Eyes on the Horizon: Serving on the Front Lines of National Security

By Richard Myers and Malcolm McConnell

General Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the critical four years following September 11, 2001, looks back over his career and provides a candid, revealing insider's view of the war on terror and proposing a bold new plan that will prepare America for the diverse national security challenges of the twenty-first century.

Growing up in Kansas as the son of hardworking, nononsense parents, General Richard Myers, a distinguished Air Force officer for more than forty years, learned early the value of steadfast integrity and selfless service. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2001 to 2005, he bore witness to the critical events that shaped America's defense policy in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In the days, weeks, and months that followed, he worked around the clock, helping to devise innovative, unprecedented strategies for the Bush administration's war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq and advising the president on tough, historic national security decisions.

In this captivating memoir, General Myers talks candidly about his career in the military, the unforgettable events of September 11, and the global war on terror. With an insider's perspective, he outlines the mistakes made by the White House, Pentagon leadership, and the intelligence community.

Myers believes that America has misidentified its adversary, focusing too narrowly on tactical battles, instead of on a long-range strategy that will overcome a global insurgency fueled by a struggle for control within Islam. The United States must rely not just on the military, but also on intelligence and other instruments of national power and work through extant governments to reverse the depiction of an American-led crusade against Muslims. Rather than identify what Islam should become, we must work with an international community that includes responsible non-Western states to protect against the behaviors we consider universally unacceptable -- especially those that promote violence against the U.S. and its allies or any other country or society affected by the struggle within Islam. Finally, Myers maintains we must integrate our own government agencies so that we can focus a sustained approach to this strategy.

Told with unfailing honesty, Eyes on the Horizon is an unforgettable memoir of one of our nation's highestranking officers and a courageous call for change that will strengthen American national security and defend a democratic way of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Release date: Mar 17, 2009
• ISBN: 9781416560319

Richard Myers

General Richard B. Myers retird as the 15th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October, 2005, after serving over 40 years in the US Air Force. A native of Kansas City, Kansas, and a 1965 graduate of Kansas State University, General Myers has held command positions at every level, including Commander of US Space Command, North American Aerospace Defense Command, Pacific Air Forces, US Forces Japan, and two fighter wings. A fighter pilot with over 4,100 hous, General Myers logged more than 600 combat hours during the Vietnam conflict. General Myers now sits on several public and non-profit boards and currently lectures nationally on national security issues and leadership. He is Foundation Professor of Military Histor and Leadership at Kansas State University and holds the Colin Powell Chair of Leadership, Ethics, and Character at National Defense University. He lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his wife, Mary Jo. They have two daughters and a son, and, to his great joy, a growing number of grandchildren.

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PART I

REMEMBRANCE

1

SUNSHINE AND SMOKE

September 11, 2001

Just before 8:45 on the bright Tuesday morning of September 11, 2001, I was waiting in the outer office of Georgia Senator Max Cleland on Capitol Hill. This was one of several scheduled courtesy calls before my Senate confirmation hearings as incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, America’s senior military officer. I had been Vice Chairman since March 2000, serving in both the Clinton and Bush administrations in that capacity.

Max Cleland and I got along well, and he supported my nomination. Like me, Senator Cleland had served in combat during the Vietnam War. He lost both legs and one arm in 1968 when a grenade exploded near Khe Sanh. I had flown 240 fast Forward Air Controller, strike, and Wild Weasel missions in modified F-4 Phantoms, many against SAM missile sites in North Vietnam. We had learned a lot about war as young men.

We also worked well as partners in America’s enduring yet flexible framework of constitutional government. The military is part of the executive branch. The President requests funding for Department of Defense operations, but Congress controls those funds—and reserves the power to declare war. Therefore the interaction between senior military and congressional leaders is a vital component of our democracy that ideally transcends politics.

