Special Section: John Hamre, Choirboy

JANUARY 12, 1991, was a dark day for John J. Hamre. That afternoon the Senate voted 52 to 47 in favor of the Gulf War Resolution. “It was a very grim day because I knew what was coming,” Hamre says, referring to projections of mass casualties in the Gulf. “I thought that it was frankly going to be worse than I feared,” he recalls, “that it was going to be a very, very bad series of days.”

John Hamre has never served in the military. He views military spending as, at best, a regrettable necessity. He is a Harvard Divinity School dropout who is at pains to explain to reporters how he is not a pacifist. And he is also the deputy defense secretary, the number-two civilian official in charge of the U.S. Armed Forces.

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Bill Gertz

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JANUARY 12, 1991, was a dark day for John J. Hamre. That afternoon the Senate voted 52 to 47 in favor of the Gulf War Resolution. “It was a very grim day because I knew what was coming,” Hamre says, referring to projections of mass casualties in the Gulf. “I thought that it was frankly going to be worse than I feared,” he recalls, “that it was going to be a very, very bad series of days.”

John Hamre has never served in the military. He views military spending as, at best, a regrettable necessity. He is a Harvard Divinity School dropout who is at pains to explain to reporters how he is not a pacifist. And he is also the deputy defense secretary, the number-two civilian official in charge of the U.S. Armed Forces.