02/01/08 – Jim Lobe – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton, and this is Antiwar Radio.
Alright, my friends, the guest is Jim Lowe.
He's the Washington correspondent for IPS News Service.
And you can find what he writes regularly at Antiwar.com slash Lowe, and also at the Lowe blog, which is IPS.org slash blog slash Jim Lowe.
Welcome to the show, Jim.
Hi, pleasure to be with you.
It's good to talk to you again.
It's been a little while.
So you're an expert in the neoconservative movement.
You've been really writing about the neoconservatives as a separate movement within the political establishment in this country for 30-something years.
Is that right?
Well, I don't know if I've been writing about it that long, but I've tried to be attentive to it, let's put it that way.
And so, I guess let's just get to the brass tacks at the very beginning here.
If you could explain the difference between neoconservatism as an ideological definition, where, you know, basically everybody who's a Republican is a neocon nowadays, it seems, versus the very specific biographical definition, the way that you use the term in your writing.
Oh, well, I'm not sure I can distinguish.
I try to keep faithful to my own conception of what neoconservatism is and has been historically.
I mean, I agree with you.
I think there's a lot of confusion in that the Bush administration is called neoconservative, and I don't think that's really correct.
I see, at least in the first term of the Bush administration, essentially a coalition of forces consisting of neoconservative, aggressive nationalists like Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld and John Bolton, for that matter.
And people from the Christian right as being the dominant ideological current with respect to foreign policy, at least during most of the first term of the administration, and certainly that was the coalition, in my view, that brought us to war in Iraq.
And I see neoconservatives as a distinct part of that coalition that was particularly influential just because neoconservatives are very good polemicists.
They're very good at framing issues, and I think their vision was important in shaping Bush's own and certainly in marshalling the arguments and the emotions for invading Iraq.
But I still see them as distinct, for example, from the Christian right or aggressive nationalists.
Well, you mentioned John Bolton there.
I think most people think of John Bolton as a neoconservative.
He's a member of AEI and so forth.
What makes him a right-wing nationalist as opposed to a neoconservative?
Well, it's mainly his background.
Most neoconservatives come from the left, and in many cases from the far left, that is, from various incarnations of Trotskyism from the 30s and 40s and 50s, even early 50s, whereas Bolton has always been on the far right.
Now, I would say the aggressive nationalists like Bolton or like Cheney formed an alliance with the neoconservatives more than 30 years ago, when at that time they were trying to derail first Nixon's and then Henry Kissinger's efforts at detente with the Soviet Union.
They formed an alliance, and I would say over the last 30 years, a lot of their ideas have cross-pollinated.
I mean, you see Bolton as being a very, very vigorous advocate of kind of right-wing Zionism, which is completely consistent with the neoconservative view.
And so, I mean, to a great extent, the two echo each other's positions on all kinds of issues now, but they still are, I think, ideologues or historically distinct groups.
For example, while neocons have, in the case, for example, of Bolton, I mean, Bolton has essentially worked for the Taiwanese government.
Now, most neoconservatives are very sympathetic to the government of Taiwan now, but let's say in the late 1970s even and early 1980s, they saw China essentially as an ally in the broader struggle against the Soviet Union.
And so they had no problem downplaying the importance of Taiwan.
Bolton feels very strongly about Taiwan.
I don't think neoconservatives generally do.
I see.
Okay.
Now, in the 1970s, when they were working to thwart Henry Kissinger's detente policy, who exactly are we talking about?
And from where were they working to thwart his policy?
Well, on the neoconservative side, the main hatchery for neoconservatives, not in the sense of the neoconservative thinkers, but more neoconservatives interested in policy and politics, the main hatchery for that was the office of Senator Henry, or better known as Scoop Jackson, from Washington State.
A number of very important neoconservatives gathered there beginning in the late 1960s, particularly perhaps the most influential would be Richard Perle.
But over the next five or six years, you had people in that office, such as Frank Gaffney, such as Eliot Abrams, although he later worked for Moynihan, which was another kind of, let's say, Capitol Hill hatchery for policy-oriented neocons.
Douglas Spice worked there for a while.
A lot of the leading lights, Bill Kristol was an intern, I believe, or he may have worked for Jackson's presidential campaign.
But a lot of influential second-generation neocons came out of Jackson, and Jackson essentially formed an alliance with the hawks within the Nixon administration, which then of course became the Ford administration.
