Alexander Haig 1924-2010

[Denny Crane]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/20/AR2010022001270.html

Alexander Haig, 85; soldier-statesman managed Nixon resignation

By James Hohmann
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, February 21, 2010; A01

Retired Army Gen. Alexander Haig, who held influential positions in the U.S. military and government and who as White House chief of staff shepherded Richard M. Nixon toward peacefully resigning the presidency, died Saturday at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore of complications from an infection. He was 85.

Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter sent the four-star general to Europe as supreme commander of NATO. Ronald Reagan made him secretary of state, a brief and stormy appointment in which he famously tried to assert command after the attempted assassination of the president. And Gen. Haig himself, a tall man with blue eyes who kept his chin-up military bearing long after he left the service, ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988.

In a statement, President Obama said Gen. Haig "exemplified our finest warrior-diplomat tradition of those who dedicate their lives to public service."

Gen. Haig's influence peaked in his late 40s, during Nixon's last 16 months in office, when brewing developments in the Watergate scandal damaged and increasingly distracted the president. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger famously told Gen. Haig to keep the country together while he held the world together during one of the greatest constitutional crises in the nation's history. Special prosecutor Leon Jaworski, and many others, called Gen. Haig the "37 1/2 president."

Gen. Haig, untainted by the botched break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, took over as chief of staff in May 1973 from H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, who would spend 18 months in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. When the public learned about the secret Oval Office taping system, which would eventually implicate Nixon in the coverup, Gen. Haig, as he acknowledged later, urged the president to destroy the tapes.

When Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, Jaworski's predecessor, pursued his investigation too aggressively for Nixon's comfort, the president dispatched Gen. Haig in October 1973 to instruct the acting attorney general, William D. Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. "Your commander in chief has given you an order," Gen. Haig told him.

Ruckelshaus refused, quitting instead in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.

Although Gen. Haig vigorously defended the president, he realized the direness of the mounting evidence and arranged a series of meetings between Nixon, his attorneys and leading members of Congress to make Nixon understand that his position had become untenable in the summer of 1974.

Gen. Haig said he thought Nixon needed to make the final decision, but he "smoothed the way" by presenting resignation as the only serious option, according to the account of this period in journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's 1976 book "The Final Days." After the president broached the possibility of suicide, the authors noted, Gen. Haig ordered doctors to take away Nixon's tranquilizers and deny his requests for pills.

Then, on Aug. 1, 1974, Gen. Haig told Vice President Ford that he should prepare to assume the presidency. Critics said later that he brokered a deal that got Nixon a pardon in exchange for stepping down. Gen. Haig maintained that he never implicitly or explicitly made such an offer.

Gen. Haig stood on the White House lawn eight days later, on Aug. 9, when Nixon left town. The chief of staff had his arms folded, but he discreetly gave a thumbs-up to his disgraced boss.

Powerful mentors
Alexander Meigs Haig Jr. was born on Dec. 2, 1924, in the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd, Pa. He was 10 when his father, a lawyer, died of cancer and left the family $5,000 in life insurance money. Gen. Haig was the second of three children, but he assumed an important role in family matters as the oldest male.

From a young age, he aspired to a career in the military. He graduated in 1947 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and graduated 214th in a class of 310. Nevertheless, he advanced far more rapidly than his academic record might have suggested.

After college, he went to Japan to help with the post-World War II occupation. While playing football, he caught the eye of Patricia Fox, the attractive daughter of a general on Gen. Douglas MacArthur's staff. He married Fox and earned a spot on MacArthur's staff, though not working directly for his father-in-law.

Gen. Haig is survived by his wife and three children, Alexander, Brian and Barbara; and eight grandchildren.

Gen. Haig was working as MacArthur's staff duty officer on Jun. 25, 1950, when the North Koreans surged across the 38th parallel. He later claimed that during the Korean War, he carried MacArthur's sleeping bag ashore during the landing at Inchon. The young officer was in Korea for both the advance to the Yalu River and the withdrawal that followed when the Chinese crossed it.

As his military career progressed, Gen. Haig picked up a master's degree in international relations from Georgetown University in 1962, and he continued to attract a powerful series of mentors. Then-Army Secretary Cyrus Vance chose Gen. Haig as his military assistant. Joseph Califano, a special assistant to Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, then tapped Gen. Haig as his deputy.

