This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu

ROBERT J. DOLE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview with

Ambassador TOM C. KOROLOGOS

April 11, 2007

Interviewer

Brien R. Williams

Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics 2350 Petefish Drive Lawrence, KS 66045 Phone: (785) 864-4900 Fax: (785) 864-1414 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 2

[Tom Korologos reviewed this transcript for accuracy of names and dates. Because no changes of substance were made, it is an accurate rendition of the original recording.]

Williams: This is an oral history interview with Ambassador Tom C. Korologos, for the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas. We are in the ambassador’s home in Washington, D.C. Today is Wednesday, April 11, 2007, and I’m Brien Williams. Let me ask you, Mr. Ambassador, when you first met Bob Dole.

Korologos: Well, when you first called, I was trying to figure that out, and I think the answer is when I worked in the White House, in the [Richard M.] Nixon White House years in 1971, when he was chairman of the RNC [Republican National Committee]. He used to come to our leadership meetings. I knew of him before when I worked on the Hill for Senator [Wallace F.] Bennett, but really didn’t have much to do with him. He was just another senator, and administrator assistants in those days didn’t have much to do with sitting senators. But he used to come to our meetings, and I was impressed with—I remember he would sit in the Cabinet meeting, in the leadership meetings with President Nixon, who would be talking about the crime bill, the energy bill, the foreign aid bill, and what have you, and Dole would turn to us in the back and go like this, “Take notes. Take notes so I can talk about it.” We’d give it to him, and he was a good, solid supporter and a good friend over that. The other thing that happened, I guess, between us, he was kind of a wise-acre and I fashioned myself as a wise-acre, so we got along because we wise-cracked with each other. During the course of this I’ll tell you a couple of stories. That’s about how we came to meet. It was a growing—it wasn’t a “Here’s Dole, here’s Korologos.” It was a growing relationship that nourished and flourished and developed through the long years.

Williams: You say at that time he was the chairman of the Republican National Committee.

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Korologos: I think so. Wasn’t he?

Williams: ’71 through ’73.

Korologos: Yes, he was chairman of the RNC.

Williams: That got to be a little sticky at the end, didn’t it?

Korologos: Oh my, yes. We got in the middle of Watergate, and that’s when he said, “[Well, there they go.] See No evil, Hear No Evil, and Evil,” and that shook us all up, but he stuck, for a very long time stuck with President Nixon. He didn’t abandon early. He kind of felt like the rest of us did, that, “Gosh, Nixon and [John N.] Mitchell are too smart to let this thing happen,” so we started believing it. Then tapes came out, an accumulation, an accumulation, and we all finally said, “Oh my gosh, this is out of control,” and that’s when I did the final vote count for President Nixon. Before that last tape was released on the Friday, the tape that talked about the cover-up and money stuff, we were sitting there with forty votes in the Senate. We could have beat it. But then it fell apart and we were down to about six. I can’t tell you that Dole was one of them, because I counted about five or six and everybody else had gone. Told the president and told the White House staffers, “Hey, we got a problem here,” which is what President Nixon meant when he said, “I’ve lost my political base,” that night that he resigned.

Williams: Did Nixon ever talk to you about Senator Dole? Was he a subject of conversation between you and the president?

Korologos: Not particularly, except for, “Tell Dole to do this. Tell Dole to do that.” I remember once instance—I can’t remember. He said, “Go tell Dole about the 3 Ms,” [Sen. George] McGovern, something, and something.

Williams: [Sen. Daniel Patrick] Moynihan and—

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Korologos: No, Moynihan was a friend. McGovern—oh my. I’m drawing a blank on the other two. So I ran up and told him, and he thought that was a pretty good crack. I don’t know if he ever used it. Another time I remember, I was the Senate liaison at the time—I should have said that at the beginning—at the White House, and I had Senator Jim [James B.] Allen, Democrat, Alabama, who was a big supporter of the president’s. Gosh, he was a good patriot. I was down there with him. For some reason Dole happened to be there, and Nixon said, “Come here. Come here, both of ya.” He called me and Dole over, and Senator Allen was there and he told Dole, “I don’t want anybody running against this guy in Alabama. Ya hear that?” pointing his finger at Dole. Dole said, “[stutters] Sure. Yes, sir. Okay. Sounds good to me.” [laughs] And I don’t know whatever happened, but they might have had a token candidate run against Allen, and old Allen was thrilled to death. He voted with us on everything, old Jim Allen, and Nixon was loyal to his friends. That was another instance of Dole getting in the middle of something.

Williams: You were asked to become the senatorial liaison because of your experience with Senator [Robert] Bennett [Utah], is that correct?

Korologos: Correct. Yes, sir.

Williams: How did you begin your and Nixon? What was that like?

Korologos: I went down to the White House as an assistant to a man named Gene Cowan, who was [Sen.] Hugh Scott’s former administrative assistant, and they beefed up the staff a little bit. Interestingly enough, I got there on April Fool’s Day, 1971, April first. What they wanted to do, Cowan and Scott were perceived as—I figured this out later; it didn’t occur to me for a long time—were perceived as the liberal wing, and we needed help with the conservatives. We were down to—I can’t remember how many Senate votes we had for the Republicans, and we needed Democrat support. Well, it was easier for Wallace Bennett’s guy to go talk to [Sen. James O.] Eastland and [Sen. John This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 5

C.] Stennis and Allen and [Sen. John J.] Sparkman and [Sen. John L.] McClellan and all those boll-weevils from the Democratic side of the Senate than it was for Hugh Scott’s guy, because senators tend to look through you, right through you, just like you’re a pane of glass, and see where you came from. “Oh, Wallace Bennett’s guy. He’s one of us.” “Oh, Hugh Scott’s guy. He’s kind of liberal.” So I figured that out a little bit, and indeed those southerners became very good friends. I became very close to Eastland, very close to Stennis. It helped a lot on the defense stuff and on the end-the-war stuff and the confirmations with Eastland on those judges that we went through. During all those years when Dole was at the RNC, actually in the Senate it was good to have a senator at the RNC, because he played hardball politics. It was good to work with him and feed him stuff that he would either use on the campaign trail or on the floor. So he was a good soldier. Then when it all collapsed, my gosh, it collapsed.

Williams: You say hardball. Can you give me some examples of how he worked with the other members?

Korologos: It wasn’t so much the other members in the Senate, although I didn’t much see that. I would talk to him quite a bit about helping us with a vote or two here and there, but he was so partisan. When you’re Republican national chairman, you’re very partisan. You’ve got to stand on the TV shows and denounce and decry and lament everything that the opposition does. So he wasn’t that good a help with the middle-of- the-road Democrats, but he sure was good with the party and getting our story told on TV and on the talk shows, what passed for talk shows in that days. Not like the screaming heads that we have today. But we had another couple of guys at the White House, used to write speeches for him, and I’d pitch in and get an oar or two in some of those. I wasn’t a speechwriter by any stretch, but we would make suggestions and they would put it into wordsmiths.

Williams: This must have been a heady time for you, I would think, as a pretty young man and suddenly in fine company and whatnot.

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Korologos: Well, yeah, it was kind of exciting. I used to say a Greek bartender’s son now works in the White House. My dad, when I went to Washington the first time, he was a big Democrat, and when Senator Bennett signed me up to go to Washington, he called his buddy up and said, “I’m a Republican now.” Then by golly, when [Vice President Spiro T.] Agnew got on the ticket, a Greek got on the ticket, boy, all those guys turned. The ethnicity came through. Yeah, it was heady times, but I kind of was careful. My late wife [Joy G. Korologos] and I were careful not to let it go to our head. The beauty of having been in Washington for ten years before you go to the Kennedy Center, to the White House car, to the fancy lunches, was that we’d been there. We’d been in campaigns. We’d put on bumper stickers. The guys that get in trouble in this town—and I’m digressing from Dole a bit—are the guys that come in fresh from the outside, that were on the campaign trail with the president, and get to go to all these perky and beautiful things, and get in trouble because it goes to their head. I can cite how far back you want to go, all the [Jimmy] Carter guys that got in trouble, some of the Nixon guys that got in trouble, all those characters that overstepped their bounds. But guys like me who were political junkies kind of have had clean noses through all those years.

Williams: As the son of a Democrat, when did you find your conservative Republican roots?

Korologos: Well, I guess the first time I voted. [laughs] I suppose I voted for [Dwight D.] Eisenhower because he was a war hero, and then pretty soon started voting for Republicans in the Senate. I was in Utah. Utah is a very conservative, boll-weevil state. I was against federal aid to education. It started to grow on me. I was a reporter on a paper, then I was in the advertising business in the head corporations, and it kind of grew on me.

Williams: How did you come to Senator Bennett’s attention?

Korologos: Well, what happened is, I worked at the ad agency that handled his 1962 senatorial race against a guy named David King, and it was a tight race. I didn’t do much at the campaign except at the ad agency, doing some of the go-fer work. When the This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 7

campaign ended, his press secretary decided to go get a real job downtown and they were looking for a media person. He came to me and he said, “You’ve been around town. You worked on the paper. You worked at the AP [Associated Press]. You’re a Columbia School of Journalism graduate. You’re a big-shot media person, PR [public relations]. Find me somebody to come to my office.” I, a little slow on the uptake, “Sure.” Here a United States senator has asked me to help him find someone. So I physically went over to the Salt Lake Tribune paper, stood in the newsroom and looked around the newsroom, said, “I wonder who of these guys that I could hopefully tap to go to Washington to work with Senator Bennett to be supportive.” And I came back to myself and said, “Holy smoke, boy, am I slow. Me!” And I went back and told him, “I found somebody who’s very good.” He said, “Who?” “Me.” “You? Holy cow.” Which led to a couple of funny things. Went to Washington on Thanksgiving in 1962, called me over to go on a Friday, and I walked in the door and he saw me with my suitcase and he said, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” I said, “No, the question is, what is a Grecian urn?” [laughs] So we laughed. I was the first non-Mormon he hired. In Utah the demographics are changing. There were a lot of other—I was married to a Mormon; I knew more about the Mormon Church than most Mormons because the ad agency I worked at handling the church account. He said, “Do you smoke?” I said, “No, no, I don’t.” He turned to his administrative assistant, Ralph Mecham, said, “Well, I guess we can hire him.” Didn’t ask could I write a declarative sentence, how Republican are you, how do you feel about anything. Wanted to know if I smoked. He didn’t want anybody from the State of Utah sitting in his office smoking when the Mormons and others came by. He was the son-in-law of a former president of the Mormon Church, so that was pretty good. Then what happened to me—gosh, I’m telling more about me than I am Bob Dole. What happened is that I became what he called a belligerent ally of the Mormons. I was an outsider; I was a Greek that defended the Mormons, and I would do it with some pizzazz, and I wouldn’t take any prisoners when they needed support. Mormon Church This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 8 guys would come in and say, “Gee whiz, we appreciate what you’re doing as an outsider.” It gave credibility to my defense of their causes. Dole and Bennett had a good relationship through the years. Eventually Dole got on the Finance Committee where Bennett was. He was ranking Republican. He was a good solid vote. He was a smart guy, very political, and they hit it off fairly well.

