As a congressman Laird had supported a strong defense posture and had sometimes been critical of Secretary McNamara.

In October 1972 Congress passed legislation creating a second deputy secretary of defense position, a proposal Laird strongly supported, even though he never filled the position.

" Laird supported the strategic arms talks leading to the SALT I agreements with the Soviet Union in 1972: a five-year moratorium against expansion of strategic nuclear delivery systems, and an antiballistic missile treaty limiting each side to two sites ( later cut to one ) for deployed ABM systems.

While Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird and the Joint Chiefs of Staff strongly supported the station, Central Intelligence Agency head Richard Helms did not support the project because he feared that the death of a MOL astronaut might ground launches and thus damage the nation's satellite reconnaissance program.

During his tenure as Defense Secretary, Laird did not share President Nixon's lingering timetable for withdrawal from Vietnam.

Following Richard Nixon's resignation as President, Laird was reported to be the first choice of successor Gerald Ford to be nominated Vice President, a position ultimately filled by Nelson Rockefeller.

* Melvin R. Laird, class of 1942, President Nixon's Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1973.

* 1969 – Vietnam War: United States Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announces that the United States will start to " Vietnamize " the war effort.

Laird was instrumental in forming the administration's policy of withdrawing U. S. soldiers from the Vietnam War ; he invented the expression " Vietnamization ," referring to the process of transferring more responsibility for combat to the South Vietnamese forces.

Recognizing the congressional determination, with wide public support, to cut defense costs ( including winding down the Vietnam War ), Laird worked hard to prune budgetary requests before they went to Congress, and acceded to additional cuts when they could be absorbed without serious harm to national security.

Vietnam preoccupied Laird as it had McNamara and Clifford.

On 27 January 1973, two days before Laird left office, the negotiators signed a Vietnam settlement in Paris.

Although, as time was to demonstrate, South Vietnam was not really capable of defending its independence, Laird retired from office satisfied that he had accomplished his major objective, the disengagement of United States combat forces from Vietnam.

Vietnam preoccupied Laird, but not to the exclusion of other pressing matters.

On 27 January 1973, after the signing of the Vietnam agreement in Paris, Laird suspended the draft, five months ahead of schedule.

In spite of Vietnam and the unfolding Watergate affair, which threatened to discredit the entire Nixon administration, Laird retired with his reputation intact.

* Iraq: Learning the Lessons of Vietnam " by Melvin R. Laird.

One protester, Eau Claire student John Laird, the son of U. S. Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird, made headlines when he announced his opposition to the war in Vietnam and his intention to join his fellow students in peaceful protest.

In 1831, Laird and certain Liverpool merchants formed a company for the commercial development of the Niger regions, the lower course of the Niger having been made known that year by Richard Lemon Lander and John Lander.

The title of Laird may carry certain local or feudal rights, although unlike a Scottish Lordship of Parliament, a Lairdship has not always carried voting rights, either in the historic Parliament of Scotland or, after unification with the Kingdom of England, in the British House of Lords.

Peel Holdings, owners of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company and 50 % owners of Northwestern Shiprepairers & Shipbuilders, purchased the Cammell Laird shipyard site and surrounding land in January 2007, to facilitate the proposed Wirral Waters development, although Northwestern Shiprepairers & Shipbuilders continue to maintain a long-term lease on the shipyard facilities, which will form an integral part of the regeneration scheme.

A Lairdship carried voting rights in the ancient pre-Union Parliament of Scotland, although such voting rights were expressed via two representatives from each county who were known as Commissioners of the Shires, who came from the Laird class and were chosen by their peers to represent them.

Eventually the board agreed to pay for the construction of a ship, although this was to be supervised by Coles himself in an admiralty approved yard ; Laird Brothers agreed to build her.

He opposed the Nixon administration's deployment of the anti-ballistic missile, a position which put him at odds with then Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird. Pete Williams, a Wyoming native and a former Hansen Senate staffer recalled Hansen's " warm Western smile and utter lack of pretense.

