"DON'T TELL ME, I'LL TELL YOU!"

http://news.microsoft.com/2005/09/21/qa-members-of-microsofts-20-year-club-reflect-on-the-past-and-the-future/

Microsoft [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]

News Center


Q&A: Members of Microsoft’s “20-Year Club” Reflect on the Past and the Future

Posted September 21, 2005 By

REDMOND, Wash., Sept. 21, 2005 – Microsoft celebrates its 30th anniversary this week, a milestone that gives pause to many of the company’s seasoned employees and inspires them to reflect on their careers and on the events and technology achievements that defined Microsoft’s history. To mark the occasion, PressPass spoke to a group of employees who share the distinction of working at Microsoft for two decades or longer. They represent a group known informally as the 20-Year Club. The group has no charter or official standing at Microsoft, but its 71 members – who grow in number each year – wear the badge of longevity with pride.

The five Microsoft veterans


Betts: There are so many memorable moments, but the one with the most personal impact was the day Frank Gaudette, our first CFO, taught me my most important lesson. He said “I reserve the right to wake up smarter every day.” In other words, don’t be arrogant enough to think you know it all; don’t be afraid to admit that you don’t know it all; and don’t hesitate to change a decision when you know you must. If it’s right, people will understand it. Frank was a huge influence on me and my career. He coached me through tough times and good times, and I still miss him.

PressPass: Can you share any anecdotes that shed light on some of the early years at Microsoft?

Zbikowski: I remember working with a fellow who implemented a tricky piece of code, the comments at the beginning of which read: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” He wasn’t kidding.










http://articles.latimes.com/1989-05-05/news/mn-2265_1_north-verdict-white-house-iran-contra-scandal

Los Angeles Times


THE NORTH VERDICT : Spotlight Dims on North Glory Days

May 05, 1989 SARA FRITZ Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — It was nearly two years ago that Lt. Col. Oliver L. North basked in the spotlight at the Iran-Contra hearings--rows of multicolored medals gleaming on the chest of his Marine uniform, a grin on his lips and a stack of adoring telegrams from well-wishers on the table in front of him.

North, the former presidential adviser with a Rambo-like reputation, was an instant media sensation after his congressional testimony in the summer of 1987. The whole nation seemed taken by his personality. Even President Ronald Reagan, who had fired North from the White House staff, described him as "a national hero."

But there was no longer any hint of smugness, no outpouring of congratulations, no public hysteria Thursday when North, who has since retired from the Marines and now earns a living making speeches, was found guilty of violating the law while at the White House. Although he was cleared on most charges, Ollie North's glory days appear to be over.

Favorite Cause

The story of North's downfall is well-known. It is the tale of a zealous presidential aide who, while he was involved in the covert sales of arms to Iran, came up with a scheme to divert the profits to the President's favorite cause--the rebels in Nicaragua. When the plan became public in late 1986, the blame largely fell on him.

And yet, despite all that has been disclosed about North's role in the Iran-Contra scandal, his true motives are in some ways still a mystery. Neither the testimony in his trial nor the evidence presented at congressional hearings have revealed fully why North, a trained military man who was used to following orders, allegedly exceeded his authority to mastermind one of the most unusual White House scandals in American history.

North contends that he was motivated primarily by ideology and a desire to rid Central America of the scourge of communism. But evidence has been presented about other possible factors, including a strong desire to portray himself as being at the center of power, a personal need for money and perhaps a tendency to test the limits of the system.

All of his life, North, 45, has been an achiever--a disciplined man with a remarkable capacity for work. After growing up in Philmont, N.Y., he attended a state university on a scholarship for one year, later was graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served with distinction in Vietnam. In every situation, his teachers and superior officers were impressed by his devotion to duty.

Thus it was no surprise that in 1981, when North first was assigned to the National Security Council staff at the White House, he was instantly seen by his superiors as a model employee--someone who could cut through the bureaucracy to get things done.

At the White House, North sought and carried out some of the toughest assignments facing the NSC. He not only worked long hours but became known for his habit of rousting other government officials out of bed late at night to get them to do what he wanted.

He was involved initially in the Reagan Administration's successful drive for congressional approval for selling the AWACS radar surveillance plane to Saudi Arabia and later took charge of counterterrorism and U.S. assistance to the Contras. Perhaps his biggest success was the U.S. capture of the Palestinians who had hijacked the Italian cruise ship, Achille Lauro.

But it was his work on behalf of the Contras that North seemed to like best, perhaps because it appealed to his strong sense of patriotism. Since his youth, North had been a flag-waving patriot. Eventually, he even developed a 30-minute slide show designed to dramatize how democracy in the hemisphere hinged on U.S. support of the Contras.

But what made North special at the Reagan White House was something more than his devotion to democracy and his capacity for hard work. He is simply the kind of person that people like--a man whose sincerity and respect for authority make him loved by his superiors.

Two of North's associates, former White House National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane and Albert A. Hakim, the financial middleman for the Iran-Contra affair, both testified that they loved North as if he were their own son. Hakim even tried, without success, to find a legal way to give $200,000 to North's family from the Iran-Contra proceeds.

Indeed, North's relationship with the late CIA Director William J. Casey appears to have been the same kind of father-son affair. North, who spent an unusual amount of time huddled with the CIA director in his private office at the Old Executive Office Building, contends that it was Casey who privately encouraged him to establish a covert supply network for the Contras.

North's success at the White House was not entirely the result of charm and hustle, however. There was also a darker side to him, according to some colleagues--a cunning, manipulative side that got out of control in the heady atmosphere created by the power and prestige of the White House.

'Flair for Melodrama'



http://articles.latimes.com/1989-05-05/news/mn-2265_1_north-verdict-white-house-iran-contra-scandal/2

Los Angeles Times


(Page 2 of 2)

THE NORTH VERDICT : Spotlight Dims on North Glory Days

May 05, 1989 SARA FRITZ Times Staff Writer

Among other things, those colleagues have said, North often lied to make people think he was friends with such important people as former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger. He also displayed what one friend described as "a flair for melodrama."

North's colleagues recognized this aspect of his personality long before the Iran-Contra affair was exposed. In fact, they say that it became most apparent about the same time that Congress cut off aid to the Contras in 1984.

"By late 1984," said Constantine C. Menges, a former Reagan aide, "I had reluctantly concluded that North was regularly exaggerating and reshaping events and was increasingly seeking to impress people through 'personal hype.' "

Among the self-aggrandizing falsehoods that North told in those days was that he had been involved in many private meetings with the President--meetings he has since admitted never took place.

Not until the Iran-Contra affair was exposed was it learned that North had been admitted to Bethesda Naval Medical Center in 1974 for emotional exhaustion. The record of his hospitalization apparently had been expunged from the record by one of his superiors to protect his career.

The Iran-Contra affair reflected both sides of North's character--the hustle as well has his penchant for self-promotion. As he has testified, North did not embark on the diversion of funds without the approval of his boss, then-National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter. But he allegedly chose to carry out the task in a way that sometimes exceeded his authority and he clearly enjoyed the cloak-and-dagger aspect of it--even using code names such as "Mr. Good" when he traveled.










http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19920405&slug=1484776

The Seattle Times


Sunday, April 5, 1992


Microsoft Marshal -- The Man Considered No. 2 Behind Gates Hopes For Order In Windows-Os/2 Battle

By Paul Andrews

He once was Microsoft's Mr. Windows. Then he was Microsoft's Mr. OS/2.

When the war between Windows' latest version, 3.1, and IBM's newly revamped OS/2 2.0 sounds its next volley at the Comdex/Spring computer trade show tomorrow in Chicago, Steve Ballmer knows where his allegiances will be:

"Microsoft has an operating system strategy to establish Windows very pervasively on the desktop," said the man generally considered No. 2 in the Microsoft hierarchy behind Chairman Bill Gates. "I don't have any historical or emotional feelings that impact my blind dedication to our customers and our strategy."










http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/7.htm

The Naked Time [ Star Trek: The Original Series ]

Stardate: 1704.2

Original Airdate: Sep 29, 1966


Captain's Log. Our position, orbiting Psi 2000, an ancient world, now a frozen wasteland, about to rip apart in its death throes. Our mission, pick up a scientific party below, observe the disintegration of the planet.

[Psi 2000 control room]

SPOCK: Check out the life-support systems.

TORMOLEN: Right, sir. All life systems were off, sir.

SPOCK: Someone strangled this woman.

TORMOLEN The other four are back there.

SPOCK: Dead?

TORMOLEN: Right, sir.

SPOCK: Engineer at his post?

TORMOLEN He's frozen there like he didn't care.

SPOCK: The rest?

TORMOLEN: Well, better look for yourself, Mister Spock. One man was taking a shower fully clothed. (they split up, he takes off his glove to scratch his nose then puts it on the console. Something orange jumps onto his skin. Feeling the cold he puts the glove back on)

SPOCK: Be certain we expose ourselves to nothing.










