Page 255 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

BECOMING A WHITE HOUSE FELLOW

no way a volunteer officer could be released for political reasons. If he was
released and the president’s antagonists caught wind of it, it would be dev-
astating to the White House and the Pentagon. However, the president was
determined that Lee remain in his administration, and he instructed the
Department of Defense to make it work.
“The result was that as of September 1, 1966, I became the command-
ing officer and all the troops of a one-person Army unit designated the U.S.
Army Element: United States Post Office Department. I do not know all of
the players at the White House, Postal Service, Pentagon, Civil Service
Commission, White House Fellows hierarchy, and maybe even the Justice
Department, who took part in that determination,” Lee said. “The good
news was that I was permitted to stay and work on the reorganization plans
and start making significant changes. The bad news was that I was still a
major in the Army, unbeknownst to everyone at the Postal Service, and
drawing $11,000 per year in a $27,000 job. That was a lot of money in those
days. The cabinet secretaries made only $35,000, and members of Congress
$25,000. After one year in that job, I went to Larry and told him that I was
so poor that I had to either start making the salary assigned to the position
or return to the active Army. Larry appealed to the president, who called
the Defense Department and requested my release. As required by Army
regulations, an efficiency report had to be submitted. The Postmaster Gen-
eral of the United States was the rating officer and the president of the
United States was the endorser, and I was released from the Army in June
1967, but with no retroactive pay differential!”
Lee later would become Assistant Postmaster General under President
Richard Nixon and one of the highest-paid African Americans in govern-
ment service. O’Brien later would become chairman of the Democratic
National Committee and Commissioner of the National Basketball
Association.

MILITARY FELLOWS: PROMOTING UNDERSTANDING
Although civilian federal government employees have always been prohib-
ited from applying to the Fellows program, uniformed military applicants
have been welcomed, and many won Fellowships in the program’s first
three years. In fact, some commissioners thought they won too many. At
a President’s Commission meeting in May 1968, the commissioners decided
to prohibit applications from all government employees, effectively barring

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