Caspar Weinberger | |
|---|---|
 Weinberger in the 1980s | |
| 15thUnited States Secretary of Defense | |
| In office January 21, 1981 – November 23, 1987 | |
| President | Ronald Reagan |
| Deputy | Frank Carlucci W. Paul Thayer William Taft IV |
| Preceded by | Harold Brown |
| Succeeded by | Frank Carlucci |
| 10thUnited States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare | |
| In office February 12, 1973 – August 8, 1975 | |
| President | Richard Nixon Gerald Ford |
| Preceded by | Elliot Richardson |
| Succeeded by | F. David Mathews |
| 20th Director of theOffice of Management and Budget | |
| In office June 12, 1972 – February 1, 1973 | |
| President | Richard Nixon |
| Preceded by | George Shultz |
| Succeeded by | Roy Ash |
| Chair of theFederal Trade Commission | |
| In office December 31, 1969 – August 6, 1970 | |
| President | Richard Nixon |
| Preceded by | Paul Dixon |
| Succeeded by | Miles Kirkpatrick |
| Director of theCalifornia Department of Finance | |
| In office March 1, 1968 – December 31, 1969 | |
| Governor | Ronald Reagan |
| Preceded by | Gordon P. Smith |
| Succeeded by | Verne Orr |
| Chair of theCalifornia Republican Party | |
| In office 1962–1964 | |
| Preceded by | John Krehbiel |
| Succeeded by | Gaylord Parkinson |
| Member of theCalifornia State Assembly from the21st district | |
| In office January 5, 1953 – January 5, 1959 | |
| Preceded by | Arthur H. Connolly Jr. |
| Succeeded by | Milton Marks |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Caspar Willard Weinberger (1917-08-18)August 18, 1917 San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Died | March 28, 2006(2006-03-28) (aged 88) Bangor, Maine, U.S. |
| Resting place | Arlington National Cemetery |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
| Education | Harvard University (BA,LLB) |
| Military service | |
| Branch/service | United States Army |
| Years of service | 1941–1945 |
| Rank | Captain |
| Unit | 41st Infantry Division |
| Battles/wars | World War II |
Caspar Willard Weinberger (August 18, 1917 – March 28, 2006) was an American politician and businessman. As aRepublican, he served in a variety of state and federal positions for three decades, most notably asSecretary of Defense under PresidentRonald Reagan from January 1981 to November 1987.[1] He was indicted on charges of lying to Congress and obstructing government investigations as part of theIran–Contra investigation, but was pardoned by PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush before facing trial.
Weinberger was a member of theCalifornia State Assembly from 1953 to 1959. He also served as Chairman of theFederal Trade Commission and Director of theOffice of Management and Budget under PresidentsRichard Nixon andGerald Ford. He later became vice president and general counsel ofBechtel Corporation.
Weinberger's tenure as Secretary of Defense was marked by hishard line againstthe Soviet Union, in disagreement with the State Department. He promoted theStrategic Defense Initiative, an orbital weapons program. Weinberger was awarded both thePresidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and an honorary British knighthood fromQueen Elizabeth II. In 1993, he became Chairman ofForbes magazine.
Weinberger was born on August 18, 1917, in San Francisco, the younger of two sons of Herman Weinberger (1886-1944), an attorney, and Cerise Carpenter Weinberger (née Hampson; 1886-1975), a music teacher.[2] His father was of Jewish descent fromAustria-Hungary, while his maternal grandparents were of Christian descent from Wisconsin. Caspar Weinberger's father, Herman, was the younger brother of Luella Weinberger McNeill, mother ofDon McNeill. The 1910 Census shows Herman and Luella living in the household of Nathan Weinberger, the grandfather of Caspar Weinberger.
