Scope and Content Note
The papers of Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr., (1924-2010) span the years 1962-1982, with the largest concentration between the years 1973-1982. The collection covers his years of service as military assistant to Henry Kissinger, deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs, chief of White House staff, the brief period he was vice chief of staff of the United States. Army, his appointment as Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and his term as secretary of state during the Reagan administration. The papers consist of briefing books, correspondence, memoranda and notes, office files, speeches and writings, subject files, scrapbooks of photographs, and printed matter. The collection is organized into eighteen series: White House Files; Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Army ; North Atlantic Treaty Organization/U.S. European Command; Post-Military File; Department of State; Miscellany; Classified; Oversize Classified; Top Secret; Sensitive Compartmented Information (Classified); Sensitive Compartmented Information (Top Secret); Restricted Data (Classified); Restricted Data (Top Secret); NATO Classified; NATO Classified (Cosmic Top Secret); NATO Classified Restricted Data-Atomal (Secret); Oversize; and Artifact.
The papers accumulated by Haig during his service at the National Security Council as military assistant to Henry Kissinger, 1969-1970, as deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs, 1970-1972, and as acting and later chief of White House staff, 1973-1974, have been grouped together as White House Files. Most of the official papers from Haig's assignment at the National Security Council and his first tour of duty at the White House relate to the trips that he made to assess the military and political situation in Southeast Asia. On some of these trips he accompanied Henry Kissinger, and on others he served as an envoy of the president. The more extensive of the trip records pertain to those made in January and April 1973 during the negotiations for the peace agreement to end the war in Vietnam. Although Haig was vice chief of staff of the army, the documents are included with the White House Files because they were generated from a request made by the president. The remainder of Haig's early White House files consist of speeches, personal correspondence, including a large group of congratulatory letters following the announcement of his appointment as vice chief of staff of the army, and social invitations.
When President Nixon appointed Haig as White House chief of staff following the resignations of John Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman in the spring of 1973, Haig perceived his role to be that of staff coordinator. His responsibilities included reorganizing the White House staff and the executive branch so that the decision-making process would be decentralized and the cabinet more visible, improving relations with Congress and the press, and facilitating the appointments to the executive-level vacancies that had followed Nixon's second inauguration. However, he was soon confronted with the problems and ramifications of the Watergate scandal. The White House Files for the period May 1973 to September 1974 provide insight into the operations and atmosphere at the White House during the last sixteen months of the Nixon administration and the transition period to Gerald R. Ford's presidency. They reveal the impact of the Watergate investigations on the daily activities of the staff, describing staff plans and strategies for both responding to the demands and counteracting the effects of the scandal while maintaining the normal functions of the White House. Documents relating to Watergate, comprising about a third of the White House papers, touch on all facets of the controversy. Topics covered include congressional hearings, selection of legal staff, relations with the press, the presidential tapes, the threat of impeachment, the concept of executive privilege, trials of former White House staff and cabinet officials, and the firing of the special prosecutor.
Among the major domestic problems facing the Nixon administration featured in the files are the economy, the energy crisis, corruption charges against the vice president, and the president's personal finances. The dominant foreign topics covered by the files are the war in Vietnam and relations with the Soviet Union. A large segment of the 1974 White House Files concerns the attempt of the Nixon administration to focus on international affairs despite the country's preoccupation with the impeachment issue. These files document the trips Nixon made during the summer of 1974 to the Middle East and to Belgium and the Soviet Union. Haig's chief of staff papers also include an extensive memoranda file consisting of items to be discussed with the president, those needing presidential handwriting action, and memoranda from Haig to the president. Smaller files record the daily senior staff meetings, memoranda and plans for the reorganization of the staff, and personnel matters. The files for August and September describe events surrounding the resignation of Richard M. Nixon, personnel changes associated with the succession of Gerald Ford to the presidency, and the pardon of Nixon by Ford.
Haig's papers representing the short duration in which he served as vice chief of staff of the army are limited to a few personal materials. These documents consist of correspondence, miscellaneous office files, papers relating to his promotion, social engagements, and speeches. The speeches extend from the fall of 1972 through commitments made while he was vice chief of staff, but which were fulfilled after Haig's return to the White House in May 1973.
After overseeing the transition from the Nixon to the Ford administrations, Haig chose to return to military life. In the fall of 1974, President Ford appointed him commander in chief of United States forces in Europe, and as the highest ranking American officer in Europe, Haig became the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) of the military forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). One of the major problems facing NATO during Haig's tenure as SACEUR was the restructuring of the southern region command. Numerous briefing books, messages, and subject files in the NATO series relate to the political situation in Turkey, the continuing conflict between Greece and Turkey and its impact on the military reintegration of Greece into NATO, and the implications of the turmoil in Iran for the defense of NATO's southern region. Other recurring issues reflected in the papers are the threat posed by the Soviet Union to the West and NATO's future defensive capabilities. The NATO series contains a voluminous file of speeches, interviews, articles, and records of testimony before congressional committees pertaining to the restructuring of NATO, assessments of NATO's combat effectiveness, and its capacity to meet future military demands. Of particular note are the reports of the Long-Term Defense Program Task Force that defined NATO's role for the 1980s.
As SACEUR, Haig had to act within a political and military framework. A large group of the NATO files are those of Robert L. Brown, the Department of State political adviser for international affairs (POLAD/INTAF). These documents consist of correspondence and informational memoranda prepared by Brown to keep Haig abreast of internal affairs in NATO and non-NATO countries, and they also include memoranda on topics of general interest such as arms control, economics, and military and political concerns. The POLAD files are supplemented by those of the special assistants to the chief of staff (SPACOS) that focus on the political situation in Yemen, Zaire, and Iran, and by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) alphabetical correspondence subseries that contains letters from distinguished international political and military leaders.
