But his most important and controversial posts were in government. To some surprise, the newly elected Reagan chose Haig as secretary of state – and within barely two months the country's top diplomat uttered the ill-considered words that would bedevil him ever after.
Hours after the near-successful assassination attempt on Mr Reagan on 30 March 1981, Haig went into the White House briefing room to tell reporters: "I'm in control here." The remark appeared to betray an ignorance of the constitution: as well as the vice-president, the speaker and the senior member of the Senate also rank ahead of the secretary of state in the line of succession if the president is incapacitated.
More important, it seemed to confirm the square-jawed and forthright Haig as a power-crazed general. "It was reminiscent of Dr Strangelove," Richard Darman, Reagan's deputy chief of staff, would later write. "Haig intended to calm the nation. He unnerved the world." ...
In fact, Haig's most vital service to his country had come a decade earlier. He had already earned Richard Nixon's confidence during a two-year stint as deputy national security adviser under Henry Kissinger when Nixon made him White House chief of staff in May 1973, just as Watergate began to engulf the presidency.
As the crisis moved to its climax, Haig played a crucial role as a channel between the president and Congress. He gently persuaded Nixon to resign once impeachment proceedings had become a certainty. With a skill belied by his later gaffes, he handled the delicate negotiations for the transfer of power from Nixon to Gerald Ford.
Haig remained at the White House only a few weeks after Nixon stepped down on 9 August 1974. It was widely believed, though never confirmed, that he had brokered a secret deal for Nixon to resign in return for a guarantee from Ford of a pardon – a pardon that would be granted on 8 September 1974.
from ap: The Charles Manson follower convicted of attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford is set to be released from a Texas federal prison later this month after serving more than 30 years behind bars. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme was a 26-year-old disciple of the cult murderer Manson when she aimed a semiautomatic pistol at Ford in September 1975 in Sacramento, Calif. A Secret Service agent grabbed her and Ford was unhurt. The Federal Bureau of Prisons and the court-appointed attorney who represented Fromme at trial say the now 60-year-old is to be released from the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, TX on Aug. 16.
The new details were included in 500 pages of the FBI's large file on Ford, released in part this past week in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act that The Associated Press and others made on the day Ford died in December 2006. The FBI intends to release additional documents about Ford in several batches, all with parts censored for law enforcement and privacy reasons.
from raw story: Forty years after Democratic rising star Robert F. Kennedy was killed at a Los Angeles hotel during his presidential run, new evidence suggests the man serving a life sentence for his murder did not fire the shots that killed the charismatic senator.
ford 'memoir' fuels jfk plot buffs from grand rapids press: Over the last four decades of his life, President Gerald Ford insisted there was no evidence anyone but Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in the assassination of John F Kennedy. That's why Ford's friends, family and biographers are casting doubt on a book publisher's claim that in his last days the president confided that Oswald did not act alone and that the CIA destroyed documents about Kennedy's murder.
'road to dallas': a treat for jfk theorists from chicago sun-times: There have been so many analyses, fantasies and theories devoted to the assassination of John F. Kennedy that anything purporting itself as a fresh perspective runs the risk of suffocation. Anything less than a smoking gun - or two - will cause many casual readers to shrug with the frustration that they've heard it all before. The Road to Dallas... is laboriously comprehensive at times and shockingly illuminating at others. It may not prove the conspiracy it suggests - that while Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman he wasn't alone in planning the assassination - but it provides unusual substance to its argument because of the nature of the material and the background of the author.
from ap: Sara Jane Moore, who took a shot at President Ford in a 1975 assassination attempt, was released from prison Monday.
Moore, 77, had served about 30 years of a life sentence when she was released from the federal prison in Dublin, east of San Francisco, said Felicia Ponce, a spokeswoman with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Ponce did not know the details of Moore's release.
Moore was 40 feet away from Ford outside a hotel in San Francisco when she fired a shot at him on Sept. 22, 1975. As she raised her .38-caliber revolver, Oliver Sipple, a disabled former Marine standing next to her, pushed up her arm as the gun went off, and the bullet flew over Ford's head by several feet.
In recent interviews, Moore said she regretted her actions.
"I am very glad I did not succeed. I know now that I was wrong to try," Moore said a year ago in an interview with KGO-TV.
Just 17 days before Moore's attempt, Ford had survived the first attempt on his life in Sacramento by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson.
Moore said she was blinded by her radical political views at the time, convinced that the government had declared war on the left.
