Gingrich, Cheney & Rumsfeld connection???

[Gimpy]

Did Gingrich get nod for AEI speech?
By Jonathan E. Kaplan

Some Bush administration officials were informed in advance of former Speaker Newt Gingrich?s April 22 speech lambasting the State Department?s bureaucracy.

Gingrich?s speech caused an immediate furor in light of the on-going policy fight between Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell over whether U.S. security is best enhanced through a multilateral or unilateral approach to world problems.

In his speech, Gingrich accused State of having bungled the diplomacy prior to the invasion of Iraq and ?descended into a murky game in which the players were deceptive and the rules were stacked against the U.S.?

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Spokespersons for Vice President Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld ? whose bosses are both close Gingrich allies who have reportedly quarreled in private with the State Department ? said that neither official had prior knowledge of Gingrich?s remarks.

The sequence of events suggests that Gingrich served a useful role for administration insiders who are loath to attack Secretary of State Colin Powell openly but sharply disagree with the department?s policies over such critical issues as postwar reconstruction and the handling of a nuclear North Korea.

The fact that no Pentagon official came forward during the ensuing controversy to disavow Gingrich?s remarks may indicate further that his views are at least partly shared by people at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

Before delivering his speech, the former Georgia congressman sent it by e-mail to about a dozen members of his personal staff as well as to some unnamed government officials, Rick Tyler, Gingrich?s spokesman, told The Hill.

?People got a heads up ? but from the time he sent it to the time he read the speech, he had no conversations with those officials,? said Tyler, who declined to list those who received an advance copy.

Former Gingrich aides pointed to a potentially telling departure by Gingrich from his usual speaking habits. He normally speaks off-the-cuff, but at the American Enterprise Institute his savaging of the State Department was read from a written text.

This is highly unusual for the former college professor. Gingrich, a member of the Pentagon?s Defense Policy Board, is known for his ability to speak at length with only short outlines notes and without missing a beat.

That he read from a prepared text caught some longtime aides off guard. That could mean, ?there was a real process in place,? and that he might have ?submitted that to someone prior,? to the event, a former aide said.

?The Speaker will put things in the form of a memo,? Tyler said. The memo, then, could be whittled down to an outline. But this time, Tyler said the memo was so good that Gingrich, with Tyler?s encouragement, decided to read straight from the text.

Speculation as to which Rumsfeld aides were told about Gingrich?s criticism centered on Stephen A. Cambone, who directs the Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation, and Douglas Feith, an undersecretary of defense policy and a former AEI fellow.

They did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Richard Perle, a member of the Defense Policy Board, said he did not know what Gingrich was going to say until he said it.

Perle added, ?I have very little contact with [the Board?s] members,? except for the two days every three months that the advisory board meets at the Pentagon. ?The press has given [the Board] an institutional life it just does not have.?

Tyler said the media attention given the speech was due to serendipity rather than calculation. Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post?s State Department reporter, could not attend the speech to write about it. Instead, he wrote a story before the speech was given.

Without the successful invasion of Iraq and a well-placed front-page story in a national paper, Tyler said he would have had to cajole and twist reporter?s arms to attend the speech.

A former Gingrich aide, Barry Hutchison, said: ?This was not uncharacteristic of Gingrich. He?s constantly looking at our institutions with how we deal in the modern world. He?s constantly looking at the efficiency of these institutions. Quite frankly, we ought to be happy that somebody is.?

Gingrich also had a hand, along with President Bill Clinton, in creating a commission on homeland security, which was chaired by former Senators Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) and Gary Hart (D-Colo.). Rudman and Hart predicted a Sept. 11-like catastrophe months before it occurred.