The Shakeup at State

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

An experienced team player replaces a battle-weary vicar

"With great regret, I have accepted the resignation of Secretary of State Al Haig."

--President Reagan at the White House

"We agreed that consistency, clarity and steadiness of purpose were essential, [but] in recent months it has become clear to me that the foreign policy on which we embarked together was shifting from that careful course."

--Haig, reading his letter of resignation at the State Department

It was a strange event, at once inevitable and shockingly abrupt. Alexander Meigs Haig, 57, had been out of tune with much of the rest of the Reagan Administration from the day he took office 17 months ago as the self-proclaimed "vicar" of American foreign policy. He had been worn down by incessant friction with colleagues--much of it self-created--in the unending battle for the President's ear, and he had said he would quit so many times that the threat of resignation had become a Washington joke. This time, however, Reagan was also worn down by the friction and was fully pre pared to let Haig go. Yet, until the very moment that an obviously strained and tense Reagan stepped before the TV cameras to make his terse (1 min. 11 sec.) announcement of Haig's resignation, there had been no hint that the President had not only agreed to his departure but had already chosen a successor. The nation, the world and even members of the National Security Council who had attended a luncheon meeting with Reagan and Haig that broke up only 1 hr. 45 min. before the President's announcement, reacted with stunned surprise.

The amazement was tinged with apprehension too. Not, to be sure, because of any misgivings about the ability of the man that Reagan chose as Haig's replacement. As Secretary of the Treasury and economic-policy coordinator in the Nixon Administration, George Pratt Shultz, 61, earned a reputation as a team player who could win cooperation from officials with strongly divergent views; he might be able to avoid the bureaucratic battles that gave Haig so much trouble in bringing "consistency, clarity and steadiness of purpose" to American foreign policy. Though Shultz has no formal diplomatic background, his negotiations with foreign leaders on trade and monetary matters during the Nixon Administration and his experience during the past eight years as a key executive of Bechtel, an engineering and construction firm with operations in more than 20 countries, have made him thoroughly familiar with the world outside the U.S. With the very notable exception of Israeli leaders and their more fervent American supporters, who are worried that Bechtel's extensive operations in Saudi Arabia have given Shultz an excessive sympathy for the Arab cause, foreign leaders who know Shultz --and a surprising number know him quite well--regard him as a cool, pragmatic professional.

The unease about Haig's de parture centered on the fact that the most knowledgeable and experienced foreign policy hand in an Administration not noted for diplomatic expertise had quit at a moment when the U.S. was trying to cope with a host of challenging global troubles. In the Middle East, the U.S. is desperately attempting to patch together some kind of settlement in Lebanon, for fear that the Israeli invasion of the country might set the whole region aflame--or, at minimum, irretrievably damage American interests in the Arab world. In Europe, the anger of American allies at U.S. opposition to their economic dealings with the Soviets threatens, in Haig's view at least, the stability of the NATO alliance. In Latin America, U.S. support for Britain's unyielding stand on the Falkland Islands has enraged many nations that Washington would like to court. In Geneva this week, U.S. and Soviet negotiators will sit down to open an ultra-important round of new talks on reduction of strategic nuclear weapons. Moscow's leaders are already expressing heightened puzzlement as to what kind of American strategy they will face.

In short, it was almost the worst possible moment for the Administration to be plunged into internal turmoil. However able Shultz may prove to be, he will at best need time to brief himself on the specifics of foreign problems and straighten out the tangled lines of authority in policymaking. It may take until mid-July before his nomination is confirmed by the Senate. Haig has said that he will stay on until then, but he will obviously have no clout. And events may not wait for the transition, as the Israeli bombs and shells falling on West Beirut all too starkly demonstrated last week.

It was, in fact, the feeling that some foreign troubles were spinning out of control--at least, out of his control--that seems to have triggered Haig's sudden departure. Those difficulties were not exactly the reasons for his resignation; there was no single predominant reason. Many Administration officials view Haig's departure as due to a clash of personalities more than to policy quarrels. But bitter disagreements between Haig and other officials over policy toward Israel and the celebrated pipeline that will carry Soviet natural gas from Siberia to Western Europe did bring to a head a long series of tensions and frustrations that had been building since the Reagan Administration took office.

