I typed up my resume on 7/3/99 to get a job using this computer which I purchased in February. My resume is one page, no fluff, just name, date and serial number.

The glaring section in the middle of that resume was "Humphrey Presidential Campaign" (former Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman and former House Speaker Jim Wright), Washington, D.C."

Wow, it made my heart stop to remember that time...the 60’s. Vietnam, growing up. I was 25 in 1968 when I worked at the turbulent Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and 21 years old when I worked  at the turbulent Republican National Convention in San Francisco in 1964. Then, in between those two Presidential campaigns, I worked at CBS Network News in New York.

Sometime in early 1968, LBJ said "I shall not seek nor will I accept the nomination of my party for the office of the President of the United States."

I decided to go to Washington, D.C., get a job on the Humphrey Campaign, and see what’s going on with this Vietnam story which affected everyone my age one way or another. This is like a diary of a trip through my life as best I can remember, and the most fascinating people I met and worked with.

Having come from working at CBS Network News, I knew the taste of war from the floor of the screening rooms. We would record these battles, interviews, and correspondent’s copy into typewritten text so the producer could edit it for the Cronkite Show. The burning villages, the helicopters, the generals all became what America came to know as the "living room war". Everybody, who was anybody or who wanted to be anybody, had gone to Vietnam to put in their tour of duty and perhaps achieve fame. 

As I recall Charlie Kuralt burned out quickly in Vietnam or didn’t have the stomach to view such carnage to promote his career. Fred Friendly, the President of CBS News and former protégé of Edward R. Murrow, quit CBS in a fight over the network not carrying the Fulbright Hearings on Vietnam. Black Rock (as they called corporate headquarters) needed the advertising money from America’s mindless daytime soap operas.

Dan Rather thought LBJ was lying, and I guess he was right. I remember once asking Rather to write a book on all this Vietnam war and why, and he said "I’m not capable." 

I left my 5 flight walk-up apartment on East 89th Street in New York City and moved down to Washington, D.C. to see what those politician guys were doing. I got an apartment in a not too great neighborhood.  I found the apartment at night, and at night everything in D.C. looked small and quaint compared to the endless skyscrapers of New York City.

Everything was okay in the neighborhood, besides when you are working on a campaign you are never home at all.

The Humphrey campaign was one block off Connecticut Avenue just behind the Mayflower Hotel but within the same block. We were into "delegate" search and the head of the department I worked for was Robert McCandless. He was a real swinger, he thought, and brother-in-law to the still to become infamous James Dean of Watergate fame.

I came of age with the birth control pill. The 60’s was a time of drugs, sex and rock and roll and war. All of your emotions are at their highest when you are in your twenties, and along with this is your acceptance of adulthood and what does it mean and are we doing the right thing?

Pre-Convention was made up of the "boiler room guys" calling and wheeling and dealing . The good stuff started after the convention. The organization was non too well organized and we didn’t get paid a couple of times (or got paid later). California was big issue, and then there was Bobby Kennedy’s death.

Jessie Unrah the head the democratic party in California as retaliation withheld his support for Humphrey and Humphrey lost the election. Unruh admitted that to me the next year in the fancy Paul Young ((?) restaurant on Connecticut Avenue.

After the convention, Larry O’Brien and Orville Freeman were co-chairman of the Humphrey Presidential Campaign. Orville Freeman, then Secretary of Agriculture and school chum of Hubert Humphrey, was in charge of speech writing and scheduling and we remained at the same offices by the Mayflower. Larry O’Brien was in charge of something and their offices were in the Watergate Hotel. There was a definite lack of coordination between the two branches of the campaign. My boss was Orville Freeman and he was a kind, soft-spoken man, with an almost touching sense of responsibility. A sadness.

Freeman worked at Agriculture in the morning and came over to the campaign in the afternoon. One afternoon I answered the phone "Secretary Freeman’s Office"; the party responded "is he there for the President?" I knew by the tone of those White House Operators "which" President they were talking about. I buzzed Freeman told him the President would be coming up on line 1; he acknowledged and I hung up. The phone rings again on the Secretary’s private line. I answer, the voice says "the President will speak on this line."

