7

KISSINGER’S DEPUTY

AT LEAST THREE members of Henry A. Kissinger’s National Security Council staff thought they should be selected as the next deputy national security advisor. The Pentagon gave Kissinger its own list of candidates to choose from, and General Haig wanted an Army officer to replace him. But Kissinger wanted someone else—someone who wasn’t already on his NSC staff and who wasn’t already a part of the high-level Pentagon bureaucratic game. He wanted someone he could rely upon, someone who would be loyal and who had integrity.³⁸

While he was traveling to Vietnam, France, the Middle East, and other overseas destinations, Kissinger realized Haig wasn’t always being straight with him. Rather than neutrally conveying information between Kissinger and the president, Haig was ingratiating himself with Nixon and influencing the message. “Things happened,” Scowcroft recalled, “that shouldn’t have been happening.”³⁹

Alexander Haig had many outstanding qualities. He had performed heroically as a soldier in Vietnam. He had superb staff skills, and for five years he had served as the supreme Allied commander in Europe. Kissinger found him extremely valuable during Nixon’s first term in office, since he “disciplined” the national security advisor’s own “anarchic tendencies.” Haig was able to establish “coherence and procedure” among the NSC staff, Kissinger writes in his memoirs, and he essentially viewed Haig as a “partner.” Haig was, moreover, “strong in crisis,” “decisive in judgment, skillful in bureaucratic infighting, [and] indefatigable in his labors.” And he put in longer hours than anyone else in the White House, arriving at seven in the morning and remaining until midnight, usually seven days a week, year after year.⁴⁰

Yet Haig also had a “sixth sense for bureaucratic gamesmanship,” one White House official commented, which led him to “indicate to the powers that be that he is their man.” But at the center of that power structure is the president of the United States, not the national security advisor. And Nixon found Haig a valuable ally in his complicated and often competitive relationship with Kissinger. Nixon regarded Haig as being “steady, intelligent, and tough,” and ensured his promotion to two-star, three-star, and finally four-star general “with unmatched rapidity.” He then “used Haig to pick up the pieces after Kissinger’s fiascoes, as in Haig’s two visits to [South Vietnamese president] Nguyen Van Thieu to hammer Saigon into acquiescence to the Paris peace agreements,” the military and foreign policy historian John Prados reports. Haig was able to achieve a comfortable working relationship with Nixon, whereas there was “more daylight on substance and more personal tension” in Nixon’s relationship with Kissinger.41

So Kissinger had ended up feeling distrustful of the smart and hardworking but politically slippery Haig. Meantime, he’d gotten to know Brent Scowcroft while on presidential flights together, including several clandestine missions, such as the April 1972 trip to Moscow and the secret visits to Paris to meet with North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho. “I would provide the airplane and make sure it was taken care of in Paris,” Scowcroft said, “and that’s how [Kissinger] really got to know who I was.”⁴² Kissinger found Scowcroft to have a solid grasp of strategic doctrine, discovered he could talk knowledgably about European and Russian history, and appreciated his understanding of the US government and the federal bureaucracy. Kissinger saw that Scowcroft was at once very well informed, extremely smart, immensely competent, and wholly trustworthy—precisely the sort of person he wanted to have as his new deputy. Kissinger said he wanted someone “intellectually who was my equivalent and comparable,” and in Scowcroft he found precisely that.⁴³

Nixon’s military assistant had a further quality that impressed Kissinger: his courage. The national security advisor witnessed Scowcroft’s willingness to stand up to Bob Haldeman, the “fearsome, domineering chief of staff” (Kissinger’s words), when he’d enough of Haldeman’s bullying. One day in early 1972 aboard Air Force One—the date and even the cause of the incident are unclear—Scowcroft took exception to Haldeman’s unreasonable point of view on an issue, and the two went at it. Strong words flew, and soon the two men were face-to-face, inches apart. Neither budged for what seemed hours—although probably only a minute or two elapsed—until Haldeman backed away from the considerably shorter and more slightly built Scowcroft. It took courage, Kissinger said, because “the military representative at the White House is a replaceable post.” “That’s the man I want,” Kissinger decided.⁴⁴

In mid-October, Kissinger spoke to President Nixon and Haldeman about appointing Scowcroft as his new deputy. Nixon was happy to let Kissinger make his own choice, and Haldeman, to his credit, said it “would be a superb idea.”45

Yet when Kissinger asked Scowcroft if he would like to be his deputy, he was taken aback by Scowcroft’s response. The military assistant told Kissinger—already an international celebrity—that he’d “think about it,” since he already had a good job and since he knew the national security advisor wasn’t an easy person to work for.⁴⁶

In the end, of course, Scowcroft accepted Kissinger’s invitation. But his nonchalant reaction to the offer—one that most ambitious people in Washington would have seized immediately—foreshadowed the unique quality of their relationship.⁴⁷

General Hughes and General Vogt had gauged correctly that Kissinger would pick Scowcroft as his new deputy—but they’d also misjudged their man: Scowcroft wasn’t going to be their spy. Once Scowcroft began working for the White House, his allegiance shifted to his civilian bosses.⁴⁸ And playing the role of informer didn’t suit Scowcroft’s loyal and straightforward personality. Indicatively, when Haldeman hinted to Scowcroft that he should provide President Nixon with information about Kissinger on the sly—as Haig had done—Scowcroft brushed him off.⁴⁹

