Carter Caldwell is a composite character from two former colleagues from the West Point Department of Social Sciences… and myself. The majority piece of the composite is my dear friend, Ty Cobb (pictured above) – and yes, he is related to the famous baseball player. In late 1982, Ty, a Soviet expert with a Ph.D., was asked to come to Washington to join President Reagan’s NSC staff. Ty was part of the permanent, tenured faculty at West Point, and the expectation was that he would be back in a couple of years. But, he never returned, and retired from that position at the end of Reagan’s term. I visited Ty in his office in the Executive Office Building next to the White House on several occasions, and Carter’s office in the book was Ty’s as I remember it. His fictional secretary, Pat Meyer, is patterned from my secretary while assigned to the State Department. My Pat had the many uncanny abilities attributed in the book to Carter’s Pat.
Ty handled President Reagan’s travels to Europe and his meetings with European Heads of State, including the Head of State of the Holy See, John Paul II. Unlike other meetings President Reagan had, Pope John Paul II insisted that his meetings with President Reagan be strictly one-on-one. Nonetheless, Ty did have several personal encounters with the pope. The NSC staff is largely made up of people “on loan” from various agencies of government beyond the Executive Office of the President, and Carter Campbell’s presence there would not have been unusual.
Another inspiration for Carter was my West Point faculty colleague Brigadier General (Ret.) Dan Kaufman, from the class of ’68, Carter’s class in the book. Dan served a tour on the NSC Staff at the invitation of Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, when Brent was the National Security Advisor for President Ford. Brent, himself an academy graduate from the class of ’47, and also a former Assistant Professor with the Department of Social Sciences, was investing in the army’s and the academy’s future by hosting Dan, who held a Ph.D. in political science, on the NSC staff knowing the experience would be invaluable. And it was, as Dan went on to be West Point’s Dean of the Academic Board. Brent, of course, would later serve another tour as the National Security Advisor, this last time for President George H. W. Bush in 1989-1993.
So, Carter is primarily a composite of Ty and Dan regarding their service on the NSC Staff. His personal background, however, is mine – being from Kentucky and having spent some formative years in Lexington, following UK basketball closely, with family friends who lived in a wonderful neighborhood across from Henry Clay’s home, Ashland. As for Carter’s graduate school experience, another army friend from the class of ’68, following his graduation from West Point, went straight to graduate school at Berkeley — and from there to Vietnam. Carter’s interest in basketball is also mine, although after two tryouts at West Point in the summer of 1968, I concluded that I had more than enough challenges during freshman year without adding head coach Bobby Knight to the mix. Like many from West Point in the late 60s, I was happy that Mike Krzyzewski became the head coach at Duke after a successful stint at the Academy. As mentioned in the fabulous book, The Last Greatest Game, about the famous 1992 Duke-Kentucky game, Mike has all of Knight’s positive attributes and none of the negative ones.
