Page 282 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

THE EDUCATION PROGRAM

achieved in the two decades since, there is still a long way to go on basic
human rights for all China’s citizens. I also have no doubt that the undy-
ing courage of unsung heroes like the old dissident, along with the
unstoppable force of information technology, will ultimately bring it
about.”

FROM COLD WAR TO WARMER RELATIONS
Thanks to the Cold War and the ensuing sweeping changes in the Soviet
Bloc, many classes chose the former Soviet Union as the focus of their pol-
icy study trip. Even though George Heilmeier (WHF 70–71) was a world
away from his work assignment at the Pentagon, where his focus was on
military affairs in the Soviet Union, his mind was always on his job. He
remembers scanning the Russian skyline for antennas the entire time he
was in Russia, taking note whenever he saw one. “I would do a ‘back of
the envelope’ calculation to determine on what frequencies they were oper-
ating and ask myself if these sites might be places where they were doing
special work. That was more or less my special interest, because I knew
that when I went back, Secretary of Defense Mel Laird at his Monday
morning meeting would say, ‘George, I want you to tell us about what you
saw when you went to the Soviet Union and what kind of discussions you
had.’ So I more or less tried to assimilate what I was seeing and hearing in
a way that might be of interest to the folks in the Pentagon.”
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell (WHF 72–73) wrote that being
on the ground in Russia gave him a perspective he could not have obtained
any other way. “I began to get a visceral feel for this country, one that
comes from touching, feeling, and smelling a place rather than only hear-
ing or reading about it. What I sensed was the common humanity of all
people, including these Russians who were then supposed to be our mor-
tal enemy. The people I met on the train, passed in Red Square, and rubbed
elbows with at the GUM department store were not political ideologues.
They were the Soviet equivalent of my own family—a mother buying gro-
ceries for supper, a tired father headed home after a hard day at the min-
istry mailroom, kids thinking more about the soccer prospects of Moscow
against Kiev than about spreading Marxism globally.” 52

52 Colin L. Powell with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey (New York: Random
House), p. 171.

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