SCOWCROFT WAS RIGHT in thinking that Kissinger would not be easy to work for. In fact, before Scowcroft began working as deputy national security advisor, Nixon saw to it that Haig fully informed “him on the Kissinger problem,” Haldeman later reported. Yet by virtue of his tact, his professionalism, and his ability not to take things personally, Scowcroft succeeded remarkably well in a job that required him to loyally serve two powerful, strong-willed principals—Kissinger and President Nixon—while remaining his own man.⁵⁰

Kissinger and Scowcroft ended up operating in tandem for four years: the years of Nixon’s truncated second term in office and the shortened Ford administration. Kissinger served as national security advisor from January 1969 to November 1975 and as secretary of state from April 1973 to January 1977. He held both offices from April 1973 to November 1975, and for about 90 percent of that time, Scowcroft was de facto national security advisor and managed the NSC staff.⁵¹

As a rule, Kissinger was “very abrasive to his subordinates,” recalled Admiral Moorer, and he would “frequently belittle them or demean them in public.” As one anonymous source told Marvin Kalb and Bernard Kalb (two of Nixon’s biographers), it was “a case of control or castrate” with Kissinger. Jack Brennan, who was Nixon’s military aide in the White House and then his chief of staff in San Clemente, remarked that when one of Kissinger’s assistants had a nervous breakdown from “working so hard, . . . Kissinger boasted about it.” And Lawrence Eagleburger called him “a miserable son of a bitch,” because when Kissinger first became national security advisor “he was so lacking in confidence” that he was “very, very tough” on his staff.” He demanded that his staff “get there at 6:30 and leave at 11:00, 11:30, and be there Saturday and Sunday.” But the longer Kissinger was in office and the more confident he became, Eagleburger observed, the more his “miserable” qualities were mitigated by his virtues.52

Yet Kissinger had great respect for Scowcroft. Not only did his deputy obviously possess considerable expertise and ability, but he couldn’t be intimidated. Although Kissinger sometimes verbally abused and terrified his subordinates—NSC staff members Eagleburger, Haig, and Helmut Sonnenfeldt were all favorite targets—he didn’t yell at Scowcroft. One day he tried. Kissinger lost his temper—Scowcroft couldn’t remember exactly why—and began screaming at his secretary, who broke down in tears. He then turned to Scowcroft and began yelling at him, standing right up against him, chest to chest. But Scowcroft just stood there, silent, until the slightly taller and heavier Kissinger suddenly stopped in midsentence and said, “Scowcroft, one day I’ll find a way to get to you.” He never did.⁵³

Nor did he really want to. Kissinger never berated, belittled, or bad-mouthed Scowcroft, unlike how he treated others—presidents Nixon and Ford included. In return, Scowcroft almost never deviated from his courteous, poised, and good-natured self.⁵⁴ He had the good sense to wait out his boss’s flashes of anger, which blew over quickly, without engaging him. He had the knack, too, of knowing when and how to offer suggestions or ask questions and when to be silent. And when Kissinger solicited his advice, Scowcroft listened carefully and replied thoughtfully. He “was particularly good at pointing out weaknesses in [the] conventional wisdom.”⁵⁵

Considerate of Kissinger’s pride and sensitive to his vulnerabilities, Scowcroft avoided openly questioning his judgment or challenging him in meetings or in front of the president. Instead, he waited until they were alone together or among a few trusted colleagues to question assumptions, make objections, and offer suggestions.

One tactic Scowcroft used was to ask Kissinger whether he wanted a briefing paper. If he said yes, Scowcroft would compose a short memo that considered the issue from another angle or looked at a perspective previously overlooked—often nudging Kissinger in the direction he wanted. “Most of the time Brent got his way,” Eagleburger said, although “not always.” Given that “being Kissinger’s deputy was not an easy task,” this was no small achievement, Eagleburger noted, adding, “Many times, he and I would connive to change Henry’s mind.”56 In fact, Scowcroft was better at handling Kissinger intellectually and temperamentally than anyone else in the government.

Not only did Scowcroft have the motivation, stamina, and discipline to put in grueling hours, but he had an immense amount of what we would now identify as “emotional intelligence.” As a result, Scowcroft became Kissinger’s “other self,” the author John Hersey observed. Kissinger may have had “intellectual disdain” for nearly everyone around him, Lt. Col. Robert “Bud” McFarlane remarked—including most members of Congress, many reporters and political writers, and the two presidents under whom he served—but he held Scowcroft in high regard.⁵⁷ Florence Gantt, who was Kissinger’s and Scowcroft’s personal assistant at the NSC, said she got the feeling that Kissinger never learned to respect others, but that he “had a lot of respect” for the deputy national security advisor. Winston Lord, another NSC aide and later US ambassador to China, also spoke of the “enormous respect” Kissinger had for Scowcroft.⁵⁸

Moreover, Kissinger said that when the two of them were working on national security issues together, he couldn’t remember which contributions were his and which were Scowcroft’s (except for when Kissinger was traveling, as during the Middle East shuttle diplomacy of 1973 and 1974).⁵⁹ It is possible Kissinger was being overgenerous, of course, since Eagleburger, Sonnenfeldt, NSC staff member Peter Rodman, and others all made valuable contributions to Kissinger’s decision making; nonetheless, the remark suggests how close the two of them were and how well each complemented the other.⁶⁰

The two men were quite different, to be sure. Whereas Kissinger was excitable, impatient, impetuous, self-centered, and occasionally malicious, Scowcroft was calm, patient, cautious, modest, and typically caring. Kissinger was perpetually concerned with intrigue, which was second nature to him, and strongly focused on obtaining his objectives, even when that meant using people. “During the worst days of Watergate,” McFarlane reported, “I knew that [Kissinger] was capable of undermining Al Haig in a conversation with Nixon one moment, and then hanging up and calling Haig to disparage Nixon in turn. He would make commitments to senators or congressmen, then call the President to rip apart the position to which he had just committed.”61 That the ends justified the means went without saying.

