cc >> For the Wisconsin Veteran's
Museum, on behalf of Dr. Zeitland, our executive
director and all our staff and volunteers, I welcome you to
tonight's very special program on the life of Melvin Laird.
My name is Jeff, I'm the curator of programs and exhibitions here
at the museum. We are very excited for this
event. We thank you all for coming out.
Before we get started with the symposium, I'd like to introduce
John Scocos, the Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of
Veteran's Affairs. ( applause )
>> Thank you and good evening. It's truly a pleasure to be here
tonight. I really want to thank
Dr. Zeitland, who's not here with us tonight.
He's recovering from surgery. I thank Jeff and all the museum
staff of the Department of Veterans Affairs Museum.
Chancellor John Wiley, a special note for the Chancellor, because
our returning veterans now from the 21st century, the War on
Terrorism, are being educated now by our University Systems,
with the help of the University, the Department and our governor.
And I think Secretary Laird would be proud right now.
Our state is taking the lead in taking care of these veterans,
especially educating them when they come back.
So I thank you, Chancellor, for being here.
Mr. Reid Hall, Mr. Dale Van Atta, the author,
President George Herring, Professor Jeremi Suri,
who's been a tremendous partner with our department in doing
what's right, we believe, in recording the history of our
veterans. Our co-sponsors, the University
of Wisconsin Press, the University of Wisconsin
Department of History, the School of Journalism Mass
Communications, the Center for World Affairs and Global
Economy, the Marshfield Clinic, and the Laird Center for Medical
Research. *The Wisconsin Department of
Veterans Affairs and the Wisconsin Veterans Museum are
honored to host this esteemed panel of experts, and present a
discussion on the life and career of Wisconsin Congressman
and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird.
Secretary Laird has been a longtime supporter of the
Department of Veterans Affairs. When the Veterans Museum moved
to its current location in 1993, Secretary Laird was one of the
first to endorse and support the project.
As a decorated World War II Navy Veteran, Secretary Laird
succeeded his deceased father in the state Senate in 1946, having
long felt that Veterans of World War II should take an active
part in state and national politics.
And I believe that this is an opportunity to prove the point.
As a state senator, Laird supported the rehabilitation
funds and grants for needy veterans.
His strong, but evenhanded support for veteran's
legislation helped push through the initial Veteran Homeland
Program, a program that still exists and flourishes yet today.
Laird, like many of his contemporaries, felt that it was
important that a veteran be able to build and own his own home.
As early as 1947, Laird sought legislation transferring monies
from the state general fund to the Veteran's Trust Fund,
providing a second foundation for the fund that veterans draw
from to this day. *During his first term in
office, the Mosinee Times called Laird a friend of Wisconsin
servicemen and women in the most intelligent and beneficial way.
The Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs is pleased to
present this program tonight in honor of Secretary Melvin Laird,
a true friend of Wisconsin veterans.
I thank you tonight for attending.
*If I could just have Jeremi come up here for a second.
I just have something special. I was talking to Rich Zeitland
this week when he was in the hospital.
I said what can we do to take care of Jeremi for all the
support he's done for us. He said, well, we need to put
something in his office for him to remember us by.
We just have a small token from the Department of Veterans
Affairs, a certificate to Jeremi in appreciation for your
outstanding service to Wisconsin veterans and the community for
your devotion to advancing the discussion of political,
diplomatic, and military history in the public realm, and for
your role in promoting the Distinguished Lecture Series,
the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs presents thanks
and well wishes for an ongoing and prosperous partnership with
the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs.
Thank you, Jeremi. (applause)
>> Thank you. >> Enjoy your evening.
>> That's actually a real surprise.
I had no idea. My wife might have actually come
if she knew that was coming. I should tell her
what she missed. Thank you, Secretary Scocos.
I tell people I have the best job in the world.
I get to work with wonderful people and study crucial topics,
and I get paid for it. It's really the greatest job in
the world. And more important, I get to
work with great students. I'm so excited to be here and to
see this event come together. I've long been a scholar of Mel
Laird's career. And now I feel like we have a
biography that Mel Laird has long deserved.
And we have an audience of people who recognize the
importance of Mel Laird's career, and also what we have to
learn from it. I'm amazed at how we often don't
learn the lessons of history. And I hope we're all prepared
now, as we move forward, to learn those lessons better.
And I know that this book, and our understanding of Mel Laird's
career will help with that. *I want to quickly thank the
organizers again, Secretary Scocos, I really want to thank
him now. Jeff Kolat, Dr. Richard
Zeitland, the wonderful director of the Veterans Museum.
I want to thank Professor James Boffman, who has in true form
not put himself up here, but he should be up here.
Professor James Boffman, the director of the School of
Journalism and Mass Comm. I just call him
"Chairman Boffman." He really made this event come
together. And I think we should give Jim
a round of applause. ( applause )
*Well, to start us out, before we get to our panel of scholars
on Mel Laird, I have the great honor, that I've never had
before, of introducing the chancellor of our great
university, Chancellor John Wiley, also a good friend,
I think. Sometimes!
John is actually the only chancellor I've known.
He became chancellor as I arrived as a lowly assistant
professor. And I think one of his first
events was probably one of my first events at the University
Club, where he explained to us all what it means to be part of
the university. I remember him saying that the
University of Wisconsin is a special place, because we have a
special connection to our community that we should never
forget. He was telling us that as young
assistant professors. And he's lived that experience.
He really has. He's modeled that for all of us.
He's been very supportive of our work at the Veterans Museum and
the Department of Veterans Affairs, and many other programs
around the state. And so, it's really been a
privilege to be one of, I guess, John's employees in a sense.
I have one gripe, though. John's the only chancellor I've
known. I feel like the citizens of the
United States under FDR. There were people at the end of
the third term who couldn't remember anyone else who had
been president. They didn't know what was going
to happen next. So my only gripe is that John
isn't staying on longer. Maybe he's wiser than FDR in
leaving at a certain point. But he will sorely be missed,
especially by the young faculty that had the privilege of
working under him. John.
( applause ) >> Thank you, Jeremi.
You've been on the faculty long enough that you should know by
now that I work for you, you don't work for me.
Anyway, in 132 days, you'll find out what comes next.
*Well, it's a real privilege to have been asked to participate
in this event, at least for the first few moments.
Like Secretary Scocos, I'm going to have to run to another one as
soon as I finish here. But it's an honor to be here for
the opening of this symposium honoring the legacy of Mel
Laird, and to help give due recognition to one of the most
accomplished and influential statesmen Wisconsin has ever
produced. Laird's work as a republican
Congressman representing Wisconsin in the '50s and '60s,
and his work as a US Secretary of Defense during the Nixon
administration led to lasting and beneficial impacts in many
walks of American life, including healthcare, education,
basic research, the modern military and veterans affairs.
*Secretary Scocos ticked off a few of his many accomplishments.
I'll add a little bit to that list, mentioning especially some
in the area of education. Education has always mattered
very deeply to Melvin Laird and his family.
For example, his mother, Helen Connor Laird, was a member of
the UW Board of Regents. To this day, Laird continues to
bring young people from across Wisconsin to Stevens Point
for Laird Leadership Days. While he graduated from Carleton
College in Minnesota, Laird was always very proud and deeply
connected to the University of Wisconsin.
He helped to advance UW Madison in many ways.
But I'll mention specifically his work on behalf the McArdle
Laboratory for Cancer Research as being indicative of that
strong commitment. In the late '50s, McArdle Lab
was housed in what we always refer to as woefully inadequate
space, and needed more lab space dedicated to cancer research.
But UW Madison was unable at that time to provide the
matching funds required by the National Cancer Institute to
qualify for additional federal funds to complete the project.
Working with the then McArdle director, Harold Rush, another
legend in Wisconsin, Laird drafted and fought for an
appropriations amendment that ultimately led to construction
funds for 14 regional cancer centers around the country,
including the McArdle Laboratory.
It was a hard fought battle, given the size of the investment
for those days, but it was also a huge step forward in the
maturation of cancer research nationwide, and certainly here
at Wisconsin. Laird takes great pride in his
record of support for medical and biosciences research, a
record that includes the establishment of the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, and the transformation of the
National Institutes of Health into the world's leading
research facilities. There is no doubt that UW
Madison's standing as a research powerhouse in health and
biosciences research owes a great deal to Laird's leadership
and vision in those areas. Laird also enjoys great acclaim
from leaders on both sides of the political aisle, as
evidenced in the new UW Press biography written by Dale Van
Atta, which you have heard about and will hear more about this
evening. Once comment about Laird from
President Gerald Ford speaks volumes.
Ford said, "Without Melvin Laird as our country's tenth Secretary
of Defense, there likely would've been no end to the
Vietnam War during the Nixon administration, no end to the
draft, no steady military modernization during the
country's virulently anti-military years, and no arms
control treaties with the then Soviet Union."
