Melvin Laird
Nixon’s defence chief who ended the ‘draft’ and managed America’s withdrawal from Vietnam
MELVIN LAIRD, who has died aged 94, was Richard Nixon’s secretary of defence from 1969 to 1973, drastically reducing American forces and involvement in South Vietnam and sharpening America’s global posture as the Soviet Union upgraded its nuclear arsenal.
Laird ended the “draft” – which at the height of the Vietnam War had provoked mass protests and evasion – as he cut service manpower by a third to 2.3 million and concentrated spending on weaponry like the B-1 bomber, Trident and cruise missiles. Even after the cuts, Laird reckoned only six per cent of US forces were fully manned, trained and equipped.
It was Laird who invented the term “Vietnamisation” for the process of replacing American combat units with South Vietnamese. A Vietnam “hawk” as a Republican congressman, he regarded the war as a mistake by the time he arrived at the Pentagon. But he was determined to prosecute it effectively.
On his watch, US manpower in Vietnam was reduced from 549,500 to tens of thousands, and combat deaths by 95 per cent from their peak of 1968. Laird stood down as a peace treaty was signed – but 27 months later the Communist North overran South Vietnam, the last Americans being helicoptered from the roof of the embassy in Saigon.
Compared to “another brick in the Berlin Wall he’s been hired to knock down”, Laird was liked by the military brass. He survived several run-ins with Nixon’s national security adviser Henry Kissinger, but later made enemies during a frustrating eight months as White House counsellor on domestic affairs as Watergate took hold.
His main achievement during that time was to persuade Spiro Agnew to resign as vice president for having accepted kickbacks when governor of Maryland, and then – by not pressing his own claim – clearing the way for Gerald Ford to succeed Agnew, and ultimately Nixon himself. Laird’s departure six months before Nixon’s resignation helped to ensure he was not tarnished by Watergate.
Melvin R Laird was born at Omaha, Nebraska, on September 1 1922, the son of Melvin R Laird, a Presbyterian minister, and the former Helen Connor. The family moved to Wisconsin, Melvin going on to read Political Science at Carleton College, Minnesota.
Graduating in 1944, Laird was commissioned into the US Navy. He saw action on destroyers in the Pacific, twice being wounded. In 1946, his father – who had become a Wisconsin state senator – died. Melvin won his seat at 23 to become the Senate’s youngest ever member.
In 1952 Laird was elected to Congress. He was instrumental in appropriating extra funds for the Polaris missile programme, securing its deployment ahead of schedule.
He chaired the platform (manifesto) committee at the 1964 Republican convention which nominated the arch-conservative Barry Goldwater against the incumbent, Lyndon Johnson; despite pressure from the Right, Laird insisted on upholding LBJ’s civil rights legislation.
As Johnson stepped up America’s involvement in Vietnam, Laird rejected Pentagon costings of the war, producing his own which proved more accurate. Laird worked with Nixon, an old friend, in his 1968 presidential campaign which ousted Johnson. Nixon made him secretary of defence after the Democrat hawk Henry “Scoop” Jackson refused the job, Laird leaving Congress reluctantly to take over from Clark Clifford.
Nixon said Laird brought to the Pentagon “a high degree of intelligence, coolness under fire and the ability to manage people as well as weapons”. He needed it. Morale was low after the trauma of the Communists’ Tet Offensive, and while many Americans still supported the war, a larger number considered it unwinnable.
Laird took office with Nixon – and Congress – committed to cut defence spending as the Soviet Union under Brezhnev flexed its muscles. He halted work on an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system to protect American cities from nuclear attack by China, but persevered with a “thin” system to counter a Soviet strike. Laird hailed the Salt (Strategic Arms Limitation) agreement reached in Moscow in 1972 as “a major first step” in halting the arms race. He responded by halting construction of a missile base in Montana, but insisted that Trident and the B-1 must go ahead.
On his first visit to Vietnam, Laird said: “We must pray for the success of the peace talks in Paris, but be prepared for every eventuality.” He adopted a “defensive holding strategy”, with fewer naval and heavy bombing missions, to keep casualties down and show that Nixon genuinely wanted a settlement.
Vietnamisation and negotiation would not, he insisted, lead to defeat, as he was confident the Viet Cong’s capabilities had been weakened. But he set about cutting the annual budget for the war from $30 billion to $17 billion.
Nixon stepped up pressure on North Vietnam by ordering the bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos, the Viet Cong’s supply line, and sending troops into Cambodia to destroy Communist bases. In 1973 the Pentagon would admit that Laird ordered the falsification of records to conceal that Cambodia had been bombed.
In November 1969 news broke of the My Lai massacre. Charlie Company of the 1st Bn, 20th Infantry Regiment, searching for Viet Cong infiltrators, had killed more than 400 civilians, including women and children, in two hamlets in March 1968; many had been raped, beaten and tortured.
Twenty-six soldiers were charged, but only one was proceeded against: Lt William Calley. The case became a global cause célèbre, the military’s discomfiture heightened by the far Right’s efforts to portray Calley as a hero.
When Calley’s court martial opened in January 1970, the defence tried to call Laird as a witness, claiming that he and Nixon had prevented a fair trial by authorising the prosecution. Calley was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment – serving three years under house arrest.
A further embarrassment was the New York Times’s publication in 1971 of excerpts from the Pentagon Papers: the proceedings of an internal task force which showed that under Johnson the White House and Pentagon had systematically lied about the war. Nixon responded with an action that contributed to his downfall: a break-in by his “plumbers” at the office of the psychiatrist to Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study and leaked it.
Nixon announced that America’s combat role in Vietnam was over, but early in 1972 the North invaded, undeterred by renewed bombing. Laird warned that America would take “whatever action is necessary, short of reintroducing ground troops or using nuclear weapons”.
He brought forward deliveries of American weaponry to South Vietnam to strengthen its hand if a ceasefire were called, and in January 1973 – just before Nixon was sworn in for a second term – agreement was reached. There was to be a complete withdrawal of US troops in 60 days, coupled with the freeing of PoWs.
Two days later Laird left the Pentagon, Nixon awarding him the presidential Medal of Freedom. That May, he rejected a request from an increasingly embattled Nixon to return to “clean up the White House”, but in July he reluctantly became counsellor for domestic affairs – succeeding John Ehrlichman, forced out over Watergate.
Laird was now Nixon’s domestic policy supremo, with Cabinet rank and a seat on the National Security Council, and with fighting inflation his priority. This upset the Treasury secretary George Schultz, who told Laird to “keep your cotton-picking hands” off economic policy.
Convinced that Nixon must appear open over Watergate, Laird persuaded him to call press conferences, which initially went well. When it emerged that Nixon had taped his conversations in the Oval Office, Laird warned him that he faced impeachment proceedings if he defied the Supreme Court – but assured him he could survive them.
Laird’s departure in February 1974 increased Nixon’s isolation. When Ford replaced him six months later, he asked Laird to stand by for White House duty. Mooted as vice president, Laird proposed Nelson Rockefeller, who took the job.
Laird continued to advise Ford on major decisions and described his much criticised pardon of Nixon as “an act of mercy and compassion” for a man who had “lost contact with reality”.
After leaving the White House, Laird took up a lucrative post with Reader’s Digest for which he continued to work as senior consultant for national and international affairs until 1999.
Melvin Laird married Barbara Masters in 1945; she died in 1992. In 1993 he married, secondly, Carole Fleishman, who survives him with two sons and a daughter from his first marriage.
Melvin Laird, born September 1 1922, died November 16 2016