Powell aide blasts Cheney 'cabal'

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Vice-President Dick Cheney has been accused of hijacking the U.S. government's foreign policy.

Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a tight cabal apparatus decided in secret to carry out policies that had left the United States weaker and more isolated in the world, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell told a meeting Wednesday at the New America Foundation.

Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff at the State Department until last January, said: "What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made."

Wilkerson said this cabal or secret inner circle was responsible for major mistakes such as the long refusal to engage with North Korea or to back European efforts on Iran.

"If you're not prepared to stop the feuding elements in the bureaucracy as they carry out your decisions, you are courting disaster. And I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran," he said.