SEATTLE -- It was an extraordinary accusation from a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
For the past two weeks, military and political leaders in the United States and Europe have been poring over a 2,000-word essay by retired Gen. John Shalikashvili that accuses the Clinton administration of entering the Kosovo conflict with insufficient military force to attain victory, and as a result NATO partners -- "appalled by the U.S. mismanagement of the entire conflict" -- are moving toward a new collective security policy to minimize American leadership in the alliance.There's only one thing wrong with the article, a furious and baffled Shalikashvili told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Wednesday: It's a forgery.
"I had absolutely nothing to do with that article," Shalikashvili said in a telephone interview from his home in Steilacoom, Wash. "Someone has stolen my name."
Shalikashvili, who retired as the nation's No. 1 military officer in October 1997, said he first heard about the article when friends and former co-workers began calling and sending him e-mail saying they had seen it on the Internet. Shalikashvili said he immediately called Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon and asked whether Bacon should reveal the forgery during one of his daily press briefings, but after further discussion, they decided to ignore the spurious document.
Pentagon computer experts have attempted without success to determine the origin of the false essay, Shalikashvili said. A friend was able to locate an earlier version of the text that did not contain his name as author.
On May 27, the document, titled "The World After Kosovo," first started circulating in e-mail messages to several West Point graduates. Word and copies of the article quickly spread.
Shortly after it first appeared, Shalikashvili got a call from U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who Bacon said had been handed a copy of the article by the president of Finland, concerned that the article might complicate negotiations between NATO and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.
Shalikashvili, who was Joint Chiefs chairman during the 1995 NATO intervention in Bosnia, said he was particularly outraged over the article because "it doesn't represent my sentiment (on Kosovo) at all."
In the fake article, Shalikashvili was purported to have said, "Kosovo will undoubtedly bring to a close what we might call the era of casual intervention by the United States. . . . There is nothing like failure to increase sobriety."
Shalikashvili said he has been careful since his retirement not to interfere with ongoing military operations out of basic courtesy toward his successor, Army Gen. Hugh Shelton. "My feeling is I would only complicate the issue," the general said. "The people in charge of trying to deal with it have their hands full, and I would not be helpful by kibitzing from the sidelines."
The general said he decided to break his silence over the forgery when he realized it was continuing to generate controversy.