Williams: So when you were doing the senatorial liaison for Nixon, what were some of the issues that you were going up to the Hill about?

Korologos: Well, in those days mostly, gosh, day and night, day and night, and the war amendments, Vietnam War, Cooper Church, Mansfield, troop withdrawals, too many troops overseas. Every other week we’d have an end-the-war amendment, whether it was somebody would withhold funds, just like is happening today. We would beat them back, we’d lose one, win one. It was always within a vote or two. We worked those to a fare-thee-well. I remember we got Dole and others to help us with the outside groups, the veterans, he was thick with the disabled veterans, the VFWs and the Legions and the what-have-yous, to drum up support. What we didn’t know was Nixon and [Henry] Kissinger used to come up to me and say—I’d give a report to them. There was a vote Friday, on the end of war. “Can you delay it till Monday?” “Let me see what I can do.” So we’d go up and fool around, delay it till Monday. Then Monday vote. “What time’s the vote?” “Well, at noon.” “Can you do it at five?” Well, what had happened is Kissinger was over in France talking to Le Duc Tho, cutting deals for peace at hand thing, and of course we didn’t know any of that, and he needed time so that they didn’t undercut him going to a meeting with the Viet Cong over there and, “You just lost your vote.” It would hurt Henry’s leveraging. All those days it was touch and go, delaying it here, thwarting it there. I remember Stennis and others on the floor would do it. We did a lot of shenanigans. We were a minority. We had to work harder.

Williams: Did you go up as a team or was it pretty much you? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 9

Korologos: Pretty much me and two or three other guys used to go. We had small groups then. The job was a one-and-a-half-person job, but we had an assistant once in a while to do things. Then you had confirmations that you had to worry about, so constantly we were up there spending all day and all night up in the Capitol doing our thing, where you’d go in the back rooms and there’d be senators and there’d be guys like Dole and Eastland and [Sen. John O.] Pastore, just yakking away. That was one of the good things about those days. The back rooms were filled with camaraderie and conversation and a bottle of Chivas or two, and what ended up happening is the relationships would grow from both sides of the aisle, and we used to win.

Williams: You were making contact with Democrats as well as Republicans.

Korologos: Oh my, yes. All the time. We never had the votes to do it on our own. I should look up the numbers, what they were in those days.

Williams: What do you have to say about the [Gerald R.] Ford presidency and President Ford’s selection of Dole to be his running mate?

Korologos: Well, the Ford presidency was fascinating to me personally. First of all, President Nixon/Agnew went away in a sad sort of a situation, and President Nixon called us all down to say that he had selected Jerry. He called the group together, had selected Gerry Ford to be the vice president. Well, we called the leadership down, and when the president announced it was all fine and wonderful, for the first time under the constitutional amendment he had to be confirmed by both the Senate and the House. So I said to him, “We’ve got to get moving here. We’ve got to get you confirmed on both sides.” I had done a lot of Senate confirmations. The first time in history we had done a House confirmation. So we prepped him and got it going, and it was hard getting Democrats to vote for Ford, because Watergate was brewing and a lot of Democrats said, “It’s conceivable I’m voting for a President of the United States that’s a Republican.” It was in the air in a lot This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 10 of circles that Nixon was in trouble and that he could really get impeached or leave, and here was the next president. The other thing that happened before that is that Nixon asked a lot of senators, Republicans and Democrats alike, “Give me your counsel on who you want to be vice president. Who should we select?” And I remember going to the Hill. I was getting envelopes. I got them from Bob [Sen. Robert C.] Byrd and [Sen. Bill.] Brock. Nixon in the worst way wanted to select [Former Texas Governor and Treasury Secretary] John Connally, and Connally had defected. He was a Democrat that had gone Republican, and I remember Senator Byrd of West Virginia, he was Minority [Whip-TK] or something at the time, said, “Tom, if he selects Connally, there will be blood coming on the floor through that door of this Senate.” See, he was a defector. He pissed off the barracudas on both sides. So what he ended up doing was, you’d pass these back and pretty soon they chose Ford. Hugh Scott was unhappy that he didn’t get selected, because he thought he had a deal with Nixon that he would not pick Scott or Ford. They were both leaders at the time, used to come to leadership meetings. Somehow or other, I don’t know how Scott got it in his head. I told his staff, I said, “You know, the trouble with senators and presidents and leaders is they talk like Casey Stengel; nobody knows what they mean. They go around Robin Hood’s barn, and yes, and so who knows what got through somebody’s head. So he named Ford and we got him confirmed both through the House and through the Senate.

Williams: So did you work long with the Ford administration?

Korologos: I was there a year. The other thing we wanted to do was cleanse ourselves from Watergate. A lot of people thought I was Deep Throat, and I laughed at that. Frankly, I didn’t think there was a Deep Throat; still don’t. Never mind that guy, senile that he was, they outed him, [Mark] Felt. I don’t think any one person knew all that stuff. I’m absolutely convinced that nobody knew—Nixon didn’t know all that stuff. Nobody knew all that stuff. I think Deep Throat was an amalgamation of a whole lot of leaks, and Deep Throat was an excuse to get another source. I’m a conspiracy theorist. So they named Felt as the culprit. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 11

But during all those days, the Ford presidency evolved into a very positive—“Our long national nightmare is over.” Then we had the leadership come down for a meeting with the new president-to-be in the East Room. Nixon went away and gave one of those. Sad as could be. Everybody was down in the dumps. The leaders were ready to come in to meet the new president. He’d been president now twenty-five yards from the East Room to the Red Room, where he was going to meet and greet, and I stood there with him and said, “Mr. President, sir, can we start the meeting with the leaders?” He said, “Sure. Who you got down here?” Well, I did a naughty thing. The leaders were standing over there by the door and I was here looking at them, and Jerry Ford was in front of me, looking at me. I saw all those guys waiting, and I talked and talked and talked for show, to show all those guys the president and I were having a tête-à-tête, having a big long conversation. I can’t remember what—I filibustered for the longest time, could have been two or three minutes, just yakking away. I said, “Oh, here they are.” Never mind they’d been standing there for five minutes. So as they started to come in, President Ford said, “Now, you listen to me.” He said, “You are the only Senate person I have around here. Everybody else is a House person.” Timmons . Even guys like [Bob] Hartman and everybody else, [John] Marsh, all those guys were House guys. “You are the only Senate person I have.” He used the word creature. “You’re the only Senate creature I got. Don’t you let anybody talk you into leaving.” Well, the president’s not been president twenty minutes and he’s just hired me. I’ve got two or three kids, I’m out of a job. What’s going to happen to all of us Nixon guys? So he just hired me, and I’m happy as a clam. My gosh, the president’s hired me. So when the party and reception was over, I went down to the White House mess for lunch, and all the Nixon people were down there. I remember saying in a loud voice, in an obnoxious way, “You Nixon guys are in a heap of trouble.” [laughs] The president had just hired me. Then we hit it off pretty good.

Williams: But you only stayed with Ford for about a year.

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Korologos: Correct. Then we left and opened our own company, Timmons & Company. Where I continued to do Republican things. I continued to do confirmations. We had corporate clients that we’d go up and see senators about, so nothing changed really, except I was doing it for money instead of love.

Williams: Did you have any role in the selection of Bob Dole for the running mate?

Korologos: I was at the Convention in the back rooms, running the official proceedings for the Convention, and it was the craziest thing. At the time everybody thought [Sen. Howard [H.] Baker [Jr.] was going to be one of the guys, and then they started talking about they needed somebody to hit the ground running, a farm bill. No, I can’t say I had anything to do with it except that the president chose Dole because of his RNC days, as I say, hit the ground running and be going. Now, Dole was at the Convention, and he and I went to the platform hearings. I remember we got our picture on the front page of Parade magazine before the selection was made, and it ran, and I was pointing like this. It was kind of a great photo, and Parade guessed before the choice was made. This was a stock picture they had of Dole and I sitting there, and it became kind of a good prediction, a good thing. Dole got nominated, and I’ll never forget he was, of course, happy to get it and so on, and he was on the podium, way the hell up there, and I was down in the audience. I went like this [gestures] and he went like this [gestures], that we had pulled it off. He was great.

Williams: Did you play any role in his campaigning?

Korologos: Not so much. We were all working for President Ford, and when the Convention was over, he went off. I didn’t do much in that race, no. I did more in the other one when he was involved and ran in ’96. I didn’t do that much with him. Can’t say that I did.

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Williams: I’ve read the observation that President Ford preferred to go play golf during that campaign and that Bob Dole was the one that was really carrying the heavy weight. Is that true?

Korologos: Oh, I don’t know that that’s true. No. Ford campaigned well. I never heard that, but Dole did a lot of heavy lifting and was out doing a lot of campaigning. I remember one of the states that they wished they’d beaten was Delaware, was late coming in. A couple of electoral votes and Dole would have been vice president. I remember he said to me or somebody, “Gadurn it, another week might have been vice president,” because it was moving toward Ford.

Williams: Any other observations that he shared with you about that particular campaign?

Korologos: Not that I can remember. We were around him a lot, but I can’t remember.

Williams: You assisted him in the leadership battle that occurred in 1984, I think that was.

Korologos: Right.

Williams: Tell me about that.

Korologos: Well, there were five or seven of them running for Leader, and what I told him is, “You’ve got to get a conservative to nominate you and a liberal to second you, or vice versa, whatever you can do. Remember it’s the first lowest guy in the totem pole out.” And eventually—boy, I’ll tell you, Senator [Ted] Stevens thought he had it. Who else ran? Did [Sen. Bob] Griffin run?

Williams: [Pete V.] Domenici?

