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W exmrGabe Kaminsky is an investigative reporter for the Washington Examiner, primarily covering the intersection of money, politics, and influence. His stories about government spending, campaign finance, and nonprofits have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Politico, Forbes, the New York Post, and other outlets.
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https://theintercept.com/2020/08/24/fbi-fusion-center-environmental-wind/
fEDERAL AND STATE law enforcement officers gathered in the Midwest in February 2019 to practice their responses to a fictional threat: wind farm sabotage. They divided into four teams and pretended to be the bad guys, environmental saboteurs targeting the large grids of turbines that turn the wind into electric power. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Omaha, Nebraska, field office and the Iowa Division of Intelligence and Fusion Center had organized the “red hat” exercise, meant to provide insight into the minds of environmental activist adversaries that didn’t exist.
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Each team developed an attack plan. One proposed ramming wind turbine infrastructure with a vehicle. Another sought to plant explosives on electrical transformers. And — although U.S. environmental saboteurs tend to not use guns — two of the teams suggested using firearms to attack electrical substations from a distance. The fact that cops themselves planned the attacks may have created a “bias toward the use of firearms,” the FBI later acknowledged in a pair of reports on the exercise obtained by The Intercept. However, the federal agents also concluded that “Environmental Extremists Likely Would Use Firearms To Circumvent Perceived Electrical Infrastructure Site Security Measures.”
The exercise was not conducted due to any imminent threat — a carefully noted fact included in the December 2019 and March 2020 reports. “Neither FBI Omaha nor the Iowa DOI/FC has intelligence suggesting environmental extremists intend to attack wind farms in Iowa,” both reports repeatedly state.
Why, then, spend public dollars on FBI role-playing?Because the energy industry wanted it. The exercise came “at the request of an USBUS private energy sector partner, following 14 environmental extremist attacks against transportation infrastructure in Iowa that services the energy sector, particularly oil pipelines,” said one of the documents about the exercise. Privately owned and operated companies and industry groups — none of which were named in the reports — were intimately involved in the exercise: An Iowa utility company and a wind energy lobbyist group provided information to help judge the fake attack plans and assess the fake “threat environment,” and an industry representative joined two of the teams, posing as an insider accomplice.
Though there was no indication an attack on wind power sites would occur, the report went on to say, if one hypothetically did, it could proliferate into many, with each set of attackers becoming more skilled in evading security and capture. “As attack methods become more sophisticated,” the report warned, “the chance for large-scale failure of the electrical grid becomes more likely.” Law enforcement ought to be on the lookout for activists undergoing gun training, activists in rural locations with large infrastructure, and activists casing wind power sites, the report advised. Neither the FBI, the Iowa Division of Intelligence and Fusion Center, nor the federal Department of Homeland Security, which helps coordinate regional fusion centers, responded to the Intercept’s questions about the documents.
The red hat exercise was the product of a national network of public-private law enforcement and security partnerships forged in the wake of 9/11. The Iowa fusion center is one of 79 intelligence hubs like it, designed to enhance coordination between federal and local police as well as select private sector players. Given their close collaboration with corporate partners, the centers serve as a vector for transmitting industry interests to law enforcement.
The reports on the joint wind power security exercise were obtained by The Intercept as part of BlueLeaks, a massive trove of law enforcement documents hacked from government web sites and published by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets. The documents provide a detailed picture of how state, federal, and local law enforcement agencies have used the label “environmental extremist”to guide their policing. More than a dozen documents collected and disseminated by law enforcement fusion centers and reviewed by The Intercept describe the wild speculation, threat inflation, and close collaboration with the private sector inherent in law enforcement’s pursuit of eco-activists branded as extremists.
With industry encouragement and cooperation, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and local law enforcement agencies have long kept a wary eye on activists organizing against energy projects. Government officials have slapped the label of “environmental extremist” on individuals who have locked themselves inside oil and gas pipelines, turned off the valves controlling oil flow, or physically damaged construction equipment — as well as a range of people who have shared viewpoints or had contact with such activists. The moniker serves to place Indigenous and environmental defenders linked to relatively minor property damage or civil disobedience in a category alongside white supremacists conducting mass killings. Both are officially declared “domestic extremists” for the federal government’s purposes.
Information about such “environmental extremists” then gets shared, as it did in the wind power exercise, through the fusion centers, to both government officials and private sector partners. From the beginning, energy industry projects have received favored status and attention from the centers as “critical infrastructure.”
Brendan McQuade, a sociologist at the University of Southern Maine and the author of “Pacifying the Homeland: Intelligence Fusion and Mass Supervision,” said he had never seen anything like the Iowa fusion center documents. “It’s paranoid threat inflation and a totally indefensible depoliticization of what might be the most important political question of our time, which is, What are we going to do about climate change? This erases that question and views anyone who is seriously committed to it as criminal.”
“I’m worried about the way this will polarize the struggle and justify aggressive responses to direct action,” he said.
Mike German, a liberty and national security fellow with the Brennan Center, who formerly worked as an FBI agent, added that the collaboration with the private sector serves to misplace public resources. “There are many entities out there that are at possible risk of some kind of criminal act. And yet you don’t see community groups who are at a threat of white supremacy being invited by the FBI to talk about how they can protect themselves,” he said. “They’re spending security resources on hypothetical threats against favorite entities while ignoring real threats against other communities or private entities.”
The Elusive “Environmental Extremist”
“Environmental extremism” is among a handful of categories of so-called domestic extremism — including “racially motivated violent extremism,” “anti-government extremism,” “animal rights extremism,” and “abortion extremism” — that the FBI monitors closely.
Who exactly are these eco-extremists? Under a section titled “environmental rights extremism,” a November 2019reference guide to “violent extremism” published by the Colorado Information Analysis Center, a fusion center, and other state security agencies, which was released as part of BlueLeaks, lists a range of groups. Among others, they listed the animal liberation group Direct Action Everywhere, which has removed animals from factory farms in rescue actions, and the Earth Liberation Front, which had its heyday committing arsons in the ’90s. Also listed were East Boulder County United, a grassroots organization that promotes community consultation on oil and gas development; and 350 Colorado, the local chapter of a well-known national climate organization. Both groups have participated in and promoted nonviolent civil disobedience as a tactic to force public officials to appropriately address the climate crisis.
In a statement,Colorado Information Analysis Center spokesperson Micki Trost provided a justification for the labels, “We want to ensure that individuals have the opportunity to exercise their First Amendment rights in a safe and impactful manner,” Trost said. “We believe that information sharing on groups that have perpetrated crimes and disrupted peaceful protests helps local law enforcement better protect those that are lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights.”
According to an FBI and Department of Homeland Securitydocument, “environmental extremists” primarily target the “extraction, use, and transportation of fossil fuels.” BlueLeaks documents from various regional fusion and homeland security centers, as well as other federal agencies, point to an array of fossil fuel industry opponents, including the climate direct action group Extinction Rebellion; the Oglala Lakota opponent of the Dakota Access pipeline Red Fawn Fallis, who remains imprisoned after being accused of firing gunshots during a struggle with law enforcement at a Standing Rock protest; Arctic drilling protesters who chained themselves to a ship in Washington; and anti-oil industry activists, who shut off a pipeline by turning a valve.
the only recent U.S. incident listed in the documents that resulted in loss of life involved Rory Gunderman, who, according to the South Dakota Fusion Center and Wyoming Criminal Intelligence Center, wasassociated with the movement Deep Green Resistancebefore he allegedly attempted to carry out a plot in 2015 to shut down the power grid. After police attempted to apprehend Gunderman, he took his own life.
Indeed, in various documents law enforcement agencies underline something that many environmental activists have themselves pointed out: Unlike other types of extremism, “environmental extremism” is aimed at property, not people. One bulletin published by the FBI and DHS noted the threat that such activists pose has decreased over the years and is lower than other types of extremism. However, their “desire” to commit crime “has not waned.”
Nevertheless, authorities are keen to view “environmental extremists” as a major threat. An FBI memo urges partner law enforcement agencies to coordinate with the Bureau on any incident involving environmental extremism. Federal agents, the memo says, are interested in who is training “environmental extremists,” in addition to knowing which purported extremists are involved in domestic or international criminal organizations, where they have traveled, and how they communicate.
Protesters gather in front of San Francisco City Hall during a protest in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline on March 10, 2017.
Photo: Joel Angel Juarez/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
And so law enforcement has continued to monitor activists’ activity, including through an online discussion forum, an environmental organization’s web site, and a bulletin that described how tactics utilized in the resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline could be repurposed against the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline in Minnesota, documents show.
To prepare law enforcement for encountering such alleged extremists, police attended trainings, including one offered in October 2019 by the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center. According to one of the documents, a flyer, the training would be led by Steven Stanley, a “certified anti-terrorism specialist” working for the Sigma Group who planned to cover a remarkable range of “domestic terrorism topics.” His focus would be on ideologically left-leaning viewpoints, including “Global Anarchist Activity, Social and Global Justice Groups, Anti-War Activists/Militants, Anti-Nuclear Activists/Militants, Anti-Pipeline Activists/Militants, Anti-Police Movement, AntifaMovement (Antifascists), Animal Liberation Activists/Militants, Eco-Terrorism, Radical Environmental Groups, Radical Unions, [and] Protests Protest Activity/Dynamics.” Stanley also promised to show attendees a “private collection consisting of 40 years of radical books, magazines, patches, stickers, clothing, pictures, videos, DVD’S and much more.” Fifty-eight people registered for the course.
German, the former FBI agent, said that the result of so much attention on environmental activists is visible in police’s response to protests. “We’ve had a variety of unruly protests by armed, far-right militia groups that the police react to in a very calm manner,” he said. “And yet when you see a group of environmentalists or people who might look similar to the way environmentalists at a protest look, you see a hyper-aggressive police response, even though the level of violence coming from those groups is significantly lower.”
Comparing Pipeline Activists to Al Qaeda
In most of the fusion center documents revealed by BlueLeaks, it’s the language of “extremism” that suggests that law enforcement officers perceive a common thread between environmental activists and violent militants. One document, though, explicitly applied the lens the U.S. military used on groups like Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq to community members opposing two natural gas pipelines in Virginia.
In September 2019, the Virginia Fusion Center issued a briefing titled “Criminal Environmental Groups Study and Adopt Militant Insurgent Strategiesto Advance Goals in Virginia.” The Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipeline projects were in the midst of approval processes and under construction in the state at the time. A range of activists, environmental experts, and neighbors had organized to observe construction, file lawsuits, voice their dissent at public meetings, and hold protests — including a series of tree sits, where project opponents camped out in trees in the pathway of the pipeline.
The document concluded that “criminal environmental groups” organizing against pipeline construction would likely use the same four tactics as Al Qaeda: provocation, intimidation, protraction, and exhaustion.
Asked for comment, Virginia State Police Public Relations Director Corinne Geller explained to The Intercept: “This particular report was designed to provide regional law enforcement with an enhanced awareness of criminal activity that has been associated with various groups protesting environmental interests nationwide and worldwide. Sharing common tactics and strategies associated with criminal activity is invaluable to law enforcement agencies’ efforts to engage with and for the protection of local citizens/communities, as well as for the purpose of officer safety.”
Related
How a Movement That Never Killed Anyone Became the FBI’s No. 1 Domestic Terrorism Threat
Provocation was used by Al Qaeda, the fusion center report claimed, when militants destroyed the Al-Askari Mosque in Karbala, Iraq, in 2004 in an effort to set off a violent response in the majority Shia country toward the Sunni minority. (The mosque bombing actually took place in Samarra in 2006.) In turn, provocation, the document claimed, was also used by “criminal environmental groups” in 2016 in North Dakota, when private security contractors unleashed their dogs on Dakota Access pipeline opponents —the suggestion being that the Indigenous water protectors strategically incited the dog attacks to stir up conflict.