Kissinger’s self-consciousness and insecurity made him highly sensitive to how others in the White House corridors and in the press perceived him. He had a famously thin skin and spent considerable time and energy talking to and meeting with journalists to counteract any unfavorable reports or perceived slights. “He was a junkie for public praise,” one of his biographers writes, “and almost maniacal about guarding his reputation.” McFarlane, too, noted that “not only was Kissinger demanding and dogmatic,” he was “distrustful, hypocritical, routinely dishonest and abusive to his friends. He [was] an extremely vain man, apparently without solid spiritual anchors, who was as absorbed with how he would be perceived by future generations as he was with his genuine commitment to sound policy.” He “went at his job with a Spenglerian view of humankind,” McFarlane said, as if “his role was to exploit the vulnerabilities of others as each situation demanded, by fair means or foul, to accomplish what he thought was right.”⁶²

Although this might seem harsh, the transcripts of Kissinger’s telephone calls confirm McFarlane’s judgment about Kissinger’s egotism and mercurial nature. The phone calls offer dozens of examples of his shrewd, charming, purposeful, and disingenuous conversations with colleagues, members of Congress, and numerous reporters, a handful of columnists and editors, and a few publishers. Kissinger, Nixon speechwriter William Safire observed acidly, had an extraordinary “ability to project childlike anguish at the reaction of others to action he had recommended with cold precision.”⁶³

Scowcroft was by no means ignorant of Kissinger’s personality and treatment of others, but he also recognized his brilliance, incisive mind, strategic sense, charisma, and rare talent. Kissinger was two years older, had been a Harvard professor with a brilliant academic record, was the author of a bestselling 1957 book on nuclear warfare (Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy), and thought in broad, conceptual terms. Scowcroft appreciated the fact that Kissinger never looked at problems or solutions in isolation, but rather in conjunction with other factors. He admired Kissinger’s “unbelievable capability” at bringing the different threads of problems and solutions together and then calculating one, two, and three years ahead.⁶⁴

Scowcroft had his own well-developed sense of military strategy and world history. He was also brilliant at questioning and evaluating the merits of new ideas and policy options as well as a superb bureaucratic operator who knew how to put concepts into practice. But unlike Kissinger, Scowcroft said, he was better at reacting to and evaluating ideas than he was at dreaming them up; that was why he liked to hire people smarter than himself. “I don’t have a quick, innovative mind,” he claimed. “I don’t automatically think of good new ideas. What I do better is pick out good ideas from bad ideas.”65

Besides learning strategy from Kissinger, Scowcroft learned how to handle reporters. A master at dealing with the press, Kissinger frequently spoke by phone or over meals with leading reporters, columnists, editors, and publishers, including Stewart Alsop, Jack Anderson, Ben Bradlee, William F. Buckley, Rowland Evans, Max Frankel, Bernard Gwertzman, Richard Hottelet, Marvin Kalb, Ted Koppel, Joseph Kraft, Don Oberdorfer, Dan Rather, James Reston, William Safire, Frank Stanton, C. L. Sulzberger, and Sander Vanocur. For Bob Schieffer, Kissinger was a “gargantuan personality” who was “funny” and “could play the press . . . like a violin.” It was “just remarkable,” to Schieffer, “how good he was at it. And he never stopped. He never stopped. And, I mean, there was no detail too small.”⁶⁶ Suggestive of Kissinger’s stature, both Hugh Sidey of Time magazine and Katharine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, sometimes deferred to Kissinger, with Sidey at one point clearing a story with him and with Graham on another occasion telling him, “I was so scared . . . I’ll come running over on my knees.”⁶⁷

Since Scowcroft had little experience with journalists, Kissinger initially had him brief just one person, the columnist Joseph Alsop. He later added Meg Greenfield, a Newsweek columnist and editorial page editor for the Washington Post, and then others to the list of those he wanted his deputy to brief. Eventually Scowcroft came to have weekly meetings with a half dozen or so Washington writers, either on background or off the record, in which he’d explain what the president had decided or was thinking of doing. He became more familiar with the press and came to appreciate how important press relations were. But he never became as deeply connected with the media as Kissinger was. Telephone records show that about half of Kissinger’s calls were to journalists, a percentage that increased after the 1972 elections, when the Watergate investigations heated up.

