Haig's Coup by Ray Locker

Author:Ray Locker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO010000 Biography & Autobiography / Political, BIO006000 Biography & Autobiography / Historical, POL010000 Political Science / History & Theory
Publisher: Potomac Books

Haig knew that innocence could never be proved. And within days, Nixon’s eventual replacement, Gerald Ford, would be confirmed by Congress as the new vice president, replacing the unacceptable Spiro Agnew, whom Haig had forced to resign the previous month. The Senate on November 27 confirmed Ford by a 92–3 vote. The House, where Ford had served for a quarter century, was next, and it was virtually guaranteed to replicate the same lopsided vote.

As the month closed on November 30, Haig received an unexpected break when Krogh, whose requests for documents about the Plumbers’ investigation of the military spy ring threatened to expose Haig, pleaded guilty to perjury. That prevented embarrassing details about the Plumbers from surfacing in court.

Also on November 30 Laird announced he would leave the White House staff early the following year. While Laird did not say so publicly, he had accomplished what he needed to do when he joined the staff in June: preserve the cover-up of the military spy ring with Haig and Buzhardt, push out Agnew, and promote the nomination of his longtime friend and ally Ford as vice president. Ford, Laird said, would take over the domestic policy duties, although presumably with more access to the president than Laird had.

While Laird had managed to keep a lid on the spy ring, it still remained a threat to those who had participated in it and covered it up. As Laird announced his departure from the White House, Donald Sanders, the Watergate committee staffer who got Butterfield to reveal the existence of the White House tapes, met with his old friend from the FBI, Donald Stewart, the chief investigator at the Pentagon who discovered the spy ring. While the Watergate committee leadership had agreed not to investigate the spy ring, Sanders’s boss, Senator Howard Baker, believed it was a key to much of what motivated the secrecy in the Nixon White House. He was not letting go. Stewart wrote Sanders a memo the next day to summarize their meeting and highlighted how Buzhardt covered up the Defense Department’s exposure in the leak of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.40

Nixon started November reeling from the news that two of the tapes subpoenaed by the Watergate special prosecutor did not exist. Two of his main defenders, Buzhardt and Garment, believed he had to resign. By month’s end, Buzhardt had revealed the destruction of another tape, knowing that the real evidence of Nixon’s still remained available for discovery. Nixon still believed he could weather the fight, but his chief defenders knew better.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.