MR. GERALD :KURTZ January 18, 1977 EAR Literally to start from the beginning, your first contacts with Stan, your first responsibilities at the Institute when you took over the Office of Communications and am I correct in recalling a George Coleman just 'preceded you. Is that the guy that was there before you were there? GK No, Lee EAR You came in late 68? GK Right, Lee was a very nice guy, but incapable, Lee, older man, 30 years older than he was, a big lumbering sort of guy. EAR I will have to look it up. EAR What was your first contact with Stan, and how did you get the job in the first place. GK I had worked with Jim Isbister at the National Library, Jim had recruited me out of a dental division at the time I was ready to leave government, I had only made a tentative two- year commitment to government and was getting to leave and Jim persuaded me to take on what was probably was the most impossible assignment I have ever had, to work with Marty Cummings at the National Library of Medicine and that was a good two-year experience in itself because in fact I went out of my way to study computers and how they work and what they can deliver in terms of information storage and retrieval, something I knew absolutely nothing about. I knew every other aspect in the communication business, here was a big boy, here was an opportun­ ity to learn it, so I went with Marty and Jim and Jim recruited me to NIMH and having had a couple degrees in psychology that couldn't help but be a natural place to go and asked me to come 2. GK(continued) and meet Stan. We were in the Barlow Building at the time and D~didn't meet Stan at first on that first day, I was interviewed and not even realizing being interviewed by the golden keeper of the gate, Esther, which lasted for about two hours and Stan was behind closed doors at a meeting, which I later learned with nobody, which sort of amused me, he was on the telephone. I met then with, I met you bri~fly, and then spent another hour wiht Jim who was embarrassed and apologetic and as I was leaving, I ran into Stan. We went into his office, never talked about me, never talked about the job. I listened to a tirade about Wilbur Cohen, and then Stan turned on me in a kind of a funny sort of a way, "I understand you have a good relationship with Wilbur" and I said I met him a couple of times and we seem to get along well. For one thing, he is a stamp collector and I designed a stamp and he has been after me for a stamp that I deigned and I haven't given it to him. Stan said, "I like the way you talk, when can you come to work" and there was no doubt in my mind that that was the move I wanted to make because the three or four weeks since I had been talking to Jim, I studied the INstitute very carefully and I looked at that Communications Program and saw the potential, saw that there was nothing being done and that's the place I wanted to go. I think it took six or eight weeks to process Cummings the papers simply because MartyAwouldn't sign off on them. Nobody should leave him was his attitude. Lee Martin and found that I was in a very awkward position because Ralph Reader couldn't get me the grade or even the slot because Lee Martin was in it and Lee Martin was determined to stay, even though he had agreed to Stan's request that he stay on in an undefined capacity, not even as Deputy, but there I was trying to put together a package and try 3. GK(continued)_ to learn what was happening, but my predecessor sitting in the office next store to me and finding two things that were problems to me. One was Stan, himself, who was very available, it seems to me that I had no problem ever getting to see him, but I could never talk about anything that I wanted to talk about. It always had to be kind of agenda which was always different than what my Program objectives were and at one time, it was either you or Jim that explained that his goal at this point in time was survival because of his relationship with Wilbur, and I would just have to deal with that. That became relatively .easy to deal with because of a guy, that you probably remember Irv Goldberg, who was Wilbur's chief confidant and speech writer. Hazel Holly was writing Stan's speeches at the time but she and I did not get along no how, despite the fact that she was working for me and could not understand why I was making arbitray changes in Stan's speeches because I was working them out with Irv, because remember all Stan's speeches had to be cleared at one time and he refused to have his speeches cleared and I refused to allow them to speak without being cleared, so the compromise was, he went out and said anything he wanted to say, but the official piece of paper that they had in the Department was the cleared speech, and I think at that. time, Stan was the only Executive whos,e speeches had to be cleared in the Department, never mind at the secretarial level, so that was the beginning of the relationship with Stan; the other problem that I had is really anecdotal and it started with my small staff, first small staff meeting. I didn't know what the hell I had gotten into. I was not introduced to anybody at that table, the only other person in the room that I knew was you and Stan and Jim. All these characters, never met any of the other Division Directors, walked in late because I was handling 4. GKCconti_nued) som.e sort· of a media crisis and you and She::cm-=~were going at each other, but hard, that suddenly stopped, I couldn't and -find a reason for it and watching trying to find out the dynamics of group that I had heard so much about and not knowing who is talking and what they represent and suddenly the whole room turned against an individual whom I didn't know because nobody brought up the name. Well, people were loud, they were vociferous, they were firm, they were nasty, everybody was nasty, like you wanted to take this person apart. I immediately went to the defense of this person who I didn't know and finally, it was Sherm who put things into perspective for me, because he said "you know, we ought to stop" in his own quiet way, "we ought to stop this dicussions, it is getting us no place, as far as I am concerned, I rather it be fuck Phil Lee'' and when I heard who it was, I agreed. It probably took me longer that at any other time in my life to understand they dynamics of small staff because nobody, at least from where I sat, nobody dealth with issues, it took me a long time to realize Stan didn't want anybody to deal with issues, he wanted the input from the various Program Directors from another perspective thant_;_ just the issue at hand, to help him make the decision, and then I realized the decisions were really being made in the room next door by Stan and a few other people and I didn't know who those people were and I also realized that those people changed from time to time, there were several little groups that dealt with several kinds of issues and what Stan would do, come back into small staff and let small staff make the decision that he had already made, and that was a dif£icult thing for me to understand, cope with, to deal with, but I also recognized that that was probably what made Stan work and made NIMH work because in terms of Division Directors, there wasn't a capable one among them and yet everyone 5. GK(continued) of them was brilliant and capable of ma.king a fantastic contribution to the Program, and it was so totally different to any other part of government that I had been exposed to, with Marty running the National Library of Medicine, he was delegate to his Division Director, or with the Bureau of State Service there was strong people as Don Galligan and then later Beefenbock, who also delegated, so when the decision was made by their Division Directors it was endorsed or approved or changed, but it was in a very logical environment, there was no such thing as logic at NIMH. What seemed to be more emotion,,. I found logic was in Stan's office and this is only after really I participated in a couple of them, I got invited in to really discuss issu~s for what they were worth and not theory. EAR How did you see the Office of Communication as part of Stan's total operat1ng style and what way did he really want to use the Office and what way did he ask you to do certain things, and how did it come out. GK There are several parts to the Off ice of Communio.ations, one was a potential for a mental health education and awareness activity for what Stan's goal really was and the other one was the Service facility of the Clearing House and then there was a third 1 one, which obviously is off the record, and that·was a toy of Stan for his gadgetry and I perceived that immediately when .I heard about the trains and we built under Stan's support the strongest audio­ visual component in all of government, all of which, I know it has nothing to do with the book, culminated in something at the White House for which I had the privilege of knowing, of being the first one in the country to know and not realize that everything that Nixon did was taped. I ran an affair in the East Room, and having been trained by Stan in audio-visuals, I knew them, I didn't know the hardware at all, Stan ·knew more of the hardware than I did 6. GK(continued) I never ran any function depending upon you:r: outside support, I brought my own audio-visual people with_me and in fact, I told the White House I wouldn't even do that event for them unles.s I brought my own