Alexander Haig
Few American public figures have had such tempestuous careers. Alexander M. Haig Jr. has spent much of his life in war zones--bureaucratic and geopolitical, as well as the kind for which he prepared in the U.S. Military Academy at West Point: Viet Nam, where he served as a battalion and brigade commander; as the indispensable aide-de-camp to National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger; as White House Chief of Staff during the climax of Watergate; and, after Richard Nixon's presidency fell, as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, with the rank of four-star general. But it was during his tenure as Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State that Haig found himself most embattled. From his stormy confirmation hearings it January 1981 until his resignation not quite 18 months later, he was almost constantly fighting, and on two fronts at once: against his colleagues in the Administration and against the Soviet Union and its clients in the Third World. In the end, Haig was defeated in the intramural struggle and frustrated in the global one. He lost Reagan's confidence and support, and he left his successor, George Shultz, with a daunting agenda of unfinished business. In the eyes of his critics, Haig's defeat was self-inflicted: the soldier in him got the better of the statesman; he did not know when to stop fighting and seek conciliation; he was too obsessed with his enemies, however real; he spent too much time defending turf and proclaiming his prerogatives; and he was sometimes a poor conceptual thinker.
Haig sees it quite differently. His memoir is not just a defense of his record as Secretary of State, but a blistering counterattack against those former colleagues he blames for bringing him down and for thwarting his policies. Caveat: Realism, Reagan and Foreign Policy, to be published shortly (Macmillan; 384 pages; $17.95), takes its title from the Latin for "warning." The word underscores Haig's argument that the experience of the past three years offers a cautionary lesson in how not to conduct American foreign policy.
On the following pages, TIME presents the first of two excerpts from Caveat, carrying Haig from his initial meetings with Reagan and his early adoption of a tough stance toward the Soviet Union, particularly for its mischief by proxy in Central America, through his controversial conduct on the day President Reagan was wounded in an assassination attempt. The principal villains of the piece are Edwin Meese, the longtime Reagan aide who has served as Counsellor to the President and is now Reagan's nominee for Attorney General; James Baker and Michael Deaver, who together manage the White House staff and channel advice to the President; and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. While Haig starkly portrays the President's men as amateurs in foreign policy who care only about its short-term domestic political implications, he praises Ronald Reagan for sound instincts, and his criticism of the President is, for the most part, oblique. Nonetheless, he strongly implies that Reagan also became part of the problem by siding too readily with his "chums" in skirmishes over policy, presiding over an "incoherent" national security process and above all failing to control or even to comprehend fully decisions that were being made in his name. "To me," writes Haig, "the White House was as mysterious 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. But which of the crew had the helm?"
Not since another Secretary of State, James Byrnes, assailed Harry Truman's foreign policy in 1947 in his memoir Speaking Frankly has a senior Cabinet member published such an attack on a sitting Administration. Haig gives little aid and comfort to Democrats on substance. His view of the world is a hard-liner's, his disagreement with the Administration largely concerns tactics and the policy-making process. But Caveat will certainly add fuel to the campaign debate over foreign policy.
"Al, Join My Team"
When Ronald Reagan asked me to be his Secretary of State, I had spent no more than three hours alone with him. In the fall of 1978, Reagan and I met at his home on the heights above Los Angeles. The evening had been arranged by Richard Allen, whom I had known as an uneasy member of Henry Kissinger's staff on the National Security Council. Allen was now Reagan's foreign policy adviser. I was still Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. I had made some statements about U.S. policy toward the Soviets that the press had interpreted as being critical of the policies of my Commander in Chief, President Jimmy Carter. Thereupon Allen had called me to say that Reagan would like to hear my assessment of the European scene.
Before dinner, Reagan and I spoke mostly about Edgar Bergen. The famous ventriloquist had died, and Reagan had just returned from the funeral. His convivial spirit had been quietened by sorrow. His face was drawn; his thoughts were with his friend; there was a sad smudge of theatrical makeup on the cuff of his shirt, one of the stigmata of the politician in this age of television.
During dinner, Mrs. Reagan skillfully led the conversation. She is, of course, one of the most charming hostesses in America. On first meeting, and sometimes subsequently, she gives an impression of guarded shyness, but she is possessed of a sprightly intelligence, a ready gift for conversation and an unerring sense of her husband's mood. I discovered that she had a well-defined and sensible view of current events.
From time to time, Dick Allen joined in with an observation. He is a comic manque whose speech is marked by a habitual mirthful undertone, and his remarks brightened the somber atmosphere. Reagan himself was a hospitable presence, smiling at the jokes, contributing an occasional phrase, gazing with deep fondness and admiration on his wife.
Mrs. Reagan was attentive to her husband, who was distracted by the loss of his old friend and fatigued, and she sought to lift the burden of the evening as much as possible from his shoulders. In this she was assisted, in a diffident but effective way, by one of the other guests, Peter Hannaford, a partner of Michael Deaver's in a Washington public relations firm. It is common for assistants to shield the great men for whom they work from the importunities of outsiders. The tendency to protect Reagan, even to answer questions that were clearly addressed to him, went beyond the usual. As a result, Reagan was a rather quiet dinner companion.
The evening was so pleasant, and Nancy Reagan's table talk so captivating, that I was somewhat surprised when I realized, while driving back to the airport, that I had hardly exchanged a word with the man who--as I already suspected--would be the 40th President of the United States.
The months passed. After I retired from NATO and ended my 31 years of Army service, I undertook a series of speaking engagements as a means of expressing certain very strong views on defense and foreign policy. To some, this activity, which took me to about 40 states, had the appearance of a run at the nomination; a Haig-for-President committee was formed in Washington. Although I was not consulted by the people involved, I did nothing to interfere with their right to support anyone they chose. But I had no expectation that I would be President and had repeatedly said so in public and private. Of all the truths that a public man can speak in American life, that is the one least likely to be believed, so I was not especially surprised that Reagan, or at least the men around him, should withhold judgment on my real intentions.
In August I received another call from Allen. Could I come to the ranch? I agreed but asked if this time I could meet with Reagan alone. My request was granted, and I went to California.
At their ranch north of Santa Barbara, the Reagans gave me a tour. Then Mrs. Reagan said goodbye with her firm handshake. She explained, with pointed good humor, that she was about to go riding--"so that you two can talk alone." I guessed that my request for a private meeting with her husband had caused a misunderstanding, but there was no chance to repair the affront. Mrs. Reagan mounted her horse and cantered away.
Reagan, in close-fitting twill riding breeches, worn with oldfashioned, buckled cavalry boots, exuded good health and good fellowship. Reagan's affability, his habit of speaking plainly, without metaphor or jargon, and above all the impression he gives of liking the person he is talking to, create a good atmosphere. Simply put, Ronald Reagan is a nice guy, and one is aware of this every moment. This is no small gift for a man to be blessed with.
I always had warm feelings for him, reaching back to the Nixon Administration. He was, in the best sense of the word, a loyalist, a man who seemed instinctively to put country above party and party above self. When President Nixon asked for his support, he gave it, sometimes at considerable political cost to himself as Governor of California, but always ungrudgingly.
In our conversation that day at the ranch, Reagan and I agreed on most things. On the draft, however, we did not. Reagan, as a conservative, believes that compulsory military service is an invasion of the right of the individual to free choice. Urging him to moderate this doctrinaire view, I argued that our youth should grow up with a sense of obligation to the nation.