Staying on the fast track, Gen. Haig took over a brigade in Vietnam as tensions escalated from 1966 to 1967. Shrapnel from an exploding grenade left a scar on his eyebrow, and he received the Purple Heart. Enemy fire downed his helicopter during the battle of Ap Gu, and he survived a successful crash landing. He returned to West Point from 1967 to 1969, where he was a regimental commander before becoming deputy commandant.

Rapid rise under Nixon
Califano was among those who recommended then-Col. Haig to Kissinger, the incoming national security adviser after Nixon won the presidency in 1968. As military assistant, Gen. Haig prepared daily reports for the new president and acted as a liaison between the Defense and State departments. Long hours and his finely honed skill at bureaucratic infighting helped him make influential friends. In October 1969, after only nine months at the White House, he won a promotion to brigadier general.

From 1969 to 1971, Gen. Haig transmitted 17 requests from the White House to the FBI for wiretaps of reporters and government officials. Among those whose phones he had bugged were the military assistant to the defense secretary and a close personal adviser to the secretary of state.

In January 1972, Gen. Haig led the advance team to China for a top-secret four-day trip that laid the groundwork for Nixon's historic visit to the communist country the next month. Gen. Haig's star kept rising in Nixon's eyes, and his relationship with Kissinger became increasingly fraught with tension. Later that year, Gen. Haig went with Kissinger as the president's personal emissary to Paris for peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese. Gen. Haig persuaded South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu to agree to the January 1973 cease-fire.

Gen. Haig discreetly told the president and Haldeman about Kissinger's designs for peace when he thought military options hadn't been exhausted, even showing the pair transcripts of Kissinger's private telephone conversations, according to historian Robert Dallek.

"Kissinger's distrust of Haig was well deserved," Dallek wrote in "Nixon and Kissinger," his 2007 book. "As ambitious as anyone in the administration, Haig's hard work and effective manipulation of Nixon, Haldeman, and Kissinger himself had brought him rapid advancement."

Months later, Nixon promoted Gen. Haig to four-star general and made him the Army's vice chief of staff. Doing that required the president to bypass 240 generals with more seniority. The promotion sent Gen. Haig back to the Pentagon, but Haldeman's resignation meant the assignment wouldn't last long. To take the chief of staff job, Gen. Haig reluctantly retired from the military.

Gen. Haig stayed on as White House chief of staff for the first six weeks of Ford's presidency. At his request, the new president recalled him to active duty as commander in chief of U.S. forces in Europe. He became supreme allied commander in Europe in December 1974 and worked to strengthen the Atlantic alliance. After Jimmy Carter won the presidency in 1976, he retained Gen. Haig.

In 1979, Gen. Haig retired from the Army and left NATO. The week before he hung up his uniform, a remote-controlled bomb detonated under a bridge in Belgium as his car drove over it. The blast threw Gen. Haig's Mercedes 600 sedan into the air, but he escaped the assassination attempt without injury. Members of the Red Army Faction, a radical leftist group, were convicted in connection with the attack.

Tumult over foreign policy
Gen. Haig was president of United Technologies, one of the county's biggest companies, before being named Ronald Reagan's secretary of state in 1981. He became the most prominent official from the Nixon administration to return to government, partly as a result of aggressive lobbying by Nixon. Polls showed that important blocs of voters remained nervous that the new president would be a saber-rattling militarist, and Gen. Haig supported seeking a stable balance of power through detente with the Soviet Union.

The ties to Nixon dogged Gen. Haig. Democratic critics forced him to answer tough questions during five strenuous days of confirmation hearings, and liberal columnists opined against his selection.

Gen. Haig got into a testy exchange with then-Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.), who pressed him for a "value judgment" about Nixon.

"Nobody has a monopoly on virtue, not even you, Senator," Gen. Haig retorted.

He acknowledged to the senators that "improper, illegal and immoral" actions had been taken during the Watergate coverup, but he refused to criticize Nixon.

"I cannot bring myself to render judgment on Richard Nixon or, for that matter, Henry Kissinger," he said. "It is not for me, it is not in me, to render moral judgment on them. I leave that to history, to others and to God."

The full Senate voted 93 to 6 to confirm him as the 59th secretary of state on the day after Reagan's inauguration.

Gen. Haig's 18-month tenure as secretary proved tumultuous, marked by continuing efforts to claim power over foreign policymaking that Reagan and his aides didn't want to give him. A characteristic first news conference created a maelstrom of bad publicity. Gen. Haig declared himself the "vicar" of foreign policy.

