Foreign Policy Experts Welcome Scowcroft Back to Old Job

Almost two years ago, as a member of the presidential commission that investigated the Iran-Contra scandal, Brent Scowcroft examined Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council staff--and told friends bluntly that he was “appalled” at what he found.

The President’s foreign policy machinery had failed completely at one of its most important tasks, to warn Reagan when policies were going astray, Scowcroft complained. “There should have been bells ringing, lights flashing,” he said later.

Now Scowcroft, who served as President Gerald R. Ford’s national security adviser in 1975-77, has been asked to run the NSC again, and he rides into the White House with universal praise from Washington’s foreign policy Establishment.

“I admire him enormously,” said former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.

‘Smart as They Come’

“He’s as comfortable as an old shoe and as smart as they come,” said former Secretary of State Edmund S. Muskie.

Scowcroft’s outward style is self-effacing; he has never sought attention in the press or visibility on the Washington social circuit. But his extensive foreign policy experience and what Kissinger called “understated tenacity” may make him a strong counterweight to George Bush’s secretary of state designate, James A. Baker III.

“He’s a man with strong views,” said Kissinger, who first hired Scowcroft on the NSC staff during the Administration of Richard M. Nixon. “He did not hesitate to disagree with me when he felt it was justified. . . . And I can think of two or three times when he actually prevailed.”

Other Scowcroft friends said that his experience as national security adviser during Kissinger’s reign as a powerful secretary of state should help him work with Baker, who has long been President-elect Bush’s closest political adviser.

“He’s so skillful in understanding the bureaucratic process in Washington that if there is a way to avoid a confrontation and still achieve the objective, Scowcroft will find it,” predicted a longtime friend who asked not to be identified.

Anticipates No Problems

“I’m very comfortable with Jim Baker, whom I’ve known for a number of years, and I just don’t anticipate any problems at all,” Scowcroft told reporters Wednesday.

“I have worked with strong secretaries of state before,” he added dryly.

In an interview earlier this month, Scowcroft said that he believes the national security adviser should operate “offstage . . . (not) center stage.” But he has also emphasized that the adviser “is not simply the manager of the process. . . . He, himself, should be an important source of advice to the President.”

“With Brent’s appointment, there’s a lot of strength being accumulated on the White House staff,” said Helmut Sonnenfeldt of the Brookings Institution, another former Kissinger aide. “Brent is low profile, but he’s obviously very knowledgeable. This means Bush will have plenty of in-house talent available in foreign policy.”

Scowcroft’s views on arms control and U.S.-Soviet relations appear already to have made a mark on Bush, whom he advised during the presidential campaign. Scowcroft has quietly criticized some of President Reagan’s more optimistic pronouncements on U.S.-Soviet relations; Bush, too, has been more skeptical about Soviet intentions than Reagan.

No Pullback Signaled

There are some points of apparent disagreement, however. Scowcroft initially opposed last year’s intermediate-range nuclear forces agreement with the Soviet Union, arguing that it would weaken the U.S. commitment to defending Europe; Bush supported the treaty. And Scowcroft has been discreetly skeptical about the Strategic Defense Initiative, Reagan’s effort to devise a system to defend the United States against nuclear attack. Asked on Wednesday whether Scowcroft’s appointment signaled a pullback from Reagan’s aims for the program, Bush replied: “Not at all.”

Scowcroft, 63, brings unusually deep expertise and experience to the role of assistant to the President for national security affairs, the White House aide charged with acting as an honest broker among members of the Cabinet and the President’s closest daily adviser on foreign policy matters.

Born in Ogden, Utah, Scowcroft was graduated from West Point in 1947 and rose rapidly through the Air Force, mostly in academic and foreign policy positions. He received a Ph.D. in international relations at Columbia University, taught Russian history and politics at West Point and the Air Force Academy and served as an attache at the U.S. Embassy in Yugoslavia. He speaks Russian and Serbo-Croatian.

In 1971, Scowcroft, then a colonel, was named military aide to President Nixon, and accompanied Nixon on his historic visit to China. He soon came to the attention of Kissinger, who was impressed by Scowcroft’s intelligence, hard work and willingness to work impossible hours. “He sometimes worked so hard that he looked like a walking cadaver,” Sonnenfeldt recalled. “And he had a very high boiling point; he almost never got rattled.”

Kissinger named Scowcroft deputy national security adviser in 1973, and relied on him heavily during whirlwind rounds of diplomacy in the Middle East.

Served Ford, Carter

Scowcroft succeeded Kissinger as national security adviser in 1975, and served in the job for the last 14 months of the Administration of President Gerald R. Ford. After Jimmy Carter’s inauguration in 1977, he served on Carter’s advisory committee on arms control, which helped formulate U.S. positions during the negotiations that produced the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty in 1979.

In 1981, the new Administration of Ronald Reagan entered office both opposed to SALT II and suspicious of Kissinger and his proteges; Scowcroft and other former Kissinger aides were offered no senior jobs. But by 1983, Reagan’s men decided that they needed Scowcroft’s help in building a national consensus in favor of modernizing U.S. nuclear weapons, and named him chairman of the President’s Commission on Strategic Forces.

Unsparing in Criticism

Scowcroft served on the commission named by Reagan and headed by former Texas Sen. John Tower to investigate the Iran-Contra affair in 1986-87. As the only member of the three-man panel who had served on the NSC staff, he was unsparing in his criticism of the breakdown of controls within the White House that led to Reagan’s secret sales of weapons to Iran and the diversion of profits to the Nicaraguan rebels.

An official who was present said that Scowcroft confronted Reagan directly and bluntly with the board’s finding that the White House had attempted to swap weapons for the U.S. hostages in Beirut, despite Reagan’s protestations to the contrary.

“Mr. President,” Scowcroft said emphatically, “there were occasions when the aircraft loaded with weapons was sitting on the runway, waiting for word that the hostages had been freed.” Reagan was surprised and shaken, the official said.

“He’s remarkable because he is both a gentle and a tough person,” said Dr. Wesley Posvar, chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh and a Scowcroft friend for more than 40 years.

Staff writers John M. Broder, Norman Kempster and Robin Wright contributed to this story.