1 Boring Old Man

Debat working for the Pentagon?

 

Alexis Debat is telling people he still has some arrangement as an analyst or contributor with Andy Marshall‘s shop in the Pentagon, the Office of Net Assessments. An arrangement that he told people has not been interrupted by recent revelations of the fraudulent interviews he published in France. As I first reported on Friday, "Sources also say that Debat claimed in the spring to have received a ‘large chunk of money’ from the Pentagon to conduct a study concerning radical Islam." I have since learned that he was preparing a study on Islamic warfare, presumably for Andy Marshall. Astounding if he’s working on the U.S. taxpayer dollar still, for the Pentagon? And that he could even get a US security clearance. He’s apparently convinced some that the faked interview episode is not a sign of pathology or mendacity but an opera bouffe misunderstanding brought about by different journalistic practices between the United States and France. And some people apparently prepared to buy it.

Andrew W. Marshall, "the Pentagon’s 81-year-old futurist-in-chief, fiddles with his security badge, squints, looks away, smiles, and finally speaks in a voice that sounds like Gene Hackman trying not to wake anybody. Known as Yoda in defense circles, Marshall doesn’t need to shout to be heard. Named director of the Office of Net Assessment ("the Pentagon’s internal think tank") by Richard M. Nixon and reappointed by every president since, the DOD’s most elusive official has become one of its most influential. Today, Marshall – along with his star protégés Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz – is drafting President Bush’s plan to upgrade the military." "The Marshall Plan" by Douglas McGray, Wired, February 2003.

"Put in charge of the Bush administration’s proposed major military overhaul by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, he has sharply polarized the defense community. Marshall’s allies and proteges revere him, calling the Office of Net Assessment ‘St. Andrew’s Prep.’ His enemies despise him, deriding his acolytes as ‘Jedi Knights’." (See Andrew Marshall Acolytes / Jedi Knights for a listing.)

"Marshall played a major role in, among other things, the conceptualization of the ‘revolution in military affairs‘ (RMA) and is currently playing a major role in the Bush administration’s defense review (Quadrennial Defense Review). Much of the work of ONA is highly classified, and it has been difficult to understand just what is involved in ‘net assessment’."

Andrew W. Marshall is the director of the United States Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment. Appointed to the position in 1973 by United States President Richard Nixon, Marshall has been re-appointed by every president that followed.

Raised in Detroit, Marshall earned a graduate degree in economics from the University of Chicago before he joined the Rand Corporation, the original "think tank," in 1949. During the 1950s and ’60s Marshall was a member of "a cadre of strategic thinkers" that coalesced at the Rand Corporation, a group that included Daniel Ellsberg, Herman Kahn, and James Schlesinger; Schlesinger later became the U.S. Secretary of Defense, and oversaw the creation of the Office of Net Assessment. The original main task of the office was to provide strategic evaluations on nuclaer war issues. James Roche, Secretary of the Air Force in the administration of George W. Bush, worked for Marshall during the 1970s.

Andrew Marshall was consulted for the 1992 draft of Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), created by then-Defense Department staffers I. Lewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and Zalmay Khalilzad.

Marshall has been noted for fostering talent in younger associates, who then proceed to influential positions in and out of the federal government: "a slew of Marshall’s former staffers have gone on to industry, academia and military think tanks." Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, among others, have been cited as Marshall "star protégés."