The Foreign Service Journal, December 2020

66 DECEMBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL But by April 1970 it became clear that his presence no lon- ger offered an opportunity to have any positive effect. Kissinger summoned Lake and a few other dovish aides to his office on a Saturday morning, where he outlined plans for a South Vietnam- ese/American offensive against Viet Cong bases inside Cambodia. The aides voiced their objections to the operation, which they regarded as a reckless widening of the war. Kissinger said to Lake: “I knew what you were going to say,” indicating that his voice no longer carried any weight. One week later, on the eve of the inva- sion, Lake and two other aides tendered their resignations. After leaving the Foreign Service, Lake worked on several presidential campaigns, completed his Ph.D. and ran Interna- tional Voluntary Services, an international equivalent of the Peace Corps. During the Carter administration, he returned to the Department of State as director of policy planning. He also raised cattle in West Virginia, selling cut-to-order beef to friends (Secretary of State Cyrus Vance was a regular customer). Lake later took up teaching at Amherst and Mt. Holyoke colleges, and wrote books on American foreign policy. As the 1992 election cycle began, Lake was living quietly on his family farm in Worthington, Massachusetts, with no plans to re-enter the fray. The end of the Cold War appeared to have placed national security on the back burner as a political issue; most of the Democratic candidates seemed willing to concede the realm of international affairs to President George H.W. Bush. But one prominent exception would draw Lake back into the fold: Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton did want to include for- eign policy in his campaign. Sandy Berger, who had been Lake’s deputy on the policy planning staff and had known Clinton since they worked together on the McGovern campaign in the early 1970s, arranged a meeting between the two. Lake had asked to talk with the presidential candidate about a book he intended to write. Instead, they spent most of their time discussing economic conditions in Worthington and the hardships his neighbors faced. “Clinton was attuned to people’s everyday lives,” remembers Lake. Following the meeting, Clin- ton’s team asked him to write an address that would become the leading foreign policy speech of the campaign; Lake signed on shortly thereafter, advising the candidate from his Massa- chusetts farmhouse. Back to Washington, and the Balkan Challenge Clinton’s election victory would bring Lake back to Wash- ington, D.C., once again. When the president-elect asked him to serve as national security adviser, he reluctantly agreed to return to the West Wing. Lake approached the position with a President Bill Clinton and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake at the White House in September 1994. WILFREDOLEE/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK