Melvin Laird
Melvin Laird | |
---|---|
Chair of the House Republican Conference | |
In office January 3, 1965 – January 3, 1969 | |
Leader | Gerald Ford |
Preceded by | Gerald Ford |
Succeeded by | John B. Anderson |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin's 7th district | |
In office January 3, 1953 – January 21, 1969 | |
Preceded by | Reid F. Murray |
Succeeded by | Dave Obey |
Member of the Wisconsin Senate from the 24th district | |
In office January 6, 1947 – January 3, 1953 | |
Preceded by | Melvin R. Laird Sr. |
Succeeded by | William Walter Clark |
Personal details | |
Born | Melvin Robert Laird Jr. September 1, 1922 Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. |
Died | November 16, 2016 (aged 94) Fort Myers, Florida, U.S. |
Resting place | Arlington National Cemetery |
Political party | Republican |
Spouses | Barbara Masters
(m. 1942; died 1992)Carole Fleishman (m. 1993) |
Children | 4 |
Education | Carleton College (BA) |
Military service | |
Branch/service | United States Navy |
Years of service | 1942–1946 |
Rank | Lieutenant (Junior Grade) |
Battles/wars | World War II |
Awards | Purple Heart |
Melvin Robert Laird Jr. (September 1, 1922 – November 16, 2016) was an American politician, writer and statesman.
Early life
Melvin Robert Laird[3] was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Melvin R. Laird Sr., a politician, businessman, and clergyman.[4] He grew up and attended high school in Marshfield, Wisconsin,[4] although in his junior year he attended Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, Illinois. He was nicknamed "Bambino" (shortened to "Bom" and pronounced like the word 'bomb') by his mother.[citation needed]
Laird was the grandson of William D. Connor, the Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin from 1907 to 1909, and the great-grandson of Robert Connor, a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly. His niece is Jessica Laird Doyle, wife of former Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle.[4]
He graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota in May 1944, having enlisted in the United States Navy a year earlier. Following his commissioning as an ensign, he served on a destroyer, the USS Maddox, in the Pacific during the end of World War II. A recipient of the Purple Heart and several other decorations, Laird left the Navy in April 1946.
Legislative career
Laird entered the
Laird was re-elected eight consecutive times and he was chairman of the House Republican Conference when Nixon selected him for the cabinet. He was known for his work on both domestic and defense issues, including his service on the Defense subcommittee of the
As a congressman Laird had supported a strong defense posture and had sometimes been critical of Secretary
Laird was reportedly the elder statesman chosen by the Republicans to convince Vice President Spiro Agnew to resign his position after Agnew's personal corruption became a public scandal. He also had a prominent role in the selection of Gerald Ford as Agnew's successor as vice president.
Secretary of Defense
After he became Secretary of Defense, Laird and President Nixon appointed a Blue Ribbon Defense Panel that made more than 100 recommendations on DoD's organization and functions in a report on July 1, 1970. The department implemented a number of the panel's proposals while Laird served in the Pentagon.
Managerial style
Laird did not depart abruptly from the McNamara–
Laird noted this in his FY 1971 report, "Except for the major policy decisions, I am striving to decentralize decisionmaking as much as possible ... So, we are placing primary responsibility for detailed force planning on the Joint Chiefs and the Services, and we are delegating to the Military Departments more responsibility to manage development and procurement programs." The military leadership was enthusiastic about Laird's methods. As the
Pentagon budget
Laird succeeded in improving DoD's standing with Congress. As a highly respected congressional veteran, Laird had a head start in his efforts to gain more legislative support for Defense programs. He maintained close contact with old congressional friends, and he spent many hours testifying before Senate and House committees. Recognizing the congressional determination, with wide public support, to cut defense costs (including winding down the Vietnam War), Laird worked hard to prune budgetary requests before they went to Congress, and acceded to additional cuts when they could be absorbed without serious harm to national security. One approach, which made it possible to proceed with such new strategic weapon systems as the
Other initiatives, including troop withdrawals from Vietnam, phasing out old weapon systems, base closures, and improved procurement practices, enabled the Pentagon to hold the line on spending, even at a time when high inflation affected both weapon and personnel costs. In Laird's years, total obligational authority by fiscal year was as follows: 1969, $77.7 billion; 1970, $75.5 billion; 1971, $72.8 billion; 1972, $76.4 billion; and 1973, $78.9 billion.
