The Improbable President

By Vincent O'Leary

The State University of New York
at Albany was badly shaken by the turmoil
of the Vietnam War era. But It was doubly taxing for a
campus caught up in converting a small teacher’s college into a major
university center. Worse, budget cuts had lead to the closing of academic
departments and the firing of faculty.

By 1977, there was serious
concern about how this not yet fully formed campus, unsure of where it was
going, would cope with these reversals. That would be the challenge facing a
new president---the fifth in eight years.

His qualifications were
unorthodox. Before becoming a faculty member, he was a national authority on
community corrections, among other things organizing and directing the parole class=SpellE>supervison agencies of the states of Texas
and Washington. All the while, he
contended with the life long, crippling effects of polio and the label--disabled.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 22, 2004
• ISBN: 9781418401450

Vincent O'Leary

Vincent O’Leary was President of the State University of New York at Albany for thirteen years and was previously the Dean of its School of Criminal Justice. He also served as Assistant Director of President Johnson’s National Crime Commission, Director of Research and Policy of the National Council on Crime and Deliquency, Director of Parole Supervision for the State of Texas and Chief Probation and Parole Officer of the State of Washington. He had extensive experience as a consultant in organizational development and published and lectured extensively in his areas of expertize.

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© 2004 by Vincent O’Leary. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/15/2017

ISBN: 978-1-4184-0146-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4184-0145-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2004091203

Cover drawing courtesy of the State University of New York at Albany

CONTENTS

Foreword

Prologue

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Epilogue

About the Author

FOREWORD

Like most children, my two daughters enjoyed hearing stories about their father’s life. The eldest recorded some and enticed me to tinker with them until they finally blossomed into a book. Comprehensive, it is not. It is what it started out to be–some tales culled from an expanse of reminiscences bound together by a loose chronology.

Did I really experience all the happenings described? Annotated calendars, clippings, publications, correspondence and conversations with some of those in the narrative gave me a means of checking many of my recollections. However, in the end. I had to depend on my memory for the details of certain events and conversations.

There are, however a few, deliberate distortions. I substituted fictitious names for people, mostly from my days of dealing with offenders, who might have been discomfited, even after all these years, by their inclusion. And I have compressed or inverted times and locations in a few places in the interest of coherence and brevity.

A regret. The choices made inevitably resulted in the omission from the text of the names of the many who befriended or worked with me in San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, New York City, Washington DC and especially at the State University of New York at Albany, the School of Criminal Justice and in the old city on the Hudson where the last two are located. Their names may be missing from these pages; but none are absent from my memory nor my heart.

I am obliged to recognize Kendell Birr’s fine history of the University at Albany as a valuable reference, as well as Marna Poole, my editor, who was of great help in the final stages of creation. Three others I must also acknowledge: Cathy and Beth, affectionate daughters, who started this whole project and an amazing writer, and loving wife, Yu Lihua, who helped me see it through to completion.

I happily add to that list my step children, grandchildren and step grandchildren for giving an old man a satisfying rationale for having written these tales in the first place.

PROLOGUE

Blue-lipped after frolicking with his brothers in the chilly ocean waves, the three-year-old boy dashed across the sands of a San Francisco beach. In the distance, his mother held a towel aloft, ready to envelop her son in its warmth, and she smiled at him as he ran toward her. It was the last time she would ever see him run.

Suddenly, he cried out and fell to the ground. A rusty nail, protruding from a board tossed ashore by the sea, had punctured his right foot. The mother raced to the boy, pulled out the nail, and sucked the wound to draw blood to cleanse it.

The boy seemed fine after that. He hobbled around for a few days, but the injury seemed to be healing. Then, inexplicably, his body temperature spiked, and with the high fever came an increasing inability to move. A doctor declared the boy had infantile paralysis, and immediately placed him in isolation in San Francisco Hospital. The virus continued to course its way down the boy’s spinal cord, destroying the nerves in his legs, and causing some of the muscles to atrophy, others to weaken. His right leg shrunk to the thickness of his arm and his left thigh became markedly thinner.

In 1927 there was no polio vaccine. Every summer was polio season: a time of dread when thousands of people, primarily children, contracted the disease. A substantial percentage recovered, while others—those with the paralytic strand—lived with the consequences of polio for the rest of their lives. The young boy was in the second group.

