January 8, 2000.Annotated on July 29, 2002

This set of vignettes about people I knew (the blunt unvarnished truth) during my 45 plus years in business is divided into three basic parts;

• the first part is largely about people I met in the political arena and government,
• the second part is largely about the people I knew and to whom i was mostly a consultant in the business world.
• The third part is largely about some of the media I knew, interviewed, was interviewed by and with whom I consorted as required by my profession and my politics!
• Everything annotated beginning on October 16, 2002--But totally incomplete; an unending task! I am just starting on parts two and three so be patient!

How can I remember all this stuff? Easy, when I retired I took with me all the Rolodex's and the description files I accumulated over the years which had names, addreses and short bio's of each and every person I had met over some 45 years in business and politics. I used to keep a bio form of the individual I had met which looked something like this: I have included my actual write up of Bill Safire as an example of what I recorded.

For everybody but everybody I met over some 45 years I filled out this kind of form for my own benefit regardless of whether the peron was supposed to be a somebody or a nobody. My staff thought it was sillly and did not cooperate in doing it but I always did it on my own. It did not matter to me who the person was, what they did, important or unimportant, famous or infamous I kept this record for my own benefit since I ws convinced that although I could trut my memeory I could not trust it completely. I never thought of these notes as extensive but as memory joggers, which time has proven them to be!

These are personal impressions and and personal comments about all these people. I do not claim them to be extensive evaluation of their service to government or to private industry or anything else. They are my impressions of them as human beings taking into account my foolish standards of honor, integrity, truthfulness and decency.

All these people whose vignettes I publish here I knew intimately on a one to one basis over a period of years.

You will recognize many of the names of the public figures but the names of the business executives at the highest levels will, most likely, be totally unfamiliar to you. Why then publish these vignettes of business leaders whose time has passed? For the very simple reason that they all fit a mold and all the horror stories now prevalent in the public domain about business leaders comes as no surprise to me. After you read most of these comments they won't come as a surprise to you either.

In the world of the well known that which you see and hear has about as much relation to the real person as the sun does to the moon. The vast majority of people I portray here are as phoney as the $3.00 bill! That is why I portray them as I knew them. It is unfortunately true that most people get to the "top" by chicanery and nothing else.

Politicians, most politicians, are, by definition, people without morals and people who know no limits in what they will do to get elected.

I look at all these people from a human point of view with my crazy idealistic principles! If they lied, cheated, stole or were vicious, I don't care how good they may have been in the political world ; to me they were and are disgusting! Their credentials don't impress me since I belong to that school that says that most people get promoted to their highest level of incompetence!

My judgment is simple: were and are these decent, reputable people with honor and integrity, as I knew them? Or did they care only about themselves and the rest of the world be damned?

The politicians like to differentiate between their "private" life and their "public" life, as if the two can be separated! This is as phoney a dichotomy as they come. How can you separate the emotions, the principals, the beliefs of ones "Private" and "Public" life. You can't and they are one and the same. If Clinton is going to be remembered for anything it is just that! The two are one and the same; totally and completely inseparable!

The word "politicians" encompasses those who NEVER BUT NEVER get elected but APPOINTED TO OFFICE! They are no different from the politicians but gutless in the sense they refuse to run for office but count on the appointment process!

If the following picture is not outlined that means I have not yet written them up! Each and every one of the people listed here I knew and quite intimately at that but I always distanced myself from most of them because most made me barff!

If there is one thing which I have learned to my regret and sorrow it is this:

A PUBLIC REPUTATION HAS NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, TO DO WITH THE REAL PERSON WHO HAS THAT REPUTATION!

Many of the people about whom you might read here have or had two personalities: one for public consumption and one for private consumption! I call them public schiznophrenics. What the public sees is a facade behind which is and lies a totally different personality.

Many of them had major private problems and handicaps totally ignored by the media, most particularly if the person was in the political camp of the media. More than one of the people listed here are or were 24 an hour day drunks and even more had/have drinking problems. I have been with them when they were as drunk as could be, slurred their words and had no idea of where they were or what they were doing!

BILL ARCHER	ARTHUR BURNS	PAT BUCHANAN	BILL BUCKLEY
GEORGE BUSH	JIMMY CARTER	JOHN B. CONNALLY	MARIO CUOMO
DAVID DINKINS	MILTON FRIEDMAN	ALAN GREENSPAN	HUBERT HUMPHREY
LEE IACOCCA	LYNDON JOHNSON	JACK KEMP	HENRY KISSINGER
MARTIN L. KING	JOHN F. KENNEDY		DANIEL MOYNIHAN
RICHARD NIXON	DAN QUAYLE	RONALD REAGAN	ALICE RIVLIN
WILLIAM SIMON	EUGENE TIGHE	JOHN EHRLICHMAN	HARRY HALDERMAN

..

FOOTNOTE 1:Some of my readers may disagree heartily with the vignettes I have posted here. By no means are any of these articles about any one individual anything but a vignette of the person I personally knew and dealt with. These vignettes should be read as my comments about my knowledge and experiences with the person in question. The vignettes are neither more or less than that!

FOOTNOTE 2: My annotation of July 10 and July 29, 2002 is the result of the fact that readers have asked me to update and write about the names I included but never finished!