It's also revealing that equal praise comes from the democratic
side of the aisle. I'm told that Jimmy Carter
considers Mel Laird to have been the most under-appreciated
member of Nixon's cabinet. Finally, I'd like to acknowledge
and thank a few people who are behind today's symposium.
They've already been mentioned, but I'll acknowledge again,
Jim's contribution. Jim is the director of the
School of Journalism. He's out there somewhere.
And history professor, Jeremi Suri, who just introduced me.
Together with Jim, had the vision and foresight to organize
this event and draw together such an impressive group of
presenters and attendees. I'd also like to give special
thanks to our next speaker--. I'm sorry, our next speaker is
actually our last speaker. So I will turn the podium back
to Jeremi. Please have an enjoyable
symposium. Again, I'm very sorry that I
can't stay and enjoy it with you.
( applause ) >> Okay, well thank you, John.
I'm going to now have the great honor of introducing the
panelists. I will introduce each of the
panelists just before he speaks. We have a really fantastic
group. We're going to start with
Professor George Herring. Professor Herring is--
You have to go operate on someone, Steve?
( laughs ) It's okay.
Professor Herring is-- It's okay when it's a surgeon
who gets that beep. When it's a student,
an undergraduate of mine, I get angry.
If you're a surgeon, it's okay. Also a veteran!
Professor Herring is the alumni Professor of History at the
University of Kentucky, where he's taught since 1969.
And I feel like, even though I've only gotten to know George
a little bit over the last few years, I've known him for much
longer. His work is work that I sort of
came of age as an historian reading.
His book, as I'm sure you've all read, and if you haven't read,
you should read, "America's Longest War."
It's the best single-volume work on the Vietnam War,
covering the entire period from the end of World War II through
1975. It's now in its 87th edition,
I think, George, right? Four?
It seems like 87 editions. Every year, there's a new cover.
He's also a distinguished scholar who's covered a number
of issues, in addition to, far beyond the Vietnam War, which is
of course a big enough task in and of itself for a full career,
he has written what is still one of the best books on
American aid to Russia during World War II.
People forget that the United States was one of the major,
perhaps the most important provider of aid to the Soviet
Union during World War II, and other things.
And George's book on the subject, which I believe was his
first book is still, I think, the best book on the subject.
And make room on your bookshelves.
George has a monster book coming out soon, the Oxford History of
the United States. This is a one-volume history of
all of American diplomatic history, from the Revolution to
just about the present. In 2008, that will be out.
And I highly recommend it to you.
I read it in draft. It's just fantastic.
George is going to speak today, but about Laird and the Vietnam
War. And we could not have a better
speaker for that. Please join me in welcoming
George Herring. ( applause )
>> Thank you very much, Jeremi, for that nice introduction.
I thank all of you for having me here.
For years and years and years, I have heard what wonderful,
special places, Madison and the University of Wisconsin were.
Most recently, from a student of mine, who came up this past
summer to learn Vietnamese. During the afternoon and the
evening, I have begun to see exactly why that's so and how
it's so. And I'm so impressed with this,
as an institution. I wish that we had something
comparable in Kentucky. I'm delighted to be here.
I hope I've brought a little spring with me.
Take heart. The dogwood is only beginning to
bloom in Kentucky in the last week or so.
It is on the way. And it's really an honor to be
able to spend a few minutes talking about a very special,
distinguished public servant. And it's been quite interesting.
I didn't know that much about Mel Laird and the Defense
Department until I started reading while we were in Florida
in the month of March. That's how I survive the
Kentucky winters. And I came to find out he's just
a fascinating character. I'm intrigued by his sense of
humor, by his skill, by his caring, wonderful character to
work with. I'm going to talk about his
service as Secretary of Defense, especially as it pertains to the
Vietnam War, and all in 15 minutes.
That's quite a challenge. The first point I would like to
make is that the job of Secretary of Defense is at least
the second most difficult job in Washington.
An astronomical and extraordinarily complex defense
budget. Deeply entrenched military
bureaucracies with their own peculiar subcultures, and close
ties to Congress. Complex weapons systems being
promoted by high powered lobbyists.
In Melvin Laird's time, as today, an ongoing, extremely
costly and unpopular war in a land terra incognito to most
Americans. And the job has taken a toll on
a number of its occupants. The first secretary of defense
plunged to his death from a room in the Bethesda Naval Hospital.
His successor, the cantankerous and ambitious Louis Johnson, was
so cantankerous and ambitious that Harry Truman eventually had
to fire him. Robert Macnamara and his
so-called whiz kids came to Washington with the idea of
reforming the Department of Defense, the Pentagon.
Macnamara left office seven years later, a broken man, not
quite sure at that point whether he had been fired, or somehow by
the slick hand of Lyndon Johnson, coaxed him to
resignation. Macnamara's successor, Clark
Clifford, recalled his year in the office as a year that lasted
five years, 1968 was the extraordinary year.
Of course, we recently witnessed the fate of another would-be
Pentagon reformer, Donald Rumsfeld.
Melvin Laird came to the office with distinguished extraordinary
credentials. He had been a member of Congress
for 16 years. And during much of that time,
had served on the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee.
So by the time he moved into the Pentagon in January, 1969, he
understood something of the politics of the building, and
the intricacies of the defense budget.
He had close ties with Congress, which were very, very important
in the Nixon administration in a variety of ways.
What I came to learn was that he was a wonderfully skilled
bureaucratic operator, all those two words convey.
Before taking office, Nixon knew something of Laird already, but
began to a little more, and wondered out loud with President
Eisenhower one time. He said, "I've heard that
Laird is a devious man." Eisenhower promptly responded,
"Of course Laird is devious." But for anyone who has to run
the Pentagon and get along with Congress, that's a valuable
asset. Henry Kissinger, in his memoirs,
grudgingly concedes his admiration for Laird's political
bureaucratic skills. The Nixon administration, as
many of you remember, was a veritable den of plots,
conspiracies, backbiting, to make the word Byzantine seem
benign by comparison. Nixon and Kissinger sought to
dominate the foreign policy process.
They took no interference from bureaucracy they distrusted.
They operated in secrecy. They used back channel
communications to keep other people out of the loop.
Kissinger's staff often complained that they were
treated like mushrooms. They were kept in the dark, got
a lot of manure piled on them, and then got canned.
Laird more than held his own in this environment.
He learned very quickly that important information was being
kept from him. So he found ways to make sure
that he found out what was going on.
The head of the National Security Agency, an operation so
secret, it's initials, NSA, are said to stand for No Such
Agency. That person was a Laird
appointee and gave him copies of many of Kissinger's back channel
messages. Distrustful of the CIA and the
State Department, Kissinger sometimes used the military
cable. Laird, of course, had access to
that, giving him other means of information.
The unit that took care of military travel kept him
informed of Kissinger's trips. All of these things giving him
an edge in dealing with the highly secretive White House.
On occasion, more than one occasion, he was able to one-up
Kissinger. In 1971, for example, Kissinger
through the National Security Council mechanism, sought to get
control of the defense budget. Laird stalled.
He submitted papers deliberately so confusing that Kissinger's
staff had to spend hours rewriting them.
He sent out different versions of the budget to different
places. Kissinger finally gave up.
"There goes the most devious man in government," Nixon remarked,
undoubtedly with an admiring smile, as Laird left the meeting
ultimately victorious. Another time, and this is my
favorite story, Kissinger sought to exclude Laird from a
presidential meeting with the pope.
Protocol required, however, that Nixon would fly on a military
helicopter from St. Peters Square to an aircraft carrier
in the Mediterranean. Laird brought the helicopter
to St. Peters an hour before Nixon was due to arrive.
And you can imagine the racket that that would make in the
square. The Pope couldn't help but hear
the noise, and invited the passengers inside.
You can imagine Kissinger's shock when he arrived and Melvin
Laird was already there. When Laird found out about the
National Security advisors ultra secret 1971 trip to China to set
up Nixon's 1972 visit, Laird scheduled a simultaneous visit
to Taiwan. Kissinger was forced to call
him, and without explaining why, asked him to reschedule.
Kissinger admits that in tangles with the Secretary of Defense,
he lost as often as he won. But he also concedes that Laird
operated with the buoyancy and good humor that made working
with him a satisfying as it could be on occasion, maddening.
As Secretary of Defense, Laird introduced major changes.
He was aware, already, from his time in Congress, of the damage
done by Macnamara's abrasive personality and top-down
management style. He introduced a de-centralized
system, emphasizing cooperation. He crippled the Systems Analysis
Office, which had been the bailiwick of Macnamara's
so-called whiz kids. He worked very hard to regain
the confidence and cooperation of the Armed Services.
Again, badly damaged during the Macnamara era.
He gave the service secretaries and the Joint Chiefs more
influence in such key areas as budget development.
One of the songs that was sung around the Pentagon, and it will
resonate with some of you World War II era people, a short time
after Laird came into office was, "Praise the Laird and push
the transformation." A happy song for many people in
a different era. A major task of the Nixon
administration was to adjust US foreign policy and defense
posture to the limits of a new era.
