Global Policy Forum

By Dan Morgan

On April 21, Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman announced she was appointing a prominent agribusiness executive to "lead the U.S. government's agriculture reconstruction efforts in Iraq" and serve as her personal liaison with American military officials there. Her appointee, Dan Amstutz, flew to Kuwait, where he detailed his hopes for Iraq in an upbeat teleconference with reporters last Thursday. But his new status came as news to the Pentagon-led team in the Iraqi capital. An official at the Baghdad-based U.S. Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) said late last week that Lee Schatz, a USDA employee, was in charge of the office's agriculture portfolio, and he referred questions about Amstutz's role to Veneman's department.

Such crossed signals and confusion have been part of the growing pains of ORHA, a new, makeshift bureaucracy that has recruited retired generals and diplomats, government technocrats, oil executives and even a university president to usher in a new democratic Iraq. Conceived in secrecy, amid bitter disputes between the departments of State and Defense, the office is beginning to take public shape. But conflicts continue and forming a cabinet of Americans to run a defeated country a third of the way around the world is proving to be an untidy process. Administration officials said last week that President Bush will soon appoint an experienced career diplomat, L. Paul Bremer III, as civilian administrator of postwar Iraq. One of his most pressing jobs, officials say, will be to ease the turf battles and apparent confusion in the chain of command that has plagued the organization. That will include sorting out his relationship with retired Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, who has been leading the reconstruction effort up to now. Garner would be under Bremer, who in turn would report to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Even as word of Bremer's appointment leaked out last week, Rumsfeld praised Garner and defended his performance in Iraq.

ORHA experienced bureaucratic intrigue even before the end of the Iraq war. Rumsfeld initially blocked eight individuals nominated by the State Department, reportedly because he considered them "too low-profile and bureaucratic" for the work envisioned. The Pentagon subsequently withdrew its objections, and a number of senior positions are now occupied by former State Department officials. Barbara K. Bodine, who was ambassador to Yemen when terrorists bombed the destroyer USS Cole at a Yemeni port in October 2000, has been named coordinator for central Iraq. Former ambassadors Robin Raphel and Timothy Carney are in charge of trade and industry, respectively. Garner's deputies for reconstruction and humanitarian assistance are both retired from the State Department.

The foreign affairs portfolio is held by David J. Dunford, a former ambassador to Oman. In a speech in Oregon a year ago, Dunford said it would be in the United States' interest to "reach out to Iran," which he described as the "second most democratic country in the Middle East" after Israel, according to the account in a local newspaper. But control of the reconstruction agency still remains firmly with a tight-knit group of Pentagon officials and handpicked former generals, government sources say. Two retired generals will oversee Iraq's northern and southern regions, and Garner's chief of staff, Jared L. Bates, is a former commanding general of the 2nd Armored Division. Several of the top retired officers share experience in the private defense sector. Garner and Bates worked for subsidiaries of the same contractor, L-3 Communications Systems. Garner is on leave as president of Sy Coleman, which specializes in missile technology. Bates and W. Bruce Moore, coordinator for northern Iraq, both have worked for Alexandria-based Military Professional Resources Inc., which offers training in "democracy transition."

Garner and his team are operating under the eyes of senior Defense Department aides with direct channels to Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Under Secretary for Policy Douglas J. Feith. Among those detailed to Baghdad are Rumsfeld's senior aide, Larry DiRita, a Naval Academy graduate who is serving as top policy adviser to Garner; Feith's immediate deputy, Ryan Henry; and Feith's senior policy adviser and former law partner, Michael H. Mobbs, who has broad responsibility over the new Iraqi government. Some reports have described Mobbs as a sort of temporary prime minister. Walter B. Slocombe, who held Feith's job in the Clinton administration, will oversee the transition of the Iraqi defense ministry. Although a Democrat, he has maintained good relations with Wolfowitz and is described by some as a "Democratic hawk." Deep and long-standing mutual suspicions divide many of those in Rumsfeld's inner circle and the State Department contingent. "The professional Arabists [from State] have brought us the 'don't rock the boat' policy that has given us these despotic regimes [in the Middle East]," said Frank J. Gaffney Jr., a former Reagan administration defense official and president of the Center for Security Policy.

