Centcom Caught Up In British Lobbying Scandal

Posted Oct 16, 2011 by Howard Altman

Updated Oct 16, 2011 at 09:08 PM

I never get tired of saying this, but every twisted road seems to lead to Tampa.

This time, the twisted road takes us to MacDill Air Force Base, specifically, to the doors of U.S. Central Command, which last week found itself in the middle of a Royal Kerfuffle involving former British Secretary of State for Defence Liam Fox and his close aide Adam Werritty.

I have to sheepishly admit that when the reporter calling from London last week asked me about if I had ever heard of Werritty before, I had not. So Marco Giannangeli, the Defence Correspondent at the London Sunday Express, filled me in.

Fleet Street is in a dither over the closeness of the Fox-Werritty relationship and, in particular, a series of meetings that Werritty, who does not have security clearance, attended with Fox in 2010. The flap raised issues of inappropriate ties between government officials and lobbyists.

As the Telegraph reported Sunday night: an on going investigation is likely to prove that Fox broke several rules by soliciting donations for a shadowy firm which bankrolled, Werritty, one of his best friends and unofficial advisers.

One of the meetings at the center of this scandal, Giannangeli explained, supposedly took place early July of last year in Tampa, where then acting Centcom chief Gen. John Allen (now running the show in Afghanistan) supposedly attended an informal dinner, in Tampa, with Fox and Werritty.

Trying to dig deeper to figure out what this whole thing was about, I rang up Patrick Mercer, a Member of Parliament I first interviewed a few years ago while covering a story in London about citizen spies taking on the most vitriolic Imam in Europe.

“The concern,” said Mercer, “is that the appointment of Mr. Werrity is unusual. He is not security cleared, therefore, it must mean the Secretary of State, whenever Mr. Werritty is present, cannot discuss sensitive matters. Obviously it means that the usefulness of the Secretary of State’s meetings with people like Gen. Allen is reduced. The meetings cannot be useful if they don’t have free and frank discussions on sensitive matters.”

At first, there was a disconnect between the Ministry of Defence and Centcom, over whether the dinner even took place and who attended. MoD said yea and initially, Centcom said nay.

In a burst of trans-Atlantic communications, reporters from London spent last week peppering the Centcom Public Affairs Office with questions about the dinner, who was there, when and where.

“We were contacted (multiple times) by half a dozen reporters for British outlets, ...then probably another 3 us reporters on behalf of “sister” or partner outlets…” Centcom’s new Public Affairs Officer, Lt. Col. Adriane Craig, wrote me in an email after I added to her list of people calling about the Fox and the Werritty. “It is not an unusual number of queries…but was pretty rapid fire…”

Thursday night, Craig, sent out a note to reporters who queried her on the matter:

Regarding the visits to CENTCOM:


Central Command has no records of any meeting with Mr. Werritty listed as an attendee during the UK Secretary of Defence visit. An informal dinner did take place during the Dr. Fox’s July visit; it was routine and social in nature.  Participating in such events was a part of the general’s role as deputy commander/acting commander at the time.

In checking with the general’s staff, there is little specific recollection about other attendees—Dr Fox was the principal guest and the focus of the general’s attention.  If the Office of the Defence Ministry advises Mr Werritty was at this social event, we have no reason to believe he was not at this public place.  Classified information would not have been discussed in such a setting.

Glad that’s all cleared up.

Which is more than I can say for the future of Liam Fox, who, according to the Sunday Express, is facing more investigations.

But that’s something for the British media to cover.