It was really under Ford that detente was entirely, or virtually entirely, derailed by this alliance of Scoop Jackson Democrats, who were for the most part neocons, and aggressive nationalists, of which Don Rumsfeld was first White House Chief of Staff and then became Defense Secretary, and Dick Cheney, who was his deputy in the White House and then became himself Chief of Staff in the White House.
Now, where did they go during the Carter years?
Well, during the Carter years, they mainly went into exile.
In fact, I think that's the word that Jacob Hovrin uses during that period.
They had backed with great enthusiasm Scoop Jackson for president in 1976.
They were deeply disappointed when he lost, and they tried to get positions in the Carter administration.
There were some efforts, but the people who were in charge of the Carter administration really had very little sympathy for neoconservatism as it was then understood, and they really didn't land anything of importance, and that embittered them quite a bit.
And what you see between 1976, which is when Carter was elected, and 1980, which was when Reagan defeated him, is a pretty steady defection of neoconservatives from the Democratic Party, which had been their home for like 20 years or more, into the Republican Party and into the Reagan administration.
Now, I'm under the impression that these days, there's really no love lost between the neoconservatives and Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisors, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Is that resentment that goes back?
Yeah, I mean, you have to remember, you know, as Heilbrin, again, and he's written the most recent kind of account of neoconservatism.
And, you know, his view, and I very much share this view, is that neoconservatism is less an ideology, and it's more a kind of mindset.
Mindset is the word that he used.
I see it as a worldview, but I think it's basically the same thing.
Because there isn't much that's consistent within neoconservatism, and it tends to change as power changes, in a sense.
It seeks to make itself the ally of power.
It has certain basic, I wouldn't call them principles, but basic instincts.
And for the most part, that began as very, very pro-Israel, and it's evolved into really being pro-Likud in Israel.
That's the right-wing party there.
And then you have much more hard-line elements, which are really, in many ways, close to the settler movement in Israel, which puts them really within the right of the Likud party.
Now, is part of neoconservatism, too, that all these guys marry each other's daughters and that kind of thing?
That we're talking really about a pretty close-knit group of guys, right, in the intellectual world and in the policy realm?
Yeah, I mean, in the social world.
Neoconservatives, yeah, I mean, there aren't very many.
Let's say there aren't very many neoconservatives.
How many are there, Jim?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, I've never really counted them, but...
Well, less than 75?
Or less than 500?
Well, in terms of influence in Washington, I would say you're probably talking about, you know, maybe several score.
But, you know, they have influence on a variety of levels.
I mean, neoconservatism is definitely, by their own admission, it's a very elite avocation.
I mean, it's very much directed at people who are influential and who can exercise influence.
They make popular appeals, for example.
I mean, in the invasion of Iraq, the point was to scare everybody, to make Saddam Hussein appear like, you know, a real monster, and more than that, extremely threatening to the United States.
And that is to rally support.
But, in terms of their actual, I mean, and again, Halbrun is very good on this issue, I think, because he traces the kind of Trotskyite roots.
The idea, already in the 50s, what people who became neoconservatives, they weren't called neoconservatives at the time, but who later became neoconservatives, were very much into small magazines.
And the whole theory of small magazines was that if the right people read them, they really could, you know, make history, they could change history, if extremely influential people wrote them.
And so, they've always been interested in getting access to very influential people.
I mean, that's not unique to neoconservatives.
There are a lot of people, I mean, a lot of people who are interested in power feel that way, or that's part of their arsenal of tactics.
Sure, just these guys have been really successful at it.
They've been very successful, and I believe, you know, very ingrown.
I mean, that's one of the things about them, is that they really are not open to kind of free debate, or taking on all comers, or they really prefer to talk with each other.
And indeed, I think that's one of the really, that's how Iraq, in a sense, happened, is it wasn't just that they had certain strategic objectives, although they certainly did, but it's that they convinced each other that their assumptions about the ease with which Iraq could be conquered and occupied, or liberated, was something they convinced each other of.
For example, their unwillingness to see that they would empower Iran by toppling the Baathists.
Yeah, and their acceptance of what Chalabi was telling them.
I mean, you know, again, I mean, it's pretty remarkable, you know, that they were so gullible about what they were being told.
