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Context of ‘July 8-10, 1996: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu Tells Congress US Must Join Israel in ‘Democratizing’ Middle East’

History Commons

1965: Former RAND Analyst Gathers Young, Nascent Neoconservatives

Albert Wohlstetter

Albert Wohlstetter, a professor at the University of Chicago, gathers a cadre of fiery young intellectuals around him, many of whom are working and associating with the magazine publisher Irving Kristol (see 1965). Wohlstetter’s group includes Richard Perle, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Paul Wolfowitz. Wohlstetter, himself a protege of the Machiavellian academic Leo Strauss, is often considered the “intellectual godfather” of modern neoconservatism. Formerly an analyst at the RAND Corporation, Wohlstetter wielded a powerful influence on the US’s foreign policy during the heyday of the Cold War. Wohlstetter, who is believed to be one of several analysts who became a model for director Stanley Kubrick’s title character in the 1968 film Dr. Strangelove, added dramatic phrases like “fail-safe” and “second strike” capability to the US nuclear lexicon, and pushed to increase the US’s military might over what he saw as the imminent and lethal threat of Soviet nuclear strikes and the Soviet Union’s plans for global hegemony. He was such a powerful figure in his hundreds of briefings that he projected far more certainty than his facts actually supported. Though his facts and statistics were often completely wrong, he was so relentless and strident that his ideas gained more credence than they may have warranted. By 1965, he is known in some circles as a “mad genius” who is now collecting and molding young minds to follow in his footsteps. Author Craig Unger writes in 2007, “To join Team Wohlstetter, apparently, one had to embrace unquestioningly his worldviews, which eschewed old-fashioned intelligence as a basis for assessing the enemy’s intentions and military capabilities in favor of elaborate statistical models, probabilities, reasoning, systems analysis, and game theory developed at RAND.” An analyst with the Federation of Atomic Scientists will write in November 2003: “This methodology exploited to the hilt the iron law of zero margin for error.… Even a small probability of vulnerability, or a potential future vulnerability, could be presented as a virtual state of emergency.” Or as one-time Wohlstetter acolyte Jude Wanninski will later put it, “[I]f you look down the road and see a war with, say, China, twenty years off, go to war now.” Unger will observe, “It was a principle his acolytes would pursue for decades to come—with disastrous results.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 42-46]

Entity Tags: University of Chicago, Stanley Kubrick, Richard Perle, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, RAND Corporation, Leo Strauss, Albert Wohlstetter, Paul Wolfowitz, Irving Kristol, Federation of Atomic Scientists, Craig Unger, Jude Wanninski

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence

Early 1970s: Neoconservatives Coalesce around Conservative Democratic Senator

Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson

The recently formed neoconservatives, bound together by magazine publisher Irving Kristol (see 1965), react with horror to the ascendancy of the “McGovern liberals” in the Democratic Party, and turn to conservative senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA) for leadership. Jackson calls himself a “muscular Democrat”; others call him “the Senator from Boeing” for his strong support of the US defense industry. Jackson merges a strong support of labor and civil rights groups with a harsh Cold War opposition to the Soviet Union. Jackson assembles a staff of bright, young, ideologically homogeneous staffers who will later become some of the most influential and powerful neoconservatives of their generation, including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, Abram Shulsky, and Paul Wolfowitz. Jackson’s office—“the bunker,” to staffers—becomes a home for disaffected, ambitious young conservative ideologues with a missionary zeal for change. Jackson presides over the cadre in an almost fatherly fashion.

History of Two Dictators – Many of Jackson’s neoconservative disciples came of age either fighting two foreign dictators—Stalin and/or Hitler—or growing up with family members who fought against them. [Unger, 2007, pp. 35-41] Wolfowitz’s father’s family perished in the Holocaust; he will later say that what happened to European Jews during World War II “shaped a lot of my views.” [New York Times, 4/22/2002] Feith will tell the New Yorker in 2005, “[My] family got wiped out by Hitler, and… all this stuff about working things out—well, talking to Hitler to resolve the problem didn’t make any sense.” Most neoconservatives like Feith and Wolfowitz tend to look to military solutions as a first, not a last, resort. To them, compromise means appeasement, just as Britain’s Neville Chamberlain tried to appease Hitler. Stefan Halper, a White House and State Department official in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations, will say of the neoconservatives, “It is use force first and diplomacy down the line.”

Former Trotskyites – On the other hand, many neoconservatives come to the movement from the hardline, socialist left, often from organizations that supported Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky (see Late 1930s – 1950s). Trotskyites accused Stalin of betraying the purity of the Communist vision as declaimed by Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. “I can see psychologically why it would not be difficult for them to become [conservative] hard-liners,” says Harvard Sovietologist Richard Pipes, himself a hardliner whose son, Daniel Pipes, will become an influential neoconservative. “It was in reaction to the betrayal.” Many neoconservatives like Stephen Schwartz, a writer for the Weekly Standard, still consider themselves to be loyal disciples of Trotsky. Richard Perle is a Trotskyite socialist when he joins Jackson’s staff, and will always practice what author Craig Unger calls “an insistent, uncompromising, hard-line Bolshevik style” of policy and politics. Like Trotsky, Unger writes, the neoconservatives pride themselves on being skilled bureaucratic infighters, and on trusting no one except a small cadre of like-minded believers. Disagreement is betrayal, and political struggles are always a matter of life and death. [Unger, 2007, pp. 35-41]

Entity Tags: Stefan Halper, Stephen Schwartz, Richard Pipes, Richard Perle, Neville Chamberlain, Abram Shulsky, Douglas Feith, Daniel Pipes, Craig Unger, Paul Wolfowitz, Henry (“Scoop”) Jackson, Elliott Abrams, Leon Trotsky, Irving Kristol

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence

Summer 1972 and After: Neoconservatives Work to Toughen US Policy towards Soviet Union

Neoconservatives see Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern’s floundering campaign and eventual landslide defeat (see November 7, 1972) as emblematic of, in author Craig Unger’s words, everything that is wrong with the “defeatist, isolationist policies of the liberals who had captured the Democratic Party.” If the neoconservatives had had their way, their favorite senator, Henry “Scoop” Jackson (see Early 1970s), would have won the nomination. But the Vietnam War has put hawkish Cold Warriors like Jackson in disfavor in the party, and Jackson was set aside for the disastrous McGovern candidacy. The Republicans offer little interest themselves for the neoconservatives. Richard Nixon is enamored of one of their most hated nemeses, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, whose “realpolitik” did nothing to excite their ideological impulses. And under Nixon, the icy Cold War is slowly thawing, with summit meetings, bilateral commissions, and arms limitations agreements continually bridging the gap between the US and the neoconservatives’ implacable foe, the Soviet Union. In Nixon’s second term, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM)—populated by Democratic neoconservatives like Jackson, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Nixon’s domestic adviser), Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ben Wattenberg, and James Woolsey, and joined by 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey, will pressure Nixon to adopt a tough “peace through strength” policy towards the Soviet Union. Although it will take time, and the formation of countless other organizations with similar memberships and goals, this group of neoconservatives and hawkish hardliners will succeed in marginalizing Congress, demonizing their enemies, and taking over the entire foreign policy apparatus of the US government. [Unger, 2007, pp. 47-48]

Entity Tags: Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard M. Nixon, James Woolsey, Henry (“Scoop”) Jackson, Ben Wattenberg, Coalition for a Democratic Majority, Irving Kristol, George S. McGovern, Craig Unger, Henry A. Kissinger, Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Timeline Tags: US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence

