Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,049
By This is the grave of Togo West.
Born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1942, West grew up in the Black middle class of that southern city. His parents were educators, demanded quality work from their kids, and he graduated as valedictorian of his high school. He was on to Howard University in 1960, where he studies to become an engineer. He graduated in 1965, but decided on law school instead and stayed at Howard for that degree, finishing it in 1968. He became the managing editor of the school’s law journal and did very well. I don’t think he was actively involved in the civil rights movement too much, which is much more common than not, even in the 60s.
Instead, this Eagle Scout (and he was one) instead joined the military, which was not a decision taken lightly in 1965. Yeah, he did his law degree and his work in the Army Field Artillery Corps at the same time, though don’t ask me how. He became a JAG, doing additional work at the University of Virginia, and was an Army lawyer from 1969 to 1971. West started practicing in DC law firms after he left the military in 1971 but remained involved in military law and veterans issues. Gerald Ford named him associate deputy attorney general in 1975, which meant this was one fast rising man. The Carter presidency kept him around and he continued to rise in the government. Under Carter, he was General Counsel of the Navy from 1977-79, then Special Assistant to the Secretary and to the Deputy Secretary of Defense for a few months, before being named General Counsel for the Defense Department in 1980. Basically, he was a top lawyer for large swaths of the military in these years.
Reagan wasn’t going to keep any Democrats around, so West went back to the law, joining a big firm in DC. He then became the head of government relations for the defense contractor Northrop.
In 1993, Bill Clinton brought West back into the government, as Secretary of the Army. It wasn’t under the best of circumstances. Clinton had named John Shannon to the role….who then got busted shoplifting women’s clothes from an Army base store. Incredible. So Clinton turned to West. It was a hard job. In fact, writing this post was a great reminder of how many enormous issues there were with the military in these years, some of which had to do with Clinton’s notorious lack of understanding of military issues, some of which were just the reality of trying to work out changes in social policy through the military, and some of which were the military’s own doing.
Clinton pushed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays in the military and just dropped it on West to implement. Not fun. He also pushed very hard to expand the role of women in the military, particularly into combat roles, often fighting with lead generals on this key issue.
West also had to deal with the Clinton-era base reductions. Of course this made sense because we had too many military bases and with the Cold War behind us, we didn’t need so many. But this flew right into the military-industrial complex. Every politician desperately wanted the base in their home protected. Honestly, the major daily impact of the military on the daily lives of Americans is as an enormous government jobs program. So to close a military base, especially given that so many were sited in areas without a lot of other economic activity going on, was a real knife to the heart of a given district. It’s kind of amazing that this even happened and almost impossible to consider happening today.
Said historian Richard Kohn, “He seemed undercut in accomplishing a great deal by the gays controversy, an Army leadership focused on dealing with [Defense Secretary Les Aspin’s] ‘bottom-up review,’ budget cuts, controversies over interventions abroad, and changes in threat planning resulting from the end of the Cold War.”
West became a key figure in the Aberdeen scandal that exposed the horrors of sexual assault in the military. One thing Trump and Hegseth and these assholes don’t understand (or perhaps they quite likely do understand and hate it) is that the military been a key agent of social change going back at least to Truman desegregating it in 1948. So as Clinton liberalized it a bit by trying to ride the fence on gay issues, the growing backlash to sexual harassment and sexual assault in the aftermath of Clarence Thomas’ confirmation to the Supreme Court led to greater complaints about endemic sexual harassment and even sexual assault within the military. There were quite literally thousands of complaints about harassment registered in the early 90s. Then, in 1996, twelve drill instructors at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland were charged with various sexual crimes. It turned out the male drill instructors at Aberdeen treated women like their personal rape club. Four were convicted and sent to prison. West was so public about the horrors of this that the lawyer for one of the convicted tried to get the judge to issue a gag order against him. West did a ton of work to tighten up sexual assault guidelines across the military. He stated, Sexual abuse is not endemic throughout our Army. Sexual harassment, however, continues to be a problem.” He even went on Face the Nation to state, “I say to the parents of America, you can trust your sons and daughters to us.”
For all of this work, Clinton bumped West to Secretary of Veterans Affairs in 1998. This went less well. He worked pretty hard to expand money for veteran health care, but without much success. The VA was also rife with divisions and internal issues, most of which he didn’t cause, but which he didn’t really improve much either.
West spent his post-Clinton years in think tank and lobbying land, like so many before and after him. He also spent some time as the head of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a vanilla named organization that focuses on issues specifically of concern for Black Americans. Despite being a pioneer in many ways, this was just about the only time he worked explicitly on racial issues in his long career.
West had a massive heart attack while on a Caribbean cruise in 2018 and died. He was 75 years old.
Togo West is buried on the confiscated lands of the traitor Lee, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia. I like to think about Lee realizing that Black Cabinet members are buried on his property and that everything he did in his life was for evil. One can wish. If you would like this series to visit other members of the Clinton Cabinet, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Hershel Gober, who replaced West at the VA, is also in Arlington and Warren Christopher is in Hollywood. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.