Years later it was established that the typical path for the poliomyelitis virus was through the mouth. But at the time, the boy’s mother attributed his infection to the rusty nail on the beach.The boy had stabs of recollection from that time. One of them was of his lying on the cold sand as his mother tried to suck the blood from his foot. For him, that marked the true start of that which followed.

CHAPTER I

There was no great magic at the prospect of meeting with ol’ Lyndon: He was a familiar figure whom I had met in Texas several times. Being called to the White House, however, to meet personally with Lyndon Baines Johnson, President of the United States, was on a wholly different level. The only word to describe my feelings was awe; not in its debased contemporary usage but in one of its traditional meanings—a mixture of wonder and great respect before majesty. Meeting alone in the White House with an American president, even ol’ Lyndon, had all of that.

When presenting myself to the uniformed guard at the front entrance. I was relatively composed, despite the aura of surrealism surrounding the experience. Walking up the path to the West Wing of the White House, the setting sun slanting across the manicured, green surface of the lawn, words came to my mind that were directed to a once young, immigrant girl: Well, Ma, isn’t this something?

Inside the building, another guard directed me to a nearby room, its regal simplicity graced by dark green wallpaper and a large, round, polished wooden table that stood in the middle of the room. There was little time to examine the paintings on its walls, as a door opened on the other side of the room and in walked a smiling acquaintance from Texas; Jake Jacobson, Governor Price Daniels’ former assistant, now serving in a similar capacity for the president. He greeted me warmly and led me down a hallway through a busy work area, one with telephones ringing, typewriters clattering, and people rapidly moving in and out of offices.

At ease in the company of Jake, I remarked, Sure is lively around here.

This is the kitchen entrance, Jake said with a laugh. Front door’s around the other side. Always looks like this when the president has called a high-level meeting for ten o’clock at night.

Passing through more doors, we arrived at a quiet quarter where the hallway ended before a closed doorway. That’s the Oval Office, Jake said. Then he indicated a small adjacent room. The president will meet you here. The room was furnished with an elegant sofa, a small desk and chair in front of a window at the end of the room, and several wooden chairs with upholstered seats facing the sofa. Jake told me the room was created for Eisenhower for naps after his heart attack. Kennedy called it his prayer room and used it mostly for private telephone calls. (Thirty years later William Jefferson Clinton employed the area for purposes that would earn him impeachment.)

The door on the opposite side of the hallway was slightly ajar and I could see it was a bathroom. By leaving its door open, as well as the door to the Oval Office, Lyndon Johnson had on occasion been known to carry on conversations with male visitors while he sat enthroned. He was not a man to waste time or one who was constrained by niceties.

A command appearance before the President of the United States had not been among my expectations, nine months earlier, when I undertook an assignment as a staff member with his Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice. Now suddenly such a encounter was about to take place and I had to find a way to resist tactfully a likely, personal request of the nation’s chief executive to accept another position—one I did not want.

* * *

The Crime Commission’s offices were in one of those obscure buildings in Washington occupied by arcane governmental bureaus, temporary commissions, or parts of major departments squeezed out of their headquarters locations by a lack of space or prestige. Located close to Capitol Hill, it housed several units of the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Elmer K. Nelson, an associate director of the Commission, was responsible for the corrections area and for arranging my upcoming session with the executive director. Nelson was a tall, round-faced man, who wore his hair carefully parted on the side and combed across his head. His easy smile and Aw, shucks, call me Kim demeanor belied the fact that he was a well-known professor of public administration at the University of Southern California. I never was quite sure how he learned about me, and when I asked he simply raised his eyebrows and offered a Cheshire-cat grin.

After being here for a month, I’m convinced this is going to be a really influential report, he said. We’re going to be working with lots of the country’s leading experts. Howard Ohmart from the California Youth Authority is coming aboard. I’d like you to help us by joining the correctional team." Ohmart was a shuffling, warm hulk of a man, whom I would discover had an excellent mind and facile pen that could turn out page after page of graceful prose and sound argument.

That’s very kind, Kim, I replied, but, with all respect, government reports have an unfortunate reputation for filling bookshelves rather than getting anything done.

His response was quick and slightly impatient. "Look, I know that, but there is much more than a report involved here. For the first time, we’re going to see substantial federal funds given in the crime field to states and cities. They’re already working on creating an agency to administer them.

