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

JOYCE McCLUNEY

January 23, 2008

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 McCluney 01-23-08—p. 2

[Joyce McCluney 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 Joyce McCluney for the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas. We’re in the Washington [D.C.] law offices of Alston and Bird, where Joyce does special projects for Senator Robert Dole. Today is Wednesday, January 23, 2008, and I’m Brien Williams. Joyce, let’s start with a little bit of your own personal background and how you eventually got to Washington.

McCluney: Okay. I was born and raised in the D.C. area. As a matter of fact, I went to high school right up the street from here, so it’s kind of like my career has gone full circle. I started out working at the Department of State, and then I was married at the time, started to have children, took off for three years. My husband and I split up. Then I decided I needed to go back because I was responsible for the three kids, and I ended up working at the Department of Commerce in a career position; worked my way up to a GS-10. Then I was asked to go the White House under President [Jimmy] Carter, and I was working with a lady by the name of Anne Wexler, who became assistant to the president for public liaison. I was there for almost three years, and then they had the election and Ronald Reagan became president. I was lucky enough to stay with that administration for six months and Elizabeth Dole came in. She was then assistant to the president for public liaison. I did not know her before that, did not know Senator Dole before that. So she wanted me to stay to help set up the office for at least six months, which I did. Her husband came over one afternoon, and I had probably a minute’s notice that I was going to meet him and talk to him about a possible position up on the Hill. So he came in. She left. He and I sat down and chatted, and it was remarkable that we just hit it off from day one. The position, it was unclear at the time what he really wanted me to do, so I had to have lunch with Betty Meyer and Jo-Anne [L.] Coe up on the Hill. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 3

I had the lunch, and the position was going to be working with Betty doing his appointments, which I had already done that, really didn’t want to do that, really wanted to grow and do something different that I had not already done. I turned the position down. I thought I was crazy at the time because I really needed to have a position, and most of the key positions around the D.C. area were already spoken for because the Democrats had left. They landed positions that I probably could have done, but because I was now working for the Reagan administration, there was no place for me to really go. So they kept me on until I was able to find a position, which I thought was very nice of them to do that. I got a call from Jo-Anne to say that there was an opening at the Finance Committee and would I be interested in that. So I went in and I talked to—Bob [Robert] Lighthizer who was then the head of the Finance Committee, and so that’s the position that I took. It took a while for people to trust me, only because they knew I had worked for President Carter. So it took about six months, and it finally worked its way out. Senator Dole, though, on my first day at work, called me down to his office and gave me little projects to work on. Well, that didn’t hit it off well with the staff, because not many people met with the senator on the first day, especially somebody from the Finance Committee, so that was another part that they really didn’t trust. What he really wanted me to do was to set up kind of like breakfast meetings with the members of the Finance Committee and business leaders on different topics. He knew that I had done that when I was at the White House, and he thought this was a good idea for me to be involved with that. So I worked with Senator [Russell B.] Long’s office because he was the ranking member of the Finance Committee at the time. So we did a lot of those, and they became very successful. We would do energy groups. We would do trade groups. We would do business groups. All of this had to do with legislation that the Finance Committee was working on, and it worked out fine. Then he decided that he wanted to become Leader, so Jo-Anne and the senator worked on that exclusively, because when you want to become Leader, you have to write letters, you have to meet with senators. That was back in 1984. The elections were in November of that year. I think that was November of that year, and he was elected. So then everybody in the Finance Committee thought, “Oh, my gosh, what are we going to do?” because the people at the committee level, they’re more specialized in that particular This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 4 piece of legislation. The senator called everybody together and said that he really couldn’t promise anybody a position, but that he would help them in whatever they really wanted to do. He would write letters of recommendation. He would receive telephone calls if that’s the way they wanted it. Most of the attorneys did go back to private practice all over the country. A lot of them did not stay in this area. Some, then, later became lobbyists. So then, still wasn’t sure what was going to happen to me. One day I got a call from Sheila Burke because she and Rod [Roderick DeArment] had moved over to the Leader’s office. It was all new to us. It was all new to the senator. It was all new to Sheila and Rod, because nobody really had worked in an office like that to know how to set it up. So I went over and they wanted me to become office manager, which I did. So we were able to set up the office, hire the staff and get the day-to-day operation running. What I did was I was the kind of like liaison person between the Hart [Senate Office Building] staff, which is the personal staff, the Leader staff, and his PAC, his Dole for Senate people, Campaign America, Better America Foundation that he also set up. So I received all the mail from the Hart Office, would then put it in to the senator for his review. I would get all the information back and would have to pass it out to various staff people, so I would have to keep track of all the mail. Anytime he went on an outside trip, outside the D.C. area, I was the person that collected all the information for him to take for that particular speech or at that particular campaign. He would campaign for a lot of the other senators. So I was the person that had control over all of that, so I had to talk to everybody, give them deadlines as to when they needed to get information in to me so that I could put everything together for him before he went out on the road. I also did the speaking engagements that he did locally. All the paperwork would come to me. I would put it together and then he would be ready to go out and give the speech. Then I was responsible for filing all of those papers, because from time to time we would have to go back, pull out information from those packets and put it into another speech or another trip or whatever. Then I was responsible for setting up meetings with Senator Dole, the leadership, the chairmen’s meetings, chairmen of all the committees. The leadership would meet at least once a week, which was on Tuesdays. That was the day that they had their lunches. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 5

The Democrats had their lunches on Tuesday; Republicans had their lunches on Tuesday, which lasted a couple of hours, to go over legislation.

Williams: That was just the leadership, or was [unclear]—

McCluney: That was the leadership, and then we started to include the chairmen of all the committees, Republicans. So we started to include them, and then we set up a system as to when we would meet so I could let those offices know that on such and such a date we were going to have a meeting. I had to keep a record of all the senators that showed up for that and the particular agenda items that they were going to talk about. I also had to prepare his daybook. His daybook was—anytime he had a meeting with anybody, there had to be a piece of paper about that meeting, and we had to have it the night before so that he could review it either the night before the meeting or the morning of the meeting. Then as the day would go on, he would call senators over to his office to have meetings with to talk about legislation. I always called the office the crisis control center because we were always putting out fires. We didn’t start the legislation. We were kind of there once it hit the Senate floor, and if it was something that they wanted to get passed, they would have to break it up into little meetings with senators. There again, I would have to keep records of all of that. Then I remember during the health issues, when Hillary [Rodham] Clinton was going to do universal healthcare for everybody, Senator Dole decided to bring in outside health groups in to talk to various senators, and so I was responsible for setting up those breakfast meetings. We did those on a regular basis, like maybe once a month, once every two months. Then it started to expand where we wanted to get the message out on what the Republicans were doing as far as healthcare. So then we invited all the major anchors, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, to come in for breakfast meetings so that the senators could sit down with Senator Dole and the anchors to kind of like get the message out to different people. I remember when CNN started, Senator Dole hosted for Bernie Shaw a reception, and we invited a lot of senators, both Republican and Democrats, over just to have a nice little reception for him. That turned out nice. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 6

So I did all the breakfast meetings, all the lunches, all the receptions in the evening. I had to set that all up for the senator, in addition to setting up the individual senators’ meetings, the leadership meetings, and it happened a lot. There was no set schedule as far as legislation was happening. You just had to go with whenever it happened. He would call a meeting on the spur of the moment. Sometimes he would have three meetings going on at the same time, one in his office, one in the conference room, and one in the reception room. So senators were coming in and out constantly. Then, there again, I would have to know what the subject matter was in order to let the senators’ offices know. They had to be prepared for the meetings, so I would know what the different agenda items were. Basically, that’s what I did for him in the Leader’s office. I learned a lot. You do when you’re working with him. You learned sometimes why he works with just the Republicans and then why he works with the Democrats. It was very interesting to watch how he kind of like did that. Of course, we had a lot of the White House people over to attend a lot of these meetings, a lot of these receptions, because it was important to have their input. Senator [Alan] Simpson was always there when he was second person in charge, and it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of work, but it was very interesting, really interesting.

Williams: So to follow this story through to its conclusion, then, at some point your association came to an end or—

McCluney: It came to an end. In 1994 they had another election and, at that particular time, the Democrats were in control. Then Senator Dole became Leader. He appointed Howard Greene sergeant-at-arms, Sheila Burke temporarily as Secretary of the Senate, and Howard and the senator sat down. Howard was interested in hiring me as the deputy sergeant-at-arms for his office. The senator thought about it. It took a little while, but he finally said it was okay that I could move upstairs, which was great because that was one of the positions in the Senate that—that was one of my goals, was to reach that office because I worked with that sergeant-at-arms office a lot, Secretary of the Senate’s office a lot. I knew a lot of the people. I knew where a lot of the bodies were buried up there, This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 7 how people got their positions, and I knew the functions of the sergeant-at-arms’ office because I had to work with the individual offices while I was in the Leader’s office. So then I became deputy sergeant-at-arms. It was great. It was wonderful. It was a lot of work, and I basically did the day-to-day and also did protocol duties because that was part of the sergeant-at-arms’ office, and sat on boards.

