00:00:00RICHARD RUSK: --Haig. Former Secretary of State 1981 through 1982 with
President Ronald [Wilson] Reagan. Formerly he was with the Defense Department
from 1962 to 1965 holding various positions. 1966 through '67 a battalion and
brigade commander in Vietnam; '67 through '69 Deputy Commandant at West Point;
Chief of Staff of the White House for Presidency of Richard [Milhous] Nixon;
Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, 1974-79. This is March of 1985. Rich Rusk
doing the interview. My father has told me he had very few actual contacts with
you during all this time; is his memory correct on that point, or what do you think?
00:01:00
HAIG: He is correct--in a direct sense, with the exception of what he didn't
know was that I was working during his time as Secretary of State, as the Deputy
to Joe [Joseph Anthony] Califano [Jr.] in Defense and--I worked in between and
for both [Robert Strange] McNamara and Cy [Cyrus Roberts] Vance. And that period
was from 1963 to the end of 1965. I then went to the Army War College. While in
the Pentagon, I had a number of opportunities to watch your father execute his
role. I also was liaison, incidentally, with the White House at that time with
President Lyndon Johnson.
00:02:00
RICHARD RUSK: Were you privy to his relationship with Robert McNamara?
HAIG: Yes I was and even before that I was with Cy Vance as his military
assistant when he was Secretary of the Army. During that time, Cy was the
executive agent for counter-insurgency in Central America under the [John
Fitzgerald] Kennedy task force concept. You remember he used to form task forces
every time there'd be a problem to be solved.
RICHARD RUSK: Yes.
HAIG: And so I did a great deal of work with the State Department with [John
H.] Crimmons who handled the Latin America Bureau and of course, therefore, was
again very familiar with the Secretary's views on a number of contemporary issues.
00:03:00
RICHARD RUSK: You had no contacts with my dad as a field commander of troops in Vietnam.
HAIG: No, I did not but I knew of his reputation and his military experience.
RICHARD RUSK: As commanding officer at West Point, any contacts?
HAIG: I think he came up there maybe once during the time I was there.
RICHARD RUSK: For a speech or something?
HAIG: Either for a speech or to get an award or something and of course I
followed his policies during Vietnam. I was heavily engaged in Vietnam from the
early period until I went to Vietnam and followed your father's testimonies, not
only then, but afterwards. I followed him very carefully because I was so
00:04:00interested in the subject.
RICHARD RUSK: Well, I'm intrigued in talking with you because you were a
commander of troops in Vietnam and had direct field experience and you also
served in that same position that he held, and I think this could be valuable in
spite of the fact that you were not in as close touch with him as some of his
other friends and colleagues.
HAIG: No, but I was very intimately involved in the events that led up to the
landing of our troops in Da Nang in the Spring of '65, the Gulf of Tonkin
incident, and the whole evolution of our involvement in Southeast Asia. And
subsequently, of course, in the whole evolution of our disengagement, when I was
working for Nixon with [Henry Alfred] Kissinger.
RICHARD RUSK: I don't have a lot of specific questions about the details of
policy for you, I'm not writing that kind of book. I'm writing more of a son's
00:05:00story about his dad, and I'll let the historians and the scholars worry about
his policies. I'll say a few things about them. There's a fellow following me
named Tom [Thomas J.] Schoenbaum, the Director of the Rusk Center, and you might
hear from him some day, he's under contract with Simon and Schuster to produce a
more comprehensive biography in 1988 and he wanted to be here today but was
unable to be here. My interest is in your general impressions, the anecdotal
kind of comments--
HAIG: Okay.
RICHARD RUSK: So, direct questions about the Vietnam experience--whatever you
think might help me understand my dad's role in those years. We might start with
your work with the Defense Department and your knowledge of my father.
HAIG: Fine.
RICHARD RUSK: How did he impress you?
HAIG: I'm an unabashed admirer of your father. I want you to know that and to
know that I probably am more familiar with the problems he faced in the office
00:06:00of Secretary of State when he first came into that position. Under the Kennedy
Administration, Washington was replete with what we called at that time "the
Irish Mafia."
RICHARD RUSK: Lot of the same back channels that you ran into during the Reagan term.
HAIG: Right. It was an anti-organizational bias in the Kennedy Administration.
