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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 2004, pages 18-20 Neocon Corner I. Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby: The Nexus of Washington’s Neocon NetworkBy Richard H. Curtiss
IT'S DIFFICULT TO categorize I. Lewis Libby, who seems to have lived every minute of his 54 years. He currently is chief of staff to Vice President Richard Cheney—which, of course, makes him one of the most powerful people in Washington. Libby also is a red-hot suspect as the man who leaked the name of CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame—a federal offense not just in Washington, but in real life. Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, exposed the Bush administration’s false claim that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger. The story, in brief, is that agent Plame got her husband a brief assignment to check out a story that “yellow cake” nuclear ore was sent to Iraq from Niger. After traveling to Niger to investigate, Wilson reported back that the story was untrue. In President George W. Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address, however, he mentioned the bogus uranium plot as if it were fact. The story refused to die, although it seemed to be an out-and-out forgery. It appeared in the U.S. press and was knocked down. Its subsequent appearance in Britain was used to raise the charge again. And it almost found itself in a bill of particulars assembled by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who fortunately threw it out before appearing in front of the United Nations prior to the Iraq war. Again it reappeared and was picked up by Cheney, who for some time had manufactured his own “evidence” for war on Iraq. For what seems to be a case of petty revenge against Wilson, “someone” decided to expose Plame, who thus lost her cover as a CIA operative. Supposedly Plame’s name was leaked to a number of journalists, but, being aware that there is a law against revealing a CIA agent’s name, they declined to run the story. Eventually her name appeared in the syndicated column of Robert Novak, a very conservative journalist who frequently discusses the fact that Israel is the biggest violator of laws in the Middle East. Why he “outed” Plame remains a mystery. Wilson, the chargé d’affaires in Baghdad when Saddam Hussain attacked Kuwait in 1991, later served as U.S. ambassador to Gabon, Sao Tome and Principe. He has recently published a memoir, The Politics of Truth. As the investigation into the Plame scandal continues, Libby is said to have referred in anger to Wilson, who reportedly now is working on John Kerry’s campaign, as “that [expletive deleted] playboy.” To have the law circling around Libby for the Plame affair, instead of for his tireless efforts to bring this nation to war, is like being hauled up for a traffic ticket after having committed a hit and run. It could, however, bring Libby’s career to a halt, at least temporarily. It brings to mind the case of Sherman Adams, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s chief of staff, who finally had to leave the government because he accepted a gift of a valuable vicuña fur coat but neglected to obtain government approval. The White House has said publicly that that Bush senior campaign strategist Karl Rove did not leak Plame’s name. When someone then brought up Libby’s name, however, a White House spokesman dodged the question, and repeatedly avoided it. While there are other possible suspects, whenever the subject arises the names of Libby and Elliot Abrams, the National Security Council’s director of Middle East affairs, always pop up. On June 24 President Bush, accompanied by his personal lawyer, James E. Sharp, was questioned, but not under oath, by prosecutors who were led by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who is in charge of the investigation into the Plame leak. Only a few years ago, Libby was equally famous—or infamous—for his 18-year collaboration with Marc Rich. In 1985, shortly after Rich jumped bail and fled to Switzerland to avoid prosecution on charges of racketeering, wire fraud, income tax evasion and illegal oil trading, Libby became the fugitive’s personal attorney. Rich’s ex-wife, Denise Rich, has been a major contributor to Democratic campaigns and the Clinton presidential library. Her close friend, Mary Beth Dozoretz, pledged to raise $1 million for the Clinton library. In his last hours as president, Clinton pardoned 140 people, including Rich. Among those who spoke up for Rich was former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Appearing before a House committee investigating the controversial pardon, Dozoretz declined to testify, pleading the Fifth Amendment on all questions upon the advice of her attorney. Although he’s kept a low profile since his pardon, Marc Rich undoubtedly appreciates his attorney’s efforts on his behalf. I. Lewis Libby was born in Connecticut in 1950 and raised in Florida. He attended Andover, earned his BA from Yale University and his JD from Columbia University. After graduating from law school, Libby went to work as a lawyer in Philadelphia. He then accepted a job offer from his old Yale political science professor, Paul Wolfowitz, and went to work for Wolfowitz at the State Department, from 1981 to 1985. He then left to go into private practice. Freed from his State Department duties, Libby was able to research 1903 Japan—the slice of time between the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War—for the backdrop of a novel he wrote called The Apprentice. By 1989 he was working again for Wolfowitz, this time at the Pentagon, as principal deputy under-secretary of defense for strategy and resources. For his government service Libby was awarded