Now, with both the Cold War and Operation Desert Storm—our last large combat engagement—ended more than a decade earlier, it was possible to hope that there were no imminent major threats to our national security. But I also recognized that hope wasn’t part of a senior military officer’s job description. Under the oversight of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army General Hugh Shelton, the Joint Staff oversaw the preparation for worst-case war contingencies and the combatant commanders’ myriad operational plans (OPLANs). The duties of the Vice Chairman are little known outside the corridors of the Pentagon. Beyond helping coordinate the OPLANs, one of my more exacting assignments as Vice Chairman had been serving as Chairman of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council—which was composed of the four-star vice service chiefs—who approved the requirements of weapons systems being proposed for procurement.

I also served on the National Security Council’s Deputies Committee and as a member of the Nuclear Weapons Council. And I represented the Chairman on the Defense Resources Board—which supported the fiscal and personnel structure to the DoD’s sprawling bureaucracy. In a large civilian corporation, I would have been the COO, the chief operating officer.

This was very demanding work, but good preparation to serve as the Chairman.

Even if I’d been so inclined, this workload left me no time for politics. But it wasn’t just the burden of work: It was against regulations and our military culture for an officer to take part in political activity. This was especially true for a senior officer. And I had always believed that a military career and politics didn’t mix. Interaction with the executive and legislative branches, however, was an expected and essential part of being Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Like many of his colleagues, Cleland kept a television set in his outer office tuned to a news network. The first thing I saw on the screen was a live shot of the New York skyline, revealed through a wavering telephoto lens. Black smoke poured from the closer of the two World Trade Center towers, already darkening the bright September sky. At the bottom of the screen, the crawler text announced that a plane had hit the north tower.

Must have been a light aircraft, I thought. Maybe on a sightseeing flight.

I entered Cleland’s private office, and we chatted a few moments about the aircraft accident in New York.

He had started preparing a pot of tea, but we hadn’t taken a sip when a staff person came in from the outer office and informed us that the second tower had been hit. We both knew the interview was over and started out to the TV to see the south tower erupting with smoke and flame.

Cleland looked pale. I suppose I must have, too. This was no light-aircraft accident, but certainly an act of unthinkable terrorist savagery. The only precedent I could imagine for such an attack was December 7, 1941—Pearl Harbor.

My military aide, Army Capt. Chris Donahue, approached us on the way out.

Sir, Donahue said, General Eberhart’s on my cell phone for you. Ed Eberhart had replaced me as commander of the North American Aerospace Command the year before. Obviously his call was urgent. In this emergency, I had to forgo the luxury of a secure encrypted Red Switch phone and use Donahue’s cell.

Dick, Ed said. We’ve got several hijack codes in the system, and I’m working with the FAA to order all aircraft in the national air space to land. Two of NORAD’s responsibilities were protecting American air space from enemy aircraft approaching our borders and warning of missile attack.

That sounds like a good plan, Ed.

NORAD’s only role with respect to hijackings was to scramble planes to shadow the hijacked aircraft. The Command was not authorized to order fighters to shoot down civilian airliners. That authority rested with the President alone.

Next, I got a call from Army Col. Matt Klimow, my executive assistant. As we spoke on Donahue’s cell phone, the television showed pillars of black smoke erupting from the south tower.

General, Klimow said in a calm, precise voice, it looks like there’s a major hijacking under way, and I recommend that you return to the Pentagon as soon as possible.

He added that the White House Situation Room had called at 9:16 A.M. to confirm that American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles had hit the north World Trade Center tower.

We’re on our way back to the Pentagon now, I told Klimow.

As we raced away from Capitol Hill, my security officer took an urgent call.

Sir, he said, the Pentagon’s just been hit.

I immediately called Matt Klimow back to verify the situation and was relieved when he answered almost at once. People are running around shouting on the E-Ring corridor, he said. And all the fire alarms are going off.

Are you all right?

Yes, sir. It must have hit on the west side of the building, near the helo pad.

The Pentagon was such a massive structure that even the crash of an airliner might affect only a portion of the building. In the event of an attack, standing procedures called for the Vice Chairman to move to an alternate command post at a remote location—Site R—while the Chairman held the fort at the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon. But Hugh Shelton was airborne on his way to Europe for a NATO meeting and couldn’t be back for hours. By law, as Vice Chairman, I was designated acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs during his absence. And with NORAD and the FAA grounding all flights already airborne in the country and diverting incoming flights from overseas, Hugh might not be able to return—although I knew it wouldn’t be easy to stop the combat-hardened former Special Forces paratrooper from heading to the heart of the action.