Well, well what do I do now? Couldn’t buzz the Secretary. There were a group of people in the office with the Secretary. So I walked into the crowned office with the Secretary holding on the telephone line with a look of anxiety on his face waiting for the President to come on the line. I tried to tell him -- "not this line but President will speak on other line" - but he would not acknowledge. So I just pushed down the button on the Secretary’s private line.

The Secretary looked up at me with the most horrified look on his face like you......just disconnected me from the President of the United States. I was also frightened for a moment. But then the Secretary said into the phone "good afternoon Mr. President". With that I and everyone else left the office for the Secretary to speak in peace with the President.

Boy, did I feel like a hot shot.

About 30 minutes later the light on the Secretary’s private line went black and I went in to speak with the Secretary about the President and how he was. Everything, every issue was Vietnam. The Secretary just shook his head and said something like "this Vietnam thing will destroy us all."

It was all rather bewildering. There I was with the big guys who were supposed to have the answers, the adults, the movers and shakers. Did they also not understand it any better than those guys back in New York at CBS?

Our campaign group went to Chicago two weeks prior to the convention. There was always a lot of  bickering among the group; I had my outs with the McCandless operation and luckily or preplanned ended up with Congressman Jim Wright of Texas. He was in charge of the Rules Committee which held hearings the week before the actual convention started.

Jim Wright was the most consuming of politicians. He was always a complete joy as a politician and as a man. He lived politics 24 hours a day. Jim called us the "Chicago four". There was Cathy who had been his secretary forever and Marshall who had been his executive assistant forever,  and then I was lucky to be included with this group who did indeed later go on to big time  with Jim Wright becoming Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The Democratic National Convention in 1968 in Chicago was the symbol of chaos. The demonstrators blamed LBJ for Vietnam and thus they blamed Humphrey as the heir apparent. The Humphrey headquarters was in the Conrad Hilton Hotel right there on the park (Grant Park) and Michigan Avenue. The thousands of demonstrators were in park across the street with signs everywhere "Fuck you" "Fuck me". They really weren’t too cute. Nothing was cute but I guess it all was. The demonstrators put stink bombs in the cooling system at the Conrad Hilton, so the Hotel countered with this sweet smelling stuff that was as bad as the stink bombs. Then you could go outside and be tear gassed or beaten up. Inside the hotel was like a fortress protected by the Chicago police, the Secret Service, etc. and finally the National Guard.

When they first pulled in it was like a military parade. The whole thing was like this great spectacular out of control party that must go on. The reason, being protection, I first recognized when walking back to the Conrad Hilton Hotel with some campaign workers one night late, a little loaded, and here are these tanks and troops every few feet along the street - they were there to protect us. At that moment you could have heard a pin drop it was so quiet and still.

Well, the party will roll on tomorrow.

The hotel returned to its chaos. A CBS producer was accused by somebody as staging demonstrations for the cameras. Turn on the camera, turn on the lights, and you get people to yell and act, their most stupid usually. Look at Jerry Springer today. Anyone can be given 15 minutes to make a complete ass out of themselves. Some call it art, some call it show business, or Ann Landers gone awry.

Carol Ann, a campaign worker, and I hung out after work and along with a few more campaign workers checked out all the local hotel eateries. We did eat well in Chicago. The food and drinks always flow freely within political campaigns. However there was never any flamboyance displayed by the Humphrey people.

Once the convention began, I had either a delegate or alternate pass and could go anywhere on the convention floor. One night quite by chance or brazen balls by me, we ended up sitting in the Speaker’s box on the dais. I guess at that point it was for us to control our own seating arrangements if we could. Let them box it out on the floor, which they did night after night.

One night I took the Texas delegates bus out to the Chicago Stockyards convention center.. That caravan was especially protected by the police who escorted the buses with blaring sirens and searching lights. I sat next to an unassuming little man who turned out to be the White House historian Dr. Joe Franz. We struck up a friendship and he subsequently invited me to join him in drinks with Governor Connolly and his wife at the Conrad Hilton the next day.

We all met in a bar on the first floor of the Conrad Hilton Hotel with the smell of tear gas lingering in the air.

Governor Connolly was good looking and charming. His wife was his attractive, charming sole mate. I don’t remember anything significant other than me just being impressed to be there amongst the people of history. I think Connolly lost his way when he lost LBJ. He was a democrat, then became a Republican, then went into bankruptcy and recovered. He was the fiber of Texas.