Vietnam War
Vietnam preoccupied Laird as it had McNamara and Clifford. Right from the moment he entered office, Laird clashed with the National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger over access to the president.[13]: 587 Kissinger as much as possible tried to exclude Laird from the decision-making process, in order to ensure he and he alone was the man advising the president on foreign affairs, which created much tension between him and Laird.[13]: 587 Kissinger established a direct channel from the National Security Adviser's office to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in an effort to isolate Laird from the decision-making process, which further increased the tension between the two men.[13]: 587
In 1968 Nixon campaigned on a platform critical of the Johnson administration's handling of the war and promised to achieve "
Although not receptive to demands for immediate withdrawal, Laird acknowledged the necessity to disengage U.S. combat forces gradually. In an interview with Stanley Karnow in 1981, Laird stated that he came into the Defense Department in 1969 believing the American people were "fed up with the war".[13]: 595 Thus he developed and strongly supported "Vietnamization", a program intended to expand, equip, and train South Vietnam's forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops. The original term was "de-Americanizing" the war, but Laird substituted the term "Vietnamization" as it sounded better.[13]: 596 In March 1969, Laird visited South Vietnam and upon his return to Washington told Nixon that the American people would "not be satisfied with less than the eventual disengagement of American men from combat".[13]: 596 As such, Laird felt it was "essential to decide now to initiate the removal from Southeast Asia of some U.S. military personnel".[13]: 596 Laird strongly pressed Nixon to agree to a timetable to decrease the number of American forces in South Vietnam down from half-million to two hundred and six thousand by the end of 1971.[13]: 595 During Nixon's first year in office from January 1969 to January 1970, about 10, 000 Americans were killed fighting in Vietnam.[13]: 601 As these losses contributed to the antiwar movement, Laird ordered the U.S. commander in Vietnam, General Creighton Abrams, to go on the defensive and cease offensive operations as much as possible.[13]: 601
In February 1969, Nixon first discussed plans to start bombing Cambodia, ostensibly to destroy the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese bases in that country, but in fact to send a message to North Vietnam that he was prepared to resume the bombing of North Vietnam, that had been halted in the autumn of the previous year.[13]: 591 Nixon would have very much liked to resume the bombing of North Vietnam, but he was warned by Laird that this would lead to the North Vietnamese ending the peace talks in Paris, which in turn would lead to Nixon being branded as the man who ruined any chance of peace in Vietnam.[13]: 591 Thus, from Nixon's viewpoint, bombing Cambodia was a way of warning the North Vietnamese that he was indeed serious about his threats to resume bombing North Vietnam if no concessions to the American viewpoint were not forthcoming.[13]: 591 Laird was opposed to the bombing of Cambodia, telling Nixon that it would upset Congress and the American people as it would appear that Nixon was escalating the war.[13]: 591 In a meeting at the White House on 16 March 1969 attended by Nixon, Laird, the Secretary of State William P. Rogers, Kissinger and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Earle Wheeler, Nixon announced that he had decided to start bombing Cambodia while at the same time not telling the American people that Cambodia was being bombed.[13]: 591 The next day, Operation Menu as the bombing of Cambodia was code-named, started.[13]: 591