Korologos: [Sen. Pete] Domenici ran. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 14

Williams: [Sen. James A.] McClure.

Korologos: McClure. They all thought they had it. I have a saying, and I told it to him, he went around getting votes, it’s an iconoclastic thing, I said, “It’s secret ballot, and senators lie.” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Senators lie. You’ll have fifty votes. Never mind there are only forty senators. They lie. They all want you to think they voted for you.” I told that to Stevens, I told that to all of them, and they said, “I didn’t believe you. You’re absolutely right.” It got so bad in some of those leadership races that Senate leaders would have guys watching how long did it take to write out “Dole,” D-o-l-e, versus Domenici, versus Byrd, versus Kennedy, so they changed the ballot to a checkoff, to an x, rather than writing the name out, because people would watch and see whose name are you writing down. He had a felt pen. “Ah, I’m going to look at that ballot and see how he voted.” The hardest thing to handicap in the world in this town is a leadership race. The senators from the same state won’t vote for you because they don’t want him to get ahead of you. Senators who are number two on your committee, i.e., [Sen. Bob] Packwood and then [Sen. John C.] Danforth, went all out to vote for Dole for Leader because it got him out of the Finance Committee, it made Packwood chairman of Finance, and it made Danforth chairman of Commerce, because the dominos all fell. Conservatives don’t necessarily vote for conservatives. Liberals don’t vote for liberals. A lot of the old bulls vote for the senior guy whose time has come. Nobody can handicap it. It’s impossible. As I told [Sen. Alan] Simpson, as I told [Sen.] Trent Lott, and I’ve told guys, even [Sen.] Lamar Alexander last year, “It’s secret ballot and senators lie.” One senator that they all can name told all three of them that they were voting for them, and they all laughed about it. So to that end I remember they went to the leadership meeting, and Howard Greene, my friend—are you going to interview Howard Greene? Secretary of the majority.

Williams: I think we may, yes.

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Korologos: Well, let him tell you this story, and don’t tell him I told you this, but he was counting the votes in the back and he went like this [gestures] to respond to Dole, and Dole said, “Me?” And Howard said, “Yes.” And then they announced that it was Dole, and Dole was Leader. He and Elizabeth [Dole] came up with a dog, and they had a party in the Finance Committee room. It was all wonderful and warm and lovely. But then Howard immediately, when the vote was over—I went up to his office, must have been ninety degrees outside, and he had a fire in the fireplace. I said, “What are you doing?” They were all burning the ballots. He’d burned the ballots so nobody could come and see them or repeat them or to look and see how they voted. He was burning the bloody ballots. That’s how serious it gets. There are even other stories about when Bob Byrd—you’re not supposed to vote proxies, but when Byrd ran for Leader, Senator [Richard] Russell was dying at Walter Reed [Army Medical Center], and they took his vote and put it by proxy. It had been signed. The letter’s like this. It had been signed up and down, and there was some question whether Russell had died before or after the vote. He died at three o’clock in the afternoon. When is this stuff going to run? [laughs] I’m not sure I should be saying some of these things. But they used his proxy, and Byrd beat Russell Long, and I guess [Sen. Edward M.] Kennedy was running at the time, too for leader. So that is a hard thing to handicap and it’s a lot of luck involved, and they went from bad cop to good cop. Like what happened to Trent Lott this time around; they beat Lamar Alexander because we’ve now got the minority. We’ve got to have somebody in there who knows what he’s doing and somebody that can raise Cain with the Democrats rather than a nice guy. So Dole followed Baker, didn’t he? Yes, I guess he did. He was a good Leader. He came around. That’s when I started hanging out in his office and knew him better.

Williams: Was he your candidate?

Korologos: All the senators, my gosh, I told them all they’re my candidate. I hung around the Senate. I was a Senate creature. They were all my candidate. What could I do? I was just a lobbyist walking the streets. I told them all the same thing, “Get a This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 16 conservative and a liberal to nominate you, and get somebody that’s off the wall.” I told them all that.

Williams: So Dole became Leader and then you became one of his very best friends.

Korologos: Well, yes, I’d like to think I was that before. [laughs]

Williams: Oh, okay.

Korologos: When he was chairman of the Committee. We had a lot of doings on the Committee. When he was chairman of the Finance Committee we had a lot of dealings with Anheiser-Busch, with airplane stuff for Eastern Airlines at the time. We saved the airline. Yes, we had a lot of doings together, and then he became Leader and, of course, I hung out in there a lot and advised and talked to him on a daily basis.

Williams: What did “hanging out” mean?

Korologos: Hanging out means you go to his office and you sit in the reception room waiting. He’d come in and say, “What’s cooking’?” And you’d sit down and B.S. for a while. Sometime he’d call me in and sometime other senators would come in. I became a fifth wheel in the operation. I had the wherewithal and the luck that senators liked me and that he let me stay in the meetings. I’d get up to leave, once in a while he’d say, “Sit still.” The one time I did leave is when Senator Packwood resigned. I was in there with him and they got to talking. I said, “I’m getting the heck out of here. I ain’t voting in this thing.” But the other thing that we got to doing together when he was Leader was I became Nixon’s Washington guy. Nixon used to call me all the time and I used to call Nixon. Nixon, when he was rehabilitating himself up in New York, would call me up and he’d say, “Bring in the freshmen senators. Get Dole to bring them up.” “All right, sir.” There would be four or five freshman Republican senators. Dole would get us a plane and go up to Teterboro and wander over to New York and have Chinese food with Nixon. I’d give him a memo or something on what they were all This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 17 doing, who they all were. He and [Sen. Lauch] Faircloth would talk about Nixon’s debate with [Nikita] Khrushchev in the kitchen. Then another time I was up there with Dole when Senator Danforth decided he wasn’t running. Dole took the call and he went in and told Nixon, and we were all chagrined. So I became Nixon’s Washington guy. Then Dole did an interesting thing. He brought him down, brought him to Washington and he’d park him in his office in the back room there at the Leader’s office at four or five o’clock in the afternoon, serve drinks, and usher in senators to go listen to Nixon tour the world. Nixon knew what the hell he was talking about, but what Nixon did is he’d call me up and he’d say, “What’s going on in the Senate?” I was the world’s leading expert on the Senate from the outside. Then he’d call John Lehman up. He’d say, “What’s going on in defense?” Former Secretary of the Navy. Then he’d call somebody else up. “What’s going on in the banks?” Then he’d call somebody else up, “What’s going on here?” And he was doing his own little tutorial, and it was like going to school. So we’d bring him down, and he knew a hell of a lot about a lot of things. He’d tour the world. He was great on foreign affairs. He didn’t need notes. Two memorable ones when Dole brought him down was he and [Rep.] Bob Michel—don’t hold me to what anniversary it was; it was an anniversary of Nixon’s inauguration. Twenty years, was it? Or whatever. Might have been. Twenty-five. So he had this big dinner in not the Mansfield Room, the other room. It was the other room, the Johnson Room. And Byrd was there, all the Democrat senators, and I happened to be—Dole had me come in there because I was Nixon’s guy. Nixon gave a tour of the world that was great. Then I’ll never forget, Byrd stood up and said the funniest thing. He said, “I want everybody to know that two or three months ago I was going to Russia,” he was the Leader, “and I was going to see [Mikhail] Gorbachev.” He said, “Well, I decided to call President Carter about, ‘Hey, I’m supposed to see Gorbachev. What do you think?’ And he told me some things which were okay. Then I called Jerry Ford and said, ‘Hey, I’m about to go see Carter [sic],” and he said some things. Then I called Nixon.” He said, “My gosh, it’s as though he knew I was calling him. He gave me this tour. Said, ‘You tell him just because this election is up, that there is not going to be any change in American policy, and you tell him that, and you tell him this, and you tell him This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 18 that.” And that’s how he introduced Nixon. And he said, “It’s as though Nixon knew I was calling him.” When Nixon stood up he said, “Bob, I gave up bugging a long time ago. I didn’t know you were calling.” [laughs] So he praised Nixon for the knowledge that he had, and Dole put that together. Then another one he put together, he got to the Democrats to put one on. Byrd put one on in his office for the Democrats, and I remember I went there to the Appropriations Committee room where Byrd was hanging out in the Capitol, and they brought in all these Democrats that had voted against and were charging Nixon with all kinds of high crimes and misdemeanors during the Watergate days, and Nixon gave them a tour de force of that, and they were sitting there with their mouths agape. Senator [Carl] Levin, I remember, told me afterwards that, “My gosh, I can’t believe that this guy, he was such the devil incarnate and here he is, I’m sitting here talking to him. It was so valuable and so good an experience.” Then Dole did another interesting thing. He’d bring Nixon down. What was Dole’s driver’s name? Wilbur? Was that Dole’s driver? I said, “I need the car. I’ve got to pick up Nixon.” He said, “Take Wilbur.” So Wilbur and I go down to—Nixon used to stay at 1 Dupont Circle. Not Dupont. Washington Circle in a hotel over there. So I go down with Wilbur to get the car to pick up Nixon. We pick up Nixon. We had to be there at the Capitol at one o’clock, and Wilbur is going this way. I said, “Wilbur, the Capitol is the other way.” He said, “No, we’ve got to go to the Watergate. Senator Dole likes to go from the Watergate.” I said, “Wilbur, we’re going to the Capitol. I know the way.” Come to find out that he had this mindset of only going to the Capitol only from the Watergate. I told Dole that. He said, “Well, you know, take it easy on Wilbur.” So finally we get up there and he put Nixon in the back room, and he’d call in senators to talk to Nixon, five and three and seven at a time. And I sat there all afternoon one day for two or three hours. Then Dole would go out in the hall and get tourists, people from Kansas come in to see the senator. “Hey, want to see the president? Come on in. Come on in. See Nixon.” And he’d call them in to see Nixon. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 19

Then he went down and got the waitresses in the Senate dining room, brought them up. Then he got the pages. Then he got the people off the street. Nixon’s in there talking. They’d come in and they’d sit there. Then they had the Senate photographer take a picture of all these people. I thought Nixon was going to blow his stack, and he loved it. He loved it. He said, “That guy knows people. It’s amazing what he knows about people.” He got the guy that cleaned the bathrooms in the back and in the Senate cloakroom and the Senate Marble Room, and he brought them all in there to see and shake hands with Nixon. The staff off the floor. He reveled in this, and he was so good at thinking about other people. Then when Dole decided to run for president, he called me. “Let’s go see Nixon.” I said, “Fine.” Called him up. Nixon said, “Anytime you want.” So I went up and we had a sandwich, and Nixon sat down with him. It’s the quietest I’ve ever seen Dole in my life. He sat there and listened to every word Nixon said for an hour nonstop. I remember Nixon said, “You’ve got to do what I did. You’ve got to go out and get commitments from governors. You’ve got to get endorsements. You’ve got to go out and get delegates. You’ve got to start now. No, don’t resign. Your first job is to elect a Republican Senate first. Then you decide to run. Don’t let on you’re doing it,” and on and on, just crass political counseling. And Dole sat there and he looked at me. I tried to take notes and tried to remember half the stuff he said. Just the three of us in the room. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Here’s Nixon, Dole, and me, these two great political characters in there talking about the next presidency.