He asked me if I would support him--"join my team," as he put it. I told him I could not, at that time, become a part of his political household, but that with the exception of the draft issue, I would be supportive of his basic policy.
At the end of 1979, Haig became president and chief operating officer of United Technologies in Hartford, Conn., one of the largest U.S. corporations (1983 sales: $14.6 billion). A few months later, at 55, he underwent a successful double-bypass coronary operation. "I had become a private man," he writes, "and I thought that I had dropped off the political radar screen for ever. "In July 1980, however, he was invited to address the G.O.P. convention and soon found himself very much back on the screen.
My speech at the Convention, based on the foreign policy plank of the party platform, called for a policy much like the one I was later to advocate within the Reagan Administration. Afterward, Justin Dart [a Los Angeles businessman], a member of the kitchen cabinet and an old friend, shook my hand and said, "You're our next Secretary of State." I was not surprised to hear this--the air in a convention quivers with hyperbole--but I did not take it as gospel. I went back to Hartford and my work.
After Reagan's election, Allen telephoned me. He expected to be Reagan's adviser for national security affairs--a job he had also expected to have under President Nixon in 1969, only to be beaten out by a more solemn man, Henry Kissinger. Allen said I was a candidate for a Cabinet post. The first position mentioned was that of Secretary of Defense. I pointed out that military men are prohibited for a ten-year period after leaving active duty from becoming Secretary of Defense. General of the Army George Marshall's appointment in 1950 required a special act of Congress. In my view, General Marshall, as one of the greatest men in American history, was a fitting exception to the rule, and should be the only one.
Allen invited me, on behalf of the President-elect, to attend a dinner at the Madison Hotel in Washington, where I met Reagan's aides Edwin Meese and James Baker and the President-elect's friend and adviser Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada. They were there, it seemed, to look me over. They asked, first, if I had anything to hide in connection with Watergate. I assured them that I had nothing whatever to hide. Then Meese asked me a second question: Did I want to be President? I answered in the negative. It seemed a curious question. Meese's own man had just been elected by a landslide. Surely he was in no political danger from any other Republican. Later, at dinner, Meese leaned over to my wife and said, "Don't worry, he's going to make it." Passing along this mysterious tidbit, Pat commented, "My worry is that you will make it."
George Shultz, who was eminently qualified to be Secretary of State, was still regarded as the leading contender. His colleague at the Bechtel Group in California, Caspar ("Cap") Weinberger, who, like Shultz, had a personal relationship with Reagan, had also been mentioned. I began to take seriously the rumors with respect to myself when the familiar baritone of Richard Nixon came down the line one day to say that Reagan had decided to ask me to be his Secretary of State. In matters Republican, Nixon usually knows what he is talking about.
As I recall, it was a wintry afternoon, Dec. 11, when Reagan himself called and in his pleasant way said," Al, I'm calling to say that I'd like you to join my team and be my Secretary of State." He went on to say that Allen, as National Security Adviser, would act exclusively as a staff coordinator. "You know my feeling about the Secretary of State," Reagan said. "He would be the spokesman." Then, referring to the predicament that developed when Nixon's old friend and Secretary of State William Rogers was outmaneuvered by Kissinger, he said, "I won't have a repeat of the Kissinger-Rogers situation. I'll look to you, Al."
In one part of my nature I now wanted the job. I had been training for it, in a sense, for 31 years. I thought that I could perform it well, and that it was important it be well performed. To accept, I realized with a certain sense of loss, would be to go back to an old life that I knew was filled with difficulty and misunderstanding and implacable (and often unjust) judgment of character and performance. I had served six Presidents. I had seen one of them fall in dreadful disgrace, but I had seen Presidents, including Richard Nixon, rise in triumph also. I had seen war as it was made in high places and as it was fought on the battlefield. I did not want to see any more of it. It seemed a good thing to do what one could to prevent more wars. I accepted the post Reagan had offered me with a glad and hopeful spirit.
There is a tendency to argue that Ronald Reagan is an aberration who does not represent the true will of the voters or the political center of the nation. This is a fallacy. His election was the culmination of a trend in American politics that began with the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt and that has steadily moved the political center to the right in this country.
I was convinced that in a broad way, the President-elect and I shared a certain view of the world. Like the voters who elected him, I perceived in Ronald Reagan more significant qualities than mere expertise: decency, optimism, a gift for self-education, a sturdy, common-sense affection for the U.S. and for mankind, and a talent for communication that approached the artistic. Better than any President since John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan had the surface qualities and the skills to do the job. In the epoch of television, he, like Kennedy, was made for the camera. In a demagogue, this would have been a dangerous thing. But Reagan was no demagogue. He was, it is true, a man of strong beliefs, but they were traditionally American and, oddly enough, essentially liberal beliefs. The people were asking for realism, for an atmosphere of honest pride in the U.S., an acknowledgment by their leaders of the astonishing things that America had accomplished for its people and for the rest of the world.
Whether Ronald Reagan could be a great President was unknowable. Like most Americans, I profoundly hoped that he would be. I hoped that I could help him.
"Nobody Has a Monopoly on Virtue"
Rumors of Haig 's appointment had already touched off intense controversy about his White House years. As Kissinger's aide on the National Security Council, Haig had requested FBI wiretaps on a number of reporters and Government officials in 1969-71 to determine the source of embarrassing leaks to the press. Later, as Richard Nixon's chief of staff when the Watergate scandal was approaching its climax, Haig resisted efforts by Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski to obtain Oval Office tapes that ultimately discredited Nixon. Critics also faulted Haig for having helped Nixon and Kissinger conduct the war in Viet Nam, including the 1970 incursion into Cambodia. Yet another cloud over his nomination was the persistent though contested allegation that the Nixon Administration ordered the CIA to organize the 1973 military coup d'etat in which Chile's Marxist President, Salvador Allende Gossens, was overthrown and killed.
To my knowledge, never before my confirmation had there been hearings so openly conducted on ideological grounds rather than merely political ones. For some men there is a high emotive content in terms that apply to me: soldier, Republican, conservative, patriot. Add to that tinder the burning issues of Watergate, Viet Nam, Cambodia, wiretaps, the CIA, Chile, and you have the makings of a pretty hot time.
The question that ought to be asked of nominees for high office is this: Who are you and how did you become the person you are today? However, it was unlikely, as the date of my confirmation hearing before the Senate approached, that anyone was going to join me in a philosophical exercise on the relationship between personal experience and policymaking. The primary subject would be Nixon.
A few days after my Hardingesque conversation at the Madison Hotel with Baker and Meese and Laxalt--in which Meese questioned me about whether I had anything to hide about Watergate--the Washington Post ran a series of articles that raised scurrilous questions about my service in the White House, my association with President Nixon and the circumstances of his resignation. By innuendo and more direct means, it was suggested that I had unjustly escaped public humiliation and hanging as a Watergate criminal, and that my appointment to the Cabinet might provide a good opportunity to correct this oversight. For the press, there is no such thing as too many scoundrels. It knows that villains are interesting. I had been cast as lago. My wife and children were distressed. My friends were appalled. I was infuriated, and in an earlier day, when the reputations of public persons were still protected by the law, might have sued for libel. But I could hardly run away from these false charges. Failing to confront them would be tantamount to saying that I was afraid of scrutiny because I did not think I could stand up to it.
During the hearings, much time was devoted to a sober discussion of how the future needed to be managed, but the leitmotiv of Watergate also continued to be heard. Time after time, the events of the past were exhumed. This was perfectly proper, but it is not especially enjoyable to be the cause for the rebirth of the doctrine of guilt by association.