team in and we taped everything for the record and then threw out a lot of the tape. The day after this big shindig all the secertaries, we really had a bigfaffair, I was kind of flattered because I was not only running it but I was on the Program itself, that's another whole funny story. The day after this was over we had a call from a guy by the name of Butterfield or Butterworth, whom I never met, and he said "I understand that you taped yesterday's affair"- in fact we taped the whole day, not only the East Room, and I said "right" and he said I am on White House Staff, could I borrow the tape from you,"I said "yes, sure, what happened to the Signal Core tape, they were there taping, is their equipment broken down?"and then he said "my equipment broke down and I am responsible for taping everything with what the President says, no matter where he is, and this a void in my collection and I must have it" and never dreaming the significaneeof it, I said, "I just listened to the tape and it is fine but I am not going to let you have it until tomorrow, I want to dupe it before, he said"that's fine, as long as I have it tomorrow, there it was in my hands and that bit of history, so Stan in a way is responsible. EAR I want to remind you of one little thing which will perhaps refresh your memory on other things, too, about this aspect of it. When we put in the microphones in the Council room at one point it became clear that the microphone setting was such that the rustling of the papers on the table was interfering with the recep­ tion of the voices and so, Stan asked you to do something about modifying this and you and I went in there at lunch time and, I forgot who was in the control room, and the microphones were 7. EAR(continued) moved up and down on the table, you made a couple of other modifications and the long tower speakers on the side that was supposed to amplify were also adjusted, but anyway, after about a half an hour or so, I said to you something like "Jerry, that sounds fine,tr and you said something to me like "look, you may think it is fine, I may think it is fine, but it is not fine until Stan comes up here and looks at it and I am not taking your word for it at all" so I said, "being a hi-fi enthusiastic myself, thinking myself as good as Stan and I said "Jerry, I am telling you it is good and you said to me very tolerantly "when Stan sees it, then it will be good" and we went downstairs and he came up and listened to it and he finally said it was okay. GK And two weeks later, we had a whole new system. EAR But you are touching on a very interesting aspect of this operation. To get back to more serious things, did you have an inkling when you came in, you said that you were intrigued with the idea of the job, but did you really have an inkling from the beginning that it was going to get to be as comprehensive as it was. How did that sort of develop in your relationship with Stan? GK It developed because Stan made it quite clear that this was my operation to run and that bothered me, that was not the way Stan ran it and he would only ask me to do things from time to time. It turned out that the things that he asked me to do were things that were usually outside the responsibility in Office of Communications, which was part of Stan's style, he picked up in people certain talents or experience or abilities that he saw and used them in ways other than for which they were trained or really interested. I talked to him about this once and he refused to talk about it too much, other than to say, or to imply really, by doing this not only did he get talent but he got 8. GK(continued) a different perspective on the kind of problem if other; than he would have gotten if he assigned somebody who was normally involved in that area, much more objectivity, but he would only do this with people that he perceived a Nixonian type of loyalty· to him and there was no need for loyalty because there was nothing clandestine that shouldn't have been done that wasn't outside the area of responsibility, there weren't even power plays on his part, it was just the things that he put in his priority list, namely political purposes for the Institute to grow, to add a new dimension to the Institute or to sanction something that he felt had a lot of potential that wasn't being materialized. EAR What about GK I was Director of the Institute by the way one day. EAR How nice GK Before I was even employed and while everyone was gone, which helped to solidify, and I think this is an important thing for you to know, I never told this story to anybody. It was an important thing because it helped solidify my relationship with Wilbur Cohen, which I was able to use later on to help Stan get things done. You were all the way at a Retreat around somewhere. Sam, I forget his name. EAR Uker GK Yes, he was Acting Director. I was still at the Library and Marty Cummings was away, Scott Adams was away, Jim Isbister had left and Stan didn't - and Marty didn't have confidence in Jim Morris, so I became the Acting Director and I did two pieces of business as Director that day, one was for NIMH, where I was not yet employed, and the other one was for, I ordered the crews to get the ice off the front steps 0£ the Library. What had happened was, Wilbur called me and said "I know you are going to NIMH, 9. GK(continued) I know you are not there, but I am appointing you Acting Director because there is some information I need immediately and I cannot get out of that clown who is· Acting Director today, and that's the words that he used and I said "Okay, what is it that you needed, he needed some data on Community Mental Health Centers, which I now knew enough about to know that they existed and I knew something about the funding mechanism. Sam did not have that information and the only one that had it was Stan and orders were that Stan was not to be disturbed, so I had to call Uker and order him to give me that information that he wouldn't give to the secretary and the best that I could get out him by being really, really tough was that he would call Esther and they would call me back. Well, Stan call me back and Stan gave me the information on the phone and told me don't tell i.. Btiker that we have done this and I could never figure out, to this day, why, so why not tell Buker, got it to Wilbur and that was my Acting Director of two large programs in the Public Health Service EAR Let me remind you of another part of the wh0le NIMH operation that you introduced early on and I remember one incident and you probably remember others and that is when you went to Council meetings and I think it was very early on that you were asked to prepare a special report on the Community Mental Health Centers or the hospital improvement project, or something like that, Mike G0rman was sitting there and in an effort to indicate that you were going to do it, Mike Gorman asked for a special report and you were sitting there and I remember you saying, no, Mike Gorman said to Stan "Can we get the Office of Communications to do a report like that" and you said something like "it's done" meaning that you had heard you were going to do it and Mike Gorman in his own inimitable way said "when I see it it will be done", do you remember 10. EAR(continued) that little incident? I just mention that only to refresh your memory about the characters that we had on Council, and what were some of the other things you recall in terms of your responsibilities and your interaction with the Council? GK I remember I guess three figures from all the Council meetings I ever went to, three figures outside of NIMH. Mik~, Stubblefield, and Jolly West, and I had very little invovlvement with Council except for one responsibility, it was one of those things that I privately from Stan and that was Mike. That was an HIP report and was probably the easiest report that came out of the INstitute while becauseN wasn't capable of doing the job, but I said "done"• I knew how to go about doing it and that was to get Mike to write it himself, to get him the information he needed and let him write it himself, have us edit it, bring it back with him, edit what we have edited and we would have a report that would be approved by Mike, which is exactly what we did and that established a long, close relationship with Mike, which ultimately paid off for me because he - - -what everbody thinks was he and not Bert that put me in touch with Elliott Richardson. EAR Well, if you would, maybe you would talk about a little bit about Mike because let me just give you background to this and you will remember of course, most of the details, but at the time that the work for the 25th Anniversary was going on and we were setting together the group that was nominally going to identify the recipients of those awards and you may recall that Ferd Hassler had initially been asked to run the show and turned out pretty soon that he couldn't do it, so Stan asked me to take over and to handle the details of putting that thing together, but you also know eventually it turned out that Mike Gorman did not get one of those awards, which upset him terribly and T think legitimately 11. EAR(continued) so because you just described one aspe.ct but i,n many others he played an absolutely critical role in the growth and development of the Institute. It might be worth while if you would, from your own perspective, talk about some of the things that he was involved in and