Nixon's Secret (78 page)

Roger Morris, a former colleague of Haig’s on the National Security Council early in Nixon’s first term, wrote that when Ford pardoned Nixon, he effectively pardoned Haig as well.
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Haig remained White House chief of staff during these early days of the Ford administration, for just over about one month, and was replaced by Donald Rumsfeld in September 1974.

Because a confirmation hearing in the senate would subject Haig to questions about Watergate as well as the 1969–71 wiretaps on White House officials and newspaper reporters, Ford appointed Haig to a job that required no Senate approval. Ford appointed Haig to a NATO post being vacated by General Andrew Goodpaster, a longtime associate of General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Haig served as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), the Commander of NATO forces in Europe, and Commander-in-Chief of United States European Command (Cin-CUSEUR). With Reagan’s election in 1980 Nixon would reward Haig by convincing the new president to appoint Haig secretary of state. Finally Haig would eclipse his old boss and later rival Henry Kissinger. In 1980, Haig had a double heart bypass operation. As is often the case with such surgeries, Haig would undergo a substantial personality change and would “lose a step” during this period. Perhaps this would explain the gaffe for which Haig was best known.

* * *

Haig’s appointment was actively opposed by Vice President George Bush, White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III, Baker aide Richard Darman, and Reagan aide Michael K. Deaver. Haig did not help himself by declaring that he would be the “vicar” of foreign policy under Reagan. The White House troika of Baker, Deaver, and Darman would aid mightily in Haig’s ultimate downfall.

Interestingly, Haig’s confirmation in the US Senate would be endangered when Senator Paul Tsongas demanded access to the Nixon-Haig tapes. Who should come to the rescue, but
Washington Post
reporter Bob Woodward who said that Haig should be confirmed without access to the tapes, denigrating the tapes reliability because, he wrote, “the audio quality is terrible, and making the transcriptions as maddening as the man (Nixon) himself.” Woodward openly praised Haig for easing Nixon out of office. This again shows that the three-pack-a-day Haig was the model for the fictitious heavy-smoking Deep Throat in both the
All the Presidents Men
book and movie. As we have shown, Deep Throat did not exist as one source, but was a composite that included Haig, William Sullivan, and Mitchell aide Donald Santarelli. It is important again to note that Deep Throat was Woodward’s source. At the same time, former White House aide and political strategist John Sears was talking to Carl Bernstein. Sears maintained impeccable midlevel relationships in both the White House and the Committee to Reelect the President after his own departure from the White House. He admitted to White House Counsel Len Garment that he was the “former Nixon administration official,” identified as a source in
All the President’s Men
.

More importantly, Haig clashed immediately and publicly with Vice President George H. W. Bush over amendments that would clarify the presidential line of succession in the event that President Reagan was incapacitated. Bush was actively planning Reagan’s ouster, where I believe he set Reagan up in the Iran-Contra Scandal, which briefly threatened Reagan’s presidency. “I was out of the loop,” Bush famously said when questioned about his role in the administration’s backdoor efforts to trade arms for hostages. Haig would lose this clash, and Reagan would approve the clarification Bush sought that would allow him to assume power if John Hinkley had succeeded in murdering Reagan or Reagan had been impeached or resigned in the Iran-Contra matter. Bush would quietly push for both of these as vice president, leveraging his network of CIA connections in Central America and the Middle East. Bob Woodward would pen a story quoting unnamed sources saying Haig had been “set up”
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and naming Bush, Baker, Deaver, and Darman as those who had engineered Haig’s ouster. The source said that Haig was displaced over “policy differences,” an oblique reference to Haig’s desire to pull the Reagan foreign policy to an early “neocon” position. Haig would remain a protégé of Dr. Kraemer. Yet again, Woodward’s source is quite obviously Haig.

Haig then made a tactical blunder that Bush and his allies would jump on. On March 30, 1981, in the wake of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, Haig addressed reporters. “I am in control here.” Although Haig was in fact directing White House crisis management until Vice President Bush arrived in Washington to assume that role, reporters and Washington power brokers saw Haig’s comments as a clumsy overreach.

