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A foreign policy adviser whom Ben Carson publicly distanced himself from after the adviser criticized Mr. Carson’s grasp of the Middle East provided input for an opinion column Mr. Carson published online in The Washington Post on Wednesday about defeating the Islamic State.

The campaign called the adviser, Duane R. Clarridge, on Monday for help with the opinion piece that was conceived to counter poor impressions Mr. Carson had made in a “Fox News Sunday’’ interview the day before. In that appearance, Mr. Carson could not name what nations he would call first to form a coalition to counter the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the Paris terrorist attacks.

Mr. Clarridge “gave input telling us we need to get in real substance, not fluff, saying to be bold about it,’’ Armstrong Williams, a senior adviser to Mr. Carson, said on Wednesday.

Mr. Carson said on Tuesday evening in an interview on “PBS NewsHour” that Mr. Clarridge, a former C.I.A. officer, was “not my adviser.’’ In The New York Times that day, Mr. Clarridge was quoted as saying that Mr. Carson was unable to absorb “one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East’’ and that Mr. Clarridge had recommended weekly briefings so “we can make him smart.’’

On PBS, Mr. Carson called Mr. Clarridge “a person who has come in on a couple of our sessions to offer his opinion about what was going on,’’ adding, “To call himself my adviser would be a great stretch.’’

The Carson campaign issued a statement calling Mr. Clarridge “an elderly gentleman” and saying that The Times “took advantage” of him, even though Mr. Williams had provided his name and phone number.

Mr. Williams, who is Mr. Carson’s closest aide although he has no official title in the campaign, had identified Mr. Clarridge as “a mentor for Dr. Carson.’’

Mr. Williams said he had passed Mr. Clarridge’s advice on to Mr. Carson for the op-ed without citing the source, along with other advice he gathered from Middle East experts. Mr. Carson wrote a draft of the essay, and Mr. Williams edited it.

Mr. Clarridge, 83, said in an interview that he had called Mr. Willams on Monday morning after Mr. Carson’s appearance on “Fox News Sunday” and said, “Look, he stepped in it.’’

Mr. Williams “called back an hour later and said, ‘You’re right, the stuff coming in is terrible.’ We’ve got to do this op-ed piece.’’

Mr. Clarridge said he supplied a five-point plan for defeating ISIS, including cautioning that Western ground troops would be unwelcome by moderate Arab countries, but “we should support the friendlies in the area with weapons and capabilities.’’

In the Post op-ed, titled “My Plan to Defeat the Islamic State,’’ Mr. Carson advocates seizing ISIS-held oil fields “with a coalition of local (Iraqi, Turkish and Kurdish) ground troops and Western military advisers and Special Operations forces.’’

Mr. Williams said Mr. Clarridge’s advice was welcome, though what he forwarded to Mr. Carson was general rather than specific.

“Before talking to him we were wondering how much specificity Dr. Carson should get into,’’ Mr. Williams said. “And after speaking to him, he emboldened me to say to Dr. Carson, ‘You’ve really got to be specific.’ ’’

Ben Carson Is Struggling to Grasp Foreign Policy, Advisers Say The candidate’s remarks on the Middle East and national security have raised questions about his knowledge of the subject, and advisers say tutoring is having little effect.

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