Excerpts from Chapter 5 - Trust and Confidence:

Ethics is not about what we say or what we intend, it's about what we do.

This is the heart of Integrity - demonstrating a consistency between ethical principle and practice.

Who we are is never more clearly revealed than in the daily moments of our lives. How we respond to some of those moments reveals whether we stand up for our principles or rationalize our way around them.

* * *

Carl Prude has been involved in several sales positions throughout his career. His story is not an unusual one, but it makes clear that nothing can take the place of a reputation for doing what's right and the necessary integrity in placing principle over expediency.

My story took place in the early days of my sales career. Our sales team was on the verge of winning a contest against two other sales teams. The prize was a three-day weekend for the entire winning team and their spouses at the Red Lion Resort in Santa Barbara. Our team was about $50,000 behind the leading team, and we had come to the final day of the contest. At about 4:30 p.m. I received a call from a customer regarding a proposal I had given him about three months prior.

After discussing some changes he wanted in the design, and some price wrangling, the customer gave me a verbal commitment to a $47,000 contract. Another sales person had just walked in with a $10,000 contract, so my contract would put our team over the top. There was one catch, however. In order for the sale to count towards the contest, a signed contract had to be faxed into our corporate order entry department. I only had a verbal commitment from this customer. When I discovered I needed a signed contract, I called his office but was told that he had left for the weekend. Furthermore, his secretary said that he was the only one who could sign our contract.

I told my manager about the situation, and he told me to go copy the original contract, sign the customer's name to the copy, and fax it into the corporate office. My boss rationalized that since the customer had given us a verbal agreement, he was going to sign the contract on Monday anyway. I balked at the idea of forging someone else's name, and I kindly refused to do it. At this point my boss became visibly upset; he stormed into his office, slamming the door behind him. After about 15 minutes he called me into his office and explained to me how things happen sometimes in the "real business world." My response was that if he wanted the contract signed that badly, that he should sign it himself. The day ended with him upset with me and the contract left in its virgin state.

The following Monday, the customer called and said that he would have to delay signing the contract until it was reviewed by his board of directors. This took about 45 days, so it was really a good thing that I hadn't listened to my boss. Subsequently, our team ended up winning the trip because a large sale that was turned in by one of the other sales teams ended up being turned down because the customer couldn't get credit approved.

The principle I followed was just being honest and doing business with integrity. My experience has been that there are more honest people in the business world than those who fall into the category of less than honest. When it's time to hit the pillow, there's no substitute for a clear conscience, or for a good reputation in the office.

Former New Jersey Governor and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman's 'moment' occurred "…literally hours after I was elected governor in 1993."

The principle that guides my life is the importance of maintaining my personal integrity, no matter what. No goal, no gain, no achievement is worth compromising one's honesty and integrity. I learned this from my parents. I remember vividly my father once explaining to me why he wouldn't deduct from his taxes the depreciation for his farm equipment. He didn't agree with the policy of depreciation, so he wasn't going to take the tax break it offered. Whenever I'm confronted with a challenge to my own sense of personal integrity, I ask myself, "is this something I could explain to my children and still merit their respect?" That always helps make things quite clear.

Governor Whitman offered this personal account taken from a commencement address she gave at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York on May 18, 1997.

Perhaps the biggest challenge my moral compass ever faced occurred literally hours after I was elected governor in 1993.

Two days after the election, our campaign's most prominent strategist went to a breakfast meeting with a roomful of reporters. For reasons that I will never understand, he told those reporters that the key to my victory was his brilliant effort to suppress the voter turnout among urban blacks by, in effect, bribing African-American religious leaders in those communities.

Until I draw my last breath, I will remember how the news of this outrageous lie knocked the wind out of me. I knew - for a certainty - that our campaign wouldn't have done this. It was simply inconceivable. I quickly confirmed my belief by talking to those involved in my campaign - including our so-called strategic genius. Everyone assured me that my campaign had done no such thing.