From 9/15/1964 ( premiere US film "Fail-Safe" ) To 4/23/1993 is 10447 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 6/10/1994 ( Mary Gates dead ) is 10447 days



From 4/23/1993 To 6/10/1994 ( Mary Gates dead ) is 413 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 12/20/1966 ( premiere US film "The Sand Pebbles" ) is 413 days



From 11/20/1992 ( the scheduled terrorist attack by force of violence by Bill Gates-Nazi-Microsoft-George Bush the International War Criminal and the cowardly violent criminal to destroy Her Majesty's Windsor Castle London England ) To 4/23/1993 is 154 days

154 = 77 + 77

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 1/18/1966 ( Lyndon Johnson - Executive Order 11266 - Draft Status of Fathers in Certain Essential Occupations ) is 77 days



From 7/1/1991 ( premiere US film "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" & the George Herbert Walker Bush nomination of Clarence Thomas as scheduled severe criminal activity against the United States of America ) To 4/23/1993 is 662 days

662 = 331 + 331

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 9/29/1966 ( premiere US TV series episode "Star Trek"::"The Naked Time" ) is 331 days



From 1/10/1964 ( premiere US TV series episode "The Twilight Zone"::"The Long Morrow" ) To 7/1/1991 ( premiere US film "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" & the George Herbert Walker Bush nomination of Clarence Thomas as scheduled severe criminal activity against the United States of America ) is 10034 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 4/23/1993 is 10034 days



From 7/1/1961 ( Diana Spencer ) To 12/20/1988 ( premiere US film "Working Girl" ) is 10034 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 4/23/1993 is 10034 days



From 5/4/1989 ( Oliver North convicted ) To 4/23/1993 is 1450 days

1450 = 725 + 725

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 10/28/1967 ( Julia Roberts ) is 725 days



From 12/25/1991 ( as United States Marine Corps chief warrant officer Kerry Wayne Burgess I was prisoner of war in Croatia ) To 4/23/1993 is 485 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 3/2/1967 ( premiere US TV series episode "Star Trek"::"This Side of Paradise" ) is 485 days



From 4/7/1942 ( premiere US film "The Scorched Earth" ) To 4/23/1993 is 18644 days

18644 = 9322 + 9322

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 5/12/1991 ( I was the winning race driver at the Formula One Monaco Grand Prix ) is 9322 days



From 11/23/1942 ( premiere US film "Miss V from Moscow" ) To 4/23/1993 is 18414 days

18414 = 9207 + 9207

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 1/17/1991 ( the date of record of my United States Navy Medal of Honor as Kerry Wayne Burgess chief warrant officer United States Marine Corps circa 1991 also known as Matthew Kline for official duty and also known as Wayne Newman for official duty ) is 9207 days



From 11/23/1942 ( premiere US film "Miss V from Moscow" ) To 4/23/1993 is 18414 days

18414 = 9207 + 9207

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 1/17/1991 ( RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 - the Persian Gulf War begins as scheduled severe criminal activity against the United States of America ) is 9207 days



From 5/25/1990 ( premiere US film "Fire Birds" ) To 4/23/1993 is 1064 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 10/1/1968 ( premiere US film "Night of the Living Dead" ) is 1064 days



From 5/25/1990 ( premiere US film "Back to the Future Part III" ) To 4/23/1993 is 1064 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 10/1/1968 ( premiere US film "Night of the Living Dead" ) is 1064 days



From 4/30/1973 ( Richard Nixon - Address to the Nation About the Watergate Investigations ) To 4/23/1993 is 7298 days

7298 = 3649 + 3649

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 10/30/1975 ( Alfred P. Murrah deceased ) is 3649 days



From 7/19/1989 ( Bill Gates-Microsoft-George Bush kills 111 passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 232 and destroys the United Airlines Flight 232 aircraft because I was a passenger of United Airlines Flight 232 as United States Navy Petty Officer Second Class Kerry Wayne Burgess and I was assigned to maintain custody of a non-violent offender military prisoner of the United States ) To 4/23/1993 is 1374 days

1374 = 687 + 687

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 9/20/1967 ( Lyndon Johnson - Letter to the Secretary of Transportation on the Need for Expanding and Improving the Air Traffic Control System ) is 687 days



From 7/7/1981 ( Ronald Reagan - Remarks Announcing the Intention To Nominate Sandra Day O'Connor To Be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States ) To 4/23/1993 is 4308 days

4308 = 2154 + 2154

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 9/26/1971 ( Susan Smith ) is 2154 days



From 4/23/1968 ( Timothy James McVeigh ) To 4/23/1993 is 9131 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 11/2/1990 ( premiere US film "Jacob's Ladder" ) is 9131 days



From 5/1/1964 ( premiere US TV series episode "The Twilight Zone"::"The Encounter" ) To 4/23/1993 is 10584 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 10/25/1994 ( Susan Smith kills her two children and dumps them in her car in the John D. Long Lake near Union South Carolina ) is 10584 days



From 11/7/1963 ( premiere US film "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" ) To 4/23/1993 is 10760 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 4/19/1995 ( Bill Gates-Nazi-Microsoft-Corbis-George Bush the cowardly violent criminal in a scheduled terrorist attack destroys the Oklahoma City Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building with many fatalities and massive destruction to the United States of America Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and the local area ) is 10760 days



From 3/16/1991 ( date hijacked from me:my first successful major test of my ultraspace matter transportation device as Kerry Wayne Burgess the successful Ph.D. graduate Columbia South Carolina ) To 4/23/1993 is 769 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 12/11/1967 ( premiere US film "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" ) is 769 days



From 10/3/1978 ( Stephen King "The Stand" ) To 4/23/1993 is 5316 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 5/23/1980 ( premiere US film "The Shining" ) is 5316 days


http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19930423&slug=1697384

The Seattle Times


Friday, April 23, 1993

Frank Gaudette, Flamboyant Financial Officer At Microsoft

By Byron Acohido, Polly Lane

When Frank Gaudette showed up as a guest speaker at the Seattle Society of Financial Analysts meeting a couple of years ago, he was introduced as the oldest employee at Microsoft Corp. - and its best racquetball player.

That intensity helped Mr. Gaudette orchestrate the phenomenal financial growth of the Redmond software giant.

The 57-year-old, Microsoft's chief financial officer, died early today at Virginia Mason Hospital, after battling lymphatic cancer for about nine months.

Mr. Gaudette also served with Steve Ballmer and Mike Maples as executive vice presidents of the software company.

The colorful executive guided Microsoft's public stock offering in 1986 and was highly respected in the financial community.

Seattle stock analyst Bill Whitlow of Pacific Crest Securities noted that while Microsoft's chairman, Bill Gates, developed winning products and marketing strategies, Mr. Gaudette "was the guy in charge of making it happen and doing it profitably."

Mr. Gaudette joined Microsoft in September 1984, moving over from a senior executive position at C3, a Reston, Va., software supplier.

At the end of 1985, Microsoft had profits of $24 million on sales of $140 million. By the end of 1992, profits were $708 million on sales of $2.8 billion.

"You can look at the numbers and what Microsoft has been able to do has been phenomenal on the financial side," Whitlow said. "I think Frank was the key factor to that."

Mr. Gaudette, a New York transplant, was known for his show-stopping presentations at Microsoft annual meetings.

In 1992, he donned a dollar-sign-embossed robe, boxing gloves, shorts and gold "World Champ" belt buckle to appear as Rocky Balboa.

Earlier, he had done an Alfred Hitchcock skit, sung a Blues Brothers routine and even appeared as the "Great Gaudetti" and was shot out of a cannon.

Though born and raised in Astoria, Queens, he left Fordham University to attend Southern Methodist University in Dallas. After graduating from SMU, he worked at Frito Lay, Rockwell International Informatics General and C3 before joining Microsoft.

"Frank combined the street-smart wisdom of his New York roots with the knowledge he gained from his decades of experience," Gates said today.

"Over the years, I have counted on Frank for the wisdom of his counsel and the strength of his leadership.

"He will be greatly missed."

He is survived by his widow, Doris, of Kirkland, and their children, Megan, 13, and Gavin, 10. Other offspring include Sean, of North Bend; Maureen Kirk, of Boston, and Timothy, of Baltimore.

Another son, Michael, died in an auto accident in 1987.

Other family members include his mother, Florence Gaudett, of Astoria, New York; two brothers, Dennis Gaudett, of Richmond, Va., and Patrick Gaudett, of New York City; and a sister, Eileen Palumbo, of New Jersey.

Arrangements for memorial services were not yet finalized. They will be made by Bonney-Watson.

Family members requested memorials go to the Pacific Science Center or the American Cancer Society.



http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1993/Microsoft-Exec-Had-Battled-Cancer-8-Months/id-1274cf4b3cc10060446e088e8719c879

AP News Archive


MICROSOFT EXEC HAD BATTLED CANCER 8 MONTHS

AP , Associated Press

Apr. 23, 1993 5:53 PM ET

SEATTLE (AP) _ Frank Gaudette, Microsoft Corp.'s chief financial officer, died Friday after an eight-month battle with cancer. He was 57.

''Frank combined the street-smart wisdom of his New York roots with the knowledge he gained through decades of experience. ... He will be greatly missed,'' Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said in an electronic-mail message to employees.

Gaudette, who also served as the company's executive vice president of operations, came to Microsoft in September 1984 after holding top executive positions at a number of other companies including Rockwell International and Frito-Lay.

He was instrumental in organizing Microsoft's initial public offering of stock in March 1986 - considered one of the most successful stock offerings of the decade.

As executive vice president of Microsoft's operations group since January 1992, Gaudette oversaw finance, manufacturing, human resources, investor relations, and other operations.

''Over the years, I have counted on Frank for the wisdom of his counsel and for the strength of his leadership,'' Gates said. ''Frank's talent and spirit, his commitment to this company and his immeasurable contributions to it, will always be remembered.''

Gaudette is survived by his wife, Doris, and their children, the company said.










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058083/releaseinfo

IMDb


Fail Safe (1964)

Release Info

USA 15 September 1964 (Second New York Film Festival)



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058083/fullcredits

IMDb


Fail Safe (1964)

Full Cast & Crew


Henry Fonda ... The President










http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=the-americans-2013&episode=s03e01

Springfield! Springfield!


The Americans

EST Men


Ideologically, she's open to the right ideas.
We're getting her ready to find out who we really are, who she really is, and that's gonna break everything open, change everything.
But it's gonna take time.
I'll let them know.
So why don't you be a good American wife and do the dishes? Elizabeth? There's something for you in the drawer under the toaster.










http://fortune.com/2011/03/13/inside-the-deal-that-made-bill-gates-350000000/

FORTUNE


Inside The Deal That Made Bill Gates $350,000,000

by Scott Olster

MARCH 13, 2011, 1:00 PM EST

On the 25th anniversary of Microsoft’s IPO, Fortune is featuring our 1986 cover story in which we followed around a young Bill Gates as he prepared to take his company public. Here’s the story of the birth of a billionaire.

