Wilkerson says Cheney hijacked U.S. policy

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Former senior U.S. State Department official, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, says Vice President Dick Cheney has dominated U.S. foreign policy with bad results.

Wilkerson made the allegations in a speech at the New America Foundation, a Washington think-tank. He was chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell until last January.

"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. "Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences."

Wilkerson said such secret decision-making was responsible for mistakes such as the long refusal to engage with North Korea or to back European efforts on Iran's nuclear program, the Financial Times reported.

He said he and Powell had a personal falling out over his decision to go public with his allegations.