Brent Scowcroft

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Brent Scowcroft (center) with Dick Cheney and William Webster

Brent Scowcroft (born March 19, 1925 in Ogden, Utah) was the United States National Security Advisor under Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush and a Lieutenant General in the United States Air Force. He also served as Military Assistant to President Richard Nixon and as Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He also served as Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005.

[edit] Positions held

Prior to joining the Bush administration, Scowcroft was Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc. He has had a long association with Henry Kissinger, having served as his assistant when Kissinger was the National Security Adviser under Nixon, from 1968.

He is the founder and president of The Forum for International Policy, a think tank. Scowcroft is also president of The Scowcroft Group, Inc., an international business consulting firm. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In the course of his military career, Scowcroft held positions in the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Headquarters of the United States Air Force, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. Other assignments included faculty positions at the United States Air Force Academy and the United States Military Academy at West Point, and Assistant Air Attache in the American Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Scowcroft retired with the rank of Lieutenant General in the U.S. Air Force.

Scowcroft has chaired or served on a number of policy advisory councils, including the President's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control, the President's Commission on Strategic Forces, the President's Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management, the Defense Policy Board, and the President's Special Review Board (Tower Commission) investigating the Iran-Contra affair.

Scowcroft was a leading Republican critic of U.S. policy towards Iraq before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which war critics in particular have seen as significant given Scowcroft's close ties to former President George H.W. Bush. [1] [2] [3] [4]. Scowcroft supported the invasion of Afghanistan as a “direct response” to terrorism.

Scowcroft had an aeronautical rating as a pilot and has numerous military decorations and awards. In addition, President Bush presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991. In 1993, he was presented with the insignia of an Honorary KBE by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace.

He received his undergraduate degree and commission into the Army Air Forces from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He has an M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University.

He co-wrote A World Transformed with George H.W. Bush. This book described what it was like to be in the White House during the end of the Cold War, as the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s.

Scowcroft is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormons.

[edit] See also

United States National Security Adviser
History of the United States National Security Council 1989-1992
Henry Kissinger
Council on Foreign Relations

[edit] External links

Preceded by Henry Kissinger	United States National Security Advisor 1974–1977	Succeeded by Zbigniew Brzezinski
Preceded by Colin Powell	United States National Security Advisor 1989–1993	Succeeded by Anthony Lake

National Security Advisors of the United States
Cutler • Anderson • Jackson • Cutler • Gray • Bundy • Rostow • Kissinger • Scowcroft • Brzezinski • Allen • Clark • McFarlane • Poindexter • Carlucci • Powell • Scowcroft • Lake • Berger • Rice • Hadley