The name Brent Scowcroft—as austere, old-fashioned, and flinty a name as they come—first caught my attention in the mid-1970s. I remember reading of General Scowcroft in newspaper and magazine articles about the Ford administration, yet the articles had little about Scowcroft beyond mentioning his titles as deputy national security advisor and then national security advisor. He seemed to be playing an important role, while the lack of sustained press attention he received stood in stark contrast to the voluminous press and often harsh criticism that Henry Kissinger and later Zbigniew Brzezinski attracted.
Scowcroft’s name reappeared in the national news when in 1983 he was appointed as the chairman of the President’s Commission on Strategic Forces—the eponymous Scowcroft Commission—and then one of three members of the Tower Commission, right after the Iran-Contra scandal broke. Again, the news stories contained little on Scowcroft himself. This changed in 1988, when president-elect George Bush again appointed him as national security advisor. Scowcroft made the headlines more often this time, occasionally appeared on television, and attracted some criticism in the press. He nonetheless mostly escaped personal attacks—an impressive feat, considering the fierce and bitter politics characteristic of presidential administrations and the nation’s capital. Nearly ten years after leaving the Bush White House, Scowcroft regained national prominence in August 2002 with his controversial dissent in the Wall Street Journal.
As a student of the United States’ international relations and of the executive branch, I found my curiosity sparked by this history. Here was someone whose fingerprints were all over the last four decades of American foreign relations, and yet few journalists, historians, or other political analysts had lifted those prints and investigated General Scowcroft’s long record of achievement. The more I read about Scowcroft and the more I spoke to others, the more interesting and important his life seemed to be. For me to translate this developing interest into a book took far more than my own initiative, however; it took the extensive and repeated help and cooperation of many others.
I never would have proceeded with the biography, or at least not in any form resembling the present book, were it not for General Scowcroft’s generous cooperation and the assistance of his colleagues at the Scowcroft Group, especially that of Gail Turner, his personal assistant, and Virginia Mulberger, managing director of the Scowcroft Group. Dozens of other friends and colleagues of Scowcroft likewise generously devoted their time to talk to me about Scowcroft and US national security in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Although I do not cite all of my interviewees in the text, they provided me with the context, details, and color that gave me a fuller sense of Scowcroft’s contributions and the world of which he has been part. Among those I talked to were Elliott Abrams, Don Bailey, James A. Baker III, Richard Barth, Reginald Bartholomew (deceased), Jean Becker, Lance Betros, David Boren, Jack Brennan, Zbigniew Brzezinski, R. Nicholas Burns, George H. W. Bush, Frank Carlucci, David Carney, Sandra Charles, Daniel Christman, Dick Cheney, Mrs. Frank (Bethine) Church, Carl Colby, Timothy Deal, David Demarest, Joan Dempsey, John Deutch, Blair Dorminey, Lawrence Eagleburger (deceased), Marianne Eagleburger (deceased), Charles Ferguson, Marlin Fitzwater, Sherman Fleek, Florence Gantt, Robert Gates, Jake Garn, Toby Gati, Leslie Gelb, Robert A. Goldwin (deceased), Larry Goodson, Michael Gordon, Paul Gorman, Clinton Granger, Alan Greenspan, Deb Gullett, Bill Gulley (deceased), Stephen Hadley, Lee Hamilton, Robert Hathaway, Richard Haass, Carla Hills, David Hoffman, Robert Hormats, Jonathan Howe, Robert Hutchings, David Ignatius, Bobby Ray Inman, Karl Jackson, Irwin Jacobs, David Jeremiah (deceased), Amos Jordan, Robert Jordan, Walter Kansteiner, Arnold Kanter (deceased), Frederick Kempe, Bobbie Kilberg, Robert Kimmitt, Henry Kissinger, Susan Koch, William Kristol, David Lake, James Langdon, Jan Lodal, Catherine Lotrionte, Winston Lord, Hans Mark, Jack Matlock, Robert McFarlane, Michael Meese, Eric Melby, Andrea Mitchell, Virginia Mulberger, Sam Nunn, Phyllis Oakley, Robert Oakley, Douglas Paal, Jay Parker, George Perkovich, Thomas Pickering, Daniel Poneman, Walter Pincus, Richard Pipes, Roman Popadiuk, Colin Powell, Jonathon Price, Condoleezza Rice, Nicholas Rostow, J. Stapleton Roy, Kevin Scheid, Bob Schieffer, Michael Shifter, George Shultz, Thomas Simons, William Sittmann, William Y. Smith, William Smyser, William Stearman, James Steinberg, John Sununu, Paul Thompson, Margaret Tutwiler, Craig Unger, Marvin Weinbaum, James Woolsey, and Philip Zelikow. I am also appreciative of the cooperation of Scowcroft’s grandnephew James Hinckley, his nephew Robert Hinckley, his grandniece Catie Hinckley Kelley, his niece Sheri Piergeorge, and his daughter, Karen Scowcroft. My apologies to any whose names have been inadvertently omitted.
