William P. Rogers

William P. Rogers

William Pierce Rogers (born June 23, 1913 in Norfolk , St. Lawrence County , New York , † January 2, 2001 in Bethesda , Maryland ) was an American politician . He served as Attorney General under President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State under Richard Nixon

youth

Rogers grew up with his grandparents in Canton , New York after his mother's death . He attended Colgate University in Hamilton , New York, and Cornell Law School in Ithaca , where he graduated in 1937. From 1938 to 1942 he worked for the New York District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey on the fight against organized crime .

In 1942 he joined the US Navy and served on the aircraft carrier " USS Intrepid (CV-11) ". On board this ship he witnessed the Battle of Okinawa in 1945 . At the end of the war he was Lieutenant Commander .

politics

As an employee of the US Senate , he examined the documentation of the investigation by the Committee on Un-American Activities of the House of Representatives against Alger Hiss on behalf of the then Congressman Richard Nixon . He concluded that Hiss had lied and advised Nixon to pursue the case.

In 1950, Rogers became a partner in the New York law firm Dwight, Royall, Harris, Koegel & Caskey . He worked in this office when he was not in the civil service. The firm was later renamed Rogers & Wells and Clifford Chance Rogers & Wells, respectively. He worked in the firm's Washington office until a few months before his death .

Minister of Justice

Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower , he was first Deputy Attorney General in 1953 . In 1957 he succeeded Herbert Brownell as Attorney General . He remained a close adviser to Nixon - now US Vice President  - throughout the presidency , particularly during his 1952 election fundraising scandal that led to Nixon's famous Checkers speech on television.

Foreign minister

Portrait of William P. Rogers in the State Department

During Richard Nixon's tenure as American President, he was Secretary of State from January 22, 1969 to September 3, 1973 . Rogers' influence as foreign minister was rather small, since the president wanted to steer foreign policy mainly from the White House . The most important foreign policy decisions during Rogers' tenure were primarily shaped by then security advisor Henry Kissinger . These included opening up to the People's Republic of China , negotiations to end the Vietnam War and disarmament talks with the Soviet Union .

The Rogers Plan, presented on December 9, 1969 on the basis of UN Resolution 242 , to end the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors after the Six-Day War of 1967 was never seriously negotiated. In the same or a similar form, it has been presented repeatedly under different names over the decades (“Fahd Plan”, “Reagan Plan” etc.).

In his memoir, Kissinger describes the relationship between the President and Rogers as very complicated, despite or perhaps because of their long-standing friendship. Rogers was barely prepared for his role as Secretary of State and Nixon's ambition was to keep Rogers away from all important decisions.

The last few years

After the disaster of the Challenger space shuttle on January 28, 1986, he headed the Rogers Commission to investigate the accident. The commission, which also included astronauts Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride and Nobel laureate in physics Richard Feynman , accused NASA of serious failings with regard to the safety of the space shuttle program.

On January 2, 2001, Rogers died of heart failure. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

In the movie

Brian Dennehy played him in the 2013 TV movie The Challenger .

Quotes

• Say as little as possible while you're doing as you were awake ( Engl. "Say as little as possible while Appearing to be awake") after a meeting.
• We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit in the stands and clap.

literature

• Roger R. Trask: William P. Rogers. 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. 421-429.
• Henry A. Kissinger : Memoirs. Volume 1: 1968-1973. C. Bertelsmann, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-570-03138-1 .

Web links

• Literature by and about William P. Rogers in the catalog of the German National Library
• William P. Rogers in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)

• William P. Rogers in the database of Find a Grave (English)