William Howard Taft IV

Early life and education

Taft was born on September 13, 1945, in Washington, D.C., the second child of William Howard Taft III and Barbara Bradfield. Taft IV's patrilineal great-grandfather was U.S. President William Howard Taft. He attended St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire graduating in 1962. Taft IV earned his bachelor of arts degree in English from Yale University in 1966 and his Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School in 1969.

Personal life

He married Julia Vadala in 1974. The couple has three children.

As is evident in official photographs, he is missing his upper left lateral incisor.

Career

After researching the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as one of the first of "Nader's Raiders"; during 1969–1970, he was briefly the attorney adviser to the chairman of the FTC. During 1970–1973, he was the principal assistant to Caspar W. Weinberger, who was deputy director, then director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President under President Richard Nixon. Taft assisted Weinberger in the management of the budgetary process, policy review, and program oversight for all of the federal government.

Taft served from 1973 to 1976 as the executive assistant to the United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. In April 1976 Taft was appointed by President Gerald Ford to serve as general counsel of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. In the post, as the chief lawyer for the department and the principal administrator of the Office of the General Counsel, he supervised over 350 lawyers in Washington and 10 regional offices. During the Carter administration, he was an attorney with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Leva, Hawes, Symington, Martin and Oppenheimer.

In February 1981, Taft was among President Ronald Reagan first nominations, as General Counsel of the Department of Defense. He served as acting Secretary of Defense from January to March 1989 after George H. W. Bush became president. Bush's initial nominee, John Tower, was not confirmed by the United States Senate after much contentious debate and testimony. The eventual appointee confirmed in March was Dick Cheney (later Vice President of the United States, 2001–2009). Although he was only acting secretary of defense, he became the third member of his family to hold a position as civilian head of a military department, after his great-great-grandfather Alphonso Taft (under President Ulysses S. Grant) and his great-grandfather William Howard Taft (under President Theodore Roosevelt)

Taft served as U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO, which has the rank of ambassador, from 1989 to 1992,

Service in George W. Bush administration

After the election of 2000, George W. Bush appointed Taft to serve as chief legal adviser to the United States Department of State under Secretary of State Colin Powell, with whom he was reportedly friends. The appointment was technically a significantly lower appointment than he had held in other administrations, but it permitted him to work with his wife, Julia Taft, a top State Department official in charge of refugees who also served during the Clinton administration.

While serving as legal adviser, Taft wrote two seminal law journal articles regarding the views of the United States on the legality of the use of military force. First, in connection with the decision of the International Court of Justice in the Oil Platforms case, Taft countered a series of propositions that the court appeared to accept regarding the principles governing the use of force. That included his conclusion that "There is no requirement in international law that a State exercising its right of self-defense must use the same degree or type of force used by the attacking State in its most recent attack. Rather, the proportionality of the measures taken in self-defence is to be judged according to the nature of the threat being addressed." Second, Taft coauthored (with Todd F. Buchwald) an article in the Americal Journal of International Law that set forth the official United States Government view regarding the permissibility under international law of the use of force by the United States and Coalition forces during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The article concluded that the preemptive use of force in Iraq is lawful where, as in Iraq, "it represents an episode in an ongoing broader conflict initiated--without question-- by the opponent and where, as here, it is consistent with the resolutions of the Security Council.

In 2004, Taft's name surfaced as a dissenter concerning the policy of interrogation techniques for military detainees. In a January 11, 2002, memo, he opposed Department of Justice lawyers to argue that the president could not "suspend" U.S. obligations to respect the Geneva Conventions and that a legal argument to do so was "legally flawed and procedurally impossible." This was also the position of Secretary Powell, who attempted to persuade Bush to reconsider. Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, subsequently advised Bush in a memo that Taft and Powell were wrong and the Justice Department's analysis was "definitive." Gonzales claimed terrorist attacks "require a new approach in our actions toward captured terrorists," and argued that if suspected terrorists had never respected the Geneva Conventions' human rights protections, the U.S. didn't need to do so.

