"I
participated in a hoax on the American people,
the
international community and the
United
Nations Security Council."
-
Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell
MER - Middle.East.Org - Washington - 6 February:
Yesterday was the third Colin Powell 'Anniversary' of what we have termed 'The Mother of all Hoaxes'. Three years ago he
gave what is now one of modern history's most infamous speeches quite
literally to the world. Purposefully seated behind him at his
insistence was the Director of the CIA and the American Ambassador to
the U.N., now in charge of the entire U.S. 'intelligence community'.
Off stage, the closest aide to Secretary of State Powell, was already
nervous and uncertain. Now he terms what happened that day a great
'haox' perpetrated ' on the American people, the international
community and the United Nations Security Council', i.e., the entire
world. Yesterday MER republished a FlashBack articlecalling
for the resigniation of both Colin Powell and George Tenet --
we did so two long years ago now when it was relevant, timely,
necessary, and difficult to do. Today here is the
transcript of the
recent interview with Colin Powell's Chief of Staff, Colonel Lawrence
Wilkerson, who is still making uncalled-for excuses for his boss but at
least trying to come clean about what was done even if still pulling
his punches far too much about why, by whom, and what should even now
be done about it. For remember of course, the actual
perpertrators responsible for this horrendous hoax and the disastrous
consequences which have followed are the President and the
Vice-President of the United States.
DAVID BRANCACCIO (host of PBS
Program NOW broadcast 3 February 2006): Mr. Wilkerson,
thanks for doing this.
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Thank you for
having me.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: We now know that
there was deep skepticism within the intelligence community about some
of these pre-war claims than what's being expressed publicly at the
time. Is it reasonable to think that the administration knew about this
skepticism?
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Six months ago I
would have said "no." Since that time, however, there have been some
revelations. Principally about Sheik Al Libbi's testimony and how it
was obtained. And how there was a DIA, for example, Defense
Intelligence Agency, dissent on that testimony, apparently I'm hearing
now, around the time the testimony was actually given.
And even more to the point than Al Libbi,
Curve Ball. And the revelations that have come out about Curve Ball.
And in particular the German dissent from the integrity of CurveBall's
testimony.
I can tell you that having been intimately
involved in the preparation of Secretary Powell for his five February
2003 presentation at the UN Security Council, neither of those dissents
in any fashion or form were registered with me or the Secretary by the
DCI, George Tenent, by the DDCI, John McLaughlin, or by any of their
many analysts who were in the room with us for those five, six days and
nights at the Central Intelligence Agency.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: And they didn't
give you any inkling that--
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Not a bit.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: -- there was this
debate about some of this information?
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Not a bit. In
fact it was presented in the firmest language possible that the mobile
biological labs and the sketches we had drawn of them for the
Secretary's presentation were based on the iron clad evidence of
multiple sources.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: Maybe they at the
most senior level, like you, just didn't know?
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I have to believe
that. Otherwise I have to believe some rather nefarious things about
some fairly highly placed people in the intelligence community and
perhaps elsewhere.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: What do you think
really did happen with regards to this-- disconnect between what we now
know about these profound questions about some of these key sources and
the fact that somebody had these questions in real time?
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, I've been a
consumer, a user of intelligence at the tactical, operational and
strategic level for close to 35, 36 years. And I've seen many errors in
intelligence. And I know it's not a perfectible business. Not by any
stretch of the imagination.
However, I am astonished at the failures of
our intelligence community over the-- last decade in particular. We
failed to predict the demise of the Soviet Union. We failed to predict
the Indian nuclear test in 1998.
We bombed a Chinese embassy in Belgrade in
1999. We failed to detect the five year planning cycle of al Qaeda, the
operatives who conducted 9/11. And we failed in terms of predicting
Iraq's WMDs.
So we have a significant problem in this
nation with our intelligence community. And, by the way, I don't think
it's fixed in any way. Yet. This administration has really done nothing
to fix it. And-- so I-- I'm familiar with intelligence failure.
However, this particular one seems to me to
warrant a lot more investigation than it has to this point warranted.
And I take in the recognition the Robb Silberman commission, the 9/11
commission and a host of other lesser-- investigations that have
attempted to look at this. And the phase two investigation now going on
in the Congress, which I think as long as the Republicans control the
Congress will not be a-- an investigation that reveals very much. But I
think we really need to take a hard look at how not just the
intelligence failures I've enumerated occurred, but how this particular
one did. Because it could turn out to be one of the worst in our
history.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: Your experience
with evaluating intelligence-- you understand from your experience
evaluating intelligence, this is tough stuff.
