Stephen
Cambone: Rumsfeld's henchman Under
Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone is
Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld's right-hand man and a
key figure in the right's web of militarists. He is also
tagged as "Rumsfeld's henchman".
Stephen Cambone: Rumsfeld's
henchman
Stephen Cambone, US
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's right-hand man
and under secretary of defense for Intelligence, was for
the first time caught in the glare of media attention as
part of the congressional inquiry into Iraq prison
abuses at Abu Ghraib. [1] Under sharp questioning by a
few senators on May 11, Cambone vigorously defended both
Rumsfeld and Douglas Feith, under secretary of defense
for policy. Cambone's attempt to split hairs on whether
the Geneva Conventions were applicable to intelligence
gathering in Iraq and his awkward defense of the role of
military intelligence in interrogations put him at odds
with the US Army general who first investigated abuses
at Abu Ghraib prison. As the first-ever under secretary
of defense for intelligence, Cambone will likely come
under increased fire as the prison scandal unfolds. Some
of the most intense questioning of Cambone centered on
whether the Geneva Conventions were "precisely"
respected. What "precisely" Cambone knew and when he
knew it, and what precisely was the role of military
intelligence will be questions that Cambone will be
required to answer.
Cambone, who as director of
strategic defense policy during the first Bush
administration under defense secretary Dick Cheney had
been a prominent promoter of missile defense systems,
served as the staff director of the two congressional
commissions - one on missile defense and another on
space weapons - chaired by Donald Rumsfeld in the late
1990s.
The two Rumsfeld commissions focused on
the issues at the top of the list for the
national-security militarists and the large military
contractors: the ballistic-missile threat to the United
States and US space-based defense capabilities. In the
tradition of Team B, the unstated agenda of these
commissions was to turn up pressure on the
administration to support new weapons programs and
substantially increase major military spending. [2] Both
commissions received funding from defense-spending bills
- in effect using taxpayers' revenues to subsidize them.
But perusing the backgrounds and connections of the
individuals charged with overseeing the commissions,
Rumsfeld and his right-hand man Cambone, most observers
at the time believed that the conclusions were
preordained.
After Rumsfeld was named defense
secretary, he made Cambone his special assistant in
January 2001. Then, in March 2003, Cambone was appointed
the first-ever under secretary for intelligence - a
position that "will allow the Defense Department to
consolidate its intelligence programs in a way that
could undermine CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] head
George Tenet's role", one defense analyst noted. [3]
Well known and much despised by both military and
civilian officials in the Pentagon prior to joining the
second Bush administration, Cambone, serving as
Rumsfeld's henchman and intelligence chief, soon began
creating a new enemies list in the CIA and State
Department.
While Cambone was directing the two
Rumsfeld commissions, he also participated in two
national-security strategy and military-transformation
commissions sponsored by the Project for the New
American Century (PNAC) and the National Institute for
Public Policy (NIPP). The institute's 2001 report,
"Rationale and Requirements for Nuclear Forces and Arms
Control", and the PNAC's "Rebuilding America's Defenses"
were blueprints for Rumsfeld's promised "revolution in
military affairs". Several other PNAC associates, in
addition to Rumsfeld himself, also served on the
Rumsfeld commissions, including Paul Wolfowitz, Malcolm
Wallop, William Schneider, and James Woolsey. Both the
NIPP and PNAC studies seem to have served as blueprints
for the defense policies initiated by the current
administration of George W Bush with respect to nuclear
policy, national security strategy and military
transformation. [4, 5]
Despite - and perhaps
because of - his close relationship to the defense
secretary, Cambone is apparently widely disliked in the
Pentagon. Tom Donnelly, PNAC military analyst and lead
author of "Rebuilding America's Defenses", wrote in the
Weekly Standard that "fairly or not, Cambone has long
been viewed as Rumsfeld's henchman, almost universally
loathed - but more important, feared - by the services".
[6] The Washington Monthly reported in late 2001: "It
would be hard to exaggerate how much Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top aide Stephen Cambone
were hated within the Pentagon prior to September 11.
Among other mistakes, Rumsfeld and Cambone foolishly
excluded top civilian and military leaders when planning
an overhaul of the military to meet new threats, thereby
ensuring even greater bureaucratic resistance. According
to the Washington Post, an army general joked to a
[Capitol] Hill staffer that 'if he had one round left in
his revolver, he would take out Steve Cambone'.
Cambone's reputation in the building hasn't improved
much since September 11, but Rumsfeld's has been
transformed." [7]
When asked by the New York
Times (April 11, 2003) if he thought hardliners in the
Pentagon had politicized intelligence to support
arguments for the war in Iraq, Cambone responded: "Any
policymaker has certain views. Policymakers are where
they are and doing what they do because they have a
view." Further, he said: "The politicization of
intelligence, I think, happens when intelligence is
thought to be more than it is. And what it can be at
best is a summary judgment at a given moment in time
based on the information that one has been able to
glean."
Cambone's work on missile-defense issues
extends well beyond his participation on the influential
Rumsfeld missile-threat commission. According to the
Carnegie Non-Proliferation Project, "As director of
strategic defense policy, [Cambone] was a major
contributor to president [George H W ] Bush's decision
to refocus the SDI [Strategic Defense Initiative]
program in 1991 and developed the concept for a global
protection system. He was a member of the high-level
group appointed by the president to discuss the global
protection system with Russia, US allies and other
states. In addition, he was responsible for addressing
and resolving policy issues that arose in the compliance
review group (DOD [Department of Defense] organization
to oversee compliance with the ABM [Anti-Ballistic
Missile] Treaty) and the strategic systems committee of
the Defense Acquisition Board, which is responsible for
approving DOD weapon-system acquisition." [8]
Before he joined the Bush Sr administration,
Cambone worked for SRS Technologies, a defense
contractor. SRS recently received a US$6 million
contract to provide administrative and management
support for the Missile Defense Agency. [9]
SRS
has also received a lot of attention recently for its
work on the controversial military effort to mine the
passenger records of JetBlue. Torch Concepts, the SRS
subcontractor that worked on the project, "worked
directly with the army and had a specific mandate to
ferret information out of [the] data stream [to find
the] abnormal behavior of secretive people", said SRS's
Bart Edsall in an interview with Wired News. Privacy
advocates immediately cried foul when the story broke.
Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said: "We
should put the brakes on all these data-mining programs
and have a serious national conversation, because travel
data is just one example of the many kinds of data every
data-mining operation wants to suck in from private
business." [10]
Notes 1. Eric
Schmitt, "Rumsfeld aide and general clash on abuse", New
York Times, May 12, 2004.
2. Lisbeth Gronlund
and David Wright, "What they didn't do", Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists, November/December 1998.
3.
John Prados quoted in TomPaine.com, April 14, 2003.
