Newt Gingrich's "outsider" act

As he eyes the White House, the former speaker tries to distance himself from the Bush administration, but he helped the president make his biggest mistake.

By Alex Koppelman

Read more: George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, Politics, News, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, 2008 election, Alex Koppelman

Salon image/Reuters (Kevin Lamarque) photo

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich

Dec. 22, 2006 | Newt Gingrich still denies that he has made up his mind about whether or not to seek the presidency -- and if he does, it will only be because America demands it. "I am not 'running' for president," he told Fortune magazine in November. "I am seeking to create a movement to win the future by offering a series of solutions so compelling that if the American people say I have to be president, it will happen."

Gingrich is, however, running away from his former friends. As the former speaker of the House unsubtly positions himself for a shot at the nomination, his latest tactic seems to be distancing himself from the political polonium that is the Bush administration. A recent article in Insight magazine, a publication affiliated with the conservative Washington Times newspaper, describes unnamed sources "close to Gingrich" as saying the former speaker was breaking with the administration: "Newt bit his tongue for months and now feels he has to tell his base the truth: the White House does not have the will or the power to promote any agenda."

In an interview with Salon - during which he said he will make his decision about a White House bid after Labor Day -- he struck the same maverick pose. "I'm an outsider," he claimed. "I have no interest in propping up whatever the current slogans [are] of whatever establishment you want to describe."

"I cue off of facts, and I cue off of the American people, and I don't particularly cue off the power structure in this city or the patterns of Georgetown cocktail parties."

But when it comes to the "establishment" or "power structure," Gingrich has been anything but an outsider. He may now be trying to put some distance between himself and the Bush administration, but his fingerprints are all over the very debacle that has made the president politically toxic. As a close advisor to the administration over the past six years, as an intimate of both Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Gingrich was a powerful advocate both for the idea of invading Iraq and for the botched way in which it was done.

Gingrich wasn't merely a booster of the war and the manner in which it was conducted, said Kenneth Adelman, who like Gingrich was a member of the influential Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, which advises the Secretary of Defense. He was involved in the hands-on planning.

"Rumsfeld thought very highly of [Gingrich]," Adelman said. "There were times quite apart from the Defense Policy Board that he was called in to meet with Rumsfeld." Adelman added that the Defense Secretary told him that Gingrich had gone down to the Central Command in Tampa, Fla., where the U.S. military directs its operations in the Middle East and "worked on war plans and proved very valuable." (Asked for confirmation of the visit, Gingrich spokesman Rick Tyler said, "All I can say is that he's made many trips to CentCom ... My guess is that's right.")

Gingrich used to like to talk about his influence at the Bush White House. In the beginning of the current administration, and especially after 9/11, when the president's popularity was at a peak, Gingrich felt no compunction in freely discussing his new role back in the seat of power three years after leaving Congress. In November 2001, the New Yorker reported that Gingrich had been scheduled to meet with Cheney on Sept. 11 to discuss what Gingrich perceived as the president's failure to properly communicate his message. Gingrich told the New Yorker at the time that he had "pretty remarkable access to all the senior leadership," including Karen Hughes, Karl Rove and then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, a former colleague whom Gingrich says he spoke with "routinely" in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Most important, Gingrich met regularly with one old friend, Cheney, and advised another, Rumsfeld. But his influence was also felt in the former employees who had taken jobs throughout the administration. Notably, Bill Luti and William Bruner, who had served Gingrich as military affairs advisors during his days as speaker, were central figures in the Bush team's politicization of intelligence. They worked for the infamous Office of Special Plans, the Department of Defense's "stovepiping" operation that was responsible for much of the questionable intelligence on Iraq. Bruner himself was the handler for Ahmad Chalabi, the exiled Iraqi who provided much of the OSP's most dubious data. Bruner and Luti worked with Elliott Abrams, the disgraced Iran-Contra figure whose redemption Gingrich had kick-started.

As war approached, Gingrich wasn't just helping the Pentagon to plan the conflict. He often acted as a proxy for Iraq hawks. Media reports place Gingrich at the CIA, where, England's Guardian newspaper reported, he was engaged in pressuring analysts on Iraq intelligence. Gingrich, who says he did go to Langley to discuss other intelligence matters at the request of then-CIA director George Tenet, denies the allegation.

"I never went down to Langley, before the war, on Iraq intelligence. I went down on other topics," he said. "I thought, frankly, the argument for replacing Saddam was so overwhelming that it was silly to base it on weapons of mass destruction. And it never occurred to me that [intelligence on weapons of mass destruction] would be such a total mess."

But as the administration geared up for war, Gingrich was striking a different note. In a paper written late in 2001 for the American Enterprise Institute, where he is a senior fellow, he asserted, "We are a serious nation, and the message should be simple if this is to be a serious war: Saddam will stop his efforts and close down all programs to create weapons of mass destruction." On Oct. 31, 2002, he wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Times opposing proposed U.N. inspections of Iraq's supposed WMD facilities; in it, he said, "President Bush and his administration have been abundantly clear why they believe Saddam must be replaced. They have convincingly argued that time is on the side of the Iraqi dictator, and that every day spent waiting is another day for him to expand his biological, chemical and nuclear weapons of mass destruction program." In a piece for USA Today on Oct. 16, 2002, he wrote, "The question is not, 'Should we replace Saddam?' The question is, 'Should we wait until Saddam gives biological, chemical and nuclear weapons to terrorists?' We should not wait until Saddam has the full capacity to create terror around the planet and is able to blackmail with nuclear weapons. Waiting is not an option."

Next page: "A less confident administration might have paused and waited"