August 15, 1974: Neoconservatives Begin Moving to Influence US Foreign Policies

Conservative Democratic senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA) meets with President Ford as part of a discussion about the standoff with the Soviet Union over trade and emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel. Jackson—hawkish, defense-minded, and solidly pro-Israel—sees the standoff as an opportunity to undercut Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Jackson is a forerunner of what in later years will be called “neoconservatism” (see 1965), an ideology mostly espoused by a group of Democratic lawmakers and intellectuals who have abandoned their support for Rooseveltian New Deal economics and multilateralist foreign policies (see Early 1970s). Jackson and his outspoken pro-Israel aide, Richard Perle, view Kissinger as far too conciliatory and willing to negotiate with the Communist bloc. Jackson and Perle see the Soviet Union, not the Israeli-Palestine conflict, as the chief threat to US interests in the Middle East and the control of that region’s oil fields. They see a strong, powerful Israel as essential to their plans for US domination of the region. Jackson resists a proposed compromise on the number of Soviet Jews the USSR will allow to emigrate to Israel—the Soviets offer 55,000 and Jackson insists on 75,000—and many in the meeting feel that Jackson is being deliberately recalcitrant. “It made no sense to me because it was sure to be counterproductive,” Ford later writes, “but he would not bend, and the only reason is politics.” For his part, Kissinger respects Jackson’s political abilities, but to his mind, Perle is a “ruthless… little b_stard.” Kissinger knows that Republican hawks as well as the burgeoning neoconservative movement will pressure Ford to abandon Richard Nixon’s policies of moderating relations with the Soviet Union and Communist China. But, author Barry Werth writes in 2006: “what Kissinger and now Ford would chronically underestimate was the neoconservatives’ argument that the United States should not so much seek to coexist with the Soviet system as to overthrow it through direct confrontation. Or the extent to which the neoconservatives would go to exaggerate a foreign threat and stir up fear.” [Werth, 2006, pp. 77-79]

Entity Tags: Richard M. Nixon, Barry Werth, Henry A. Kissinger, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Richard Perle, Henry (“Scoop”) Jackson

Timeline Tags: US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence

Early 1976: Neoconservative ‘Team B’ of Outside Intelligence Analysts Created

Richard Pipes

After George H. W. Bush becomes the head of the CIA (see November 4, 1975 and After), he decides to break with previous decisions and allow a coterie of neoconservative outsiders to pursue the allegations of Albert Wohlstetter that the CIA is seriously underestimating the threat the USSR poses to the US (see 1965), allegations pushed by hardliners on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

Internal Opposition – Bush’s predecessor, William Colby, had steadfastly refused to countenance such a project, saying, “It is hard for me to envisage how an ad hoc ‘independent’ group of government and non-government analysts could prepare a more thorough, comprehensive assessment of Soviet strategic capabilities—even in two specific areas—than the intelligence community can prepare.” (Bush approves the experiment by notating on the authorization memo, “Let ‘er fly!”) The national intelligence officer in charge of the National Intelligence Estimate on the USSR, Howard Stoertz, will later recall: “Most of us were opposed to it because we saw it as an ideological, political foray, not an intelligence exercise. We knew the people who were pleading for it.” But Bush, on the advice of deputy national security adviser William Hyland, agrees to the exercise. Hyland says the CIA had been getting “too much flak for being too peacenik and detentish…. I encouraged [Bush] to undertake the experiment, largely because I thought a new director ought to be receptive to new views.” The neocon team of “analysts” becomes known as “Team B,” with “Team A” being the CIA’s own analytical team. It is unprecedented to allow outsiders to have so much access to highly classified CIA intelligence as Bush is granting the Team B neocons, so the entire project is conducted in secret. CIA analyst Melvin Goodman later says that President Ford’s chief of staff, Dick Cheney, is one of the driving forces behind Team B. The outside analysts “wanted to toughen up the agency’s estimates,” Goodman will say, but “Cheney wanted to drive [the CIA] so far to the right it would never say no to the generals.” [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 208; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-55]

Political Pressure – Ford’s political fortunes help push forward the Team B experiment. Ford has been a strong proponent of detente with the Soviet Union, but his poll numbers are sagging and he is facing a strong presidential primary challenger in Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA), an avowed hardliner. Reagan is making hay challenging Ford’s foreign policy, claiming that the so-called “Ford-Kissinger” policies have allowed the Soviet Union to leap ahead of the US both militarily and geopolitically. In response, Ford has lurched to the right, banning the word “detente” from speeches and statements by White House officials, and has been responsive to calls for action from the newly reforming Committee on the Present Danger (CPD—see 1976). In combination, these political concerns give Bush the justification he wants to push forward with the Team B experiment.

Three B Teams – According to Carter administration arms control official Anne Cahn, there are actually three “B” teams. One studies Soviet low-altitude air defense capabilities, one examines Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) accuracy, and the third, chaired by Harvard Sovietologist Richard Pipes, examines Soviet strategic policy and objectives. It is Pipes’s team that becomes publicly known as “Team B.” [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993]

Assembling the Team – Pipes fits in well with his small group of ideological hardliners. He believes that the USSR is determined to fight and win a nuclear war with the US, and he is bent on putting together an analysis that proves his contention. He asks Cold War icon Paul Nitze, the former Secretary of the Navy, to join the team. Richard Perle, a core member, has Pipes bring in Paul Wolfowitz, one of Wohlstetter’s most devout disciples. Wolfowitz immediately begins arguing for the need to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. The “incestuous closeness” of the members, as Cahn later calls it, ensures that the entire group is focused on the same goals as Wohlstetter and Pipes, with no dissension or counterarguments. Other key members include William von Cleave and Daniel Graham. The entire experiment, Cahn will write, “was concocted by conservative cold warriors determined to bury détente and the SALT process. Panel members were all hard-liners,” and many are members of the newly reconstituted “Committee on the Present Danger” (see 1976). The experiment is “leaked to the press in an unsuccessful attempt at an ‘October surprise’ [an attempt to damage the presidential hopes of Democrat Jimmy Carter—see Late November, 1976]. But most important, the Team B reports became the intellectual foundation of ‘the window of vulnerability’ and of the massive arms buildup that began toward the end of the Carter administration and accelerated under President Reagan.” Team B will formally debate its CIA adversaries, “Team A,” towards the end of the year (see November 1976). [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-55]

‘Designed to be Prejudiced’ – In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will note, “Team B was designed to be prejudiced.” Pipes, the Soviet experts, holds a corrosive hatred of the Soviet Union, in part stemming from his personal experiences as a young Jew in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, and his belief that the Soviet system is little different from the Nazis. When asked why his team is stacked with hardline opponents of arms negotiations and diplomacy of any kind with the USSR, Pipes replies, “There is no point in another, what you might call, optimistic view.” Scoblic will write, “Team B, in short, begged the question. Its members saw the Soviet threat not as an empirical problem but as a matter of faith.” He will add, “For three months, the members of Team B pored over the CIA’s raw intelligence data—and used them to reaffirm their beliefs.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 93-94]

Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Richard Pipes, William Hyland, Paul Nitze, William Colby, J. Peter Scoblic, Paul Wolfowitz, George Herbert Walker Bush, ’Team A’, ’Team B’, Anne Cahn, Albert Wohlstetter, Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Central Intelligence Agency, Howard Stoertz

Timeline Tags: US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence

November 1976: Team B Browbeats CIA Analysts, ‘Proves’ Soviets Far Ahead of US in Military, Nuclear Capabilities

A team of young, mid-level CIA and DIA analysts, informally dubbed “Team A,” debates the neoconservative/hardline group of outside “analysts” known as “Team B” (see Early 1976) over the CIA’s estimates of Soviet military threats and intentions. The debate is a disaster for the CIA’s group. Team B uses its intellectual firepower and established reputations of members such as Richard Pipes and Paul Nitze to intimidate, overwhelm, and browbeat the younger, more inexperienced CIA analysts. “People like Nitze ate us for lunch,” recalls one member of Team A. “It was like putting Walt Whitman High versus the [NFL’s] Redskins. I watched poor GS-13s and GS-14s [middle-level analysts with modest experience and little real influence] subjected to ridicule by Pipes and Nitze. They were browbeating the poor analysts.” Howard Stoertz, the national intelligence officer who helped coordinate and guide Team A, will say in hindsight, “If I had appreciated the adversarial nature [of Team B], I would have wheeled up different guns.” Team A had prepared for a relatively congenial session of comparative analysis and lively discussion; Team B had prepared for war.