Williams: What are the protocol duties?

McCluney: Anytime a head of state, a former president would come in, we would have to escort them. The State of the Union. Howard would go down as the sergeant-at-arms, and then I would walk the senators over to the House chamber anytime they had a joint session or the State of the Union. We were constantly busy with that. Most of the time, the different government officials would come in most of the time at the morning or early afternoon, so you had to work your day around that. We had a huge budget. I think, at that particular time, it was 100 million dollars, because the sergeant-at-arms’ office is still in charge of all the services for the senators; the telephones, the computers, the post office, the tour guides, just the inner workings of the entire Senate. Then I was part of two boards, which was the Capitol Police Board, because that came under the jurisdiction of the sergeant-at-arms, and then another board under the Secretary of the Senate. The Secretary of the Senate was in charge of the school for the pages, but the sergeant-at-arms’ office was responsible for the dorm where they stayed. It was interesting how the two kind of interact. We sat in on those meetings to try to make sure that everything was running properly.

Williams: And what caused you to retire from that position?

McCluney: I was ready to retire. I had twenty-nine years of service, and there was another change because Senator [Trent] Lott then became Majority Leader. Senator Lott had called me down to his office and said that he would still like for me to stay in sergeant-at-arms’ office, but he couldn’t guarantee that I could remain in the deputy position. So they offered me the AA position, which was the administrative assistant, This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 8 which was the number three person, basically doing almost the same duties that I did before. But the new sergeant-at-arms and I didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of the problems that we had in the sergeant-at-arms’ office, and I just said to him one day, I said, “Well, I just can’t work like this and I’m going to hand in my resignation.” I had twenty-nine years’ service, and I figured that I would just retire. So I left in November of ’96, I guess it was.

Williams: Before or after Howard?

McCluney: Howard left; I remained. They did not give me the title. I just remained as deputy sergeant-at-arms, and there wasn’t really that much time before Senator Lott had put in someone to replace Howard. Senator Lott was great to me, and I still would go down and have meetings in his office. I would give him the history on some of the things that he was interested in. So it worked out fine. I left there, and I was going to retire and just do volunteer work. I received a call from the senator, asking me if I would want to come back and work with him on a temporary basis to close the presidential office. I said, “Sure. I’m not really doing anything,” as long as he paid for my parking. And that’s what he did. I ended up coming in probably twice a week. There was so much to be done. When a campaign is over, they leave everything on their desk, everything on their floor. Nobody cleans up anything, and they had a huge office. So I was responsible for looking over the mail, trying to get that all sorted out, all the videotapes, all the tapings. You name it. We had to kind of like tag it up and send it out to the Dole Institute. Then Senator Dole decided that maybe Ruth Ann [Komarek], who had worked with the senator in doing his mail and sent out his photographs and his autographs, which she had been doing ever since he was a House member, and she had retired from the Senate around the same time that I did. She worked in the personal office. He asked me to call her to see if she’d be interested in coming in and helping. So a part-time job ended up being five days a week for both Ruth Ann and I because there was that much to kind of like go through. Then we sorted the mail, and Senator Dole then decided, “Well, let me call some people that I should have talked to during the campaign,” and most of those were kids. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 9

He talked to the kids, and they were shocked that they received a telephone call from him. He enjoyed it. He liked to be with people. It was just great. So we closed that office, and then he was asked to go to the Verner Liipfert law firm. It was more of a lobbying law firm. He asked Ruth Ann and Moe [Taggart] and myself to go with him, and we said, “Sure.” So none of us knew what we were going to do. I don’t remember the timeframe on that. It took a while to close the office. It probably took about three months to close the office, and then we had probably a month to close the final part of that office so that we could then move over to the law firm. So then we had to call Brian Culp, who was the archivist for the Dole Institute, to come up and help us decide what should go out to the Dole Institute and what should not go out to the Dole Institute. So then we moved. We got settled in, and then Senator Dole was asked to chair the National World War II Memorial, and so he asked me if I would be interested in working on that project with him. I said I would love to work on something like that. He said it would just be a short time, nothing to it. All we have to do is raise the money. Well, seven years later—it took that long, and they did it the wrong way. What they did was they asked the senator to be chairman before they had a design approved. Normally you have all your ducks in a row, and they didn’t do that at this particular time. So we had to fight a lot of the battles in the press. There was a movement. There was a little organization in the D.C. area which was called Save the Mall, and they were opposed to how large they felt the memorial was going to be, so they fought the campaign people every step of the way, and we ended up fighting it out in the press. We had to get the press people behind us, get the American people behind us, and show why we really should do this memorial. Then there are so many different commissions that they had to get approval from, that I would go to all those meetings because I was really the liaison person between Senator Dole and the campaign staff, the World War II Memorial campaign staff, so I would meet with them on a regular basis. I met with the executive director once a week, and then they would have a meeting once a month with all of the different directors that they had because we had a director for corporate. We had a director for foundations, a director for direct mail, and then there was a secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission, and we would all get together and they would all give a status This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 10 report as to where we were going and how long it was going to take. So we all kind of like worked together. The campaign staff then hired Burson-Marsteller as their PR organization, and they started to be involved in a lot of the things that we were trying to get passed through the different commissions, and we then ended up setting up a conference call once a month with all of the top people to try to come up with a strategy as to how we should attack the organization that was against the memorial. So the campaign staff decided that they needed to change what the memorial looked like. So they had the designer change it and they would take it to the different commissions. At the end of the day, it was finally approved, but there was a lot of tweaking that had to go on. The Save the Mall people were still against the memorial, so we had to fight all the time. Well, Senator Dole decided that this was taking entirely too long and he wanted the process speeded up. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Senator Dole, probably after he had been there six months, decided that we needed a co-chairman, so the campaign people pulled together a list of names and had Senator Dole take a look at them, and then he decided that Fred Smith—he really did not know him; he knew of him. His wife knew him a lot because he was involved in giving money to the Red Cross, FedEx was, and she said that he was a great guy. So the senator asked him to come in to sit down and talk to him to find out if he would be interested in being the co-chair. He said that he would be interested. He had relatives that had fought in World War II, and this was a special thing for him. And because Fred Smith’s background with FedEx, sitting on the Business Roundtable, he knew a lot of the corporate CEOs that Senator Dole did not know because the business community was changing. The old guard was leaving. The new guard was coming in. So it was a good complement. The people that Fred Smith knew helped Senator Dole, and the people that Senator Dole knew helped Fred Smith. We ended up setting up conference calls. Instead of having them go on the road and go to the individual companies, we decided that it might not be a bad idea to try to do a conference call between the senator, between Fred Smith, and the CEO. The corporate staff would do that by sending out a letter under Fred Smith’s signature or Senator Dole’s signature to the CEO. They would then follow up with a telephone call and try to come up with a time and a date that all three individuals could do this five-minute telephone call. So we did that for a number of months and it was very successful. A lot of people This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 11 were surprised that we were able to raise money that way because it had never been done like that. It was great. Then Senator Dole decided that it might not be a bad idea to get Fred Smith to help us set up meetings with the Business Roundtable members, and that Senator Dole and Fred Smith would go and talk to them and ask them for a contribution and tell them how important it was. It worked. It really did. We also set up an Internet—a lot of people gave contributions through the Internet, and it just worked, it really did, but it did take a long time. Senator Dole did not want to have an appropriations bill. He wanted the campaign to be able to raise the money from individual companies, individual people themselves, and not get an appropriations. He didn’t think that that was appropriate. Well, after Fred Smith had done this about three months, he saw how slow the process was in getting big donations from the corporations, and he asked Senator Dole to reconsider an appropriations. He said that he would, and he picked up the telephone and called Senator [John] Warner from Virginia and asked him if he could help with that process. They were able to pass legislation, and I think we received 6 million dollars from that and it was through the sale of titanium, which I had never even heard of. The campaign staff said, “Oh, we’ll never get the money. It will take too long to sell it. They’ll never sell it. They’ve never sold this before.” Well, it didn’t take that long. It only took less than a year to get that money and so we were able to get 6 million dollars that way. But still, that group, Save the Mall people, were still getting upset because they didn’t like the location. They didn’t like the design. And every time there was a Commission of Fine Arts meeting or the National Capital Planning Commission, it was open to the public so they would always go. They would bring their people in to testify on why we shouldn’t do what we were doing. Senator Dole ended up going to testify before these commissions, as well. Then Eleanor Holmes Norton decided she didn’t like the design, she didn’t like the location, so she was on the opposite side. Senator Dole understood that, and they were able to work it that she would go up and say what she had to say, Senator Dole would come in and say what he had to say, and we finally won that battle with the location and the design. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 12

