| Our story begins on the afternoon of July 2, 1971. President Richard Nixon is angered to read in the Washington Star that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has downplayed a drop in the unemployment rate from 6.2 percent to 5.6 percent, attributing it to a statistical quirk. (For details about the BLS interpretation, which was routine and unexceptional, see Hughes' "Nixon vs. the Imaginary Jewish Cabal," posted Sept. 24 on the Web site History News Network.) We join Nixon as he is talking to White House aide Charles Colson. (This is from a newly released Miller Center transcription.)
"He" turned out to be Harold Goldstein, assistant commissioner of labor statistics. According to Hughes, Nixon had been wanting to fire Goldstein since the previous January, when Goldstein had publicly (and correctly) termed an unemployment drop of two-tenths of 1 percent "marginally significant." On July 3, Colson advised Nixon (according to a tape available to Hughes but not yet transcribed) that he demand a reorganization of the BLS. "In the process of reorganizing it," Colson said, "I think we'll get this guy's resignation." Nixon agreed and called in White House budget director George Shultz and Labor Secretary James Hodgson. "Well," said Shultz, "I think the only kind of organization that would be sensible under these circumstances is a reorganization that separates Goldstein from the employment, uh, employment figures, and gets him into something else entirely." Later that day (according to a July 3, 1971, tape widely publicized on its release by the National Archives in 1999), Nixon and Colson, now alone, had the following exchange:
Also that day, Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, had the following conversation (this, too, is from the July 3, 1971, tape that was released in 1999):
Three weeks pass. It is now the morning of July 24, 1971, and Nixon, fulminating about Daniel Ellsberg and the New York Times and administration leaks, finds his thoughts drifting back to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. What follows is from a second new Miller Center transcription (click here and scroll to the bottom):
We're going on a Jew hunt! Two days later, on July 26, Haldeman sends a memo to Malek. "What's the status of your analysis of the BLS; specifically of the 21 key people?" Haldeman writes. "What is their demographic breakdown?" Malek answers in a memo the following day. Out of 50 names on the organization chart, Malek has run down the party affiliations of 35. Twenty-five are Democrats, one is a Republican, and nine are either independents, not registered, or of unknown party affiliation. "In addition," Malek writes (someone—presumably either Haldeman or Nixon himself—has underlined this sentence), "13 out of the 35 fit the other demographic criterion that was discussed." Scribbled beneath this (I'm guessing by Haldeman) are the words, "Most of these are at the top." (Malek's method of identifying who was Jewish and who wasn't was to scrutinize surnames, rendering his estimate as unreliable as it was abhorrent.) Six weeks pass, and it is Sept. 8, 1971. Malek reports in a memo (previously unpublished; thanks, again, to Kenneth J. Hughes) that he has had "several meetings" with Labor Secretary Hodgson "to convince him of the need for fairly drastic moves." Six out of nine offices will be combined into an Office of Data Analysis. This will be headed by a "politically sensitive, loyal Republican economist," presumably one who does not have a mezuzah nailed to his front door. The move will strip the BLS' deputy commissioner, the unfortunately surnamed Ben Burdetsky, from authority "over the most critical areas." In addition, "Harold Goldstein will be moved to a routine, non-sensitive post in another part of BLS. He has been told of this and will move quietly when the reorganization is announced." Goldstein, too, will be replaced by a "sensitive and loyal Republican," one who we may assume eats shellfish with a clear conscience. (Goldstein lost some key duties, had a new supervisor placed above him, and decided less than a year later to retire at 57.) In addition, Malek reports, two other associate commissioners with Jewish-sounding names—Peter Henle and Leon Greenberg—"will be transferred when the reorganization is announced." (Henle, after a sabbatical at the Brookings Institution, was reassigned to the Library of Congress and after Jimmy Carter became president in 1977 returned to the Labor department* as a deputy assistant secretary before retiring in 1979. He died at 88 this past February. I don't know what happened to Greenberg.) "These moves do not go as far as I would have preferred," writes Malek in the September 1971 memo, "but represent a reasonable compromise that I feel will make the BLS a more responsive and effective unit." Nixon Jew-Counting Archive: Feb. 6, 2006: "Malek's List, Part 7" Correction, Sept. 27, 2007: An earlier version of this column stated erroneously that Henle returned to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is part of the Labor Department. (Return to the corrected sentence.) Correction, Sept. 28, 2007: An earlier version of this column misstated Weiss' middle initial as "J." (Return to the corrected sentence.) E-mail Timothy Noah at chatterbox@slate.com . http://www.roncorvus.info/nixon.htm
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