Ho Hum. Another Arrogant Bush Appointee Trying to Destroy America

From Loyola University Alumni Page:

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT - November 2006

THE HONORABLE ROBERT WILKIE • L' 1988
Assistant Secretary of Defense

The Honorable Robert Wilkie is Assistant Secretary of Defense. He is a native of New Orleans. The son of an Army Artillery commander, he spent his youth at Fort Sill and Fort Bragg. He attended Tulane and Wake Forest Universities. He received his Juris Doctor degree from Loyola University School of Law (New Orleans), where he received honors in Latin American Law, International Law and Legislation He was also awarded a Master of Laws in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown University. He began his professional career on Capitol Hill as Counsel to Senator Jesse Helms, where he was the Senator's policy advisor for Armed Services, Nuclear Energy and Senate Rules and Procedure. He later served as Legislative Director for Congressman David Funderburk where he was assigned to the Committee on International Relations and the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. In 1997, he began service as the Counsel and Advisor on International Security Affairs to the Senate Majority Leader, the Honorable Trent Lott. In addition to his regular duties, he served on the staff of the 1992 and 1996 Republican National Conventions and was the principal staffer and editor of the national security section of the 2000 Republican Party Presidential Platform. From 2003-2005 Mr. Wilkie was Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and a Senior Director of the National Security Council. In this capacity he served as a senior policy advisor to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs, Dr. Condoleezza Rice and to her successor, The Honorable Stephen Hadley. While at the NSC Mr. Wilkie developed strategic planning for the implementation of the Moscow Treaty, NATO Expansion, the Millennium Challenge Account; and Iraqi Reconstruction. Mr. Wilkie is an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve. An honor graduate of the Reserve Intelligence Officer's Basic Course, he is currently a Division Officer in the Maritime Threat Targeting Department at the Office of Naval Intelligence. He was named the Office of Naval Intelligence Junior Intelligence Officer (Reserve) of the year in 2004. He previously served with Atlantic Intelligence Command, Joint Forces Intelligence Command, and Naval Special Warfare Group Two. He is a graduate of the College of Naval Command and Staff and in 2002 received a Masters in Strategic Studies from the United States Army War College. He is also a graduate of the Joint Forces Staff College. Mr. Wilkie is married to the former Julia Bullard of Fayetteville, North Carolina. They have two small children, Adam age six and Megan age four.
Publications: His articles have been published in The Naval War College Review, Parameters, and Proceedings. He contributed a chapter on European Defense to the recently published "Strategy for Empire: U .S. Regional Security Policy in the Post-Cold War Era".

Did you see the name of that chapter? Strategy for Empire? And how does he propose to promote and protect this new empire? Read on...

Boston Globe:

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | May 10, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has placed unprecedented restrictions on who can testify before Congress, reserving the right to bar lower-ranking officers, enlisted soldiers, and career bureaucrats from appearing before oversight committees or having their remarks transcribed, according to Defense Department documents.

Robert L. Wilkie , a former Bush administration national security official who left the White House to become assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs last year, has outlined a half-dozen guidelines that prohibit most officers below the rank of colonel from appearing in hearings, restricting testimony to high-ranking officers and civilians appointed by President Bush.

The guidelines, described in an April 19 memo to the staff director of the House Armed Services Committee, adds that all field-level officers and enlisted personnel must be "deemed appropriate" by the Department of Defense before they can participate in personal briefings for members of Congress or their staffs; in addition, according to the memo, the proceedings must not be recorded.

Wilkie's memo also stipulated that any officers who are allowed to testify must be accompanied by an official from the administration, such as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his top-level aides.

Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress see the move as a blatant attempt to bog down investigations of the war. But veterans of the legislative process -- who say they have never heard of such guidelines before -- maintain that the Pentagon has no authority to set such ground rules.

The guidelines would not affect congressional subpoenas, which can compel anyone to appear before lawmakers. As a result, several lawmakers have pledged privately to use that power if the Pentagon's guidelines stymie their efforts to get information from specific sectors of the military.

Wilkie declined to be interviewed for this story, but a Pentagon spokesman confirmed that the guidelines are new. "The memo was a way to establish guidelines on how junior officers and the enlisted be contacted on their participation in the aforementioned briefings," Army Lieutenant Colonel Brian Maka said in a statement yesterday.

Even so, the guidelines, a copy of which was provided to the Globe by a Democratic aide, have already set off one highly unusual confrontation between Pentagon lawyers and the newly created House oversight and investigations subcommittee, according to several congressional officials who witnessed the exchange.

[. . .]

Before the Senate confirmed him last fall, Wilkie -- an aide to former GOP senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina -- was a senior director of the National Security Council in the White House from 2003 to 2005.

Wilkie was also the "principal staffer and editor of the national security section of the 2000 Republican Party Presidential Platform," according to his official biography. Wilkie is currently responsible for providing "guidance for centralized direction, integration, and control of DoD legislative affairs and liaison activities with the US Congress," according to a September 2006 Pentagon job description.

Several congressional officials accused him of attempting to muzzle the military's lower ranks, which are more likely to give Congress an unvarnished opinion compared with the top-level Pentagon brass, who typically seek to further the Bush administration's policies.

Wilkie's guidelines stipulate, for example, that "junior officers" -- any officer at or below the rank of colonel, as well as noncommissioned officers -- "may provide support to briefers and witnesses, but shall not be asked or required to have their names entered into the record or speak on the record," according to the memo, which was sent to Erin Conaton , the armed services panel staff director.

The guidelines claim the right to provide Congress only with witnesses who are Bush administration appointees -- as opposed to longtime senior government officials who do not owe their jobs to the current administration -- to provide sworn testimony.

This is insane.