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Very.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: It often is
inconclusive. And you have to use powers of critical thinking to figure
out what is the right thing to do.
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: And you have to
listen to dissent. You must. You can't squelch dissent. You can't put
dissent in an obscure footnote on page 495 of an intelligence annex.
You must listen to dissent.
You must-- I-- I today regret the fact that
I didn't listen better to the Intelligence Bureau and the State
Department. The-- the Intelligence Bureau and the State Department at
this time we were preparing Secretary Powell dissented on one key
issue. And they essentially said there was no active nuclear program in
Iraq.
And they were right. And the rest of the
intelligence community was wrong. But the rest of the intelligence
community did not take that dissent, massage it, compete it in the
world of ideas in the intelligence community. It simply footnoted it
and relegated it to that footnote. To that qualification, if you will.
INR was right. The rest of the intelligence
community was wrong. Now INR was wrong about bio and chem. They said
the same thing the rest of the intelligence community said. That he did
have active bio and chem programs. But they were right about the most
important weapons of mass destruction Saddam could have had, the one
that backed up, for example, Dr. Rice and the Vice President and the
others who talked about mushroom clouds. And I did not listen to INR.
And the Secretary of State did not listen to INR. And as it turns out
we should have.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: In the case if
pre-war intelligence are we just talking about not listening to
dissenting views?
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I think that's a
big part of it, but it's larger than that. A good friend of mine who
was probably one of the most respected INR intelligence personnel that
we had at the State Department and who indeed has gone on to join John
Negroponte as one of his principle subordinates, once told me that what
was missing was competition. And that struck me, because that's what we
believe in in America.
You know business, education. Competition is
an essential ingredient of what we do. There is no competition in the
intelligence community. In other words leaders don't listen to various
parts of the intelligence community debate one another.
Instead it's a conformist community. And the
DCI and-- at that time presided over the conformity. In other words,
if-- you had a dissenting view, that dissenting view might make it into
a footnote. It might make it into a qualifying paragraph. But the
intelligence community, speaking through the-- director of Central
Intelligence, was going to have a conformist view.
And that view was going to be collected from
the community, but it was going to be a conformist view. And there's--
it's absurd to think that the director for Central Intelligence, or now
the National Director of Intelligence, is not influenced by the
politics around-- him or her.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: Well, that's a key
question here. Is it just a-- an issue of there's a dominant view in
the intelligence community and the competing views aren't heard? Or are
you concerned that the view of the intelligence community that, for
instance, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, is in a sense being
imposed from the top?
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I think there's a
certain amount of politicization of intelligence. I-- don't think you
can escape it because of human nature. Particularly if you have a DCI
like George Tenent who is frequently in the presence of the President.
Then he is going to absorb during those
meetings what the President wants. What the President is looking for.
What the angle of attack the President has is. And he's going to search
for intelligence that will support that angle of attack.
That's just the nature of human beings. So
it's absurd for someone to say that the intelligence is not politicized
at all. Of course it is. It has to be. It has to conform to the
leader's wishes-- to a certain extent. And what you need in this
competitive community I've described is people who will stand up to
power and tell truth to power. And say, "No, that's not right," to the
Vice President of the United States, for example.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: We now know from
published reports that Vice President Cheney and his right hand man,
Lewis Libby, went over to the headquarters of the CIA about 10 times in
late 2002 and early 2003. We don't know what was said. What do you
think was going on?
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, if the Vice
President was exercising his right as one of the leaders of this
country to go to one of its intelligence agencies and to-- check on how
they're doing and to make sure that they're doing their jobs properly
and so forth, I find it difficult to believe that took 10 times. And as
I've said, it's absurd to think that intelligence isn't somehow
politicized at times.
It's equally absurd for the Vice President
to assert that his trips out to the agency were not bringing undue
influence on the agency. That's preposterous. Anytime a leader of his
stature visits a single agency that many times, he is, by simply the
virtue of his position, bringing undue influence on that agency.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: So you can imagine
a scenario where the Vice President's over there kind of CIA?
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I-- could imagine
that scenario easily.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: I've never met the
Vice President. He's the kind of guy who could lean on somebody?
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Absolutely. And
be just as quiet and taciturn about it as-- he-- as he leaned on 'em.
