On September 17, 2003— about 21 months after his more experienced rivals had begun the arduous task of assembling their campaigns—Wesley Clark, a military man who had never run for elective office, announced his intention to seek the presidency. While many state party officials and outside observers questioned whether Clark could be a credible candidate after entering the race so late, he quickly confounded expectations. Within a week of his announcement, polls showed him leading the Democratic pack and even with or slightly ahead of President George W. Bush.

Even more impressive, a group of high-powered advisers and supporters lined up behind Clark for his bid. Jumping onto the general's bandwagon were Mickey Kantor, the former commerce secretary and chair of the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign, and Donnie Fowler, national field director of Al Gore's 2000 campaign and the son of former DNC chairman Don Fowler (Fowler resigned from the campaign in early October). Mark Fabiani, who served as Clinton's point man on Whitewater for the 1996 campaign and as Gore's deputy campaign manager in 2000, also signed on, as did Ron Klain, a Washington attorney who worked on Clinton's 1992 campaign, his transition team, and later as former attorney general Janet Reno's chief of staff. Political neophytes generally can't count on assembling seasoned campaign hands, but then Clark isn't exactly a political neophyte. Clark raised his profile as a television analyst, landed a job at a politically powerful Arkansas investment bank, and plied the age-old game of trading on his military contacts as a corporate lobbyist. The former supreme allied commander in Europe, four star general and Rhodes scholar is a very savvy Washington insider.

Clark was born in Chicago on December 23, 1944 to Veneta and Benjamin Kanne. Four years later his father suffered a fatal heart attack, and the widow Vannete returned with her son to her hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. There she met and married a banker by the name of Victor Clark.

Given his stepson's small wiry frame, Victor informed Wesley that he was not destined to play basketball. So in the eighth grade, Clark channeled his competitive drive in another direction and started swimming at the Little Rock Boys Club. He attended Joseph Pfeifer Kiwanis Camp, where, under the tutelage of swimming director Jimmy Miller, he developed into a strong swimmer. The Boys Club also taught the youth about leadership, and awakened in Clark an interest in public service.

When he entered Hall High in the 1950s, opposition to a Supreme Court order to desegregate schools led the Little Rock school system to temporarily shut down. Fearing that the schools might not reopen for Clark's sophomore year, his parents sent him away to Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon, Tennessee, where he stuck it out for a year before returning home. He reenrolled at Hall High and helped the school's swim team win the state championship by swimming two legs of the four-man individual medley relay. He graduated in 1962.

Despite being offered scholarships to Ivy League schools, Clark had decided during his junior year that the United States Military Academy at West Point and a career in the military best suited his desire to be a public servant. Only one obstacle stood in his way—a congressional appointment. Every cadet entering the academy must receive a nomination from a member of Congress or the Department of the Army.

Clark got no response from his letter to Arkansas Senator J. William Fullbright, but the 16-year-old was undeterred and went to Capitol Hill in search of a sponsor. First, he visited Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan, who gruffly informed Clark, "You're not old enough, you're not big enough and you're not smart enough." Failing with the senators, Clark turned to Arkansas representative Dale Alford, then serving his only term in Congress. Alford decided to select his nominee by administering the potential cadets a civil service exam. Clark received the highest score on the test and won the appointment.

At West Point, Clark continued to excel. He finished first in his class as a plebe and went on to graduate first among the class of 1966. After graduation, Clark attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, where he earned a masters degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. While there, he went on a speaking tour to explain the U.S. policy in Vietnam, though he had been one of the first members of his West Point class to question the war.

Shortly thereafter he found himself in Vietnam, where he served with the 1st infantry division staff in Lai Kae before being transferred to a field command. Soon after, Clark was shot four times while out on patrol, but managed to direct a counterattack and successfully lead the platoon to safety. For his injuries he received a purple heart, and for his valor, a silver star.

The severity of the injuries landed Clark an extended stay in the hospital and a ticket out of Vietnam; he needed months of care and a year of rehabilitation to recover from his wounds. When he had recovered, Clark accepted a teaching position at West Point; he was soon promoted to major and assigned to the staff of the supreme allied commander of NATO forces in Europe, then Alexander Haig, who went on to become Ronald Reagan's first secretary of state.

Clark quickly ascended through the military ranks, taking command of a tank battalion at Fort Carson, and then the Army's National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, in the late 1980s. In 1994 he accepted a position with the Joint Chiefs of Staff as director of strategic plans and policy, an appointment that garnered the general his third star and further contacts necessary to finish his ascent.

