Brent Scowcroft: Mr. Behind-the-Scenes

By PRISCILLA PAINTON

He was nowhere to be seen on the day of the President's speech, and Americans only rarely catch glimpses of the professor's face on television. But Bush's stunning redirection of America's defense priorities last week was the triumph of one of Washington's last druids, a 66-year-old son of a wholesale grocer, who with a blend of self-effacement, crisis management and historical imagination has become the main architect of George Bush's foreign policy.

Brent Scowcroft, Bush's National Security Adviser, has been pushing for nearly a decade for a new kind of nuclear arsenal -- small forces of mobile, single-warhead missiles that would replace those with multiple warheads, which he regards as more destabilizing because they invite a pre-emptive strike. Scowcroft sketched this vision eight years ago as chairman of President Reagan's Commission on Strategic Forces, and he is now seeing it become reality. Said one Administration official of Bush's announcement: "This is the unwritten appendix to the Scowcroft commission of 1983."

During his nearly three years in the Bush White House, Scowcroft has in some ways eclipsed Secretary of State James Baker: while Baker remains an ingenious political quarterback who can execute the big play, jetting off to the Middle East to try to broker a peace conference, Scowcroft sets the overall game plan. Scowcroft, for instance, proposed cutting U.S. conventional forces in Europe, an idea that culminated in the signing of a treaty by 22 nations in November 1990. Bush's December 1989 surprise meeting in Malta with Mikhail Gorbachev was cooked up by the President and Scowcroft on the veranda of the American embassy in Paris after Bush made a four-day swing through fast- changing Poland and Hungary.

But Scowcroft's influence was perhaps most evident in Bush's handling of the gulf war. While the two men were angling for bluefish off the Maine coast a year ago, Scowcroft suggested the strategy Bush would pursue over the following year, predicting that sanctions would fail to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, that war would be necessary, but that the U.S. should not expand its objective to include Saddam's removal from power.

During the early hours of the Soviet coup, Scowcroft passed the night in his blue pajamas at a Kennebunkport hotel, waking regularly to check on CNN and rising early to draft Bush's first brief comments, which were careful not to cut off all channels to the plotters. After the coup was over, he again began holding long seaside conversations with Bush, this time about what the coup meant for both Soviet and American nuclear forces. Last week's White House proposal is Scowcroftian not only in its elimination of land-based multiple- warhead systems but also in its soft-pedaling of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, a land- and space-based shield system Scowcroft has always believed was too expensive and unnecessary.

Much of Scowcroft's success comes from his affinity with Bush. The men are only nine months apart in age. They often spend three or four hours a day together, popping into each other's offices and easily lapsing into conversations about world affairs. Both were military pilots in the 1940s, with Bush flying for the Navy and Scowcroft, a Utah native and West Point graduate, for the Air Force. Like Bush, Scowcroft came close to losing his life when his P-51B Mustang made a forced landing in a New Hampshire forest. The impact broke his back, and he spent two years in a hospital, where he met a nurse, Marian, who became his wife. Both Bush and Scowcroft served on the Nixon and Ford teams, with the future President reporting to Scowcroft, who ran the National Security Council while Bush was director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

They are also both joggers, fishermen, golfers and workaholics; Scowcroft puts in such rigorous hours that he often jogs after midnight and involuntarily catches up on his sleep by dozing during meetings. Both men enjoy teasing each other. Bush once placed an exploding chalk golf ball on Scowcroft's tee, and then erupted in laughter when his adviser pounded it into a million particles.

Above all, they share a distaste for ideology and a willingness to circumvent the bureaucracy when a bold stroke is needed. "I don't have a quick, innovative mind," says Scowcroft. "I don't automatically think of good new ideas. What I do better is pick out good ideas from bad ideas." Bush seems to believe that Scowcroft knows the difference.

With reporting by Michael Duffy/Washington