Word: laird
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Later in the week, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, who was Nixon's military adviser during the campaign, reluctantly admitted that his boss was right on sufficiency-which to Laird was apparently synonymous with "superiority." To further that end, said Laird, the Nixon Administration would continue with the $5 billion-to-$10 billion Sentinel antiballistic missile system. Designed to ward off a primitive Chinese attack-but virtually useless against a heavy Russian assault-Sentinel, in Laird's view, would nonetheless be an important bargaining pawn when negotiations do start with the Soviets. Many Congressmen, who grudgingly agreed...
Whatever the outcome of the Pueblo investigation, it will be only a prelude to an even more intensive inquiry. Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird has ordered a top-level Pentagon study "to see that incidents of this kind do not happen again." However, the overriding significance of the Pueblo inquiry so far is not that the seizure occurred, but that a mentality existed in the U.S. Defense Department that allowed it to occur. That may take more than a Pentagon study to correct...
...Quite a few of the new Cabinet members are no strangers to Washington. Stans served as Eisenhower's budget director from 1958 to 1960. Finch was executive secretary to California Congressman Norris Poulson in the late 1940s, and administrative assistant to Vice President Nixon a decade later. Melvin Laird, the incoming Secretary of Defense, has been an eight-term Congressman from Wisconsin, and has become a highly influential Republican in the House. Secretary of State-designate William Rogers was Eisenhower's last Attorney General; during the Kennedy and Johnson years, he kept a handsome house in Bethesda...
Several Cabinet wives bring to the capital experience in community service, and in one case a considerable firsthand political background. Lenore Romney has campaigned effectively for her husband George both in Michigan and nationally; Barb Laird, on the other hand, says candidly: "I doubt if many political wives know much more about politics than I do, which is nothing." Both Mrs. Shultz, whose husband has been dean of the University of Chicago graduate business school, and Mrs. Clifford Hardin, married to the incoming Agriculture Secretary and ex-chancellor of the University of Nebraska, are used to the incessant social round...
Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense-designate Melvin Laird, who had gained a solid reputation as an expert in military affairs in 16 years in the House, told the Senate Armed Services Committee what it wanted to hear. He was in favor of staying ahead of the Soviet Union in the nuclear arms race. He said that the invasion of Czechoslovakia had set back attempts to negotiate an arms-limitation treaty as much as twelve months. Added Laird: "We have to start preparing all over again...