Editor’s Note: This story was first published in the July 21, 1986 issue of Fortune. As Bro Uttal told Fortune‘s editor, Marshall Loeb, at the time (see Editor’s Letter at the bottom of this page), “I doubt that a story like this has been published before or is likely to be done again.”

By Bro Uttal, writer

Going public is one of capitalism’s major sacraments, conferring instant superwealth on a few talented and lucky entrepreneurs. Of the more than 1,500 companies that have undergone this rite of passage in the past five years, few have enjoyed a more fren- zied welcome from investors than Microsoft, the Seattle-based maker of software for personal computers. Its shares, offered at $21 on March 13, zoomed to $35.50 on the over-the-counter market before settling back to a recent $31.25. Microsoft and its shareholders raised $61 million. The biggest winner was William H. Gates III, the company’s co-founder and chairman. He got only $1.6 million for the shares he sold, but going public put a market value of $350 million on the 45% stake he retains. A software prodigy who helped start Microsoft while still in his teens, Gates, at 30, is probably one of the 100 richest Americans.

Gates thinks other entrepreneurs might learn from Microsoft’s MSFT 0.78% experience in crafting what some analysts called ”the deal of the year,” so he invited FORTUNE along for a rare inside view of the arduous five-month process. Companies hardly ever allow such a close look at an offering because they fear that the Securities and Exchange Commission might charge them with touting their stock. Answers emerged to a host of fascinating questions, from how a company picks investment bankers to how the offering price is set. One surprising fact stands out from Microsoft’s revelations: Instead of deferring to the priesthood of Wall Street underwriters, it took charge of the process from the start.

The wonder is that Microsoft waited so long.Founded in 1975, it is the oldest major producer of software for personal computers and, with $172.5 million in revenues over the last four quarters, the second largest after Lotus Development. Microsoft’s biggest hits are the PC-DOS and MS-DOS operating systems, the basic software that runs millions of IBM personal computers and clones. The company has also struck it rich with myriad versions of computer languages and a slew of fast-selling applications programs such as spreadsheets and word-processing packages for IBM, Apple, and other personal computers.

Yet Microsoft stood pat when two of its archcompetitors, Lotus and Ashton- Tate, floated stock worth a total of $74 million in 1983. Nor did it budge in 1984 and 1985, when three other microcomputer software companies managed to sell $54 million of stock. The reasons were simple. Unlike its competitors, Microsoft was not dominated by venture capital investors hungry to harvest some of their gains. The business gushed cash. With pretax profits running as high as 34% of revenues, Microsoft needed no outside money to expand. Most important, Gates values control of his time and his company more than personal wealth.

Money has never been paramount to this unmarried scion of a leading Seattle family, whose father is a partner in a top Seattle law firm and whose mother is a regent of the University of Washington and a director of Pacific Northwest Bell. Gates, a gawky, washed-out blond, confesses to being a ”wonk,” a bookish nerd, who focuses singlemindedly on the computer business though he masters all sorts of knowledge with astounding facility. Oddly, Gates is something of a ladies’ man and a fiendishly fast driver who has racked up speeding tickets even in the sluggish Mercedes diesel he bought to restrain himself. Gates left Harvard after his sophomore year to sell personal computer makers on using a version of the Basic computer language that he had written with Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft. Intensely competitive and often aloof and sarcastic, Gates threw himself into building a company dedicated to technical excellence. ”All Bill’s ego goes into Microsoft,” says a friend. ”It’s his firstborn child.”

Gates feared that a public offering would distract him and his employees. ”The whole process looked like a pain,” he recalls, ”and an ongoing pain once you’re public. People get confused because the stock price doesn’t reflect your financial performance. And to have a stock trader call up the chief executive and ask him questions is uneconomic — the ball bearings shouldn’t be asking the driver about the grease.”

But a public offering was just a question of time. To attract managers and virtuoso programmers, Gates had been selling them shares and granting stock options. By 1987, Microsoft estimated, over 500 people would own shares, enough to force the company to register with the SEC. Once registered, the stock in effect would have a public market, but one so narrow that trading would be difficult. Since it would have to register anyway, Microsoft might as well sell enough shares to enough investors to create a liquid market, and Gates had said that 1986 might be the year. ”A projection of stock ownership showed we’d have to make a public offering at some point,” says Jon A. Shirley, 48, Microsoft’s pipe-smoking president and chief operating officer. ”We decided to do it when we wanted to, not when we had to.”

In April 1985 Gates, Shirley, and David F. Marquardt, 37, the sole venture capitalist in Microsoft (he and his firm had 6.2% of the stock), resolved to look into an offering. But Gates fretted. To forestall sticky questions from potential investors, he first wanted to launch two important products, one of them delayed over a year, and to sign a pending agreement with IBM for developing programs. He also wanted time to sound out key employees who owned stock or options and might leave once their holdings became salable on the public market. ”I’m reserving the right to say no until October,” Gates warned. ”Don’t be surprised if I call it off.”


By the board meeting of October 28, held the day after a roller-skating party for Gates’s 30th birthday, the chairman had done his soundings and felt more at ease. The board decided it was time to select underwriters and gave the task to Frank Gaudette, 50, the chief financial officer, who had come aboard a year before. Gaudette was just the man to shepherd Microsoft through Wall Street. He speaks in the pungent tones of New York City, where his late father was a mailman, and prides himself on street smarts. He had already helped manage offerings for three companies, all suppliers of computer software and services.

Aspiring underwriters, sniffing millions in fees, had been stroking Microsoft for years. They had enticed the company’s officers to so-called technology conferences — bazaars where entrepreneurs, investors, and bankers look each other over. They had called regularly at Microsoft, trying to get close to Gates and Shirley. Gaudette had been sitting through an average of three sales pitches or get-acquainted dinners a month.

Gaudette proposed that since Microsoft was well established, it deserved to have a ”class Wall Street name” as the lead underwriter. This investment firm would put together the syndicate of underwriters, which eventually was to number 114. It would also allocate the stock among underwriters and investors and pocket giant fees for its trouble. Gaudette suggested a ”technology boutique” co-manage the offering to enhance Microsoft’s appeal to investors who specialize in technology stocks.

Narrowing the field of boutiques was easy. Only four firms were widely known as specialists in financing technology companies: Alex. Brown & Sons of Baltimore, L.F. Rothschild Unterberg Towbin of New York, and two San Francisco outfits, Hambrecht & Quist and Robertson Colman & Stephens. Culling the list of Wall Street names took longer. Microsoft’s managers concluded that some big firms, including Merrill Lynch and Shearson Lehman, had not done enough homework in high tech. The board pared the contenders to Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Smith Barney. It also included Cable Howse & Ragen, a Seattle firm that could be a third co-manager if Gates and Shirley decided that pleasing local investors was worth the bother. ”Get on the stick,” Shirley told Gaudette. ”Keep Bill and me out of it — we can’t spend the time. Give us a recommendation in two or three weeks.”

Early in November, Gaudette called the eight investment bankers who had survived the first cut. ”I need half a day with you,” he said. ”Take your best shot, then wait for me to call back. I’ll have a decision before Thanksgiving. But remember, it’s my decision — don’t try going around me to Bill or Jon.” Gaudette made up a list of questions, ranging from the baldly general — ”Why should your firm be on the front cover of a Microsoft prospectus?” — to the probingly particular, such as, ”How would you distribute the stock, to whom, and why?”

After a whirlwind tour of New York, Baltimore, and San Francisco, Gaudette made his recommendations to Gates and Shirley on November 21. Then he took off for a ten-day vacation in Hawaii, a belated celebration of his 50th birthday in the 50th state. No decision would be announced until his return. The investment bankers turned frantic. Theirs is a who-do-you-know business, and they mobilized their clients, many of them Microsoft customers or suppliers, to besiege Gates and Shirley.

Gaudette had methodically ranked the investment houses on a scale of 1 to 5 in 19 different categories. But he also stressed that any candidate could do the deal and that the chemistry between Microsoft and the firms would finally determine the winners. Among the major houses, Gaudette had been most impressed by Goldman Sachs, which tightly links its underwriting group with its stock traders and keeps close tabs on the identity of big institutional buyers. For those reasons, Gaudette thought Goldman would be especially good at maintaining an orderly market as Microsoft employees gradually cashed in their shares.

On December 4, after conferring with Gates and Shirley, Gaudette phoned Eff W. Martin, 37, a vice president in Goldman’s San Francisco office who had been calling on Microsoft for two years. ”I like you guys,” Gaudette said, ”and Microsoft wants to give you dinner on December 11 in Seattle. Do you think you can find time to come?” Dinner at the stuffy Rainier Club was awkward. The private room was large for the party of eight, and one wall was a sliding partition ideal for eavesdropping. Most of the party were meeting each other for the first time; how well they got along could make or break the deal. Microsoft’s top dogs didn’t make things easy. Gates, who had heard scare stories about investment bankers from friends like Mitchell Kapor, chairman of Lotus Development, was tired and prepared to be bored. Shirley was caustic, wanting to know exactly what Goldman imagined it could do for Microsoft.

For nearly an hour everyone stood in a semicircle as Martin and three colleagues explained their efforts to be tops in financing technology companies. An Oklahoman by birth and polite to a fault, Martin labored to kindle some rapport. But it was not until talk turned to pricing the company’s stock that Gates folded his arms across his chest and started rocking to and fro, a sure sign of interest. At the end of dinner, Martin, striving to conclude on a high note, gushed that Microsoft could have the ”most visible initial public offering of 1986 — or ever.”

