Word: nsc
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...votes he needs to win Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation as CIA Chief sometime next week, but he's certainly off to a bad start as the man who proposes to manage the flow of the most sensitive information. Bad enough that La ke somehow never learned from his NSC subordinates of keen FBI concerns that China was trying to influence congressional elections. Questions about his competence deepened today on reports that even after his own NSC tried to warn the White House that Joh nny Chung was "a hustler" who might embarrass the Clintons, Chung blithely continued to visit Hillary...
...NSC documents were released by the White House in response to a request from the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is considering the nomination of Anthony Lake to be the new CIA director. The giant pile of data did achieve its ostensible purpose: it showed that Lake was not a party to the unseemly fund-raising operation. But in making the case for Lake, the White House damaged itself in the larger battle to rise above the fund-raising scandals that are swamping it. Press secretary Mike McCurry conceded that at times the NSC's "good, sound counsel" was ignored...
Another troubling document is an April 1996 E-mail message from NSC's Suettinger that warned Vice President Gore about attending a fund-raising lunch at a Buddhist temple near Los Angeles. Gore's attendance, he said, would appear to give U.S. policy a pro-Taiwan, anti-China tilt at a time of great tension between the two. "My reaction would be one of great, great caution." The State Department expressed similar concerns. The result? Gore went, but there were no Taiwanese flags flying to make for uncomfortable photo ops, and no Taiwanese politicians playing a visible role. The lunch...
...problem is particularly sticky for Lake, who as NSC director is supposed to have known about potential diplomatic embarrassments and can never utter the words "I was out of the loop." But that is essentially Lake's defense. His team contends that Harold Ickes and Doug Sosnik, who ran the White House political operation, rarely asked the NSC to do background checks on the foreigners coming to the White House for some of the 81 coffees the President had last year with donors and backers. In previous administrations, a rigorous NSC investigation greeted every foreigner who came to the White...
...Cohen for Defense, and Albright was an obvious choice for State. Colin Powell, considered at one point for the job, was pressed by the Vice President as a way to neutralize a potential rival in 2000. But the Republican of choice was always Cohen for Defense. Berger got the NSC job in part by default: he was offered the chief-of-staff position when Erskine Bowles at first seemed unwilling to take it, so NSC was the consolation prize. And Lake was rewarded with the CIA after being evicted from the NSC to make room for Berger...