Ad hocisra and an informalism had to have been at times frustrating times for
your father as Secretary of the largest department responsible for national
security and foreign affairs. There was during that time a great tendency to
create little task forces which reported on foreign policy not to your father,
00:07:00the Secretary of State, but directly to Bobby [Robert Francis] Kennedy, who was
the enforcer for his brother, the President. I don't mean that in a critical
way, because every President's got to have an enforcer. And initially, I think
Kennedy was closer to Bob McNamara, probably philosophically if not personally,
and probably both, than he was to your father. That also must have added to your
father's frustration and challenges. I saw your father over a period of time,
act as a very courageous buffer to a number of policies, especially in our
relationships with Europe, and the Soviet Union. And your father was the voice
of classic and I think more realistic policy. For example, McNamara repeatedly
00:08:00was proposing initiatives for Western Europe which could have had the practical
consequences of unraveling the alliance. And your father courageously fought him
in a very elegant way.
RICHARD RUSK: About the multi-lateral force, things of that nature?
HAIG: Oh, on forces, troop levels, defense expenditures, I found your father
always on the side with which I was in agreement. Not empathetic, but
sympathetic. And he prevented a number of initiatives, without going into detail
that could have been catastrophic. He slowly but surely maintained his course.
00:09:00After the assassination of President Kennedy, and the emergence of Lyndon
Johnson, your father was confronted again for different reasons for then the
situation was one in which he had to really fight his way back into influence in
the White House.
RICHARD RUSK: At the time of the assassination, the transition.
HAIG: Yes, because at times of crisis of that kind, all of the levers of
transition and power are really domestically concentrated in the Pentagon. The
Pentagon is a natural source of intelligence and access, and for that reason, I
think, initially Lyndon Johnson was heavily reliant on Bob McNamara.
RICHARD RUSK: Was Bob McNamara a little bit alarmed by that? The fact that he
00:10:00may--he personally may have felt that he was overriding my father on issues of
foreign affairs.
HAIG: I don't think it was an issue that would have disturbed him.
RICHARD RUSK: Because in other ways he did try to defer to my dad.
HAIG: Yes, he did, I think personally he deferred. You know, Bob McNamara is
not a confrontational person. He is very, very intelligent. Very sensitive. But,
politically, in a foreign policy sense he is totally naive. In this area, he had
no feel. He was a problematic thinker, systems analyst, a fellow who was devoid
of the kind of judgmental acumen that your father had, thank God. I think your
father had been more experienced in foreign affairs, government, and dealing
00:11:00with those abroad. And had to be very courageous, repeatedly. People don't
realize the kind of subterranean tension that existed because we didn't have a
disciplined administration just like the present one that allows all the fights
to be fought in the press. They were there during your father's time as
Secretary and I know because I was at the junction box of a lot of them. Most
importantly, as I say, in addition to other accomplishents, he saved the NATO
Alliance, which I think he did against great obstacles and with great personal
sacrifice and courage.
RICHARD RUSK: I've never seen recognition of this--
HAIG: Yes, he really did. There is also a great tendency, in an effort to
improve East-West relations, at times to depart from reality for atmospherics
and I think your father was a very realistic shock absorber in preventing
00:12:00excess. I think the area where I developed perhaps the most admiration for your
father was his incredible articulateness. He's a very articulate man, and he
would go constantly to a session in the Congress, defend the administration's
position as a loyal cabinet member, but never fail to patiently and moderately
and very, very convincingly present his case against the worst kind of rudeness
and harassment. I can remember thinking, not only during the time, but since,
00:13:00what a remarkable internal mechanism your dad must have had. With his own sense
of direction and self-assurance, he would intellectually arrive at a solution,
stick to it and hold to it against a lot of barrages.
RICHARD RUSK: You recall where a specific instance of this hostility, this
rudeness in Congress--
HAIG: Well, they used to be shown on the TV night after night, you know.
RICHARD RUSK: The [James William] Fulbright hearings, this type of thing?
HAIG: Yes, yes. Terrible statements were made. I don't mean personally
insulting, but intellectually arrogant and often wrong.
RICHARD RUSK: Right. I recall that, I was tuned in on all that stuff.
HAIG: He always held his ground, never lost his cool, and when he did it was
00:14:00really for technical reasons to make a point needed to be made. I think he was
the past master of that. In other words, I think he was a teacher. People around
him learned from him. And he was very generous with his willingness to share his
perceptions, which was so essential for a cabinet officer with his
responsibility. He was not a solemn, introverted man. He shared his capacity
with others. You know, getting back to the point, I think ultimately he ended up
enjoying Lyndon Johnson's confidence to a far greater degree than anyone in the cabinet.
00:15:00
RICHARD RUSK: Walt Rostow has called it coming in first among equals, referring
to that McGeorge Bundy, Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara relationship. Is that the way
you saw it from where you sat?