Williams: Did they talk as equals or was Dole deferential to the president in particular?

Korologos: He was so deferential, he didn’t say a word. He just listened. You know how Dole is, impatient as hell. He doesn’t take to too many conversations like that. Yes, I guess it was equals because he was like a little kid in school learning from the master.

Williams: This was prior to the ’88?

Korologos: I don’t know. I guess it was prior to the—when did Dole run for president? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 20

Williams: He ran in ’80 against Reagan.

Korologos: No, it wasn’t that one. It was the other one.

Williams: It was ’88 against [George H.W.] Bush.

Korologos: Yes.

Williams: Wow.

Korologos: That one and then the other one when he—Nixon didn’t much like Bush for some reason. I guess one of the reasons, he never called him. Nixon didn’t like [Vice President Dan] Quayle. I think one of the reasons he didn’t like Quayle is Quayle called Nixon and invited him to come to the Capitol, and Nixon took umbrage to that. “He should come see me.”

Williams: So tell me about what your observations are in terms of Dole’s leadership style. What kind of a leader was he?

Korologos: It was a different type of leadership style, that he would let them go into the room and beat each other up. I was in there one time, we were working on something, it was a veto. No, that was another time. I’ll tell you that story later. What it was, was some issue they had to decide, and it was as contentious as could be. The Republicans are fighting with each other and just screaming and hollering. I sat in the other office; I could listen to all this in the outside of his office over there. He came out and I said, “What are you doing out here? Why aren’t you in there?” “Oh,” he said, “we’re making progress.” “Making progress? They’re going to kill each other.” “Oh, no. You kidding me? That’s good. Let ‘em.” He sat down and we had a cup of coffee. I said, “Shouldn’t you be in there?” This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 21

“Oh, let ‘em work it out.” And it did. It settled down. That was his leadership style. “Work it out” was his mantra. And sure enough, they worked it out. And he was a good lobbyist. When President Bush vetoed—I’ll never forget, he vetoed the communications bill, the Telecom Act of some kind, and Dole was working like hell. He used to go to them and say, “Now I’m a leader and you’re going to follow me. You understand that? I’m either going to lead or not. You tell me whether you’re going to follow me. I’m your leader. This is different. This isn’t the issue. The issue has disappeared. This is to support the president.” And I’d hear him say that to them in no uncertain terms, and they’d quiver. Sure enough, he cut deals with more than one or two guys. Some guys wanted somebody from their own state to be ambassador to somewhere, and go down and tell Bush. Gosh, he called me one day, told me one day that he went down there and one senator was on the fence. “What are you doing?” “Well, they want to appoint my guy ambassador,” to something or other. So Dole told me that he told Bush this, and Bush picked up the phone and called personnel and said, “Why are we making this guy ambassador?” Dole told me the president said, “I don’t care how bad he is. Name him ambassador.” [laughs] And Dole came back and said, “Well, we got his vote.” I’m not going to tell you who it was, because the guy is still around. “We got his vote.” [laughs] I mean, he worked it. As much as Dole and Bush got in a squabble over “Quit lying about my record,” he was a good leader for Bush. He was always there. His leadership style was one of work ‘em hard, stay till it could be worked out. He was there day and night. I remember the gun bills. I remember when they closed the government down over the question of debt ceiling or whatever that turned out. He was a good leader, and they respected him. He got along with [Sen. George] Mitchell, always shook hands. That’s different today. Always shook hands with Mitchell. They fought like crazy. I remember President Bush came to Dole’s office once and they went in and it was a surprise drop-in. They yakked away for a while. I was sitting there. Looking back on this, I don’t know how in the hell I got away with just sitting there day and night in his office. Yeah, I did some lobbying and got paid for doing some stuff, but I got a lot done in there. So Bush came in and we’d sit there and yak away, and he said, “Come on. Let’s go.” This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 22

Bush said, “Where are we going?” He said, “We’re going over to see Mitchell.” “Going to see Mitchell?” “Yeah. Come on.” White House staff wasn’t on the agenda. [laughs] Oh my goodness. Baloney. They’d traipse down and see Mitchell in the Leader’s office. I didn’t go to that. But he came back, said the funniest thing. He said, “We walked in and here’s the President of the United States in George Mitchell’s leadership office, said, ‘Hi. Is George here?’ And the staff all quivered and they went out and got him.” Mitchell was in a meeting with two guys from Maine on some—I don’t want to say sewer thing, but some diversion of some water thing that they were working on. Mitchell bounced out of his chair and said, “Gee whiz, yeah, gosh, I’ll be right back,” he told the guys. Mitchell, being smart as hell, said, “Come on. I want you to meet a couple of guys from Maine.” Leaders don’t forget from where they came, and Dole didn’t either. They’re from Kansas first. You ain’t getting elected in Kansas in Maine, you ain’t gonna be Leader long. And Mitchell and Dole did that. I’ll tell you another story about Dole in a minute on that score. So he took Bush in to see these two guys from Maine. “What brings you here?” “Well, we got this sewer diversion thing and we can’t fix this thing, and the Interior Department and the water something or other.” And Bush said, “Well, we can handle that.” And Mitchell said to the guys, “See? Anything else I can do for you?” And Dole was laughing up a storm. Dole did that a lot, too. When he was Leader, we brought Nixon to Kansas for a book signing and a dinner and a thing. I remember saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and Senator Bob Dole,” I said on the microphone. They all went out and Nixon gave this big long speech. What Dole had done, smart as can be, he bought Nixon’s book and he had stacks of them around to give to the people that came. Must have been a hundred people in the room, all ga-ga over Nixon coming to Kansas. We had preplanned it and arranged it and got Nixon a private plane. He used Air Dole, you know, one of those jets that he commandeered from the private sector somewhere. Can’t do it today. So Nixon started autographing these books, and one of Nixon staff guys says, “His time’s up. He’s got to go. He should have gone an hour ago.” This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 23

I’d go to President Nixon, I’d say, “Hey, what do you think?” He said, “Are you kidding? I love this. Bring ‘em on.” And it’s still twenty, thirty more people. “What’s your name?” “I’m Charlie.” “Charlie. What’s your name? Hey, come over here.” Nixon had a ball doing this, and old Dole was parading these guys around, not forgetting Kansas. I have to tell you another story that was fun. I got him into trouble once. I got him into trouble a lot. But this particular time we were working on a railroad strike bill, and it was two, three o’clock in the morning. The House was working on the Bill. The Senate was waiting. He got up and went to the Senate, said, “I deem the bill passed.” “Fine with me.” Everybody went home. The bill was deemed passed, hadn’t even passed the House yet. Kind of broke every rule of precedent there was, I guess, because you had to break the railroad strike. One of the first things that happens when the railroad strike becomes known to the people is when McDonald’s runs out of French fries. Potatoes are freshly shipped to McDonald’s nationwide, and when they don’t get there, people start suffering. That was the first indication that there was a strike and it was going to hurt America because McDonald’s ran out of French fries. So they passed the bill, the thing passed. Dole came in and said to Sheila [Burke], “What’s my schedule tomorrow?” And she said, “You’re doing this at eight and nine, early in the morning, ten, eleven. At noon you and Speaker [Rep. Thomas S.] Foley are meeting the Dalai Lama.” “The Dalai Lama? What am I doing with Dalai Lama? I don’t want to do that.” “Yes, you are. The Dalai Lama is coming up the steps. It’s a big deal. The Speaker is going to meet him out at the back steps.” So he turns to me. He said, “Hey, Korologos, you hang around these Greek priests all the time. How do you address the Dalai Lama?” I said, “That’s easy. [singing] Hello, Dolly, so glad seeing you, Dolly.” So, fast forward, the next day I’m hanging out, wandering around the halls, and every cop, every staffer, all the pages, “The Leader’s looking for you. The Leader’s looking for you. Dole’s looking for you.” One of them said, “Dole’s looking for you. He’s madder than hell.” This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 24

“So what he’s mad at me for?” So I finally found him. I said, “You’re looking for me, boss?” He said, “Yeah, you got me in trouble.” I said, “What do you mean, I got you in trouble? What’d I do?” He said, come to find out, when Dole and Foley were waiting for the Dalai Lama to drive up in his car, he turned around to the international media and started singing, “Hello, Dolly, it’s so long…” and it became a full-blown international incident, and he’s mad at me because I told him to do that, like it always happens. So that was one of the funny stories that I remember. Another time Elizabeth started—he went to testify for her to be Secretary of Labor or Transportation or something. I remember he got in there, he said, “I regret that I have but one wife to give to my country.” [laughs] You know who is good, who you ought to interview, is Tymchuck, the speechwriter who works for Senator Smith in Oregon, Kerry Tymchuck. Kerry was great. He did the analysis—he’s the one who figured out it was Nixon’s twenty-fifth anniversary and it was this D-Day and this, that. He was a great speechwriter. He did a lot of stuff for Dole. Might be useful to the history. Brien, I don’t know. Is there any more? Have I shot my wad?

Williams: We’ve just begun. [laughs] Were there other times when Dole upbraided you or got mad at you?

Korologos: Oh yeah. One time we were voting on something and he told me who was one of the guys who wouldn’t vote for us. By god, I’m a lobbyist. I get paid to hustle votes. So we hammered his home state, put some heat on him, and he heard about it from the senator. “How do they know I wasn’t voting for you?” “Goddamn it, I told you, Korologos, you shouldn’t have done that. You got me in trouble.” He’d wax hot and cold sometimes. You never crossed him. I don’t have any regrets about doing that because, “Dole, you’re not paying me. This guy is. My client is.” So that was one time, but he got over it. Another time that he—come to find out, I didn’t learn this for a while. You never bothered him when he was in there eating. When he was sitting there having lunch, he This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 25 did not want to talk. I did it once or twice, and he’d go, “Not right now.” So I’d leave and feel bad for a while, but then I’d make up.