At length I was overtaken by exasperation. This happened on the fourth day, after a long session in which the plowed and salted earth of the Nixon era--Chile, wiretaps, Watergate--was spaded again and again. Democratic Senator Paul Sarbanes of Maryland turned once again to Nixon and his deeds. Why had I not resigned as a matter of conscience? It hardly seemed necessary to say again that I had not been there when the misdeeds took place. So I suggested that one did not have the option of quitting when the Republic was in danger: "I felt an obligation to do the best I could. I did that."
Sarbanes asked for my "value judgment" about the things that were happening. I repeated that there had been abuses on both sides, that Nixon had a right to the presumption of innocence like any other citizen. The exchange ran on. Sarbanes pressed me for a "value judgment" no fewer than four times. Finally, I remarked, "Nobody has a monopoly on virtue, not even you, Senator."
I do not think anything was lost by the incident. In some circumstances, it is wrong to turn the other cheek. I was determined not to be Richard Nixon's judge. I had not been a witness to his misdeeds, only to their consequences and to his suffering.
The night of Aug. 8, 1974, when Richard Nixon announced his resignation as President and his long ordeal was over, I did not want to leave him alone. All Presidents must be aware of history because they are the limbs on its body. No President was more keenly aware of it than Nixon; better than anyone else, he knew what had happened to him and how this event was likely to be viewed. We went together to the Lincoln Sitting Room, his favorite place. The only light came from a log fire on the hearth.
He began to talk. He spoke about his predecessors and the times of doubt and anguish through which nearly all of them had passed. Not a single word did he speak about his own tragedy. He uttered no recriminations. He had lost the thing he wanted all his life, but he seemed to be at peace. I left him there, sitting alone in the dark. When I returned, shortly after dawn, Nixon was still in the same chair. He had a way of sitting on the small of his back, and that was how he was sitting now. The gray light of morning filled the room. There was the smell of a fire that had died. On a table lay a stack of books--the memoirs of Presidents. In each, he had inserted a slip of paper, marking a place where he had found something of interest. That is how Nixon had spent his last night as President. He had been seeking solace from the only men who could truly know what he was feeling--his kinsmen in history. I simply could not render personal judgment on Nixon after seeing what he had gone through.
I am not insensible to the central lesson of Watergate, that a seemingly trivial act can take on such Aeschylean significance as to threaten the balance of the world. But it would be wrong to assign all the blame for that state of affairs to Nixon. There were abuses, and actions that were worse than abuses, on all sides. One need not describe the damage, not the least of which is that the U.S. now has a precedent for the removal of an elected President from office through a process of denunciation rather than due process of law.
It is true that Nixon chose not to avail himself of the impeachment process, but there were reasons for that beyond the shrill quality of public discourse that made a fair trial moot. Not all of those reasons, which included an unselfish belief that the country would be sundered politically, economically and emotionally by a protracted impeachment process, redound to Nixon's discredit.
During my confirmation hearings, when someone advised, "Tell them what they want to hear," I replied, "What is our purpose here? I can't tell them what they want to hear!"
The tragedy I had witnessed, and tried within the limits of legality and honor to help manage, was in the past. It had nothing whatever to do with my qualifications to be Secretary of State. I was willing to answer the questions that would be put to me, but not to gossip about a former President or to be brought so low that I would seek to demonstrate my fitness for my post, or certify my own decency, by joining in the hurling of anathema upon him. There are worse things than not being confirmed.
More than personal pride was involved. If I permitted myself to be hammered down, the cost would be severe. If I crawfished before my own countrymen, what could I be expected to do when dealing with America's adversaries? I had a chilling vision of the videotapes of such a performance being played in the Kremlin. The price was unpayable.
Naturally, I would have preferred that the hearing be held under quieter circumstances. I don't mind being questioned, hectored even, but it is discomfiting to have to answer sharply in full view of the world. It is easier to administer humiliation in public than to accept it. Besides, a circus atmosphere elicits the clown in all of us. It is difficult, when on camera, not to play to the gallery. This cheapens the process, distorts the results, and causes otherwise thoughtful persons to make damn fools of themselves.
To a significant degree, the television camera has driven the natural, the heartfelt, out of our national life. The rule used to be "What am I saying?" Now it is "How do I appear?"
In the end, the Foreign Relations Committee voted 15 to 2 for confirmation, with Sarbanes and Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts casting negative votes. The hearings had lasted 32 hours over five days with one evening session. Among my recent predecessors, beginning with John Foster Dulles, only one, Henry Kissinger, had been subjected to more than a day of hearings. On Jan. 21, the day after the Inauguration of Ronald Reagan, the Senate voted, 93 to 6, to confirm my nomination as the 59th Secretary of State.
In facing the ordeal, I had been left entirely to my own devices. No advice, no offer of help, no word of encouragement came to me from Reagan or his staff. When the hearings were over and it seemed that I had come through them all right, the President-elect did not congratulate me, nor did any of his people phone or write. Because Reagan is so instinctively kind and courteous, this surprised me. But each President has his own style, and in fairness there is no reason why I should have been praised for getting myself confirmed. That was the least I owed to my chief, who had risked much in nominating me.
An Administration Of Chums
On Jan. 6, two weeks before the Inauguration, I called on Reagan at Blair House to discuss the current play of events in the world and the structure of his foreign policy. In dealing with a President, one must tell the absolute truth, no matter how unpleasant, and conserve the President's time. Later, I was told that Reagan had found me brusque. Perhaps, in my ignorance about his way of doing things, I came a little too quickly to the point; maybe my speech was unadorned. This is a habit instilled in West Point cadets and nothing in a life spent in the service of busy and impatient men had cured me of it.
I told Reagan, "You must have a single manager who can integrate the views of all your Cabinet officers and prepare for you a range of policy choices." He nodded.
If Reagan was uncomfortable, he gave no sign of it. The very first order of business was the structure of the foreign policy establishment. The President had to decide, and put in writing, who was going to do what. Without such a charter, the foreign policy machinery cannot function in an orderly way. The alternative is dispute over territory, rivalry over precedence, loss of decorum, and a policy that lacks coherence and consistency.
I was aware of the tendency among the President-elect's men to sing from different sheets of music, but I put it down to the exhilaration produced by the freshness of the candidate's triumph at the polls. I assumed that Reagan would control the garrulity. Still, I discussed with him at length the importance of speaking with a single voice on foreign policy, and agreed that Allen and his colleagues at the NSC would have no independent contact with the press and that contacts with visiting foreign dignitaries should be the sole province of the Department of State. If Allen had any quibble with this concept, he said nothing about it.
Every Secretary since the redoubtable Dulles, with the exception of Kissinger, had to some degree been a bystander. State had increasingly become a housekeeping agency, charged with the errands of foreign policy rather than the creation of foreign policy. To a degree even Kissinger had made bystanders of the Foreign Service. As Secretary of State, he had run things with a personal staff, largely excluding the wider bureaucracy from the romance of important issues.
Under Reagan, I believed, all this was going to change. The problem was how to make the Foreign Service and the rest of the department's staff believe this too. The most difficult management problem faced by any incoming Administration is the inertia of the bureaucracy. It is like an asteroid, spinning in an eccentric orbit, captured by the gravity of its procedures and its self-interest, deeply suspicious of politicians who threaten its stability by changing its work habits. This is a greater problem for Republicans than for Democrats. The civil service is not infected by Republican sentiment. Perhaps because they believe more fervently than Republicans in the power of bureaucracy to perfect the human condition, more young Democrats tend to make careers of federal service.
