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Beers: Kerry Would Restore Alliances, Stress Diplomacy if Elected President
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor
Interviewee: Rand Beers

http://www.cfr.org/publication.html?id=7237
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Clearly, thanks to his membership on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Intelligence Committee, John Kerry has a background in foreign affairs. What kind of national security advisory group have you put together for his campaign?

We have within the campaign an increasing number of people who were among the lower rungs of the upper levels of the Clinton administration and an advisory group of senior-level types that goes beyond the Clinton administration. Then we have another circle of people who are on what we call our “policy teams,” who are experts on specific areas. They are either preparing papers on issues or are available for rapid reaction or are available to go out and speak to the press about issues at appropriate times.

Let me start with the people working full-time in the campaign. In addition to myself, the national security director, Susan Rice, who last worked for the Brookings Institution, came aboard in the last month as my deputy for national security affairs. She was assistant secretary [of state] for African affairs in the second half of the Clinton administration. Jamie Rubin, who was Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s spokesman, has come on to serve as the foreign policy adviser for the traveling party. And Brooke Anderson, who was the communications director at the National Security Council in the latter part of the Clinton administration, is the foreign policy/national security communications director on the campaign staff.

In the period before the primaries were settled, John Kerry and I both talked to a number of people. But at that time they were generally advising all of the candidates— with two exceptions: William J. Perry, former defense secretary in the Clinton administration, who signed on with Kerry last summer, and former Senator Gary Hart, who signed on in the early fall. Those are the two longest-standing senior people.

After the primaries were settled, Albright, Sandy Berger— who was [President Clinton’s] last national security adviser, but has since withdrawn from the campaign because of [the investigation of his removal of documents from] the National Archives— Richard N. Holbrooke, former ambassador to the United Nations for Clinton, and General John Shalikashvili, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all came aboard, as did, more recently, Leslie H. Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Then there are other people to whom Kerry speaks occasionally, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, or former Senator Sam Nunn [D-Ga.], who for many years was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he always talks with Senator Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. And Nancy Stetson has been his assistant on the Foreign Relations Committee for about 10 years.