Interviewer:of how you and John Fogarty first met?
I appreciate you taking the time to do thisinterview.
Can you tell us again the story
Melvin Laird: Well, I'm not sure the firstmeeting was the important one.
But, the first time I wasintroduced to John Fogarty was when the chairman
of his subcommittee and the ranking Republicanon that committee, Frank Keefe of Wisconsin..
.I had been out there visiting as the youngstate's
senator as a guest of Congressmen Burns, Davis,and Ford.
I was there and I met John that day inthe committee room.
I did not really get to know him again untilI came to Congress in 1953.
I wasassigned temporarily to the HEW-Labor subcommittee.
John Taber was the ranking Republican andhe was the most senior Republican in the House
and was on that committee as a ranking Republicanand John was the chairman.
We kind of hit it off from that time on.
John was so forthright with me and honestin telling me about how he wanted to run the
committeeand what we could do and the opportunities
we had to do things for people.
He convinced me that itwas the most important committee in the Congress
and that he felt that way.
After I had served for ayear or two I came to the same conclusion.
John was always forthright, honest, and hisintegrity
could not be questioned at any time.
We played together the game of politics.
We loved one anotherand we believed that we could get along in
a bipartisan way.
Interviewer:Paint a picture for me.
Tell me a little bit about what he soundedlike, what he looked like, how he dressed.
Melvin Laird: Well, he wasn't a big dresseror anything but he always looked nice and
presentable.
He was always there in a friendly sort ofway.
He could be very gruff.
He could be tough as thedickens.
I should say on a witness.
But, he wanted to do it for a purpose-to getto the bottom of a
subject.
There was no better interrogator than JohnFogarty.
Interviewer:be on, but I know you had a lot of home state
support.
You just told me that he convinced you thiswas the most important subcommittee to
Melvin Laird: Well, the reason I was interestedin being on the committee and asked the Chairman
of the House, the Republican side of the committee-JohnTaber worked on that committee-was
because of the Marshfield Clinic.
There was a great group of doctors out inMarshfield-Dr. Ep-
stein, Dr. Ben Lawton, Russ Lewis, GeorgeMagnin, Dean Emanuel.
They all got together with meas I went to Congress.
They said Mel, you should concentrate on health,medical research, and de-
livery of health services to people.
That's an area that needs help and it needsunderstanding.
Wewould appreciate it if you would make an all
out effort to get on that committee.
In the first term Ihad a little difficulty.
I was assigned only as temporary member byJohn Taber because there wasn't
a vacancy on the committee.
But, I started going to those committee meetingsas a temporary mem-
ber at that time and it was a great eye openerfor me.
But really, it was the drive of those doctorsthere at the Marshfield Clinic that I've just
named that were important in getting me tobe on that
committee.
John had the same kind of support in Providence.
There were doctors there, members of BrownUniversity, in Providence that worked on John
to get his interest and build it up.
They were respon-sible, I think, for his going on that committee
early on and he was very appreciative of theirsupport
all during the years.
Interviewer:
To follow-up on that, his background was asa bricklayer, not in health.
Melvin Laird: I know he was a damn good bricklayer too because I went around on a couple
ofjobs with him out in Wisconsin and he was
teaching some of those guys the modern techniqueof
brick laying.
I remember when we were with the doctor fromthe McArdle Laboratory and John was
sort of telling the guy the importance ofbrick laying as his job out in Rhode Island
and Harold Ru-sch, the doctor in charge of the McArdle Cancer
Clinic said well, I was a brick layer as ayoung
man.
John sort of scoffed at that and said well,what do you mean?
How did you handle.. .on a coldwinter day out in Wisconsin, how did you set
the bricks on a corner if it was real cold?
He said well,the way we did that, Dr. Rusch said, was we
urinated on them and that made the set.
John knewright away that here was a brick layer and
he had a relationship with Howard Rusch andMcArdle
Cancer Clinic there in Madison.. .that waslong remembered.
Interviewer:ing, yes?
I read about these three important meetingsin Wisconsin.
That was the second meet-
Melvin Laird: Yes.
That was the second.. .that was the secondmeeting.
Interviewer:
What else transpired during that second visit?
