The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Haig Resignation

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Alexander Haig suddenly resigned today as Secretary of State, saying Reagan foreign policy was shifting from the course they had agreed. The President accepted the resignation with regret, and immediately nominated former Nixon Treasury Secretary George Shultz as Secretary of State. The announcement immediately followed a meeting of the National Security Council at which the crisis in Lebanon was discussed. While the Haig news stunned Washington, Israel continued heavy attacks on Syrian troops and the bastion of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Beirut, then announced another ceasefire. Attitudes to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon have been one of the many reported differences between Secretary Haig and other members of the Reagan team. Tonight, why did Al Haig quit? Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, it was just after 3 o'clock Washington time when President Reagan walked into the press room at the White House. UPI White House correspondent Helen Thomas was later to describe the President as being near tears when he made this statement.

Pres. RONALD REAGAN: It's an announcement that I make with great regret regarding a member of our administration who has served this country for 40 years above and beyond the call of duty, who has served me so well and faithfully, whose wisdom and counsel I have respected and admired for all the time that our administration has been here, but who now is resigning and leaving government service after all this great time. And with great regret, I have accepted the resignation of Secretary of State Al Haig. I am nominating as his successor, and he has accepted, George Shultz, to replace him. And that's the extent of the announcement. Again, as I say, I do this with great regret, and I said no questions. I said no questions.

LEHRER: Mr. Reagan took no questions, offered no further comment either on his own or through spokesmen. Within a few minutes afterward, he was on a helicopter with Mrs. Reagan on his way to spend the weekend at Camp David. It was over an hour later that Secretary Haig went before reporters and cameras at the State Department. He took no questions or offered any explanations, either. His statement was mostly the reading of the resignation letter he sent to Mr. Reagan.

ALEXANDER HAIG, Secretary of State: I'd like to read a copy of the text of the letter which I presented to President Reagan today. "Dear Mr. President: Your accession to office on January 20, 1981, brought an opportunity for a new and forward-looking foreign policy resting on the cornerstones of strength and compassion. I believe that we shared a view of America's role in the world as the leader of free men, and an inspiration for all. We agreed that consistency, clarity and steadiness of purpose were essential to success. It was in this spirit that I undertook to serve you as Secretary of State. In recent months it has become clear to me that the foreign policy on which we embarked together was shifting from that careful course which we laid out. Under these circumstances, I feel it necessary to request that you accept my resignation. I shall always treasure the confidence which you reposed in me. It has been a great honor to serve in your administration, and I wish you every success in the future. Sincerely." Now, I am extremely pleased, ladies and gentlemen, that Mr. George Shultz, an old friend of many years, has accepted the President's request that he assume my post. My own knowledge of George and his experience, professionalism and integrity gives me the utmost confidence that our country, the American people and our President will be well served by his incumbency.

MacNEIL: One of the reporters at the State Department for that Haig announcement was Daniel Southerland of the Christian Science Monitor. Daniel, why do you think Haig quit?

DANIEL SOUTHERLAND: Well, I think the primary reason had to do with what he viewed as a reversal of the policy that he had set down for the President's European trip, particularly as it related to trade with the Soviet Union. And he felt the decision to restrict American companies' technology going to the natural gas pipeline from the Soviet Union to Europe was not in line with the spirit of the agreement that was made with the Europeans. I think, though, that this was only one element -- maybe the main element; there were others: I think the Middle East added, as you mentioned earlier, added to the uncertainty and tension. I think Haig had a feeling he was going it alone on the Middle East to a degree in calling for a relatively restrained policy as regards Prime Minister Begin --

MacNEIL: Going it alone against whom?

Mr. SOUTHERLAND: Against most of the White House advisers and Secretary Weinberger at the Defense Department. The President was siding with the Haig approach to the Middle East, but I was told today that Haig felt he was involved in a very high-risk operation in which he was risking his own prestige to a great extent, and I think he was very tense about that.You've got to add personal factors -- very little personal rapport between Haig and the White House advisers -- and then you've got to add the ascendency of Mr. Clark as the National Security Adviser becoming more prominent, making more decisions, writing speeches in which the State Department had no input. I think all of this began to add up, and it must have been an accumulation of things.