"I was functioning, I think, purely on adrenalin and not thinking clearly. I have often said that I had put blinders on and I was only listening to what I wanted to hear," she told KGO. Chronicle photographer Gary Fong captured Ford reaction
Moore's confusing background - which included five failed marriages, name changes and involvement with political groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army - baffled the public and even her own defense attorney during her trial.
"I never got a satisfactory answer from her as to why she did it," said retired federal public defender James F. Hewitt. "There was just bizarre stuff, and she would never tell anyone anything about her background."
Moore was born Sara Jane Kahn in Charleston, W.Va. She acted in high school plays and dreamed of being a film actress before going through a series of marriages, beginning with nuptials to Marine sergeant Wallace Elvin Anderson in 1949...
In the 1970s, Moore began working for People in Need, a free food ransom arrangement established by millionaire Randy Hearst in return for his daughter Patty, who was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974. She soon became involved with radical leftists, ex-convicts and other members of San Francisco's counterculture. At this time, Moore became an informant to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Moore has said she fired at Ford because she thought she would be killed once it was disclosed that she was an FBI informant. The agency ended its relationship with her about four months before the shooting.
"I was going to go down anyway," she said in a 1982 interview with the San Jose Mercury News. "And if I was going to go down, I was going to do it my way. If the government was going to kill me, I was going to make some kind of statement."
Moore was sent to a West Virginia women's prison in 1977. Two years later, she escaped, but was captured several hours later.
from raw story: Did the CIA orchestrate a cover-up in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy?
According to the publisher of a new book, who appeared on Fox News Wednesday morning, the last living words of former President Gerald Ford fingered the CIA in the orchestration a cover-up of Kennedy's assassination.
Ford, who died late last year, was the longest surviving member of the Warren Commission, which investigated Kennedy's assassination. The new book, "A Presidential Legacy and the Warren Commission," was written by Ford before his death, its publisher claims.
"This book, actually authored by Gerald Ford, finally proves once and for all that the CIA, our government, did destroy documents and cover-up many facts that day in Dallas," publisher Tim Miller told Fox & Friends Wednesday morning.
Kennedy was killed as his motorcade rolled through downtown Dallas Nov. 22, 1963. Officially seen as the work of a single shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, the Kennedy assassination has sparked myriad conspiracy theories placing responsibility for the assassination on a variety of suspects, including the CIA, the Mafia or Cuban President Fidel Castro.
Although Miller was given little time to go into detail about the book on Wednesday morning's show, a press release gives more detail on the book, being published by Flat Signed publishers.
In the book, Ford argues that the CIA destroyed information about the assassination, but he "contends with interesting specificity that Oswald was the only shooter," Miller says.
"There was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy," says Tim Miller, CEO of FlatSigned.com, in the release. "There is no doubt that President Gerald Ford knew more about the JFK death. There is no doubt President Clinton knows more. Has he or any other US President since November 22, 1963 ever swore under oath that they know no more?"
This video is from Fox's Fox & Friend's, broadcast on November 21.
from you tube: Inspired by true events in the life of Clifford Irving, the writer who nearly pulled off one of the most audacious media scams in history, when his "autobiography" of Howard Hughes was published. Richard Gere stars as Irving, who claimed the book was based on in-person interviews with the reclusive billionaire, which were in fact completely bogus.
from lisa pease: Every now and then a little Real History sneaks into the cinema. The movie "The Hoax" tells the story of Clifford Irving's attempt to sell an "autobiography" of Howard Hughes written with or without the help of the man himself...
According to screenwriter William Wheeler, several people in a position to know think Robert Maheu, the CIA man chosen to head the Castro assassination plots, who also worked with Hughes for years, aided Irving in his project with the goal of getting that damning Hughes loan to Nixon info to the public. Seeing as the CIA was definitely working against Nixon during his second administration, this theory makes sense.
Nixon had already lost his race for the Governor of California in 1962 when a $200,000 loan from Hughes to his brother was made public. When Nixon realized that the more recent Hughes loan to Nixon via Bebe Rebozo would be made public through Irving's book, the White House got very nervous. The film strongly implies this concern was a direct motivation for the Watergate break-in. As regular readers remember, this is my theory as well re the original reason for the break-in (but see my long article on Gerald Ford, Watergate, and the CIA for the reason why I think the break-in itself was sabotaged).