Melvin Laird: Well, John questioned the wholeset up of the Marshfield Clinic, interrogated
thosedoctors (like) as they had never been interrogated
before, finding out about the practice ofso-called
clinical medicine and of one of the firstHMOs in the country.
This was an HMO that was set upvery early and was set up prior to any HMOs
in the country and John was interested init.
Interviewer:
The No Match Bill was also discussed in thatmeeting wasn't it?
Melvin Laird: We discussed the No Match Grantfor the University of Wisconsin and their
hospitaland the provisions were made for a No Match
on the addition there at Madison.
It was very im-portant to the University Hospital that No
Match be recognized.
It meant a lot to Wisconsin and alot to the University.
But, the McArdle Center was one that was sponsoredby John and by me, the
whole center.
That center was built in the form of a cancercell as they saw it.
It was a two storybuilding.
Wonderful work was carried on there for chemotherapyand drug use.
And some im-portant discoveries were made there that are
still being used today.
The center is still very active.
What John and I established..
.John used to call it the Lairdettes, butwe established seven regional
cancer centers in the United States.
He always gave me the credit for the amendment,but it was his
prodding that got me to put the amendmentinto committee.
So, that's why he called it theLairdettes.
Those cancer centers are Farber, [MD] Andersonin Texas, [Dana] Farber in Massachusetts,
theUniversity of Wisconsin.. .there are very
important cancer centers that were establishedunder that
legislation.
The most important ones nationally are probablyFarber and the Anderson Clinic down
in Texas.
Additional aid was presented to them and providedfor them for their work.
Interviewer:Ben Lawton.
Can you describe that meeting for me?
There was a very famous quote that came outof the basement of the library by Dr.
Melvin Laird: I think that was on our firstmeeting.
Dr. Lawton at that time was a very fine surgeonand president of the clinic-one of the finest,
most dedicated doctors I've ever met in mylife.
Dr.Lawton felt that medicine without research
was no medicine at all.
And, he was a great person onpushing research and going in as far as the
future of medicine was concerned.
And that quote of Dr.Lawton's was always remembered by John Fogarty
and by me.
Interviewer:ton that night.
Tell us the story of your last night withMr. Fogarty and why you were in Washing-
Melvin Laird: In 1967, January, Congress wasgoing to go into session.
We had also planned to goto the [first] Super Bowl out in California.
So we had made our plans that we would cometo the
start of the Congress and then go to Californiabecause Green Bay, which is in my area of
Wiscon-sin, was playing in the Super Bowl.
I thought it would be fun for us to be there.
That night, the daybefore the session..
.John insisted on being there the day of thesession.
I felt we could have gottensworn in out in California by a judge, a federal
judge, which is perfectly permissible.
John said no,"I want to be sworn in on the floor of the
House of Representatives.
We'll go to California that af-ternoon".
Well, it so happens that John didn't makethat next day for being sworn in for his very
im-portant [14`"] term, that he thought was important
for him to be there.
We had dinner that night.
Iwent back to his office, left my golf clubs
there with the understanding that as soonas the session
was over on that next day we would take offto see Green Bay play in the Super Bowl.
John nevermade it.
I just don't understand.
We had a nice dinner that night and I wentback to the office and
everything was in fine shape.
But, he had a very serious heart problem thatevening.
That was theend of John Fogarty and the end of a wonderful
relationship and a great friendship.
Interviewer:the next big accomplishment?
May I ask if you recall what you were discussingat dinner?
What would have been
Melvin Laird: Well, at that time we were discussing..
.I was telling him about the changes we weregoing to make in the House Republican leadership
and that we were moving Ford up to a differentposition.
I would stay there as a Republican conferencechairman.
So, we did discuss a little repub-lican policy because he was always interested
in what was going on on my side of the aisle.
Hewould always tell me what Mike Kirwan from
Ohio was planning or what John McCormick wasplanning at that time.
John McCormick was a great friend and MikeKirwan from Ohio was a great
friend of John's.
I think his greatest friend, however, wasHugh Carey who became.. .later became
governor of New York.
Hugh used to join John and I for a littleafter hours drink together in John's
office from time to time because he was sucha good friend of John
Fogarty's.
He was a great member from New York, laterwent on to very important positions in
New York.
Interviewer: So, you have taken us sort ofto the end of your partnership.