To describe Kissinger solely in terms of his self-absorption and instrumental use of others does injustice to his complexity. Kissinger scheduled frequent meetings with his staff—especially after first taking office—listened attentively, and frequently consulted with his subordinates, which is why he sought to hire the best talent possible.⁶⁸ And while he expected and demanded that those on his staff work long hours and perform to the highest standards, he worked extremely hard himself. Underappreciated, too, was Kissinger’s intellectual honesty with respect to other people’s ideas and options, as Walter Isaacson, one of his biographers, observes. Far from wanting to have yes-men around him, Kissinger enjoyed intellectual debate and tolerated, even sought, criticism and disagreement, so long as those who disagreed with him argued with subtlety and rigor.69

Witty, brilliant, and charming—especially in pursuit of the approval or agreement of others—Kissinger could be seductive. But because he had the capacity to appear as a different person to different audiences and could say different things to those different audiences, he acquired a reputation for duplicity and untruthfulness.⁷⁰ He could be charismatic as well as cruel, inspiring as well as insulting, bold as well as petty, and creative as well as prejudiced. He could be funny, endearing, self-deprecating, and playful, just as he could be rude, abrupt, self-aggrandizing, and intolerant. And when circumstances seemed to be deteriorating, he had a “well-timed sense of humor that he [used] to break the ‘tension spell’ and then in the next few moments to get the best out of people, their best thinking.”⁷¹ If others often found Kissinger extremely difficult to take, he made things happen. People wanted to be around him; he was exciting. For all of Kissinger’s ambition, ego, arrogance, and guile, Scowcroft’s NSC colleagues and presidents Nixon and Ford appreciated Kissinger’s ability to conceive of grand designs, his diplomatic imagination, and his lofty aspirations to worthy goals, such as ending the US-Soviet arms race.⁷² Those who couldn’t stomach him or his policies, such as NSC staff members Anthony Lake, Roger Morris, and Morton Halperin, simply quit.⁷³

Notwithstanding Kissinger’s complex and sometimes difficult personality, Scowcroft very much admired him.⁷⁴ Further cementing their relationship was their convergence on foreign policy positions. In terms of international relations theory, both were realists—if Kissinger more than Scowcroft—as were Nixon and others on the NSC staff, such as Eagleburger, Sonnenfeldt, and Rodman. Specifically, Kissinger and Scowcroft believed that the United States, as the hegemon (that is, the dominant global actor), had to balance its rivals and suppress threats to the world order, whether through its own actions or through joint actions with its allies. Both agreed, too, that the United States had the burden of leading the free world against the Soviet Union or any coalition of communist or communist-allied states that might contest US global interests.

Scowcroft and Kissinger further recognized the limits of diplomacy and were skeptical of what United States could expect from other governments. They took the world as it was, with its violence, political repression, cruelty, ethnic and racial prejudices, and dysfunctional governments. They were thus wary of the capacity of ideals, shared norms, or international institutions to serve as guidelines for international relations or to constrain the behavior of other states. The practical implication of realism was that the US government had to have the means to either act on its own or ensure that its alliances with other states could safeguard its national security. In a world of many shades of gray, replete with deep ambiguities, difficult compromises, unhappy trade-offs, and half-truths, the United States needed to be able to engage in careful, discreet, and judicious foreign policy making, while being willing to take initiative on its own when necessary. Accordingly, Scowcroft and Kissinger both strongly believed in the prerogatives and privileges of the executive branch, which could afford the United States the leeway it needed to make and enact foreign policy in its best interests.

In this world of complexity and ambiguity, the United States needed a national security policy that was pragmatic, nuanced, and discreet. It couldn’t afford a policy based on absolute standards of human rights, on moral ideals, or on crystal-clear transparency, like the ideals expressed by President Woodrow Wilson in his speeches. As for the idea that Americans knew the one path to righteousness and therefore could impose their norms and principles on other states, realists believed this to be shortsighted and even arrogant. Thus, the vigorous pursuit of universal values such as human rights or democratic government risked being unpractical and backfiring on the United States.

This sort of realpolitik tended to be out of step with American values, however. Americans pride themselves on their commitment to democracy and freedom, and most have little patience for the finer points of strategy and geopolitics.75 Yet these finer points were exactly what Kissinger and Scowcroft offered an American public looking for accessible truths and moral reassurance.

Most students of the Nixon and Ford presidencies underestimate Scowcroft’s importance. With the exceptions of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Walter Isaacson, and John F. Osborne, most of those who have written about the period focus exclusively on Kissinger. If they mention Scowcroft, they variously describe him as a “pliable technician,” “Kissinger’s loyal deputy,” “Kissinger’s protégé,” or his “errand boy.” Robert T. Hartmann, President Ford’s chief political adviser and former congressional chief of staff, calls Scowcroft a “typical staff” type, and author Neil Sheehan refers to him as a “career staff officer.” The most critical label him a “Kissinger clone.” Kissinger himself did not do very much to correct the misperception; Scowcroft plays only a minor role in his multivolume memoirs.⁷⁶

These descriptions are correct in one sense: Scowcroft was Kissinger’s “loyal deputy” and “protégé” when he first began working as deputy national security advisor. Scowcroft conceded as much. He said he was unprepared for his new responsibilities upon taking office, since he hadn’t previously served on the NSC staff or held a policy-making position. So for the nine months up to September 1973, when Kissinger became secretary of state, Scowcroft was essentially a staff officer, deferential to and solicitous of his boss (although the records of their telephone conversations suggest their relationship was more consistently even-handed than the edited transcripts of their in-person conversations would seem to indicate).