Ideology Trumps Facts – Neither Stoertz nor anyone else in the CIA appreciated how thoroughly Team B would let ideology and personalities override fact and real data. While CIA analysts are aware of how political considerations can influence the agency’s findings, the foundation of everything they do is factual—every conclusion they draw is based on whatever facts they can glean, and they are leery of extrapolating too much from a factual set. Team A is wholly unprepared for B’s assault on their reliance on facts, a line of attack the CIA analysts find incomprehensible. “In other words,” author Craig Unger will write in 2007, “facts didn’t matter.” Pipes, the leader of Team B, has argued for years that attempting to accurately assess Soviet military strength is irrelevant. Pipes says that because it is irrefutable that the USSR intends to obliterate the US, the US must immediately begin preparing for an all-out nuclear showdown, regardless of the intelligence or the diplomatic efforts of both sides. Team B is part of that preparation. [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-57] Intelligence expert John Prados, who will examine the contesting reports, later says that while the CIA analysts believe in “an objective discoverable truth,” the Team B analysts engaged in an “exercise of reasoning from conclusions” that they justify, not in factual, but in “moral and ideological terms.” According to Prados’s analysis, Team B had no real interest in finding the truth. Instead, they employed what he calls an adversarial process similar to that used in courts of law, where two sides present their arguments and a supposedly impartial judge chooses one over the other. Team B’s intent was, in essence, to present the two opposing arguments to Washington policy makers and have them, in author J. Peter Scoblic’s words, “choose whichever truth they found most convenient.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 98]

Attacking the Intelligence Community – The first sentence of Team B’s report is a frontal assault on the US intelligence community. That community, the report says, had “substantially misperceived the motivations behind Soviet strategic programs, and thereby tended consistently to underestimate their intensity, scope, and implicit threat.” Team B writes that the intelligence community has failed to see—or deliberately refused to see—that the entire schema of detente and arms limitations negotiations are merely elements of the Soviet push for global domination.

Fighting and Winning a Nuclear War – Team B writes that the Soviets have already achieved measurable superiority in nuclear weaponry and other military benchmarks, and will use those advantages to cow and coerce the West into doing its bidding. The Soviets worship military power “to an extent inconceivable to the average Westerner,” the report asserts. The entire Soviet plan, the report goes on to say, hinges on its willingness to fight a nuclear war, and its absolute belief that it can win such a war. Within ten years, Team B states, “the Soviets may well expect to achieve a degree of military superiority which would permit a dramatically more aggressive pursuit of their hegemonial objectives.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 94-95]

Lack of Facts Merely Proof of Soviets’ Success – One example that comes up during the debate is B’s assertion that the USSR has a top-secret nonacoustic antisubmarine system. While the CIA analysts struggle to point out that absolutely no evidence of this system exists, B members conclude that not only does the USSR have such a system, it has probably “deployed some operation nonacoustic systems and will deploy more in the next few years.” The absence of evidence merely proves how secretive the Soviets are, they argue. [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-57] Anne Cahn, who will serve in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in the Carter administration, later says of this assertion, “They couldn’t say that the Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines, because they couldn’t find it. So they said, well maybe they have a non-acoustic means of making our submarine fleet vulnerable. But there was no evidence that they had a non-acoustic system. They’re saying, ‘we can’t find evidence that they’re doing it the way that everyone thinks they’re doing it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don’t know what that different way is, but they must be doing it.‘… [The fact that the weapon doesn’t exist] doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It just means that we haven’t found it yet.” Cahn will give another example: “I mean, they looked at radars out in Krasnoyarsk and said, ‘This is a laser beam weapon,’ when in fact it was nothing of the sort.… And if you go through most of Team B’s specific allegations about weapons systems, and you just examine them one by one, they were all wrong.… I don’t believe anything in Team B was really true.” [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Common Dreams (.org), 12/7/2004; BBC, 1/14/2005]

Soviet Strike Capabilities Grossly Exaggerated – Team B also hammers home warnings about how dangerous the Soviets’ Backfire bomber is. Later—too late for Team A—the Team B contentions about the Backfire’s range and refueling capability are proven to be grossly overestimated; it is later shown that the USSR has less than half the number of Backfires that B members loudly assert exist (500 in Team B’s estimation, 235 in reality). B’s assertions of how effectively the Soviets could strike at US missile silos are similarly exaggerated, and based on flawed assessment techniques long rejected by the CIA. The only hard evidence Team B produces to back their assertions is the official Soviet training manual, which claims that their air-defense system is fully integrated and functions flawlessly. The B analysts even assert, without evidence, that the Soviets have successfully tested laser and charged particle beam (CPB) weapons. [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ] (The facility at Semipalatansk that is supposedly testing these laser weapons for deployment is in reality a test site for nuclear-powered rocket engines.) [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 96]

Fundamental Contradiction – One befuddling conclusion of Team B concerns the Soviets’ ability to continue building new and expensive weapons. While B acknowledges “that the Soviet Union is in severe decline,” paradoxically, its members argue that the threat from the USSR is imminent and will grow ever more so because it is a wealthy country with “a large and expanding Gross National Product.”

Allegations ‘Complete Fiction’ – The CIA lambasts Team B’s report as “complete fiction.” CIA director George H. W. Bush says that B’s approach “lends itself to manipulation for purposes other than estimative accuracy.” His successor, Admiral Stansfield Turner, will come to the same conclusion, saying, “Team B was composed of outsiders with a right-wing ideological bent. The intention was to promote competition by polarizing the teams. It failed. The CIA teams, knowing that the outsiders on B would take extreme views, tended to do the same in self-defense. When B felt frustrated over its inability to prevail, one of its members leaked much of the secret material of the proceedings to the press” (see Late November, 1976). Former CIA deputy director Ray Cline says Team B had subverted the National Intelligence Estimate on the USSR by employing “a kangaroo court of outside critics all picked from one point of view.” Secretary of State Henry Kissinger says that B’s only purpose is to subvert detente and sabotage a new arms limitation treaty between the US and the Soviet Union. [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Common Dreams (.org), 12/7/2004; BBC, 1/14/2005; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-57]

Costs of Rearmament – In 1993, after reviewing the original Team B documents, Cahn will reflect on the effect of the B exercise: “For more than a third of a century, assertions of Soviet superiority created calls for the United States to ‘rearm.’ In the 1980s, the call was heeded so thoroughly that the United States embarked on a trillion-dollar defense buildup. As a result, the country neglected its schools, cities, roads and bridges, and health care system. From the world’s greatest creditor nation, the United States became the world’s greatest debtor—in order to pay for arms to counter the threat of a nation that was collapsing.” [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993] Former Senator Gary Hart (D-CO) will agree: “The Pro-B Team leak and public attack on the conclusions of the NIE represent but one element in a series of leaks and other statements which have been aimed as fostering a ‘worst case’ view for the public of the Soviet threat. In turn, this view of the Soviet threat is used to justify new weapons systems.” [Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ]

Entity Tags: Howard Stoertz, Henry A. Kissinger, Stansfield Turner, Richard Pipes, J. Peter Scoblic, Ray Cline, George Herbert Walker Bush, Craig Unger, Defense Intelligence Agency, ’Team A’, Gary Hart, Anne Cahn, ’Team B’, Carter administration, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Paul Nitze, Central Intelligence Agency

Timeline Tags: US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence

Late November, 1976: Team B Breaches Security to Successfully Whip up Fears of Soviet Threat

Although the entire “Team B” intelligence analysis experiment (see Early 1976, November 1976, and November 1976) is supposed to be classified and secret, the team’s neoconservatives launch what author Craig Unger will call “a massive campaign to inflame fears of the red menace in both the general population and throughout the [foreign] policy community—thanks to strategically placed leaks to the Boston Globe and later to the New York Times.” Times reporter David Binder later says that Team B leader Richard Pipes is “jubilant” over “pok[ing] holes at the [CIA]‘s analysis” of the Soviet threat. Team B member John Vogt calls the exercise “an opportunity to even up some scores with the CIA.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 57] Team member George Keegan tells reporters, “I am unaware of a single important category in which the Soviets have not established a significant lead over the United States… [This] grave imbalance in favor of Soviet military capability had developed out of a failure over the last 15 years to adjust American strategic thinking to Soviet strategic thinking, and out of the failure of the leadership of the American intelligence community to ‘perceive the reality’ of the Soviet military buildup.” Keegan’s colleague William van Cleave agrees, saying that “overall strategic superiority exists today for the Soviet Union,” and adds, “I think it’s getting to the point that, if we can make a trade with the Soviet Union of defense establishments, I’d be heartily in favor of it.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 95]