"With the dazzling speed that only words possess, it entered the vocabulary of the press and played its part in creating first the impression, and finally the uncomfortable reality, of a struggle for primacy between the president's close aides and myself," Gen. Haig said later.

That narrative frustrated Gen. Haig, but everything he did seemed to strengthen it. He tangled with Vice President George H.W. Bush over which of them should lead a committee on crisis management. Then, on March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. nearly assassinated Reagan. Gen. Haig quickly arrived in the White House Situation Room. Bush was flying back from Texas when Haig went to address reporters in the briefing room.

"As of now, I am in control here in the White House," Gen. Haig told the nervous country watching on television, "pending return of the vice president and in close touch with him."

The sound bite symbolized to many a disconcerting hunger for power.

Gen. Haig was the ultimate Cold Warrior, seeing virtually every regional conflict as enmeshed with the larger struggle against the Soviet Union. At the State Department, he elevated the importance of Central America -- pushing to support anti-communists in El Salvador to send a message that the Soviets shouldn't think about interfering in the Western Hemisphere.

Reagan himself grew tired of Gen. Haig, who objected to sending a letter the president personally wrote for Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev on the grounds that the State Department staff should draft it.

On June 24, 1982, Gen. Haig visited Reagan in the Oval Office and handed the president a list of complaints about the "cacophony of voices" speaking about the administration's foreign policy. Reagan called him back in the next day and astonished him with a note accepting his resignation.

"The president was accepting a letter of resignation that I had not submitted," Gen. Haig wrote in his 1984 book "Caveat: Realism, Reagan, and Foreign Policy."

"Caveat" was a score-settling account aimed at his critics in the White House, which made headlines during Reagan's 1984 campaign for reelection. Gen. Haig, who had been so loyal to Nixon, decried the Reagan foreign policy apparatus as "a ghost ship."

"You heard the creak of the rigging and the groan of the timbers and sometimes even glimpsed the crew on deck," he wrote. "But which of the crew had the helm?"

Bid for presidency
In 1988, as Reagan's second term came to an end, Gen. Haig decided to run for president. He struggled to raise money and build support, deciding to pull out of the Iowa caucuses so he could focus his efforts on the New Hampshire primary. Never having won elected office, observers quickly realized he wasn't cut out for retail campaigning. He scoffed when people didn't seem to know who he was. Those who did questioned his ties to Nixon.

With polls warning of impending humiliation in New Hampshire, Gen. Haig dropped out of the race on the Friday before the critical first primary. He spent much of his campaign attacking Bush, and he quit the race with a final flash of what some viewed as vindictiveness toward the vice president by endorsing Sen. Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.).

In interviews, Gen. Haig brushed off all those who criticized his manner and at times his methods.

"If you're a guy who just comes in and occupies a position and keeps his head down, of course, life can be rather pleasant," he once told The Washington Post in an interview. "They come and go in all their adulations. But if you have a firm set of ideas, and you want to make a difference, you've got to be controversial."

 

[Denny Crane]

I met him sometime in the mid/late 1990s and got to talk to him for about 20 minutes. He was an awfully nice guy and his resume is elite. He certainly was in the George Marshall (Marshall Plan) mold of public servant.

What really came across in our discussion (politics, of course!) was how bitter he was toward the Republican Party. Basically, he told me that the Bush family were the power brokers and the primaries were basically fixed. I got it from an insider (him), that it's true. No reason to doubt it - I generally think the worst of politicians anyway.

This morning, Fox News was falling all over themselves to heap praise on the guy, except Chris Wallace (their best actual news guy) who ripped him over a few things.

If you weigh all things, good vs. bad, that made up his life story, I think it's heavily tilted toward the good.

RIP.

 

[MARIS61]

When the public learned about the secret Oval Office taping system, which would eventually implicate Nixon in the coverup, Gen. Haig, as he acknowledged later, urged the president to destroy the tapes.

When Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, Jaworski's predecessor, pursued his investigation too aggressively for Nixon's comfort, the president dispatched Gen. Haig in October 1973 to instruct the acting attorney general, William D. Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. "Your commander in chief has given you an order," Gen. Haig told him.

Ruckelshaus refused, quitting instead in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.

I could attack his record for hours, but these 2 acts alone should have had him in prison for treason.

 

[Denny Crane]

When the public learned about the secret Oval Office taping system, which would eventually implicate Nixon in the coverup, Gen. Haig, as he acknowledged later, urged the president to destroy the tapes.

When Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, Jaworski's predecessor, pursued his investigation too aggressively for Nixon's comfort, the president dispatched Gen. Haig in October 1973 to instruct the acting attorney general, William D. Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. "Your commander in chief has given you an order," Gen. Haig told him.

Ruckelshaus refused, quitting instead in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.

I could attack his record for hours, but these 2 acts alone should have had him in prison for treason.

As to the first paragraph:

http://articles.latimes.com/1997-02-08/news/mn-26685_1_watergate-tapes

Democrat Advised Haig to Burn Watergate Tapes

BOCA RATON, Fla. — Joseph A. Califano Jr., a former White House official during Democratic administrations, acknowledged Friday that he advised Nixon aide Alexander M. Haig Jr. a quarter-century ago that the Watergate tapes should be burned.

Califano was an attorney for the Washington Post and the Democratic Party when he offered the tape-burning advice during an informal phone conversation with Haig, who once was a colleague at the Pentagon.

"I suggested to him that they do burn the tapes," Califano said. "It was the only chance they had. We could not understand why the tapes were not destroyed. It would have been a terrible 10 days, but then it would have been over."

But former Nixon Counsel Leonard Garment said he advised the president not to burn the damaging White House tapes.

As to the second, it wasn't clear at the time (no SCOTUS ruling) whether Nixon had the authority to fire Cox. Cox was indeed fired, so apparently he did have the authority. Whether it was a good idea, obviously not. Eliot Richardson (the attorney general) and Ruckelshaus (#2 in DoJ) resigned during the saturday night massacre. Both had made certain assurances to the congress during their confirmation hearings that made them uneasy about firing Cox.

In Ruckelshaus' own words:

http://www.mainjustice.com/2009/10/...-riveting-account-of-saturday-night-massacre/

I was confirmed by the Senate as Deputy Attorney General in late September of 1973. Like Elliott, when asked by the Senate Judiciary Committee, I indicated my support for the appointment of Archibald Cox as special prosecutor. I held the job of Deputy Attorney General for 23 days.

Before leaving, I stuck my head in the Attorney General’s office and told Elliott of my destination. Whereupon he quickly said, “We’ve got an even worse problem than Agnew.” That’s not possible, I replied. “Yes, it is, the President wants to fire Cox.” My reply reflected by belief at the time. “Don’t worry” I said, “When it comes right down to it, he’ll never do it. The American people won’t tolerate it.” I was wrong about the first, but right about the second.

Archibald Cox had been struggling, since the existence of the Oval Office tapes had been revealed, to obtain transcripts of key conversations with the President relating to his alleged involvement in the cover-up. Several witnesses had recounted to Cox and his staff conversations they had had with the President regarding the Watergate cover-up. If electronic records of those conversations existed, Cox wanted them. He asked for them directly, through the Attorney General and finally through the courts.

The President’s problem was not legal; it was political. Whether his legal position had any merit was irrelevant in the face of growing public demand for full disclosure. Resisting a reasonable request by the Special Prosecutor for the clarifying effect of recorded conversations flew in the face of that public demand. The President’s increasing recalcitrance just further fueled public skepticism and eventually overwhelmed his defense.

I told Haig that I would not resign until next week if the President would withhold his order to fire Cox until that time. If he was worried about the situation in the Middle East, then I was willing to wait. Haig was not impressed and asked if the Solicitor General, Bob Bork was around. At that time, the Solicitor General was third in command at the Department of Justice and there the chain of command stopped. It’s not clear what would have happened if Bork had refused. I put the phone down and went back to Elliott’s office and informed Bork he had the same caller. Bork went down to my office, picked up the resting phone and told Haig he would carry out the President’s order.

Both Elliott and I had urged Bork to comply if his conscience would permit. We were frankly worried about the stability of the government. Bork indicated to us that he believed the President had the power to fire Cox and he was simply the instrument of the exercise of that power. He thus issued the order discharging Cox.

 

[jlprk]

You know, Denny, most people would just post the link instead of the whole encyclopedia....I read half of that first post (I got to 1970...I see he was in Tokyo 2 years before I got there) and I'm just going to go ahead and post.