Bodine, coordinator for central Iraq, has long experience in the region, but is among those who have come under fire from an array of critics. She barred the senior FBI investigator from entering Yemen at one point during the investigation into the bombing of the Cole, and prevented agents from carrying automatic weapons there. A former national security official, who asked that his name not be used, also faulted Bodine for failing to appreciate the seriousness of the security threat to U.S. naval vessels in Yemeni ports before the attack on the Cole. State Department and congressional officials, on the other hand, praise Bodine's handling of a series of difficult assignments. She worked in the U.S. interest section in Baghdad in the 1980s and was deputy chief of mission in Kuwait during the 1990-1991 Iraqi invasion and occupation. "Barbara is first class. She's an Arabist and a distinguished foreign service officer," said James W. Dyer, chief of staff of the House Appropriations Committee, which oversees the State Department budget.

In testimony last week before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell played down the frictions. "Sure, the gears always tend to grind a little bit when you start down one of these things, but those gears are now being well lubricated, and I don't anticipate a major problem," he said. But a senior administration official acknowledged that ORHA has had its difficulties. "We had this excellent year-long planning on how to rebuild the political economy of Iraq," the aide said, "and then we have this group that comes out of the politics of Washington." The danger, some say, is that philosophical differences could detract from solving the enormous, pressing practical problems in Iraq, such as restoring power and reopening ministries. "Those who produce and deliver will rise to the top," said one congressional official. Recent appointments, he suggested, reflect the administration's awareness of the need for "gravitas" and practical experience. Philip J. Carroll, a former executive of Shell Oil Co., has been handpicked by the Pentagon to lead the rebuilding of Iraq's petroleum industry, the Wall Street Journal reported last week. Amstutz, a former senior Reagan administration trade official, has worked for agribusiness giant Cargill Inc. And Treasury Secretary John W. Snow announced last week that Michigan State University President Peter McPherson would be "financial coordinator" for ORHA and "principal financial and economic policy adviser" to Garner. Before assuming the presidency of Michigan State in 1993, McPherson had been administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and had held senior posts at Bank of America. He is a friend of Vice President Cheney, who spoke at the university's undergraduate commencement last year.

The Michigan State board of trustees has granted McPherson a leave of absence until September. But ORHA officials are still trying to figure out where Amstutz and McPherson fit in. Late last week, the organization was listing David M. Nummy, a Treasury Department official, as having the portfolio for the financial transition. A senior Agriculture Department official said last week that Amstutz would not move to Iraq until "the security situation is such that it's okay to go there." The ORHA official with principal responsibility for getting the Iraqi government up and running is Mobbs, a 54-year-old international lawyer. Although he was a senior arms control official in the Reagan administration, Mobbs is little known outside a small, but influential circle of conservative defense intellectuals and policy experts.

Acquaintances describe him as intelligent, quiet and "unflappable." Phillip L. Robinson, an attorney at the Washington law firm where Mobbs worked before joining the Pentagon in 2001, said Mobbs "did not push an ideological agenda." Mobbs did, however, become associated with the administration's hard line toward terrorist suspects last year, when he signed a two-page statement of facts supporting the unlimited detention of a U.S. citizen captured with Taliban forces in Afghanistan. The paper, which became known as the "Mobbs memorandum," asserted that the subject was an "enemy combatant" and not entitled to the rights of an ordinary criminal defendant. During the 1990s, Mobbs managed the Moscow offices of several large U.S. law firms that were representing businesses attempting to gain a foothold in Russia during a period of anarchy and economic collapse. "Most informed people believe the experience most relevant to Iraq is Eastern and Central Europe and, to a lesser extent, Russia, in terms of moving from a nondemocratic state to one that is more democratic and free-market," said James J. Maiwurm, managing partner in the Washington office of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, for which Mobbs worked in Moscow. "He has done a lot of things internationally."

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