please help me welcome charles stevenson. [applause] [applause] >> thank you, and could evening. nice to see people show up on such a lovely day to talk about this topic. i want to tell you some stories about the 20 people, all men so far, that have served as secretary of defense and explain why most of them, after serving, have drifted into obscurity. it was exactly five years ago, august 2001, that i was observing the way secretary rumsfeld was trying to get all the the the pentagon. i thought, i've seen this story before. this looks just like what robert mcnamara was going through as he tried to assert civilian control over the pentagon under president kennedy. there were so many similarities, both men were very self confident, not arrogant. both men were corporate ceos who wanted to bring business practices in to the pentagon. both republicans. both elevated outsiders as they took over office and ignored a lot of the insiders, causing a lot of unrest. both tried to muzzle dissent. both of them created new processes that would allow them to a centralized their authority in the