Her concern is justified. Kathy’s depression has deepened and her inability to cope with the world has grown. She says she
was diagnosed with “schizo-affective disorder” and she talks of the voices she hears, critical and condemning voices telling
her what a bad person she is. Occasionally she sees a psychiatrist who asks about her antidepressant drugs and sends her on
her way. Three days a week she works at a facility for those with mental disorders. She is afraid to ride the bus so either
Mary or Jeff drives her. She is well into her forties, but her anger toward her father is unabated.
For a while Jeff worked part-time at a nature preserve, but he was let go. He says he lost the job because he is principled
and honest and these attributes make people uncomfortable. He is moving into his forties and, like Kathy, suffers from depression.
He will not take medication. He says married women find him very attractive and that they frequently make advances but that
he always turns them down. His portfolio is filled with drawings of spiders and snakes and insects, truly outstanding sketches.
He could sell many of them, but refuses to do so. He spends hours every day lying across his mother’s bed, talking on the
telephone. He says Mary has helped him financially but not emotionally.
John Scott, who now uses only his first name, lives in California, where he works in the computer industry. His hobby is building
motorcycles. Alexander, his young son, is named for Alexander the Great. John wanted to name him Alexander Genghis but instead
named him Alexander John. The “John” is for his father. His animosity toward his father is such that the other members of
the family wondered if he would come to the funeral. He did, but the anger lingers. Now he wants his son to grow up to be
an Air Force fighter pilot. Sometimes he quotes his father and sometimes he admits that he misses him terribly. When things
are not going well in business, he thinks of his dad’s “sense of integrity and duty” and finds the strength to press on.
Mary Ellen writes computer manuals and lives outside Washington. Although she is the youngest child, she is easily the strongest
person in the family. She handles all the details of her father’s estate and watches closely over his papers and books at
Quantico. She has Boyd’s old phone book, which contains an unlisted number for the line between the Pentagon and Dick Cheney’s
home. She is very much like her father: direct, painfully honest, and at times loud and boisterous. Mary Ellen is divorced.
She sometimes wonders if the depression that runs in the Boyd family might one day surface in her daughter, Rebah.
Mary Ellen and John Scott, the two children who for so long fought with their father, tried to join the military. Both were
refused, Mary Ellen because of allergies and John Scott because of a juvenile run-in with the law.
Stephen died on June 3, 1998. In the aftermath of chemotherapy, he had a stroke and, like his uncle Bill, choked to death
on his vomit.
Then there are the Acolytes. They remain an extraordinary group as they continue to shape and influence their world. In one
sense, they are Boyd’s greatest legacy. Through them, his work and ideas remain alive. Every year or so the Acolytes and more
than a dozen of Boyd’s old friends gather at Winslow Wheeler’s West Virginia cabin for a Boyd Weekend. They eat and drink
and tell the old stories and they laugh as they remember.
After Boyd died his family was making plans to bury his remains in Erie when Gerry, Boyd’s older brother, said Boyd wanted
to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Mary and the children were surprised. Boyd never mentioned Arlington to them;
all he talked about was a Viking funeral on Lake Erie. But Gerry was so adamant that Mary Ellen called Tom Christie and asked
for his help. The Finagler did not tell her that most of the available space in Arlington is gone and that it is very difficult
to be buried there today. One more time the Finagler came through, a final favor for his old friend.
Christie lives in Vienna, Virginia, in the same house he and Kathy bought when they came to Washington about thirty years
ago. In the spring of 2001, Christie was weeks away from retiring when he received a phone call from a representative of President
Bush’s administration. He was offered the job of director of Operational Test and Evaluation in the Pentagon. This was the
position created through the efforts of the Reformers in the early 1980s. The sweet irony of Christie’s taking over a job
that he indirectly helped create was not lost on the old Reformers.
Christie’s decisions of the next few years will have a long-term effect on the defense industry. The happy hour crowd at Fort
Myer wondered which Tom Christie would triumph: the ultimate insider, or the Finagler. Then came the war in Afghanistan and
they stopped wondering. The U.S. military had the media believing that the Predator, an unmanned aerial vehicle, was the greatest
technological advance in years, that it enabled commanders to monitor the battlefield in real time. Christie published a
report saying the Predator was thrust into service without proper testing, that it was unreliable, and that the onboard surveillance
cameras had severe limitations.