Moreover, the fear was abroad that a legion of right-wing activists was going to march in and start conducting American diplomacy according to the rules of a political rally. Some early nominations--that of the neoconservative Mrs. [Jeane] Kirkpatrick as Ambassador to the United Nations, for example--had been read as signs of a trend in this direction. This was unjust, but the perception existed.
Some of my own nominations encountered delays at the White House. Lawrence Eagleburger, an old colleague from the NSC staff, whom I wanted as Assistant Secretary for European Affairs, found disfavor because he was regarded as a Kissingerite; he had been Kissinger's executive assistant both at the White House and at State. There was a certain determination to exclude those who had been closely associated with Kissinger from the foreign policy apparatus under Reagan. There should have been no problem. Eagleburger was a thoroughgoing professional and a strong-minded individual unlikely to have been brainwashed even by so powerful an intellect as Kissinger's. As these and other appointments were stalled, I asked Meese and Baker who, exactly, was opposing them. Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, they replied. Oddly, I never heard directly from Helms. Thoroughly puzzled and somewhat frustrated, I finally got through to Helms on the telephone. To my surprise, the Senator said he had no problem in accepting the appointments I was proposing. Other phone conversations followed, always with the same result: Helms had no objection. Yet later, when there were further delays, Helms was again cited as the cause. I was never able to unravel this mystery.
The key appointment is that of Deputy Secretary of State. I wanted an alter ego in the job, a man who would share every detail of my work and to whom I could give my deepest confidence. He must also be a Reagan loyalist. One name, that of William Clark of the California Supreme Court, was mentioned frequently by people close to Reagan. It came up in an official way one day, early in January, when Dick Allen and I were going over his list of candidates. In one of the most significant decisions of my life, I seized upon it.
At my request, Clark came to Washington and slipped in a side door of the State Department. He is a very tall man with a boyish face and the simple manners of a rancher, which he is; he wears a Stetson and Western boots. I took a great liking to him. He has a very manly and open and easygoing manner. "I don't know a thing about foreign policy," he told me with amiable candor. I knew that already. It didn't matter: State abounds with experts in foreign policy.
Clark had a single, overwhelming qualification: he was an old and trusted friend of the President's. I was not, and in an Administration of chums, bonded together by years of faith and hope and hard work on the campaign trail, this was a handicap. I was already puzzled by the methods of the President's aides; perhaps Clark, who had known these men for years, could explain them to me. No less important, he could explain me to them.
"I know the Governor's ways," he told me. In Clark's way of talking and thinking, I saw similarities to Reagan--the casual manner, the ready smile, the friendly tone, the easy equality--and understood why the two were friends. It seemed to me Clark and I could work together.
Questions had been raised about Clark's ability to grasp complex issues, and there was some anxiety in the department about his confirmation, as he lacked even the rudiments of an education in foreign affairs. Some of the ablest foreign policy experts in Washington set about to tutor Clark, but they did not have time to fill the empty vessel. Clark flunked the senatorial quiz, although he was confirmed anyway. I discounted these difficulties. Most public men are thought to be less intelligent than in fact they are. Bad publicity tends to arouse my sympathy for its object.
Haig was the object of some bad publicity himself, largely through the unwise choice of one word during a press conference.
It is diverting to attempt to identify the precise moment when the grain of sand enters the oyster, beginning the long process of irritation that ends with the pearl. In my case, the sea change that later produced my resignation, though I should hesitate to characterize that act as a pearl, began almost at the start of my days as Secretary of State. It began in a jest.
At my first news conference at the State Department, on Jan. 28, 1981, I remarked, "When I accepted this position, I was assured by President Reagan personally that I would be his chief administrator, if you will, and I use the term vicar "--a word I had used earlier with Reagan when we discussed my role. Seldom has a man made an unwiser public display of pedantry. The dictionary defines the word to mean "administrative deputy." Possibly the only other American to use the word in this sense and have it get into print was Paul Nitze, who employed it to describe the relationship of the Secretary of State to the President in testimony before the late Senator Henry Jackson's subcommittee on Government reorganization more than two decades ago. I stole it from Nitze (who later became our chief negotiator for the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces talks).
The word caused the press to chortle and the White House staff to choke. In some minds it seemed to evoke the picture of a harmless ecclesiastical gentleman on a bicycle, in others that of an antipope. Very soon I lost my affection for it. 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.
My "Grab For Power"
For years, members of Reagan's staff had been communicating with their chiefs friends and enemies through the press, rewarding the one and punishing the other. They had often communicated with each other in the same way. It seemed natural to them, now that they were in the White House, to communicate thus with other officials, and even with foreign governments.
At first, I did not realize that the media had let themselves be converted into White House bulletin boards. When I would deliver a sensitive memorandum for the President's eyes only in the early afternoon, and then hear quotations from it on the evening news, I would react with surprise and call up the White House to express my shock. How naive I must have seemed.
Since my meeting with Reagan on Jan. 6, we at State had been working with Defense, the NSC staff and CIA to produce a mutually agreeable version of NSDD1 , the National Security Decision Directive establishing the structure of foreign policy. State was awarded the chairmanship and Defense the vice chairmanship of all the interagency groups dealing with foreign policy. This arrangement was accepted without demur by Secretary of Defense Weinberger and by William Casey, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and especially by Allen.
So it was with confidence, even camaraderie, that we four met at the White House after the Inauguration to deliver the agreed-upon document to the President, although we did not seek to see the President. A certain festivity was in the air and a certain solemnity too. We were living through the first hours of a new era, and if the heart of the Government is anywhere, it is in the White House. At the end of an Administration, it has an air of shabbiness, poignant to those who remember the paint when it was new and the furniture before it was battered. No one, I imagine, has left the place more threadbare than President Carter.
The draft directive was received by Meese in his office. Also present were Baker and Deaver. Meese seemed very much at ease, very sure of his authority. Baker and Deaver, favorites of Mrs. Reagan's, seemed to be lesser players, hanging back a bit. Allen was there, and so was Casey.
Also present was Weinberger. He is a capable man, immensely likable and honest, a talented administrator and a stubborn fighter for what he believes is right. The defense policy that he and President Reagan were to devise is a long-needed corrective and will heighten the chances of keeping the peace in small ways and large.
Under Meese's chairmanship, we began a point-by-point discussion of the document. With lawyerly meticulousness, Meese conducted a dogged critique of the paper. In the process, my earlier understandings with the President--and Weinberger's too--were disappearing in a haze of nitpicking. At length, Meese tucked the directive into his briefcase. I would like to be able to say that something in his manner warned me that the document would stay there, unsigned, for well over a year. But the truth is, I never dreamed that he would not hand it to the President at the start of the next day.
Once before, when the Cabinet-designates met in Washington on Jan. 7,1 had sensed in Meese a tendency to assume an unusual measure of authority. In a sort of primer on Cabinet relations with the White House, he explained the President's ideas, the President's procedures, the President's priorities. Reagan himself spoke very little. When he did intervene, it was usually to recall an incident from his days as Governor of California that was in some way relevant to the subject.
As a result of Meese's pocketing the draft directive, there was no description of duty, no rules, no expression of the essential authority of the President to guide his subordinates in their task. This failure arose from ignorance: Reagan's assistants saw a routine act of government as a novel attempt to pre-empt power. In fact, it was a plan to share and coordinate those duties in foreign policy that express the President's powers under the Constitution. I left the White House that day with the feeling that Ed Meese and his colleagues perceived their rank in the Administration as being superior to that of any member of the Cabinet.