the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Award and the Department of the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award. He also received the Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Award for Public Service. When the Democrats took over in 1992, Libby crossed the Potomac to serve as legal adviser for the House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China. In 1995 he became managing partner at the Washington office of the Dechert, Price and Rhoads law firm, where he worked until 2001, when Vice President Cheney named him chief of staff and national security adviser. Along with Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Robert Kagan and others, Libby was a founding member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). He has served on the board of the Rand Corporation, owned shares in armaments companies and has oil interests. He also has been a consultant to Northrop Grumman, the defense contractor, and active in the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, formerly chaired by neocon extraordinare Richard Perle. In 1992, while working with then-Defense Secretary Cheney, Libby co-wrote with Wolfowitz a policy guidance memorandum aimed at formulating a post-Cold War defense posture. Upset by President George H.W. Bush’s decision to leave Saddam Hussain’s regime in place after the 1991 Gulf war, Libby and Wolfowitz argued that the U.S. should actively deter nations from “aspiring to a larger regional or global role,” and suggested the use of pre-emptive force to prevent countries from developing weapons of mass destruction. They also advocated unilateral action, if necessary. Although the draft memorandum was quashed soon after it was leaked to The New York Times, many of its ideas—in particular, the doctrine of pre-emption—later resurfaced as part of President George W. Bush’s national security strategy. The document also seems to have served as a template for the founding statement of principles of the Project for a New American Century, which was signed by a who’s who list of hawks and neocons who now serve in the current administration, including Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, Peter Rodman and Zalmay Khalilzad. In his office Libby has a picture of Winston Churchill, to whom he often refers. A skier, he is said to take daredevil risks on the ski trail. Libby is strikingly reticent to volunteer personal details about himself. He refuses to use his first name, for example, using only his initial, nor does he offer any details about his marital or family status. Despite his prominence in the public arena, then, one can accurately describe Libby as a true enigma. Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
Robert Kagan: Honeyed Words and Neat Phrases, With a Neoconservative TwistBy Richard H. Curtiss
ROBERT KAGAN is a professional writer and a very good one, who uses his impeccable education to the best possible advantage. Unlike many of his fellow neoconservatives, he gets along easily with people and doesn’t argue over nonessentials. Kagan got his start as principal speechwriter for former Secretary of State George Shultz. Shultz had his own carefully thought-out agenda, but seemed to get nowhere with the world press. Someone suggested that if he stopped worrying about the Palestinians and focused on the rest of his agenda, things might work out better. They did, and Shultz never looked back. In fact, he seemed almost to have rationalized an entirely new reason for helping the Israelis. This writer cannot ascertain whether Robert Kagan played any part in Shultz’s new agenda, and if so, when his influence began. What is clear, however, is that Kagan can come up with the precisely appropriate words for any occasion. He was and still is a natural speechwriter. Kagan came by his felicitous turn of phrase honestly, and shares those talents with other members of his family. His father is Yale University historian Donald Kagan, and his brother, Frederick, is a military historian at the U.S. Military Academy. On the eve of the 2000 presidential elections, Donald and Frederick Kagan published While America Sleeps. Jim Lobe described the book in an article entitled “Family Ties Connect U.S. Right, Zionists,” published in Pakistan’s English-language newspaper, Dawn. “This was a clarion call on Washington—which was already spending more on arms than the 13 next biggest militaries combined—to increase its defense spending sharply lest it find itself, like Britain in the late 1930s, unable to face down a new Hitler,” Lobe wrote. “Since then, both men have published reams of columns warning that Washington must immediately increase military spending by at least 25 percent to keep up with its global responsibilities.” Donald and Frederick both are prominent exponents of the neoconservative cause, and both signed the Sept. 20, 2001 open letter to President George W. Bush urging that the war on terrorism include the removal of Iraqi president Saddam Hussain “even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [9/11] attack.” Robert Kagan, who earned his B.A. at Yale College and a M.A. degree in public policy and international relations from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and an Alexander Hamilton Fellow in American Diplomatic History at American University in Washington, DC. In 1981 he was assistant editor of Public Interest magazine. In 1983 Kagan served as foreign policy adviser to Congressman Jack Kemp and as special assistant to the deputy director of the U.S. Information Agency. A member of the State Department’s Policy Planning staff in 1984 and 1985, Kagan then served until 1988 as deputy for policy in the State Department’s Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. Kagan’s wife, Victoria Nuland, a foreign service officer and former