Citizen Perot

CITIZEN PEROT: His Life and Times (Random House, 1996) was excerpted in Time magazine and critically acknowledged as the definitive biography of Texas billionaire Ross Perot. "Brilliant" - Business Week. "Engrossing" - Philadelphia Inquirer. "Juicy" - Boston Globe. "Fascinating" - New York Daily News. The book was one of the most controversial books of the 1996 political campaign, and has been optioned for a television film.

Citizen Perot

His Life and Times

by Gerald Posner

FROM THE BOOK'S FLAP COPY: Ross Perot, for all that has been said and written about him, remains something of an enigma. The images presented of his life are often in conflict. Is he a heroic businessman who risked his life to rescue two of his kidnapped workers from revolutionary Iran, or a callous executive who ran roughshod over his employees and investigated the company's senior officers? A brilliant strategist who built a multibillion-dollar empire with an innovative idea in computers, or someone cunning enough to take advantage of government programs and milk an unfair profit? A super patriot who underwrote his own missions to Southeast Asia to help the plight of the POWs and MIAs, or a secretive billionaire who was engrossed in far-flung conspiracy theories about the CIA and the international narcotics trade?

The result of two years of meticulous research, and based on hundreds of new interviews and documents Citizen Perot strips away the mythology and unmasks the real Ross Perot for the first time. This groundbreaking book discloses the inside story of how Perot made his fortune; uncovers the tremendous influence he wielded with different presidents; presents the complete saga of his rescue mission from Iran; exposes the private wars he waged against government officials and business competitors he considered corrupt; explains the secret battles that created animosity with George Bush; and, finally, reveals what was behind Perot's unusual charges of Republican dirty tricks in the 1992 campaign.

At the heart of this investigation is Perot himself. Based in part on Perot's own unprecedented cooperation with author Gerald Posner, this book narrates a life that is rich in detail and unique for what it has attempted and accomplished. Studying Perot from his childhood to his current effort to create a third political party, Posner delivers an exhaustive inspection that cuts through years of misinformation and distortions to lay bare Perot's accumulation and use of power. In the process, it answers the perplexing question of what motivates Perot. It also shows whether he has the temperament and personality to be an effective president. Citizen Perot is an absorbing examination of a man who has become an American icon.

Partial Excerpt from Chapter 17

Enter the Professionals

When a decision was made to hire professionals, Perot's inner circle was initially inclined to hire only Hamilton Jordan, the Democratic consultant, who had attended some strategy sessions during April. Although Luce and Meyerson liked the forty-seven-year-old Jordan, they were not certain he was the right choice on his own, since he had been out of politics and had not run a campaign in twelve years. By mid-May, as Perot's poll numbers skyrocketed, Meyerson began actively pushing for balance by hiring a Republican consultant to work with Jordan. "I thought that if we went with only one or the other," recalls Meyerson, "we would have been labeled as Democrat or Republican, and I thought the only way to avoid that was to hire one from each party." Soon the Republican list narrowed to forty-nine-year-old Ed Rollins, who was credited with Ronald Reagan's successful reelection effort.

Jim Squires, however, argued against hiring Rollins. "I told Mort and Tom that Eddie is the antithesis of Perot," says Squires. "He is all professional, he is big-time, he loves the press, is a spin guy, and Perot is an anti-spin guy. So its like mixing oil and water. I think he is very smart, and he is well connected, but he is not for Perot. He was the worst choice. Fellows like Eddie are really out to convince the press how smart they are. They take credit for everything. What you needed with Perot were a bunch of self-effacing anonymous guys who wouldn't take credit for anything, who would hide in the woodwork and do what they could do. And Rollins was just the opposite."

Luce also had mixed feelings about Rollins. "I was concerned about him being a leaker and about his judgment," he says. "Early on, I read where Ed Rollins said he turned down a million-dollar offer to be campaign manager for Ross Perot. That was before I ever met with him."

Meyerson, however, was a strong Rollins booster. "I had met both Rollins and Jordan and was quite impressed with both," he recalls. His argument that both were necessary to give the campaign balance prevailed. When Luce and Meyerson presented their decision to Perot, he agreed. "They [Luce and Meyerson] were two people I knew, that I trusted," says Perot, "and I was busy on the road, so I left it up to them."

Jordan was anxious to join the campaign. Yet, just as the Perot team was divided on Rollins, so Rollins himself had not made up his own mind as to whether he would accept the offer. His wife, Sherrie, was in the Bush White House as one of eight presidential aides, and he feared that if he worked for Perot he could lose substantial Republican business in the future. But after several weeks of being courted by Meyerson and Luce, Rollins was inclined to accept. On Memorial Day weekend, Rollins joined Luce and Meyerson for a conference at Jordan's office in Nashville. There, the two professionals divided their campaign responsibilities.