Used to Escalate Defense Spending – The experiment is far more than a dry, intellectual exercise or a chance for academics to score points against the CIA. Melvin Goodman, who heads the CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs, will observe in 2004: “[Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld won that very intense, intense political battle that was waged in Washington in 1975 and 1976. Now, as part of that battle, Rumsfeld and others, people such as Paul Wolfowitz, wanted to get into the CIA. And their mission was to create a much more severe view of the Soviet Union, Soviet intentions, Soviet views about fighting and winning a nuclear war.” Even though Wolfowitz’s and Rumsfeld’s assertions of powerful new Soviet WMD programs are completely wrong, they use the charges to successfully push for huge escalations in military spending, a process that continues through the Ford and Reagan administrations (see 1976) [Common Dreams (.org), 12/7/2004; BBC, 1/14/2005] , and resurface in the two Bush administrations. “Finally,” Unger will write, “a band of Cold Warriors and neocon ideologues had successfully insinuated themselves in the nation’s multibillion-dollar intelligence apparatus and had managed to politicize intelligence in an effort to implement new foreign policy.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 57-58]

Kicking Over the Chessboard – Former senior CIA official Richard Lehman later says that Team B members “were leaking all over the place… putting together this inflammatory document.” Author and university professor Gordon R. Mitchell will write that B’s practice of “strategically leaking incendiary bits of intelligence to journalists, before final judgments were reached in the competitive intelligence exercise,” was another method for Team B members to promulgate their arguments without actually proving any of their points. Instead of participating in the debate, they abandoned the strictures of the exercise and leaked their unsubstantiated findings to the press to “win” the argument. [Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ]

‘One Long Air Raid Siren’ – In 2002, defense policy reporter Fred Kaplan will sardonically label Team B the “Rumsfeld Intelligence Agency,” and write: “It was sold as an ‘exercise’ in intelligence analysis, an interesting competition—Team A (the CIA) and Team B (the critics). Yet once allowed the institutional footing, the Team B players presented their conclusions—and leaked them to friendly reporters—as the truth,” a truth, Team B alleges, the pro-detente Ford administration intends to conceal. Kaplan will continue, “The Team B report read like one long air-raid siren: The Soviets were spending practically all their GNP on the military; they were perfecting charged particle beams that could knock our warheads out of the sky; their express policy and practical goal was to fight and win a nuclear war.” Team B is flatly wrong across the board, but it still has a powerful impact on the foreign policy of the Ford administration, and gives the neoconservatives and hardliners who oppose arms control and detente a rallying point. Author Barry Werth will observe that Rumsfeld and his ideological and bureaucratic ally, White House chief of staff Dick Cheney “drove the SALT II negotiations into the sand at the Pentagon and the White House.” Ford’s primary opponent, Ronald Reagan, and the neocons’ public spokesman, Senator Henry Jackson, pillory Ford for being soft on Communism and the Soviet Union. Ford stops talking about detente with the Soviets, and breaks off discussions with the Soviets over limiting nuclear weapons. Through Team B, Rumsfeld and the neocons succeed in stalling the incipient thaw in US-Soviet relations and in weakening Ford as a presidential candidate. [Werth, 2006, pp. 341]

Entity Tags: Melvin A. Goodman, New York Times, Paul Wolfowitz, Reagan administration, Ronald Reagan, Richard Lehman, William van Cleave, John Vogt, Richard Pipes, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Henry (“Scoop”) Jackson, Gordon R. Mitchell, Bush administration (41), Boston Globe, Barry Werth, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Bush administration (43), Central Intelligence Agency, ’Team B’, David Binder, Fred Kaplan, Craig Unger, Ford administration, George Keegan, Donald Rumsfeld

Timeline Tags: US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence

1977-1981: Nationalities Working Group Advocates Using Militant Islam Against Soviet Union

In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter’s National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. The Islamic populations are regarded as prime targets. Richard Pipes, the father of Daniel Pipes, takes over the leadership of the NWG in 1981. Pipes predicts that with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will “explode into genocidal fury” against Moscow. According to Richard Cottam, a former CIA official who advised the Carter administration at the time, after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1978, Brzezinski favored a “de facto alliance with the forces of Islamic resurgence, and with the Republic of Iran.” [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 241, 251 – 256]

Entity Tags: Richard Pipes, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Nationalities Working Group

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence, War in Afghanistan

Early 1981: Richard Perle Assists Reagan’s Transition Team

Richard Perle works on the Reagan administration’s transition team. He manages to “place his associates in important national security positions and in the Department of Defense.” [New York Times, 4/17/1983]

Entity Tags: Richard Perle

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence

Early 1981 and After: Reagan Categorically Opposed to Arms Control Agreements with Soviet Union; Advisers Reflect Oppositional Agenda

In conjunction with his huge peacetime military buildup (see Early 1981 and After), President Reagan strongly opposes any sort of arms control or limitation discussions with the Soviet Union.

Rostow to ACDA – As a member of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD—see 1976), Reagan had spoken out against the SALT II arms control treaty with the USSR (see June 18, 1979-Winter 1979), calling it “fatally flawed.” He has opposed every significant arms limitation agreement since 1963, no matter whether it was negotiated by Republican or Democratic administrations. To continue his opposition, Reagan appoints Eugene Rostow to head the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). Rostow, a fellow CPD member, is flatly opposed to any sort of arms control or disarmament agreement with the Soviet Union, and had led the CPD fight against the SALT II agreement. “Arms control thinking drives out sound thinking,” he told the Senate. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 118-120] During his confirmation hearings, Rostow tells Senate questioners that the US could certainly survive a nuclear war, and gives World War II-era Japan as an example—that nation “not only survived but flourished after a nuclear attack.” When asked if the world could survive a full nuclear attack of thousands of nuclear warheads instead of the two that Japan had weathered, Rostow says that even though the casualties might be between “ten million… and one hundred million… [t]he human race is very resilient.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 126] Rostow’s aide at the ACDA, Colin Gray, says that “victory is possible” in a nuclear war provided the US is prepared to fight. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 127]

Burt to State Department – Reagan names Richard Burt to head the State Department’s Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs, the State Department’s primary liaison with the Defense Department. Burt, a former New York Times reporter, is one of the few journalists synpathetic to the CPD, and recently called the SALT agreement “a favor to the Russians.” Just before joining the Reagan administration, Burt called for reductions in nuclear arms controls: “Arms control has developed the same kind of mindless momentum associated with other large-scale government pursuits. Conceptual notions of limited durability, such as the doctrine of mutual assured destruction [MAD], have gained bureaucratic constituencies and have thus been prolonged beyond their usefulness. There are strong reasons for believing that arms control is unlikely to possess much utility in the coming decade.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 118-120; US Department of State, 2008]

Perle to Defense Department – Perhaps the most outspoken opponent of arms control is neoconservative Richard Perle, named as assistant defense secretary for international security affairs. Perle, until recently the national security adviser to Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s), will quickly become, in author J. Peter Scoblic’s words, “the administration’s chief arms control obstructionist, dubbed ‘the Prince of Darkness’ by his enemies.” Perle once said: “The sense that we and the Russians could compose our differences, reduce them to treaty constraints… and then rely on compliance to produce a safer world. I don’t agree with any of that.” Now Perle is poised to act on his beliefs. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 118-120]

Vice President Bush – Although seen as a pragmatist and not a hardline conservative (see January 1981 and After), Vice President George H. W. Bush is also optimistic about the chances of the US coming out on top after a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. During the 1980 campaign, he told a reporter: “You have a survivability of command and control, survivability of industrial potential, protection of a percentage of your citizens, and you have a capability that inflicts more damage on the opposition tham it inflicts on you. That’s the way you can have a winner.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 126-127]

Other Appointees – Perle’s immediate supervisor in Defense is Fred Ikle, who headed ACDA in 1973 and helped battle back part of the original SALT agreement. Ikle will be primarily responsible for the Pentagon’s “five-year plan” that envisions a “protracted nuclear war” as a viable option (see March 1982). Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger considers the standoff between the US and the Soviet Union akin to the situation between Britain and Nazi Germany in 1938, with himself and his ideological confreres as Britain’s Winston Churchill and any attempt at arms control as nothing but appeasement. Energy Secretary James B. Edwards says of a hypothetical nuclear war, “I want to come out of it number one, not number two.” Pentagon official Thomas Jones tells a reporter that the US could handily survive a nuclear exchange, and fully recover within two to four years, if the populace digs plenty of holes, cover them with wooden doors, and bury the structures under three feet of dirt. “If there are enough shovels to go around, everybody’s going to make it,” he says. Reagan’s second National Security Adviser, William Clark, will, according to Reagan official and future Secretary of State George Shultz, “categorically oppos[e] US-Soviet contacts” of any kind. Some of the administration’s more pragmatic members, such as Reagan’s first Secretary of State Alexander Haig, will have limited access to Reagan and be cut off from many policy-making processes by Reagan’s more hardline senior officials and staffers. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 118-120, 127; Air Force Magazine, 3/2008]