So my command post had to be in the burning Pentagon.

Looking down the Mall, I saw the cluster of government buildings near the White House. Instinctively, my gaze swept the sky.

Sir, Matt added, the White House advised that the combatant commanders will probably want to increase THREATCON as they see fit. In emergencies, the functional and regional commanders in chief had control to adjust the level of protection their forces needed in their geographical areas.

The THREATCON was the alert status that the regional or functional commanders—Central Command, European Command, Space Command, Pacific Command, and so forth—set to defend their forces and installations against terrorist or other threats. If terrorists were executing a complex and massive attack today, our isolated naval, air, and ground bases overseas might be especially vulnerable, so raising the THREATCON was essential. The THREATCON levels increased from Normal, through Alpha, up to Delta. In the next hours, I was sure, over one million American service members around the world would be at their highest level of alert.

Unfortunately, the senior military and civilian leadership in this country was stretched thin that morning. The Chairman was flying to Europe; President George Bush was in Florida, promoting his education initiative; and Secretary of State Colin Powell was in South America, so a significant number of the National Security Council were away from Washington.

At this point, the roles of the military and domestic agencies were being sorted out. Klimow added that the FBI had been designated the lead civilian agency in the crisis, with the military standing by as needed if the terrorist attacks involved weapons of mass destruction (WMD: chemical, biological, or radiological warfare agents).

There was only one current enemy that could have coordinated the suicide hijacking of three airliners, almost simultaneously crashing them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon: Islamic extremists—no doubt commanded by the al-Qaida terrorist movement. This was confirmed later in the day. These terrorists had tried to destroy the Trade Center towers with a massive truck bomb in 1993. Later in the 1990s, their growing organization had attacked American embassies in East Africa. In October 2000, an al-Qaida suicide boat bomb severely damaged the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen, killing seventeen of her crew and maiming many more. Al-Qaida’s leader was wealthy Saudi radical Usama bin Laden.* Now, as my government sedan sped down I-395 toward the Potomac, it was virtually certain that bin Laden had found the means to export his extreme violence to our shores.

I asked Matt if the National Military Command Center was up and running, knowing I’d need to be where we had the appropriate command and control apparatus. It was. We’re coming in, I told him. I’ll use the River Entrance.

As the sedan merged with traffic onto the Fourteenth Street Bridge, we saw black smoke and orange flame rising from the far side of the dull gray Pentagon. I wondered about my friends and colleagues, about Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his staff. How many were still alive?

My thoughts were chaotic as the car raced over the Potomac toward the rising smoke. Then, a half-forgotten childhood memory flooded back. I had seen such a greasy black pillar of smoke before.

2

FAMILY VALUES IN KANSAS

Discipline, Integrity, Hard Work

When I was just two years old in Merriam, Kansas, in the summer of 1944, I witnessed a terrifying incident that scared me so badly my parents were convinced I’d never have anything to do with airplanes.

We lived in this Kansas City suburb in a two-story wood-frame house on a quiet middle-class street bordering a pasture. My dad, Robert Bowman Myers, was a manufacturer’s representative for Grayco, which built air-driven and electrically driven industrial pumps and tools, and he also sold other lines of equipment. Pauline Louise, my mother, had taught primary school, but stayed home after I was born.

One sunny afternoon when I was out in the yard playing, a huge four-engine B-24 Liberator bomber roared low overhead, banked steeply, and stalled, crashing nose-first into a vacant lot just a few blocks away. The explosion shook the ground, and I saw the fireball and greasy black smoke boiling above the rooftops.

