At 11:55 a.m. last Wednesday, just as planned in advance, the short, portly Cabinet officer made his phone call.
Hurrying away from testifying before the House Appropriations Committee, he borrowed 150 from an aide and dialed a private number from a phone booth. Then Secretary of Transportation William T. Coleman Jr. announced his decision to President Gerald Ford: he would let the British-French supersonic Concorde fly into and out of Washington and New York City, but only on a limited experimental and tightly controlled basis.
Go Ahead. The decision was entirely Coleman's,...
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