There was a clear realization by 1969 that the United States
could not do everything in the world, a sharp departure from
John Kennedy's 1961 pledge to pay any price, bear any burden.
The so-called Nixon doctrine called for Allies to take
greater responsibility for their own defense.
Laird reduced US forces in South Korea and persuaded Japan to pay
for its own defense, both of them very challenging tasks.
Under his administration, as has already been indicated, of
course, the draft was ended and planning initiated for an
all-volunteer force. The Vietnam War was, of course,
a if not the dominant national security issue of the Nixon
years. And Laird played a decisive role
in shaping Nixon administration policies.
By January 1969, as many of you remember, the war had become in
the words of Nixon's speech writer, William Sapphire,
"A bone in the nation's throat." Despite more than a half million
troops in Vietnam, a heavy bombing of North Vietnam, the
United States could gain no more than a stalemate.
With no end in sight, opposition at home increased sharply, and
was manifested, many of you remember here, in large and
sometimes violent anti-war demonstrations.
On March 31, 1968, Johnson introduced major changes in
policy, and even withdrew from the presidential race, something
he must have done knowing him a little bit, with some
reluctance. These initiatives produced no
real breakthroughs. And when he left office, the war
remained stalemate. The nation remained bitterly
divided. As Secretary of Defense, Melvin
Laird relentlessly promoted what he called Vietnamization.
He believed that Johnson's greatest mistake in Vietnam had
been to Americanize the war, beginning in 1965, to turn over
most of the fighting to US troops.
He understood, Laird understood, that to maintain any semblance
of public support, it was essential to begin withdrawing
US forces from Vietnam and shift the burden of military
operations back to the South Vietnamese.
The other part of the plan was to drastically increase military
aid to South Vietnam, to bolster its ability to defend itself,
and of course, to protect the administration from charges of
selling out an ally. A regular program of troop
withdrawals, he reasoned, would persuade the public and Congress
that the United States was getting out of Vietnam, buying
some time. Laird seems to have recognized
that military victory was impossible.
The best plan was to get US forces out and hope that South
Vietnam could defend itself and do everything possible to ensure
that outcome. Laird's plan drew fierce
opposition from within the Nixon administration.
Some military leaders saw it as the beginning of a rear guard
military action, which in truth, it was.
Some complained or insisted that troops not be withdrawn unless
certain conditions were met inside South Vietnam, which has
an eery resonance to today. Kissinger complained that
withdrawing troops would weaken his hand in negotiations.
Troop withdrawals, he argued in a famous memo, would be like
salted peanuts. The more you got, the more you
wanted. It would be an irresistible
process once it got underway. And over Kissinger's strenuous
objections, Laird's program was approved by Nixon
in the spring of 1969. But his support was conditional.
He too at times wavered on the idea of troop withdrawals.
And it was really Laird who provided the momentum and the
relentless pressure to keep the program going.
He used every opportunity available to him to secure
presidential approval for removing fixed numbers of US
troops. Using a precedent set by
Clifford in 1968, sometimes he would leak or announced the
numbers of troop withdrawals before Nixon had formally
approved them. And once they were out there,
the president had little choice but to go along.
Each withdrawal, he accompanied with maximum publicity, to make
sure there could be no backtracking.
The numbers fell from 536,000 December 1968,
to 415,000 June 1970, 150,000 December 1971,
and 47,000 in June 1972. While pushing for the withdrawal
of US troops, Laird also consistently and steadfastly
opposed escalation of the war. Numerous times between 1969 and
1972, and especially in 1969 and 1970, Nixon and Kissinger
considered, or actually launched expanded military operations in
Indo-China. Working usually with Secretary
of State William Rogers, Laird repeatedly argued against,
insisting, in most cases correctly, that more would be
lost in terms of provoking domestic opposition than would
be gained by bolstering the US military and diplomatic
position. Laird supported the bombing of
North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia in 1969, but he
objected to keeping it secret. He insisted correctly that it
could not be kept secret, first, and he went on to argue that
well, if this is important enough to do, then it ought to
be important enough to put out before the public and argue
about it, not try to do it behind the scenes.
And on both points he was right. The secret bombing of Cambodia
had fateful unintended consequences.
The inevitable leaks to the press provoked the White House
to wiretap numerous government officials, including the home
phone of one of Laird's top military assistants, one of the
first in a series of moves that ultimately snowballed into
Watergate. Laird and Rogers helped thwart
a major escalation of the war in the fall of 1969.
They also strenuously opposed the US incursion into Cambodia
in the spring of 1970, insisting, again correctly, I
think, that such a move could not be decisive militarily.
They protested that the use of US troops in Cambodia would set
off a huge uproar at home, again, as many of you recall,
they were on target. The April 1970 Cambodia
incursion reawakened the anti-war movement in many ways,
revived it, and also produced the first efforts on the part of
Congress to exert some kind of control of the war.
So I think on the fundamental questions regarding the Vietnam
War, Laird was right more often than wrong.
Shrewd geo-politicians that they were, Nixon and Kissinger could
never quite recognize, or maybe accept that by 1969, the
home front was the decisive theater in the war.
Laird saw that with clarity. He recognized that troop
withdrawals were essential. He understood that escalation
would be counter productive. Any gains in Vietnam would be
more than offset by losses at home.
And I think again, he was right. The administration's escalation
of the war in 1969 and 1970 seriously weakened its hand.
No less an authority on this subject than William Bundy, who
had been an advisor to Lyndon Johnson, has speculated that
perhaps if Nixon and Kissinger had listened to Laird in 1969
and 1970, and not escalated the war, the outcome perhaps might
have been different. Perhaps South Vietnamese
independence could not have been sustained.
But perhaps also the war might have ended in a less traumatic
fashion than it did in 1975. The result, he concludes, could
hardly have been worse than it was.
I am not entirely convinced of Bundy's argument, nor am I
persuaded as Secretary Laird contended in his much publicized
October 2005 foreign affairs article that despite Nixon's
escalations, Vietnam had succeeded, the peace agreement
of 1973 was viable, and Congressional Aid cuts were
primarily responsible for the 1975 debacle.
What is beyond doubt, however, is that Laird's relentless push
on withdrawing troops was essential.
He carried it off despite a notable lack of support from top
military people in the White House.
It fundamentally altered the nature of the war.
At the Pentagon, Laird repaired relations with the military and
Congress. During a difficult period, he
held things together. In an administration wrought by
scandal, he left office in 1972. His reputation not simply
in tact, but enhanced. He rates, I think, as one of the
more successful people to have served in a most difficult
position. Thank you very much.
( applause )
>> I always enjoy hearing George speak.
He's so analytical but also so funny in a wry way.
Thank you, George. I next have the great privilege
of introducing Reid Hall. I've gotten to know Reid over
the last few years. And it's really been a privilege
to get to know Reid and to work with him.
Reid is just a delightful and thoughtful person.
He is the executive director, as most of you know, of the
Marshfield Clinic. And I need not tell this
audience that the Marshfield Clinic is one of the five
largest private medical clinics in the United States.
I've often asked why it isn't the largest.
It's certainly the best. And it has been, the Marshfield
Clinic, recipient of a great deal of attention and support
from Secretary Laird. Much of its growth and
innovation is actually, I think, been deeply supported by Laird
throughout his career, something that I'm sure you'll hear a fair
amount about. Most significant though, I do
want to mention that Reid Hall is not only the person who runs
the Marshfield Clinic, not only the person who is helpful and
insightful on all issues of politics and diplomacy in the
state, he's also a graduate from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. He graduated in 1970.
So, proving once again, that you can't do any better than getting
a degree at the University of Wisconsin.
So without any further adieu, let me turn it over to Reid.
Thank you, Reid. ( applause )
>> Thank you very much. I should correct you.
No one really runs the Marshfield Clinic, with its 777
doctors, and I don't know how many additional staff.
Welcome. It's my pleasure to be on this
panel tonight, to speak in part about a gentleman that's very,
very important to the Marshfield Clinic, and to me personally, to
the city of Marshfield, to the state of Wisconsin, and indeed
the nation in my judgment. Mel sends his regrets for not
being able to be here. This book has taken us ten years
to write, and edit, and publish, which tells you how detailed the
research was done on this thing. And of course, Mel's hand was in
part of the writing and re-directing, as any Secretary
of Defense would continue to do after he leaves office.
But Mel, I know looked forward to this book very, very much for
many years. Unfortunately, he's recovering
from some health issues that preclude his attendance tonight.
But he's recovering very well and we look forward to Mel
joining the book tour later this summer.
He sends his very best to you, and his regrets for not being
here. But let me just highlight a few
things about his career, and accent, if I may, the things
that primarily involve the healthcare field and what he's
done for medical research, medical education, and
specifically the clinic. You probably know that Mel grew
up in Marshfield. His family home is there.