And, I mean, on the one hand, they're depicted as intellectuals who are very sharp and very rigorous, but on the other hand, they often act by what appears to be by faith, and very little real evidence, and very rarely any real expertise in whatever region they're dealing with, whether that's the Middle East, or in the 1980s in Central America, because they were very outspoken about Central America, very supportive of Reagan's efforts.
But they, I mean, none of them had any experience in Central America whatsoever.
Right.
I think, actually, I don't remember who it was, but I interviewed someone recently who told me that Ronald Reagan actually forbid the neoconservatives from having anything to do with Middle East policy, but he let them, basically, to keep them away from the Middle East, he let them play in South America instead.
Well, I think it's a bit more complicated than that.
I mean, they certainly influenced his thinking about the Middle East initially.
I think what happened, however, was that when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, and particularly after the Sabra and Shatila massacre, in which, essentially, Sharon and the high command permitted Christian phalanges to go into these Palestinian camps and slaughter people, unarmed people, mostly women and children and older people, because the PLO soldiers had been evacuated to Tunis, Reagan became very disillusioned with Israel and the Begin government, and with the neoconservatives, who were so strongly in favor of the invasion.
And the result was that Secretary of State Shultz essentially took over Middle East policy, whereas before that, it was much more in contention.
Ronald Reagan was much more sympathetic to Israel and the Likud.
Interesting.
So he was opposed to that invasion, then?
No, he wasn't opposed to the invasion.
I think he felt misled by the invasion, as was, in many ways, Prime Minister Begin.
Because you'll remember, Sharon started the invasion, and initially it looked like they were just going to go in, you know, like 20 miles and clean out Palestinian resistance in that area, along that kind of buffer zone.
But instead, Sharon went all the way to Beirut, and that set up a whole series of essentially calamitous events.
See, I barely remember, because I was only in first grade at the time.
I understand.
I was in Washington trying to cover it.
Okay.
In your recent article here, Neocons Shaken But Not Deterred, you're reviewing this new book, They Knew They Were Right, by Jacob Hilburn, that you've mentioned a couple of times here.
And you say that basically their intention was not to join the establishment, but to create their own parallel establishment.
Well, that's Hilburn's thesis, in a sense.
I think, yeah, I mean, and in a sense, you know, they've done that.
Their establishment, again, consists of not just of themselves, but of people with whom they've forged alliances at various times.
They've been very good at forging alliances, their alliance with the aggressive nationalist states back to 1974, 75, 76.
Then they forged a second alliance with the Christian Right, beginning in 79, 80, and worked very closely with the Likud government, with Begin, in that respect, to forge that alliance.
Because the Christian Right is overwhelmingly Christian Zionist, and so to the extent, as neoconservatives became increasingly right-wing in their Zionism, that is, opted more for Likud than for Labor, they essentially made a bargain with the Christian Right, which was interested in the Likud vision of a greater Israel, primarily, I believe, for theological reasons.
And during the 90s, they forged alliances with liberal interventionists over Bosnia and other parts of Yugoslavia.
So, tactically, they're very agile and very effective in forging alliances with groups that are, in a political sense, more powerful than they are.
Well, and the military-industrial complex, as well, sort of the old Yankee-cowboy war, they used to call it.
The neocons joined on the side of the cowboys.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a fair statement.
I think they're tied to what we would call the military-industrial complex.
But particularly, I mean, military contractors, particularly high-tech military contractors, are very important, but haven't been looked at very much by anybody.
I think that's an area that people need to pay a lot of attention to.
It dates back to, of course, Scoop Jackson again, because Jackson was a very powerful figure on the Armed Services Committee.
You know, he was known not only as the senator from the state of Washington, which happens to be my native state, and I actually knew Jackson, but also the senator from Boeing.
And neoconservatives definitely have had ties to high-tech defense industry for a long time.
For example, during the Reagan administration, the person who was in charge of exports of sensitive military or dual-use equipment in the Pentagon was Richard Perle, or it was his office.
The person who actually oversaw that part of the office was Stephen Bryan, who was another neoconservative.
And, I mean, I think this, I've been told, I mean, I wasn't around, I wasn't studying it at the time, and I don't purport to be an expert on it, but essentially a lot of exports went that were pretty sensitive.
The main task was to deny countries that might trade with the Soviet Union export licenses of sensitive kinds of equipment.
But my understanding is that they were quite willing to provide those kinds of licenses to Israeli military industry, which became very competitive.
