Autobiography

My memories of Ft. Stotsenberg are not rich, by any means; but neither are they so meager as to require a fictional and speculative journey into the "might have been" past. During this relatively brief period, I attained the age of four and celebrated a birthday party outside my parents' quarters- a celebration captured for posterity in a photograph. The alien culture of the Philippines and the presence of Filipino "aliens" on "my base" at Ft. Stotsenberg like Rufina, my amah evoked my worst, colonial tendencies. I quickly learned Tagalog, much to the amusement of Rufina, whom I treated with disdain, not only because she was small and dark but equally because she was supposed to watch over me. Perhaps to underscore my rebellious contempt for her competence, I led her into a series of mishaps and adventures that quickly established my charming reputation as a warrior of unpredictable habits.

 

Lieutenant “Shorty” and Hannah Hawkins lived nearby. Because Hannah had offered me an open invitation to drop in and see her whenever I had a moment's free time, I once wandered into her home in search of female companionship. Needless to say, the unspeakable Rufina was not in attendance. After discovering that Hannah was not at home, I thought to avail myself of any food in the icebox and, to my delight, found a newly baked chocolate cake. I managed to polish off about a third of the cake before my hunger could be satisfied. Confident that some servant would clean up the mess, I cheerfully rambled out of the house in search of other entertainment.

 

One may imagine my chagrin some hours later when my mother confronted me with an accusing and baleful stare, asking, “Did you steal Hannah Hawkins’ cake this morning?" Of course I swore total ignorance of the situation, claiming some other social engagement as my alibi while ignoring the telltale evidence of chocolate all over my clothes). I loved Hannah, who would bail me out of a much more serious situation some twenty years later, and was wounded when my mother informed me that she had freshly baked the cake for a tea party, now ruined because of my thoughtlessness.

 

I recall trying to put the blame on Rufina for avoiding me and not feeding me, but the story wouldn't wash. My father, home for lunch and failing to repress his vast amusement at my daring and the consequences, ordered me to march straight over to Hannah’s home to apologize forthwith. Sheepish but still rebellious and angry for being caught, I walked into Hannah’s tea party in full swing. The ladies surrounded me and made much fun of my uncivilized behavior to the point where I was ready to throw cake, when another event diverted everyone’s attention.

 

To my astonishment, Shorty Hawkins suddenly drove up, slammed on the brakes, burst from his car and raced up the steps onto the screen porch, where the party was being held. Riveting everyone's attention, he demanded, “Hannah, I want your full attention. I want nothing to divert you from the serious question I am about to ask you. Can I be assured that are focusing all your energies on this question?"

 

"Yes! Yes! " she replied while the assembled gaped.

 

"Are you sure? I want no bridge or tea party to interfere with your thoughtful answer to what I am about to ask. Do I have that commitment?"

 

"My God, you fool! Ask your question!" (By now, my cake escapade had faded into insignificance and I had a hunch that the worst might be over. The ladies are breathless with expectation, confident that some earth shaking even has brought the young pilot home from "the line" for a vitally important, life-changing decision.)

 

"Don't you think that I'm the best looking man on the Post?" asked Shorty. Though he was only in his twenties, hours of open-cockpit flying in sun, wind and rain had already so toughened his face that he looked like a wizened old man.

 

The peals of laughter that met Shorty’s question exploded into the afternoon and released me from any further agony. The story has lost none of its vitality, fun and absurdity for me down the years, representing perhaps a kind of central theme of my first time in the beloved Philippines: a theme of gaiety and youth and rakish hell-raising in a foreign clime.

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West Point

Social Sciences Department

(1954-1957)

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In August, 1954, I finally reported to West Point for a three-year teaching assignment. It was a thoroughly fulfilling experience, both professionally and personally. Four people helped shape my spiritual and professional development. Mary (“Dinnie”) Haywood Vance, Lieutenant Dan McGurk, Lieutenant William Y. Smith and Lieutenant Brent Scowcroft.

 

Mary Haywood Vance

 

I had met Dinnie in 1949 when I attended the Engineer School at Ft. Belvoir. She had then revealed herself to be quiet, scholarly and athletic: a fine swimmer. Her father was then a student at the National Defense University at Ft. McNair. Her father and my father had been classmates at at the Air Tactical School, Maxwell Field in Alabama, in the Class of 1937. It was a time when bombers were becoming the dominant force in the Air Corps.