I owe special thanks to those who read parts of chapters, one or more chapters, or the entire text of my manuscript. They saved me from many errors and forced me to be more precise. I am fortunate to have received comments from Timothy Brook, Sherman Fleek, Jim Hornfischer, Robert Kimmitt, Kenneth Kitts, Susan Koch, Mark Atwood Lawrence, Patricia Maclachlan, Paula Newberg, Peter Osnos, Richard C. Roberts, David Schmitz, Ted Sparrow, Robert Strong, Robert Suettinger, Guillermo Velasco, and Ralph Wetterhahn.
I am also very appreciative to the contributions of acquaintances, colleagues, and friends who answered questions, explained events, pointed me in helpful directions, or assisted me in other ways: Lance Betros, Philip Bobbitt, Janet Bogue, H. W. Brands, Bruce Buchanan, Michael Desch, Jeffrey Engel, Frank Gavin, Christine Fair, Stephen Holmes, Seymour Hersh, William Inboden, Don Inbody, Bryan Jones, Paul Kens, W. Roger Louis, Patrick McDonald, Robert Moser, Michael Nelson, Shannon O’Brien, Patrick Roberts, Elspeth D. Rostow (deceased), Mary Elise Sarotte, Jeremi Suri, and Mark Updegrove. I also want to thank Kit Belgum, Jason Brownlee, Patrick Conge, George Forgie, Rod Hart, Timothy Naftali, Gwenn Okruhlik, Molly and Skip Silloway, Dan Sterneman, and P. Hartley Walsh.
I am very grateful to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for a residential fellowship, to the George Bush and Gerald Ford presidential libraries for travel allowances, to the College of Liberal Arts and the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Texas at Austin for indispensable leave time, and to Gary Freeman and Robert Moser, chairs of the Department of Government at the University of Texas, for their long-standing support.
Administrators, archivists, and librarians affiliated with the above institutions and other government and nonprofit institutions also offered invaluable assistance: the Bush Presidential Library in College Station (Zachary Roberts in particular), the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (Ray Wilson), the US Military Academy, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Janet Spikes), Columbia University (Kay Achar), Lafayette College (Pamela Murray), the George Marshall Foundation (Paul Barron), the Library of Congress, the Hoover Institution, the Air Force Historical Research Agency, the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the Hinckley Institute of Public Affairs, the LBJ Presidential Library, and the University of Texas Department of Government.
For help with the photographs, I thank Amy Bowman, Ed Brouder, Carolyn Brierley, Kenneth Hafeli, Mary Finch, John Fletcher, Aryn Glazier, Tom Hildreth, Melissa Johnson, Jessica Pappathan, Brent Scowcroft, and Lee Witten. Oxford University Press granted me permission to publish material (mostly from Chapter 17) previously published in “Bartholomew H. Sparrow, ‘Realism’s Practitioner: Brent Scowcroft and the Making of the New World Order, 1989–1993,’ Diplomatic History (2010) 34 (1): 141–175.
Several University of Texas undergraduates—undergraduates no longer and who have moved on to bigger things—helped me transcribe interviews, find facts, trace sources, and complete other tasks. Hannah DeMartini, Taylor Perk, Elizabeth Resendez, and Heather Winkle, in particular, were terrific. Edgar Walters helped with translation of German-language documents.
Jim Hornfischer, my agent, was encouraging, supportive, and offered valuable feedback throughout, from soon after I approached him in 2008 through the manuscript’s completion.
At PublicAffairs, I have been lucky to work with editor and now publisher Clive Priddle, his predecessor and the founder of PublicAffairs, Peter Osnos—who, to my good fortune, took a personal interest in the project—managing editor Melissa Raymond, and others on the PublicAffairs team. I could not have asked for a more professional, quicker, or more helpful editor than Karl Weber. Karl helped me focus the manuscript, eliminate extraneous material (painfully!), and write as concisely and directly as possible.
John Padgett, my former PhD adviser and friend, encouraged me to be thorough and not to rush. His advice dovetailed with my own sense: that Brent Scowcroft’s life warranted an extensive study. The result was that this project took longer to complete than I envisioned. So I thank PublicAffairs and Clive Priddle, in particular, for his forbearance. I am also thankful for the continued interest shown by my parents, brothers and sisters, and in-laws. They persistently, but never impatiently, inquired about the book and never seemed to tire of my invariable answer of “Soon,” to their repeated questions of “When are you going to be done?”
Polly Lanning Sparrow has been my invaluable partner. Besides her patience and willingness to take care of most of the home front while I spent hours on end in my office working on “the book,” as a former journalist and editor, Polly contributed a needed perspective on various aspects of the project, answered questions about phrasing and tone, and helped immensely with her good judgment.
I have been blessed to have had so much support.