Weinberger's paternal grandparents had leftJudaism over a religious dispute while living in Bohemia. He was raised in a home with no denominational ties, though with a socially Christian orientation. Weinberger would later become an activeEpiscopalian and often expressed his faith inGod.[3] Weinberger had stated that his mother's Episcopal religion was "an enormous influence and comfort all my life".[4]
Weinberger attendedSan Francisco Polytechnic High School. He was academically gifted and gained admission toHarvard University, graduating in 1938 with aB.A.,magna cum laude. Weinberger was offered a scholarship to study at theUniversity of Cambridge but instead attendedHarvard Law School, graduating in 1941 with aBachelor of Laws.[5]
After graduating from Harvard Law School, Weinberger enlisted in the U.S. Army as aprivate. He was sent to the Army'sOfficer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia (nowFort Moore), where he was commissioned asecond lieutenant. During World War II, he served with the41st Infantry Division in the Pacific; by the war's end, he was acaptain on the intelligence staff of GeneralDouglas MacArthur. Early in life, Weinberger developed an interest in politics and history, and, during the war years, a special admiration forWinston Churchill, whom he would later cite as an important influence in his life. From 1945 to 1947, Weinberger was a law clerk for U.S. circuit judgeWilliam Edwin Orr of theUnited States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He then entered private practice at a San Francisco law firm.
In 1952, Weinberger entered the race forCalifornia's 21st State Assembly district[6] in the San Francisco Bay area as a Republican at the persuasion of his wife,Jane Weinberger,[7] who also served as his campaign manager.[8] He won and was reelected in 1954 and 1956. As the chairman of the Assembly Government Organization Committee, Weinberger was responsible for the creation of theCalifornia Department of Water Resources and was instrumental in the creation of theCalifornia State Water Project. Weinberger also unsuccessfully opposed the construction of theEmbarcadero Freeway, saying it would ruin the view of the Bay and damage property values.[9] Weinberger felt vindicated when the freeway was removed after the 1989 earthquake. Although unsuccessful in his 1958 campaign forCalifornia Attorney General, Weinberger continued to be active in politics and was chosen by Nixon in 1962 to become chairman of the CaliforniaRepublican Party.
Governor Ronald Reagan named him chairman of theCommission on California State Government Organization and Economy in 1967 and appointed him State director of finance early in 1968. Weinberger moved to Washington in January 1970 to become chairman of theFederal Trade Commission. He is credited for having revitalized the FTC by enforcing consumer protection.[10]
Weinberger subsequently served under PresidentRichard Nixon as deputy director (1970–1972) and director (1972–1973) of theOffice of Management and Budget andSecretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (1973–1975). While serving in the Office of Management and Budget, Weinberger earned the nickname "Cap the Knife" for his cost-cutting ability. For the next five years, Weinberger was vice president and general counsel of theBechtel Corporation in California.
In 1973, theSouthern Poverty Law Center named Weinberger as a defendant in a case that sought restitution for the forced non-consensual sterilization and medical experimentation on three young Black American girls,Minnie Lee, Mary Alice, and Katie Relf in Montgomery, Alabama. An employee of Montgomery's federally-fundedCommunity Action organization took the Relf sisters to a family planning clinic under the pretext of needing “shots.” Staff gave Katie Relf a then-experimental birth control shot as well as inserted a contraceptive IUD device without parental knowledge or consent. On a separate occasion, doctors surgically sterilized Minnie Lee and Mary Alice who were twelve and fourteen years old respectively.[11] At the time of the suit, theOffice of Economic Opportunity was preparing to hand over funding and control of its associated family planning clinics to Weinberger's Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
The SPLC's complaint shows that the O.E.O. recently began providing funding for such sterilization procedures, while top OEO personnel intentionally did not distribute a medical memo containing guidelines on obtaining patient consent for such operations.Dr. Warren M. Hern authored the memo, and ultimately resigned in outrage that the guidelines were not distributed. Copies of the memo, which included age of consent laws whose criteria the Relf girls did not meet, sat undistributed in a DC warehouse. At the time of the suit, Weinberger's most recent approved Health, Education, and Welfare budget included specific funding allotments for sterilization procedures, and thus he was named a defendant in the case. A district court involved in Relf V. Weinberger hearings found that anywhere from 100,000 to 150,000 poor people were sterilized annually using federal dollars, and some among those sterilized were coerced into the procedures by doctors who threatened to cut off welfare benefits.[12] The case shined fresh light on numerous[example needed] state sterilization and eugenics programs nationwide and led to compensation funds and settlements for some victims[citation needed].