To a kid of two, this was like the end of the world. I ran into the kitchen, crying uncontrollably, and buried my face in my mother’s apron. For several weeks, whenever I saw a plane in the sky, I dashed back into the house, sobbing hysterically. And there were a lot of planes over Kansas City in those days. Not only did North American build thousands of twin-engine B-25 Mitchell bombers at the nearby Fairfax plant, Boeing assembled huge B-29 Superfortresses in Wichita, and aircraft like that B-24, en route to Europe from factories in California or training bases in the Southwest, often refueled in Kansas City.

When my mother realized I just wasn’t going to wake up one morning, eat my Wheaties, and forget my terror of the big airplanes droning above the house, she took me to see the family doctor. There weren’t many child psychologists in Kansas City in 1944, so the doctor approached the problem from a practical point of view.

"What does he like to do?" the doctor asked.

Well, Mom replied, he certainly likes to eat.

Fine, he said. Take him right out to the airport restaurant. Feed him a hamburger and a malted milk and let him watch the planes taxiing, landing, and taking off. If he’s still hungry, buy him another hamburger.

Freud probably would not have approved of this approach. But our no-nonsense midwestern family doctor knew a lot about practical child psychology. I quickly came to connect those hulking, noisy machines flying above the house with hamburgers, grilled cheese sandwiches, and chocolate malted milks—not with smoke and flames. But, since this was wartime and food was rationed, it was a good thing the doctor pronounced me cured of my airplane phobia before Mom and Dad ran out of ration stamps.

The test of the cure came a couple of years later when Dad bought us tickets on a TWA DC-3 flight to Wichita. I clomped up the steps and sat on a pillow next to a window so I could see outside. I don’t remember anything specific about the short flight, other than a sense of powerful force lifting us up into the sunshine and the flat checkerboard of farm fields stretching below to the horizon. From that day on, I loved airplanes, and that’s good, because if I hadn’t lost my fear of them, I never would have become a pilot, with flying becoming my passion.

Kansas City was typical of America in those years: Everyone was focused on winning the war. Men of military age not working in defense industries were serving in uniform. Rationing of food, fuel, tires, and clothing was universal. Everyone in my neighborhood had a victory garden. Like most people, we kept ours growing in the backyard well past V-J Day in 1945.

What dim and splintered memories I retain from those very early childhood years are of a general sense of national purpose, of my parents sitting in front of the big varnished cabinet of our radio, listening to President Roosevelt address the country…of sad and important events unfolding far beyond the safety of our living room.

My dad was born in Atchison, Kansas, in 1898, so he was too old to serve in the war. He was a risk taker, very skillful at the card table. The story in my family was that Dad supported himself during the lean years of the Great Depression playing poker and gin rummy. His ability to accept risk certainly showed when he became a representative for Grayco Manufacturing, which had its headquarters in Minneapolis.

He wanted a district near our home in Kansas. By then, my brother Chuck had come along, and Dad didn’t want to uproot the family during the postwar housing shortage. But the company warned him that the southern Midwest was not very promising. You don’t want that territory, the people in the home office told him.

But Dad took a chance and asked for Kansas and Missouri. He worked hard to become successful. Much of his achievement was due to his ability to read human nature and get along with people. Dad was also a low-pressure guy, equally at ease with a company president or a machinist on the factory floor. And he was honest, never promising more than he could deliver. People liked him and trusted him. I learned the value of genuine friendliness and trust from him when I was just a little kid.

This didn’t mean Dad was a pushover at home. He never spoiled my brother or me. But he expected us to be polite and obey adults. I’ll never forget my eighth birthday party, a breezy Wednesday afternoon in March 1950. We had relatives and friends of my parents coming over to help me celebrate, but I decided it would be more fun to ride my bike around the neighborhood.

When I finally got back home, my dad pointed up the stairs and said, Go to your room.

I hoped being exiled from the ice cream and cake was all the punishment I’d get. Not so lucky.

Dad closed my bedroom door and said, Take down your pants.

He never used his belt, but his bare hand was bad enough. This hurts me more than you, Dick.

That I found hard to believe. But I knew Dad was disappointed. I was the oldest child, and he expected me to act accordingly. I’d been disrespectful of the family’s guests by disappearing before the party even started.

