Alexander Haig, General Haig, has passed.
Here is what the Associated Press has to say about it:
Former Secretary of State Alexander
Haig, a four-star general who served as a top adviser to three presidents
and had presidential ambitions of his own, died Saturday of complications from
an infection, his family said. He was 85.
Haig's long and decorated military
career launched the Washington career for which he is better known, including
top posts in the Nixon,
Ford and Reagan administrations.He never lived down his televised response to
the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald
Reagan.
Hours after the shooting, then Secretary of State Haig went
before the cameras intending, he said later, to reassure Americans that the White
House was functioning.
"As of now, I am in control here in the White
House, pending the return of the vice president," Haig said.
Some saw the
comment as an inappropriate power grab in the absence of Vice President George
H.W. Bush, who was flying back to Washington from Texas.
Haig
died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where he was surrounded by his
family, according to two of his children, Alexander and Barbara. A hospital
spokesman, Gary Stephenson, said Haig died at about 1:30 a.m.
In his book,
"Caveat," Haig later wrote that he had been "guilty of a poor choice of words
and optimistic if I had imagined I would be forgiven the imprecision out of
respect for the tragedy of the occasion."
Haig ran unsuccessfully for
president in 1988.
"I think of him as a patriot's patriot," said George P.
Shultz, who succeeded Haig as the country's top diplomat in 1982.
"No matter
how you sliced him it came out red, white and blue. He was always willing to
serve."
Born Dec. 2, 1924, in the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd,
Alexander Meigs Haig spent his boyhood days dreaming about a career in the
military. With the help of an uncle who had congressional contacts, he secured
an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1943.
After
seeing combat in Korea and Vietnam,
Haig — an Army colonel at the time — was tapped by Henry
Kissinger to be his military adviser on the National Security Council under
Nixon. Haig "soon became indispensable," Kissinger later said of his
protege.
Nixon promoted Haig in 1972 from a two-star general to a four-star
rank, passing over 240 high-ranking officers with greater seniority.
The next
year, as the Watergate scandal deepened, Nixon turned to Haig and appointed him
to succeed H.R. Haldeman
as White House chief of staff. He helped the president prepare his impeachment
defense — and as Nixon was preoccupied with Watergate, Haig handled many of the
day-to-day decisions normally made by the chief executive.
On Nixon's behalf,
Haig also helped arrange the wiretaps of government officials and reporters, as
the president tried to plug the sources of news leaks.
About a year after
assuming his new post as Nixon's right-hand man, Haig was said to have played a
key role in persuading the president to resign. He also suggested to Gerald
Ford that he pardon his predecessor for any crimes committed while in office
— a pardon that is widely believed to have cost Ford the presidency in
1976.
Years after serving as one of Nixon's closest aides, Haig would be
dogged by speculation that he was "Deep Throat" —
the shadowy source who helped Washington
Post reporters Bob
Woodward and Carl
Bernstein break the Watergate story. Haig denied it, repeatedly, and the FBI's Mark Felt was
eventually revealed as the secret source.
Following Nixon's resignation, Haig
stayed with the new Ford administration for about six weeks, but then returned
to the military as commander in chief of U.S. forces in Europe and supreme
allied commander of NATO forces — a post he held for more than four years. He
quit during the Carter administration over the handling of the Iran hostage
crisis.
Haig briefly explored a run for presidency in 1979, but decided
he didn't have enough support and instead took a job as president of United
Technologies — his first job in the private sector since high school.
When
Ronald Reagan became the 40th president of the United
States, Haig returned to public service as Reagan's secretary of state, and
declared himself the "vicar of American foreign policy."
His 17-month tenure
was marked by turf wars with other top administration officials — including
Defense Secretary Caspar
Weinberger and national security adviser William
Clark.
Two months into the new administration, Haig was portrayed as
pounding a table in frustration when the chairmanship of a crisis management
team went to Bush. Despite the clashes, Haig received high praise from
professional diplomats for trying to achieve a stable relationship with the
Soviet Union.
In his book, Haig said he had concluded during a 1982 trip to
Europe with the president that the "effort to write my character out of the
script was underway with a vengeance." He resigned days later.
Describing
himself as a "dark horse," Haig sought the Republican
presidential nomination for the 1988 elections. On the campaign trail, he told
supporters about his desire to "keep the Reagan revolution alive," but he also
railed against the administration's bulging federal deficit — calling it an
embarrassment to the GOP.
Haig dropped out of the race just days before the
New Hampshire primary.
During his career in public service, Haig became known
for some of his more colorful or long-winded language. When asked by a judge to
explain an 18 1/2-minute gap in one of the Nixon tapes, Haig responded: "Perhaps
some sinister force had come in."
And later, when he criticized Reagan's
"fiscal flabbiness," Haig asserted that the "ideological religiosity" of the
administration's economic policies were to blame for doubling the national debt
to $2 trillion in 1987.
Haig is survived by his wife of 60 years, Patricia;
his children Alexander, Brian and Barbara; eight grandchildren; and his brother,
the Rev. Francis R. Haig.
WFDS
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