Word: laird
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Recently, however, Fischer has begun to detect signs of improvement. "Before Watergate, people in the White House frequently refused to make appointments and often neglected to return phone calls." Today, Fischer happily finds that such Nixon advisers as Alexander Haig, Melvin Laird and Bryce Harlow "are aware of the dangers of White House isolation in a way that Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman never understood...
...Richardson was picked to supply it as Secretary. Though critics contended that he weakened the drive for school desegregation by failing to support busing with sufficient enthusiasm, Richardson was notably successful at HEW. After last year's election he was picked to succeed Melvin R. Laird as Defense Secretary but held that job only three months before Nixon chose him in May to repair the Watergate damage as Attorney General...
While bombs fell in the wrong places, the dubious beginnings of U.S. military activities in Cambodia were being laid bare in Washington. Former Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird has insisted for three weeks that he never ordered falsification of any documents to hide U.S. air and ground activities in Cambodia and Laos in 1969 and 1970. Last week, however, that flat denial apparently became inoperative. The Senate Armed Services Committee, which has been investigating what is being called "the Cambodian cover-up," released a top-secret 1969 memorandum, which showed that Laird had approved falsified reporting to hide bombing raids...
Dated Nov. 20, 1969, some seven months after the clandestine bombing began, the memorandum came from General Earle G. Wheeler, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was initialed by Laird. It recommended that a 41-plane force of B-52s strike targets inside Cambodia while other B-52s bombed cover targets in South Viet Nam and Laos. The memorandum added: "Strikes on these latter targets will provide a resemblance to normal operations, thereby providing a credible story for replies to press inquiries." Despite the memorandum, Laird still insisted that he had not authorized any falsification-just...
Finding them may not be easy. Melvin Laird, former Secretary of Defense, and General Earle G. Wheeler, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both hastily denied having ordered the falsifications. Henry Kissinger also asserted no knowledge of the Air Force's peculiar reporting procedures. After considerable doubletalk, the Pentagon finally issued a public statement saying only that the falsification processes were "authorized and directed from Washington...