The blogosphere has been agog ever since former assistant secretary of state for George W. Bush, Richard Armitage, admitted "he was the person whose conversation with a columnist in 2003 prompted a long, politically laden criminal investigation in what became known as the C.I.A. leak case" (
New York Times). The admission followed the scoop (long suspected) that Armitage was the initial leaker of Valerie Plame's name, as reported in
Newsweek.
This diary will detail the political history of Mr. Armitage, who is usually briefly identified as a friend and ally of Colin Powell, and an enemy of the neo-cons in the George W. Bush administration. If you follow the details below, wherein it is shown that Richard Armitage has a shadowy and dirty history in U.S. intelligence operations, including Iran-Contra, and has long been a sophisticated member of the top echelons of the U.S. government, in addition to being a prominent member of the neo-con Project for the New American Century -- I think that the idea that Armitage was a gossipy and forgetful bumbler who innocently let fall Plame's name will seem more and more unlikely.
The U.S. State Department describes Mr. Armitage's early career thusly:
Born in 1945, Mr. Armitage graduated in 1967 from the U.S. Naval Academy, where he was commissioned an Ensign in the U.S. Navy. He served on a destroyer stationed on the Vietnam gunline and subsequently completed three combat tours with the riverine/advisory forces in Vietnam. Fluent in Vietnamese, Mr. Armitage left active duty in 1973 and joined the U.S. Defense Attache Office, Saigon. Immediately prior to the fall of Saigon, he organized and led the removal of Vietnamese naval assets and personnel from the country.
Most sources note that Armitage was fluent in Vietnamese, without naming how or where he learned this. This language facility in a young officer is usually the sign of a trained intelligence agent. (Of course, he may have just been highly ambitious; or maybe he was drawn by some affinity with the Vietnamese culture.) After he resigned from active duty in 1973, he went to work at the office of the U.S. Defense Attache in Saigon. According to Carr's Compendium of the Vietnam War:
The Defense Attache Office, Saigon was activated 28 January 1973 by Major General John E. Murray. In addition to the traditional functions of defense attache, DAO Saigon also assumed the advisory duties and supervision of military assistance programs from the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam when it stood down in the aftermath of the cease-fire negotiated that month at the Paris Peace Conference.
It is said that it was at the Defense Attache office that Armitage made the acquaintance of Ted Shackley, CIA Saigon chief. In any case, Armitage helped in the evacuation of the U.S. personnel as Saigon fell. After Vietnam, he is said by the South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG) to have joined the Defense Intelligence Agency, and was soon posted to Iran. (The State Dept. bio lists him then as a "Pentagon consultant".) After a few years of this, he left government service to go into... the import/export business. (Didn't every TV spy also have a job in import/export?)
According to SAAG:
It is generally believed that Mr. Armitage actually served in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) till 1978 and from 1976, after a cover resignation from the CIA, worked for some private companies of the CIA, which were being used by it for covert actions in Indo-China.
In a famous lawsuit brought by the Christic Institute, Daniel Sheehan, an attorney already famous for the Silkwood case, made the accusation that:
"From late 1973 until April of 1975, Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines and Richard Armitage disbursed, from the secret, Laotian-based, Vang Pao opium fund, vastly more money than was required to finance even the highly intensified Phoenix Project in Vietnam. The money in excess of that used in Vietnam was secretly smuggled out of Vietnam in large suitcases, by Richard Secord and Thomas Clines and carried into Australia, where it was deposited in a secret, personal bank account...."
In Tehran, Armitage, set up a secret "financial conduit" inside Iran, into which secret Vang Pao drug funds could be deposited from Southeast Asia. According to Daniel Sheehan: "The purpose of this conduit was to serve as the vehicle for secret funding by Shackley's "Secret Team," of a private, non-CIA authorized "Black" operations inside Iran, disposed to seek out, identify, and assassinate socialist and communist sympathizers, who were viewed by Shackley and his "Secret Team" members to be "potential terrorists" against the Shah of Iran`s government in Iran."
[Conspiracy digression -- Since these are explosive accusations, I should add that much of this was also reported in Joel Bainerman's book The Crimes of a President, which some have criticized as a conspiracy book. The Christic Institute had their lawsuit thrown out of court in 1989, and they were fined an unprecedented $955,000 in sanctions. The Christic Institute was not known, however, as a nuthouse conspiracy organization. They had run the Karen Silkwood case all the way to victory at the Supreme Court; they won a verdict in federal civil court against Klan members and police officers implicated in the famous Greensboro shootings in 1979 and worked with ABC cameraman Tony Avirgan and his wife, journalist Martha Honey, on the La Penca terrorist bombing in Nicaragua. See link.]
Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh had investigated Richard Armitage during the Iran-Contra scandal and had decided to not indict him. From Walsh's Report's Executive Summary:
The notes demonstrated that Weinberger's early testimony...was false, and that he in fact had detailed information on the proposed arms sales and the actual deliveries. The notes also revealed that Gen. Colin Powell, Weinberger's senior military aide, and Richard L. Armitage, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, also had detailed knowledge of the 1985 shipments from Israeli stocks....