Leaving government service

After the re-election of President Bush, resignation of Colin Powell and appointment of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, Taft resigned to return to private practice, again at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. He is a visiting professor at Stanford Law School, having succeeded Allen Weiner as the Warren Christopher Professor of the Practice of International Law and Diplomacy in 2007. In January 2009 he was named chair of the board of trustees for Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization which supports the expansion of freedom around the world. On September 12, 2006, Taft co-signed (along with 28 other retired military or defense department officials) a letter to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services committee in which he stated his belief that the Bush Administration's attempt to redefine Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention "poses a grave threat" to U.S. service members.

Taft is said to be one of the sources who told journalists David Corn and Michael Isikoff that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the source syndicated columnist Robert Novak had when he made public the fact that Valerie Wilson worked for the CIA. In a review of Corn's and Isikoff's book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, Novak wrote: "I don't know precisely how Isikoff flushed out Armitage [as Novak's original source], but Hubris clearly points to two sources: Washington lobbyist Kenneth Duberstein, Armitage's political adviser, and William Taft IV, who was the State Department legal adviser when Armitage was deputy secretary."

Though a staunch Republican, Taft opposed the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump, declaring alongside 49 other Republican former national security officials that he would not vote for the candidate. In 2020, Taft again rebuked his party, endorsing Democrat Joe Biden over Trump. In 2020, Taft, along with over 130 other former Republican national security officials, signed a statement asserting that President Trump was unfit to serve another term, and "To that end, we are firmly convinced that it is in the best interest of our nation that Vice President Joe Biden be elected as the next President of the United States, and we will vote for him."

References

References

1. "Nomination of William Howard Taft IV To Be Deputy Secretary of Defense {{!}} The American Presidency Project".
2. Stiles, Andrew. (2024-09-18). "Drain The Tub: Fat President's Skinny Scion Backs Kamala Harris".
3. "Summer 2018 Formnotes 60s".
4. U.S. Congress Senate Committee on Armed Services. (January 24, 1984). "Nomination of William H. Taft IV, to be Deputy Secretary of Defense". U.S. Government Printing Office.
5. (May 5, 1974). "W.H. Taft Weds Mrs. Julia Vadala". The New York Times.
6. "Julia Taft; Crisis Manager Helped Resettle Refugees". [[The Washington Post]].
7. Duscha, Julius. (March 21, 1971). "Nader's Raiders is their name, and whistle-blowing is their game . . .". The New York Times.
8. "William Howard Taft IV". Historical Office.
9. "Nomination of William Howard Taft IV To Be General Counsel of the Department of Defense {{!}} The American Presidency Project".
10. "II. Secretaries of Defense". Washington Headquarters Services - Pentagon Digital Library.
11. "William Howard Taft IV {{!}} American Academy of Diplomacy".
12. Dewar, Helen. (March 17, 1989). "PANEL APPROVES CHENEY NOMINATION". The Washington Post.
13. (2023-03-17). "William H. Taft IV: A Legal Adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State".
14. [http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1232&context=yjil] Tat, William H., "Self-Defense and the Oil Platforms Decision," 29 Yale J. International Law, 295, 305 (2004)
15. [http://lawfare.s3.amazonaws.com/staging/2016/taft_buchwald_ASIL_iraq%20(4).pdf] Taft, William H. and Buchwald, Todd F., "Preemption, Iraq and International Law, 97 American Journal of International Law 557, 563 (2003)
16. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A759-2004Jun23.html Lawyer for State Dept. Disputed Detainee Memo ]
17. [http://www.law.stanford.edu/news/pr/57/William%20Taft%20IV%20to%20Join%20Stanford%20Law%20School%20as%20the%20Warren%20Christopher%20Professor%20of%20the%20Practice%20of%20International%20Law%20and%20Diplomacy/ "William Taft IV to Join Stanford Law School as the Warren Christopher Professor of the Practice of International Law and Diplomacy"] [[Stanford Law School]], April 4, 2007
18. [http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=70&release=753 "Freedom House Welcomes William H. Taft IV as New Chairman"]; retrieved January 15, 2011
19. [https://web.archive.org/web/20070930204626/http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=12785&R=EE501DF13 Novak, Robert, "Who Said What When: The rise and fall of the Valerie Plame 'scandal']", [[The Weekly Standard]], October 16, 2006, book review of ''Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War'', by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, accessed October 8, 2008
20. "Former GOP national security officials: Trump would be 'most reckless' American president in history". Washington Post.
21. "Republicans endorse Biden".
22. (20 August 2020). "Former Republican National Security Officials for Biden".