Williams: I’ve read people who have said that there always seems like there’s a little bit of anger just below the surface. He could quickly be upset. Is that true?

Korologos: He had some anger below the surface, but he never showed it. He’d take it out on me once in a while instead of other senators and other staffers, and I didn’t mind it. He would get unhappy with certain senators he would come and grouse at me about, “That guy drives me crazy.” They’d say how we handled it. I’d say, “Yeah, forget it. That’s him all the time. He grouses at everybody.”

Williams: So you obviously had reached a comfort level where even if he was talking harshly to you, you knew that you could come back the next day and it would be okay.

Korologos: Yes, pretty much. I’m getting nervous that I’m overplaying my role in his office. I was there a lot. I wasn’t his number one guy. My gosh, he had Sheila, he had— what’s his name, that went to the Truckers? I’ve drawn a blank. [Jim Widdinghill-TK] He had a good staff. He had Rod [Roderick A.] DeArment, he had—gosh, I’ve been gone too long. All those guys on the committee that were there with him on the substantive stuff more than I was. He and I did political talking and yakking back and forth. I didn’t get into chasing amendments on the tax bills and all that. Those guys were good.

Williams: I was going to ask you about some of the bills or some of the big issues that came out, like healthcare and NAFTA and various other things.

Korologos: He was a good tactician. The poor guy couldn’t write, couldn’t take notes, so it was all in his head. He always had to remember and be reminded of a lot of things. You and I can sit here and take out some paper and write it down; he couldn’t do that. He had a tendency to dig deep into issues and had them all in his head. It was remarkable. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 26

Williams: What about the ’94 revolution, so to speak, with Newt Gingrich coming in and so forth? How did Dole react to that?

Korologos: In the first place, I remember that night at the vote. We were all hanging out and he had a huge party in the back when the Republicans were winning everything. The House was going Republican, and we didn’t know what the Senate was going to do. Senator Gorton looked like he might lose. It would have been a disaster because he’d have lost. So he and the other guy’s name was Jim Widdinghill and I and Elizabeth were in there looking at the votes and counting polls, and Whit called somebody and then says, “It’s okay.” He was very pleased with that. There was a point at which he did not want to go too far, because his and the Democrats and his role as a Leader was not to take the car over the cliff, which is what he didn’t do on the waiting period on guns, on the Brady Bill. He didn’t do it when they shut down the government, when he said, “That’s enough.” He didn’t keep them all in all night and all long, but he kept them in weekends sometime to vote. I remember there was a bill up. Whit got married, was getting married, one of his staff guys, and it was a Saturday on I guess it was November first. The election was November 7. They chose it, because surely the Senate would be out. They weren’t. So we all went to the wedding up someplace over in the mountains of Maryland, and ran back to do the Senate. Dole kept them working when he had to. He gave guys passes when they needed them, that knew they were running. He was a good political leader, just as tactical as could be, and they liked him. The guys liked him.

[Begin Tape 2.]

Williams: All right. Let’s talk about the 1996 presidential race.

Korologos: Well, he decided to jump into it, and I had been helping him and Elizabeth at conventions. When Elizabeth was the—what was she? Temporary chairman or something? One of those. She came to me and I was her “rabbi.” I handled all of the official proceedings. Every word she said, I scripted it. We sat down, we rehearsed it, This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 27 we went to the Dole suite wherever it was. I guess we were in Dallas, weren’t we, or somewhere, and helped her out there. Then I would help Dole at the conventions. I did all the official proceedings under the podium, scripting all the rehearsals and all that. I used to say to the party and others, “Don’t forget. This is a political convention whose sole purpose is to nominate a president and vice president. All this other stuff is nice and it’s needed and it helps the party, but in the end, somebody has to call the roll and get delegates into that hall and pass a platform and pass permanent rules and pass a convention. Sorry, all you guys, but here’s what we need to do, and you guys can take the rest of the time to do whatever you want.” So I did all the official proceedings. We were doing that, Bill Timmons and I, did that since, gosh, since ’72, I guess, or ’68. I’ve been to seven or eight conventions doing that business. So to that end, they grabbed me and I helped Elizabeth, then I helped Kay Bailey Hutchison, then I helped others. So pretty soon Dole’s fixing to run for president and he’s the heir apparent, and he lost to [Pat] Buchanan the first primary, didn’t he? I went up to Maine [New Hampshire- TK] , yeah, and was shook up. Then he got the thing and we did the convention and went to a hotel there. [Robert E.] Lighthizer was there, others who were running the policy stuff at the convention, the Dole positions on things. Some of it we made up. I’ll never forget the Voice of America guy came up to me and said, “We’d like you to do a Worldnet interview. You know Dole.” I said, “Sure.” So we did a Worldnet interview, and what that meant was that they got a bunch of—one of them was Nigeria, one was someplace else in Africa, Ethiopia, another one was in Morocco. This was a Worldnet in Africa. So I wander in, cold as hell, and now I’m on a Worldnet in Africa talking about Dole, using the usual blather about, yes, the Convention. So now we go to Nigeria and there’s a microphone thing, and I can’t see him but I can hear him. “What is the senator’s position on Nigeria?” Gosh, I didn’t know where Nigeria was. So I sat there and I said, “Well, of course Senator Dole is for the rule of law, free trade, human rights,” and something else. So, wow, headlines the next day, “Dole is For Human Rights and Free Trade and Rule of Law.” I was making all this up as I go along. What could be wrong with that? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 28

Then pretty soon the Convention got going, and it started out that I was going to be Convention manager, then Scott Reed and those guys, and Paul Manafort, all came in and finessed it away, and I got bent out of shape that they took it away from me. I had already done some work about the Convention and budget and where everybody was going to stay. We’d gone out and scoped the grounds in San Diego, where it was going to be. I went out two or three months ahead of time and came back and I’d report to him on what was going on, and send him memos and cables. Not cables. In the end, they were better at it than I would have been. I would not have done as good a job as they ended up doing, so I said, when the thing was over, I said, “The two best things that happened in this convention was you fired me and put yourselves into it,” and I commended them. But during the campaign and during the Convention I took care of Dole, and we were with him at the rehearsals for this speech and for that. The night, I’ll never forget, at the final acceptance speech, he said to me, “Is my tie straight?” I said, “Yeah, you look fine.” Fixed a piece of hair that kept falling. And I said, “You know what?” He said, “What?” I said, “You finally get to speak last at one of these things.” [laughs] He was always—and he remembered that and he used it a little later. But he did well. I scolded him once at a—I’m getting wrapped around which one it was, but he was sitting at the podium. I was in charge of the podium. He was sitting at the podium and Elizabeth was speaking. He was waving at people. One of the cameras was watching away while Elizabeth was talking, and I crawled on my hands and knees and put a note in front of him. I said, “Pay attention to Elizabeth. You’re on TV.” And he dropped everything and paid attention to Elizabeth. He’s going to get mad when he reads this, but that’s what I did. That’s what I was for. After the thing, there was great consternation among a lot of the staff when he picked [Rep. Jack] Kemp [Jr.]. Everybody was, “Kemp? Where in the hell did that come from? What was he thinking? My goodness.” I also became friends with Ellsworth during all this time. Are you going to interview [Sen. Bob] Ellsworth? You’d better interview him. He knows more about Dole than anybody. Where is Bob? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 29

Williams: I think he’s in California. I’m not sure.

Korologos: If you see him, tell him hello. Good friend. But anyway, Ellsworth and I and all of us were kibitzing around, and Ellsworth helped pick, did the vetting for the vice president, as I recall, and they chose Kemp. Lighthizer and all of us, “Kemp? My gosh. All right. Whatever Dole wants, I’ll do whatever he wants.” So pretty soon the acceptance speeches and all that, and the campaign started. He told me to put together a graybeards’ group, and I said, “What’s that?” Well, get with [Sen. Alan] Simpson, [Sen. Paul] Laxalt, Gingrich, Senate guys, House guys, old bulls, this guy, that guy, about twenty of the old bulls that we should meet with once every couple of weeks to go over the campaign, and I’d tip them off and bring the pollster in to show this and do that. Well, I put this together and the campaign got unhappy with me. “What are you doing? What’s this thing?” I said, “Dole wanted it.” “Well, he can’t do that.” “He asked me to do it. What’s wrong with it? What’s wrong with getting support and drumming up surrogates to go around doing this stuff?” They were madder than hell at me, and I kept doing it. Then I’d schedule it and I’d go to Dole and I’d say, “Hey, how about this?” And he’d come. We’d schmooze. God, I remember Newt Gingrich showed up with—at the time he had a bucket, used to carry a bucket around, and what it was was he used to give this speech about how he found that the House budget had a monthly fee of $75 for a bucket of ice, and he was carrying this bucket around and he said, “This is an empty bucket. I saved $75,” and Newt used to bring this bucket around. They’d all give him advice and counsel. The trouble with those damn things is they all have a piece of action that they want to give the president-to-be, and you can’t follow everything. You can’t do everything. “You didn’t listen to my advice.” I remember Simpson was in there screaming like hell about the immigration bill. “You’ve got to do this. You’ve got to do that.” It deteriorated, and turns out that Scott Reed and the campaign guys were probably right about these guys bitching about their little pet This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 30

project. The immigration bill was one that they didn’t want to talk about because Dole was ducking and hiding. We went to—I’m jumping ahead a little bit. We got on the campaign plane and went down to a border one time, did an immigration thing. I was briefing the press on Dole’s and—and then we stopped at the Nixon Library and Dole’s and that, then we ended up at Alcatraz or whatever the hell. Maybe it was San Quentin, one of the prisons we did a thing. But at any rate, the campaign didn’t like what I was doing with this graybeards, but we kept doing it, and it was good. It showed that everybody cared. The trouble with campaigns, everybody volunteers. I had a list of a hundred people that wanted to help, and you had to include them in the group because they said, “You didn’t ask me. I was giving you my time.” So what I did, I put them all in a room. I said, “All you guys want to help, Washington lobbyists, big shots, little shots, everybody in this room wants to help. We appreciate all you’re doing. We’ve called you all together at once because you’ve all volunteered to be here. I’m going to be back at three o’clock. Give me some idea what you all want to do. I want five things. I don’t want a hundred things because there are a hundred guys in this room. I want five. Give me the five things. I’ll be back. And then you guys set out to do it.” And oh my god, you know, they were aghast at this thing that I did, and by golly, some of them said, “Well, you’ve got to do this, got to do that,” and they came up with some pretty good stuff. Turned them loose and they all had participated. So we did that. Then one day we got on the plane, and it was [Donald] Rumsfeld was there, Marty Anderson, me, and somebody else was on the plane. It looked like, hey, this ain’t too bad. Rummy, Marty Anderson, who helped Reagan. Gosh, I can’t remember. Somebody else. We were all sitting there, and Dole had taken a liking to me, said, “You sit right there. You wait right there and wait with me.” We went on the trip, and then for some reason it fell off. Rummy got off, Marty got off, and I’m looking around and there’s nobody but me. I often said to myself, “Where did these guys go? Did they get tossed off? Did campaign fire them? Where were they?” They all stuck together. It would have been a hell of a lot better policy-wise. I mean, these were smart guys. To this day I don’t know the answer, Brien, as to why that thing collapsed. It was a good solid group of speechwriters and what have you. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 31