Scowcroft would duck out of meetings in the Oval Office to fetch maps. He would write up Kissinger’s notes and forward them to the president. He would draft memos, make calls, or do research on Kissinger’s behalf. Sometimes these duties weren’t very pleasant. After Ford took office, for instance, Scowcroft had to tell his mentor and hero, General Andrew Goodpaster, that he was being relieved of his position as supreme Allied commander in Europe (SACEUR) to make way for Al Haig. Once Ford made the decision, he asked Kissinger to inform Goodpaster. “Kissinger in turn looked squarely at Scowcroft, who then picked up the telephone and called his good friend,” the military historian Robert S. Jordan reports. Goodpaster “was not at all pleased with the news.”77

Upon first becoming deputy national security advisor, Scowcroft wasn’t involved in setting national security policy. He’d been trained to serve his superiors and to assist them in achieving their goals, not to concern himself with the whats and whys. But to describe Scowcroft as Kissinger’s loyal aide is misleading for the reason that their relationship evolved over the course of Nixon’s shortened second term and the two and a half years of the Ford presidency. Kissinger himself considered Scowcroft far more than his staff officer. “I didn’t need a staff officer,” said Kissinger. Rather, national security policy “was an amalgam,” he said, and “when we were together I did not do anything without consulting him, without bringing him into the discussion.”⁷⁸

Scowcroft’s responsibilities gradually expanded beyond military and strategic affairs to encompass diplomacy, economics, intelligence, and other matters, and once Kissinger was appointed secretary of state in September 1973, Scowcroft became the one briefing the president, seeing him often several times a day for up to thirty minutes each time, and managing the NSC staff during an extremely difficult period in US foreign relations.⁷⁹

A brief exchange between Scowcroft and Kissinger in early 1974 suggests the shifting terms of their relationship. When Kissinger found out that Scowcroft was invited to a black-tie dinner with the ambassadors from the Organization of American States, he remarked, “Oh, are you invited to that? That’s a little more above your level.” Scowcroft merely replied, “I understand that.”80 The conversation hints at Kissinger’s insecurity, his jealousy of Scowcroft’s privileges, and his concern over appearance. But it also suggests his deputy’s calm, modesty, and self-possession. Scowcroft didn’t apologize, explain himself, or crack a joke at Kissinger’s expense. He simply admitted Kissinger’s point and phrased his reply so as to defuse any status anxiety his boss may have had.

Scowcroft understood the need to reassure and soothe Kissinger. He would affirm him by saying after something Kissinger decided, “That’s terrific, just terrific.” Or, when Kissinger said of an action, “We cannot do this now,” he affirmed his judgment by responding, “Oh no. That would be the worst possible thing to do.”⁸¹ When Kissinger, in reference to his characterization of a particular policy, for instance, asked, “Brent, have I exaggerated?” Scowcroft said, “You have bent over backward.”⁸² Neither did Scowcroft contradict or try to tone down Kissinger’s more caustic remarks, whether directed at CIA director William Colby, German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, defense secretary James R. Schlesinger, or others.⁸³ Instead, he usually commiserated, remained silent, or moved on to another subject.

The two never quite became peers during the Nixon and Ford years; Scowcroft said he always regarded Kissinger as his boss. But the longer Scowcroft worked in the West Wing, the more responsibilities he took on, the more independent he became, and the more confident he felt in his own judgment. In early 1975, for instance, Scowcroft recommended that Ford veto the 1975 foreign aid bill on the grounds that almost $500 million in the bill was to go to Israel, with none for any Arab states—despite the fact that Israel had reneged on a promise to return to Egypt two oil fields and two strategic passes it held in the Sinai. Ford vetoed the bill without telling his secretary of state, shocking Kissinger, who had wanted the bill passed. (When Senator Hubert Humphrey asked the president why he had vetoed the bill, Ford said, “Hubert, you don’t seem to understand; I am the President.” US diplomat Robert Oakley reports that Kissinger, who was also in the room, “turned purple.”) Over the following days, Scowcroft worked closely with Representative Otto Passman to revise the bill—again without direct input from Kissinger.⁸⁴

But differences between the two men were few. Kissinger trusted Scowcroft, something that didn’t come easily to him. When Kissinger married Nancy Maginnes on Saturday, March 30, 1974, he asked Scowcroft to be his best man.

Scowcroft’s subsequent promotion to national security advisor on November 2, 1975, marked another shift in the terms of their relationship. In this stage, which lasted until January 20, 1977, the end of the Ford presidency, Scowcroft became Kissinger’s near equal. Part of the reason was that Kissinger’s star had started to descend. SALT II and détente had become increasingly controversial among Republicans and across the country as the Republican Party swung to the right and as Ford’s own advisers—Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Hartmann, and others—tried to distance the president from Kissinger and the disgraced Nixon White House. But it was also because of Scowcroft’s emergence in his own right as an adviser to the president and a policy maker.

