Alexander Haig: military leader and political figure

Alexander Haig

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Unfortunately, Alexander Haig will be forever known as the man who stated that "I am in control" of the Reagan White House after the President was shot in 1981. "The helm is right here," he said to members of the Reagan cabinet, "and that means right in this chair for now..." (Weiner). Then, a few minutes later, he repeated similar words to the nation from the White House press room. Of course, he wasn't. As Secretary of State at the time, he would have been fourth in line of succession.

But he was also in charge during the last of the tumultuous Watergate months of President Nixon, and, according to almost all experts, steered the White House through the critical final days of that president's administration. Henry Kissinger credits him with holding the government together (Weiner).

As we will see, he was a controversial figure in almost every position he held. Promoted from colonel to four-star general during the Nixon years, over 240 other more senior officers and without a battlefield command, he was ultimately fired by President Reagan from his Secretary of State position after only 18 months due to his "turf" wars with Reagan's advisors. He spent such as inordinate amount of time defending his positions that even the president became alarmed at the amount of unfinished business at the State Department under Haig (Thomson Gale).

Early Years

Haig was born in a classy suburb of Philadelphia in 1924. His father, Alexander, a well-to-do lawyer and assistant city solicitor of Philadelphia, died of cancer, when Haig was ten years old. The comfortable lifestyle ended with his father's death, but young Alexander found several part-time jobs and was able to save enough money to enroll at Notre Dame in 1942. He stayed at the catholic university for two years, and then, thanks only to an uncle with political connections, received an appointment to West Point. Haig's academic performance and his qualifications to attend the military academy were minimal, at best. He graduated in 1947 with only 92 cadets of 310 graduating lower than he did. He was fortunate that, due to World War II, academics had been eliminated at West Point in some of the areas that Haig would have performed at less than a satisfactory level, such as English, and history, so that those attending could graduate in three years rather than the usual four. It is known that his classmates labeled him as "having strong convictions and even stronger ambitions." His tenure at the academy was unremarkable and could hardly have predicted the incredibly successful career he was about to embark upon (Jackson).

Military Career

After a couple of initial training courses at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and Fort Riley, Kansas, he was attached to the First Cavalry Division in Japan. In 1950, he married Patricia Fox, the daughter of one of his commanding general officers, General Alonzo Fox, who was assigned to General Douglas MacArthur's Tokyo headquarters for the U.S. occupation forces. He would later describe MacArthur's headquarters as an alternative court to Emperor Hirohito's. The experience with MacArthur and his excessive enjoyment of power, evidently left a great impression on Haig. And the initial North Korean attack of the Korean War in mid-1950 brought home to Haig how unprepared MacArthur and his command had become for its military vs. its political role in the Far East. It would forever impress upon Haig that the communists would always be knocking on the front door.

All during his career, Haig was somehow able to attract the attention of general officers. He served as administrative assistant to the chief-of-staff of Far East Command, Major General Edward Almond, who was known as a stern taskmaster to those who worked for him. Then, in 1950, during the Korean War Haig became an aide to the Tenth Corps Commander. As a captain, that same year, he did see combat in Korea and participated in General MacArthur's landings at Inchon, and the Battle of Chosin Reservoir (Thomson Gale). For his Korean service in four campaigns, he was awarded two Silver Stars and a Bronze Star with Valor device.

He suffered a bout with hepatitis after the Korean War and was reassigned to Fort Knox, then served on the faculty at West Point. His career began to blossom, and he was promoted to major in 1957, spent the next four years at U.S. Army Europe, Naval War College and Georgetown University, where he received his M.A. In international relations. A promotion to lieutenant colonel followed in 1962 (Answers Corp.). He then served at the Pentagon until 1966, where he ended up as Military Assistant to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

Viet Nam followed:

"When two of his companies were engaged by a large hostile force, Colonel Haig landed amid a hail of fire, personally took charge of the units, called for artillery and air fire support and succeeded in soundly defeating the insurgent force...the next day a barrage of 400 rounds was fired by the Viet Cong, but it was ineffective because of the warning and preparations by Colonel Haig. As the barrage subsided, a force three times larger than his began a series of human wave assaults on the camp. Heedless of the danger himself, Colonel Haig repeatedly braved intense hostile fire to survey the battlefield. His personal courage and determination, and his skillful employment of every defense and support tactic possible, inspired his men to fight with previously unimagined power. Although his force was outnumbered three to one, Colonel Haig succeeded in inflicting 592 casualties on the Viet Cong..."