Insurgent groups use the tactic of intimidation, the document continued, by threatening violence against local community members who don’t submit to their cause. An individual associated with a “criminal environmental group” deployed a comparable tactic in Virginia, the document suggests, when they posted a comment on the Facebook page of a hotel that provided rooms to pipeline construction workers. “I hope that money lasts you for a lifetime because the people will be there every day making sure you never earn another dollar for the rest of your existence,” the comment said. The threat of protest was apparently comparable to a threat of physical violence.
The fusion center even quoted 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden describing his goal of exhausting the U.S. government by “bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.” Then it went on to note that “criminal environmental groups” would likely try to exhaust law enforcement and private businesses’ resources by building camps and distributing “extremist propaganda” to residents impacted by construction. Although the document title suggested activists were studying these tactics, the fusion center provided no evidence that was so.
In small print at the bottom, the fusion center wrote, “This document is not designed to compare criminal environmental groups to al-Qa’ida and associated movements” — despite the fact that it did exactly that.
The report repeatedly cited the book “The Accidental Guerrilla,” by David Kilcullen, a senior counterinsurgency adviser to the U.S. during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a source. “Overall, in terms of content, the document doesn’t strike me as objectionable,” Kilcullen said when asked to comment on the document. “I am sure if they knew it was going to be leaked the authors might have framed the language differently, but it is an accurate reflection of how things work in these kinds of situations.”
In a recent article for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a neoconservative Washington think tank where he is an adviser, Kilcullen argued that, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, the U.S. might considered as being amid an “incipient insurgency.” He told the Intercept, “What’s perhaps a bit confronting is that people are now applying that logic to the United States —but the shocking thing is not that this is inaccurate, but rather that it’s now an increasingly accurate way of thinking about what’s happening on our streets and elsewhere.”
McQuade, the University of Southern Maine sociologist, said that, although this document was distinct from other fusion center documents he’s reviewed throughout his research, it shouldn’t be viewed as an aberration. “This is an insight into how security professionals view politics,” he said. “When your job is to defend the status quo at all costs, it isn’t a ridiculous overreach to apply a theory for defeating an armed movement in a developing country that has been in a civil war for decades against a protest movement in a country that isn’t at civil war.”
The danger, German said, was that law enforcement officers might unthinkingly take the document seriously. “I would put myself in the place of a brand-new police officer trying to protect his or her community, and not having a deep background in terrorism research, receiving this document,” German said. “Now anybody doing any activism in my community, I would automatically perceive as a threat — not just a threat of engaging in civil disobedience or vandalism but actually a terrorist threat.”
The fusion center claimed some individuals would be recruited into Virginia’s “criminal environmental groups” through what the unnamed author called “accidental guerrilla syndrome,” a process that leads someone who normally would not join an insurgent group to fight alongside one.
State and local law enforcement monitor an anti-pipeline protest site to make sure that no attempts are made to give protesters food or water. The pipeline opponents are occupying trees high above the ground outside Roanoke, Va., to protest the Mountain Valley Pipeline Project on April 2, 2018.
Photo: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The proliferation of tree sits were signs that “accidental guerrilla syndrome” was already in the “contagion phase,” the document says. The memo pointed to Giles County, where tree-sitters with Appalachians Against Pipelines had gained support from neighbors, and Montgomery County, where a tree sit called Yellow Finch has been in place for two years. “If tree sits like these continue to develop, it may become more difficult for pipeline construction to continue and support for it may decrease,” the fusion center document concluded.
“If they can compare us to Al Qaeda, they can do anything to us,” said Dustie Pinesap, commenting from atop the Yellow Finch tree sit. “Last I checked we never picked up a Kalashnikov. We tend to see property damage or denial of use of property or any sort of damage or impeding of property rights as violent.”
Indeed, the document makes crystal clear that the fusion center conflated support for the projects with security. “Collaborative relationships between law enforcement and businesses, working with contractors or the energy companies may help identify criminal actors before violence or property destruction takes place,” the fusion center document says. It points to a suite of “counter insurgency strategies,” drawn from a Kunar Province road-building project in Afghanistan, that police — as well as the pipeline companies — could deploy to build community support.
“Organizations involved in pipeline construction” should consider “contracting local restaurants to provide lunch to pipeline workers each day,” the fusion center advises, in order to “spread economic engagement across the community.” Similarly, implementing the Kunar road’s “10 kilometer rule,” hiring workers within a certain radius of the construction zone, could “provide local residents a sense of pride and connection to the project.”
The pipeline companies might even consider a “youth employment campaign,” the publicly funded fusion center suggested. “If such a project was implemented in local Virginia communities, families would not support outside groups, individuals, or local opposition groups that hinder their children’s economic and skill gaining opportunities, much like the Afghan communities that rejected the Taliban and al-Qa’ida in their attempts to delay and disrupt the Kunar Road project because it directly affected their livelihood.”
“The constituency is clearly the private sector,” said McQuade, highlighting that the document’s goal did note even seem to be to protect the broader community that may be ambivalent about pipeline construction. “Those people are just pawns whose support needs to be won.”
German sees the fusion centers as captured by corporate PR campaigns seeking to portray themselves as victims of extremist violence. “Many of these are multinational corporations —they’re not even necessarily U.S. corporations — yet law enforcement seems to favor protecting them over their own communities,” German pointed out. “How many fusion center reports have we seen that document environmental damage done by criminal actions or negligent actions of corporations? Those are also criminal — those are within the jurisdiction of these law enforcement agencies — and arguably cost a whole lot more in economic damage to these communities than somebody turning a valve on a pipeline. Yet that’s not where we see law enforcement resources being spent.”
Law Enforcement Goes Don Quixote
Despite the comparisons to Al Qaeda and the descriptions of widespread monitoring of activists, several fusion center documents acknowledge that environmental defenders pose little threat to people — or even property. But intelligence analysts still had plenty of guesses about what might spark “environmental extremists” to commit so-called violence, defined to include property damage.
“Media attention given to related issues, such as exotic game hunting, may compel some individuals who had not been associated with the extremist movements to make threats of violence or commit other crimes,” a 2016 FBI report suggests.
The arrests of high-profile activists could also push people over the edge. When Ruby Montoya and Jessica Reznicek were arrested last October for using a welding torch to poke holes in the Dakota Access Pipeline, the FBI and DHS assessed that “it is possible environmental extremists may commit criminal acts potentially destructive of critical infrastructure, such as property damage, to express solidarity with those arrested in the near term.” However, the document adds, there existed “no specific targeting or threat information” suggesting that this was actually true.
In the eyes of some intelligence analysts, even Covid-19 provided potential spark for environmental extremism. A daily intelligence briefing by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Interagency Counterterrorism Task Force provided analysis about how “Europe’s terrorists” might take advantage of the pandemic. “The Covid-19 outbreak could also lead to a rise of violent actions by the hands of environmental extremists. Economic difficulties, a lack of public support, and more urgent needs might thwart advances in the global warming agenda and interrupt green investments by national governments,” the document states. “Moreover, having witnessed the immediate environmental benefits due to radical actions like a global lockdown and economic disruption, eco-activists could be triggered to resort to violence.”
German framed much of the speculation as noise. “One of the problems with the buildup of these intelligence reporting platforms and the information sharing environment that was built after 9/11 was that they hired all these analysts who aren’t given a very specific mandate on what to report,” he explained. “They’re measured by the number of reports. After you’ve written about one problem in the criminal justice system, you run out of things to write about.”
Ultimately, the wind energy exercise in Iowa was inconclusive. The attacks might happen, or they might not: “Based on the Red Hat exercise, FBI Omaha and the Iowa DOI/FC estimated that, as wind energy projects become more common, there is a roughly even chance that attacks against wind energy assets in Iowa by environmental extremists will occur.” Even in the face of that analysis, though, the FBI declined to back down from its hypothesis: “The FBI’s official assessment is environmental extremists possibly will increase their criminal activity against the industrial wind industry.”
If anything, Germain said, the FBI’s foray into attacking windmills was counterproductive. “It is just dangerous for the FBI to be brainstorming ways for groups to attack private companies, putting that on paper, and then putting it in systems where it can leak out,” he said. “They created a security situation. This is a blueprint for how to attack wind turbines, and it doesn’t come from any terrorist group, it comes from the FBI.”
Down the road, police learning to view environmentalists as saboteurs could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. “It’s creating a likelihood that when there are more confrontations over energy infrastructure,” McQuade said, “that the response will be extremely punitive and will escalate the struggle.”
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https://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/07/10/multimillion-dollar-ad-campaigns-aim-influence-congressional-votes
7/15
A nuclear deal with Iran could be a game changer for US foreign policy and for the Middle East. The P5+1 (the U.S., China, Russia, France and the United Kingdom, plus Germany) and Iran have been developing a comprehensive agreement that would freeze Iran’s ability to create a nuclear weapon and start the process of sanctions relief.
If it succeeds, this deal would dramatically decrease the probability of another costly war in the Middle East and could usher in an historic rapprochement between the US and Iran after 34 years of hostilities. US-Iranian collaboration against extremist groups from ISIL to Al Qaeda could help damp down the fires raging across the Middle East.
Key US allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, oppose the deal. Both nations harbor long-standing hostilities toward Iran and both want to preserve their preferential relationship with the US. But the American people, frustrated by over a decade of US involvement in Middle East wars, support the initiative. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that 6 in 10 Americans support a plan to lift international economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for limits on its nuclear program.
Democrats back the agreement by an overwhelming majority of five to one, but even a plurality of Republican voters support the Iran nuclear deal. Why, then, will there be such a tough battle in Congress to approve a deal that the Obama administration has worked so hard to achieve and is supported by most Americans?
Some Republicans have a knee-jerk reaction to anything the Obama administration puts forth. And certain Republican and Democrat Congress members fundamentally distrust Iran, believe it is sponsoring militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and think a deal will strengthen Iran to the detriment of Israel.
But the most compelling reason that so many elected officials will oppose the deal is the power of lobby groups and think tanks, backed by hawkish billionaires who are determined to quash a deal they see as bad for Israel.
Little known to the public, here are some of the groups:
United Against Nuclear Iran:Founded in 2008, UANI boasts a bipartisan powerhouse advisory board of former politicians, intelligence officials and policy experts. Cofounders Richard Holbrooke and Dennis Ross, and its president Gary Samore, have all worked in Obama’s White House. In June, UANI announced a multimillion-dollar TV, print, radio, and digital campaign with the message that “America Can’t Trust Iran, Concessions have gone too far.” Mark Wallace, UANI’s chairman and George Bush’s US ambassador to the UN, said, “We have a multi-million-dollar budget and we are in it for the long haul. Money continues to pour in.”
Secure America Now: Founded in 2011 by pollsters John McLaughlin and Pat Cadell, it is linked to right-wing pro-Israel factions in the US and abroad. The Advisory Board includes Col. Richard Kemp, who denounces the “global conspiracy of propaganda aimed at the total de-legitimization of the state of Israel” and former UN Ambassador John Bolton, who insists that “the biggest threat to our national security is sitting in the White House.”
The group labels Iran “the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism” and recently launched its own $1 million ad campaign against the nuclear deal. One ad features an American woman saying her father was killed by an IED in Iraq, followed by a menacing voice claiming “Iran has single-handedly supplied thousands of IEDs that have killed or maimed America’s troops overseas. Today, negotiators are pushing for a nuclear deal with Iran that would give them access to nuclear weapons.” It tells Americans to call their Senators and “speak out against a bad deal.”
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies:Founded just after the 9/11 attacks, this neoconservative think tank pushes for an aggressive military response in the Middle East and also follows a hawkish pro-Israel line. It advocates for crippling sanctions on Iran, including medicines, as a way to cause domestic hardship and internal turmoil and its experts are leading advocates for a US military strike on Iran.
American Security Initiative: This is a new group, also bipartisan, formed in 2015 by three former senators: Norm Coleman, Evan Bayh and Saxby Chambliss. In 2014 Norm Coleman, a Republican from Minnesota, became a registered lobbyist for the repressive Saudi regime, providing the Saudis with legal services on issues including “policy developments involving Iran.”