But before we won the battle, the Save the Mall group decided that they were going to take us to court. So we thought, “Oh, my gosh. What are we going to do now if they take us to court?” We didn’t know if we were going to win or if we were going to lose. Senator Dole decided that we needed to do legislation up on the Hill to come up with legislation to stop them from taking us to court. We won that battle in court and it went as high as the district court, I believe. So we won that, and finally they had to give in because they were going to go forward anyway. There was not any more that they could do to stop the building of the memorial. As it turned out, we raised more than enough money. We were supposed to raise 100 million, and I think the final figure was a 140, I think, 140-some [165.8—JMcC.]. We also set it up in the legislation that any money that was left over would go to the World War II Memorial [Trust Fund]. That would be for ceremonies that they would have down there where the people would come in and they would want to lay a wreath, like on November the 11th, Veterans Day. So there is money. I think there’s still 14 million dollars left in that. People still continue today to give money to the Memorial and that goes to that trust fund. We did the dedication. It was very successful, and it was really much better once it was built. I would go down there every month just to watch the status of it. It didn’t seem like it took as long as it did to build, and then once it was built, everyone said that it had been there forever because it had worked. It had worked into the landscape. It wasn’t obstructing any views or any vistas or whatever. Now today, Senator Dole goes down and he meets with the veterans that are flown into D.C. It’s an organization known as the Honor Flight. So now he’s the official greeter when these people come in. He usually goes down there, like, every Saturday, every Sunday, when the weather’s nice. And sometimes during the week he’ll go down and he’ll meet with them. They’re flown in from different states. It’s all paid for. Most of them bring at least one or two family members with them, and they come in, they meet the senator, they spend some time at the Memorial. They have lunch, and then they’re driven back to the airport and they fly back to their own states. So it’s just a day trip. They’ve not had anybody come in from California because they haven’t had a chance to work that out because it would take longer than a day. I don’t know how many veterans have come in, but it’s been an awful lot, and it keeps getting bigger, it keeps growing, This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 13 and they have to raise money. The Honor Flight organization has to raise money in order for these veterans to come in. So it’s just wonderful for that. After I worked on that, then I got involved with the Library of Congress on the Veterans [History] Project. Senator Dole was on that commission or board or however it was set up, co-chairman, whatever. So now when we receive calls from different veterans on “How do I get my story told?” I refer them to the Library of Congress. I have little packets that I send to different people. The executive director of the Veterans [History] Project happened to be the same person that worked at the World War II Memorial in the veterans’ area, by the name of Bob Patrick, and that’s how I know Bob Patrick. I still continue to talk to him today to see if we can be helpful, if Senator Dole could be helpful. So that doesn’t take up really a lot of time, but we do get veterans that call in here periodically. The other project that I work on is I’m the liaison person between the senator and the Dole Institute [for Politics]. Any time they want to have any input in to the senator, they go through me and then I put it in to the senator. He says yes or no, or whatever. So that’s on an ongoing basis. It’s kind of interesting because Bill Lacy, who was the executive director, left there and worked on the [Fred] Thompson campaign. Thompson just dropped out of the race yesterday, so Bill will be going back to take up his functions again because they’re constantly trying to raise money for the Dole Institute.

Williams: So were you actually working at the Library of Congress in the Veterans History Project?

McCluney: No, I was still working in with Senator Dole in the law firm, so I physically was here. It was mostly e-mails and telephone conversations with Bob Patrick to do that.

Williams: So you participated in the transition from Verner Liipfert over to Alston & Bird?

McCluney: Alston & Bird, right.

Williams: You came with the senator? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 14

McCluney: Came with the senator, right, and had to move and do all that. I also, at Alston & Bird, from day one worked with Rusty [phonetic], who was the D.C. person in charge of this office, and Elizabeth Germain , who was kind of like in charge of administration and working out the senator’s needs as far as space, equipment that we needed. I did that on both of those moves.

Williams: So after you left the sergeant-at-arms’ office, then you have been with the senator ever since, as he’s moved from one law firm to another.

McCluney: Right. So you might as well say that from 1981 until present time I’ve been with the senator in some capacity. It doesn’t seem that long. [laughs]

Williams: I’m curious to know, your first job in government was with the State Department?

McCluney: State Department.

Williams: And what preparation, what qualifications did you bring to that first job that you had?

McCluney: Oh, gosh. That was such a long time ago. I did not go to college. When I was growing up and when I was at that age, my parents could not afford for me to go to college. I really didn’t know that I wanted to go, not until later on in life, and then I didn’t have a chance because I was having children, and then because of the divorce. I had to provide for my family, and so what I would have to do is try to get positions that paid the most money. But as I was doing that, it was also taking up more of my time because with each position meant longer hours. The State Department came to the high school that I was going to. I went to a business high school, St. Patrick’s Academy, in downtown D.C., and they talked about the different areas that they had openings. So I just applied like I did with the CIA, the Department of Justice. Because I went to a business school, they always had different This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 15 government agencies come in to try to recruit from within, because St. Patrick’s had a very good reputation because they taught a lot of the business classes, and a lot of the nuns had worked in private industry before they became nuns. So that was a really good thing to know because they could share their experiences with us. So I started out in personnel, was there for a short time, knew it was only for a short time—oh, plus I had to take the civil service test, so I qualified for a GS-3 is when I started. Then from the Office of Personnel I went into part of the State Department that worked with the United Nations. You had to interview for those positions and I was selected to be a secretary. I can’t remember the name of the office, but what it did was it would recruit individuals from around the United States to work for, like, UNESCO, different organizations that belonged to the United Nations. So we were instrumental in having that done. I worked there for a pretty long time and then I was having children, and when I became pregnant with my second child, decided that I needed to stay home. So for three years I stayed home. Then my husband and I broke up and knew that I had to go back. I didn’t know where to begin, but I figured I should go back to government only because I was eligible to go back at the same grade that I left and the same salary. And when I went back, of course, it was making more money than when I did when I left because the finances had changed. So I ended up working in personnel again, and I worked in the Employee Relations section of the Commerce Department, which handled all the labor disputes for the employees, it did the retirement system. If you wanted to retire, you would come into our office and sit down with an expert. They would kind of tell you what you would be eligible for. If you had bad credit rating, you had to be called into our office. You had to sit down with an expert to say, “Okay, now, this is what you really have to do. You have to get on the right track. We don’t really want you to have your wages taken away from you because you haven’t paid your bills.” So I did that for a while, which I learned an awful lot from that. The head of the personnel department, I’ll never forget him, his name was Frank Seymour [phonetic], and he was the director. He saw my work and he had me come down to his office and say to me, “You need to move on. You need to get out of personnel. There isn’t anything here that you’re going to learn from, so why don’t you This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 16 start looking around in the department and see if you can’t find another position that will help you grow,” which I thanked him for that. I thought that was really nice that he did that for me. He did that to a lot of our employees, but I thought it was really great because I really didn’t know that he even knew what I was doing. So I started putting my application in to different positions, and I was one of two people that had put in for the deputy undersecretary of Commerce, so I interviewed for that position. It was between someone older than me, and I was younger. I was selected. I did not know that at the time. I knew it after I had gotten the position because my boss, Anne Wexler, at the time said, “You know, there was another person that I was looking at, and I really didn’t know what to do, if I should go with the older person, go with the younger person.” And she said she decided to go with the younger person. She just felt that that would work better. So I was selected for the position, and that particular office was in charge of the field offices that were out in the different states under the Commerce Department. They had offices out in the states, and they did particular fieldwork out there. Anne was responsible to oversee that entire organization, plus she had other little organizations underneath her. There again, if she was going to travel, I was the person that pulled together all her travel. Somebody else did her schedule. I did her day-to-day schedule, but somebody else did the travel schedule. So that worked for a while, and then she was called out by Vice President [Walter] Mondale to ask if she would come over to the White House to start up the Office of Public Liaison, and she asked me if I would be interested in going to the White House. Well, I had always been a career employee, really didn’t want to get labeled one way or the other, Republican, Democrat, and I knew that if I did go over to the White House, I would have to give up my status as a career employee and take a Schedule A position. So I really thought about it. I knew it would be more money, it would be longer hours, but I knew it was only five days a week. I thought about it and I thought, “Well, how many chances do you really get to go to the White House?” And I thought, “You’ll never get this opportunity again.” I was honest with her and told her that I particularly didn’t care for President Carter’s policies that much. She said, “Don’t worry about it. We’re not going to be working on policy. We’re just going to be working with outside groups.” This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 17

If they needed something, we were to help provide information, meetings, or whatever with the president. So I said, “Okay.” So we went and I worked there until President Reagan was then elected. I was lucky enough to stay in that position because Anne Wexler knew Elizabeth Dole, who was then going to be the new person in charge of public liaison. Then it went on from there.

