Career
During World War II, he served as a Marine Lieutenant in the Pacific theater of the war, participating in the U.S. 5th Marine Division capture of Iwo Jima and the initial occupation of Japan. Afterwards, he became assistant to the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee from 1947 to 1948. He continued as staff aide to three Secretaries of Defense: James Forrestal, General George Marshall and Robert A. Lovett from 1948 to 1953.
He then went on to work in the private sector for a number of years, spending 7 years as partner of an international consulting firm: Cresap, McCormick and Paget.
In 1964, he returned to public service as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International affairs. From 1965 to 1967, he was Principal Deputy for International Security Affairs at the Pentagon.
Serving as Under Secretary of the Air Force at the Pentagon from 1967 to 1969, he witnessed firsthand the effect of the 1968 Tet Offensive, and Lyndon B. Johnson's subsequent decision to de-escalate the war in Vietnam.
After leaving the government, he became fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for two years. From 1973 to 1986, Hoopes became president of the Association of American Publishers.
In a telephone conversation between Richard Nixon and Charles Colson, taped on July 1, 1971, Colson relates the news that Lyndon Johnson privately believed that Hoopes had played a role in releasing the Pentagon Papers to the press, and that he would have liked to have seen Hoopes taken to court by the government alongside various newspapermen.
He also became co-chairman of Americans for SALT, director of the American Committee on U.S. Soviet Relations, and a distinguished international executive at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 2002, he became senior fellow of Washington College.
From the mid-1980s to 1995, Mr. Hoopes and his wife ran Hoopes Troupe, a charitable amateur singing group that performed around Washington, D.C., including at the Supreme Court.
Read more about this topic: Townsend Hoopes
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the assistance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.”
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“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
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“My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.”
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