MacNEIL: Do you know what the actual precipitating thing was, and was the decision made just suddenly today?

Mr. SOUTHERLAND: Well, I'm not sure. I think the decision was given to the President yesterday, but I was having lunch with a rather high-ranking State Department official who was totally surprised by the decision, and it came right after -- right as we were finishing our lunch. So it was a great surprise to most people.

MacNEIL: The decisions involving the pipeline were really made about a week ago, weren't they? It would appear then to have taken some time for this to precipitate out into this.

Mr. SOUTHERLAND: Well, I think that's true, but as you know, Secretary Haig has had a long list of grievances. He's stated before that he thought there was sort of a guerrilla warfare campaign going on against him from the White House, and I was told recently that he felt that had resumed. And Clark, with whom he had fairly good rapport when Clark was in the State Department, was beginning to feel that Haig had let the White House down on Europe, and I think Clark wanted a tougher approach on the Middle East to the Israelis.

MacNEIL: Do you think that there will be in the White House genuine regret over his departure, or that one group will be cheering and thinking they've won, and that's a big impediment and obstacle out of the way?

Mr. SOUTHERLAND: Well, it depends on how Shultz turns out. I don't think Shultz in many regards is that different from Haig, but I think personally he's going to have a lot better rapport with his California acquaintances than Haig did. And I think there will be some quiet cheering, but I don't think so on the part of the President. I had the feeling the President was genuinely sincere in what he said today. I think he was regretting this.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Another reporter on the story is Karen Elliott House, diplomatic correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. What have you been able to piece together on what happened, Karen?

KAREN ELLIOTT HOUSE: Well, Haig did resign yesterday, he apparently told the President that he intended to resign yesterday. I do not know if the President said at that time, "I accept your resignation and I'm sorry to see you go," or if this was another one of the many times Haig has tried to resign and hoped that somebody would talk him out of it, and this time the President said okay. At any rate, he apparently did tell the President yesterday he intended to leave, and then he sent his letter over today, the letter that he read earlier on your show.

LEHRER: You heard what Dan Southerland just said. Do you agree with his accumulation theory, or is it your understanding that something hot happened in the last 24 hours, the last 48 hours to cause this?

Ms. HOUSE: The official line at the White House is the accumulation theory, which makes me somewhat suspect of the accumulation theory.

LEHRER: Because they say it, right?

Ms. HOUSE: Yes. I mean, obviously, I think it's accurate that he has been -- from the very beginning he made it clear that he intended to be the dominant foreign policy spokesman and architect. And he constantly encountered interference in that from what he considered the political people, the two advisers -- Meese and Baker -- in the White House; from Richard Allen when he was the national security adviser; and I was one of those people who felt that he would find the same difficulties with Bill Clark when he replaced Richard Allen as national security adviser. And I think that that's clearly another part of what's happening. He feels that he's not the dominant voice. He does not like this opposition to his views.

LEHRER: Well, Karen, you said it yourself a moment ago, that Secretary Haig has threatened in the past to resign, but it never came off. He is also a man who is known to have a hot temper. But you haven't picked up anything to indicate that there was a temper problem or a temper eruption of some kind over the last couple of days or so, right?

Ms. HOUSE: No, but apparently a temper eruption was fairly common with the Secretary, and he himself said that that was a part of his management style, to lose his temper from time to time. I think he never managed -- though I believe he did improve his relations with the President, he never managed not to be an outsider. And one of the things that was said this afternoon at the White House briefing by an "official" in talking about George Shultz was, "He's a team player," and no one ever regarded Haig as a team player, and I think that's one of his liabilities.Plus, they also believe, many people in the White House, that he had presidential ambitions, and thus the supporters of Reagan saw him as somewhat of a threat, and the supporters of George Bush saw him as somewhat of a threat.

LEHRER: On the list of things that have accumulated, how would you assign weight to the most important -- the problem over the pipeline and the Soviet Union, or the problem over the policy on the Middle East?