My mother set equally high standards of behavior. She believed in showing respect to others and avoiding selfishness. She emphasized the Golden Rule at every opportunity and that affected my view of how to treat people the rest of my life. These were values that had shaped her life. Her father was a German immigrant named Koerper, a grocer in Kansas City who had gone broke during the Depression by extending too much credit to needy families. Mom graduated from the University of Kansas and taught school, supporting her parents for most of the 1930s. So she and Dad couldn’t afford to get married. In that regard, they were like millions of other engaged couples, but they weren’t young. In fact, when they finally could marry, Mom thought she was too old to have children. She was thirty-nine when I was born. And Chuck was born two years later.

Mom loved music. She played the accordion, having learned the instrument from her German parents, and the upright piano, which Mom kept in excellent tune—despite the humid Kansas summers and cold, dry winters.

She was determined to make a musician out of me. That meant piano lessons—five years of piano lessons. I’ll never forget sitting on that thinly padded piano bench with my teacher, Mrs. Wolfe, pointing out the endless stanzas of notes as we practiced key progressions to the beat of her metronome. Through our big picture window, I could see the neighbor kids tossing softballs in the spring or playing touch football in the fall. In the winter, they towed their Radio Flyer sleds to hills in the park, while I sat practicing. A dentist appointment would have been more fun.

But I was learning patience and tenacity, as well as a love of music that endures today, and that prepared me for the high school and college bands I would play in. Once, waiting to play in a recital made me so nervous that I threw up. But my parents expected me to play and persevere—a trait they valued. As my character matured, I, too, came to value that attribute.

It was obvious that they loved Chuck and me and wanted the best for us. Besides his family, cars were Dad’s great joy. One summer afternoon he came home driving a canary yellow 1951 Buick Roadmaster convertible. He piled us into the car and drove all around Kansas City with the top down. Next, my dad bought a big Pontiac station wagon with real wood paneling on the doors, a true battleship of a vehicle.

We took that car on a trip east, stopping in Washington, D.C. My parents knew President Harry Truman’s private secretary, Rose Conway, and she arranged a private tour of the White House for us.

Waiting beside the long table in the Cabinet Room, we hoped for a peek into the Oval Office that never came, because the President was busy. Chuck and I gazed up at the paintings of sailing ships shooting smoke from their cannons and old guys with whiskers riding horses. Right outside the glass doors were the Rose Garden and the South Lawn, where President Truman greeted visiting kings and queens.

My parents told me, Take a good look, because you’ll never see this place again. Although I certainly did see the White House again, Mom and Dad did not live to share that experience.

I had a very good public school education in the forties and fifties. After my stage fright before that piano recital as a young kid, I became comfortable performing for audiences and drew satisfaction from mastering a new skill. A good part of that was due to my new instrument: the tenor saxophone. At Shawnee Mission North High School, I was the sax and piano player in a small dance band and helped arrange some of the songs.

I was also heavily involved in sports—too heavily—playing on the football, basketball, and track teams. The camaraderie and competition among my teammates were a real pleasure even though team practices, band and glee club rehearsals, and the Latin Club kept me at school until dinnertime almost every afternoon. That didn’t bother me because I was slowly learning the value of teamwork and discipline.

So, when I landed one of the two spots on the basketball team reserved for football players at the end of the season, I signed up—but then quit after a day, disappointed that my close friend Sam Keeley had just missed making the team. This was the first time I’d ever quit anything. Finally, I thought, I’ll have some free time. It didn’t happen that way. The football coach, Bryan Sperry, said to me, Son, if you want to play football again next year I expect you to sign up for winter track in a week. So much for getting a little free time off after school. I still had to walk home each afternoon to a late dinner and homework. Then and there, I decided never to quit anything again.

We had a television set by then, but Mom and Dad were strict about what we watched and when. Homework came first. I understood that my job as a teenager was doing as well as I could at school and that I Love Lucy and Dragnet could wait until I’d finished my math and U.S. history reading. My parents were reinforcing the worth of discipline that I had begun to learn on the football field and the basketball court. This would prove to be far more valuable in my adult life than memorizing who fought the Battle of Tippecanoe.