Its first campaign was a successful effort to pass the Corker-Menendez bill, which forces President Obama to submit the agreement to Congress before signing it. In March, the group launched a $1.4 million ad campaign aimed at Senator Schumer and other key senators with the message that the deal (which had not even been released) is “great for Iran, and dangerous for us.” One over-the-top, fear-mongering ad showed a suicide-bombing truck driver in an American city detonating a nuclear bomb, apparently on behalf of Iran. The message, albeit a crazy one, is that if Iran is allowed to get a nuclear weapon, it will attack the US.
AIPAC: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is the largest pro-Israel lobby group. AIPAC, too, has been pushing sanctions and opposing the nuclear deal. It claims that Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terror and is racing toward a nuclear weapons capability. AIPAC spends millions of dollars lobbying but its real financial clout lies with the pro-Israel Political Action Committees (PACs) it is tied to.
In addition to lobbying against a deal in Washington, over the past several years AIPAC has also been promoting state-level bills mandating divestment of public funds from foreign companies doing business with Iran.
Dozens of states have passed such bills, and many are likely to stay in place even after a nuclear deal, complicating the federal sanctions relief that is a key element of the negotiations.
What is the source of the millions of dollars now being poured into the effort to squash the nuclear deal? Most comes froma handful of super-wealthy individuals. Home Depot founder Bernard Marcus gave over $10 million to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Other multimillion donors are hedge fund billionaire and Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs board member Paul Singer, and Charles Bronfman of the Seagram liquor empire and board chair of Koor Industries, one of Israel’s largest investment holding companies.
The largest donor is Sheldon Adelson,a casino and business magnate who contributed almost $100 million to conservative candidates in the 2012 presidential campaign, outspending any other individual or organization. He publicly advocated for the Obama administration to bomb Iran. Peter Beinart, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, said “Every Republican politician knows that Adelson conditions his checks on their Iran vote.”
Congress has 30 days from the day the deal is introduced to vote in support or opposition (or 60 days if the negotiations are delayed). To block the deal, Congress needs a veto-proof majority, which is precisely what these groups and individuals are attempting to buy.
“I’ve been around this town for about 30 years now and I’ve never seen foreign policy debate that is being so profoundly affected by the movement of hundreds of millions of dollars in the American political system,” said former six-term Congressman Jim Slattery.
Congresspeople face a dilemma: they fear a backlash by the billionaires if they vote for the deal, but most of their constituents support the deal. The pathetic irony is that the democratic move of giving Congress a say in the Iran deal (instead of leaving the administration with the authority to seal the agreement), the billionaires have a better shot at drowning out the voices of the American people.
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace, is the author of the new book, Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Her previous books include: :{Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}:; Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control; Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart, and (with Jodie Evans) Stop the Next War Now (Inner Ocean Action Guide). Follow her on Twitter: @:{medeabenjamin:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}:
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Founded in the wake of the 9/11 attacks with the goal of pushing an aggressive “war on terror” in the Middle East and hawkish “pro-Israel” policies in Washington, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is aneoconservative think tankthat claims to defend democratic countries from “radical Islamism.” It is the successor organization of a group called EMET, an education initiative founded earlier in 2001 as part of an effort to gain support for Israel's response to the Palestinian Intifada and to diminish public outcry against Israeli actions.[[1]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn1)
Regarding FDD’s predecessor EMET, Slate reported in mid-2015: “On April 24, 2001, three major pro-Israel donors incorporated an organization called EMET (Hebrew for ‘truth’). In an application to the Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt status, FDD president [Clifford May] explained that the group ‘was to provide education to enhance Israel’s image in North America and the public’s understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations.’”[[2]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn2)
Describing itself as “a non-profit, non-partisan policy institute working to defend free nations against their enemies,”[[3]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn3) the organization at one point declared on its website that “a global war is being waged against democratic societies. While the military fights with arms, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies fights with ideas. … We fight militant Islamism and other anti-democratic forces with information, policy research, investigative journalism, strategic communications, and democracy and counterterrorism education.”[[4]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn4)
Writer John Judis argues that FDD has an “ideological affinity with the Israeli government.” In an August 2015 piece, Judis wrote: “Its research and advocacy have centered on the Middle East and in particular on conflicts and issues that impinge on Israel. And its positions have closely tracked those of the Likud party and its leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”[[5]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn5)
Shortly after its founding, FDD quickly became a prominent member of a group of neoconservative think tanks and advocacy groups—including the American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute—that were influential in shaping the early foreign policy priorities of the George W. Bush administration. At the height of the so-called “war on terror,” FDD also absorbed the Committee on the Present Danger, a Cold War-era anticommunist group that been reconstituted to push for hardline policies in the Middle East.
Today, FDD’s experts are leading advocates of U.S. military intervention in Iran and Syria, promote overturning the comprehensive July 2015 nuclear deal on Iran’s nuclear program, and advocate one-sided U.S. support for Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Partisan or Nonpartisan?
While FDD purports to be nonpartisan, Republican Party insiders hold a number of its top posts, and many of the group’s principals have been vocal advocates of hawkish “pro-Israel” policies. FDD’s president, Clifford May, is a former writer for the New York Times who once served as director of communications for the Republican National Committee. May is also a former editor of the party's official magazine (Rising Tide), a former vice chair of the Republican Jewish Coalition, and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger. FDD’s chairman is former CIA director and longtime neoconservative activist James Woolsey, a self-described “Scoop Jackson Democrat” who advised George W. Bush and John McCain on national security issues. Senior fellow John Hannah is a former national security aide to Dick Cheney.
FDD no longer provides information on its website about its board of directors or “Leadership Council.” In mid-2013, the Leadership Council included several high-profile neoconservatives and Republican Party figures. Among them were Paula Dobriansky,an undersecretary of state during the George W. Bush administration; publisher Steve Forbes, a former GOP presidential candidate; former FBI director Louis Freeh; the *Weekly Standard*’s Bill Kristol; Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT); and former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was a past member, along with the late Jeane Kirkpatrick, Jack Kemp, and Max Kampelman. Its board of directors had a similar makeup. In 2013, members included the Republican House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), religious right figure Gary Bauer, neoconservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, Reagan-era Pentagon official Richard Perle, and the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens.
As of September 2015, FDD provides a list of “distinguished advisors” on its website, which included many of the figures mentioned above, including Lieberman, McFarlane, Freeh, Dobriansky, Stephens, Krauthammer, Kristol, and Forbes. Other advisors included former CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Richard Carlson, former Reagan official Francis “Bing” West, and retired Gen. P.X. Kelley.[[6]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn6)
FDD’s claims of nonpartisanship were severely damaged in February 2008 after it created a spin-off organization, the now-defunct Defense of Democracies, to run an aggressive television ad campaign aimed at pressuring the Democratic-led House to “pass the Senate’s version” of the “Terror Surveillance Bill.” The controversial bill was aimed at providing retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that had cooperated with the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance programs. FDD has 501(c)(3) non-profit status, which bars it from undertaking political activities. However, according to a February 25, 2008 statement on the FDD website, the spin-off organization, which operated out of the same offices as FDD, was “a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c)(4) advocacy organization affiliated with, though separate from, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Its mission is to support and encourage policies, procedures and laws necessary to defeat terrorism.”
Targeted ads that aired in more than a dozen different Democratic-held congressional districts left the impression that if the House didn’t pass the bill in question, the United States would lose clearance to “intercept Al Qaeda communications.” Spencer Ackerman, reporting in the Washington Independent, wrote, “In fact, the intelligence community has the authority to intercept Al Qaeda communications under other laws; the expired Protect America Act allowed the National Security Agency to intercept communications between any two persons of interest to a foreign intelligence investigation, even including U.S. citizens, without a warrant.”[[7]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn7)
Noting that FDD had received State Department contracts in the past, some observers pointed out that any use of State Department funding for political advocacy would be illegal. “A spokesman for the foundation, Brian Wise, said he did not know the exact monetary worth of the foundation’s [State Department] grants,” reported Ackerman. “But he said one grant was worth $487,000 for an unspecified democracy-promotion program. Wise conceded that the foundation had founded the Defense of Democracies organization last week ‘for tax purposes,’ adding that ‘Defense of Democracies [provides] issue advocacy, whereas the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies is a policy institute and academic institution.’ … Wise said he was ‘100 percent sure’ that no federal funds received by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies went to the Defense of Democracies. ‘They are completely separate organizations with separate funding sources.’”[[8]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn8)
FDD’s efforts to distinguish itself from Defense of Democracies did not satisfy many Democratic supporters of the foundation, some of whom expressed outrage that FDD would target their colleagues. Within days of the ads’ airing, nearly all the Democrats who had served on FDD’s board of advisors quit, including Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, Rep. Jim Marshall of Georgia, and former Al Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile. Asked about the resignations, FDD’s Clifford May told Newsweek, "I'm disappointed that the political pressures have been such that several Democratic members of FDD's board of advisors—including several who I'm pretty sure agree with us on the substance of the issue—have decided to resign. The Senate bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, which persuaded us this was not a partisan issue.”[[9]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn9)
Iran
FDD’s activities on Iran have increased considerably since 2008, when leading hawks Michael Ledeen and Reuel Marc Gerecht joined the foundation after leaving theAmerican Enterprise Institute.[[10]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn10) By 2011, FDD had launched three projects directly focused on Iran: the Iran/Hezbollah Project,[[11]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn11) the Iran Energy Project,[[12]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn12) and the Iran Human Rights Project, which helped found iranchannel.org.[[13]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn13)
Of these projects, which as of 2015 all appear defunct, the Iran Energy Project was arguably the most influential. Led by FDD executive director Mark Dubowitz, the project became a clearinghouse for research and talking points in favor of a crippling U.S. and international sanctions regime on Iran. “As the Iran issue turned into a hot-button foreign policy problem for Obama,” an OZY profile noted in January 2014, “Dubowitz and FDD colleagues like Jonathan Schanzer, a former Treasury Department official on terrorist financing, have become go-to sources for the New York Times, AP and others,” including for “sanction hawks” in Congress.[[14]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn14)
In particular, Dubowitz has pushed for sanctions that would cause domestic hardship and turmoil inside Iran and argued against adapting U.S. laws to ease the import of sanctions-exempt U.S. medicines.[[15]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn15) "Political and economic isolation is designed to nurture Iran's convulsive internal contradictions," Dubowitz wrote in a 2011 *Weekly Standard* piece coauthored with Gerecht. "The issue is timing: Can we put enough pressure on [Iranian Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei and his praetorians to either crack the regime or make the supreme leader believe that the nuclear program actually threatens his rule?"[[16]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn16)
FDD was strongly critical of the nuclear negotiations between Iran and six world powers that led to a comprehensive nuclear deal in July 2015. Dubowitz staunchly opposed any lapse in economic pressure after Iran reached an interim nuclear deal with the six world powers known as the P5+1 in late 2013. "The efficacy of sanctions depends on the threat of escalation, where an ever-expanding web of restrictions scares off foreign businesses," he and Gerecht wrote in a November 2013 Wall Street Journalop-ed. "The sanctions game with Iran has been as much psychological as legal," they added. "When the Obama administration sends a signal that it is willing to reduce economic sanctions for little in return, the general impression abroad…is that the White House's resolve is waning."[[17]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn17) Dubowitz was a staunch supporter of sanctions legislation introduced during the talks by Sens. Mark Kirk and Robert Menendez, which observers argued were designed to scuttle the process altogether by violating a U.S. pledge not impose new penalties during the negotiations.[[18]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn18)