HAIG: Yes. Well, it was earned. It was not a foregone conclusion. It didn't
start out that way, any more than it did with Kennedy. He earned it, because
Johnson began to find that some of the more fast stepping fellows around him
were frequently wrong. And he came to rely on your father for the kind of
counsel that he should have heard.
RICHARD RUSK: Interesting.
HAIG: Now I'd like to tell you, not for your book, that I got to know Lyndon
Johnson rather well after his return to private life, because I'd go down and
00:16:00I'd brief him for President Nixon on events in Southeast Asia and we'd spend
some time together.
RICHARD RUSK: You would go to Texas to brief him.
HAIG: Yes, to the Ranch--
RICHARD RUSK: Huh!
HAIG: I know, I think two or three trips I made when we spent the whole day
sitting, reminiscing, and it became very clear to me that Lyndon Johnson held
your father in very high regard.
RICHARD RUSK: Yes, it was almost a love relationship in a way, from what people
have told me.
HAIG: Yes. But built on the what I call experienced judgment, rather than chemical.
RICHARD RUSK: You're giving me one of the better interviews I've had, I
appreciate your analysis and your patience in these oral histories. I feel
obliged to ask a few obligatory types of objective questions--
HAIG: Sure.
00:17:00
RICHARD RUSK: So people don't accuse me of cooking the records--
HAIG: That's what you have to be very careful on.
RICHARD RUSK: I'm not writing a critical book of my father, that's a
contradiction in terms. There have been enough of those written. But I do feel
obliged to ask you a few questions. Such as: What were some of the more negative
aspects of my dad's performance as Secretary that you recall? Obviously, it was
a mixed record like that of any official in government.
HAIG: Well, I saw a little more of him than he knows because working for
McNamara we used to have regular Congressional briefings of the Congressional
leadership over in the West Wing of the White House. Sometimes as many as two a
week. The President used these meetings with small groups of Senators or
Congressmen to try to keep their support for the Vietnam effort. I used to
00:18:00prepare the briefings, the charts and graphs for McNamara for the briefings.
McNamara was a great chart and graph man. Your father was always there and I
thought, the most articulate and effective spokesman on the issue.
RICHARD RUSK: With the kind of--with these groups?
HAIG: With these groups and I must say that despite his reputation for not
being a good communicator, Lyndon Johnson was also. Johnson was very poor with
the media--television, radio--but he was a spell-binder in these small groups.
So they [Johnson and your dad] were a very good one-two combination, very
effective. Now I haven't given you the criticism, and I frankly don't have any.
I wouldn't presume to have any. I think in hindsight that our policies in the
00:19:00Southeast Asia were less than what they might have been. I don't mean that in
criticism of your father, because the way we got involved was essentially driven
by the White House and the Defense Department, not the State Department. The
Gulf of Tonkin, I thought, was an aberration. It was a product of modern
technology which kept the President, through modern technology, more informed
than the bureaucracy and above all the field.
RICHARD RUSK: Huh! That's interesting.
HAIG: I don't know what your father's view on it is.
RICHARD RUSK: Gulf of Tonkin was primarily a presidential show, I take it. He
was the desk officer on that one and ran that through his office.
HAIG: Right. And I think in hindsight facts were that there probably never was
an attack on our ship in the Tonkin Gulf that night.
00:20:00
RICHARD RUSK: He, himself made that point in conversation with a colleague. For
all I know they may have been shooting at flying fish out there.
HAIG: I think that there were technical aberrations, electronic intercepts
perhaps and perhaps not.
RICHARD RUSK: The critics have said that people walked around with the Gulf of
Tonkin resolution in their hip pocket waiting for an instance to pull it out. Do
you tend to lay any credence to that theory at all?
HAIG: I can't say. I just have remained highly suspicious that the whole
incident was a series of misjudgments and mistakes in which there was no
maliciousness involved and that the President was a victim of new technology and
intelligence which was not seasoned by human judgment. And so, almost from the
00:21:00moment of our involvement, your father had to be an apologist for things which
in the first instance he may have not been a party to, and wasn't asked. I am
presuming this, it may or may not be true. And your father and I might differ on
what we should have done in Vietnam. It was my view that before we ever put
troops in that we should have mobilized.
RICHARD RUSK: Mobilized the country?
HAIGH: Mobilized the country. Avoided the guns and butter syndrome, and put the
Soviet Union, which was really behind the whole thing, on notice that we were
prepared to win a victory if it meant landing 12 or 15 American combat divisions
00:22:00in North Vietnam. And I believed, sincerely, and I continue to believe that had
we taken that position--
RICHARD RUSK: Right at the start?
HAIG: Right at the start, there would never have been a conflict.
