Discovery Channel is currently knee-deep in a special series that looks at the job of White House chief of staff. Former presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, Rahm Emanuel, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney are among the interviews already scored for “Gatekeepers.”
A little birdie tells Yeas & Nays that some of the material collected so far includes candid conversations about the job and recent presidential administrations. Bush’s chief of staff, John Sununu, goes into detail about the president’s Scowcroft Award, named after national security advisor Brent Scowcroft. The award went to staffers who fell asleep at the office and was based on Bush’s complicated point system, which factored in where you fell asleep, how deeply you were sleeping, and how well you recovered upon waking.
Producers have also captured Emanuel talking about how he’d be on the phone while reading books to his kids and Rumsfeld calling the job the toughest of his life. Cheney, who blames his first heart attack on his tenure as chief of staff for President Gerald Ford, described the position as having “more authority and more power, if you want to put it in those terms, than the vice-president.”
No word on whether Bill Daley, former chief of staff to President Obama — who stepped down in February — will appear in “Gatekeepers.” Daley surprised senior administration officials and the president after walking into the Oval Office on Jan. 3 with a letter of resignation. Daley had turned some heads with a candid and salty interview in 2011 in which he blamed Democrats for some of Obama’s troubles and cursed. We’re hoping he shows up in “Gatekeepers” just to drop another f-bomb.
Filmmakers Gedeon and Jules Naudet, the French brothers behind the film “9/11,” and former ABC producer Chris Whipple are behind the series, which is scheduled to air in 2013.