The claim that Scowcroft was merely Kissinger’s loyal deputy thus has to be understood in context of their evolving relationship. Scowcroft may have been “very quiet” and almost invisible to those outside the government, as the New York Times initially described him, but he could also be “very forceful,” as the Times also pointed out. And by no means was he bland, unemotional, retiring, or unwilling to contradict the boss, contrary to the image of a typical staff officer.85 In short, the description of Scowcroft as Kissinger’s “loyal aide” doesn’t capture Scowcroft’s true role. There were good reasons why Kissinger described their relationship as a “full partnership.”⁸⁶ In their book The Final Days, Woodward and Bernstein rightly observe that Scowcroft had perhaps as much influence on US foreign policy at this time as any White House official or cabinet member apart from Kissinger and the president.⁸⁷

IN THE YEARS following World War II, as the Cold War grew in scale and complexity, the position of national security advisor rose in prominence. US presidents needed more and more help formulating, enacting, and implementing national security policy. And they needed help managing the ever-larger cast of people, agencies, and departments involved with foreign policy, military planning, international economic policy, and grand strategy.

The accretion of power in the president’s assistant for national security affairs and the NSC staff was an uneven process. The text of the 1947 National Security Act, best known for establishing the Central Intelligence Agency, for creating the Air Force as a separate military service, and for unifying the services under a single secretary of defense, makes no mention of a “national security advisor.” However, it did establish the National Security Council, which Navy Secretary James Forrestal (later the first secretary of defense) perceptively considered the most important feature of the proposed legislation.⁸⁸

Yet the National Security Act only mentioned a civilian executive secretary to be appointed by the president, and the position of “assistant to the president for national security affairs”—the official title of the present-day national security advisor—was reserved for the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Intelligence (one of the several committees to be established within the NSC).89 For the first NSC executive secretary, President Truman appointed Rear Adm. William “Sid” Souers, an intelligence expert and the former head of the Central Intelligence Group (the successor to the wartime Office of Strategic Services and the immediate precursor of the CIA). Souers mainly assisted Truman on intelligence issues, however, and played only a limited role in the administration. He saw himself as an “anonymous servant” whose role was to help the president in any way possible, which mostly meant fostering interagency cooperation on policy planning, rather than participating in policy decisions.

For advice and options on foreign policy, military affairs, and grand strategy, Truman chiefly relied on his two secretaries of state, Dean Acheson and George C. Marshall. However, Truman did use the NSC as an “intimate forum” during times of crisis, and began to convene regular meetings to “develop, discuss, and coordinate” policy relating to the Korean War.⁹⁰

President Eisenhower, who had extensive experience with a military staff system, established an “elaborate interagency structure” for handling foreign policy decision making, with General Andrew Goodpaster as the executive secretary responsible for coordinating policy among the secretary of state, secretary of defense, director of central intelligence, and others. Goodpaster, who had Eisenhower’s complete trust, took it on himself to gather and vet different policy options for the president. Once Eisenhower decided upon a policy, Goodpaster was the one who ensured the policy got implemented. By presenting policy options with equal advocacy and without imparting his own preferences, Goodpaster set the model of the “honest broker” in foreign policy management.

It was Robert Cutler, in 1953, who became the first official to be given the title of assistant to the president for national security affairs. Cutler served in that role for two years, and then returned in 1957 for another two-and-a-half-year stint in the post. Yet Eisenhower, like Truman, chiefly relied on his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, for advice on diplomacy, military policy, and other matters of US national security.

President John F. Kennedy ultimately gave the national security advisor position its current recognizable form as the president’s chief administrator with respect to national security and his confidential adviser.⁹¹ Kennedy appointed McGeorge Bundy as his assistant for national security affairs, and Bundy, together with his small staff, oversaw the administration’s organization and handling of information and decisions on national security. An extremely able man, Bundy was impartial when presenting different recommendations and analyses to the president, just as Goodpaster had been with Eisenhower. Also like Goodpaster, Bundy organized and coordinated national security affairs and ensured that JFK’s decisions were carried out. At the same time, Bundy was closer to the president than Souers or Cutler had been.

Kennedy relied on defense secretary Robert McNamara for advice more than he did on his capable but passive secretary of state, Dean Rusk. But he relied on Bundy even more. It was Bundy who had the president’s ear, who was the closest intellectually and by disposition, and who—in another NSC innovation—began setting Kennedy’s “action agenda” of current foreign policy issues. Bundy foreshadowed the role played by such national security advisors as Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Scowcroft, and others, who have been both coordinators or guarantors of the president’s policies being carried out and their counselors and personal agents.92 Bundy was also the first presidential assistant for national security affairs to have a West Wing office.

Advances in technology under JFK further enhanced the national security advisor’s growing role. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the White House installed real-time communications in the new Situation Room, providing twenty-four-hour command and control capabilities for all US military posts, American embassies, and US departments and agencies. The national security advisor position thus took its present-day shape. Perhaps indicative of the effectiveness of the NSC process under Kennedy and Bundy was the fact that the thirty-three-member Executive Committee convened during the Cuban missile crisis produced no leaks.⁹³

Lyndon B. Johnson’s use of the national security advisor marked a step backward to some degree. Although President Johnson initially retained Bundy upon taking office, LBJ didn’t mesh well with his Harvard-affiliated national security advisor, and in early 1966 he replaced Bundy with Walt W. Rostow. Although LBJ deliberately avoided bestowing the title of national security advisor on Rostow, Rostow had Bundy’s job, in essence. He attended White House meetings on national security, made decisions about how to handle the information flow, and presented LBJ with policy options.

