[4][7] At the height of the Cold War, he headed the air section of the Reconnaissance Squadron assigned 24/7 to patrol the borders of Soviet occupied East Germany and Czechoslovakia.

His 1953 Harper's piece, The Unfortunate Taft Memorial,[13] resulted in legislation being enacted to prohibit the building of future monuments to any senator or congressman on the Capitol grounds until they had been deceased a minimum of 50 years.

Assured of easy senate conformation, the Minnesotan was preparing to assume the new job when officials discovered the post had been eliminated during the last days of the Eisenhower administration.

At that time, a special presidential order formulated by President Eisenhower was in force designating the Secretary of the Army as having exclusive authority over policies and operations concerning the Canal Zone and the Ryukyu Islands.

[17] In one of his first actions, Haugerud formed a committee to study the return of Okinawa and the surrounding Islands to Japan under conditions that would permit continued U.S. use of the military bases.

He found the company, charged with the operation of the legendary canal was being run efficiently, but under work rules differing little from those established when the project was completed in 1914.

Resentment among the native population was high and building, helped along by some thoughtless Americans who boasted they had lived and worked in the zone for 20 years and had never ventured over the line into largely destitute Panama.

After reporting his findings to the Secretary of the Army and the President, Haugerud instituted programs to begin reducing the bonus payments, amend the security regulations and training Panamanians to fill substantive positions in the Canal Company work force.

One such occasion, at the request of Kennedy, he arranged for the legendary mobster Joe Valacchi to be secretly sequestered at a military prison in New Jersey for some 18 months to keep him from being assassinated by gang figures who feared being implicated by his testimony.

A few weeks prior to his death, President Kennedy asked Haugerud to accept the position of Inspector General of Foreign Assistance at the Department of State as he was planning to name the incumbent to an ambassadorial post.

Unlike any other Inspector Generals, past or present, Haugerud, and his partner, Ken Mansfield, held program suspension authority, and could halt the expenditure of funds even though such a measure was contrary to the orders of the Secretary of State or any cabinet officer.

These shipments, along with vast quantities of hair spray and liquor were being quickly cleared through ports jammed with vessels, some waiting for as long as 50 days to unload their cargos of arms, ammunition, foodstuffs and other material required to support the massive war effort.

A routine “end use” survey by Haugerud's inspectors turned up evidence that shipments of shoe manufacturing material was sufficiently large so as to enable every inhabitant of Vietnam to own several unique pair, yet they could not be found in the most likely places—on the feet of Vietnamese men, women or children.

[22] During this period, Haugerud's work was repeatedly praised on the floor of the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, with members of both bodies entering their remarks in the Congressional Record.

Its students were senior officers from those organizations who were preparing to assume overseas posts as well as those returning from such assignments on their way to domestic positions in their respective branches.