Haig was the McCain of his day. Unlike the robotic wing of his party, he led the twinkle-in-their-eyes faction of Republicans. He found humor in things other than just deriding Democrats. He strayed from the party line and on Meet the Press, he would smile and publicly disagree with fellow partymembers. He was independent. We Democrats didn't know what to make of him, like McCain. Under Reagan, his party's attitude changed. Since then, his party has viewed Democrats as waste material to purge from influence. I kind of liked Haig, or at least, I could tolerate him more than the Gingrich/Texas wing of haters and plotters. When lost in a storm of political conflict, generals (Colin Powell, Wesley Clark) don't seem as sharp-edged, wild-eyed, and right-wing as professional Republicans.

 

[MARIS61]

As to the first paragraph:

http://articles.latimes.com/1997-02-08/news/mn-26685_1_watergate-tapes



As to the second, it wasn't clear at the time (no SCOTUS ruling) whether Nixon had the authority to fire Cox. Cox was indeed fired, so apparently he did have the authority. Whether it was a good idea, obviously not. Eliot Richardson (the attorney general) and Ruckelshaus (#2 in DoJ) resigned during the saturday night massacre. Both had made certain assurances to the congress during their confirmation hearings that made them uneasy about firing Cox.

In Ruckelshaus' own words:

http://www.mainjustice.com/2009/10/...-riveting-account-of-saturday-night-massacre/

Yes, there were many, many traitors involved in our nation's worst betrayal from our leaders. Only a handful of our elected representatives called out for justice. The cowardly bulk of them fell on the absurd excuse that our country was too weak and stupid to survive seeing a President brought to justice and made to pay for his crimes.

The opposite was true, of course. Americans have never recovered from the betrayal and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone of any party who trusts our government to faithfully serve us again.

In the end, Nixon and his henchmen were not only allowed to walk without ever being charged, most lived a lavish lifestyle on the taxpayer's dime until death.

 

[MARIS61]

You know, Denny, most people would just post the link instead of the whole encyclopedia....

Denny Crane doesn't care if it's against board rules, or our nation's copyright laws.

He just doesn't think we're smart enough to know how to click on a link.

 

[Denny Crane]

Yes, there were many, many traitors involved in our nation's worst betrayal from our leaders. Only a handful of our elected representatives called out for justice. The cowardly bulk of them fell on the absurd excuse that our country was too weak and stupid to survive seeing a President brought to justice and made to pay for his crimes.

The opposite was true, of course. Americans have never recovered from the betrayal and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone of any party who trusts our government to faithfully serve us again.

In the end, Nixon and his henchmen were not only allowed to walk without ever being charged, most lived a lavish lifestyle on the taxpayer's dime until death.

Our founding fathers didn't trust government to faithfully serve us. The "again" in your post is a joke, right?

There weren't any traitors in the government, but there were plenty in the anti-war movement. Nobody thought we were too weak to survive an impeachment, just that there was a constitutional crisis surrounding the separation of power between the three branches. Those things were sorted out and we survived a presidential resignation. The only sorry thing is that we ended up electing Jimmy Carter the next election.

There was also a war going on in the middle east to be considered.

The man you call a traitor got the resignation and transition done in an orderly manner. He didn't encourage the president to fight impeachment to the bloody end, like Clinton did. Speaking of whom, all those separation of powers things I mentioned that got sorted out made Clinton's impeachment possible. It seems you can be quite crooked and be a popular president.

 

[MARIS61]

I realize you are too young to have firsthand knowledge of these terrible times, but that's no excuse to make shit up.

Anyone my age or older will clearly recall "America is too weak to survive an impeachment" was the friggin' tag-line in every piece of media, every statement from politicos, it was the ONLY excuse ever offered for letting Nixon walk and evade not only impeachment but the obvious criminal charges which would most certainly have to follow a successful impeachment.

Here's some interesting facts that document Haig's eventual fall from power and how the Bush Cartel took complete control of our government (which it still clearly holds) through illegal acts too numerous to list here, including assassinations.

http://home.att.net/~m.standridge/haig.htm

 

[Denny Crane]

I was in high school when Nixon resigned. I had firsthand knowledge, thank you.

It was quite clear that Nixon was struggling all along to stay in office but was going down.

I've seen the GHW Bush / CIA conspiracies. Tin foil hat stuff. The guy was made head of CIA for less than a year to help restore public confidence in the agency at a time when there was talk of disbanding it altogether. His successor was Stansfield Turner.

Haig told me that the republican party was run by the Bush family, which makes a lot of sense. The VP elected President is the leader of the party by definition. Though none of the stuff in your link bears a resemblance to reality, otherwise GHW Bush would be king or something. The fact that Bush captured Noriega and put him in prison flies in the face of those kinds of accusations.