Bothwell and 24 followers took 6000 crowns of English money destined to be used against Guise from the Laird of Ormiston on Halloween 1559 at an ambush near Haddington.

Informally, when referring to a Scots feudal baron in the third person, the name Laird of is used or simply.

The phrase was also used to describe California in the 1860s, and by Clement Laird Vallandigham to describe the land of the Mississippi plains None of these remained a widely used to describe a region, though it is still occasionally used to describe the United States overall.

In Scotland, whilst Esquire and Gentleman are technically correctly used at the Court of the Lord Lyon, the title Laird, in place of squire, is more common.

Donald Maclean, 5th Laird of Torloisk used some of the stones to build a cottage for his family close to the site of the castle.

Former Mahavishnu Orchestra bass guitarist Rick Laird had one, R. " Skeet " Curtis played one ( and still has it ) while touring with Parliament, Vincent Gallo used one in the New York City noise band Gray and Nick Lowe used a Curlee fretless on a few assignments.

The word Laird, known to have been used as far back as the 15th century and further, is a shortened form of ' laverd ', which is an old Scottish word that shares a similar root to an Anglo-Saxon term meaning Lord and the Middle English word ' lard ' also meaning Lord ; however the terms Lord and Lady have since become words chiefly associated with peerage dignities in Scotland, so the term ' Laird ' has come to have a separate meaning.

Laird ’ s first vessel was a 60 ft pre-fabricated iron lighter, The Wye in 1829-displacement sixty tons-which was used on canals and lakes in Ireland.

A constituent, James Stewart, once commented to a friend who wrote this letter, "... he ( Stewart ) had come mainly to see one Jardine, an enormous Laird from Applegarth Parish and China, and a very good man ; who is understood to be dangerously ill at present.

The concept arose from a humorous drawing sketched out by Kevin Eastman during a casual evening of brainstorming with his friend Peter Laird.

Carobeth Laird indicates their traditional territory spanned the High Desert from the Colorado River on the east to the Tehachapi Mountains on the west and from the Las Vegas area and Death Valley on the north to the San Bernardino and San Gabriel Mountains in the south.

The Scottish title Laird is a shortened form of ' laverd ' which is an old Scottish word deriving from an Anglo-Saxon term meaning ' Lord ' and is also derived from the middle English word ' Lard ' also meaning ' Lord '.

As a judge he took the courtesy title Lord Auchinleck from the name of his estate at Auchinleck House, of which he was the 8th Laird.

Laird was the grandson of William D. Connor, the Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin from 1907 to 1909.

Laird did not depart abruptly from the McNamara-Clifford management system, but rather instituted gradual changes.

Laird did not shrink from centralized management where he found it useful or warranted.

Laird paid special attention to two important interdepartmental bodies: the Washington Special Action Group ( WSAG ), composed of senior Defense, State, and CIA officials, which gathered information necessary for presidential decisions on the crisis use of U. S. military forces ; and the Defense Program Review Committee ( DPRC ), which brought together representatives from many agencies, including DoD, State, the Council of Economic Advisers, and the Office of Management and Budget, to analyze defense budget issues as a basis for advising the president, placing, as Laird commented, " national security needs in proper relationship to non-defense requirements.

As a result, total military personnel declined from some 3. 5 million in FY 1969 to 2. 3 million by the time Laird left office in January 1973.

* The English songwriter Nigel Blackwell has placed a number of references to the novel in a number of his songs, including the song titled, " Thy Damnation Slumbereth Not " from the album Cammell Laird Social Club.

In 1931, Doolittle won the Bendix Trophy Race from Burbank, California, to Cleveland, Ohio, in a Laird Super Solution biplane.

The British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston and Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell had allowed the Alabama to put to sea from the shipyards of John Laird Sons and Company in Birkenhead, despite the explicit objections of the American Legation in London and charges from the American Minister to Britain Charles Francis Adams that the ship was bound for the Confederacy.

Murphy was principal military assistant to successive Secretaries of Defense Melvin R. Laird and Elliot Richardson, deputy director of the CIA in 1976 and 1977, and Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Pentagon from 1977 to 1980 under Jimmy Carter.