As he leaned on the Congress recently-- in the-- torture issue.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: We've been talking
grand policy. The then director of the CIA, George Tenent, Vice
President Cheney's deputy Libby, told you that the intelligence that
was the basis of going to war was rock solid. Given what you now know,
how does that make you feel?
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: It makes me feel
terrible. I've said in other places that it was-- constitutes the
lowest point in my professional life. My participation in that
presentation at the UN constitutes the lowest point in my professional
life.
I participated in a hoax on the American
people, the international community and the United Nations Security
Council. How do you think that makes me feel? Thirty-one years in the
United States Army and I more or less end my career with that kind of a
blot on my record? That's not a very comforting thing.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: A hoax? That's
quite a word.
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, let's face
it, it was. It was not a hoax that the Secretary in any way was
complicit in. In fact he did his best-- I watched him work. Two AM in
the morning on the DCI and the Deputy DCI, John McLaughlin.
And to try and hone the presentation down to
what was, in the DCI's own words, a slam dunk. Firm. Iron clad. We
threw many things out. We threw the script that Scooter Libby had given
the-- Secretary of State. Forty-eight page script on WMD. We threw that
out the first day.
And we turned to the National Intelligence
estimate as part of the recommendation of George Tenent and my
agreement with. But even that turned out to be, in its substantive
parts-- that is stockpiles of chemicals, biologicals and production
capability that was hot and so forth, and an active nuclear program.
The three most essential parts of that presentation turned out to be
absolutely false.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: You've said that
Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld managed
to hijack the intelligence process. You've called it a cabal.
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Decision--
DAVID BRANCACCIO: And--
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: -- making
process.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: The decision making
process.
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Right.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: Well, let me get it
right. You've said that Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld somehow managed to hijack the intelligence
decision making process. You called it a cabal.
And said that it was done in a way that
makes you think it was more akin to something you'd see in a
dictatorship rather than a democracy. Now those are strong words. Why a
cabal?
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, the two
decisions that I had the most profound insights into and which I have
spoken to are the decision to depart from the Geneva Conventions and to
depart from international law with regard to treatment of detainees by
the Armed Forces in particular. But by the entire US establishment, now
including the CIA and contractors in general.
And the post-invasion Iraq-- planning, which
was as inept and incompetent as any planning I've witnessed in some
30-plus years in public service. Those two decisions were clearly--
made in the statutory process, the legal process, in one way and made
underneath that process in another way. And that's what I've labeled
secret and cabal-like.
Now let me hasten to add that I've taught
the national security decision making process in the nation's war
colleges for six years. I'm a student of that process. I will teach it
again-- starting in January. This is no aberration. It's been done
before. It was done with regard to the Bay of Pigs with John F.
Kennedy. It was done with regard to Watergate with Richard Nixon. It
was done with regard to Iran-Contra with Ronald Reagan.
It was done to a certain and rather lasting
effect-- with regard to Vietnam by Lyndon Johnson and others. So you--
it's not anything new. And it's been done many times before. That is to
say, decisions have been made elsewhere than in the Oval Office in
other presidencies.
Normally nothing happens as long as the
decision is effective, it's well executed and it produces success. It's
when the decision produces failure that historians, politicians,
Congressmen, American citizens want to know why. And in this case I
think both decisions did produce failures and so they're going to want
to know why. And-- we're seeing some of the investigations and-- looks
into those decisions now to decide why they were failures.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: There's an argument
that swashbuckling executives, Defense Secretary and the Vice President
making executive decisions without involving the bureaucracy is very
efficient, gets the--
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Oh yes.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: --job done.
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Oh yes.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: But you're saying
that--
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: This is the
argument that's marshaled by presidents from Truman on. Although I will
say that Truman and Eisenhower were probably the two least apartment to
do this sort of thing.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: Well think about
it. Involving, just for starters, the entire National Security Council
on, for instance, evaluating the intelligence that-- would help inform
a decision to go to war in Iraq. And that's going to slow things down.
They're going to be dissenting opinions. You're never going to get that
war done.
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: You mean kind of
like what our founding fathers-- intended when they put the
Constitution together? Checks and balances, dissent would be listened
to and so forth and so on.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: You're thinking
that--
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Ferdinand
Eberstadt was a bright man who participated in these debates that were
roiling — I mean truly roiling around Truman and then around Eisenhower
as we try to implement the National Security Council and tried to
implement the other parameters of the act, including the formation of
the Central Intelligence Agency. And other putting together the
National Defense, national military establishment and then turning it
later in an amendment to the act into the Defense Department. Many
debates occurred that are just like the debates we're having today.
