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Edited on Mon May-02-05 06:11 PM by FrenchieCat
To DU admin...these articles were archives that I purchased them. These are New York time archives...where they just give you a paragraph (not even) of the original article. So I cannot provide a link in where one will find the complete articel....so I must post the entire articles. Those who want to verify the content can do a search of NYT Archives using the date and the headline name.....
July 29, 1999, Thursday
FOREIGN DESK
Clinton's Adviser Defends Decision to Retire NATO General
By ELIZABETH BECKER (NYT) 801 words
WASHINGTON, July 28 -- The President's top security adviser today defended the decision to speed up the retirement of the NATO Supreme Commander, Gen. Wesley K. Clark, by a few months to make way for his intended replacement, and the adviser insisted that the move did not signal any displeasure with the general's performance.
''General Clark is a superb commander,'' Samuel R. Berger, the national security adviser, said. ''The President has the highest degree of confidence in him.''
Over the weekend, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen chose Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as his candidate to succeed General Clark as the head of United States forces in Europe and NATO commander.
Administration officials said moving General Ralston to the prestigious NATO post was the Pentagon's primary motive.
General Ralston is required by law to leave his current post by February, because he will have served the maximum four years. That timetable led in turn to the decision to ask General Clark to leave his post a few months early. He had been scheduled to retire next summer, when his extended term would have ended.
NATO officials said General Clark was taken aback by the suddenness of the decision to have him retire in April or May, a message relayed to him by telephone on Tuesday while he was traveling.
''His assumption was that he would remain as long as he was doing a good job,'' a NATO official said. ''This came sooner than expected.''
Several officials felt compelled to dismiss any notion that the general's many disagreements with the Pentagon and other NATO members in the Kosovo conflict might have contributed to the decision. General Clark urged a more aggressive bombing campaign and asked the Pentagon for speedier deployment of equipment and troops.
His insistence that NATO prepare for the possibility of a ground war was at odds with the Administration, which did not want to pursue an invasion that would be publicly unpopular.
Officials went to great lengths to play down the friction and turn the spotlight on the promotion of General Ralston.
Mr. Cohen and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright joined today in praising General Clark.
''He's done an outstanding job in serving this capacity as Commander of the European Forces and Supreme Allied Commander,'' Mr. Cohen said at a news conference in Tokyo.
Last Thursday, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Hugh H. Shelton, met senior military commanders, including General Clark, in Tampa, Fla., but nothing was said to General Clark about his impending early retirement, several officials who were at the meeting said.
On Tuesday, when General Shelton telephoned General Clark who was on an official visit to Lithuania, to tell him the news, General Clark was upset that he had not been told in Florida, a NATO official said.
A spokesman for General Shelton said that the Chairman had telephoned General Clark as soon as the final decision was made over the weekend and that General Ralston had agreed to be a candidate.
General Clark said today that he considered the action part of a routine change of command. ''When a soldier's journey is over, it's over,'' he said in Vilnius, Lithuania, according to the Baltic News Service.
At the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, reaction to was muted.
''I think this is much ado about very little here,'' said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican who opposed the Kosovo bombing but is close to General Clark. ''I don't think this is in any way a slap at General Clark. It's not unusual to make a two- or three-month adjustment in someone's tour to accommodate another officer.''
Lawmakers and officers praised General Ralston, who is 55. ''Joe Ralston will be very good,'' said Tillie Fowler, a Florida Republican who is on the House Armed Services Committee.
A highly decorated former combat pilot in Vietnam and an administrator known for his skills at building a consensus, General Ralston withdrew from consideration for Chairman of the Joint chiefs two years, ago after it became known that he had an affair in the 1980's while separated from his wife.
He had planned to retire next year to Anchorage, Alaska. But in his last two years as vice chairman, his 18-hour days, for example seeing to details like accompanying Ms. Albright to visit the Chinese Ambassador here on the night a NATO plane bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, helped erase military and Administration concerns that he could not surmount the adultery reports.
