One Road to Foggy Bottom
CURREY, CECIL B.
One Road to Foggy Bottom Haig: The General's Progress By Roger Morris Playboy. 450 pp. $13.95. Reviewed by Cecil B. Currey Author (as "Cincinnatus"), "Self-Destruction: The Disintegration and...
...He hired Haig in July 1963 as"the brightest" of all those he interviewed...
...At the apex of his military career, as saceur, a German officer is reputed to have commented that nato readiness and leadership were so deplorable that "the only thing that will save [the alliance] in a war is the responsibility of the soldiers to disobey their orders...
...Persuaded that "I am as promising a national candidate as there is in the field and the least nominable," he ran for President for six months before abandoning the race...
...Cadets who knew him at West Point, where he served as a tactical officer after his return from Korea, recalled that his main interest was in the gloss of their shoes...
...I never viewed myself as anything but an extension of Dr...
...Morris subsequently resigned over the issue of the Cambodia invasion in April 1970...
...Morris shows that Haig has always been ready with plenty of excuses: "I was, incidentally, against that approach...
...Strangewordsfromaman who once shouted, "I run this White House and don't you forget it...
...The wonder is that Haig rose so far...
...In 1973, while the President supposedly lay upstairs in the White House, drunk, Haig believed him unable to command...
...Some may feel this book is outdated, since Haig has already had to leave the Reagan Administration...
...Joe Cali-fano apparently came to that conclusion while casting about in the military for a Johnson White House aide who would beof the "new breed," a "liberal, renaissance'' man...
...he would stand cautiously and almost obliviously aside...
...In a moment of perceived crisis, un-elected and constitutionally unem-powered to act, Haig ordered U.S...
...Mistakes...
...Haig's views on world and national politics were no more moderate...
...Not a bad record for one who had suffered more than anyone else...
...His unit helped to lay waste to the village of Ben Sue, and his "leadership" was so little in evidence that his men there "trod the thin edge of atrocity...
...Morris spends many pages demonstrating that Haig was also wilfully dishonest about almost everything: his role in the Chilean destabilization, the armed incursion into Cambodia, the White House tapes...
...I wasn't there...
...One of Morris' finest contributions is to explore the differences between the man and his myth...
...He urged the extension of the war into Cambodia, helped launch American intervention in Chile, favored using White House " plumbers," and listened to wiretap recordings...
...Haig was a colonel in 1969 when he came to the NSC to be an intelligence briefer...
...Could it be that others relied on the General because of his willingness to accept responsibility for his actions...
...An adherence to the democratic process has not hindered Haig's ascent...
...He is "the offspring of an elite incest," accustomed to "fawning and deceit and self-promotion," guilty of "partisanship" and "moral insensibility...
...Me has not shown much respect for the age-old line of demarcation between civilian and military authority, either...
...In his master's thesis, written at Georgetown University in the early 1960s, he talked about "useless civilian incursions" on military policy that could work only "so long as the sword is not put to the test...
...sometimes at close range and usually on cordial personal terms...
...military forces to the brink of war with a worldwide alert...
...Casual observers may wonder if there isn't more to Haig than Morris has portrayed, yet the reality of the man's record bears out the author's view...
...Further, Morris' purpose would have been better served had he refrained from purple prose...
...Morris observes that Haig never had any notion of "the burrowing decay of Army morale and leadership...
...when he was Henry Kissinger's still obscure...
...If Haig was not much of a soldier, perhaps his rise was attributable to his sensitive, intelligent nature...
...One former colleague called him "Kissinger's man in Haldeman's office and Haldeman's man in Kissinger's office...
...Haig's war experiences did not give him insight into the Army's growing problems with internal stress, mismanagement and an undue emphasis on personal advancement...
...troops were readied for an attack against some 120 bewildered and squabbling Indians armed with slogans and hunting rifles...
...The author declares that on occasion "Haiggavemisleading if not perjured testimony under oath...
...One wonders what G. Gordon Liddy would say...
...Which is not to suggest that Haig: The General's Progress isn't very good...
...At least he convinced Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski, who called him our 37th and a half president...
...The author has the requisite credentials...
...More apt, it turned out, was Henry Kissinger's later description: "I don't need an intelligent, sensitive human being for an assistant...
...There are minor problems...
...I was not deeply involved...
...Is Haig a brilliant military man with a distinguished record...
...Kissinger...
...The concern has to be that he will rise again...
...Indeed, many of his actions in concert with Kissinger and Nixon were so secret that only those three knew of them...
...When Vietnam "released a torrent of military soul-searching and self-criticism...
...I did not know...
...The path has been tortuous, the story dismal, and reading about it inspires anger, chagrin and sorrow...
