73 Facts About Melvin Laird

Melvin Laird was a US congressman from Wisconsin from 1953 to 1969 before serving as Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1973 under President Richard Nixon.

Melvin Laird grew up and attended high school in Marshfield, Wisconsin, although in his junior year he attended Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, Illinois.

Melvin Laird was nicknamed "Bambino" by his mother.

Melvin Laird's niece is Jessica Laird Doyle, wife of former Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle.

Melvin Laird graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota in May 1944, having enlisted in the United States Navy a year earlier.

Melvin Laird entered the Wisconsin State Senate at age 23, succeeding his deceased father.

Melvin Laird represented a legislative district encompassing Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

Melvin Laird remained in the Senate until his election in November 1952 to the United States House of Representatives representing Wisconsin's 7th District in central Wisconsin, including the areas of Marshfield, Wausau, Wisconsin Rapids and Stevens Point.

Melvin Laird was re-elected eight consecutive times and he was chairman of the House Republican Conference when Nixon selected him for the cabinet.

Melvin Laird was known for his work on both domestic and defense issues, including his service on the Defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

Melvin Laird left Congress reluctantly, making it clear when he became secretary on January 22,1969, that he intended to serve no more than four years.

Melvin Laird voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957,1960,1964, and 1968, as well as the 24th Amendment to the US Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Melvin 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.

Melvin Laird had a prominent role in the selection of Gerald Ford as Agnew's successor as vice president.

The department implemented a number of the panel's proposals while Melvin Laird served in the Pentagon.

Melvin Laird pursued what he called "participatory management", an approach calculated to gain the cooperation of the military leadership in reducing the Defense budget and the size of the military establishment.

Melvin Laird accorded the service secretaries and the JCS a more influential role in the development of budgets and force levels.

Melvin Laird revised the PPBS, including a return to the use of service budget ceilings and service programming of forces within these ceilings.

Melvin Laird did not shrink from centralized management where he found it useful or warranted.

Melvin Laird's tenure saw the establishment of the Defense Investigative Service, the Defense Mapping Agency, the Office of Net Assessment, and the Defense Security Assistance Agency.

In October 1972 Congress passed legislation creating a second deputy secretary of defense position, a proposal Melvin Laird strongly supported, even though he never filled the position.

Melvin Laird maintained close contact with old congressional friends, and he spent many hours testifying before Senate and House committees.

Right from the moment he entered office, Melvin Laird clashed with the National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger over access to the president.

The original term was "de-Americanizing" the war, but Melvin Laird substituted the term "Vietnamization" as it sounded better.

In March 1969, Melvin 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".

Melvin 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.

Melvin 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.

Melvin 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.

Melvin 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.

Melvin 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.

Melvin Laird often clashed with Kissinger in 1969 over the correct policy to follow in Vietnam.

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, Melvin Laird persuaded Nixon to reject the plan.

Melvin 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.

At the time, the younger Melvin Laird told the press "I think everybody should be against the war", though he praised his father for "doing the best job I think he possibly can".

Melvin Laird replied "that's the way John felt and I supported him".

Nixon's statement that Melvin Laird was a poor father who should have found a way to "muzzle" his son angered him so much that the president never criticized him on that point again.

However, Melvin 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.

Melvin 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.

Melvin Laird's "Go Public" campaign did lead to an improvement in the conditions for American POWs from mid-1969 onward as stories of Americans being tortured increased support for hawkish policies in the United States and thus led the North Vietnamese to improve conditions to assist the dovish section of American opinion.

Melvin Laird publicly supported Nixon's Vietnam course, although Melvin Laird privately opposed the deception used to mask the Cambodian bombing from the American populace.

In early 1970, Melvin Laird was opposed to Nixon's plans to invade Cambodia.

Once Melvin Laird learned that the president was determined to go ahead, he reconciled himself to invading Cambodia, though he tried to minimize the operation by having it limited to the South Vietnamese forces with their American advisers invade the Parrot's Beak area of Cambodia.

Nixon as part of his "madman theory" liked to portray himself to the world as a reckless, dangerous leader capable of anything, but as Melvin Laird noted most of the American people wanted their president to be a statesman, not a "madman".

In 1970, Melvin Laird approved of planning for a commando raid on a North Vietnamese POW camp at Son Tay.

In October 1970, Melvin Laird approved of an increase in bombing along the section of the Ho Chi Minh trail running through neutral Laos.

On 23 December 1970, Nixon approved of the plan, and in January 1971, Melvin Laird went to Saigon to persuade the South Vietnamese president Thieu to approve it as well.

Unlike the invasion of Cambodia the previous year, the invasion of Laos caused few protests in the United States mostly because Lam Son was perceived as a South Vietnamese operation, not an American one, which for Melvin Laird was a sign of the success of Vietnamization.

Melvin Laird secretly informed the Solicitor General, Erwin Griswold, who was prosecuting the New York Times for threatening national security, that there were only "six or seven paragraphs in the whole thing that were a little dangerous" and those paragraphs had already been published.

Melvin Laird was dubious about the plans to support Pakistan, the weaker of the two powers, all the more so as the Soviet Union was supporting India, which would thus make Pakistan's inevitable defeat look like a defeat for the United States as well.

Melvin Laird did not fire Radford as Kissinger demanded while Admiral Moorer was given a verbal dressing-down for unprofessional conduct.

Melvin Laird felt that firing Moorer as Kissinger wanted would resulted in the atmosphere of fear and distrust in the Nixon administration being made public as undoubtedly the sacked admiral would have leaked the reasons for his dismissal to the press.

Melvin 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 Melvin Laird left office, the negotiators signed the Paris Peace Accords.

Although, as time was to demonstrate, South Vietnam was not really capable of defending its independence, Melvin Laird retired from office satisfied that he had accomplished his major objective, the disengagement of United States combat forces from Vietnam.

On January 27,1973, after the signing of the Vietnam agreement in Paris, Melvin Laird suspended the draft, five months ahead of schedule.

Melvin Laird completed his term of office as secretary of defense on January 29,1973.

Melvin Laird publicly contradicted the administrations policy, which upset the White House.

Melvin Laird wished to return to the political arena, and was said to be planning a run for president in 1976.

In spite of Vietnam and the unfolding Watergate affair, which threatened to discredit the entire Nixon administration, Melvin Laird retired with his reputation intact.

Melvin Laird achieved a smooth association with the military leadership by restoring some of the responsibilities they had lost during the 1960s.

In February 1974, as the Watergate crisis in the White House deepened, Melvin Laird resigned to become senior counselor for national and international affairs for Reader's Digest.

In November 2005, Melvin Laird published an article in Foreign Affairs that was highly critical of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war, though Melvin Laird advised against an immediate pull-out from Iraq as that would cause more chaos.

Melvin 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.

Melvin 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.

Melvin Laird 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.

Melvin Laird argued that retaining US 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.

Melvin 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.

Melvin 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.

In 2007, Melvin 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.

Melvin Laird played a key role in advancing medical research, although this part of his biography is often overshadowed by his political achievements.

Melvin Laird often teamed up with liberal Democrat John Fogarty of Rhode Island to pass key legislation on education or health matters.

Melvin Laird received many awards for his work on health matters, including the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award and the American Public Health Association award for leadership.

Melvin Laird died of congestive heart failure in Fort Myers, Florida on November 16,2016, at the age of 94.