GOP National Security Expert Defends Clinton On Emails

This is the first of a two-part interview. In part I, Wilkerson defends Clinton’s handling of emails, her effectiveness as a Senator and as Secretary of State. In part II, he explains her role and defends her actions in Benghazi, Libya and Syria.

Retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson was traveling and speaking in Iowa last week on the national security risks of climate change. Wilkerson is a Republican and the former Chief of Staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell (2002-05). Wilkerson doesn’t hold back on condemning the Republican Party’s historic record of attacks on Clinton.

“I’ve seen what my party has done to her, everything from the Whitewater business all the way up to Benghazi and the email business,” Wilkerson said. “It’s really painful for me to think about all the things my party has done to try and bring her down.”

Wilkerson is considered an expert on national security, having served at the highest levels in the military and later as part of the Bush Administration in the State Department under Powell. He agreed to this interview about Hillary Clinton because he is going to vote for her and wants to correct the record. He addresses many of the false charges that have been leveled at her on handling of emails, Benghazi, Syria and Libya.

On Trump he says he agrees with Colin Powell that “Trump is a national disaster … Trump is an extremely dangerous man.” He specifically mentioned his concern about Trump’s cavalier comments about nuclear war. Initially, he thought that a President Trump would be prevented by his advisors from doing anything foolish.

“The institutional fabric would prevent him from going crazy,” he figured.

Now, after examining Trump’s advisors, he believes there is reason to be concerned about them as well. He knows Trump’s key national security advisor, former General Mike Flynn, saying, “Flynn is a concern due to his hate for the establishment.” Politico profiled Flynn following his forced retirement, calling him America’s angriest general.

In a powerful contrast to Trump, Wilkerson dismissed the often cited criticism of Clinton as cold or distant.

“She was one of the better Senators,” he said. “She was always willing to go across the aisle. She was always willing to compromise. She was always a master of the details. She was very impressive as a Senator, and not as some people have told me, the arrogant women who stands up there and looks down on everybody else. Quite the contrary.”

Much has been made about Clinton’s handling of her email and specifically the use of a private server while Secretary of State. Wilkerson’s use of emails at the State Department provided him with an unchallenged credibility since he has intimate knowledge about the State Department email system. That’s how he communicated with his former boss, Secretary of State Colin Powell.

“A private server in some little town in New York was probably safer than a government server that gets hacked about 300 times a month,” Wilkerson said of Clinton’s use of emails. “That’s the first thing the press has absolutely missed purposely or otherwise. And second, we (me and Powell) were using AOL servers out at Dulles for a lot of our communication back and forth. That’s not surfaced and my boss would probably shoot me for having said it, but I’m sorry, that’s what we were doing. When we say we weren’t using a private server, we weren’t using a small server in some city in New York. We were using a huge one run by AOL out at Dulles. It’s fair to say we had more faith in that than we did in the government. In the last six months I’ve received two letters from government agencies saying that all of my personnel data has possibly been compromised because they lost it. That’s reinforced my opinion that the bigger you are the more apt you are to be hacked.”

According to Wilkerson, the need for urgency of communication should be the priority for using unsecured devices. He says there is no privacy anymore due to the increase in cyber penetration. When there was an emergency, Powell used cell phones to talk to the Russians and Chinese.

“How did Powell usually talk to the Chinese delegation during a crisis? Cell phones,” Wilkerson stated. “The urgency of the emergency … crisis demands instant communication. If you can’t secure it, and there’s a problem, talk. I’m not trying to defend everything she (Clinton) did, I’m just saying I understand the environment in which she did it.”

When asked about rating Clinton’s effectiveness as Secretary of State, Wilkerson made a comparison between Republican Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Clinton. He said the comparison should be between the unproductive and tense relationship between Secretary Rice and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld versus the close working relationship between Secretary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Bob Gates (a Republican). Rice tried to mend the animosity between State and Defense and made progress, but Clinton succeeded where Rice struggled.

“I think we missed one of the reasons she was (so effective) … When you got Bob Gates and Hillary Clinton together it was a whole different world,” he said. “Between the two of them they healed the bureaucracy between State and Defense. In that sense it was a much more productive secretariat … Gates and Hillary fixed that (animosity between State and Defense) and they fixed it in a way I didn’t think was possible”

In part II tomorrow, Wilkerson attributes the firestorm sweeping the Middle East on the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq and defends Clinton over Benghazi attacks.

by Rick Smith
Posted 10/17/16