The high-tech part of it became very competitive very fast.
And now Israel is one of the major arms dealers, particularly in high-tech equipment, in the world.
And you're talking about a tiny country compared to, like, France or Germany or Italy or Britain, which are also big arms exporters.
But Israel, I think, last year actually exceeded all but one or maybe all of the European countries.
And I think that's because they created hookups with high-tech American defense contractors.
And that was facilitated by neoconservatives within the administration.
Now, there are accusations that go a little bit deeper than that to actual spying on behalf of Israel.
It's been reported that neoconservatives such as Richard Perle and Douglas Feith have been under investigation by the FBI numerous times, although never prosecuted.
And, of course, Douglas Feith's employee, Larry Franklin, has been convicted of passing secrets to Israel.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counterterrorism officer, on this show last week said that he considered, and the CIA, the intelligence community in general, considers Richard Perle to be an agent of influence for Israel.
Would you say that that's accurate?
You know, I don't know enough.
I mean, I've certainly heard accusations.
I do know, you know, there was a telephone intercept of Perle back in the 70s, which really is a long time ago, that was somewhat controversial.
There's a lot of questions about why Feith seems to have been abruptly terminated by Judge Clark in the National Security Council under Reagan.
And he then went to work for Perle in the Pentagon.
I don't know.
I mean, I do not believe that Perle, for example, is an agent of influence of the Israeli government.
I say that because hardline neoconservatives like Perle or like Feith, they believe they have a much better grasp of Israel's interests than any government of Israel does.
So they don't need to really be an agent of influence for the other government directly, because they already have their own ideas that they mean to implement.
Yeah.
I mean, let's say neoconservatives who are very sympathetic to the settler movement in Israel, which includes Feith's law partner, and probably Feith himself.
I mean, his law partner has been a spokesperson, Mark Zell, has been a spokesperson for the settler movement on the West Bank.
I mean, except when somebody like Benjamin Netanyahu is in power, I don't see their positions as being consistent with those of the Israeli government.
I mean, for example, Sharon was determined to get disengagement from Gaza, but certainly my impression is that hardline neoconservatives, certainly Perle, someone like Feith, Daniel Pletka at AEI, in fact, most of the people I think at AEI, people at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which takes a very neocon line and very lacutist, they didn't go for that.
They opposed it in various degrees of intensity.
Similarly, when you see that the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which is very, very neoconservative in orientation, is running on the day before the Winograd Commission report, which essentially exonerated Ehud Olmert, they run an op-ed by Michael Oren, who's very closely tied to Netanyahu and Natan Sharansky, on their editorial page basically saying, you know, there's no way that Ehud Olmert should survive as Prime Minister.
I mean, calling for his resignation even before the Commission report, on the eve of the Commission report, I mean, that is not consistent with being an agent of Israel.
Certainly not of the Israeli government.
Most neoconservatives, in fact, I mean, I think Israel is a core issue.
If you don't understand the importance of Israel to neoconservatives, you can't really understand neoconservatives.
That's my view.
I think that's Halbrin's view as well.
He states it a bit differently.
But it's their conception of Israel.
It's not the sitting government of Israel.
Or maybe it's Netanyahu's idea of how it should be.
Netanyahu, or even to the right of Netanyahu.
I mean, when Netanyahu was in power, they were very upset that Netanyahu made concessions under pressure from Clinton.
Again, I mean, another characteristic of most neoconservatives is they're just overweening arrogant.
And I don't think an Israeli Prime Minister could tell them what is in Israel's interest, I think, or in America's interest.
And I think another core belief among neoconservatives is that Israeli and American interests are identical.
They really don't see that there's a difference.
Right, which makes it easy.
Yes, sure.
And speaking of their arrogance, in the run-up to the war, and this is something you've written extensively about, in the run-up to the war, they basically created their own little intelligence agency called the Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon, and basically went to war against the State Department and the CIA, I guess, right?
Yeah, but that's not an unusual position for them.
I mean, the impact was unprecedented, but their attitude toward the State Department and the CIA is not unusual.
Again, Heilbrunn's book is good on this, because they see in the State Department, and especially the Near East Bureau of the State Department, and in the analysts in the CIA, what they see there is this WASP establishment that they believe is pro-Arab.
And just as they believed in the mid-1970s that the CIA and the State Department wanted detente much too badly, and that as a result they couldn't understand the Soviets and their intentions well.