Next day, the press contained gossip items suggesting that I had tried to thrust the paper into the President's hands and secure his signature only moments after he had taken the oath of office. White House sources were quoted on the shock this "grab for power" on the first day of the Administration had produced in the President.
This struck me as distinctly odd. I could not conceive that any of the seven of us who had firsthand knowledge of the circumstances would be so mischievous, so numb to the requirements of the presidency, as to plant such a story. It was damaging to the President and to me. And it wasn't true. I called Ed Meese. He told me the matter wasn't worth worrying about.
But the phenomenon had seized my attention. Few things are more stimulating than being able to hear what is being said about you behind your back. I have thought much about the press and its place in American life, but never more deeply and never more poignantly than in my time as Secretary of State. In the Washington Post I soon learned that Bill Clark had not, after all, been my choice as Deputy Secretary of State, but rather that he was "expected to function as the White House eyes and ears in the State Department, especially on behalf of those in the Reagan inner circle who are suspicious of Haig's ambitions for the presidency." From the New York Times I discovered that my "take-charge" style had earned me the nickname CINC-WORLD, or Commander in Chief of the World. From other reports, it appeared that I had raised hackles by pointing out the foreign policy implications of the grain embargo and auto imports, by reassuring our allies on our plans with respect to the neutron bomb and by the nature of my personality. The fanciful story about my thrusting a "20-page memorandum" into Reagan's hands as he returned from his swearing-in took root in the press and demonstrated once again that gossip is hardier than truth. Again I called up Meese. "Al," he said, "it's just newspaper talk. Don't pay any attention." Baker gave me the same advice.
The day after the Inauguration, Haig was struck once again by the behavior of the White House staff, particularly during the very first formal meeting of the Cabinet.
Of the many destructive effects of Viet Nam and Watergate, none is worse than the tendency of a new Administration to believe that history began on its Inauguration Day, and its predecessor was totally wrong about everything, and that all its acts must therefore be canceled. This produces a policy of recrimination rather than a policy of renewal; it causes men and women to look back in anger rather than to look forward in hope and confidence.
President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan once remarked that being the friend of the U.S. is like living on the banks of a great river: the soil is wonderfully fertile and there are many other benefits, but every four years or eight years, the river, flooded by storms that are too far away to be seen, changes its course, and you are left in a desert, all alone. These irrational changes, of course, produced by a political vengefulness that is alien to American life, are a great danger. They confuse our friends, mislead our adversaries and confound our own plans for a more manageable world.
It seemed important to establish, early in Reagan's presidency, that smallness of spirit would not be his way. Yet the day after the Inauguration, it was suggested in the Oval Office that the agreement with the Iranians for the return of the hostages, negotiated by the Carter Administration, be abrogated. This amazing proposition won the support of many in the room. Insofar as Jim Baker's reaction could be interpreted, he appeared to be in sympathy. So did Deaver. The President did not seem to be surprised by the suggestion; evidently he was prepared, in his remarkable equanimity, to listen to the most audacious ideas. I had to say that I was appalled that such a cynical action could even be considered. The agreement, however bitter, however deeply flawed, was a pledge of the honor of the U.S. Government. We just couldn't go back on it. Again, the President, in his quietude, was nodding agreement, but he made no decision, listening instead to both views with impartial receptivity. In the end, the agreement with Iran was honored.
I may have snatched the issue of the Iranian agreements out of the White House staffs hands a bit too brusquely. But their style was new to me; I had never encountered anything quite like it. Earlier that day, the first Cabinet meeting had been held. On entering the Cabinet room, I saw that Meese and Baker were seated at the Cabinet table. This was a startling departure from tradition. H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman at the height of their pride would never have dared such an act of lese-majeste. They were aides, not members of the Cabinet, and they sat against the wall, as all other aides have always done. Deaver was seated there now--but a meeting or so later, he joined the others.
Sitting at the table, the triumvirate of Meese, Baker and Deaver had the schoolboyish habit of scribbling and passing notes among themselves. During the first Cabinet meeting, I wrote on my notepad: "Government by Cabinet or troika?"
Warning Signals For the Soviets
The Soviet Union, at the time of Reagan's Inauguration, possessed greater military power than the U.S., which had gone into a truly alarming military decline even before the withdrawal from Viet Nam accelerated the weakening trend. Reagan was, and remains, President of a U.S. that no longer deploys irresistible economic influence and military power.
But if America is weaker than it was, it is still a superpower. That is a fact of history and nature from which there can be no escape. The U.S., if it does not wish to sow fear and confusion in the world and create conditions of the greatest danger for itself and for all of humanity, must behave like the superpower it is. For all but the final year of Carter's presidency, it had refused to do this, apparently as a matter of conscience.
Because of Viet Nam and Watergate, the U.S. had, for some time before Carter took office, been too distracted to act like a superpower. The consequences were devastating. The balance of the world was disturbed. Our enemy, the Soviet Union, had been seduced by the weakness of the American will and had extended itself far beyond the natural limits of its own apparent interests and influence. Soviet diplomacy is based on tests of will. Since Viet Nam, the U.S. had largely failed these tests. Like the assiduous students of Western vulnerabilities that they are, the Soviets would send out a probe--now in Angola, again in Ethiopia, finally in El Salvador--to test the strength of Western determination. Finding the line unmanned, or only thinly held, they would exploit the gap. From such unstable situations, routs develop.
It was time to close the breach and hold the line. From the experience of the 1970s, I was convinced that the Soviet Union did not want war. But where the U.S. was soft or inconsistent or ambiguous in its policies, the Soviets were increasingly willing to take risks. We had to change that pattern of cause and effect.
No frivolous playground test of manhood was involved here. "Mere confrontation should never be the aim of our policy. If the Reagan Administration came into office with the determination to resist Soviet adventurism, it arrived also with the idea of reopening a realistic dialogue with Moscow.
The weakened position of the American deterrent and dissatisfaction with the results of the earlier Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) had convinced some that the negotiations were too dangerous to be undertaken at all. Conversely, I believed that we could not pursue policies that raised tensions with the U.S.S.R. and at the same time claim we were too weak to negotiate with them. Moreover, the American people would never agree to a posture that supported only a major arms buildup but ruled out negotiations that might produce greater security at less risk. It is the duty of any Administration to listen to the messages contained in great popular movements and to try to understand their deeper meanings. But if the demands of a popular movement are likely, if adopted, to bring about results opposite to the ones desired by the movement, then leaders must not yield to popular pressure. Early in the Administration, when the nuclear-freeze movement was at its apogee, some of the President's advisers urged him to consider calling for a freeze after the level of weapons had been reduced and equalized. This I opposed, and would oppose again, because only the word freeze, not the qualifier "after reduction and equalization," would have registered on the superheated surface of the disarmament issue. The U.S. cannot freeze if its deterrent is in question; the U.S.S.R. would never negotiate the conditions that would permit a freeze if it knew in advance that an American President was committed to a freeze. It would merely wait for him to institutionalize the Soviet advantage. Any commitment to a freeze, at present unstable levels of force, would be a cynical exploitation of a vulnerable popular mood and a signal to the Soviets of precisely the weakness and erosion of integrity that can lead to miscalculation and its unthinkable consequences.
