Remarks on Presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Melvin R. Laird.

Note: The President spoke at 10:30 p.m. in the East Room at the White House. Prior to the President's remarks, members of the United States Naval Academy Glee Club had entertained guests at a dinner honoring Mr. Laird.

On the same day, the White House released a fact sheet on the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Mr. Laird responded to the President's remarks as follows:
Mr. President, Mrs. Nixon, Vice President Ford, Mrs. Ford, friends:

I am very proud, Mr. President, of this presentation which you have made to me tonight, but I would like to make several acknowledgments.

First, I would like to acknowledge the strong support and help that you gave to me as Secretary of Defense for those 4 years. No President or Commander in Chief of our military forces could have given stronger, more understanding support than I received as Secretary of Defense.

Secondly, I would like to acknowledge the support and help of the Congress of the United States. For those 4 years, as we went to the House and to the Senate, on not a single occasion did the House and the Senate vote against us on a request, and we had many roll calls in the House and in the Senate. Several were close, but we always had a majority vote, and this majority was made up of Republicans and Democrats alike that understood what we were doing in the Administration and in the Department of Defense in our efforts to restore peace and to be able to maintain peace in the future.

And third, I would like to acknowledge the civilian-military team that made up the Department of Defense. In December of 1968, Dave Packard and I went down to the Carlton Hotel, and we locked ourselves up for almost 2 weeks to look at the problems not only that confronted our Department but the men and women that made up that Department, to go over the personnel and to try to put together a program and a team that would be able to carry forward on the pledges that the President of the United States made in the 1968 campaign to the people of America.

Dave and I spent a great deal of time interviewing people and going over the various programs that we would be presenting to the Congress for the new Administration.

We like to think we had a Nixon-Laird-Packard team that understood what participatory management was all about between civilians and the military. And we like to think that we were a Department, 5 million strong, that was implementing the Nixon Doctrine of strength, partnership, and a willingness to negotiate. And we felt that the people of that Department, working together, understanding one another, gave the kind of leadership and the kind of understanding to the problems that faced us as we tried to Vietnamize a war that had been Americanized for some 4 years.

We changed policy there, and we carried out the pledge that was the pledge of the President of the United States to do away with the draft and move towards volunteerism in the military service, do away with conscript labor and start paying the young men and women who served in our service an adequate wage. And we were, I believe, successful in instilling that philosophy of the Nixon Doctrine throughout that Department.

And so, to these men and women, civilian and military alike, in all four of the services, this award means a great deal to all of them.

And the fourth credit is the credit that I would like to pay to my family: to Barbara; to John, who cannot be with us tonight, who is teaching school out in Los Angeles; to my daughter Alison; to our son David.

Barbara and I have been here in Washington for a good many years, but we will look back with a great deal of pleasure and a great deal of happiness to the years that we have served the Nixon Administration.

And I believe that in acknowledging the fine support that I have had from my family, I am joined by all of us in the Department of Defense tonight, Mr. President, in thanking you for recognizing what I think was a Department effort from 1969 through 1973, in changing some directions as far as America was concerned, in making it possible for us to look forward to a period in which the Nixon Doctrine will be truly a great reality of the 1970'S and the 1980's.
Thank you very much, Mr. President.