They were too sympathetic to the Soviets, and now they're too sympathetic to the Arabs.
And so they see, essentially, a necessity to either force those bureaucracies into line, or to completely circumvent those bureaucracies and make them as irrelevant to policymaking as possible.
But this attitude is not a new attitude.
It's one they've held consistently over more than 30 years.
Yeah, OSP as just Team B or Team C, I guess.
Yeah, it's a form of Team B in the mid-70s.
Again, Team B, which distinguished itself historically by being wrong on virtually every count.
Now that we know the actual records and we have access to the archives, we know that their assessment of Soviet power and Soviet intentions was delusional.
Now, in the first term, do you think that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, well, actually exclude Rumsfeld and Cheney from that.
Because they forged this alliance back then.
But George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, George Bush.
Did they understand that this is some weird little group of Republicans that are sort of separate and different and crazier than the rest?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, I'm sure Bush's father tried to tell him that, because Bush's father had no sympathy for neoconservatives.
And certainly Bush's father's closest advisors, Jim Baker and Brent Scowcroft, had no sympathy for neoconservatives.
So I assume that the younger Bush got the word from them.
But I, you know, again, the younger Bush has shown a total lack of intellectual curiosity.
And so he may, and clearly, you know, I mean, I don't buy all the psychological explanations for his motivations and so on.
But, you know, a Marine Dowd is on to something.
I mean, somehow wanted very much to distinguish himself from his father, and clearly, you know, disdained Brent Scowcroft and his advice.
So I don't know whether it penetrated his consciousness, what they were presumably saying.
It's clear that Powell tried to make that clear.
I mean, when Powell left, there's, I think it's Larry Wilkerson, you know, who said that, you know, you understand, Mr. President.
I think in their last, you know, in the interview in which Powell was told his services wouldn't be needed, in that interview, he said, you understand, Mr. President, that there are people who are advising you who are card-carrying members of the Likud.
So one has to assume that Powell communicated at various times that he thought this group was a little bit crazy.
And we do know, you know, that he referred to the FISAF as kind of the Gestapo.
Fairly strong.
As for Condi, I suspect she was aware.
I don't see how she could not have been aware, because she was in touch with Scowcroft at the beginning.
But I think she was a very, very weak national security advisor, and I think she's only been marginally stronger as Secretary of State, and felt that her role as national security advisor was to carry out the President's wishes.
So I just, you know, I don't know what the dynamic was between them on this particular issue.
Well, you know, Andrew Coburn, in his book on Rumsfeld, reports that George Jr. didn't ask his father what a neocon was until August of 2006.
Yeah, I recall, now that you mention it, I recall that.
I mean, I don't, I think it may be that the actual word, I mean, I don't know.
You know, I don't know.
Certainly Scowcroft and Baker knew who Baker was.
Sure.
Yeah, I've heard them, I guess Ray McGovern and Scott Ritter both have talked about how Scowcroft called them the crazies in the basement.
They're to be kept in the basement, away from actual policy making.
That was fairly common usage among, in the Bush One veterans.
Yeah.
I mean, again, I don't want to get into psychobabble, and I don't buy all the psychological explanations that have been offered for why George W. Bush thinks as he thinks.
Or feels as he feels.
But I suspect he, there was an aspect of, I'm not going to listen to these people who are saying such bad things.
Yeah.
About people who are telling me the things I want to hear.
Right.
And in addition to that, you know, I don't think neocons had all that much direct contact.
I think it was Cheney who essentially is the key person in terms of making the sale to the President.
And besides just being a belligerent, power-hungry lunatic, do you have any idea what motivates his seeming allegiance to the Likud Party?
Well, I personally don't think he himself is all that Israel-focused.
I mean, I have a hard time believing that, too.
What does he care about Israel?
And yet, he seems to want a war with Iran, and I can't figure out who else is pushing for that but the Israel lobby in this country.
Well, except, no, I mean, as a belligerent nationalist, I think he feels that the U.S. has lost a lot of credibility.
And it's very important to show that it remains a hyper-power.
And that nobody can really thumb their nose at the United States.
And he sees Iran as a major nose-thumber, if you will.
So it's the principle of the thing.
No, but at the same time, you know, he voluntarily surrounded himself with our neoconservative, the most important of whom was Guterr Libby.
Right.