Weinberger was vying for Reagan to appoint him as Secretary of State but was given the position of Secretary of Defense instead.[13]
Weinberger took the lead in implementing arollback strategy against Soviet communism. In 1984, journalist Nicholas Lemann interviewed Weinberger and summarized the strategy of the Reagan administration to roll back the Soviet Union:
Their society is economically weak, and it lacks the wealth, education, and technology to enter the information age. They have thrown everything into military production, and their society is starting to show terrible stress as a result. They can't sustain military production the way we can. Eventually it will break them, and then there will be just one superpower in a safe world – if, only if, we can keep spending.[14]
Lemann notes that when he wrote that in 1984, he thought the Reaganites were living in a fantasy world. But in 2016, he says, that passage represents "a fairly uncontroversial description of what Reagan actually did".
Although not widely experienced in defense matters, Weinberger had a reputation in Washington as an able administrator; his powers as a cost cutter earned him the sobriquet "Cap the Knife". He shared Ronald Reagan's conviction that theSoviet Union posed a serious threat to the United States, and that the defense establishment needed to be modernized and strengthened. Belying his nickname, atthe Pentagon Weinberger became a vigorous advocate of Reagan's plan to increase theDepartment of Defense budget. Readiness, sustainability, and modernization became the watchwords of the defense program. In his early years at the Pentagon, Cap Weinberger was known as "Cap the Ladle" for advocating large increases in defense spending.
As Secretary of Defense, Weinberger oversaw a massive rebuilding of US military strength. Major defense programs he championed included theB-1B bomber and the "600-ship Navy". His efforts created economic and military-industrial pressures that were associated with the beginning ofPerestroika and the beginning of the end of both theCold War and theSoviet Union.[15] However, this thesis was contested by a study on the causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union by two prominent economists from the World Bank –William Easterly, andStanley Fischer fromMIT: "... the study concludes that the increased Soviet defense spending provoked by Mr. Reagan's policies was not the straw that broke the back of theEvil Empire. The Soviet war in Afghanistan and the Soviet response to Mr. Reagan's Star Wars program caused only a relatively small rise in [USSR] defense costs. The massive US defense effort throughout the period from 1960 to 1987 contributed only marginally to Soviet economic decline."[16]
The same study points out the key reason for the economic decline of the USSR was relying oncentrally-plannedindustrial-expansion to driveeconomic growth, rather than driving growth byincreasing worker productivity viaincentives;France andJapan were also mentioned (in 1994) as other centrally-planned economies that could soon experiencesimilartroubles.[16] While theReagan Doctrine was not a key factor in causing the economic implosion of the USSR, which was driven byinternal contradictions, the Reagan proxy-rollback policy of the 1980s (which replacedDétente that Nixon and Carter generally pursued during the 1970s) was thekey factor[17] in preventingexpansion of theSoviet economic empire, andsustenance of their decliningdomestic economy fromexternal sources. Reagan was one of thefew people topredict this possibility. The final piece of the puzzle was the Soviet leadership:Brezhnev,Andropov, andChernenko were hardline Communists, and prevented any significant changes, butGorbachev was a reformer—and onceeconomic reforms andpolitical reforms began, they became unstoppable. British journalist Bernard Levin wrote in 1977:
I do not believe it possible that the thirst for freedom and decency in the countries of the Soviet Empire can remain much longer unslaked, and that any attempt ... to satisfy it by real reforms, will be cataclysmically destructive of the eroded foundations of the entire State system. ... there will be no stopping the tide once the first sluice has been opened. Memories of the Czech tragedy of 1968 will still be fresh ... the most significant element of the Prague Spring was the way in which, once Mr Dubcek had shown that he supported the Czech desire for liberation, no attempt by him and his equally brave colleagues to go slowly proved availing — the scent of freedom in the nostrils of his people was too strong.[18][better source needed]
These events came at the cost of helping to triple the USnational debt, and fundingradicals. Weinberger pushed for dramatic increases in the United States'nuclear funding, and was a strong advocate of the controversialSDI, an initiative which proposed a space- and ground-based missile defense shield.[19][20]
Weinberger was reluctant to commit the armed forces, keeping only a token force of American marines in Lebanon that then became victims in the October1983 Beirut barracks bombing.[21] In the wake of that terrible event, he laid out his engagement policy in a November 1984 speech on "The Uses of Military Power" at theNational Press Club as the Six Tests.[22]
Unlike PresidentReagan and Secretary of StateShultz, Weinberger did not regard any ofGorbachev's actions—whether it wasperestroika orglasnost—as reassuring indicators of his stated intentions.[23]: 34 "Not only did Gorbachev give up all of the Soviet 'non-negotiable' demands [regarding theINF Treaty], but he gave us precisely the kind of treaty that the President had sought for seven years. That act of course does not mean—any more than does the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan—that the USSR has given up its long-term aggressive designs."[23]: 34 Initially, Reagan's views were in line with Weinberger's views, but he began to reevaluate his perception of Gorbachev's intentions in 1987, the year Gorbachev accepted the U.S. proposal on INF.[23]: 35
Weinberger resigned as Secretary of Defense on November 6, 1987.[24][25]
TheIran–Contra affair concerned the selling of US missiles to Iran. The funds received from Iran were then channeled to guerilla rebels known asContras, who were fighting the socialist government of Nicaragua.[26] Such funding had been specifically denied by the US Congress.