Mom and Dad also had their own sense of hard-earned discipline, forged in the lean years of the Great Depression, but buffered by my father’s innate risk-taking. I’ll always remember seeing them sitting at the breakfast room table, counting the money in their bankbooks and insurance policies. Dad, at over sixty years of age, was determined to buy his own equipment distributorship, so that his sons could work with him when he became too old to deal with the exhausting strain of those long road trips.

But he was thinking more about Chuck’s and my futures than his own.

Years later, when I was a career military officer, the expression selfless service came into the professional lexicon. And when it did, I remembered my mother and father sitting at the table planning to risk everything for their children.

3

SPREADING WINGS

College, ROTC, Pilot Training, Marriage

Although Dad wanted Chuck and me to come work with him one day, mastering another profession seemed more interesting. My math and chemistry courses at Shawnee Mission North High School were fascinating, and veterinary medicine appealed to me.

Kansas State University in Manhattan, about 150 miles northwest of Merriam, had a well-established vet school, having been founded as an agricultural college in 1863 under the pioneering Morrill Land Grant Act. So that’s where I headed to enroll in fall 1960. But my dream of becoming a vet, working with livestock and people’s pets, did not last long. The assistant dean helping freshmen register explained that while I met most of the requirements for enrolling in the preveterinary course, taking two years of a modern foreign language was a requirement.

What’s your choice? Spanish? German…French?

How about Latin? I asked hopefully. I had three years of Latin in high school. Won’t that count?

I didn’t add that I would tear my hair out if I ever had to conjugate another irregular verb. After cramming for a Latin test, I’d wake up in the morning with augeō, augēre, auxī, auctum echoing inside my skull.

I’m afraid not, the assistant dean said. "It has to be a modern foreign language."

When I stood to leave, she asked where I was headed. Let me think about it. Thanks, ma’am. Dick Myers would never hang out his shingle as Dr. R. B. Myers, DVM.

Strolling across the campus, I mulled over my options. When I looked up, I was in front of Seaton Hall, a three-story Kansas limestone building that looked like a fortress. Engineering was carved into the lintel above the main entrance. I had originally given some thought to engineering.

I told the assistant dean who greeted me in the large hallway that I wanted to enroll in engineering. He asked what kind of engineering I wanted.

What kinds of engineering are there? I asked.

He grinned, probably thinking I was some farm boy who’d just scraped the manure off his boots.

Well, he said, ticking off specialties with his thumb and fingers, chemical, electrical…mechanical…

Mechanical, I said without hesitation. Dad had taught Chuck and me a lot about mechanics and I had always had a fascination with motors. I’d built several of my own go-karts out of some pretty basic material. After about half an hour of paperwork, I was signed up.

Because Kansas State was a land grant university, all male students were required to complete a minimum of two years of Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) courses. When the assistant dean asked, What kind of ROTC do you want, Army or Air Force? I found that question much easier to answer.

After that brief airplane phobia as a toddler, I’d come to love planes and dreamed of getting my pilot’s license. And I was especially drawn to jet fighters. I could trace this fascination to my cousin, Win Koerper, an Air Force lieutenant and aide to the commanding general at Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base on the edge of Kansas City. The Air Force had F-86 Sabre Jets stationed there, and I was thrilled to reach up and run my hands over the smooth and shiny aluminum skin of the fighters, to see the snouts of the .50 caliber machine guns in the nose. The Korean War movie Sabre Jet had been one of my favorites, and I was fascinated with the actual footage of combat missions with our guys shooting down enemy MiGs above the frozen Yalu River.

The other relative who influenced me was Sid Newberger, who was married to Dad’s sister. Uncle Sid had served in China during World War II and remained interested in the military. Sid asked if I was considering any of the service academies when I graduated from high school.

I shook my head sadly. It would be the Air Force Academy if I could get in, I said. But you need twenty-twenty vision to apply. And I don’t have it.

Well, he said, don’t give up. I had the idea that Sid regretted not having applied for a Regular Army commission after the war.