Williams: How did you manage to balance your responsibilities as a mother with this pretty highly intense job?

McCluney: I think I was very lucky in that we lived in Suitland, Maryland, my husband and the two children. After we broke up, I knew that I had to move to a different location because the neighborhood was changing at the time and it really wasn’t safe in the neighborhood that I was living in. I had three children at the time. So then I decided, “Okay, well, where am I going to go?” Well, I contacted a real estate agent, and I ended up finding a house down in Waldorf, Maryland, which was about, I don’t know, twenty- five miles from D.C., which meant a long commute for me. So I did it and bought a house. The school system down there was really, really good. I found a wonderful babysitter that had three children herself, but they were around the same ages as my children, and it just worked out fine. My hours weren’t really that bad when I first started with this particular babysitter. It was not a nine-to-five job, but I was home by six and I didn’t have to work weekends. It worked out. It was really good. But then as the kids got a little bit older, within, like, a year and a half or two, they decided they didn’t want to be with that babysitter anymore. I had gotten to know my neighbors real well right next door. She had three children that are around the same ages as mine, and they really wanted—Barb [Barbara] Salpeck was her name—to kind of like watch my children. I thought, “Oh, this is great. She’s right next door.” And it just worked out. If I had to work late, I called her. No problem. The kids were able to stay there or she would bring them home, they could get ready for bed. And that continued until they were teenagers. So I was lucky that way. In the beginning, when I was still living in Suitland, I called my church because I really didn’t know what to do as far as a babysitter went. The church said to me, “We This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 18 have this lady who just lost her husband, and her family is concerned about her because she’s spending too much time at the cemetery. We think that it would be a good idea for her to watch your children.” Well, I interviewed her and she was this Italian grandmother type, loving person, and she really thought that would be a good idea that—the kids were like two, four, and six at the time, and she loved children. She would come to the house to watch the kids, and it just worked out fine, and that’s what I did. She ended up making noodles from scratch because that’s what she did. She still went to the cemetery, but not every day, and when she did go, she would take the kids. It worked out. It wasn’t just one day. It was not for a very long time, and my children ended up becoming very close to her. But when it came time to move, she was kind of upset about it, but she understood why I had to move because the neighborhood was changing and the kids had to get into a really good school system. That’s why I chose Waldorf.

Williams: And when you moved to Waldorf, that was at what stage in your career? Was that when you were at State?

McCluney: Let’s see. I have to remember. I was still at the Commerce Department at that point, and then it was after the Commerce Department, then three, four years later I was at the White House.

Williams: Was your former husband involved a lot in the kids’—

McCluney: No, not at all, even though he remained in the area. No, he was not at all. In the beginning, he would come and visit with them on Saturday, but as they got older, the kids would be still sleeping when he would come. At that age, they really didn’t want to get up. So then he decided, “Well, it’s not worth it to come all this way down here just to sit and just wait for them to wake up.” No, so he wasn’t close at all. It was strictly on me. I was lucky to have the support of my mother and father, who were divorced. I was closer to my father, and he was kind of like the father figure. He would come down once a week and spend time with us. That really helped. My kids were very close to him until he died, and the same thing with my mother. They were close with my mother, and This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 19

I was lucky that at least both of them got along. We weren’t always together at the same time, but at least they had their grandparents.

Williams: And your kids today, what—

McCluney: One lives in St. Mary’s County; that’s Cathy, who’s the second child. She’s forty-one now. She has a son. She works. Her husband owns his own business. They’re really doing great. I talk to them every week, and I try to go down there, like, every four weeks just to spend time with her and her husband and my grandchild. My son, he lives in Charles County, and he kind of has his own business. He does fix-’em-up type of things. He does painting. He does building. He’s married. They have a daughter and her name is Danielle. Then my other daughter is married to a captain in the Coast Guard, where currently he’s down here working at the Pentagon, but it looks like he’s going to be able to move back up to Boston where Michelle and TJ, my oldest grandson, is living. Tom’s been down here two years and now he’s going to go back for two years. Then he’ll probably retire from the Coast Guard and he’ll have, like, twenty-six years of service and go out as a captain. So we’re all close, even though we’re not really close together, and I try to see Tom and Michelle at least four times a year. Either I go up there or they come down here, and it works. I talk to them every week, as well. So I’m lucky that my kids have turned out to be very successful.

Williams: Let’s start now with the Finance Committee and that. Let me ask you again to just go over a little bit your interactions and role as compared with the office, which I guess then was in Dirksen.

McCluney: It was in the Dirksen Building. Right.

Williams: And what was the division of labor there and the relations?

This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 20

McCluney: Let’s see. How do I want to say this? The personal staff was also in the Dirksen Building. They were right down the hall from us, so it was easy to go back and forth. I worked in the Finance Committee offices and all of the lawyers were there. We had two floors. Social Security, Unemployment was down on another floor, and then the actual tax and trade attorneys were in the same suite of offices where I was. I basically was the office manager there. Everything kind of like had to go through me to the staff director, which at that time was Bob Lighthizer. So he was kind of like the number one person, so if you wanted to see him, you had to kind of like go through me to get to him, and he and I had to constantly talk to one another. He had to let me know what was going on so that I could let some people on the staff know what was going on and what was expected as far as work assignments. I was responsible in calling the senators’ offices on both sides to let them know when we were going to have a hearing, so I had to keep track of all the hearings working with the chief clerk, working with the different members of our staff. They had to prepare all the paperwork for the different hearings and then after you had a hearing, then you would have meetings with Republican staffers. Then Senator Dole would have meetings with the senators, and then we would go to markup. Then from markup it would go to the floor to see whether it was going to get passed or not. Once it hit the floor, we were kind of out of it. Only the particular attorneys would go to the floor to work on that, but then we had to stay back and answer telephone calls. So we had to be brought up to date on what was actually going on because we would be getting calls from the public to find out where do we stand. Then one of the other things that I had to do, the Congressional Record published the Daily Digest, so after I sat in on all markups—I did not sit in on all hearings, but all markups I did, and I would have to keep the voting record of all the senators. I would have to keep track of the agenda items that were brought up so that after each markup session, I would have to give input to the Daily Digest so that they could then print it in the Congressional Record. So that’s why I constantly had to be in touch with my boss, Bob Lighthizer. If he was not available, then I would have to go to the different attorneys to find out exactly what I should be letting the people know. Then once I got that information, I would have to let the receptionists know so that they could give out This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 21 information so that they would free up the attorneys just to do what they had to do instead of answering calls from the public.

Williams: Who was your main point of contact in the personal office?

McCluney: It was the senator directly, and I did work with Betty Meyer because she did the senator’s day-to-day schedule. The senator did not spend much time in the Finance Committee offices. If he did, it was just for a short period of time, not very much time since it was so close to the committee hearing room. He maybe would come down and I would place a couple of calls for him. But with Betty, I had to work with her because I had to know what his schedule was and I would have to get hearings put on his schedule. Working with Ruth Ann every now and then, but not that much, in case we got a call from somebody out there wanting to know how to get an autographed picture or whatever, and then maybe once in a while working with other staff members because they had to have a question answered about some Finance Committee-related issue. Because we were so close as far as the offices go, I had an opportunity to meet almost everybody on the personal staff.

Williams: What about your interactions with Jo-Anne Coe?