Though he claimed to have been opposed to the sale on principle,[citation needed] Weinberger participated in the transfer of United StatesHawk andTOW missiles toIran at that time.
Iran–Contra resulted in a major scandal with several investigations which resulted in fourteen Reagan administration officials being indicted.[27][28][29]
After his resignation as Secretary of Defense, legal proceedings against Weinberger were continued byIndependent CounselLawrence E. Walsh. On June 17, 1992, Weinberger was indicted on five felony charges related to the Iran-contra affair, including accusations that he had lied to Congress and obstructed Government investigations.[30][31] He was defended by defense attorney Carl Rauh.
Prosecutors brought an additional indictment just four days before the 1992 presidential election. This was controversial because it cited a Weinberger diary entry contradicting a claim made by PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush. Republicans claimed that this action contributed to Bush's later defeat. On December 11, 1992, JudgeThomas F. Hogan threw out this indictment because it violated the five-year statute of limitations and improperly broadened the original charges.[32]
Before Weinberger could be tried on the original charges, he received apardon on December 24, 1992, from Bush, who had been Reagan'svice president during the scandal.[28][33]
| External videos | |
|---|---|
 Booknotes interview with Weinberger onFighting for Peace, July 15, 1990,C-SPAN |
Weinberger had been Secretary of Defense for six years and ten months, longer than anyone except forRobert McNamara and more recentlyDonald Rumsfeld. After Weinberger left the Pentagon, he joined Forbes, Inc., in 1989 as publisher ofForbes magazine. He was named chairman in 1993. Over the next decade, he wrote frequently on defense and national security issues. In 1990, he wroteFighting for Peace, an account of his Pentagon years. In 1996, Weinberger co-authored a book entitledThe Next War, which raised questions about the adequacy of US military capabilities following the end of theCold War.
He was a member of the Founding Council of theRothermere American Institute at theUniversity of Oxford and a fellow at theInstitute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at theUniversity of Edinburgh.[34]
In 1942, Weinberger married the formerRebecca Jane Dalton (1918–2009).[8] A World War II Army nurse, and later author and publisher, she "coaxed her husband ... into politics and was a loyal Washington wife during three Republican administrations before she began to write and publish children's books".[7]
While residing onMount Desert Island, Weinberger was treated for and died from complications ofpneumonia at Eastern Maine Medical Center inBangor, Maine, aged 88. He was survived by his wife, their two children, and several grandchildren.
He was buried in Section 30, Grave 835–1 atArlington National Cemetery on April 4, 2006.
Shortly after his deathGeorge W. Bush in a public statement said:
Caspar Weinberger was an American statesman and a dedicated public servant. He wore the uniform in World War II, held elected office, and served in the cabinets of three Presidents. As Secretary of Defense for President Reagan, he worked to strengthen our military and win the Cold War. In all his years, this good man made many contributions to our Nation. America is grateful for Caspar Weinberger's lifetime of service. Laura and I send our condolences and prayers to the entire Weinberger family.[35]
Then Secretary of DefenseDonald Rumsfeld stated:
Cap Weinberger was a friend. His extensive career in public service, his support for the men and women in uniform and his central role in helping to win the Cold War leave a lasting legacy ... He left the United States armed forces stronger, our country safer and the world more free.[36]
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| Preceded by | Chair of theFederal Trade Commission 1969–1970 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Director of theOffice of Management and Budget 1972–1973 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare 1973–1975 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | United States Secretary of Defense 1981–1987 | Succeeded by |
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