of "Mother India" adorned the walls of his office. Historian Ramachandra Guha quoted him saying, "India is a pluralist society that creates magic with democracy, rule of law and individual freedom, community relations and [cultural] diversity. What a place to be an intellectual!. I wouldn't mind being born ten times to rediscover India." Controversy over management style On April 22, 2003, Blackwill announced that he was resigning as US ambassador to India to return to his academic career at Harvard University. The New York Times reported that there had been complaints about Blackwill's management style from embassy staff members that led to a review by the State Department's inspector general although after the review the complaints died down. "He's extremely bright. He has a very penetrating intellect that produces great ideas", said one official who worked with him. "He's also utterly charming and has more energy than anybody around him. He never sleeps. He's a double-A type. But he's also a prickly demanding personality who can become impatient with others who don't keep up with him. He's hard on people because he's smart. He wants things now." National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Planning Upon completing his time as ambassador to India, Blackwill was originally planning to return to Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government until he got the call from National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice asking him to come to Washington. On August 16, 2003, Blackwill was appointed deputy assistant to President George W. Bush as well as coordinator for strategic planning under Rice. Blackwill's assignment was to help develop and coordinate the direction of America's foreign policy. In his new post on the National Security Council, Blackwill quickly became the alter ego to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. He was given free rein to track global trends and predict unintended consequences of US foreign policy decisions anywhere in the world by providing long-range planning for a foreign policy team under stress from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Envoy to Iraq One of Blackwill's jobs on the National Security Council in 2003 was to coordinate between Washington and Baghdad working with Paul Bremer to achieve a political handover to Iraq. Blackwill and Bremer had worked together in the State Department in 1974 and shared a conservative view of the world. "Both are basically conservatives", said one mutual friend. "But it is a 19th-century conservatism -- focused on