The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project GENERAL CHARLES GRAHAM BOYD Interviewed

The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project GENERAL CHARLES GRAHAM BOYD Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: February 27, 2019 Copyright 2020 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Rockwell City, Iowa, 1938 Attended Baylor University, Waco, Texas 1956–1958 Air Force Pilot Training 1959–1960 James Conally Air Force Base, Waco, Texas Bainbridge Air Base, Bainbridge, Georgia Greenville Air Force Base, Greenville, Mississippi Nellis Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada Entered the Air Force 1961 Luzon Island, Philippines—F-105 Fighter Pilot, Clark Air Force Base 1961–1963 Nuclear Alert Victorville, California—George Air Force Base, F-105 Fighter Pilot 1963–1964 Wichita, Kansas—McConnell Air Force Base, F-105 Fighter Pilot 1964–1965 Bangkok, Thailand—Royal Thai Airforce Base, F-105 Fighter Pilot 1965–1966 Hanoi, Vietnam—Hoa Lo Prison, Prisoner of War 1966–1973 Interrogation and torture Prisoner march through Hanoi Relations with fellow prisoners Ho Chi Min’s death Son Tay raid Outside communication Propaganda Repatriated 1973 Homecoming Spousal relations post-war BA, Air Force Institute of Technology, University of Kansas 1973–1975 1 Spanish language skills MA, Air Force Institute of Technology, University of Kansas 1975–1976 Attended Air War College, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 1976–1977 Naples, Italy—Allied Forces Southern Europe, Special Assistant to the 1977–1979 Chief of Staff Managing staff input Command briefing Soviet threat Naples, Italy—Allied Air Forces, Southern Europe, Executive Officer to the Chief of Staff 1979 Air Force relations in the Mediterranean Washington, D.C.—Pentagon, Directorate of Plans, Chief, Western Hemisphere Division 1979–1980 Air Force relations with Latin America and the Soviet Union Interactions with Canada Washington, D.C.—Pentagon, Joint and National Security Council, Deputy Assistant Director 1980–1982 Process of resolutions within the council Green Desk Influential Coworkers at the Pentagon Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany—U.S. Air Forces in Europe, Ramstein Air Base, Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Programs 1984–1986 Lance Lord and the GLCM Missile bed down Air Force Budget Perception of other European Air Forces and their roles in NATO Soviet air threat in Europe Chain of command in the Air Force th Bossier City, Louisiana—8 Air Force, Barksdale Air Force Base, Vice Commander 1986–1988 Goldwater-Nichols law and Congress-Military relationship The story of Memphis Belle Transition into Strategic Air Command [SAC] Medical clearance to return to flying Washington, D.C.—Pentagon, Office of Deputy Chief of Staff, Director of Plans 1988–1989 Duties as a planner 2 Account of William J. Crowe and Sergey Akhromeyev’s meeting Global issues in relation to planning Washington, D.C.—U.S. Air Force, Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Operations 1989–1990 Working with General Larry Welch Maxwell, Alabama—Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Commander 1990–1992 Changes within the Air University Changes within the Air Force Institute of Technology Curriculum at Maxwell Trip to Moscow and the break up of the Soviet Union General LeMay stories Leaving Maxwell and the undoing of reforms Stuttgart-Vaihingen, Germany—U.S. European Command, Deputy Commander in Chief 1992–1995 Drawdown of forces at the end of the Cold War War in Bosnia Staff within EUCOM [U.S. European Command] Wife’s death and effect on the family The Garmisch-Partenkirchen School Evacuation duties in Africa Rwandan Genocide aid Spending more time with the family Retired from the U.S. Air Force 1995 Washington, D.C.—House of Representatives, Strategy Consultant to Speaker Newt Gingrich 1995–1998 st Washington, D.C.—U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21 Century, Executive Director 1998–2001 9/11 report Washington, D.C.—Council on Foreign Relations, Senior Vice President 2001–2002 Washington, D.C.—Business Executives for National Security [BENS], President and CEO 2002–2009 Washington, D.C.