![]() During the fifteen months from May 1973 to August 1974, when he served as President Richard Nixon’s chief of staff, Haig was, in the words of Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski, the nation’s “thirty-seventh-and-a-half president.” Haig believed he was in control that day in 1981 because he knew what it meant to be in charge at the White House. But it was not the first time Haig had assumed authority that was not his to take. That brief moment in the White House, when he strove to display calm, forever marked Al Haig as impulsive and unstable as he appeared to grab for power and fill the vacuum created by the attempt on Reagan’s life. “As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending return of the Vice President.” “Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State in that order,” Haig said. Haig stacked the deck against Nixon and engineered public exposure of the secret White House taping system.
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