His brother has a home there. Strong roots in the city of
Marshfield. He graduated from Marshfield
Senior High, then went to Carlton College thereafter.
He served with distinction in the Navy during World War II,
received the Purple Heart for injuries received on his ship
during the war effort. Following the Navy service, he
ran successfully for his father's seat in the Senate,
from our district. Unfortunately, his father passed
away unexpectedly. So at age 24, Mel Laird is the
youngest state senator that we had at that time in the state
Senate. He enjoyed the state Senate from
1946 to 1952. Gaylord Nelson, a colleague from
those days, once called Laird the most formidable senator on
the republican side. And that friendship continued,
and mutual admiration continued. Mel was elected to Congress in
1952, and represented the 7th Congressional District for many
years, 1952-1969. While in Congress, Mel was
recognized as one of a handful of upper Midwestern congressmen
that could get things done in a bipartisan effort.
Other individuals in that category were young republican
representatives by the name of Gerry Ford of Michigan, John
Rhodes of Arizona, Bob Michael of Illinois, and a young Don
Rumsfeld of Illinois. "With Honor" points out, which
is the book we're chatting about tonight.
In chapter five, Mel was known in Congress as a cloud rider, a
zealot of the highest order when it comes to funding health
programs and research. And I think that's truly what he
wishes his legacy would be in the future.
I'm certain that Mel, growing up in Marshfield, had a part to do
with his lifelong interest in healthcare.
Dr. Stephan Upstein, one of our dermatologists and researchers,
is very close to the Laird family.
And Dr. Upstein encouraged Mel to concentrate on health issues
when he got to Congress. He said that one congressman can
do so much more than a group of doctors can do if he's on the
right committees. So Mel did exactly that.
In 1959, he became the ranking member of the HEW Labor
Subcommittee. During this time, Mel and his
partner at HEW Appropriations, John Fogerty, a democrat from
Rhode Island, multiplied the National Institutes of Health
budget by a factor of 28-fold. Definitely bipartisan support
for expanding programs. They successfully sponsored 12
regional cancer centers, the CDC in Atlanta, the Library of
Medicine. They vastly expanded the NIH,
the National Environment Center in North Carolina, and many
other health related programs, including here in Madison, as
was mentioned, the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research,
the University of Wisconsin Cancer Center and the Math
Center. These were among his many
projects here in Madison for the University of Wisconsin.
He served on the World Health organization board from 1959,
with an appointment from Eisenhower, Kennedy in 1961, and
Johnson in 1963, serving 12 years in total.
President Nixon asked Mel Laird to leave a nice, safe
congressional district here in Wisconsin in 1969, and take a
position as Secretary of Defense.
And I think we'll hear more about that department from Dale
Van Atta. He served in that position for
four years, one term, to 1973. He announced when he came in
that he was going to be leaving at the end of four years, and he
did. It was very difficult to leave
the House. He enjoyed that very, very much.
But he said when the President called, it was very difficult to
turn him down. At the Defense Department, Mel
was responsible for three primary things, in my judgment.
The disengagement of US combat forces from Vietnam, ending the
draft and designing the volunteer service.
And having been at the University of Wisconsin in 1966
to 1970, and living through some of the turbulent years here, Mel
Laird was certainly a figure that we all knew.
But anyway, moving on. After the Secretary of Defense
position, 1973 and 1974, he served as White House counselor
to the president for domestic affairs.
And he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1974.
After retiring from public service in 1974, he became a
counselor to the Reader's Digest Association, which association
has continued for 34 years, and continues today.
He also served as director to a Trust, as well as on the board
of directors to many other large national corporations.
He's received over 300 honorary degrees, including the Public
Service Award for Healthcare. His relationship with the
Marshfield Clinic extends to his early years, when he received
his treatment there. He's been a friend to the
clinic. He's helped us with our research
and education mission, helped us set up our first HMO operation
there. He's been an active member of
our national advisory council since 1982.
We're honored to be the home of the Laird Center, the original
Laird Center, which was dedicated in 1997, and we will
dedicate the new Laird Center for Medical Research in October
of this year, which will be a new facility on our campus,
which will house our clinics, personalized medicine program,
infomatics research center, applied science, and our human
clinical laboratory center. The Center is going to allow
physicians and scientists to work side by side, and as Mel
says, great discoveries are just ahead.
But on behalf of Secretary Laird and the Marshfield Clinic, I
want to thank you for coming. And we just have a couple clips
from a couple of Mel's friends. If you can play these.
Good, thank you. I think you'll enjoy these.
>> I've just come from a very private tour of the new Laird
Center, which enabled me to see firsthand, the pioneering
applications of molecular genetics to the field of
preventative medicine. Needless to say, Mel, you should
be very proud of this state of the art facility that bears your
name. The Center is a magnificent
tribute in brick and mortar. But it's far more than just
that. It's also a dynamic institution,
whose greater benefits will accrue to generations yet
unborn. This much I know for sure.
At the end of the day, no leader worth his salt will take comfort
in the polls he conducted, or the tactical victories he may
have racked up. Anyone can take a poll.
Only a leader can move a nation. All his life, Mel Laird has
given that kind of leadership to you here in Wisconsin, to all of
us in America, and yes to all the world.
As a result, no historian tracing the evolution of this
country during the second half of the 20th century, will be
able to overlook the life and the legacy of the man from
Marshfield. He remains today, what he has
always been, a model public servant, a can-do conservative.
He went into politics because he liked people even more than he
distrusted bureaucrats. A man who reflects honor upon
Washington, and the people who sent him there.
A patriot before a partisan. Thank you, old friend, for all
you've done for the Fords, for all you've been to Wisconsin,
for all that you have given so graciously and successfully to
all America. Those of us who know you are
better for having known you. Thank you.
( applause )
>> Mel Laird was Secretary of Defense in one of the most
complicated and tragic periods of American history.
When he became Secretary of Defense, he found 550,000
American troops in as far away from the United States as you
place them. And some of those who put them
there joined the peace movement. We had to extricate those troops
under conditions which were compatible with the honor of
this country, and the security of the world, which depends on
the reliability and steadiness of American promises.
And that had to be done under conditions where not only every
move in that direction was under violent assault, but where
simultaneously, the defense budget was under sharp criticism
and subject to constant pressure to be reduced.
And finally at time when the president and his associates
believed that it was essential to demonstrate to the American
people that we had a vision of peace, so that simultaneously,
with the war in Vietnam, there had to be conducted negotiations
on the limitation of various forms of armaments, creating the
possibility that one could be attacked from both the liberal
and conservative sides, simultaneously.
These policies could never have been carried out without the
imagination, the dedication and the extraordinary good humor
of Mel Laird. He was the architect of the
Vietnamization program, in which every year, over 150,000
American troops were withdrawn. Our casualties dropped to only
10% of what they were when we came in.
He was the architect of those policies.
And he was the architect of a reduced, but effective defense
budget, the major elements of which have lasted to this day.
I look at Mel as a great patriot, as a great colleague,
as a man who President Ford has so justly described.
President Ford, with whom I had the great honor to work, and
who, in my view, has never received the credit he deserves
for preserving and restoring the dignity and honor of our
country. ( applause )
So I'd like to thank God for giving me this opportunity to
pay tribute to a great American, a great patriot, a great citizen
of the world. And before we get too maudlin,
let me say I think of him with enormous affection, only
slightly tinged with exasperation.
( laughter ) ( applause )
>> Mel would've loved to have been here tonight.
And perhaps we can do another program some time in the future
when he is with us. Thank you very much.
( applause )
>> I'm glad he stood up after Kissinger spoke.
I didn't want to come up right after that.
And I also hope, maybe later on, this is not the time for this,
but later on, I think we should all ask Reid if he has time at
the very end to tell the story of how Henry Kissinger got to
the dedication there. It's quite a story, which
involves a flatbed truck, a farmer, and a variety of other
things. No sheep, as far as I know,
though we could add that to the story if we need to.
( inaudible ) Oh, a deer!
Sorry, mixing up that story and my fraternity life
together there for you. Okay, well now, it's really my
great honor to introduce Dale Van Atta, the author of this
magisterial and deeply important volume.
The most important, most significant and I think what
will be a longstanding landmark biography of Mel Laird.
I first had the opportunity to read this in manuscript form
when it was about twice as long as the version you will all buy
and read, I hope. And it was a wonderful book
then. But one point that Dale and I
talked a little bit about by email, and that we talked with
the publisher about, was making this a book that Americans, many
Americans, would have the chance and opportunity to read.
And I so respect Dale's hard work in turning what was already
a great manuscript, and I know, being a writer myself, you put
every ounce of energy into every word, and every sentence, and
every file card, and every document.
It's very hard to liberate yourself from that.
My graduate students in the audience know this as well.
Usually, for them, I just take the red pen.
It's a little harder to do that to Dale Van Atta.
But he did this. And I have great respect, both
for his attention to serious historical research, but also
for his desire and commitment to making sure that a story that
needs to be told is told in a way that ordinary Americans can
read and understand. Dale is a distinguished author.
