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Remembering Cap Weinberger and Margo Carlisle

I first met Caspar Weinberger in 1986 when he was serving as President Reagan's secretary of Defense. I found him to be brilliant, humorous, and able to think on his feet when testifying before Congress. Above all, he was an American patriot.

I served as special assistant for foreign affairs to the assistant secretary of Defense for legislative affairs in Secretary Weinberger's Pentagon. My boss, Assistant Secretary Margo D. B. Carlisle, worked directly for Secretary Weinberger. Her office was one office away from Weinberger's in the E-Ring. My office was directly across from the secretary's in the D-Ring.

Every now and then I would attend meetings with Ms. Carlisle in Secretary Weinberger's office. Memories of these times are etched in my mind. We were fighting the Cold War. That a devastating nuclear exchange was always less than half-an-hour away weighed constantly on our minds.

During the 1970s, it was thought that America was in decline relative to the Soviet Bloc. Following this belief, nuclear arms control treaties were a way of engaging the Soviet Union and delaying the coming conflict in the hope that the Soviets might soften. Such a policy was called "détente" after a French word meaning "release of tension." Simply surrendering military supremacy was one sure way to release tension.

When President Reagan came into office in 1981 détente died, and Caspar Weinberger buried its ignoble remains.

Weinberger's resume reads like the giants of old. He graduated from Harvard and then earned his Harvard law degree in 1941. Just before Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Army as a private in the infantry. He fought in the Pacific in WWII. He was eventually commissioned an officer and served on Gen. MacArthur's intelligence staff.

Newly elected Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1967 named Weinberger chairman of the Commission on California State Government Organization and Economy, a relatively new commission at the time and appointed him State Director of Finance in early 1968.

President Nixon recruited Weinberger away from California in 1970 to become chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. Shortly thereafter, Chairman Weinberger was appointed deputy director and then director of the Office of Management and Budget. In 1973, he was appointed secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, where his reputation as a cost cutter earned him the nickname "Cap the Knife" from William Safire, then a presidential speechwriter.

In 1981, President Reagan recalled Weinberger from the private sector to be his secretary of Defense. For the next seven years, Weinberger would be Reagan's unflagging ally in an uphill drive to overturn a generation of defeatist strategic thinking. Reagan and Weinberger sought to leave our enemies on the ash heap of history.

History has been more kind to Reagan and Weinberger than their contemporary critics were. Surely history will smile even more upon them as the full magnitude of their efforts to defeat Soviet communism becomes even better known.

Caspar W. Weinberger was 88. He died with his wife of 63 years, Jane, at his side. He leaves a son, Caspar W Weinberger, Jr., and a daughter, Arlin, as well as several grandchildren.

Margo D. B. Carlisle

On top of the death of Caspar Weinberger last week, I was deeply saddened to learn of the passing less than 24 hours later of Margo Carlisle. As assistant secretary of Defense (legislative affairs), Margo was the second most powerful woman in the Reagan Administration during her tenure. (Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole held the highest post.)

Margo worked for conservative Sen. James A. McClure of (R.-Idaho) in the 1970s as his speechwriter. She quickly earned a reputation as an expert in the arcane parliamentary procedures of the Senate. She worked as the director of the Senate Republican Conference and was executive director of the conservative foreign policy group, the Council on National Policy.

Margo showed how to build the conservative movement one person at a time. She knew that personnel are policy and that long-term success could be had only by encouraging young activists and fostering their careers in public policy. As a result, she was not afraid to take the risk in hiring a young prospect like me.

Reminiscence about Margo Carlisle would not be complete without a mention of her brand of humor. In her Pentagon office she hung an oil painting of the XB-35 flying wing bomber of the 1940s. The XB-35 looks remarkably like the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. Since the B-2 was, in 1986, known only to a very small number of people, her XB-35 painting was the ultimate insider's prank. Folks who saw the painting who knew about the B-2 were often initially stunned that Margo would have a painting of it in her office. Folks who didn't know about the B-2 just assumed she liked old experimental aircraft. Years later, when the B-2 became public, I finally understood her long-running joke.