By Phillip Ewing | Politico Pro
June 28, 2013
James Cartwright never wanted a shooting war with Iran to become a forgone conclusion.
The former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs said so in public, urging audiences to expand their thinking about how the U.S. should to try to deter Tehran. The question raised Thursday night was whether he said so in private to The New York Times, even giving reporter David Sanger classified details about America’s cyberstrategy, including the cyberweapon Stuxnet.
Heather Hurlburt, director of the National Security Network, said when she went back and looked at the Times stories, she remembered the impression they created when they first appeared last year.
“You did very much have the feeling that, at the time, someone they had been talking to was aggrieved that they thought they were making good progress and that they weren’t getting enough credit for it,” she said. “I have no idea where it came from or why it came out, but very much the tone of the coverage does support the idea that somebody thought, ‘Hey, this is an important part of the arsenal that we have to deal with the Iran problem that’s not getting recognized.’”
Official Washington is not discussing Thursday’s press reports that Cartwright is under investigation for leaking Stuxnet details — the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the White House all have declined to comment. An attorney said to be representing Cartwright did not respond to a message from POLITICO.
But two defense insiders said Friday that one way to understand the storyline, and Cartwright’s role, is to look at it in the context of the larger, long-term debate in Washington over how to handle Iran’s nuclear program. On one side, Hurlburt said, are the hard-power hawks “who really only see U.S. leadership through a kinetic and unilateral prism, to use a couple of buzzwords.”
On the other, Hurlburt said, is “the national security establishment that can create and use and these kinds of unconventional tools and a centrist national security policy consensus about how the American people want to get things done — which is to avoid large new wars.”
During last year’s presidential campaign, she said, supporters and opponents of attacking Iran used it as “shorthand” to make arguments against each other. Mitt Romney and Republicans said they wanted to stop Iran’s centrifuges with an attack, calling for an aggressive role for the U.S. in the world. President Barack Obama and many Democrats said they preferred to exhaust diplomacy first.
But the incumbent White House also wanted to send a message that just because it opposed pre-emptive air strikes didn’t mean the government was sitting on its hands.
“The GOP had attempted to make hay over the ‘failure’ of the administration’s Iran policy,” said Carl Conetta, director of the Project on Defense Alternatives. “Throughout the year, others, too, had suggested that the administration’s policy was not effectively curbing Iran. Iran was a central issue at the G-8 summit, and Congress took independent action to strengthen sanctions. In this context, a leak to The New York Times on Stuxnet might assuage concerns within the Democratic coalition about the administration’s handling of Iran.”
But Conetta cautioned against connecting dots and forming the wrong picture: “The fact that I or you or anyone can find a plausible rationale for Cartwright (or someone else) to leak such information doesn’t make it true — just more plausible.”
That “plausible rationale” also raises a major question: If the White House wanted Americans to know about its secret campaign against Iran as a way to assist Obama’s reelection bid, why would the government later pursue the man who may have gotten out the message?
One possibility is politics: Republicans howled after the Stuxnet story appeared and since then, the White House has cracked down on leaks as much as any administration in history, tracking phone records and intercepting emails.
Another is Cartwright himself, said to have made as many enemies as friends around the capital, given his departures from the official consensus on Iran, Afghanistan and strategic weapons. He was the subject of a whisper campaign in 2011, when Pentagon reporters were told he’d been investigated — but cleared — in an alleged inappropriate relationship with a female subordinate.
A younger Marine officer in Cartwright’s command had fallen asleep, possibly while drunk, in his hotel room during a visit to Eastern Europe, DoD’s inspector general had found. Although he was not implicated in any wrongdoing, the headlines did not help his reputation.
Then on Thursday, someone leaked the allegation that Cartwright is under investigation for leaks.
“This climate around leaks is so interesting right now,” Hurlburt said. “Does this make it into a witch hunt, or go from a witch hunt to an anti-witch hunt? Plus, there’s the whole question of why it came out now — it’s deeply fascinating.”
For his part, Conetta said he was dubious that Cartwright might have given out classified information, especially out of bitterness over potentially having been passed over for a higher job in the Pentagon.
“It’s hard for me to believe that an officer with such a distinguished career would behave in such a risky and petty way,” Conetta said. “So little to gain personally; so much to lose.”
Ewing, Philip (June 28, 2013). "Cartwright saga part of wider Iran debate." Politico Pro.