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Seven years younger than I, Dinnie asked for help with algebra homework whenever I was invited to dinner with the Vances. Later, when I served General Hobbs at Governors Island, Colonel Vance had been an American representative on the United Nations Military Staff Committee. Once again, I had an occasional meal at the Vance residence on Long Island.

For two years, Dinnie and I dated, usually entertained by restaurants and the theater in New York City. Her major at Barnard College was in fine arts, but her specialty was Oriental art, especially Chinese brush painting. Her cool beauty and calm, intelligent tolerance for other people appealed to my better nature over and over. I soon learned that her older (16) sister, Susan, had been a negative role model in Thailand where her father, Reggie, had been our Military Attache for two years. While Dinnie had continued school and had kept fit by daily exercise at the Bangkok Foreign Correspondents Club, Susan had dropped out of school and had become a social butterfly, a chatterbox with countless young foreign service officers and diplomats in attendance.

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The contrast between the two sisters was not lost on me. I thought Dinnie was by far the more balanced, well rounded woman whose mind could meet mine without any awkwardness. Perhaps because of my adventure with Marianne, I was suspicious of romantic love. However, as I tested my own sensibility with Dinnie through the two years of our courtship, the feeling grew that she would be a perfect mate, experienced as a world traveler, familiar with the role of “Army wife,” and quite prepared to improvise while we learned to love each other.

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Accordingly, we were married on May 30, 1956. Dan McGurk played the role of best man and we sealed our pledge to each other in the West Point chapel. Dan then drove us in a buggy down a steep hill from the Chapel to the Plain where we had a sumptuous reception. My father was inordinately pleased, as if my course had been returned to rationality from Marianne  and three years of bachelorhood. We embarked on a glorious honeymoon in the Virgin Islands, returning to West Point to rent a house in Highland Falls and to prepare for the 1956-57 academic year.

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Through that year, I counted myself blessed beyond all expectations. Din had hidden her adventurous spirit for years and could now join me in many adventures: feathering our nest with small, inexpensive antiques; congratulating ourselves on acquiring two mutual wedding gifts, a T’ang Dynasty tomb figure from Ralph Chait, a dealer who guaranteed its validity (something he didn’t know he was not qualified to do!) and a teak “Campaign Chest,” the British version of a foot locker for British officers who served in the Raj in India in the 19th century; spending many weekends touring antique shops in the Hudson Valley; buying and selling “Betty,” a hunter that bucked when a saddle rested too tightly on her injured spine; and, above all, celebrating our first son, Whit, Junior, when he was born in April, 1957.

 

Advanced Infantry Course, Ft. Benning, Georgia (1957-1958;
Courses in Airborne and Ranger Tactics

 

Dinnie and I reached Ft. Benning in August in time to allocate household goods to a small set of quarters on Post. Fortunately, the house was fully air conditioned, qualified to mitigate south Georgia’s oppressive summer heat and humidity.

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The Advanced Infantry Course was the most boring possible survey of “modern” infantry tactics. For most of daylight hours, several hundred officers were imprisoned in a classroom to receive handouts and hear canned lectures on the role of infantry in combat. In theory, upon graduation, we were supposed to know how to command a battalion or even a regiment. In spite of the wartime experience of many instructors in WW II and Korea and the arrival of several new weapons systems, the Course seemed grounded in the same tactics that I had learned at Sewanee thirteen years earlier. The only new elements in the curriculum were the promise of more fixed wing and helicopter support for Army operations and the ominous threat of tactical nuclear weapons on a battlefield.

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The Course was very leisurely and permitted all students to socialize at the golf course, tennis courts and the officers club. I could detach my mind from most lectures and write notes about my PhD Dissertation, which I was able to complete before June, 1958. I was friendly with several classmates and foreign students, especially a Spanish exchange student with whom I could practice my Spanish. He was an expert on Islam and Arab culture, having served on Spanish Embassy staffs in several Mid-East countries.

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Upon completion of the course in June, 1958,  at 31 years old, I received parachute training and six weeks of Ranger training. In my absence from Ft. Benning, Dinnie gave birth to Christina on June 28th. In my view, this was the only event that made 1957 significant. Otherwise, the Army kept trying to shift my interest from international politics and economics to combat-related skills. The practical climax of that balancing act came in August when, bronzed and lean, I went to the Fletcher School to defend my dissertation.

