Jim Wilkinson (former U.S. Government Employee) - Afghanistan, Iraq, and CENTCOM

Afghanistan, Iraq, and CENTCOM

Wilkinson was head of the "war room", or Coalition Information Center for the Afghanistan War. He highlighted efforts to improve living conditions for Afghan women. In public relations preparations for 2003 invasion of Iraq, Wilkinson was part of the White House Iraq Group under Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. The goal of the group was to "get the country on the page that the White House wanted everybody to believe: that Iraq, with its weapons of mass destruction, was an imminent threat to the United States".

For the Iraq war, Wilkinson was the chief spokesman for Gen. Tommy Franks under CENTCOM in Doha. Many reporters were unhappy in Doha, and the atmosphere was tense; Ben Smith of The New York Observer mentioned three theories on the source of the tension: that stationed reporters were jealous of their embedded colleagues, that Wilkinson helped execute an operation that controlled the information well, or that Wilkinson was inept. Ron Suskind, writing in The Washington Post, called Wilkinson the "spinmeister for the Iraq war". When Wilkinson faced questions from reporters he found lacking in support for the Iraq War, he would rebuke them.