You know, and he's, you know, he has always shared the neoconservative distrust of the CIA and the State Department, although for different reasons.
You know, not because they're Arabist, but for other reasons.
Because he sees them as liberal, as people who are too likely to go native, and stuff like that.
Right.
Too pro-Arab.
So it sounds to me like you really think that these guys successfully did hijack American foreign policy.
I guess the real question is, has the establishment taken it back?
We saw the Iraq study group in the form of Robert Gates come and take over the Defense Department and so forth.
Is the neocon coup over for now, at least?
Well, again, I don't think it was a neocon coup, per se.
I think the neocons, in terms of strategy and concept of what they wanted and what they wanted to achieve, were kind of intellectually the most influential group.
But there's no question in my mind that they needed help from both aggressive nationalists and certainly Cheney and Rumsfeld.
So that says Cheney's still there, and that's what really counts, right?
Yeah.
And the Christian right.
That is, the neocons could never have pulled this off by themselves.
They were very important because they provided the framework, and they did a lot of the propagandizing, if you will.
They were ubiquitous in the media, and that was very helpful to the administration.
Well, and that remains to a great degree, right?
I think less so.
I mean, if you look at them, their priorities, I think, have changed.
I think they're aware of what a lightning rod they've become.
So I think they're more low-profile than they would prefer to be, and certainly than they were in the run-up to the Iraq War.
But, I mean, they were highly influential, and I doubt we would have gone to war without them.
But on the other hand, they were necessary but not sufficient in and of themselves.
As to where they are now, and how the balance of power is tilted, I mean, it's been my belief that neoconservatives began losing influence by the fall of 2003, when it became clear that the assumptions that they had made going into the war in Iraq were incorrect, in almost every respect.
Since then, huh?
Well, it's been gradual, and it's been up and down.
But, you see, in the fall of 2003, the Pentagon begins to lose control over Iraq policy.
And Rice forms this Iraq, it wasn't called the Iraq Study Group, it had another name.
It was headed by Robert Blackwell, in the National Security Council.
And I don't know if you remember, but Rumsfeld complained that this had been done without consulting with him, and so on.
And I think you see that you have Baker coming on and handling the debt issue, the Iraqi debt issue, and so on.
And so you can see the beginning of a gradual dilution of their influence, particularly with respect to Iraq.
But that doesn't mean the balance of power tilted against them.
They were still riding quite high.
They were quite a bit higher than the realists at the time.
But with some exceptions, it's been a gradual decline.
Now, I would say they enjoyed a brief return in the summer of 2006, during the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
They had made a comeback of sorts, because whereas the realists wanted that war to end within days, and in fact the government of Israel wanted that war to end within days of its beginning, it was really neoconservatives and their influence within the administration that kept the war going for a month.
And in fact, Elliott Abrams, who is probably the most powerful neoconservative who remains in the administration, suggested to the Israeli government on the second day, or second or third day of the war, that if Israel wanted to attack Syria, that would be just fine with the administration.
They would not have an objection to that.
And the Israelis kind of came back to him and said, are you crazy?
And that's the beginning of some tension between the Bush administration and the Olmert government.
When the Olmert government realized that in fact these guys were a lot more hawkish than they were.
Well now, was the implication there that, go ahead and start a war with Syria, we'll back you up?
Or just go ahead, we're sure you can handle it?
More the latter, but I think the assumption was that if they needed some additional material, we'd be happy to provide it.
But particularly since Gates replaced Rumsfeld, I believe the balance of power has shifted much more strongly in favor of the realists.
And I think Gates is the real motivator on the realist side.
Rice gets credit, but I think Gates is a much more important character in this ongoing battle.
Just because his bureaucratic savvy is much greater than Rice's.
And he has influence with the intelligence community and naturally now with the Pentagon, which for foreign policy reasons, I mean for reasons of just the budget, is an extremely influential bureaucracy on foreign policy.
So what you see is that once Gates is on board, you see Rice making this deal with the North Koreans, which they essentially pulled what Cheney and Rumsfeld had pulled before, essentially a coup, whereby the decision to engage the North Koreans and to strike a deal did not go through normal interagency processes.
And it left the hawks, Cheney's office, people on the NFC, furious that this deal was struck.
Didn't they do it when he was out of town?
Wasn't he on a world tour threatening people or something when they went and struck the deal?
Who was it?
