Top Christopher Aide Quits Over Leaks, Blame

Deputy Secretary of State Clifton R. Wharton, frustrated and angry over criticism that seemed to blame him for President Clinton’s foreign policy troubles, resigned Monday, becoming the first top-level official to leave the Administration.

“In the past two weeks, it became unmistakably clear that I was being subjected to the classic Washington practice of sustained anonymous leaks to the media,” Wharton said in a written statement. “I decided to resign, rather than permit my effectiveness to be further eroded.”

Paradoxically, Wharton, 67, had specialized in departmental reorganization and administrative matters during his brief tenure. He was not deeply involved in establishing the Administration’s controversial policy toward trouble spots like Bosnia, Somalia and Haiti, which produced most of the criticism on Capitol Hill and elsewhere of the foreign policy team of Secretary of State Warren Christopher, White House National Security Adviser Anthony Lake and Defense Secretary Les Aspin.

Nevertheless, Wharton’s departure opens up the department’s second highest job, giving the White House an opportunity to strengthen the foreign policy team.

According to department sources, Christopher has concluded that he needs an experienced career diplomat as his deputy, perhaps someone in the mold of Lawrence S. Eagleburger, a tough bureaucratic in-fighter who served as deputy secretary of state for most of the George Bush Administration before moving up to the top post during the final months of Bush’s presidency.

Although officials said that no successor has been chosen, speculation centered on Thomas R. Pickering, currently ambassador to Russia, who is generally considered the country’s most able active diplomat. Pickering, ambassador to the United Nations during the Persian Gulf War, played an important role in building and maintaining the international coalition that turned back the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

Officials said that another possible candidate is Michael Armacost, a veteran diplomat who was the department’s third ranking officer during the Ronald Reagan Administration. He retired recently after serving as ambassador to Japan.

Clinton accepted Wharton’s resignation with unstinting praise. He said that the Administration “benefited greatly from his dignified presence and it will be diminished by his departure.”

Christopher lauded Wharton for bringing his experience in business to bear on reorganization of the department and its foreign aid operation.

“He has made a very significant impact on the redirection and reform of our foreign assistance policies and programs,” Christopher said. “Drawing upon his 22 years of experience in foreign economic development, he conducted a review of the Agency for International Development, supervised the redrafting of the Foreign Assistance Act and--in an important milestone--reorganized the entire foreign assistance budgeting process.”

However, the AID reorganization has been largely overlooked by the public, concerned about the Administration’s approach to high-profile conflicts like those in Somalia, Bosnia and Haiti.

In a Sunday television interview, Clinton delivered what some considered a tepid endorsement of his foreign policy team. However, White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers said Monday that the President has complete confidence in Christopher, Lake and Aspin.

“The President has full confidence in his foreign policy team and in his entire Cabinet,” she said. “And that’s all I have to say about it.”

State Department spokesman Mike McCurry said that Christopher is “absolutely” satisfied with the President’s backing.

Wharton was the department’s highest-ranking black official. A former president of Michigan State University, he was chairman and chief executive officer of a New York-based pension fund for academics before accepting the State Department post. As head of the pension fund, with $112 billion in assets, Wharton was the first black chief executive of a Fortune 500 company.

But department officials said that Wharton’s limited background in foreign policy had become a liability. Although Wharton’s father, Clifton R. Wharton Sr., was a 40-year veteran of the Foreign Service, becoming the first African-American career diplomat to rise to the rank of ambassador when he was named to head the embassy in Norway in 1961, the younger Wharton made his career primarily in education and business.