“Mr. Secretary,” I said to Carlucci, “let me know what I can do for you.”
“For one thing, don’t call me Mr. Secretary,” he said.
“Okay, I’ll stick to Mr. Carlucci,” I responded.
“Not Mr. Carlucci either, and certainly not Mr. Ambassador. Just call me Frank.”
I finally accepted that behind closed doors it would be Colin and Frank. “But,” I added, “don’t embarrass me by forcing me to call you Frank in front of all these generals. They are never going to call you Frank openly. This isn’t HEW. You’re running the armed forces of the United States, and we don’t call our bosses Jim Bob, or Freddie, or Frank.”
Carlucci was finally sworn in on February 4 over Helms’s objections in a deal that brought Fred Ikle, a stainless conservative, to the department as undersecretary of defense for policy. Carlucci took over Graham Claytor’s old job and office. And I remained in place, now as Carlucci’s senior military assistant.
The man so modest in forms of address enjoyed playing the consummate insider. One day when Carlucci kept referring to “Cap” in an unlikely context, I finally said, “Weinberger?” No, Frank explained, he meant Carlos Andrés Pérez, charismatic president of Venezuela. I was amused by the contrasts between his style and his substance. Frank could be planning Machiavellian machinations while changing the diaper on his baby daughter, Kristin, whom he brought to the Pentagon on Saturdays when his wife, Marcia, was tied up with her job.
… … …
“I want you to go to the Wehrkunde with me,” Carlucci informed me a few days into the new administration. The Wehrkunde was a conference held in Munich every February and sponsored by a German publishing magnate, Baron von Kleist. Heavy-duty papers with titles like “A New Strategic Paradigm for Europe” were delivered. National security wonks hungered to go to the Wehrkunde.
“Fine,” I told Frank. “I’ll have the Air Force lay on a plane.”
“No,” he said, “just get us a couple of seats on a commercial flight.”
I did as Frank asked, and we trotted out to Dulles Airport. There we waited while our departure was delayed for hours because of an engine breakdown. Frank eyed his watch nervously. We finally boarded, and Frank took his first-class seat, to which, by rank, he was entitled. I kept on moving. “Where you going, Colin?” he asked. “I only rate coach, Frank,” I said. Consequently, we could not work together during the flight. And we lost another day of work coming back by accommodating ourselves to the airline schedule.
I no sooner got back to my office than General Robert “Dutch” Huyser, commander of the Military Airlift Command, pulled me by the ear. “That was dumb,” Huyser said. How could he provide secure communication when we were off flying Pan Am? How could he safeguard top-secret documents? The next time we bypassed military aircraft designated for official travel, it was off with my head. Frank finally agreed, and we started using military planes.
One thing soon became apparent about the Reagan administration: the World War II generation was back in the saddle. The President’s military screen credits may have been modest—he made training films on the Hollywood front—but the war was a defining experience for him, and he liked to dwell on it. Cap Weinberger had risen from private to captain in the Pacific theater, serving under General MacArthur. There he had met his wife, Jane, an Army nurse. He too was shaped by that era.
One morning in a staff meeting, Weinberger mused to Carl Smith and me, “I’m puzzled. Are you all in the military or not? I seldom see officers on my staff in uniform.” We explained that wearing civvies had become common during the early seventies to make it appear that fewer military personnel were serving in Washington. Weinberger harrumphed and said, “If you’re in the military, you wear a uniform.” The word went out, and that was that.
“There’s something that bothers a lot of us around here,” I told Carlucci one day. I explained how we had been unable to get President Carter or Secretary Brown to present Master Sergeant Roy Benavidez the Medal of Honor he had earned. Benavidez had performed his gallant deeds in 1968; it was now 1981. “It would mean a lot to us to see this hero get his due,” I said. The idea leaped like a spark from Carlucci to Weinberger to the White House. Reagan’s image maker, Michael Deaver, seized on the possibilities. A Hispanic-American, neglected during a Democratic administration, was finally to be honored by a Republican President. Pull out all the stops.
The scenario chosen was for President Reagan to come to the Pentagon. The ceremony was to be held on February 24, 1981, in the huge center courtyard, with the whole Pentagon invited. Ordinarily, a military officer would read the citation and the President would hang the medal around the recipient’s neck. Reagan looked over the citation and said, “This is something I’d like to read,” pointing out that he had had some experience with scripts. He thus became the first President ever to recount the heroic deeds personally before bestowing the nation’s highest military honor. Even more than inauguration day, that afternoon marked the changing of the guard for the armed forces. We no longer had to hide in civvies. A hero received a hero’s due. The military services had been restored to a place of honor.