In a testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee shortly before the November 2014 deadline for negotiations between Iran and the P5+1, Dubowitz suggested that the sanctions regime on Iran should remain even if an agreement is reached. Congress should “’defend the sanctions architecture it was so instrumental in creating’ to enforce a nuclear deal that may be announced between the United States and its allies and Iran in the coming days,” an FDD press release quotes him as saying.[[19]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn19)Dubowitz also wrote in a opinion piece that “If the president chooses to ignore Congress,” then it should withhold funding to implement any deal.[[20]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn20)
FDD fellows and staff assailed the July 2015 nuclear deal reached between Iran and the P5+1. “This deal is going to leave the next president with an excruciatingly difficult decision: either to accept an Iranian bomb or to bomb Iran,” claimed Dubowitz after the agreement was announced.[[21]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn21) FDD President Clifford May contended that “Mr. Obama seeks to accommodate and appease Iran’s rulers.” He added: “It would be an exaggeration to say that such policies always lead to major wars and holocausts. But can you tell me when such policies have led to good outcomes?”[[22]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn22)
In an op-ed for the right-wing Washington Times, May also denounced the Obama administration for working with the rest of the P5+1 to pass a U.N. Security Council Resolution backing the agreement. “If that isn’t technically a surrender of American sovereignty, it certainly opens that door—and, I’m afraid, removes the remaining hinges,” May declared. He further accused Obama of “setting changes to the Constitution” for not passing the deal as a treaty through Congress.[[23]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn23)
Some observers have noted that FDD’s real opposition to the Iran nuclear deal is the potential it created for a broader U.S.-Iran rapprochement. According to John Judis: “[Clifford] May described sympathetically Israel’s ‘worry that Mr. Obama means to form a de facto alliance with Iran.’ Some observers have long said that this concern actually lies at the heart of the Israeli government’s opposition to a deal with Iran: Netanyahu fears that a deal would wed American foreign policy to an irredeemably revolutionary Iran at the expense of Israel.”[[24]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn24)
However, in their opposition to the Iran deal, FDD and its like-minded allies have sought to emphasize the supposed threats the agreement poses to the United States, as opposed to Israel. “FDD experts have lately stressed the Iran agreement’s threat to America rather than its threat to Israel. AIPAC has followed the same path in an ad called”[[25]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn25)
In November 2012, FDD added a fourth Iran ini ‘We Need a Better Deal,’ which its Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran produced. People at AIPAC and FDD may be worried that they will be accused of acting solely in Israel’s interest or of putting Israel’s interest before that of the United States.tiative funded by the Targum Shlishi Foundation called the “Iran Corruption and Social Media Project.” According to a Targum Shlishi email bulletin: “The project will use military grade social media technology to comb through hundreds of thousands of social media conversations to determine whether the economic sanctions are broadening anger against the regime from a cross section of the population, ranging from middle and upper class to lower working class Iranians. The results will help FDD allies in the government both to gauge the impact of the sanctions and help them counter accusations that sanctions hurt only the average Iranian.”[[26]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn26)
“Iran is an existential threat to Israel, and time is running out,” noted Aryeh Rubin, director of Targum Shlishi. “While the sanctions have been a heavy blow, they are not enough. We hope this FDD project will provide valuable information about what is going on in the minds and hearts of the Iranian people and that it will also help to identify examples of regime corruption—ultimately, we hope this project will contribute to countering the threat a nuclear Iran poses to Israel. We applaud the FDD’s use of state-of-the-art technology to further the cause of democracy, of all people of goodwill, and of Israel and the Jewish people.”[[27]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn27)
FDD has also promoted providing direct support to Iran’s opposition “Green Movement.” In 2010, at its annual forum on the theme “Countering the Iranian threat,” then-newly elected Sen. Mark Kirk, the event’s keynote speaker, argued that President Obama should reach out to exiled members of the Green Movement, increase aid to Iranian democracy groups, and make Iranian political prisoners "household names throughout America" like President Ronald Reagan did with Soviet detainees in the 1980s.[[28]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn28)
Many figures associated with FDD have been vocal proponents of direct military action against Iran. “We are in a big war, and Iran is at the heart of the enemy army,” wrote Ledeen in 2009. “Most of the time, our leaders have refused to accept the fact that Iran will do everything possible to dominate or destroy us. Instead of trying to defeat the mullahs, every president has sought rapprochement, just as Obama is doing now."[[29]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn29) Remarking on his own longtime advocacy for war with Iran, Gerecht once quipped, "I've written about 25,000 words about bombing Iran. Even my mom thinks I've gone too far.”[[30]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn30)
Israel-Palestine
Another core FDD preoccupation is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, about which the organization promotes views similar to those of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party. An early example of its advocacy on this issue came in Spring 2002, when in an apparent effort to thwart Bush administration initiatives to reopen Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations, FDD aired 30-second television spots conflating Yasser Arafat with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.[[31]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn31) The video's producer was Nir Boms, FDD's first vice president and a former officer for the Israeli Embassy in Washington.[[32]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn32)
During the 2014 Gaza War, FDD “journalist-in-residence” Claudia Rosett vociferously criticized the United Nations Relief Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), claiming that it was “one of the U.N.’s most perverse, destructive creations” and that “it essentially functions as Hamas’s handmaiden” in the Gaza Strip. Rosett decried UNRWA for having accused Israel of violating international law during the conflict and lamented that an UNRWA spokesman had “wept for the Palestinians” on Al Jazeera. She added: “U.S. tax dollars fund UNRWA officials now lobbying in Washington to obtain yet more money for an agency entwined with the rocket-launching, tunnel-digging rulers of Gaza.”[[33]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn33)
In late February 2004, FDD submitted a supporting brief to the International Court of Justice, which was considering a Palestinian petition to have the massive wall Israel is building in the West Bank condemned as a breach of international law. FDD claimed that the wall, which has been at the center of violent disputes between Palestinians and Israelis as well as a campaign of nonviolent resistance, was a first step toward resolving the conflict: "The terrorism prevention barrier can benefit the Palestinians because with it in place, Israel's re-occupation of West Bank cities and towns will no longer be necessary. Tanks, troops, checkpoints, and roadblocks will be removed as terrorism declines. Under such circumstances, the chances for renewed negotiations leading to a settlement can increase.”[[34]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn34)
FDD has also pushed for the United States to aggressively confront and marginalize the grassroots BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement, which promotes placing economic pressure on Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories. Speaking before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in July 2015, FDD executive director Mark Dubowitz stated: “The BDS movement is a tool of political, economic, and financial warfare against Israel. Those waging this war seek to first isolate and delegitimize Israel and to turn it into an international pariah. From there, doing economic damage to Israel becomes an easier task.”[[35]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn35)
Dubowitz added: “While many in this country are focused on the threatening atmosphere that the BDS movement has created for pro-Israel students on campus, FDD’s research has determined that the economic and financial warfare campaign currently targeting Israel’s economic and financial relationships with Europe is far more dangerous. … BDS is a form of economic and financial warfare. We can and should weaken it through tactical measures. This hearing is an important step to that end. But BDS must also be viewed within a broader problem set that must be addressed at a more strategic level. Failure to do so will leave us vulnerable to attack, while also leaving exposed our most reliable partner in the Middle East as well as other important allies in Europe, Asia and around the world.”[[36]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn36)
In October 2010, FDD released a report called “Palestinian Pulse: What Policymakers Can Learn From Palestinian Social Media.” Similar to the Iranian social media project it launched in 2012, the project purported to use “military-grade software to cull information from social networks” to “determine Palestinian public sentiment and its potential impact on U.S. foreign policy.” Report coauthor Mark Dubowitz suggested that the results showed a lingering Palestinian antipathy toward Israel. "If the online environment is even a remotely accurate indicator of Palestinian public sentiment,” he said, “the Obama administration's Middle East peace initiative may encounter more challenges than expected. The United States cannot discount the impact of deepening Palestinian rejectionism."[[37]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn37)
Although the report seemed to suggest that attitudes tracked through social media could shed some light on the outcome of peace talks, no corresponding analysis of Israeli social media postings was apparently conducted (though the authors did acknowledge toward the end of the report that such research “could be carried out”).[[38]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn38)
Staff and Projects
The FDD has a stable of policy wonks with hawkish track records, especially on Mideast-related issues. Prominent senior fellows and staffers have included Andrew C. McCarthy, a contributor to the National Review and former federal prosecutor; Toby Dershowitz, a former spokesperson for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee(AIPAC) and fundraiser for the Brussels-based European Foundation for Democracy; and journalist Claudia Rosett, a winner of the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism (which was established by Rupert Murdoch, a close ally of many neoconservatives). Other notable FDD scholars have included Emanuele Ottolenghi, Walid Phares, Lee Smith, and James Kirchick.
a now-defunct neoconservative institute that was one of the leading promoters of the Iraq War and the Bush administration's aggressive agenda in the Middle East. These include James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney, Bill Kristol, Steve Forbes, Richard Perle, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Charles Krauthammer, among others.
FDD runs many projects and programs, though some appear dormant. In addition to the projects noted above, FDD operates a program explicitly devoted to “promoting regime change in Syria”[[39]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn39) and another dedicated to ensuring U.S. support for Israel’s “quantitative military edge” in the Middle East. Other projects have included the Center for Terrorism Research, at one time headed by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Walid Phares; the Center for Law & Counterterrorism, headed by Andrew McCarthy; the Future of Terrorism Project; and the Radical Islam in Africa Project focusing on the Horn of Africa, which FDD calls the “forgotten front” in the war on terror. In addition, FDD hosts the Shield America project, dedicated to promoting elaborate “missile defense” projects and alerting the public and policy makers about the discredited “threat” of an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) terrorist attack from Iran. (For more on the EMP threat, see Robert Farley, “The EMP Threat: Lots of Hype, Little Traction,” Right Web, October 2009.)[[40]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn40)
The foundation directs a number of projects at young people. It operates a Campus Program, a “National Security Fellows” program for “up-and-coming members of the policy community, and a “National Security Trip to Israel,” which takes aspiring young DC professionals for private meetings with Israeli political and security officials.”[[41]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn41)
FDD has operated numerous democracy-support programs over the years, including an education program with the "goal of advancing democratic values of liberty, tolerance, pluralism, and individual rights in the Greater Middle East"; a program that promoted "democracy activists" in the Middle East; and one that focused on South Asia. During the George W. Bush administration, FDD expanded its democracy programs in the Middle East with U.S. government funding. One such program was the Iraqi Women's Educational Institute (IWEI), a joint initiative of the American Islamic Conference, FDD, and the conservative Independent Women's Forum. The mission of this short-lived organization was, according to FDD, to promote the participation of women in Iraqi society through programs on democracy education and coalition building.[[42]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn42) Between 2004 and 2006, the IWEI ran two initiatives with funding from the U.S. State Department.[[43]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn43)
In mid-2006, FDD and the European Foundation for Democracy, both of which listed Walid Phares as a fellow, created a joint project called the Center for Liberty in the Middle East (CLIME),“a non-profit organization that supports individuals and civic groups that are spreading democratic values of liberty and tolerance in the Middle East.” With headquarters in both Brussels and Washington, D.C. and a multinational staff made up of scholars from Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, CLIME’s website claims to advocate “peaceful transitions to political systems that protect individual liberties, enable full political participation, and respect ethnic, religious and political diversity.”[[44]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn44)
Funding
FDD has long been secretive about its sources of funding, with May insisting that the organization enjoys the support of “all kinds of donors who are interested in defending democratic societies around the world from their sworn enemies.” But an August 2013 Salon report revealed that FDD subsisted primarily on the largesse of a “handful” of the Republican Party’s “heavyweight donors, fundraisers, and outspoken critics of the Obama White House’s foreign policy.” Key donors have included Home Depot founder Bernard Marcus, hedge fund billionaire and Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs board member Paul Singer, and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, also a well-known funder of right-wing “pro-Israel” pressure groups. All three are prominent backers of the Republican Jewish Coalition who donated heavily to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.[[45]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn45) Singer, moreover, is the former hedge fund boss of leading Romney foreign policy adviser Dan Senor, a key figure behind the neoconservative pressure group Foreign Policy Initiative.
