Text of NYT article on Brent Scowcroft.
September 20, 2002
Scowcroft Straddles the Worlds of Business and State
By JEFF GERTH and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 - Brent Scowcroft, the former national
security official whose voice on Iraq policy has attracted
considerable attention, plays so many different public and
private advisory roles that even he has trouble keeping
them straight.
"All of this sounds confusing," Mr. Scowcroft said in an
interview at his consulting firm just a few blocks from the
White House. "In a way, it is. I do my best to keep all
these things quite compartmentalized."
As head of the Scowcroft Group, he dispenses advice to
American corporate clients, for six-figure fees, on foreign
affairs.
He serves as an unofficial adviser to the Bush
administration's national security team, several of whom
worked for him in government or at his consulting firm.
His close relationship to President Bush's father, in whose
administration he served as national security adviser, is
part of the reason why his op-ed article in The Wall Street
Journal last month attracted so much attention and helped
turn the capital's deliberations over Iraq into an
impassioned national debate.
He is chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board, which reviews the most important
intelligence issues and makes recommendations to the
president. As head of the board, Mr. Scowcroft reports to
Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, whom he
employed in the first Bush administration.
He is also chairman of the American-Turkish Council, a
business group that aids American corporations doing
business in Turkey.
Mr. Scowcroft, 77, calls himself "one of the old men around
town." He is part of a coterie of former officials,
including Henry A. Kissinger, Richard Allen and Sandy
Berger, who have become business consultants, helping
corporations assess the risk of doing business in different
parts of the world and opening doors to foreign
governments. But none enjoy Mr. Scowcroft's access or deep
personal connections to members of the administration's
national security team.
Although years ago questions were raised about Mr.
Kissinger's speaking out on United States policy toward
China while he had clients - undisclosed - who were doing
business there, Mr. Scowcroft's private work has not drawn
attention. Before he joined the first Bush administration,
Mr. Scowcroft was a member of Mr. Kissinger's firm.
"I don't have many assets in the world, but my integrity is
one and I'm not willing to put that on the line," Mr.
Scowcroft said.
When he speaks there is a question, even some confusion,
about whether he is a surrogate for the elder Mr. Bush, a
role Mr. Scowcroft denies. In 1998, the two wrote a book,
"A World Transformed," and last May traveled together to
Beijing to meet government leaders.
"Do I have friends all over the government? Of course," Mr.
Scowcroft said during a one-hour interview last week. "I've
worked with these people for many years."
The Scowcroft Group helps open doors abroad for American
corporate clients and "provides access to government
agencies," according to the firm's Web site.
Scott Harshbarger, the president of Common Cause, said it
was legitimate to raise questions about whether Mr.
Scowcroft and other former national security advisers were
marketing their government connections. "In our view, this
poses the classic potential conflict of interest question,"
Mr. Harshbarger said. "With the internationalization and
globalization of business, the very close connection
between national interests of foreign countries and
corporations, it is entirely appropriate to raise the issue
- where is their independence?"
Mr. Scowcroft said he would take on clients only after
determining that what they were doing was in the interest
of both the United States and the country in which they
worked.
The needs of the few dozen multinational American
corporations that have retained the Scowcroft Group, which
he founded in 1994, complement his globalist foreign policy
views. Mr. Scowcroft declined to identify any of his firm's
clients, which he said number fewer than 50. Nor would he
discuss his company's fees, but public records show a
former principal of his firm, who left in 2001, was paid
$710,000 for a year and a half's work.
"We guard our clients' privacy very closely," Mr. Scowcroft
said. As a member of President Bush's intelligence advisory
board he is required to file a confidential financial
disclosure statement that identifies his sources of income.
Any potential conflicts of interest are handled privately
by the board.
Leon E. Panetta, who was President Clinton's chief of staff
and now heads the Panetta Institute of Public Policy at
California State University, Monterey Bay, said that while
Mr. Scowcroft was a man of high integrity, the questions
surrounding the multiple roles of people who advise the
president and consult global corporations needed to be
discussed further. "Rather than waiting for a person who's
not a Brent Scowcroft to make a wrong decision, people
should think about the potential conflicts" of "people who
play a role advising a sitting president" and who are also
"attractive to the business world because you have those
ties," Mr. Panetta said.
Mr. Scowcroft said he could avoid any conflicts. "I'm
comfortable with what's classified and what is not. I'm
comfortable with what is propriety and what is not. If I
had never been in the government, no one would have hired
me. I hope they are hiring me for my judgment."
