The Brain of the Pentagon
Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work hosts a farewell ceremony for Andrew M. Marshall at the Pentagon, Jan. 5, 2015. Marshall, 93, worked his last day as director of the Defense Department's Office of Net Assessment, retiring after 42 years.
By Eliot A. Cohen The Atlantic Read bio
May 12, 2019
Andrew Marshall leaves behind an American tradition of strategic thinking that will live well beyond him.
When the memorial service for the former defense official Andrew W. Marshall, who recently passed away at the age of 97, was held, an eclectic throng attended. Former senior Cabinet officials, generals (the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave one of the eulogies), professors, think tankers, and bureaucrats from several continents showed up. There were historians, anthropologists, economists, journalists, and political scientists. But it was not a gathering of the establishment, for these were the cranky insiders rather than the complacent wielders of authority. And all of us thought of ourselves as members of what is affectionately known as St. Andrew’s Prep.
Andy came to Washington in 1969 from the Rand Corporation to work for Henry Kissinger. His friend James Schlesinger recruited him from there to create and run the Office of Net Assessment in the Pentagon in 1973, and he retired out of that job an astounding 42 years later. In that time, he influenced not only the senior civilian and military leadership of the Pentagon (emphatically, some more than others), but generations of students of national-security affairs.
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/05/brain-pentagon/156843/