Haig's quarrels with the White House staff started a few hours after the Inauguration, when he handed Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese a memo, for Reagan's approval, demanding total control over foreign policy (he never quite got it). Haig was often at public odds with Cabinet colleagues and even some of his subordinates.

Says one Administration official: "Just consider all the people he has been in fights with recently: [Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Director Eugene] Rostow, [Secretary of Defense Caspar] Weinberger, [U.N. Ambassador Jeane] Kirkpatrick, [White House Chief of Staff James] Baker, [National Security Adviser William] Clark, [Secretary of the Treasury Donald] Regan. There is no way you can have everybody divorced from foreign policy questions except for the Secretary of State, as Haig tried to do."

Policy differences aggravated, and were aggravated by, the personal hassles. Haig, who was chief assistant to Henry Kissinger on Nixon's National Security Council staff, is a devoted believer in the "Atlanticist" school of diplomacy, which insists that the U.S. must always try to act in concert with its European allies and favor a carefully calibrated mixture of carrots and sticks in dealing with the Soviet Union. In contrast, most of the Californians around Reagan--and to some extent the President himself--instinctively tend to follow a hard, unyielding line toward Moscow, backed up by military muscle, whether U.S. allies agree or not. The leading exponent of this view is Weinberger, who in recent months has openly criticized Haig's policies on everything from the repayment of delinquent Polish debts to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, with no attempt by the President to quiet him. The intense, high-strung Haig was worried constantly, and with reason, that the laid-back Californians had far easier and more intimate access to Reagan than he ever would.

For all that, Haig usually managed to prevail on policy. Indeed, even his relations with the White House staff seemed to be improving early this year. The reason was Reagan's appointment of Clark as National Security Adviser to replace Richard Allen. Haig regarded Allen as a "guerrilla" who was sniping at him from the White House. Clark, a former California judge and longtime intimate of Reagan, had originally been brought into the Administration as No. 2 at the State Department, largely to serve as a trouble-shooter between Haig and the White House. He nonetheless worked amicably and effectively with Haig and managed to smooth out relations somewhat between the Secretary of State and Reagan's Californians. Haig welcomed Clark's appointment as National Security Adviser, and not only because Allen was gone. Haig had encountered great difficulty in penetrating the "troika" arrangement at the White House, under which Meese, Baker and Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver share authority; he could never figure out whom to see. With Clark in the White House, Haig thought, his views would get a quicker and fuller hearing.

The appointment soon turned out to have the exact opposite result. Clark, says one former Haig lieutenant, "is a man who has no fixed address. He will serve whichever boss he happens to be working for"--and Clark has worked for Reagan a lot longer than he did for Haig. He is convinced that Reagan must put his personal stamp on foreign policy rather than let his Secretary of State run the show. And he is turning into an exceptionally potent National Security Adviser, even though he had no foreign policy experience whatever before he came to Washington. Clark has unlimited personal access to Reagan and can speak for the President within the bureaucracy far more powerfully than Haig could--sometimes without checking with Reagan in advance.

Clark soon began clashing with Haig on policy issues. When Haig in April undertook his epic Washington-London-Buenos Aires shuttle in an effort to avert war between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands, Clark thought that Haig had staked the Administration's prestige far too heavily on a mission that seemed likely to fail--as, of course, it did. After war broke out, Clark believed that Haig had persuaded Reagan to come out openly on Britain's side too quickly and completely.

When Haig in Washington and Ambassador Kirkpatrick at the U.N. got into a furious telephone argument over policy toward the Falklands--Kirkpatrick urging more sympathy for Argentina--Haig wanted her fired. Clark instead got her an appointment at the White House on Memorial Day to state her views directly to Reagan. Though the President did not agree with those opinions, Haig was furious at this deference to a "company commander," as he once called Kirkpatrick, who in his judgment had been insubordinate.

Even so, Haig continued to win on most of the substantive issues. As late as a month ago, at the Versailles summit conference of the non-Communist world's seven strongest industrial powers that opened Reagan's ten-day trip through Europe, Haig appeared to be in complete control of U.S. foreign policy. That appearance could not have been more misleading. It is now clear that for Haig the European trip generally, and Versailles specifically, marked the beginning of the end.

