A Democratic Vassal in King Richard's Civil Service
Markham, Charles
A Democratic Vassal in King Richard’s Civil Service by Charles Markham One of the few side benefits of the Watergate hearings, assorted grand jury investigations, and copious...
...There was no need for a meeting about Langman’s file, he said, because he had not changed his mind about Langman...
...The following narrative is therefore disquieting not because it unveils another far-reaching scandal, but rather because it conveys, more effectively than anything else we have seen, how pervasive is the spirit of the Nixon Administration...
...I had no further confrontations with Flemming and Ladd...
...Eventually, Sam Jackson-who had apparently forgotten the earlier Van Dusen-Ladd exchanges which concluded that Langman was an internal HUD matter-gingerly approached Harry Flemming to approve Langman’s return to the new communities office...
...Ladd’s letter was primarily a reiteration of the familiar tales of the previous summer...
...and as a human being with, I hope, at least an average allotment of ethical values...
...Otherwise we should serve notice on the mysterious tale-bearers that we would ignore further repetitions of accusations which were demonstrably false...
...as a citizen with respect for the law...
...There was no question in my mind that the continued White House interference in Langman’s case was the type of political discrimination clearly forbidden by law...
...All seemed to stem from unnamed sources, outside HUD and usually said to be high in rank...
...My political credentials were not gilt-edged, but 1 was (and remain) a registered Republican...
...Then the conversation turned, inevitably, to questions of why we had hired Langman in the first place...
...attorney ignored Markham S application after saying he was “desperate” for a chief deputy...
...Shortly thereafter, a departmental reorganization switched Langman from the new communities program to a general management post...
...I was prepared-and had expected-to walk the plank, but I would do so not for Tom Langman, who was not an intimate or even a friend, but because I resented bullying from any quarter and because I had certain personal principles about courage and cowardice in the bureaucracy...
...Jackson agreed, conferred with Flemming, and on August 21, 1970, instructed me to telephone Bruce Ladd and arrange for an exchange of file material...
...During that “new towns” in the entire country at period Jackson was a Republican the time, someone with Langman’s commissioner at the EEOC...
...The book, about the Johnson A dm in is tra tion, is en titled Crisis in Credibility: An Investigation into Secrecy and Deceit in the United States Government...
...Not long after Langman started work I received in rapid successiqn two phone calls-one from the executive assistant to HUD Secretary George Romney and the other from Harry Flemming’s deputy for political personnel at HUD...
...Langman’s talents in some suitable position...
...Continuing this line of argument, I stressed that in light of Ladd’s display of bad judgment, my assessment of Langman’s case should be granted greater weight than his, since I was being more “protective” of the President...
...I also sought to satisfy Flemming that Langman in no way could influence Administration policy in the new communities program...
...Many other considerations influenced my thoughts in those two days...
...Upon taking office, he discovered that more than 50 proposals for federal assistance to build new communities were pending and that there were only three people to The Langmaii Litany Unfortunately, this godsend was a member of the “wrong” political party and had served in the “wrong” presidential administration...
...Basic issues of civil liberties were also involved, and as 1 was to write Van Dusen a,few days later: Appointees in executive positions have not merely the right but the duty to challenge-to the presidential level, if necessarydecisions ostensibly made in the President’s name when it is clear that such decisions are based on totally erroneous information...
...I assured them that we were not so naive as to have ignored his position in the previous administration, and-in what foreshadowed a seemingly endless litany over the next 15 months-I pointed out the reasons we had hired Langman: his Reston experience, the difficulty of finding another experienced applicant, Senator Javits’ endorsement, and, of course, the absence of, any existing directives requiring the political appointment of mid-level civil servants...
...I experienced no exultation at the outcome of the Langman affair...
...Before resigning from HUD in May, 1972, he failed in an attempt to return to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as executive director...
...In his new position Langman was dealing with administrative matters rather than questions of policy, which should have pacified those who feared that he would undermine Republican programs...
...Ladd’s remark was not only offensive, but it also reflected an attitude which had no place in the White House, let alone in its personnel office...
...Miller produced it at once, and just as I suspected, about three or four easily accessible pages from the top were government personnel documents confirming Langman’s appointment as special assistant to the Secretary of Commerce on March 4, 1968, and his subsequent transfer to the Undersecretary’s office...