Ms. HOUSE: I think the pipeline is much more important. I mean, so far, while there is opposition, as far as one can tell, of varying degrees on the Middle East from the Vice President, from the National Security Adviser, from the Secretary of Defense, Haig has been prevailing there, primarily, I think, because the President in essence agrees with the "Let's talk to Begin calmly and try to achieve what we can that way rather than yell at him in public." I think that he did -- that it is an accumulation in a sense of frustrations over not being number one. He was apparently insulted on the European trip because he had to ride in the third helicopter sometimes instead of with the President. I mean, he's a man who takes his position very seriously.And when he feels slighted -- all of these things seem to have added up. And I would just suspect that there was something that precipitated it yesterday, but I may be totally wrong about that.

LEHRER: Thank you, Karen. Robin?

MacNEIL: Another view on why Haig quit from Joseph Churba, president of the Center for International Security, a Washington research group. Mr. Churba is a former Air Force intelligence expert on the Middle East, a Reagan campaign adviser, and a senior policy adviser at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency until he resigned in May. Mr. Churba, why do you think Haig quit?

JOSEPH CHURBA: I think it had much to do with the pro-Arab school that was urging confrontation with Israel as a result of its incursion into Lebanon. Over the last few weeks Mr. Haig had overruled the NEA proposals urging punitive action against Israel, and they must have been furious, and this certainly had impaired his capacity to deal with the bureaucracy. I think the Habib mission in Lebanon is to the point.

MacNEIL: He is the President's special envoy, Philip Habib, who has been trying to sortout some settlement in Beirut.

Mr. CHURBA: The issue in Beirut is not the withdrawal of the PLO from West Beirut, but the terms under which this withdrawal will take place. And this was a very lively issue between Mr. Habib and Mr. Haig. If the Reagan intention is to preserve the PLO as a negotiating partner in the coming autonomy talks on the West Bank, then this would have set the stage for a wider confrontation with Israel. So I think this had a great deal to do with it.

MacNEIL: Can you spell that out, what the Haig position was and what the other position was? In simple terms.

Mr. CHURBA: Well, in simple terms, there was one view -- the Weinberger school -- that urged punitive action against Israel for its incursion in Lebanon, and the Haig school, which argued that you must talk the Israelis quietly out of their activities in West Beirut.

MacNEIL: How did the two views affect what happened to the PLO in the immediate situation where they're besieged by the Israelis who were shelling them again today in what is described by the wire services as the heaviest bombardment of the war?

Mr. CHURBA: It is a heavy bombardment.The issue is whether the PLO will come out of this with political gains despite their military defeat.

MacNEIL: And who wants them to do that?

Mr. CHURBA: I would think that the Weinberger school wants to emphasize the political gain and to treat the Israelis as aggressors in Lebanon.

MacNEIL: I see. And where does that leave U.S. policy with Mr. Shultz coming in, from your knowledge of the scene with Mr. Shultz coming in? Where does that leave U.S. policy in the Middle East then?

Mr. CHURBA: It means the triumph of petrodollar diplomacy, and the demise of the school of thought that Reagan had promoted, that Israel was its primary strategic asset in the Middle East. It means that the Department of Defense and the State Department will now have one voice on the Middle East.

MacNEIL: Mr. Southerland, does this view make sense to you from what you know?

Mr. SOUTHERLAND: Well, I doubt that things are that clear. I think Dr. Churba is overstating it a bit. I do think, though, that there was a crack in the Haig approach that showed up when the White House just recently put out a statement saying -- rather in a panic -- saying that Prime Minister Begin had assured President Reagan that the Israelis would not try to take West Beirut. That statement was not cleared by the State Department; it was not approved of by the State Department. Under the Haig approach the idea was to get to Begin in private, not to come out with a statement like that. For two reasons: one, Begin would not yield, in their view, to public pressure; and, two, if you go public you're telling the PLO, in effect, we've got assurances, nobody's going to hurt you, nobody's going to come in and get you, and you let them off the hook. They've got no incentive then to lay down their arms and to make a deal. And the State Department was terribly concerned about this statement, which was put out by Larry Speakes. So you did have a tendency there at the White House to begin chafing, to begin to feel the Haig approach wasn't working, to begin to feel the President was looking bad and rather impotent in the situation. But whether or not Shultz would come in and mean a triumph for petrodollar diplomacy, I sort of doubt it. I think there are too many factors at work here.