RICHARD RUSK: Interesting.
HAIG: That the Soviets would have pulled back because under a similar set of
conditions, during your father's time when there was a crisis in Burma, Kennedy
mobilized a brigade of troops and took all the steps necessary to indicate he
was ready to intervene. Well, that stretched the rubber band and the next time
around we had to do something far more dramatic to convince Moscow to convince
its proxies to butt out. Now that's a bad term to use, because Hanoi was not
00:23:00really a proxy at that time-- but all of us in Washington were living under the
illusion that Hanoi was run under the wing of the People's Republic of China,
and therefore we were more subject to the kind of thing we faced in Korea than
was ever the case. And I reconstructed that with my Chinese friends since. I
tell you, they didn't want us to lose in Vietnam.
RICHARD RUSK: No, Chou En-Lai begged Henry Kissinger, I believe, in the early
seventies to keep an American presence in Vietnam, as a barrier. He told you
that probably.
HAIG: Chou En-Lai did. He said to me do not lose and do not withdraw from
Southeast Asia.
RICHARD RUSK: Isn't that something.
HAIG: Now he--
RICHARD RUSK: But, Vietnam was a variative--Chinese expansion was sort of a
fallacy on our part.
HAIG: It was a fallacy. And it was an aberration. Again I think a product of
00:24:00unsophisticated American intelligence resulting from our downgrading the human
in favor of the technological and we got caught unawares, but hell, we were
caught unawares in Korea. For an entirely different set of reasons and with a
different outcome.
RICHARD RUSK: My dad has never, to this day, wavered in his beliefs and
premises that underlay that policy. He believes the issues were valid, that we
had a valid reason for being there. He had questioned--
HAIG: I agree with that.
RICHARD RUSK: You do. I suppose the post-Vietnam era has suggested that there
were issues at stake. A lot of us sixties campus radicals--
HAIG: Well, China has in fact prevented all the worst scenarios of the conflict
in Southeast Asia. We would have had a domino theory take place in reality. The
North Vietnamese would have overrun Thailand in 1975 and were in the process of
preparing to do so but the Chinese prevented it.
00:25:00
RICHARD RUSK: Has that story been made public at all?
HAIG: I say it publicly. A lot of people don't accept it. The Chinese know it's
so. They told me.
RICHARD RUSK: My dad has come to question the tactics that he recommended back
there, especially the idea of gradualism as opposed to shoving in a stack of
blue chips at the very beginning of that struggle--
HAIG: I think we would have had more success. This would be my criticism of
Vietnam and I'm not A Johnny-come-lately because I broke with McNamara on that
issue. There was a feeling that if Vietnam was indeed worth fighting for, if it
was "a vital interest", then, as a nation we had to understand that the steps we
took must involve everything, credibly that we could do to convince the other
00:26:00side that we intended to make it a matter of priorities. That meant not
gradualism, not a Marine division followed by an Army division and in the local
area which is only a manifestation of the ill rather than the real cause of that
ill. I happen to believe that the Soviet Union, even in the mid-sixties, was
sufficiently wary of United States overall power that had we demonstrated that
power, they would have flinched. That would probably be less true today in a
critical area. Now, in that sense you can say that as a nation we should have
learned something. I think your father has learned these things. I think he'll
never say anything that would be disloyal to his President that he served and I
don't assume he could be that way--
00:27:00
RICHARD RUSK: I've got him down to a great extent on oral history talks with
him, his policies and his whole life, we've talked at great length about it.
We've got a lot of transcripts. Yet on the issue of Vietnam, he remains a
spokesman for the official policy of that era. He doesn't really go beyond into
what was.
HAIG: It's asking too much of him.
RICHARD RUSK: I think so.
HAIG: It's asking too much of him. And I agree with him, in every sense of the
word with the fact that it was a vital interest, it was an issue that we had to
address. My only problem was as to the gradualist approach.
RICHARD RUSK: Did that bother you as a battalion or brigade commander in
Vietnam, the idea that we weren't using our power to its fullest extent?
HAIG: Of course.
RICHARD RUSK: It did.
