Word: haig
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...vortex of such pressure, been the man to orchestrate so many traumatic events, been torn by so many personal emotions, doubts, loyalties. How could he have continued to believe in Nixon? It is no simple matter to arrange your sense of duty when you see it as Haig did. "It involves the country and the American people," is all he will say now. "That's what it was all about." He deserves to be listened...
When he began his last White House tour of duty, he found almost total paralysis in the wake of the Haldeman-Ehrlichman firing. He got the machinery going again. He found that Nixon had no Watergate counsel. Haig recruited Fred Buzhardt from the Pentagon and urged Nixon to lay out all of the Watergate case. When Nixon made his May 22 statement, Haig thought that was the whole story. How could he have continued to believe as one by one Nixon's defenses were shown to be false, incomplete? That is the part that Haig cannot explain away. Maybe...
...months before the end, Haig and Kissinger saw an anguished impeachment trial, bare survival for Nixon. And even that was the thinnest of hunches. Did Haig begin to ease the way for a Nixon resignation then? Probably...
...Haig knew that Watergate was taking a terrible physical toll of Nixon. The viral pneumonia was the first signal. Yet Nixon could come back to his peak. Said Haig: "The President performed brilliantly in the Middle East and Russia...
...When Haig learned of the last transcript, he knew Nixon was finished. He believes Nixon knew it too. Some others in the White House did not. Haig moved through the murk. The question that concerned him most was whether the country was ready for the events ahead, and Haig moved skillfully to get the tapes out and bring the country abreast of them...