MacNEIL: Karen Elliott House, how do you see the fate of the PLO and the disagreements over that as affecting the Haig resignation?

Ms. HOUSE: Well, I don't think it has all that much to do with Haig's resignation. I mean, I think because Haig is very supportive of what Israel is doing now that if that were the reason, he would try to hold on because this is, it seems to me, one of the most significant things about this resignation is the potential for what effect it could have on our policy in the Middle East. George Shultz's views of the Middle East do not square with Al Haig's.

MacNEIL: What effect could it have on our policy in the Middle East in your view?

Ms. HOUSE: Well, this is a very critical time. The administration is completely split and divided over, one, what to do inside Lebanon now, and how much to push Mr. Begin not to go into Beirut, how much to push the PLO through Habib and the Lebanese government. And, more critically, whether we should commit American troops to play a role in securing Israel's security along the northern border. Haig, I believe, was very much -- very favorably disposed toward that idea, and I very much doubt that George Shultz will be.

MacNEIL: Dr. Churba, the two journalists who cover the State Department don't put quite as much weight as you do on this factor in the Haig resignation.

Mr. CHURBA: Well, I say the triumph of petrodollar diplomacy because of the similar views that Mr. Shultz shares with Mr. Weinberger, and neither of them believes that Israel is a strategic asset, that President Reagan had declared during the campaign and since. So I see this as a continuing struggle, but at this point I think the triumph is complete with the Shultz appointment -- that is, of the petrodollar element.

MacNEIL: Do you not see a wider connection, to put it crudely, between the so-called moderate line and the so-called hard line in this on other issues than the Middle East?

Mr. CHURBA: Yes, I do see. There are other issues that have to do with the pipeline, with the general nature of selective detente, and cooperation with the Soviet Union. But Mr. Shultz is primarily an economist. And he will be interested in recycling oil dollars for trade and long-term non-negotiable market securities, and the rest. And I think he sees in Saudi Arabia a source for this money.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: There has been no public comment yet from George Shultz, the man who will replace Secretary Haig. He was in London today and is reportedly flying to Washington tonight or in the morning. He has been to Washington before, having served as Secretary of Labor and Secretary of the Treasury, and ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Nixon administration. He is an economist by training, and was a college economics professor before joining government. For the past six years he has been with the Bechtel group, a large, multinational engineering and construction firm headquartered in San Francisco. He has been its president since January, 1981. For more on George Shultz, Hobart Rowen, economics columnist for The Washington Post. As a reporter he covered Shultz's earlier careers in Washington. Why would President Reagan turn now to Shultz as Secretary of State, Bart?

HOBART ROWEN: Well, Jim, George Shultz is a man who has been very close to Reagan. He knows him well. He was part of the campaign, and you may remember that he was even considered early on as a possible appointee as Secretary of State at the beginning, although in fact Shultz told me himself he was never offered the job.

LEHRER: Well, there were reports at the time, Bart, that he was in fact Reagan's first choice for Secretary of State. Was there everanything to that?

Mr. ROWEN: Well, I know there were those reports, but I think when they sat down and assessed the various possibilities and decided that they were going to put Weinberger in Defense, they thought it was best not to put two men from Bechtel in the two top jobs, and in fact they never did offer Shultz the job. But State is the one job that Shultz has wanted if he were going to come back into government.

LEHRER: You know George Shultz. Tell us about him. What kind of man is he in terms of demeanor, style -- any way you want to put it?

Mr. ROWEN: Well, George Shultz is a very able man. As was said before, he is an economist, a conservative economist from the Chicago school, a free-market oriented man. He's a monetarist, but not an ideologue. He has strong views on government that are very parallel to Ronald Reagan's. You might say that he brought the small government, cut-the-taxes, cut-the-spending school to Washington long before Ronald Reagan arrived here. But he's got a great style. He is unflappable; he is civil; he gets along with people. And he moved along, as you said before, from Secretary of Labor on through the Office of Management and Budget to the Treasury, and in effect became a kind of an economic overlord. He wielded as much power on the economic side as Henry Kissinger did on the foreign economic side.