McCluney: Not on a daily basis with her. I should back up, though. I first met Jo- Anne—I did not know Jo-Anne Coe from the man in the moon—when I was let go on January the nineteenth after Carter had left. Then there was the inauguration. Then I went into the office on the 21st, the Office of Public Liaison where I worked under the Carter administration. Jo-Anne was sitting at my desk, and I had to be interviewed by Red Caveny, who was Elizabeth Dole’s deputy. He was deputy assistant secretary [deputy assistant, not deputy assistant secretary—JMcC.]. Jo-Anne sat outside, but she heard my interview with Red Caveny, and I guess they had to ask her after I left if they really wanted me to be back and work there. She said, “Yes, definitely.” So then I went back and I was able to stay there for six months. That was the first time I met Jo-Anne. She and I hit it off. Betty and I hit it off right away because they saw that I was there to do a job. I was not out there to get anybody else’s position, This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 22 because there’s a lot of power things that kind of like go on with individual offices. So with Jo-Anne, she was part of another committee staff. She wasn’t on the personal staff. I would have to go and talk to her about politics or how do I set this up or how do I set that up, just to get the senator’s preference, because I couldn’t always get to him and I knew she had been around a long time. So she would advise me on a lot of things. There again, she would have to get information about what Finance Committee did, and so I was able to provide her with that information, but like I say, not on a daily basis. And then I forgot about this, too. When I was with the Finance Committee, Jo- Anne—what happened? She then became heavily involved in Campaign America, I guess. She did the vouchers, the payments of all the bills from the Finance Committee. I completely forgot about this. She did all of that. Well, now she wasn’t going to have a chance to do that. Somebody on the Finance Committee staff had to do that. The senator said, “Oh, give it to Joyce.” And I thought, oh, my gosh. I had no idea what this was about. Jo-Anne didn’t even train me. She was here today, gone tomorrow. She told me where the files were. The Finance Committee was going to be audited within the next month, and she handed me the books, she handed me the files, and then I had to figure it out from there. But I was lucky in that she kept pretty good files. I called the disbursing office—that’s the office that you had to come, like, work with, and they’re the ones that pay the bills because you’re given a certain budget under an appropriations—and explained to them that, “Hey, I’m new. I don’t know what this is all about. Could you help me?” And they were very good at that. So then by the time the books were ready to be audited, it worked out fine. Jo-Anne was so busy that lots of times she would be six months behind schedule in paying the bills, so it was very hard to make the books reconcile. So I made a point to pay the bills every single month so that when it came time to do the audit, that we were pretty much up to date so that everything could be reconciled, because it’s hard to do it for a six-month period. I’m not knocking Jo-Anne. It’s just that she had too much to do and she really didn’t have hardly any help. I didn’t have any help either, but if you do it as you get it or try to do it every month, it just makes it easier to do that. I guess I was audited maybe four times, and we reconciled. Then after I left there, I had to turn the books over to somebody else and it worked out fine.

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Williams: How large was the Leader’s office?

McCluney: Oh, gosh. I can’t remember how many employees we had. We had press secretary, deputy press secretary, another secretary, two receptionists, somebody that was with the senator all the time, kind of like taking him from meeting to meeting. He greeted the visitors when they came into the office. A number of people have had that position over the years. Then we had a health person. We had interns, which would depend on when the program was going to come over. We also had a fellow who did health issues. We had Nelson Rockefeller [Jr.]. We had a speechwriter. We had somebody that handled boards and commissions. We had chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, a tax person that did tax and trade. We had two support staffers and then, probably, myself.

Williams: So it was smaller than the personal office?

McCluney: It was a smaller than the personal office. Oh yes, definitely.

Williams: But it was still quite large.

McCluney: Yes.

Williams: Nelson Rockefeller? What was his connection?

McCluney: Nelson Rockefeller—I don’t remember now how we got him, but—

Williams: You mean the former governor?

McCluney: The former governor’s son.

Williams: Oh, I see.

McCluney: Yes. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 24

Williams: Junior?

McCluney: Junior. He worked on kind of like housing areas, that type of thing, and he was with us for about a year or two.

Williams: In the Leader’s office, did Dole spend more time in—

McCluney: He was in the Leader’s office five days a week. He would go over to the Hart office most of the time on Saturdays to do the paperwork over there. That’s why it worked out best that when the mail would come into the Hart office—all the mail went to the Hart office. We did not get any mail except what was hand-delivered to us and then we kept a log of all of those. The mail would go to the Hart office. Ruth Ann would sort it. Betty would add her input into it. It would all come over to me. It would then go in to the senator. Then it would be disbursed throughout the rest of the staff. I would always get calls from the Hart office to find out, “Have you seen my paper? Do you know where it is?” I would say, “Well, it’s on its way back. It’s still on his desk.” “Well, could you get it? Because I need to replace it with something.” And I would say, “Yes.” Then, if it would take a couple of days, “Why do you think it’s taking so long?” And I just made up things, because he would have different stacks on his desk. The stack in front of him I always called his think stack, which meant—he would go through everything. It would come over twice a day. He would go through everything and try to have it back out because he didn’t like to have a cluttered desk at all. Things that he didn’t want to focus on or things that he had to think on would go in this particular stack. That’s why I called it the think stack. Plus, I had to come up with a system that would make it easier for him to go through. If somebody were to come into his office, say another senator, or he was having the senators’ meetings, you didn’t want people reading things on his desk because people would do that. So I came up with a system that I would divide everything into folders. Things that he had to sign would be in one folder. Things that required action right away would go into another folder, and things that were This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 25 less priority would go into another one. And it worked. So he would go through and sign everything that would come out. Things that he could say yes or no to would come out right away, but those that he had to think about would go into what I called the think stack. And it worked. It really did work. Then I would have to call Betty most of the time and say, “Okay, the senator wants his weekly schedule,” his monthly schedule, or his three-month schedule. “He needs it now.” She would have to make sure that it would be sent over, because he was constantly changing his schedule. When he was running for reelection in the Senate, he had to travel and he would have to know when he was going to be back so that they could schedule legislation and other meetings. So he had to have that updated constantly, and so it had to kind of like come from Betty to me to him. Lots of times he would call me down to the cloakroom and he was trying to find out when he was going to such and such a state so he could talk to a senator about the different things that he was going to do. Then he ran for president in ’88, so I had to work with the ’88 people in briefing, papers, and schedules. Then in ’96 I had to work with them the short time that they were around, and I did that so—

Williams: In terms of the Leader’s office, how much did Dole’s personality set the tone for the office?

McCluney: Oh, that was funny. The minute he would come in the office, you could tell exactly what kind of mood he was in. All you had to do was look at him. Sometimes he would come through the back door. There were like three different entrances that you could go into to get into that office. Sometimes he’d go in the front door, but if he knew somebody was going to be in there—he was the type of person that really didn’t want to talk to anybody when he first got there, because he wanted to have his coffee, he wanted to see his newspapers, or he had something on his desk he wanted to kind of—

Williams: His think pile.

McCluney: —think about. Sometimes he would come through the back door. It was a joke, really, between the staff. Nobody really wanted to be the first one to go in and see This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 26 the senator knowing that he was in a bad mood, maybe, that day. He would always take it out on the first person. Well, then it would trickle down to the staff, so if that first person got it, not personally, but just got it because something had happened that the senator wasn’t happy with, then it would trickle down. It would go to the next person. That person would be in a bad mood, and then, finally, it would get to somebody else; they would be in a bad mood. But then that would only last like five minutes. Then the senator would come out of his office. I always used to laugh because I called it his bed check; he would go to every single office in the Leader’s office to see who was here and who wasn’t here.

Williams: He was taking attendance?

McCluney: He was taking attendance without telling anybody he was taking attendance. And if he needed to see somebody, he would say, “Okay, where is so-and-so? When is so-and-so going to be back? This is what I want to talk to so-and-so about.” So there again, I basically had to know where everybody was and kind of keep track, and if I didn’t know where they were, maybe somebody sitting next to that person would know exactly where they were. We really did try to communicate. Sometimes you could. Sometimes you couldn’t. If you were really busy on the Senate floor, sometimes you couldn’t. But you could always reach somebody. If you couldn’t reach somebody, you could always walk down there and find out. Lots of times, the senator would be in the cloakroom and say, “Where is so-and-so?” Well, so-and-so was sitting right behind him and he didn’t see him because there’s so much going on. Or he was on the Senate floor and he couldn’t find Sheila, and she was in the cloakroom. But he would call the office to find out where so-and-so was when so-and-so was down there. So it was that type of thing. When he would walk through the office, you could hear him tap, like this, and sometimes he would let you know that he was coming.

Williams: He would tap on—

McCluney: He would tap on the wall usually that you could hear him. Sometimes he wouldn’t tap, and that way he would try to just hear things. He would pick up things. He This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 27 had to be in the know on everything. And he did; he knew everything. He knew more than all of us knew, and it was really interesting to watch him do that. I can remember a meeting—I forget how many people were involved. There must have been fifty people coming in from different foreign countries. Well, he decided two minutes before that meeting he was not going to meet with them. So I had this whole room full of people and he was just too busy. He wasn’t going to do it. So the person that I was working with—I can’t even now remember who it was at the time—said, “Okay, I’ll go in and I’ll tell him this is why he has to meet with these people.” He’d come out and he’d have his meeting. He was fine. You’d never know that he wasn’t even going to meet with those people. That would happen a lot. It could be maybe we were having a senators’ meeting. Well, he was just too busy. He doesn’t know why he set that up. Well, and then you would have to go in and explain to him why he set this up, and then he would come to the meetings and then he would be fine. He wasn’t moody, but he was just distracted. But he had his little quirks. Then when it came time for him to leave, he would walk around and he would say something to mostly everybody before he left, not “Goodbye,” or, “I need this tomorrow. What are you working on?” That type of thing. Then once he left, the minute he got to the car, he’d be calling somebody because he felt that the minute he walked out that door, everybody else was going to walk out that door. Well, they didn’t walk out the door. So that’s why he would call different people just to ask them different things, and it could be that it was the same question he asked before he left. It’s not that he didn’t trust anybody; he just felt that once he walked out, that the day was done. Well, it doesn’t work that way, because the day wasn’t done because you’re preparing for the next day or you had to go down and work on the record. Sheila and Witt [Jim Wittinghill], they would have to meet with other staffers to talk about the next day’s work. But you could always tell his mood because all you would have to do is just look at him and you could tell.