(HQ U.S. Army, Vietnam, General Orders No. 2318 (May 22, 1967)

For this action, Lt. Col. Haig was awarded the Army's second highest medal for valor, the Distinguished Service Cross. He was also awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart, and received a promotion to Colonel as well as brigade commander.

(Author's Note: There are many who will dispute Haig's "heroic" role in Viet Nam as well as insisting he had a "self-serving" purpose for being there. However, I found no substantiation for such charges during my research.)

In 1969, Haig's career took off when he became a military assistant on Henry Kissinger's National Security Council. He was the hardest worker around and the colonel was soon a brigadier general and Henry Kissinger's deputy (Weiner). Viet Nam was his area of expertise and he visited the country frequently between 1970 and 1973.

"He soon became indispensable," Kissinger said of Haig (Gearan). In 1972, at the urging of his National Security Council chief, Nixon promoted Haig from two stars to a four-star rank, thus passing over the 240 higher ranking officers who had more seniority than Haig. As it is often said, it is not what you know but who you know, and Haig now had, in his network of pals, the President of the United States.

Nixon

It was during the final 15 months of President Nixon's presidency, before he resigned in disgrace, that General Alexander Haig became de facto President of the United States in every sense we define the term. While a president struggled to free himself from his own illegal doings, Al Haig kept the White House and the government running.

After Nixon fired H.R. Haldeman as one step in trying to pass the blame from himself, he appointed Haig his chief-of-staff. There is no question in any expert's mind that Haig became the "secret" president at this point -- early in 1973 -- and in a borderline unconstitutional move, assumed the day-to-day duties of an otherwise incapacitated Nixon (Jackson). He also played a major role in the "negotiations" that led to his boss's resignation in August, 1974 and to the appointment of Gerald Ford as vice-president, and ultimately, president.

There is no doubt that, in a questionably unconstitutional role, Alexander Haig handled situations with tact and diplomacy. It was a serious time in our history. Besides Watergate and a vice-president pleading no contest to taking bribes, and with the next in line in succession, House speaker Carl Albert being treated for alcoholism, there was more. The Middle East decided to go to war at that time. and, when President Nixon attempted to fire the Watergate special prosecutor, his own attorney general and deputy resigned. Al Haig had stepped into a quagmire the likes of which had not been seen in the White House before and of which he had little knowledge before being thrust into it.

Haig took the time, and was the first person in the White House, to read the transcripts of the tapes that the president was trying to withhold from the special prosecutor. "When I finished reading it," he says, "I knew that Nixon would never survive -- no way" (Weiner). Only days after the break-in at the Watergate, the president had met with his closest aides and discussed how to cover it up and how to get hush money to the burglars. It was plainly obstruction of justice, and Al Haig knew it immediately.

It must also be noted, however, that, as the president tried to cover his tracks, Al Haig was given orders by Nixon to help him do it. In that capacity, for instance, Haig helped arrange the wiretaps of government officials and reporters (Gearan).

He played a key role in attempting to persuade Nixon to resign. Most believe it was Haig who first suggested to Gerald Ford that he pardon Nixon for his crimes while in office. It was this advice and Ford's acceptance of it that is believed to have cost Ford the presidency in 1976.

In "Nixon: An Oral history of His Presidency," (Strober & Strober, 2003), Haig says this:

"It is totally untrue that I raised the question of pardon with Ford...a series of options was given to him, including pardons...There were five options written by Fred Buzhardt..." And former President Ford, in the same book, confirms that Haig presented him with "five or six different options" (Strober and Strober, p. 474-475)

For years after Nixon's resignation, Haig was hounded by reporters and repeatedly questioned about his role as "Deep Throat" -- the inside source who guided the Washington Post's reporters to break the Watergate story. He denied it steadfastly, and, many years later was proven correct when Mark Felt was identified as "Deep Throat" (Gearan).

