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Former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger (1917–2006) packed an incredible amount of history-changing influence into his 88 years. Weinberger served in the cabinets of three presidents, most notably as secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan. There, he lead a trillion-dollar buildup of the U.S. military that many believe directly lead to the fall of the Soviet Union.
In a famous 1984 speech at the National Press Club, Cap Weinberger outlined what would come to be known as the Weinberger Doctrine, his rules for accomplishing what Ronald Reagan called “Peace through Strength.” Over his career, Weinberger also managed to write 12 books, serve as publisher of Forbes magazine, and speak and write prolifically on current issues.
He and his wife, Jane, a native of Old Town and founder of Windswept House book publishers, lived for the last two decades on Mount Desert Island. Caspar Weinberger made local as well as international news when he passed away last March at Eastern Maine Medical Center, where he had been receiving dialysis for the previous two years. His place in history, however, is both undeniable and yet still to be determined.
Caspar Weinberger Jr., 60, is hard at work defining and expanding his father’s legacy. From the family home on Somes Sound, “Cap Jr.”—in between his own work as a conservative political commentator—is sorting through stacks of photographs, reams of journal entries, miles of videotape, and a lifetime of memories. Through the newly formed Caspar Weinberger Foundation, he is determined to keep his father’s memory and message alive.
When did you first realize that your father was an important person?
There were really several moments, I think, around the ages of five to maybe nine years old. When I was five and my father was running for the state assembly in California, I saw a billboard with his picture on it. Later, when I was a newspaper boy delivering the San Francisco News, I saw a huge headline saying “Weinberger” something—I forget what—but it filled me with a great sense of pride that I was delivering news about my dad to the city.
What was your father like?
He was a very warm and caring man. His public persona was not much different than his private personality. He and I played tennis, went to ball games, discussed politics, and were very close over the years, especially as his life slowed down after the Pentagon years.
Did you feel intimidated by your father’s achievements?
Not at all. I basically made them my own! Well, no, but we shared the same name and it is an unusual name so often his fame became mine as well. I remember several occasions when people would come up to me, saluting, and saying I was so young-looking to be secretary of defense!
Your mom and dad were married for 63 years. It’s been written that your mother shunned the Washington social scene, while your dad relished it. Is that true?
Nonsense. My mother was very active in Washington for many years of Cap’s career. She was on many committees and boards and performed countless charitable functions. She was chairman of the Folger Library Board (Shakespeare) for a long while and attended hundreds of social functions with Cap over the years. Finally, her health deteriorated a bit, and I think she grew tired of the endless rounds of cocktail parties and official dinners; at that point in the mid-’80s, she decided to make Maine her permanent home while my father continued on at Defense. However, this was the culmination of nearly 20 years as a Washington hostess. She gave lots of parties at their Capitol Hill home, including a wonderful one for incoming President Reagan in 1980.
In hindsight, what were some of the biggest advantages of being Cap Weinberger’s kid?
First, he was a very correct man with the English language and would abhor the use of “kid” as a reference to his children. However, my name was instantly recognizable. Any door I wanted to open, pretty much could be. Also, I was privy to American history with an insider’s view for decades and saw and heard many priceless moments of the republic’s history. More, I was the son of a wonderful man who imparted much knowledge to me about America and our government.
Who are some of the most memorable people you’ve met? Can you give us an idea of what they were like?
There were so very many that it would be a very long list to be anywhere near complete. Obviously the American presidents, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and the senior George Bush come to mind. I worked with Ronald Reagan both when he was governor of California and in the White House. His goodness was almost not of this Earth. Lady Thatcher is a woman of enormous poise, grace, and strength. Wernher von Braun, the rocket pioneer at NASA, was a fascinating man. Henry Kissinger possesses incredible knowledge of our foreign policies and agendas. David Rockefeller is a wonderfully decent and warm human being whom I see often on MDI in the summers. He always reminds me that he knew my father longer than me, as he first met Cap at Harvard in 1936 or so. Shall I continue?
Please do.
Oh, the list is almost endless. The late Strom Thurmond was just a giant on the American political stage and a true southern gentleman. General Colin Powell, as strong and clear a speaker as you will ever hear, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who in my view fell on his sword for President George Bush; our senior senator, Olympia Snowe, and our junior senator, Susan Collins, are poised women with calm and reasoning voices in an increasingly hysterical Washington climate. I don’t know, you name them, I have most likely met them, and for that I can only thank my father for opening the doors for me to be in contact with so many fantastic individuals.
What do you believe your dad saw as the highlights of his life?
Well, I would like to think first it was in siring me! No, I think becoming secretary of defense would have to be it, as he loved Ronald Reagan, loved America, and wanted to serve this great nation at its highest levels, and so he did. But if you asked him, it would be obvious that the biggest highlight was in meeting and marrying Jane Dalton Weinberger and the partnership they formed for the next 63 years of his life.