With Sputnik, in 1957, came the race to deploy intercontinental ballistic missiles. Merriam and a thousand other American cities were now definitely in the Soviet nuclear bull’s-eye.

As I started college, the Cold War had entered a new, more dangerous phase. In high school, there had been a vague sense of danger from our protracted confrontation with the Soviet Union. I remember seeing maps in the Kansas City Star that showed the combat radius of Russian Ilyushin and Tupolev bombers. Our town was well outside their operational range.

And in October 1962, during the first semester of my junior year, the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted. The Soviets had secretly deployed intermediate-range nuclear missiles to Cuba. The United States had similar weapons based in Turkey. Both sides had longer-range, more powerful missiles on their own territory, aimed at their Cold War opponents. We told the Soviets to get their missiles out of Cuba. They told us, Nyet. For two weeks, America and the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of thermonuclear war. Some nights, trying to study, I lost focus on the differential equations in my textbook and thought about those Russian and American intercontinental missiles poised to fire.

After President John Kennedy ringed Cuba with a naval blockade, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev backed down and withdrew the missiles. America and the world could breathe again.

Kansas State was great. That first year, I made some very good friendships that still endure. I also pledged SAE fraternity and moved into the frat house. It didn’t cost much more than the dorm, and the food was a lot better. The friendships I made there have lasted a lifetime.

But mechanical engineering was tough. Although I was fairly disciplined, there were lots of demands to support SAE in intramurals and other fraternity events. This all ate into the time for studying calculus, physics, heat transfer, and thermodynamics. And the fraternity house itself was not always conducive to studying. Some of the guys had softer majors that didn’t require long lab hours, and they tended to start their weekends early. I hadn’t yet fully learned how to prioritize, so midterm and final exams saw me trying to catch up in a quiet rented hotel room where I could study without interruption, hunched over my laboratory workbooks with my slide rule practically grafted to my hand.

The deal with my parents was that they would pay the tuition and house bill, and I would pay for my books, clothes, and all other incidentals. So I found a way to combine business and pleasure. I joined a four-member rock and roll band that we called The Travelers, led by Larry Wellington at Washburn University in Topeka. I played the tenor saxophone and piano. To my great surprise, a local bank was willing to lend me $710 to buy a high-quality Selmer Mark VI sax. I must have looked honest, because all I had to do was sign a loan note and they handed over my check. Playing dances and parties with The Travelers was both fun and satisfying: Our theme song was the classic twelve-bar blues instrumental Night Train, which has a hard-pounding sax solo. We usually made about ten dollars apiece for a gig, and played about six to eight times a month—good money in the early 1960s.

And one night at a party in Topeka, the audience asked the band to stay late. I walked out of there with thirty-five dollars in my wallet. Dad had bought a ’62 Ford convertible that I drove at school. After that late performance, my friend Barry Wilson managed to slide his bass fiddle into the convertible’s backseat with the neck jutting forward between our shoulders. That was a fine arrangement, except that the bass completely blocked my rearview mirror. I was heading through the empty streets toward the highway when I heard the police car siren. The officer had clocked me doing forty-five. The fine? He handed me a ticket. I handed the cop the thirty-five dollars I’d just made. It was a solemn and silent ride home.

A few years later, when I was learning to fly Air Force jets, my instructors drummed in a fundamental lesson: Always watch your six. That was the six-o’clock-position blind spot directly behind your plane from which an enemy attack was most likely to come. A valuable lesson, one I’d already learned on the late-night streets of Topeka.

My ROTC course required attending a short summer camp orientation to the military at Williams Air Force Base southeast of Phoenix: how to wear your uniform—sharply creased with spit-shined shoes—beds made so taut that you could bounce a quarter off them, how to line up your socks and hairbrush in your footlocker. And on it went, a mixture of classroom seminars and lectures, sports, and marching on the drill field in the baking Arizona heat.

We were offered a flight in the T-37 if we wished. I jumped at the chance for my first flight in a jet. I loved absolutely everything about the experience, from getting fitted with the helmet and oxygen mask to the heavy parachute beating rhythmically off your back and buttocks as you walked to the airplane. The flight was surreal in a way, and I remember being fascinated by the pilot executing a zero-G maneuver and putting his pencil in the air right before our eyes. It just stayed there floating magically. Simple stuff now, but then very impressive to a young cadet.

