MCCAIN GRILLS LIPPERT
The Pentagon’s nominee for assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs is under fire from Sen. John McCain, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr. McCain wrote to Mark Lippert on Nov. 30 to pose very specific questions about whether Mr. Lippert was behind a series of press leaks that sought to undermine retired Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones when he was President Obama’s national security adviser.
Mr. McCain wrote that a 2010 book by journalist Bob Woodward discussed Mr. Lippert’s relations with Gen. Jones and “offers a disturbing portrayal of your actions that could be described as arrogant and disloyal.”
In the letter, Mr. McCain asked if Mr. Lippert and another National Security Council colleague, Denis McDonough, were known by Gen. Jones as “the Politburo,” “the Mafia” and “the water bugs” because they had become major obstacles to “deciding on coherent national security policy.”
Mr. Lippert also was asked whether he managed to “cut off” Gen. Jones from consulting with the president during a 2009 trip to Europe.
The letter also stated that Gen. Jones had talked to Mr. Obama about firing Mr. Lippert for “rank insubordination” and that the president had agreed to move Mr. Lippert out of the NSC.
Additionally, Mr. McCain asked Mr. Lippert to explain whether he “shut out” a top White House military adviser, Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, from key Iraq policy discussions because he distrusted him.
When asked about his clashes with Gen. Jones at a Nov. 17 committee hearing, Mr. Lippert responded, “I did not leak to the press about General Jones.”
But he would not answer questions from Mr. McCain about whether his departure from the NSC staff was the result of differences with Gen. Jones.
“Gen. Jones and I worked collaboratively on many issues, and I’m proud of what we accomplished, but there was also times we disagreed, but I knew General Jones was the boss,” Mr. Lippert said.
http://www.gertzfile.com/gertzfile/ring120811.html
The attack comes amid growing anti-U.S. protests here over comments made last week by State Department official Wendy Sherman.
Sherman, undersecretary of state for political affairs, angered many South Koreans with comments that seemed to tell the country to give up hardline nationalist policies toward North Korea and to seek closer ties with its neighbor.
The South Korean government issued a formal diplomatic protest to the State Department over the remarks, sources said.
“Nationalist feelings can still be exploited, and it’s not hard for a political leader anywhere to earn cheap applause by vilifying a former enemy,” Sherman said Friday in a speech at the Carnegie Endowment, a think tank.
“But such provocations produce paralysis, not progress,” she said. “To move ahead, we have to see beyond what was to envision what might be. And in thinking about the possibilities, we don’t have to look far for a cautionary tale of a country that has allowed itself to be trapped by its own history.”
The comments were interpreted by critics here as criticism of South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s hardline stance against North Korea.
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/u-s-ambassador-injured-in-attack/
Lippert was Obama’s point man on denying our ally Taiwan fighter planes mandated under the Taiwan Relations Act
http://test.weeklystandard.com/blogs/tough-time-explaining-taiwan-policy_609149.html#
On Purim!