Your dad’s career was clouded by the Iran contra scandal. [While it’s well-documented that Cap Weinberger was against the Iran arms deal, he was later accused of hiding what he knew and was indicted by a special prosecutor, and was pardoned by President George H. W. Bush right before he was to stand trial.] Do you think your dad genuinely knew nothing? Or was he trying to protect President Reagan by not telling all he knew?
What was there to know? Only what everyone already knew and that was that Ronald Reagan got some very bad advice from a genuinely troubled national security advisor, Bud McFarland—he has admitted contemplating suicide on more than one occasion—and a few others. These hand-wringing, bleeding heart emotionalists so wanted to help Reagan free hostages that they felt the way to do it was by “negotiating” with the enemy. Cap knew you could never do that and count on anything going right. At all times, my father protected both President Reagan and the presidency itself by doing what was right, not by advocating a policy doomed to fail. It is just unfortunate that in public life one often has to put up with well-meaning, but really inferior, people on your own team.
The special prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh, turned out to have apparently a personal vendetta against Reagan and my dad and others in the Reagan administration because they had failed to name him to a high position in the government. Thus, he pushed on my dad to testify against the president in return for him dropping a malicious and false set of charges against Cap. Naturally, Cap refused, and fortunately, George Herbert Walker Bush “pardoned” my dad before any trial could begin.
Caspar Weinberger said, both with Iran contra and with the 1983 Marines bombing in Beirut, that he “wished he had been more persuasive” in talking President Reagan out of what he felt were bad policies. Did Reagan generally listen to him? How would you characterize their relationship?
Their relationship was very close and Reagan started listening to my father when he was the state of California director of finance in Sacramento. Indeed, Reagan appointed my father to that position himself, in spite of some of his conservative backers who thought my father was too liberal. Both my father and Ronald Reagan were Californians with sunny and positive dispositions who preferred to see the glass always half-full and not half-empty.
Your mother, Jane Weinberger, founded Windswept House publishers in Maine in the early 1980s. And she has written or cowritten several books. To what extent was she involved with your father’s career?
My mother was the driving force behind my father his entire adult life. It was she who saw that the law was often too serious and dour for Cap. It was she who encouraged him to run for state political office [as a California assemblyman] and she who would emotionally hold the household together during his long public career. She was always there for him and he for her. That is not surprising, given the fact that she is a very strong lady of Maine where we seem to breed women who learn early on the values of hard work. They had a double desk, facing each other, and would work on their respective projects together for several hours every night.
Since your father’s death, your byline has been seen very frequently with commentary on current events. Did you and your dad see eye to eye politically?
Obviously not always, given our radically different generations. His was the “Greatest Generation”; mine, more the “Psychological Generation.” His generation did things often unquestionably and at first asking; mine was a more laid-back, internal group. His war was World War II, a really black-and-white war; mine saw Korea and Vietnam, where the reasons for fighting and the results were less clear.
However, on one thing we most definitely did agree, and that is that America must have the strongest, mightiest defense possible. Peace, we both knew, can only be achieved through strength and never through weakness or by being gullible enough to think that if we lay down our arms, everybody else will, too.
As your father grew older, your entire family knew he would not be around forever. What kind of preplanning did you do? Did your dad talk about how he wanted to be remembered after his death?
With a man who believes he will live forever, with a man for whom the subject of death was taboo, as if by mentioning it, you hasten it, preplanning was pretty much impossible. Nevertheless, I did ask him about a month before he passed if he wanted to be laid to rest in Arlington with full military honors, and he said “yes,” so I made very sure that it happened just that way. I had no time to preplan; I just put all my producer skills to use and helped to make it happen when the time came. It was a lovely ceremony and a great tribute to a man for all seasons.
You and your family [including the late Cap Weinberger’s wife, Jane, and his daughter, Arlin], have formed the Caspar W. Weinberger Foundation. What are some of your current and future goals for that organization?
We wish to honor Cap by informing many people and future generations about him and his work—about what it takes to be a great patriot. My father was more than a strong secretary of defense. He was vital in so many areas of American life. He held Cabinet-level jobs at Health, Education, and Welfare in addition to overseeing the federal budget at the Office of Management and Budget, and chairing the FTC. We intend to fund some of the institutions he believed in and supported, including the memory of his greatest hero, Winston Churchill.
Cap’s commitment to “peace through strength” is really the heart and soul of what the foundation will be about. We’ve started developing projects and raising funds to keep his international policy ideals at the forefront of the media and our public life.
It’s a lot of work handling your dad’s legacy. What keeps you going?