...Holder of a doctorate in government from Harvard, author of a previous work on Henry Kissinger, Roger Morris became an aide to Dean Ache-son in 1966 and later moved to the National Security Council (NSC) staff...
...What I need is a good, smart robot...
...Next he was saceur...
...In 1969, Kissinger asked him to remain at NSC as a senior staff officer for the incoming Nixon Administration...
...1 don't recall that" "I never had responsibility...
...He was at the center of the vortex (one of his favorite words) in planning the mining of Haiphong harbor and advocating the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam...
...I don't believe I was [involved] at all...
...Fortunately, they surrendered before Haig could act against them...
...He is filled "with a barely concealed resentment, a belligerence of pose and policy, and an angry, elastic ethic of self-belief if not self-esteem...
...He uses the "hyperbole and incoherence of the half-educated...
...Upon officially retiring from the Army he became president of United Technologies, earning an income of six figures...
...outer-office aide...
...Haig is described as "sometimes pandering," and touched by the "pervasive taint of scandal...
...Yet after previous setbacks he has demonstrated a remarkable ability to land on his feet, making The General's Progress an examination we ignore at our own peril...
...But as operations planning officer for the First Division in Vietnam, Haig accepted the "sterile, lumbering" tactics then in use, clumsy and conventional approaches that did not work against guerrillas...
...Sometimes Nixon himself did not know...
...Haig referred to Haldeman's team as "those shits," to Nixon as "our drunk," and spoke of the President's "limp-wrist" relationship with Bebe Rebozo...
...For a year and a half, I worked around Haig...
...Reviewed by Cecil B. Currey Author (as "Cincinnatus"), "Self-Destruction: The Disintegration and Decay of the United States Army During the Vietnam Era" Our former Secretary of State will give no copies of this-book to relatives and friends as Christmas gifts...
...I didn't make them...
...Striving to discern a single action he has been involved in that has redounded to this nation's benefit, one finally quits the effort empty-handed...
...Years later, after President Reagan was wounded by an assassin's bullet, Secretary Haig, again with a fine disregard for Constitutional niceties, pronounced himself "in charge...
...Then he was appointed Reagan's Secretary of State...
...It is...
...Nor has Haig been particularly loyal...
...Nor will he advise anyone wishing a summary of his career to browse through its pages...
...Hewas involved, for example, in both the Cedar Falls and Junction City divisional level search-and-destroy missions in the Iron Triangle...
...That is hard to believe...
...The author quotes the General ruminating, "There is nobody in the White House who has suffered more from walking close to Richard Nixon than me...
...The task is easy, and although the results are troubling, it is clear the author has enjoyed probing his subject's rise to "potentially enormous" power...
...During the "second battle of Wounded Knee" where in early 1973, Indian protesters found themselves faced by an awesome array of civilian lawmen, Haig—as Army Vice Chief of Staff—felt that 340 marshals, FBI agents and border police were insufficient . Without warrant or authority, he laid out a free-fire zone reminiscent of Vietnam and supplied the "battlefield" with 17 armored personnel carriers, 100 M-16 rifles, 200 flak vests, 9,000 parachute flares, and 123,000 rounds of ball and tracer ammunition...
...Alexander Haig has trampled across the bodies and reputations of everyone in his way, patron and foe alike...
...Until his return to the United States as a 42-year-old lieutenant colonel, his "combat leadership" consisted of commanding the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry, First Division, plus a few weeks at the head of the Division's Second Brigade while its commander lay wounded...
...At least Morris' predilections are plain: He wants to reveal Haig's blemishes...
...Morris even fails to find Haig grateful to those from whom he received favors...
...At Ap Gu, his unit was in danger of annihilation until it was saved, not by Haig's combat skills, but by profligate air and artillery firepower coupled with helicopter resupply and extraction...
...The general's progress has not boded well for anyone save himself...
...By March, 1972 three years shy of 50, he was a major general...
...The sentence structure is unnecessarily convoluted, and the vocabulary is often arcane...
...Only a few months afterward he was promoted to full general and assigned as Vice Chief of Staff of the Army...
...Appearing before the Senate for confirmation as Secretary of State, he was the first such nominee in the nation's history to bring a lawyer along to help him field questions about his past candor and the propriety of earlier actions...
...Nowhere in his past has he left a stamp for better: He failed to provide sound leadership in the Nixon White House, and sullied the of f ice of Secretary of State with his petulance and greed for power...
...Richard Nixon thought so, praising him as a "brave combat soldier...
...He didn't tell us about it...
...His next major military post, after the Nixon years, was as Supreme Allied Commander Europe (saceur...
Vol. 65 • October 1982 • No. 19
