|
Institutional
Affiliations
Center for Security Policy: Participant in various CSP events, including its 2002 Keeper of the Flame award ceremony, which also counted on the participation of Douglas Feith, Peter Rodman, Dov Zakheim, Pete Aldridge, Richard Perle, and James Schlesinger (4), (5)
Government
Posts/Panels/Commissions
Special Adviser to Vice President Richard Cheney for National Security Affairs (Middle East) (2001)
Commander, USS Guam (1997-98)
Office of House Speaker Newt Gingrich: Congressional Fellow (1996-97)
Served on USS John F. Kennedy during 1991 Gulf War
Education
The Citadel: B.A. in History
U.S. Naval War College: M.A. in National Security and Strategic Studies
Tufts University: M.A. and Ph.D. in International Relations
|
Highlights
& Quotes
William J. Luti, the controversial deputy undersecretary of defense and die-hard supporter of the war in Iraq, became a nationally known figure in early 2003 after the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh published a story about Luti's intelligence work in the Office of Special Plans (OSP), a secretive Pentagon outfit whose players included Douglas Feith and Abram Shulsky. According to Hersh's expose, Luti and his OSP cohorts were charged with digging up intelligence on Iraq that would support the administration's arguments for going to war.
According to Hersh, the Office of Special Plan, which was conceived by Paul Wolfowitz and began its work soon after the 9/11 terrorists attacks, "has brought about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community. These advisers and analysts ... have produced a skein of intelligence reviews that have helped to shape public opinion and American policy toward Iraq. They relied on data gathered by other intelligence agencies and also on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, or I.N.C., the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi."
By late 2002, says Hersh, the Office of Special Plans had overshadowed the C.I.A. and the Pentagon's own Defense Intelligence Agency, the D.I.A., and become Bush's main intelligence source on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and on Hussein's alleged Al Qaeda connections. Hersh continues, "Although many people, within the Administration and outside it, profess confidence that something will turn up, the integrity of much of that intelligence is now in question. The director of the Special Plans operation is Abram Shulsky, a scholarly expert in the works of the political philosopher Leo Strauss. Shulsky has been quietly working on intelligence and foreign-policy issues for three decades; he was on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the early nineteen-eighties and served in the Pentagon under Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle during the Reagan Administration, after which he joined the Rand Corporation. The Office of Special Plans is overseen by Under-Secretary of Defense William Luti, a retired Navy captain. Luti was an early advocate of military action against Iraq, and, as the Administration moved toward war and policymaking power shifted toward the civilians in the Pentagon, he took on increasingly important responsibilities." (2)
W. Patrick Lang, a former Middle East expert at the DIA, told Hersh, "The Pentagon has banded together to dominate the government's foreign policy, and they've pulled it off. They're running Chalabi. The DIA has been intimidated and beaten to a pulp. And there's no guts at all in the CIA." (2)
The Washington Post followed up on the Luti story in late October, running a full-page profile of the deputy undersecretary. According to the Post, one of Luti's early heroes was Albert Wohlstetter, the Strangelovian nuclear war strategist who influenced a number of key neocon figures. Reported the Post, "In the early 1990s, while deputy director of the chief of naval operations' executive panel, a civilian advisory group, Luti became interested in the views of one member, strategy guru Albert Wohlstetter. A mentor to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Defense Policy Board member Richard N. Perle and several other prominent conservative defense thinkers, Wohlstetter became Luti's entree into their world. From there, while still in the Navy, Luti became a congressional fellow in the office of then-Speaker Gingrich. His time there, in part spent working on legislation related to arming and training Bosnian Muslims, again brought him into contact with interventionist conservatives." (1)
Randy Schuenemann, a member of the Project for the New American Century's board of directors who worked with Luti on Iraq issues while he was on Gingrich's staff, told the Post, "We were talking with people like Perle and Wolfowitz about doing the right thing in Bosnia."
An unnamed Pentagon official familiar with Luti's work said that the deputy undersecretary's arrogance strained relations with his colleagues. "It's very difficult to inform people who already know it all," said the official. A former intelligence official commented, "Basically [Luti] didn't like other people's information if it didn't agree with is opinion."
When the Post asked Luti about his critics, he said that they are "either confused, malicious, or both."
|
