Barry McCaffrey Barry Richard McCaffrey ( born November 17 , 1942 ) is a retired United States Army general , news commentator , and business consultant . He served as adjunct professor at the U . S . Military Academy and also Bradley Professor of International Security Studies there , from 2001 to 2008 . He is a military analyst for NBC and MSNBC as well as president of his own consulting firm , BR McCaffrey Associates . West Point Association of Graduates of the United States Military Academy presented its 2010 Distinguished Graduate Award to Gen . McCaffrey . Education . McCaffrey graduated from Phillips Academy , Andover in 1960 and U . S . Military Academy ( Class of 1964 ) and earned an Master in Civil Government from American University in 1970 . He also attended the National Security and Executive Education programs at Harvard University . His postgraduate military education included United States Army War College , Command and General Staff College , and Defense Language Institute ' s program in Vietnamese , and Armor School Advanced Course . Military career . Following his graduation from West Point in 1964 , McCaffrey was commissioned into the infantry . His combat tours included action in the Dominican Republic with the 82nd Airborne Division in 1965 , advisory duty with the Army of the Republic of Vietnam from 1966 – 67 , and company command with the 1st Cavalry Division from 1968 – 69 . During the course of his service in the Vietnam War he was twice awarded the Distinguished Service Cross , the Purple Heart three times and the Silver Star twice . During Operation Desert Storm , McCaffrey commanded the 24th Infantry Division ( Mechanized ) . Under his command , the division conducted the " left hook " attack 370 km into Iraq . He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal . In Operation Desert Storm , he was known for his speed and boldness . Joe Galloway , co - author of We Were Soldiers Once . . . And Young , rode with and reported on the division and later said in an interview that he witnessed " some great military commanders at work , " leaders like General Barry McCaffrey , General Norman Schwarzkopf , and General Hal Moore , the hero of the Battle of Ia Drang in Vietnam . General McCaffrey ' s peacetime assignments included tours as an instructor at the U . S . Military Academy from 1972 – 75 , Assistant Commandant at the U . S . Army Infantry School ; Deputy U . S . Representative to NATO ; Assistant Chairman , Joint Chiefs of Staff ( JCS ) ; Director of Strategic Plans and Policy , JCS . General McCaffrey ' s last command in the Army was United States Southern Command ( SOUTHCOM ) , the unified command responsible for U . S . military activities in Central and South America . He commanded SOUTHCOM , whose headquarters were then in the Republic of Panama , from 1994 to 1996 . Besides managing military personnel , as part of his duties in Panama , McCaffrey supported humanitarian operations for over 10 , 000 Cuban refugees in 1996 . It was also during his last military position that he created the first Human Rights Council and Human Rights Code of Conduct for U . S . Military Joint Command . McCaffrey was the youngest and most highly - decorated four - star general in the Army at the time of his retirement from the military in 1996 . ONDCP Director . Barry McCaffrey was Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy ( ONDCP ) under President Bill Clinton from 1996 to 2001 . He was confirmed unanimously by the U . S . Senate on February 29 , 1996 . As director of ONDCP , McCaffrey sat in the Cabinet . McCaffrey came to this position with experience interdicting drug smugglers from South America , as head of the Southern Command . He disliked the metaphor of a " war " on drugs , preferring to call it a malignancy for which he advocated treatment ; at the same time , he also headed an initiative that began in 1999 to eliminate coca farming in Colombia . During McCaffrey ' s tenure , a controversy arose over the ONDCP ' s policy of paying television producers to include anti - drug messages embedded into major television proigrams . The WB network ' s senior vice president for broadcast standards Rick Mater acknowledged , " The White House did view scripts . They did sign off on them – they read scripts , yes . " Running the campaign for the ONDCP was Alan Levitt , who estimated that between 1998 and 2000 the networks received nearly $ 25 million in benefits . One example was with Warner Brothers ' show , " Smart Guy " . The original script portrayed two young people using drugs at a party . Originally depicted as cool and popular , after input from the drug office , " We showed that they were losers and put them [ hidden away to indulge in shamed secrecy ] in a utility room . That was not in the original script . " Other shows including " ER " , " Beverly Hills , 90210 " , " Chicago Hope " , " The Drew Carey Show " and " 7th Heaven " also put anti - drug messages into their stories . Details about the program were published by " Salon " on January 13 , 2000 . McCaffrey defended the program , saying that “ We plead guilty to using every lawful means to save America ’ s children ” , and President Clinton defended McCaffrey . Clinton said on January 14 , 2000 : " [ I ] t ’ s my understanding that there ’ s nothing mandatory about this , that there was no attempt to regulate content , or tell people what they had to put into it – of course , I wouldn ’ t support that . " McCaffrey opposed efforts in Congress to extend the national anti - drug media campaign to include messages against underage drinking . Conduct during the Gulf War . According to an article written by Seymour Hersh published in 2000 " The New Yorker " , General McCaffrey committed war crimes during the Gulf War in 1991 , by having troops under his command kill retreating Iraq soldiers after a ceasefire had been declared , and to fail to properly investigate reports of killings of unarmed persons and an alleged massacre of hundreds of Iraqi POWs . Hersh ' s article " quotes senior officers decrying the lack of discipline and proportionality in the McCaffrey - ordered attack . " One colonel told Hersh that it " made no sense for a defeated army to invite their own death . . . . It came across as shooting fish in a barrel . Everyone was incredulous . " These charges had been made by Army personnel after the war and an Army investigation had cleared McCaffrey of any wrongdoing . Hersh dismissed the findings of the investigation , writing that " few soldiers report crimes , because they don ' t want to jeopardize their Army careers . " Hersh describes his interview with Private First Class Charles Sheehan - Miles , who later published a novel about his experience in the Gulf : " When I asked Sheehan - Miles why he fired , he replied , ' At that point , we were shooting everything . Guys in the company told me later that some were civilians . It wasn ' t like they came