William Luti

Luti served as a naval officer for over 25 years, but he made his name as an aide to House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) in the late 1990s. He retired from the military in 2001 to join the staff of Vice President Dick Cheney. By the start of the Iraq War in March 2003, Luti was more closely affiliated with the neoconservative civilians in the Pentagon than with the military brass, and in July 2005, after Feith resigned, Luti left the Pentagon to join the staff of the National Security Council at the White House (Washington Times, July 15, 2005).

Seymour Hersh first documented Luti's role in the faulty intelligence on WMD in a May 2003 New Yorker piece about the Office of Special Plans. According to Hersh, the OSP, which was conceived by Paul Wolfowitz and began its work soon after the September 11 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 INC, the exile group headed by Ahmed Chalabi" (New Yorker, May 12, 2003).

Hersh reported that by late 2002, the Office of Special Plans had overshadowed the CIA and the Pentagon's own Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and become Bush's main intelligence source on Iraq's WMD and on Hussein's alleged al-Qaida connections. Hersh wrote that "[a]lthough 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 1980s 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" (New Yorker, May 12, 2003).

In March 2004, an expose by Karen Kwiatkowski, a former Pentagon staffer in Luti's section, cast further light on Luti's activities at the OSP. Kwiatkowski noted that Luti apparently helped coordinate the OSP's efforts with Cheney's office, and that he would frequently and ostentatiously boast about his close work with Cheney's then-chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. She claimed that Luti was bullying toward subordinates and critics and once in a meeting referred to retired Gen. Anthony Zinni as a "traitor" for his skeptical attitude toward the Iraq War. Luti was, however, notably deferential to Shulsky, who was ostensibly his subordinate (Salon.com, March 10, 2004).

Kwiatkowski also revealed that Luti had clashed with Bruce Hardcastle, the section's intelligence staffer from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). She wrote that "Luti and possibly others within OSP were dissatisfied with Hardcastle's briefings, in particular with the aspects relating to WMD and terrorism. I was not clear exactly what those concerns were, but I came to understand that the DIA briefing did not match what OSP was claiming about Iraq's WMD capabilities and terrorist activities. I learned that shortly before I arrived there had been an incident in NESA [the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia desk] where Hardcastle's presence and briefing at a bilateral meeting had been nixed abruptly by Luti. The story circulating among the desk officers was 'a last-minute cancellation' of the DIO [defense intelligence officer] presentation. Hardcastle's intelligence briefing was replaced with one prepared by another Policy office that worked nonproliferation issues. While this alternative briefing relied on intelligence produced by DIO and elsewhere, it was not a product of the DIA or CIA community, but instead was an OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] Policy 'branded' product—and so were its conclusions. The message sent by Policy appointees and well understood by staff officers and the defense intelligence community was that senior appointed civilians were willing to exclude or marginalize intelligence products that did not fit the agenda" (Salon.com, March 10, 2004.)

Nearly a year before Kwiatkowski went public with her allegations, W. Patrick Lang, a former Middle East expert at the DIA, had come forward with similar conclusions. In an interview with Seymour Hersh, he said that "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" (New Yorker, May 12, 2003).

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 his opinion." Luti responded that his critics were "either confused, malicious, or both" (Washington Post, October 22, 2003).

Unlike most of the neoconservative war planners, Luti came from a military background. He served as a naval weapons officer beginning in the mid-1970s, but went back to school in the late 1980s to study strategy and diplomacy at Tufts University's Fletcher School, receiving his Ph.D. in 1990. He then served on the USS John Kennedy during the 1991 Gulf War.

According to a profile in the Washington Post, Luti became associated with leading neoconservatives through their shared interest in the Strangelovian nuclear war strategist Albert Wohlstetter. The Washington Post reported: "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" (Washington Post, October 22, 2003). Randy Scheunemann, a director of the Project for the New American Century 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" (Washington Post, October 22, 2003).

After leaving Gingrich's staff, Luti served his final major assignment for the Navy as captain of the USS Guam. When George W. Bush became president in 2001, he joined Cheney's staff, then retired from the Navy a few months later to join Feith's team at the Pentagon (Washington Post, October 22, 2003). Since leaving the Pentagon in July 2005, details of Luti's activities have been scarce. As of August 2007, the nature of his work within the National Security Council was unclear.

Government Service

Education

Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, "Luti Moves," Washington Times, July 15, 2005.

Seymour Hersh, "Selective Intelligence," New Yorker, May 12, 2003, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/05/12/030512fa_fact.

Karen Kwiatkowksi, "The New Pentagon Papers," Salon.com, March 10, 2004, http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/index.html.

Thomas E. Ricks, "Iraq War Planner Downplays Role," Washington Post, October 22, 2003.

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