In Turkey last November, Mr. Scowcroft pressed the concerns
of several American businesses that are members of the
council. Motorola, a council member, had separately
retained his group to help resolve a private dispute in
Turkey with a telecommunications company, Motorola's
spokesman said. The telecommunications business dispute was
also raised in the council's November meetings, according
to Mr. Scowcroft.
"If I were to weigh in on behalf of a client, I would make
clear to whoever I was calling in Turkey that I was
weighing in on behalf of the Scowcroft Group," he said.
"Does it make any practical difference? I'm not sure."
Interviews with corporate executives, former employees of
Mr. Scowcroft and company documents show that the firm's
clients have included Motorola, Pennzoil-Quaker State, SBC
Communications and Textron.
Mr. Scowcroft's business résumé is enhanced by his deep
ties to the current Bush administration. Stephen J. Hadley
worked for the Scowcroft Group before joining the current
Bush administration as a deputy national security adviser.
Another former Scowcroft Group employee, Walter H.
Kansteiner III, was nominated last year as assistant
secretary of state for African affairs. Secretary of State
Colin L. Powell called Mr. Scowcroft to ask permission to
hire him. .
But he said he had never tried to influence any of his
friends in the administration on behalf of his clients. He
also said he would change his Web site to emphasize that
its reference to providing "access to government agencies"
meant foreign governments.
"I don't consider myself to be an inside adviser," he said.
But Ms. Rice seeks his advice from time to time. "Do we
talk now and then?" he said. "Of course, but I'm not going
to comment on my conversations with her." On Sunday on the
NBC News program "Meet the Press," Secretary Powell said
he, too, spoke often with Mr. Scowcroft.
While he does not consider himself to be an inside adviser,
Mr. Scowcroft also said that he did not see himself as an
outside critic of the president. "If the president had said
he was going into Iraq, I would not have written that
piece," he said, referring to the Wall Street Journal
article in August. "I will support him."
Despite his ties to foreign governments, Mr. Scowcroft said
his firm did not represent any countries in Washington. But
the Turkish government views his chairmanship of the
American-Turkish Council as "a big opportunity for Turkey,"
said Naci Saribas, the deputy chief of mission at the
Turkish Embassy. Turkey, a neighbor of Iraq, has serious
misgivings about any military action intended to topple
Saddam Hussein.
When Turkey's prime minister visited Washington last
January, Mr. Scowcroft and American businesses raised anew
their concerns, including faster action by Turkey on
multibillion defense contracts with Boeing and Bell
Helicopter, a unit of Textron; government financing issues
for several American-owned power plants in Turkey,
including one owned by Enron; and the multibillion dollar
business dispute between Motorola and a Turkish
telecommunications company.
Mr. Scowcroft and Motorola declined to discuss the work of
his group, which has become an issue in a lawsuit filed in
New York by Motorola against the owners of the
telecommunications company. The owners' lawyers have
requested documents from Motorola about Mr. Scowcroft's
work, but it has so far declined to produce any, a Motorola
spokesman said.
Mr. Scowcroft said he was not even aware that Enron's power
plant in Turkey was one of the projects raised in meetings
with Turkish officials, but defended the bankrupt Houston
energy company and its former chairman, Kenneth L. Lay.
From 1994 to 1997, Mr. Scowcroft served on the board of
Enron Group Power and Pipelines, an Enron affiliate that
invested in power plants abroad. In addition, Enron's
foundation was an early donor to the Forum for
International Policy, a research group set up by Mr.
Scowcroft. Mr. Lay is one of the forum's trustees.
"He's a friend," Mr. Scowcroft said of Mr. Lay.
In
October 2000, Mr. Scowcroft traveled to China with Irwin
Jacobs, chief executive of Qualcomm, the telecommunications
company on whose board Mr. Scowcroft serves. They met with
China's prime minister, Zhu Rongji. "I think that meeting
with Premier Zhu helped, obviously," Dr. Jacobs said.
Qualcomm has agreements to provide technology to China
Unicom, the country's second largest telecommunications
corporations.
Mr. Scowcroft, and his colleagues and friends, said his
continuing involvement in global matters was not driven by
money. "I'm not a businessman," he said. "I'm not an
entrepreneur. I'm an old man who's just trying to stay
active and not vegetate."
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company. |
