Former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig,who died last week at the age of 85, played a variety of roles in the military and the government, including combat duty in Korea and Vietnam, Army Chief of Staff, White House Chief of Staff, and Supreme Allied Commander Europe. It is worth remembering, however, that when he was military assistant to national security adviser Henry Kissinger and later his deputy, Haig played a central role in a wiretap scandal which was one of the abuses of power that brought down the presidency of Richard M. Nixon. Indeed, the wiretaps were an element of Article 2 of the articles of impeachment adopted by the House Judiciary Committee on July 27, 1974.
On May 10, 1969, the day after The New York Times published an article by William Beecher on the secret bombing of Cambodia, known only to a few in Washington, then-Colonel Haig went to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters to order wiretaps of three White House aides and a senior Pentagon official. William Beecher, “Raids in Cambodia by U.S. Unprotested,” The New York Times, May 9, 1969. When Haig made the formal request for the wiretaps, he told FBI assistant director William Sullivan that the request was “made on the highest authority” and that the matter was “so sensitive it demands handling on a need-to-know basis, with no record maintained.” [i] That was not the way the FBI did business, especially when White House officials were issuing unprecedented requests to wiretap White House aides, as opposed to espionage suspects or organized crime figures. Thus, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover provided Attorney General Mitchell with the gist of the conversation with Haig. [ii] (more…)