I won't say more as these are already spoilers, to some degree. But go see the film when it opens in April. Richard Gere has a blast playing this very colorful character, and gets to impersonate Howard Hughes in the process as well. The film has hilarious moments and other more provocative ones. But in the end, it's just great entertainment with a little historical flair.
from 9/11 blogger: In the third hour of her January 2nd radio show, Randi Rhodes discussed Bush senior's recent odd behavior - referencing the Warren commission report and JFK conspiracy theories during his speech at Ford's memorial. Randi drew comparisons to his recent breakdown while giving a speech regarding his son Jeb. She questions whether his recent strange behavior is due to a forthcoming wave of questions by the incoming democratic majority. Amongst this segment Randi quite bluntly questions the collapses of the twin towers as well as WTC7.
Let's hope that Randi will continue to voice her concerns over what really happened on 9/11, and that her voice won't fall on deaf ears with the incoming democratic majority. Check out the first segment - about 12 minutes - in the MP3 linked above.
Former President triumphs Warren Commission at Ford's funeral; Are the Bush's breaking down? from prison planet: During his speech at yesterday's funeral service for Gerald Ford, former President George H.W. Bush bashed JFK "conspiracy theorists" and defended the Warren Commission report, another odd public outburst indicative of a crime family whose decades of misdeeds may finally be catching up with them.
"After a deluded gunman assassinated President Kennedy, our nation turned to Gerald Ford and a select handful of others to make sense of that madness," said Bush. "And the conspiracy theorists can say what they will, but the Warren Commission report will always have the final definitive say on this tragic matter. Why? Because Jerry Ford put his name on it and Jerry Ford’s word was always good."
The only thing Ford was good for was running defense for criminals when he pardoned the remorseless Richard Nixon and others after Watergate, allowing larcenous felons to walk free and leaving the legacy in place that it's OK to break the law if you are the President, a form of absolutism that has been keenly inherited by the current crop of crooks, including Dick Cheney who praised Ford for 'allowing the nation to heal' by protecting a cadre of organized crime gangsters.
Of course, all of this had nothing to do with liberals or conservatives, bricklayers or office clerks," writes Kurt Nimmo, "It had to do with breaking the law, with “dirty tricks,” snooping on political opponents, sabotaging Democratic presidential candidates, going after Daniel Ellsberg for the public service he provided by bringing the Pentagon Papers to light, ordering the FBI to investigate CBS News reporter Daniel Schorr, discussing the possibility of having newspaper columnist Jack Anderson assassinated, and other crimes (evading taxes, accepting illicit campaign contributions, ordering secret bombings, and harassing opponents with executive agencies, wiretaps, and break-ins), all of it culminating in Watergate."
There's no doubt that Ford, not unlike Saddam Hussein who died days after, knew where the bodies were buried and Bush was simply eulogizing his noble service in sweeping the JFK assassination under the rug, shielding Poppy himself from serious questions about his own involvement in events at Dealy Plaza.
As Wayne Madsen comments, "The elder Bush cannot really remember where he was on November 22, 1963. He later claimed he was in Tyler, Texas although there is evidence that he was checked into the Dallas Sheraton Hotel that day. Mr. Bush, the conspiracy theorists will continue to say what they will until you start telling the truth about Zapata, de Mohrenshildt, Mongoose, New Orleans, and JM/WAVE."
Bush senior's outburst marks the second time in the same amount of months that he has felt the need to publicly attack those who would normally be relegated to the fringes of political discourse by big media consensus.
During an appearance with his wife Barbara on Fox News in November, George Bush Sr slammed Internet bloggers for creating an adversarial and ugly climate, echoing the rhetoric of fellow Neo-Cons and the White House itself in trashing the reputation of the world wide web and the political blogosphere.
The fact that Bush is being pressured into bad mouthing so-called "conspiracy theorists" and bloggers proves that the chorus of dissent is beginning to make these cretins lose some sleep at night.
The Bush family as a whole is starting to exhibit some seriously offbeat behavior that suggests their decades of underhand chicanery, murders, cover-ups and scams are finally beginning to catch up with them.
Last month Bush senior burst into tears during a speech at his son Jeb's leadership forum. Jeb Bush himself recently declared that he had "no future" in politics. George W. Bush's obvious deteriorating mental acumen, characterized by a consistent supply of "Bushisms," has led several commentators to conclude that the current President is in the early stages of pre-senile dementia. The Bush daughters' behavior doesn't seem to be maturing with age either after U.S. Embassy officials strongly urged them to cut short last month's escapade in Argentina.
Are the Bush's breaking down? Is the fact that the President is less popular than Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Satan combined finally starting to provoke pangs of conscience amongst the notorious crime family?
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from independent: Alexander Haig, the four-star general who played a crucial role as White House chief of staff at the climax of the Watergate scandal, and later served as secretary of state during Ronald Reagan's presidency, died yesterday [feb20] in Baltimore. He was 85...