that was central to the operation of the Institute. GK Most of those things I don• t know of becaus:e th.ey were all over the telephone and closed door things with Stan and I was not included in that group, as a matter of fact, when I really became aware of the interface between Stan and a few others and Mike, it was at the point where Stan was making his moves in the drug arena, and I became so heavily involved in that I wasn't even really allowed to run my own shop and that was a question of survival and also Stan was having troubles with everybody else in the Institute and wanted to stay away from it and Stan was smart enough to recognize that we didn't go that way, we didn't make concessions and get involved and take some initiatives the Institute would have been wiped out. EAR I want to get to that whole story GK So the business with Mike, I really wasn 1 t aware other than I knew that I had to occasionally go out with him at night. I had to respond twice as fast to him as anybod¥ else on requests. Mike would not communicate to me or anybody else what he really wanted, so you had to cut three layers into Mike to find out what the real agenda was and then when you got there you found that it was a sincere concern for whatever project he was working on, but always colJJared by the Mike Gorman ego,trip. EAR You know that he was very significant and responsible for Stan being made the Director of the Institute GK I never knew that EAR Very, very strongly involved when there was a . lot of interplay early 12. EAR(continued) on in 64, after Bob Felix retired and Stan was Acting Director for a while and there was a. lot of politics behind the scene, but Mike through his own relationships- and contac~s, and of course, representing Mary Lasker. You never met Mary Lasker? GK Yes, I did EAR And to which relationship with her played a very central role in Stan's appointment. Besides which I think it's important and if anything else that you can recall in your relationship with him can be added to the picture that would be fine, but it is important to recognize that the man has unique talent. His ego is over­ whelming but GK You could live with that, so was mine in my own way and so was yours EAR But he produces with tremendous talents. I don't know.whether you were privileged to be at Council meetings when he would hold forth but the man has absolutely amazing verbal fluency. You could see him sometimes talking at Council beginning and it is almost like an avalanche going down a hill, it builds up steam as he continues to talk and substantively solid GK Consistently so, right. EAR Substantively very knowledgeable, perceptive about all the nuances political, professional, the man really has it. GK The only time·in my experience with him that he demonstrated this was when he was holding forth on a platform at Council, if you dealt with one on one or had lunch with a group of two or three people, he was irrational. He was certainly more knowledgeable about the whole field than I was and yet I could cut him to pieces in a one on one discussion in a small group because he could not focus, he could not tune in unless he had an audience and then my observation of th~ way he behaved was that he had written his 13. GK(continuedl speeches, he had spent hours and hours writing his speeches for Council and I could watch him mentally turn the pages of the thing, he was working from notes and from an action plan. Now, it just suddenly occurred to me that was· Mike the journalist, he couldn't work any other way. As verbal as he was, he could not communicate unless it was through the printed word. EAR You may be right GK He was superb, the guy was just EAR Really a talent. Let's go back for a moment, I wanted to get to the drug business and other aspects of it, but in the early development of the Office of Communications program, what other things can you recall that are worth putting on the record? GK Stan had a fanatic commitment to the Clearing House but yet in a that very self-destructive way. His choice of peopleAactually run the day to day operation of the Clearing House was sick. EAR Lorraine? GK Lorraine was one of them, but more important, Dave Swenson was another one. He took a sick psychiatrist and put him in charge of day to day _ _ _ _sick operation and I was charged with the responsibility of handling him and the Program. I will have to say for Stan he had a lot of confidence in me because while Swenson had direct access to Stan, he never got support from Stan, Stan would listen to him, play psychiatrist, nod his head, but never really agree with him, so that was a burden, perhaps my toughest assignment, plus having to clear out sweetheart contracts for the Clearing House. It,took me a long time to realize it to get, I wasn't going to be able to make the contribution that was needed to get that Clearing House to the point that Stan wanted to do it, no matter how long I stayed at NIMH, but I could make a start at 14. GK (continueEH.:. it by getting th.e rid of th.e swee.the.a+::t contracts which. Stan was very supportive of. That first meeting that I had when I laid it out to him without any papers or anything else, this contract has to go there, despite the fact that they are coming from organizations on whom I know you are dependent for'political support becaus.e you want the Clearing Hous·e to go, it is· ·not the personnel problem that I have been bitching about, it is this problem and Stan was incredibly supportive of· it and r vaguely remember it, I think it was the APA contract, I' think you were called in to get the feathers smoothed out and T don ''t know how you did it, but we did not renew that EAR I remember. You are touching on a very important attribute of Stan's competence. He can be very ·tough--mind·ed when it is necessary to be tough-minded, there is- nothing unusual about that and yet it ran rather deeply in his operating procedures. GK I think that the one thing that inhibited Stan from being consider­ ably mor~ effective than he was - Is the Mike German's of the world - Stan had no choice because of the ill favor in which mental health was received by whatever Administrations- were in power to develop much closer associations than he would like to have had or should have with organizations and individuals outside th.e Institute, you know, the Murdock Heads, the Mike Gorman':s EAR American Psychiatric Association GK APHA. EAR Well, I think that is almost an inevitable part of the picture though, as you well know, politics, when an organization gets th.at size, politics inevitably plays a role in this GK More so at NIMH than I think most other organizations. All others that I had been involved in government and I attribute that to Administration's collectively, attitude toward witb.hcraft aspects 15. GK ( continued} of the whole mental heal th, people wer·e intimadated by even Nixon well know, but even before that and look what is happening under Carter. I mean with all that Mrs. Carter's involve­ ment and all of his commitment beforehand, once you get into that Office you realize that the stigma of mental health is still or has not been overcome. EAR And they are not going to put a lot more money into ib now.. Well, let's turn a bit to the whole drug abuse program, you were so heavily involved in I think it is an important aspect to get your perspective on the sorts of things that developed and how you saw it and what your responsibilities were there. GK My involvement came about in a very peculiar way. The time the Administration was changing, the old Administration was still in power and the new one was coming in. I got a call at home, very late one night from Stan asking me to attend a meeting the next day with Phil Lee, Mark Melvich and others who I don't remember - Phil Lee's office downtown on a subject that Stan would not tell me what was all about, I suspected that it turned out later that I was wrong, that Stan was just being Stan and not showing up for this meeting because he didn't like Phil. It.turned out that Phil did not want to talk to Stan, it was the other way around. The subject was drug abuse, the White House in power, the incoming White House, Phil Lee's hope that he could be reappointed. What they wanted was a million and a half dollars, I think that was the figure from NIMH to go in a special fund the Secretary of the White House bcause Nixon had determined that that was going to be a priority of his and if Phil could deliver the money, the money, no program, no substance, no nothing, he would retain his position. After spending a whole day getting beaten on the head by those 16. GK(continued) two guys I pulled a figure out of my head, I had to get out of it somehow because Stan sent me there to represent the Institute and that is the way you have to function. I said you are not talking about a million and a hal£, you are talking ab~ut arid an 800 thousand dollar budget, this is the second year of that money, that much I knew. I said every penny of that money has been spent in Committee, there is no way you are going to get a dime of it, it is gone, and he said, "well, how can you be sure of that," because I said "becaue every bit of money that is spent in the Institute has to go through my office because we make the announce­ ments on it, obviously not true because there was money going out of style in other areas, and we weren't publicizing a lot very deliberately. So he said okay, so I went back and I