Our strong denials, however, did nothing to extinguish the firestorm that erupted. Understandably, the media, our opponents, and the state's black clergy members wanted a full investigation. Not only did this story impugn the integrity of my campaign, it also smeared the reputations of those religious leaders who stood accused of accepting bribes for keeping down the vote in their communities.

I knew I had to act quickly - not so much to secure my victory but to restore my integrity. Some suggested that I brand the calls for an investigation as nothing more than a partisan effort to reverse the election. Others maintained that I should move forward with putting my administration together, ignoring the serious questions that had been raised. My own moral compass, however, was pointing in another direction.

I decided that there was only one honorable course to take. I had to announce that I would delay my inauguration so long as there was any credible evidence that my campaign subverted the electoral process. I could not - and would not - assume office under the cloud that we had somehow stolen the election.

I always believed that it wasn't healthy to spend too much time reveling in the thrill of victory. But take my word for it; there must be better ways to come back down to earth. It wasn't easy to voluntarily offer up my victory as the price to pay if these charges proved to be true. But it was the right thing to do.

The weeks that followed were filled with the most extensive electoral investigation ever conducted in the State of New Jersey. Not a single piece of evidence was ever found to support the charge that we had bribed our way to victory. That's because we hadn't.

This was one case in which the truth of Harper Lee's observation in To Kill a Mockingbird was literally true. "The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience." The hundreds of thousands of votes I had received would not have been enough to defeat the single vote my conscience had cast.

 

In April 1998, for the first time in our nation's history, the director of the United States Secret Service was asked to testify against a sitting president in court. Independent counsel Kenneth Starr wanted to question Lewis Merletti about Bill Clinton's meetings with Monica Lewinsky. Starr was trying to find out whether the president lied under oath when he denied a sexual relationship with Lewinsky to Paula Jones' lawyers.

In a declaration made in opposition to Starr's Motion to Compel testimony from Secret Service agents, Merletti argued that agents could refuse to testify because they are shielded by a "protective envelope" privilege similar to those covering doctors, lawyers and clergy. (The privilege, it was pointed out, did not extend to any area that covered an agent witnessing the commission of a crime.)

At the core of Merletti's statement to Starr was this passionate defense of trust:

"The history of the Secret Service provides a strong foundation for this tradition of unequivocal trust. The motto of the United States Secret Service is 'WORTHY OF TRUST AND CONFIDENCE.' This tenet is so central to our mission it is emblazoned in the Secret Service Commission Book. I feel so strongly about this creed that when I speak to agents upon their graduation, I tell them that the 'most important' factor in the Secret Service Commission Book is the one in which 'I commend you to the entire world as being worthy of TRUST and CONFIDENCE.' As I state, the phrase, 'BEING WORTHY OF TRUST AND CONFIDENCE' is the absolute heart and soul of the United States Secret Service.' This trust and confidence cannot be situational. It cannot have an expiration date. And it must never be compromised."

My life lessons go back to 1967 with my enlistment in the United States Army. At the age of 19, I completed basic training, advanced infantry training, and jump school. I was recruited into the Army's Special Forces Training Group. There I completed one year of Special Forces qualification courses, then on to Vietnamese language school. During my tour of duty in Vietnam, I learned many things. It was my first exposure to leading people in a stressful, often hostile environment. I experienced cultural diversity. Our Special Forces team consisted of whites, blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians. We depended on each other, we trusted each other, we cared about each other, we were a team. We worked alongside the Montagnards, Cambodians, and Vietnamese, and we were a team. We lived their culture and learned not to impose ours upon them. We were accepted by them and our mission succeeded.

Those lessons became the foundation for the principles that guided me throughout my career in the United States Secret Service, an agency composed of highly dedicated men and women.