Entity Tags: George Herbert Walker Bush, Fred C. Ikle, Committee on the Present Danger, Colin Gray, Caspar Weinberger, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Eugene V. Rostow, US Department of State, William Clark, Thomas Jones, Richard Burt, Richard Perle, Reagan administration, James B. Edwards, Ronald Reagan, J. Peter Scoblic, US Department of Defense, Henry (“Scoop”) Jackson, George Shultz

Timeline Tags: US International Relations

September 1981 through November 1983: Hardliners Block INF Arms Agreement

Reagan officials reopen the stalled Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) arms limitation talks with the Soviet Union, against the advice of President Reagan’s more hardline officials (see January 1981 and After). The talks center on the Soviets’ SS-20 missile, designed to strike European targets. In return, then-President Carter had agreed to deploy US intermediate-range nuclear missiles—Pershing II’s and Tomahawks—in West Germany and Italy by 1983. According to author J. Peter Scoblic, the missiles have little real military value, as American ICBMs, submarine-based nuclear missiles, and long-range bombers could destroy Soviet targets with near-impunity. They do, however, have some political significance, mostly in helping tie European security to US security. Carter had agreed to open talks with the Soviets to get rid of the SS-20s entirely.

Hardliners Sabotage Talks – The more pragmatic Reagan officials succeed in reopening the talks; Reagan hardliners, thwarted in stopping the talks, set about sabotaging them in any way available. When arguments in favor of delays and “further study” finally fail, they pressure Reagan to offer an agreement they know the Soviets will refuse: the so-called “zero option,” which originates with Defense Department official Richard Perle (see Early 1981 and After). Perle says that the Soviets should remove all of the SS-20s, and in return, the US will not deploy its Pershings and Tomahawks—in essence, having the Soviets concede something for essentially nothing. State Department officials suggest a fallback position in case the Soviets reject Perle’s offering; in his turn, Perle appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee and compares anyone who opposes his zero-sum offering to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler in 1938.

‘Walk in the Woods’ – When the Soviets reject Perle’s option, Reagan hardliners argue that the government should accept no compromise. The head of the INF negotiation team, Paul Nitze—a Cold War figure who has come out against arms control (see January 1976) but is not fully trusted by the hardline ideologues because of his history as an arms negotiator—wants a compromise. In official negotiations, he sticks to the all-or-nothing position of Perle, but opens private, informal negotiations with his Soviet counterpart, Yuli Kvitsinsky. One afternoon in 1982, Nitze and Kvitsinsky go for what later becomes known as their “walk in the woods.” Sitting together on a log during an afternoon rainstorm, the two hammer out an agreement that greatly favors the US—mandating a 67 percent reduction in Soviet SS-20s and allowing the US to deploy an equal number of Tomahawks. Not only would the Soviets have to reduce their already-deployed contingent of missiles and the US be allowed to deploy missiles, because the Tomahawks carry more independent warheads than the SS-20s, the US would have a significant advantage in firepower. The deal also sets limits on SS-20 deployments in Asia, and forbids the Soviets from developing ground-launched cruise missiles. In return, the US would agree not to deploy its Pershing missiles.

Hardliners Block Agreement – Perle and his hardline allies in the Reagan administration succeed in blocking acceptance of the Nitze-Kvitsinsky agreement. As author J. Peter Scoblic later writes, “Perle’s ideological obstructionism—concisely conveyed in his disparagement of Nitze as ‘an inverterate problem-solver’—reached fantastic heights.” Perle first tried to block Reagan from even learning the details of the agreement, and lied to Reagan, asserting falsely that the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed the agreement. Perle, in conjunction with Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, eventually convinces Reagan to stick to the “zero option.” Perle argues against pressure from key US allies such as Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, telling Reagan, “We can’t just do something; we’ve got to stand there—and stand firm.” In 1983, Perle tells Weinberger that it would be better for the US to deploy no missiles at all than to accept the agreement. Scoblic will write: “In other words, he argued that foregoing deployment in return for nothing was better than foregoing deployment in exchange for something. The position made no sense, but the Reagan team held firm to it, once again preventing the adoption of a viable arms control deal.” When the US deploys Pershing missiles in Europe in November 1983, the Soviets walk out of the talks. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 120-123]

Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Margaret Thatcher, Joint Chiefs of Staff, J. Peter Scoblic, Caspar Weinberger, Paul Nitze, Ronald Reagan, Reagan administration, Senate Armed Services Committee, US Department of State, Yuli Kvitsinsky

Timeline Tags: US International Relations

May 1982 and After: START Talks Supplant SALT Negotiations, Make No Progress

President Reagan, giving a speech at his alma mater, Eureka College, renames the US-USSR SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) negotiations START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks). The renamed negotiations reflect profound dissension within the administration for and against arms limitation talks (see January 1981 and After and Early 1981 and After). State Department official Richard Burt, formerly opposed to arms negotiations, wants to ramp up the SALT talks and seek reductions in warheads and launchers. Defense Department official Richard Perle, the neoconservative who is working to block another arms limitation with the Soviet Union (see September 1981 through November 1983), wants to focus on payloads and “throw weight.” The administration’s compromise between the two positions—START—“ma[kes] no sense whatsoever,” according to author J. Peter Scoblic.

Initial Proposal Unacceptable to Soviets – START’s initial position—reducing each side’s deployment to 850 nuclear missiles and 5,000 warheads, of which no more than 2,500 can be on ICBMs—sounds like a significant reduction on paper, but many experts on all sides of the nuclear arms issue worry that such an agreement, putting so many warheads on so few missiles, would actually encourage each side to consider a first strike in a crisis. Arms control proponent Paul Warnke says, “If the Russians accept Mr. Reagan’s proposal, he’ll be forced to reject it himself.” But because of the disparity in missile configurations between the US and the Soviets, such an agreement would require the Soviets to drastically reduce their nuclear arsenal by 60 percent, while the US would lose almost nothing; therefore, the Soviets would never agree to such a proposal. Scoblic will note that as an opening gambit this proposal might be successful, if the Americans were prepared to back down somewhat and give the Soviets something. But the US negotiators have no intention of backing down. The Soviets are keenly interested in the US agreeing to reduce the number of cruise missiles it has deployed, but Reagan signs a National Security Directive forbidding US negotiators from even discussing the idea until the Soviets made significant concessions on “throw weight,” essentially tying his negotiators’ hands.

Chief US Negotiator Insults Soviets – The negotiations are made more difficult by the US team’s chief negotiator, Edward Rowny. Rowny, a former national security adviser to hardline Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), does not believe in diplomacy with anyone, particularly the Soviets. According to Scoblic, Rowny believes in “telling it like it is” to his Soviet counterparts, which Scoblic calls “insulting one’s negotiating opponents.” As he has no real negotiating latitude, Rowny’s diplomacy consists of little more than insults towards his Soviet counterparts. He tells them they do not understand the issues, boasts of his own Polish (i.e. anti-Russian) heritage, even stages walkouts over the seating arrangements. Rowny feels that he is opening a new era in negotiations, but in reality, the START talks are making no progress. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 123-124]

Entity Tags: Paul Warnke, Edward Rowny, J. Peter Scoblic, Jesse Helms, Ronald Reagan, Richard Burt, Richard Perle

Timeline Tags: US International Relations

1984: Richard Perle Promotes Propaganda Campaign to Encourage Soviet Soldiers to Defect

Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle urges the CIA to promote a propaganda program urging Soviet soldiers to defect to the mujaheddin in Afghanistan. He is viewed by the CIA officers as the craziest of the many extreme right-wingers with whom they have dealt. [Crile, 2003, pp. 331-334]

Entity Tags: Richard Perle

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence

October 11-12, 1986: Reagan, Gorbachev Almost Conclude Agreement to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons; Negotiations Founder on US Missile Defense Program

Gorbachev and Reagan

President Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Reykjavik, Iceland, for a second summit, to follow on the success of their first meeting almost a year before (see November 16-19, 1985). They base their discussion on Gorbachev’s January proposals of deep cuts in the two nations’ nuclear arsenals (see January 1986).

