http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4052506/
NEWSWEEK (USA)
February 2,
2004
The General: Did Clark Fail to
Salute?
Wes Clark won a war,
but ran afoul of his Pentagon masters and lost his
job. Here's how. A
NEWSWEEK exclusive
By Evan Thomas and T.
Trent Gegax
Newsweek
Feb. 2 issue - One of the most damning charges
against retired Gen.
Wesley Clark has also been the vaguest. After Clark
entered the
Democratic race last September, Gen. Hugh Shelton, former
chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that Clark had been
sacked as
commander of NATO forces after the 1999 Balkans war because
of
"integrity and character issues." Shelton has refused to
comment
further, and Clark's civilian boss, the then Defense Secretary
William
Cohen, has also remained silent.
The doubts raised by Clark's
own bosses have cast an uneasy pall over
his presidential candidacy. What
really happened? According to a
knowledgeable source, Clark ran afoul of
Cohen and Shelton by being less
than totally forthcoming in morning
conference calls during the Kosovo
war in the spring of 1999. From his NATO
headquarters in Brussels, Clark
wanted to wage the war more aggressively, but
back in the Pentagon,
Cohen and Shelton were more cautious. They would give
Clark instructions
on, for instance, the scale of the bombing campaign.
"Clark would say,
'Uh-huh, gotcha'," says NEWSWEEK's source. But then he
would pick up the
phone and call [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair and
[Secretary of
State] Madeleine [Albright]." As Clark knew full well, Blair
and
Albright were more hawkish than Shelton and Cohen. After talking to
the
State Department and NATO allies, Clark would have a different set
of
marching orders, says the source, who has spoken about the matter
with
both Cohen and Clark. "Then, about 1 o'clock, the Defense
Department
would hear what Clark was up to, and Cohen and Shelton would
be
furious."
Was Clark going around them? Not really. As NATO
commander, Clark told
NEWSWEEK, "I wore two hats." He reported to Washington,
but also to
America's European allies. And within the U.S. government, he was
within
his authority to seek guidance from the State Department and
certainly
from the White House, as well as from his nominal bosses at
the
Pentagon.
"I was forthcoming," Clark insisted. "If [Cohen and
Shelton] gave me an
instruction, I did it. I would never have not done what
they told me to
do. But the truth is, they weren't in touch with the
situation well
enough to tell me everything to do. It's why you have the
title supreme
allied commander... The buck usually stopped on my desk... I
had, by
necessity, a certain independence. Yet no matter how many times I
tried
to bring Hugh Shelton and Washington to understand the allied side,
it
didn't compute. They just didn't see it." General Shelton, Clark's
aides
are quick to note, is now listed as an unpaid adviser to the
John
Edwards campaign.
The problem may have been partly a matter of
Clark's tone and manner. As
an ambitious officer, Clark gained a reputation
among his peers for
telling different people what they wanted to hear,
without seeming to
realize that his listeners might later compare notes and
accuse Clark of
being two-faced. Clark might have done better if he had
adopted a more
straightforward manner, perhaps leavened with a spot of humor.
Consider,
for instance, the approach used by Secretary of State Albright.
When she
first pushed to threaten force against the Serbs in Kosovo, a
senior
administration official exclaimed, "You people
always want to bomb
someone. It's some kind of orgasm." Albright
silenced the men in the
room by remarking, "I forget what
an orgasm is."