In contrast to Bundy, however, who saw it as his duty to ask questions and maintain intellectual skepticism, Rostow unequivocally supported the president on Vietnam. A brilliant economic historian and policy analyst, Rostow was supremely confident of his own judgment and impervious to criticism. He did not function as an honest broker; his strong views biased the information as well as the range and quality of policy options presented to LBJ. As a result, Rostow’s influence on LBJ didn’t translate to a commensurate influence on national security policy across the federal government.94

Rostow’s proximity to the president and influence on national security decision making nonetheless set an example followed by his successor, Henry A. Kissinger. Kissinger stands as the single most influential and most celebrated national security advisor in US history and in many ways defined the position. He “broke the mold,” as Kissinger’s personal assistant later put it.⁹⁵

Kissinger became national security advisor in January 1969, when Nixon first took office—noteworthy in itself, since Kissinger had been closely associated with New York governor and rival Republican presidential candidate Nelson Rockefeller—and he had Nixon’s full support in centralizing information and decision making within the national security advisor’s office and the NSC. He proceeded to establish the Washington Special Actions Group (WSAG) in May 1969, the Verification Panel (for arms negotiations) in July 1969, and the Vietnam Special Studies Group in September 1969. He chaired all three groups. By creating these groups, Kissinger in some ways returned to the administrative formality of the Eisenhower administration; in other ways, he also retained Bundy and Rostow’s roles as presidential advisers who exceeded the influence of official cabinet members. Kissinger oversaw an expanded NSC staff that included about eighty professionals and staff as well as dozens more—off the NSC budget—detailed to his staff.⁹⁶ Like Bundy, he was very close to the president and became his chief adviser with respect to US foreign policy and military affairs.

Further helping Kissinger concentrate decision-making power in his hands was his skill at bureaucratic maneuvering and his penchant for secrecy. He was notorious for not sharing information with the secretary of state, defense secretary, and others in the government—including his own aides—with the result that other government actors, especially in the military, sought to develop their own White House sources (hence the spying). Nixon gave Kissinger wide discretion and let him control policy making at the expense of secretary of state William Rogers and defense secretaries Melvin Laird and then James R. Schlesinger. If Kissinger didn’t create the secrecy of the Nixon White House, he “certainly manipulated and profited” from it, one of his biographers, Jussi Hanhimäki, observes.⁹⁷

But by collapsing the national security advisor and secretary of state into one position, Nixon—and later Ford—defeated the purpose of the national security advisor role. By overshadowing the Department of State and constantly battling with the Department of Defense, Kissinger undermined the idea of the national security advisor as an honest broker of competing interests and ideas. The role of the national security advisor and the NSC during those years “was probably not as useful or valuable as later,” Scowcroft observed—though, as deputy national security advisor under Nixon and Ford, he played a more important role than he probably would have otherwise because of the very changes Kissinger put in place.98

In the role of deputy national security advisor, Scowcroft’s assiduous work habits became even more pronounced. Informed that Kissinger needed no more than five hours of sleep a night, Scowcroft began to sleep even less—though he had to nap more, curling up on his small office couch, to survive his own seven-day workweeks of ninety to a hundred hours. Scowcroft was at the White House almost every day of the year in the mid-1970s, except when traveling with the president. During crises, he’d stay up until two or two-thirty in the morning or simply remain at the White House around the clock, except for brief trips home to visit Jackie.⁹⁹

Scowcroft’s desk at the White House was stacked high with papers—nine separate stacks, each between ten and thirty-six inches high, which rendered him almost invisible when he sat behind the desk. However, the most important papers stayed on the coffee table, and Scowcroft worked on these while seated in his armchair, where he could be seen. All of the papers would be put away in the evening, with secretaries collecting and locking them up in five drawer safes and then putting them out again the next morning, all in exactly the same order.¹⁰⁰

Scowcroft recognized he was “routinely slow” at moving paper. He wanted to read documents carefully, study them thoroughly, and mark them up. If a report or memo was urgent, he’d have the author put a little red circle on it; some memos would have three or four red circles on them. But Scowcroft said he never remembered any president ever complaining about his deliberate pace.¹⁰¹

He worked out of a small office in the West Wing, next door to Kissinger’s corner office, up until November 1973, two months after Kissinger was appointed secretary of state. Scowcroft then moved into the national security advisor’s larger office.¹⁰² To make the most of his time, he almost always took lunch in his office, brought up from the White House Mess (his favorite meal was Thursday’s Mexican lunch). And he always had a cup of black coffee on hand, even in late afternoon or early evening.¹⁰³

This is Woodward and Bernstein’s description of Scowcroft in their book The Final Days:

The small man with thinning hair and a scholarly, meek look sat behind the cluttered desk in the West Wing of the White House. His slightly rumpled suit, inexpensive white Dacron shirt, and drooping black socks seemed out of place in the exquisitely furnished office. Around him were the historic keepsakes of five years of whirlwind diplomacy. Contemporary art hung on the walls, and marvelous Oriental rugs lay on dark-blue wall-to-wall carpeting. Foot-high stacks of papers bulged from folders marked “Top Secret.” They were piled all across the desk.