HAIG: I went there intellectually convinced we were not doing it the right way,
and after a year plus in the field commanding a battalion and a brigade, I left
00:28:00all the more convinced. A lot of that came from the perversion of the so-called
spectrum of conflict. This came with Max [Maxwell Davenport] Taylor and the
Democrats and the transition between [Dwight David] Eisenhower and the
Democratic administration. They started saying that since we could neutralize
the Soviets with our nuclear power and since we have sufficient conventional
power to deter them in a major confrontation what we had to focus on was the
gray area down at the lower spectrum, lower edge of the spectrum of conflict. At
that time, it was referred to as counter-insurgency, the hearts and minds notion
and that's where the Special Forces concept came up. The Army, the military let
00:29:00itself be prostituted in order to get money. If they joined right in they got
the resources. As an Army officer at that time I was appalled by it. And I
remember the package of steps to be taken after the Gulf of Tonkin. Then we had
the destruction of the hotel. Johnson was having his number called on every
ultimatum he put down, North Vietnam would hit him on it. And it was really not
the Brinks [?] Hotel, the other hotel that finally culminated in the decision to
send the Marines into Da Nang. Now, before that decision was made, the Chief of
00:30:00Staff of the Army, Johnny [Harold K.] Johnson, was ordered to go to Korea, I
mean Vietnam, and make a survey, and come back and make recommendations to the
President. Another officer, I touch upon this in my book, another officer and I
were asked by our Chief of Staff before he went for ideas. And I remember
spending a weekend with a Lieutenant Colonel outside of McNamara's office
writing thirty-some steps that the United States should take. They started with
mobilization, an ultimatum to the Soviet Union. I don't mean we're going to go
to war with you, but we want to put you on notice that we mean business.
RICHARD RUSK: Yeah.
HAIG: Now when it came back, when the Chief of Staff of the Army came back with
00:31:00a response to our memorandum, the first fifteen recommendations had been deleted.
RICHARD RUSK: Were not in the presentation itself?
HAIG: Were not considered acceptable options. Instead, all of the easy
political steps which didn't disturb the tranquility of the domestic economy,
get the American people riled up, create tensions with Moscow, were retained as
options. As to the Soviet Union, you will recall this was the post-Cuban missile
crisis era, and that's where we got started. I know one thing about your father,
also. You know there was folklore around the department, around the State
Department, with respect to your father being a very controlled public figure.
00:32:00In private, however, he really let his hair down. He was really one of the
fellows. I remember he used to take a drink with you at night, with a few of the
people he trusted and he let his hair down.
RICHARD RUSK: He has what they called a Bottle Club at the--
HAIG: Yeah. A very human portrayal. I think sometimes in fact he spoke of a
couple of bottles!
RICHARD RUSK: My dad never had combat experience. He served in--see back there
in World War II as Deputy Chief--
END OF SIDE 1
BEGINNING OF SIDE 2
RICHARD RUSK: -- influence his decision making on Vietnam and his understanding
of Vietnam--he had been in the military and around the military for years, but
never out there in the field, under battlefield conditions, and to what extent
did that affect him?
HAIG: I can't answer that. But I always found in your father evidence that his
00:33:00military experience, whatever it was, enabled him to be more effective and more
realistic, and I thought he was the most realistic fellow in the administration.
RICHARD RUSK: Interesting--more understanding of military concerns, strategy,
than the average--
HAIG: Sometimes also understanding of the foibles of the military, too.
RICHARD RUSK: Part of his desire for gradualism probably stemmed from his
Korean War experience in which he and all of his fellow advisers did not
anticipate the Chinese intervention. You add that one up and then add to that
the Cuban Missile Crisis--having his finger on that--
HAIG: This is a historically evolutionary policy for the United States that
really didn't even start in Korea, it started in World War II. The extension of
00:34:00the [Franklin Delano] Rooseveltian approach which I think was more right than it
was wrong at that time. With respect to Korea, with my work as an adviser, very
close to being an adviser when the war broke out, on [Douglas] MacArthur's
staff, and he of course, was very, very frustrated for he really fundamentally
opposed it, and so I left Korea after a year's experience in the battlefield
there with a distinctive impression that we weren't doing it right there.
Another thing that I didn't like was the way we exercised the draft.
RICHARD RUSK: Student deferment system?
HAIG: The draft which meant it was for the poor people and the underprivileged
from the inner cities who were bleeding and dying, not the children of the
elite, and therefore the country could go along its merry way with a no-win war.
00:35:00That was a terrible mistake.
RICHARD RUSK: I suppose they--
HAIG: This same draft had matured by the time Vietnam came.
RICHARD RUSK: I suppose the professional army itself is a direct consequence of
Vietnam, and without Vietnam we'd likely not have ended up with this--
HAIG: Well, I'm violently opposed to all-volunteer army.
RICHARD RUSK: Yeah. And it's probably not as good an army, in a sense.
HAIG: Well, you know in time it is not, but day to day, our young folks are
just super.
RICHARD RUSK: Have you ever thought about making a public issue and you
yourself get--
HAIG: Oh, yes.
RICHARD RUSK: You have.