As Cambodia was a neutral nation, the bombing was kept secret and officially denied.[13]: 591–92 Laird created a dual reporting system at the Pentagon so that the reports from bombing raids over Cambodia were not reported via the normal channels, with both the secretary of the air force and Air Force chief of staff being kept out of the loop.[13]: 592 As North Vietnam professed to respect Cambodia's neutrality, Hanoi did not protest against the American bombing of the North Vietnamese forces that were violating Cambodia's neutrality. Laird told a few members of Congress that the United States was bombing Cambodia, but to the American people, it was denied in 1969 that Cambodia was being bombed.[13]: 592 Several legal and constitutional experts were to subsequently testify that as Nixon did not inform the majority of Congress that he was bombing Cambodia, let alone ask for permission of Congress for the bombing, that this was illegal as the U.S. constitution gave Congress, not the president, the power to declare war.[13]: 592 The bombing campaign against Cambodia which started in March 1969 and ended in August 1973, is considered by most legal experts to be an act of war which was waged without being sanctioned by Congress, making the bombing campaign to be a matter of questionable legality at best and downright illegal at worst.[13]: 592
Under the constitution, Congress has the control of the budget and the president can only ask Congress to appropriate money. Starting in 1969, Laird put the assumption that U.S. forces in Vietnam would be lower in the next fiscal year into the Defense Department's budget request to Congress.[13]: 595 Given that Nixon was a Republican and the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, passing a budget required much torturous negotiation. By putting the anticipated lower number of troops in Vietnam into the Pentagon's budget request for the next fiscal year, Laird in effect tied Nixon's hands as not to withdraw these troops would greatly upset relations with Congress and could potentially threaten the entire defense budget.[13]: 595 Once Congress passed the budget, Nixon had to withdraw the troops as it would otherwise cause a major constitutional crisis that would as Karnow put it threaten "...the defense establishment's entire financial equilibrium".[13]: 595 Karnow wrote that Laird's "...contribution to America's departure from Vietnam has been underestimated".[13]: 595
Under the Johnson administration, the issue of American POWs in North Vietnam had been generally ignored out of the fear that signaling concern about their status would make them into hostages that could be used to extract concessions.[14]: 206 The families of the Air Force and Navy pilots shot down over North Vietnam and taken prisoner found that the Pentagon was often savagely unsympathetic to their plight, taking the view that the best thing these families could do was to be silent. Starting in May 1969, Laird did his best to publicize the POW issue, launching on 3 May a "Go Public" campaign to draw attention to the mistreatment and torture of American POWs in North Vietnam.[14]: 207–08 Laird believed in drawing attention to the POW issue for humanitarian reasons, but officials such as Vice President Spiro Agnew saw the issue more as a way of mobilizing public support for Nixon's Vietnam policy.[14]: 207–11 Agnew calculated that the American people did not care much for South Vietnam, but that presenting the war as a struggle to free American POWs being mistreated in North Vietnam would increase public support for the war.
Laird often clashed with Kissinger in 1969 over the correct policy to follow in Vietnam.[13]: 595 Kissinger argued to Nixon that the continued presence of American soldiers in South Vietnam "remains one of our few bargaining weapons" and that to start withdrawing forces from Vietnam would become "like salted peanuts" to the American people as "the more U.S troops come home, the more will be demanded".[13]: 596 Kissinger still believed if only North Vietnam was bombed hard enough, then concessions could still be won as he maintained: "I can't believe that a fourth-rate power like North Vietnam doesn't have a breaking point".[13]: 596 By contrast, Laird argued to Nixon that a steady reduction in U.S. forces from Vietnam was the best way of ensuring his re-election in 1972.[13]: 594 Before 1969, Kissinger was a professor of political science at Harvard University whereas Laird had been a Republican Congressman. Owing to these very different backgrounds, Laird was considerably more sensitive to American public opinion while Kissinger belonged more to the traditional Primat der Aussenpolitik school which saw foreign policy as belonging only to a small elite.[13]: 587
