Karen Kwiatkowski

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Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski United States Air Force
24 Sept 1960-
Kwiatkowski during an interview in Honor Betrayed
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Air Force
Years of service	1978–2003
Rank	Lieutenant Colonel
Unit	Near East/South Asia and Special Plans
Other work	A Case Study of the Implementation of the Reagan Doctrine.

Karen U. Kwiatkowski (born 24 September 1960) is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties as a Pentagon desk officer and a variety of roles for the National Security Agency. Since retiring, she has become a noted critic of the U.S. government's involvement in Iraq. Kwiatkowski is primarily known for her insider essays which denounce a corrupting political influence on the course of military intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Colonel Kwiatkowski has an MA in Government from Harvard and an MS in Science Management from the University of Alaska. She has a PhD in World Politics from Catholic University; her thesis was on overt and covert war in Angola, A Case Study of the Implementation of the Reagan Doctrine. She has also published two books about U.S. policy towards Africa: African Crisis Response Initiative: Past Present and Future (US Army Peacekeeping Institute, 2000) and Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions (Air University Press, 2001).^[1]

1 Career
2 Quotations
3 Books and articles
4 Anonymous essays 2002-2003
5 References
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Career

Raised in western North Carolina, Kwiatkowski began her military career in 1982 as a second lieutenant. She served at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, providing logistical support to missions along the Chinese and Russian coasts. She also served in Spain and Italy. Kwiatkowski was then assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA), eventually becoming a speechwriter for the agency's director. After leaving the NSA in 1998 she became an analyst on sub-Saharan Africa policy for the Pentagon. Kwiatkowski was in her office in the Pentagon when it was attacked on September 11, 2001. From May 2002 to February 2003 she served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia directorate (NESA).^[2] While at NESA, she wrote a series of anonymous articles, Insider Notes from the Pentagon which appeared on the website of David Hackworth.^[3]

Kwiatkowski left NESA in February 2003 and retired from the Air Force the following month. In April 2003 she began writing a series of articles for the libertarian website LewRockwell.com. In June of that year she published an article in the Ohio Beacon Journal, "Career Officer Does Eye-Opening Stint Inside Pentagon,"^[4] which attracted additional notice. Since February 2004 she has written a biweekly column ("Without Reservations") for the website MilitaryWeek.

Her most comprehensive writings on the subject of a corrupting influence of the Pentagon on intelligence analysis leading up to the Iraq War appeared in a series of articles in The American Conservative magazine in December 2003 and in a March 2004 article on Salon.com. In the latter piece ("The New Pentagon Papers") she wrote:

I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.

Kwiatkowski described how a clique of officers led by retired Navy Captain Bill Luti, assistant secretary of defense for NESA and former aide to Dick Cheney when the latter was Secretary of Defense, took control of military intelligence and how the "Office of Special Plans" (OSP) grew and eventually turned into a censorship and disinformation organism controlling the NESA.^[5]

Following the American Conservative and Salon articles, Kwiatkowski began to receive criticism from several conservative sources that supported President Bush's policies. Michael Rubin of the National Review argued she had exaggerated her knowledge of the OSP's workings and claimed she had ties to Lyndon LaRouche.^[6] Republican U.S. Senator John Kyl criticized her in a speech on the Senate floor.^[7] On a Fox News program, host John Gibson and former Republican National Committee communications director Clifford May described her as an anarchist.^[8] Kwiatkowski responded by saying, among other points, that she had never supported or dealt with LaRouche.^[9] She requested and received a written apology from Senator John Kyl for his false statements about her.^{[citation needed]}

In addition to her writings Kwiatkowski has appeared as a commentator in the documentaries Hijacking Catastrophe, Honor Betrayed and Why We Fight. She has been a registered member of the U.S. Libertarian Party since 1994 and spoke at the party's national convention in 2004.^[10] She is also a member of the Liberty and Power group weblog at the History News Network. Kwiatkowski currently lives with her family in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and works part-time as a farmer.

Kwiatkowski has been widely seen as an attractive Libertarian presidential candidate,^[11]^[12] especially given her military background and outspoken opposition to the Iraq War. In April 2006, Kwiatkowski received the New Hampshire Libertarian Party's 2008 vice-presidential nomination (the Libertarian Party chooses presidential and vice-presidential nominees on separate ballot, and campaigns for the two positions are often independent).^[13]^[14] In 2007, she announced her support for Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. ^[15]

[edit] Quotations

"I came to share with many NESA colleagues a kind of unease, a sense that something was awry. What seemed out of place was the strong and open pro-Israel and anti-Arab orientation in an ostensibly apolitical policy-generation staff within the Pentagon."^[16]
"Why we fight? I think we fight 'cause too many people are not standing up, saying 'I'm not doing this any more.'"
"If you join the United States military now, you are not defending the United States of America; you are helping certain policy-makers pursue an imperial agenda."
"At the end of the summer of 2002, new space had been found upstairs on the fifth floor for an "expanded Iraq desk." It would be called the Office of Special Plans. We were instructed at a staff meeting that this office was not to be discussed or explained, and if people in the Joint Staff, among others, asked, we were to offer no comment. We were also told that one of the products of this office would be talking points that all desk officers would use verbatim in the preparation of their background documents."
"By August, only the Pollyannas at the Pentagon felt that the decision to invade Iraq, storm Baghdad, and take over the place (or give it to Ahmad Chalabi) was reversible."
"It wasn't intelligence — it was propaganda. They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together."^[17]

"Interestingly, the Downing Street memo is actually being reported by CNN and FOX News. It is being discussed in the major papers. Congress intends to examine it. Hearing it mentioned on the half hour by CNN Headline News has not dispossessed me of the belief that a state suicide is impossible. Thus, my gentle thoughts are increasingly turning to murder. Murder of the state. In self-defense, of course!"^[18]
"We have a Congress that failed in every way to ask the right questions, to hold the President to account. Our Congress failed us miserably, and that's because many in Congress are beholden to the Military Industrial Complex."
"The reason we're in Iraq first off has not honestly been told to the American people; it certainly had nothing to do with the liberation of the Iraqi people. It was never part of the agenda and it's not part of the agenda now."

[edit] Books and articles

African Crisis Response Initiative: Past Present and Future (US Army Peacekeeping Institute, 2000)
Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions (Air University Press, 2001)
Assessing the Official 9/11 Conspiracy Theory in: David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott (Ed.) 9/11 and American Empire. Intellectuals Speak Out (Arris Books, 2007)