HAIG: I fought it when Nixon was heading toward lifting the draft until he
ordered me to stay the hell out of it. You can't undermine your
Commander-in-Chief, if you're going to be a leader.
RICHARD RUSK: Got another question for you, and as a former commander of troops
in battle, I think you might have some insights for me, and that is-- involves
00:36:00the psychology of command decision making and what happens to people like my
father who get involved in decisions that result in war, everything that war
entails, fellows getting killed over policies that you either work out or don't
work out, but nevertheless a lot of suffering, a lot of violence, a lot of dead
men, and it's a cumulative type of thing. How does that responsibility affect
people like my father? How does it affect the decision-making process? And was
that one of the factors that helped lock him in to that policy probably long
beyond a point when it was evident to most other observers that the darn thing
was just not going to work out?
HAIG: I think the answer to that is it works both ways.
RICHARD RUSK: It's a hard question.
HAIG: Yes. Having been there, I think anyone who presides over or participates
00:37:00in a very meaningful way in national decisions that result in a loss of any
American lives--it poses tremendous contradictions, subjective contradictions to
that individual. On the one hand, of course, he is very reluctant to pursue
anything that would add to the prolongation of the conflict. On the other hand,
he is very reluctant to adopt policies that would appear that we squandered
those lives. And, you know, your father, I thought, held a middle course. That's
one of the reasons I had a great admiration for him. Robert McNamara recoiled.
RICHARD RUSK: Recoiled, you say?
HAIG: He recoiled.
00:38:00
RICHARD RUSK: Yeah.
HAIG: In the duration of saying "no more."
RICHARD RUSK: Yeah. He was unable to function beyond a certain point there.
HAIG: God knows I can't answer for the subjective agony involved with Robert
McNamara or others around him, such as Cy Vance who also flew into left field as
a result no doubt of experiences with Vietnam. Your father has never done that.
He's the strong one.
RICHARD RUSK: Oh it that right.
HAIG: And the right one. It doesn't mean I think he went the other way, in
other words by saying it has cost so much I can't abandon the position which I
contributed to without looking like I'm too cowardly to face up to reality.
That's not the issue. I have never found your father on that extreme end of it.
00:39:00Just the opposite. He's a very rational, logical, precise thinker. I never asked
him about gradualism, which was really the culprit. It was a misreading of who
was really behind the power push and the price you had to pay if you wanted to
come out successful.
RICHARD RUSK: I'm heavily interested in this question of combat command and the
effect of lives upon you as an individual and upon your decision making. That's
the one I feel is the-- you know the fact that there was blood on his hands.
Regardless of your views about the policy, it was a factor-- had to be a factor.
David Halberstam made brief reference to it and he's the only one I've ever seen
00:40:00that he called it "the process whereby one dead American begets another dead
American". The need to somehow make the thing work, because if you turn around
on it and admit the policy is no good, you're not simply a decision maker who
made a mistake, you're a murderer in your own eyes almost, you know the fact that--
HAIG: Well, that's what I say, but it works both ways, in McNamara's case, it
worked the other way. I have a feeling your father, a tub-thumping justifier of
those policies, I've heard him, I'm being public, where a number of these
questions were asked. I don't think he will ever abandon the fact that we had
not only the right to be in Vietnam but perhaps a major obligation to be there.
00:41:00And in that sense he's totally right.
RICHARD RUSK: The post-war developments have confirmed you in your feelings
there in-- from North Vietnamese or Vietnamese involvements in Cambodia and the
rest of the world? It's caused a lot of us to rethink what we--
HAIG: Slaves of South Vietnam. We murdered five million Cambodians. Don't tell
me that the stakes in Vietnam didn't justify standing up to them. Afghanistan
was an easy step for the Soviets after the failures in Southeast Asia. Ethiopia,
Southern Yemen, Afghanistan, what's going on in Central America are the
byproducts and we're on the verge of making the same mistakes in Central America
that we made in Vietnam.
RICHARD RUSK: Within the military perhaps with the war college, or within the
military training programs are officers who are in command of field units, do
00:42:00they get into this question of how an individual commander should deal with this
issue when lives are lost partially as a result of decisions that he had made?
Does the military treat that at all?
HAIG: No. Not as such. But the whole, I think the whole culture in our schools
deals with it.
RICHARD RUSK: You're talking about military schools?
HAIG: Yes, military schools are designed with the full understanding that the
young officer, through his development, could be the instrument of a very
brutal, almost mindless, sacrifice in lives, but that he's got to make his
00:43:00decision on what he knows in a local sense. Further, with respect to the orders
that he receives from above, that they are put up against his individual
assessment. He's got to recognize that there are larger issues, and higher
authorities to be considered, and that makes them somewhat more reflexive in a
sense. I use the word martinet in the sense of "do what I do because I say so"
but that's a stronger thread in the military ethic than it would be in any other
discipline in our country.
