6

MILITARY ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT

SECRET SERVICE AGENTS surrounded the dingy twenty-year-old light blue Mercedes sedan with a cracked and curled leather dashboard they found parked on West Executive Avenue the morning of December 15, 1971. No one knew whose car had been left on the White House grounds, and it was about to be towed—until White House officials discovered it belonged to Col. Brent Scowcroft, who had parked it there that morning after driving in for his first day of work as President Nixon’s new military assistant.¹

The pale, short, and slightly built man didn’t impress his new colleagues. He claimed to be an Air Force colonel, but he was wearing a nondescript civilian suit. His open and friendly face, receding hairline, and cordial demeanor gave his new colleagues further reason to think he would be a pushover. And they laughed when he naively asked for a White House organizational chart so as to make sense of his new responsibilities. Those with government experience know that formal titles reveal little about anyone’s actual role, since the exact responsibilities and actual importance of any assistant or deputy are notoriously particularistic and protean. But for Scowcroft, who was used to the military’s rigid hierarchies and organizations, the presidential system came as “an enormous change, an enormous shock.”²

Other White House officials were underwhelmed upon meeting Nixon’s new military assistant. When Lawrence Eagleburger, then a member of Kissinger’s NSC staff, first met the soft-spoken and pleasant-mannered Scowcroft, he considered him a Caspar Milquetoast. Frank Carlucci, then with the Office of Management and Budget, later recalled having seen no signs of Scowcroft’s “brainpower and strategic sense.” And Nixon aide Col. Jack Brennan thought that the new military assistant seemed like a “small, meek-looking guy.” He “fools you a little bit initially,” as Representative Lee Hamilton later noted. “He doesn’t try to impress you.”³

Scowcroft’s new teammates soon realized that he was no pushover. And he quickly earned the respect and affection of US Marine Corps Sgt. Warren “Bill” Gulley and the other staff members who worked in the White House Military Office in the East Wing, right next to the First Lady’s suite.4 Scowcroft had “no ideology [and] no ego,” Gulley said, calling him “a fish I hadn’t worked for before” and the “closest thing to a patriot” he’d ever encountered.⁵

Scowcroft’s new colleagues appreciated the fact that their boss wasn’t impressed by his White House position, awed by prestigious titles, or intimidated by officials with higher rank. Nor did he flatter or curry favor with those who had more seniority—a refreshing contrast to most other ambitious aides. He seemed to respect people no matter their position or fame. Most important, Scowcroft was utterly committed to fulfilling his duties as well as he could and to serving the president of the United States. In this role, he was much more of a bureaucrat or even a “fixer”—someone who could be counted on to handle touchy or tricky problems with skill and discretion—than a policy maker.

The new military assistant continued to drive his old Mercedes to the White House for another several days, refusing the offer of a car and driver. But Scowcroft eventually accepted the fact that he needed the secure communications accompanying the car and driver, since one of his roles was as an emergency action officer in the Office of Emergency Management (forerunner of the Federal Emergency Management Agency), and he had to be available at any time.

President Lyndon B. Johnson had created the position of military assistant. Previously, four military aides, one from each service branch, had jointly managed the Defense Department’s White House assets. It was LBJ’s idea to elevate one aide above the others and put him in charge. As the highest-ranking military officer on the White House staff, the military assistant would be responsible for all of the Defense Department’s personnel and equipment dedicated to the service of the president and his family, advisers, other White House staff, and guests.

These assets included the Presidential Airlift Group, operated by the Air Force, which consists of the various aircraft used by the president, the vice president, cabinet secretaries, other officials, family members, and guests. They included the White House’s fleet of thirteen or so helicopters (Marine Helicopter Squadron One) operated by the Marine Corps. They included the motor pool of cars and limousines, operated by the Army, as well as the White House Communications Agency, which sets up and secures the president’s communications in the White House and while traveling, operated by the Army Signal Corps. And they included the presidential yacht Sequoia and other boats used by the White House, Camp David, the White House mess and dining facilities, the White House social aides, and the White House doctors and medical staff (the White House Medical Group) as well as Bethesda Naval Hospital, all of which are operated by the Navy. And they included the Special Programs Office, in charge of the emergency bomb shelters. In short, the military assistant managed many of the programs, processes, and staff that kept the American presidency in operation.

