Haig's Coup: How Richard Nixon's Closest Aide Forced Him from Office

When General Alexander M. Haig Jr. returned to the White House on May 3, 1973, he found the Nixon administration in worse shape than he had imagined. President Richard Nixon, reelected in an overwhelming landslide just six months earlier, had accepted the resignations of his top aides—the chief of staff H. R. Haldeman and the domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman—just three days earlier.

Haldeman and Ehrlichman had enforced the president’s will and protected him from his rivals and his wors...