—Business Executives for National Security [BENS], Member of Board of Directors 2009–present 3 INTERVIEW Q: Today is an interview with General Charles G. Boyd … BOYD: Charles Graham Boyd … Q: … being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, and I’m Charles Stuart Kennedy. ORIGINS AND CHILDHOOD Q: To begin with, when and where were you born? BOYD: I was born in Rockwell City, Iowa, on April 15, 1938. Q: Tell me please what you know about the Boyd family? BOYD: There are two sides of my family, of course: the Boyd family and the Staton family. Q: Give us a sense of timing, too, as you go. BOYD: Yes. My father Henry Graham Boyd was born in 1903 in Palmer, Illinois. He was the son of a storekeeper who moved to southwestern Missouri in 1908 to become a farmer. My father was the eldest of a family of eight children. His father, my paternal grandfather, the storekeeper, died when my father was 14. As the eldest, my father became the breadwinner for that family. He raised the family actually, all the way to putting the youngest one through high school. He then moved to Iowa, becoming an itinerant farm worker and, after a time, began a family of his own. So, I’m the product of a union between that man, Henry Graham Boyd, and my mother, Vernal Staton, who was born in Auburn, Iowa, in 1908. She was also from a family of eight children. .That marriage produced one other child, my sister Shirlee Glee Boyd, now Shirlee Boyd Bouch, the better half of a wonderfully close lifetime friendship. Q: What do you know about your mother’s background? BOYD: My mother’s parents were of English heritage. We’re not sure when her ancestors came to this country. I do know that my grandfather on my mother’s side, Arthur Staton, was orphaned at age five and grew to the age of thirteen under difficult family circumstances. He then left home, became an itinerant on his own, wandering about the country, sort of a vagabond. 4 When the Spanish-American War began he joined the Army, was sent to the Philippines, saw combat, returned to the states as the conflict drew to a close, and was mustered out of the service. With no home to return to, he followed an Army colleague to the Midwest, met the chap’s sister, married her, and became a farmer. So that’s my parents’ brief history and launches me into my own life story. Q: A quick question first, please: What can you tell us about your parents’ educations? BOYD: My father completed eighth grade, whereupon he became a full-time provider for his family, as I just noted. My mother graduated from high school and, following high school, she became a country schoolteacher. In those days in that part of the world there were small one-room schoolhouses that taught children from kindergarten through the eighth grade. She did that until she and my father were married. Neither one of them had any education beyond that: my father eighth grade, my mother high school. Q: Very typical for that … BOYD: … for that era, yes. Q: So, let’s get to you, then, as a child. Let’s talk about where you grew up. BOYD: I grew up on a farm near Rockwell City, Iowa. It was a small agricultural enterprise, but not exactly a typical family farm. It was actually a couple of different farms, dairy, and dirt farming. My father rented out 160-acres on a sharecrop basis. My parents were frugal people. They saved their money, bought a small piece of land, of about 80 acres, while maintaining their home on, and working the rented farm, and simultaneously farming the 80 acres, Now, this was a time, just before World War II, when land prices were going up rapidly. They managed to take one good crop off of that 80-acre farm, and then used the profits to buy a 120-acre naked farm, without buildings. They took a couple of crops there, and eventually they had enough money to buy a 160-acre farm of their own. That’s the farm I remember growing up on. By the time I was about 11 years old, in 1949, I was helping to run a dairy and multi-crop agricultural enterprise, with all kinds of livestock. I did that until I graduated from high school in 1956. Q: Well, let’s talk about early education. What sort of school did you go to first? BOYD: A one-room kindergarten school. For first grade I moved into a public school, one building with all 12 grades. I think we had mostly just one class per grade, sometimes two. I spent a lot of time in that building, graduating high school, as I said, in June 1956. Q: So, these were not large classes, right? How small were they? 5 BOYD: My high school graduating class was 56 students. Most of the kids were farm kids, though there were a few who lived in town. Their fathers were storekeepers or bankers or what have you, but the culture was that of an agricultural area. Farm values, hard work, worrying about the weather, predominated. I grew up working on that farm and then as I got a little older I worked as a laborer in the summertime, earning money baling hay, working with tractors and crops, whatever was available that I could do—and by then I could do pretty much anything on a farm. Between my junior and senior years in high school I took a job with a highway construction company building highways. The following summer, after I graduated, I became a truck driver., driving a gravel truck on construction projects.

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