In the summer of 1969, Laird told the press that Vietnamization was the Nixon administration's "highest priority" while also stating that the U.S. troops in South Vietnam were moving from "maximum pressure" to "protective reaction".[13]: 599 In September 1969, when Kissinger drafted Duck Hook, a plan which in his own words called for a "savage, punishing blow" against North Vietnam in the form of renewed bombing, Laird persuaded Nixon to reject the plan.[13]: 596 Laird argued to the president that Kissinger's "savage" bombing plan would kill a massive number of innocent North Vietnamese civilians and thus increase popular support for the anti-war movement.[13]: 596 At the same time, Laird doubted that Kissinger's plans for a "savage" bombing of North Vietnam would yield the desired results and predicated that it would cause the North Vietnamese to break off the peace talks going on in Paris.[13]: 596 For all these political reasons, Laird was able to convince Nixon not to go ahead with Kissinger's plans for a "savage" bombing offensive.[13]: 596
During 1969 the new administration cut authorized U.S. troop strength in Vietnam from 549,500 to 484,000, and by May 1, 1972, the number stood at 69,000. During this same period, from January 1969 to May 1972, U.S. combat deaths declined 95 percent from the 1968 peak and war expenditures fell by about two-thirds. Laird publicized Vietnamization widely; in his final report as secretary of defense in early 1973, he stated: "Vietnamization ... today is virtually completed. As a consequence of the success of the military aspects of Vietnamization, the South Vietnamese people today, in my view, are fully capable of providing for their own in-country security against the North Vietnamese."
On 15 October 1969, the first
However, Laird helped to contribute ideas for Nixon's "Silent Majority speech" of 3 November 1969, where the president asked for the support of the "silent majority" of Americans for his Vietnam policy.[14]: 230 During the second Moratorium protest on 15 November 1969, Laird asked two of his more hawkish officials, the Navy Secretary John Chafee and his undersecretary John Warner to go "undercover" with the demonstrators.[14]: 231–32 Both Chafee and Warner came back to Laird saying the demonstrators were far from the conservative caricature of anti-social drug-crazed, sex-obsessed hippies intent upon destroying everything good in the United States, saying the demonstrators were thoughtful and patriotic young people who just thought the Vietnam War was misguided.[14]: 233 Laird later recalled: "They were a little shaken because I don't think they realized the extent of some of the feelings of those young people. That's what I was tying to get them to understand. But I couldn't get the White House to understand that".[14]: 233 Laird believed that America by late 1969 was becoming a dangerously polarized society and it was the best interests to have hawks who despised the anti-war movement to try to understand the young people demonstrating against the war on the streets of Washington.[14]: 233–34
In October 1969, at the urging of Laird, the American Red Cross began "Write Hanoi" campaign, urging the American people to send letters to POWs.
In this same report Laird noted that the war had commanded more of his attention than any other concern during his four-year term. Upon becoming secretary he set up a special advisory group of DoD officials, known as the Vietnam Task Force, and he met with them almost every morning he was in the Pentagon. He also visited Vietnam several times for on-the-scene evaluations. Although his program of Vietnamization could be termed a success, if one considers the progress of troop withdrawals, U.S. involvement in the conflict became perhaps even more disruptive at home during Nixon's presidency than during Johnson's. The U.S.
On the night of 21 February 1970, as a secret counterpart to the official peace talks in Paris, Kissinger met the North Vietnamese diplomat Lê Đức Thọ in a modest house located in an undistinguished industrial suburb of Paris, largely as a way of excluding the South Vietnamese from the peace talks as Kissinger had discovered that the South Vietnamese president Nguyễn Văn Thiệu had a vested interest in ensuring the peace talks failed and that the United States should not withdraw from Vietnam.[13]: 623–24 Reflecting his disdain for both Laird and Rogers, Kissinger did not see fit until a year later in February 1971 to first inform the Defense Secretary and the Secretary of State that he had been talking with Thọ in Paris off and on for the last year.[13]: 624 Laird publicly supported Nixon's Vietnam course, although Laird privately opposed the deception used to mask the Cambodian bombing from the American populace.
