Hi, I’m Ray Locker, a Pulitzer Prize nominee and former enterprise editor at USA Today. I’ve also written Nixon’s Gamble: How a President’s Own Secret Government Destroyed His Administration:
When General Alexander M. Haig Jr. returned to the White House on May 3, 1973, he found the Nixon administration in worse shape than he had imagined. President Richard Nixon, reelected in an overwhelming landslide just six months earlier, had accepted the resignations of his top aides—the chief of staff H. R. Haldeman and the domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman—just three days earlier.
Haldeman and Ehrlichman had enforced the president’s will and protected him from his rivals and his worst instincts for four years. Without them, Nixon stood alone, backed by a staff that lacked gravitas and confidence as the Watergate scandal snowballed. Nixon needed a savior, someone who would lift his fortunes while keeping his White House from blowing apart. He hoped that savior would be his deputy national security adviser, Alexander Haig, whom he appointed chief of staff. But Haig’s goal was not to keep Nixon in office—it was to remove him.
In Haig’s Coup, Ray Locker uses recently declassified documents to tell the true story of how Haig orchestrated Nixon’s demise, resignation, and subsequent pardon. A story of intrigues, cover-ups, and treachery, this incisive history shows how Haig engineered the “soft coup” that ended our long national nightmare and brought Watergate to an end.
You can get the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Haigs-Coup-Richard-Nixons-Closest/dp/1640120351/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1547675656&sr=8-1&keywords=haig%27s+coup or here:https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/potomac-books/9781640120358/ and follow me on Twitter @rlocker12.
Thank you so much for joining us today! What I mainly know about Haig is of course his infamous "I'm in control" speech following Reagan's assassination, and to be honest, knew quite little about his earlier political career. Clearly it didn't have too much of a negative impact as he was in place to be Secretary of State for Reagan, but just how did his behind the scenes involvement in Nixon's ouster impact his standing within the Republican Party? Was it seen positively, as a pragmatic necessity, or something else?
What do you mean by the phrase "soft coup"? This language seems incendiary in the extreme, and as a student of intelligence history is close enough to "silent coup" to make me nervous.
What did Haig do, and what is your threshold for considering something a coup d'etat?
Hi! Thanks for doing this AMA.
In Haig’s Coup, Ray Locker uses recently declassified documents to tell the true story
Was this documentation the result of Freedom of Information Act requests, or declassifed as part of ongoing government policy? What kinds of documentation are we talking about - internal memos, private communications, legal documents, etc?
So why did Haig act to remove Nixon? Did he have personal reasons to do so? Did he feel he was acting in the interests of the Republican Party or the country by purposely sabotaging Nixon?
What was the process that went into picking Haig as CoS? Who recommended him? And you say that 'Haig's goal was to remove Nixon', but do you feel that was his aim from the time of his appointment, or rather that it was a view that developed once he came into the position? Or more simply, was Haig a Trojan horse from the start of his tenure?
Thanks for doing this AMA!
I'm currently writing a doctoral dissertation on the Reagan administration, and I've been consistently fascinated by Haig's personality and his rocky relationship with his fellow White House staffers in Reagan's administration. While most saw him as competent, they also believed that he was smug, power-hungry, attention-seeking, and paranoid. These character faults ultimately led to Haig's ouster as Secretary of State.
To what degree were these traits prevalent during Haig's tenure in the Nixon White House? Did his colleagues in the Nixon administration dislike Haig as much as those in the Reagan administration?
Thanks for your time!