Word: haig
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Shultz was supposed to be everything his volatile predecessor, Alexander Haig, had not been: calm, collegial, steady. Unlike Haig, he would avoid squandering his clout on bureaucratic spats. A former business-school professor, Treasury Secretary and president of an international corporation, Shultz came to the job with a thorough knowledge of world economics and a feel for Middle East affairs...
...named president of the Bechtel Group Inc. (1982 sales: $13.6 billion), a construction and engineering firm; Weinberger followed Shultz there as a vice president. But Weinberger's service to Governor Reagan in California put him ahead of Shultz when the President picked his original Cabinet. After Shultz replaced Haig, he and Weinberger soon began fencing, regularly taking opposite sides in policy debates...
...from transcripts, notes and minutes of meetings, all from the Israeli side. Conversations that took place in English have all been translated into Hebrew. Even if the quotations were indisputable, the interpretation by participants would not be. For example, Snow Ball contains a lengthy exchange between Sharon and Alexander Haig, supposedly showing that the former Secretary of State gave Israel the green light for an invasion...
Meeting with Haig in Washington two weeks before the attack, Sharon reportedly asserts, "We do not see any other way but to enter and clean up the area." In a long, rambling reply, Haig is quoted in the Hebrew text as saying, "We understand your goals ... As your allies, we are in no position to tell you not to take care and protect your interests ... I hope that you will be sensitive to the international implications ... A way should be found in order to solve the matter...
According to Shiffer, Sharon took Haig's monologue as the go-ahead signal. Haig insisted to TIME through a spokesman last week that he never gave Sharon the encouragement implied. According to Haig, moreover, the former Defense Minister has assured him he never took his words as approval. Even if the Secretary of State did deliver the speech cited in Sniffer's book, it at best constituted not a green light but an amber one, full of the normal ambiguities of diplomatic discourse...