...A Democratic Vassal in King Richard’s Civil Service by Charles Markham One of the few side benefits of the Watergate hearings, assorted grand jury investigations, and copious newspaper reports has been the fairly thorough glimpse they have provided of the paranoia and pettiness of White House life during the regime of H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman...
...From a folder in front of him, he extracted a couple of new charges against Langman...
...Then we could probably establish-once and for allwhether Flemming’s information was erroneous...
...Harry Flemming left the White House shortly after the events here described, turning over his personnel functions to Frederick Malek and Daniel Kingsley...
...At the time, this recitation seemed sufficient to satisfy my callers, and perhaps would have remained so if Langman had not played squarely into the hands of parties even now unknown to me-who were determined to have lus head...
...At this I decided to go to Sam Jackson with the urgent suggestion that we report this whole matter to Dick Van Dusen, the Undersecretary of HUD...
...When I arrived, Ladd was waiting as well...
...The continuing harassment of high HUD officials had long since become intolerable, and the interminable series of deliberately false, or at minimum, half-baked accusations against Langman was not merely irresponsible but downright silly...
...Once that happened, the matter could be closed-and stay closed...
...lt might be wrong to draw wild inferences from this episode, or Markham S experiences since his return to North Carolina-a congressional candidate refused his offer of full-time volunteer help, a U.S...
...but not delight...
...The Undersecretary told me he approved of it...
...The note said, ‘Are you free for lunch?’ ” (I have always assumed that some of Langman‘s subsequent difficulties stemmed from lus choice-with characteristic brashness-of a certain wellplaced, if pompous, Republican senator to pass along the note...
...For as the saying goes, “dministrations may come and go, but the bureaucracy endureth forever...
...Satisfaction at the resolution of a long and exasperating bureaucratic skirmish and a renewed faith that decency, once in a while, could prevail, yes...
...The White House” and “other Cabinet members,” 1 was told, had been besieging Secretary Romney’s Office with charges that Langman had been publicly criticizing the Administration’s SBA policies, and, in fact, had been “passing documents” to “enemies of the President” on the Senate subcommittee...
...Finally, for me there was the hghly personal issue of my obligations and perhaps conflicting interests as a political appointee serving at the pleasure of the President...
...The file in question was not, of course, Langman’s official government personnel folder, but a special dossier maintained in Flemming’s White House office...
...we reviewed Langman’s financial statement and found no reference to the company with which the alleged conflict existed...
...Langman would have been just another hungry Democrat were it not for one critical fact: before entering the government he had been employed for five years as an administrator of Reston, the new town in northern Virginia...
...Yet, if there is LE lesson to the Langman story, it is that simply because such inferences sound implausibly petty and vindictive, they cannot be dhmissed...
...Langman has a wealth of experience and knowledge [which] would be of considerable value to you and the Nixon Administration...
...Ladd’s remark about Senator Javits, I said, was not only personally repugnant to me, but also dangerous in a political sense...
...I was deeply disappointed in myself for not having refused long ago to participate in this absurd charade...
...I asked, aware that he could quite appropriately advise it was none of my damned business...
...What did the note say...
...He said that he was “provoked as hell,” that I had directly violated his intentions, and that it was not Langman, but I, who would be subject to the “next action...
...Since Jackson had just left for a vacation, I decided to exercise my legal authority, delegated by the Secretary, to return Langman to the new communities office...
...Few of the Charles Markham resigned from HUD in 1972 and now lives in North Carolina...
...He was hardly calling to dispense the milk of human kindness...
...To make false statements on these forms is a criminal offense, and Ladd reported that he had checked with high Commerce Department officials who were positive that Langman had never held such a position...
...With this somewhat partisan background, and with my vivid recollection of the six-month delay in my own “clearance” for the EEOC post in 1965 after President Johnson’s henchmen learned that I was a Republican, I was in no particular mood to help undeserving Democrats retain their posts in the Nixon Administration...
...Not so...
...both said he was not there at any time...
...Thomas Langman is still with the new communities program in HUD...
...Avoiding Blunders The Undersecretary, long a political ally of George Romney, is a man of surpassing wit, tact, and integrity...