It was the office of Henry A. Kissinger, Secretary of State of the United States and national-security adviser to the President. The gentleman sitting at Kissinger’s desk was Air Force [General] Brent Scowcroft, one of the Nixon Administration’s most powerful men.104

Others noticed Scowcroft’s clothes. Kissinger’s (and later Scowcroft’s) personal assistant, Florence Gantt, laughed about how Scowcroft dressed upon arriving at the White House. “We had a joke about Air Force One, he wore high water jeans,” his personal assistant recalled. “So for Christmas, we got him a track suit for Air Force One. Neat, very neat. For golfing attire we teased him about his plaid pants.” But as Scowcroft spent more time in the White House, “his wardrobe got better,” Gantt observed.¹⁰⁵

Scowcroft and his staff knew they were putting in longer hours than anyone else in the White House because early in the morning and late at night they wouldn’t see any other lights on in the West Wing or the Old Executive Office Building. Weekends were particularly productive for Scowcroft and the NSC staff, since he could catch up on the memoranda that had arrived during the week and compose his own messages. So the stacks on Scowcroft’s desk would shrink to a more manageable size over the weekend, only to slowly and ineluctably grow again after Monday morning rolled around.

Scowcroft expected his staff to perform. He wanted polished and complete memoranda, “perfect in form and substance,” Bud McFarlane, Scowcroft’s NSC assistant, said. And he assumed the staff would put in long hours, show total dedication, and exert their utmost efforts on behalf of the president and the United States. But whereas Kissinger demanded perfection and became outraged when he found mistakes, Scowcroft was patient and almost always maintained his cordial demeanor. And rather than having his staff members rewrite memoranda that required it, he’d often simply have his secretarial staff help rewrite them or rewrite them himself. Some thought him “patient to a fault.”¹⁰⁶

While he rarely got mad, he did get upset if someone leaked information or acted without clearing it with him. When one of his secretaries took it upon herself to organize his piles of office papers by subject, he threatened to fire her. (He relented, but refused to speak to the offending secretary for weeks.) This was a rare outburst, however. Gantt could easily tell when he was angry. He’d stay quiet and merely glare at the culprit. Scowcroft simply “didn’t get flustered,” Gantt said; it was “just incredible”—especially in contrast to Kissinger, who was “was a terror in the office.”107

Scowcroft’s NSC staff appreciated his simple decency in how he treated people and experienced firsthand his puckish and self-effacing sense of humor. When Gantt presented him with notes that required an action on his part, she generally gave him options labeled A, B, and C, occasionally including “Other” as a fourth choice. One time, when asked about scheduling a meeting, he wrote in his own additional option, “When pigs fly,” and checked that. Bill Gulley, Scowcroft’s aide and good friend, noted that many of those on the NSC staff and many of the “efficient and good-looking secretaries” in the office adored him.¹⁰⁸ Rose Mary Woods (known simply as Rose to Scowcroft and others in the White House), who was particular about her likes and dislikes, loved Scowcroft—and disliked Kissinger. For Maria Downs, the White House social secretary, Scowcroft was a “jewel,” her “Little General.” The White House secretaries called him “Babycakes.”¹⁰⁹

Bud McFarlane described him as “concerned as a boss and generous.” He told of one occasion when Scowcroft, concerned that McFarlane wasn’t getting enough time away from the office, conspired with McFarlane’s wife to get airline tickets to Nantucket and arrange for a friend to drive them to the airport. When McFarlane protested, his wife called Scowcroft, who then ordered his aide not to come back to work.¹¹⁰

Scowcroft was the most popular and most beloved senior official in the Ford administration, with the exception of deputy chief of staff and then chief of staff Dick Cheney—who, Gulley said, was equally well liked. (“The Cheney I knew always had a lopsided smile on his face,” press secretary Ron Nessen writes. “He was relaxed around reporters, trading jokes and gossip with them,” and “close friends” with many of them.) For Bob Schieffer, Cheney was “the single best staff person I ever worked with.” He was “straightforward. He was open. He didn’t tell us any dirty laundry, but he was very accessible.” Gulley, who’d served in five presidencies, described Cheney and Scowcroft as being as close as any two senior presidential advisers he had ever seen.

Scowcroft’s demanding work schedule eased up a little when he traveled with the president. He might then be able to take in a ballgame, go skiing (as with President Ford at Vail), play golf, or enjoy some other kind of break. However, when he was paired with Jack Nicklaus in a celebrity golf tournament, his performance made Gulley, then serving as Ford’s military assistant, the “most embarrassed [he’d] been in his life”; Scowcroft was nothing but a “whacker,” Gulley said.111

Notwithstanding his promotions to major general on October 1, 1973, and then lieutenant general on August 16, 1974, Scowcroft continued to live in the house in Bethesda with Jackie and their daughter, Karen, who was now a teenager. Karen would remain an only child, though Scowcroft says that he and Jackie would have liked to have another.¹¹²

While he was at the Pentagon, Scowcroft had made time to play squash and practice pistol shooting (and won a prize for his shooting). But he now had no spare time for exercise. So he began to run around his Bethesda neighborhood at night, usually after the late evening news and sometimes as late as midnight. Scowcroft was no jogger, however; he ran seven-minute miles—like “a gazelle,” Gantt said when she saw him once—as though he were still running high school track. The late-night runs gave Scowcroft a chance to clear his mind, he said; he was able sort things out, plan speeches, and give the ideas swimming around his head a chance to incubate.¹¹³ And then he’d get up at 4:45 A.M. so that he could be in the office by six.

Brent Scowcroft would get little rest in the mid-1970s, as the nation careened through the Watergate scandal, Nixon’s resignation, the end of the Vietnam War, and a seemingly endless parade of other problems and crises.