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It was another opportunity to reinforce my growing sense of “bemused detachment.” On the night before my scheduled defense I anticipated a lively discussion with three Fletcher Professors (George Halm; economics; Ruhl Bartlett, American Diplomatic History; and a third with expertise in International Law). 

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However, my hosts had a house full of cats. By the time I awakened on the fated day, my allergy to cats had exploded with sneezes and watery eyes. I dried myself as best I could and resolved to play my role. A professor asked the first question, “What factors do you think are influencing the Berlin situation today?”

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A perfect question for an inspiring analysis of economic, political and legal factors on the stage of Berlin. I was about to begin my pitch when tears flowed down both cheeks. While I tried to mop up, the three Profs, thoroughly shocked at this unexpected arrival of a weeping airborne Ranger, began arguing over the relative importance of obvious and not-so-obvious psychological issues at stake in Berlin. They wouldn’t allow me to open my mouth! I never had a chance to mention my dissertation. After they had debated Berlin for about ten minutes, they invited me to leave the room while they made their judgment. In a few seconds, Halm opened the door and, smiling, welcomed me back to hear all three congratulate me on my “spirited defense” of a fascinating subject. 

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My life-long lesson? Substance often takes a back seat to ritual when the purpose of the meeting is already a foregone conclusion. I would not have been invited to a defense of my dissertation if the committee had not already come to a positive conclusion. I later learned that PhD committees often save time by jumping to sincere congratulations. Once more I was made to understand that “All the world is a stage!”

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.........For me the single most outstanding event of our two-year tour at Ft. Bragg was the birth of our third child, Shawn Victoria, in August, 1960.

 

 

Army Language School

Monterey, California

August, 1961- June, 1962

 

Aside from the joys of learning a new language and simply living in the beauty of Monterey, the assignment gave me a life style of leisure and family that I had not expected. It was not unusual for me to come home at noon, have lunch and then spend hours listening to taped conversations in Mandarin. Shawn frequently took a nap in my lap while the four tones of Mandarin droned on, perhaps laying a foundation for her later career specialization in China and Chinese. Andy’s birth in November, 1961 added a fourth new member to our family, a fact that did not sit well with Susan Vance, Dinnie’s mother. She accused us of “behaving like Catholics.”

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Dinnie and I explored the Monterey Peninsula with a sense of joy and gratitude. In our enthusiasm for the climate and the people, we bought five acres of land in the Aguajito area. We hoped that we would return in retirement some day.

On reflection, I believe that my superb instructors inadvertently began to change my entire sense of reality during that year. They quietly conveyed perceptions that were fundamentally opposed to everything my life and my career had taught me about “ the good life.” Hours of reflection with instructors and Dinnie (who was permitted to attend all classes) opened my mind to the idea that Kipling had been right. “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.” Little could I know that this was a beginning of my profound  acculturation, my liberation from the military paradigm in which I had already invested thirty-five years of my life in 1961. I had only one more year of the Western military mindset before I would pour my energies into the culture of China for seventeen years.

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Although I cannot name a single instructor at Monterey who profoundly altered my views of identity and the world, all of them gave so generously of their patience and humor that that year became a firm foundation on which I could erect a new sense of tolerance for ambiguity and cultural differences.

 

.............During the summer of 1963, while I attended a familiarization course on military intelligence in Washington, Dinnie gave birth to our fifth child, Robert Kenneth Whitson.

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THE DECADE OF THE 1970s

 

RAND CORPORATION 

(May-December, 1970)

 

That mood of pervasive fear and distrust in the summer of 1970 only added to my own perplexity as I attempted to guide myself and my family into this grim period facing us. I have already written about my dismay with the post WW II, arrogant military attitude of "We won the war, didn't we?" My dismay also reflected my growing dis-ease with the existing military bureaucracy. My assignment to the Philippines, to Fletcher and West Point had served to reinforce my innate rebelliousness against the routines of that bureaucracy and to foster an independence of mind while I searched for a destiny that eluded me. The war and my experience in the Pentagon were crowning disillusionments of a career in which I had repeatedly searched for integrity only to find posturing of insecure "leaders" at the highest levels, baffled by our national security environment.. 

