Halloween Massacre
Categories: Trading
Ever seen the movie Halloween, about a rampaging psychopath slaughtering people on the titular holiday? It’s pretty good, if you like that sort of thing. But, uh...that’s not really relevant here.
Instead, we’re talking about a cabinet reshuffling undertaken by President Gerald Ford in 1975 (we know...less exciting than a horror movie).
Ford had taken over the presidency in 1974 when Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal. As such, Ford’s administration began under a cloud, and he spent his short term in office under fire from Ronald Reagan and the conservative wing of the Republican Party.
Facing Election Day just a year down the road, Ford took drastic steps to re-jigger his leadership team. The Halloween Massacre (which was actually announced on November 4, but the "November 4 Massacre" doesn't have the same ring).
In the reshuffling, Henry Kissinger left his role as National Security Advisor (though he stayed on as Secretary of State). Brent Scowcroft became the new NSA. Meanwhile, William Colby got canned as Director of the CIA, with George H.W. Bush (both a future president and the father of a future president) taking his place.
The Secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger, got fired as well, with Donald Rumsfeld stepping into the role. To take the Defense Secretary gig, Rumsfeld had to quit as the president's chief of staff, so Dick Cheney moved into that job.