...During the first six months of 1970 they both made repeated pleas for Langman to be returned to his old job...
...Do you have Langman’s personnel file...
...I had not previously heard of Ladd, who I later discovered was attached to Flemming’s headquarters in the Executive Office Building...
...this article will be the first time he learns about the controversy over his employment...
...I had come to know Jackson while I was director review them...
...Soon the question of what Langman had dropped at the hearings became a matter of considerably greater urgency and uncertainty...
...My answer was direct, but restrained: “I have made this decision...
...One Democrat who had apparently been found undeserving at the Small Business Administration (SBA) was Thomas L. Langman, a 31-year-old “whiz kid” who had served as a special assistant to Howard Samuels when the latter was Undersecretary of Commerce and later SBA Administrator...
...moreover it was well within his constitutional rights even if he had been a government employee...
...At the close of his letter Ladd promised Miller that “heads will roll at HUD” if Langman weren’t fired immediately...
...Langman may be the innocent victim of a vendetta by highly placed persons, unusual-even by the standards of the jungle that political Washington can be-for the persistence and vindictiveness with which it has been carried on...
...I t is the very ordinariness of the entire episode that makes the story so disturbing...
...I then turned to my typewriter and drafted a three-page memo to Sam Jackson insisting that if there was any legitimate ground for inquiry we should turn the problem over to professional investigators...
...Although he was told that he was EEOC Chairman William Brown’s first choice for the job, and although he had the endorsement of Republican Senators Scott, Thurmond, Pearson, and Javits, Markham didn’t get the job...
...I then drafted, signed, and mailed to Harry Flemming an “addressee’s eyes only” letter...
...Both callers asked whether Jackson and I were aware of Langman’s background...
...After two days of soul-searching, I concluded that there was but one course of action, whatever the risk...
...Protective Reaction The first order of business the following morning, Thursday, August 27, 1970, was the formal transfer of Tom Langman to the new communities staff...
...Reasoning that Flemming’s file on Langman was probably full of undocumented and mistaken allegations of the type with which I was by then all too familiar, I suggested to Jackson that I should meet with Flemming and go over the file...
...If you’re asking about the SBA hearing, the SBA committee meeting, or the HEW demonstration, tell the Senator that the first two aren’t true and the third wasn’t even worth checking out...
...Flemming, who remained impassive during the entire conference, disavowed any concern about the press and emphasized that, as the President’s deputy on personnel affairs, he spoke for the President and his wishes must be respected...
...As I left, Flemming urged me rather earnestly to reconsider my position...
...Later checking proved them to be totally inaccurate...
...Flemming and Ladd serve, where reliance upon inaccurate information, failure adequately to evaluate charges, and “jumping to conclusions” can have most serious consequences for and throughout the Administration...
...Another of the principals, Bruce Ladd, also left the White House and became a deputy assistant secretary at-o f all placesthe Department of State...
...Within a month or so, however, it was clear that I would remain at HUD and that Langman would remain in the new communities office...
...That doesn’t mean anything,” Ladd exploded...
...I believe I have the authority to make such a decision, and 1 am sticking by it...
...characters in our little drama are famous...
...Among his souvenirs of the Langman affair is a book Markham received from Bill Nicoson, a HUD colleague...
...I t revolves around the career of Thomas Langman, who was neither an atypical civil servant nor a martyr to principle...
...I do know that Dick Van Dusen resisted a command by Flemming to come to the White House to discuss my future...
...Ladd was hardly deterred by this information, and Miller later called to tell me that someone still faced the threat of the guillotine if we didn’t fire Langman...
...The entire Langman affair, with all its ramifications, had become an outrage defying description...
...It was asserted (still by unknown forces outside the Department) that Langman had been seen at HEW some months before, participating in a demonstration against Secretary Robert Finch’s an ti-hunger program...
...For all Bruce Ladd knew, I might have been Jewish myself, perhaps even a relative of the Senator...
...Its author is Bruce Ladd...
...We found two people who were present at the meeting and who knew Langman...
...This was an almost laughable basis for possible disciplinary action since the incident took place before Langman joined HUD...
...I had never met Ladd, but I could have anticipated his response...
...Other charges against Langman came steadily to our attention...
...I explained to Flemming the full circumstances of the case in chronological order since April, 1969...