 

In my search, the 1970's would introduce me into new ways of perceiving myself and the world, perceptions that would resolve many of the conflicts that had challenged my mind during those tumultuous years. As McLoughlin had predicted, it was during this decade of America's Fifth Great awakening that so many people would become "itinerant ministers", preaching informally of the coming "New Age," attacking the old order and fostering a renewal of spiritual search. Towards the end of the decade, I would become one of those "itinerant ministers." In effect, I would finally and gratefully discover a resolution of identity that I had been seeking for a lifetime. Unfortunately, my next step on the way to that resolution would be strewn with small crises and explosive devices. It remains to tell about them. 

 

Writing now from the perspective of thirty years later, I understand that I thought a job with RAND might be a happy compromise, a bridge out of my dilemma, still pseudo-governmental but blessed with more freedom to write about the Far East and perhaps contribute to national security policy. 

 

After retirement, I went over to RAND (Washington)….By the end of that first trip to RAND, I felt satisfied that I had "come home." Indeed, RAND's style and its "corporate culture" seemed to agree with my personal style. It was not impressed with its military clients (nor was I). It felt no obligation to provide footnotes for the Pentagon's latest fads, theories or visions (neither did I). It charged well for its opinions and paid its analysts well. It provided a secured environment in which open debate at top secret levels could explore almost any aspect of security policy world- wide. I liked many people I had met at RAND on my first visit in 1968: Guy Pauker, the expert on Southeast Asia; Arnold Horelick, Tom Robinson and Tom Wolfe- all profound students of the Soviet military; economists and sociologists engaged in various aspects of policy analysis; and a management team that seemed to be sympathetic to the needs of the professional staff with a collegial sense of unity that attracted me from the beginning. Finally, it was a long way from the frenetic confusion of the Pentagon, in part because RAND could almost choose its own focus for research and let the Pentagon stew over its own petty internal political games and rivalries. 

 

Since I did not expect to spend a lot of time at RAND- West (except for summer, when I promised to stay in residence for a month to six weeks), I began a practice on my visits to RAND that I would follow for the next four years. I tried to stick to a schedule of daily activities that remained on East Coast time….Career equities counted for much less at RAND than they did in Washington. Impressing people was not so important at RAND. The dress code was casual, except for managers, who always had to anticipate a visit from their up-tight clients in the Pentagon. When I first began my time with RAND, these differences were elements of an attitude that eluded me and yet attracted me. The RAND ethos was stimulating and challenging. Challenging because it made a newcomer pay attention to his own discipline, lest the Santa Monica casual veneer erode the newcomer's commitment to deadlines and quality. Since I had never been a beach person, the much touted proximity of the beach from the RAND buildings meant nothing to me. But the climate thrilled me. I had always liked the desert and the dry heat, the aroma of cactus and eucalyptus, the light clothing and the "flex-time" work schedule. 

 

Within a week after my initial briefings there and the cordial reception they gave me, I returned to Washington, reasonably confident that I had made the right decision. I was not sure where that decision would take me; but it seemed to be the right next episode in my life and I was ready to go to work for my new masters! 

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Private Consulting
(July-August, 1974)

 

The two-month period between RAND and BDM was not without some apprehension for me. RAND had been a pseudo-governmental organization whose style and leisurely approach to research had not been much of a shock to my own sense of professional pace. Moreover, I had gone to RAND with a reputation (partly deserved!) in the China field. Armed now with a determination to escape from the China game, I was somewhat confused about “next steps.” The feeling of “hanging in the wind” was not comfortable. So I focused on job search while I continued an active social schedule with friends and former clients in order to publicize my availability.

 

liked what I heard about an upstart new “Beltway Bandit” called Braddock, Dunn and MacDonald (BDM), just moved to Washington from their roots in Arizona. Their very newness appealed to me because I thought I might really be useful to them as a bridge to the Pentagon, the State Department, CIA and even people in academia who were interested in foreign affairs and national defense. Accordingly I applied for a job with BDM on July 1, 1974. 

Fortunately, the summer kept Shawn busy with competitive diving, while the other children filled their time at the farm with Susan and Reggie, at Donaldson Run and at the Army-Navy Country Club.

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Library of Congress

Washington, DC

April, 1976-August, 1979

 

Three plus years in the Library of Congress provided an opportunity for unprecedented introspection. I was already a veteran at managing research and professional researchers. Most of my staff of about a hundred scholars and secretaries were familiar with the protocols of the Library and the Congressional Research Service.