Alexander Haig

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full colors of the Secretary of State and with the full confidence of the President." TIME described the issuance of the statement as an "extraordinary step." So it was. Never had so many anonymous people been so eager to reassure the world in such an intensive way that I was not only competent, I was also quite "steady." But newsmen, canny skeptics that they are, were stimulated by all this reassurance to ask themselves, and their readers: If this fellow is really all right, why do they insist on telling us that he's all right?

* The Presidential Succession Act of 1947, not the Constitution, specifies that after the Vice President, the presidency passes to the Speaker of the House, then to the president pro tempore of the Senate, then to the Secretary of State, then down through the Cabinet. It was according to this law that Speaker of the House Carl Albert was, for almost two months in 1973, in line to succeed Nixon after the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew. Nixon appointed Gerald Ford as Vice President under the terms of the 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967.