NY Occasions: 2 Carson Advisers Forged Doubt on His Overseas Coverage Information

And Carson has attracted extra attention because his repeated dubious statements give rise to questions about where, as a retired neurosurgeon without government experience, he turns for information and counsel on complex global issues.

In the last GOP debate, Carson suggested that China was active in Syria.

Carson called on Republican members of the House of Representatives to terminate public funding for any federal program that would resettle refugees, saying that “given the events in Paris Friday night, there can be no disputing the fact that the United States cannot, should not and must not accept any Syrian refugees”. Last week, he wrongly claimed that China had intervened in Syria.

Clarridge, a former Central Intelligence Agency agent who had connected Carson with the operative in Iraq, said Monday that the information was wrong. “And I think the people who do the best are the ones who know how to utilize experts around them”.

A second Carson spokesman accused the Times of taking advantage of Carridge, 83, calling him an “elderly gentleman” who has “incomplete knowledge” of Carson’s briefing schedule.

“[Clarridge] is coming to the end of a long career of serving our country”, Watts continued. During the Reagan administration, he helped found the agency’s Counterterrorism Center and ran the CIA’s Latin American division.

Clarridge was indicted for lying to Congress in the Ronald Reagan-era Iran-Contra affair but later pardoned. Clarridge added that Carson required weekly foreign policy briefings so “we can make him smart”. Aides said that often Carson can be dismissive of questions he thinks are irrelevant and needed to understand that viewers and voters could see such dismissiveness as lacking knowledge. And, simply because Carson says it doesn’t make it any more true. “I’m just not going to go there”. Clarridge, says Williams, has been working with Carson for the past two years or so.

Once written off by political insiders, Carson has rocketed to the top tier of candidates and has traded off a lead in recent polls with Donald Trump.

And Clarridge isn’t just a few random hanger-on – Armstrong Williams, who’s running Carson’s campaign, told Gabriel that Clarridge was “a mentor for Dr. Carson”.

“He’s not my adviser”, Carson said.

That would be a pretty scorching burn if it came from one of Carson’s opponents.

Dees offered a different portrait of Carson than Clarridge.

“You know, the Chinese are there, as well as the Russians, and you have all kinds of factions there”, Carson said.

On Fox News Sunday this week, Chris Wallace repeatedly pressed Carson on which nations he would call to form an anti-ISIS coalition. Carson claims his victim was wearing a metal belt buckle which broke-off the knife. But top advisors recently said that the doctor is struggling to grasp foreign policy. If, at the next Republican debate, Carson comes out for sending military aid to French Indochina, we’ll have to admit the campaign was right about this.