30.

On his first trip abroad as President, Ford visited Vladivostok in the Soviet Union. His meetings, including this official luncheon with General Secretary Brezhnev and Foreign Minister Gromyko, were held in a former mental health sanitarium.

31.

Two a.s.sa.s.sination attempts in September 1975 added to President Ford's challenges. After the attempt by radical Squeaky Fromme, my longtime secretary, Lee Goodell, took down the President's recollections on our return flight to Washington, D.C.

32.

During the second a.s.sa.s.sination attempt, the bullet from Sarah Jane Moore's pistol pa.s.sed between the President's head and mine, before hitting the wall of the St. Francis Hotel.

33.

My mother, Jeannette, with Joyce, Nick, Marcy, and Valerie at my first swearing-in ceremony as secretary of defense. This is a favorite photograph of the special people in my life.

34.

Nick, then eight years old, was taken aback by the nineteen-gun salute at the ceremony, but tried hard not to show it.

35.

General-turned-statesman Yitzhak Rabin (left center) succeeded Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1974 to become the first Israeli-born leader of the Jewish state. He impressed me with his patriotism, which was tempered by a realistic understanding of the challenges of the Middle East. Tragically, he was a.s.sa.s.sinated in 1995.

36.

In March 1976, President Ford awarded the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal to my colleagues from NATO (left to right), Belgian Amba.s.sador Andre de Staerke and French Amba.s.sador Francois de Rose, as well as my successor as U.S. amba.s.sador, the noted diplomat David Bruce.

37.

The President's loss to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election was tough, but the Fords continued to approach life with optimism, confidence, and good humor. It was a privilege to serve in his administration and to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in January 1977.

38.

It seems that most of what I have done in life has resulted from working closely with bright, energetic, broadly experienced people. As I entered the business world with precious little background, I benefited from the talents of Jim Denny (left) and John Robson (right). I had known John in high school and Jim in college, but it had never occurred to me that we might wind up working together at G. D. Searle in the 1970s and 1980s. It was my great good fortune that we did.

39.

Serving as President Reagan's Special Envoy for the Law of the Sea Treaty, I met with two old friends in Tokyo: U.S. Amba.s.sador to j.a.pan and former Democratic leader of the Senate Mike Mansfield of Montana and Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, with whom I had worked when I served as a member of the j.a.panese-American Parliamentary Exchange fifteen years earlier.

40.

President Reagan asked me to serve as his Middle East envoy days after the terrorist attack on the Marine barracks outside Beirut, Lebanon, in October 1983. Reagan was deeply distressed over the loss of American lives. If in the end the problem of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel proved as intractable for his administration as for others, it was not for lack of will on the President's part.

41.

With Jack Kemp (left), Howard Baker, and Colin Powell discussing the 1996 presidential campaign. While our candidate, Bob Dole, had long experience in government and a compelling personal story of service, we were never able to challenge the personal charm and easy manner of his opponent, Bill Clinton.

42.

As the year 2000 approached, Joyce and I thought we were moving into our rural period, Taos, New Mexico.

43.

d.i.c.k Cheney and I were both amazed to find ourselves serving together in another administration some three decades after our time together at OEO. Cheney marked the occasion by signing this old photograph.

44.

My second swearing-in as secretary of defense, this time with my old friend and colleague Judge Larry Silberman doing the honors.

45.

With Colin Powell, d.i.c.k Cheney, and Condi Rice at the Pentagon, March 2001. From the beginning of the Bush administration the four of us met weekly for lunch when we were in town, and Colin, Condi, and I had a regular telephone call each morning. I respected them all.

46.

The Pentagon, September 11, 2001.