More substantial proof that a new era had dawned came as the new administration took over the defense budget. Ronald Reagan had run on a strong defense platform and against the “hollow Army” that General Shy Meyer had deplored. Even though the final Carter budget, which the Republicans inherited, increased defense spending by over 5 percent, word went out from Weinberger’s office asking the service chiefs how much more they needed. This was Christmas in February. This was tennis without a net. The chiefs began submitting wish lists. The requests initially totaled approximately a 9 percent real increase in defense spending. I sat in the Secretary’s office with Frank Carlucci and heard words I had never expected to hear in my life. That was not enough. Weinberger ordered the chiefs back to the drawing boards. They went from their wish lists to their dream lists, pulling out proposals they never expected to see the light of day. The latest figures went to the Office of Management and Budget, and the word came back, not enough. OMB’s conclusion was based on no strategic analysis; the Reagan White House was simply telling the Pentagon to spend more money. The military happily obeyed. Manna, they realized, does not fall from heaven every day.
Weinberger managed to up the inherited Carter budget by 11 percent, or $25.8 billion, the pattern for the foreseeable future. We had not embarked on a pointless spending spree. After successive lean years, the armed forces were in poor shape. The glamour investments—research for sophisticated weapons, primarily—had been well funded. But the bread-and-butter expenditures that support the services and that make military life tolerable had been neglected. The forces were like a tumbledown house with a BMW parked in the driveway. The Reagan budgets funded pay raises, spare parts, training, modern communications centers, repair facilities, child-care centers, family housing, dental clinics—items that in many cases had been neglected since World War II. And Congress readily approved these increases. The once-feared Cap the Knife had become, to his critics, Cap the Ladle. Those of us on the inside, however, knew that the services were undernourished. We needed a ladle to restore the country’s military strength, purpose, and pride.
Late in February, in my capacity as Carlucci’s gatekeeper, I made an appointment for the new Secretary of the Army, John O. Marsh, Jr., to see Frank. Jack Marsh was a thoughtful, soft-spoken former Virginia congressman whom I knew only slightly. I had no idea what his business was that day with Carlucci, but when he came out, he led me into the hallway. There, the mild-mannered Marsh tossed me a hand grenade with the pin pulled out. “Colin,” he said, “I’d like you to consider resigning from the military. I’d like you to become undersecretary of the Army.” He added that he had just checked out the idea with Carlucci and the White House personnel office and had a green light.
Though stunned, I understood what was going on. I had a reputation for being able to move the Pentagon burea
ucracy. More to the point, Marsh also hoped to place a qualified minority executive in a senior political position in an organization composed almost 40 percent of minority soldiers. I told Marsh I would have to sleep on this one.
I ordinarily spared Alma my days at the office. But this decision would change both our lives so radically that I had to have her opinion. We did not lose much sleep over it. I was a forty-four-year-old brigadier general with a good future. The Army was my life. Resigning and taking a political appointment would confirm everything I wanted to spike—the suspicion, sometimes in my own soul, that I was becoming more politician than soldier. Alma agreed 100 percent. And a plunge into the uncertain waters of political appointments made her uncomfortable. The next day, I thanked Marsh for the honor, but turned him down.
The day after Marsh’s offer, I went in to see Carlucci. I liked working with him, but, by now, I had been in the front-office suites for nearly four years. “Frank,” I said, “I want to go back to doing what brigadier generals are supposed to do.”
“Yeah, sure, we’ll get around to it,” he answered and then proceeded to unload a bundle of new assignments on me.
At the end of the day, before going home, I liked to stretch out and talk shop with now Rear Admiral John Baldwin, Carlucci’s other military assistant. One March evening, Baldwin said, “Colin, you’ll never get out of here.”
“Why not?”
“First, Carlucci has no incentive to let you go. He’s happy with you. He’s not military. He doesn’t understand our need not to stay away too long. He’s just getting you in deeper and deeper.”
“And the second reason?” I asked.
“Your real boss is Shy Meyer, and he would prefer to keep you here.”
Jack Baldwin’s words rang out like a fire bell in the night. The next morning, I went into Carlucci’s office again and said, “Frank, I’ve got to go.”
“Yeah, yeah, we’ll talk next week.”
By early spring, however, by constantly badgering Carlucci, I managed to pull it off. General Meyer proved unexpectedly understanding. He assigned me as assistant division commander for operations and training, 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized), Fort Carson, Colorado. The ADC job is an apprenticeship for command of a full division. I could not have chosen better myself. I began telling my friends about my good fortune. To my surprise, many whose judgment I valued did not share my enthusiasm, including Major General Dick Lawrence, under whom I had served as deputy G-3 in the Americal Division in Vietnam, and Julius Becton, who had steered me to the National War College, both of whom were members of the armor fraternity.
“Colin,” Lawrence told me, “I would give anything not to see you going to Fort Carson.” Why? I wanted to know. He had “bad mojo,” uneasy vibes, Lawrence said, because of the 4th Mech’s commander, Major General John W. Hudachek. He knew Hudachek, and the guy was, well, difficult. “He shouldn’t have been given a division,” Dick said. Julius Becton called me to express similar reservations. I was also warned of potential problems involving my new commanding general’s wife. I was not discouraged. I was eager to get back to the troops. And I had always gotten along with my commanders, good guys like Red Barrett and tough guys like Tiger Honeycutt.