He's co-author of a book on Norman Schwartzkopf,
"Stormin' Norman, an American Hero."
He's written, "Trust Betrayed: Inside the AARP," and now
this great book, "With Honor: Mel Laird in War, Peace
and Politics." Please join me in welcoming
Dale Van Atta. ( applause )
>> I didn't know I'd be following Henry Kissinger
either. ( laughs )
We should tell that story. Briefly, I was at the
dedication. And I realize it was more than
ten years since I started on this.
I was already working on it in 1997.
And Henry Kissinger, who had survived assassination plots and
very difficult things around the world, came to Wisconsin and was
very nearly killed. He talked about getting off the
plane in Wausau. It was the largest limousine he
had ever seen. In the middle of Wisconsin.
He gets in the limousine, late at night, with Reid Hall
and a few others. And they're driving.
And you know that great dreaded killer of men and women in
Wisconsin, a Wisconsin deer, jumped out.
They were very lucky. It just hit the grille.
As you know, some people die if it hits the windshield, bounces
up, still alive, goes kicking into the car.
So it was fairly frightening, but everyone came out a little
unruffled. They didn't know how they were
going to get Dr. Kissinger to the dedication.
So along comes Melvin McGuire, this Wisconsin farmer.
One of the favorite interviews I did for the whole book.
Once they were driving in the vehicle, you know, he had just
come from a city hall meeting. I think he was a town councilman
there. And he, at one point, asked
Kissinger who he was. Well, "My name
is Henry Kissinger." And he thought he worked
in Marshfield Clinic, because I think he said,
"Dr. Henry Kissinger." And here was Reid Hall,
who was really important from the Marshfield Clinic.
"Oh, what do you do?" ( laughs )
It slowly started to dawn on him, because Dr. Kissinger
started dropping names. Well, I was just, you know, at
Princess Diana's funeral, and so on.
So he kind of realized it. But I would like to tell you,
Dr. Kissinger was pretty gracious with me and this book.
I will tell you, it was my aim to be his arch nemesis during
the years preceding this book. I worked with a columnist named
Jack Anderson. And I inherited quite some
animus toward Henry Kissinger from him, for a variety of
measures. But at one point, like after
Tienanmen Square, I revealed some of his financial dealings
with China, and so on. So, suffice it to say he was no
more a fan of mine than he was of Seymour Hirsch, who will
cause him to go apoplectic. And made the mistake within ten
minutes of mentioning Sy's name, and the interviews took a
decided turn for the worse. But we went to the Marshfield
Clinic. I had been bumped off a plane
for senators, or whatever. So I asked Mel's assistant,
well, at least put me at the table with Kissinger, because he
won't do that on his own, for the lunch that day.
So she did. It was myself, Kissinger, Bob
Michael, and a few other important people.
Well, I went in early, to make sure, this lunch for 500 or 600
dignitaries, that I was actually sitting next to him.
Surely, I was. There was the placard there.
And then, well ahead of anyone else, Dr. Kissinger came in with
his body guard. So I faded to the back.
I knew he wouldn't recognize me. I faded to the corner and
watched as he went around the table, checking all the place
cards. He saw mine, was clearly aghast,
moved it to a far table, and replaced it with a woman that he
knew and liked that would be sitting next to him, instead of
the dreaded Dale Van Atta. And then, happy with what he had
done, he removed from the hall. At which point,
I brought it back. ( light laughter )
So he found himself sitting next to me.
I told Larry Eagleburger this story, and of course the great
Wisconsinite, he was Secretary of State later, and worked for
Dr. Kissinger earlier. He said he used to do that all
the time. He'd scope the room and see who
he was going to sit with. The gamesmanship never ended
with Dr. Kissinger. So that was one of the reasons
for doing the book. One of the reasons that
compelled me to do it was I felt, here was an underrated
individual who was-- I should read you some of the
rejection slips I got. This is just a guy that didn't
matter, and I couldn't believe it.
Every time we got a rejection slip about writing a book about
this great man, it just made me more concerned that I should do
it, that he had been far too underrated for far too long.
One of the things that interested me so much in doing
it, was these very eloquent remarks by Dr. Herring, was the
ability is not known, the ability of Mel Laird, to stymie
Henry Kissinger, and his own president, for those first
couple years. And when I'm saying that, for
me, one of the reasons I was writing the book, is the things
that he was able to stymie them on, were things I was personally
interested in. I'll just read this briefly from
the book. So it wasn't just gamesmanship.
What Laird wanted was quite often the same, more often than
not, he agreed with Kissinger. It would be a mistake to say
they were enemies. They were combative and
competitive. But probably 80% of the time,
they agreed, particularly when it came to the Soviet Union.
And a lot of times, Kissinger didn't necessarily have an
opinion. For instance, he also said in
that same speech, quite rightly, he could never have achieved any
arms control without Laird. Because it was Laird who
provided him the numbers that the military could live with.
So using those numbers, Dr. Kissinger negotiated with
the Soviets. What Laird wanted was quite
often the same as what Kissinger wanted.
But four major exceptions became evident in the first year.
Laird wanted one, sizeable and swift American withdrawal from
Vietnam; two, national acknowledgement of the POWs, and
international pressure for more humane treatment.
And there are many POWs who will tell you that, and some believe
it's true with even John McCain, that he saved their lives by
forcing it to become a public issue, which Dr. Kissinger
didn't want. Avil Herreman, it had been his
policy and the policy of the Johnson administration, because
if you do this, they had an understandable opinion, if you
make the POWs important, then it'll be part of the peace
negotiations and they'll use them as a pawn.
Mel felt, this is a human issue. They're violating the Geneva
Convention. I don't care if they become part
of the peace negotiations. They are being tortured every
day. And by ignoring them and not
going public on it, which he did in June 1969, you'll see a
wonderful picture in the book with the POW wives around him.
I mean, they were tearful. They had met with Secretaries
before, but now he was going public and saying this is an
important issue. So between that going public
campaign and the Son Tay Raid, a raid against the prison camps
that turned out to be empty, the POWs will tell you that their
conditions improved. Many lives were saved.
Less torture during that time period.
There's a couple scholarly works on that.
Number three, unhesitating movement from the draft to the
all-volunteer force. It was Mel and Bryce Harlowe
who committed Nixon to that at the end of a radio address.
They were writing for him. And so, he just read it on
September 30, the previous year, during the campaign.
And Laird held him to it. There were some great people
behind the scenes, Martin Anderson, Milton Friedman,
scholars at the University of Rochester.
There had already been a movement, and he capitalized on
that and their expertise. And four, a commitment to open
government, which fully informs the public on all important
matters. That Laird won on the first
three goals was the more historically significant,
because it was not only Kissinger, but Nixon who opposed
him. Laird's loss on the issue of
open government became a painful one.
The paranoid penchant for secrecy that led Nixon and
Kissinger to lie about the bombing of Cambodia and other
actions added to the administration's discredit and
later made Nixon's resignation inevitable.
Laird had come to this position in what he felt was the worst of
all possible ways. There are very few people, I
mean, yes there were some people that wanted to be Secretary of
Defense, but very few that you would want in there.
So a deal had been arranged. Here was this cashiered
republican vice president, former republican Vice President
Dick Nixon, who had lost against John F. Kennedy.
And two years later, against Laird's advice and all his other
friends had run for governor of California.
The nation thought he was gone. But he comes back roaring after
George Romney, the father of the recent presidential candidate,
starting tripping and falling over the Vietnam issue.
And Nixon rises to the fore and declare's he's the front runner.
And one of the reasons he won, if you go back then, is because
there was a belief in the American public, and there's
various stories about how that started, was that Richard Nixon
had a secret plan to end the Vietnam War, a secret plan.
I've been waiting during this election, 40 years later, to
hear that one of these candidates has a secret plan,
and I can't tell you about it, because we don't want to give it
to the enemy now, but when I get in office, I'll begin
implementing this plan. So it was quite interesting.
That was one of the reasons that he won against Hubert Humphrey,
though the margin was closing, with the Salt Lake City speech,
by the time that occurred. Once Nixon won, he had this one
goal. He wanted to be the first
president of the United States, I mean it was a public relations
goal, to announce all the secretaries at once.
He wanted that picture on the front page of the New York
Times, with all the cabinet secretaries.
And he lined them all up. Mel picked several of them, and
Mel unquestionably talked him into Henry Kissinger, not a
cabinet member of the time. But Mel was very fond and
admired Henry Kissinger, because he had worked with him going
back to 1964. Kissinger had helped out with
the republican platform. He had used some of his help in
previous books, and considered him a great conservative
thinker. So Nixon hadn't met him prior to
that time, until Mel introduced him and said this is a good man.
I'm not sure he was actually there that day at the hotel, but
Mel claims that he was the one. And Kissinger told me he
couldn't dispute that. But he wants to pick his
cabinet, and Mel says, we have got to have a democrat in this
cabinet. And the best democrat will be,
Henry Scoop Jackson, the senator from Washington.
