Word: haig
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...visible members of the new Administration, does in deed coat his somewhat alarmist world view with the mellow affability that is the hallmark of Ronald Reagan and his California insiders. Says one senior Administration official who has worked with both the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense: "Haig worries about authority, while Weinberger assumes it. Haig is tense by nature, where as Weinberger is relaxed." As a result, the avuncular Weinberger has so far managed to avoid the four-star controversy that has surrounded his take-charge colleague at State...
Weinberger, 63, has an unpretentious old-shoe style that makes him seem comfortably self-effacing-a description seldom applied to the high-strung Haig. Cap enjoys the exercise of power but seems bemused by its trappings. When security-conscious West German officials sent a limousine to take him to a secluded wood for his daily three-mile run one morning, he gently protested, to no avail, that he preferred jogging the streets near his hotel in Bonn. Later, he joked that the Germans had probably insisted he get out of town because his tattered jogging outfit was so indecorous. Unlike...
Arriving in Bonn a few days later, Haig had to tone down Weinberger's pessimistic assessment of the prospects for Soviet-American negotiations. Commented the Neue Ruhr Zeitung: "Haig repaired the china that was smashed a few days earlier by Secretary Weinberger." But Cap keeps smashing away. In Washington last week he told reporters that arms-control talks were contingent on the further reduction of Soviet troop levels near Poland. The State Department had to send messages to NATO capitals reassuring them of America's commitment to renewed negotiations. Haig publicly stated that Soviet-American talks are "under...
...learn about the subtleties of diplomatic discourse, has a tendency to make casual and imprecise pronouncements that later have to be corrected by others. In his first press conference, he said that the U.S. might decide to deploy the enhanced-radiation warhead known as the neutron bomb. Haig quickly sent out cables saying that no such decision had been made. Discussing the presence of U.S. trainers in El Salvador, Weinberger offhandedly referred to them as "advisers"-a red-nag word with disturbing echoes of Viet Nam. This tendency to shoot from the hip has done nothing to ease tensions between...
Weinberger insists that he is not interested in any dispute with Haig over prerogatives or authority. "I've got all the turf I want or could handle," he says. In fact, White House aides worry that Weinberger has yet to get a good grip on the country's massive but cumbersome military apparatus. Reagan aides are disappointed that Weinberger-now known to some as "Cap the Shovel," since he is dispensing the Administration's only budgetary increases-has not come up with any innovative overhauls of bloated programs to make the increased defense outlays more palatable...