Bruce B. G. Clarke senior military officer in arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union. After his first year at the State Department he was selected for brigade command but the busy pace of Soviet-American negotiations caused his assignment to be extended one year beyond the normal two-year posting. In his three years at the State Department, he regularly shuttled between negotiations in Washington and Geneva. This period include three summit meetings between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev: the November 1985 Geneva Summit, the October 1986 Reykjavík Summit and the December 1987 Washington summit where the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was
Stuart A. Summit General at the time. And although the nomination of Summit, an active Republican, had not been thought to be particularly controversial, his nomination ultimately languished. Initially, Summit's ethics were challenged by a personal injury attorney in New York who once had faced Summit in court. Then, Burns, who had been Summit's biggest champion in the Justice Department, resigned from the Reagan administration amid a public quarrel with Attorney General Edwin Meese. Even so, Summit was unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on August 11, 1988, which should have placed his nomination on the fast track for confirmation. However,