Independent Counsel declined to prosecute Armitage because the OIC's limited resources were focused on the case against Weinberger and because the evidence against Armitage, while substantial, did not reach the threshold of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Armitage's first political job appears to have been for Bob Dole, as an administrative assistant in 1978. Only two years later, he is a prominent member of the Interim Foreign Policy Advisory Board for incoming President Ronald Reagan, who later appointed him Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, and later, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.
Okay, okay, say you with the blurry eyes and tired brain, trying to get the gist of all this. Where's the meat? I'm going to ask you to hang on a little longer, because it's the total gestalt of the Armitage picture that I'm trying to portray. But already, I think, we can see that he is a central player in GOP/U.S. conservative shenanigans and crimes going way back.
When the administration of George H.W. Bush rolled around, Mr. Armitage was nominated to be Secretary of the Army. But Armitage had to withdraw his nomination after a scandal erupted. It wasn't about Iran-Contra or drug-running. It was about sex and money. From a 2001 story from In These Times, by Jim Nureckas, who claimed an unpublished article of his got used by GOP types to spike Armitage's nomination:
The article was about Armitage's relationship with a woman named Nguyet Thi O'Rourke, a Vietnamese immigrant convicted of running a gambling operation in Northern Virginia. Armitage had already attracted the attention of the President's Commission on Organized Crime by writing a glowing character reference for her in conjunction with her trial, on Pentagon stationery no less.... It seemed that when the Arlington Police raided O'Rourke's house, they discovered some unusual photographs: They showed a nude O'Rourke holding another photo, which depicted her and Armitage wearing swimsuits.
Apparently Ross Perot and other assorted right-wing types were mad at Armitage for not being more rabid on the Vietnam-MIA issue, then a favorite far-right shrieking point. They used the information to ax the Armitage nomination.
Well, Armitage survived the scandal (he seems to have a genius for surviving) and was used by Bush I for special assignments, negotiating on military bases in the Philippines, a mediator on water issues in the Middle East. Per Wikipedia's bio:
In 1991, he was appointed a special emissary to King Hussein of Jordan. Following this, he was sent to Europe with the title of ambassador; his assignment was to direct U.S. foreign aid to the states that had been formed out of the fallen Soviet Union. He served here until 1993, at which point he entered the private sector.
Of course, this date (1993) corresponds with the accession of the Clinton Presidency.
Again, from South Asia Analysis Group:
In May 1993, he floated an organisation called the Armitage Associates L.C., with himself as its President, to provide consultancy services to Government Departments and business companies on a wide range of subjects relating to international relations and security.
Amongst other positions held by him since leaving public service in 1993 were as a member of the Board of Directors of the General Dynamics Electric Systems, Inc....
He is reputed to be one of the highly decorated officers of the US public service. He has received numerous military decorations from the Governments of Thailand, Republic of Korea, Bahrain, and Pakistan.
All well and good, but Sourcewatch chimes in with some poltically important information. Armitage is described as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Also:
He is one of the signers of the January 26, 1998, Project for the New American Century PNAC letter to President William Jefferson Clinton... He is also a former board member for CACI International, the private military contractor, which "is being investigated by no less than 5 US agencies for possible contract violations" and "employed four interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison" in Iraq, one of whom was singled out by General Taguba in his report on abuses of Iraqi detainees at the prison.
Okay, let's sum up thus far: CIA in Vietnam, drugs in Laos, an Iran-Contra plotter, a decorated member of government service, embroiled in possible sex scandal with a Vietnamese woman, a friend of Powell (who's lionized by many, but is a lackey who got his start by trying to cover up the My Lai massacre in Vietnam), involved with companies that torture in Iraq, and a charter neo-con member.
Now, how does this all jibe with Michael Isikoff's recent conclusion in Newsweek? --
The disclosures about Armitage, gleaned from interviews with colleagues, friends and lawyers directly involved in the case, underscore one of the ironies of the Plame investigation: that the initial leak, seized on by administration critics as evidence of how far the White House was willing to go to smear an opponent, came from a man who had no apparent intention of harming anyone.
Yeah, how could a big fat teddy bear of a man, a cuddly member of the anti-Cheney cabal behind Colin Powell, know anything about Iraq WMD? What would this ex-ambassador to Jordan, this drumbeater for war in Iraq, care about what some CIA operative running a Joint Task Force on Iraq WMD care about the likely fact that the JTF was not going to find the WMD the war party wanted? (See this and other related issues covered by emptywheel over at The Next Hurrah.)
I'm not going to go into the history of Mr. Armitage in the Plame scandal, or even in the administration of GBushJr, as this story is too hot and breaking to be adequately summarized here, and I refer readers to other diaries at Daily Kos or over at The Next Hurrah (see link above).
However, I end by questioning the conventional wisdom. Is Armitage really a "moderate"? I'd say he and Powell may represent a clique within the neo-con administration, but politically they are not qualitatively different. One must learn the difference between cliques and principled oppositions or factions. Was Armitage really, as Novak labelled him, "not a partisan gunslinger"? Was it only "chit chat" or "gossip" that was involved in his outing of Valerie Plame?
Okay, you decide. But as you read the stories about Armitage in the days and weeks to come, or if you go back and read the prior week's articles and essays, consider the history of Richard L. Armitage, and see if you don't come away wondering if there isn't far more to his involvement than meets the eye.