Washington Post
August 24, 2001
Pg. 1
A Pilot's 'Good Hands' Near Joint Chiefs' Helm
By Vernon Loeb, Washington Post Staff Writer
As a boy in Kansas, Richard B. Myers witnessed the crash of a small airplane and was badly frightened. From then on, he ran home in tears every time he saw a plane fly overhead.
Finally, his parents took him to a pediatrician, hoping the doctor could help the boy overcome his fear of airplanes.
Whatever the doctor did, it worked.
Myers became an Air Force fighter pilot with 4,000 hours in the cockpit, including 600 in combat over Vietnam, during an improbable journey through the ranks that administration officials said will culminate today in his nomination as the 15th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Without specifically naming Myers, President Bush said yesterday that the person he has selected to become the nation's highest uniformed officer is "someone who's willing to think differently about the missions of our military."
By virtue of his experience, intellect and temperament, Myers, 59, is considered by fellow officers to be a natural ally for Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in their effort to reshape the armed forces to cope with the emerging threats of the 21st century by emphasizing missile defenses, computer warfare and the military uses of space.
In his current job as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Myers has been a principal adviser to Rumsfeld on this "military transformation." While the defense secretary has encountered significant resistance both in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, Myers has been steadfast in his support -- even though his peers say he is no zealot for radical change.
"He is a level-headed guy, he doesn't panic, he eats pressure for breakfast, and he doesn't have a personal agenda," said retired Gen. Merrill "Tony" McPeak, who was Air Force chief of staff from 1990 to 1994. "He will be working the secretary's problem, or the president's problem -- he's never working Richard Myers's problem."
Asked to describe Myers's style, McPeak said: "He's more of a Gary Cooper than a John Wayne."
John Pike, a defense analyst and space expert in Washington, described him as more of a Clint Eastwood -- at least judging from numerous papers published from 1998 to 2000, while Myers was head of the U.S. Space Command in Colorado, that called for the aggressive development of space weapons.
Although Pike opposes the idea of militarizing space, he said he understands why Bush finds Myers a perfect fit as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, describing his tenure at the Space Command as "unusually high profile." Unlike the typical Air Force officer sent off to spend a couple of quiet years at SpaceCom, Pike said, Myers truly "embraced" the futuristic mission.
Yet Myers is far from being one of the Pentagon's radical "transformation" theorists, according to other analysts inside and outside the military.
"He has a reputation for being a sober team player," said Loren B. Thompson, a defense consultant at the Lexington Institute, a conservative think tank in Arlington. "Myers is a good person to execute an evolutionary, incremental approach to change. He will not overthrow the status quo in order to transform."
One defense analyst, who asked not to be quoted by name, called Myers "an ecumenical military bureaucrat."
"If he disagrees with Bush and Rumsfeld, he'll disagree with them in private," the analyst said. "He has been everywhere and done everything. He wouldn't be in that job if he were a zealot."
Indeed, Myers has flown jets, run acquisition programs and commanded U.S. air forces in the Pacific, in addition to serving as commander in chief of the Space Command, where he led the military's Y2K computer defense efforts and became comfortable with the newest battlefield, cyberspace.
He was also an assistant to Army Gen. John Shalikashvili when Shalikashvili was chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the Clinton administration. In that role, Myers acted as Shalikashvili's liaison to the State Department and traveled extensively with Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright -- who, according to Shalikashvili, raved about Myers's performance.
"Quite often you find people who rise to that level who have a bravado about them, and it gets in the way of getting the job done," Shalikashvili said. "Dick doesn't have any of that. He's very confident -- free of the sort of thing you would normally associate with people who have risen to senior ranks in the military."
While Myers did not exhibit any of the swashbuckling ways for which fighter pilots are known, Shalikashvili added: "I've seen the good side of him as a war fighter -- his ability to deal with crisis."
As chairman, Shalikashvili, a childhood refugee from Central Europe, was more favorably disposed toward peacekeeping and other humanitarian missions around the world than his predecessor, Colin L. Powell. Where Myers comes down on that spectrum is not clear, and it could be a central issue in his Senate confirmation hearings.
Asked during his confirmation hearing as vice chairman in the fall of 1999 whether frequent peacekeeping deployments were eroding the nation's military capability, Myers said NATO's bombing of Kosovo served as a "wake-up call" to remind commanders just how thinly stretched U.S. forces had become.
A pause in deployments, Myers testified, might be in order "so we can reconstitute."
That hearing was most notable, however, for Myers's forceful advocacy of military capabilities in space. Satellites "are deployed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. They don't get as tired as other forces, and they bring a lot to the fight. And I think that's being realized by war fighters," he said.
Myers, a tall man with a square jaw who loves motorcycles and golf, grew up in Merriam, Kan., and went to Kansas State University, where he joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps and received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering.
He joined the Air Force in 1965 as the Vietnam War was heating up and went straight into pilot's school. By late 1969, he was flying combat missions over Vietnam in F-4Ds out of Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand.
McPeak, a fellow fighter pilot, called Myers "a good hands guy," which he translated for non-fighter pilots: "You put a stick in one hand and a throttle in the other, and you can tell whether a guy's got good hands, or whether he's a plumber. He is a good hands guy, really and truly."
Most of Myers's flying days were behind him, however, by 1977, when he went off as a major to study at the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base and then proceeded to Auburn University, where he received a master's degree in business administration.
By the 1990s, his star was in rapid ascent at the Pentagon, where -- in rapid succession -- he directed the Air Force's fighter acquisition program and commanded the 5th Air Force in Japan, before Shalikashvili brought him to the Joint Chiefs.
When, four years later, he left the Space Command in Colorado Springs to become vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Michael E. Ryan, the Air Force chief of staff, told the Denver Post that the troops would be sad to see Myers and his wife, Mary Jo, "drive out the gate with their two sheepdogs, his saxophone, his Harley Davidson and his 'almost' fully restored Triumph TR-6 roadster in tow."
McPeak said that, looking back over Myers's range of experience, it is hard to picture a more well-rounded Air Force career. "He's had a variety of tough jobs," McPeak said, "and he's never been fired from any of them."