Pierre Sprey brought to his music recording studio in the Maryland countryside the same unbending ways he brought to the Pentagon.
The corporate motto for Mapleshade Studio is vintage Sprey: “Music Without Compromise.” He says the music is “rigidly empirical”
in that every piece of recording gear is picked by ear, never by numbers or measurements. He does not use a mixing board,
over-dubs, compression, equalization, or reverb—none of the studio tricks to enhance music. It is all analog, live to two-track,
and beloved by those who like their music warm and vital and pure. The loyalty of his customers is unwavering. His music is
revered by audiophile magazines.
Sprey’s son, John, is growing up hearing stories of the man for whom he is named.
Sprey rarely ventures into defense matters these days. All that is behind him. But his swan song in that area is one of which
he is particularly proud: the sound of the A-10 Warthog screaming into battle like one of Boyd’s Valkyries. Air Force General
Charles Horner did not want to send the “Hogs” to the Gulf; they are cheap, ugly, and slow, and A-10 pilots go around posting
signs that say,
THERE IS NO INTELLIGENT LIFE ABOVE
1,000
FEET
. Much of the news about the aerial side of the war was devoted to the Stealth Bomber. But the A-10 had a bigger effect on
the campaign than any other aircraft. It was the aircraft most feared by Iraqi troops. They called it “Black Death.” Iraqi
POWs said other aircraft came in, made a quick strike, and were gone. But the A-10 lingered over the battlefield, and when
the pilot sighted a target, the deadly thirty-millimeter cannon released destruction such as ground troops had never seen.
General Horner said, “I take back all the bad things I have ever said about the A-10. I love them. They’re saving our asses.”
One day during the Gulf War, Sprey saw a TV clip of an A-10 landing. The aircraft had gaping holes in the fuselage. Half of
the tail was shot away and sky could be seen through an enormous hole in the wing. The pilot crawled down from the smoking
airplane, then turned and kissed it. Sprey laughed. It was one of the greatest moments of his life to see that the airplane
whose design he influenced was the only aircraft in the theater that could have brought its pilot home after suffering such
damage.
Ray Leopold is vice president and chief technology officer of Motorola, where he continues to be an achiever. He was one of
three engineers who created the iridium satellite-based cell-phone network and is a much-sought-after speaker at technical
and telecommunications symposia. Leopold holds twenty-six U.S. patents and has patents issued or pending in about fifty countries.
He is a senior lecturer at MIT. He lives in Arizona and keeps in touch with the other Acolytes.
As Boyd lay dying, Franklin “Chuck” Spinney wrote him a letter saying, “I will do my best to continue the good work you taught
me to do.” He lives up to that promise. Spinney stayed in the Pentagon, keeper of the flame and fiercely protective of Boyd’s
ideas. One of the best things written about Boyd after his death was done by Spinney—a piece in
Proceedings
called “Genghis John.” As brash and uncompromising as ever, Spinney continues on at the TacAir shop, where he works in Boyd’s
old office, an office that some think is almost a shrine, what with framed quotes and pictures of Boyd on the wall. Spinney
is the most feared and respected GS-15 in the U.S. government, a man whose very name causes defense contractors to tremble.
The Pentagon gave up trying to fire him and instead adopted an isolationist policy: ignore him, give him no duties, segregate
him from his colleagues, and maybe he will resign. A wall was installed between his office and that of several young civilians.
The purpose of the “Spinney Wall,” as it is called, is to keep Spinney from contaminating their minds. He has not been promoted
since 1979. The last time he was assigned meaningful duties was 1989. He has received no awards or bonuses. Much of his time
is spent writing insightful articles about the Pentagon, which he calls the “big green spending machine” or “Versailles on
the Potomac.” He calls the articles “Blasters” and sends them via e-mail to some of the most influential people in government
and the media. The man who did not fare well on the writing side of his college boards has turned into a passionate and convincing
advocate. His Blasters are not only unshakable in fact and logic (he has never been caught out on a major factual issue) but
they have caused change in government. It was Spinney who made the wing problems of the F/A-18 a national issue. Spinney also
has become a prolific writer of op-ed columns for the
Washington Post
and
Los Angeles Times
. He laughingly served notice on Tom Christie that if he doesn’t do the right thing as DOT&E, he gets hosed.