In early 1970, Laird was opposed to Nixon's plans to invade Cambodia.
The new Cambodian leader Lon Nol had supported the Cambodian "incursion" through he had not been consulted in advance, and as a result, the North Vietnamese increased their support for the Khmer Rouge guerrillas who were fighting to overthrow him. As Laird had warned, the United States now had the responsibility of supporting not only the South Vietnamese government, but also the Cambodian government as well in their struggle against Communist guerrillas.[13]: 610 The Cambodian "incursion" set off massive protests in the United States, as Karnow wrote that the "biggest protests to date" against the war took place all across the nation in May 1970 as it seemed to many Americans that Nixon was recklessly escalating the war by invading Cambodia.[13]: 610 Nixon as part of his "madman theory" liked to portray himself to the world as a reckless, dangerous leader capable of anything, but as Laird noted most of the American people wanted their president to be a statesman, not a "madman". Many Republican politicians complained to Nixon from May 1970 that his policies on Vietnam would hurt their chances for the congressional elections in November 1970, leading Nixon to comment to Kissinger "when the Right starts wanting go get out, for whatever reason, that's our problem".[13]: 626 In an address on national television aired on 7 October 1970, Nixon changed tactics as he toned down his rhetoric as he stressed his interest in peace, saying he would pull out 90,000 American soldiers from South Vietnam by the spring of 1971 and wanted an immediate ceasefire.[13]: 627 The speech on 7 October was the beginning of a remodeling of Nixon's image from being Nixon the "madman" president over to Nixon the statesman president.[13]: 627
In 1970, Laird approved of planning for a commando raid on a North Vietnamese POW camp at Son Tay.[14]: 211–2 On 24 September 1970, he asked for Nixon's approval, which was granted.[14]: 212 On 19 November 1970, the camp was raided, but there were no POWs present, having been moved to another camp in July.[14]: 213 At a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the raid, Laird testified: "I could not ignore the fact that our men were dying in captivity. Mr. Chairman, I want this committee to know that I have not faced a more challenging decision since I have been Secretary of Defense".[14]: 214
In October 1970, Laird approved of an increase in bombing along the section of the
In June 1971, the
In December 1971, the Third
A bizarre aftermath to the crisis occurred when the columnist
Laird counted on the success of Vietnamization, peace talks that had begun in 1968 in Paris and the secret negotiations in Paris between Kissinger and North Vietnamese representatives to end the conflict. On 27 January 1973, two days before Laird left office, the negotiators signed the Paris Peace Accords. They agreed to an in-place cease-fire to begin on 28 January 1973, complete withdrawal of U.S. forces within 60 days, the concurrent phased release of U.S. prisoners of war in North Vietnam, and establishment of the International Commission of Control and Supervision to handle disagreements among the signatories. Although, as time was to demonstrate, South Vietnam was not really capable of defending its independence, Laird retired from office satisfied that he had accomplished his major objective, the disengagement of United States combat forces from Vietnam.
Cold War and nuclear war planning
Vietnam preoccupied Laird, but not to the exclusion of other pressing matters. Although not intimately involved in the development of strategic nuclear policy as McNamara had been, Laird subscribed to the Nixon administration's program of "
Conscription suspended
Other important Laird goals were ending conscription by June 30, 1973, and the creation of an All Volunteer Force (AVF). Strong opposition to selective service mounted during the Vietnam War and draft calls declined progressively during Laird's years at the Pentagon; from 300,000 in his first year, to 200,000 in the second, 100,000 in the third, and 50,000 in the fourth. On January 27, 1973, after the signing of the Vietnam agreement in Paris, Laird suspended the draft, five months ahead of schedule.
Later career
Laird completed his term of office as secretary of defense on January 29, 1973. Because he had stated repeatedly that he would serve only four years (only
During his tenure as Defense Secretary, Laird did not share President Nixon's lingering timetable for withdrawal from Vietnam. He publicly contradicted the administrations policy, which upset the White House. Laird wished to return to the political arena, and was said to be planning a run for president in 1976. After Watergate, this proved implausible. There was also talk of a Senate run and perhaps a return to his old House seat in hopes of becoming Speaker.
