While browsing through the Trump Transition Team Agency Landing Team webpage, we recognized a name listed under Department of Defense:
Craig Duehring
Employer (current or most recent): United States Air Force (Retired)
Funding source: Volunteer
A native of Mankato and graduate of Minnesota State University at Mankato, Duehring challenged incumbent Congressman David Minge in Minnesota's Second Congressional District in 1998, back when the district included parts of western and central Minnesota.
Duehring lost, and returned to the Washington DC area. He served on the Bush-Cheney Transition Team, Department Defense Transition Team following the 2000 election, and was appointed as the Air Force's Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs and Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs under the Bush Administration from 2001 through 2009.
His biography online at the US Air Force notes:
Mr. Duehring is a 28-year Air Force veteran, having been commissioned in 1968 through Officer Training School. He is a decorated combat pilot, completing more than 800 missions during the Vietnam War as a forward air controller, including a tour as one of the Raven FACs in northern Laos. Mr. Duehring has flown more than a dozen types of aircraft, amassing more than 1,200 hours in the A-10 Thunderbolt II. He retired as a colonel in 1996. His final military assignment was U.S. Air Attaché to Indonesia.
Mr. Duehring has served on the Bush-Cheney Transition Team and the Department of Defense Transition Team. He was the Executive Director of the Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, a non-profit educational and charitable foundation, and he was endorsed as the Republican candidate for the Minnesota 2nd Congressional District in 1998. Prior to his current assignment, Mr. Duehring served six years as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs. He performed the duties of acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs in the absence of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, including an extended period during and following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. . . .
Duehring was inducted into the Minnesota Aviation Hall of Fame in 2014, the New Ulm Journal reported. He returned to Minnesota in 2015 to promote his memoir, The Lair of Raven, described by Amazon:
. . . While the war in Vietnam ebbed and flowed with alternating violence and boredom, there was a rumor of another war, somewhere else, where men flew long hours in propeller aircraft without markings into constant danger in a land where adventure reigned supreme, where common sense replaced the hated Rules of Engagement and where a man could finally test the limits of his abilities. These pilots were few in number and their call sign was Raven.
This is the wartime autobiography of one of the few pilots ever to fly under that now famous call sign. Craig Duehring lived and flew out of the guerilla headquarters at Long Tieng, Laos, in support of the iconic Hmong leader, Major General Vang Pao, for a longer tour of duty than any other Raven. During that time, he knew many of the most notable Ravens and participated in many tragic events of the day – including the famous “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre”.
This is the story of how one young man left the farm country of southern Minnesota and embarked on a career as an Air Force pilot during the height of the Vietnam War. Equally as important as the combat he experienced is his personal triumph over repeated obstacles and near disasters to achieve his dream that will be a source of inspiration for young readers everywhere. . .
The New Ulm Journal also reports that Duehring has taken an interest in Minnesota history, researching birth dates of German immigrants who died in the 1862 US Dakota War and joining an effort to keep art work related to the war up in the Minnesota state capitol. His family lived in the area at the time of the conflict; an ancestor was killed in the war, the Mankato Free Press reported in 2011.
Photo: Craig W. Duehring during a Pentagon press briefing, Sept. 14, 2001. Via Wikimedia Commons. Image was released by the United States Department of Defense with the ID 010914-D-9880W-047.
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