Elimination of All Nuclear Weapons by 1996 – Gorbachev and his negotiators begin by reiterating Gorbachev’s proposals for a 50 percent cut in all nuclear weapons, deep reductions in Soviet ICBMs, and the elimination of all European-based intermediate nuclear weapons. Reagan and his negotiators counter with a proposal for both sides to destroy half of their nuclear ballistic missiles in the next five years, and the rest to be destroyed over the next five, leaving both sides with large arsenals of cruise missiles and bomber-based weapons. Gorbachev ups the ante, proposing that all nuclear weapons be destroyed within 10 years. Reagan responds that it would be fine with him “if we eliminated all nuclear weapons,” implicitly including all tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and everywhere else. Gorbachev says, “We can do that,” and Secretary of State George Shultz says, “Let’s do it.”

Agreement Founders on SDI – The heady moment is lost when the two sides fail to reach an agreement on SDI—the Americans’ “Star Wars” missile defense system (see March 23, 1983). Gorbachev cannot accept any major reductions in nuclear weapons if the US has a viable missile defense system; Reagan is convinced that SDI would allow both sides to eliminate their nuclear weapons, and offers the SDI technology to the Soviets. Gorbachev finds Reagan’s offer naive, since there is no guarantee that future presidents would honor the deal. Reagan, in another example of his ignorance of the mechanics of the US nuclear program (see April 1981 and After), does not seem to realize that even a completely effective SDI program would not defend against Soviet cruise missiles and long-range bombers, and therefore would not end the threat of nuclear destruction for either side. Author J. Peter Scoblic will later write, “[SDI] would have convinced the Soviet Union that the United States sought a first-strike capability, since the Americans were so far ahead in cruise missile and stealth bomber technology.” Gorbachev does not ask that the US abandon SDI entirely, but simply observe the terms of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty (see May 26, 1972) and confine SDI research to the laboratory. Reagan refuses. Gorbachev says that if this is the US’s position, then they would have to “forget everything they discussed.” Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze breaks in, saying that the two nations are “so close” to making history that “if future generations read the minutes of these meetings, and saw how close we had come but how we did not use these opportunities, they would never forgive us.” But the agreement is not to be.

Participants’ Reactions – As Shultz later says, “Reykjavik was too bold for the world.” Shultz tells reporters that he is “deeply disappointed” in the results, and no longer sees “any prospect” for a third summit. Gorbachev tells reporters that Reagan’s insistence on retaining SDI had “frustrated and scuttled” the opportunity for an agreement. Gorbachev says he told Reagan that the two countries “were missing a historic chance. Never had our positions been so close together.” Reagan says as he is leaving Iceland that “though we put on the table the most far-reaching arms control proposal in history, the general secretary [Gorbachev] rejected it.” Scoblic will later write, “In the end, ironically, it was Reagan’s utopianism, hitched as it was to a missile shield, that preserved the status quo.” [Washington Post, 10/13/1986; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 140-142]

Hardline Sabotage – One element that contributes to the failure of the negotiations is the efforts to undermine the talks by hardline advisers Richard Perle and Ken Adelman, who tell Reagan that confining SDI to research facilities would destroy the program. Perle and Adelman are lying, but Reagan, not knowing any better, believes them, and insists that SDI remain in development. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 143-144]

Going Too Far? – Reagan’s negotiators, even the most ardent proponents of nuclear reduction, are shocked that he almost agreed to give up the US’s entire nuclear arsenal—with Shultz’s encouragement. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President Francois Mitterand are horrified at the prospect, given that NATO’s nuclear arsenal in Europe is the only real counterweight to the huge Red Army so close to the borders of Western European nations. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 140-142]

Failure of Trust – The US-Soviet talks may well have foundered on an inability of either side to trust the other one to the extent necessary to implement the agreements. During the talks, Soviet aide Gyorgy Arbatov tells US negotiator Paul Nitze that the proposals would require “an exceptional level of trust.” Therefore, Arbatov says, “we cannot accept your position.” [National Security Archives, 3/12/2008]

Entity Tags: Paul Nitze, J. Peter Scoblic, Kenneth Adelman, Gyorgy Arbatov, George Shultz, Francois Mitterand, Margaret Thatcher, Richard Perle, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev

Timeline Tags: US International Relations

1987-2004: Richard Perle Serves as Member of Defense Policy Board

Richard Perle serves as a member of the Defense Policy Board, an unpaid but influential position in the Pentagon. [Inter Press Service, 6/29/2004]

Entity Tags: Richard Perle

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence

March 20, 1989 and After: Dick Cheney Becomes Secretary of Defense

Dick Cheney

Former Representative Dick Cheney (R-WY) becomes secretary of defense under President George H. W. Bush. [US Department of Defense, 11/24/2005] Cheney is the second choice; Bush’s first consideration, former Texas senator John Tower, lost key Senate support when details of his licentious lifestyle and possible alcoholism became known. Cheney was the choice of, among others, Vice President Dan Quayle and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, who both feel that Bush needs someone in the position fast, and the best way to have someone move through the confirmation process is to have someone from Congress. Although Cheney never served in the military, and managed to dodge service during the Vietnam War with five student deferments, he has no skeletons in his closet like Tower’s, and he has the support of Congressional hawks. His confirmation hearings are little more than a formality.

Cheney Leaves the House, Gingrich Steps In – Cheney’s House colleague, Republican Mickey Edwards, later reflects, “The whole world we live in would be totally different if Dick Cheney had not been plucked from the House to take the place of John Tower.” Cheney was “in line to become the [GOP’s] leader in the House and ultimately the majority leader and speaker,” Edwards will say. “If that [had] happened, the whole Gingrich era wouldn’t have happened.” Edwards is referring to Newt Gingrich (R-GA), the future speaker of the House who, in authors Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein’s own reflections, “ushered in fifteen years of rancorous, polarized politics.” While Cheney is as partisan as Gingrich, he is not the kind of confrontational, scorched-earth politician Gingrich is. According to Edwards, no one can envision Cheney moving down the same road as Gingrich will.

Successful Tenure – As the Pentagon’s civilian chief, many will reflect on Cheney’s tenure as perhaps his finest hour as a public servant. “I saw him for four years as [defense secretary]. He was one of the best executives the Department of Defense had ever seen,” later says Larry Wilkerson, who will serve in the Bush-Cheney administration as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. “He made decisions. Contrast that with the other one I saw [Clinton Secretary of Defense Lester Aspin], who couldn’t make a decision if it slapped him in the face.” Cheney will preside over a gradual reduction in forces stationed abroad—a reduction skillfully managed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell.

Bringing Aboard the Neoconservatives – Cheney asks one of Tower’s putative hires, Paul Wolfowitz, to stay; Wolfowitz, with fellow Pentagon neoconservatives Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Zalmay Khalilzad, will draft the Pentagon’s 1992 Defense Planning Guide (DPG) (see February 18, 1992), a harshly neoconservative proposal that envisions the US as the world’s strongman, dominating every other country and locking down the Middle East oil reserves for its own use. Though the DPG is denounced by President Bush, Cheney supports it wholeheartedly, even issuing it under his own name. “He took ownership in it,” Khalilzad recalls. Cheney also brings in his aide from the Iran-Contra hearings, David Addington (see Mid-March through Early April, 1987), another neoconservative who shares Cheney’s view of almost unlimited executive power at the expense of the judicial and legislative branches. [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 87-95]

Entity Tags: Lester Aspin, George Herbert Walker Bush, David S. Addington, Dan Quayle, Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft, Jake Bernstein, Lawrence Wilkerson, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, John Tower, Newt Gingrich, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, Mickey Edwards, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Lou Dubose, Paul Wolfowitz

Timeline Tags: US Military

Late March 1989 and After: Defense Secretary Cheney Advocates Enforced Regime Change in Soviet Union

When Dick Cheney becomes defense secretary (see March 20, 1989 and After), he brings into the Pentagon a core group of young, ideological staffers with largely academic (not military) backgrounds. Many of these staffers are neoconservatives who once congregated around Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (see Early 1970s). Cheney places them in the Pentagon’s policy directorate, under the supervision of Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, himself one of Jackson’s cadre. While most administrations leave the policy directorate to perform mundane tasks, Wolfowitz and his team have no interest in such. “They focused on geostrategic issues,” one of his Pentagon aides will recall. “They considered themselves conceptual.” Wolfowitz and his team are more than willing to reevaluate the most fundamental precepts of US foreign policy in their own terms, and in Cheney they have what reporters Franklin Foer and Spencer Ackerman call “a like-minded patron.” In 1991, Wolfowitz will describe his relationship to Cheney: “Intellectually, we’re very much on similar wavelengths.”