...Also at that time, applicants for positions at Langman’s level were not being scrutinized for political loyalty prior to being hired...
...The Langman Affair began in April, 1969...
...In the late fall of 1969, I was summoned to the office of March Miller 11, Harry Flemming’s deputy in charge of HUD personnel matters...
...The only new item,” I observed, “is the Commerce Department thing...
...While Markham did not suffer the most obvious form of retaliation for his defense of Langman, it is hard for him to forget that he has irritated the White House...
...Ladd claimed that Langman had falsely stated on his government job application form that he had served in the Johnson Administration as special assistant to the Secretary of Commerce...
...My memo concluded that either Langman was lying, there was a case of repeated mistaken identity, or, “Mr...
...Flemming apparently passed the letter on to Ladd, who responded by telephone the next day...
...The Ivy League Rebel The SBA hearing canard had barely been given the burial it deserved when I heard of even more imagnative accusations, accompanied by demands that we “do something” about Langman...
...As Assistant Secretary, Jackson was responsible for supervising HUD’s $25O-million program to develop “new towns...
...Reduced to its essence, the following account is a simple tale of almost unbelievable vindictiveness and pettiness...
...It is high time we found out which,” I told Jackson...
...Although immediately sensing the implications behind Ladd’s threats, Van Dusen was far more discreet than I. Rather than calling Ladd’s superior, Harry Flemming, and demanding an immediate end to such nonsense, Van Dusen merely phoned Ladd and amiably, but firmly, suggested that he keep off our backs...
...I had reached that limit...
...Stop there,” I nearly shouted...
...That’s just one New York Jew endorsing another New York Jew...
...On May 19, 1969, Javits sent HUD the standard laudatory letter, stating that “Mr...
...It’s the same as Strom Thurmond recommending the head of the KU K~LIKXla n.” I was so stunned that I quickly ended the conversation...
...I believed then, and nearly four years later I am even more convinced, that the latter judgment was the correct one...
...I mentioned that this phone conversation had not been Ladd’s only indiscretion...
...But far more serious than Langman’s tardiness was his lunchtime destinationthe Senate subcommittee hearings on the Small Business Administration...
...Whatever the case,” I told Jackson, “I don’t want to waste any more time on this foolishness...
...To my relief he had none...
...most populated the middle echelons of the White House and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), but the message is depressingly universal...
...Since Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Reston was one of only two existing from 1965 to 1968...
...However, wise to the ways of Washington, Jackson suggested that a friendly letter from Republican Senator Jacob Javits (we were told that Langman’s voting address was in New York) would do Langman’s cause no harm...
...Yet even as we learn new details about the imperiousness of these former protectors of the presidential presence, we take comfort in the belief that on the less-exalted rungs of government life went on much as it always has...
...I had been told that Ladd had met Langman’s wife at a recent cocktail party and had puzzled her by saying, “I hear Tom’s been behaving himself lately...
...Technically, such a letter was not necessary under the rules for hiring established by Harry S. Flemming, the 28-year-old John Mitchell protCg6 to whom President Nixon had given the responsibility for political personnel matters...
...there is, after all, a limit to what one should do out of respect for the concerns of one’s superiors...
...Along with hundreds of other LBJ holdovers throughout the government, Langman was dismissed from the SBA in April, 1969...
...Asked what he had done to provoke such high-level indignation, Langman said that he had passed a note to a friend, a Senate employee who was sitting at the committee table...
...Do you have any new complaints...
...I repeated the ancient litany, concluding with the reference to Senator Javits’ letter of recommendation...
...If you have anything further to say, you can take it up with him...
...I added that if Langman ever learned the full story, and if Langman’s connections with prominent Democrats were as close as his unseen enemies suspected, the newspapers would have a field day with the,entire episode...
...I would very much appreciate your fullest consideration in utilizing Mr...
...In mid-July we received Flemming’s answer: he would not look with favor on the move at that time because of unspecified, but derogatory, material in Langman’s file...
...1 set forth my authority for this move, Langman’s Civil Service rights, the background of his appointment, and my conviction that the best interests of the Administration and HUD would be served by the transfer...
...Throughout this entire period I had had only limited contact with Langman, but as far as I knew, his work had been satisfactory and he had not been transferred because of poor performance...