Cheney.
Frankly, that could be.
That rings a bell, but I don't recall exactly.
I'm sorry, I don't have my footnote in front of me right now.
Yeah, I mean it was a phone call essentially from Chris Hill to Condi and then Condi to the President.
And the President went along.
So Cheney wasn't even in the room.
So you have that and I think Gates may not have had a direct hand in it, but I think he was quite knowledgeable and probably encouraged a move like that.
And then more recently you just have a lot of, I mean, every time a warlike statement has been made toward Iran, it's from the Pentagon that it gets batted down.
And Gates is behind that.
And then you have the NIE and Gates.
We know that Gates and Admiral Mullen were very instrumental in persuading Bush to make the NIE public.
And that was a huge step back to the neoconservatives in particular.
Well, I admit that Gates and Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had persuaded him to release it.
Pardon me?
I was unaware of that.
Well, there was a big debate about it at the highest level.
You look at who's in charge of the intelligence agencies now, and they're all Bush 1 people.
And hence all people who've worked with Gates, either with Gates when he was Deputy National Security Advisor under Bush 1, or with Gates when he was head of the CIA.
You mean McConnell and Hayden?
McConnell.
Well, both of them, I understand, also argued in favor of publishing the NIE.
Now, so you think that, well, what do you think are the prospects for war with Iran in the last year, then?
You think there's no way?
Well, I mean, until the NIE was published, I tended to think that it was slightly more likely than not.
After the NIE was published, I think it's substantially less likely.
I mean, I had long thought that it was going to be kind of a 50-50 proposition, and I was leaning more to 60-40 up through October, or through November, I guess.
The NIE came out in early December.
I wasn't in the country at the time, so I'm a little confused.
And I think the chances now are down to 25%.
And one of the things that you – I mean, I think there's a possibility of it, and I think if Israel decides itself that it has to do this, then I think the chances of our getting involved are significant.
Well, that's the real risk, isn't it?
That Israel will start the war on an agreement, a back-channel agreement with Cheney or otherwise, and then that will necessitate our involvement.
Well, that's the so-called Wormster scenario, that Wormster was talking up about ten months ago, when he was still working for Cheney.
But you'll notice that Wormster is gone.
And you look at what the neoconservatives themselves say, including Wormster, and for that matter Bolton, at the Herzliya conference this last week, I mean, they pretty consistently say that the NIE has sunk the chances of an attack, at least on the nuclear installations in Iran.
He said that at the Herzliya conference?
Yeah, he basically said, make no mistake, this administration is not going to do anything about Iran.
Oh, that's good to hear.
Militarily.
Well, I don't know, Jim, if you've had an opportunity to read this, or if you've heard of this, or I guess I know you haven't done any reporting along these lines yourself, but Philip Giraldi again, he wrote something in the Huffington Post last week, that basically said that when the Washington Post series came out, his sources tell him, when the Washington Post series on Dick Cheney came out, that that really humbled George Bush and angered him, that Cheney was being portrayed as the real boss and that kind of thing.
And so he then sidelined Cheney quite a bit in favor of Gates and Rice.
But that then when the NIE came out, Bush took that as a slap in the face from those pansies in the State Department and the CIA, and went running back into Cheney's arms.
And that now he's much more on Cheney's side since the NIE.
I mean, I don't know what to make of that argument.
I mean, it's conceivable.
Certainly, one indication of that would be that he's lining up behind Petraeus and against Gates and the Joint Chiefs on the question of withdrawal from Iraq, at the pace of withdrawal.
Because Gates made it clear this fall, and the Joint Chiefs have made clear, and the Chief of Staff of the Army has made clear, that they want to continue drawing down combat troops from Iraq at the same pace that they are supposed to be doing now, which is roughly 5,000 troops a month, through the end of the year.
And Bush's most recent statements indicate that no, he supports Petraeus, who at the very least wants to pause as of August when they supposedly reach the 130,000 troop level, and then possibly not reduce any more.
He's a commander guy, but he picks and chooses which commander's advice he wants to follow.
Yes, that's right.
And he's very sold on Petraeus, who's become a neoconservative icon, especially to Bill Kristol.
But what interests me, back on the Iran thing, with respect to Cheney's influence, what I have found most interesting is that the neoconservatives, who are the most active polemicists, have stopped writing about Iran, like in October.