reported it to Stan and Stan said okay y6u did the right thing, I said except for one thing, Stan, I lied. I said I just checked through figures available to me and that money was dedicated to communications projects and last year's money was spent for some pechotic tapes some school needs, nothing had been done, he said "well, we just got through, you know, you making presentations on your budget you went through that whole budgetary and tells me that every penny of that money has been spent, you said the right thing. I said to Stan, "no way". He said, "alright, check. into it, but don't tell anybody you are doing it, how do you get information from NIMH, I checked into it and the money had not been spent. So, I had a long talk with Sid about it and I said "I don't have the manpower to do the job, obviously we have to spend this money before the end of the fiscal year or probably even bef6re Nixon comes in and we have big troubles on our hands, we now know that this is going to be a priority, and Sid said I can't spend it in the Communications area, you do it for me" and I said, "I 17. GK (continued) can't do it without getting Stan •:s approval because now we are talking about developing radio and television commercials, we are talking about all sorts of support programs that are completely from where Stan wants to be or give me the authority in Communication Program, so he said "I don't want to talk to Stan about it, you do it"and he said "you have my word that you can spend that money in my budget anyway you want" so when I talked to Stan he said "do it" and he said "I can't help you with people, I can help you with technical advice"and he said "there are only two people here that I would get involved with it, but you are not going to be able to work with them substantively, they will take issue whatever you do because you are in the public arena and they are professionals, one was Mort, and one was Sherm and he said"I will sit in on your final clearance of meetings~ so that is how we started to work and I put together a volunteer team in my office and by this time the Administration was in and we were way ahead of the game and anecdotally, a very funny scene, we broke a public campaign, I don't remember the dates that we did it because we had so many national launches. I mean that was the strategy, every City we went to we ran a national lauch and got credit for it in the media, but we broke New York first, we took th~ daring step of going to the New York market rather than ______to test and Stan was going up to a Alaska Awards luncheon on a miserable, rainy, horrible day, and for some reason, he took the limousine into Grand Central Station, rather than taking a cab, and I don't know why, it is so unlike Stan - Oh, I know why because we couldn't get cabs, because there was a cab strike or something and he walked to wherever the hotel was, Biltimore, wherever they werehaving the thing, but ducking into the porno shops, and he said he was never so embarrassed in his 18. GK(continued) life because they had the radios blaring and the radio campaign broke before the television campaign, everyplace he went this is brought to you by the National Institute of Mental Health, so the setting of the p©rno shop and the radio, he said just blew his mind. Stan was involved in every step in the evolution of television and radio campaign. The Clearing House for Drug Abuse information came about in another peculiar way. The Institute was asked as it was every year with every Administration to submit innovative ideas, the improvement of the quality of Government, if you remember. And, they were all exercises in futility. I had, I guess it was Stan who first observed, because he was fighting in that battle constantly, the public problem as far as drug abuse was concerned and that was, you would write to the Justice Department, or call Justice Department and you . get one set of information, you call OE and you get some more information that was different, and.you call us and it was different and as the publicity was mounting as a result of the campaign, the White House was becoming more and more active in coordinating it and trying to usurp the program, he asked me to look for some sort of solution to this problem and of course, the solution wasz:an obvious one as you put together an essential Clearing House which would be the focal point in Government and operate under a di~ferent name and so on and I put together a fairly sloppy memo which Stan eqully, sloppily sent off to the Department, but suggested that I send to Bud Wilkinson privately and the next thing we· knew, Stan and I kept getting called down to the White House to meet with a young guy by the 19. GK(continued) the name something like Acheson, young former writer for the Reader's Digest whom we developed a pretty close relation­ ship with. The agenda was always different but always they asked questions about this Clearing House, what would it take in the way of manpower, what would it take in the way of budget, what kind of time period, what kind of agreements would you have to have with other agencies and so on, which Stan and I would deal with off the top of our heads, at first, we never thought the thing would be a reality, we were now convinced it was something they ought to have, never felt it would be supported, never felt that you could ever get any interagency cooperation even with White House clout to get it going, but we just kept making up information and then one day Stan got called down to the White House to par­ ticipate in a press conference, it was to announce the Clearing House and my appointment to head the Clearing House, we had like six hours notice of the damn thing, that we had to do all the graphics for the press conference, that's how the Clearing House came into being, but unfortunately, that whole period took hours and hours of Stan's time away from the Institute, you look at the records it will show that there was very few if any small 1 staff during that period, practically nothing came out of the Office of the Director. Stan wouldn't talk about it but you knew that he perceived that Nixon priority and that's the ·way he was going to keep alive. EAR You are illuminating one I think very important aspect of the way the Institute worked. In other respects under Bob Felix, perhaps more spectacually, if you will in certain instances under Stan, and that is the readiness, the willingess and the ability to take advantage of targets of opportunity when they came along to be very politically aspute about things for the growth and 20. EAR(continued) development of the Institute in directions that, earlier you might not have thought what to be part of NIMH, a good example is that whole TV and social behavior business, which began as an accidental sort of thing, it wasn't one of the major things that NIMH did by a long shot, but I think it is illustrative of the NIMH's flexibility in terms of expanding its responibilities in a variety of directions. GK I would not agree with you, I think that was characteristic of the Institute but in a peculiar sort of way, several people in the whole Institute, it was kind of big at that time, that were capable of delivering those kinds of projects and of those people who were capable there were fewer of them that Stan would trust to do it and they were done not necessarily for any sort of pro.grall\-t. mAtic purpose they were always done for political purposes, often as an iniative to anticipate what was corning down the pipe and as often I would say, reactive as a survival kind of technique. EAR Well, I think that is a point well taken, but can you recall from your own experiences instances in which Stan perhaps turned down something because he didn't want to get involved? GK Yes, he did it constantly with Wilbur, all sorts of irritional demands and from my perspective, and I don't even remeber what they were, but I remember hearing about them and saying immediately Stan is going to turn that down, there is going to be trouble, if he does, and that happened time and again. He wouldn't take anything on, but he would take on things that he saw were urgent and just about every one of those he was opposed by most of his staff. EAR Well, why don't you continue, I didn't mean to divert you from the story about the Drug Abuse Program, because, so the national 21. EAR(.continued) campaign began and you got involved at the White House level, but the NIMH was still very much involved, will you talk about this some more. GK Again, that was Stan more than Sherm, more than anybody else. It first started, I think, as opportunism on Stants part, once that he saw that what he was doing was working in terms of survival with the White House, he had a two-step program. The.first one was to take care of people, places, programs where he had a deep personal concern and involvement that's why Lexington got top priority and Stan was down there constantly, and bars were coming down you began to learn that there was method to the madness, while it was a personal kind of thing, despite John Eberhard, Stan did have a commitment to research and knew that was a critical ~hing as far as drugs were concerned and the stepping stone to that was not going to be through the Institutes or through &ohn, it was going to be Lexington as the base, and he really poored the money, the enthusiasm, the heart into that place. The obstacle there, of course, was obvious, and that was ·a prison, it was always going to be a prison and the research never really was a prime thing, but he did have a resear:·ch prbgram underway that seemed to be headed in a productive direction, that was typically of Stan, he never did things in isolation, it was always a long-range, whatever the motivation to get him involved, there was always a long-range plan, same thing with St. Elizabeth's Hospital. EAR Any other aspects of the drug program that you think is worth putting on the record that would help to illuminate, obviously, what with Jerry Jaffee and everything else got to be far larger than what anybody, I suspect, anticipated, although Stan may have an inkling of it and in some respects it served to dramatically 22. EAR(continued) modify the whole Ins.titue program, the tripod arrangements that developed and the visibility at the national level, all these things, what were some of the other things that you recall that we ought to put on the record? GK I think the principal negative, as far as the Institute irs concerned, was the drug program being the tail began to wag the dog, not because Stan let it get out of hand, just the Wh~te House began making all sorts of demands on it, all of which the Institute delivered on and every time the Institute delivered whether it was in research or it was in training, whether it was in education, we got clobbered for i t from the White House in a very sadistic sort of way,out of every person we dealt with at the White House, but I think that was the cause of tremendous personnel friction, nobody could get the Director's ear, nobody could get support for their programs and I blame the program people, not the drug program for this, because I heard Sherm explain it to people, and they wouldn't believe him because he was part of the drug progrm or Jim explained it to people as much respect people had for Jim, they wanted to hear it from Stan and Stan was saying for the first time,"run your programs and run with them the best you can, I am doing what I am doing because I have to do that way, and they either couldn't or wouldn't, the fact was that they didn't. You had such people as Ham come in, they took your program and destroyed it, he was a good man, he probably could have done the job, but he needed Daddy in the Big Office to tell him what to do and how to do it. EAR And, he was going through a personal crisis of his own. How did you see Sid Cohen? GK That 1 s a tough question to answei because I happen to lov~ .Sid Cohen. Sid was an independent guy who had no bus·ine'ss running a 23. GK (_continued)_ program, but was the right guy at the right time because of his personality, because of his knowledge, because of the confidence that the Director put in him and because of the immediate confidence he earned of small staff and that was just an incredible phenomena, he showed up there one day and there was never any discussion that he was coming or anything, he was there and he was a part of the team and earned, I believe, earned the respect of the program. Everybody accuses Sid as being more interested in Sid's visibility and that he wasn't interested in the the program and I find this to .beAopposite case. I had to force him into public appearances. I had to use his name where he didn't want to and I was very worried about my making that decision because but I knew Stan was enjoying the publicity he was getting, I got, it wasn't I, I think several of us, I don't remember who was there, had a meeting about it and decided the time had come for the survival of the Institute to continue to make the commitment to drugs, even though we didn't like to, a lot of people didn't like it, I did, because there was a lot of personal glory and satisfaction, I was doing things and getting support, but to get Stan out of the limelight, everybody read, although nobody would verbalize that Stan's days were numbered because of his successes in this program and we decided that Sid was going to handle, be the front guy for it, he was the natural guy and he willing to do it, but you have to work on him to do it, but then everybody began criticizing Sid because he was so publicity conscious. He was not a strong administrator and that's why eventually Mort was put into it, but Sid was the right guy at the right time. He was acceptable to the White HOuse, he was a psychiatrist who wasn't a psychiatrist, they could live with him and Sid was a good guy, as independent as he was, he followed orders. If something came down from the Head Office 24. GK(continued) he would deliver on that. EAR Were there any particular incidents that you recall that illustrate the kind of reaction there was, the kinds of feelings there were, the kinds of perspe-ctive there was about Stan at the White House. Did they s-ee him primarily as the a hard-nosed guy that wouldn •-t do what he was suppose to do? GK As a stubborn guy, and my frame of reference this was an unwarranted kind of thing. I can site one instance, one meeting we had in the Executive Office Building, chaired by Bud Wilkinson and among the participants were Jack Ingersoll, and that whole Justice crowd, a whole bunch of White House people including Jack Stomfeld and that group and representing NIMH was Sherm, Mort, Stan and myself - a very peculiar combina­ tion of people and we were sitting - we go to a lot of those meetings down there and Stan always managed to engineer the seating, even though they had something else going and we were never sat together. For some very strange reason which I could never fathom, Stan anticipated problems and forced us to sit side by side, which forced the Justice Department to sit on the other side in an adversary position and White House people at either end of the long table and at that meeting Stan was worried about time because he had an appointment on the Hill that was critical on another program. This thing was dragging on and on, the subject was marijuana, I knew how Stan felt about it, we all felt the same way about it. I knew privately that Wilkinson was sympathetic to our point of view and we knew the Justice Department was hostile. Presiding at the other end of the table, opposite us was Ingersoll with the full support of John Mitchell, insisting that we change the character of 25. GK(continued) our public information program from television all the way down to information where sending out to be, and he used the word to lie if necessary about the scientific data on the effect of marijuana and he went on for along long time and I who had been the cool one in the White House relationships and all the Justice Departments relationships, I had been the accommoda­ ting one, lost my cool. I really lost my cool, and I stood up which was uncalled for and I started to talk and Stan kicked me or pulled me and he took over the floor and agreed .completely and I remember when the meeting broke up, Mort was incensed, really took off with Stan like I had never seen him, and he got ticked off with Stan,freguently, and I was just numb by the whole thing, I just couldn't believe what had happened. Mort was so ticked off, he went back to the Institute by himself in a cab, and Walter started to drive us to the Hill, and Stan - no, he had Walter take us to a restaurant, I couldn't talk and all during that lunch, Stan explained to me why he did what he had to do and that's way we had to deal, at that level, with those people. We will continue to do what's right, there was no winning in that situation and he said "you don't go into a ballgame when the odds are against you, you know they have all the strength and expect to win, the only thing to do is agree and you have to fight it in another way" and that is the way he functioned throughout that whole drug abuse thing and yet he was always perceived as a hard-nose, partly because he would go out and make public statements that were contradictory to what he agreed to in the White House setting. EAR It is interesting that he had similar problem of course, with Wilbur, two very strong-minded people, and he would not give 26. EAR (continued). into Wilbur one inch on things that he felt Wilbur was wrong on and I. think that general attiude on his part putting aside the sort of response that he gave at that meeting, but I think he never gave in anyone, in terms of his professional ability and his professional knowledge and I think people like Wilbur, you know Wilbur is no slouch and certainly very knoweldgeable guy and they get to that position and they feel that now have the mantle of authority placed on them, so if they say to someone do something, they are supposed to do it regardless of what that guy really believes. GK I think that's more what Stan was reacting to than any substantive issues that came up, it was just a personality complex, but you are right and you are wrong, Stan gave in regularly, consisistently to verbal level and did what was necessary at the other level. I remember countless concessions at small staff and private meetings to Nino, to you at times, to Eberhard consistently, he agreed with him, there was always a smile on his face and then he went and did exactly what he wanted to do and the only one that ever really fought him on it I think, and really raised hell was Eberhard, he really fought it through and sometimes won and some­ times lost. Stan was a pretty rational guy despite the perception of everybody - everything was thought through EAR Very much so and as you said before I