In spite of Vietnam and the unfolding Watergate affair, which threatened to discredit the entire Nixon administration, Laird retired with his reputation intact. Although not a close confidant of the president and not the dominant presence that McNamara was, Laird had been an influential secretary. He achieved a smooth association with the military leadership by restoring some of the responsibilities they had lost during the 1960s. His excellent relations with Congress enabled him to gain approval for many of his programs and budget requests.
After a brief absence, Laird returned to the Nixon administration in June 1973 as
In 1974, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Since 1974, he wrote widely for Reader's Digest and other publications on national and international topics.
Laird was quietly opposed to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and tried to use his influence together with that of the former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft to persuade President George W. Bush not to invade Iraq.[14]: 520–21 In November 2005, Laird published an article in Foreign Affairs that was highly critical of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war, through in the same article that Laird advised against an immediate pull-out from Iraq as that would cause more chaos.[14]: 525 Laird advised a strategy of Iraqization along the same lines as Vietnamization, arguing that the American people would not tolerate endless war in Iraq anymore than they did in Vietnam.[14]: 525 Laird argued that as long the American forces were doing the majority of the fighting in Vietnam, the South Vietnamese government had no reason to try to improve its military, and it was only in 1969 when the South Vietnamese were informed that the United States was pulling out in stages that the South Vietnamese finally became serious by trying to make its military actually fight. He argued that the same strategy of Iraqization was needed, stating that as long as the American forces were doing the bulk of the fighting in Iraq that the Iraqi government had no reason to try to improve its military. Laird criticized human rights abuses, writing: "For me, the alleged prison scandals reported to have occurred in Iraq, in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay have been a disturbing reminder of the mistreatment of our own POWs by North Vietnam".[14]: 525 He argued that retaining U.S. moral leadership would require that the "war on terror" be conducted with the standard humanitarian norms of the West and that the use of torture was a disgrace.[14]: 525 About President Bush, Laird wrote: "His west Texas cowboy approach – shoot first and answer questions later, or do the job first and let the results speak for themselves – is not working".[14]: 526 Laird's article attracted much media attention, all the more because he was a Republican and former Defense Secretary who had been a mentor to Donald Rumsfeld.[14]: 526
On January 5, 2006, he participated in a meeting at the White House of former Secretaries of Defense and State to discuss United States foreign policy with Bush administration officials. Laird was disappointed by the meeting, which was a photo-op, as neither he nor the others present were allowed much time to speak, with the bulk of the conference consisting of video calls from servicemen in Iraq.[14]: 526 In 2007, Laird came close to endorsing the presidential bid of his former intern, Hillary Clinton, saying in an interview that she had been one of his best interns and that he felt certain she would make an excellent president.[14]: 528
In 2008, journalist Dale Van Atta published a biography of Laird entitled With Honor: Melvin Laird in War, Peace, and Politics, published by University of Wisconsin Press.[14]
Role in health care research
Laird played a key role in advancing medical research, although this part of his biography is often overshadowed by his political achievements. "Laird's position on the House Appropriations subcommittee handling health matters allowed him to play a key congressional role on many medical and health issues. He often teamed up with liberal Democrat
Between 1956 and 1967, Laird was appointed a member of the U.S. Delegation to the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, by three U.S. Presidents – Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
In fact, President Eisenhower so admired Laird's work in Congress for world health and national security that he described Congressman Laird as "one of the 10 men best qualified to become President of the United States."