”Well, they didn’t spill their food and they seemed like nice guys,” Gates drawled to his colleagues afterward in the parking lot. ”I guess we should go with them.” He and Shirley drove back to Microsoft headquarters, discussing co-managing underwriters. Gaudette leaned toward Robertson Colman & Stephens. But Alex. Brown had been cultivating Microsoft longer than any other investment banking house. ”Better the whore you know than the whore you don’t,” Shirley concluded. Three days later the board quickly blessed the selection of Goldman Sachs and Alex. Brown.

The offering formally lumbered into gear on December 17 at an ”all-hands meeting” at Microsoft. It was the first gathering of the principal players: the company with its auditors and attorneys as well as both managing underwriters and their attorney. Some confusion crept in at first. Heavy fog, a Seattle specialty, delayed the arrival of several key people until early afternoon. One of Microsoft’s high priorities was making its prospectus ”jury proof” — so carefully phrased that no stockholder could hope to win a lawsuit by claiming he had been misled. The company had insisted that the underwriters’ counsel be Sullivan & Cromwell, a hidebound Wall Street firm. Gaudette was miffed to see that the law firm had sent only an associate, not a partner.

The 27-point agenda covered every phase of the offering. Gates said the company was contemplating a $40-million deal. Microsoft would raise $30 million by selling two million shares at an assumed price of around $15. Existing shareholders, bound by Gates’s informal rule that nobody should unload more than 10% of his holdings, would collect the other $10 million for 600,000 or so shares. The underwriters, as is customary in initial public offerings, would be granted the option to sell more shares. If they exercised an option for 300,000 additional shares of stock held by the company, almost 12% of Microsoft’s stock would end up in public hands, enough to create the liquid market the company wanted.

Gates had thought longest about the price. Guided by Goldman, he felt the market would accord a higher price-earnings multiple to Microsoft than to other personal computer software companies like Lotus and Ashton-Tate, which have narrower product lines. On the other hand, he figured the market would give Microsoft a lower multiple than companies that create software for mainframe computers because they generally have longer track records and more predictable revenues. A price of roughly $15, more than ten times estimated earnings for fiscal 1986, would put Microsoft’s multiple right between those of personal software companies and mainframers.

A host of questions came up at the all-hands meeting. Both Shirley and Gates were concerned that going public would interfere with Microsoft’s ability to conduct business. Shirley wondered whether all three of Microsoft’s top officers would be needed for the ”road show,” meetings at which company representatives would explain the offering to stockbrokers and institutional investors. Gates tried to escape the tour by saying, facetiously, ”Hey, make the stock cheap enough and you won’t need us to sell it!”

Microsoft’s attorney, William H. Neukom, 44, a partner at Shidler McBroom Gates & Lucas — the Gates in the title being Bill’s father, William H. Gates — raised another matter. The company would have to tone down its public utterances, he said, lest it appear to be ”gun jumping,” or touting the stock. Press releases could no longer refer to certain Microsoft programs as ”industry standards,” no matter how true the phrase. Neukom would review all the company’s official statements, which came to include even a preface Gates was writing for a book on new computer technologies.

The most tedious part of taking the company public was writing a prospectus. It was a task rife with contradictions. By law Microsoft’s stock could be sold only on the basis of information in this document. If the SEC raised big objections to the preliminary version, Microsoft would have to circulate a heavily amended one, inviting rumors that the deal was fishy. However cheerful or gloomy the prospectus, many investors would fail to read it before buying. Then if the market price promptly fell, they would comb the text for the least hint of misrepresentation in order to sue. Still, the prospectus could not be too conservative. Like all such documents, it had to be a discreet sales tool, soft-pedaling weaknesses and stressing strengths, all the while concealing as much as possible from competitors.

Even Before Microsoft had picked its underwriters, Robert A. Eshelman, 32, an attorney at Shidler McBroom, had started drafting the prospectus. That task took all of January. ”As usual,” says one of the investment bankers, ”it was like the Bataan death march.” Neukom, who had just left Shidler McBroom to join Microsoft, spent the first week of 1986 with Eshelman, sketching in ideas about the company’s products and business. Two days a week for the next three weeks, many of the people who had been at the all-hands meeting reconvened at Microsoft’s sleek headquarters in a Seattle suburb to edit the prospectus.

At the first sessions, on January 8 and 9, the underwriters brought along their security analysts to help conduct a ”due diligence” examination, grilling the company’s managers to uncover skeletons. Gaudette was mollified that Sullivan & Cromwell had now furnished a partner from its Los Angeles office, Charles F. Rechlin, 39. Gaudette had met him years before in New York but was bowled over by how much he had changed. Rechlin was 40 pounds lighter and sported shoulder-length hair and a fierce sunburn.

For ten hours Gates, Shirley, and other managers exhaustively described their parts of the business and fielded questions. Surprisingly, the Microsoft crew tended to be more conservative and pessimistic than the interrogators. Steven A. Ballmer, 30, a vice president sometimes described as Gates’s alter ego, came up with so many scenarios for Microsoft’s demise that one banker cracked: ”I’d hate to hear you on a bad day.”

By late January only one major item remained undecided — a price range for the stock. The bull market that began in September had kept roaring ahead, pushing up P/E multiples for other software companies. The underwriters suggested a price range of $17 to $20 a share. Gates insisted on, and got, $16 to $19. His argument was ultraconservative: $16 would guarantee that the underwriters would not have to go even lower to sell the shares, while a price of $20 would push Microsoft’s market value above half-a-billion dollars, which he thought uncomfortably high. ”That was unusual,” says Christopher P. Forester, head of Goldman Sach’s high-technology finance group. ”Few companies fight for a lower range than the underwriter recommends.”

On February 1 a courier rushed the final proof of the prospectus to Los Angeles for Sullivan & Cromwell’s approval and continued on to Washington, D.C., with 13 copies. Two days later Microsoft registered with the SEC, the underwriters sent out 38,000 copies of the prospectus, and the lawyers began waiting anxiously for comments from the regulators.

Gates coped with concerns of a different sort. Relatives, friends, and acquaintances of Microsoft’s managers — from Gates’s doctor to a high school chum of Gaudette’s — called begging to buy stock at the offering price. Except for about a dozen people, including Gates’s grandmother and his former housekeeper, who wanted small lots for sentimental reasons, Gates turned most of them down. ”I won’t grant any of these goofy requests,” he said. ”I hate the whole thing. All I’m thinking and dreaming about is selling software, not stock.”

Rehearsals for the road show dramatized how differently Gates and Gaudette approached the process of going public. Neukom, Microsoft’s in-house attorney, had admonished Gates to say nothing to anybody that deviated from the prospectus or added new information. At Goldman Sachs’s New York offices for a February 7 rehearsal, Gates wondered to himself, ”With my mouth taped, what’s the point of giving a speech?” Addressing about 30 investment bankers and salesmen, he assumed an uncharacteristic, robotic monotone while covering Microsoft’s key strengths. He became annoyed when one critic commented, ”It’s a great first effort, but you can put more into it.” Snapped Gates: ”You mean I’m supposed to say boring things in an exciting way?”

Gaudette, however, was in his element. He praised and repraised the company’s record, studding his talk with cliches and corny jokes. ”When it comes to earnings,” he exclaimed, showing a graph of quarterly changes, ”the pavement is bumpy, but the road goes only one way — up!” Describing Microsoft’s $72 million in stockholders’ equity and its lack of long-term debt, Gaudette teased Goldman Sachs with a competing investment house’s slogan: ”We made our money the old-fashioned way: We earned it!”

The road show previewed in Phoenix on February 18, and over the next ten days played eight cities, including engagements in London and Edinburgh. Halfway through, the pageant took on an almost festive air. Gates relaxed a bit, having been able to push his products as well as his stock at various ports of call. In London, Eff Martin of Goldman escorted the party to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, found tickets for the smash musical Les Miserables, and arranged admittance to Annabel’s, a popular club. Gates danced the night away with Ruthann Quindlen, a security analyst for Alex. Brown.

Festivity was appropriate. Every road show meeting attracted a full house, and many big institutional investors indicated they would take as much stock as they could get. By the end of February the Dow Jones industrial average had passed 1700. In London, Martin told Gaudette that Goldman’s marketing group considered the Microsoft issue very hot. The $16 to $19 price range would have to be raised, he said, and so would the number of shares to be sold.

The underwriters had wanted to come to market while euphoria from the road show ran high. But the SEC held the starting flag. On March 4 and 5 an SEC reviewer phoned in the commission’s comments on the preliminary prospectus to ^ Eshelman. The SEC had picked all sorts of nits, from how Microsoft accounted for returned merchandise to whether Gates had an employment contract (he does not). Its major concern appeared to be that the underwriters allocate shares widely enough to make the offering truly public and not just a bonanza for a handful of privileged investors. Eshelman was relieved. ”It was a thorough review,” he says, ”but it was nothing to make my stomach drop.”

On March 6 Microsoft’s lawyers and auditors called the SEC to negotiate changes. Meanwhile, the company persuaded two stockholders to sell an additional 295,000 shares. The next day, as the lawyers pored over proofs of a revised prospectus at the San Francisco office of Bowne & Co., the financial printers, Gaudette zestfully battled to raise the price. Eff Martin of Goldman, who had flown up to Seattle that morning, had good news. The ”book” on Microsoft — the list of buy orders from institutional investors — was among the best Goldman had ever seen. The underwriters expected the stock to trade at $25 a share, give or take a dollar, several weeks after opening. A sounding of big potential buyers showed that an offering price of $20 to $21 would get the deal done.

