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Jay Garner is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general who is best known for his brief stint in 2003 as the head of the short-lived Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) for Iraq, established two months before the invasion of Iraq. Garner’s track record includes serving more than three decades in the military, advising the government on security and weapons policies, serving as a defense industry executive, advising oil companies, and working with rightwing advocacy groups. Some observers have argued that Garner’s career represents “a classic example of the military-industrial complex at work.”[1]

Business interests

As of 2010, Garner was an advisor to the Canadian oil company Vast Exploration, which has oil prospects in Kurdish areas of Iraq. Discussing his work—as well as that of several other former U.S. government officials who have business interests in Iraq, like former U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad—the New York Times reported in July 2010:

“As America winds down its war effort in Iraq, Mr. Khalilzad is among a growing list of former American diplomats and military officials now chasing business opportunities in the oil-rich Kurdish region or acting as advisers to its government. … Critics say these former officials are cashing in on a costly and contentious war they played a role in. The way they see it, though, they have every right to fulfil the American dream after having left their government posts. … Many of the former American officials turned businessmen have also become staunch advocates of the Kurdish cause, including the right of statehood, which clashes with America's stated policy of preserving Iraq's unity and being at equal distance from all groups.”[2]

Garner told the Times, ''Why we do not wrap our arms around them [the Kurds], I do not understand.”[3]

Commenting on the Timesarticle, journalist James Fenton wrote: “The Timesdidn't mention that Garner is also an advisor to Forbes & Manhattan, the Toronto-based merchant bank headed by Stan Bharti that manages Vast Exploration. Thanks to Garner's Iraqi ties, another member of the F&M group of companies that won an oil block in the Kurdistan Region is Longford Energy. Both Bharti and Canada's former Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew, who sits on both the Vast and Longford boards of directors, accompanied Garner to the Kurdish region last April. It's worth mentioning that Vast shares the Qara Dagh block with the KRG and two other Canadian companies, Niko Resources and Groundstar Resources. In June, two Groundstar executives were penalized for insider trading ‘relating to a significant oil and gas production sharing contract involving Groundstar and Vast Exploration.’”[4]

In an earlier article about Garner’s work in Iraq, Fenton reported that Garner’s success with Vast Exploration “evidently encouraged him and his associates to pursue more opportunities in Iraq. He and [retired Lt. General Ron Hite] are on the board of Eurocontrol, a company that designs oil theft technology. Eurocontrol's CEO, Bruce Rowlands, says the company is exploring opportunities in Iraq, and that Garner and Hite are helping to facilitate contracts there. Garner and Hite's ability to interpret Iraq's ‘political sub-plots’ and their understanding of the ‘U.S. industrial military complex’ is, Rowlands says, ‘invaluable.’”[5]

Before taking up his post as head of the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) in Iraq in 2003, Garner was president of the missile defense contractor SYColeman, a post he had held since 1997, when he retired from the military. Before being bought out in 2002 by Pentagon contractor L-3 Communications, the company helped design guidance systems used in the Patriot missile system as well as in Israel’s Arrow defense system. According to PBS:

“Garner came to the ORHA after six years in private sector technology firms and 30 years in the U.S. Army. After retiring from active service in 1997, Garner accepted a position as head of SY Technology, a firm that supplies much of the technical support for many of the missile systems used by the military. In 2002, L-3 Communications, a Texas-based technology firm, purchased SY. Garner became a board member of the new company and, in May of that year, head of its Coleman Research division. In March, L-3 was awarded a $1.5 billion Pentagon contract, for which they were the only bidder, to support U.S. special operations forces in the war on terrorism. Garner's close ties to the Pentagon and his contractor position have come under fire by some. Last year, Biff Baker, a retired lieutenant colonel of the Army Space Command, charged that Garner used improper influence to win $100 million in contracts for SY Technology. Garner denied any wrongdoing and sued Baker for defamation. ‘I do not go to my friends for business,’ Garner said in sworn testimony last year, The Associated Press reported. ‘I get business from my friends, but it's not solicited by me. It's given to us because of the quality of our company.’”[6]

