Former senior Bush State Department official Lawrence Wilkerson's speech blasting “the national security decision-making process” -- and describing a “cabal between” Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld -- has received scant attention in the broadcast media. Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, was chief of staff under former Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005. Wilkerson's October 19 speech, given at the New America Foundation, described a process in which Cheney and Rumsfeld “made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made” on critical issues.

Wilkerson served in various capacities under Powell for 16 years, beginning in 1989 at the Army's Forces Command. Immediately before becoming Powell's chief of staff at the State Department, Wilkerson was the associate director for policy planning. During his tenure at State, Wilkerson was involved in policy planning and for legislative and political-military affairs, according to his State Department bio.

But a Media Matters for America review* of broadcast and cable transcripts since October 19 shows only six mentions of the speech on television news -- once each on two segments from Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume (“Fox News All-Stars” and “Political Grapevine”), three instances on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, on October 20, 24, and 25, and once on NBC's Meet the Press. Aside from Meet the Press, no network news program has covered it. CNN, as well as the three broadcast networks' nightly newscasts, have failed to cover the speech altogether.

In contrast, Wilkerson's speech received several mentions in major newspapers and wires, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Newsday, and The Denver Post, among others.

Newsday Washington bureau chief Timothy M. Phelps wrote the first lengthy news story among major newspapers, reporting that Wilkinson warned of further ineptitude on the part of the federal government in the event of another domestic terrorist attack.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank published a commentary the day after the speech, noting that Wilkerson said of undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs Karen Hughes's tour of the Middle East to promote U.S. foreign policy, “It's hard to sell [manure],” quoting a friend.

Milbank's reporting formed the basis for the two most prominent mentions of Wilkerson's speech in the few examples of television coverage. On the October 20 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews interviewed Milbank about the speech and the CIA leak investigation. And on the October 23 Meet the Press, host Tim Russert read from the Milbank's account of the speech during a roundtable interview with New York Times columnist Frank Rich, Weekly Standard staff writer Stephen F. Hayes, and author George Packer.

In all, Media Matters found** 31 news stories and editorials in the major newspapers and wires that mentioned Wilkerson's remarks.

From Wilkerson's October 19 speech:

I don't know what the case is today; I wish I did. But the case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process. What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. And then, when the bureaucracy was presented with the decision to carry them out, it was presented in a such a disjointed, incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn't know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out.

* Search of Nexis transcripts library for “Wilkerson,” October 19-26.

** Search of “US Newspapers and Wires” for “Lawrence Wilkerson,” “Larry Wilkerson,” October 19-26 (total excludes Hotline and non-relevant hits for both.)