Not Always in Control: An Alexander Haig Remembrance

Alexander Meigs Haig Jr. was a patriot, a resolute warrior, an embattled diplomat, and an unsuccessful politician. When he died Saturday at the age of 85, the obituaries inevitably focused on the shortcomings of Haig's diplomacy and politics, especially during a stormy and short-lived tenure as President Ronald Reagan's secretary of state. But Alexander Haig was also a fine soldier who served his country with bravery on the battlefield in Vietnam and commanded the military forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with considerable skill during a crucial period of the Cold War.

Overcoming the handicap of finishing 214^th in a class of 310 at West Point in 1947, Haig was promoted rapidly and served as a general and brigade commander in the Vietnam War, where he won the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions during the battle of Ap Gu in March 1967. As Haig surveyed the battlefield, his low-flying helicopter was hit by enemy fire. The chopper went down but Haig pulled himself from the wreckage and in two days of bloody hand-to-hand combat led his troops to victory over a Viet Cong force that outnumbered the U.S. soldiers 3-1.

Earlier in the war Haig won a Purple Heart when his face was scarred by shrapnel from an exploding grenade. Even off the battlefield, he was a target. In 1979, in the final week of a successful five-year tour as supreme Allied commander in Europe, Haig amazingly escaped injury when his car was thrown into the air by a bomb blast. Members of the radical Red Army Faction were convicted for the assassination attempt.

But on the civilian stage Al Haig did not replicate his charmed life as a soldier. He was serving as a deputy national security aide to President Richard Nixon in 1973 when the deepening Watergate scandal forced the resignation of H.R. Haldeman, the White House chief of staff. Haig took over for Haldeman and behind the scenes took on more and more of Nixon's responsibilities. In the six weeks before Nixon resigned the presidency in disgrace in August 1974 Haig was so influential that he was, as special prosecutor Leon Jaworski called him, the "thirty-seventh-and-a-half president."

As a reporter covering the fall of Nixon for the Washington Post, I remember being summoned in July to Al Haig's office in San Clemente, known as "the western White House." Haig had seen a story in which I wrote that in San Clemente the Nixon administration had already "passed into history."

After putting me at ease about the story, Haig assured me that the Constitution of the United States would be observed no matter what happened in the days ahead. It was his way of saying there would be no coup to keep Nixon in power, a fantastic notion that nonetheless had currency at the time. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein later revealed that Haig, after being told by the White House doctor that he feared a Nixon suicide, had taken away the pills by which Nixon might have accomplished this.

Fast forward to the White House briefing room after the March 30, 1981, attempt on President Reagan's life. Reagan, wounded by a bullet that narrowly missed his heart, is fighting for his life at George Washington Hospital. Alexander Haig, now the secretary of state is at the podium, with his voice quavering and his hands trembling.

"As of now," Haig said, "I am in control here in the White House, pending the return of the vice president and in close touch with him (Vice President George H.W. Bush was flying back from Texas). If something came up I would check with him, of course."

Haig went on to misstate the order of presidential succession -- as secretary of state he was fourth in line -- but his greater problem in this nationally televised briefing was that Haig did not seem in control of anything. He was from that moment persona non grata with Reagan's White House staff, whom Haig called "hambones." Although it would take more than another year before these hambones, joined by Nancy Reagan, forced Haig's resignation, the writing was on the wall from the moment of this disastrous briefing.

What, I wondered, had happened to the confident Haig who had used the media to assure the world that Gerald Ford would replace Nixon in a peaceful transition of power? I had earlier had a glimpse of the new and shakier Haig during an interview of the Secretary of State conducted with a Washington Post colleague, Lee Lescaze. During the interview Haig made a slight mistake in citing the number of radar surveillance aircraft, known as AWACS, that the United States was in the process of providing to Saudi Arabia. Not wishing to see the wrong number wind up in the story, an aide corrected Haig. This proved to be unwise. The Secretary of State blew his top, launching a fiery tirade against the aide before calming down and completing the interview. Lescaze, who knew Haig, told me afterward he'd never seen him like that. As it turned out, Haig was under considerable stress from battling his perceived enemies in the White House. He'd also had open-heart surgery in 1980, which a doctor told me sometimes induces changes in behavior.

Reagan, for his part, was amazed to find out that the great general he had brought into his administration was at war with his most trusted aides. Even so, Reagan respected Haig's abilities. Praising him for his analysis of the Falklands situation in a diary entry a few weeks before Haig's departure, Reagan wrote, "Al Haig made great sense on this entire matter. It's amazing how sound he can be on complex international matters but how utterly paranoid with regard to the people he must work with."

In his memoir, An American Life, Reagan wrote that he'd discovered only a few months into the administration that "Al didn't want anyone other than himself, including me, to influence foreign policy while he was Secretary of State." In the end, Haig was maneuvered into firing himself. He submitted a letter of resignation he thought Reagan would reject. Instead, it was quickly accepted.

Ronald Reagan and Al Haig shared a profound distaste for communism and the Soviet Union and a determination to rebuild the U.S. military. But the buildup was for Reagan a means to the end of getting the Soviets to the bargaining table. George P. Shultz, who replaced Haig, was better suited for this task. After Haig left the White House, his foes depicted him, not quite fairly, as a mad bomber. They cited in particular a national security meeting where Haig had talked of turning Cuba into an expletive -- deleted "parking lot." Haig said he was saying this for effect and didn't understand why his words created such a fuss. In fact, Haig was more nuanced in his anti-Soviet approach than many people realized. As NATO commander, he quietly cooperated with Irving Brown, the AFL-CIO representative in Europe to aid Lech Walesa when he was emerging as the Communist nemesis in Poland.

In 1988, Haig half-heartedly offered himself as a presidential candidate as an alternative to Vice President Bush. The Haig candidacy never became airborne. Haig dutifully supported Bush for president but continued his feud with former Reagan aides he thought had conspired against him. But with the passage of time, Haig's service to his country in easing out Nixon has received neglected recognition by historians while his heroism in Vietnam was valued mostly by his fellow veterans and scholars of that difficult war.

The New York Times obituary on Haig called him "a rare American breed: a political general." For better or for worse, however, the breed is common, beginning with our first president, George Washington, and continuing through Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant, Douglas MacArthur Dwight D. Eisenhower and Colin Powell among others. Among this group, Haig stands with Grant and MacArthur as a superior soldier who failed to master the intricacies of civilian politics.

He died a hero nonetheless. President Barack Obama said on Saturday that Al Haig "exemplified our finest warrior-diplomat tradition of those who dedicate their lives to public service." And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added, that the fallen general had "served his country in many capacities for many years, earning honor on the battlefield, the confidence of presidents and prime ministers, and the thanks of a grateful nation."