at us with a gun . It was that they were there – ' in the wrong place at the wrong time . ' Although Sheehan - Miles is unsure whether he and his fellow - tankers were ever actually fired upon during the war , he is sure that there was no significant enemy fire : ' We took some incoming once , but it was friendly fire , ' he said . ' The folks we fought never had a chance . ' He came away from Iraq convinced that he and his fellow - soldiers were , as another tanker put it , part of ' the biggest firing squad in history . ' " McCaffrey ' s and Powell ' s rebuttals to allegations of misconduct . McCaffrey denied the charges that on three occasions , General McCaffrey or his men of the 24th infantry division either fired on enemy soldiers who had surrendered in an " unprovoked attack " , or " went too far " in responding to a non - existent threat . He attacked what he called Hersh ' s " revisionist history " of the Gulf War . BBC reported that " General McCaffrey said an army investigation had previously cleared him of any blame and he accused the New Yorker of maligning young soldiers . . . White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said President Bill Clinton felt the charges were unsubstantiated . " According to Georgie Anne Geyer of the " Chicago Tribune " from May 2000 , Hersh ’ s accusations were disputed by a number of military personnel , who later claimed to have been misquoted by the journalist . She argues that this may have been Hersh ’ s misguided attempt to break another My Lai story , and that he " could not possibly like a man such as McCaffrey , who is so temperamentally and philosophically different from him … ” Finally , she suggests that Hersh may also have been motivated to attack the general for McCaffrey ’ s role as the drug czar . Lt . Gen . Steven Arnold , interviewed by Hersh for the controversial article , was one of the officers who later claimed to have been misquoted . He wrote the editor of " The New Yorker " saying " I know that my brief comments in the article were not depicted in an entirely accurate manner and were taken out of context … . When the Iraqi forces fired on elements of the 24th Infantry Division , they were clearly committing a hostile act . I regret having granted an interview with Mr . Hersh . The tone and thrust of the article places me in a position of not trusting or respecting General Barry McCaffrey , and nothing could be further from the truth . " Similar criticism came from Gen . Colin Powell , former Secretary of State and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Iraq War , who described the Hersh article as " attempted character assassination on General McCaffrey , " in an interview with Sam Donaldson for the TV show " This Week " , in May 2000 . Comments on the War on Terror and the Iraq War . McCaffrey has harshly criticized American treatment of detainees during the War on Terror . According to McCaffrey : " We should never , as a policy , maltreat people under our control , detainees . We tortured people unmercifully . We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that , both the armed forces and the C . I . A . " He " supports an investigation of the government lawyers who knowingly advocated illegal torture , and he specifically cited Bush ' s White House counsel and attorney general in the same discussion , emphasizing that ' we better find out how we went so wrong . ' " In June 2005 , he surveyed Iraq on behalf of U . S . Central Command and wrote an optimistic report afterwards . In it , he says the U . S . senior military leadership team is superb and predicts the insurgency will reach its peak from January - to - September 2006 , allowing for U . S . force withdrawals in the late summer of 2006 . A year later , however , after visiting Iraq again , his assessment was grim : " Iraq is abject misery . . . I think it ' s a terribly dangerous place for diplomats and journalists and contractors and Iraqi mothers . Trying to go about daily life in that city is a real nightmare for these poor people . " He called Abu Ghraib " the biggest mistake that happened so far . " In an official memorandum , McCaffrey nevertheless expressed optimism about the operation ' s longer term future : " The situation is perilous , uncertain , and extreme – but far from hopeless . The U . S . Armed Forces are a rock . This is the most competent and brilliantly led military in a tactical and operational sense that we have ever fielded . . . There is no reason why the U . S . cannot achieve our objectives in Iraq . Our aim must be to create a viable federal state under the rule of law which does not : enslave its own people , threaten its neighbors , or produce weapons of mass destruction . This is a ten year task . We should be able to draw down most of our combat forces in 3 – 5 years . We have few alternatives to the current US strategy which is painfully but gradually succeeding . This is now a race against time . Do we have the political will , do we have the military power , will we spend the resources required to achieve our aims ? " His assessment noted several negative areas as well as very positive areas in the struggle for democracy in the country . McCaffrey returned a third time in March , 2007 , and followed the visit with a third memorandum . The grimness of the 2006 assessment was repeated , additionally asserting a concern about the effect of the continuing war on the readiness of the small - sized U . S . military . He tempered his optimism about the future saying : " There are encouraging signs that the peace and participation message does resonate with many of the more moderate Sunni and Shia warring factions . " Controversial military analysis . In April 2008 , the " New York Times " published a front page report by David Barstow confirming that military analysts hired by ABC , CBS and NBC to present observations about the conduct of the war in Iraq had undisclosed ties to the Pentagon and / or military contractors . McCaffrey was " at the heart of the scandal " detailed by Barstow . In late Nov 2008 , the " New York Times " published another front page article by Barstow , this time specifically profiling General McCaffrey . It detailed his free movement between roles as a paid advocate for defense companies , media analyst and a retired officer . An earlier report with some of the same information had appeared in The Nation in April , 2003 but was not widely picked up . McCaffrey and his consulting firm BR McCaffrey Associates , LLC responded to the Times piece , stating that he is " absolutely committed to objective , non - partisan public commentary " . The response highlighted his military record , as well as his history of criticizing the execution of the Iraq War and specifically Rumsfeld . Journalist Glenn Greenwald later wrote that there had been " extensive collaboration between NBC and McCaffrey to formulate a coordinated response to David Barstow ' s story . "