My group of cadets, F Flight, won the trophy for the overall best flight at the summer camp. I thought I made significant contributions to that award. Unfortunately, the training officer running the summer camp didn’t feel the same way about me. When I got back to Kansas State in September, the professor of Air Science, Air Force Col. Lee Ruggles, called me to his office and showed me my training report.

The message was short and brutal: Cadet Myers does not have much of a future as an Air Force officer.

Sir… I began, but stopped. What could I say? In my view the captain who’d written the report was flat-out wrong.

Colonel Ruggles grinned. He was a World War II veteran who took pride in getting to know each of his cadets. Short, with close-cropped graying hair, he looked every bit the professional officer.

I wouldn’t worry about that too much, he said. He trusted his own judgment and had faith in me.

He convinced me I’d made the right choice in opting to become an Air Force officer. But there were other factors involved in my decision. The Cold War was getting warmer—both in Europe and in Southeast Asia—and the Army was drafting increasing numbers of young men. One way or another, I was going to serve. I preferred to do so as an officer, in the air. I still wished I could be a pilot, but my eyes had me pointed toward navigator training. On the positive side, the B-58 and B-52 bombers and the new F-4 fighter-bombers all had navigators in their crews. So it looked like Lt. Dick Myers would see the world from a navigator’s seat.

Once I learned how to study, by my sophomore year, I had more time for a social life. I’d played football in high school and became an end on my fraternity’s touch squad. The intramural football game with the Phi Delts was the high point of every fall semester, with the queen of the festivities selected from photos submitted by sororities. A pretty, demure brunette named Mary Jo Rupp was the queen my sophomore year. When she appeared on the parade float in 1961, I decided we had to get to know each other, and managed to drive her home that night.

Mary Jo and I began to date. In those days at Kansas State, dates consisted of slow walks to ice cream parlors and long conversations about suitably serious topics. We started to fall in love.

Meanwhile, I still had to master the mysteries of differential equations, dynamics of machines, and fluid mechanics, to name some of the tougher courses. And in the next two years my ROTC classes also became more demanding. At least ROTC now paid a cadet the princely sum of thirty dollars a month, which in 1962 Manhattan, Kansas, went a long way. I can still remember cashing lots of dollar checks for lunch and getting change back.

After Mary Jo and I met, she’d sometimes come with me to gigs The Travelers played. She got the job of stamping the hands of the paying audience. It’s a wonder she stayed with me.

I was still somewhat disappointed that I was destined to be an Air Force navigator, not a pilot. One of our ROTC instructors, a captain named Joel Hetland, had just come back from flying supersonic F-100 fighters in England. He brought a couple of reel-to-reel tape recordings of his squadron mates singing classic flying songs in a Cambridgeshire pub. You could hear the clinking glasses and almost smell the pipe and cigarette smoke. Bless ’em all…bless ’em all…Throw a nickel on the grass, save a fighter pilot’s…

I thought I would never be part of that elite circle.

My senior year at Kansas State was a grind of rough classes and the encroaching responsibilities of the adult world. I’d be Lt. Dick Myers soon, heading for navigators’ training, as well as a married man. In May

Reviews for Eyes on the Horizon

[deaconbernie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As auto biography, there is little to make it stand out from any other four star flag officer. Myers is very careful through-out the work to keep his personal views to himself. He is strong on duty and taking all assignments as duty. His recounting of his time as Assistant Chief and Chief of the JCS is just that, and emotionless. It is the last two chapters where he speaks to the immediate and long future that he puts forth his own ideas. With six years at the very top, he evidences a good feel for international terrorism, and his recommendations for dealing with it. Some of his thoughts are bold but most are logical progressions in thought. His one significant criticism is the draw-down of forces during the Clinton years. I would recommend this book, not to settle any disputes of the Bush incurrsion into Afganistan or Iraq but to give yet an additional point of view.