LEHRER: What is known, or, let me put the question directly: how would you characterize his views on foreign policy?

Mr. ROWEN: Well, there's very little known about George Shultz's views on foreign policy except the general assumption, as Dr. Churba said, that in the Arab-Israeli arena he comes down on the Arab side.

LEHRER: Is that just a perception, or is that real?

Mr. ROWEN: No, I think there's a lot there. You must remember, too, that Bechtel is a very big construction company that's had very important contacts and dealings in the Arab world. As a matter of fact, Shultz is in London today on business. You can assume it's this kind of business dealing with money and possibly oil. I think you should also know that Shultz is more than just an economist. He's a man that's had great experience in labor affairs. He was very close to George Meany, for example. And he has a talent for getting along with all sides, even if people don't agree with his basic philosophy. He has a way of working with people -- it was said before that he's a team player, and I think that's true. He was very much opposed to wage and price controls, for example, but he went along with it when Nixon imposed them in 1971, although ultimately it was the wage and price control issue that led to his resignation because in 1973, when Nixon continued a freeze, he went in the next day and resigned, although Nixon persuaded him to stay a few more months because at that time Brezhnev was coming over here, and he didn't want to upset the administration. But he's a man of great principle and great integrity. He came out of Watergate, for example, unsullied. As a matter of fact, as head of the Treasury he had the IRS under his control, and he refused to be pushed by Nixon into using IRS during the Watergate period.

LEHRER: Karen, you have of course covered the Middle East extensively. Is the perception of George Shultz as an Arabist, to use Joe Churba's term -- this means the triumph of a petrodollar diplomacy? What's your feel for that -- what George Shultz is going to do?

Ms. HOUSE: Well, I think that Shultz, as I said, has very, very different views from Secretary Haig --

LEHRER: Different in whatway?

Ms. HOUSE: Well, Secretary Haig, as Dr. Churba said, believes that Israel is a strategic asset, thus the U.S. must at almost any cost maintain a good relationship with that government, that that is the country which can protect American interests in the Middle East. The Arabs obviously don't believe that, and judging from their enthusiasm for George Shultz -- I happened to be in Saudi Arabia on election day in 1980, and the Saudis were very delighted with the prospect that somehow both Weinberger and Shultz might wind up in the government, and that these are two men that they know extremely well, and believe understand their cause, understand, as they say, that America's economic interests lie in the Arab world, not in Israel, that Israel is not the country that can protect American interests in the Middle East; it can only destroy American interests in the Middle East.

LEHRER: Dan Southerland, what's your view on that in terms of how dramatic a change this could mean in U.S. policy toward the Middle East?

Mr. SOUTHERLAND: Well, I do think it could mean a slight, or perhaps more than slight toughening of the attitude toward the Israelis. It wouldn't necessarily show up in a public sort of way, but maybe a tougher and firmer approach to Menachem Begin. But I think we're sort of jumping to conclusions here. The fact that Shultz knows a number of Arab leaders doesn't necessarily mean, it seems to me, that he's going to sort of be in their pocket. It would seem to me he's going to try to find out what President Reagan wants. If he's a team player he's going to try to find out what the rest of the White House wants. He's sort of coming from behind on this issue. There are a lot of other people who are dealing with it.And I suspect it'll depend a lot on what the President wants.

LEHRER: Joe Churba, excepting the Middle East, do you have any feel for what George Shultz's views are on foreign affairs, or do you agree with Bart Rowen that very little is really known?

Mr. CHURBA: Very little is really known. He is on record -- November, 1980, he stated publicly that the only issue he disagrees with Ronald Reagan is on the Middle East, based on his reading of the Ronald Reagan speech before the B'nai B'rith during the campaign. This we know.

LEHRER: But nothing other than that?

Mr. CHURBA: I would think that he would be inclined to accelerate ties with the Europeans, and at the same time improve the balance of payments issue with the United States.

MacNEIL: I'm sorry to interrupt, Mr. Rowen, Mr. Churba, Ms. House and Mr. Southerland, but we have to go now. Thank you all for joining us. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That's all for tonight. We will be back on Monday night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.