In Washington, Haig and the White House staff could at least avoid one another when they had no business to discuss. Thrown together on a tightly scheduled visit to Europe, they got into explosive quarrels over the pettiest matters. For example, Haig is said to have regarded it as an affront that the helicopter carrying him and his wife Patricia from Heathrow Airport outside London to Windsor Castle was far behind the Reagans' chopper. According to White House aides, he upbraided Clark and Baker on the lawn at Windsor Castle, while Queen Elizabeth II was welcoming Reagan. "He went crazy," recalls one presidential assistant. Haig further annoyed Clark and Baker by theatening to abandon the trip and return to Washington.

More important, Haig at Versailles undertook a bit of well-intended diplomacy that failed. Reagan earlier had forbidden American companies to supply equipment for the Siberia-Western Europe natural gas pipeline, as a method of putting economic pressure on the Soviets in retaliation for the crackdown in Poland. He had reserved the option of imposing further sanctions if the Poles were not granted some greater measure of freedom. The Europeans were angry, regarding any American effort to block the pipeline as an attempt to wage economic war on the Soviet Union. They opposed economic sanctions both on principle--they are eager to preserve whatever remains of detente--and because they need the energy supplies and the jobs that the pipeline will provide.

Haig was convinced that American sanctions would not then stop the building of the pipeline or cancel the European commitment to it. He thought he could satisfy Reagan's desire to be tough on the Soviets by getting the Europeans to pledge that they would limit government-subsidized loans to the U.S.S.R. and its Warsaw Pact allies. They understood him to promise that if such a pledge were written into the final Versailles communique, there would be no further American moves against the pipeline. The communique did contain a vague promise to study restrictions on loans to the East bloc, and Haig tried to convince Reagan that this supposed commitment was a U.S. victory. In fact, the language was so weak as to be almost meaningless.

Clark believed that Haig had misrepresented the President's position, and he therefore set out to tighten restrictions on the pipeline. He called a meeting of the National Security Council in Washington on June 18--a day when, as he knew, Haig was scheduled to be in New York City conferring with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. At the urging of Clark, Weinberger and others, Reagan at the NSC meeting not only reaffirmed the original ban but ruled that U.S. companies could not permit their foreign subsidiaries, or foreign companies with American licenses, to make equipment for the pipeline either. The Europeans felt doublecrossed. Even British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, an anti-Soviet hardliner, registered a strong protest. Haig stormed that Reagan and Clark had destroyed his credibility in any future negotiations with the Europeans.

A potentially far more dangerous storm was simultaneously brewing. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was due at the White House, and the Administration had to decide what to say to him about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Clark and Weinberger thought that Reagan should at least raise the threat of sanctions if the fighting did not stop. Some Administration hard-liners were even discussing possible moves. They included withdrawing Ambassador Samuel Lewis from Tel Aviv, giving American support to a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel (the U.S. has vetoed such resolutions to date) and finally cutting off arms aid that Israel needs. The hard-liners were moved by shock at the civilian casualties caused by the Israeli invasion and also by fear that the Arab world would interpret American silence as a sign that the U.S. agrees with, and may even have helped to instigate, the violence.

Increasingly isolated in the Administration on this point, Haig has argued vehemently against any open break with Israel for a year, since the Israeli air raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor near Baghdad in June 1981. In part, he believes that public criticism has the same effect on the stub born Begin that waving a red flag has on a bull: it only provokes him to still more outrageous behavior. Also, Haig believes that since the Israeli invasion has smashed the military power of the Palestine Liberation Organization, U.S. diplomacy has a chance not only to re-create an independent and neutral Lebanon but move toward a general Middle East peace based on settlement of the longest-festering problem of all: the aspirations of the Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. In his view, an Israel freed of fears about P.L.O. terrorism would be more willing to grant real autonomy to the Palestinians; the moderate Palestinians, no longer afraid of P.L.O. reprisals, would be more willing to enter the autonomy talks with Israel. Once more last week, Haig argued that public criticism of Israel and Begin, let alone any threat of sanctions, would destroy all these prospects.

