Upon entering office in 1969, President Richard M. Nixon appointed Packard U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense under Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird.
After Halibut discovered a sunken Soviet submarine containing at least one intact ballistic missile complete with nuclear warhead, Melvin Laird, United States Secretary of Defense under President Richard Nixon, approved Azorian.
Laird was instrumental in forming the administration's policy of withdrawing U.S. soldiers from the Vietnam War; he invented the expression "Vietnamization," referring to the process of transferring more responsibility for combat to the South Vietnamese forces.
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He counted on the success of Vietnamization, peace talks that had begun in 1968 in Paris, and the secret negotiations in Paris between Henry Kissinger, the president's assistant for national security affairs, and North Vietnamese representatives to end the conflict.
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Journalist Dale Van Atta has written a biography of Laird entitled, "With Honor: Melvin Laird in War, Peace, and Politics," published by the University of Wisconsin Press, 2008.
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Thus he developed and strongly supported "Vietnamization", a program intended to expand, equip, and train South Vietnam's forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops.
Within a year she was sitting in the office of the Secretary Of Defense Melvin Laird discussing policy.
Melvin Van Peebles | Laird | Scott Laird | Laird Hamilton | Melvin Purvis | Melvin Burgess | Thomas Laird Kennedy | Melvin Seals | Melvin Laird | Melvin Belli | Melvin Franklin | laird | Melvin Calvin | Laird Hunt | Laird Bell | John Keith McBroom Laird | William Laird Clowes | Tré Melvin | Melvin Williams | Melvin Stewart | Melvin Mora | Melvin J. Lerner | Melvin J. Lasky | Melvin Endsley | Melvin Conway | Luke Laird | Laird Wilcox | John Laird | Hector Maclean, 2nd Laird of Torloisk | Winder Laird Henry |
Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and Deputy Defense Secretary David Packard, who entered office with the Nixon administration in 1969, were interested in these studies and threw their support behind the notion.
The chemical weather modification program was conducted from Thailand over Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam and allegedly sponsored by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and CIA without the authorization of then Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird who had categorically denied to Congress that a program for modification of the weather for use as a tactical weapon even existed.