Many of the folders in the NATO series retain the internal arrangement devised by Haig's staff. In some instances, folders have been combined or redescribed to facilitate retrieval by researchers. The document logs, which indexed items in each folder for most of the files in a continuous folder numbering sequence, have been placed at the end of the papers because the folder reference numbers have been discarded except for the administrative file. It retains the folder arrangement, but is preceded by a general subject index. A set of photographic scrapbooks that chronicled Haig's activities at NATO has been transferred to the Library's Prints and Photographs Division.
At the time of Haig's resignation from NATO, there was considerable speculation in the press that he would pursue a career in politics. Although Haig never made any political commitments, and formally announced to the press on 22 December 1979 that he was not a candidate for political office, the Post-Military File series contains several folders pertaining to assessments of a possible candidacy for president and to arrangements for speaking engagements. However, a major portion of the Post-Military File series relates to the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT). On 18 June 1979 the negotiators for the SALT treaty reached an agreement based on the principle of equal and lower ceilings of strategic offensive arms. As an army officer and recently retired SACEUR, Haig was one of several individuals invited by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Senate Committee on Armed Services to present his views and recommendations concerning the correction of any deficiencies associated with the agreement and its impact on the national security of the United States. The SALT files include background information used in preparing Haig's testimony, drafts of his statement, and testimony of other individuals associated with national security and defense.
Following his election in November 1980, Ronald Reagan nominated Haig to be secretary of state. Papers relating to Haig's confirmation hearings from 9 to 15 January 1981 are included in the Department of State series. Many of the files highlight the strategy for securing confirmation devised and implemented by Haig and a team of advisers headed by Joseph A. Califano, who served as Haig's legal counsel. The documents assembled for the confirmation hearings span the years 1962-1981. They consist of briefing books on significant events of Haig's life and the Nixon administration, and thus anticipated the scope of questions expected to be raised regarding Haig's previous service at the White House. Topics covered are wiretapping by the government, events related to Watergate, covert activities in Chile, the pardoning of Richard Nixon, and bombings in Cambodia. Papers representing the transitional period between the announcement of Haig's nomination and his assumption of duties are also a part of the Department of State series. They are composed of briefing books and papers on major domestic and foreign policy issues, files relating to the proposed reorganization of the Department of State and Foreign Service, the reports of the transition team, and personnel recommendations relating to the staffing of the Department of State and the appointment of United States ambassadors.
The remainder of the Department of State files consists of Haig's personal and office files and papers of his executive assistant, Sherwood D. Goldberg, and his speechwriter and policy analyst, Harvey Sicherman. The bulk of the secretary's office files are day files constituting a chronological record of events that dominated the Department's attention from 19 September 1980 to 5 August 1982. These files, which elucidate various aspects of the formulation of American foreign policy, include briefing books, correspondence, cables and telegrams, memoranda between government officials, memoranda of conversations, reports, the secretary's schedule, and press clippings. Situations and topics emphasized in the day files are international terrorism, western hostages in Lebanon, trips by Secretary Haig, visits of foreign government representatives to the United States, arms sales, the Middle East and relations with Iran after the release of the American hostages, Communist influence in Central America, particularly the support of guerillas by the Soviet Union and Cuba in Nicaragua and El Salvador, internal affairs in Poland in the wake of reforms initiated by the trade union, Solidarity, and the role the United States played in the settlement of the dispute between Great Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands. The day files are complemented by the secretary's country and topic subject files that centralize or expand some of the topics covered in the day files and highlight additional foreign policy interests. The country subject files contain extensive folders on China, Cuba, El Salvador, Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Namibia, Nicaragua, and Palestinian autonomy. Topic subject files on issues such as disarmament, technological developments in military weaponry, and the use of nuclear force, illustrate the interrelationship between foreign policy and national defense.
The papers of Secretary Haig's executive assistant, Sherwood Goldberg, relate to the administrative operations of the department and the appointments of ambassadors and executive personnel, and reflect his control of paperwork directed to the secretary. The staff files of his speechwriter and policy analyst, Harvey Sicherman, consist mainly of briefing books for trips and meetings with foreign dignitaries and country subject files. The most extensive of these pertain to the Middle East and include Philip Habib's 1981 mission and several files on Palestinian autonomy.
The Miscellany series contains a substantial clipping file that chronicles Haig's career between 1971-1982, with the bulk of the items relating to his service at the White House and at NATO. Also included in this series is a group of inventories that accompanied the Haig Papers to the Library of Congress.
Correspondents in the Haig Papers include: David M. Abshire, Menachem Begin, Leonid Brezhnev, Robert L. Brown, Harold Brown, Frank C. Carlucci, Peter Alexander Rupert Carington Baron Carrington, William J. Casey, William P. Clark, Archibald Cox, Ioannis Davos, Charles W. Dyke, Sherwood D. Goldberg, Robert E. Huyser, George A. Joulwan, Richard T. Kennedy, William A. Knowlton, Robert W. Komer, David A. Korn, Joseph M.A. H. Luns, John G. Pappageorge, Francis Pym, Elliot L. Richardson, Semih Sancar, Brent Scowcroft, Harold E. Shear, Stansfield Turner, Caspar W. Weinberger, and Herbert F. Zeiner-Gundersen