"We had each managed campaigns and knew you couldn't run it by committee," recalls Rollins. "So I said, 'I am happy to let you manage it if you want to, or I will manage it.' Ham said, 'I am not current, I haven't run a campaign in twelve years. You know the game, you know the players, you are better equipped to do it.' There was no power struggle."

Neither Jordan nor Rollins had yet met Perot. Both agreed to fly to Dallas the following weekend to make sure the chemistry was right. Before that happened, on May 28 a story broke in The Wall Street Journal that scooped the Perot campaigns announcement about the hiring. Rollins, by his own admission, was the source for the story. Perot was furious, since if there was one thing he could not tolerate, it was leaking information to the press. He wanted to cancel the meeting with Rollins, but Jordan spoke to Rollins, who apologized and said it would not happen again. Perot was temporarily placated.

Before meeting Perot, Rollins and Jordan again met with Luce and Meyerson. There, according to Rollins, "we told them a final time what we needed to do to run a modern-day campaign. They didn't have a primary, they didn't have a political party, so to make up the difference, we talked in the neighborhood of a $150 million budget. It was important that they begin an advertising campaign in June or July, and run it through the summer, to define him, since no one knew who he was. The potential with Perot was real, and the potential to win, given the unique set of circumstances in 1992, was very real. We were both very insistent that we did not want to be part of anything less than that, because it just wouldn't work."

However, Luce and Meyerson deny that Rollins or Jordan ever mentioned such a large sum. "Neither mentioned $150 million, never," Luce says. "No way. That statement is not true. If it had been mentioned, it would not have stopped the conversation, but I would have remembered it, and I would have thought that was crazy. Ross Perot didn't get to be a billionaire by giving people blank checks."

Instead, Meyerson and Luce tried to impress on the two professionals that they needed advice on how to run an unconventional campaign. Luce remembers saying, "You must understand that this will be an entirely different presidential campaign than has ever been run, and if you think you are going to prepare cue cards for Ross Perot, forget it."

Rollins and Jordan wondered whether Perot might still veto their hiring the next day. Yet, when they finally met for five hours, Perot was gracious and likable. "He was in his sales mode. He agreed to everything," Rollins remembers. "We put the $150 million figure on the table. 'I will spend whatever it takes,' Perot said. 'I have never swam halfway across the river.' He said all the right things."

Rollins was impressed by Perot. "There was a Reagan quality to him and a Nixon quality to him, the two presidents I had worked for. The Reaganesque quality was when he spoke of Americana and POWs. He started telling some of his great stories about these POWs, and he had obviously done some wonderful things. The Nixon part was the paranoia, the sort of 'They are out to get me.' I can't tell you precisely what it was, but there were little things that warned me even then about his paranoia this whole thing, 'The Republicans are out to get me, the opposition research,' and all this horseshit. Then we spent some time talking about my wife [a Bush aide]; he was very concerned about that".

Perot also said several things that led Rollins to believe that Perot had had him investigated prior to the meeting. "He talked about my health, and no one really knew much about my health," says Rollins. "I had a stroke in 1982. He talked about my first marriage, and said, 'You've already had one failed marriage; we wouldn't want you to damage this one.' No one, anywhere, knew about my first marriage. It happened before I came to Washington, it wasn't in the clips, you would just never have found it in the Lexis/Nexis clips. No one thought of me as someone divorced."

But Perot told Rollins and Jordan they could run a campaign that might change political history. They left feeling comfortable with their decision to come aboard. They were not aware that Perot was not especially impressed with either of them. Less than a week later, Rollins further dampened any enthusiasm Perot may have had when he appeared on a Sunday morning television show talking about his new job. "He didn't clear that with Perot first," says Jim Squires, "and Perot was on the phone chewing him out and critiquing his performance immediately. And he said something on TV that got Jesse Jackson all riled up, and Jesse was calling Perot. Perot was all out of joint."

"Rollins ignored direct instructions," says Luce. "He had agreed not to go on television. Then he goes right on and purports to speak for Ross Perot. Ross said, 'I am not going to have Rollins speak for me when he doesn't know me from Adam. He doesn't know what I think. He doesn't know what I say.' Rollins's first strike was the Wall Street Journal article, strike two was that he went right back on television after we had gone through this with him again, and strike three was Jesse Jackson."

It almost made Perot feel that he had made a mistake by agreeing to any professionals coming aboard. "I should have said absolutely no [to their hiring]," he says. "Within three days after he [Rollins] was on board, I felt it was a serious mistake and wondered if he was really on board to represent me."

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