June 28, 2013
James Cartwright never wanted a shooting war with Iran to become a forgone conclusion.
The former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs said so in public, urging audiences to expand their thinking about how the U.S. should to try to deter Tehran. The question raised Thursday night was whether he said so in private to The New York Times, even giving reporter David Sanger classified details about America’s cyberstrategy, including the cyberweapon Stuxnet.
Heather Hurlburt, director of the National Security Network, said when she went back and looked at the Times stories, she remembered the impression they created when they first appeared last year.
“You did very much have the feeling that, at the time, someone they had been talking to was aggrieved that they thought they were making good progress and that they weren’t getting enough credit for it,” she said. “I have no idea where it came from or why it came out, but very much the tone of the coverage does support the idea that somebody thought, ‘Hey, this is an important part of the arsenal that we have to deal with the Iran problem that’s not getting recognized.’”
Official Washington is not discussing Thursday’s press reports that Cartwright is under investigation for leaking Stuxnet details — the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the White House all have declined to comment. An attorney said to be representing Cartwright did not respond to a message from POLITICO.
But two defense insiders said Friday that one way to understand the storyline, and Cartwright’s role, is to look at it in the context of the larger, long-term debate in Washington over how to handle Iran’s nuclear program. On one side, Hurlburt said, are the hard-power hawks “who really only see U.S. leadership through a kinetic and unilateral prism, to use a couple of buzzwords.”
On the other, Hurlburt said, is “the national security establishment that can create and use and these kinds of unconventional tools and a centrist national security policy consensus about how the American people want to get things done — which is to avoid large new wars.”
During last year’s presidential campaign, she said, supporters and opponents of attacking Iran used it as “shorthand” to make arguments against each other. Mitt Romney and Republicans said they wanted to stop Iran’s centrifuges with an attack, calling for an aggressive role for the U.S. in the world. President Barack Obama and many Democrats said they preferred to exhaust diplomacy first.
But the incumbent White House also wanted to send a message that just because it opposed pre-emptive air strikes didn’t mean the government was sitting on its hands.
“The GOP had attempted to make hay over the ‘failure’ of the administration’s Iran policy,” said Carl Conetta, director of the Project on Defense Alternatives. “Throughout the year, others, too, had suggested that the administration’s policy was not effectively curbing Iran. Iran was a central issue at the G-8 summit, and Congress took independent action to strengthen sanctions. In this context, a leak to The New York Times on Stuxnet might assuage concerns within the Democratic coalition about the administration’s handling of Iran.”
But Conetta cautioned against connecting dots and forming the wrong picture: “The fact that I or you or anyone can find a plausible rationale for Cartwright (or someone else) to leak such information doesn’t make it true — just more plausible.”
That “plausible rationale” also raises a major question: If the White House wanted Americans to know about its secret campaign against Iran as a way to assist Obama’s reelection bid, why would the government later pursue the man who may have gotten out the message?
One possibility is politics: Republicans howled after the Stuxnet story appeared and since then, the White House has cracked down on leaks as much as any administration in history, tracking phone records and intercepting emails.
Another is Cartwright himself, said to have made as many enemies as friends around the capital, given his departures from the official consensus on Iran, Afghanistan and strategic weapons. He was the subject of a whisper campaign in 2011, when Pentagon reporters were told he’d been investigated — but cleared — in an alleged inappropriate relationship with a female subordinate.
A younger Marine officer in Cartwright’s command had fallen asleep, possibly while drunk, in his hotel room during a visit to Eastern Europe, DoD’s inspector general had found. Although he was not implicated in any wrongdoing, the headlines did not help his reputation.
Then on Thursday, someone leaked the allegation that Cartwright is under investigation for leaks.
“This climate around leaks is so interesting right now,” Hurlburt said. “Does this make it into a witch hunt, or go from a witch hunt to an anti-witch hunt? Plus, there’s the whole question of why it came out now — it’s deeply fascinating.”
For his part, Conetta said he was dubious that Cartwright might have given out classified information, especially out of bitterness over potentially having been passed over for a higher job in the Pentagon.
“It’s hard for me to believe that an officer with such a distinguished career would behave in such a risky and petty way,” Conetta said. “So little to gain personally; so much to lose.”
Ewing, Philip (June 28, 2013). "Cartwright saga part of wider Iran debate." Politico Pro.