Word: haig
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Haig was in touch with me every day thereafter. On Thursday, Aug. 1, he said matters were heading toward resignation, though the Nixon family was violently opposed. On Friday, Aug. 2, he told me that Nixon was digging in his heels; it might be necessary to put the 82nd Airborne Division around the White House to protect the President. This I said was nonsense; a presidency could not be conducted from a White House ringed with bayonets. Haig said he agreed completely; as a military man it made him heartsick to think of the Army in that role; he simply...
...somewhat at a loss to judge whether months of harassment had caused Haig to overreact, or whether we really were at the end of the line. Those who had been working on Watergate matters full time had seen so many climaxes by now that they could not believe any single revelation could be the final one. Haig, it turned out, had a good sense of proportion...
...that night, the reaction on which Haig told me the President's decision would depend had become plain for all to see. The Senate Republican whip, Robert Griffin, asked for Nixon's resignation. Vice President Ford dissociated himself, saying: "The public interest is no longer served by repetition of my previously expressed belief that on the basis of all the evidence known to me, the President is not guilty of an impeachable offense...
...Haig told me later in the day that Nixon was tilting toward resignation; he was thinking about doing so late in the week and had asked Speechwriter Ray Price to begin work on a speech. But his family might change his mind. During the afternoon I faced many opportunities to dissociate from the President publicly, thereby precipitating a crisis. I refused...
Wednesday, Aug. 7, Haig told me that Nixon would be meeting that afternoon with key Republican leaders of the Congress: Senator Hugh Scott, Congressman John Rhodes and the respected conservative Senator Barry Goldwater. That might prove decisive. At 5:58 p.m. Haig called. Could I come right over to the White House? The decision had obviously been made. When I entered the Oval Office, I found Nixon alone with his back to the room, gazing at the Rose Garden through the bay windows. I knew the feeling from the time when as a boy I had to emigrate...