Despite the fact that the White House Military Office, with about two thousand employees, constitutes by far the largest group of staff in the White House, it remains almost entirely out of view to visitors, the public, and even White House officials and staff, since the officers and enlisted men and women working for the president are spread across different offices, do not wear their military uniforms, and serve a wide variety of functions.6 What is more, the sizable budget of the Military Office is buried within the Pentagon budget and divided among separate accounts spread across the four military services. Hiding these dollar figures from public view dissuades politicians and reporters from grandstanding in front of their colleagues and television by announcing “the president and his staff spend $500,000 a year on telephone calls,” for instance, or declaring “presidential air travel cost $6,000,000 to U.S. taxpayers in the first half of the year alone.”⁷

The size of the budget dedicated to the US president and his entourage was another LBJ legacy. Lyndon Johnson and then Richard Nixon were the first presidents to insist upon the luxurious accommodations that later presidents, their families, their advisers, and their guests have come to take for granted—and that the American public, the press corps, and other politicians now expect of the office.

Johnson and Nixon also used US government assets for their private residences. President Johnson used funds from the White House Military Office to finance work at his ranch in Johnson City, Texas, fifty miles west of Austin. He had US government property and gifts shipped down to Texas, installed an airplane runway, converted a hangar into a movie theater, and had other improvements done. LBJ also used US government airplanes to take four secret trips down to a 110,000-acre ranch in Chihuahua that he leased from former Mexican president Miguel Alemán—in the process violating US and Mexican customs regulations, FAA regulations, and rules on presidential travel outside the United States, among other restrictions.⁸

When Nixon assumed office, he had work done on his Key Biscayne compound to suit it for presidential use and fixed up his San Clemente house. He had Camp David transformed into a luxurious retreat and elegantly redecorated the White House. Twice he rebuilt the interior of Air Force One. (H. R. “Bob” Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff, had done the original redesign, but because there was no way to go from one end of the plane to the other without walking through the First Lady’s cabin, the president insisted on a second redesign.) Both Johnson and Nixon made use of extra funds tucked away in Pentagon budgets as well as a secret fund—since discontinued—for exceptional projects.9

The journalists and political scientists who wrote in the mid-1970s about the “imperial presidency” were referring to the executive’s increase of power relative to the other branches of government, but they could have just as easily been commenting on the luxury now associated with the White House and other presidential facilities. The presidential scholar Richard E. Neustadt made precisely this point in his classic study Presidential Power, when he wrote of the “extraordinary self-indulgence” of presidents Johnson and Nixon.¹⁰

It was Scowcroft’s job as military assistant to run this small empire. Therefore, much of his attention was taken up by efforts to ensure that President Nixon’s accommodations were up to snuff. And Nixon’s chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, was his boss, with oversight of all the improvements and other projects. Scowcroft had to spend much of his time appeasing Haldeman, a demanding, hard-nosed man who, when he saw the slightest thing that needed attention—whether in the White House, aboard Air Force One, at Camp David, or elsewhere—was quick to telephone Scowcroft or dash off a memorandum. Not only did the chief of staff micromanage, he complained constantly and bullied; Scowcroft was by no means the only victim of his bullying.

Scowcroft saw to it that his boss’s requests, however trivial, were quickly carried out. At Nixon’s Key Biscayne compound (the “Florida White House”), for instance, Haldeman had Scowcroft do an assortment of jobs—fixing loose boards along the edge of the helicopter pad, getting dead car batteries replaced, installing a pair of outdoor stereo speakers at one of the villas, and checking to see that that same villa was equipped with an AM/FM radio. He ensured there was TV reception aboard Air Force One and that movie cassettes could be viewed in flight. He supervised the delivery of a new Boeing 707 as a backup Air Force One, and ordered a fleet of new presidential helicopters. He planned routes for the Sequoia to take on the Washington waterways for when the president was entertaining—including one-way trips with helicopter-ride returns—and supervised the remodeling of Camp David. Scowcroft also had to decide who would receive dining privileges at the well-subsidized White House Mess (a much sought-after status symbol), set the food prices, and scheduled the seatings for meals.11