In arms control and in other areas, we wanted to identify questions on which the U.S. and the Soviets could accommodate their interests in ways that advanced peace and social justice. But before that could happen, the Soviets must believe that it was better to accommodate to the U.S. and the West than to go on marauding against their interests and security. Rhetoric would not lead them to this conclusion, only a credible show of will and strength. Even with the American military in a temporary state of post-Viet Nam dysfunction, the U.S. and its friends had enough assets to be able to deal with the Soviets and their proxies with confidence. No one knew this better than the Soviets.
The Soviet Union is not a buoyant imperial power, having its way whenever and wherever it chooses with an America that has come to the end of its moral capital. In fact, the Soviet Union is a deeply troubled and most vulnerable power, beset by problems that cannot be solved by its atrophying system and its doctrinaire leadership. Moscow is overextended militarily and economically. The Russian Revolution has become a frozen orthodoxy. Its objective is not change but conformity.
After the Carter experiment in obsequiousness, and the criticism and uncertainty it stimulated among our allies and friends, there was an imperative need to deal with the Soviet question. With the election of Ronald Reagan, the U.S. confronted a great opportunity. If it could shake off its lethargy and abandon its self-doubt, it could lead the free world into a new era of stability, peace and social progress. My years in Europe had convinced me that our allies thirsted for American leadership. Other nations wanted the reassurance, the freedom to develop, that only a strong American advocacy of the rule of law and peaceful change can provide. The Third World was ready to seek new areas of cooperation with the West.
The new President, in his first days, had to move against the climate of uncertainty. With our military strength at the ebb and our economy in trouble, we had to proceed with care. Nevertheless, strong signals were needed. A new President has perhaps 18 months to put the framework and substance of his foreign policy into place. After that, he will be shackled by his critics and distracted by the exigencies of the next election.
The morning of an Administration is the best time to send signals. Our signal to the Soviets had to be a plain warning that their time of unresisted adventuring in the Third World was over, and that America's capacity to tolerate the mischief of Moscow's proxies, Cuba and Libya, had been exceeded. Our signal to other nations must be equally simple and believable: once again, a relationship with the U.S. would bring dividends, not just risks.
"All I Hear Is Cuba, Cuba, Cuba!"
Signals were particularly necessary in Central America. It was typical that Americans would be reluctant to treat El Salvador as a strategic problem with global implications. Historically, we have been slow to think and act in these terms. It has cost us dearly. After World War II, an American Secretary of State declared that Korea was not within the U.S. sphere of interes.. A short time later, North Korean troops attacked across the 38th parallel. A few months later, entering Seoul with elements of X Corps, I saw evidence of Soviet military presence down to the battalion level in the North Korean army.
A decade later, the war in Viet Nam should have taught us that such an expression of North Vietnamese imperialism could not have taken place without the massive support of the U.S.S.R. Yet we chose not to take the issue to the Soviet Union or even, in a meaningful way, to Hanoi. We chose, instead, to tangle ineffectually with the puppets, rather than the puppetmasters.
Central America offered another chance to show we had learned this lesson. The war in El Salvador seemed to be a slale-mate. No stalemate could have existed without the massive support of outside sources. I believed that through economic, political and security measures we should persuade the Soviets and Cubans to put an end to Havana's bloody activities in the hemisphere and elsewhere in the world. In Central America there could not be the slightest doubt that Cuba was at once the source of supply and the catechist of the Salvadoran insurgency.
The insurgents said that they financed their war with the proceeds of bank robberies and ransoms paid by rich relatives of kidnaped members of the exploiting classes. Many accepted these explanations. The will to disbelieve our own governments is a very strong force in America and the West. We ran into this phenomenon when, in February 1981, we published a State Department White Paper called "Communist Interference in El Salvador." The White Paper's critics brought in the Scottish verdict: not proven. Perhaps no defense of the paper would have been equal to the task of quieting the outrage. We had told impermissible truths.
To understand the circumstances of life it Central America is to wish to change those circumstances. No one could be unmoved by the spectacle of poverty and social injustice in a country like El Salvador. Merely by taking up arms against these conditions, the insurgents won a measure of idealistic international sympathy and trust. What the rebels had done in fact was to add murder, terrorism and inestimable sorrow to the miseries of the people.
The Reagan Administration was concerned with human rights. But publicly denouncing friends on questions of human rights while minimizing the abuse of those rights in the Soviet Union and other totalitarian countries was at an end. El Salvador, vital though the preservation of its democratic future is, represents a symptom of dangerous conditions in the Americas--Cuban adventurism, Soviet strategic ambition.
When I was a private citizen, President Jose Lopez Portillo of Mexico had told me that the difficulty he had had it a domestic Mexican sense in dealing with the Carter Administration was that, in his words, "a President of Mexico cannot survive by taking positions to the right of the President of the U.S."
Months later, as Secretary of State, I found myself seated next to the Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. at a dinner. He leaned over and made an offer. Would the new Administration like to open a discreet line of communication with the rebels in El Salvador? I exploded: no longer, I said, would Washington deal secretly with insurgents who were attempting to overthrow legal governments in the Western Hemisphere. In the next four years, the Americas would see a determined U.S. effort to stamp out Cuban-supported subversion.
The Ambassador was at first startled by my vehemence, but he gripped my hand warmly. "For years," he said fervently, "I have been waiting for an American to speak words such as these. Tonight I will go home and sleep well!"
There was another envoy who needed to hear the message. This was the Soviet Ambassador, Anatoli Dobrynin. "It's good to see you back in Washington, Al," he said when he made his first call on me at the State Department. "You belong here." Coming quickly to the point, I raised with him the question of the transshipment of Soviet arms through Nicaragua to the insurgents in El Salvador. "All lies," said Dobrynin.
"Photographs don't lie," I replied, for the U.S. had been gathering intelligence on arms smuggling for a period of a year or more from human agents and by technological means like satellite photography. "The U.S. is profoundly disturbed by Cuban activities in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the world."
Dobrynin said this was certainly no way to start an Administration. How, he asked, should the U.S. and the Soviet Union begin to develop a dialogue? I said, "It is not acceptable to talk peace while acting differently. One statement we can never accept is [President Leonid] Brezhnev's insistence on your right to support so-called wars of liberation whenever and wherever targets of opportunity develop."
This was a flash point. Dobrynin said he could recall no such policy. It would be very unfortunate, he added, if the Soviet leadership formed the impression that the Reagan Administration was hostile to the U.S.S.R., because first impressions often persisted.
"Not hostile," I said. "Offended by Soviet excesses. Confident, determined, prepared to do what is necessary. The Soviet leadership must know that there must be change, for the future good of both sides." Then and subsequently, I stressed our concern with Cuba's role as a Soviet proxy.
Dobrynin complained, "All I ever hear from you is Cuba, Cuba, Cuba!" It is true that I raised that subject often. Cuban troops in Ethiopia were the praetorian guard of a regime whose policy had caused inestimable suffering. Cuban troops in Angola were the chief impediment to a settlement that might bring peace to that country and independence to neighboring Namibia. But it was the role of Cuba in the insurgency in El Salvador that engaged our attention in the most urgent manner.
There was not, however, a unity of views within the Administration over how to respond. Very nearly the first words spoken on the subject of Central America it the councils of the Reagan Administration made reference to the danger of "another Viet Nam." Indeed, this danger existed, if Reagan repeated the errors of the past and resorted to incrementalism. To start small, to show hesitation, to localize our response was to Vietnamize the situation. If it is easier to escalate step by small step, it is easier for an adversary to respond to each step with a response that is strong enough to compel yet another escalation on our part. That is the lesson of Viet Nam. If an objective is worth pursuing, then it must be pursued with enough resources to force the issue early.
