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The White House cabal
By Lawrence B. Wilkerson
LAWRENCE B. WILKERSON served as chief of staff to Secretary of State
Colin L. Powell from 2002 to 2005.
10/25/05 "Los
Angeles Times" -- -- IN PRESIDENT BUSH'S first term,
some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security —
including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a
secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group
of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld.
When I first discussed this group in a speech last week at the New
America Foundation in Washington, my comments caused a significant
stir because I had been chief of staff to then-Secretary of State
Colin Powell between 2002 and 2005.
But it's absolutely true. I believe that the decisions of this cabal
were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the
president and sometimes with something less. More often than not,
then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was simply
steamrolled by this cabal.
Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift — not
unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a
dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged
neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal
decision-making process, where decisions, if they were reached at
all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its
dissenters, obstructionists and "guardians of the turf."
But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced a
series of disastrous decisions and virtually ensured that the
agencies charged with implementing them would not or could not
execute them well.
I watched these dual decision-making processes operate for four
years at the State Department. As chief of staff for 27 months, I
had a door adjoining the secretary of State's office. I read
virtually every document he read. I read the intelligence briefings
and spoke daily with people from all across government.
I knew that what I was observing was not what Congress intended when
it passed the 1947 National Security Act. The law created the
National Security Council — consisting of the president, vice
president and the secretaries of State and Defense — to make sure
the nation's vital national security decisions were thoroughly
vetted. The NSC has often been expanded, depending on the president
in office, to include the CIA director, the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, the Treasury secretary and others, and it has
accumulated a staff of sometimes more than 100 people.
But many of the most crucial decisions from 2001 to 2005 were not
made within the traditional NSC process.
Scholars and knowledgeable critics of the U.S. decision-making
process may rightly say, so what? Haven't all of our presidents in
the last half-century failed to conform to the usual process at one
time or another? Isn't it the president's prerogative to make
decisions with whomever he pleases? Moreover, can he not ignore
whomever he pleases? Why should we care that President Bush gave
over much of the critical decision-making to his vice president and
his secretary of Defense?
Both as a former academic and as a person who has been in the ring
with the bull, I believe that there are two reasons we should care.
First, such departures from the process have in the past led us into
a host of disasters, including the last years of the Vietnam War,
the national embarrassment of Watergate (and the first resignation
of a president in our history), the Iran-Contra scandal and now the
ruinous foreign policy of George W. Bush.
But a second and far more important reason is that the nature of
both governance and crisis has changed in the modern age.
From managing the environment to securing sufficient energy
resources, from dealing with trafficking in human beings to
performing peacekeeping missions abroad, governing is vastly more
complicated than ever before in human history.
Further, the crises the U.S. government confronts today are so
multifaceted, so complex, so fast-breaking — and almost always with
such incredible potential for regional and global ripple effects —
that to depart from the systematic decision-making process laid out
in the 1947 statute invites disaster.
Discounting the professional experience available within the federal
bureaucracy — and ignoring entirely the inevitable but often
frustrating dissent that often arises therein — makes for quick and
painless decisions. But when government agencies are confronted with
decisions in which they did not participate and with which they
frequently disagree, their implementation of those decisions is
fractured, uncoordinated and inefficient. This is particularly the
case if the bureaucracies called upon to execute the decisions are
in strong competition with one another over scarce money, talented
people, "turf" or power.
It takes firm leadership to preside over the bureaucracy. But it
also takes a willingness to listen to dissenting opinions. It
requires leaders who can analyze, synthesize, ponder and decide.
The administration's performance during its first four years would
have been even worse without Powell's damage control. At least once
a week, it seemed, Powell trooped over to the Oval Office and
cleaned all the dog poop off the carpet. He held a youthful,
inexperienced president's hand. He told him everything would be all
right because he, the secretary of State, would fix it. And he did —
everything from a serious crisis with China when a U.S.
reconnaissance aircraft was struck by a Chinese F-8 fighter jet in
April 2001, to the secretary's constant reassurances to European
leaders following the bitter breach in relations over the Iraq war.
It wasn't enough, of course, but it helped.
Today, we have a president whose approval rating is 38% and a vice
president who speaks only to Rush Limbaugh and assembled military
forces. We have a secretary of Defense presiding over the
death-by-a-thousand-cuts of our overstretched armed forces (no
surprise to ignored dissenters such as former Army Chief of Staff
Gen. Eric Shinseki or former Army Secretary Thomas White).
It's a disaster. Given the choice, I'd choose a frustrating
bureaucracy over an efficient cabal every time.
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