Word: melvin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird returned last week from a four-day tour of Viet Nam, and it became known that he was considering pulling out as many as 50,000 troops before the end of the year. Nixon obviously would like to do so, but, for the immediate future, at least, he quashed that notion. "In view of the current offensive on the part of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong," he said at his press conference, "there is no prospect for a reduction of American forces in the foreseeable future." He was still more abrupt when...
...general expectation was that the President would choose to continue the ABM program in some form, despite the bitter criticism that that course would draw. To do otherwise would amount to a vote of no confidence in the military and undercut Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, who has come out in favor of the ABM. In the highly unlikely event that Nixon chose to abandon this system, he would come under heavy fire from those Americans who voted for him at least in part because he promised to guarantee clear U.S. military superiority over the Soviet Union. To steer a cautious...
...initial hardware. The skeptical McNamara, backed by the White House, refused to spend the extra funds. The very next year, in the face of domestic political pressure and continued weaponry development by the Chinese and Russians, the Johnson Administration reluctantly reversed itself. Now the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Melvin Laird seems eager to press ahead at full speed with an ABM system called the Sentinel-despite hesitance elsewhere in the Administration and increasingly stubborn opposition to ABM in Congress...
...soon to gauge his long-term influence on Nixon. For the present, he clearly has a great deal. He sees the President an average of 90 minutes a day, apart from formal meetings of the National Security Council. Secretary of State William Rogers and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird are not experts in their fields; Kissinger is in his. While Rogers and Laird have been relatively slow in reorganizing their mammoth departments, Kissinger immediately attracted attention by his speedy recruitment of staff members, many of them well-known specialists. Most of his aides were in place by Inauguration...
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...