Gates asked Martin to leave while he conferred with Shirley and Gaudette. This was a different Gates from the one who two months before thought $20 too high. ”These guys who happen to be in good with Goldman and get some stock will make an instant profit of $4,” he said. ”Why are we handing millions of the company’s money to Goldman’s favorite clients?” Gaudette stressed that unless Microsoft left some money on the table the institutional investors would stay away. The three decided on a range of $21 to $22 a share, and Gaudette put in a conference call to Goldman and Alex. Brown.

Eric Dobkin, 43, the partner in charge of common stock offerings at Goldman Sachs, felt queasy about Microsoft’s counterproposal. For an hour he tussled with Gaudette, using every argument he could muster. Coming out $1 too high would drive off some high-quality investors. Just a few significant defections could lead other investors to think the offering was losing its luster. Dobkin raised the specter of Sun Microsystems, a maker of high-powered microcomputers for engineers that had gone public three days earlier in a deal co-managed by Alex. Brown. Because of overpricing and bad luck — competitors had recently announced new products — Sun’s shares had dropped from $16 at the offering to $14.50 on the market. Dobkin warned that the market for software stocks was turning iffy.

Gaudette loved it. ”They’re in pain!” he crowed to Shirley. ”They’re used to dictating, but they’re not running the show now and they can’t stand it.” Getting back on the phone, Gaudette crooned: ”Eric, I don’t mean to upset you, but I can’t deny what’s in my head. I keep thinking of all that pent-up demand from individual investors, which you haven’t factored in. And I keep thinking we may never see you again, but you go back to the institutional investors all the time. They’re your customers. I don’t know whose interests you’re trying to serve, but if you’re playing both sides of the street, then we’ve just become adversaries.”

As negotiations dragged on, Shirley became impatient. Eshelman, the securities lawyer from Shidler McBroom, was waiting in San Francisco to get a price range so he could send an amended prospectus off to the SEC. Finally Gaudette told Dobkin, ”I’ve listened to your prayers. Now you’re repeating yourself, and it’s bullshit.” The two compromised on a range of $20 to $22, with two provisos: Goldman would tell investors that the target price was $21 and nothing less, and Dobkin would report Monday on which investors had dropped out.

Monday’s News was mixed. Six big investors in Boston were threatening to ”uncircle” — to remove their names from Goldman Sachs’s list. Chicago and Baltimore were fraying at the edges — T. Rowe Price, for instance, said it might drop out above $20 — while the West Coast stood firm. The market had closed flat, worrying Goldman’s salesmen. But their spirits revived the next day as the Dow surged 43 points. Gaudette, now confident that he and Dobkin could agree on a final offering price, flew with Neukom to San Francisco to pick up Martin, and the three boarded a red-eye flight for New York.

Sleepless but freshly showered and shaved, Gaudette reached Goldman Sachs’s offices at 11 o’clock on Wednesday, March 12. Neukom walked over from Sullivan & Cromwell, where the other lawyers were preparing the last revision of the prospectus. After lunch the two Microsoft officers went to Dobkin’s office and patched Shirley and Marquardt into a speakerphone.

The conferees had no trouble agreeing on a final price of $21. The market had risen another 14 points by noon. The reception for a $15 offering that morning by Oracle Systems, another software company, seemed a favorable omen: The stock had opened at $19.25. About half the potential dropouts, including T. Rowe Price, had decided to stay in.

The only remaining issue was the underwriting discount, or ”spread” — the portion of the price that would go to the underwriters to cover salesmen’s commissions, underwriting expenses, and management fees. Having agreed fairly easily over dollars, the two sides bogged down over pennies.

Microsoft had always had a low spread in mind, no more than 6.5% of the selling price. That was before negotiators at Sun Microsystems, where Marquardt is a director, wangled 6.13% on a $64-million offering. Gates wanted Microsoft to get at least as good a deal on its offering. But he had gone to Australia, where he was difficult to reach. In theory Gaudette lacked authority to go above 6.13%, or just under $1.29 a share.

Dobkin opened with an oration. He touched on what other Goldman clients had paid, noting that Sun’s spread was off the bottom of the charts. He suggested that the managing underwriters deserved healthy compensation; after all, their marketing efforts had raised Microsoft’s offering price 20%. Goldman’s best offer, Dobkin said, was 6.5%, or $1.36 a share. But if pushed very hard and given no alternative, it might, just to keep things amicable, go as low as $1.34. Having given away $62,000 — each penny of the spread was worth $31,000 — Dobkin and his contingent left the room to let Microsoft’s side confer.

When they returned, Gaudette declared that Bill Gates had given definite orders: no more than $1.28. Besides, he argued, Microsoft was a much easier deal to handle than Sun. As to the underwriters’ marketing efforts, selling more shares at a higher price was its own reward since it automatically increased the money in their pockets.

At 3:30 the two sides were stalemated, Goldman Sachs now at $1.33 and Microsoft at $1.30. They were arguing over all of $93,000 in a total fee of more than $4 million, and pressure was building. The market was turning flat and would close in minutes. Members of the syndicate were clamoring to know whether the deal was done. Dobkin kept reiterating his arguments. ”Eric, you’re wasting my time,” Gaudette sighed wearily, donning his coat. ”I’m going to visit me sainted mother in Astoria. When you’ve got something to say, send a limo to pick me up.” With that, the Goldman team left the room.

Dobkin returned alone and closed the door. ”Sometimes these things go better with fewer people,” he observed. Gaudette insisted he lacked authority to go higher. ”All I can do is try to get another penny from Jon,” he said. ”But I’m calling him just one more time, so don’t screw up.” ”Make the call,” Dobkin said.

Gaudette caught Shirley as he was leaving a Bellevue, Washington, restaurant to buy a car for his daughter as a 16th birthday gift. The lowest spread they could get, Gaudette said, was $1.31. Though it was above Sun’s spread, it was way below what any other personal computer software company had achieved. Shirley approved. Neukom beckoned Dobkin back into the room, and Gaudette uttered one phrase that betokened his assent to $1.31: ”It’s a go!” Dobkin hugged Gaudette. David Miller, a beefy ex-football player who was Goldman’s syndicate manager for the offering, thundered down the stairs to his office bellowing to his assistant, ”Doreen, we have a deal!”

Gaudette saved his cheers for the next morning. At 8 A.M. a courier had delivered Microsoft’s ”filing package” to the SEC — three copies of the final prospectus and a bundle of exhibits, including the underwriters’ agreement to buy the shares, which had been signed only hours earlier. The commission declared at 9:15 that Microsoft’s registration was effective. On the trading floor at Goldman Sachs, Gaudette heard a trader say, ”We’re going to shoot the moon and open at 25!”

At 9:35 Microsoft’s stock traded publicly on the over-the-counter market for the first time at $25.75. Within minutes Goldman Sachs and Alex. Brown exercised their option to take an extra 300,000 shares between them. Gaudette could hardly believe the tumult. Calling Shirley from the floor, he shouted into the phone, ”It’s wild! I’ve never seen anything like it — every last person here is trading Microsoft and nothing else.”

The strength of retail demand caught everyone by surprise. By the end of the first day of trading, some 2.5 million shares had changed hands, and the price of Microsoft’s stock stood at $27.75. The opportunity to take a quick profit was too great for many institutional investors to resist. Over the next few weeks they sold off roughly half their shares. An estimated one-third of the shares in Microsoft’s offering has wound up in the hands of individuals.

In the wake of Microsoft’s triumph, Gates still fears that being public will hurt the company. No longer able to offer stock at bargain prices, he – finds it harder to lure talented programmers and managers aboard. On the other hand, his greatly enriched executives have kept cool heads. Shirley, who cleared over $1 million on the shares he sold, has been the most lavish. He bought a 45-foot cabin cruiser, traded in two cars for fancier models, and may give in to his daughter’s pleas for an exotic horse. Gates used part of the $1.6 million he got to pay off a $150,000 mortgage and may buy a $5,000 ski boat — if he finds time. One vice president who raked in more than $500,000 can think of nothing to buy except a $1,000 custom-made bicycle frame; a programmer who received nearly $200,000 plans to use it to expand his working hours by hiring a housekeeper.

That’s just the kind of attitude Gates prizes. Constantly urging people to ignore the price of Microsoft’s stock, he warns that it may become highly volatile. A few weeks after the offering, strolling through the software development area, he noticed a chart of Microsoft’s stock price posted on the door to a programmer’s office. Gates was bothered. ”Is this a distraction?” he asked.

From the July 21, 1986 Editor’s Letter:

Taking a company public is usually as private-and erratically emotional-as a love affair. Managers and their underwriters view the federally mandated “quiet period” before and after the stock sale (designed to discourage hucksterism) as a signal to maintain a nervous circumspection in the presence of the press. But Microsoft, the Seattle computer maker that is to yuppies what GM is to middle-aged executives, granted “astounding access” over several months before and after its offering, say Uttal. Chairman William Gates, whom Uttal calls the “Rabid Rabbit” for his high-strung competitiveness, took the writer into his confidence. “We got along because Bill likes intellectual challenges,” says Uttal, “and I like to ask questions.”

And ask questions he did. Questions of company officers, underwriters, lawyers, and major investors. Questions in six cities, from San Francisco to Baltimore, where he followed Gates and his troupe as they spoke to investors and negotiated the deal. Uttal went back to these sources after the successful stock offering, when many felt more at liberty to talk. Meanwhile, invoking the Freedom of Information Act, reporter David Kirkpatrick got the Securities and Exchange Commission to release its normally private comments on Microsoft’s prospectus.