I had come to admire the rare Carlucci mix, tough and energetic in pursuing his goals, yet thoughtful and kind in his dealings with people. I continued to be impressed by his lack of ego. Frank Carlucci did not need people scattering petals before him. He threw a farewell party at which he awarded me the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, and we parted as close friends.
The last people I said goodbye to before heading out to Fort Carson were Rich Armitage and Marybel Batjer. Rich was about to become assistant secretary for international security affairs. The man cussed like a sailor and spoke sense in simple declarative sentences. I understood him and he understood me. We had connected immediately. I had made not simply a service friend or a job friend, but a friend of the heart. And Marybel, who probably could not have distinguished an admiral from a doorman before she came to the Pentagon, displayed a native shrewdness at sizing up people, a talent invaluable in someone handling political appointments. The three of us had informal channels reaching into almost every corner of the Pentagon, the only way to tap into the stream of information flowing beneath the department’s formal reporting system. And almost every day, we exchanged this useful intelligence. I did not know it then, but this relationship would endure and become invaluable for the rest of my career.
For a lad from the South Bronx whose idea of a view was to stand on an apartment house rooftop and see Brooklyn, the site of Fort Carson was intoxicating. The post is situated at a point where the Great Plains collide with the Rocky Mountains. Pikes Peak and Cheyenne Mountain, towering like twin thrones, are visible from Fort Carson. “There’s too much sky,” Alma had said on the drive out. “Where did it all come from?” And she missed the trees. I knew what she meant. The vast, treeless prairie and the Rockies somehow dwarfed a person.
Colorado Springs is a handsome city built on the fortunes of nineteenth-century gold-mining barons. The present gold mines are three major military organizations, of which the prize is the U.S. Air Force Academy north of town, with its airy architecture and four thousand of the brightest young men and women in the country in its cadet wing. NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command, is located inside Cheyenne Mountain and also at nearby Peterson Air Force Base. NORAD monitored the skies for enemy bomber and missile strikes and operated the forces to intercept attackers. NORAD’s natural setting is so magnificent that many Canadians and Americans who served there come back to the area to retire.
South of town is Fort Carson, home of the 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized), the blue-collar brother-in-law. The 4th Mech made a hellish racket with its guns; it chewed up the landscape with its tanks and unleashed thousands of libidinous nineteen- and twenty-year-olds onto Colorado Springs. The division also pumped more money into the local economy than the other two organizations combined and, consequently, was welcomed, even loved a bit, like a rough, self-made millionaire uncle.
Three flat ranch houses had been built on top of a bare hill on the edge of the post, one for the commanding general, one for the assistant division commander for operations and training, my job, and one for the ADC for support. The houses provided living space but no charm. Alma was still not about to get the home she had dreamed of for a general’s lady.
On my first day at Fort Carson, I walked up to the second floor of a modern, fifties-style headquarters building and had a conversation with my predecessor, Brigadier General Grail L. Brookshire. Afterward, my new aide, Captain Fred Flynn, took me across the hall to meet my new boss commanding the 4th Mech, Major General Hudachek. Both Brookshire and Flynn, I had noticed, had been strangely reticent about the man. I entered a large office, the walls covered with the usual plaques and power photographs, the windows affording a panoramic view of the parade ground and the Rockies. There I met a stocky officer of medium height with close-cropped hair and a serious aspect. Hudachek greeted me with a brisk no-nonsense handshake and got down to business. His main interests were training and management. My responsibility would be training. He spoke forcefully and intelligently on the subject, without wasting words. The programs he had in place impressed me. After ten minutes, he made clear that the conversation was over. As I left, I thought, this guy sure knows his stuff. I can learn from him. I also noticed that no smile had crossed his lips during this first encounter. Jack Hudachek was clearly not a Red Barrett, a Charles Gettys, or a Gunfighter Emerson.
The mission of the 4th Mech was to fight the communist-bloc armies on the battlefields of Europe. My experience, particularly with tanks, had been scant. And so I set out to qualify myself as an expert gunner on an M-60A1 tank. As division ADC, I did not have to do this. But coaches who have never played lack a certain credibility. I began my training under a trio of tough tanker sergeants who were respectful, but unawed by my single star.
Certain things simply are not done. You don’t spit into the wind. You don’t mount horses from the right side. You don’t run ships aground. And tankers never stick their main gun tube into the dirt or run out of gas. Infantrymen believe that tankers will urinate in the fuel tank rather than be caught empty. And tankers elevate the gun tube before, not after, going into a decline.
The sergeant looked at me with weary patience. “Sir,” he said, “we’ve got to take a break and check the tube.” We bore-sighted it. Luckily the tube was not bent. We swabbed it out and were soon on our way again. By the third pass, I was nailing the target, and I qualified as expert tank gunner.
My American Journey Page 32