think John Eberhard specifically did not appreciate how much a friend Stan was really in terms of his perception of the research program, but you see that goes back to an old story, John Eberhard was there in the old days with Bob Felix and that whole complicated business of Stan taking Bob Felix's place. GK Stan was a pragmatist, whereas Bob was a dreamer, and he was able to deliver on most of his dreams, because he had a charm about him 27. GK (continued) and still continues to use and Stan has that s.ame charm, but he refused to use it professionally EAR I know, bec.ause he thinks it is insincere. Two other things, just very briefly since I do want to talk about the 25th Anniversary in some sense and you were very much involved, very productively involved in setting the thing up in a physical sense. I remember one little incident where I was very tight­ assed about this little business about the use of the computer, do you remember that little incident? GK No EAR You have repressed it GK I repressed a lot about the 25th Anniversary EAR Well, what happened was that GK Excuse me a second, one of the reasons that I repress, as you know I had an unbelievably loyal hard working staff and one of the<reasons that I developed that staff, it wasn't anything that I did, I just happened to recruit right, and I had no positions available to me and Stan just couldn't make positions, and I knew it had a lot of dead wood in it. When positions became available, they became available in a certain way, Stan gave me over budget positions under agreement that I would go back down to our level through attrition, he knew I needed the ability to get some talent in there. That put me in a very.tough spot, I was having problems with the other Program Directors because of my involvement in the drug thing and suddenly I had positions. Now, they couldn't get positions, they couldn't get dollars and of course, they didn't know that Stan wouldn't allow me to say that as soon as I had vacancies, which were inevitable, because peoplelwould have to leave after bringing in new people, then they would g t them.. In fact, I committed to go under-budget because 28. GK(continued) I always felt I had too many people, I inherited the situation where Stan was always bailing the program out, never getting anything out, but putting more people in to it, so it was always bigger than it should have been, but with all the loyalty I had from my people, you ran everybody ragged for the 25th Anniversary and for the evenings, I wound up there alone to the Press Room when all the stories were breaking. I really became uptight about it, I couldn't get my own people together and my own people didn't want the show, they resented the whole outreach of the Anniversary, it was a classic in public relations. An Anniversary is a staged event and if you are a pro, you don't want to the staged event you want to do the substantive kinds of things. EAR Well, it is really interesting because you know these two perspectives are terribly important to put side by side in a sense you and your people were absolutely right that it,was a staged event and my hunch is that everything you tried to do to get publicity for it couldn't work because the press themselves knew that it wasn't a story so to speak. GK Which we said right from the beginning and you refused to accept. EAR You are absolutely right, but on the other side of that coin it's equal,ly true that all., the people came to the meeting, you know, all the professional people came thought it was a tremendous event and I still hear after the fact, what a wonderful situation that was. AFter the fact, the people from the Heart Institute came to me because they wanted to do the same thing. Cancer people came to me, three or four people came wanting to do the same thing. So, it was one of these inevitable differences, but the incident that I am talking about which I probably gave you and 29. EAR (continued) your people the hardest time of all was, it was_ Ron what is his last name? GK Ron MacMillan EAR MacMillan J was involved and he wanted to use the computer for s.ome. kind of illustration about retrieval and there was going to be a set up at the 25th Anniversary GK Telephone EAR Yes, people punch in and you can get anything you wanted out of the Clearing House GK Out of the Drug Abuse Clearing House EAR Maybe it was the Drug Abuse Clearing House, I have forgotten the specific details, but the important thing was that that same computer operation was being used for the Extramural Program, information retrieval in connection with the ongoing program, so it got to the point where it was either you or Ron, in effect, said you had to have it for the 25th Anniversary and the people from the Grants Administration were coming and saying "we are going to close down the computer, we can't use it" and we, both of us, very tight, went up literally to see Jim to solve the problem for us and Jim was faced with a dilemma, two people come up there absolutedly insisting that they have to have this damn thing and what they were going to do was going to work. Jim worked it out very beautifully, he soothed my feathers and must have soothed your feathers separately and the computer, in fact, was there, and we used some other kind of back-up procedure for the Grants Program but I remember that GK Which is what enabled us eventually to set up the Clearing House Computer System so we can go to the White House and other people, EAR Well, okay, so much for the 25th Anniversary. GK There were some other aspects of this, 25th Anniversary that were 3 0. GK(continued) interesting, what we thought was a non-media event became a media, a professional media, and public media success, because we got superficial and minimal coverage just as we anticipated the event itself. The evening that I am talking about let us to develop a whole outreach program because we had established contacts with the people that did come and with others who came as guests or participants, that set us off on a whole new kick of public professional exposure, interestingly enough at the time, when we were just trying to de-emphasize it for the Institute, we did not want the visibility, but I think that resulted to the benefit of the Institute. A lot of people who didn't go to notoriety, their names became known, what's his name, Daniel X. Friedman grew out of Chicago at that point, he got some national exposure and there were others. EAR One point, when I was interviewing Bob a couple of years ago, he said "his press people from St. Louis were saying to, they wanted to take clippings out of the paper about this"and they said they couldn't find anything here, I won this big award and there was nothing in the papers. I said"Bob, look, the communications people tried to do the best they could but you can't force the papers to print something" and it wasn't considered an event, so that is why we didn't get any publicity. GK The one thing we did deliver was an awful lot of television that we got, nationally, and in the Washington area much more than we deserved, but our old friends refused to get involved, Julie Randall refused to get involved, who was my friend and not the Institute's, well not Stan's anyway, she did it all on a personality basis, that's cause Stan wasn't giving the emphasis to the alcohol that he was supposed to give. Stu Auerbach wouldn't deliver 31. GK(continued) copy and he was there. We got the professional media coverage, but they had no choice. EAR I want to turn to one other event and ta.en perhaps there are some other things you might want to discuss, and that is, your effort when Stan resigned to get him to meet the press, or face the nation, whatever it was, but in general, you know, the whole issue of how that resignation was handled, perhaps you would want to talk about that a little bit. GK I think you have a bit of a misconception. I know the incident you are talking about EAR Go ahead, straighten-it out. GK Ron Nessen was the principal character involved and it all happened quite quickly, everybody knew it was coming when it happened, it really came like a guillotine. Stan had a point of view in a position and I believe in an effort to protect his people decided to handle the media in his own way. He made, he sent his letters of resignation by messenger to all the media. It didn't come out of our office at all. We were under an embargo not to talk about it. Stan, in seeking the publicity, he was very schizophrenic about it, he set himself up as a media figure and then refused to deal with the media and I think what he was doing looking for one selective outlet, which probably was a wrong judgement on his part, because nothing really ever happened as a result of that. The big interest was NBC and Ron Nessen EAR You were talking about Stan being schizophrenic about the publicity GK Because he wanted it and he didn't want it, but we~ere all, you included, downtown when it happened. We all had lunch together in: Chevy Chase when Stan got a call that he asked me to take from Esther saying that Ron Nessen and the camera crew were there, not to interview Stan but to photograph him, he wasn't there 32. GK(continued) yet, photograph him packing h~s books. Again, that is one of the second site kinds of things that Stan had. A call from Esther he would take, and he would normally not ask me to take it. 