Laird was Secretary of Defense in the Nixon Administration from 1969 to 1973.
Before becoming Secretary of Defense, a position that he held from 1969 to 1973, Laird was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. After serving as Secretary of Defense, he would become Counsellor to the President for Domestic Affairs (1973-74).
On Nov. 11, 1971, Nixon met then-Counsellor to the President and Director of the Economic Stabilization Program Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and others : [2]
Future Secretaries of Defense Richard Cheney, Frank Carlucci, Caspar Weinberger and James Schlesinger also worked in the Nixon Administration in those days, along with then-Secretary of Defense Elliot Richardson.George H.W. Bush was also there. For more on this group, see: Rumsfeld and [Gang of Four].
Decades later, in 1999, there would be a reunion attended by these 6 men, who had in the interim all become Secretaries of Defense in one or another of the various Republican administrations; and now they would unite again, to oppose the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty bill for which Clinton was seeking approval.
Seven years earlier, in 1992, two months before the presidential election that Clinton would win, a preliminary version of the treaty had been passed in the Senate:
TITLE:CONGRESSIONAL REPORT, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 (09/21/92) SENATE OKAYS TEST BAN, B-2 FUNDS The Senate September 18 reaffirmed an earlier vote to suspend and eventually ban all U.S. nuclear testing by 1996. Senators voted 68-26 August 3 to stop the tests for nine months and end them permanently in four years unless Russia resumes testing. That measure was part of the Energy Department annual appropriations bill. But after Congress returned to Washington this month following its summer recess, the test ban question became the object of another tally during the Senate's debate of the Defense Department spending authorization bill. Senators voted again -- this time 55-40 -- to proceed with the suspension and eventual ban of the weapons tests. The change in the two votes is critical, because a 55-vote majority would fail to muster the two-thirds majority needed to override President Bush's promised veto of any test-ban bill.
The Senate September 18 reaffirmed an earlier vote to suspend and eventually ban all U.S. nuclear testing by 1996.
Senators voted 68-26 August 3 to stop the tests for nine months and end them permanently in four years unless Russia resumes testing. That measure was part of the Energy Department annual appropriations bill.
But after Congress returned to Washington this month following its summer recess, the test ban question became the object of another tally during the Senate's debate of the Defense Department spending authorization bill. Senators voted again -- this time 55-40 -- to proceed with the suspension and eventual ban of the weapons tests.
The change in the two votes is critical, because a 55-vote majority would fail to muster the two-thirds majority needed to override President Bush's promised veto of any test-ban bill.
On the same day, former Secretary of Defense testified before Congress, but on another matter, as is recorded in the same Congressional Report:
... Melvin R. Laird, who served as secretary of defense from 1969-1973, told the panel that he had had "hard intelligence" that indicated perhaps 20 U.S. servicemen were held in Laos in 1973. He said he had always had the "gut feeling" that the lists of captive U.S. servicemen provided by the Vietnamese had been incomplete. [3]
In 1999, the Test Ban Treaty would again come up for a vote. But this time all six Secretaries of Defense would be there, and they would speak out against it as a group. Due primarily to their intervention, the Senate would decline to ratify the treaty by a 51 to 48 vote, ' handing the president what even administration officials conceded was a humiliating foreign policy defeat for Clinton.' [4]
The fact that six former secretaries of Defense urged the Senate leadership to reject ratification was undoubtedly a factor in the final outcome. James R. Schlesinger, Richard B. Cheney, Frank C. Carlucci, Caspar W. Weinberger, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Melvin R. Laird argued, in a letter to Lott and Sen. Thomas Daschle (D-S.D.), the minority leader, that if all nuclear tests, even of the lowest yields, were permanently prohibited, the reliability of America's own nuclear arsenal would inevitably decline--as would, of course, the overall U.S. deterrent credibility. [5]
Here is a 1972 Nixon-tape telephone conversation in which Nixon orders air strikes against the POL and urges Laird to "be a little more hawkish than even I am" and Laird repeatedly mutters 'yes' and 'uhu': [6] (13 minutes in).