As military aide to Chief Negotiator Richard Holbrooke, Clark helped plan and implement the military side of the Dayton Peace talks that brokered an end to the war in Bosnia. This feat earned the general his fourth star, and helped position him for his next assignment—commander in chief of the U.S. Southern Command, Panama, where he assumed responsibility for all U.S. forces in the region. Just over a year later Clark reached the pinnacle of his military career when President Clinton nominated him as NATO's senior military officer as supreme allied commander of Europe.

Both promotions came at the behest of high level officials and may have earned Clark the ire of some within the ranks. Defense Secretary William Perry overrode the Army's recommendation and secured Clark the appointment to Commander in Chief of U.S. Southern Command, Panama. Then, in 1997, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. John Shalikashvili overrode the Army again to ensure Clark became the Allied Commander of NATO forces in Europe.

Whatever the case, Clark led NATO to victory in its first military encounter by holding together the quarrelsome 19-member alliance throughout the 78 days of bombing that drove Slobodan Milosevic and the Serb forces out of Kosovo. Ironically, his accomplishment also cost him his job.

There are conflicting accounts of the reasons for Clark's dismissal; in his book, he blamed it on Defense Secretary William Cohen and General Hugh Shelton, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, adding that President Bill Clinton said he had nothing to do with the early departure.

Clark's competitive nature—a State Department official once told the New York Times that "He's competitive drinking coffee with you"—might have had something to do with his dismissal. In his rise to the top, the commander had relied on the top brass to advance him at the expense of his fellow officers, earning him their enmity. Clark's conduct in Kosovo also landed him on the wrong side of Cohen and Shelton, particularly his incessant demand for ground troops and Apache helicopters and his public questioning of his superiors' judgment. In January 2000, Clark left his job at NATO; that summer, the four star general retired from the military.

After more than three decades of military service, the General transitioned to civilian life, accepting a consulting position with Arkansas-based Stephens Inc., one of the largest investment banking companies off Wall Street. A year later, the retired general pondered running for governor of Arkansas. A few months after that, the first "Draft Clark" movement emerged, in which supporters tried to persuade Clark to challenge Arkansas Republican Senator Tim Hutchinson in the 2002 midterm elections.

Neither opportunity provided the allure necessary for Clark to relinquish his position as a military analyst at CNN or the lucrative lobbying and consultant contracts he procured as a business executive. That is, not until the presidential election provided him with the platform to challenge the unilateral foreign policy of the Bush administration.

Two weeks after declaring his intention to run for president, Clark was still registered to represent a high tech contractor, Acxiom Corporation, giving him the rare distinction of seeking the White House while registered as a lobbyist. Shortly after Clark announced his candidacy, a company spokesman said the general no longer lobbied for Acxiom, but, according to the Senate Office of Public Records, Clark had not filed any termination papers.

Clark has been lobbying for the firm since January 2, 2002; Acxiom has paid more than $830,000 for Clark to advance its agenda and meet with government officials. Clark also serves on the company's board of directors.

According to federal disclosure records, Clark lobbied directly on "information transfers, airline security and homeland security issues," for Acxiom, which sought funding to do controversial informational background checks on passengers for airlines. Privacy advocates have criticized the program, called the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System II, because of concerns that the data collected would be an overly invasive violation of individuals' rights to privacy. The public outcry has been so strong that there is a bi-partisan effort to create more oversight for the program to protect privacy interests if CAPPS II is implemented.

Clark lobbied the Department of Justice, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Transportation for the company. Clark also reported, on his lobbyist disclosure forms, that he promoted Acxiom to the Senate and the executive office of the president. According an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette report, he even met personally with Vice President Richard Cheney.

He also made a pitch for the kind of tracking that the company's wares can perform while acting as a commentator on CNN. On January 6, 2002, four days after filing as a lobbyist for Acxiom, Clark told an interviewer, in response to worries that private planes could be used for terrorist attacks, "We've been worried about general aviation security for some time. The aircraft need to be secured, the airfields need to be secured, and obviously we're going to also have to go through and do a better job of screening who could fly aircraft, who the private pilots are, who owns these aircraft. So it's going to be another major effort."

Naturally, he did not reveal to CNN's viewers that the company he lobbied for had a substantial stake in this issue.