"[72] White was dismissed from the foreign service by the Reagan Administration after he had refused to participate in a coverup of the Salvadoran military's responsibility for the murders at the behest of Secretary of State Alexander Haig.Throughout the 1980 U.S. presidential campaign, Reagan and his foreign policy advisers faulted the Carter administration's perceived over-emphasis on the human rights abuses committed by "authoritarian" regimes allied to the U.S., labeling it a "double standard" when compared with Carter's treatment of communist-bloc regimes.