Spinney is one of three living people who can deliver the “Patterns of Conflict” briefing (the others are Chet Richards and
Pierre Sprey), and he drives down to Quantico occasionally to give the briefing to young Marine officers. He and Richards
are writing a commentary on the briefing in an effort to make it more accessible. They want to make sure Boyd’s greatest work
lives on.
Jim Burton, the man who might have been a general, moved into the village of Aldie, Virginia, and lives in an old house near
the base of Bull Mountain. After he resigned, Congress ordered the Army to complete the live-fire tests exactly as Burton
had ordered them. In addition, Congress threatened to kill the Bradley program unless the Army implemented more than a dozen
of Burton’s recommendations. Finally, Congress mandated that all weapons systems be tested in the same realistic fashion as
the Bradley. One change alone to the Bradley—the addition of a Kevlar lining inside the troop compartment—doubtless saved
many lives in the Gulf War. It took almost three years, but Jim Burton won his battle with the U.S. Army. When Lieutenant
General Donald Pihl of the Army testified before Congress about the live-fire tests, he said the Army had “learned much” and
“much of the credit must go to Colonel Burton for pushing us in that direction.”
Burton wrote a book called
The Pentagon Wars
that, on February 28, 1998, aired as an HBO original movie starring Kelsey Grammer. The book’s epilogue was largely about
the failures of the Gulf War and was published as an article in
Proceedings
. For eight months after the article was published, senior Army generals wrote letters taking Burton to task. He used the
information in the letters to put together a devastating briefing about the failures of the U.S. military in the Gulf War.
After he moved to Aldie, Burton grew dismayed at the rapid pace of development that was destroying the rural nature of the
Virginia countryside. Loudoun County is the fastest-growing county in Virginia. His ideas of controlling development resonated
with a group of citizens, and they asked him to run for the post of county supervisor. “I will run but I will not solicit
funds,” he said. “I will not be beholden. You raise the money and I will run.” He was elected and
lived up to his campaign pledge so well that a major developer, one of the wealthiest men in Virginia, held a clenched fist
in Burton’s face and said, “I’m going to build houses. Nothing you can do will stop me. I am a fighter.”
Burton looked him in the eye and said, “I haven’t had a good fight in about six months. Let’s see how this turns out.”
A few months later the developer left the county. “It’s the same game as in the Pentagon,” Burton says. “Except there are
not as many zeros.”
Burton learned from Boyd that if a man does the right thing, it does not matter how overwhelming the odds against him. There
always is a way to victory. “No matter what the situation is, no matter how bleak or how dark things appear, how scary, there
is always a way out,” Burton says. “It works every time. And it all goes back to Boyd’s ideas on maneuver conflict.”
Mike Wyly bought a farm near Pittsfield, Maine, planted grapes, and made big plans for what he called “Wilderness Vineyard.”
But then he heard that the local ballet was in debt and in danger of being disbanded. The board of directors spent more time
squabbling and trying to make sure their children had starring roles than they did in good business practices. Wyly volunteered
to take over the ballet. He sounded the call to his Marine Corps friends, and James Webb and Colonel G. I. Wilson and a dozen
others responded. Wyly put Marine Corps thinking to the ballet and turned it around, and today the Bossov Ballet Theater is
a great success story. The
Wall Street Journal
even did a front-page story about the retired Marine colonel who runs a ballet school.
Wyly hosted a Boyd Conference the summer after Boyd died, and more than two dozen of Boyd’s friends journeyed to Maine for
a week. In early 2001, he called a board meeting to coincide with a performance of
Cinderella
. Board members and advisors came from as far away as California and Georgia to a small town in central Maine. After the performance,
Wyly and his friends visited a bar, where they stood and drank a toast to Colonel John Boyd.