A sworn duty to myself to preserve, protect, and defend this nation every day I am on the Earth. I believe that this nation is the one country in the entire world that can bring peace and advancement for all mankind. My dad believed that, too. We’re in this together.
In a famous 1984 speech at the National Press Club, Cap Weinberger outlined what would come to be known as the Weinberger Doctrine, his rules for accomplishing what Ronald Reagan called “Peace through Strength.” Over his career, Weinberger also managed to write 12 books, serve as publisher of Forbes magazine, and speak and write prolifically on current issues.
He and his wife, Jane, a native of Old Town and founder of Windswept House book publishers, lived for the last two decades on Mount Desert Island. Caspar Weinberger made local as well as international news when he passed away last March at Eastern Maine Medical Center, where he had been receiving dialysis for the previous two years
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Caspar Weinberger Jr., 60, is hard at work defining and expanding his father’s legacy. From the family home on Somes Sound, “Cap Jr.”—in between his own work as a conservative political commentator—is sorting through stacks of photographs, reams of journal entries, miles of videotape, and a lifetime of memories. Through the newly formed Caspar Weinberger Foundation, he is determined to keep his father’s memory and message alive.
When did you first realize that your father was an important person?
There were really several moments, I think, around the ages of five to maybe nine years old. When I was five and my father was running for the state assembly in California, I saw a billboard with his picture on it. Later, when I was a newspaper boy delivering the San Francisco News, I saw a huge headline saying “Weinberger” something—I forget what—but it filled me with a great sense of pride that I was delivering news about my dad to the city.
What was your father like?
He was a very warm and caring man. His public persona was not much different than his private personality. He and I played tennis, went to ball games, discussed politics, and were very close over the years, especially as his life slowed down after the Pentagon years.
Did you feel intimidated by your father’s achievements?
Not at all. I basically made them my own! Well, no, but we shared the same name and it is an unusual name so often his fame became mine as well. I remember several occasions when people would come up to me, saluting, and saying I was so young-looking to be secretary of defense!
Your mom and dad were married for 63 years. It’s been written that your mother shunned the Washington social scene, while your dad relished it. Is that true?
Nonsense. My mother was very active in Washington for many years of Cap’s career. She was on many committees and boards and performed countless charitable functions. She was chairman of the Folger Library Board (Shakespeare) for a long while and attended hundreds of social functions with Cap over the years. Finally, her health deteriorated a bit, and I think she grew tired of the endless rounds of cocktail parties and official dinners; at that point in the mid-’80s, she decided to make Maine her permanent home while my father continued on at Defense. However, this was the culmination of nearly 20 years as a Washington hostess. She gave lots of parties at their Capitol Hill home, including a wonderful one for incoming President Reagan in 1980.
In hindsight, what were some of the biggest advantages of being Cap Weinberger’s kid?
First, he was a very correct man with the English language and would abhor the use of “kid” as a reference to his children. However, my name was instantly recognizable. Any door I wanted to open, pretty much could be. Also, I was privy to American history with an insider’s view for decades and saw and heard many priceless moments of the republic’s history. More, I was the son of a wonderful man who imparted much knowledge to me about America and our government.
Who are some of the most memorable people you’ve met? Can you give us an idea of what they were like?
There were so very many that it would be a very long list to be anywhere near complete. Obviously the American presidents, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and the senior George Bush come to mind. I worked with Ronald Reagan both when he was governor of California and in the White House. His goodness was almost not of this Earth. Lady Thatcher is a woman of enormous poise, grace, and strength. Wernher von Braun, the rocket pioneer at NASA, was a fascinating man. Henry Kissinger possesses incredible knowledge of our foreign policies and agendas. David Rockefeller is a wonderfully decent and warm human being whom I see often on MDI in the summers. He always reminds me that he knew my father longer than me, as he first met Cap at Harvard in 1936 or so. Shall I continue?
Please do.
Oh, the list is almost endless. The late Strom Thurmond was just a giant on the American political stage and a true southern gentleman. General Colin Powell, as strong and clear a speaker as you will ever hear, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who in my view fell on his sword for President George Bush; our senior senator, Olympia Snowe, and our junior senator, Susan Collins, are poised women with calm and reasoning voices in an increasingly hysterical Washington climate. I don’t know, you name them, I have most likely met them, and for that I can only thank my father for opening the doors for me to be in contact with so many fantastic individuals.
What do you believe your dad saw as the highlights of his life?
Well, I would like to think first it was in siring me! No, I think becoming secretary of defense would have to be it, as he loved Ronald Reagan, loved America, and wanted to serve this great nation at its highest levels, and so he did. But if you asked him, it would be obvious that the biggest highlight was in meeting and marrying Jane Dalton Weinberger and the partnership they formed for the next 63 years of his life.