Arch conservative about the Soviet Union, a hawk when it
came to the military. Let's make him Secretary of
Defense. So they talked to Senator
Jackson, who was interested. But he had a problem.
There was no way he could stand up in the democratic party if he
resigned as senator and became a cabinet official, and the
republican governor of Washington, Dan Evans, replaced
him with a democrat. So Laird and others raised an
extraordinary deal where Governor Evans agreed to appoint
a democrat to replace Scoop Jackson.
So they jumped through hoops to get Jackson to do this.
Well then, Jackson went drinking with Teddy Kennedy during this
outing for democratic senators. And Teddy said, you know, I've
heard that you might be accepting secretary of defense.
You can't do that. I know you have presidential
ambitions. You can never run for president
if you become Nixon's secretary of defense.
That is not a springboard for the presidency.
And he was quite right. So Scoop changed his mind.
He called Nixon at the last minute, while he was at a
Republican Governor's Association meeting in Palm
Springs, he said, I'm not going to do it.
Well, Mel had pushed Scoop on him, so Nixon was furious.
So he tells Mel, you're going to become secretary.
I only have a few days. You are going to become
secretary of defense. You are the ranking member on
the House Appropriations Committee for Defense, as well
as Health. You have the expertise.
You have the respect. You're going to do it.
It was the last thing in the world anyone should want to do.
Certainly, Mel didn't want to do it.
So over the next day, and as they're flying back to Andrews
Airforce Base in this plane with him and a couple others, Nixon
keeps trying to persuade him. You're going to do this.
And in the end, Mel knew he couldn't say no to serving his
country and the president elect. By the time they got closer,
Mel played his trump card. He thought he was going to tell
Nixon of one condition that if Richard Nixon met this
condition, he would become secretary of defense.
He said to Nixon, I want to make every appointment in the
Pentagon, civilian and military. You cannot put anyone there.
I mean, the Pentagon is this huge, patronage pot for every
president that comes in. And it's a rare secretary of
defense who actually got to choose his own deputy.
Rumsfeld didn't get to choose his own deputy.
That's not who he would've picked, this second time around.
That's chosen by the president. It's a payoff to political
advisors and friends over the years.
Why is it a payoff. Because it's like this straight
shift. If you put all these great
political aids over the years in the Pentagon.
Yes, it's not the greatest salary in the world, but guess
what, four years later they're going to move right out into the
defense industry and make some serious money and go on boards.
So Mel was taking that away. He wasn't letting the White
House or the president of the United States call the shots
there. He was sure Nixon would say no.
Nixon finally, at that point, they'd both had quite a few
Manhattans. I pushed Mel on it, and he said,
yeah, we were a little woozy. There was a little rough flight
there at the end. And Nixon said sure, why not.
So Mel said, well, you know, I need this in writing.
They looked around and none of them had a piece of paper.
So they took a cocktail napkin and President Elect Nixon wrote
on this cocktail napkin that he guaranteed the White House could
not force any selection on Mel Laird.
When Mel came in, he picked his own deputy, an amazing man,
David Packard, the partner in Hewlett Packard.
Mel knew he had had 20 staffers, or whatever it was, as a
congressman. And he was about to head
the biggest corporation in the world, the biggest budget,
thousands of employees. How's a congressman going to
manage this, it's not in his expertise.
I need to go out and get the best manager possible.
And he talks Dave Packard into it.
They kind of pass a special resolution, because they were so
into the defense department. Packard finally said, okay, I'll
put all my Hewlett Packard stock into a blind trust, and any
profit during the four years goes to charity.
It was a couple hundred million dollars at that time.
Because Mel talked him into it, and Packard agreed to serve,
that went to charity, the Kennedy Center, so many
beneficiaries of that particular decision.
Mel finally agreed to come. And it was a very difficult time
period he inherited, as was eloquently said by Dr. Herring,
just this huge mess. And it was a thing, at the
beginning, and I would actually defer to Dr. Herring and
Dr. Suri on this, who have written and studied it more.
But my impression was that there were different times in that
first year or two, that Nixon and Kissinger actually thought
they might still be able to win it.
But Mel knew from the beginning that you couldn't win it, and
you no longer had the public support.
That was his modus operandi. Have the public support.
If it deserves support, you can talk about it publicly.
So later on, when he's golfing on the golf course, and the
Pentagon papers have been released on Sunday in the New
York Times, Kissinger calls him and says, you son of a bitch,
you leaked this document. He was just sure that Mel had
leaked the Macnamara papers. But one of the many new things
in the book is that by the time the decision came on how to
prosecute this, because Nixon and Kissinger wanted to
prosecute it. A thing that led to some
landmark cases, Mel thought that it was just fine that it was
published. He didn't speak out in public
against it. Not only that, he kind of said
to the Pentagon officers, you know, we've checked this.
This was a history of the Vietnam War, and how we got into
it. The public deserves to know.
And we can only find like 25 paragraphs that might still be
national security. But now, since it's already in
the New York Times, it's not because it's already out.
So he did something very secretly.
He did kind of quiet things. You could never know where his
hand was. And I accused him a number of
times, and he always laughed, sometimes he didn't know where
his hand was. He has a favorite expression.
He says, like over the years, when I was working with him,
"You know what I mean?" And finally, after the first
year, I said, "Heck, no, I don't know what you mean.
Do you know what you mean?" Calling him on it a couple of
times, he said no, I'm still thinking about it.
But he thought I was an author. I would be able to interpret the
reason that he did something. This was not an introspective
man. A brilliant strategist in some
ways, in political gamesmanship and understanding what the
public wanted. But he wasn't a Henry Kissinger.
He wasn't a chess player. He didn't think of all the
moves. He just proceeded on a straight
course, with an instinctive understanding of the American
people. And good results occurred.
And it was a wonderful thing to be able to discover that and
find that out. Some of my favorite stories that
are in the book have been mentioned by Dr. Herring.
And I'd just like to refer to a couple more.
When I think about some of the people that he affected, I was
thinking about the current presidential race.
Certainly, John McCain was affected by him, and brought out
as a result of his withdrawing the troops and then
Dr. Kissinger finishing up with the peace accords to finally get
the POWs home. Hillary Rodham, a kind of closet
democrat at that point, she had already switched over, she
became an unsponsored intern to Mel Laird in the summer of 1968,
working for the House Republican Committee.
We have a picture that shows her, with the shortest skirt
among all the young ladies there.
But I thought, I'd like to really ask Hilary, because Mel
keeps telling me, she's giving speeches and called this
Congressman from Wisconsin a great mentor of hers.
So I'd like to interview her. I called Mel and asked if he
could get me an interview. He said sure.
So it was set up a couple weeks in advance.
And when the day came, that weekend, Monica Lewinski broke.
Hilary found that weekend that her husband had lied to her and
been with this intern, Monica Lewinski.
And I've got an appointment on Tuesday morning to talk with her
about being an intern for Mel Laird years before.
Quite a different circumstance. She kept the appointment and
just praised him to the hilt. She said you have to understand,
I have an antenna for B. S., she said the whole word, and
I have an antenna chauvinists. He actually listened to me.
He used some of my ideas at that early stage.
And he also never gave me the impression that he thought less
of me because I was a young lady offering these opinions.
She said I was so bold, he made me feel like such a friend that
a year later when he was Secretary, I was bragging I knew
the Secretary of Defense. I had some Biafrins come to me
and say there's terrible things happening in Biafra, and she
said, oh I know the Secretary of Defense.
You want to go see him and talk about the military support over
in Biafra. They said sure.
So she called up and they met with Laird.
He was an extraordinary man when it came to understanding and
talking to people. And one of my favorite examples
in the book comes November 15, 1969, to demonstrate the
difference between Laird and those who were working in the
administration at the time. That was the date of the
moratorium, the huge march against the war and against the
government. In fact, to this day, it still
holds the record as the largest anti-government march ever held
in Washington. At least 600,000 people.
So it was youth and others, from the Lincoln Memorial on the
Mall, all the way past the Washington Monument.
So imagine this day, is the Secretary of Defense afraid?
No, but he knows that he wants to go out and talk with them.
But if he goes out and talks with them, he'll be recognized,
because Mel Laird had one of the most recognizable heads of all.
He had a bald head, shaped like a missile.
Cartoonists loved making him a missile or a bullet head.
So he thought he might be a little mobbed and it might be a
distraction. So instead, he had protesters
come in and see him. And two of the protesters who
came in and saw him that day was his niece, Jessica Laird, now
Jessica Laird Doyle, and her boyfriend, Jim Doyle, fresh from
the idealism of the Peace Corps in Tunisia.
And we talked to him yesterday about that experience.
And he kind of remembered it and said, you know, we kind of
yelled at him a little, and we were using the F-word out there
about the war. But he listened to us, and then
we left. But the other extraordinary
thing that day was you had John Warner and John Chafee, Deputy
Secretary of the Navy and Secretary of the Navy.
The latter being gung-ho about Vietnam, we're talking about the
end of 1969. And he said, I wanted to knock
the shine off their views of Vietnam, and that we could win
this war, because there were still hawks at that point, both
of them. So he thought, I'm going to go
out and talk to these youth. So he sent the Secretary of the
Navy, by assignment, on a Saturday, and the Deputy
Secretary of the Navy, go mingle with the youth.
And they did so in sneakers. They borrowed somebody's beat up
car, so it wasn't a limousine. Both of them told me, John
Chafee, two days before he died, very emotionally, about what
working with Mel was like. But they told me how the first
thing we noticed of course, was a very sweet smell in the air.
The acrid smoke, but we decided to ignore that.
And they started listening to the youth.
And the most affected was John Chafee.
Decorated Marine Corps veteran. Been through some very, very
tough battles. And he could not help but be
emotional when he was talking to the youths, some of whom were
veterans from Vietnam, like John Kerry, and who were saying, this
is the wrong war. And by the way, unlike when you
went off to war and came back, you came back a hero.
We come back and we get blood thrown at us.
The public does not want us there.
He was very moved by that. Mel said they both came back
four-square behind him on ending the draft and moving ahead with
withdrawing from Vietnam. At the same time that day,
Richard Nixon was in the White House, the biggest
anti-government demonstration ever, 57 buses end-to-end,
circling for security, the White House, 300 troops in the
Executive Office Building, White House, and snipers and sharp
shooters around the White House. He's holed up in the fortress
White House watching a football game on television.
He was a bit out of touch. That's what Mel felt like he had
to work with. One of the things I discovered
that was a great surprise to me. And I still wonder if history
will bear it out. Mel's memory was quite excellent
the whole time I was working with him.
But there was an extraordinary circumstance with Dr. Kissinger
with Mel that I never expected to have happen.
You've heard how Camp David and all these other things occurred.
When he was referring to Camp David, there was an incident at
one point early in the administration, since the
military runs that, like they did the Navy Sequoia, like they
did the White House communications equipment, which
he knew was being taped, even when he went to see Lyndon
Johnson. He knew the Defense Department
was running the secret taping machine in there.
He had it pulled out, because he just thought that was wrong.
If you tape somebody, they ought to know about it.
But they were talking about something, as I recall, and it's
in Holderman's diary, and a couple others mentioned it, out
at Camp David. They tried to reach someone in
the military. And a few minutes later, Mel
called and said, I understand you're trying to get a hold of
"X." They were convinced he had the
Camp David phones bugged. Well, Mel was not going to be
the eavesdropper. It was going to be the other
side. And in fact, in a way, as was
mentioned, he was a target of the eavesdropping.
Kissinger and the National Security Council people had
worked with, Alexander Haig, and so on, knew that they couldn't
wiretap the Secretary of Defense.
But they didn't trust him and they were worried about him.
So they wiretapped his military aid's home, hoping they would
get information about what Mel was up to.
But when I talked with Kissinger, I said, you know, he
said he knew about all that stuff.
The incident that was mentioned with Taiwan, Mel was playing a
joke. It was terrible.
He never planned to go to Taiwan.
He knew Kissinger was going to China on a particular day.
He already had this amazing plan to be the first American Defense
Secretary to go to Tokyo, Japan, and meet with the Japanese
Defense Minister, who he became friends with, and stayed through
him being Prime Minister, a man who had 50 pieces of shrapnel in
him from a Japanese Kamikaze plane, was going over to Tokyo
to meet and talk and work with this Japanese Defense Minister,
who had been on the other side. But he decided, when he heard
about the secret opening to China, knew what day he was
going to be working on the China communica, he said he was just
ticked Henry didn't tell him to his face.
He always had to find things out through his sources.
So a week before, he sent in new plans to be in Taiwan on that
precise day. Nothing could be more
embarrassing than during a secret negotiation with a
Mainland Chinese than a known hawk Defense Secretary railing
about the evil People's Republic of China, while in Taipei,
Taiwan. So he let Henry swing in the
wind for a little while, then graciously agreed not to go to
the place that he was never planning to go to.
But the most significant thing that is new regarding this
particular aspect of this gamesmanship or what have you,
was when I was interviewing Dr. Kissinger, I said, you know,
this was in 2001, Mel says he knew everything you were doing
because he had this and this and this.
But he also said the reason that he knew about your negotiations
with the North Vietnamese in Paris, was not just because of
the planes and pilots, but he knew what you were saying,
because the NSA had intercepted the communications between the
Paris negotiators and Hanoi, and had even been able to decode,
allegedly, some of the instructions that went back for
the next peace negotiations. And Kissinger was furious.
He said that was absolutely false.
And if Mel's telling you that. You know, he's an honest man,
he's never lied. So I have a hard time with it.
But I never saw any such transcripts.
I know of no such transcripts. So about two hours later, after
I got back to my hotel room in New York, I got a call from Mel.
"What did you do with my good friend Henry?
He's angry at me." I said, "Why is he angry
at you?" He said he's furious over
the transcripts. He accused me of lying and
saying that I didn't see any. Because of course, if I had seen
any, why wouldn't Henry Kissinger, the chief negotiator,
the man who could use that information with the North
Vietnamese, why wasn't he reading them.
And I said, well, Mel, that's a good question.
I'm an American, you know. However I feel about Kissinger,
he should have the best stuff if he's in there negotiating with
the enemy. He said, "I told him and I'm
going to tell you now. He was not in my chain of
command. I did not report to the National
Security Advisor. I was a cabinet secretary.
I reported to the President of the United States.
If the President of the United States chose to share those
transcripts with Henry Kissinger, that was his choice.
But I wasn't supposed to do that on my own."
That was really how that worked. It wasn't just with those
transcripts. So he sent the courier with the
NSA documents over to the Oval Office.
Nixon read them, appreciated them, and told him to take them
back to the Pentagon, without Henry Kissinger seeing them.
I couldn't believe, after all these years, they had never
talked about this. It took six years before Mel
said anything to me about it. It's extraordinary to me.
So trying to make sense of this, I thought, I've got to talk to
the only man who understands both these men, Larry
Eagleburger. He loves both of them, but knows
both of their faults, etc., and foibles.
I called Secretary Eagleburger and I said, you know, this is
what I've got. And he just started laughing.
And he said of course it's true. And I said why.
And he said, don't you understand, it was Nixon's way
of controlling Henry. He was always trying to bottle
him up. So it was his way of checking up
on whether Dr. Kissinger was following his instructions in
the negotiations with the North Vietnamese, by reading what he
was telling them. I said, well, what about if
there was this text anticipating instructions for the next time,
how far they could go, that's pretty vital.
He said of course it was. And I'm sure Nixon said it to
Kissinger, but he made it appear as if he understood what the
North Vietnamese were going to do, which made Kissinger
probably think, in retrospect, as I'm reading his memoir, this
is a brilliant man. This president, whatever you
think of him, he sometimes anticipated what the North
Vietnamese were going to do, and gave me instructions toward that
end. So this was pretty much a
surprise to me after all these years of studying this.
Shall I end there? All right, yeah, there were many
other stories. Let me just close by saying the
surprise to me, I'm an investigative reporter,
everything I wrote before was skewering people.
It was afflicting the comfortable.
With Jack Anderson. It was bringing down cabinet
secretaries. Calling presidents to bear.
You know, writing stories about the president of Mexico stealing
money. And all around the world, that
was my job. And when I came across Mel's
story, I thought, you know, this time, I'm going to write a man,
who in the middle of a morass, maintained honor and did the
right thing, and still looks pretty good, even in hindsight,
with all that we understand 40 years later.
Thank you very much. ( applause )
>> Okay, well I want us to have time to ask questions and have
some discussion with the audience.
We are at 8:30 already, but I think we can go another 15
minutes or so. Is that okay?
So I'm not going to say anything.
I'll just play traffic cop. What I think we've had here are
really extraordinary presentations on the Vietnam
War, on Mel Laird's career as a whole, and on working with Mel
Laird and trying to, I think, as they all so well put it, trying
to understand an honorable man operating in a morass of
difficulty and despair in some ways.
So I think we should open this up for questions, thoughts,
comments. Mr. Engel.
>> At least get my name right! Englerre.
>> I'm sorry. >> We've heard a lot of very
good things about Secretary Laird.
What does he regret from his time as secretary of defense?
>> One of the great suggestions made by Jeremi Suri, when he
reviewed the manuscript and said this needs improvement in the
following areas, was you need to put in there some of the regrets
Mel Laird feels from that time period.
He fussed over that for a month, and couldn't quite come up with
anything. And the thing that he came up
with in the end, was not as secretary, but it was accepting
the position of Domestic Counselor in the White House in
June 1973, in the middle of Watergate.
It cost him a great deal. He was fine when he left as
Secretary of Defense, but going in to work for President Nixon
at that time, I mean, it did change the country's history.