RICHARD RUSK: You refer to that point in your book Caveat and if I can quote
you just briefly, you make the point that "a servant of the President owes his
00:44:00Chief the truth in this obligation even more than the confidential relationship
between the President and the subordinate is permanently binding" and I guess
it's your feeling on that that might have ultimately led to your resignation as
Secretary, you believed certain things and they were more fundamental to you
than the relationship itself. My dad may have taken a little different stance on
that, he almost held the relationship and the presidency sacred and I'm not
suggesting that he in any way abandoned his search for what the truth was in his
willingness to stick up for truth, but there was a slight difference between the
two of you and yet you both have the same military background in which you are
taught to--
HAIG: Well, it would be presumptuous of me to suggest that what you say is true
of your father. I don't know that-- and there is no reason to believe it. I
would be more inclined to believe the opposite. I guess I-- you're on the
00:45:00subject of loyalty-- and I've always felt that there are loyalties and
loyalties. In that the ultimate loyalty of a public servant is to his own
conscience with respect to that assessment of what's right for the American
people. Wow, loyalty to the division commander is above your loyalty to your
regimental commander. Loyalty to the president is above your loyalty to your
division commander or your departmental commander. But there is a greater
loyalty to what your conscience and your own subjective intellect tells you is
00:46:00in the best common interest of the American people and when you have a clash
between those two, then you've got to opt for the greater loyalty and face your
own reality.
RICHARD RUSK: Well a world war was fought over that. Just a question of
individual conscience and--
HAIG: I guess one thing I've learned after many years of public service is that
everyone, from presidents on down, is human. They put their pants on the same
way every morning and they're as susceptible to misjudgment, because they're
human and the greatest obligation that you have as a subordinate is to disagree;
when your conscience tells you. You have to pick and choose and you've got to be
practical. In my case I opted out from President Reagan, not because I didn't
00:47:00respect the man, I do. Not because I didn't, in general, support his policies. I
do. But rather, because I was in a bureaucratic situation in which the men
around the President prevented my access to him in the way that I should have
had access. Anything I recommended, they would recommend the opposite just to be
doing so. And therefore, my presence in the government was counter-productive.
It's a good policy. That's really why I left. I had determined that after
eighteen bloody months of trying a number of different approaches, none would
succeed, and I didn't think that the President was going to change.
RICHARD RUSK: I raised that question about truth and loyalty because some of
the critics of my father suggested that in too many issues he was for too long
00:48:00the good soldier. That's the phrase they used, and I wondered to what extent
that might have tried in to his military training and chain of command--
HAIG: I'd be careful about that. Most of the guys that say that about your
father were anti-Vietniks whose only approach is one of criticism.
RICHARD RUSK: He hasn't had good press. Not at all.
HAIG: How could he? He presided over a foreign policy and most unpopular war
our country ever fought. And the fact that he came out of it unscathed as a
person in human terms, is to me the greatest confirmation of the man.
RICHARD RUSK: I'm getting more from this interview than any interview I've had;
I appreciate your analysis.
HAIG: Well, you believe me.
RICHARD RUSK: You are giving me something--
HAIG: Having been there, I think I know some of the things your father was up
against. He didn't lose his sense of proportion, he didn't lose his sense of
balance, or his values. He didn't even lose his sense of humor. Some of these
00:49:00other guys came out basket cases. Be very, very careful of what I call
conventional logic on that troubled period in our history. Remember another
thing about your father. He stuck to his guns longer under the most adverse set
of circumstances than probably any Secretary of State in history. And I think
the people for whom he worked, through their own talents, led him to believe
that he could make a difference, so he hung in there. That's nothing to be
00:50:00critical of.
RICHARD RUSK: Well, in spite of what happened in Southeast Asia, I'm immensely
proud of my father. I came through that Cornell experience very much colored by
a lot of anti-war thinking at the time. I joined the Marines in '65 and if the
Fourth Marine Division had had an airlift, I guess we would have gone, but we
were not activated. By the time I got done with Cornell, I was more than merely
the brain I was when I started. But yet with this project here has given me a
look at my dad's total of seventy-five years and if you look at the whole story,
it is quite a story.
HAIG: You keep the macro issues in focus. You gain a lot of intellectual
credibility by, if necessary, being questioning of some of the tactics and some
00:51:00of the details. But keep the macro issues center stage in whatever you write.