But anyway, we went out to California campaigning, and I remember we went to the Northrop plant, where Dole got up and—god dang, boy, the [William Jefferson] Clinton campaign knew what they were doing. They knew Dole was going to Northrop and making a B-2 bomber. The day before, Clinton announced the Defense Department was buying another ten B-2 bombers. Boy, like they had an inside track to everything. Dole stood up, bless his heart. Pete Wilson was there. I told Pete, “If Dole comes out here two or three more times this year, we’ll get up to a hundred B-2s in a minute.” And Pete said, “Gee, can I use that?” I said, “Let me ask Dole. Maybe he wants to use it.” Dole said, “No, let Pete say it.” And Pete did. Governor Wilson at the time said, “We’ve got to bring Dole out here. We’ll fix the B-2, get the production going.” Then I’ll never forget, we were at one stop somewhere and he brought four or five congressmen on the plane. I can’t remember their names or who they were. We all got off the plane, they all waved. California guys, I guess. They all waved, and he said, “Get in the car with me. We’ve got some things to talk about. Get in the car.” So I said, “Fine.” So we got in the car and started off. I said, “What’s up?” He said, “Nothing. I just didn’t want to ride with any of those guys.” [laughs] We just rested and closed our eyes. Then another time I ended up with him somewhere. I guess it was St. Louis. I’m mixing a lot of stories in. It was in St. Louis doing a fundraiser, and August Busch was a client. So we’ve got August Busch, raised a ton of money out there with Sam Fox, now ambassador, took my place in Belgium, and August and all these guys. August said, “Write me an introduction.” So I stood up and I wrote, and it got in the paper. I wrote, “Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you why you’re all here. We have a man in front of us who is going to be either President of the United States, Vice President of the United States, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, ranking Republican of the Finance Committee, Majority Leader of the Senate, Minority Leader of the Senate, and if he ain’t gonna be one of those things, his wife’s going to be something. That’s why you’re here.” And laughter and laughter. And it was right. I mean, here’s a guy that was going to be one of fifteen things of leadership in this country. We played on that for a while. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 32

We went to a fence thing. It was terribly ugly, at the California border there. They had thrown all their garbage. The fence was a dividing line, and Tijuana guys or whoever it was had thrown their garbage over on the American side, just like a garbage dump. But we sat there in the heat. Then we went to Oakland [California] to pick up Elizabeth, and she was so cute. The plane pulls up and she gets out of her car and goes like this [gestures], like hitchhiking for a ride. She got on the plane and campaigned with us for the next stop, whatever it was. It was a heady time. Those were exciting, good times. Then the damn election came and we didn’t do a darn thing. It was interesting, I went over to the headquarters. [William] Timmons, my partner, and I were doing the transition, the Dole transition when he was going to be president. GSA [General Services Administration] has to provide space and what have you, and golly, we were down in the dumps in the polls. Timmons and I were the most optimistic guys in the world. We wanted space and we wanted it ready on the next morning so the transition could begin, and GSA wouldn’t give us space. We got mad, and turned out they were right. But I went over there, and I was one of the few guys that talked about the campaign. Everybody else was holed up upstairs and wouldn’t talk. That’s when Dole came down and said, “Well, it’s over. I’m going to wake up tomorrow morning, first time in my life with nothing to do.” But he recovered and did well. At his firm I went over there and I helped him out a lot there. Not a lot, but I was with him over time. It’s too bad Jo-Anne Coe has died. She’d have been good for your thing.

Williams: What about how Dole absorbed the defeat? Can you say anything else about that?

Korologos: I don’t remember too much about that. I wasn’t around him that much, I guess. I went to Florida one time with him at the place down there with—there was [David] Brinkley, [Bob] Strauss, Dole, and somebody else had a condo down there somewhere. I don’t remember much.

This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 33

Williams: You mentioned San Diego and a lot of details there. Of course, Elizabeth Dole’s speech was quite memorable.

Korologos: Yes.

Williams: What role did you have to play in that?

Korologos: We orchestrated it. I hope we say this after Elizabeth dies, too. She was a real pain. She was hard to work with, took high maintenance for her speech and for what she was wearing. We had this stage with big steps. I said to her during the rehearsal, “Elizabeth, you can’t wear those high heels on there. You’ve going to fall down.” And she got madder than hell. She’d be rehearsing. So we had to put in special steps for the “Dole stroll” which she did. It worked marvelously. But what happened is she had a mic without wires on it, and I guess even in ’96 the quality—today I guess you can do it in a minute, but they had huge lights and electronics. I mean, my gosh, television and everything up there, and it screwed up the microphone thing. We knew it wasn’t going to work, and she refused to have a wire, a wire to go to the thing. She had this Dole stroll and she’d go around and ask questions, but we knew it wasn’t going to work eventually. And bless her heart, when it died, we casually slipped her one with a wire on it, she picked up and didn’t miss a beat. I’m not sure she knew we had one squirreled away for when that thing was going to fold on us, and that worked. One of the staffers, I don’t remember, some woman, they brought in a bunch of Kansans to be along the row when Dole was going to walk in, to walk to the stage and accept the nomination, so he could see friendly faces, we had them all put down on a row. One of them, I went to the meeting and told them what the scenario was, and one of them said, “Can we take pictures?” And this one staffer said, “No. Dole has got to be concentrating on his speech.” I said, “Bullshit. What do you mean, concentrating? It’s a wild, screaming audience. Nobody’s concentrating on anything. Of course you can take pictures.” So I got in a fight with whoever this lady was, made me mad. I did a lot of stuff like that. I kamazaki’d around, screamed at people. [laughs] This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 34

Williams: Let’s go back to all these confirmations that you did. What stands out in your mind about those?

Korologos: Well, one that I didn’t do was [Robert H.] Bork. I didn’t do it. I did it, but we lost it. Dole was Leader at the time. Bless his heart, he was more out there in front for Bork than even the White House. The White House wanted to cave on Bork. He was becoming an embarrassment. I heard, “He’s got to do the right thing.” But Dole wouldn’t give up. I had a talk with him. I was Bork’s guy. I was in charge, caught hell from the conservatives because I didn’t do it right. What happened is Bork fooled us. I thought he was going to be better than he was in the hearing, and he didn’t schmooze. He was Einstein of a law. He knew every little nuance of the USC 3546, but he didn’t schmooze. He didn’t come across as a human being. So what happened is it started fading on us, and Dole stuck by him and called leadership meetings, and [Sen. Strom] Thurmond and all of us worked it like crazy. There was a fellow by the name of Jerry Ford who came and testified for Bork when he was out of office. Reagan was president. I remember we briefed Jerry at the—not Blair House. It’s the one around the corner where he stayed. Dole came down to that, to talk to Ford. Is that where Ford testified? Yes. Yes, it was for Bork. Yes, it was for Bork. What Dole was doing, fishing for Ford’s endorsement for president, see, in ’96. And I tipped him off that we were going to go down to brief and he came down and they did some private talking. I don’t know what happened. But we had the hearing and it didn’t go well. They had a war room and they beat us, just flat beat us. If they’d have named [Antonin] Scalia second, if they’d name Bork first—I handled Scalia’s too—if they had named Bork first, Bork would have got confirmed, then the Democrats took over the Senate and Scalia would have made it because of the Italian thing, ethnic business. But it was not to be. Bork is still unhappy, poor guy. That was a sad thing. It boggles my mind that he’s not on the [U.S. Supreme] Court. He’s smarter than all of them. Smarter than [William H.] Rehnquist. Smarter than all of them. I handled Rehnquist twice, his confirmation twice. I did Rumsfeld this last time around, everybody in the Defense Department, [Paul] Wolfowitz, [Douglas] Feith, all This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 35 those characters. I counted them one time. I guess there are three or four hundred of them. I’ve done ten a year for forty years.

Williams: What does “doing it” entail?

Korologos: It means you’re the shepherd. You’re the babysitter. Getting confirmed is an arcane art. They’ve never done it before. They have never gone through the process of having gone through the wringer of going to be confirmed for a job where everything is laid bare. You have no rights. It’s open season to ask you anything they want. I helped [Richard B.] Cheney with his nomination for Defense secretary. I helped [Nelson] Rockefeller when he was vice president nominee. Ford, as I say, both House and Senate.

Williams: So you start meeting well in advance?

