Richard Allen, President Reagan’s National Security Advisor, announced this afternoon that he has dismissed Maj. Gen. Robert Schweitzer as chief of the National Security Council’s Defense Policy Cluster for making an unapproved speech yesterday.
Schweitzer was transferred back to the Pentagon from where he had joined the NSC. Allen said that while he had high regard for Schweitzer, he broke NSC rules by not clearing beforehand his speech before the annual meeting of the Association of the U.S. Army.
The speech created a furor because Schweitzer said, “The Soviets are on the move, they’re going to strike.” He also spoke of “a drift toward war” with the Soviet Union. Allen told reporters that the speech had not been cleared by him or anyone else in the NSC nor did he know of its contents, even in general, before it was delivered.
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