And this is a huge difference from what happened in Iraq.
I mean, you just don't see that much about Iran.
Right, it seems like the President is the most hawkish of all.
It seems as though Bush is the most hawkish of all on Iran, in terms of public statements lately.
Yeah, but even in his State of the Union, I mean, you know, he threatened and he kind of gave an ultimatum, but it wasn't...
You know, I don't know anybody who said, ooh, Jesus is so hawkish, you know.
Right, it was nothing new.
Same old threats.
It was pro forma.
And I think, also, Bush has been badly...
I think hopes for a war with Iran diminished, not only as a result of the NIE, but I think this trip that he just took to the region, and particularly to the Gulf, was very discouraging to him.
Because I think the Gulf states, or the leaders in the Gulf, the king, the monarch, the emirs, and so on, you know, basically said, we don't want a war here.
You know, we really don't want a war here.
And we do want to remind you that a barrel of oil is currently costing between $90 and $100.
And if you're really concerned about a recession, you don't want a war either.
Right.
And I think they made that very, very clear to him and his party.
And I think that chastened him quite a bit.
Because, again, if there had been any encouragement coming out of that trip, I think you'd see the Weekly Standard filled with articles about the nefariousness of Iran.
And you'd see the Wall Street Journal editorial page plastered with similar articles.
And you'd see the National Review also carrying lots and lots of articles about Iran.
But the fact is that for three months now, there's been very, very little about Iran.
That's very contrary to normal neoconservative practice, which is, if you want a policy done, you do it in a very orchestrated manner.
Yeah.
Well, and they even wrote about, come on, guys, we have to orchestrate a campaign against Iran a year ago.
And then another, well, last fall, too, they also came out with that thing, saying that they got word from Cheney's office that we're to begin a propaganda offensive.
Apparently that's been called off.
Well, I just don't see any evidence of it.
Now, some people are very suspicious.
They say, oh, these neoconservatives, they're so smart.
They know that if they make a big noise, everyone's going to say, oh, it's Iraq all over again, and that'll kill it.
But I think that's a little bit far-fetched.
Yeah, they're not so smart, really.
Well, if they wanted to drum up, if they want to drum up a war, they have a long way to go.
And every day that passes is another day left in this administration's life.
Okay, now, we kind of got to wrap this up here.
I'm sorry I'm keeping you over time here.
But I was hoping I could ask you just, if you can just kind of yes or no, I'm correct that there are no major neoconservatives advising Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.
Is that right?
I mean, they have the neoliberal set.
I haven't paid that much attention to their campaign.
I mean, I would say they're liberal interventionists, the kind who are interested in war in Bosnia and in Yugoslavia, with whom neoconservatives forged alliances in the 90s who are around both candidates.
I mean, certainly Holbrooke.
Right, and Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Is a liberal interventionist, and is important in the Clinton campaign.
And now, do you know about John McCain and his advisors?
Well, I believe McCain is the neoconservative candidate at this time.
I mean, the hard, hard line neoconservatives, the Fetler sympathizers, and so on, and people closest to Netanyahu were clearly rallying behind Giuliani.
You could tell that from the membership of his foreign policy team.
That, obviously, is now, Giuliani has left the campaign.
Perl, and some other neocons, supported, indicated support for Thompson, that that was their favorite Clinton candidate.
But Thompson's out too, and that leaves McCain, and essentially McCain, Romney, and Huckabee, whom they do not trust at all.
And it's very clear to me that the neocons favor McCain, because McCain is much closer to them on Iraq.
I mean, Kristol was a big McCain campaigner in 2000.
The coverage in the Weekly Standard has been pro-McCain for weeks and weeks, ever since he seemed to make a comeback.
So, my assumption is that they're all going to rally around McCain.
And, hopefully, not all get jobs working for him, if he gets elected.
Well, I don't know.
McCain has a much broader range of advisors than, say, Giuliani.
But, you know, he is very hawkish on Iraq.
And, again, if you look at the volume of articles that have been put out by neocons on foreign policy for the last six months, Iraq is the big issue for them.
That we need to maintain U.S. troops in Iraq.
Yeah, well, he definitely won't disappoint them on that.
It doesn't look like that.
All right, well, I've got to tell you, I really appreciate you taking your time out of your day to explain the history and the who's and the why's of the neoconservatives.
It's very enlightening.
Okay, good.
Thanks, Scott.