U.S. deputy chief of mission to NATO, currently is Vice President Dick Cheney’s number two foreign policy adviser. “While Nuland enjoys a strong reputation as an independent thinker,” wrote Lobe, “the family connection to Kagan is typical of the extraordinarily tight-knit nature of the regime that has taken control of U.S. foreign policy since 9/11.” By the time Nuland was assigned to Brussels, Robert was writing a regular column for Rupert Murdoch’s neoconservative The Weekly Standard. Kagan also writes a monthly column for The Washington Post, and has published articles in Foreign Affairs, Commentary, The New York Times, The New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, the National Interest, and the Policy Review. His first book, A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990, was published in 1996 by the Free Press. The book received financial backing from the Bradley Foundation and the Carthage Foundation, two key conservative funders. Kagan’s expertise was not merely academic: Elliott Abrams had appointed him in 1985 to head the Office of Public Diplomacy, created to push for U.S. support for the Nicaraguan Contras. As Philip H. Burch wrote in 1997, “After the Iran-Contra scandal broke, Abrams pleaded guilty to two counts of withholding information from Congress. Kagan, however, failed to mention Abram’s illicit activities or his guilty plea in his A Twilight Struggle.” In his final days in office, President Ronald Reagan pardoned Abrams, along with Col. Oliver North and Adm. John Poindexter. In 2003 Knopf published Kagan’s Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, which made The New York Times best-seller list. Despite that success, it is in Europe that Kagan’s name virtually has become a household word. As Peter Smith of the Louisville Courier-Journal wrote, “if author Robert Kagan could retract one sentence it would be the catch phrase that has come to summarize his view of the current trans-Atlantic rift: ‘Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus.’” In Kagan’s view, Europe and America “agree on little and understand one another less and less.” This, he claims, is because Europe has benefited from 60 years of U.S. security guarantees, has not been forced to spend as much on defense as the United States, and is softer when it comes to issues like Iraq and other “rogue states.” Continued Smith, “For many European analysts, Kagan’s name is nearly as common as George Bush’s or Donald Rumsfeld’s as a symbol of the growing antagonism between the United States and its NATO allies. Many European commentators have seen Kagan as the brains behind a neoconservative American effort to distance itself from what Rumsfeld calls the ‘old Europe’ of Germany and France.” In a 2002 article for Policy Review, Kagan argued, “It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. On the all-important question of power—the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power—American and European perspectives are diverging. Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little differently, it is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Kant’s ‘Perpetual Peace.’ The United States, meanwhile, remains mired in history, powering the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might.” Peter Smith described Kagan’s thesis as follows: “Europeans’ experience with World War II was so horrific that they set about forming multilateral structures like the European Union. This was not just for the economic benefits of free trade but to prevent the nationalistic power struggles that so often ravaged the continent. Now, ‘everything they do is multilateral by definition,’ [Kagan] said, adding that while benefiting from the American security umbrella, Europeans are living in a relative ‘paradise’ of prosperity and peace. Power is important, particularly American power,’ he said, noting that former President Bill Clinton spoke of the ‘indispensable nation.’” In 1997, following the publication of his book, Kagan became a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Along with The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol, he is a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century. Kristol and Kagan also collaborated on the book, Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy, published by Encounter Books in 2000, and to which both Donald and Frederick Kagan contributed chapters. Writing in the March 30, 2003 Boston Globe, Laura Secor described Robert Kagan as “A big man in his early 40s with salt-and-pepper hair and something of a baby face, Kagan possesses an aggressive, rapid-fire intelligence that rarely misses a beat or flubs a syllable. Good-humored and affable, he also exudes the bland personal inscrutability of the government official he once was—in the Reagan State Department, where he was a wunderkind in his mid-20s.” Continued Secor, “The Bush administration could certainly have tried harder to avoid the break with European allies, Kagan concedes. As he told a crowd of politicians and notables in London in mid-March, there has been undoubtedly a lapse of statesmanship on the American side. No one not in the direct employ of the Bush administration could deny that. The way the administration has handled things couldn’t be better designed to create ill will.” Kagan maintains that the dream of promoting American values through international institutions died with Woodrow Wilson. He consistently supports a hard line, recommending a strategy of “regime change” wherever hostile regimes challenge American interests. In Of Paradise and Power, however, Kagan concedes that the trouble with military might is that it comes with a great temptation for its use. Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. |
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