Although FDD’s 2011 990 filing reported only a little over $8 million in revenues,[[46]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn46) Salon reported that the group’s Schedule A form from the same year reported nearly $11 million in receipts from Marcus, $3.6 million from Singer, and over $1.5 million from Adelson. Rounding out the list were million-dollar contributions from both Newton Becker and his family foundation, the Abramson Family Foundation, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation—all of which have supported the work of other neoconservative groups in the past. Journalist Eli Clifton concluded for Salonthat the numbers belied FDD’s claims to bipartisan support. “FDD’s right-wing national security work,” he wrote, “has long corresponded nicely with the politics of the nation’s right-leaning political party.”[[47]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn47)
A 2011 investigation by Think Progress revealed the dozens of donors who helped launch FDD and keep it afloat during its formative years. According to tax documents obtained by Think Progress, which were combined into one PDF with addresses deleted, among the main funders during the 2001-2004 period were the Abramson Family Foundation, led by the founder of U.S. Healthcare Leonard Abramson. It provided the largest portion of FDD’s startup funding with a $222,523 grant in 2001. Abramson continued funding the group with an $600,000 in contributions during 2002-2004. The heirs to the Seagram liquor company fortune, Canadians Edgar M. and Charles Bronfman, gave $1,050,000 to FDD during this period. According to Think Progress, “Edgar M. Bronfman served as president of the World Jewish Congress from 1979 to 2007. Charles Bronfman, along with fellow FDD donor Michael Steinhardt, cofounded Taglit Birthright which offers free trips to Israel for young Jewish adults. Steinhardt is a hedge fund mogul who contributed $850,000 to FDD from 2001 to 2004.”
Other donors included “Home Depot cofounder Bernard Marcus who contributed $600,000 between 2001 and 2003; mortgage backed securities pioneer Lewis Raniericontributed $350,000 between 2002 and 2004; and Ameriquest owner, and Bush administration ambassador to the Netherlands from 2006 to 2008, Roland Arnall contributed $1,802,000 between 2003 and 2004. … [M]edia mogul and Democratic Party donor Haim Saban, a surprising donor considering FDD’s Republican bent and Clifford May’s former role as an RNC spokesperson; The Israel Project director Jennifer Mizrahi; and Dalck Feith, father of former Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith.”[[48]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/#_edn48)
==
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/coates_victoria/
Victoria Coates is the National Security Adviser on the Senate staff of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a leading Republican nominee for the 2016 presidential election.[[1]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/coates_victoria/#_edn1)
Coates has distinct neoconservative leanings, having served as director of research for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and completed a stint as adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.[[2]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/coates_victoria/#_edn2) These tendencies were clearly on display in March 2016 when Cruz announced his foreign policy team, which included a host hard-right and “pro-Israel” ideologues, many of whom were associated with the campaign to push the George W. Bush administration to attack Iraq after the 9/11 attacks, including Elliott Abrams, Michael Ledeen, and Frank Gaffney. When asked about this team, Coates noted her role in assembling it: “Both Frank and Elliott are people I went out of my way to set up meetings with the Senator. He has met with both of them individually for years.”
According to the Daily Beast, Coates requires interns working for Ted Cruz to read a controversial essay by former U.S. ambassador to the UN and influential neoconservative ideologue Jeane Kirkpatrick titled “Dictatorships and Double Standards.”[[3]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/coates_victoria/#_edn3) The essay, published by Commentary Magazinein 1979, was a widely noted rightwing critique of President Jimmy Carter’s efforts to emphasize human rights in U.S. foreign policy. It was also notorious for its attempt to justify U.S. alliances with brutal right-wing dictatorships as part of the U.S. anti-communist crusade in places like Central America.[[4]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/coates_victoria/#_edn4)
Coates, who has a PhD in art history from the University of Pennsylvania, is a contributor to the conservative blog, RedState, as well as the William Kristol-edited *Weekly Standard*.[[5]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/coates_victoria/#_edn5) During the 2012 president election, she served as a foreign policy adviser to Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry’s presidential campaign.[[6]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/coates_victoria/#_edn6)
Foreign Policy Views
In a 2012 review of neoconservative writer and historian Robert Kagan’s book The World America Made, Coates highlighted the “importance” Kagan places on “human initiative and action” in bringing about a “more liberal political and economic order.” Pointing to U.S. influence around the world, Coates wrote: “Kagan’s insistence on the spread of democracy as a necessity for improving greater good, even when it is difficult, is welcome.”[[7]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/coates_victoria/#_edn7)
Other commentators, such as Eliana Johnson of the conservative National Review, have pointed out that Kagan’s book “posits that the modern world order rests not on America’s cherished ideals—respect for individual rights and human dignity—but on economic and military power, and that its preservation requires bolstering America’s hard power.”[[8]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/coates_victoria/#_edn8)
Coates has argued that the United States should launch military strikes against Syria similar to those conducted against Libya in 2011. “In dealing with Libya and Syria, consistency need not be the hobgoblin of little minds but can rather be the hallmark of a consistent and coordinated foreign policy. There are equivalencies to be drawn between the two crises, and once these are recognized we should take equivalent action. It is not a decision to be taken lightly, but we would not be alone and the cause is just,” Coates wrote on her blog in February 2012. “We have the unified support of our European and Arab allies. We have moral and strategic interests at stake. Rather than whining about the shocking moral turpitude of the United Nations, the President of the United States needs to remember his responsibilities as the leader of the free world—and lead.”[[9]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/coates_victoria/#_edn9)
Coates has also been a vociferous critic of President Obama, particularly his support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the pre-1967 war borders, which has been stated U.S. policy for decades.[[10]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/coates_victoria/#_edn10) “What the President is asking is that more than 70% of that [Israel’s] history be erased, beginning with the reasons it was deemed necessary to annex the territories in 1967, and continuing on through the failed diplomatic initiatives, UN humiliations and relentless, deadly terrorist attacks of the past decades,” Coates wrote in May 2011. “Perhaps for our President Israel is still an abstract phantasm that might or might not exist, but for others it has been a reality for the last 63 years. Israel has the right to all of its history, and all of its territory.”[[11]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/coates_victoria/#_edn11)
Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.
Sources
==
Broidy relied on a few key figures in Washington to help carry out his plan. One was Rep. Ed Royce, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Broidy had helped Royce’s wife get a job at the State Department. A onetime Saudi critic, Royce figured prominently into Broidy’s work. Broidy told Nader that he “caused” Royce to enter into the Congressional Record a fawning FoxNews.com op-ed by a Saudi general that hailed Trump for ushering in a new era in U.S.-Saudi relations.
Royce also headlined a May 2017 conference on Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood that, at least on paper, was organized by two think tanks, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy and the Hudson Institute. But emails and other planning documents show that Broidy had a hand in the planning. With dozens of journalists in the audience at the Fairmont Hotel in Washington, Royce announced an upcoming piece of legislation that would accuse Qatar of funding Hamas and open up the possibility of sanctions. “This is the first such bill to do so!” Broidy told Nader in an email. (Royce did not respond to requests for comment.)
Broidy’s conference came amid a crescendo of op-eds, news stories and other critical statements about Qatar in the spring and summer of 2017. As one former foreign lobbyist told me, small actions that create the perception of closer ties or tensions between a foreign nation and the U.S. are nearly as valuable as actual policy. That can take the form of a public event, a critical editorial or a letter from one member of Congress to his or her colleagues.
The lobbyist tells the story of a 2015 hearing about U.S.-Hungary relations hosted by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., the then-chair of a subcommittee focusing on Eastern Europe. Few people attended the hearing, and it received almost zero coverage in the U.S., but it created a “deluge of coverage” in Hungary and was used by the country’s autocratic prime minister, Viktor Orban, to show that he had champions in the U.S. “The smallest or inconsequential action by a member of Congress, such as a ‘Dear Colleague’ letter, can be put out in the foreign press and used by governments to justify their policies and politics,” the lobbyist says.
fox cheerleader venez
https://www.foxnews.com/world/drug-trafficking-maduro-venezuela
no lnx pix [vid?]
==-
Drug trafficking keeping Maduro in power in Venezuela, analysts say
Hollie McKay [who?]
By Hollie McKay | Fox News
Pence says Venezuela ambassador 'shouldn't be here' while addressing the UN Security CouncilVideo
Pence says Venezuela ambassador 'shouldn't be here' while addressing the UN Security Council]
It has been more than three months since the U.S. accelerated its onslaught of economic sanctions on Venezuela, coupled with the back of a new interim President – heightening official expectation that the Nicolas Maduro-led regime would crumble.
Only the socialist dictatorship has failed to fall. While there an array of factors to blame, analysts are pointing to illicit trafficking rings as a fundamental Maduro lifeline.
:{
“The Venezuelan military forces has become a narco-criminal, armed organization. Most of the top and mid-commanders are deeply involved in corruption, drug operations, and serious human rights abuses,” Johan Obdola, president of Latin America-focused global intelligence and security firm IOSI, told Fox News,}: noting that cartel-led, massive drug operations continue to spawn the country keeping the top echelon well-fed and financed. “Small pro-regime policing agencies and military units across the nation conduct these criminal operations centered on drug trafficking, kidnapping, and robbery to survive the crisis.”
Kevin Ivers, Vice President and Latin America expert at public policy firm DCI Group, pointed out that years ago, the elite of the Venezuelan military was put in charge of the core elements of the domestic economy, such as the importation and distribution of food and consumer goods.
[In this Feb. 14, 2019 file photo, Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during an interview at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela. (???????AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)
“This has encouraged corruption and profiteering that has made key elements of the military part of what can be called the regime’s ‘mafia,’ and this has extended beyond consumer goods to drug trafficking,” he explained. “Maduro has also spent years systematically splintering the military into factions and playing them off each other to make it difficult for them to unite against him.”
PENCE CONFRONTS VENEZUELAN AMBASSADOR AT UN: ‘YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE’
Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, concurred that many in the upper echelons receive a cut from the regime’s illicit trafficking network – from drugs to food and medicine racketeering.
“There aren’t enough incentives(for military leaders) to leave and disincentives to stay to tip the balance, especially at the top,” he noted.
Indeed, military defections – once considered key to Maduro’s expulsion – have dipped from 80 to 100 per day earlier this year to just two or three, according to the Washington Post. And of those, very few have come from the highest ranks and thus failed to generate a game-changing ripple effect.
“There were no key defections, roughly 500 members of the military without any real commanders. In a 110,000 military it had no impact,” explained Carlos Ponce, a senior fellow, and director of Latin America Programs at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. “There was no real analysis of the military structure and the breaking points.”
Ponce said that former leader Hugo Chavez intentionally dismembered the lines of command to avoid a coup d’état while he was in power. He also pointed out that those who did make the leap have been paying the price.
“The commanders and high-ranking officials allegedly caught in anti-Maduro meetings have been tortured and their families isolated from any social or food program,” Ponce noted. “So there is a disincentive for anyone who showed discontent with the regime – jail or torture and abandonment to their families.”
Maduro’s reign is also being held together by external players. The U.S estimates that more than 20,000 Cuban agents alone are now planted within the Venezuelan military and law enforcement, presiding over internal operations and the movements of the top brass.
“Maduro relies heavily on foreigners to prop up his regime – Cuba, Russia, and Iran. They have a vested economic and political interest in ensuring he succeeds. Economically, to ensure that it is they that control the largest proven oil reserves in the world,” said John Wood, analyst and author of 'Russia, the Asymmetric Threat to the United States.' “Politically, to render the U.S. visibly impotent in its own backyard and thereby lay the groundwork forbuilding a viable military threat to the USA in its own hemisphere.”
[Eight-year-old Franyelis feeds her baby brother Joneiber as their mother Francibel Contreras holds a bowl of scrambled eggs and rice, at a soup kitchen in the Petare slum, Caracas, Venezuela. Contreras brings her three malnourished children to the soup kitchen in the dangerous hillside slum where they scoop in spoonfuls of food in what could be their only meal of the day. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
]
Obdola also underscored that the Cubans have “established an intense regional intelligence and surveillance operation” in bordering areas and in countries that support regime change in Venezuela.
“This operation is intense and mostly in Colombia, Brazil and other nearby nations where a very unique gathering of spies, intelligence and even terrorist operations are very active,” he said.