A Different View of the Soviet Union – Cheney pairs with Wolfowitz and his neoconservatives to battle one issue in particular: the US’s dealings with the Soviet Union. Premier Mikhail Gorbachev has been in office for four years, and has built a strong reputation for himself in the West as a charismatic reformer. But Cheney, Wolfowitz, and the others see something far darker. Cheney opposes any dealings with the Soviets except on the most adversarial level (see 1983), and publicly discusses his skepticism of perestroika, Gorbachev’s restructing of the Soviet economy away from a communist paradigm. In April, Cheney tells a CNN news anchor that Gorbachev will “ultimately fail” and a leader “far more hostile” to the West will follow in his footsteps. Some of President Bush’s more “realistic” aides, including James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, and Condoleezza Rice, as well as Bush himself, have cast their lot with Gorbachev and reform; they have no use for Cheney’s public advocacy of using the USSR’s period of transitional turmoil to dismember the nation once and for all.

Cheney’s Alternative Policy – Cheney turns to the neoconservatives under Wolfowitz for an alternative strategy. They meet on Saturday mornings in the Pentagon’s E ring, where they have one maverick Sovietologist after another propound his or her views. Almost all of these Sovietologists echo Cheney and Wolfowitz’s view—the USSR is on the brink of collapse, and the US should do what it can to hasten the process and destroy its enemy for good. They assert that what the Soviet Union needs is not a reformer guiding the country back into a papered-over totalitarianism, to emerge (with the US’s help) stronger and more dangerous than before. Instead, Cheney and his cadre advocate enforced regime change in the Soviet Union. Supporting the rebellious Ukraine will undermine the legitimacy of the central Soviet government, and supporting Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Republic, will strike at the heart of the Gorbachev regime. Bush and his core advisers worry about instability, but Cheney says that the destruction of the Soviet Union is worth a little short-term disruption.

Failure – Bush will not adopt the position of his defense secretary, and will continue supporting Gorbachev through the Soviet Union’s painful transition and eventual dissolution. After Cheney goes public one time too many about his feelings about Gorbachev, Baker tells Scowcroft to “[d]ump on Dick” with all deliberate speed. During the final days of the Soviet Union, Cheney will find himself alone against Bush’s senior advisers and Cabinet members in their policy discussions. [New Republic, 11/20/2003]

Entity Tags: George Herbert Walker Bush, Brent Scowcroft, Boris Yeltsin, Franklin Foer, US Department of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, James A. Baker, Henry (“Scoop”) Jackson, Condoleezza Rice, Mikhail Gorbachev, Spencer Ackerman

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence

1991-1997: Group of Foreign Policy Analysts Recommends Interventionist Policy

Morton Abramowitz

Morton Abramowitz, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, establishes a number of blue-ribbon commissions, headed by a select group of foreign policy elite, to create a new post-Cold War foreign policy framework for the US. Some of the group’s members are Madeleine Albright, Henry Cisneros, John Deutch, Richard Holbrooke, Alice Rivlin, David Gergen, Admiral William Crowe, Leon Fuerth, as well as Richard Perle and James Schlesinger, the two token conservatives who quickly resign. The commission will issue a number of policy papers recommending the increased use of military force to intervene in the domestic conflicts of other countries. Some of the commission’s members are appointed to brief Democratic presidential candidates on the commission’s reports ahead of their release. [American Spectator, 6/1999] Abramowitz is also influential in the career of counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke, who refers to Abramowitz as his “boss and mentor” at the State Department. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 48]

Entity Tags: Richard A. Clarke, Richard Holbrooke, William Crowe Jr., Richard Perle, Morton I. Abramowitz, Madeleine Albright, Leon Fuerth, David Gergen, Henry Cisneros, John Deutch, Alice Rivlin, Arthur M. Schlesinger

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Neoconservative Influence

February 1991-1992: Cheney and Neoconservatives Dispute Decision Not to Overthrow Hussein

Many experts consider President Bush’s decision not to invade Baghdad and overthrow Saddam Hussein (see January 16, 1991 and After) as wise and prudent, avoiding putting the US in the position of becoming a hostile occupying force and, thusly, avoiding the alienation of allies around the world as well as upholding the UN mandate overseeing the conflict. However, many of the neoconservatives in Defense Secretary Dick Cheney’s office have different views. Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and Zalmay Khalilzad are among those who view the “failure” to overthrow Hussein as what author Craig Unger will call “a disastrous lost opportunity.” Unger will reflect, “Interestingly, in what critics later termed ‘Chickenhawk Groupthink,’ the moderate, pragmatic, somewhat dovish policies implemented by men with genuinely stellar [military] records—George H. W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft, and Colin Powell—were under fire by men who had managed to avoid military service—Cheney, Wolfowitz, Libby, and Khalilzad.” (Secretary of State James Baker tells Powell to watch out for the “kooks” working for Cheney.) In some ways, the criticism and counterproposals from Cheney and his followers amounts to another “Team B” experience similar to that of 16 years before (see Early 1976, November 1976 and November 1976). Wolfowitz, with Libby and Khalilzad, will soon write their own set of recommendations, the Defense Planning Guide (DPG) (see February 18, 1992) memo, sometimes called the “Wolfowitz doctrine.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 115-117]

Entity Tags: Paul Wolfowitz, Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell, Craig Unger, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Saddam Hussein, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, George Herbert Walker Bush

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

February 18, 1992: ’Wolfowitz Doctrine:’ Proposal Advocates US as World’s Lone Superpower

Paul Wolfowitz

A draft of the Defense Department’s new post-Cold War strategy, the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), causes a split among senior department officials and is criticized by the White House. The draft, prepared by defense officials Zalmay Khalilzad and Lewis “Scooter” Libby under the supervision of Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, says that the US must become the world’s single superpower and must take aggressive action to prevent competing nations—even allies such as Germany and Japan—from challenging US economic and military supremacy. [New York Times, 5/23/1992; Rupert and Solomon, 2005, pp. 122; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 165] The views in the document will become known informally as the “Wolfowitz Doctrine.” Neoconservative Ben Wattenberg will say that its core thesis is “to guard against the emergence of hostile regional superpowers, for example, Iraq or China.” He will add: “America is No. 1. We stand for something decent and important. That’s good for us and good for the world. That’s the way we want to keep it.” [AntiWar (.com), 8/24/2001] The document hails what it calls the “less visible” victory at the end of the Cold War, which it defines as “the integration of Germany and Japan into a US-led system of collective security and the creation of a democratic ‘zone of peace.’” It also asserts the importance of US nuclear weapons: “Our nuclear forces also provide an important deterrent hedge against the possibility of a revitalized or unforeseen global threat, while at the same time helping to deter third party use of weapons of mass destruction through the threat of retaliation.” [New York Times, 3/8/1992] The document states, “We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” [New York Times, 3/8/1992] In 2007, author Craig Unger will write that deterring “potential competitors” from aspiring to a larger role means “punishing them before they can act.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 116]

US Not Interested in Long-Term Alliances – The document, which says the US cannot act as the world’s policeman, sees alliances among European nations such as Germany and France (see May 22, 1992) as a potential threat to US supremacy, and says that any future military alliances will be “ad hoc” affairs that will not last “beyond the crisis being confronted, and in many cases carrying only general agreement over the objectives to be accomplished.… [T]he sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the US will be an important stabilizing factor.” [New York Times, 5/23/1992] Conspicuously absent is any reference to the United Nations, what is most important is “the sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the US… the United States should be postured to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated” or in a crisis that demands quick response. [New York Times, 3/8/1992] Unger will write of Wolfowitz’s “ad hoc assemblies:” “Translation: in the future, the United States, if it liked, would go it alone.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 116]

Preventing the Rise of Any Global Power – “[W]e endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union and Southwest Asia.” The document advocates “a unilateral US defense guarantee” to Eastern Europe, “preferably in cooperation with other NATO states,” and foresees use of American military power to preempt or punish use of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, “even in conflicts that otherwise do not directly engage US interests.” [Washington Post, 3/11/1992]

Containing Post-Soviet Threats – The document says that the US’s primary goal is “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.” It adds, “This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to general global power.” In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, “our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve US and Western access to the region’s oil.” The document also asserts that the US will act to restrain what it calls India’s “hegemonic aspirations” in South Asia [New York Times, 5/23/1992] , and warns of potential conflicts, perhaps requiring military intervention, arising in Cuba and China. “The US may be faced with the question of whether to take military steps to prevent the development or use of weapons of mass destruction,” it states, and notes that these steps may include pre-empting an impending attack with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, “or punishing the attackers or threatening punishment of aggressors through a variety of means,” including attacks on the plants that manufacture such weapons. It advocates the construction of a new missile defense system to counter future threats from nuclear-armed nations. [New York Times, 3/8/1992]

Reflective of Cheney, Wolfowitz’s Views – Senior Pentagon officials say that while the draft has not yet been approved by either Dick Cheney or Wolfowitz, both played substantial roles in its creation and endorse its views. “This is not the piano player in the whorehouse,” one official says.

