Breaking Ranks

Leaving the Fold

By early 2004, it was clear to Wilkerson that the Pentagon's failure to prepare for the war's aftermath -- including dismissal of Army Gen. Eric Shinseki's warnings as well as peacekeeping and nation-building plans -- had led to mounting deaths and injuries for U.S. ground troops. Nor was there, in Wilkerson's view, any thought given to future replenishment of the Army and Marine combat troops as the insurgency continued.

"Larry Wilkerson is a man of the Army in the finest sense," says Kelly. "He cares deeply about the U.S. Army . . . and he hates to see this institution badly damaged, and he believes it has been badly damaged."

Revelations about Abu Ghraib and the skirting of the Geneva Conventions added to Wilkerson's anger. He came to see Powell as the administration's lone voice of reason -- but Powell was being shut out.

"Combine the detainee abuse issue with the ineptitude of post-invasion planning for Iraq, wrap both in this blanket of secretive decision-making . . . and you get the overall reason for my speaking out," Wilkerson says.

"It never became personal for Powell, because he believed in the process," says Robert Charles, a former assistant secretary of state who worked with both men. "I believe it was harder for Larry, because he felt such great empathy for the boss, the most seasoned military officer he had ever served with."

(Another aside from Wilkerson, on this period with Powell: "I can say in all truth that in 16 years he never blew his stack. He got mad at me one time and asked me to leave the office -- told me to leave the office -- and that was towards the end when he was truly embattled, embittered and besieged, in my view. And even though it made me a little angry, I didn't take it that seriously because I knew at that point he was not a happy camper.")

Wilkerson went so far as to draft a letter of resignation to Bush. He never sent it and now wonders whether he should have come out guns blazing before the 2004 election. But becoming a vocal political defector in Washington can mean lonely exile, a loss of stature and income.

"I know it's very hard to put kids, job security and all that sort of stuff aside. I think that's the answer to why more people don't speak out."

For Wilkerson, there was another reason: It might seem a betrayal of Powell, his hero, the man who signed photos to him with sentiments like, "To LW, You're the greatest!"

Larry and Barbara Wilkerson, married for 39 years, live frugally in a Falls Church townhouse. She works at a Hallmark card shop. Their son is an Air Force navigator who's done duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their daughter, now a homemaker, served in the Army. Departing from government after Bush's second inauguration, Wilkerson had to decide: Would he speak his conscience or remain the quiet man like Powell?

"My wife said to me: 'You have two choices, my man. You can think more about him or you can think more about your country. I suggest you do the latter.' "

The Most Important Things

For years Barbara Wilkerson, 55, has baked cupcakes and cookies for the kids in the Powell club at Macfarland. After distributing treats at the year-end party, wearing her festive red blazer and a rhinestone teddy bear pin, she sat down for a moment to talk about her husband.

"The most important person in his whole life has been General Powell," she says. "And the general has never let him down."

Even more important than Barbara Wilkerson?

"Well," she hesitates, unsure how to put it. "When you're married to an Army person, the Army is always -- that's kind of the thing. But he wouldn't put anybody above his country, that's for sure."

She and others who know Wilkerson well say he has no intention of cashing in as a Bush critic. He hasn't joined a think tank or become a cable news pundit-for-hire. He has turned down publishers who want him to write a tell-all book for big money.

Wilkerson says he may write an academic text about presidential decision-making. This month he began supplementing his retirement with part-time teaching jobs at George Washington University and the College of William & Mary.

Recently a speakers bureau called Wilkerson to ask what fee he would want for a speech to a corporate audience. "I said I'd speak for the highest fee they'd pay," he recalls.

But there was a condition: The money couldn't go to him. He said he wanted it all donated to scholarships for children in the Colin L. Powell Leadership Club.

After the party the colonel helps with the cleanup. He lugs a bag of garbage out the door. All part of his duty.

Walking to his car, he offers a final aside, about poetry. The colonel sometimes uses poems to tutor the kids in reading. He mentions a line that Powell always liked because it described the depth of family ties:

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

"In fact," says Wilkerson, "one time he quoted it to me and I said, 'You know where that came from?'

"He said, 'Yeah, it came from me.' I said no, that's from Robert Frost's poem."

Powell may or may not have known that already. The poem is called "The Death of the Hired Man."