Relations Committee, Vermont Senator George Aiken noting that Kissinger "met with us at Senator Fulbright's house for breakfast at least twice a year." In November 1973, Fulbright endorsed the Middle East policy of Secretary of State Kissinger in a Senate speech, arguing for the central requirement of a peace requirement prior to "another military truce hardens into another untenable and illusory status quo" and added that both sides would need to make concessions. Fulbright stated that Washington, Moscow, and the United Nations were responsible for spearheading the peace settlement. He also led the charge against confirming Nixon's conservative Supreme Court nominees Clement Haynsworth and Harold Carswell. In May 1974, Fulbright disclosed the existence of a weapon stockpile for South Korea, South Vietnam, and Thailand, and the Defense Department released a statement three days later that confirmed Fulbright's admission. Throughout 1974, Kissinger was investigated for his possible role in initiating wiretaps of 13 government officials and four newsmen from 1969 to 1971. In July, Fulbright stated that nothing significant had emerged from the Kissinger testimony during his nomination for Secretary of State the previous fall, and Fulbright indicated his belief that opponents of détente with the Soviet Union were hoping to unseat Kissinger from the investigation into his role in the wiretapping. Defeat and resignation In 1974, Fulbright was defeated in the Democratic primary in Arkansas by then-Governor Dale Bumpers. His well-documented stances on Vietnam, the Middle East, and Watergate were out of step with the Arkansan majority, and his campaign powers had atrophied. Bumpers won by a landslide. Speaking to congressmen in the weeks after Fulbright's primary loss, Nixon mocked the defeat. At the time that he formally resigned the Senate in December 1974, Fulbright had spent his entire 30 years in the Senate as the junior senator from Arkansas, behind John L. McClellan who entered the Senate two years before him. Only Tom Harkin, who served as junior Senator from Iowa from 1985–2015 (to senior Senator Chuck Grassley), was a junior Senator for longer. Political and foreign policy views American foreign policy In The Arrogance of Power, Fulbright offered his analysis of American foreign policy: Throughout our history two strands have coexisted uneasily; a dominant strand of democratic humanism and a lesser but durable strand of intolerant Puritanism. There has been a tendency through the years for reason and moderation to prevail as long as things are going tolerably