'How Esther tracked us down has got to be a story, Esther can tell it, I don't know how she found us at that restaurant, but she did. So from that restaurant, I phoned my office, and cordoned the building every single exit, to keep them out and it didn't work. Nessen got into the building with his equipment, but Nessen never got a picture or a story because Stan went into the Projection Room from the Conference Room, back into his office and that's when I got into my big fight with Nessen. I lost my temper, and I cursed, and yelled and physically escorted him by the collar out of the building and of course, Nessen turned out to be Ford's guy, and by that time, Nessen and I had patched our differences because raid him a big favor over the Alcohol Program. I caught him after a press conference and he asked me a couple of questions and I knew he had the story all wrong and I knew all the other ~edia had it right. I shouldn't have done it, I should have let the bastard hand himself, but I straightened him out. EAR Okay, just a few words on after Stan left and you stayed, we still haven't gotten to the 25th Anniversary, which was almost a year later. Do you recall, incidentally, the conversations with Stan about holding such an event before he left, did he share with you any thoughts in the future about wanting to do something like that? GK He shara:lwith small staff', as I recall, EAR Well, but very minimally so, GK It was one of' those trial balloons, there was never any in-depth discussion of' it at_ all, never with me except, I don't remember whether it was the book on the Russian trip, but there was some book that he would have liked to have seen issued at the time of' the 25th Anniversary, ••• EAR Okay, I have to pin that down a bit more precisely. So Stan lef't 33 EAR cont. and you stay on, of course, and Bert came in. Now I've had about an hour with Bert which has been very unsatisfactory because I caught him at a time when a million things were happening. He'll probably be more interested in talking now. You know what his latest situation is. GK He's Assistant to the Assistant Secretary. EAR Yes, but I found out he may be offered the job of Commissioner of Mental Health £or the State of California, and I think le may seri­ ously consider that, so we'll see what the story is. GK.{ I have to wonder about that, whether that's Bert or ••• I talked to Bert. I called him as soon as I heard the story, and I got a mid­ night calls from Washington and people in San Diego, people I didn't even know but who knew me and knew I knew Bert and I don't have any connections in California at all, and I knew another individual who is interested in the job. Bert said he might be interested in it, and anything I could do ,,,and I said, yeah, what I could do, if you give me Sid Cohen's phone number, I don't know how to get in touch with1him. He's the best entree to make that move in your behalf and Bert never got back with that information. EAR There's a better entree now because some people at UCLA are apparently working very hard trying to get him involved who are even more into the political scene than Sid is, Jolly West is one of them and George Tarjian is another, so I don't know what the story is going to be, and there's no way to anticipate at this stage of the game. But let's go back to what we were talking about, what do you recall about those very eventful few days when Stan had resigned and Bert was working like fury trying to keep things from falling apart? GK The very first few minutes of the whole thing was when we all came back from the restaurant and Bert had to go dountown to the Depart­ ment where he was going to get the job, and Stan was going to stay and pack, now the media part and the Nessen thing was over and I had big personal problems. I wanted to stay with Stan, and yet I felt I should go with Bert, and Bert had asked me to come with him and I couldn't say yes and I couldn't say no, and in the middle of the packing and the chaos, somehow this message came through to Stan and he came out and ordered me, he didn't ask me and he didn't sug­ gest, he didn't say, I think you better, he ordered me, and it was the first time he really ordered me, he said your place was to go with Bert down to this event, and then I blanl< on everything, I don't remember what happened downtown, I know there was a media event, I 34 GK cont. Know there was White House involvement, and one thing I do remember is that I got a call to go over to the White House from downtown, to leave this media event, to be instructed, and I don't remember whether it was Herb Klein, or who it was, to be instructed that the reason £or Bert's selection was that Bert was a competent administrator and Stan wasn•tl That's the first time we had gotten the word that that was the story, and I remember laughing, I don't think I told them how ludicrous that was, but Bert was able to laugh at it, because he was uptight, he was tense, he was ambivalent, he wanted it and he didn't want it, but he could deal with that issue because he realized that it was just a stupid kind of thing. But Bert•s big concern at that time, I remember he confessed it to me, was Stan's attitude, how he's taking this, and you could not convince Bert, and I hadn't talked to Stan, but I knew, I just had to know that it if had to happen, there wasn't anybody but Bert that he would want to have the job, not because of any personal thing with Bert, but that was his sweetest revengg.(., EAR Sure, in a peculiar kind of way, but it's true. Well, it was cer­ tainly an interesting time. Okay, you're talking about Bert wanting the job and not wanting it. GK Yes, he wanted it as desperately as any man wanting anythtng else, but he did not want it under those circumstances, and his big con­ cern was to convince a hostile bitter small staff that this was the case, and I don't think he ever convinced anybody of that. EAR Well, it's an interesting problem.Stan had problems following Bob Felix and Bert had problems following Stan. I think almost in­ evitably you have that kind of situation developing and it's just part of something that you have to work through. I don't know if he every did work it through as satisfactorily as he would have liked to. GK In my judgment Bert was the right guy for that job at the time from the Institute 1 s needs, not from the Administration's point of view. EAR Well, to maintain continuity and because he knew everything that was going on as well as he did and I think actuaally GK He didn't though, if you remember in the last six months he was alienated completely from anything that was happening. EAR You're right. What I mean is that he had a lot of contacts down­ town and I think that people wanted to believe that the program was going to continue and here was a familiar face, and when he 35 EAR cont. came in, the points that he made that the program was going to continue with dignity, I've got to find that memorandum, GK That•s a myth that he was known and liked and respected downtown. Stan had effectively isolated him from the Department, he was not known down there and it is to Bert's eternal credit that he resisted the pressures that we all were putting on him to stay at home and get the ship afloat. He spent his time making those contacts down- town, he capitalized on the White House and just moved through that place like crazy, a thing that nobody else could have done, and the doors opened up to him, because they didn't know why he was put into the job, they just assumed he was the White House fair-haired boy, which was furthest from the truth. EAR Well, why do you think he was appointed? What do you think was the reason? Was it just a sop to the field? GK Oh, no. There wasn•t any thought given to that. They really didn't give a darn. It was a punishment for Stan. The statement was that Bert was a better administrator, and that's what they need out there. EAR Well, it was an ironic event in many many respects. GK It was a good event, and as sad as we were, it was good for Stan, it was good for the movement, it was good for the Institute ••• EAR I mean ironic in the sense that that's the reason they did it, almost like throwing someone in the briar patch, so to speak. GK But it gave us new life. EAR Yeah. Anything else, as we talk this way, that come to mind that you think is wor~h commenting on? GK I don't remember much of it, but the why 1 s of it, but the whole Joe English thing had trememdous impact on MIMH. I know why the hostility and the resistance to Joe by everybody, but why we initiated it, I'll never know. EAR But that goes way back to the early relatinnship between Stan and Joe. It's a very complicated kind of business. In some respects Joe was a protegee of Stan's and got to big for his britches, so to speak •••• GK Well, I never knew that. I thought he was just a brand new figure. EAR No, it's an old story. And then when Joe comes in to be Stan's boss, so to speak, ••• GK Except he never was Stan's boss ••• EAR No, but he tried to be ••,.