Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (US Army, retired) was the chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. He became known as a mouthpiece of Powell, in that he would verbalize what the Secretary of State would or could not say. A former director of the Marine Corps War College, he retired from government service in January 2005 at the same time as Powell. During an October 19, 2005 speech at the New America Foundation, he gave stinging criticism of the administration of George W. Bush, including such lines as
I would say that we have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita and I could go on back, we haven’t done very well on anything like that in a long time. And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence.
During the Vietnam War, Wilkerson served as an OH-6A scout helicopter pilot.
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