I'd like to take you back,not to the very beginning, but talk a bit
about your committee work and how you didit.
You ran tworammed through very hefty increases in medical
research spending against opposition.
Can you talkabout your strategy and how you worked together
to do that?
Melvin Laird: Well, I came Congress the sameyear that James Shannon became director of
NIH[1955].
So, we both started together as rather freshman.
He was Director of NIH.
I was a new mem-ber of the appropriations committee.
John Fogarty and I got together and had avisit about this and
how we should try to help Shannon in his newresponsibilities.
At that time, the budget of HEW forNIH-National Institutes of Health-was a few
million dollars.
It wasn't a big budget at the timebecause this had been a small group that moved
from New York up to Washington.
And the Na-tional Institutes of Health was just beginning
to blossom and become a reality.
Shannon had a verysmall laboratory there in New York.
This was blossoming into a very big national,international
laboratory as we envisioned it at that time,and as he envisioned it.
During the period of time from1953
until 1968..
.John died in '67.
I left Congress to go to Defense in '68.
Shannon retired.
But, thegreater growth of the National Institutes
of Health was outstanding.
There has never been an institu-tion that has grown that rapidly as far as
the budget was concerned.
We went from those few milliondollars in 1953 to $1,500,000,000 in 1968-a
tremendous increase in the amount of moneymade
available for medical research.
I think we spent it well.
We created several new institutes.
We en-larged the other institutes that were already
in existence.
I think it's a remarkable record of goodgrowth of government for a very good reason.
As you know, we had to fight the administrationsduring this period because both the Eisenhower,
Kennedy, and Johnson administrations wantedless money than we appropriated.
They were verymuch opposed to what we were doing.
But John and I would always wait till theconference com-
mittee between the House and the Senate.
There is where we set the goals for all areasof NIH-
CDC.. .everything from syphilis relief andprograms in that area all the way through.
We'd take itone by one and go through and we put those
increases in there above the administration.
Now, wehad to judge how far the administration would
go without vetoing.
There were people in the Senatethat always felt a veto was good politics
because you had a big issue then on theseissues of cancer
and heart disease and some of the other publicissues.
John Fogarty felt it was better to get actionand so did I.
So, we wanted to work a position that wouldbe signed and become law and be effec-
tive in helping Jim Shannon build his greatinstitution that we had envisioned for the
United States.
Interviewer:
How did you go about determining what thosenumbers would be?
Melvin Laird: Well, we had some friends overin the Bureau of the Budget.
I had several goodfriends there.
I also had a good friend in General [Wilton]Persons in the White House.
I would al-ways kind of run things off him.
I had Bryce Harlow over there as a young manworking for the
General.
I could always run things off them to see.
They'd say, oh no, we can't go that far.
Whatcan you do?
I'd kind of come back with a report aboutwhere we could be and we'd stretch it just
alittle bit.
But, we always felt that we were in the ballgame.
We weren't interested in playing politicswith this.
We wanted results and we got them.
Interviewer:
Mr. Fogarty kept you very busy with hearings.
Melvin Laird: Oh yeah, he was a slave driveron hearings.
He'd start at 8:30 in the morning andwe'd go straight through until five in the
evening.
I was on the Defense Appropriations Committeetoo.
They would meet in the morning.
I would try to get to as many of the DefenseAppropriations
Committee's meetings as I could.
But, I had to give priority to John becauseJohn would raise so
much hell with me.
George Mahon was Chairman of the Defense Committee,subcommittee at the
time.
He was a little easier on me and would excuseme to go to HEW meetings right through until
'68.
Interviewer:
Why was he so focused on the importance ofthese hearings?
Melvin Laird: He felt that a hearing recordwas absolutely necessary in order to justify
an increasein the budget.
He wanted to be in a position where he hadbuilt a record that would show that the
extra funds were needed, necessary, and couldbe spent properly.
Interviewer:committee.
Tell me again how you two had worked togetherwhen you were in conference
Melvin Laird: Well, in the conference committeethe Senate has one vote and the House has
onevote.
By John and I staying together always, wehad a lock on the committee.
The senators had dif-ferent ideas.
Margaret Chase Smith would have some and otherswould have other things.