The President was buffeted by the winds of opinion and tugged by the advice of those who doubted the wisdom of a decisive policy based on the strategic considerations I have outlined. One camp favored a low-key treatment of El Salvador as a local problem and sought to cure it through limited military and economic aid, along with certain covert measures. In that camp were Vice President Bush, Defense Secretary Weinberger, Director of Central Intelligence Casey (with reservations), National Security Adviser Allen and most of the others. Together with Baker and Deaver, Meese was the leading voice for caution and slow decision. Meese's keen legal mind detected the risks; his deep loyalty and affection for the President made him protective.
Some of Reagan's highest aides counseled against diluting the impact of his domestic program with a foreign undertaking that would generate tremendous noise in the press and in Congress. Weinberger genuinely feared the creation of another unmanageable tropical war into which American troops and money would be poured with no result different from Viet Nam. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, chastened by Viet Nam, in which our troops performed with admirable success but were declared to have been defeated, and by the steady decline of respect for the military--and the decline of military budgets--resisted a major commitment. I sensed, and understood, a doubt on the part of the military in the political will of the civilians at the top to follow through to the end on such a commitment.
I was virtually alone in the other camp, which favored giving military and economic aid to El Salvador while bringing the overwhelming economic strength and political influence of the U.S., together with the reality of its military power, to bear on Cuba in order to treat the problem at its source. In my view that the potential strategic gain from this combination of measures far outweighed the risks, and that the U.S. could contain any Soviet countermeasures, I was isolated.
Fortunately, the protracted nature of our discussions did not produce total paralysis. The aircraft carriers Eisenhower and Kennedy with their battle groups totaling some 30 ships were sent on routine Atlantic Fleet maneuvers in the waters around Cuba. An existing task force was upgraded to the status of Caribbean Command. Even these limited actions produced results.
Castro ordered antiaircraft guns placed on the roofs of Havana during our naval exercises. The flow of arms into Nicaragua and thence into El Salvador slackened, a signal from Havana and Moscow that they had received and understood the American message. From many sources we heard that the Cuban was nervous, that he desired contacts with the Americans.
In late February, one of Richard Allen's staff assistants, Roger Fontaine, took the unusual step of trying to arrange a meeting with Castro through Jack Anderson, the columnist. Anderson, it seems, knew a Cuban exile in Miami who claimed to have arranged for the passing of messages between the Castro regime and previous U.S. Administrations. Fontaine met the Cuban in Anderson's office. The question of opening a secret channel to Havana was discussed. The President's name was invoked.
When word of this reached me, I telephoned Meese, Allen's effective superior, to talk about its implications. We had spent weeks putting fear into the hearts of the Cubans and getting results. This diversion undermined the whole effort. Meese seemed to understand my objections. The President could not have been aware of this, he said; he had told Allen not to meet with foreigners without prior clearance from the State Department.
Castro's approaches became more frequent. Finally, it began to seem that nothing could be lost by testing the waters. On Nov. 23, the Cuban Vice President, Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, and I met in Mexico City, in strictest secrecy and with President Reagan's approval. Rodriguez seemed less a fearsome revolutionary than a cosmopolitan member of the privileged classes. Educated by the Jesuits, a Castroite from the first days, a trusted collaborator of the Soviet Union, he is probably the guarantee in human form that the Cuban revolution will outlive Castro.
The last thing Cuba wanted, Rodriguez said, was a confrontation with the U.S. The U.S. was mistaken, even irrational, to think that Cuba was involved in El Salvador. Cuba could not renounce its right to solidarity with revolutionary masses elsewhere in the world, but Cuba did not want a confrontation by mistake.
Clearly the Cubans were very anxious. Actually, Castro and Rodriguez had more reason to be nervous than they knew. In my conversations with Dobrynin, I continued to press the question of Cuban adventurism. Dobrynin's response convinced me that Cuban activities in the Western Hemisphere were a matter between the U.S. and Cuba. Castro had fallen between two superpowers.
"I'm in Control Here'
In a severe crisis, the fate of the nation is at stake, and the ultimate crisis manager must be the President. In 1973, during the October War, the U.S. received an ultimatum from the Soviet Union: either the Israeli forces that were driving across the Sinai withdraw, or the U.S.S.R. would intervene, possibly with airborne troops. The Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, suggested to me that this crisis could be managed in the State Department. As the White House chief of staff, I insisted, on instructions from the President, that it must be brought under control by the President, in the White House, with the support of State and other agencies. The Soviet challenge was handled in the West Wing Situation Room of the White House. U.S. strategic forces went to a higher state of readiness, a strong reply to the Soviet ultimatum was sent to Moscow, and the President won out. In the Reagan Administration, I envisaged the State Department providing whatever assistance the President required in the area of crisis management, in support of whatever system he decided he wanted to use. But no pre-eminent role was even sought for the State Department or the Secretary of State.
On March 22,1981,1 read on the front page of the Washington Post an article that quoted senior White House officials saying that Vice President Bush would be in charge of a new structure for national-security crisis management. To place a Vice President in charge of crisis management would be a departure, but the vice presidency can be almost anything the President wants it to be. Nixon, who literally "learned" the presidency in eight years under Eisenhower, isolated Spiro Agnew as if he were a bacillus. In at least one White House meeting that I attended, President Johnson allotted the loquacious Hubert Humphrey five minutes in which to speak ("Five minutes, Hubert!"); then Johnson stood by, eyes fixed on the sweep-second hand of his watch, while Humphrey spoke, and when the Vice President went over the limit, pushed him, still talking, out of the room.
Reagan, on the other hand, respected Bush's experience and listened to his views. I phoned Ed Meese on Monday morning and asked if there was any truth in the article in the Post. "None whatsoever," Meese replied.
Subsequently Reagan called me into the Oval Office. He wore an expression of concern. "I want you to know," he said, "that the story in the Post is a fabrication. It means that George would sit in for me in the NSC in my absence, and that's all it means. It doesn't affect your authority in any way." Later that same day, he called me on the phone, evidently to reassure me a second time: "Al, I want you to know that you are my foreign policy guy." One hour later the President's press secretary made a statement formally confirming that Bush would indeed chair the Administration's "crisis management" team.
This was a stunning sequence of events. I called in my deputy, William Clark, who knew the mind of the President. "Something is wrong here," he said. "The President wouldn't do a thing like this. Let me go over to the White House and find out what happened."
I called my wife; she had already heard the news on television. "Don't unpack, honey," I told her with forced cheeriness. That night I slept fitfully. There were no more calls from the President, and no word from Bill Clark.
The following morning I began dictating the draft of a letter of resignation, although I did not sign it. The possibility that matters could be explained still existed. Word of my "threat to resign" quickly leaked to the press. I called Vice President Bush. "The American people can't be served by this," I told him. "Of course you chair the NSC in the President's absence. We didn't need to say it. I have been dealt with duplicitously, George. The President has been used. I need a public reaffirmation of my role or I can't stay here."
Soon Reagan called. In fact, he was able to explain the misunderstanding. He regarded the new arrangement as a mere housekeeping detail, a formality. Lack of communication, aggravated by staff mischief, was the root problem. I was convinced that Ed Meese had been as misled as the President. The trouble lay elsewhere in the President's staff.
Reagan said that he had received complaints from other Cabinet officers about "steamroller tactics" in connection with issues that interested me. Perhaps the President agreed with them.
