Alexander Haig: Deep Throat

[John Simkin]

Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, the authors of Silent Coup: The Removal of a President, claimed that Haig was Deep Throat. Jim Hougan (Secret Agenda) and John Dean (Lost Honor) agreed with this analysis. However, Haig was not in Washington during Woodward's meeting with Deep Throat on 9th October, 1972. The other problem with Haig concerns motivation. Was it really in his interests to bring down Richard Nixon? According to Leon Jaworski Haig did everything he could, including lying about what was on the tapes, in order to protect Nixon from impeachment.

What do members think?

[John Geraghty]

Haig was very certainly in the camp of George HW Bush and constantly played the angle to create a result in his favour. We know that Bush was a possibility as vice presidential nominee, though Gerald Ford eventually got it. Haig was very active in attempts to secure power for Bush on the day of the Reagan assassination attempt, he himself claimed authority in the situation room, despite the fact that the speaker of the house was in Washington D.C. at the time. The constitution clearly states that if both the president and vice president are incapacitated the position then falls to the speaker of the house.

George HW Bush was not in a faction of his own, so it is not inconceivable that the actions were taken by Haig to benefit someone other than Bush, but that would be a likely scenario.

The following is taken from an interview with John Judge on the ratical site http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/112600.html

One was when Bush helped to get Haig appointed as Secretary of State. The entire Cabinet staff underneath him was already pre-appointed and he wasn't allowed to pick or choose any of them, or fire any of them. So it was like he was a figure head put up at the head of this agency that he wasn't really allowed to run. Then just a few days before the shooting of Reagan, there was a switch where Bush replaced Haig as the head of an emergency preparedness committee or unit that they had at the White House. The press was asking Bush right after he was appointed in place of Haig -- this was just three days before the shooting -- `What constitutes an emergency for the purpose of this special office?' And Bush said, "The president will know it when he sees it." I think he meant that he -- Reagan -- would know it when he saw it lying on the ground dying.

This I believe was a coup. The black box disappeared for several hours. . . There was that kind of transition-of-power going on -- who was actually going to control things and there were switch-overs about the Strategic Air Command bomber pilots, again, not having code books aboard on March 31, 81 like they didn't on November 22, 63. This was a classic transition-of-power situation.

I think, the loyalists won the concession that Reagan will be allowed to stay alive but Bush would come into power and at that point Haig emerged from the situation room to the press and said, his famous quote, "Gentlemen, I am in charge here until the Vice-President returns." That meant two things: number one, that they were going extra constitutional -- beyond twenty-fifth amendment, a military take-over and Haig in this office of preparedness, prior to Bush and basically he's taking charge. The press were questioning What does this mean? It's not the twenty-fifth amendment which goes to the Speaker of the House or the Vice-President. What's happening that Haig can come up and say this?

What they don't understand is all that Constitution stuff is pushed aside once they declare National Emergencies. Then they go into FEMA and they have whole other orders of succession that have to do more with the military and the Pentagon than with any of the civilian sector.

So Haig is jumping into that breech. Haig has his own strange progress up the chain-of-command and at one point jumps over literally hundreds of other people that were in line to be promoted when Califono moves him up into these high positions to take over the White House for the removal of Richard Nixon. So Haig is part of their larger game.

The second thing Haig is saying is `until the Vice-President returns.' Bush is said to be in a jovial mood on a flight between (of all places) Fort Worth and Dallas when he gets the news. There is no indication that his joviality diminished. He says that he'll come back in a few hours. There is no rush to get back on his part. Again this lack of any emergency response indicates to me that the thing is planned, they knew it was going to happen, the only thing that didn't work out right was that Reagan actually survived the shooting and survived this small disc going in under his arm.

The full story of the attempt on Reagans life can be found at the link provided above.

Haig was well and truly in the Bush camp.

I recently saw parts of a film about the mess in the situation room following the attempt on Reagan, it was quite awful and made the whole thing seem like a bumbling mess ('The day Reagan was shot', starring Richard Dreyfuss as Alexander Haig). John Judge told me that it was originally Oliver Stone who was to make the film but passed on it during the research stage. John presented the evidence that he had to the new film maker, but he was uninterested and made what turned out to be an apology for Alexander Haig. The film portrayed the cabinet and the joint chiefs as spectators to events.

All the best,

John