We al-ways gave Margaret a little bit of hell about
some of her most important problems.
But, we stayedtogether.
The Senate never was entirely together becausethey were always for more, more, more
without regard to whether they'd become apractical program or not.
Interviewer:committee hearings like master puppeteers
and that sometimes you might disagree withMr. Fogarty
but perhaps it was all staged..
."
I've read that.. .this was in your biography.
"The two men manipulated their sub-
Melvin Laird: Well no.
We'd try to show a difference of opinion inorder to bring out something
from a witness.
We know that they had differences of opinionand Fogarty would take one side and
I would take the other and we would be ableto come down to a conclusion after the hearing
was allover.
But there was nothing improper about that.
We did that because we felt that we couldget to
the truth faster that way.
Interviewer:partnership?
Were you at times under pressure from otherfellow Republicans for being in such a
Melvin Laird: I'm sure.
I know I was.
I mean they criticized me for going alongon these increases.
But, I was able to hold my own alright overon my side of the aisle and I never got in
too muchtrouble.
I got a lot of kidding about it, about thepartnership.
Sam Rayburn first recognized it thenJohn McCormack recognized it.
And, all succeeding speakers understood thatFogarty and I had a
partnership when it came to HEW and Labor.
Interviewer:things?
The record shows these tremendous accomplishments.
Did you two ever disagree on
Melvin Laird: Oh yes.
We disagreed sometimes.
John was a little more liberal than I was,you
know.
You have to kind of work those things out,but we always came to an agreement.
Interviewer:each other at times in your home districts,
which seemed..
.
I understand that you two, to help maintainthis partnership, would campaign for
Melvin Laird: We did.
We did, I went out to his district and hewent to mine, but that was a little
unusual at that time.
But, it was a matter of friendship.
I had various other relationships like that,but not any of them as close as with John
Fogarty.
But it was great that the speaker always recog-nized it and my leadership always recognized
it.
Gerry Ford and Charlie Halleck used to giveme
the needle a little bit about it because theywould be called by the White House-"can't
you dosomething with Me1 and get him to kind of
cut back a little bit on this and be a littlecloser to the
President's position?"
It was kind of like Lyndon Johnson callingGerry Ford on a different issue
that had to do with defense.
The tapes show that he called Gerry and said,"Gerry you've got to get
down there and muzzle Me1 Laird on Vietnam."
I always took that as kind of a badge of honor.
Interviewer:from opposite sides of the aisles.. .did you
at the time ever talk about how unique thisrelationship
was?
Just to wrap up on this topic about your uniquebipartisan relationship, you two were
Melvin Laird: Oh sure we did.
We talked about it.
We'd have dinner together quite often.
We had agroup down at Paul Young's restaurant we met
quite frequently.
As a matter of fact, John and I hadan advisory committee made up of some very
important people.
This was before Dave Packard be-came my deputy in defense, but he was chairman
of the board at Hewlett Packard.
He was on ouradvisory committee.
He was on the board at Stanford University.
Juan Trippe, who was president ofthe board of trustees at Yale, also had created
Pan Am American Airlines was on our committee.
Icould go through and name these people, but
they were helping us as far as their interestsand their
school's interest in research in the areaof health care and research in medicine.
Interviewer:on-Mary Lasker.
You had support from a lot of people-somein particular maybe you could comment
Melvin Laird: Well, Mary Lasker was a Wisconsiner-amefrom Wisconsin-and married an ad-
vertising man out in New York and did verywell.
They became very wealthy.
They set up the Al-bert and Mary Lasker Medical Research Foundation
to promote medical research throughout theUnited States.
This little Wisconsin girl kind of blossomedout in New York this became a very fine
affair and she helped support people thatshe felt would be interested in this area.
As a matter offact, she and Mrs. [Alice] Fordyce would make
campaign contributions to some members ofthe
Congress.
I never took a campaign contribution fromeither one of them because I had a campaign
manager, chairman of my campaign, Bob Froehlkewho later became Secretary of the Army, and
hewouldn't accept a dollar from outside of Wisconsin.
So, we never got any of that New York moneyin my campaigns.
Interviewer:wondered if you could comment on Dr. Michael
DeBakey and what that relationship was like?
Some of your expert witnesses you'd bringinto your hearings were tied to NIH.
