Ex-State official blasts 'Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal'
His is a name that appeared only rarely in the news media. But for more than three years, Lawrence Wilkerson was Colin Powell's chief of staff–and a key behind-the-scenes policy player at the State Department during most of President Bush's first term. As it turns out, he was also a high-level participant in the rampant infighting over foreign policy that often pitted State against Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department and the office of Vice President Cheney.
The 60-year-old Wilkerson left office in January, when Powell did. Since his departure, he has been doing some hard thinking about the first term. On Wednesday, in perhaps one of the most remarkable retrospectives yet offered by a senior alumnus of the Bush administration, Wilkerson ripped into what he calls the "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal"–a duo he contends has been forging key decisions on Iraq and other issues in secret. The combination, he told an audience at the New America Foundation in Washington, "flummoxed the process."
Wilkerson's tone ranged from coolly academic to one not designed for tender ears. He described an administration in which a mistrusted bureaucracy was cut out of key decision making on Iraq, North Korea, and Iran, then had policies "foisted" on it.
"Decisions that send men and women to die," he said, "should not be made in a secret way." He described the pair as hailing from the same "military-industrial complex" that Dwight Eisenhower warned of in his farewell address as president.
A 31-year veteran of the military and a close aide to Powell for 16 years, Wilkerson has been both a policymaker and a policy analyst. He once directed the U.S. Marine Corps War College, and he is now a professor at George Washington University in Washington and the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va. He is also at work on a book, some of which was apparently previewed Wednesday.
In a portrayal that is sure to be hotly rejected by the administration, Wilkerson argued that Cheney and Rumsfeld's dominance in part stems from "a president not much versed in international relations and not much interested either." He argues that then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who succeeded Powell as secretary of state, was unwilling to provide a counterforce to them: "Rice made a decision that she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president." Hence, Wilkerson says, she did not play the role of policy and bureaucratic "balancer" that is widely expected of the national security adviser.
As secretary of state since January, Rice has been able to use her closeness to the president to carve out greater "flexibility" for U.S. foreign policy, he says. But her moves also reflect trouble for the administration overseas, in the budget, and in the opinion polls showing diminished public support for Bush.
"The administration finds itself in some fairly desperate straits, politically and otherwise," he says.
Wilkerson said that to this day he cannot explain why the United States went to war in Iraq. He questions why the Bush administration waited for years to side with the European Union's diplomacy to counter Iran's alleged nuclear weapons development. And on the initially static U.S. diplomacy on North Korea's nuclear weapons programs, he asks, "Why did we wait three years to talk to the North Koreans?"
Wilkerson, who reached the rank of Army colonel before retiring and was part of efforts to rebuild the Army after the Vietnam War, bemoans damage to morale and combat readiness resulting from heavy deployments to Iraq. "My Army, right now, is truly in bad shape," he declared. He predicts that ever more soldiers facing repeated postings to Iraq would "vote with their feet" and not re-enlist.
He also criticized Bush for occasional "gracelessness" in conducting international affairs. Wilkerson cited as an example Bush's abrupt rejection of then South Korean President Kim Dae Jung's recommendations for handling North Korea in a 2001 White House meeting -- an incident that shocked Seoul and wound up embarrassing Powell, who unlike hawks–and the president -- favored continuing the Clinton administration's outreach to Pyongyang.
"That's not diplomacy. That's cowboyism," Wilkerson said.
Wilkerson counts himself a fan of the first President Bush. "The difference between father and son, in my mind, comes in that difference in their attitudinal approach to the world," he says.
He laid part of the blame for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal --characterized by the administration as an isolated case of individuals acting without authorization -- at the doorstep of top leaders.
"We are going to be ashamed of what we allowed to happen," he says. He says the administration conveyed a "carte blanche" mentality toward pursuing suspected terrorists, with the attitude being, "You should not have any qualms because this is a different kind of conflict."
And on the question of public diplomacy -- promoting favorable views of the United States and its policies, especially in the Arab and Muslim worlds -- Wilkerson fell back on some soldier's salty language to describe the dilemma.
"It's hard to sell s---," he said, paraphrasing the comment of an Egyptian.
Wilkerson says he hopes his speaking out might "effect some change for the good." He acknowledges that his dissent has taken a personal toll–especially in his relationship with Powell. He says he was "physically thrown out" by Powell from the secretary's office after an argument over Iraq. He still praises Powell's leadership and "inveterate optimism." Unlike Wilkerson, Powell has kept his counsel private since leaving Foggy Bottom, aside from a few public comments on mistaken U.S. intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
"He's the world's most loyal soldier," says Wilkerson.
Wilkerson, we now know, has a different sense of what loyalty dictates.