Scowcroft handled the arrangements for state events as well. He had to oversee the logistics of President Harry Truman’s funeral in Independence, Missouri, on December 28, 1972, as well as the details of President Nixon’s motorcade for his second inauguration on January 20, 1973. And when Leonid Brezhnev gave the president of the United States a new Volga 70 hydrofoil—which Scowcroft had ridden during the June 1972 US-Soviet summit in Moscow—the military assistant saw to its docking in Baltimore harbor and its eventual destination.¹²

Despite the mundane nature of many of these tasks and despite Haldeman’s frequent complaints and harsh memoranda, Scowcroft invariably remained poised, cordial, and professional. He accepted responsibility for any problems that arose and didn’t let Haldeman, whom he described as a “very, very difficult” person, get to him. Because of his perseverance, professionalism, and ability not to personalize matters, he was able to say in good faith that he “got along all right” with Haldeman.¹³

Other aspects of Scowcroft’s job as military assistant took him in wholly different directions. Scowcroft’s most impressive performance may have been in an uncomfortable, poignant role: his responsibility for corresponding and meeting with the parents, families, and loved ones of US servicemen in Vietnam who had been taken as prisoners of war (POWs) or who were missing in action (MIAs). Although this part of his job didn’t take up a great deal of his time, “it was very stressful,” he said, and “very complicated.”¹⁴

When family members of POWs and MIAs wrote to President Nixon, Kissinger, or other administration officials about their sons (there were no women in combat at the time), Scowcroft’s assignment was to draft letters in response, often in Nixon’s or Kissinger’s name. In some cases, the families would request a visit with the president, and Scowcroft would see to the arrangements so that groups of POW or MIA families (the Forgotten Americans Committee of Kansas, Inc., for example) could meet with Nixon. He also corresponded with families and Defense Department officials about getting POWs home.

Making Scowcroft’s job particularly difficult was the fact that family members of POWs and MIAs were, as a rule, demanding and insistent. They strongly—and justifiably—believed the US government owed them a great debt for what Scowcroft later described as “the most agonizing and anguishing experience for many of these persons.”¹⁵ Many of the POWs fortunate enough to be released from prison in North Vietnam suffered from serious and long-lasting injuries that were both physical and psychological. And almost no MIAs were ever found.

Dealing with the families of the POWs and MIAs forced Scowcroft to draw upon personal reserves of compassion and to consider the many dimensions of patriotism. Scowcroft had to be diplomatic, tactful, and politically savvy. No one wanted the loss of his or her loved one to be in vain, yet different survivors took different lessons from their losses. Some became more supportive of the United States and the Vietnam War, while a number came to consider the war a terrible, tragic mistake; still others had different reactions.16 The POW-MIA problem “was a very sensitive issue and much more sensitive at the time than people [today] realize,” Scowcroft said, a matter that at once reflected and distilled the public’s attitudes on the Vietnam War. It was “a big political issue,” he emphasized, “not just an emotional one.”¹⁷

Scowcroft fulfilled these delicate responsibilities with thoroughness, patience, and kindness. He gave the POW-MIA families more time and attention than he had to, and more than his predecessors had given.¹⁸ Gen. Don Hughes had taken a tough approach to the POW and MIA survivors so as to shelter President Nixon; so had Marvin Watson, LBJ’s military assistant. Scowcroft, in contrast, made himself accessible to the families of the POWs and MIAs and was gentle with, sympathetic to, and considerate of the survivors. He wrote detailed and personalized letters in reply to those who wrote to the White House.

It was while working on the POW issue that Scowcroft met Ross Perot, the colorful, opinionated business leader who would mount eccentric third-party presidential candidacies in 1992 and 1996. The two of them “became fairly good friends,” Scowcroft later recalled. Perot “was very helpful [with the POW issue], but only to a point. He wanted to be more helpful and play a bigger role, and the White House didn’t want him to.”¹⁹

Scowcroft was also able to get Nixon himself involved.²⁰ Sergeant Gulley recollected one incident that showed Scowcroft’s willingness to go the extra mile. In 1972—Gulley didn’t remember exactly when—a Florida man wrote in to request that his father be buried in Arlington National Cemetery (the kind of random letter that Gulley and others in the White House Military Office termed “moon mail”). This man’s father had been a Good Humor man during the Second World War, bicycling around the docks with a small refrigerator and distributing ice cream free to the sailors.

