Alexander Haig

Alexander Haig (1981)

Alexander Meigs "Al" Haig Jr. (born December 2, 1924 in Bala Cynwyd , Pennsylvania , † February 20, 2010 in Baltimore , Maryland ) was an American officer and politician. Haig was a general in the US Army and NATO commander in chief in Europe . He was also Chief of Staff of the White House under US Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan .

Career

Early military career

Haig, the son of Alexander Meigs Haig Sr. and Regina Anne Murphy, began a military career after finishing school and graduated from the US Military Academy in West Point . He graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, DC with a Master of Arts degree in international relations . As a soldier he served in occupied Japan , Korea and Vietnam after 1945 , where he commanded a battalion and finally a brigade of the 1st Infantry Division and was promoted to colonel . In 1967 he was badly wounded. He received the Distinguished Service Cross for his war service in Vietnam . From 1967 to 1969 he was the commander of a cadet regiment at West Point.

In 1969 he became a member of the National Security Council under Henry Kissinger . Kissinger sent him repeatedly on special missions to Cambodia , Laos , Thailand , Vietnam and Paris . Haig helped South Vietnamese President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu negotiate a final ceasefire in 1972 . In early 1973 he was promoted to general and appointed Deputy Chief of Staff of the US Army in the US Department of Defense .

White House Chief of Staff

When President Richard Nixon dismissed his chief of staff Bob Haldeman because of his involvement in the Watergate affair , he appointed Haig as " Assistant to the President ". In the Watergate Affair, Haig played a major role as a crisis manager as Nixon's White House chief of staff from 1973 to 1974. Haig initially remained in office under President Gerald Ford until he was replaced by Donald Rumsfeld .

The authors Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin speculated in 1991 in her book Silent Coup: The Removal of a President that Haig, the informant could be "Deep Throat", where they pointed out that Bob Woodward and Haig first met when Woodward at Marine intelligence worked . This thesis was found to be false when Mark Felt , the former Vice Director of the FBI , confessed himself to be Woodward's and Carl Bernstein's source in 2005 .

NATO Commander in Chief Europe

Alexander Haig (1979)

From 1974 to 1979 Haig served as NATO Commander in Chief in Europe (SACEUR). On the morning of June 25 1979, the committed Red Army Faction (RAF) has a stop on Haig when he on his way to his workplace at NATO headquarters in Casteau ( Belgium was). The terrorists had filled a pipe running under the road with explosives and detonated the charge when Haig's motorcade passed the spot. His Mercedes was hit and destroyed, but Haig and his driver were able to get to safety unharmed. Therefore the attempt to kidnap him with a stolen ambulance also failed.

Dissatisfied with President Carter's policies , he submitted his early resignation in 1979. He became head of the defense company United Technologies Corporation (UTC).

Foreign minister

In January 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed him Secretary of State to his cabinet . His tenure as Foreign Minister was marked by clashes with the more moderate Defense Minister Caspar Weinberger over the necessity of military operations. In his view, the progressive fragmentation of power among more and more nations, the increasing threat to the United States and its allies from civil unrest, and Soviet armament were the three main foreign policy dangers of that time.

When Ronald Reagan was assassinated on March 30, 1981, Vice President George Bush was in his native Texas and Haig took control of the White House in front of television cameras a few hours after the attack. As a former chief of staff in the late stages of the Watergate affair, he should have been aware that in the constitutional order of succession to the president, the speaker of the US House of Representatives was third, two places ahead of the secretary of state. This has caused considerable alienation within the US government and the public. The situation was resolved when Bush assumed office that evening pending Reagan's recovery.

During Haig's tenure as Foreign Minister, the Falklands War also fell , in which Haig carried out a shuttle diplomacy in April 1982 after the Argentine invasion before the arrival of the British fleet in the South Atlantic war zone. Haig traveled to London and Buenos Aires to meet with the British and Argentine governments, but negotiations were broken off and Haig returned to Washington DC on April 19 without any results. It was later revealed that the British had received photos from American reconnaissance satellites , which gave the Royal Navy an important advantage.

Haig resigned as Foreign Minister on June 25, 1982, after only 18 months in office.

Later years

In the 1980s and 90s, Haig, at the time the head of a consulting firm, was a director for various companies that were going through difficult times at the time, most notably the computer manufacturer Commodore International .

Haig tried unsuccessfully in 1988 for a nomination as a presidential candidate by the Republican Party and served CNN temporarily as a military analyst - a kind of military expert. In 2002 he was charged with the film : Interviewed Henry Kissinger . He is the father of the writer Brian Haig .

Haig died of an infection on February 20, 2010 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Awards

Selection of decorations, sorted based on the Order of Precedence of Military Awards :

• Distinguished Service Cross
• Defense Distinguished Service Medal (2 ×)
• Army Distinguished Service Medal
• Silver Star (2 ×)
• Legion of Merit (3 ×)
• Distinguished Flying Cross (3 ×)
• Bronze Star (3 ×)
• Purple heart
• Air Medal (24 ×)
• Army Commendation Medal
• National Defense Service Medal (2 ×)
• Korean Service Medal (5 ×)
• Vietnam Service Medal (3 ×)
• Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

Publications

• Ghost ship USA. Who Makes Reagan's Foreign Policy? From the American by Hermann Kusterer with an introduction by Richard Löwenthal . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-608-91322-X .

literature

• Robert F. Gorman: Alexander M. Haig, Jr. In: Edward S. Mihalkanin (Ed.): American Statesmen: Secretaries of State from John Jay to Colin Powell . Greenwood Publishing 2004, ISBN 978-0-313-30828-4 , pp. 234-237.

Web links

Commons : Alexander Haig  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Alexander Haig  - Quotes

• Literature by and about Alexander Haig in the catalog of the German National Library
• Alexander Haig in nndb (English)
• Alexander Haig at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia (English)
• Obituary , The New York Times, February 20, 2010
• Alexander M. Haig Jr. in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ What Really Happened When Reagan Got Shot
2. ↑ USA: Ronald Reagan's greatest appearance . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1981, p. 131 ( online - April 6, 1981 ).
3. ↑ Alexander Meigs Haig Jr. - People - Department History - Office of the Historian
4. ↑ Al Haig: Embattled In The Boardroom . In: Businessweek of June 16, 1991 (English).

predecessor	Office	successor
Andrew J. Goodpaster	Supreme Allied Commander Europe 1974–1979	Bernard W. Rogers