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Current Biography - June 2003

Vincent Brooks

Date of birth: 1958(?)

Profession: U.S. Army brigadier general

Biography from Current Biography (2003)
Copyright (c) by The H. W. Wilson Company. All rights reserved.

During the American-led war with Iraq in the early months of 2003, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, the spokesperson for the U.S. Army Central Command, was widely referred to as "the face of the U.S. military." The Central Command is one of nine U.S. combatant commands that answer directly to the president and secretary of Central Command, defense; its territory embraces 25 nations in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. As Brooks helped to oversee military action in Iraq, his daily press briefings brought him celebrity status and led some commentators to note that Brooks—an African-American—has helped reinvent the look of the American military. In an article for the Cincinnati Post (April 10, 2003, on-line), a reporter wrote that in the demanding job of spokesperson, Brooks had to provide "a little propaganda, a little information, and confirm or deny the stream of reports that about 600 embedded correspondents are producing hourly. He must still convey absolute authority–all before the pitiless eye of the TV camera." Known as something of a technocrat, Brooks delivered his daily brief ings in a dry, professional tone that led some members of the press to nickname him "cyborg." "Generals don't have emotions," Brooks once declared, as quoted by Geoff Meade for Sky News (on-line). "One of the things I like about him is that he doesn't look very defensive," Roy Peter Clark, the vice president and senior scholar at the Poynter Institute for journalism, told Patrick Cooper for CNN.com (April 8, 2003). "He doesn't project himself as someone who is going to automatically  or reflexively defend every act that is made under the umbrella of this military action."  

Vincent K. Brooks was born in about 1958 in Anchorage, Alaska, the second of the three children of Brigadier General Leo A. Brooks Sr.,  who later became a city manager of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After the family moved to California, Brooks attended Jesuit High School, in Sacramento, where he ran track and excelled as a member of the basketball team. Along with his older brother, Leo, who also later became an army general, Brooks was one of the few African-Americans to attend the school. A solid student, Brooks turned down a basketball scholarship at North Carolina State University to follow his older brother to the prestigious United States Military Academy, in West Point, New York. Recalling what led to that decision, his father revealed that one night when Leo Brooks Jr. was home from West Point, Vincent Brooks tried on one of his older brother's military-academy uniforms. "That night when we went to bed I said I thought he was hooked," Leo Brooks Sr. told a reporter for the Augusta Chronicle, as quoted by Tanu T. Henry for Africana.com. At West Point Brooks became the first African-American in the school's history to be named cadet brigade commander (the top-ranking cadet), a position in which, somewhat like the president of a college class, he led more than 4,000 cadets during his senior year. Brooks graduated first in his class in 1980 with a B.S. degree. He later earned a master's degree in military art and science from the School of Advanced Military Studies at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and studied for a year as a national security fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.   

Meanwhile, after graduating from West Point, Brooks served in the U.S. Army in locations around the globe, including South Korea, Panama, and Europe. In his role as deputy director for politico military affairs in the Western Hemisphere at the Directorate for Strategic Plans and Policy, he was involved with military cooperation efforts between the U.S. and Canada as well as between the U.S. and Latin America; his work in that capacity also included policy formulation for all the Americas. In addition, he managed several multilateral and inter-American operations, including United States/United Nations military activities and the Inter-American Defense Board. Brooks helped command the U.S. Third Army in Kuwait during the 1991 Persian Gulf War against Iraq and led 3,000 soldiers in a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo in 2001. During his military career Brooks has completed assignments with the 82d Airborne Division, the First Infantry Division (Forward), and the First Cavalry Division; he also served at the Pentagon with the army deputy chief of staff for operations and, later, as aide de camp to the army vice chief of staff. Retired general Wesley Clark, who commanded the First Cavalry Division in the early 1990s, noticed Brooks even though he was one of 80 majors serving under Clark at the time. "He had a good sense of timing," Clark was quoted as saying by Patrick Cooper. "He is a no-nonsense leader who has studied his profession carefully, works hard and delivers." In 1999 Brooks graduated from the Army War College, in Washington, D.C., and he was the, youngest nominee to go before the U.S. Senate in 2002 for confirmation as a general. Brooks was confirmed and named a brigadier general.   

With the March 2003 outbreak of the U.S.-led war against Iraq— undertaken with the announced aim of ridding that country of weapons of mass destruction, and as part of a larger war on international terrorism—the soft-spoken Brooks was named by the commander in chief of the United States Central Command, General Tommy Franks, as the spokesman for the U.S. Central Command base in Qatar. While some journalists were angered that Franks did not address the media himself, Brooks got a generally positive reception. While briefing the press Brooks appeared, as Deborah Simmons wrote for the Washington Times (April 11, 2003, on-line), ''as if he were born for the job, obviously carrying both the lessons of military discipline as well as the values and common courtesies learned at home. Exceptionally polite, Brooks addressed each reporter as " ma' am" or "sir" during his press briefings.

"He's quite candid and forthcoming," Joseph Lorfano, a former U.S. Navy commander who held daily press briefings during the Vietnam War, told the reporter for the Cincinnati Post. "He looks great and talks great, and that' s part of it. You have to get the press to have confidence in what you're telling them." Some reporters, however, were less than happy with Brooks's presentations, noting that much of the information he related had already been released by the Pentagon. "He has five scripted things to say and a lot of stuff he just won't answer," one war reporter said to the Cincinnati Post.

Brooks is married to a physical therapist. He is known as a business- like, hard-edged leader who is also humble and gives credit for his successes to those close to him, without minimizing the role of his own discipline and persistence in bringing about those successes. "We are role models to a lot of young people, not just African Americans and soldiers," Brooks said, as quoted Tanu T. Henry. "People can see the achievement and how hard work leads to it." — G.O.

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