Since burial in Arlington was restricted to those who had served in the military, Gulley responded to the man by writing that his father didn’t qualify for burial at Arlington. The two went back and forth, until the man, fed up, wrote Gulley saying that he was flying up to Washington National Airport with his father’s body. He threatened to throw the body over the fence, “embarrass the hell out of everyone,” and have Gulley fired. Gulley thought the man was bluffing, so he ignored him; he heard nothing more, and thought that was end of it.

A few years later, with President Ford in office, the man again wrote Gulley. In the letter, he revealed that General Scowcroft had met him at National Airport, given him a letter personally signed by President Nixon—not by robo-pen—and invited the man’s father to be buried at Baltimore National Cemetery, another veterans cemetery. But the man was writing Gulley because he still wanted his father to be buried in Arlington. When Gulley asked Scowcroft about the man’s story, Scowcroft said, “Yeah,” and volunteered nothing more. Gulley knew of no other officer or White House official who would have gone to such trouble.21

Another incident, recounted by journalist Neil Sheehan in his book A Bright Shining Lie, reveals Scowcroft’s combination of toughness and poise. Col. John Paul Vann’s middle son, Jesse, wanted to protest the war by giving one-half of his torn draft card to President Nixon at a White House ceremony following his father’s state funeral at Arlington. He planned to put the other half of the card on his father’s coffin. Of course, mutilating a draft card was a federal crime. Vann’s eldest son, John Allen, told Scowcroft what Jesse intended to do, and said that their family didn’t know how to stop him. So at the ceremony, Scowcroft sought Jesse out. He was easy to spot: the young man, who had shoulder-length blond hair, was wearing purple slacks and two-tone golf shoes. Scowcroft drew Jesse aside and calmly told him, “Whatever you think about the war and whatever you want to do about it, this ceremony is to honor your father. There is no way you can do this and not ruin the ceremony. Unless you promise us you won’t give your draft card to the president, we’ll have to cancel the ceremony.”

Scowcroft’s calm demeanor impressed Jesse, and he realized he’d be acting selfishly if he proceeded as he planned. “Okay, okay,” he promised. But Scowcroft kept his eye on Jesse throughout the ceremony.²²

Years later, when he was working as deputy national security advisor, Scowcroft was still in touch with a few of the POW and MIA wives.²³

Because of these dealings with POW-MIA families, Scowcroft got to know Nixon in a private, nonpolitical setting. He came to appreciate an unexpected side of the man—the reflective, sensitive, and compassionate Dr. Jekyll who coexisted with the devious, embittered, and vindictive Mr. Hyde described by former aides and political writers and revealed on the White House tapes.

George H. W. Bush captured Nixon’s divided personality in a letter to his sons in the summer of 1974, three weeks before the president’s resignation. “He is enormously complicated. He is capable of great kindness . . . [and] he holds people off some,” Bush observed. “But I’ve been around him enough to see some humor and to feel some kindness.” On the other hand, Bush added, “he has enormous hang-ups. He is unable to get close to people. It almost like he’s afraid to be reamed in some way—people who respect him and want to be friends get only so close—and then it is clear—no more!”24

Scowcroft got to know all these sides of Nixon. He also discovered that Nixon was a very shy man. After the president made difficult decisions, for instance, he “would go hole up in Camp David and wouldn’t talk to anybody.” And he anguished over his actions. “Was it the right decision? Would it work?”²⁵

Nixon’s Mr. Hyde was very real, and the president’s personality clearly had serious and damaging consequences for his administration. But Scowcroft recognized that Nixon was also a tortured soul and that in most situations he was profoundly insecure. He saw that the president would often lapse into tough-guy, “macho” talk among his inner circle of aides and that he easily became paranoid. Nixon was ill at ease with himself and, with rare exception, everyone else. He “never let his hair down altogether,” Scowcroft recalled. Nixon made it hard for people to love him, and because of that, Nixon also made it difficult for members of Congress, reporters, and the American public to rally to him.²⁶

Scowcroft appreciated Nixon’s kindness and humanity during their visits together with the families of the POWs and MIAs and when listening to his conversations with the survivors. He became fond of Nixon and got to see something of and to appreciate his better, less-seen side. (Before Scowcroft had met Nixon, he “was not a particular fan of his.” He was unsympathetic to how Nixon had made his political career and to “the whole notion of the internal communist menace.”) Furthermore, Scowcroft could almost always tell when Nixon was being serious and when he was only posturing. Yet the president almost always had a double agenda, Scowcroft observed—and when Nixon was dealing with him directly, he conceded he couldn’t always discern the other agenda. Scowcroft could “never be quite sure about Nixon.”²⁷

Nixon, in turn, became acquainted with his military assistant and grew to have confidence in him as an intellectual, a person of discipline, and a thoughtful man of substance. And he came to trust Scowcroft in a way he trusted few others.