In defense of Haig, it is important to see his entire statement, which was, “Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state in that order, and should the president decide he wants to transfer the helm to the vice president, he will do so. He has not done that. As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending return of the vice president and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course.”
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The US Constitution, including both the presidential line of succession and the Twenty-fifth Amendment, dictates what happens when a president is incapacitated. However, the holders of the two offices between the vice president and the secretary of state, the Speaker of the House (at the time, Tip O’Neill) and the president pro tempore of the Senate (at the time, Strom Thurmond), would be required under US law (3 U.S.C. § 19) to resign their positions in order for either of them to become acting president. Considering that Vice President Bush was not immediately available, Haig’s statement reflected political reality, if not necessarily legal reality. Haig later said, “I wasn’t talking about transition. I was talking about the executive branch, who is running the government. That was the question asked. It was not, ‘Who is in line should the President die?’”
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The national press would pounce on Haig’s remark to depict him as both power hungry and mad. They were egged on by Bush and his White House allies until Haig became a distraction. They would succeed in driving “the Vicar” out.

Haig, addicted to the taste of power and with a military record as impressive as Eisenhower’s, would launch a quixotic campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988. Although he enjoyed relatively high name recognition, Haig never registered more than of single digits in national public opinion polls. He was a fierce critic of then Vice President George H. W. Bush, questioning Bush’s leadership abilities, questioning his role in the Iran-Contra scandal, and calling Bush a “wimp” in an October 1987 debate in Texas. Despite extensive personal campaigning and TV advertising in New Hampshire, Haig remained stuck in last place in the polls. Days before the February 1988 New Hampshire primary election, Haig withdrew his candidacy and endorsed Senator Bob Dole. Dole ended up losing to Bush in the New Hampshire primary by ten percentage points. In the end, I am persuaded that but for the White House stewardship of General Alexander M. Haig, the Nixon presidency might have survived. If the Watergate debate had remained between Nixon and chief critic John Dean, the political will probably did not exist for Nixon’s removal. It was only the tapes, controlled by General Haig, and his longtime military associate Butterfield, that brought Nixon down.

* * *

Nixon watchers have been endlessly fascinated by the 37th president’s televised remarks to the White House staff in the hours before his exile to San Clemente. Pat Nixon, so mindful of her tears during the televised agony of Nixon’s 1960 de facto concession remarks, was furious when she learned that the president’s remarks would be carried live. “We owe it to our supporters,” Nixon told her. “We owe it to the people.”

The first family entered the crowded East Room of the White House with its gold curtains and grand chandeliers. The room was packed with cabinet and sub-cabinet members, Republican lawmakers, White House staff and their spouses. Ed and Tricia Cox, as well as David and Julie Eisenhower accompanied the Nixons.

Nixon’s red-rimmed eyes fought back tears and his face was drenched with sweat as he began to speak. Nixon’s remarks were a surreal and rambling soliloquy that still achieved his aims—to put his spin on his years in the arena. “Greatness comes not when things go always good for you,” Nixon said, “but the greatness comes and you are really tested when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes, because only if you have been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.” Then, in a stunning piece of self-appraisal he added, “Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win, unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”

The legal proceedings and civil lawsuits against Nixon at the end of his presidency allegedly destroyed him financially. At one point, his bank account was reportedly down to a balance of $500. He left office broke, as well as physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. His greatest comeback was still ahead.

NOTES

1
.     Werth, Barry, 31 Days, p. 83.

2
.     Lukas, J. Anthony.
Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years,
p. 438.

3
.     Hodgson, Godfrey. “Fritz Kraemer: Briliant Geopolitical Strategist Who Launched Henry Kissinger’s Rise to Power.”
The Guardian.
November 11, 2003.

4
.     Ibid.

5
.     Kissinger, Henry. “Remembraces—Fritz Kraemer.”
http://www.henryakissinger.com/eulogies/100803.html
.

6
.     Rutenberg, Jim. “Rumsfeld: No ‘graceful exits’ from Iraq.”
Pittsburg Post-Gazette.
December 16, 2006.