...I made no reference to Ladd’s remark, to civil liberties, or to other philosophical considerations, preferring to have the written record confined to the issues of my legal authority...
...One particular tale-startling for its naive assumption that such conduct was illegal or improper-was that Langman had attended a Saturday meeting of an SBA advisory committee and had been heard to make unflattering comments about the President...
...Perhaps uniquely among those who appeared to defy the White House staff, I was not asked to pay the ultimate price for my heresy...
...If Ladd would make such a comment to an utter stranger, he ,might do so again in circumstances where the newspapers would get wind of it, to the severe detriment of the President and his party in an election year...
...We were soon able to ask Van Dusen the same question...
...Good-bye.’’ Within the hour, I received a command to appear before Harry Flemming at the White House on Monday, August 31, at 10 a.m...
...At that time I had accepted and was awaiting White House “clearance” (which I later received) for the position of Deputy to the Assistant Secretary of HUD for Metropolitan Planning and Development, Samuel C. Jackson...
...There was, however, one new charge, one which was more serious, more specific, and more easily checked out than any of the other shopworn accusations which were still making the rounds...
...It soon became evident, that there were Republicans in Washington who did not share Senator Javits’ enthusiasm for Langman’s talents...
...Zionist Coiispiracy The only problem with the shift was that it disappointed both Langman, who had developed great enthusiasm for his work in the new communities program, and William Nicoson, the new communities program director, who was desperately trying to build an experienced staff...
...Miller asked me to look over a letter written on White House stationery from a Bruce Ladd...
...And so the story ends, devoid of climax or clear resolution...
...Langman’s explanation was that he had gone to Capitol Hill for lunch: as a f c k e r SBA- employee he was interested in the hearings and had dropped in out of curiosity...
...Is George Romney running this Department or is Bruce Ladd running this Department...
...In 1968 I resigned from the EEOC and almost immediately joined the Nixon campaign as a volunteer member of the anti-vote-fraud squad-a group of attorneys whose assignment was to prevent a repeat of the I960 election...
...He strolled into my office and asked, “Do you have a fellow named Langman working for you...
...1 gave Dick Van Dusen, the Undersecretary, a copy of my letter, and he assured me he approved of my decision...
...background was virtually a godsend...
...A very influential Republican senator...
...Under such in tense scrutiny almost anyone would sooner or later have made a fatal misstep...
...We will handle the situation in our own way,” Van Dusen said, adding that since Langman had Civil Service status it would be a political blunder to try to fire him...
...Langman, it should be noted, did not know of the incidents at the time and had no part in the preparation of this article...
...I thanked him for his time and the opportunity to explain my decision...
...By mid-June, Langman had received a temporary appointment and was at work in the HUD new communities office...
...I passed the letter back across Miller’s desk...
...All three were on loan of research for the Equal Employment from other HUD divisions...
...As far as 1 knew, the White House personnel staff had never insisted on political clearance for transferring employees holding Civil Service appointments unless a promotion was involved...
...I sensed that neither the legal nor the philosophical values involved were of any importance to lum, so in closing I decided to appeal to the one instinct to which I suspected those in the President’s retinue would respond...
...This is particularly true in an area as important and as sensitive as that in which Messrs...
...He was, of course, soon circulating his resume elsewhere, and a copy came to the attention of Sam Jackson and myself through a mutual friend at EEOC...
...But he said that if we really believed we needed Langman, 1 could write him a letter justifying our position and he would “think about it...
...There were vague hints of a conflict of interest...
...Brown told him that, under orders from Malek and Kingsley, Markham S application had not been considered...
...Heads Will Roll For a while I received no calls or visits about Langman and I assumed that my memorandum had gone to Secretary Romney’s office and achieved its purpose...
...Even ‘ t o someone like myself, with only a fleeting impression of Langman’s dress, manner, Georgetown lifestyle, and 1950s’ Ivy League background, his participation in such a demonstration seemed grossly improbable . On August 5, 1969, HUD’s congressional liaison added what was to be the first of several last straws...
...One day in mid-July, Langman overstayed his lunch hour and earned a reprimand from lus new supervisors...
Vol. 5 • July 1973 • No. 5
