For National Security: Gen. Brent Scowcroft
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Scowcroft Paper No. 3 For National Security: Gen. Brent Scowcroft Bartholomew Sparrow, PhD June 2016 A significant address presented at the Scowcroft Legacy Conference Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas on April 26, 2016 For more information: bush.tamu.edu/scowcroft/ 1 For National Security: Gen. Brent Scowcroft0F by Bartholomew Sparrow Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin “A friend in Washington is someone who In 1925 Scowcroft was born into a family stabs you in the chest.” Brent Scowcroft that was, as we see, established socially and well sometimes tells this joke to break the ice when off materially; indicatively, his parents were beginning a speech. The irony, though, is that married in the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City. Scowcroft has a great many friends and admirers. By all accounts he had a happy childhood. Brent It is this capacity for friendship, together with his was a member of the Boy Scouts, skied, played other personal qualities, his upbringing, military golf, and roamed around the Wasatch foothills background, and intellectualism, that have made with his friends, only blocks from his home. As him so remarkably effective and so very much the youngest of three children and the only son, respected and, it is fair to say, so adored in Scowcroft was, he concedes, “spoiled.” Not once Washington, around the country, and around the did he remember hearing his parents fight, and he world. never remembered feeling any tension at home. Later, reflecting on his upbringing, Scowcroft To understand General Scowcroft’s wryly observed that his idyllic childhood gave success as a policymaker means returning to his him a highly distorted view of his fellow 2 family background—at least in part. Brent humans.1F Scowcroft (no middle initial) grew up in Ogden, Utah, in an unusually secure and nurturing Upon reading West Point Today in 1937, at the environment. Two of his great-grandfathers were age of 12, he decided he wanted to go to West captains leading “companies” of Latter-day Point. Neither did the transformative effects on Saints on their journey by foot from Omaha to the American society of the Japanese attack on Pearl Great Salt Lake Basin. One was Job Pingree, a Harbor—which he remembers listening to radio successful merchant, prosperous banker—the co- broadcasts of with his parents—dissuade him founder of the Pingree National Bank—large from his dream. landowner, and one of Ogden’s first residents. The other was Richard Ballantyne, who Brigham Scowcroft attended a West Point prep Young selected to be one of “Seventy” of the program in Lafayette College in Easton, PA, Church of the Latter-Day Saints and was the where he overlapped with future senator Frank founder of the Mormon Sunday school system. A Church and Henry Kissinger, who were both with third, and Brent’s most famous great-grandfather, the Army Specialized Training Program. In July was John Scowcroft. John Scowcroft founded 1944 he started at the U.S. Military Academy, Scowcroft & Son’s, a highly successful dry goods where he was a member of the last WWII cohort wholesaler, which became the largest such that had a three-year curriculum, because of the company between the Mississippi and the wartime need for more Army and Army Air California coast. Its best-known product was Corps officers. Upon graduating in the top third “Never Rip Overalls,” which in 1909 Scowcroft of his class, he joined the Army Air Corps. & Sons produced at the rate of two-thousand pairs After training at air force bases in San per day. By 1914, the company employed 250 Antonio and Chandler, Arizona—where to workers alone for fabricating overalls, work survive the desert heat they had to get up at 4:00 pants, and work shirts. a.m. to fly—he became a pilot for a Strategic Air Command fighter escort. It was while on a dog- A significant address presented at the Scowcroft Legacy Conference Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas on April 26, 2016 For National Security: Gen. Brent Scowcroft fight training exercise in central New Hampshire, had spent several months at Mather Air Force in early January 1949 that “Scowcroft base in central California. miraculously escape[d] death” (as the Manchester Union Leader reported). The engine It was also while Scowcroft was at Valley of his F51B Mustang failed at 2000 feet, too low Forge Army Hospital that he received a letter an altitude to use the parachute, so Scowcroft from Col. Herman Beukema, the head of the tried to crash-land his aircraft. After tearing loose Department of Social Sciences at West Point and some telephone cables, hitting a stone bridge, and the former head of the Army Specialized Training missing a passenger bus by about a