Brent Scowcroft, 95, was national security adviser to two presidents
WASHINGTON >> A lifetime before he served two presidents as national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft was just 12 when he decided to become a West Point cadet after reading about cadet life. After he graduated with the class of 1947, he decided to join the Army Air Corps and train to be a fighter pilot. He achieved that goal, too, but then fate shot down his plans.
Just months after earning his wings, Scowcroft was flying over New Hampshire when his F-51 crashed in a frozen swamp. A broken back and other injuries kept him in the hospital for two years. He flew again, but so much time had passed that he decided to turn from tactics and operations to strategy and planning.
And he did. Playing a prominent role in American foreign policy, Scowcroft served as national security adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, the only national security adviser to two different administrations. He also advised Presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan on defense issues.
“I don’t have a quick, innovative mind. I don’t automatically think of good, new ideas. What I do better is pick out good ideas from bad ideas,” he told The Washington Post on the eve of the George H.W. Bush administration.
Scowcroft, who died Thursday of natural causes at age 95 at his home in Falls Church, Virginia, was appointed Ford’s national security adviser in 1975 as he retired from the Air Force with the rank of lieutenant general. He served as national security adviser to Bush, by then a close friend, during the four years of the Bush administration, 1989-93.
Scowcroft’s death was confirmed Friday by Jim McGrath, a longtime spokesperson for Bush, who died in 2018.
An independent streak and a penchant for honesty burnished Scowcroft’s reputation in government. He differed at times with the Reagan administration on missile policy. In 2002, as President George W. Bush prepared to invade Iraq, Scowcroft argued against attacking Saddam Hussein’s regime. Scowcroft was described at times as both gentle and tough, a brilliant coordinator most concerned with results, a tireless worker accustomed to 18-hour days. In a 2011 study of his career, historian David F. Schmitz noted that Scowcroft had been at the center of numerous post-Vietnam War discussions of American foreign policy.
He was part of the presidential administrations that grappled with U.S. responses to the collapse of communism in Europe, the crackdown in China after the Tiananmen Square protests and Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent Gulf War.