Uttal, who joined FORTUNE shortly after earning his Harvard MBA in 1972, has covered electronics since 1977. “I was bit badly,” says Uttal about his fascination with computers. He now has four of them, including an ancient Osborne model and a laptop machine for taking notes at interviews. His favorite stories for FORTUNE have examined subjects as diverse as the office of the future and corporate “culture vultures.” But he views the Microsoft chronicle as one of his personal best because it is unique. As Uttal says, “I doubt that a story like this has been published before or is likely to be done again.” –Marshall Loeb










http://articles.latimes.com/1989-05-05/news/mn-2271_1_north-verdict-deliberations-jury-room

Los Angeles Times


THE NORTH VERDICT : Jury Marshaled to Verdict by 'Soul-Stirring Prayer'

May 05, 1989 DOUGLAS JEHL Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The jury that convicted Oliver L. North of three felony counts did not come to agreement on those charges until Thursday morning, when a "soul-stirring prayer" brought the panel together, the only juror to provide an account of the deliberations said.

Unemployed security guard Earl F. Williams said previous discussions during the 12 days of deliberations had sometimes been riven by "bickering and arguing." By Thursday morning, the jury had decided to acquit North on nine charges, believing that he had been "pushed a little too far out there by himself" by his superiors in the Iran-Contra affair, Williams said in an interview broadcast on ABC's "Nightline" program.

Acquittal Favored

Some of the nine women on the 12-person panel favored acquittal on the remaining three charges, Williams indicated. But after the prayer by juror Caswell Hartridge, the holdouts said: "You know, I think I was wrong. You know, I could go along with the program a little bit better," Williams said. "And that's how we came to get together on the last three counts."

The juror acknowledged that he and his colleagues had at times found difficulty in following the evidence in the complicated trial, and complained that documents presented seemed to contradict one another.

Partly as a result, he said, it was "touch and go in different spots" as to whether North should be convicted.

In a separate interview with reporters in front of his Washington home, Williams said the jury had spent much of its time discussing the allegations that North had illegally shredded sensitive documents describing his role in the Iran-Contra operation.

Saw North as Hero

Although Williams indicated that he had sided with those who urged that North be found guilty on at least some charges, he said he still regarded the former Marine as a hero.

"He was guilty but I don't think he should go to jail for it," Williams said.

After the two-month trial and 64 hours of intensive deliberations, most of the 12 jurors seemed to want nothing so much as to put their extraordinary experience behind them.

"Right now, all I want to do is catch the next plane to Jamaica," a weary Jean I. Johnson told reporters after federal marshals escorted her from the camera-encircled federal courthouse to her modest Washington home.

Johnson, a 53-year-old cashier who had won a place on the jury after she told the court, "I'm not into politics," refused to disclose what had transpired during days of debate in an isolation so complete that there were no windows in the jury room and those in the courtroom had been covered with paper. Likewise, Ernest Nelson, a 30-year-old telecommunications technician, told reporters gathered outside his home: "I'm tired, and I'm trying to relax. I just want to spend time with my family, because I missed them all very, very much."










http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0005/04/mn.11.html

CNN


Morning News

CNN 20: Oliver North Verdict, May 4, 1989

Aired May 4, 2000 - 10:27 a.m. ET

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: We have a look back at "CNN 20" today, the segment, White House aide Oliver North, a verdict is in.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): ... read the jury's decision on the fired White House aide. North shows no emotion on hearing the verdict: guilty on three guilty, not guilty on nine counts. Later, at his lawyer's office, North called this a partial vindication.

OLIVER NORTH: It was certainly our hope that this battle would be behind us by now, but today's was not a complete victory. After more than 2 1/2 years and over $40 million of our taxpayers' money, we now face many months and perhaps years of fighting the remaining charges.

Nonetheless, we are absolutely confident of the final outcome.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLES BIERBAUER, CNN SR. WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: The image that we best recall of Ollie North is the Marine officer, ramrod straight, standing in front of the congressional committee saying: I was just the Marine officer who saluted smartly and charged up that hill. As if to say, I was just following orders. The question of course then is: Were these Ronald Reagan's orders?

The answer was: Ollie North was convicted of this.










http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/M/MU010.html


Oklahoma Historical Society's

Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture

MURRAH, ALFRED PAUL (1904-1975)

Attorney and federal judge Alfred Paul Murrah, Sr. was born October 27, 1904, near Earl, Indian Territory, a now-extinct community but then part of the Chickasaw Nation.


Murrah died October 30, 1975.










http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3823

The American Presidency Project

Richard Nixon

XXXVII President of the United States: 1969 - 1974

133 - Statement Announcing Resignation of the Attorney General and Members of the White House Staff, and Intention To Nominate Elliot L. Richardson To Be Attorney General

April 30, 1973

I HAVE TODAY received and accepted the resignation of Richard G. Kleindienst as Attorney General of the United States. I am appointing Elliot L. Richardson to succeed him as Attorney General and will submit Mr. Richardson's name to the Senate for confirmation immediately.

Mr. Kleindienst asked to be relieved as Attorney General because he felt that he could not appropriately continue as head of the Justice Department now that it appears its investigation of the Watergate and related cases may implicate individuals with whom he has had a close personal and professional association. In making this decision, Mr. Kleindienst has acted in accordance with the highest standards of public service and legal ethics. I am accepting his resignation with regret and with deep appreciation for his dedicated service to this Administration.

Pending Secretary Richardson's confirmation as Attorney General, I have asked him to involve himself immediately in the investigative process surrounding the Watergate matter. As Attorney General, Mr. Richardson will assume full responsibility and authority for coordinating all Federal agencies in uncovering the whole truth about this matter and recommending appropriate changes in the law to prevent future campaign abuses of the sort recently uncovered. He will have total support from me in getting this job done.

In addition, I have today accepted the resignations of two of my closest friends and most trusted assistants in the White House, H. R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman.

I know that their decision to resign was difficult; my decision to accept it was difficult; but I respect and appreciate the attitude that led them to it.

I emphasize that neither the submission nor the acceptance of their resignations at this time should be seen by anyone as evidence of any wrongdoing by either one. Such an assumption would be both unfair and unfounded.

Throughout our association, each of these men has demonstrated a spirit of selflessness and dedication that I have seldom seen equaled. Their contributions to the work of this Administration have been enormous. I greatly regret their departure.

Finally, I have today requested and accepted the resignation of John W. Dean III from his position on the White House Staff as Counsel.

Effective immediately, Leonard Garment, Special Consultant to the President, will take on additional duties as Counsel to the President and will continue acting in this capacity until a permanent successor to Mr. Dean is named. Mr. Garment will represent the White House in all matters relating to the Watergate investigation and will report directly to me.

Note: The texts of the letters of resignation of Richard G. Kleindienst, Attorney General, H. R. Haldeman, Assistant to the President, and John D. Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs, dated April 30, 1973, and released with the President's statement, read as follows:

Dear Mr. President:

It is with deep regret and after long and searching thought that I hereby submit my resignation as Attorney General, to take effect upon the appointment and qualification of my successor.

Even though, as you know, I had previously indicated a desire to leave the government this year for family and financial reasons, the circumstances surrounding the disclosures made to me on Sunday, April 15, 1973 by Assistant Attorney General Petersen, United States Attorney Titus, and Assistant United States Attorney Silbert, dictate this decision at this time. Those disclosures informed me, for the first time, that persons with whom I had had close personal and professional associations could be involved in conduct violative of the laws of the United States. Fair, and impartial enforcement of the law requires that a person who has not had such intimate relationships be the Attorney General of the United States.

It is not for me to comment now on the tragedy that has occurred. However, I will always be mindful of your charge to me from the very beginning that the entire matter be fully investigated and that the full effect of the law be administered no matter who it might involve or affect. You can be proud of the Department of Justice for the manner in which it, from the beginning, has responded to that charge.

Finally, let me express my deep personal appreciation to you for having appointed me the 68th Attorney General of the United States. It is the greatest honor I shall ever have. I shall always be humbly proud to have been a part of the Department of Justice and to have had the opportunity to serve my country as a part of your Administration.

Sincerely,

RICHARD G. KLEINDIENST

[The President, The White House, Washington, D.C.]

Dear Mr. President:

As you know, I had hoped and expected to have had an earlier opportunity to clear up various allegations and innuendos that have been raised in connection with matters related to the Watergate case. It now appears that this process may consume considerable time. Meanwhile, there is apparently to be no interruption in the flood of stories arising every day from all sorts of sources.

I fully agree with the importance of a complete investigation by the appropriate authorities of all the factors that may be involved; but am deeply concerned that, in the process, it has become virtually impossible under these circumstances for me to carry on my regular responsibilities in the White House.

It is imperative that the work of the Office of the President not be impeded and your staff must be in a position to focus their attention on the vital areas of domestic and international concern that face you, rather than being diverted by the daily rumors and developments in the Watergate case. For these reasons, I submit my resignation as Assistant to the President.

I intend to cooperate fully with the investigation--and will at my request be meeting this week for that purpose with the U.S. Attorneys and with the counsel to the Senate Select Committee.

I am convinced that, in due course, I will have the opportunity not just to clear up any allegations or implications of impropriety but also to demonstrate that I have always met the high and exacting standards of integrity which you have so clearly and properly demanded of all who serve on the White House staff.

I have full confidence that when the truth is known the American people will be totally justified in their pride in the Office of the President and in the conduct of that office by President Nixon.

Respectfully,

H. R. HALDEMAN

[The President, The White House, Washington, D.C.]

Dear Mr. President:

For the past two weeks it has become increasingly evident that, regardless of the actual facts, I have been a target of public attack. The nature of my position on your staff has always demanded that my conduct be both apparently and actually beyond reproach. I have always felt that the appearance of honesty and integrity is every bit as important to such a position as the fact of one's honesty and integrity.

Unfortunately, such appearances are not always governed by facts. Realistically, they can be affected by repeated rumor, unfounded charges or implications and whatever else the media carries. For instance, this week totally unfounded stories appeared in the Los Angeles Times claiming I had asked our Embassy in Lebanon to help the Vesco group in a banking deal. I not only did not do so but, in actual fact, I caused the State Department to cable the Embassy that no one at the White House had any interest in the Vesco dealings. Since I have already reported to you many of the facts in the Gray case, I need only say that at no time did I directly or indirectly suggest that Mr. Gray should do other than keep the Hunt documents, although there have been reports to the contrary. Equally without merit are the source stories about some alleged involvement in the Watergate matter.