hundred Program, who invited him to return to the U.S. yards, Scowcroft’s plane came to rest on a frozen Military Academy to teach. After studying marsh, just outside Derry, New Hampshire. Public Law and Government at Columbia University for eighteen months and earning a Scowcroft had two broken vertebrae as Masters Degree, Scowcroft would teach for four well as other, less serious injuries, but he was years at his alma mater. He was then billeted to nonetheless in some ways fortunate: he could Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where he worked as the have easily been killed or paralyzed, and his assistant air attaché, a position in intelligence, for plane, full of fuel, could have caught fire and two years and where he became acquainted with exploded. Confined to a plaster cast from waist ambassador George Kennan. Scowcroft was then up initially and having to spend two years in assigned to teach at the Air Force Academy’s military hospitals because of complication, it was Department of Political Science, where he served a difficult period. Not only was he told that he as deputy department head and then department would not be able to fly again, but barely a month chair. after the crash he learned that his father, James Scowcroft, had died of heart failure. Scowcroft then went to work in the Pentagon under Maj. Gen. Richard Yudkin for The two had been close and Brent several years. He worked with U.S.-Latin assumed that his father would help him learn the American military relations, did Long-Range family business, which he would take up after his Planning, directed the Air Force’s component of time in the Army. But now, lying in hospital beds Vietnamization, and assisted the Joint Chiefs of for months on end and with a career in the family Staff. In between his various positions he business, absent his father, now much less attended the National War College and, with his appealing, Scowcroft realized he wanted to study performances, attracted the attention of his Air national security and to contribute to U.S. Force superiors. national security. It was no accident, then, that Gen. John The good news was that while at Valley Vogt selected Scowcroft as Nixon’s White House Forge Army Hospital recovering from his broken military assistant, upon the recommendation of back, Scowcroft met 1st Lt. Marian Horner, a Maj. Gen. James “Don” Hughes, who suggested nurse with the Army Air Corps. Marian, “Jackie” that Scowcroft replace him as military assistant. to her friends, was vivacious, outgoing, and Generals Hughes and Vogt figured that once immensely capable. She was a Roman Catholic Scowcroft took over as the President’s military from Syracuse, New York, two years older than assistant, he had the intelligence, academic Brent and, because of her great competence, training, administrative savvy, and personality to positive attitude, and strong work ethic, had just attract Kissinger’s attention. They knew that Lt. been awarded the “Outstanding Nurse” at Valley Gen. Alexander Haig, deputy to National Forge Army Hospital. Brent and Jackie married Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, wished to in September 1951, in Sumter, South Carolina return to the Army, and they wanted an Air Force (where she was stationed) after Scowcroft had officer to serve as Kissinger’s right-hand man, finally recovered after some complications and since the deputy national security advisor was the 2 For National Security: Gen. Brent Scowcroft first to brief the president each morning and was Embassy and Department of Defense, so as to in constant contact with the President by virtue of calculate how many persons remained to be Nixon’s role as commander in chief. evacuated. They coordinated actions with the State Department and the Pacific Command. Were Scowcroft to become Kissinger’s Mostly, though, they simply tried to impose order new deputy, he would be well placed to learn of and ensure a modicum of cohesion on what developments vital to Air Force interests, such as Scowcroft called a “confusing, crazy” mess. But diplomatic breakthroughs or early versions of the to Scowcroft’s and the administration’s credit, federal budget. Hughes and Vogt figured, too, the military was able to evacuate 130,000 that they would then be kept apprised of Vietnamese in April 1975, ten times the number Kissinger’s plans. Like other top Pentagon planned for by the State Department. In the final officers, they distrusted and feared Kissinger fourteen hours alone of April 29th and 30th, because of his unpredictable foreign policy and Marine helicopters succeeded in lifting out apparent influence over President Nixon. They almost 8,000 U.S. military personnel, Saigon particularly disliked having the National Security Embassy officials, South Vietnamese, and their Advisor tell them how many and what kind of dependents.