Williams: So this checking up on people, that sounds almost a little paranoid.

McCluney: No, it’s not. It’s just that—even now he’ll walk around just to see who’s here and who’s not here. That’s just something that he’s done. I could never understand This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 28 it, but then when I went up to the deputy sergeant-at-arms’ office—not that I would tap my hand or anything, but I would go around to see who was there and who wasn’t there just to know, I guess just feel secure that your staff was there and that they weren’t taking off because they just felt like taking off or they just didn’t want to come in. I just felt that you had to be in there five days a week, and you better have a good reason if you’re not in there. I think that’s probably what he felt, as well. It was hard to take off. We had to schedule our vacation when the Senate wasn’t in session, but it was hard to do that because he was there. He was there while we were in session. He was there when we were out of session unless he was traveling. But if he was traveling, he’d be calling because he would be thinking of legislation or different things out on the road. He just wanted you there, and if you weren’t there, we had to find you. And that’s just the way that it was.

Williams: So how did you schedule time off?

McCluney: Well, I just said, “I’m taking this week off, and Sheila said it was fine,” and I just did. Everybody else basically did the same thing, but we tried not to have everybody take off at the same time. I would come up with a list of, like, during, say, Christmas, different numbers where people could be reached in case he wanted to talk to them on the telephone, and that’s how we did it. That was before you really had cell phones. All you had back then was kind of like beepers. Now it’s a lot easier with cell phones. He even has a cell phone, which I never thought I would ever see him have a cell phone. He actually talks on a cell phone, actually calls on a cell phone because he wouldn’t carry a beeper. Most of the senators would carry a beeper, but he would never carry a beeper. So, you were really on call--it was 24/7 when you were in Leader’s office. Finance Committee, it wasn’t like that. He didn’t come down to check to see who was there every day. He would meet with Bob Lighthizer and Rod usually every morning just to go over what the Finance Committee was doing. They would come back. You could tell what kind of mood he was in because they would be in the same type of a mood. So he didn’t have to. He just checked with Bob or Rod. In the Leader’s office is a little bit different because you basically had to be there because you didn’t know if something was going to come up and you were needed. So if you were going out to This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 29 lunch, you had to let us know where you were going, just in case. He would be okay if you were gone, like, maybe thirty, forty-five minutes. You were gone any longer than that, he would get impatient and he would say, “Okay, I want to talk to so-and-so, and this is what I want to talk to them about.” And you couldn’t reach them because there were no cell phones.

Williams: Were there days, I’ll call it days of jubilation, in the office?

McCluney: Oh, gosh. That’s hard to—yes. Well, yes, anytime we won something as far as legislation goes. We did a lot of fun things in the office. We had the Kansas City Royals in when they won the championship. We did the K.U. [Kansas University] basketball team when they won. We had the individual boxers in for receptions. We had professional basketball teams in for a reception. Those were really fun, and he seemed to really enjoy those. The other thing that he did which was fun—I thought it was fun—he would have a lot of visitors come in from Kansas, especially kids. He would have them come over to the Leader’s office, and he would take them to every office inside the Leader’s office and he would have them use the telephone for the kids to call back home to talk to their parents. Well, every now and then he would come up to an individual and say, “Who are you talking to?” “I’m talking to my mother.” “Well, here, let me have the phone.” And he would get on the phone and he would talk to them. You could just tell that that child was just beaming, and the other person on the other line didn’t believe that Bob Dole was on there. But he did that a lot. If you were on the phone, he asked you very nicely to please get off the phone so that this child could pick up the phone and call home. So that was fun. There were a lot of fun times. After hours, like after the Senate would go out, he would leave right away because most of the time it was late. The staff would sit back, and they would just sit and just talk about the day or whatever. We all got along, and we were all busy. We just knew that we were there for a purpose and that’s what we did. We were all dedicated, I think, and we all enjoyed working with him. We had very little turnover on the Finance This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 30

Committee staff and on the Leadership staff. Most people, when they came, they stayed. They left only because their internship was over, they decided to go into private practice, or whatever. But you would find the majority of the people really stayed. The Finance Committee staff didn’t change at all, hardly.

Williams: What about the mood of the office when it went from Majority Leader to Minority Leader?

McCluney: For us, it wasn’t really that bad. What I didn’t like was that the people that you had to deal with around the Senate, their attitudes changed. If we were in the majority, they were there just like that. Once we became in the minority, they weren’t there just like that. It took a little bit longer for them to get there. I was surprised. I just didn’t know that that’s how it worked. So that’s why it’s more fun to be in the majority than it is to be in the minority, because you’re second. You’re not first. They tried to be there, but if the Majority Leader wants something, they take priority, and then we’re second. We were lucky in that we didn’t have to change offices. I don’t know what they did prior to Senator Dole coming. I don’t think Senator Baker moved either, but I’m not sure. But at least with Dole, we didn’t have to change offices. There was a point after Jo-Anne was Secretary of the Senate, we then went into the minority. Jo-Anne did not vacate the Secretary of the Senate’s offices when she should have, and Senator [Robert C.] Byrd was furious about that. So he told Senator Dole that he was going to change offices and that he found some offices that the Minority Leader’s office could have, and it was down in the basement. One of the rooms happened to be the coal room. It was the coal room way back when they were burning coal in the Capitol. Senator Dole could not believe that Senator Byrd was offering us an office down there like that. No windows. It was in the basement. It was a very narrow walkway, and I went down there with him and Sheila went down there with him, and we couldn’t believe it. We came up, and then Senator Dole met with Senator Byrd and they worked it out. Why Senator Byrd was upset was because Mrs. Byrd didn’t have a place to sit when it came time for him to be the Majority Leader, and there was no reason for Jo-Anne to sit that long in that office, but she did for whatever reason. She then went over to Campaign America shortly after This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 31 that. But it was not a happy time. I think that was the lowest point, I think, that I had seen in that office.

Williams: Did the size of the staff change when he went into minority?

McCluney: No. No, it stayed the same. Yes, it stayed the same.

Williams: I asked you about days of jubilation. You just described one of mild despair. What about a few other low points? Do any stand out?

McCluney: There weren’t that many. Well, it was low points depending on what you were working on, like the mood would be low depending on what was going on at the White House, if things weren’t working right out there in the country. The senator would be involved in it and that would be a low point. If they were working on a nomination, which we did all the time—the [Robert] Bork thing, that was not good. The [John] Tower nomination was not good. Those would be low points, especially with Senator Tower because he was a colleague. The Bork nomination, that was a low point, not necessarily for the staff, but for the members it was pretty bad. So it just depended on the legislation or what was going on in the country at the time.

Williams: Just a few short things to end up here with. You mentioned that Dole didn’t initiate much legislation.

McCluney: Right. As Leader?

Williams: Yes.

McCluney: Right. We came in the middle of the legislation because it would go from the committee to the floor. Then once it got to the floor, if it was legislation that really needed to be passed or they wanted it to be passed and it would only take the leadership working with other senators, then that’s when we would kind of like get involved in it. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 32

So we never really started anything. We just came in the middle and then saw it go to the end.

Williams: Do you think that that troubled Dole at all that he wasn’t forced to be an initiator or—

McCluney: No, I don’t think so. He was still on committees. He still had input into the committees. He still had input into legislation. He would introduce bills, like for the White House on behalf of, that type of thing. No, I think he got a lot of satisfaction out of just working it on the Senate floor, and if the White House wanted it passed, he would do his best to make sure that it did get passed. If it did not get passed, then they would know why it did not get passed, because one thing that the senator always wanted was he always wanted you to be truthful with him. If you were not truthful with him, then he did not trust you. I would say all of the senators that he ever worked with were honest with him—his side, the Republican side, and the Democratic side. He knew where everybody stood on an issue. He knew what would get passed, what would not get passed. He knew if it wasn’t going to get passed, well, maybe we could go this way, maybe we should do it this way, or, “I need to talk to this person,” or, “I need to talk to that person.” He would do his best to make sure that the right thing was done. I used to enjoy watching him going down to the Senate floor, because when he was passionate about something, he wouldn’t have to read the legislation; it would come from the heart. And that’s when he was at his best. Like he would have to do Bicentennial Minutes every day, which was interesting, but it was also very boring. He would read it. Well, you don’t get the same sense that it really meant anything to him. But if it was something that was coming from the heart, you could tell it in his voice and you could see it when he was delivering a speech. He did that a lot.