Government work

Garner was commissioned in the U.S. Army in 1962, serving two tours in the Vietnam War (1967-1968, 1971-1972). One of Garner’s last assignments before retiring in 1997 was to serve as commanding general of the U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense Command (1994-1996), which oversees the U.S. missile defense system, a role that appears to have served as a convenient foundation for Garner’s later corporate work with missile defense contractors.[7]

Reported PBS: “His move to high-tech firms was a natural one for Garner, who directed the Reagan administration's Star Wars program in the 1980s. Garner also worked on the Patriot missile-defense system during the 1991 Gulf War. After that war, Garner defended the system when reports surfaced that it had offered only limited success in downing Iraqi Scud missiles. In April 1992, Garner … testified that revised assessments of Patriot performance in the Gulf was insignificant. … ‘War is a bottom-line business,’ Garner told a House committee. ‘The bottom line on Desert Storm is that the United States and its allies won.’ But Garner's approach and testimony irked those who had been critical of the system. ‘He was arrogant and very discourteous,’ Theodore A. Postol, an MIT professor and leading critic of the Patriot system, told the Washington Post. ‘He was part of a group of senior officers who were lying about Patriot's performance.’”[8]

Garner’s war-is-business mentality may have played a role in the decision to include him in the congressionally established “Rumsfeld Space Commission,” which was set up in 1999 under the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld with the apparent aim of pressuring the Clinton administration to move toward weaponizing space.[9] Observers criticized the commission as the embodiment of the "military-industrial-think-tank complex" because of its inclusion of representatives from rightwing think tanks, retired military brass, and defense contractors.[10] Six commissioners were retired flag officers with experience working with Pentagon contractors and rightwing advocacy groups, including Garner and retired generals Ronald Fogleman, David Jeremiah, and Charles Horner. Other commission members served as advisors to neoconservative groups like the Center for Security Policy, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and the Hudson Institute.[11]

Not surprisingly, the commission heavily promoted weaponizing space, despite concerns that such a move could spark a new arms race and negatively impact U.S. security. The report stated: "We know from history that every medium—air, land, and sea—has seen conflict. Reality indicates that space will be no different. Given this virtual certainty, the United States must develop the means both to deter and to defend against hostile acts in and from space," stated the reports executive summary. The commission argued in Orwellian style that because the United States is without peer among "space-faring" nations, the country is all the more vulnerable to "state and non-state actors hostile to the United States and its interests." In other words, U.S. enemies would seek to destroy the U.S. economy together with its ability to fight high-tech wars by attacking global-positioning satellites and other "space assets," which would effectively result in a "Space Pearl Harbor" (Report of the Rumsfeld Space Commission, Executive Summary, pp. vii-viii).[12]

When it was announced in 2003 that Garner would serve as the first head of the U.S. Iraqi reconstruction effort, his experience advancing specious arguments on behalf of missile defense as well as his ties to rightwing Israeli factions sparked considerable public criticism.

One writer reported that Garner “has been regularly denounced by the Council on American-Islamic Relations for his views. ... He has close ties with conservative Israeli groups, attracting criticism when he backed a statement in 2000 by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs [JINSA] praising the Israeli army for showing what it called ‘remarkable restraint’ in the face of the Palestinian uprising.”[13] (Garner also participated in JINSA-organized junkets for U.S. military brass to Israel, during which “recently retired American generals and admirals are invited to visit Israel with JINSA to meet the top echelon of the Israeli military and political leadership [to] ensure that the American delegation is well briefed on the security concerns of Israel, as well as the key role Israel plays as a friend and ally of the U.S.”[14])

Said another observer, “The man who will be in charge of the disarmament of Iraq was also a fervent proponent of the fatally flawed Star Wars missile defense system, touting its virtues even when the results of its testing were later revealed to be rigged. … The Iraqis themselves may be unhappy, if not surprised, to hear that their to-be satrap's former company has contracts to help build Patriot missile systems for Israel and Kuwait.”[15]

