| 18 December 2006 The River Entrance Former Secretary of State Colin Powell was on the talking-head circuit Sunday morning, blasting the Administration that he had attempted to serve. He said the Army was “about broken.” Too few soldiers, too many deployments. Too much of a backlog in broken equipment. He does not support a surge in force levels to accomplish an undetermined mission. I admire the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and would go to war with him again, if they ever needed cranky veterans. Mr. Powell appeared to be putting a round across the bow of the new Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, who will be sworn in this afternoon in a suitable ceremony at the River Entrance to the Pentagon. That is the one they use to greet visiting dignitaries, since it is closest to the Chairman's Office to the right on the Second Floor, and the Secretary's suite of offices on the Third. The walls are wood-paneled, and there is an elegant half-circular staircase that leads upstairs past a bust of Ike Eisenhower, his image captured as a General, not a President. I used to duck outside the River Entrance to smoke, since they were in the process of banishing the loathsome habit from the interior of public buildings. The broad porch had little alcoves at either end, and they were the nearest place to get to the open air from where we toiled down in the bowels of the vast gray building. It was nice to look out across the Potomac at the dawn breaking over the city on the other side. I heard later that I caught my smoke break right outside Mr. Powell's office window. I couldn't tell, since the glass was gold-tinted and quite opaque. I don't know if my pacing outside bothered him. He never mentioned it to me at the time. Mr. Powell left the government batting around .333 for wars, having lost the one in Vietnam, won the decision in the First Gulf War, and got tagged with the loss in the second one. The Relievers they brought in from the bullpen to try to take his place were not able to save it. I think there is an argument that it was a managerial screw-up, not Mr. Powell's fault. But that is the way the record book gets written, and they say that a .333 average over a career is still enough to get you to the Hall of Fame. I suspect we are in the last innings on the current war. The bullpen is about empty. Mr. Gates was in comfortable retirement down in Texas, and I think he had his arm twisted by the first president Bush to come and see if he could put some spin on the show at the Pentagon. The Transformation Shock and Awe Guns and Butter Review that has been in progress for the last six years was wearing thin. Mr. Rumsfeld casts a long shadow over this war, just as Robert MacNamara did over the conflict in Vietnam. Which is why the discussion about how Mr. Gates was going to perform turned naturally to Clark Clifford, the man Lyndon Johnson brought in late in his game to try to salvage something out of Vietnam. It was the year before I had to register for the Draft, and naturally there was considerable interest by my friends. That is lacking these days, since there is no practical connection between the mass of young people and government policy. That is why John Kerry's gaffe about lack of education getting you stuck in Iraq resonated so strongly with the troops. They have all volunteered to be there, and everyone at home did not even have to ask to be left alone. Clifford took over the Pentagon with just a year to go in Johnson's Administration. Mr. Gates will have a little more time to work the problem than he did, and some positive things are expected of him. Coordination with Ambassador Negroponte's staff might be better as a result, but I don't know what else good can be expected, except slow disengagement and a new policy in the next Administration. I do not know if Mr. Gates will continue the dramatic press to transform the American military, and I rather suspect that he does not, either. He will have to sit in the seat for a moment, and see how it feels to be at the helm of such an enormous and lethal enterprise. Clark Clifford had much the same situation in 1968; a war going badly, economies that had to be made, and a hostile Congress and surly Electorate. His approach was smooth, which is what made him such a successful Washington lawyer. He continued one of the major MacNamara initiatives and sliced $1.2 billion out of the budget. He said he supported sending more troops to the war as he cut force structure, and made nice with the lawmakers. He left his brief tenure as the 9th SECDEF with his reputation intact, which is precisely what I expect for Mr. Gates. Clark Clifford was an older man when I got a call from him on a Sunday in 1986. I was sitting in the Bureau of Personnel at the Navy Annex on the bluff overlooking the Pentagon. I had the duty, which is to say I was supposed to be the officer who would answer the phone for inquiries regarding service-related casualties. It was peacetime, and business was slow at the Bureau. Mr. Clifford asked if I knew who he was, and the wheels turned around in my head. I responded that I did, Mr. Secretary, and he seemed pleased. I did not tell him that I thought the closure of all the Nike Air Defense sites around America's cities was a mistake, and that the war in Southeast Asia might still have been winnable, if he had changed the approach. There would be four more years of American combat deaths yet to come with Richard Nixon's Secret Plan to End the War. I did not ask him what he thought about 1968 in all its glory. Being a man of considerable influence in town, Mr. Clifford was calling to ensure that a friend of his got a last favor. He had died the day before, and expressed a desire for interment at Arlington Cemetery before passing. I asked a couple perfunctory questions as I thumbed through the thick manual that outlined the policies of the Department of the Army, which was the agency entrusted with the operations at Arlington. Mr. Clifford's friend had been a soldier, and a hero, at that. His WWII-era Silver Star entitled him to admission. I told the former Secretary that, and he seemed satisfied. I took down the contact information and assured the former Secretary that matters would be professionally handled at opening of business on Monday. I assume they were, since I heard nothing more on the issue. The next thing I heard about Mr. Clifford was the sad news about his involvement with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) scandal in 1991. At its peak, the Pakistani-based financial giant operated in 78 countries and claimed assets of over $25 billion, which seemed like a lot at the time. Clifford was 85 then, and chairman of a Washington bank that had undisclosed links to BCCI. You could almost see their building from the River Entrance to the Pentagon. They say he might not have been at the top of his game. There were allegations by legendary Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau that Clifford's bank was secretly controlled by BCCI. Clifford's predicament worsened when it leaked that he and his partner Robert Altman had made millions in bank stock profits. The Congressional investigation was co-chaired by Senator John Kerry, of all people, and the report that wrapped it up said that BCCI had been successful before they used prominent Americans as fronts. Clark Clifford was just one of them. After more than a half century in public life, he said that at the end, he had only the choice “either seeming stupid or venal." Insiders suspect it was the former, rather than the latter. Clifford died in 1998 from natural causes at age 91. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, an honor for which he was entitled by his WWII service in the Navy, and by his tenure as Secretary of Defense. On the whole, my recommendation to Mr. Gates is to do the best you can, play the hand you are dealt with skill, and then, as quickly as is honorable, get back to Texas where it is safe. Would you believe that Robert Morganthau is still DA in New York? Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |