who is one of Leopold's sources. Wilkerson has obviously been very vocal, but it might have been necessary for him to remain anonymous in that article because it was a discussion related to Fitzgerald's ongoing investigation (Leopold states in the article, "The State Department officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because some of the information they discussed is still classified...")
Here's a piece written by Wilkerson last October. It's pretty much the same info he's saying now, and that he said during that interview on PBS's NOW program Friday 2/3/06:
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.
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.
~snip~
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."
~snip~
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.
cont'd here:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-wilkerson25oct25,1,2824203.storyFrom Wikipedia:
Wilkerson was responsible for the one-week review of information from the Central Intelligence Agency that was used to prepare Powell for his February 2003 presentation to the United Nations Security Council. His failure to realize that the evidence was faulty has been blamed on the limited time he had to review the data. The subsequent developments led Wilkerson to become disillusioned: "Combine the detainee abuse issue with the ineptitude of post-invasion planning for Iraq, wrap both in this blanket of secretive decision-making . . . and you get the overall reason for my speaking out."(Breaking Ranks, Washington Post, 19 January 2006)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Wilkerson#_note-Breaking And here's the interview with Wilkerson in the WaPo, January 19, 2006 that was cited in the above-noted Wiki comment:
~snip~
Wilkerson, as it turned out, became the point man for making the case for preemptive war against Hussein. He put together the task force that, during a week at CIA headquarters, vetted all the intelligence reports used for Powell's famous pro-war presentation in February 2003 to the Security Council, where he brandished a vial of fake anthrax, played excerpts of intercepted Iraqi military chatter, and warned of mobile bioweapon "factories" and other doomsday machines, none of which actually existed.
How did it happen?
"Larry thought they had cleaned out the obvious garbage, but it turned out there was more," says James A. Kelly, a former assistant secretary of state who's known Wilkerson for 20 years. "Larry felt that he let down the secretary, but the job was so big in cleaning out the misinformation."
Wilkerson won't say outright that he and Powell were deliberately snowed by intelligence reports tailored to fit a political push for war, but he has edged closer to that view, noting, "I've begun to wonder." It turns out that the administration relied on fabricators' claims about Hussein's illusory WMD programs and, in one case, an al Qaeda suspect whom the CIA turned over to alleged torturers in Egypt.
"I kick myself in the ass," Wilkerson says. "How did we ever get to that place?"
The speech tarnished Powell's gold-plated reputation, but he has never publicly pointed a finger at then-CIA Director George Tenet or the White House.
"Nothing was spun to me," Powell told David Frost in a BBC television interview last month. "What really upset me more than anything else was that there were people in the intelligence community that had doubts about some of this sourcing, but those doubts never surfaced up to us."
Why didn't the doubts reach Powell? Perhaps because then he wouldn't have given the speech at all?
"That's right," Wilkerson says, shooting a hard, solemn stare across the restaurant table. "That's right."
He also says, "I am prepared to entertain the idea that they used him."
~snip~
cont'd here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/18/AR2006011802607.htmlAs to your question: "...wouldn't this article have more credibility and therefore more of an impact?"
Seems if Wilkerson is one of the The State Department officials who Fitzgerald interviewed, then Fitzgerald is getting an earful, no doubt.
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