FIRST SHIPMENT OF RED CROSS AID ARRIVES IN VENEZUELA]
But the U.S., which has vowed to refurbish the rule of law and bring about new leadership in Venezuela, is yet to dramatically change its strategy.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week that “all options” are on the table when it comes to Venezuela, insisting that the strategy is “not just an American strategy” but the “Venezuelan’s people’s strategy.”
“Sometimes people think Maduro is winning, and yet he’s handed over all his power to the Cubans, to the Russians,” Pompeo told theVoice of AmericaSpanish. “This is weakness from Maduro. And so this weakness will ultimately lead to his departure, and democracy and prosperity will be restored in Venezuela.”
He has also taken aim at China’s role in standing by Maduro financially, mandating that their role is prolonging the protracted crisis in Venezuela.
[People cross the Tachira River into Colombia near the Simon Bolivar International bridge, which Venezuelan authorities only open to students and the sick, in Cucuta, Colombia, Tuesday, March 12, 2019, on the border with Venezuela. People crossing the river are using makeshift bridges as the water level grows with the approaching rainy season. (AP Photo/Schneyder Mendoza)
]
Once awash will oil wealth and deemed the richest country in Latin America, Venezuela has been beleaguered by an economic crisis since 2015 which has since spiraled into a grave humanitarian catastrophe and prompted the exodus of almost four million into now overburdened neighboring nations. Maduro has consistently blamed the U.S. for purporting to wage "economic war," but has largely denied that there are mass problems.
GET THE FOX NEWS APP
On the ground in the poverty-plagued Venezuela, it’s a mix of exasperation and desperation with the vast majority continuing to push for change and turn to the U.S. for support as time rolls on.
“There is more room for applying sanctions,” Ivers added. “Anything that cuts off the regime’s ability to generate cash, that disrupts its flow ofcontrabandgoods and drug trafficking finances, and increases the pressure of possible prosecution of senior military and regime figures for crimes against humanity or other criminal acts, will bring the regime closer to the negotiating table to seek an end to the conflict.”
Hollie McKay has a been a Fox News Digital staff reporter since 2007. She has extensively reported from war zones including Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, and Latin America investigates global conflicts, war crimes and terrorism around the world. Follow her on Twitter.
https://www.alternet.org/former-cia-acting-director-reveals-mueller-might-be-opening-another-front-investigating-ex-aide-dick
former top national security aide to Dick Cheney has fallen under scrutiny by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Two sources with knowledge of the probe say Mueller is examining possibly suspicious contacts by John Hannah, who served as a Cheney adviser and worked on Trump’s State Department transition team, reported The Daily Beast.
“Mueller might be opening another front here,” said John McLaughlin, former acting director of the CIA. “His mandate is to examine Russian collusion, but there’s the clause in his mandate that’s very open-ended—to the effect of ‘and any associated matters.’ It could be a separate line of inquiry about efforts to influence the election by foreigners.”
Hannah has not been accused of any wrongdoing, but investigators are interested in his interactions with Lebanese-American businessman George Nader, who arranged meetings between Trump associates and foreign dignitaries, and Joel Zamel, a social media expert with deep ties to Israeli intelligence.
Hannah, Nader and Zamel reportedly met with a top Saudi general shortly before President Donald Trump was inaugurated to discuss plans to overthrow the government of Iran.
Nader worked with Hannah onIraq policyduring the Bush administration, and Hannah is listed as an advisory council for Zamel’s tech firm Wikistrat.
Hannah now serves as a senior counselor for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a pro-Israel think tank highly critical of Iran.
Nader and Zamel have each been questioned by Mueller’s team and are reportedly cooperating with the Russia investigation.
==
they're baaaaack
Once upon a time there were hopes that Donald Trump as president might pursue a different kind of American foreign policy; call it non-interventionist, or isolationist, or transactional.
He certainly broke with conventional Washington discourse. When the foreign policy establishment of Washington almost unanimously urged President Obama in September 2013 to punish the Syrian government for a chemical gas attack, Trump tweeted, “Do not attack Syria” three times in two days.
Trump denounced previous administrations, Democratic and Republican, for casting America as the "policeman of the world.” He criticized President George W. Bush even more harshly than many liberal critics did. ...No longer. For the first year of his presidency, Trump intensified U.S. military action in every war theater he inherited from Obama. He sent more troops to Afghanistan. He dropped more bombs on Somalia than Obama and Bush combined. He loosened the rules of engagement in Syria. And he supplied Saudi Arabia with the bombs to besiege the civilians of Yemen.
Only on the issue of Iran did Trump exercise a degree of restraint. While he repeatedly disparaged the 2015 international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, he deferred to the triumvirate of his national security advisers: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.
They all told Trump that international inspectors confirm Iran is abiding by the terms of the deal, and the results serve American security interests by blocking Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon at least until 2025.
But Tillerson’s "differences" with Trump on Iran chafed the president and finally cost Tillerson his job.
Neo-Continuity"When you look at the Iran deal, I thought it was terrible,” Trump said of Tillerson Tuesday. “He thought it was okay. I wanted to either break it or do something, he felt a little differently.”
Trump is now moving toward renouncing the deal in May, a move Pompeo has long advocated. Along the way, Trump is adopting the worldview of the neoconservatives he once scorned.
“For anybody who thought that Trump was bluffing about his May 12 deadline to fix the deal or nix it, the appointment of Mike Pompeo as secretary of state should be a wake-up call,” said Mark Dubowitz, an executive at theFoundation for Defense of Democracies, which has close ties to the Trump administration.
The foundation, created in 2001, embodies the continuity between the neoconservative policies of the Bush administration and the Trump administration. Founded by a “group of visionary philanthropists and policymakers who understood the threat facing America, Israel and the West,” the foundation's advisers include former Sen. Joe Lieberman, columnists Bret Stephens and Charles Krauthammer, and neoconservative guru William Kristol.
The personnel has changed—Kristol is now a Never Trump conservative—but the song of “regime change” in Iran remains the same.Even before the invasion of Iraq, the foundation’s ideologues were dreaming of invading Iran. “Everyone talks about going to Baghdad,” said one British official of the neoconservatives. "Real men talk about going to Tehran."
“The potential for a democratic transition exists in Iran, where such aspirations have been growing for over 100 years,” Reuel Marc Gerecht, senior fellow at the foundation, wrote last week in the Wall Street Journal. “As regime-shaking street protests have repeatedly revealed, the country is a volcano. We want it to erupt. For the U.S. and the Middle East, sooner is better than later.”
The ostensible goal of reaching a better agreement with Iran cannot conceal a larger ambition. In 2016, Pompeo said, “Congress must act to change Iranian behavior, and ultimately, the Iranian regime."
Pompeo, much more than Tillerson, identifies with Israel, which has sought to kill the Iran agreement even while it was being negotiated. He was much more energetic than Tillerson in cultivating the Persian Gulf oil states that feel most threatened by Iran.
Jim Lobe notes that Pompeo met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia in December to promote an anti-Iran coalition of Israel and the Gulf Arab states. The Jerusalem-Riyadh axis wants to enlist the United States in their campaign to confront and disrupt Iran.
“We absolutely need Sunni partners,” Pompeo said in a talk at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute. “This administration has broadly reached out to Sunni countries all throughout the Middle East to form coalitions… not only against ISIS, but against Iran as well.”
Enter Bolton?
“Tillerson’s dismissal has also deepened speculation about the departure of the national-security adviser, General H. R. McMaster,” says Robin Wright of the New Yorker. “The former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, an über-hawk on foreign policy, visited the White House last week; Republicans in previous administrations told me that he is an increasingly likely candidate to replace McMaster, whose long-winded lectures Trump has grumbled about.”
Bolton's policy goals are not subtle. In a 2015 New York Times opinion column, he advocated bombing Iran immediately.
Trump’s firing of Tillerson and his chumminess with Bolton is a reminder that the president once harbored the belief that instigating war with Iran would be a good move for a president in need of a boost at the polls.
In 2011 and 2012, Trump tweeted six times that Obama was going to attack Iran in order to win the election.
...[tweets]
https://www.alternet.org/return-neoconservatives-trump-administration
==
Bush has recently taken to accepting Perle's view that the United Nations is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to Iraq. [9]
Perle is also associated with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which backs Bush's Iraq war push. Others with the foundation are columnist Charles Krauthammer,the Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, and Georgia senator Zell Miller. Perle, who produced the 1992 PBS documentary, "The Gulf Crisis, the Road to War," has long experience in the ways of Washington.
Talk:Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
- 1 The following was removed from the main page of this article by CMD Staff for further review:
- 2 Origins of FDD
- 11 Hold pending rewrite (an essay/commentary)
- 12 The stub needs a bit of a rewrite
- 13 personal tirade
- 14 External Links
The following was removed from the main page of this article by CMD Staff for further review:
The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a neoconservative think tank aand lobbying organization that claims to conduct "research and education on international terrorism — the most serious security threat to the United States and other free, democratic nations. FDD produces independent analyses of global terrorist threats, as well as of the historical, cultural, philosophical and ideological factors that drive terrorism, and which threaten democracies and the individual freedoms guaranteed within democratic societies." Their work is closely linked with that of the National Endowment for Democracy.[1] FDD was created two days after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Ever since its creation, FDD has pushed for US wars against Iraq and Iran – Eli Clifton states that "In recent years, FDD has become one of the the premiere DC organizations promoting more aggressive actions against Iran."[2]Clifton adds:
"While FDD has a 10-year history of engaging in alarmist rhetoric and fear mongering — e.g. in 2002 FDD aired a series of ads conflating Osama bin Laden, Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein — and helped promote the “Bush doctrine” which led to the invasion of Iraq, its donors have, for the most part, hidden behind their anonymous contributions to the organization. The new documents should permit for greater scrutiny of the interests and individuals behind FDD’s hawkish presence in the Washington think tank world."[3]
FDD run the Long War Journal.
Origins of FDD
Daniel McCarthy expressed an enhanced view of FDD's origins in the November 17, 2003, issue of The American Conservative.[4]
In early 2001, a tightly knit group of billionaire philanthropists conceived of a plan to win American sympathy for Israel's response to the Palestinian intifada. They believed that the Palestinian cause was finding too much support within crucial segments of the American public, particularly within the media and on college campuses, so they set up an organization, Emet: An Educational Initiative, Inc., to offer Israel the kind of PR that the Israeli government seemed unable to provide itself.At first, Emet floundered, without an executive director or a well-defined mission. But that changed after Sept. 11, and Emet changed too, into what is now the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. The name is different, but the goal of influencing America's opinion-forming classes remains.What makes all of this possible is the support the foundation receives from its billionaire backers. Its nearly $3 million annual budget comes from 27 major donors, most of whom are members of "the Study Group"--also sometimes called the "Mega Group" because of their sizeable contributions--a semi-formal organization of major Jewish philanthropists who meet twice a year to discuss joint projects.Leonard Abramson was the point man for establishing Emet. He, Michael Steinhardt, and Edgar Bronfman were the foundation's board of directors at the time of its incorporation in the spring of 2001.
Funding Sources
Eli Clifton reports that the following billionaires/millionaires are the principal source of FDD funding[5]:
- Edgar M. Bronfman
- Charles Bronfman
- Michael Steinhardt
- Haim Saban
- Bernard Marcus
- Dalck Feith
- Abramson Family Foundation
- Lewis Ranieri
- Roland Arnall
- Jennifer Mizrahi
- Clifford May
A Critical Assessment of the FDD
According to Jeffrey Blankfort, a Jewish anti-Zionist activist in California (former editor of the Middle East Labor Review, and victim of a spying operation directed against him by the ADL), the FDD:
For those of you who haven't heard of this "foundation," it is one of the most influential and powerful of the Zionist lobbies which changed its name and sprung into action immediately after 9-11. If you check its board, its advisors, you'll find a lot of familiar names, the neocons, of course, and some surprises, like the Democrat's ranking African-American spokesperson, Donna Brazile. It claims to have seven articles from FDD sources appear in the mainstream media every day and if you check its site, that appears to be the truth. That President Bush chose this group for the first of a series of speeches defending his Iraq policy is not an accident but a genuflection to the FDD's power. Another reflection of its power is the apparent unwillingness of the major media, such as the NY Times, to identify it for what it is.[6]
Jeffrey Blankfort suggests that the best assessment of FDD is that it is the successor of PNAC, as many of the PNAC-associated neocons now reside at the FDD.[7]
President Bush's address to FDD
On March 13, 2006, President George W. Bush addressed the FDD on the war in Iraq.[8]
Spinning FDD bias
Non-partisan, non-ideological
The FDD states the following on its website:[9]
"FDD is a tax-exempt, non-profit, non-partisan, non-ideological institution. We do not seek to advance any political party or views."