As I rose through the ranks, ultimately becoming the 19th Director of the United States Secret Service, I developed a reputation of team building, vision and forward thinking. During my tenure as director, the Secret Service experienced one of its most critical tests. That test came in the form of the Office of the Independent Counsel's request for Secret Service testimony. Never in the history of our agency had we been asked to violate our standard of trust and confidence.

For the Secret Service the issue of trust and confidence was decidedly non-partisan and non-political; the training and activities of U.S.S.S. personnel transcend political party or the crisis of the moment. We live according to an unwritten code, an invisible web of obligation; we would sooner die than fail.

The decision I made, however, was not made in a vacuum. Although I had a strong sense of what the Service's position should be, I sought the counsel of all four living former directors. I also sought the opinions of all the living former Special Agents in Charge of the Presidential Protective Division. When I asked what they would do, to a man they answered, "trust and confidentiality is what this Agency has always stood for. You're the first to be tested. You have no option; you must stand firm on this agency's strong heritage and tradition. Don't let us down."

I firmly believe that history will record our stance as one that was prudent, well planned, and required for the survival of our Agency's reputation and its ability to successfully carry out its critical National Security mission.

I wish to share the following creed, origin unknown, which I have carried for over 30 years. I consider it to be a touchstone that has inspired me during the most trying times.

"To bear up under loss, to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief, to be victor over anger, to smile when tears are close, to resist evil men and base instincts, to hate hate and to love love, to go on when it would seem good to die, to seek ever after the glory and the dream, to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be. To maintain dignity and integrity, surrender is not in this creed. This is what any man can do and so be great."

Based on his testimony and support of lawyers from the Justice and Treasury departments, the "Trust and Confidence" standard of the Secret Service was upheld. Lewis Merletti retired from the Secret Service on January 2, 1999. He currently serves as Executive Vice President, Stadium and Security for the Cleveland Browns football team.

John Baldwin is a general and vascular surgeon. Before going to Vietnam, he specialized in open-heart surgery but decided upon the broader fields of general and vascular surgery, he says, "to give my people skills more room to flourish." For his service as Chief of Thoracic Surgery with the 24th Evacuation Hospital, John received the Bronze Star. His story makes clear why his integrity is so vitally important.

As a surgeon trained as a scientist and a healer, I learned early in my career that absolute integrity is essential for success. Absolute integrity - the ability to honor and recognize the truth and follow through with appropriate action at work, at home, in marriage, with your children, and with yourself. This is the ingredient of great men and women and shines out of their eyes like a lamp in the night. This has been my goal and my obligation to those who have entrusted and allowed me, to operate and handle their very beings, their stilled hearts and their living, breathing organs.

John's story of inspiration happened Thanksgiving Day, 1968, while he was a major in the United States Army serving in Vietnam.

I had been at the 24th Evacuation Hospital near Bien Hoa, since May, and was chief of chest and vascular surgery, and after the first two weeks of disbelief and homesickness had settled into the routine of over one thousand casualties a month, an average of twelve major operations a day and constant outgoing artillery. I had seen it all: rocket wounds, Claymore mine injuries, gunshot wounds, punji stick gangrene, and napalm burns. We thought we were pretty good, and we were. Our place prided itself in saying, "If you get to the 24th, we will get you home."

The radio crackled in the surgical Quonset. A chopper was bringing in four American wounded. None of the wounded, all GI's, made a sound. Four teams of nurses, doctors and corpsmen went to work, cutting off clothes, drawing blood, starting IV's and assessing priorities.

I was summoned almost immediately to attend to the most urgent of those casualties, a young man, aged 21, named Bruce Clark, an E-4, who had been in-country for just a week. While training with live hand-grenades from a pit trench with several of his company, a soldier, two down from him, had dropped a grenade in the pit, and everyone froze. They were too green to know they had four seconds to pick it up and throw it, and too frightened to move. The resulting explosion killed four and severely wounded Clark. My initial rapid assessment was difficult because he was covered with mud, torn uniform, and blood, but it was obvious he needed a quick trip to the O.R. if he were to live.