I
Melvin Laird: Well, DeBakey and [Sidney] Farberand some of those people, Howard Rusk up at
the rehabilitation center in New York, theywere outstanding leaders in the field.
They were alwayswilling to help us when it came time to work
on support for the positions we were taking.
We'd al-ways call them before the committee.
We would go over their questions somewhatwith them.
WithShannon, we'd go over his appearances a little
bit beforehand and have kind of a little mocksession
sometimes with him because we didn't wanthim to be caught unaware either.
We wanted him toknow that we were doing what we could to build
this international center there in Bethesda.
But, wedid work closely with them.
I think that Dr. Shannon said as he was leavingNIH, that he didn't
know how he would have gotten along withoutthe Fogarty/Laird partnership.
Interviewer:your role there?
Can you tell me about the WHO [World HealthOrganization] meetings?
What was
Melvin Laird: Well, our role there at thatparticular time, had to do with pure water-water
suppliesfor people and how important that was to health,
and also to close in on the chicken pox andsmall
pox as well as the polio vaccine programs.
We wanted a program of universal inoculationpaid for
by the federal government.. .taking this vaccinethat had been developed and making it available
throughout the United States and the world.
Interviewer:cine].
Paint the picture for me of the founding ofthe library [National Library of Medi-
Melvin Laird: Well, the library, the NationalLibrary of Medicine, was a project that we
were veryinterested in.
There were several people that were pushingus in that area.
Among them wereDeBakey, Farber, and some of those great key
witnesses we had for other areas of NIH.
We had thesupport of the American Medical Association.
We had good support on that project and wefunded
it in our appropriation bill.
As you know, we had the ground breaking forthe Library of Medicine in
1959.
I was there at the groundbreaking.
As a matter of fact, if you look at the pictures,I'm the on-
ly living American that's still around thatwas at that ceremony.
I'm not sure how long I'm going tobe around, but it's nice to know that I was
there and had an appreciation for one of thegreat things
that has happened to medicine in the world.
People all over the world can tune in on variousdiseas-
es, on operations-how they're performed, someof the new medical equipment and machinery.
Some of the new discoveries are all availablealmost the day after they are discovered.
It's (That's)an amazing wealth of information not only
of medical research, but how to keep peopleliving long-
er and better.
Interviewer:
Am I correct that Dr. Shannon initially didn'twant that to be part if NIH?
Melvin Laird: At that time he thought thatit would take away from NIH.
But, we felt it should be atNIH.
He went along with it being there.
It was under his authority for about threeor four years be-
fore he left.
He treated it well.
Interviewer:brary?
Did you work closely with Dr. Martin Cummingswho was the director of the li-
Melvin Laird: I worked with him, yes.
I have great respect for the work he has done.
Well, he was agreat promoter of the library.
He's done a tremendous job.
The success of that library is due mainlyto his perseverance and his leadership.
Interviewer:
You also authorized the funding of the ListerHill Center for Biomedical Research.
Melvin Laird: Yes.
Well, Lister Hill was a very important personas far as health care was con-
cerned.
His father had been a doctor, as you know.
We thought that it was something very worth-while and it should be named after him, just
as I thought the International Center forFogarty should
be named after him.
I insisted upon that from the day after Fogartypassed away.
I went to the floorof the House of the Representatives.
We had gone forward with the Lister Hill thing.
It was abso-lutely fitting and proper that the International
Medical Program at NIH bear the name of JohnFogarty.
John Fogarty was always interested in theworldwide application of medical research
thatcame from his association with WHO.
He attended six of those meetings, of WHO,the international
meetings, and he always felt that gettingtogether and having a depository for all of
this informationwas very important.
He felt that this was an important aspectof the growth of NIH through these
programs and that the international programwas very much needed and necessary, and that
theUnited States should take the lead in that
area.
Interviewer:
Tell me the story again, the day after hedied.
Melvin Laird: Well, the day after he passedaway we had a special session of the Congress
in whichpeople could come together and talk about
John.
That is the first time that I presented theidea of the
International [Center].
. . I got some of the suggestions from NIHas to what would be the fitting,
proper recognition of John Fogarty.
And all of them agreed in that short periodof time that this
would be the best thing that we could do inthe name of John Fogarty.