7
.     “Strategic Weapons in the Changing World.”
CSPAN.
November 9, 1990.

8
.     Colodny, Len. Gettlin, Robert.
Silent Coup,
p. 54.

9
.     Colodny, Len. Shachtman, Tom.
The Forty Years War,
pp. 36-37.

10
.   Colodny, Len. Shachtman, Tom.
The Forty Years War,
p. 30.

11
.   Hersh, Seymour. “Kissinger and Nixon in the White House.”
The Atlantic Monthly.
May, 1982.

12
.   Colodny, Len. Shachtman, Tom.
The Forty Years War,
p. 58.

13
.   Hitchens, Christopher. “Death of a Banana Republic,”
Slate,
Feb. 22, 2010.

14
.   Colodny, Len. Shachtman, Tom.
The Forty Years War,
p. 134.

15
.   Hersh, Seymour. “Kissinger and Nixon in the White House.”
The Atlantic Monthly.
May, 1982.

16
.   Colodny, Len. Gettlin, Robert.
Silent Coup,
p. 53.

17
.   Colodny, Len. Shachtman, Tom.
The Forty Years War,
p. 146.

18
.   Colodny, Len. Gettlin, Robert.
Silent Coup,
p. 407.

19
.   Phone interview with Jeff Bell. February 2014.

20
.   Colodny, Len. Gettlin, Robert.
Silent Coup,
pp. 294-295.

21
.   Colodny, Len. Shachtman, Tom.
The Forty Years War,
p. 29.

22
.   Colodny, Len. Gettlin, Robert.
Silent Coup,
pp. 292-293.

23
.   Ibid, p. 293.

24
.   Dobbs, Michael. “Haig said Nixon Joked of Nuking Hill
.” The Washington Post.
May 27, 2004.

25
.   Colodny, Len. Gettlin, Robert.
Silent Coup,
p.331.

26
.   Nixon, Richard.
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon,
p. 898.

27
.   Colodny, Len. Gettlin, Robert.
Silent Coup,
p. 335.

28
.   Ibid, p. 334.

29
.   Strober, Deborah Hart. Strober, Gerald.
The Nixon Presidency: An Oral History of the Era,
p. 393.

30
.   Nixon, Richard.
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon,
p. 901.

31
.   Colodny, Len. Shachtman, Tom.
The Forty Years War,
p. 191.

32
.   Ibid.

33
.   Wicker, Tom. “Case of Navy yeoman curiouser, curiouser.”
Eugene Register-Guard.
February 17, 1974.

34
.   Strober, Deborah Hart. Strober, Gerald.
The Nixon Presidency: An Oral History of the Era,
p. 373.

35
.   Colodny, Len. Gettlin, Robert.
Silent Coup,
p. 342.

36
.   Ibid, 347.

37
.   Strober, Deborah Hart. Strober, Gerald.
The Nixon Presidency: An Oral History of the Era,
p. 441.

38
.   Ibid.

39
.   Kilpatrick, Carroll. “Nixon Forces Firing of Cox; Richardson, Ruckelshaus Quit. The
Washington Post
, October 21, 1973.

40
.   Nixon, Richard.
The Memoirs of Richard Nixon,
p. 969.

41
.   Woodward, Calvin. Benac, Nancy. “Nixon’s gap “an accident.”
Philly.com
,
November 11, 2011.

42
.   Associated Press. “Haig says ‘sinister force’ theory raised in discussing tape gap.’
Eugene Register-Guard.
December 6, 1973.

43
.   Goldwater, Barry.
Goldwater,
p. 277.

44
.   Novak, Robert. The Prince of Darkness, pp. 210-211.

45
.   Haldeman, H.R.
The Ends of Power,
p. 33.

46
.   Ibid.

47
.   Correspondence with Richard H. Greene. October 13, 2013.

48.   Ibid.

49
.   Werth, Barry. 31 Days, p. 344.

50
.   Fulsom, Don.
Nixon’s Darkest Secrets,
p. 233.