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A different view is contained in The Palace Guard, by Dan Rather (ignore his politics and latest follies for a minute--this was 30 years ago this year and we were all a lot younger), which for you young'uns was one of the more famous chronicles of the Nixon/Watergate era. Rather's position is that Trans. Secy. John Volpe had two pet projects: the SST and Railpax/Amtrak. He goes on to allow that Volpe's leadership in pushing these two projects over and apart from White House staff control was viewed as a feat of insubordination tantamount to treason which greatly (an understatement) annoyed the Haldeman/Erlichman leadership, who tried to maintain a chokingly tight reign on the chain of command in the administration. But, he says, Volpe had Nixon's ear and that situation set up a classical intramural "not invented here" squeeze play--H/E knew they didn't have Nixon's backing to can either Volpe or his two projects, so they set out to kill them in Congress. They succeeded magnificently with the SST (which probably was a great outcome in light of ensuing events). But Railpax wouldn't die, and Volpe had decided it was worth a fight to the death (which he could and would win because of his tight relationship with the President). So, Rather states, faced with this losing battle in the White House, H/E did the next best thing--they backed Railpax with one side of their mouths and, with the other side, they got their cronies in Congress to structure the legislation so Railpax would flop within 3-5 years, which they passed, and they did it admirably well. This desired outcome, of course, generally caused the RRs no grief at all, and so most of them got on the bandwagon. The scheme would have worked, too, except the Arabs got in the way after the 1973 Yom Kippur war with the oil embargo, which caused a significant shift in passenger loads to what was by then Amtrak, and a couple of powerful, very smart people (again regardless of your politics) Charlie Luna (President and founder of UTU,and an incorporator of Amtrak) and Joe McDonald, VP of Continental Can Co. ("consumer representative" appointed by powerful Conn. Sen. Lowell Wycher), got on the board and started stirring things up. <br /> <br />Charlie used to swear that Rather was right on this, and he would have been one with the insider's knowledge to say yea or nay to the veracity of the story. If you look at the enabling legislation and the original appointments, purchases, etc., it also tracks the position that Railpax/Amtrak was a cynically conceived little illegitimate stepchild that was set up to fail 3-5 years after incorporation. The scheme backfired. <br /> <br />FTR, Charlie was a personal friend of mine, and although I disagreed with his politics on a number of issues, he stands gigantically tall on this one. And a true prince of a guy, too, who knew more about how the Hill worked than the folks who resided there. He stood in the way as a mountainous blockade to those who wanted to kill Amtrak from within and without, and he could run rings around them politically. Joe was a an accounting whiz with the motivation of a hungry bulldog who was cut down by cancer far too quickly. Had he lived, the whole sorry can of worms would have been completely out in the open, because he had almost gotten all the way to the bottom as to how they were cooking the books when he passed away. His writings are priceless for any serious student who wants to know why Amtrak is the way it is. May they both rest in peace.
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