in October 1995. For information on how to obtain a copy of White House Fellows, call The White House Fellows Foundation at (703) 492-6611.