Four hours later, with the combined talents of the "A Team" anesthesiologist, ophthalmologist, orthopedist, neurosurgeon, and myself, Bruce Clark entered the recovery room. Swathed in bandages from head to his knees, this once-handsome high school athlete from Cumberland, Rhode Island had been "saved," but reduced to one arm, no legs, no eyes, a profusion of tubes and wires going in and out, and painful incisions in his abdomen and left chest. Our angels of mercy, the army nurse corps, surrounded him with love and care.

In the mess hall, turkey with all the trimmings was laid out in grand style, but I was too tired to eat. I went back and made rounds on the dozen or so kids that I had operated upon over those last twenty-four hours, and made a special stop to see Bruce Clark. I was the one who had to tell him that he would never see again, and that walking would be very, very difficult. He never asked me, "then why did you let me live?"

In the weeks that followed, Bruce Clark required several more operations, and incredible amounts of daily care to survive. He endured pain most men could never understand, all in the inky blackness of his sightlessness. We became quite close; indeed, he became bonded to me and dependent upon me. I became his big brother and his dad. I was there when the general pinned the Purple Heart on his pillow, and when it was finally safe for him to make the 3,000 mile journey to the 249th Field Hospital in Tokyo, my commander allowed me to accompany him. I was his contact with reality on the big C-141Starlifter as it winged its way across the South China Sea, carrying Bruce and one hundred other American wounded farther and farther from the killing fields.

I bade him a tearful farewell on January 5, 1969 in a clean, sunny, well-appointed ward with the finest American nurses and doctors that ever were. He, the soldier, just a kid; I now thirty-five, the surgeon, his companion on the road to recovery. "I can't cry, Major Baldwin," he said. "My tear makers must have been taken out with my eyes." "I know," I said, unashamedly weeping as I hugged him goodbye, knowing that we would never meet again in this world.

I returned to Vietnam, finished my tour, and came home to a strange country that did not understand where I had been or what we had done; much less why we were still doing it. My family and I visited the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., in 1986. I was shocked to find his name, on panel 34W, line 47. "Ground casualty, died, accidental self-destruction, January 21, 1969" said the inscription in the book-like directory. (This referred to the dropped hand grenade, but could not convey the suffering that followed and the unexpected death after reaching safety in Japan.) I ran my fingers across his name engraved in the cold black marble…BRUCE A. CLARK. What had happened? An infection I had missed? A blood clot to the lungs? Some hidden fragment that became a catastrophe? Again the tears came, this time enough for both of us. I turned to hold my wife and said, "Maybe that was the best way for him. I just don't know."

Bruce was only one of many. A young man who never got to own a car, go to college, propose marriage, have children, take kids to a Sunday doubleheader at Fenway Park or any of the thousands of things we all take for granted. Devastated by the loss of their son, the Clarks moved from Cumberland shortly thereafter and I have never been able to find them to tell them of the bravery of their son and how I loved him.

And then there is now. Bruce and the nearly two thousand American soldiers that I had the privilege to operate upon remain indelibly written on my heart. Somewhere between that emotional day of farewell on the ward in Tokyo and several years later, it became apparent to me that my life must stand for something more than the ordinary, if the sacrifice of the Bruce Clarks was to have real meaning. It was their example of courage, bravery and unquestioning devotion, which inspired me to become the person that I am now.

In honor of their memory, I have tried to elevate my standards of absolute integrity to meet their expectations. I treasure life, children, honesty, valor, duty, country and family; all things that Bruce and the 57,000 other names on the Wall never got to practice or experience. I cannot dishonor their sacrifice by living my own life in a manner unworthy of their suffering.

This poem by W.H. Auden, which is inscribed by the grave of the Gallant Warrior (Great Britain's Unknown) in Westminster Abbey, says it best:

"To save your world, you asked this man to die,
Would this man, could he see you now, ask 'Why?'"