• GK Well, he tried, he tried, but he didn't get very far. I remember when Joe came in we were still in the Barlow building and we were 36 GK cont. still fighting moving up to Parklawn and Stan moved very quickly to bring Joe in to talk to Small Staff and then encouraged everybody to make a fool of Joe. And those minutes I would like to see of the tape, that session I would like to see. EAR Well, Joe began way back in the Peace Corps and he was still a very yound psychiatrist, very ambitious, and very much interested•••• GK That whole thing remains a mystery to me. On the surface I Know why, but there were all sorts of dealings going on and I don't know that Stan shared with too many people but that was a bad scene. I guess Stan just saw us getting under the thumb of Hsmha. He fought the move, he fought every directive that came down, at one time we were encouraged to de~ay responses to correspondents. EAR Well, in many respects it was an unfortunate situation~ especially after prior to that having achieved Bureau status, for NIMH to have moved from part of NIH to an independent bureau, then and very shortly thereafter to end up in this new cockamamie operation called HSMHA was almost too much for Stan to take, so that was another part of the whole problem. It was a very frustrating undermining of everything that Stan had worked for in terms of the independence and the autonomy and the growth and strength of NIMH. GK Yeah, even cosmetically that's true, but I thinl< the Institute was so strong, compared to the other components, the leadership was strong, we had everything going for us that HSMHA could have become NIMH if we were allowed to play it that way. Certainly the Office of Communications became the Office of Communications for HSMHA despite Ed McVey and that whole group, to the point where eventually Herb Wilson asked me to redo that office. We had all the equipment, we had all the talent, we had all the news contacts and Stan en­ couraged them to utilize it, which was a diversionary t~ctic, I realize, but we had that strength every place we went. The extra­ mural programs particularly, none of the extramural programs were functioning in the rest of HS:MHA, the service programs, we knew what we were doing and doing it well and nobody else was, and Joe was d~pendent, couilid have been dependent, and could have been made totally subservient to Stan, but whether it was a prophecy of doom that he saw, whether it was an ego thing, whether he knew that he would eventually lose control of his people and become loyal to another body, I really don't know because I remember at the time, outside of a few people, most of the division directors 37 GK cont. were relatively new and not :first choices, so maybe Stan d:£.dn't :feel he had enough loyalty. EAR Well, that could be part of' it, but there's also another thing that happens both in the growth and development of' individuals in their professional career and the growth and development of' an organization per se, there's a certain :flourishing and then there are_changes, and sometimes there's a kind of' decline that takes place and at NIMH perhaps we were reaching that point, and I'm not saying this an any way to denigrate the Institute per se, but just over time this sort of' thing happens. GK Yeah, people and Institutes get tired. EAR Yes, partly that's it and partly other things develop. When we got to the point where we were up to a $6 million budget, we were inevitably a totally di:f:ferent organization than would appear with loo, 200 or even 300 million dollars. The community mental health services program wasn't going that well by that time, the political developments took place, there was a whole complicated interaction that took place. GK And yet the thing that could have o:f:fset these kinds of' problems, that could have helped didn't happen and can't happen because of' the way government is structured. You can change program leaders at the top levels but the system denies you the ability to bring in the talent that you need to work :for you to e:f:fect the changes that have to take place, and that's what you can't do, you can't get people out of' office, you can't move them, and that's indeed unfortunate. EAR Well, it's an interesting story. Jerry, is there anything else that we've left out. GK Yeah, thousands of' things. EAR Well, listen, let me turn this thing o:f:f at this point and thank you so much. EAR Let me just bry to repeat what you said and comment on them, because I think you're making a very important point. I think a lot of people who have been involved with NIMH have the same feeling that you have, that in many respects within the inevitable limita­ tions of the bureaucracy it functioned extraordinarily well. I think your characterizing it as Academia at i t s best is an excellent way of saying that not only did you have people come with :fairly high -pvofessional talent and cpmpetence and indeed as you well know a lot of people came from Academia and went back to Academia. J8 EAR cont. Sid Cohen is only one example. A lot of' psychologists in the intramural program came from universities and went back to univer­ sities. But I think what you're saying about this carrot, about the ability to do things perhaps within the bureaucratic constraints that overcame those obstacles not, NIMH was not concerned with just building a bureaucracy for the sake of' being larger and therefore having your own salaries go up, etc, I think what you're saying, and you're avoiding a cliche, but let me use the cliche, there was a real sense of mission among the people there that helped. Bob certainly began that way. If you ever have a chance to talk to him, corny as that guy is, as much as he plays on the hearstrings, he really is sincere, he really means that, he really lived that life, he started NI:MH with the help of a lot of' other people primarily because he had, if you will, again a cliche, this kind of dream and Stan who plays emotions much closer to himself and doesn't get as corny, I think has that same sincere conviction. There was never a time that I know, working with Stan, in which he didn't put paramount, pragmatist that he is, pragmatist he was, that he didn't put paramount his real concern. Fort Worth was a good exampl.e for the field. Does that fit your perspective? GK Yaah, and understated. Because of the leadership, because of other factors, the people who were attracted in, generally superior people intellectually and professionally and most of those people whom I've known and heard from came out of the NIMH experience far better. They were good to begin with, they too learned in the process and continued, the alumni continues to contribute and some of them in totally different fields. EAR But even those in the same field, a good example is a guy that I saw last week, Ed Shneidman, who came to NIMH to run the Suicidology program and :_left to continue to be involved in Suicidology as he is up at UCLA. I don't know how much interaction you had with Ed Shneidman. GK Not enough and more than I should have. EAR He's a character of the first order. An egotist with a larga:-ego than almost any other two people combined but an incredibly pro­ ductive guy, a terribly competent man, knowledgeable about his field, a showman of' the first order, but he put together an opera­ tion at NIMH that made a difference to the field in some respects, made a difference to NIMH and he himself said to me last week 39 EAR cont. exactly what you said, that it was an experience that was a major part of his profess~pnal growth and development, something that put him on the national scene in a way that nothing else could have and that when he left he continued, he is now a national and international figure in ways that never would have occured had he not been involved in NIMH. GK Does he recognize that this was very deliberate on the part of NIMH leadership? EAR Oh, yes. No question about it. GK He doesn't take the credit for it on himself2 EAR Oh, no. By no means. In fact, GK You see, that was one of the things we didn't cover in talking. I did have discussions with Stan about several priority programs not that Stan was particularly sympathetic to, but recognized the need for, and even though it wasn't in my action plan at any time those were the ones that he expected me to give a little extra attention to and suicidology was one of them. EAR Yes, that record that was produced, and some other things that were involved. I think that as narcissistic as Ed is, and inciden­ tally he uses that word about himself, himself, so I'm not saying anything that he wouldn't say, I think he clearly understand how much the NIMH was responsible for that, I just say that to document the point that you're making, which is interesting. GK That was the exciting thing about NIMH. I think that's a difficult word to use, exciting, because its the cliche of my profession, but it really is the word that characterizes NIMH most, there was a vitality that always built up to an excitement, even on trivial kinds of things that we were doing, things that we all recognized would have no impact on anything, but had to be done to determine just to prove that they had no impact, and maybe they would go. So you had some fun from time to time. EAR Yes, I was going to say you used exactly the right word that dramatically the way you described Eli Lilly, I think that the people at NIMH always were able to have a sense of humor about what was going on. It was a fun place to be, you know, you work your balls off at times and Ed Shneidman would say, you know I worked 18 hours a day, he 1 d go home for weekends and would work on the plane going and work on the plane coming, it sounds like an exaggeration, but frnakly I believe him because he real~y 40 EAR cont. produced, he really did. GK The :fun was there. Do you remember the time, I don't think you were in my o:f:fice at the time, Sherm was there because he made the [NLM NOTE: interview tape ends abruptly here]