John Pustay, assistant to the chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff and president, National Defense University.

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Mike Davidson, former assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, notes that Gates is respected among military officers.

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DuGan, who started out as an assistant to the chairman right out of college in 1988, never received a formal anointing, Carey says.

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Nicky Oppenheimer joined Anglo American in 1968 as the Personal Assistant to the Chairman, and worked subsequently in the Gold and Diamond Divisions of the Corporation.

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In 2004, he was promoted to be assistant to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in the Pentagon, as well as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's senior military advisor, accompanying her on state visits.

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He joined as an executive assistant to the chairman and started a program called TimJ2 (as in "This is my job, too"), designed to get doctors and senior executives to answer simple questions from patients and visitors.

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Mr. Meyer served during the Reagan administration as special assistant to the director of Central Intelligence and vice chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council.

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Committee chairman Keith Vaz pressed the deputy assistant commissioner for an apology to the parents whose children may be involved.

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Richard Scheff, a former consultant to the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Law Enforcement in the Clinton administration and chairman of Montgomery McCracken law firm, says selecting a jury in case like this might be difficult since its been widely covered in the press.

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