A writer for Middle East Online reported, “David Kirp, a professor of ethics at Berkeley, said that Garner was a ‘charming example’ of American indifference toward the Iraqi people and showed the lack of foresight by the U.S. administration.”[16]

In the event, Garner’s tenure as head of the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) proved brief and controversial. As one commentator wrote, “In the history of the Iraq War, one name is perhaps synonymous with the collapse of the Bush administration's hopes for a post-Saddam world: Retired Lt. General Jay M. Garner. It was Garner who served as the first post-war administrator for Iraq, running the country during the fateful two months immediately following the invasion before being replaced by L. Paul Bremer III.”[17]

In an interview with the BBC after his dismissal, Garner said that Rumsfeld abruptly informed him of the Bush administration’s decision to replace him with Bremer after he called for elections. "My preference was to put the Iraqis in charge as soon as we can, and do it with some form of elections ... I just thought it was necessary to rapidly get the Iraqis in charge of their destiny."[18] Reported the Guardian, “Despite being a protégé of Mr. Rumsfeld, Gen. Garner was the subject of what was alleged to be a White House whispering campaign, describing him as weak.”[19]

According to some accounts Garner, whose spokesperson in Iraq was Dan Senor—an investment banker and neoconservative pundit who would later head the William Kristol-founded Foreign Policy Initiative—attempted to develop realistic estimates about the eventual cost of the U.S. occupation, which were apparently not well received. A draft report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction cited an eye-opening conversation between Garner and Rumsfeld on the eve of the U.S. invasion. Discussing the report, the New York Times reported:

“On the eve of the invasion, as it began to dawn on a few officials that the price for rebuilding Iraq would be vastly greater than they had been told, the degree of miscalculation was illustrated in an encounter between Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, and Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant general who had hastily been named the chief of what would be a short-lived civilian authority called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq. ‘What do you think that’ll cost?’ Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan. ‘I think it’s going to cost billions of dollars,’ Mr. Garner said. ‘My friend,’ Mr. Rumsfeld replied, ‘if you think we’re going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken.’”[20]

According to the inspector general’s report, by mid-2008, Iraqi reconstruction efforts had cost $117 billion, about $50 billion of which was U.S. taxpayer money.[21]

The inspector general’s report also recounts a number of problems related to Garner’s efforts to set up ORHA’s command structure, including several run-ins with Rumsfeld and his various aides, like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, who appeared to want to micro-manage Garner’s decision-making. The report relates one incident in which Feith attempted to convince Garner that he should declare Ahmed Chalabi—a close associate of leading neoconservatives like Richard Perle who would later be accused of collaborating with Iranian forces in Iraq—leader of the country, thereby effectively undermining Garner’s presumed role in Iraq. Recounts the report:

“Although Ahmed Chalabi—the prominent exile politician who headed the Iraq National Congress—was never explicitly endorsed as the potential leader of a new Iraq, several senior Defense officials clearly backed installing him as leader of an Iraqi interim government. ‘We were talking, just the two of us in his office,’ Garner recalled about Feith, ‘and he said, “You know your job would be a lot easier if you just declare Ahmed the president when you get there.”’ Feith and Wolfowitz even proposed the Chalabi idea directly to the President at two separate meetings of the National Security Council. Although the President rejected the suggestion, Chalabi still preceded Garner to Iraq. Garner wanted a second opinion on how to approach the politics of Iraq.”[22]

Liz Cheney, daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, and her colleagues in the State Department set up meetings with Garner to advise him on efforts to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which was a key element of the pro-war argument developed by neoconservative and other hardliners. Recounts New York Magazine: “When David Wurmser, a special assistant to John Bolton at the State Department, was asked to fly to Kuwait on the eve of the Iraq War to brief Army general Jay Garner on the search for WMDs, Liz Cheney called Wurmser to warn him that her boss [Richard Armitage] was going to block his efforts. ‘She would be very discreet,’ says Wurmser. ‘There was clearly an effort to stop [Bolton], and she thought that was necessary to convey.’”[23]

Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.