Williams: Who wrote those Bicentennial pieces?

McCluney: That was done by Dick Baker, who was the historian in the Senate. He did them. We typed them up, and then the senator would go and deliver that. Or if he didn’t read it, then he would insert it into the record. There was a book put out with those. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 33

Williams: You mentioned that you were scheduling a lot of special interest people in for meetings, business people and so forth. Some people have charged, at times, that Dole was in someone’s pocket.

McCluney: Oh, no. No, never.

Williams: Speak about that.

McCluney: No. I can remember at the Finance Committee how the lobbyists would line up outside the Finance Committee doors to get in. The senator would always joke with them going down the hall. No, he just never did that. He would listen to people. That’s why he would have meetings with people. That’s why he would call business leaders in to get their idea, to know the pulse. But he was going to do what he felt was right. He wasn’t going to take anybody else’s idea, or he didn’t want so-and-so to do this and I would do that. At least I never saw that.

Williams: Do you think he sought a wide range of viewpoints?

McCluney: Yes, he did. That’s why he called in all the different business groups on different pieces of legislation, like energy, the business community, the Roundtable people. They weren’t necessarily lobbyists. He would try to get the CEO. We always wanted the CEO of a corporation to come in. We did not want the person that was their lobbyist of a corporation to be at a breakfast meeting. It had to be the CEO. If it wasn’t the CEO, very rarely would we go down to the number two person, and most likely, if you were the Washington person, you weren’t coming. It was the CEO or, really, you’re not coming to the breakfast, because you get more out of the CEO than you do anything else, you know. The Washington person you could see anytime. The CEO, you’re not going to be able to see all the time, and this started Finance Committee. When we had our breakfast meetings, the CEO was there.

Williams: So did Senator Dole have an uneasy feeling about lobbyists? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 34

McCluney: No. It’s just that he knew that it was better to deal with the CEO than it was to deal with anybody else, and that you would get the feeling of the CEO and not the feeling of the person that ran the Washington office.

Williams: Were you gate-keeping a lot? Did lobbyists have much access to the senator?

McCluney: If he would walk by out in the hallway and if they were standing there, they’d have access that way. Most of the meetings that we had in the Leader’s office were with the CEO. If the lobbyist, if the Washington person came, sometimes he would go in there; most of the time he would not. He would be out in the reception area or he would not come at all.

Williams: Did you feel that was unusual, that that was sort of—

McCluney: Well, for me, no, because that’s all I ever knew. Even when I worked with Anne Wexler, we always worked with the top person, never with the lobbyist. That’s just the way that he always was.

Williams: I have two other questions. What about April 14? Was that observed in any special way? That was the day he was injured in ’45.

McCluney: Right, right. No, not at all. No.

Williams: That just passed by?

McCluney: It was just passed by. He would always say something. I don’t now remember exactly what he would say, but you would know that that was the day if you really forgot it yourself. Somebody would say something, not necessarily the senator. Somebody on the staff would say, “Oh, today is April 14,” or whatever. He never did. When we were in the Senate, he very rarely, if ever, talked about it. He’s only talked about it since he has left the Senate. And now when he talks about it, he gets real This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 35 emotional, whereas before, he did not talk about it at all. The staff talked about it more than he did, not with him but individually.

Williams: You were there when television was introduced to the Senate.

McCluney: Yes.

Williams: From your perspective, did you see any notable changes?

McCluney: Oh, yes. Really. I used to only like the radio because we used to have a little game that we would play if you could recognize the senator’s voice on the radio. That’s all we ever had, and we always had the radios on. Well, when it went to TV, I found it very distracting, the TV. The radio wasn’t distracting because it didn’t move. The television moved and everybody had to have a television in each of the rooms, and between the television, the meetings, the doors opening, it was a lot of commotion and you had to tune a lot of it out. You saw a big difference in the senators when they would go to the floor and you would watch them on television. They would be more animated. You couldn’t see that on the radio. I very rarely went to the floor because I had no really business to be down there. I would go more to the cloakroom, so what I saw was just on the television. So I didn’t see too many live senators get up and speak. But, yes, it changed a lot. It really did change a lot. They became more animated and more partisan, I think, and they used more props. They never had props before because they didn’t have to have props. They became more elaborate over the years and more and more senators started to use them. So that part of it was interesting. I’ll tell you what. The other thing, too, was once I went up to the sergeant-at- arms’ office, I did not turn on a TV set, because I found that it just got on my nerves since I had to tune everything out, because I had to focus on what I was doing, and people would be walking around me. I still have a hard time anybody walking around me, so I try to make sure that no one does intrude on my space because all those years and all those hours, that’s all that happened. I didn’t like that, so for a long time, no television. Even now I have a TV in my room and I do not turn it on that often. I can turn it on, but if it goes up to a little bit higher pitch, it does something to me. I guess it just brings back This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 36 all that noise, and it was hard to get used to the peace and quiet because I did miss the noise, but I prefer the peace and quiet.

Williams: You have an individual office here.

McCluney: Right.

Williams: Was that common when you were on the Hill or were you mostly in open areas?

McCluney: No. In the Finance Committee I shared an office with two other ladies. The Leader’s office, I was in with one, two, three—there were four of us in one big room. Sheila was behind me, and in front of me was Witt and another person in that office. Then we had an opening to the left of where I sat and an opening to the right, so not only were you having people coming—and the senator would come around to the left. So you would have people coming in this way, people coming in this door going into Sheila’s office, people coming out of Sheila’s office, people going into Witt’s office. So it was constant movement. Or the White House staff would be coming up and they would have to sit down with Sheila. Other staffers from other committees, they’d be waiting in the outer office where I sat. So you not only had that conversation, but the conversation behind you, the senator coming in this door, these people coming in here. And the phones are ringing and you’re trying to concentrate. So it was a constant thing. The only time it was quiet was when everybody left the office. That was the only time it was quiet.

Williams: So one of your really important job skills was to be able to filter all this out.

McCluney: Yes, and be able to juggle a multitude of things per day, because I could set up, like, maybe three meetings in one day, and it had to be put together within five, ten minutes, or maybe an hour’s notice. So you would have to stop at what you were doing and then go on to the next thing and then go back. Or then you were given something else to do, so it was a constant movement. I saw why he wanted things off his desk. I was in a more terrible situation than he was because I constantly had people around me, This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 37 and when staffers would come in, they would try to read what was on your desk. So I had to really be careful because I had his papers. I think that’s why I came up with that system with the folders because it was more private that way, and then I immediately stuck it in an envelope. Then if somebody did come in, they wouldn’t know what was in the envelope.

Williams: It sounds like this was a pretty exciting time in your life.

McCluney: It was very exciting. It was also very intense, and you don’t realize how much information you’re picking up. You don’t know what you’re learning until after it’s over with, after you walk away from it and kind of sit back and think about it. It’s like, oh, my gosh, I was part of this, or I was part of that, and that impacted on the country. And I always did this, too. When I was at the White House, I felt like history was being made every single day, which it was and still is today. Up on the Hill it takes longer to see what impact the legislation has on the country, so it’s not immediate, even though there were times that what you were doing was history in itself. Maybe this was the first time the Senate did this or the Senate did that. So that was the remarkable thing. I think that’s what I take away from all of it was the sense that you were accomplishing something, which not a lot of people can say that they have accomplished something, that you start something and finish it, or you see the beginning, you see the middle, and then you see the end. So I can see why he feels so good about himself is because he’s accomplished an awful lot.

Williams: Is there some part of that accomplishment that is directly attributable to you?

McCluney: I don’t think so. [laughs] I just don’t think so.

Williams: There’s no McCluney footnote to history here?

McCluney: No, not really. No. I don’t think so. I just made his life a little bit more organized, I think. I tried to at least help with making sure that if he wanted something, I could give it to him. He still does that today. Lots of times I say he’s the teacher, and This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 38 sometimes you feel like you’re in school. He’ll come in and he’ll start asking all kinds of questions. And it’s like, why is he doing that? Why does he want to know that? Or like yesterday, he came in because he was having a meeting and he said, “This fellow said that he raised 5.2 million dollars towards the World War II Memorial and he’s with such- and-such a company.” I said, “No, he didn’t.” “Well, how do you know that?” I said, “Okay, I’ll show you.” Then he watched me go into my computer, get the printout so that I could show it to him that they were not on the list. Then he said, “Okay. Well, bring it in to the meeting,” which I did. It’s like you’re constantly being tested, and it’s always been that way. Sometimes I think it’s not that he’s testing you; I think he’s talking to you. That’s his way of talking to you, of feeling comfortable in talking to you because I think basically he’s kind of shy.

