Why Haig Quit
SCHORR, DANIEL
BEYOND AD HOMINEM Why BY DANIEL SCHORR One might have thought they were describing a disturbed child. Al threw tantrums. Al banged the table. Al spoke loudly among soft-spoken people. Nancy...
...policy" to wage "economic warfare" against the Soviets...
...A detailed and accurate report of the NSC session was immediately leaked to New York Times columnist William Safire, to the additional dismay of the State Department...
...In such terms was the first departure from the Reagan Cabinet meant to be recorded for history...
...The President, enjoying the reaction to his relatively pacific speeches, seemed comfortable in the mantle of peacemaker and disarmament advocate...
...opposition to the pipeline...
...But Secretary Vance did resign in 1980 over the abortive attempt to rescue the American hostages from Tehran...
...At the June economic summit in Versailles, Reagan had appeared to go along with a cosmetic agreement that exacted token concessions from America's partners on tighter credit terms for the Communist bloc, without significantly sharpening U.S...
...It was not until after the President had announced Haig's resignation at 3 p.m...
...He believed that he had persuaded President Reagan not to make too great an issue, for the time being, of Israeli withdrawal from theenvironsof Beirut, and even to permit an ambiguous threat of Israeli entry into West Beirut...
...had seemed to lurch from linkage to unlinked arms control negotiations, from sanctions over Poland to refunding of debts and grain sales, from all-out backing of Britain on the Falkland Islands to a voting snafu in the United Nations, from confrontation with Cuba to secret talks with Castro??and back again...
...Nancy Reagan didn't like him...
...In the American system, the issue is less clearly drawn...
...Because the speech was undergoing last-minute changes, no text was available at the advance White House briefing...
...As Haig's letter of resignation was being awaited, senior aides cranked up the White House Ad Hominem machine to provide deep background for the news magazines with weekend deadlines and a thirst for color...
...On June 17, at the United Nations special session on disarmament, he spoke with renewed harshness of the Soviet "record of tyranny...
...Wake Up...
...Haig's most immediate grievance was t he emergence of a two-track policy on Lebanon...
...His effectiveness had been impaired...
...The next day, while Secretary Haig conferred with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei GromykoinNew York, Reagan summoned the National Security Council (NSC) into session and announced that he had decided in favor of his most drastic option on the pipeline...
...Nor would Cyrus Vance, who inherited the ratification battle...
...Now the Administration was calculating how many months, or years, the Soviets would be set back in meeting their energy needs...
...In pressing foreign governments to support American sanctions, he had assured them that no military action was contemplated...
...The President's aides were furious...
...The President, who hates to fire anyone, decided to let him go...
...As has happened before, and surely will happen again, the executor of foreign policy, with no domestic constituency, proved to be expendable...
...President Carter approved the rescue plan primarily for political reasons...
...Haig felt this approach was undercut by separate White House contacts with Saudi Arabia??most recently ameeting between Clark, the President's national security adviser, and Saudi Ambassador Faisal Alhegelan held without the Secretary's knowledge...
...Still, there is an important issue in the Haig resignation that threatens to become submerged in the flood of personal trivia...
...special envoyPhilipC...
...This extended the ban on the sale of American equipment to companies abroad under American license, and to contracts already in effect...
...His credibility with foreign governments having been destroyed, he had little recourse except to resign...
...It was clear that, for reasons of domestic policy, the "intent and substance" of foreign policy had suddenly shifted...
...It was reported by the Saudis to Beirut in a form suggesting Washington's leaning on Israel to pull back, and thus encouraged PLO intractability...
...Habib in his effort to obtain the disarming and evacuation of the PLO forces...
...Al quibbled about his place in receiving lines and caviled about his helicopter...
...The Committee on the Present Danger criticized the President for agreeing to abide by the terms of the "fatally flawed" salt n. Abruptly, the President began shifting course...
...Outsiders might have trouble discerning the steadiness of a policy that ALEXANDER M. HAIG JR On Friday morning, June25, President Reagan told Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr...
...Al had insulted Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, whom the President admired...
...Haig had not been good soldier enough for a brisk "personal reasons" resignation...
...Will wrote, " Reagan has had less impact on foreign policy than any modern President (Ford excepted...
...Columnist George F. Will, under the title "Creeping Haigism," charged him with having "abandoned" foreign policy to theSecretary...
...that his proffered resignation would be accepted...
...The political stakes were too high...
...In the end, William Clark, Al's last supporter in the White House, turned against him...
...Altering foreign policy is obviously a prerogative of the President...
...A group including Lofton went to Reagan's home town, Dixon, Illinois, to criticize the President for having slipped his ideological moorings...
...A more central Haig complaint involved the controversy over the Administration's position on restricting the saleof U.S...
...That left Haig out on a limb...
...on Friday that the Secretary's letter reached the White House...
...And moments later Haig was reading it on television...
...The situation becomes worse when the Secretary is rendered unable to switch smoothly to a new track, and worst of all when he is left pursuing an old track with foreign governments in ignorance of a second track...
...Only three days earlier the official U.S...
...Lord Carrington, having negotiated with Argentina a new status for the Falkland Islands, felt obliged to resign as the British Foreign Secretary after his plan was rejected by the House of Commons...
...position, as set forth by State Department spokesman Dean Fischer, had been that it was "neither the intent nor the substance of U.S...
...It was a blockbuster that rocked chanceries and executive suites in Europe...
...It went on to describe how the President, "constantly undermined by Secretary of State Haig," had finally come up "tough as nails...
...What he should not do is trivialize a major decision into the minor tantrum of his Secretary of State...
...Henry Kissinger, who launched a thousand resignation threats, would not have dreamed of resigning if, during his tenure, the Senate had rejected the Panama Canal Treaty...
...On June 16, the President was lambasted at a New Right summit session convoked by Michael Joyce of the Olin Foundation at Washington's La Brasserie restaurant...
...It has to do with the untenability of a Secretary of State's position once a foreign policy is overridden out of political or other domestic considerations...
...He accused Reagan of having shifted from the "careful course" they had laid out together, a course based on "consistency, clarity and steadiness of purpose...
...The President had abided him, but never really liked him...
...Richard Viguerie, Howard Philips, Michael Novak, Irving Kristol, and Norman Podhoretz were among those present as John Lofton lamented over " Reagan without Reaganism...
...Vance opposed it for foreign policy reasons??he saw it as a bad example of international behavior and, more specifically, a destruction of his credibility...
...The strategy was to maintain pressure which, Haig argued, would sup-portU.S...
...In a parliamentary system, the issue is straightforward...
...he feared the impact of the prolonged hostage crisis on his nomination and reelection chances...
...He came home to a rude awakening at the hands of his Right-wing supporters...
...But the conservative weekly, Human Events, headlined: "Reaganauts Elated by Pipeline Decision...
...equipment and technology to the Soviet Union for its projected gas pipeline to Western Europe...
...Viguerie's Conservative Digest assembled a special issue with the theme of sending Reagan a "message from Main Street...
...he had launched a missile at the President...
Vol. 65 • June 1982 • No. 13