The book may help you give your dad very high marks, I know it.
RICHARD RUSK: The story is there.
HAIG: Yeah.
RICHARD RUSK: If I can do my job.
HAIG: I'll tell you another thing about your father. In all the time I was
Secretary, he could not, being a Democrat, albeit a southern Democrat, it makes
a big difference, have been comfortable with all of the things we were doing.
But any time I called on him, he never did anything but support me, or make a
constructive contribution, and if he couldn't he would have said no, don't ask me.
RICHARD RUSK: Did you have a lot of contacts with him?
HAIG: I had some. I had some.
RICHARD RUSK: You did. Do you recall exactly what they may have been?
00:52:00
HAIG: Well, I think on some of the early parts of our policy on Central
America. I remember I think I called him on the phone and I think I got a letter
from him. He always has conducted himself, since leaving office, in such a way
that he tried to ease the burden of his successor incumbents. And he taught me a
very good lesson in that regard. You know it's very easy to be out carping if
you've been there before and say "Oh, the son-of-a-bitch, if I'd been there I'd
have done it this way." He never engaged in any of that.
RICHARD RUSK: Yeah. That is true.
HAIG: And I say--
RICHARD RUSK: He's awfully disturbed with some of this arms control stuff
that's been going on but even that he holds his punches.
HAIG: Well, you know, he told me a year ago down in Atlanta, that if the
President went along with this Strategic Defense thing he was going to depart
00:53:00from the long-held practice of not attacking publicly. I asked him not to, but
frankly I was as appalled by the President's speech as I think your father was.
Maybe for different reasons, but I thought it was ill-timed and ill-conceived.
It's complicated to do what's right. But I support our exploring outer space for
defense purposes.
RICHARD RUSK: Incidentally he has a question--
[break in recording]
RICHARD RUSK: When you were Chief of Staff for President Nixon, I understand
there was an effort made to deactivate the nuclear firing trigger; at least put
some additional steps in there so that the President in a moment of extreme
stress could not do something dramatic. There wasn't any effort made there?
00:54:00
HAIG: No, you're referring to the last days of Watergate--
RICHARD RUSK: That's right.
HAIG: That is totally untrue. And it was done by a mischievous staff.
RICHARD RUSK: Should this be on or off the tape--it doesn't matter?
HAIG: Sure.
RICHARD RUSK: It doesn't matter.
HAIG: It's totally untrue. At this point, it would be inconceivable to me that
the American military with its orientation and its overall set of democratic
values could ever be so used. Secondly, it was the product of a very mischievous
press briefing given on the background basis by a Cabinet Officer who was later
fired for having done it.
RICHARD RUSK: Interesting.
HAIG: That's off the record--
RICHARD RUSK: I'm going to ask you perhaps one more and then I'm going to allow
00:55:00you to kick me out of here. I would love to talk to you at great length, but
this--I know your time is more limited than mine. My dad said he made a lot of
decisions in office under conditions in which he was "bone tired" and that the
fatigue factor alone may well have had an influence on policies and decision
making. Based on your eighteen months as Secretary of State, would you suggest
that that also can be a factor?
HAIG: Absolutely. It's a factor in any executive position. It's aggravating
modern statecraft for Secretaries of State and Defense by the consequences of
00:56:00modern communications. Because of the press, the people expect almost an
instantaneous reaction. Presidents can no longer wait for the system, for
principles within that system to meet and discuss and think. He's got to have
the answers now. If there is a plane hijacked, the press is all over the White
House and he's got to have a position. Principals like Secretaries of State are
very, very infrequently permitted time to think. They are constantly putting out
fires. And it's very true Presidents too. I was thinking Jimmy Carter was less
able to do that than this fellow. This fellow can walk away from a problem, go
00:57:00to bed, sleep all night. He's pretty good at it. I have to admire him for it. I
don't think your father was of that ilk, and I know I'm not. If I've got a
problem, I worry about it. You know, Richard Nixon worried about it. He'd
anguish over a decision. Not because he was indecisive, he's not an indecisive
man, but because the consequences of these decisions are sometimes so momentous
you can't do less. Reagan is pretty good. The combination of fatigue and crisis
management constantly has you in the vortex of every event that happens around
the world because television and modern communication has changed the nature of
00:58:00statecraft very fundamentally. It's very important.
RICHARD RUSK: Very good. I want to thank you again. Not only the interview, but
again, everything you did during the Nixon era as Chief of Staff. I told myself
that if I ever had the chance to meet you I would thank you for that because we
all followed that, of course, very intensely and that was quite a period in our
history and we all owe you.
END OF SIDE 2