And Ferdinand Eberstadt, remember now that
the 1947 Act in part at least was passed to prohibit ever having
another Franklin Roosevelt. The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was
also passed to prohibit having 12/16 years of one man. But I think any
critic of Roosevelt would've said even people who, as my father used to
say-- "Roosevelt ah terrible man. Terrible man." They might've hated
his policies but they never would've accused him of being anything
other than brilliant.
Ferdinand Eberstadt now, remember that
history. Ferdinand Eberstadt writes to Walter Lippmann and he write--
he writes I believe in 1953 if I recall Walter Lippmann being-- that
columnist who didn't mind commenting on anything. And Ferdinand says to
Lippmann, "I understand that this may be a more effective process, that
a few men making a decision maybe a more effective process, a secretive
process may be very efficient." But suppose we get a dumb man?
Suppose we get people who can't make good
decisions as FDR was pretty good at. I'm worried and I would rather
have the discussion and debate in the process we've designed than I
would a dictate from a dumb strongman. And that dumb strongman is his
felicitous phrase.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: You're worried that
we not have come to that but that we're heading down this path of--
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Oh I think it's
come to that. I think we've had some decisions at this administration
that were more or less dictates. We've had a decision that the
Constitution as read by Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo and a few other very
selected administration lawyers doesn't pertain the way it has
pertained for 200-plus years. A very ahistorical reading of the
Constitution.
And these people marshal such stellar lights
as-- Alexander Hamilton. They haven't even read Federalist Six. I'm
sure they haven't. Where Alexander Hamilton lays down his markers about
the dangers of a dictate-issuing chief executive. This is not the way
America was intended to be run by its founders and it is not the
interpretation of the Constitution that any of the founders as far as I
read the Federalist Papers and other discussions about their views
would have subscribed to. This is an interpretation of the constitution
that is outlandish and as I said, clearly ahistorical.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: And if the system
were shown to work that might be one thing. But-- in the case of recent
US for--
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Dictatorships
work on occasion. You're right. Dictatorships do work but I-- I'm like
Ferdinand Eberstadt. I'd prefer to see the squabble of democracy to the
efficiency of dictators.
Lawrence Wilkerson
Lawrence B. Wilkerson was Chief of Staff at the Department of State
from August 2002 to January 2005. Read more from his conversation with
NOW's host David Brancaccio below.
Biography
Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired) Larry
Wilkerson joined General Colin L. Powell in March 1989 at the U.S.
Army’s Forces Command in Atlanta, Georgia as his Deputy Executive
Officer. He followed the General to his next position as Chairman of
the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, serving as his special assistant. Upon
Powell's retirement from active service in 1993, Colonel Wilkerson
served as the Deputy Director and Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War
College at Quantico, Virginia. Upon Wilkerson’s retirement from active
service in 1997, he began working for General Powell in a private
capacity as a consultant and advisor.
In December 2000, Secretary of
State-designate Powell asked Wilkerson to join him in the Transition
Office at the U.S. State Department and, later, upon his confirmation
as Secretary of State, Secretary Powell moved Wilkerson to his Policy
Planning Staff with responsibilities for East Asia and the Pacific, and
legislative and political-military affairs. In June of 2002, the
Director for Policy Planning, Ambassador Richard Haass, made Wilkerson
the Associate Director. In August of 2002, Secretary Powell moved
Wilkerson to the position of Chief of Staff of the Department.
Wilkerson is a veteran of the Vietnam
War as well as a U.S. Army "Pacific hand," having served in Korea,
Japan, and Hawaii and participated in military exercises throughout the
Pacific. Moreover, Wilkerson was Executive Assistant to US Navy Admiral
Stewart A. Ring, Director for Strategy and Policy (J5) USCINCPAC, from
1984-87. Wilkerson also served on the faculty of the U.S. Naval War
College at Newport, RI and holds two advanced degrees, one in
International Relations and the other in National Security Studies. He
has written extensively on military and national security
affairs–especially for college-level curricula--and has been published
in a number of professional journals, including the Naval Institute’s
Proceedings, The Naval War College Review, Military Review, and Joint
Force Quarterly (JFQ)