The convention followed thru that week, and Humphrey got the nomination. No body else got shot. So, we all flew back to Washington, D.C. to prepare the real campaign.

It was called like "what can anyone do about Vietnam". I am convinced to this day that the mighty friendly Hubert Humphrey would have talked them, whoever had to oppose him to death. They would give up just to get him to shut up. He was such a convincing man, like a scholar.

As I said earlier, I worked for Secretary Freeman at the same campaign office near the Mayflower.

Freeman imported the best of the speechwriters - John Bartlow Martin , who had been a speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson (two generations) and John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. John Bartlow Martin had also written about 35 books on every political subject known to man. After searching the hills of Michigan using the White House operators day after day after day, he finally called in and appeared for work.

A small man with a Bow-tie and a cigar in his hand, when he doesn’t have a Heineken and a shot of whiskey in the other. He grew up in Chicago politics and survived to strive. He was a master, and always on time or before.

Another speechwriter/foreign adviser to Freeman/Humphrey was Zbigniew Brzezinski, who later went on to become National Security Adviser to President Carter. I kept asking him what they were going to do about Vietnam and he kept saying they had a "secret answer".  Brzezinski was not one to have a conversation with, he was not funny and he had no answers. I thought he was a little smug and appeared to be in no demand as an adviser on anything.

John Bartlow kept on trying to get Humphrey to say over and over "if you’ve seen one slum, you’ve seen one too many, etc. etc." I don’t think that took. Oh yes, and then Humphrey said we have a secret solution on Vietnam which we will unveil after the election.

Nixon was saying the same thing.  As the bombs kept falling.

The election was held on November 2, 1968. We all flew to Minneapolis, Humphrey’s home town to view the election returns. I worked a great deal for John Bartlow Martin then and he was the barometer anyway of what was happening moment by moment with the election returns throughout the night. There was an air of gloom in the air in the suites filled with food and booze. The actor who played Maverick was a guest actor type, I guess.. and he was standing there saying how exciting it was to be here at this momentous point in history.

John Bartlow Martin said "what the hell is he talking about -- we already lost". That was at the time of the Chicago returns.

John said "hey Vivian, let’s go get drunk."

We did, Humphrey lost by about 220,000 votes.

So now that Nixon won the election, we get to see the "secret plan" for Vietnam that he and his opponent had envisioned. Turns out by what I have read since, there was indeed a cooperation or relationship between Nixon’s Kissinger and Humphrey’s Brzezinski in planning the Vietnam solution. One of them wrote a book on it.

That was also the time Americans liked Americans who sounded like foreigners with accents as their advisers and English nannies to take care of their children. That was also the beginning of designer clothes - originally Mark Cross in New York on to Gucci and Pucci and now the Gap and Nike.

Well, you get what you pay for - way too much money to cart around someone else’s design.

So the American military action or inaction was to cut back on the number of American troops involved, college deferments were protected, and increase the bombing threefold including Cambodia and Laos.

Oh yes, another foreign hero of sorts about that time was Edward Teller of Hydrogen bomb fame. Through that strongest German guttural sound, you were able to understand him to say "yes, I can make the biggest bomb there is." That was enough.  (Read about science and politics at  1979 - Of Art, the Ayatollah, Oil, Mellon & Fusion ).  

I had two brushes with the law in 1968. One was potential stolen property and the other was a charge of disorderly conduct.

We had one last supper on the Presidential yacht the "Honey Fritz". Secretary Freeman arranged our use of the vehicle for a final farewell trip down the Potomac River. This was of course my first time on this boat and it was very impressive. What was great and surprising was when I walked onto the boat - the military types on duty with the vehicle, saluted me as I boarded the ship. I remember being completely stupid and saying something to them like "you don’t have to do that, I’m nobody" ... bad show Vivian.

Then I thought this is really cool, won’t be a second chance for this, walked back off the boat and back on to have those military guys salute me again. Thanks.

There were some new people connected with the campaign on the boat like Ambassadors and Governors - about 50 or so. We called it our "last supper" on the Potomac.