Haig, Weinberger, Clark and top White House officials carried their counterarguments--that the President should get tough with Begin--into the Oval Office in a meeting with Reagan that convened at 10 a.m. Monday, only an hour before the Israeli Prime Minister was to arrive. Recalls one participant: "It was a typical foreign policy meeting--ten guys giving eight different positions." Haig apparently won, but only for the moment. Accounts of what Reagan and Begin did eventually say to each other differ somewhat. Haig and other State Department officials privately stressed indications of harmony; White House aides insisted that Reagan had pressed Begin hard to agree to a lasting cease fire in Lebanon and to a speedup in the autonomy negotiations.

The White House, as Haig had hoped, made no public criticism of the Israeli action, although Begin received an extraordinary dose of acerbic reaction when he paid a courtesy visit to Congress. When Democratic Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachussetts asked Begin whether Israel had used U.S.-made cluster bombs in Lebanon, despite an earlier promise not to employ those deadly weapons in offensive operations, Begin replied that he did not know. Tsongas found that hard to believe. Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat, jabbing his finger at Begin, warned that U.S. support for Israel was eroding. Begin shouted back: "Don't threaten us with cutting off aid to give up our principles!"

In his meeting with Reagan, and in a later private talk with Haig, Begin likewise would not budge on anything. At one point, the White House put out word that the Prime Minister had pledged to refrain from a final assault on Beirut. Haig was furious because he regarded the threat of an Israeli attack as essential to induce the remnants of the P.L.O. holed up in Beirut to negotiate with Israel. The Israeli leader had, in fact, made no pledge. As the fighting continued, Clark, Weinberger and others were arguing with Reagan that Haig's soft-on-Israel approach increasingly made it seem that the U.S. was endorsing a military action that much of the free world viewed with considerable alarm. Even State Department subordinates who initially supported Haig's approach were whispering that they wanted a change in policy.

In the meantime, European protests against the pipeline sanctions poured into Washington--including one from Foreign Minister Emilio Colombo of Italy, a country with which the U.S. has no serious foreign policy disputes. As he read the plaints and monitored reports of renewed fighting in Lebanon, Haig grew increasingly morose. By midweek he was again thinking of resigning--not knowing that this was exactly what his adversaries at the White House wanted.

Nor did Haig know that Reagan, who abhors conflict among his subordinates, had pretty much decided to accept his resignation. Until the European trip, Reagan had regarded Haig's volcanic behavior with a kind of uneasy tolerance. But shortly after the presidential party returned to the U.S., Reagan agreed with key aides that the frictions had become insupportable. White House aides insist that there was no plot to get Haig; in fact, they thought that it would be best if the Secretary of State stayed on until after the November congressional elections. So Reagan would not directly ask Haig to quit--but he resolved that the next time Haig threatened to resign, he would take him at his word. Indeed, there are rumors among the White House staff that as long as two weeks ago, Reagan began sounding out Shultz as to whether he would take the job if and when Haig quit.

The last act of the drama began Wednesday evening, when Haig invited Clark to meet with him at the State Department. The Secretary ran through a long list of complaints, citing specifically the private meetings that the National Security Adviser had held with Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to Washington. In Haig's view, those meetings constituted a White House attempt to conduct backchannel dealings and undercut him in foreign policy. He also complained that Vice President George Bush had been sent as head of the U.S. delegation to memorial services for the late King Khalid in Saudi Arabia, and that he had been cut off from cables addressed to the White House from the President's special envoy to the Middle East, Philip Habib. Unless things changed, and he had more influence on such decisions, Haig said, he would have to resign. Clark did nothing to discourage the Secretary, but tipped off Baker, Deaver and the President, with whom Haig had requested a meeting on Thursday morning.

Reagan was prepared to accept Haig's resignation on the spot, but did not get a chance. Apparently, Haig overnight once more had second thoughts. During his 20-min. meeting with the President, the Secretary ran through the same list of complaints he had presented to

Clark the night before and handed Reagan a four-or five-page letter spelling them out. He told Reagan that he had also drafted and had in hand a letter of resignation. To the President's surprise, however, he added, "but I don't want to resign." Haig said he would prefer to make a last try at working things out. Reagan, briefly taken aback, replied that in that case he did not want to see the letter of resignation but is would review the Secretary's protests.