Tricia Nixon Cox, daughter of the former president, said, immediately after Haig's passing in February, 2010, that:

"General Haig embodied the spirit of 'duty, honor, country' and the Country had no better servant in war or in peace."In times of crisis, he was a loyal tower of strength for my father and America," she said. "We mourn his passing and are grateful for his distinguished service"(Gearan).

When she spoke of "times of crisis," she was referring to those Watergate years when her

father needed Haig so desperately. One would not think Nixon's own daughter would have specifically referred to Haig's service during this time with such glowing praise were it not true.

Public outcry lasted a long time and beliefs were held quite deep by a good portion of Americans that Ford should not have pardoned Nixon. Two months after Nixon resigned, so did Haig. He left to become supreme allied commander in Europe of all NATO forces. His tenure as an adviser to presidents and his "political" career was over -- or so he may have thought at the time.

Controversy followed him to this new position as well. He disagreed with President Carter over the handling of the Iranian hostage crisis which went on for 444 days, and resigned from his NATO post after four years, retired from the military and served as president of United Technologies for about a year. but, he had great successes at NATO as well. As NATO commander, he, along with Irving Brown, the AFL-CIO representative in Europe, worked behind-the-scenes with Lech Walesa when he was emerging as the Communist arch-rival in Poland.

A little known fact about Haig's tenure as NATO commander was the assassination attempt on his life. It seems Haig, perhaps in a day when political assassinations were not as evident as they are now, always took the same route to his office every day. It was a pattern that the Red Army Faction (RAF), a terrorist group, noticed. In June, 1979, they detonated a land mine under a bridge and under Haig's car. The blast missed Haig, but wounded three of his bodyguards in a following car. It is not known if he alternated his routes to work after that. There had been so much animosity and back-biting over Carter's policies, not only about the hostage crisis, but over what Haig called Carter's "namby-pamby appeasement of the Soviet Union, that he received a call as soon as he arrived back at his office after the assassination attempt. It was Secretary of Defense Harold Brown who deadpanned to Haig, "Al, I just wanted you to know we didn't do it" (Kralev).

The "Haig for President" committee was both formed and dissolved in 1980 as Haig made a feeble run at the White House. He would later make a more serious attempt in 1988, but that would not get off the ground either. In the same "Nixon: An Oral History," Haig was quite vivid in his description of his run for office and his ever-after distaste for politics: "Not being a politician, I think I can say this: The life of a politician in America is sleaze...As Nixon once told me -- and he took great pride in it -- 'Al, I never took a dollar. I had somebody else do it'" (Gearan).

Secretary of State

As he took office in January, 1981, President Reagan asked Haig to become his Secretary of State. He was confirmed in the Senate with an overwhelming positive vote -- just six senators voting against his confirmation.

Besides his infamous gaffe about being in control when Reagan was shot, Haig was also known for what was called "Haig-speak." His nouns became verbs as in: "I'll have to caveat my response, Senator." In Al Haig's world, it meant to say something with a warning that it might or might not be true. He would say: "There are nuance-al differences between Henry Kissinger and me on that," and, "Some sinister force" had erased one of Mr. Nixon's subpoenaed Watergate tapes, creating an 18 1/2-minute gap. In his ongoing battle with the English language he would use terms such as "careful caution," "epistemologically-wise," and, "saddle myself with a statistical fence" (Weiner).

He would serve as Reagan's Secretary of State for 18 months. He declared himself the "vicar of American foreign policy," and marked his short service with continuous turf wars with other administration officials (Gearan).

As we have said, as secretary of state, he is remembered for his "I am in control" statement after Reagan was shot. He later attempted to defend that statement by saying that he wasn't talking about the official presidential line of succession, but "about the executive branch -- who is running the government" (Kralev). It was the beginning of the end for Haig as a member of Reagan's cabinet.

It must be said that, despite his turf wars with various members of the president's staff -- most notably defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and national security adviser William Clark -- he seems to have received quite solid praise from professional diplomats regarding his attempts to solidify a more stable relationship with the Soviet Union (Gearan).