‘The Commission’s findings are going to influence how that agency is set up and where the money is spent. We ought to make sure that corrections gets its fair share and that it’s channeled in the right direction."

With his bushy, black eyebrows, a strong chin, and working in shirt sleeves, Jim Vorenberg was the picture of a hard-driving executive director of a federal commission; impatient to get things done. No frills. His office was minimally furnished and had a temporary feel about it. Piles of neatly stacked reports were on his desk and on the floor behind him. He was cordial as we chatted about my joining the Crime Commission staff but I sensed him measuring me as he sat with a kind of coiled ease.

On leave from Harvard, Jim Vorenberg was like many, youngish law-school professors who had been asked to take on an important assignment in Washington. Bright, focused, confident and tough, his career trajectory was clearly ascendant. He rarely left his office before nine o’clock at night and took it as a given that really good people shared a similar work ethic.

The chemistry was right. It was not long before we were talking about the details of my appointment. I was to begin what was to become a ritual for the next year and a half. Every Tuesday morning at seven, Adele and I put two sleeping children in blankets in the back of our station wagon and headed to the Newark Airport, where they saw me off on the air shuttle to Washington, D.C. On every Thursday evening, the reverse journey was completed. That schedule gave me two days at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, and weekends at home. It also gave my family more than a little familiarity with the New Jersey Turnpike.

Released early in 1967, the Commission’s report, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, was widely covered by the national press, and it formed the basis of President Johnson’s message to Congress on combating crime in the United States. An impressive piece of work, it had a broad influence in shaping subsequent criminal control policies in the nation.

It was the Commission’s report that first gave prominence to the notion of a criminal justice system, as contrasted to the three traditional entities—police, courts, and corrections. Without question its findings had a significant effect on that system and on its components, specifically corrections.

The treatment approach, which for forty years had focused almost exclusively on individual pathology, had not reduced recidivism. We and our collaborators offered reintegration as a fresh organizing principle for corrections. Attention needed to be shifted, we noted, to what research had shown as the major sources of criminality: the absence of positive family influences, criminogenic peer groups, poor school achievement and the lack of employment. The concept of reintegration caught hold in myriad forms; community-based facilities mushroomed, correctional training programs proliferated, and ways of organizing and administrating programs were altered considerably.

But the Commission’s report had some inevitable flaws and disagreements. As with generals who tend to prepare for the last war, the sparse coverage of certain emerging topics later made some of the Commission’s recommendations seem weak. The scourge of crack cocaine, the deepening crisis of the ghetto, and the degree of increase in violence in the country were given insufficient weight. Nor were all of its findings met with wide acclaim.

The Commission’s correctional recommendations were seen by some as soft on crime, while others saw its refusal to take a position on the death penalty as craven. Another conclusion that was not universally popular, even among all Commission members, was the Supreme Court’s finding in the Miranda case that gave criminal suspects a series of rights (to remain silent, to have a lawyer, etc.) during interrogation. The Court’s decision was accepted by two-thirds of the Commission as the settled law of the land. That was not satisfactory to the remaining third (numbering among them Lewis Powell, a future appointee to the Supreme Court, and Leon Jowarski, the prosecutor during Nixon’s impeachment). They filed a dissent to the Commission’s report, calling for a Constitutional amendment to reverse that decision.

The depth of feeling stirred by the Miranda case extended well beyond these few dissenters, as was evident in the banquet room of the Willard Hotel a few weeks after the The Challenge of Crime was published. The occasion was a national gathering of police and prosecutorial officials at which the president was to appear to discuss crime in America and draw upon the Commission’s work as the basis for several initiatives he planned to announce.

As distinguished guests were escorted to the head table, virtually the entire room suddenly stood up and began to applaud as a beaming J. Edgar Hoover made his way to the raised dais. I did not join in. My nascent dislike of Hoover had solidified when, instead of meeting with the Commission in person, he sent his assistant Deke DeLoach, whose disdain for any group at the federal level dealing with matters of police policy (other than the FBI) had been palpable.

A few moments later, another man entered the banquet room and walked toward the dais. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with white hair and a smiling, open countenance. It was Earl Warren, whom I had seen thirty years earlier in Sacramento when he was governor of California and I was just a boy.