An old friend of Haig's, who talked with the Secretary by phone Thursday night, says that as late as 11 p.m. Haig still had not made up his mind whether to go through with the resignation. Overnight Thursday, however, Reagan evidently did come to a hard-and-fast decision: this time he would give Haig no chance to back out. Shortly after he met with Baker, Clark and Deaver midmorning Friday, Reagan had drafted and signed an acceptance of Haig's letter of resignation, which he had still not seen.

Said Reagan to the advisers: "You know, I just don't want to get into any more of these things about who's right and who's wrong." He told his aides that he would call Haig into the Oval Office after the National Security Council lunch to accept his resignation. At 10:10 a.m., Clark and Reagan began placing calls to Shultz, who was attending a Bechtel meeting in London, formally asking him to take Haig's job.

The NSC lunch, which began at 12:10 Friday, was an odd affair. Of the dozen or so people attending, only Reagan, Baker, Clark and Deaver knew that Haig was finished. Says one of those four: "We had to sit through that lunch knowing what was about to happen, and knowing that Haig didn't even know." Haig's demeanor, however, struck most of those attending as exceptionally quiet and peaceful, possibly because he had made up his mind to go through with his resignation.

In fact, he had no choice. After the NSC lunch broke up at about 1:15, Reagan, as planned, summoned Haig into the Oval Office. Immediately, the President handed the Secretary of State his signed acceptance of Haig's resignation--which still had not been formally offered. The two men talked, apparently without heat, for about 20 min. Nothing remained except to break the news.

The White House intended to make its statement at 2:30, but held off for a bit more than half an hour so that it could give advance notice to congressional leaders and to former Presidents. Reagan managed to call Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, but Gerald Ford was aboard an airplane and could not be reached. When Reagan strode into the White House press room, newsmen had been told only that he would make "an important statement" and had been given no hint of what it would be about.

Haig, appearing before reporters and cheering subordinates in the State Department auditorium, simply read aloud his letter of resignation, which he had finally delivered, three hours after it had been accepted. He said about his successor Shultz: "My own knowledge of George and his experience, professionalism and integrity gives me the utmost confidence." Reagan and Haig both opened by announcing that they would answer no questions, and both left the podium quickly, ignoring shouts of "Why?" Reagan went by helicopter to Camp David shortly after his appearance. Later, a top White House aide was asked how Reagan felt about it all. The answer: "Just like he did after the New Hampshire primary," referring to the point in his campaign at which the Republican candidate fired his top political strategist just as Reagan was beginning to show that he might win the election.

There was almost a palpable sense of relief at the White House over the prospect of Haig's departure and Shultz's arrival. Some aides actually celebrated on Friday evening. Whether the new Secretary of State will actually direct a fundamental shift in foreign policy remains to be seen. Institutional restraints and Shultz's own need to familiarize himself with both his assignment and new colleagues will probably prevent him from having a noticeable impact in the weeks ahead, even if he comes to Foggy Bottom with a mandate from Reagan and a clear set of objectives of his own.

In any case, the problem of achieving a consistent foreign policy is not only one of personalities, nor even of contrasting views on specific problems, but also of structure. In domestic policy, for good or ill, Reagan has a strongly held set of beliefs that he has at times imposed even over the unanimous opposition of his advisers. In foreign affairs the President has little experience and at times seems to lack the intense interest he displays in domestic concerns. He has preferred to govern in the foreign sphere by consensus, letting advisers argue out their views in front of him and deciding now in favor of one, now for another.

In practice this has been a formula for continuing and unresolved conflict, especially between the contrasting State Department and Pentagon views of the world. It is also a formula for an endless series of discrete decisions that are poorly related to each other.

No doubt, Haig's mercurial personality worsened conflicts. But Myer Rashish, who was forced to resign last January as Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, says of the storms of the Haig era: "Neither Haig nor the White House was right in any of this. The problem is the system for making policy. It is neither designed for, nor capable of, making coherent policy on any major issue. Policy is all made ad hoc." It will take more than a change of the name of the Secretary of State from Haig to Shultz to overcome that difficulty.

--By George J. Church. Reported by Robert Ajemian and Douglas Brew/ Washington

With reporting by Robert Ajemian, Douglas Brew

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