Scowcroft was also responsible for the White House advance team—the crews who preceded presidential trips and coordinated presidential visits with the local officials where the visit would take place. This was a particularly important responsibility on sensitive trips abroad, such as those to Beijing, Warsaw, and Moscow.

The most important part of presidential travel was the president’s physical security. The Secret Service had to coordinate with the local police or security forces and work out the security details for his public appearances, for any travel within that city or country, and for his housing. The same applied to medical care: Scowcroft had to line up a local staff of available physicians and other emergency personnel, as well as find and approve of nearby hospitals.

The advance team was also responsible for presidential communications. The White House military office therefore had to arrange for a wiring crew and electricians—who sometimes had to secure a power source—so that the president could have a secure telephone system available wherever he was, whether immediately upon landing in a foreign city or in the president’s and senior staff’s hotel suites or guesthouses. For example, during President Carter’s August 1978 raft trip with family members down the Salmon River in Idaho, the communications personnel had to set up secure telephone stations on a series of mountaintops running parallel to the Carters’ route down the river. (Not that everything always went smoothly. During the administration of George H. W. Bush, for instance, Scowcroft was on a secure telephone line with defense secretary Dick Cheney when a strange voice suddenly came on the line. Inexplicably, it was the hotel operator.)28

Another part of the advance team had responsibility for the president’s limousine and for any other cars needed for ground transportation. If the president was going to a large city and didn’t want to shut down the city with a motorcade, the military office would transport three helicopters by Air Force cargo so that the president and his entourage could fly from the airport directly to their ultimate destination. To make things easier for regular travelers, as well as safer for himself, the president didn’t always fly to the most obvious airports. In Los Angeles, for instance, he might use the Long Beach Airport or the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport (now the Bob Hope Airport), rather than Los Angeles International Airport.²⁹

One of Scowcroft’s first trips as head of the advance team was with President Nixon on his famous visit to Beijing in February 1972. He had to oversee the president’s daily schedule, review all of the arrangements, and plan for any contingencies. He had to check the schedule and itinerary for First Lady Pat Nixon and the other women accompanying the president in the event that Nixon and his advisers were occupied and the women needed to make separate plans. Scowcroft also had to make the final decision if an issue couldn’t be worked out between the Secret Service and the local security forces or between the respective countries’ medical personnel. Because of his role, Colonel Scowcroft was the highest-ranking US military officer to visit the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 1949.30

At the time of Nixon’s visit, China—then almost universally known as Communist China or “Red China”—was still isolated internationally and recovering from the horrific Cultural Revolution. It was impoverished, bleak, barely industrialized, and extremely fearful of the Soviet Union. This was the context for Nixon’s path-breaking visit, which heralded the beginning of the warming of US-China relations. (National security advisor Henry Kissinger had already visited China secretly in July, October, and December 1971 to set up Nixon’s historic journey.)³¹

As a result of Nixon’s visit, the United States and China established understandings that would set the course of US-China relations for the next forty years. According to what would become known as the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, the United States was to neutralize Soviet threats against China, keep China current on developments regarding the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) and other significant negotiations and agreements with the USSR, offer China the same trade status as the Soviet Union, agree not to discuss US-China relations with the USSR, and agree not to pressure China to join the Geneva Disarmament Conference. President Nixon also agreed to withdraw two-thirds of US forces from Taiwan after the conclusion of the Vietnam War and not to support Taiwanese independence. The United States further promised to dissuade Japan from intervening in Taiwan and Korea and from expanding its military. And the United States and China both renounced the use of force against the other as well as against other states, and both agreed that neither country would try to dominate Asia.³²

This was tremendous progress, given that the United States and the PRC had not previously had any diplomatic relations. Nixon’s visit sparked an increase in trade between the two states and, in particular, in the sale of US arms and technology to China, including M48 tanks and C-54 transport aircraft.³³ The Shanghai Communiqué marked a significant change in the strategic terrain of the all-consuming Cold War. And while Scowcroft was responsible only for the president’s safety and for the logistics of the visit, it marked the beginning of a special relationship between Scowcroft and China that would span the rest of his career.