So, I went forward with it.
The outline of the program is almost wordfor word.
The resolution was signed by President John-son [in 19681.
Because that was John's dream.
Interviewer: There was a recent New York Timesarticle by William Broad called "Billionaires
with Big Ideas are Privatizing American Science"talking about the move away from government
funding in medical research.
I'd love to know your thoughts.
Are the days of the United States gov-ernment being at the forefront of funding
medical research coming to an end or havethey come to
an end?
Melvin Laird: I certainly hope they haven't...the best way to fund this medical research
is throughthe government.
Certainly the pharmaceutical companies, themedical profession, and all the people
together should understand that the best placeto put their money is in the National Institutes
ofHealth and this worldwide organization that
we have built up here through the Libraryof Medicine
and through those institutes out there.
There's nothing like it in the world.
Don't try to duplicate it.
Keep that thing going and concentrate on doingyour research through that organization.
Interviewer:outcomes of your partnership with John Fogarty.
We can move away from NIH just for a momentand talk about some of the other
Melvin Laird: Well you know, John was a greatfriend of the chairman and CEO of the Retired
Teachers Association, Dr. [Ethel] Andrus.
She became quite a friend of mine.
She decided that theRetired Teachers Association should be broadened
and should go forward with all retired people,people of the aging group, and that the best
thing for her to do was to merge with anotherorganiza-
tion that had just gotten started-the AmericanAssociation of Retired People.
So, she came to usand wanted us to help in that merger she had
proposed.
So, we agreed to do everything we could topromote that merger.
We were at the convention where the mergertook place.
John was one key-noter and I was the other.
We were the two co-keynote speakers at theSalt Lake City Convention
when the Retired Teachers Association of Americajoined up with the AARP.
Now, it was decided at that convention thatwe drop the retired teachers and make it AARP
for allgroups.
That was the right decision because this newgroup takes in all retirees.
Hell, I'm 92 rightnow.
Who thought that people would be living thatlong?
It's going to become more and more im-portant.
So, those associations have to be thoughtof carefully.
They have to be responsible though.
They cannot be for free lunches.
You've got to pay for government services.
You have to be willingto pay taxes to pay the piper.
I think that sometimes they should realizethat government does cost
money.
You've got to be willing to pay for it, butyou want to make sure your dollar is used
proper-ly.
That's the important thing.
Interviewer:topics you would like to talk about?
Rather than sort of throw out other outcomesof your partnership, . . .are there other
Melvin Laird: Well you know, I'd like to giveJohn credit for a lot of things.
He understood my po-sition on working for the All-Volunteer Service.
He never really got involved in it, but hedid un-
derstand it.
One of my most important accomplishments hasbeen the All-Volunteer Service.
It's inits 41St year now.
From 1939 until 1970 the only way we wouldfill manpower requirements was
through the draft.
Now, we have the volunteer service and it'sworking well.
I'm so pleased withthat.
Now John was interested also in a medicalschool that was developed.
The author of the bill whenJohn was there was a guy by the name of Eddy
Herbert [F. Edward Herbert] from Louisiana.
Hehad this bill in all during the time that
John and I were in this area and never gotit any place.
WhenI became Secretary of Defense, the armed forces
medical uniformed..
.University for Medicine wasestablished there in Bethesda.
I don't know if you're familiar with it ornot, but it's a good school.
Our doctors now come from there.
We had to have a school because we were usingthe draft as a
means of getting doctors.
We gave people who went to medical schoola deferment if they agreed to
serve so many years.
We didn't have that anymore.
So, you had to have this school.
This school issomething that is working out well.
It's right there in Bethesda and it's doingvery well.
John wouldhave been proud of it.
He was for Eddy Herbert's bill, but Eddy Herbertcould never get it moving.
He got it moving in 1969 when the Air ForceAcademy was playing down in the Sugar Bowl.
I wasdown there as Secretary of Defense.
He cornered me and I said Eddy, I'll see thatthat's done.
Oneof my projects as Secretary was to establish
that school and get it through the Congress.
I thinkthat's been a good thing.
Interviewer:
What could Congress today learn from you andJohn Fogarty?
Melvin Laird: If you want to get somethingdone, work together.