Is This a Claude Rains Moment?

Claude Rains as Captain Renault

I love old movies. Perhaps it’s because I grew up watching them. In those pre-Sesame Street days, after school television was largely a choice between soap operas and the Million Dollar Movie. Independent NY channel 9 (WOR-TV) would run the same movie twice a day for five afternoons. So, I grew up watching old movies from the 30’s and 40’s. Perhaps that would explain my poor social skills.



One of my favorites (and, I am not alone on this) was Casablanca. The romantic WW II classic starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman had a great supporting cast including Claude Rains as a corrupt French policeman.

The ordering by the Nazi’s to find a reason to shut down Rick’s Café (Bogart’s establishment) elicits the following dialog between Rick and Rain’s Captain Renault

Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.

I thought of him this week when the news broke of members of the Secret Service and (gasp!) our very own military were discovered to have engaged the services of prostitutes in Colombia. I am shocked, shocked to find that members of our military and Secret Service engaged the services of prostitutes.

But, this is not a joke. There are a couple of issues here:

Prostitution is legal in Colombia. What's the controversy? Are we to hold these public servants to a standard that is above the law? Who sets the standard? How does a member of the Secret Service know what the standard is?

Well, there is a higher standard. It’s called a security clearance. And, though I seriously doubt that everyone who engages the services of a prostitute has had theirs lifted, in this case, that’s exactly what happened.

But, I wonder. Are activities that are legal some places but not others permissible? Drugs are legal in Switzerland and prostitution is legal in the Netherlands. Should members of the Secret Service be precluded from engaging in legal activities in other countries if they are not legal in the US?

The larger issue, of course, is the potential security risk associated with inviting prostitutes into a hotel room that houses the President's itinerary and other details of his trip to South America. What's to stop a potential terrorist or assassin from paying a prostitute to spirit away some of the confidential documents that contain these details in the middle of the night?

Something nearer to me personally is the scandal that just broke about alleged rapes at West Point and Annapolis and the associated cover-up. Two women – one from each of the Academies – have alleged that they were raped as students (cadets, midshipmen) and that senior officers were unresponsive to their complaints. If true, it is unconscionable. Women were first admitted to the Academies in 1976. By now, their participation in our armed forces and their evaluation on the basis of merit should be a matter of routine.

I am reminded of the Tailhook scandal in 1992. Navy Lt. Paula Coughlin was forced to run a gauntlet of drunken pilots who groped her and tore at her clothes. The annual Tailhook convention was attended by some of the same senior officers who should have been preventing this type of behavior.

When the story broke, then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney asked for and received the resignation of the Secretary of the Navy (the Navy’s CEO), Lawrence Garrett III. Several senior officers were relieved of their responsibility and punished for the cover-up. The Navy embarked upon an education program to prevent future occurrences of sexual harassment.

It’s time for a refresher course.

There will always be breaches of acceptable conduct and there will always be cover-ups. The larger question is how will the leadership of these important institutions respond?

The Catholic Church covered up sexual abuse of children for decades, a breach that I still find the most egregious of any in my lifetime. Richard Nixon and his close advisors engaged in a cover-up of the Watergate burglary. The cover-up was worse than the crime.

So, it will be interesting to watch the events of the next few weeks. How will the LEADERS of these important institutions respond as the facts unfold? What will the current Secretaries of the Army and Navy do? How about the head of the Secret Service? How will they respond?

Will they act like true LEADERS? Or, will they act like Claude Rains?

WHO WILL LEAD?

No Excuse, Sir!

I had many responses to my last posting (Memorial Day Memories). Most were expressions of gratitude for my service which were warmly received. Others complimented the health of my whiskers (also warmly received). But it was the one from a very close friend, Bob Cannan, which really stood out. Bob was a year behind me at the Naval Academy (USNA). It’s fair to say that my posting caused him to remember some of his own lessons from that time.


By way of background, I should recount for those of you who did not attend USNA that our plebe year (like all military training) was a process of breaking down our conditioned responses to stimuli and replacing them with something more suitable to the armed forces. There were only four acceptable responses to any statement or question from upperclassmen: “yes, sir”; “no, sir”; “I’ll find out, sir”; and, “no excuse, sir”. That’s it. Nothing else need be, should be or had better be said. Try on something else and there was a price to pay.

Why? Well I quote, in part, from Bob’s email:

“Here’s the one phrase that impressed itself on me most profoundly in those formative years: “No excuse, sir.”


“And, the few times I was stupid enough to say it, it was always followed in a nanosecond by, “YOU’RE GODDAM RIGHT THERE’S NO EXCUSE!”


“After a whole (plebe) year facing the holy truth of that response I realized, “Hey, there really isn’t any excuse.” It worked. That got through, and it’s been a big one for me.


“Since then, it always amazes me that the same people who step up and say they “take full responsibility” never really do.


“And further, the main point is that an admission of guilt is not what we want. We don’t want excuses, certainly. But we also don’t want admissions of guilt or failure. Who cares? They’re failing or quitting. That’s been done. They want our sympathy? Our admiration for their honesty?


“We want them to do what they were hired to do, and keep at it until they deliver. That’s when they’ll have my admiration. Honesty and candor aren’t as courageous as the media makes them out to be. In fact they’re so common they’re not even very dramatic anymore. Here’s an alternative: how about shutting your mouth and getting the job done? That’s what you promised. That’s all I want.”

Obviously, Bob is a passionate guy. That’s why I love him. Passion aside, let’s examine for a moment the value of the lesson. We have been served up a succession of failures by our so-called leaders who would have benefited from some USNA conditioning. Think of Richard Nixon, Bill CLinton, Martha Stewart and Scooter Libby.

The common element in each of these examples is that these folks were not guilty of the underlying crime of which they were accused. They were guilty of the cover-up, the lie – the excuse. Richard Nixon wasn’t involved in Watergate; he was guilty of the cover-up. Clinton’s failure was not the Whitewater caper but lying about his sex life. Stewart wasn’t found guilty of insider trading but of lying to the FBI about it. Ditto Scooter Libby.

I often tell people that the personal attribute I value most is “forthrightness”. Think about that for a moment. Forthrightness is more than just honesty. You can be silent and still be honest. Forthrightness is about putting your failures on the table and saying, “There’s no excuse for this but everyone needs to know”.

Can you admit your failures without being drawn out? To your colleagues? To your family? To your children? To your spouse?

In combat, when someone doesn’t admit to a problem, people die. Hopefully that doesn’t happen in our personal and business lives. But, the next time you screw up – and we all do – put it out there to those that matter and simply say, “I have no excuse for this. Let’s talk about it and discuss how we move forward”.

Over the last 20 years, there has been a call for our military heroes to run for President. Schwarzkopf, Powell, Petraeus. What is their appeal? The sentiment transcends party politics. People don’t care about that. Quite simply, they long for true leadership, forthrightness – a “No Excuse” approach to the job. Isn’t that what we grew up with? Eisenhower, JFK, John Glenn?

The Veterans Campaign, a non-profit dedicated to helping military veterans run for office, reports that, in 1969, 75% of members of Congress had served in the military. Today the figure is 22.5%.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have and will produce veterans who will step up and serve. It’s already happening. Indeed my own Congressman is a West Point grad. It will continue to happen because those who serve in the military will want to continue to serve. It will happen because people are tired of partisan politics.

To quote Seth Lynn, the Marine Corps veteran who heads the Veterans Campaign, “Military members have served overseas and seen that the enemy is the guy at the end of the battlefield, not the guy on the other end of the aisle".

Perhaps we will soon have the answer to my favorite question, WHO WILL LEAD?