Colonel of truth

Wilkerson, 60, exited the Bush government along with his former boss in January 2005; he now teaches at George Washington University and the College of William and Mary. He speaks in direct and sometimes folksy language, his accent evocative of small-town South Carolina, where he grew up. The son of a World War II veteran, Wilkerson decided in 1966 to drop his English lit studies at Bucknell University and to serve in Vietnam. The Army career to which he dedicated half his life began with service as a helicopter pilot scouting for the infantry, which took him repeatedly into heavy combat.

After the war, Wilkerson attended the elite Airborne and Ranger schools, completed his B.A. and earned advanced degrees in international relations and national-security studies. He attended and taught at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., and went on to serve as acting director of the Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Va. Wilkerson met Powell in 1989, beginning his 16 years on Powell's staff as an aide and speechwriter, rising to become Powell's top deputy during George W. Bush's first term.

Naturally, Wilkerson has drawn fierce counterattacks for his criticisms, notably from the president's loyal lieutenants. As Powell's point man for preparing the case for a war on Iraq, he received top-level intelligence briefings. Nevertheless, in November, Rumsfeld called Wilkerson's charges "ridiculous," telling CNN, "In terms of having firsthand information, I just can't imagine that he does." Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that he had no recollection of Wilkerson's attending meetings with military commanders, the National Security Council or the president. "I have never seen that colonel," Pace said.

Wilkerson responded to a recounting of those comments by noting that Pace had been his immediate supervisor back at the Marine Corps War College. "We sat in the chapel together when a dear friend of ours was buried," he said. "He came into my seminars. Pete Pace not knowing me? Come on. That was an embarrassing moment."

Wilkerson has the ability to listen keenly and hold his opinions in reserve. During the panel discussion at the University of Maryland, he sat back as fellow speaker Frank Gaffney, the tenaciously right-wing founder of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, responded to most audience questions by preaching about the apocalyptic horrors likely to be unleashed on America and the rest of the civilized world by "Islamofacism." Still, by the time Gaffney declared, "Like it or not, we're in a war that will last the rest of our lives, and likely our children's and grandchildren's lives," Wilkerson rolled his eyes, and along with a slight, incredulous smile, glanced at his watch.

Wilkerson's voice rose in anger when he discussed what he saw as the "hijacking" of policy inside the administration. "Those people are not conservatives," the lifelong Republican said of Cheney and his inner circle. "I'm a conservative. Those people are radicals."

Accounts of the manipulation of intelligence by administration hard-liners in the march to war have continued to emerge in recent months. In 2003, when Powell presented his case to the United Nations on Saddam Hussein's biological weapons, he relied heavily on intelligence gleaned from an Iraqi defector code-named "Curveball." But according to an in-depth report published in the Los Angeles Times in November, top CIA operations officials, including then chief of clandestine services James Pavitt, had grave doubts about Curveball long before Powell's U.N. speech. They'd determined Curveball was unstable, an opportunist and a fabricator, and had sounded the alarm about him repeatedly. "My people were saying, 'We think he's a stinker,'" Pavitt, who retired from the agency in August 2004, told the Times. But former CIA director George Tenet, who had told the president there was a "slam dunk" case for war, maintained that deep skepticism about Curveball never reached him.

"Preposterous," Wilkerson said. "It's extremely difficult for me to believe that James Pavitt's doubts didn't get through to Tenet. Pavitt was one of Tenet's principal operators in the CIA."

Today, Wilkerson continues to see an administration that punishes dissent, pushes a radical reinterpretation of the Constitution, and exploits executive power. "Brent Scowcroft said he didn't recognize Dick Cheney anymore," he said. "I don't know Dick Cheney as intimately as Scowcroft does, but I did see him as secretary of defense and now as vice president. I can tell you that 9/11 made him a paranoid, to the extent where I'm not sure his exercise of power carries with it reason."

"I've been told by several Republicans that Cheney was the first vice president ever to come sit down in the middle of a [Senate] caucus and chide the members on their votes," Wilkerson added. "This is not going to the CIA, where he also exercised undue influence -- this is going to the Congress and using the office of the vice president essentially to intimidate lawmakers in their discussions."

Wilkerson expressed genuine concerns about terrorism. But he said the administration has played the fear card with lawmakers by suggesting that if the United States gets hit again, it will be their fault unless they back such policies as warrantless spying on Americans and the brutal interrogation of prisoners.

Such interrogation led Wilkerson to cite Aharon Barak, the chief of the Israeli Supreme Court, which ruled against the torture of prisoners in 1999. "This is the destiny of a democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it," Barak wrote in the decision. "Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand."

Losing that upper hand, Wilkerson said, "is a very dangerous thing."

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