Rawhide Down by Wilber Del Quentin

Author:Wilber, Del Quentin [Wilber, Del Quentin]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2011-03-04T07:00:00+00:00

IN THE SITUATION Room, the secretary of state was becoming increasingly agitated. As other officials discussed how to properly calibrate the administration’s public statements or worried about the gunman’s potential associations, Haig remained concerned about how to control the flow of information to the public.

“We’re going to be on a straight line from the hospital,” Haig said. “So anything that is said, before it’s said, we’ll discuss at this table, and any telephone calls that anybody is getting with instructions from the hospital”—his voice rose to a near shout—“come to this table first!”

Then Haig smacked the table hard with a hand—thwap! “Right here! And we discuss it and know what’s going on.”

Richard Allen elbowed Fred Fielding and threw a glance over at Haig. The two men had often talked about the retired general’s theatrics and his endless conflicts over turf. Now, in the midst of a crisis, Allen was alarmed by Haig’s aggressive tone and his table slap, which seemed completely out of place at such a sober moment. He wondered if they foreshadowed more problems to come.

To many outsiders, Haig had seemed like the perfect secretary of state when the president nominated him to the post the previous December. During his years in the army, he had risen quickly through the ranks, earning a number of decorations; later, as President Nixon’s chief of staff, he earned the respect of many for his part in holding the government together during the Watergate scandal. From 1974 to 1979, he served as supreme allied commander of NATO forces and became well known in European capitals. A staunch conservative who took a hard line toward the Soviet Union, he was tough, intelligent, and fearless.

Richard Allen, however, was not an admirer. Allen had worked briefly with Haig during the Nixon years and considered him too blunt and bullheaded and volatile. As well, he felt that the backbiting culture of the Nixon White House had permanently damaged Haig’s ability to collaborate with others. On a more personal level, Allen was privately concerned that a heart bypass operation in April 1980 had made Haig even more erratic, if that was possible.

Only weeks into Reagan’s presidency, a number of others in the administration had come to share Allen’s views. Haig was constantly trying to augment his own authority, and he had upset some of Reagan’s closest advisors by raising the unlikely prospect of U.S. military intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean at a time when the administration was working hard to keep the country’s focus on its economic message. As for Haig, he wasn’t happy either. He felt the Troika—in a recent conversation with Allen, he had called them a “three-headed monster”—went out of its way to interfere with his relationship with the president, making it difficult for him to do his job. Only two months into his tenure, he worried that he wasn’t one of Reagan’s confidants. He also didn’t believe that he was the president’s primary foreign policy advisor, which was the role he’d expected to play as secretary of state.

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