Mr. Cohen cited General Ralston's ''diplomatic skills, his war capabilities and his war record.''
-----------------------------------------
This story deals with Clark's replacement and the scandal he, Ralston was involved in....
August 4, 1999, Wednesday
NATIONAL DESK
For a Scandal-Scarred General, the Gleam Appears to Be Back on the Brass
By MELINDA HENNEBERGER and ELIZABETH BECKER (NYT) 1655 words</h5>
WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 -- At a level where there are few second chances in the United States military, Gen. Joseph Ralston has been not only redeemed but resurrected.
When an affair 13 years in the past blocked his promotion to the country's top military job two summers ago, the General never complained, associates say, and if he looked back at all, he never let anyone catch him at it. Instead, he made his new boss look good and put his hand up for sensitive assignments.
When the United States bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in May, it was General Ralston who accompanied Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright on a midnight visit to the ambassador's residence here. When Washington planned to attack a factory in Sudan in retaliation for the terrorist bombings of American embassies in Africa, it was General Ralston who flew to Pakistan to explain. Now, his constancy in a changed environment has been rewarded. Two wars, two years and a presidential sex scandal later, General Ralston is again considered a crucial member of the inner circle on national security. Last week, he was named the Pentagon's choice to replace Gen. Wesley K. Clark as supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe. And some in the military and in Congress even say he may be back on track for the job of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Back in 1997, he withdrew his name from consideration for the chairman's job a week after the Air Force was intensely criticized for forcing a female pilot to leave the service for lying about an illicit relationship. But he stayed on for a second term as vice chairman, working 18-hour days. He spoke for the Pentagon at high-level policy meetings, directed the purchase of new weapons systems and equipment, coordinated with military commanders around the world.
And with the passage of time, ''I hope the environment has settled down a bit and I think it has,'' said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. ''We're able to look more objectively at the whole person, the context and the texture of events rather than drawing these complicated human events with broad brush strokes.''
When his name was first raised as the Pentagon's choice for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the case of First Lieut. Kelly Flinn, the first woman to fly a B-52 strategic bomber, had particularly outraged many women in Congress: How come he gets the ultimate promotion after his affair, they asked, and she gets to explore new career opportunities?
Since then, of course, the Flinn case has faded from memory. The Commander in Chief, President Clinton, survived a sex scandal that divided and then wearied the country, causing several members of Congress to suggest that, post-impeachment, they feel more than two years older than they were back when Lieutenant Flinn was Topic A.
General Ralston's affair, with a civilian employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, apparently began when he was separated from his wife, though in 1988 divorce papers his wife said the relationship had continued after the couple reconciled and eventually caused their breakup.
''The fact that there was a consensual affair when he was separated from his wife should not disqualify him from even serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs,'' Mr. Levin said. Asked if that seemed likely, he answered, ''He's surely qualified.''
Friends and family members now say that no one was more surprised by the choice assignment -- and the latest extension of a 34-year career -- than General Ralston himself.
He had already bought a house in Alaska, where he expected to retire next March, said his daughter, Paige Ralston, deputy press secretary to Representative J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, the Speaker of the House. ''My stepmother had already bought the furniture and picked out the curtains,'' Ms. Ralston said.
General Ralston still has critics, especially among loyalists to General Clark. Some of them suggested that the current NATO commander, who sometimes disagreed with his superiors but won NATO's air war against Yugoslavia, is being replaced with a go-along, get-along type.
Others say the military wing of the old boys' network had simply been waiting for things to calm down so they could restore General Ralston's standing without much of a fight.
''Maybe he's the greatest guy since Patton,'' said Tod Ensign, director of Citizen Soldier, a veterans advocacy group in New York, ''but we ought to at least acknowledge that they're still winking at this and continuing a double standard.''
