Leadership involves conduct. Conduct is determined by values. Values are what makes us who we are.
—GENERAL H. NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF OCTOBER 30, 1997
IN THE SPRING OF 1998, the exuberance and energy of the White House staff that had initially amazed me when I arrived in Washington just two years earlier had deteriorated into foreboding and a sense of defeat. The battering the administration was taking from the endless revelations of scandal had deflated the White House staffers’ morale; those who once vigorously defended the president now had little or nothing to say.
The military aides, while officially apolitical, felt just as tarnished by the shame and embarrassment that was overwhelming the White House staff. We discussed the stigma that would be attached to each of us when we returned to our services. One of the aides refused his official Oval Office farewell from the president. Another aide was concerned about the negative repercussions from having the president’s name and signature on his annual evaluation report. Collectively, we were all concerned about returning to our respective services into positions of command and having to lead young men and women who knew that our résumés included serving as an aide to President Clinton; we feared it would besmirch us as being “political” officers rather than sincere, trustworthy, committed, and moral leaders of warriors.
At one time or another, we all wanted out. At one point, we even discussed resigning en masse. The symbolic nature of the five military aides leaving our positions simultaneously in disgust was something we contemplated and seriously considered. We recalled the Joint Chiefs during Vietnam and their failure to take a principled stand. Now, although much more junior in rank, we too had an opportunity to do the right thing. We had been carefully selected for this assignment, we were capably representing our individual services, and we strove to professionally represent the calling of military officership. We were also very conscious of the fact that we represented all the previous military aides who had served their presidents with honor and distinction.
Ultimately, we came to the consensus that we were serving the office and our country, not the man who held the presidency. Still, in the months leading up to my departure, I had become completely dejected. As my final days approached, I couldn’t wait to leave. The Air Force, thank goodness, helped me to find my way forward. General Walter Kross, commander of the Air Mobility Command, my Air Force “home” command, personally called and asked me what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go next. I respected him immensely as a leader and a gentleman. I’d had the opportunity to serve under him while I was stationed at Travis Air Force Base, and I knew him as one of the “good guys” that the Air Force had in senior leadership positions. He was supporting me for command of a flying squadron.
“Sir,” I offered, “I need to fly out and see you. I’ve got some things on my mind that may not be in line with your expectations. I need to discuss them with you personally.” He agreed, and I flew out to Illinois a few weeks later to meet with him.
We sat down in his office at Scott Air Force Base and talked about my future. I told him that my career goals and personal aspirations had changed. My time at the White House had been difficult—not only for myself, but because I was recently married, and continual travel was not conducive to the sort of home life I wanted to have. Instead of assuming command of a flying squadron, I wanted to go back to the roots, back to the origins of officership, integrity, and honor. It was a tough thing for me to say, because commanding a squadron was something I knew how to do, and I felt competent and honored to lead the young men and women of an Air Force squadron. But I had made my decision: I wanted to be reassigned to the United States Air Force Academy, a completely new and unfamiliar challenge, but one that I felt would be a great relief from my time in the Clinton White House.
With the many assignment opportunities available to me and all the avenues that the Air Force was making available to me, serving at the Air Force Academy made the most sense. It was important to me to reclaim my pride, my self-respect, and I decided the best way to accomplish that would be by teaching future officer candidates the meaning of honor, integrity, and character. I wanted a return to the naïveté and innocence of college-aged men and women just starting out in their pursuit of the profession of arms. I wanted to wake up each morning and, as General Fogleman so aptly put it when he retired, ask myself, “Do I feel honorable and clean?” and be able to answer yes.
General Kross understood my wishes, and though he wanted me to accept the squadron command, he agreed to arrange for me to take a position at the Air Force Academy. In a few short months, I would take command of an Air Force Academy group of one thousand cadets and future officer candidates as Cadet Group Commander—essentially a dean of students in charge of military training, counseling, mentorship, and the logistical care and feeding of the cadets—one of four such commanders that reported to the academy commandant. The assignment filled me with relief, happiness, and restored hope. But of course all that would come later.
My farewell from the White House was typical of what most military aides receive when they leave. My fellow military aides arranged an official farewell in the Oval Office with the president and a staff send-off of invited guests and friends in the Indian Treaty Room of the Old Executive Office Building.
I thought long and hard about whether to go along with the Oval Office ceremony. Very simply, I did not want to have to shake President Clinton’s hand. I talked it over with my milaide brothers and decided to go to the ceremony if for no other reason than to give my wife, Nichole, and my parents the opportunity to come to the White House to mark the closing of my time there with the president.
My parents flew in from Atlanta, and as my wife, my parents, and I were ushered into the Oval Office, I caught a glance at President Clinton—and I couldn’t believe it. He was eyeballing my wife as though she had just entered a singles bar. I was angered and immediately regretted being there and putting my wife in this situation.
The president presented me with the Defense Superior Service Medal for service to my country. He shook my hand and thanked me for my service to him and his administration. I thanked him for the opportunity to serve. To this day, I have not opened the box that I put my medal in immediately after receiving it.
As we exited the Oval Office, we ran into Mrs. Clinton. She was “on.” She met my wife and parents, said her goodbyes to me, and then immediately chastised her personal aide for not putting my farewell on her schedule. It was vintage Hillary again, just as I knew her. My last two personal interactions with the Clintons completely encapsulated just who I knew them to be.
When the guard from the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service closed the gate behind me on my last day in the Clinton White House, all I could feel was tremendous relief. There was no sadness. There was only the sense that the man in the Oval Office had sown a whirlwind of destruction upon the integrity of our government, endangered our national security, and done enormous harm to the American military in which I served. He inherited a New World Order, where peace and opportunity were expected for the foreseeable future, but he left behind a world of disarray, where the symbol of America’s wealth and modern prosperity—the World Trade Center towers in New York—would be destroyed within months of his departure. His administration’s impact on the U.S. armed forces in terms of capability and readiness will truly be known only as this first decade of the new millennium concludes. He assumed command of the mightiest army the world has ever known, yet he left it eight years later as a significantly smaller force—significantly reduced in capability and decayed in infrastructure. His impact on the military in terms of morale and discipline may never be known. Members of the armed forces, when left with no other choice, tend to vote with their feet. During the Clinton administration, we voted with our feet in record numbers, myself included. Events since then have only strengthened these beliefs in me. And now, after those years of destruction, there is so much work to be done. I pray that it will.