We can talk about that. But I could not get any regrets
out of him, nor could I say. I mean, he is not a perfect man.
There were a number of mistakes that he made.
But I'm not an historian. And it was really kind of them
to call me a scholar. And perhaps when you work on a
book for ten or 12 years, it may be the equivalent of a master's
thesis or doctorate. >> At least.
>> But they're more trained in these kind of things than I am.
But nevertheless, as an investigative reporter, when I
look at the overall, and when I understand the context of the
times, and who he was dealing with, which Dr. Herring really
explained, especially the differences in the Pentagon,
that he was able to get the Joint Chiefs to go along with
all this. I'm sorry to be so long, but
what I haven't explained is, Nixon came into the White House,
and certainly Kissinger, without many friends on capitol hill.
And certainly, few friends in the media.
That's where Mel's power derived from.
And they knew they couldn't do anything in this area without
him. Mel Laird had this scorecard, at
the end of four years, that he never lost a vote on capitol
hill. He had more friends in both
parties than Nixon or Kissinger. By a couple years in, Kissinger
had learned, and developed some significant friends,
particularly in the media. But in those first couple years,
they couldn't work around him. So there really was nothing he
regretted. All the regrets he had was
things being kept secret that he had argued shouldn't be kept
secret. >> Great, next question.
Mr. Currance. >> You got my name right.
>> Yeah, I got your name. >> What did Mel Laird think
about the civil rights violations, wiretapping,
breaking into people's places, and stuff like that.
And what does he think about what's happening right now, with
arguably civil rights violations?
>> You want me to take that? >> I think you should.
>> Outrage. I mean, he was really tough with
Alexander Haig. He felt Haig was more
responsible than Kissinger on the wiretapping of aids in the
White House. It got worse than that for those
of you who remember the time period.
He had an admiral, Tom Moore, who really couldn't be trusted a
whole lot. A clever man.
Kind of forced to put him in the position in some ways, but who
had a spy ring operating in the White House, stealing documents
from Kissinger's briefcase. A Navy yeoman, Radford, who was
working in that position. They decided not to make it
public, including Mel, because if they found out that the Joint
Chiefs were spying on the White House, it might be like Seven
Days in May. It was the last thing we needed.
But there were so many things during that time that outraged
him that, yes, he was always for openness in government, and
always against anything illegal. >> Did he ever confront Nixon?
>> When did he find out about it personally?
>> He didn't confront on it personally.
If I may jump to another story that kind of answers your
question. When I was almost done with the
book, I came to the period of Domestic Counselor.
And I thought, and re-thought, since he was helping me a lot
and overseeing this project, giving great support for the
Marshfield Clinic, it's almost done.
He's out of the White House. I mean, he's out of the
secretary's office. We're done with this book.
Then I hit that Domestic Counselor period and came across
extraordinary things, especially as I developed it and talked to
Mel. And let me just set the scene
for you. He goes in where he shouldn't
go, where his wife and mother have said, we don't trust Nixon,
you shouldn't even have been Secretary of Defense, and
alienates, to a degree, the two women he loves most, to go in.
Because people on capitol hill have insisted Holderman and
others have resigned, all Nixon can think about is Watergate.
You've got to go in and pass the budget for us.
So he was definitely in the basement, he admitted, he and
Bryce Harlowe, using the auto pen, many times without Nixon's
approval, just to sign legislation, just to move things
along. But his wife had said, you can't
accept this position unless you eyeball Richard Nixon and ask
him, did you have anything to do with Watergate.
So he went to see Nixon at Camp David, his friend, and said, did
you have anything to do with it. When I talked to senior George
Bush, he said, none of us asked. I was head of the RNC.
None of us asked Nixon directly. But he did.
And Nixon lied to him. Now, three weeks into it, in
late June, Fred, Nixon's lawyer. And those of you who are lawyers
in the room, Reid understands how amazing this was.
He would've been disbarred for this.
Fred, who had been general counsel in the Pentagon, whom
Mel had placed over at the White House, and who had talked Mel
into coming to the White House as domestic counselor, now says,
secretly meets with Mel and says, I've been the first person
to listen to the tapes. There are tapes that exist.
Nixon is guilty. My client is guilty.
Well, at that point, you're an honorable politician.
Do you stay or do you go? Well, he called Bryce Harlowe
and said I'm going. I can't tell you why.
I can't stay in this administration.
I can't stay here, and basically go down the tubes.
Everybody came to him from capitol hill.
They had this great rousing group that came to him and said
you've got to stay. Well, so he agreed to stay.
But he buttonholed Nixon. He knew he always took this walk
between the White House and the Executive Office Building
hideaway. Within a couple days of Fred
telling him, who he couldn't quote, he said I understand
President Nixon, you lied to me. You were definitely involved in
the Watergate cover up. And I'm sick about it.
And I can't believe you'd do this to a friend.
Nixon said nothing. One sentence.
Are you going to stay? No denial.
But are you going to resign. Well, he decided not to resign.
But he worked behind the scenes. And what he did, undid Richard
Nixon. And that's been known till now,
how successful he was. Not that he intended to,
necessarily. He put Gerald Ford in there
when Spiro Agnew went out. And he could have had it
himself. He could've been president, I
believe. People talking about it on
capitol hill were willing to put his name forward first.
He said absolutely not. He said Ford's name goes.
He becomes president. Once you have Ford there, you
can impeach Richard Nixon. If Spiro Agnew's gone, you have
no vice president. This was a constitutional crisis
at the time the country could not afford.
Once you have this wonderful man in as Vice President, you could
move next. The next thing he did, was he
made Leon the special prosecutor.
He and Bill Archer talked Leon into it, got everybody to say
yes. Got Nixon to say yes.
Now you've put in the second man that's going to do Nixon in.
Then the last peg that dropped was the Chief Council of the
Watergate Committee that had actually issue the impeachment,
200 applications, but there was one man Mel Laird wanted there.
A Wisconsinite. A trusted, amazing Wisconsinite,
Frank, who had been a civil rights champion during the
Kennedy and Johnson administrations, amazingly
courageous down in the middle of hostile people, protecting
African Americans. A book should be written about
him. But everybody respected him.
They knew he'd be impartial. So it's not coincidental that he
tells him to appoint him. He does the next day, and quotes
from, the support, the only person he says supported it is a
republican, White House Domestic Counselor Melvin Laird.
Well, that means you've appointed an impartial person.
The three were in place. Because they all had integrity,
it was inevitable Nixon would go.
So that was his reaction, to do the right thing.
>> I think this is why you're the right person to write this
book. Only an investigative reporter
can untangle that mess. No historian could do that.
George, I wanted to ask you a question while we have you here.
Why is it that, according to what we've heard and what Van
Atta has written so well, why is it that someone like Mel Laird,
who had nowhere near the policy experience, or for that matter,
the intellectual capital like someone like Robert Macnamara,
why did he understand so much when Macnamara understood so
little? >> I'm guessing it's
understanding people and having a feel for what's going on in
the country. And I'm not nearly as
knowledgeable about this. As I was looking at it, it's
just a sense of a real feeling of the pulse of the country,
which Nixon was a clever politician in many ways.
Kissinger, I think never really had this.
In fact, he thought everything that was happening in the
country was wrong, and conspiracy and all this.
Laird seemed to have seen through it.
There were real problems with troop withdrawals, because as
Kissinger pointed out, we were withdrawing unilaterally.
We're not getting anything for it.
In a military sense, as we're pulling out, our military
position is going to weaken. There's no arguing with either
of those. But Laird saw it had to be done,
and insisted it be done, and did it in, I suppose you could say,
a typically Lairdian way at that time.
Although Clifford saw the same thing.
Clifford was a domestic counselor, and more than foreign
policy expert. >> Laird is somewhat unique in
actually being an elected politician in that position.
He was the first one. Right, most often, those were
either defense experts, or patronage people, as you pointed
out, and corporate executives. So it is interesting that Laird
is the first. And Sam Rayburn's criticism of
all the people around Johnson was that they were smart, but
had never been elected county sheriff, right?
I mean, Laird had been elected county sheriff, and much more.
I think we have time for one last question.
Mary. >> The time that Laird was
serving, and then bringing troops home, is that he also
cared about the people who had fled the country.
And he offered, through a plan with Bob, a limited amnesty to
the soldiers, well, they weren't soldiers, they were draft
dodgers. But they left the country.
And if they came back and asked for forgiveness, they could
resume their place in society. >> Right, I think that's a great
point. Do you want to say something
else? You and Mary have known Laird
probably longer than most everyone in this room.
>> I've said to many people, after being in 31 campaigns, 85%
of what I know, he taught me. He was not a scholar, but he
sure was a teacher. >> I think that's probably a
good note for us to close on. Dale will be signing books just
downstairs in the front. He will take plastic and cash,
and all kinds of things of that sort.
I encourage you all to read the book.
Thank you very much for coming. ( applause )