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The public announcement of the proffered resignations produced a level of alarm and dismay that apparently surprised Carter and his inner circle. When the State Department reported that there was consternation in several overseas chancellories about what the effect might be on U.S. foreign policy, Carter authorized top aides to disclose that he would not accept the resignations of Vance, Defense Secretary Harold Brown and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Almost everyone else was left to sweat out the President's decisions.
The next day the White House was humming with nervous tension. Reported TIME Correspondent Christopher Ogden: "Jordan would pop into Powell's office. They would both dash out, cut through the Roosevelt Room and pop into the President's office. More aides than I have ever seen before stood in the corridors, mingling and watching others run back and forth. Frank Moore slipped into the Oval Office at 9:30. Two of the President's speech-writers huddled in a doorway. 'You tell me what's going on,' said one official as he left the West Wing. 'I haven't got the slightest idea what they are doing, and I was just in there.' "
There was similar tension in the offices of the Cabinet members. Pat Harris' staff had some anxious moments when she was summoned to the Oval Office. Asked Carter: "Was 10 a.m. convenient?" Said Harris: "Even if it weren't, Mr. President, I would be there." On her return to HUD, she told her staff: "There is no reason for any of you to be concerned as a result of what happened." Indeed not; she had just been promoted.
Some officials tried to relieve the pressure with gallows humor. Members of the Agriculture Department sent out invitations for a 51st birthday celebration, saying that "the party will be either for Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland, or it will be for Bob Bergland." It turned out to be the former: Bergland kept his job. (So did another Cabinet member who had been widely rumored to be due for replacement, Secretary of Commerce Juanita Kreps.) On Capitol Hill, when Blumenthal returned from a break during a hearing before the House Budget Committee, a reporter cracked: "At least you came back." Replied Blumenthal: "What did you expect? Defenestration?"
Carter's first victim was Califano, who was called to the Oval Office Wednesday evening. The President's Georgia Mafia gave Califano good marks for administering HEW, but accused him of being a big-spending liberal, a "slick operator" and "not a team player." Said a Carter aide: "Competence alone is not enough. There has to be loyalty." And not only to Carter; Califano had been at odds with Hamilton Jordan almost from the beginning. Califano has been faulted for not enthusiastically supporting Carter's bill to create a Department of Education separate from HEW. His case also was not helped by his antismoking campaign. It upset Carter's supporters in tobacco-growing North Carolina, where cars are plastered with bumper stickers that proclaim: CALIFANO IS DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH. Nor did the Georgians overlook Califano's long friendship with Ted Kennedy.