The tax-exempt and non-profit claims are true. However, the non-partisan and non-ideological assertions are very suspect.
Directors, Fellows, Personnel
The following information was updated August 16, 2007.[10]
Board of Directors
- Steve Forbes, Board Member; CEO Forbes Magazine (site bio)
- Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (deceased), Board Member; Former Ambassador to the UN (site bio)
- Jack Kemp, Chairman Emeritus; Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (site bio)
Distinguished Advisors
- Judge Louis J. Freeh, Former Director of the FBI (site bio)
- R. James Woolsey, Former Director of the CIA (site bio)
- Newt Gingrich, Former. Speaker of the House (site bio)
- Joe Lieberman, US Senator (D-CT) (site bio)
Board of Advisors
- Gary Bauer, President, American Values (site bio)
- Donna Brazile, Campaign Manager Gore 2000 (site bio)
- Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Task Force on Terrorism Chairman (site bio)
- Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), U.S. House of Representatives (site bio)
- Frank Gaffney, President, Center for Security Policy (site bio)
- Amb. Marc Ginsberg, Former Ambassador Morroco (site bio)
- Charles Jacobs, President, American Anti-Slavery Group (site bio)
- Charles Krauthammer, Syndicated Columnist (site bio)
- Bill Kristol, Editor, Weekly Standard (site bio)
- Hon. Richard D. Lamm, Former Colorado Governor (site bio)
- Rep. Jim Marshall (D-GA), U.S. House of Representatives (site bio)
- Sen. Zell Miller, Former U.S. Senator (site bio)
- Richard Perle, Former Chair of the Defense Policy Board and FDD Advisor (site bio)
- Steven Pomerantz, Former Assistant Director FBI
- Oliver "Buck" Revell, Former Associate Deputy Director FBI
- Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), U.S. Senate (site bio)
Previously listed
- Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL), U.S. House of Representatives (site bio)
- Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ), U.S. House of Representatives (site bio)
- Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), U.S. Senate (site bio)
Senior Fellows
- Khairi Abaza, Middle East and Democracy Expert (site bio)
- Avi Jorisch, Terrorism Expert (site bio)
- Samer Libdeh, Middle East and Democracy Expert (site bio)
- Mario Loyola, Visiting Fellow: Diplomacy and Defense
- Andrew C. McCarthy, Legal Commentator, Terrorism Expert (site bio)
- Barbara Newman, Investigative Reporter and Author (site bio)
- Walid Phares, Florida Atlantic University Professor (site bio)
- Victoria Toensing, Fmr. Chief Counsel to Sen. Intelligence Committee (site bio)
- Emanuele Ottolenghi[11]
Adjunct Fellows
- Dr. Jonathan Adelman, University of Denver Professor (site bio)
- Richard Z. Chesnoff, Journalist (site bio)
- Paul Crespo, Former Marine Corps Officer and Military Attaché (site bio)
- Tanya Gilly, Member of the Iraqi National Assembly (site bio)
- Orde Kittrie, Arizona State University Law Professor (site bio)
- Michael I. Krauss, Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law (site bio)
- Agota Kuperman, U.S. Foreign Service (ret.) (site bio)
- Dr. J. Peter Pham, Director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs, James Madison University (site bio)
- Dr. Frederic Smoler, Sarah Lawrence College Professor (site bio)
Previously listed
- Dr. Mohammed Akacem, Metropolitan State College of Denver Professor (site bio)
- Jess Sadick, U.S. government Terrorism Specialist (site bio)
- Jan Ting, Temple University Law Professor (site bio)
Staff
- Tony Badran, Research Fellow, Levant
- Karen Buck, VP of Development, FDD
- Richard W. Carlson, Vice Chairman
- Mark Dubowitz, Chief Operating Officer
- Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, VP of Research, FDD
- Joshua Goodman, Manager, Research, FDD
- Jonathan Schanzer, VP of Research, FDD[12]
- Eleana Gordon, Senior VP
- Veronica Machtey, New Project Development Coordinator, FDD
- Clifford D. May, President; Former Director
- Bill McCarthy, VP, Communications
- Cara Rosenthal, Senior Manager, Donor Relations
- Claudia Rosett, Journalist-in-Residence
- Stephanie Schwartz, Communications and Special Projects Coordinator, The Center for Liberty in the Middle East
- David Silverstein, VP, Campus Education & Grassroots Programs
- Jonathan L. Snow, Manager, Research
- Jean Thurman, Manager, Operations
- Caitlyn Walters, Coordinator, Campus Programs
- Brian Wise, Director of Media Relations, FDD
- Adela A. Zachariades, Coordinator, Future of Terrorism Project, FDD
Affiliations
Contact information
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
P.O. Box 33249
Washington D.C. 20033
Phone: 202 207-0190
FAX: 202 207-01915
Website: www.defenddemocracy.org
Weblog: http://fdd.typepad.com/
Email: info AT defenddemocracy.org
Resources and articles
Related SourceWatch articles
- American Islamic Congress
- Committee on the Present Danger
- Henry Jackson Society
- Iraq Foundation
- Post-war Iraq
- Project for the New American Century
- Women for a Free Iraq
References
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ [1]
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Eli Clifton, Documents Shed Light On Those Underwriting The Foundation For Defense Of Democracies, Think Progress, 19 July 2011.
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ ibid.
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Daniel McCarthy, "Most Favored Democracy. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies goes on offense," The American Conservative, November 17, 2003.
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Eli Clifton, Documents Shed Light On Those Underwriting The Foundation For Defense Of Democracies, Think Progress, 19 July 2011.
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Jeffrey Blankfort, 15 March 2006
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Jeffrey Blankfort, Takes on the World, Radio4All, 26 October 2011.
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ "President Discusses Iraq to FDD," George Washington University, March 13, 2006.
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ "Frequently Asked Questions About FDD," FDD website, accessed August 16, 2007.
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Biographies, FDD, accessed August 16, 2007.
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ FDD: Senior Fellows: profile (Accessed: 3 December 2011).
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ FDD: Staff: profile (Accessed: 3 December 2011).
External articles
2003
- Daniel McCarthy, "Most Favored Democracy; The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies goes on offense," The American Conservative, November 17, 2003.
2004
- Tom Barry, "Cold War Liberals Together Again," Foreign Policy in Focus (LewRockwell.com), February 12, 2004.
- News Release: "Foundation for the Defense of Democracies to Hold Conference on 'Iraq's Future and the War on Terrorism' on June 16," U.S. Newswire, June 15, 2004.
- Joe Lieberman, "Iraq's Future and the War on Terrorism." Remarks (as prepared for delivery) to the Symposium Sponsored by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Committee on the Present Danger, Mayflower Hotel, Washington, DC, June 16, 2004. Also here.
- Tom Barry, "US: Danger, danger everywhere," Asia Times, June 23, 2004.
- James Kirchick, "Cold warriors return for war on terrorism," The Hill, June 30, 2004.
- Jim Lobe, "They're Back: Neocons Revive. the Committee on the Present Danger, This Time against Terrorism," Foreign Policy in Focus, July 21, 2004;*LewRockwell.com*; *Common Dreams* and *Asia Times*, July 22, 2004; *TomPaine.com*, July 23, 2004.
- Justin Raimondo, "The Present Danger. Neocons attempt a comeback," antiwar.com, July 23, 2004.
- Matthew Yglesias, "Present Dangers. Neoconservative dead-enders regroup and start plotting their comeback," The American Prospect Online, July 27, 2004.
- Katrina Vanden Heuvel, "Of Hawks and Hacks," The Nation, August 8, 2004.
- Laura Rozen, *War and Piece* for August 25, 2004.
- Steven C. Clemons, "Woolsey Watch: Mongering for World War IV?" The Washington Note, September 14, 2004.
- Dep. Secty. of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, "Speech to the Committee on the Present Danger and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies," Mayflower Hotel, Washington, DC, September 29, 2004.
2005
- Robert Bryce, "As Green as a Neocon. Why Iraq hawks are driving Priuses," Slate, January 25, 2005.
- Tom Barry, "Neocons and Liberals Together, Again," International Relations Center (WorldPress.org), February 16, 2005.
- James Wolcott, "Second Verse, Same as the First," JamesWolcott.com, March 1, 2005.
- "Before Sunset," PR Watch, March 5, 2005. From Rolling Stone.
2006
- "Iranian Reformers," FDD Blog, March 2, 2006.
- Meghan Klyne, "Congress Outbids Bush On Iran Democracy Aid," The New York Sun, March 3, 2006. Lieberman, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), and the FDD sponsored "a panel discussion of leading Iranian pro-democracy activists."
- News Release: "President Discusses Freedom and Democracy in Iraq," Dorothy Betts Marvin Theatre, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., March 13, 2006.
- Jim Lobe, "Bush Reaffirms Ties With Leading Neocons," Inter Press Service (antiwar.com), March 15, 2006.
- Sidney Blumenthal, "Iraq: The big lie. Bush and Rumsfeld robotically repeat their Iraq talking points, ignoring the fact that their ambassador and generals are contradicting them," Salon, March 16, 2006. Preview or subscription required.
- Scott Shane, "Behind Bush's Fury, a Vow Made in 2001," New York Times, June 29, 2006.
- "Iran: The Next War," PR Watch, July 26, 2006. From Rolling Stone. Also see war in Iran
- Clifford D. May, "National interest loses in Connecticut," Boston Herald, August 10, 2006.
- Newt Gingrich, "The Only Option is to Win," Washington Post (FDD website), August 11, 2006.
- LindainCinci, "FDD, the new PNAC with Lieberman, Schumer and other PNAC members," Daily Kos, August 15, 2006.
- Debra England, "Top 10 charitable gift ideas for this holiday season," TownHall.com, December 16, 2006.
2007
- Jim Lobe, "Neo-Cons Driving Iran Divestment Campaign," InterPress Service, May 11, 2007.
External resources
- Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Right Web Profile.
- Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Wikipedia.
- Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Political Friendster.
- Foundation for Defense of Democracies Neocon Europe.
End Page Excerpt
Hold pending source
Zionist political action committee
Jeffrey Blankfort, a Jewish anti-Zionist activisit in California (former editor of the Middle East Labor Review), wrote the following March 15, 2006, about the FDD:
For those of you who haven't heard of this "foundation," it is one of the most influential and powerful of the Zionist lobbies which changed its name and sprung into action immediately after 9-11. If you check its board, its advisors, you'll find a lot of familiar names, the neocons, of course, and some surprises, like theDemocrat's ranking African-American spokesperson, Donna Brazile. It claims to have seven articles from FDD sources appear in the mainstream media every day and if you check its site, that appears to be the truth. That President Bush chose this group for the first of a series of speeches defending his Iraq policy is not an accident but a genuflection to the FDD's power. Another reflection of its power is the apparent unwillingness of the major media, such as the NY Times, to identify it for what it is.
Hold pending rewrite (an essay/commentary)
FDD's claim of "non-ideological" is non-sensical. Webster's defines idealogy as "the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement,institution, class, or large group."[1]
The FDD provides a page defining its core beliefs.[2] Beliefs do comprise an ideology.