Laird's interest in medical research is documented by his co-authoring legislation to finance the construction of the
Death and legacy
Following the death of
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said in a statement: "Secretary Laird led the Defense Department through a time of great change in the world and within our department. Through it all, he demonstrated an unfailing commitment to protecting our country, strengthening our military, and making a better world."[20]
"Those of us who fought and those of us held prisoner in Vietnam will always have a special place in our hearts for Sec Melvin Laird," tweeted Senator John McCain, after learning of Laird's death.[20]
The Laird Center for Medical Research (dedicated in 1997), located in Marshfield, Wisconsin is named after him.[4] It is a medical research and education facility on the campus of Marshfield Clinic.
On May 19, 2017, the Department of Defense ordered the following. ALCON, 1. IN ACCORDANCE WITH REF A, AS A MARK OF RESPECT FOR THE INTERMENT OF FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE MELVIN LAIRD, THE FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES IS TO BE FLOWN AT HALF-STAFF ON FRIDAY MAY 19, 2017. 2. THE FLAG SHALL BE FLOWN AT HALF-STAFF ON ALL DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS, MILITARY POSTS AND NAVAL STATIONS, AND NAVAL VESSELS THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES AND ABROAD. RELEASED BY: CDR H. MOHLER, DOD EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
Laird was buried in Arlington National Cemetery (Section 34) after a service in the Post Chapel.[citation needed]
See also
Notes
- ^ "Melvin R. Laird – Richard Nixon Administration". Office of the Secretary of Defense – Historical Office.
- ^ "Laird, Melvin R. 1922 -". Wisconsin Historical Society. Archived from the original on June 11, 2011. Retrieved July 6, 2009.
- ISBN 9781851099610.
- ^ a b c d "Melvin Laird, Defense Secretary under Nixon, dead at age 94". New York Daily News. November 16, 2016.
- ^ "'Wisconsin Blue Book 1948,' Biographical Sketch of Melvin R. Laird, Jr., p. 36" (PDF).
- Time Magazine(July 24, 1964).
- ^ "HR 6127. CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1957". GovTrack.us.
- ^ "HR 8601. PASSAGE".
- ^ "H.R. 7152. PASSAGE".
- ^ "TO PASS H.R. 2516, A BILL TO ESTABLISH PENALTIES FOR INTERFERENCE WITH CIVIL RIGHTS. INTERFERENCE WITH A PERSON ENGAGED IN ONE OF THE 8 ACTIVITIES PROTECTED UNDER THIS BILL MUST BE RACIALLY MOTIVATED TO INCUR THE BILL'S PENALTIES".
- ^ "S.J. RES. 29. CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO BAN THE USE OF POLL TAX AS A REQUIREMENT FOR VOTING IN FEDERAL ELECTIONS". GovTrack.us.
- ^ "TO PASS H.R. 6400, THE 1965 VOTING RIGHTS ACT".
- ^ ISBN 978-0140265477.
- ^ ISBN 978-0299226800.
- ^ "Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum".
- ^ BenchMarks Magazine, Fall 1994 "BenchMarks".
- ^ "Congressional Biographical Directory (CLERKWEB)". Archived from the original on April 23, 2010.
- ^ "Melvin Laird, Nixon defense secretary at the height of the Vietnam War, dies at 94". The Washington Post.
- ^ "Nixon's Secretary of Defense Dead at 94". The Daily Beast. November 16, 2016.
- ^ a b "Draft-ending former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird dies | CNN Politics". CNN. November 17, 2016.
- United States Congress. "Melvin Laird (id: L000024)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
- [1] US Department of Defense Biography
- [2] Marshfield Herald News archives
- [3] BenchMark Magazine archives
- Bibliography
- Laird, Helen L., A Mind of Her Own: Helen Connor Laird and Family, 1888–1982, The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
External links
- Laird Center Biography
- Melvin Laird Papers at the Gerald Ford Library
- Iraq: Learning the Lessons of Vietnam" by Melvin R. Laird. – Foreign Affairs Magazine article, November/December 2005 Issue.
- Melvin Laird and the Foundation of the Post-Vietnam Military, 1969–1973 Office of the Secretary of Defense
- ANC Explorer
- Appearances on C-SPAN