Korologos: You start meeting well in advance. I take them aside. The first day I say to them, the first meeting—by the way, I don’t get paid a dime for this. This is all for love of country, pro bono, nothing. I don’t ever want to get anything. I get nothing. First thing I say to them is, “What is there in your background that you may have done either as a student or as a child or as a Boy Scout or church, anywhere, that you are nervous about because those guys on the committee are going to find it and ask you about? I’m not telling you to tell me what it is, but get an answer in your head, because it’s going to come up.” Well, I had one guy who had two drunken driving convictions in the same night. Not convictions; arrests. He was drunken driving in Georgetown, crossed Key Bridge, and the cops let him go, and five minutes later got a drunken driving ticket in Virginia. He was up for confirmation. He said, “What are we going to do about that?” I said, “We’re going to tell the committee.” He was a graduate student, G.W. [George Washington University] or Georgetown [University] or somewhere. “We’re going to tell the committee.” Rehnquist, when the old Senate doctor was handling his bad back, he overdosed him on pain pills, so Rehnquist—and this has come out later—was at Bethesda This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 36

[Memorial Hospital], having hallucinations and walking up and down and hall screaming at ghosts or something because he was on pills. Well, that showed up in the health report. I went to [Sen. Joseph R.] Biden [Jr.] with [Sen. Paul] Laxalt and a bunch of them and I said, “Gentlemen, does everybody agree that we’re going to probably eventually confirm Rehnquist for Chief Justice?” And they said, “Well, yeah, I guess so.” “Here. Read this. Do we really want this out in the public domain? You take a look at it. We’re not hiding anything, but don’t you think it’s time—?” And by golly, old Biden, bless his heart, said, “Yes, this cannot be revealed. It will hurt the system.” I’ve been friends with Biden ever since. That was an honorable thing to do. Another guy, my favorite story is some guy came in and I told him, “What is there in your background you may have done?” I can’t remember what the heck he was up for. “That you’ve done that’s going to embarrass the president and you?” He thought about it for a second. I looked up from my desk, from my notes. He said, “How do they know that?” I said, “What?” He said, “Oh, never mind.” He withdrew his name. So something hit a chord and he withdrew his name. He didn’t want anybody to know. I say to them, “Your role in this process is that of a bridegroom at a wedding. Stay out of the way, be on time, and keep your mouth shut. The rules are, it’s not fair; the Constitution stops at the hearing room door; you are to grovel before your true masters, the senators; you are to be deferential; you are not allowed to make loud proclamations about—senators do not like to hear loud, big, grandiose plans from unconfirmed nominees. Your role is to get in and get out. It is not a place to make big- deal pronouncements or promises. You’re allowed to give a three-minute speech, not five, not six, not two. Three. You can have a fifty-page insert on your great and glorious things you’ve done, but you’re allowed to get in and get out. Answer the questions.” And I said this to Scalia. Another thing I learned the hard way is I said this to—“Read the paper the day of your confirmation.” I helped [Dr. Louis W.] Sullivan get confirmed for the HHS [Department of Health and Human Services] job, and Bush One. The day of his This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 37 confirmation was the day of the Alar apple scare. Alar was something that coated apples, and it caused cancer. There’s the health doctor of America didn’t know anything about it because he didn’t read the papers, he was so nervous. So, read the paper. Other little tips that you’d give, you know. “I don’t know” is an acceptable answer. Don’t make up things. Don’t give the store away just to get confirmed. So it somehow works. I’ve done so doggone many of them, you know what works and what doesn’t.

Williams: Do you do mock hearings?

Korologos: Oh, all the time. Yes, we did one with Bork that didn’t go well at all. I did a lot of them, but it was all lawyers. All the lawyers were there. Yes, I play senator. I ask them the rottenest questions. I said, “When this is over, I want you to come to me and say, ‘Those guys weren’t half as bad as you were.’ If you tell me that, I’ve succeeded.” Then I go to the swearing-in and smile when everybody else takes credit for getting them confirmed. It’s a fun process.

Williams: What about the [Sen. John G.] Tower nomination?

Korologos: I was on the fringes of that and helped. That was a sad state of affairs for the Senate to turn on one of its own. [Sen.] Sam Nunn hurt himself badly, but any Republican to get—they weren’t going to confirm him for anything. They remember what he did to Tower. A lot of that stuff, I don’t know how true it was, but it was a sad day when they turned down a guy like Tower. I got into some murder boards and some briefings with him on some stuff, but in the end, that one didn’t work either.

Williams: I’d like to get your observations on the presidents during your period. You’ve talked about Ford and Nixon. What about Jimmy Carter? What was that period like for you?

Korologos: I remember President Nixon called me for Christmas. He used to call people for Christmas. I said, “What did you think of the election?” This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 38

He said, “You know what I thought of the election. What kind of a question is that?” He said, “How ya doing?” I said, “I’m a little nervous.” He said, “Why?” I said, “Well, we just started our company. Carter’s president, Democrats are taking over the world, and here we are, me and Timmons, a Republican firm.” He said, “You’re crazy. Republican firms flourish in Democrat administrations.” He says, “Every business in America thinks, ‘The Democrats are in. My gosh, we’d better hire somebody in Washington who knows what they’re doing.’” And indeed he was right. We flourished. He said, “When Republican administrations are in, corporate America thinks, ‘We’re safe. Why do we need to hire anybody?’” So he was right, and we did well. Carter was all over the place. He gave parking spaces. He cleared what pictures to hang on the wall. I used to go around and give speeches to colleges and stuff about the presidency. Come to find out, there is a composite presidency that comes around. All presidents go through the same thing. They win the election. My gosh, they nominate people to be somewhere. Every one of them gets in trouble over something, you know. You want to talk about [Interior Secretary] Wally Hickel? Want to talk about—what’s his name? Burt Lance. You want to talk about—who did we have in the Bush years? Paul O’Neill got in trouble with Byrd over saying something once. And on and on and on. So the Carter presidency was one where—what is he? He was a nuclear physicist. What do they do? They touch everything. They’ve got to have their finger in everything. Presidents bring into the job what they were before. Reagan was a governor and an actor. He brought in the governor/actor. Nixon was a lawyer. He wrote long things on yellow pads. Ford was a congressperson. What do they do? You say ten, we say five; let’s decide on seven and a half and go home. He was a dealer. I remember when Ford was president, bless his heart, he wanted to meet people, to meet the leadership, so I brought [Sen.] Russell Long down. Russell Long, chairman of the Finance Committee, was the kind of a guy who moved his chair more forward, more forward. I was sitting there in the Oval Office, and Long has got his chair from over there where that book is clear over This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 39 here to where President Ford was sitting, pulling his chair forward. Pretty soon he’s got his hand on his knees Lyndon Johnson style, pounding on them, “Here’s what we ought to do on this; here’s what we ought to do on that.” I got a little nervous, because Ford was sitting there, “Well, that sounds good to me. It sounds good to me.” I said, “Not the way we make policy, sir.” I didn’t say that; under my breath. Ford went off somewhere to the Virgin Islands to a Big Seven conference of some kind with seven leaders, came back and he said, “Bring Long back.” So I brought Long back. This time he was president. He said, “Now, Russell, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to do this and this and this.” And Long said, “Wow. Okay.” And I knew that Jerry was now president. He wasn’t Congressman Ford; he was President Ford. So Ford did that. Carter touched everything from the tennis courts to everything. Who was next? Reagan, I guess. I handled the transition for Reagan. My partner, Timmons, did the big transition; I did all the congressional affairs. We placed guys in office over on M Street and we brought Reagan to town, and we did a whole lot of things that were remarkable. This is turning into a thing on me. Is this what you want?

Williams: I’m so fascinated.

Korologos: It’s in my book. It’s in the Jim Baker book, the Richard Baker book. [Tom Korologos’ oral history conducted by Senate Associate Historian, Donald Ritchie-BW] So anyway, I’m now handling the transition and we did several things. We brought him into town and he said, “Bring some senators down.” I said, “I could bring senators down to meet you, Governor.” “Sure. Bring ‘em down.” He stayed at that place I can’t remember. Blair House is on Pennsylvania Avenue. This place is on the park over here. Jefferson House? Jefferson?

Williams: I don’t know.

Korologos: Some other house. So I brought them all down, brought Long down and Stennis down. Gosh, I had more fun with Stennis. Stennis was a big promoter of This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 40

something called the Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway, which was bringing water from here to there or something, Mississippi, that he’d been laboring on it for years and years and years. Stennis was also chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which presidents care a lot about. So I told President Reagan, I said, “You say the words Tennessee Tombigbee and you’ll support him, and we’ve got Stennis for eight years.” So I said to Stennis, “Governor Reagan wants to see you.” He said, “Oh my goodness. What am I going to say to him?” So I gave him a script. I gave Reagan his script. So they came down, and right before my eyes—I’m now bragging—I saw these two guys reading the original scripts that I had both written. President Reagan said, “You know, this—,” he screwed it up, “this Tennessee Bigtombigbee thing.” Stennis says, “Yes.” “I’d like to support you about that, Mr. Chairman.” And Stennis lit up and he turned to me and says, “We’re going to get along with this boy. It’s going to be all right.” And by golly, old Stennis was all right. Reagan had put some bucks in there for the thing, and he helped us on every defense thing that Reagan wanted. My favorite all-time story—and I told this to Bryce Harlow and he said that is the funniest thing he’s ever heard—we brought Harrison Schmidt down, who was an astronaut from New Mexico, senator. We brought him down to see Reagan. Reagan said to him, “You know, this is the tenth anniversary of the landing on the moon,” or fifteenth, whatever, “anniversary of your landing on the moon.” We had researched. He said, “Yeah, that’s right.” He said, “Boy, that’s a fascinating thing. How was it?” And they yakked about it. Then Reagan said to him, “You know, one of the things that bothers me—,” and this was the start of his Star Wars thing. “One of the things that bothers me,” he said, “is through the centuries, through the years, history has had offensive weapons and defensive weapons sort of keeping up with each other. I suppose you had the sword and then you had the shield, and you had a rock and then you had a wall. Then you had this and you had that. You had an airplane, you had a bomb shelter.” He said, “How on earth did the nuclear missile thing get so far ahead offensively from the defense? There’s no defense against it.” This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 41

And Schmidt said, “Oh, no, no. Gee whiz, you’re wrong. Why, down in Sandia in New Mexico (it’s me and Schmidt and Reagan) there’s a lot going on.” And he stopped. And he looked at him and he said, “Are you cleared?” [laughs] Reagan, bless his heart, “Well, Tom, am I cleared?” I said, “Governor, I think they cleared you last Tuesday.” So they went on and talked about whatever the Sandia invention for the Star Wars shooting down planes was all about. That was really one of the funnier instances.

Williams: Let me bring it back to finish up today. What observations do you have about Senator Dole working with Bill Clinton?

Korologos: I think it was a respectful relationship. He was president. I was on a plane with Dole going somewhere. Gosh, where we were? One of those Air Dole things. We were coming back from somewhere. Cell phones weren’t that sophisticated and good. I picked up the phone, I guess it was in the plane, and he was sleeping. They said President Clinton would like to talk to Dole. I said, “Sure.” I shook him and I said, “The president wants to talk to you.” So he took a glass of water and he got on there, and he said, “Hello,” like he always used to do. “Mr. President. No, I’m in a plane coming back from—,” somewhere, somewhere. And he said, “Okay, okay,” and hangs up. I said, “What was that?” He said, “He wants me to call him when we get on a ground line. He didn’t want to talk over an airplane line where a thousands of people could hear it.” So we stopped somewhere for gas and oil in about an hour somewhere. I don’t know where the hell we were. I went to a phone, and it was one of the Libya things that Clinton did, and he wanted Dole to know about it. They got along pretty good. They were a couple of old pols, as I recall. I didn’t know much about what they did at leadership meetings because I didn’t go to those. That was one of the things that I remember about that. I can’t really give you anything substantive.