''In this post-impeachment environment,'' Mr. Ensign said, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, ''probably feel now, 'What can the White House say? Who's going to really complain?' ''
Louis Font, a Boston lawyer with a number of clients in the military, said that just last May, a low-ranking male client of his had been sent to Leavenworth to serve four months in prison for a consensual affair with a civilian.
But there is little question that the heat has gone out of the debate now; Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, promised to ''work diligently to get his nomination through.'' And General Ralston's Congressional allies expect an easy confirmation.
Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat who complained about a double standard when General Ralston's promotion was announced two years ago, said, ''I'd like to see Kelly Flinn have a comeback,'' but added that she had heard from Ms. Flinn since she left the military and believed she was flying commercially now. Ms. Maloney said she did not plan to make an issue of General Ralston's past affair at this point. Like many of the core group of women in Congress who supported Lieutenant Flinn, Ms. Maloney also was a strong defender of President Clinton in the impeachment debate.
Another member of Congress who stood by Mr. Clinton sighed and said, ''Even though the President's conduct is not subject'' to military rules, ''I'm sure that is part of the whole change.''
Former Senator Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, who runs the Center for Defense Information, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, said, ''I would like to believe this is at least a slight easing in the harsh line the Pentagon has always taken.'' Mr. Bumpers spoke on Mr. Clinton's behalf on the Senate floor in the impeachment trial.
But the General's supporters at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and at the White House said his improved standing also has everything to do with his own performance. General Ralston, 55, could not have known he would get another shot at the top job when he just kept showing up for work at 5:30 every morning after withdrawing his name from consideration.
Joseph Ralston grew up outside Louisville, the youngest of four children born to a tobacco farmer and an X-ray technician. ''He came from a poor family in Kentucky and it was all up to him,'' said Ms. Ralston, his daughter. But somehow, he never considered himself poor, or no worse off than most people he knew, and the family eventually sent three children to college.
Miami University of Ohio was an intimidating place for him in the fall of 1961, and he has often told the story of the kind stranger in a military uniform who helped him figure out his class schedule on one of his first days on campus. The man pointed out that Joseph had Tuesday and Thursday afternoons free for Air Force ROTC, so he signed up, and began his military career. (He also met his second wife, Dede, through ROTC. He knew her on campus, where she was involved in the women's program then known as Angel Flights, and they reconnected after his divorce from his first wife, Linda.)
After graduating in 1965, he became a fighter pilot, flying 147 combat missions, most of them over North Vietnam. At one point in the summer of 1968, when the Air Force was losing planes at a particularly alarming rate, he flew five combat missions over Hanoi in three days.
When he came home, he seemed most interested in repairing the mistakes made in Vietnam and helping the military become more combat ready, first as a squadron commander, then a wing commander, and then head of the Alaskan Command. Finally, in 1995, he was named the top fighter pilot commander in the Air Force, becoming the head of the Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.
In his first term as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, his boss, Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, recommended him as the next chairman.
Several months ago, when Mr. Cohen and General Shelton sat down to figure out how to replace half a dozen senior military officers whose terms were up next summer, they again thought of General Ralston and quickly realized he was the man they wanted to succeed General Clark.
They got the enthusiastic support of the White House. And they felt so strongly about General Ralston, in fact, that they advanced the retirement of General Clark by two months to make sure General Ralston would be his successor.
(Under law, General Ralston has to assume another command within 60 days after his term as vice chairman ends at the end of February, or face automatic retirement.)
Even now, those close to him seem afraid to drop the slightest hint that he might feel vindicated.
''He doesn't have the job yet,'' said Ms. Ralston, his daughter. ''It's still early.''
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DOING A COMPARISON OF DATES....IT APPEARS THAT THIS MAY BE THE PROMOTION THAT PASSED OVER GENERAL RALSTON BECAUSE OF HIS 1986 SEX SCANDAL. WHICH CONFIRMS JUST THAT MUCH MORE WHY RALSTON AND THE REST DIDN'T LIKE CLARK, AMONG JUST PURE JEALOUSY!
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