Although this analysis may be too pendantic about FDD's use of "non-ideological", it is likely that its usage is meant to imply that the FDD possesses no inherent bias towards the common U.S. political ideological binary classes like "Conservativism/Liberalism", "Democrat/Republican" and "Right/Left"; although the term, "nonpartisan", used in place of "nonideological, would offer more clarity in this context. To judge how "non-ideological" FDD is from this perspective requires an examination of the personnel makeup of FDD and the site's literature.
When examining the biographies of individuals associated with FDD, the ideological makeup of the individuals ranges from neo-conservatives (William Kristol,Richard Perle, and Newt Gingrich) and conservatives (Steve Forbes and Gary Bauer) to, at best, moderate (Donna Brazile), with a large percentage of those listed normally considered to be (neo-)conservative. For example, the Board of Directors is comprised of Steve Forbes, Jack Kemp, and Dr. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, all known to be conservative (as well as Republican).
The President of FDD, Clifford D. May, has served as Director of Communications for the Republican National Committee (RNC) from 1997 to 2001: "In that role, he was the Republican Party's staff spokesman, and appeared frequently on national television and radio programs. In addition, he managed all RNC communications activities, including long-range strategic planning; press, radio and television services; online services; TV and radio coaching; speech writing; advertising and marketing. He also served as the Editor of the official Republican magazine, Rising Tide." t is also worth noting that Mr. May worked for a PR agency: "After leaving the RNC, he was named Senior Managing Director in the Washington, D.C. office of BSMG Worldwide, a firm specializing in public affairs advocacy, public relations and media relations." [2]
The site's biographies' page provides and indicator for party affiliations for members currently holding political office, but fails to list party affiliations for ex-office holders, giving an appearence of bipartisanship (note, we do not use the term non-partisan as FDD does). By the way, just because an organization includes former, or current, Republican and Democratic politicians, does not imply that the organization contains a variety of views. As politics, especially modern politics, has shown us, party affiliation does not imply a given set of views by any individual and it is quite common for political bureaucrats to serve with both major parties. For example, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., who is on FDD's Board of Advisors, worked both in the Ronald Reagan (Republican) administration (and at one time worked directly under Richard Perle) and as an aide to a Democratic Senator. [3]
With a few possible exceptions, the members of FDD are predominately conservative and neo-conservative and the articles written by FDD's members and the literature on their site promote a neo-conservative slant.
For example, FDD's page on Iraq provides a list of documents authored by FDD members or documents FDD believes are worth highlighting. All the documents (as of this writing with documents ranging in dates from 8/2002 to 6/2003) support the hawkish view of Iraq. No documents provide any critical perspectives of U.S. policies towards Iraq. Also, some of the documents listed cite "facts" that have been proven to be false, such as the linkage of Saddam Hussein with al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks, as well as with Saddam's highly active WMD programs (see Weapons of mass deception for related analysis).
Clifford D. May (discussed earlier) wrote a July 3, 2003 article justifying military action in Africa, mainly due to the press about the problems in Liberia. The article is guilty of overall generalization, labeling, and statements of "facts" that not backed by references. For example, he accuses "liberal" think tanks that insisted "Africa's young nations were making progress, [stating]... that it bordered on the racist to suggest otherwise. Any problems that could not be wished away were dismissed as 'the legacy of colonialism.' And, of course, the consequence of too little U.S. foreign aid." However, May fails to provide any references to back this up, including that all "liberal" organizations share the same view. Use of such rhetoric shows an ideological bias.
May continues by blaming "the legacy of socialism" as the "obvious" reason for Africa's problems since, as May states, "The first generations of post-independence African leaders were advised by European and American intellectuals (many of them at those universities and think tanks) to forego capitalism in favor of 'the socialist path to development.'" First, May fails to cite references to back up this view along with dimissing factors like ancient tribal conflicts (which was made worse by the effects of colonialism), the legacy of Western support of dictators during the Cold War to fight off Soviet influence, and the interference by large multinational corporations seeking to profit from Africa's natural resources.
Clifford May then provides justifications for military intervention in Africa that mirror the justifications promoted by hawks for the war in Iraq, but with a slight twist: failed African nations "are apt to become terrorist havens." So, we have now moved from nations believed to be supporting terrorists as a justification for military action to nations that may become breeding grounds for terrorists. Any humanitarian concerns are listed last and hints of oil (Nigeria) exist in the reasons.
Another indicator of FDD's ideological bias is provided on their related websites page. They provide links to numerous conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute (which some FDD members are either current or former fellows of) and the Hudson Institute. There is a link to the so-called student group Oxford Democracy Forum which portrays the same hawkish perspective and includes the same rhetoric with respect to Iraq and terrorism as is coming out of the Bush administration and neo-con controlled media. On OxDems' FAQ page, it repeats false information about Iraq, such as its links to Al-Qaeda by citing Colin L. Powell's discredited United Nations speech.
The list of related media links provided by FDD is very interesting, with Fox News listed first, and mostly conservative publications (like fellow FDD member Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard) that follows. CNN and the Washington Post are listed, but these news organizations are moderate at best. The New Republic is the only exception, as most consider it a liberal-oriented publication.
The stub needs a bit of a rewrite
My original intent in editing this page was just to add and correct personel I scraped from the FDD site today on a visit. I can scrape data fairly easily, and upon checking the sourcewatch stub, found it in need of an update.
While adding the data, I decided to optimise the article for a TOC by adding some section titles, and synchronised the spelling of the term "non-ideological' in its occurrences.
I also checked the current FAQ at FDD and discovered that the term, "non-ideological" is no longer used to describe them. Maybe they read sourcewatch.
The term non-ideological had been removed from the FDD FAQ, but it still shows on a google cache from June 3, 2005.
"non-ideological" is also found on several other pages of FDD - (tiny url pointing to google search):
Two past press releases:
- White Paper: The Geneva Convention Is Not a Suicide Pact, February 6, 2002 - (same doc using same url plus attrib_id=7397)
- If We Appease Terrorism, We'll Get More Terrorism, April 22, 2002 - (same doc using same url plus attrib_id=7397)
plus the following:
"Pragmatic, nationalistic and non-ideological, Allawi has emerged as a rallying figure to most major forces in Iraq. He has mitigated the fears of the Kurds by assuring them of their autonomy. He has obtained the implicit blessing of Iraq's highest Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani. The Catholic Chaldeans and Orthodox Assyrians find him reassuring and understanding of their fear of Islamists and of Kurdish hegemony in the north of Iraq. Many Sunnis and Baathists perceive him as a savior who could salvage some of their past privileges and guarantee their political inclusion. Even the Shiite extremist Muqtada al-Sadr, who, though opposing Allawi's government, has sent the leader a mixed signal that he will lead a peaceful resistance."Walid Phares, Robert G. Rabil, "Prime Minister's Coalition-Building Serves Iraqis Well", Chicago Sun-Times, July 30, 2004The big news in Woodward's book is that Bush was deeply skeptical about the CIA's conclusions regarding Iraqi WMD - even after he was presented with a "Top Secret" document starkly warning: "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons."What changed the president's mind? Woodward vividly describes a meeting in the Oval Office in which George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, responded to Bush's doubts by rising up from his seat and throwing his arms in the air. "It's a slam-dunk case!" he said.Even that didn't quite persuade Bush. He pressed further, asking Tenet: "George, how confident are you?" At which point, the nation's top spy - a nonideological nonpartisan who held the same job in the Clinton administration - "threw his arms up again. 'Don't worry, it's a slam dunk!' he repeated."Imagine if - instead of heeding this warning - Bush had ignored it, put on his sweat suit and gone for a jog around the White House. Imagine if a terrorist attack, utilizing WMD supplied by Saddam Hussein, had followed. Bush would have faced impeachment - and deservedly so.Clifford D. May, "Seeing Only What They Want to See", Scripps Howard News Service, April 21, 2004But we now know that many of abductions in Iraq are carried out by non-ideological criminals who then sell their victims to the highest bidder. The throat-cutting of the hostages that often follows is a competence that probably can be mastered in a variety of environments.Clifford D. May, "Get Smart", Scripps Howard News Service, June 30, 2005 - (also served under the same url plus attrib_id=7374)Denationalized corporate elites who are non-ideological, but seek economic advantage, often have a symbiotic relationship with the transnational progressives.John O'Sullivan, Editor, "The National Interest", Number 76 - Summer 2004 - (pdf)
These instances were contexually the same improper distortion that the criticism in the article points out.
The use of the term "ideological" is much more frequently used on the site, (307 instances -tiny url of google search), often with an ideologically loaded context.
personal tirade
I was disgusted by the article "The Geneva Convention Is Not a Suicide Pact", and am not presently in a state of mind to re-edit this stub.
The FDD is comprised of cowardly UnAmerican bastards. No the Geneva Conventions are not a suicide pact, but it is an expression of the Dreamtime America at its apogee.
These learned asses would have us believe that America's core is no longer valid:
- We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all human sare creeated equal, and endowed by what they perceive as their creator with inalienable rights; that among these rights, three delienated here are: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
- No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
- In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Due process rights are held by all humans, and a just government will not infringe upon them, no matter how evilly their intentions are posited. To legitimately strip any human of life, liberty or property requires a proper procedure that adheres to due process of law. This right is a natural right which was never ceded to the government. A government which steals these rights is an illegitimate tyranny.
The title of the second Press Release, "If We Appease Terrorism, We'll Get More Terrorism", shows just how wrongfully hammerheaded the HDD is. There will be no converts to our worldview from the unchained US war machine's injust destruction, there will be none from our inhumane treatment of detainees. There will just be humans brooding in their chains and tempering their blades in the fire of their passion. --Hugh Manatee 17:06, 27 Oct 2005 (EDT)
Relocated the following from the erroneously named Foundation for the Defence of Democracies created by User:Mike:
The Foundation for the Defence of Democracies (FDD) was:
"founded two days after the September 11 attacks, it would be difficult to conceive of an organization more centrally connected to US corporate interests and the neo-conservative agenda. The FDD is funded by private donations from some of the wealthiest individuals and companies in the US, including:
"The Ameriquest Capital Corporation, the largest privately held mortgage company in the US, donated over $1.5 million to FDD in 2004. Ameriquest is headed byRoland Arnall, who with his wife Dawn has been the biggest contributor to the Bush campaigns since 2002. In 2005, Roland Arnall was appointed as US ambassador to the Netherlands while his company was under investigation for predatory lending practices in the US."
"Leonard Ambramson a member of the Board of Directors of the NASDAQ Stock Market, Inc., the Board of Trustees of the Brookings Institution, and the Board of Trustees of Johns Hopkins University. Ambramson personally donated $250,000 to FDD in 2004."
"Steinhardt Partners, one of the largest hedge funds in the world during the 1990s, donated $250,000 to FDD in 2004."
"Jerome Goodman, a former director of Aetna Inc., one of the largest health insurers in the US, donated over $240,000 to FDD in 2003."
"The Sarah Scaife Foundation, a well-known supporter of neo-conservative think-tanks whose fortune is financed by the Mellon oil and banking empire, donated $125,000 to the FDD in 2004."
"The Russel Berrie Foundation, which also funds ‘educational’ programs for Israeli soldiers, gave $75,000 in 2004."
"Appropriately enough - given that most of these names appear on the periodic lists of the wealthiest individuals and corporations in the US - Steven Forbes, CEO of Forbes Inc.]], sits on the three-person board of FDD. Forbes himself is a strident advocate of neo-liberal policies, in particular the introduction of a flat-tax that would see him pay the same amount of tax as the poorest working Americans. Forbes is also a board member of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), another neo-conservative think-tank. The ‘distinguished advisors’ to the FDD board of directors includes James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI, and rabid neo-conservative Newt Gingrich. In 2006, Tanya Gilly, a staff member of the FDD was actually elected to the Iraqi National Assembly as a Kurdish representative. Gilly was highly placed at the FDD in the position of director of democracy programs." [4]
The funding information has been taken from public IRS 990 forms available on non-profit organizations, including the FDD, from the GuideStar website (http://www.guidestar.org).
External Links
- Adam Hanieh, "Democracy Promotion' and Neo-Liberalism in the Middle East", In the Name of Democracy, 2006.
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