“I’d like to suggest to you that some of the investigations would lead one to believe that perhaps the vehicle the nuns were riding in may have tried to run through a roadblock, or may have accidentally been perceived to have been doing so, and there may have been an exchange of fire, and then perhaps those who inflicted the casualties sought to cover it up. And this could have been at a very low level of both competence and motivation in the context of the issue itself. But the facts on this are not clear enough for anyone to draw a definitive conclusion.”—Secretary of State Alexander Haig, suggesting to Congress how four American women came to die in El Salvador, quoted in The State of the Language, edited by Christopher Ricks and Leonard Michaels (1990)
I love the above quote for its sheer unapologetic chutzpah. Against the obvious facts--that three American nuns and a female volunteer were raped and murdered on this date in 1980, with the connivance of Salvadoran security forces and associated right-wing death squads--Alexander Haig set up one smokescreen after another, like a good defense attorney telling a jury how someone else was responsible for a death but not that client of his caught holding the smoking gun and standing over the body.
Perhaps…may have…may have…may have…perhaps…could have been…not clear enough. Hard facts slip through your fingers when reading these sentences. But a seed was planted in the minds of the infinitely susceptible (there will always be such people, ripe for the picking), that the women--Maryknoll nuns Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Ursuline sister, Dorothy Kazel, and a Maryknoll volunteer, Jean Donovan--had had it coming, that they even fired at guerrillas who merely shot back in self-defense. This, of course, despite the fact that forensic evidence showed the women suffered gunshot wounds to the head at close range.
Haig, a Roman Catholic himself with a brother for a priest, had no compunction about--let’s use the right word here--sliming others who had devoted themselves to God. This being still the Cold War, he was prepared to say anything, no matter how preposterous, if it meant attaching no blame to a regime that the then-new Reagan administration viewed as a counterweight to Marxist Nicaragua (not to mention Fidel Castro’s Cuba) in Latin America.
Haig had more laughable moments as White House chief of state under President Nixon, NATO chief under Jimmy Carter, and, of course, Secretary of State (the famous “I’m in control here,” after the attempt on the life of Ronald Reagan, comes to mind). But I’d like to suggest--with none of the massive Orwellian doublespeak than this self-described “vicar” of foreign policy could summon--that none of these moments was more shameful than his aspersion on the character of Sisters Ford, Clarke and Kazel and Ms. Donovan.
I love the above quote for its sheer unapologetic chutzpah. Against the obvious facts--that three American nuns and a female volunteer were raped and murdered on this date in 1980, with the connivance of Salvadoran security forces and associated right-wing death squads--Alexander Haig set up one smokescreen after another, like a good defense attorney telling a jury how someone else was responsible for a death but not that client of his caught holding the smoking gun and standing over the body.
Perhaps…may have…may have…may have…perhaps…could have been…not clear enough. Hard facts slip through your fingers when reading these sentences. But a seed was planted in the minds of the infinitely susceptible (there will always be such people, ripe for the picking), that the women--Maryknoll nuns Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Ursuline sister, Dorothy Kazel, and a Maryknoll volunteer, Jean Donovan--had had it coming, that they even fired at guerrillas who merely shot back in self-defense. This, of course, despite the fact that forensic evidence showed the women suffered gunshot wounds to the head at close range.
Haig, a Roman Catholic himself with a brother for a priest, had no compunction about--let’s use the right word here--sliming others who had devoted themselves to God. This being still the Cold War, he was prepared to say anything, no matter how preposterous, if it meant attaching no blame to a regime that the then-new Reagan administration viewed as a counterweight to Marxist Nicaragua (not to mention Fidel Castro’s Cuba) in Latin America.
Haig had more laughable moments as White House chief of state under President Nixon, NATO chief under Jimmy Carter, and, of course, Secretary of State (the famous “I’m in control here,” after the attempt on the life of Ronald Reagan, comes to mind). But I’d like to suggest--with none of the massive Orwellian doublespeak than this self-described “vicar” of foreign policy could summon--that none of these moments was more shameful than his aspersion on the character of Sisters Ford, Clarke and Kazel and Ms. Donovan.
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