Bob

Bob Liebman has had, as the expression goes, a wild ride.

Born the day before Christmas in 1938, Bob traveled often as a child. His father, who grew up in post-World War I Versailles Treaty Germany, and who claimed he’d met Adolf Hitler no fewer than five times in Munich, emigrated to the United States from that town in early December 1923. (The so-called “Beer Hall Putsch,” Hitler’s first efforts at seizing power in Germany, took place on November 8th, 1923.)

Hitler notwithstanding, Liebman père went where his work took him. Trained as an engineer, he spent time in Florida, California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. During those early days, he operated automotive garages, all the while perfecting some of his many inventions. Along the way, he met some of the luminaries of his time: Zane Grey, Thomas Edison and his wife Mina, Henry Ford, Jack Dempsey, and even President Roosevelt, the latter of whom was “escaping” from his Secret Service detail while attempting to enjoy the Adirondack Mountains in New York. Eventually, he settled in Pittsburgh, where he ended up working as Chief of Research and Development for the Dravo Corporation. Dravo designed and built the largest number of Landing Ship Tank vessels (LSTs) used by the Allies in their World War II invasions in Europe, Africa, and the Far East, and from one of which came the large flag raised on Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima, the one with the famous photo taken by Pulitzer Prize-winning Joe Rosenthal, an image later used by President Roosevelt in the war effort.

This, then, was the atmosphere in which Bob was raised: rich with chance encounters with celebrities and powerful businessmen, and heavy on engineering and international intrigue. Also prominent, though, were some strong military inclinations, perhaps at least somewhat facilitated by the fact that Bob’s father was the adopted godson of Kaiser Wilhelm II ('Kaiser Bill'). And two of Bob’s cousins were aviators—one a fighter pilot and the other a dive bomber pilot.

There was also an uncle who returned from a WWII Soviet prisoner-of-war camp all “skin and bones,” having been only one of several from his unit that survived.

Self-motivated and studious, Bob excelled both academically and as a leader. It only made sense, then, that given his background and upbringing, he’d gravitate toward the military. He applied to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and was accepted. There, he studied Russian and became the first cadet in the history of the school to visit the Soviet Union since the end of World War II. In addition to this distinction, he was invited by the esteemed West Point graduate and Rhodes Scholar Harvey Garn to join him in an advanced International Relations course.

After graduating in 1961, Bob first served as an Airborne Ranger qualified command and staff infantry officer on the front lines of Korea, escaping death and serious injury on three separate occasions. He then spent 20 months in Special Warfare before serving out his time as an Assistant Operations Officer, Air Operations Officer and Historian for the 4th US Army.

In Special Warfare, his A Team leader was the legendary Larry Thorne—a Finnish­born national hero from World War II who later joined the U.S. Military and went on to become known as “Mr. Special Forces.”

Having served his country, Bob began to spend time in the Middle East. It was there, while working on various contracts, that he realized where his true talents lie: as a perspicacious and astute observer and prognosticator of both business and political landscapes. Obviously, the Middle East plays an enormously disproportionate political role worldwide, not to mention economically, since the emergence of the petrochemical industry in that area of the world.

In December 1978, Bob, who’d two years earlier spent time in Tehran, Iran, wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter about the “up and coming Iranian Revolution.” In his missive to the president, he recommended that Carter seek out Karim Sanjabi, head of the Iranian National Opposition Front, “before the end comes to the Monarchy in Iran.” As it turned out, President Carter chose General Robert Huyser, from the U.S. European Command, to interface with Iran’s Shah Reza Pahlavi regarding this horrible situation, an action that proved largely unsuccessful. But Bob’s 1978 note to President Carter represented the first practical application of his prescience regarding international affairs and power politics.

The “Carter letter” became the first of five communiques Bob initiated over time with the White House, the National Security Council, and, later, with Ronald Reagan’s administration. Bob’s OPEC Moderating Council Paper generated some good activity, both inside and outside the Administration, eliciting a number of letters from prominent people, and even a personal visit with Abdul Aziz al Nazir, Saudi Ambassador Bandar’s top aide at the Saudi Embassy in Washington. This paper, in short, called for a rollback in OPEC (oil) pricing in exchange for a moderated format for Palestinian Self-Determination on the West Bank and/or Gaza Strip, and made its appearance in the National Security Council twice, finally being met on (probably, as best as Bob has figured out) by NSC Middle East Director Geoffrey Kemp and some of his staffers. The project was placed in the NSC first by Elizabeth Dole and her aide, Red Cavaney, then by Bob’s former Congressman from Florida, C.W. Bill Young.

Later, when the stock market was in danger of crashing in October of 1987, Bob was patched through to M. Peter McPherson’s home phone from the Department of the Treasury at about 11 PM, whereupon he explained to the Department of the Treasury’s Deputy Secretary “how we got into this horrible mess (via Reagan’s so-called “Supply Side Economics”),” and what to do to get out of it: “Tell your boss to go on national television and announce movement toward or all the way to a flat tax structure.” Allowing that then-Secretary of the Treasury, and McPherson’s boss, Jim Baker, may have been in Europe at that time, the expression “Home Alone” regarding the status of his deputy has become an endearing—and somewhat amusing—term to Bob.

Regarding the United States’ second unfortunate foray into Iraq, Bob wrote letters to President George W. Bush, the first of which beat to print the conclusions of the Iraq Study Group by five days, and the second having outlined the ways President Bush could substantially redeem himself from his “fiasco” in other parts of the Middle East, as well, with five sets of negotiations. This letter, too, beat the convening by then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice of “The Neighbors Conference” in Baghdad by a similar amount of time, and also indirectly resulted in a prized note from General David Petraeus, who was then-Commanding General of Iraqi Freedom.

Bob left the Beltway in the early 2000s, relocating to New Mexico. In 2006, he ran for Congress in the New Mexico 1st District as an Independent, and although he most likely had one of the highest signing rates for a nominating petition in the history of the state, was challenged off the ballot on a State Democratic Party of New Mexico signature challenge, and failed to get back on.

In 2012, he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate. But he has continued to keep a keen eye on what’s going on in the world, both politically and commercially. He recently authored a column that ended up in three English-language newspapers in Pakistan regarding Donald Trump and U.S.-Pakistani relations in the event that Trump becomes President.

Bob, then, is something different: he refers to himself as an “organizer, analyzer, synthesizer, and communicator, written and oral, technical and social.” All of this in one package, one consultant. He has a keen sense of not only “where things are at” politically, socially and economically, but where they have been and where they are going. He also understands “north-south” and “east-west” tensions and possibilities, and what is happening with regard to racial relations both here in the U.S. and abroad, with ISIS and Al Qaeda, and more recently and sadly for our country, white nationalism and QAnon. He’s amassed an impressive number of contacts around the world, in business, the military, on the ground, in back rooms, and in the media, via whom he continues to be informed and kept abreast of ongoing events and trends, and how they might affect you, your business, and perhaps other aspects of your daily life, as well.

And he is available to you and your challenges, and very much looks forward to helping you meet and deal successfully with them, on both a daily as well as ongoing basis.