As I analyze my situation, I have to conclude that my present usefulness to you and ability to discharge my duties have been impaired by these attacks, perhaps beyond repair.

It is not fair to you and my staff colleagues for me to try to do my job under these circumstances. Too much of my time and attention is and will be consumed in concern for and straightening out such allegations. At my request, I am going to have separate interviews this week with the District Attorney and the Senate Committee Counsel. Thus, I am looking forward to an early review of the facts and evidence with the appropriate authorities, and I: should spend the time necessary in relation thereto.

One of the toughest problems we have in this life is in seeing the difference between the apparent and the real, and in basing our actions only on that which is real. We all must do that more than we do. I have confidence in the ultimate prevalence of truth; I intend to do what I can to speed truth's discovery.

Therefore, Mr. President, I submit to you my resignation. There are on the Domestic Council staff so many good people of ability that I am confident a transition of my responsibilities can be affected without loss of progress. I Will do all I can to assist in accomplishing the transition.

Yours sincerely,

JOHN D. EHRLICHMAN,

Assistant to the President

[The President, The White House, Washington, D.C.]





http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3824

The American Presidency Project

Richard Nixon

XXXVII President of the United States: 1969 - 1974

134 - Address to the Nation About the Watergate Investigations.

April 30, 1973

Good evening:

I want to talk to you tonight from my heart on a subject of deep concern to every American.

In recent months, members of my Administration and officials of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President-including some of my closest friends and most trusted aides--have been charged with involvement in what has come to be known as the Watergate affair. These include charges of illegal activity during and preceding the 1972 Presidential election and charges that responsible officials participated in efforts to cover up that illegal activity.

The inevitable result of these charges has been to raise serious questions about the integrity of the White House itself. Tonight I wish to address those questions.

Last June 17, while I was in Florida trying to get a few days rest after my visit to Moscow, I first learned from news reports of the Watergate break-in. I was appalled at this senseless, illegal action, and I was shocked to learn that employees of the Re-Election Committee were apparently among those guilty. I immediately ordered an investigation by appropriate Government authorities. On September 15, as you will recall, indictments were brought against seven defendants in the case.

As the investigations went forward, I repeatedly asked those conducting the investigation whether there was any reason to believe that members of my Administration were in any way involved. I received repeated assurances that there were not. Because of these continuing reassurances, because I believed the reports I was getting, because I had faith in the persons from whom I was getting them, I discounted the stories in the press that appeared to implicate members of my Administration or other officials of the campaign committee.

Until March of this year, I remained convinced that the denials were true and that the charges of involvement by members of the White House Staff were false. The comments I made during this period, and the comments made by my Press Secretary in my behalf, were based on the information provided to us at the time we made those comments. However, new information then came to me which persuaded me that there was a real possibility that some of these charges were true, and suggesting further that there had been an effort to conceal the facts both from the public, from you, and from me.

As a result, on March 21, I personally assumed the responsibility for coordinating intensive new inquiries into the matter, and I personally ordered those conducting the investigations to get all the facts and to report them directly to me, right here in this office.

I again ordered that all persons in the Government or at the Re-Election Committee should cooperate fully with the FBI, the prosecutors, and the grand jury. I also ordered that anyone who refused to cooperate in telling the truth would be asked to resign from Government service. And, with ground rules adopted that would preserve the basic constitutional separation of powers between the Congress and the Presidency, I directed that members of the White House Staff should appear and testify voluntarily under oath before the Senate committee which was investigating Watergate.

I was determined that we should get to the bottom of the matter, and that the truth should be fully brought out--no matter who was involved.

At the same time, I was determined not to take precipitate action and to avoid, if at all possible, any action that would appear to reflect on innocent people. I wanted to be fair. But I knew that in the final analysis, the integrity of this office--public faith in the integrity of this office--would have to take priority over all personal considerations.

Today, in one of the most difficult decisions of my Presidency, I accepted the resignations of two of my closest associates in the White House--Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman--two of the finest public servants it has been my privilege to know.

I want to stress that in accepting these resignations, I mean to leave no implication whatever of personal wrongdoing on their part, and I leave no implication tonight of implication on the part of others who have been charged in this matter. But in matters as sensitive as guarding the integrity of our democratic process, it is essential not only that rigorous legal and ethical standards be observed but also that the public, you, have total confidence that they are both being observed and enforced by those in authority and particularly by the President of the United States. They agreed with me that this move was necessary in order to restore that confidence.

Because Attorney General Kleindienst-though a distinguished public servant, my personal friend for 20 years, with no personal involvement whatever in this matter-has been a close personal and professional associate of some of those who are involved in this case, he and I both felt that it was also necessary to name a new Attorney General.

The Counsel to the President, John Dean, has also resigned.

As the new Attorney General, I have today named Elliot Richardson, a man of unimpeachable integrity and rigorously high principle. I have directed him to do everything necessary to ensure that the Department of Justice has the confidence and the trust of every law-abiding person in this country.

I have given him absolute authority to make all decisions bearing upon the prosecution of the Watergate .case and related matters. I have instructed him that if he should consider it appropriate, he has the authority to name a special supervising prosecutor for matters arising out of the case.

Whatever may appear to have been the case before, whatever improper activities may yet be discovered in connection with this whole sordid affair, I want the American people, I want you to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that during my term as President, justice will be pursued fairly, fully, and impartially, no matter who is involved. This office is a sacred trust and I am determined to be worthy of that trust.

Looking back at the history of this case, two questions arise:

How could it have happened?

Who is to blame?

Political commentators have correctly observed that during my 27 years in politics I have always previously insisted on running my own campaigns for office.

But 1972 presented a very different situation. In both domestic and foreign policy, 1972 was a year of crucially important decisions, of intense negotiations, of vital new directions, particularly in working toward the goal which has been my overriding concern throughout my political career--the goal of bringing peace to America, peace to the world.

That is why I decided, as the 1972 campaign approached, that the Presidency should come first and politics second. To the maximum extent possible, therefore, I sought to delegate campaign operations, to remove the day-to-day campaign decisions from the President's office and from the White House. I also, as you recall, severely limited the number of my own campaign appearances.

Who, then, is to blame for what happened in this case?

For specific criminal actions by specific individuals, those who committed those actions must, of course, bear the liability and pay the penalty.

For the fact that alleged improper actions took place within the White House or within my campaign organization, the easiest course would be for me to blame those to whom I delegated the responsibility to run the campaign. But that would be a cowardly thing to do.

I will not place the blame on subordinates--on people whose zeal exceeded their judgment and who may have done wrong in a cause they deeply believed to be right.

In any organization, the man at the top must bear the responsibility. That responsibility, therefore, belongs here, in this office. I accept it. And I pledge to you tonight, from this office, that I will do everything in my power to ensure that the guilty are brought to justice and that such abuses are purged from our political processes in the years to come, long after I have left this office.

Some people, quite properly appalled at the abuses that occurred, will say that Watergate demonstrates the bankruptcy of the American political system. I believe precisely the opposite is true. Watergate represented a series of illegal acts and bad judgments by a number of individuals. It was the system that has brought the facts to light and that will bring those guilty to justice--a system that in this case has included a determined grand jury, honest prosecutors, a courageous judge, John Sirica, and a vigorous free press.

It is essential now that we place our faith in that system--and especially in the judicial system. It .is essential that we let the judicial process go forward, respecting those safeguards that are established to protect the innocent as well as to convict the guilty. It is essential that in reacting to the excesses of others, we not fall into excesses ourselves.

It is also essential that we not be so distracted by events such as this that we neglect the vital work before us, before this Nation, before America, at a time of critical importance to America and the world.

Since March, when I first learned that the Watergate affair might in fact be far more serious than I had been led to believe, it has claimed far too much of my time and my attention.

Whatever may now transpire in the case, whatever the actions of the grand jury, whatever the outcome of any eventual trials, I must now turn my full attention--and I shall do so--once again to the larger duties of this office. I owe it to this great office that I hold, and I owe it to you--to my country.

I know that as Attorney General, Elliot Richardson will be both fair and he will be fearless in pursuing this case wherever it leads. I am confident that with him in charge, justice will be done.

There is vital work to be done toward our goal of a lasting structure of peace in the world--work that cannot wait, work that I must do.

Tomorrow, for example, Chancellor Brandt of West Germany will visit the White House for talks that are a vital element of "The Year of Europe," as 1973 has been called. We are already preparing for the next Soviet-American summit meeting later this year.

This is also a year in which we are seeking to negotiate a mutual and balanced reduction of armed forces in Europe, which will reduce our defense budget and allow us to have funds for other purposes at home so desperately needed. It is the year when the United States and Soviet negotiators will seek to work out the second and even more important round of our talks on limiting nuclear arms and of reducing the danger of a nuclear war that would destroy civilization as we know it. It is a year in which we confront the difficult tasks of maintaining peace in Southeast Asia and in the potentially explosive Middle East.

There is also vital work to be done right here in America: to ensure prosperity, and that means a good job for everyone who wants to work; to control inflation, that I know worries every housewife, everyone who tries to balance a family budget in America; to set in motion new and better ways of ensuring progress toward a better life for all Americans.

When I think of this office---of what it means--I think of all the things that I want to accomplish for this Nation, of all the things I want to accomplish for you.

On Christmas Eve, during my terrible personal ordeal of the renewed bombing of North Vietnam, which after 12 years of war finally helped to bring America peace with honor, I sat down just before midnight. I wrote out some of my goals for my second term as President. Let me read them to you.

"To make it possible for our children, and for our children's children, to live in a world of peace.

