Read Blind Ambition: The End of the Story for Free Online

switchboard rooms, and I decided that Kissinger must have something more than the Situation Room to impress the ladies.
    Outside the “Sit Room” we peeked into a large storage area beside the mess, where workmen were building an executive dining room for senior staff and Cabinet officers, which would resemble a private men’s grill at a posh country club. We walked on, peering into the White House barbershop, the limousine drivers’ waiting room, the photographer’s office, the vault safe for sensitive Presidential papers, and a Secret Service command post.
    We went upstairs to the first floor of the West Wing, where the President’s Oval Office is located. Bud was amazed that I had never seen it. As we approached, he pointed out a small monitoring device that kept constant track of the President’s whereabouts. It indicated that the President was in his hideaway office at the Executive Office Building next door. An Executive Protective Service officer was posted near the monitor. A thick velvet rope guarded the door to the Oval Office, which was standing open. Bud, never shy, asked the officer to remove the rope so that we could take a closer look. He obeyed reluctantly, with the request that we step just inside.
    “This is The Man’s office,” said Bud. “What do you think?”
    “Not bad, not bad at all. In fact, it’s damn impressive.” I could feel the importance of the office as I took it all in. My attention was caught by the conspicuous rug and the huge desk. The oval rug was deep blue, with a ring of gold stars and a huge gold eagle in the middle, a replica of the President’s seal of office. It struck me as surprisingly flashy for Richard Nixon, who had such strong feelings about appearing dignified and Presidential. He would not, despite the advice of his television experts, wear a blue shirt. Blue shirts weren’t Presidential, he said, and he didn’t care if his white shirts made his dark features appear harsher on television; white shirts were Presidential. His blue-and-gold rug, like the short-lived Bavarian-guard uniforms he commissioned for the White House, was in odd contrast to all that.
    His desk was enormous and had allegedly been used by Woodrow Wilson. Two Presidents, maybe four, could have worked at it without disturbing each other. There was a story about the desk around the White House. The President liked to sit with his feet on it, and his heels had scarred the top. Once, when he was out of the country, someone noticed the damaged mahogany surface and sent the desk out to be refinished. When he returned, Nixon noticed that his heel marks had been removed. “Dammit, I didn’t order that,” he snapped. “I want to leave my mark on this place just like other Presidents.”
    We moved on to the East Wing, with Bud pointing out places of interest along the way—the doctor’s office, the chief butler’s office, the Map Room, the Lincoln Library, the kitchen, the secret tunnel. We stopped briefly at the door of the secret tunnel, which ran from the basement of the White House to the Treasury Department a block away. Bud said the Secret Service had contingency plans for bringing troops through the tunnel if a hostile demonstration ever got out of hand. But the only trooper to use the tunnel was Chief Justice Warren Burger. On the day his Supreme Court nomination was announced, the tunnel enabled him to enter the White House unnoticed by the press.
    Down we went to the East Wing basement, until halted by a large steel door posted “Restricted Area.” Bud ignored the sign, and I followed him through a room of furnaces, low-hanging pipes, and huge valves to a second steel door with a small window. He rang the doorbell, and a face appeared that recognized him. The door opened and Bud stated his purpose: “I want to show Mr. Dean, the new counsel to the President, the area we use as a command post during demonstrations.”
    We walked through a corridor maze until we came to a small suite