Less than two months later, Scowcroft headed a small advance team to prepare for a ten-day visit by President Nixon and his twenty-five-person delegation to Moscow for a summit with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. The Soviet Union was an ally of North Vietnam at the time, and by engaging with the Soviet leadership Nixon wanted to gain some leverage in US negotiations with the North Vietnamese—despite the fact that the summit came at a bad time, right after the Nixon administration had renewed its bombing of North Vietnam and had mined Haiphong harbor. The visit marked the first time a US president had traveled to the Soviet Union since Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Yalta in the Crimea in February 1945.

By most counts, the summit was a success. It resulted in several political, economic, and cultural agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union. Most important, Nixon and Kissinger’s diplomacy paved the way for the separate, difficult negotiations that resulted in the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. SALT put ceilings on the numbers of different types of nuclear weapons allowed and, as a result, slowed the escalating Cold War arms race.

Thus, the Moscow summit marked the beginning of détente—a thaw in the Cold War mean to promote a spirit of mutual coexistence, reverse the demonization of the Soviet Union, and establish a way to manage an extremely dangerous relationship. But since détente first and foremost revolved around arms control, one effect of détente was to make weapons systems sought-after chips in US-Soviet negotiations. “We have to have these [weapons] systems if we’re to be able to bargain away the Soviet systems,” Scowcroft said in reference to arms control negotiations.34 The implication was that the United States needed to keep developing new weapons so it could accumulate additional bargaining chips for use in negotiations.

Despite détente and the opening of China, the administration made little progress on the dominant foreign policy issue of the era, the war in Vietnam. And coinciding with Nixon’s foreign policy breakthroughs were the rumblings from Watergate. Nixon and his advisers had already begun to cover up the break-ins at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex.³⁵ Watergate and the Vietnam War would haunt and ultimately wreck the Nixon presidency. Scowcroft witnessed these developments as well.

Scowcroft enjoyed being military assistant. He liked the variety of tasks and challenges involved, he appreciated learning firsthand how the White House and the federal government functioned, and he enjoyed the opportunity to solve practical problems, especially with the resources of the US military and the General Services Administration at his disposal. And by all accounts he was extraordinarily conscientious, highly efficient, and immensely capable in this role. For example, Henry Kissinger—generally stingy with praise—thanked Scowcroft in writing for his “superb support” during his “trip to Moscow, Munich, London and Paris” and commented that “every aspect of the myriad of complicated logistical and communications arrangements was flawlessly handled by your people.”36

In acknowledgment of Scowcroft’s “singularly distinctive accomplishments” and his “exceptionally meritorious service in a duty of great responsibility,” President Nixon, the secretary of the Air Force, and the Air Force chief of staff awarded Scowcroft the Distinguished Service Medal. Scowcroft was cited for his “rare degree of tact and diplomatic skill in dealing with officials of the highest levels of the United States government, political personages, industrial figures, and foreign dignitaries . . . In addition, the manner in which he initiated and carried out the many sensitive and confidential duties related to the Office of the Presidency reflected a high order of judgment, discretion, and personal integrity.”³⁷ And it was during his tenure as military assistant that Scowcroft received his first star as a brigadier general, on March 1, 1972.

He served as military assistant for barely twelve months. In October 1972, Kissinger asked Scowcroft to be his new deputy national security advisor; Alexander Haig, who currently held that position, had his sights on becoming the Army vice chief of staff. In January 1973, Scowcroft started working in the West Wing, in a small office right next to Kissinger’s corner office. (Scowcroft retained the title of military assistant until August 1973, when Brig. Gen. Richard L. Lawson took over; in the months when Scowcroft nominally held both jobs, Sergeant Gulley effectively acted as Nixon’s military assistant.)

Vogt and Hughes had figured right: Scowcroft’s skill, intelligence, and tact had attracted Kissinger’s notice. With his appointment as the deputy national security advisor, Scowcroft’s dream of being able to help shape national policy was one big step closer to being realized.