Laird, Melvin

March 1969-July 1971 Director, Asia Communist Affairs, EA Laird, Melvin R. 

Tyler s principal source is then Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, but all of the ex-officials interviewed by this author in 2001 denied that such a deal was under consideration. Hyland to Kissinger, Sino-Soviet Contingencies, 28 August 1969, Box 700, NSF, NPM. Kissinger, White House Years, p. 172. 

Early in April 1970 the Secretaries of the Health, Interior and Agriculture Departments in the US drafted a statement banning the use of 2,4,5-T in the US except in very restricted circumstances. Melvin Laird, the Defense Secretary, suspended the use of 2,4,5,-T in military operations. Herbicide Orange was currently being used at a rate of up to 200 000 gallons a month in Vietnam. The Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed the ban, and sought without success to have it lifted. By early May Operation Ranch Hand had run out of usable defoliants and after a brief resumption, on July 17 all future fixed-wing defoliation missions were cancelled." ... 

Memorandum from Melvin Laird to Henry Kissinger, dated 18 July 1970, cited Buckingham, op. cit., p. 172. 

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