Your dad’s career was clouded by the Iran contra scandal. [While it’s well-documented that Cap Weinberger was against the Iran arms deal, he was later accused of hiding what he knew and was indicted by a special prosecutor, and was pardoned by President George H. W. Bush right before he was to stand trial.] Do you think your dad genuinely knew nothing? Or was he trying to protect President Reagan by not telling all he knew?
What was there to know? Only what everyone already knew and that was that Ronald Reagan got some very bad advice from a genuinely troubled national security advisor, Bud McFarland—he has admitted contemplating suicide on more than one occasion—and a few others. These hand-wringing, bleeding heart emotionalists so wanted to help Reagan free hostages that they felt the way to do it was by “negotiating” with the enemy. Cap knew you could never do that and count on anything going right. At all times, my father protected both President Reagan and the presidency itself by doing what was right, not by advocating a policy doomed to fail. It is just unfortunate that in public life one often has to put up with well-meaning, but really inferior, people on your own team.
The special prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh, turned out to have apparently a personal vendetta against Reagan and my dad and others in the Reagan administration because they had failed to name him to a high position in the government. Thus, he pushed on my dad to testify against the president in return for him dropping a malicious and false set of charges against Cap. Naturally, Cap refused, and fortunately, George Herbert Walker Bush “pardoned” my dad before any trial could begin.
Caspar Weinberger said, both with Iran contra and with the 1983 Marines bombing in Beirut, that he “wished he had been more persuasive” in talking President Reagan out of what he felt were bad policies. Did Reagan generally listen to him? How would you characterize their relationship?
Their relationship was very close and Reagan started listening to my father when he was the state of California director of finance in Sacramento. Indeed, Reagan appointed my father to that position himself, in spite of some of his conservative backers who thought my father was too liberal. Both my father and Ronald Reagan were Californians with sunny and positive dispositions who preferred to see the glass always half-full and not half-empty.
Your mother, Jane Weinberger, founded Windswept House publishers in Maine in the early 1980s. And she has written or cowritten several books. To what extent was she involved with your father’s career?
My mother was the driving force behind my father his entire adult life. It was she who saw that the law was often too serious and dour for Cap. It was she who encouraged him to run for state political office [as a California assemblyman] and she who would emotionally hold the household together during his long public career. She was always there for him and he for her. That is not surprising, given the fact that she is a very strong lady of Maine where we seem to breed women who learn early on the values of hard work. They had a double desk, facing each other, and would work on their respective projects together for several hours every night.
Since your father’s death, your byline has been seen very frequently with commentary on current events. Did you and your dad see eye to eye politically?
Obviously not always, given our radically different generations. His was the “Greatest Generation”; mine, more the “Psychological Generation.” His generation did things often unquestionably and at first asking; mine was a more laid-back, internal group. His war was World War II, a really black-and-white war; mine saw Korea and Vietnam, where the reasons for fighting and the results were less clear.
However, on one thing we most definitely did agree, and that is that America must have the strongest, mightiest defense possible. Peace, we both knew, can only be achieved through strength and never through weakness or by being gullible enough to think that if we lay down our arms, everybody else will, too.
As your father grew older, your entire family knew he would not be around forever. What kind of preplanning did you do? Did your dad talk about how he wanted to be remembered after his death?
With a man who believes he will live forever, with a man for whom the subject of death was taboo, as if by mentioning it, you hasten it, preplanning was pretty much impossible. Nevertheless, I did ask him about a month before he passed if he wanted to be laid to rest in Arlington with full military honors, and he said “yes,” so I made very sure that it happened just that way. I had no time to preplan; I just put all my producer skills to use and helped to make it happen when the time came. It was a lovely ceremony and a great tribute to a man for all seasons.
You and your family [including the late Cap Weinberger’s wife, Jane, and his daughter, Arlin], have formed the Caspar W. Weinberger Foundation. What are some of your current and future goals for that organization?
We wish to honor Cap by informing many people and future generations about him and his work—about what it takes to be a great patriot. My father was more than a strong secretary of defense. He was vital in so many areas of American life. He held Cabinet-level jobs at Health, Education, and Welfare in addition to overseeing the federal budget at the Office of Management and Budget, and chairing the FTC. We intend to fund some of the institutions he believed in and supported, including the memory of his greatest hero, Winston Churchill.
Cap’s commitment to “peace through strength” is really the heart and soul of what the foundation will be about. We’ve started developing projects and raising funds to keep his international policy ideals at the forefront of the media and our public life.
It’s a lot of work handling your dad’s legacy. What keeps you going?
A sworn duty to myself to preserve, protect, and defend this nation every day I am on the Earth. I believe that this nation is the one country in the entire world that can bring peace and advancement for all mankind. My dad believed that, too. We’re in this together.
