# Lawrence Wilkerson Lawrence B. Wilkerson (born 1945) is a retired U.S. Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State [[Colin Powell]] from 2002 to 2005. He supervised the team that assembled Powell's February 2003 UN presentation — and became, in the years after, one of the most outspoken insider critics of the [[Iraq War]] and the institutional rot that produced it. ## Military Career Wilkerson dropped out of Bucknell University to volunteer for the [[Vietnam War]], where he flew observation helicopters and logged roughly 1,100 combat hours. He spent 31 years in the Army, teaching at the Naval War College and directing the Marine Corps War College, and served as special assistant to [[Colin Powell]] when Powell chaired the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He retired as a colonel in 1997 and followed Powell into the State Department. ## The UN Speech Tasked with vetting the intelligence for the [[Powell UN Presentation]], Wilkerson led the days-long marathon at [[CIA]] headquarters at Langley. He later described the source material the administration provided — much of it routed from [[Dick Cheney]]'s office — as "anything but an intelligence document," likening it to "a Chinese menu from which you could pick and choose." He called his role in preparing the speech "the lowest point of my life." Wilkerson also assembled, at Powell's request, an "audit trail" on the administration's interrogation and torture policies that he said led "straight from the Vice President's office." ## Insider Critic Since leaving government Wilkerson has been a relentless public critic of the [[Iraq War]], the [[Weapons of Mass Destruction]] deception, the torture program, and the broader machinery of American intervention. A professor of government at the College of William & Mary, he has become a fixture in antiwar and realist foreign-policy circles — a credentialed establishment insider whose testimony lends weight to the [[Forever Wars]] critique the realignment right and antiwar left share. His firsthand account is among the most damning primary sources in the vault's reconstruction of the [[Iraq WMD Intelligence Failure]]. ## See Also - [[Colin Powell]] - [[Powell UN Presentation]] - [[Iraq WMD Intelligence Failure]] - [[Iraq War]] - [[George Tenet]] - [[Forever Wars]]