Leader Personality Assessments in Support of Government Policyto Communist party chairman Leonid Brezhnev at a time when the
succession was by no means clear. This analysis permitted identify-
ing and distinguishing the candidate who was apt to be most rigid
and ideological from the one apt to be most flexible and adaptable.
But for summit meetings and other high-level negotiations,
senior consumers preferred comprehensive in-depth political person-
ality profiles that placed the leader in his or her longitudinal context:
and provided insights on the historical forces that shaped the leader's
political personality. Such an occasion was provided by the Camp
David negotiations of 1978.
The Camp David Profiles
If the degree of influence of the Langer study of Hitler and of the
assessment of Krushchev is not clear, it is clear that the psychologi-
cal portraits of Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, the Camp David
profiles, significantly informed and influenced President Jimmy
Carter's understanding of the protagonists and the strategy he devel-
oped for the conduct of the negotiations. Indeed, according to
Carter, they were among the most important influences upon the
strategy and tactics of his personal diplomacy with Begin and Sadat.
In his presidential memoirs Keeping Faith (1983), Carter spoke of
the intensity of his study of the backgrounds and personalities of
these remarkably different leaders. In August 1978, just prior to the
historic Camp David negotiations, Carter took a vacation to Jackson
Hole, Wyoming, to relax before what he knew would be an arduous
and testing challenge. After a day of fly fishing for cutthroat trout in
the Snake River, Carter immersed himself in psychological analyses
of Begin and Sadat.^3Ours would be a new approach, perhaps unprecedented in his-
tory. Three leaders of nations would be isolated from the out-
side world. An intensely personal effort would be required of
us. / had to understand these men! I was poring over psychological
analyses of two of the protagonists which had been prepared by
a team of experts within our intelligence community. This
team could write definitive biographies of any important world
leader, using information derived from a detailed scrutiny of
events, public statements, writings, known medical histories,