Williams: He’s been described as a private person.

McCluney: Yes, yes. I really think so. The other thing with him, which is really kind of interesting, is Jo-Anne and Betty and I know I can at times almost anticipate what he wants, but you can’t let him know that you anticipate what he wants because then he’ll change in midstream. So you always had to kind of sit back, even though you knew that he was going to do this or he was going to do that. But you just had to keep it to yourself.

Williams: And what is the motivation for his having to change course if you show that you know—

McCluney: I don’t know. I don’t know what the motivation is. I just know that he has a hard time trusting people, and I think that’s because over the years staff people have not done what he asked them to do, and it was just lack of confidence in that person. But once you gained his trust, he was more apt to trust you to a point. Like we would do these breakfast meetings and, because of my training, I knew that I had to do thank-you letters. I think he told Jo-Anne or Mike Pettit or somebody when we were at the Finance Committee, “I can’t believe she did these thank-you notes. I didn’t even have to tell her,” This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 39 because people on his staff just did not do that. They waited till he told them to do something, whereas, to me, that was in anticipation and I just knew that was the right thing to do. Just like about two weeks ago, the Dole Institute came out with a fall review of all the people that had given from ’04 to ’06, or something like that, and he said, “Did I thank everybody that was on this list?” Now, I would do the thank-you notes to the big donors because the Dole Institute would let me know who they were and how much they gave, but we never thanked anybody who gave less than, say, 10,000 dollars. We did not go below that because there were so many people that were giving money that all he would be doing was signing thank-you notes. And I said, “No.” I said, “We didn’t.” And he said, “Do you have letters to show me that I thanked these people?” And I said, “Yes, I do.” And there again, I felt like I was being tested, and why was he doing that because he knew that I did these thank-you notes? So I had to call up Sean [McDaniel] at the Dole Institute and we went over all the list. Well, he thanked the top list, he thanked the middle list, he thanked the other list, but he didn’t thank anybody under 900, 1000 dollars and below. Well, now he wanted to thank all those people, so we thanked all those people. We never did that. So when I did my memo back to him I said, “Senator, we did this group, we did this group, but we did not do that group. But this list does not include the people that have given the same amount of money in prior years,” because I just wanted him to know that this was not the entire list of people that had given, because it was misleading. And plus, I wasn’t on that list and I knew that I had given x amount of money and I should have been on that list. But I didn’t give during those years. I felt that if I was in that category, there had to be so many others, and I didn’t want him to think that other people did not give. So I did them all. I did all the thank-you notes, and so now everybody has been thanked. So from here on out, we’ll have to do that. So in my memo, I said to him, “You thanked this group. You thanked this group,” told him about the prior years, “and if you want to see these letters, I have them in my file,” because I just felt that he didn’t trust that I had thanked those people because he didn’t remember signing the letter. He has a very good memory. And he says, “Well, what about this person?” This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 40

I said, “Oh, no, you thanked them,” because I have a pretty good memory when it comes to things like that. Anything that I touch, I usually can remember. So I said, “Okay, I put the offer out there.” Well, then he never said, “Okay, show me the letters.” Sometimes I’d like to get back at him, only because I feel that it’s my reputation that’s on the line. I’m going to let him know in a nice way that, “Yes, I did do this, even though you think I didn’t. Here’s the proof.” That’s the other thing with him. You had to show him that you did it or you had to show him that so-and-so did it. But I understand it because I’ve been burned by different staff people. There’re certain people you can trust; there’re certain people you can’t. But then sometimes you can’t trust anybody because people have let you down, so I understand that.

Williams: Good.

[End of interview] This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 41

Index

Alston & Bird, 13, 14 American Battle Monuments Commission, 9 American Red Cross, 10

Baker, Dick, 32 Baker, Howard Jr., 30 Better America Foundation, 4 Bicentennial Minutes, 32 Bork, Robert, 31 Burke, Sheila, 4, 6, 26, 27, 28, 30, 36 Burson-Marsteller, 10 Byrd, Robert C., 30

Campaign America, 4, 22 Carter, Jimmy, 2, 3, 16, 21 Caveny, Red, 21 Clinton, Hillary Rodham and healthcare plan, 5 CNN, 5 Coe, Jo-Anne L., 2, 3, 21, 22, 30, 38 and Campaign America, 22, 30 Congressional Record Daily Digest, 20 Culp, Brian, 9

DeArment, Roderick, 4, 28 Dole for Senate, 4 Dole Institute of Politics (University of Kansas), 8 Dole, Elizabeth, 2, 17, 21 and Fred Smith, 10 Dole, Robert J., 6, 8, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40 and Bernard Shaw, 5 and cell phones, 28 and Clinton healthcare plan, 5 and Fred Smith, 11 and Honor Flight, Inc., 12 and Joyce McCluney, 3 and legislation, 31 and Library of Congress Veterans History Project, 13 and lobbyists, 33, 34 and observance of April 14, 34 and Robert C. Byrd, 30 and Robert J. Dole Institute for Politics, 13 and Robert Lighthizer, 28 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 42

and Roderick DeArment, 28 and Senate Finance Committee, 20 and staff, 4, 20, 38 and the media, 5 and Verner Liipfert law firm, 9 and World War II Memorial, 9, 11, 12 at Alston & Bird, 14 becoming Republican leader, 3 on meeting with CEOs, 33

Federal Express (FedEx), 10

Germain, Elizabeth, 14 Greene, Howard, 6, 7, 8

Honor Flight, Inc., 12, 13

Kansas City Royals, 29 Kansas University basketball team, 29 Komarek, Ruth Ann, 8, 9, 21, 24

Lacy, Bill, 13 Lighthizer, Robert, 3, 20, 28 Long, Russell B., 3 Lott, Trent, 7, 8

McCluney, Joyce and Office of Public Liaison at the White House, 16 and World War II Memorial, 9, 10, 12 as deputy sergeant-at-arms, 7 as deputy undersecretary of Commerce Department, 16 as member of Robert J. Dole's Finance Committee staff, 3, 20, 22 as member of Robert J. Dole's Leader office staff, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 as member of Robert J. Dole's staff, 4, 5, 29, 31, 36, 37 as sergeant-at-arms, 7 at Verner Liipfert law firm, 9 considering becoming a member of Robert J. Dole's staff, 3 describes Republican leadership meetings, 5 describes Robert J. Dole's daybook, 5 describes the Finance Committee office layout, 36 differences between majority and minority leadership, 30 her children today, 19 on becoming deputy sergeant-at-arms of the Senate, 6 on Betty Meyer, 21 on closing Robert J. Dole's 1996 presidential campaign office, 8 on family relationships, 18 on her educational background, 14 on Jimmy Carter, 16 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 43

on Jo-Anne L. Coe, 21, 22 on leaving the seargeant-at-arms office, 8 on moving to Waldorf, Md., 17 on obtaining care for her children, 18 on Robert J. Dole, 6, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40 on Ruth Ann Komarek, 21 on staff turnover, 29 on television in the U.S. Senate, 35 responsibilities as member of Robert J. Dole's Leader office staff, 4, 6 responsibilities as member of Robert J. Dole's staff, 4, 5 working for the Commerce Department, 15 working for the State Department, 15 McDaniel, Sean, 39 Meyer, Betty, 2, 21, 25, 38 Mondale, Walter, 16

Norton, Eleanor Holmes Norton and World War II Memorial, 11

Patrick, Bob, 13 Pettit, Mike, 38

Reagan, Ronald, 2, 3, 17 Robert J. Dole Institute for Politics, 39 Rockefeller, Nelson Jr., 23

Salpeck, Barb, 17 Save the Mall (organization), 9, 10, 11, 12 Seymour, Frank, 15 Shaw, Bernard, 5 Simpson, Alan, 6 Smith, Fred and World War II Memorial, 10, 11 St. Patrick’s Academy (Washington, D.C.), 14

Taggart, Moe, 9 Thompson, Fred, 13 Tower, John, 31

U.S. Senate and television, 35 UNESCO, 15 UnitedNations, 15

Warner, John and World War II Memorial, 11 Wexler, Anne, 2, 16, 17, 34 White House Office of Public Liaison, 16 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu McCluney 01-23-08—p. 44

Wittinghill, Jim, 27, 36 World War II Memorial, 9, 10, 38 and federal funds, 11 and litigation, 12 and sale of titanium, 11 fundraising, 10, 11, 12