Rising to my feet, I began to applaud vigorously; then suddenly realized that only a handful of us were standing, clapping in a desert of silence for the chief justice of the United States. Most of the several hundred in the room sat in mute yet obvious disapproval of the man associated with the Court’s decisions, which they saw as handcuffing police. Despite feeling isolated and exposed, I was determined that Earl Warren would know that some in the room supported him.

It was my first taste of the potential depth of conflicts at the center of federal power and how those conflicts played out in the behaviors of those caught up in them. It also reminded me that a seemingly innocuous act in another setting could be fraught with unexpected consequences in this one.

* * *

The final months at the Crime Commission for me were devoted to preparing the Corrections Task Force Report (one of ten to be put out by the Commission), designed to expand upon and back up the corrections chapter in The Challenge of Crime.

By this time, Kim Nelson and Howard Ohmart had returned to California; most of the work of editing the earlier drafts we had written as a team were left in my hands. Being the last person to edit the Corrections Task Force final report reminded me of the old Communist Party tactic of staying at exhausting meetings to the bitter end. You get to shape the final product in a way you could not when everyone was fresh and still present.

Kim’s collaborative style had given me little incentive to make any substantive changes, even if I had been tempted; my editorial work was limited largely to stylistic modifications. In Washington, however, the perception of power is everything, and I quickly found myself attending one meeting after another, speaking as an authority on things correctional in the United States. Soon I was acting as an advisor to the budding Office of Law Enforcement Assistance, giving advice as to the best places to expend grant funds to implement the recommendations of the Corrections Task Force.

As my attention focused on all these activities, I was taken by surprise by a call from Main Justice, the building in which most of the top officials of the Department of Justice were housed. It was the attorney general’s secretary, who informed me he wanted to meet with me. She had no idea, or more likely would not tell me, what he wanted to talk about. The next day I found myself in an enormous oak-walled office. One of the largest desks I had ever seen was situated near the center of the room. An American flag stood to one side, the Seal of Office on the wall behind it.

A door under the seal opened and out stepped a relatively young, lanky man wearing a cardigan sweater. He greeted me warmly and, waving his hand, said with a slight Texas drawl, This is all for show. Come on in hyah where the work gets done. Ramsey Clark, Attorney General of the United States and the son of a former member of the U.S. Supreme Court, was a man adverse to pretense, easy to relate to, and fiercely dedicated to the moral principles underlying American law and government, as he saw them.

Sitting beside me and next to his paper-strewn desk, he began to talk. There were a few words about folks in Texas, my family, and the Crime Commission; then he moved on to the matter at hand. Mr. O’Leary, for the last four months I’ve been searching for someone to become the chairman of the United States Parole Board, and you’re the most qualified person I could find in the country. I want to recommend to the president that he appoint you to that job. It’s one of the most important posts in this department. What do you say?

I was taken aback, but managed to reply, General, I’m surprised and honored by your offer. Believe me, sir, I’ll carefully think about it. I really appreciate your confidence.

There’s an old saying, Mr. O’Leary: Patriotic appeals are the last refuge of the scoundrel. So I won’t use any on you, but I sure hope you’ll take this assignment. It needs a man like you. Let me know soon.

After a few additional exchanges and the promise of an answer within two weeks, I departed the office, impressed and thoughtful. Deep down, I knew already the position was not for me but I wanted to warm my hands for a bit over the glow of a flattering offer.

Shoehorned between my editorial and consultant responsibilities was another seminar for new parole board members. Caught up in it, and not wanting to think about how to tell the attorney general that I did not want the job he offered, I put the decision out of my mind.

But if I was not thinking about Ramsey Clark, he was thinking about me. Ten days after our meeting, the telephone rang just as my family and I were sitting down to dinner. I took it in the bedroom, and as I sat on the bed, annoyed by a call at that time of day, I answered with a brusque Hello.

The response from the operator on the line caught my full attention. This is the White House calling. Would you please wait a moment?

Startled, I sprang to my feet. A gentle Texas voice spoke. Mr. O’Leary, this is Miss Fleming. I’m so sorry to be calling you at home. The president was wondering if you could meet with him in his office next Tuesday evening at five o’clock. Is that possible? She sounded like a neighbor asking me to come over for drinks.

Of course. I would be happy to be there, I replied.

After giving me instructions on how to get into the White House, she bade me a charming Good evening. I stood for a long minute, staring at the telephone.