As the night drew on, I was attracted to a beautiful mahogany Presidential Seal which was located on the wall right before you go inside the boat. We were all getting ready to leave, passing out raincoats, everyone was laughing. I was talking with an Ambassador and some people from the campaign when I decided to take that Presidential Seal off the wall. Didn’t have any plans for it. just told everybody as I took the Seal off the wall and wrapped it in my raincoat - "This is one of Lyndon’s seals that Tricky Dick isn’t going to get." Those who saw thought it was a great idea.

As I scooted across the gangplank and up to a ride home, I did feel like a thief.

Secretary Freeman had told me I could use his limousine to go home in. That was really great having a limousine and a chauffeur, too..

I told Tommy, the Secretary’s long time driver, about my great prize under my arm wrapped in my raincoat. He didn’t want to hear about it.

The next morning I woke up with a hangover and a fear of bringing my head out from under the pillow. There on the floor next to my still unpacked boxes was the beautiful Presidential Seal of the President of the United States.

I gathered my courage and apologies together, put the seal back into my raincoat, and called the Secretary’s office requesting an immediate appointment. They complied, and I returned the Seal with apologies.

When you start talking about downtown Washington, D.C., it is really a small place, like you can almost walk everywhere. The White House, The Ritz Carlton, the Hill, Duke Zeibert’s and the lovely Hay Adams Hotel right on Lafayette Park in front of the White House.

Then there is Mr. Lincoln sitting over there on the Mall observing everything.

I had gone over to visit Mr. Lincoln late at night before and had been run off by the police. The place is almost like a temple late at night. It was like a place to pray for peace or have a dream as Martin Luther King did.

Right, it is a very political place too, and I shouldn’t have been there.. but. The administration had just stopped or just started a massive bombing campaign in Vietnam, and it was big time demonstrations, etc.

An old friend of mine from Business Week and I were drinking late one night. I said Charlie, let’s go visit Mr. Lincoln. Yeah, that’s a good idea. We drive to the monument, walk up the stairs, under the barricades, and onto the floor where the statute is situated. We were only there a few moments, when we heard sirens and the police came storming up the steps. There were two from the D.C. police and two from the park police.

I made some speech as I was escorted down to the paddy wagon. They threw Charlie into the paddy wagon - after roughing him up. Charlie had also been beaten up in Chicago by the police when he was in McCarthy headquarters at the Conrad Hilton Hotel.

Charlie made the observation as we were riding in the paddy wagon - "can you imagine what they would have done to us if we were Black?"

We spent a couple hours at the police station. We were charged with disorderly conduct. We would fight it and a court date would be set. Now, go home and get some sleep.

By the time the court date came around I was working for Myer Feldman, a former White House general counsel whose office was right next door to the White House/EOB complex. Mike was a funny guy who completely loved all aspects of politics. He was now heading a fund-raiser for the Kennedy Family. I told Mike, why don’t you just call Rose Kennedy and tell her you need some money to help pay off Bobby Kennedy’s campaign debts. He said, no we don’t do it that way.

All monies were duly recorded, but I remember walking across Lafayette Park with $245,000 in my purse to put in the Bank. It was pretty heady stuff.

Told Mike about my Lincoln court date, he said he would take care of it or represent me or whatever the case may be. He thought it was all funny. He would have gotten the charges dropped or convinced me not to go or whatever,

Charlie and I got a Civil Liberties Attorney and went to court. My case came up first, and Charlie had to leave the room. The officers of the law got on the stand, answered the questions from my Civil Liberties attorney and the Judge. They really made me sound awful and distorted the intent.

My attorney turned to me and said "do you want to go on the stand?" I said "yes, cause we’ve lost it already."

The Judge asked me to explain it all in my own works. I started out with "Your Honor, I have a thing about Mr. Lincoln." etc. etc. We were talking like Mr. Lincoln was sitting right there on the front row. As I finished my speech, which is probably similar to something here in this document, and was about to get off the stand, the Judge said "Yes, and Ms. Westerman, have you ever been there at the Lincoln memorial before at that late hour." "Yes, your honor, I have."

In conclusion, the Judge said when rendering my fate "No matter how childishly the young lady may have been acting, I find her not guilty because she was speaking for the spirit of Abraham Lincoln. Not guilty."

There was slight applause in the courtroom.

Charlie’s case came up next. He was found guilty.

1968 was not a year of big victories.

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