"Do we have different conceptions of what your foreign policy should be, Mr. President?" I asked.
Reagan, exasperated, raised his voice. "Damn it, Al," he said, "we have the same views, and I need you!"
A few days later--at 2:35 p.m. on Monday, March 30--the State Department command center informed me that the television networks were reporting that a gunman had fired shots at President Reagan as he left the Washington Hilton Hotel but that the President had escaped injury. I picked up a telephone connected to a direct White House line. James Baker told me that the first report was inaccurate. The President had been struck "in the back" by a bullet. "It looks quite serious," Baker said. "I'm going to the hospital."
Vice President Bush was in Texas. "I will move immediately to the White House," I said. Baker agreed. "You will be my point of contact."
In my car, my mind filled with memories of the day on which President Kennedy was assassinated and the sense of shock and sorrow that overcame the nation. Now the terrible blow had fallen again. On arrival at the White House, I learned that all the President's senior aides had rushed to the hospital. "Has the Vice President been informed?" I asked. The answer was no. Bush was airborne, flying from Dallas to Austin. I telephoned him on his plane and recommended he return to Washington at once. To Allen, I suggested that the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General and the director of Central Intelligence be asked to join Secretary of the Treasury Donald Regan, who was already present, Allen and me in the Situation Room.
Weinberger and Casey were the last to arrive. Each member of the crisis team in ,his turn gave the newcomers a report on his activities. Weinberger seemed somewhat selfconscious. Perhaps he was embarrassed by his late arrival. Abruptly, he said, "I have raised the alert status of our forces."
I was shocked. Any such change would be detected promptly by the Soviet Union. In response, the Russians might raise their own alert status, and that could cause a further escalation on our side. The news would exacerbate the existing climate of anxiety and anger and fear. Moreover, the Soviet leaders might very well conclude that the U.S., in a flight of paranoia, believed that the U.S.S.R. was involved in the attempt to assassinate the President. Why would we alert our military forces if a lone psychotic had been responsible?
"Cap," I said, "what do you mean? Will you please tell us exactly what you've done." He had some difficulty specifying. This was natural enough: he had been Secretary of Defense for barely 70 days, hardly long enough to absorb the complete vocabulary of the job. I kept pressing him. He said he had ordered pilots of the Strategic Air Command to their bases.
"Then you've raised the Defcon [defense condition]," I said. He disagreed. This raised the temperature of the conversation. I began to suspect that Weinberger did not know what he had done. He left the room to telephone in private. He was absent for perhaps ten minutes. When he returned, he told us, unequivocally, that he had not formally raised the alert status of our forces. He had merely sent a message to field commanders informing them officially of the situation in Washington. Most important, U.S. strategic forces remained in their normal defense condition.
A short time later, I turned my chair and craned to hear what the assistant White House press secretary, Larry Speakes, was saying on television. The room was hushed. It was oppressively hot. It appeared that Speakes had been waylaid by the press as he returned to the White House from the hospital, and he was fending off hard questions that reporters were hurling at him.
An official White House spokesman was being asked who was running the government at a time of national crisis, and he was responding that he did not know. He was being asked if the country was being defended, and he was saying that he did not know. This was no fault of Speakes'. He had not been part of our group. "This is very bad," Allen said. "We have to do something." "We've got to get him off," I said. Allen and I dashed out of the Situation Room and ran headlong up the narrow stairs. Then we hurried along the jigsaw passageways of the West Wing and into the press room. With Allen at my side, I made the following statement:
"I just wanted to touch on a few matters associated with today's tragedy. First, as you know, we are in close touch with the Vice President, who is returning to Washington. We have in the Situation Room all of the officials of the Cabinet who should be here at this time. We have informed our friends abroad of the situation. The President's condition, as we know it, is stable, [he is] now undergoing surgery. There are absolutely no alert measures that are necessary at this time that we're contemplating."
I then took questions and was asked, "Who is making the decisions for the government right now?"
My reply: "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."
On my return to the Situation Room, Weinberger expressed displeasure at my statement on the alert status of American forces. I was surprised. "Cap, are we or are we not on an increased alert status?" Instead of answering my question in direct fashion, he made some remarks that were less than relevant about the status of Soviet submarines off our coasts.
Weinberger added that Ed Meese had told him on the telephone that the Secretary of Defense was third in line of command after the President and Vice President. On defense matters, this was quite true, but the question was moot. The Vice President would be back in Washington in little more than two hours.
My remark that I was "in control... pending return of the Vice President" was a statement of the fact that I was the senior Cabinet officer present. I was talking about the arrangements we had made in the Situation Room for the three-or four-hour period in which we awaited the return of the Vice President from Texas. Less precise, though in the same context, was my statement that "constitutionally ... you have the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of State, in that order." I ought to have said "traditionally" or "administratively" instead of "constitutionally."
If, at the time, anyone had suggested to me that I believed that the Secretary of State was third in order of succession to the President, the press would have had the pleasure of even more vivid quotes. For many months, in this same house, I had lived hourly with the question of succession in case of the removal first of a Vice President and then of a President; I knew the Constitution by heart on this subject.*
My appearance on the screen that night became a celebrated media happening. Edited versions were played and replayed many times in the days to come. Even if I wished to do so, it is now far too late to correct the impressions that it made, but I may be forgiven for saying that I regard the way in which the tape was edited, especially by CBS, as the height of technical artistry. The television camera is the siege machine of the 20th century. Perhaps the camera and microphone magnified the effects of my spring up the stairs. Possibly I should have washed my face or taken half a dozen deep breaths before going on camera. The fact is, I was not thinking about my appearance. I was wholly intent on correcting any impression of confusion and indecision that Speakes' words may have inadvertently created. Certainly I was guilty of a poor choice of words, and optimistic if I imagined that I would be forgiven the imprecision out of respect for the tragedy of the occasion.
The "take charge" image had taken hold even before March 30. Only a few weeks before, my photograph (jaw jutting, arms akimbo) had been on the cover of TIME magazine. With the insouciant hyperbole for which that publication is famous, the caption read "Taking Command." Inside, under a bold line reading "The 'Vicar' Takes Charge," the editors devoted several pages of snare-drum prose to an account of my life and a description of the Reagan foreign policy. ABC reported: "The sight of Alexander Haig taking command on the cover of TIME magazine was more than some of the President's aides could take, and since its publication there have been several obvious White House putdowns ... The problem seems to be that some of Mr. Reagan's closest advisers see Haig as a political competitor who must be reminded that while he may be vicar, he is not the Pope."
In days to follow, my vicarhood was recertified by "officials" and "presidential assistants" with more zeal than was perhaps good for it. When I departed two days later for a diplomatic tour of the Middle East, the White House, in an official statement, said that I was leaving "in the full colors of the Secretary of State and with the full confidence of the President." TIME described the issuance of the statement as an "extraordinary step." So it was. Never had so many anonymous people been so eager to reassure the world in such an intensive way that I was not only competent, I was also quite "steady." But newsmen, canny skeptics that they are, were stimulated by all this reassurance to ask themselves, and their readers: If this fellow is really all right, why do they insist on telling us that he's all right?
* The Presidential Succession Act of 1947, not the Constitution, specifies that after the Vice President, the presidency passes to the Speaker of the House, then to the president pro tempore of the Senate, then to the Secretary of State, then down through the Cabinet. It was according to this law that Speaker of the House Carl Albert was, for almost two months in 1973, in line to succeed Nixon after the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew. Nixon appointed Gerald Ford as Vice President under the terms of the 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967.