"To make this country be more than ever a land of opportunity---of equal opportunity, full opportunity for every American.

"To provide jobs for all who can work, and generous help for those who cannot work.

"To establish a climate of decency and civility, in which each person respects the feelings and the dignity and the Godgiven rights of his neighbor.

"To make this a land in which each person can dare to dream, can live his dreams--not in fear, but in hope--proud of his community, proud of his country, proud of what America has meant to himself and to the world."

These are great goals. I believe we can, we must work for them. We can achieve them. But we cannot achieve these goals unless we dedicate ourselves to another goal.

We must maintain the integrity of the White House, and that integrity must be real, not transparent. There can be no whitewash at the White House.

We must reform our political process-ridding it not only of the violations of the law but also of the ugly mob violence and other inexcusable campaign tactics that have been too often practiced and too readily accepted in the past, including those that may have been a response by one side to the excesses or expected excesses of the other side. Two wrongs do not make a right.

I have been in public life for more than a quarter of a century. Like any other calling, politics has good people and bad people. And let me tell you, the great majority in politics in the Congress, in the Federal Government, in the State government--are good people. I know that it can be very easy, under the intensive pressures of a campaign, for even well-intentioned people to fall into shady tactics--to rationalize this on the grounds that what is at stake is of such importance to the Nation that the end justifies the means. And both of our great parties have been guilty of such tactics in the past..

In recent years, however, the campaign excesses that have occurred on all sides have provided a sobering demonstration of how far this false doctrine can take us. The lesson is clear: America, in its political campaigns, must not again fall into the trap of letting the end, however great that end is, justify the means.

I urge the leaders of both political parties, I urge citizens, all of you, everywhere, to join in working toward a new set of standards, new rules and procedures to ensure that future elections will be as nearly free of such abuses as they possibly can be made. This is my goal. I ask you to join in making it America's goal.

When I was inaugurated for a second time this past January 20, I gave each member of my Cabinet and each member of my senior White House Staff a special 4-year calendar, with each day marked to show the number of days remaining to the Administration. In the inscription on each calendar, I wrote these words: "The Presidential term which begins today consists of 1,461 days--no more, no less. Each can be a day of strengthening and renewal for America; each can add depth and dimension to the American experience. If we strive together, if we make the most of the challenge and the opportunity that these days offer us, they can stand out as great days for America, and great moments in the history of the world."

I looked at my own calendar this morning up at Camp David as I was working on this speech. It showed exactly 1,361 days remaining in my term. I want these to be the best days in America's history, because I love America. I deeply believe that America is the hope of the world. And I know that in the quality and wisdom of the leadership America gives lies the only hope for millions of people all over the world that they can live their lives in peace and freedom. We must be worthy of that hope, in every sense of the word. Tonight, I ask for your prayers to help me in everything that I do throughout the days of my Presidency to be worthy of their hopes and of yours.

God bless America and God bless each and every one of you.

Note: The President spoke at 9:01 p.m. from the Oval Office at the White House. His address was broadcast live on nationwide radio and television.










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057193/releaseinfo

IMDb


It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

Release Info

USA 7 November 1963 (Los Angeles, California) (premiere)










http://www.amazon.com/The-Stand-Stephen-King/dp/0385121687/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top/181-3029201-4209261

amazon


The Stand Hardcover – October 3, 1978

by Stephen King (Author)


Product Details

Hardcover: 823 pages

Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (October 3, 1978)










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081505/releaseinfo

IMDb


The Shining (1980)

Release Info

USA 23 May 1980



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081505/fullcredits

IMDb


The Shining (1980)

Full Cast & Crew


Jack Nicholson ... Jack Torrance










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061735/releaseinfo

IMDb


Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

Release Info

USA 11 December 1967 (New York City, New York)



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061735/fullcredits

IMDb


Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

Full Cast & Crew


Sidney Poitier ... John Prentice










http://www.tv.com/shows/better-call-saul/

tv.com


Better Call Saul

Sunday 10:00 PM on AMC Premieres Feb 08, 2015


COUNTDOWN TO PREMIERE DATE: 2 DAYS 23 HOURS 50 MINS 1 SECS










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103064/quotes

IMDb


Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Quotes


Dr. Silberman: You broke my arm!

Sarah Connor: There's 215 bones in the human body. That's one.










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096463/releaseinfo

IMDb


Working Girl (1988)

Release Info

USA 20 December 1988 (Los Angeles, California) (premiere)



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096463/fullcredits

IMDb


Working Girl (1988)

Full Cast & Crew


Harrison Ford ... Jack Trainer
Melanie Griffith ... Tess McGill










http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=the-twilight-zone-1959&episode=s05e15

Springfield! Springfield!


The Twilight Zone (1959)

The Long Morrow


I'll be the little old lady in the lace shawl.

The one waving the "welcome home" sign.

So look for me.










http://www.tv.com/shows/the-twilight-zone/the-long-morrow-12720/trivia/

tv.com


The Twilight Zone Season 5 Episode 15

The Long Morrow

Aired Unknown Jan 10, 1964 on CBS

Quotes


(Closing Narration)

Narrator: Commander Douglas Stansfield, one of the forgotten pioneers of the space age. He's been pushed aside by the flow of progress and the passage of years--and the ferocious travesty of fate. Tonight's tale of the ionosphere and irony, delivered from--the Twilight Zone.










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036164/releaseinfo

IMDb


Miss V from Moscow (1942)

Release Info

USA 23 November 1942










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036164/taglines

IMDb


Miss V from Moscow (1942)

Taglines


American Ace Meets Russian Spy!










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103064/releaseinfo

IMDb


Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Release Info

USA 1 July 1991 (Century City, California) (premiere)










http://www.tv.com/shows/star-trek/the-naked-time-24889/

tv.com


Star Trek Season 1 Episode 4

The Naked Time

Aired Unknown Sep 29, 1966 on NBC

AIRED: 9/29/66










http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1994_1207571

chron Houston Chronicle Archives


Deaths of note

Houston Chronicle News Services

SUN 06/12/1994 HOUSTON CHRONICLE


Mary Maxwell Gates

Mary Maxwell Gates died Friday in her Seattle home


In more recent years, she had become better known as the mother of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates



http://www.livedash.com/transcript/biography_on_cnbc-(bill_gates__sultan_of_software)/5406/CNBC/Tuesday_November_17_2009/108766/


Biography on CNBC - Bill Gates: Sultan of Software

CNBC

Aired on Tuesday, Nov 17, 2009 (11/17/2009) at 09:02 PM


She died in the early morning of june 10, 1994.

Bill rushed home to be at his mother's side.

>> When he came to the house that night, he'd been stopped by the police on the way, because he was speeding.

And, of course, the policeman recognized him.

It wasn't the first time he ever got stopped for speeding, by the way.

And they looked at him, and they said, " 'cause he said, you know, "i was sitting there and the tears were just running " and-and the policeman said, "well--" he said-he said to the policeman, " " and the policeman said, "well, you go ahead.

"You go on home.

"But, please, slow down a " so, he was-he was very deeply affected by his mother's death, as we all were, of course.










http://www.divxmoviesenglishsubtitles.com/S/Sand_Pebbles_The_CD2.html


Sand Pebbles The


And now they're coming for me.
Because of you...
and your blind pride.
Damn your flag!
Damn all flags!
It's too late in the world for flags!










http://www.divxmoviesenglishsubtitles.com/S/Sand_Pebbles_The_CD2.html


Sand Pebbles The


You alone endanger us.
I must ask you to leave now.
My duty is to protect you.
No longer. Shirley, will you please get that paper from my desk?
We've declared ourselves stateless persons. We've sent our names to Geneva.
That's impossible.
Read this.
- Jake. - I tried to get back sooner. l couldn't.
- You staying? - Yes. What happened at the boom?
By that signed declaration we have renounced nationality itself.
Your uniform now gives you no authority over us and no responsibility for us.
- Romantic nonsense. - We've convinced most people here
that there is no connection between ourselves and the gunboats.
- Your presence only endangers us. - We're at war, Jameson. They'll kill you.
They will not.
Perhaps once this might have protected you, but not now.
Now it is shooting and killing. lt's too late for such fine distinctions.










http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=101543

The American Presidency Project

Lyndon B. Johnson

XXXVI President of the United States: 1963 - 1969

Executive Order 11266 - Draft Status of Fathers in Certain Essential Occupations

January 18, 1966

By virtue of the authority vested in me by the Universal Military Training and Service Act (62 Stat. 604), as amended, I hereby prescribe the following amendment of the Selective Service Regulations prescribed by Executive Orders No. 10292 of September 25, 1951, No. 10469 of July 11, 1953, and No. 11098 of March 14, 1963, and constituting portions of Chapter XVI of Title 32 of the Code of Federal Regulations:

Paragraph (a) of section 622.30, Registrant with a Child or Children; and Registrant Deferred by Reason of Extreme Hardship to Dependents, is amended to read as follows:

"(a) In Class III-A shall be placed any registrant who has a child or children with whom he maintains a bona fide family relationship in their home and who is not a physician, dentist or veterinarian, or who is not in an allied specialist category which may be announced by the Director of Selective Service after being advised by the Secretary of Defense that a special requisition under authority of section 1631.4 of these regulations will be issued for the delivery of registrants in such category."

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

The White House

January 18, 1966










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734637/quotes

IMDb


Twilight Zone (TV Series)

The Encounter (1964)

Quotes


Taro: I grew up in Honolulu. I was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed.

Fenton: Were you one of the pilots?










http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1999/dec99/cfopr.mspx

Microsoft News Center

News Press Release

Microsoft Names John Connors Chief Financial Officer


REDMOND, Wash., Dec. 22, 1999 — Microsoft Corp. today named John Connors as senior vice president of finance and administration and chief financial officer effective Jan. 7.



- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 9:10 PM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Wednesday 04 February 2015