Four days later, the door to the Oval Office opened and I heard the president’s voice speaking to someone in the room. I barely had time to rise before his large frame appeared in the doorway. Hand extended, he greeted me. How you, Mr. O’Larry?

Fine, Mr. President. It’s very good to see you again, sir.

He was serious-faced and on a tight schedule. Gesturing for me to sit down on the sofa, he drew up a chair, moved close to me, and bent forward. His face was not much more than eighteen inches from mine. When he wanted something from someone, his trademark was to try to physically dominate his prey.

The hound dog countenance was intense; the brown eyes squinted at me. The treatment was about to delivered by a renowned persuader.

I’ve got some people waiting, so let me get right down to business. Ramsey tells me you’ve been offered the chairmanship of the U.S. Parole Board. I wanted to see you to say, personally, I want you in that job. It’s an important one and you’re the most qualified person for it.

Suddenly, the distance between his face and mine had shrunk to twelve inches and his eyes narrowed further as they continued to peer directly into my own. I needed time to think but he was not about to give it to me. The heat was on and I was being engulfed by it.

In desperation, I reached for a responsive yet noncommittal answer. It turned out to be one that could have been used by the head of any government agency. With as much self-possession as I could muster, I said, Mr. President, that job requires money and backing.

Mr. O’Larry, you’ve got it, the president replied instantly and emphatically. Our noses were now separated by no more than six inches. I was looking deeply into the presidential pupils.

Smiling weakly, I made a vague reference about writing to him. To my great relief, he relented. I guess he considered the matter settled. Shaking my hand and already beginning to focus on his next meeting, he rose. Far be it for me to press the point that I had not actually agreed to take the job. The ambiguity suited me fine.

I was disconcerted, however, when, after turning me over to Jacobsen, who had been waiting at the doorway, the president called over his shoulder as he headed towards the door to the Oval Office: Send his name up to the Senate, Jake.

I had to slow that down. As Jacobsen and I began to retrace our steps to the West Wing entrance, I quickly asked, "Would you mind holding up that referral a bit until I get a chance to write a letter to the president, as I promised him??

Sure, he replied.

The last time I saw Jake was in the same room where he had first greeted me. Eventually, he would be accused of accepting a bribe from a representative of the milk industry for which he subsequently was convicted.

It was dark when I exited the White House, with the phrase Mr. O’Larry, you’ve got it still ringing in my head. The reality was that I did not actually have it.

The president was not dissembling but I was experienced enough to know, unlike a J. Edgar Hoover, that there was little chance I could go directly to the president over the head of an attorney general who had decided to cut the Parole Board’s budget request. It would have to be overturned by lobbying Senate and House committees on my own. That did not faze me too much: I had some practice in the Washington and Texas state leagues. And to be asked by the president to take a job was not to be taken lightly.

Despite his reputation for micromanaging, it was surprising that the president took his time to see me, even at the request of Ramsey Clark. The last two years had seen a deepening involvement in South Vietnam, despite his reluctance. Increasingly his attention and energy was absorbed by it and he was deeply wounded by the antiwar protesters across the United States, who filled the air with their shouts of LBJ! LBJ! How many did you kill today?

The man who was responsible for Medicare, the College Work Study program, and the Elementary and Secondary School Act that provided billions of education dollars for poor children, as well as the Civil Rights and Voting Rights bills, and who wanted so much to be loved, was instead becoming widely reviled.

Political and bureaucratic considerations certainly colored my thinking but in the end were peripheral to the central question: did I want the job? I pondered that as my taxi passed by brightly lit government offices and monuments of the nation’s capital city on the way back to my office. At my request, the driver stopped not at my usual entrance, but a block away, at the other end of the building. For a half-hour in the cold of a Washington winter night, I stood looking up four stories at the darkened windows of the office of the chairman of the U.S. Parole Board. By the time I scurried back to my usual entrance, I was certain that I did not want to occupy that office.

Why? It was an important and respected post and I was confident that I could handle it. I simply had a strong premonition that I should not take it; almost as if doing so would betray some unarticulated thing of great personal value.

At that instant, I had no insight into what it was, but now, with the benefit of time, I believe it had something to do with the closing of vistas opened to me during the prior four years. It was as if taking the chairmanship would mean turning away from the stimulating, growing edges of my life. It was a challenge to train parole board members.