Williams: You mentioned your oral history with Dick Baker in the Senate Historical Office, so people who are reading this transcript should know that that exists, because it’s This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 42

a very thorough following of these years. Ours has been more focused on Bob Dole. Are there any last thoughts you have that you’d like to express at this point?

Korologos: Well, Dole was and is a good friend. Elizabeth was and is a good friend. I love the guy. He was exasperating. His bedside manners sometimes weren’t that red hot with people. We raised money for him. I thought he was one of the great strengths of the era. Boy, what a thing for him to do, the films that we showed of his wounds, at the conventions. The guy was a genuine hero. Came back from Italy. I remember he took a trip over there with [Sen. Alphonse] D’Amato. You ought to ask D’Amato about him. He should get on the list. They were pretty good friends. He went to Italy and showed D’Amato where—I think it was over there on that hill over there where he got shot. I think what happened to Dole at that thing is they used to tell guys to get a sense of humor, to start laughing at yourself, and that’s one of the reasons he and I hit it off. We both popped off to each other a lot, the Dalai Lama thing being just one of the examples. We wise-acred a lot. He’s such a human being that couldn’t be—it turned out that the Senate, I guess he only won by one or two votes, secret ballots. Senators lie. Nobody ever knows because they burn the ballots. I guess he won by only one or two votes. But what a choice for a Leader at the time.

Williams: Do you think Senator Stevens would have been a very different kind of Leader?

Korologos: Oh my gosh, yes. Stevens had a huge temper. Dole had a temper. Stevens was a screamer and still is. Stevens would have been a good different Leader. Stevens was good. I told him the secret ballot, senators lie, and next day he told me. I said, “See? You didn’t believe me, did you?” And he said, “You’re right.” He thought he had it. What was the other one? Somebody voted against…. Oh, Byrd thought he had [Sen.] Bennett Johnson’s vote on something. Bennett Johnson told him he wasn’t going to vote for him because Sam Nunn was running in a race, and “That’s my best friend.” Byrd said, “Well, yeah, it’s a commitment.” Bennett Johnson never got another thing from Byrd. That’s serious stuff when you don’t vote—I don’t give a damn how you vote on a veto or on a welfare bill or defense bill or all that stuff. That happens every This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 43 day. But when you vote against somebody that you told you’re going to vote for in a leadership race, and you don’t, man, you got it. You got it. No, I love Dole. Haven’t seen him for a while. I hope his health is well. Hope he lives a hundred years, and I hope they never release this thing. [laughs]

Williams: Thanks for the secret document.

Korologos: [laughs] Thank you, Brien. It was fun.

[End of interview]

This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 44

Index

_____, Wilbur (Dole’s chauffeur), 24

Agnew, Spiro T., 7, 12 Alexander, Sen. Lamar, 19, 20 Allen, Sen. James B., 4, 6 Anderson, Marty, 41 Anheiser-Busch, 21

Baker, Sen. Howard H. Jr., 16, 20 Bennett, Sen. Wallace F., 2, 9 and Robert J. Dole, 10 Biden, Sen. Joseph R. Jr., 49 Bork, Robert H., 46, 47, 51 Brinkley, David, 45 Brock, Sen. Bill, 13 Buchanan, Pat, 37 Burke, Sheila, 31, 34 Busch, August, 43 Bush, George H.W., 27, 28, 29, 50 and Robert J. Dole, 29 Byrd, Sen. Robert C., 13, 20, 23, 24, 52, 58

Carter, Jimmy, 52, 53, 54 Cheney, Richard B., 48 Clinton, William Jefferson, 42 and Robert J. Dole, 56 Coe, Jo-Anne L., 44 Columbia School of Journalism, 8 Connally, John, 13 Cowan, Gene, 5

D’Amato, Sen. Alphonse and Robert J. Dole, 58 Dalai Lama, 32 Danforth, Sen. John C., 19, 22 DeArment, Roderick A., 34 Deep Throat, 14 Dole, Elizabeth, 19, 33, 43, 45 and Tom C. Korologos, 36 role in 1996 presidential campaign, 45 Dole, Robert J., 2, 25, 26, 33, 34, 58 and George H.W. Bush, 29 and Gerald R. Ford, 47 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 45

and Richard M. Nixon, 3, 4, 22, 23, 24, 25, 30 and Sen. George J. Mitchell, 29 and Sen. Wallace F. Bennett, 10 and Tom C. Korologos, 2, 21, 22, 33, 39, 42, 44, 58 and William Jefferson Clinton, 56 as a lobbyist, 28 as chairman of Republican National Committee, 2, 3, 6 as chairman of the Finance Committee, 21 as Ford’s vice presidential running mate, 16 election as Senate Majority Leader, 19 leadership style, 20, 27, 28, 29, 35, 36 reaction to losing 1996 presidential campaign, 44 sense of humor, 58 support for Robert H. Bork, 46 Domenici, Sen. Pete V., 18

Eastern Airlines, 21 Eastland, Sen. James O., 5, 11 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 8 Ellsworth, Robert and Robert J. Dole, 39 Ellsworth, Sen. Bob role in 1996 presidential campaign, 39

Faircloth, Sen. Lauch, 22 Feith, Douglas, 47 Felt, Mark, 14 Foley, Rep. Thomas S., 32 Ford, Gerald R., 12, 13, 48, 53 and Robert J. Dole, 47 and Tom C. Korologos, 15, 53 as presidential candidate, 17 chooses Robert J. Dole as vice presidential running mate, 16 support for Robert H. Bork, 47 Fox, Sam, 43

General Services Administration (GSA), 44 Gingrich, Rep. Newt, 35, 40 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 23 Greene, Howard O., Jr., 19, 20 Griffin, Sen. Bob, 18

Harlow, Bryce, 55 Hartman, Bob, 15 Hickel, Walter J. (Wally), 52

Johnson, Sen. Bennett, 58

This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 46

Kemp, Rep. Jack Jr., 39 Kennedy, Sen. Edward M., 20 Khruschev, Nikita, 22 King, David, 8 Kissinger, Henry, 10, 11 Korologos, Joy G., 7 Korologos, Tom C. administrative assistant to Wallace F. Bennett, 2 and Antonin Scalia, 47 and Donald Rumsfeld, 47 and Douglas Feith, 47 and Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, 50 and Elizabeth Dole, 36, 37, 45, 57 and George H.W. Bush, 50 and Gerald R. Ford, 15, 48, 53 and Jimmy Carter, 52 and Nelson Rockefeller, 48 and Paul Wolfowitz, 47 and Richard B. Cheney, 48 and Richard M. Nixon, 22, 26, 52 and Robert J. Dole, 2, 21, 22, 26, 31, 33, 34, 39, 42, 44, 57, 58 and Ronald Reagan, 54 and Sen. Bob Ellsworth, 39 and Sen. James O. Eastland, 6 and Sen. John C. Stennis, 6, 54 and Sen. John G. Tower, 51 and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, 37 and Sen. Wallace F. Bennett, 9 and William H. Rehnquist, 47 assists presidential appointees in Senate confirmations, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51 conservative Republican background, 8 father of, 7 first impressions of Robert J. Dole, 2 interactions with Robert H. Bork, 46 member of Gerald R. Ford administration, 14, 15 relationship with Mormon Church, 9 response to choice of Rep. Jack Kemp Jr. as Robert J. Dole's running mate, 39 role in 1976 Republican National Convention, 16 role in 1996 presidential campaign, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 46 Senate liaison, 3, 4, 5, 7, 11 support for Mormons, 10 Timmons & Company, 15, 52

Lance, Burt, 52 Laxalt, Sen. Paul, 40, 49 Lehman, John, 23 Levin, Sen. Carl, 24 Lighthizer, Robert E., 37, 39 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 47

Long, Sen. Russell, 53, 54 Lott, Sen. Trent, 19, 20

Manafort, Paul, 38 Marsh, John, 15 McClellan, Sen. John L., 6 McClure, Sen. James A., 18 McGovern, Sen. George, 4 Mecham, Ralph, 9 Michel, Rep. Bob, 23 Mitchell, John., 3 Mitchell, Sen. George J. and Robert J. Dole, 29 Moynihan, Sen. Daniel Patrick and Richard M. Nixon, 4

Nixon, Richard M., 2, 10, 12, 23, 24, 25, 30, 53 advice to Robert J. Dole, 26 and Robert J. Dole, 4, 22, 26 and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 4 and Tom C. Korologos, 22, 52 opinion of Dan Quayle, 27 opinion of George H.W. Bush, 27 preference for John Connally as vice presidential nominee, 13 resignation of, 4, 14 Watergate, 3 Nunn, Sen. Sam, 51, 58

O’Neill, Paul, 52

Packwood, Sen. Bob, 19, 22 Pastore, Sen. John O., 11

Quayle, Dan, 27

Reagan, Ronald, 41, 47, 53, 55 and Sen. John C. Stennis, 55 Reed, Scott, 38, 40 Rehnquist, William H., 47, 49 Rockefeller, Nelson, 48 Rumsfeld, Donald, 41, 47 Russell, Sen. Richard, 20

Scalia, Antonin, 47, 50 Schmidt, Harrison, 55, 56 Scott, Sen. Hugh, 5, 13 Simpson, Sen. Alan, 19, 40 Sparkman, Sen. John J., 6 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Korologos 4-11-07—p. 48

Stennis, Sen. John C., 6, 11 and Ronald Reagan, 55 and Tom C. Korologos, 54 Stevens, Sen. Ted, 18, 58 Strauss, Robert, 45 Sullivan, Dr. Louis W., 50

Tho, Le Duc, 11 Thurmond, Sen. Strom, 47 Timmons, William E., 15, 37, 44, 52, 54 Tymchuck, Kerry, 33

Widdinghill, Jim, 34, 35, 36 Wilson, Sen. Pete, 42 Wolfowitz, Paul, 47 Worldnet, 37