Democrats Condemn Policy Proposal – Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), an advocate of a reduction in military spending, calls the document “myopic, shallow and disappointing,” adding: “The basic thrust of the document seems to be this: We love being the sole remaining superpower in the world.” Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) attacks what he sees as the document’s emphasis on unilateral military action, and ridicules it as “literally a Pax Americana.” Pentagon officials will dispute characterizations that the policy flatly rejects any idea of multilateral military alliances. One defense official says, “What is just dead wrong is this notion of a sole superpower dominating the rest of the world.” [New York Times, 3/8/1992; Washington Post, 3/11/1992]

Abandoned, Later Resurrected – Wolfowitz’s draft will be heavily revised and much of its language dropped in a later revision (see May 22, 1992) after being leaked to the media(see March 8, 1992). Cheney and Wolfowitz’s proposals will receive much more favorable treatment from the administration of George W. Bush (see August 21, 2001).

Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Ben Wattenberg, Craig Unger, Robert C. Byrd, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Bush administration (41), United Nations, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, US Department of Defense, Joseph Biden

Timeline Tags: US International Relations

March 8, 1992: Raw US World Dominance Plan Is Leaked to the Media

The Defense Planning Guidance, “a blueprint for the department’s spending priorities in the aftermath of the first Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union,” is leaked to the New York Times. [New York Times, 3/8/1992; Newsday, 3/16/2003] The document causes controversy, because it hadn’t yet been “scrubbed” to replace candid language with euphemisms. [New York Times, 3/10/1992; New York Times, 3/11/1992; Observer, 4/7/2002] The document argues that the US dominates the world as sole superpower, and to maintain that role, it “must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” [New York Times, 3/8/1992; New York Times, 3/8/1992] As the Observer summarizes it, “America’s friends are potential enemies. They must be in a state of dependence and seek solutions to their problems in Washington.” [Observer, 4/7/2002] The document is mainly written by Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who hold relatively low posts at the time, but become deputy defense secretary and Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, respectively, under George W. Bush. [Newsday, 3/16/2003] The authors conspicuously avoid mention of collective security arrangements through the United Nations, instead suggesting the US “should expect future coalitions to be ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted.” [New York Times, 3/8/1992] They call for “punishing” or “threatening punishment” against regional aggressors before they act. [Harper’s, 10/2002] Interests to be defended preemptively include “access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, [and] threats to US citizens from terrorism.” The section describing US interests in the Middle East states that the “overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve US and Western access to the region’s oil…, deter further aggression in the region, foster regional stability, protect US nationals and property, and safeguard… access to international air and seaways.” [New York Times, 3/8/1992] Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) later says, “It is my opinion that [George W. Bush’s] plan for preemptive strikes was formed back at the end of the first Bush administration with that 1992 report.” [Newsday, 3/16/2003] In response to the controversy, US releases an updated version of the document in May 1992, which stresses that the US will work with the United Nations and its allies. [Washington Post, 5/24/1992; Harper’s, 10/2002]

Entity Tags: Soviet Union, Lincoln Chafee, United States, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence

May 22, 1992: New European Military Force Announced

Germany and France announce the formation of a pan-European military force, and invite other European nations to join. The new alliance will work with NATO in individual crises when NATO’s 16 members declare an interest, but will also work independently of NATO when that organization’s interests are not involved. A new US proposal for post-Cold War foreign policy (see May 22, 1992) does not oppose such alliances, though it emphasizes the role of NATO, which is dominated by US interests and policies. [New York Times, 5/23/1992]

Entity Tags: North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Timeline Tags: US International Relations

July 1992: Think Tank Publishes Book Proposing Policy of Unilateral Interventionism in the Name of Humanitarianism

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace publishes “Self-Determination in the New World Order” by Morton H. Halperin (head of State Department policy planning under Madeleine Albright) and David Scheffer (Albright’s special envoy for war crimes issues). The book proposes a set of criteria for the US to use in responding to the independence and separatist movements that have arisen since the break-up of the Soviet Union. The authors argue that in certain circumstances, such as when civil unrest threatens to create a humanitarian crisis, “American interests and ideals” compel the US to assume “a more active role.” Interventions “will become increasingly unavoidable,” the authors write. Foreshadowing the unabashed unilateralist foreign policy adopted by the Bush administration after the September 11 attacks, they write that “the United States should seek to build a consensus within regional and international organizations for its position, but should not sacrifice its own judgment and principles if such a consensus fails to materialize.” [Review of International Affairs, 4/2000]

Entity Tags: David Scheffer, Morton H. Halperin, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Madeleine Albright

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence

Autumn 1992: Influential Neoconservative Academic Advocates Breaking Up Middle Eastern Countries, Including Iraq

Bernard Lewis

Princeton University professor Bernard Lewis publishes an article in the influential journal Foreign Affairs called “Rethinking the Middle East.” In it, he advocates a policy he calls “Lebanonization.” He says, “[A] possibility, which could even be precipitated by [Islamic] fundamentalism, is what has late been fashionable to call ‘Lebanonization.’ Most of the states of the Middle East—Egypt is an obvious exception—are of recent and artificial construction and are vulnerable to such a process. If the central power is sufficiently weakened, there is no real civil society to hold the polity together, no real sense of common identity.… Then state then disintegrates—as happened in Lebanon—into a chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions, and parties.” Lewis, a British Jew, is well known as a longtime supporter of the Israeli right wing. Since the 1950s, he has argued that the West and Islam have been engaged in a titanic “clash of civilizations” and that the US should take a hard line against all Arab countries. Lewis is considered a highly influential figure to the neoconservative movement, and some neoconservatives such as Richard Perle and Harold Rhode consider him a mentor. In 1996, Perle and others influenced by Lewis will write a paper for right wing Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu entitled “A Clean Break” that advocates the “Lebanonization” of countries like Iraq and Syria (see July 8, 1996). Lewis will remain influential after 9/11. For instance, he will have dinner with Vice President Cheney shortly before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Some will later suspect that Cheney and others were actually implementing Lewis’s idea by invading Iraq. Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, will say in May 2003, just after the invasion, “The neoconservatives’ intention in Iraq was never to truly build democracy there. Their intention was to flatten it, to remove Iraq as a regional threat to Israel.” [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 330-337]

Entity Tags: Chas Freeman, Bernard Lewis, Richard Perle, Harold Rhode, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

January 1993: Pentagon Releases Revamped ‘Wolfowitz Doctrine’ Envisoning ‘Zone of Peace’ Led by US

As Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and his staff prepare to leave the Pentagon to be replaced by President-elect Clinton’s appointees, Cheney’s senior aide Paul Wolfowitz and his staff recycle their controversial “Defense Planning Guidance” (DPG) from the year before (see February 18, 1992 and May 22, 1992) and publish them in another proposal, the “Regional Defense Strategy” (RPS). Much of the DPG’s ideas are present in this proposal as well, including the concept of a “democratic ‘zone of peace,’” defined as “a community of democratic nations bound together in a web of political, economic and security ties.” In Wolfowitz’s view, the US government must shoulder the responsibility “to build an international environment conducive to our values.” Like the DPG, this document has the quiet but firm support of Cheney. Years later, Cheney’s closest aides will point to the DPG and the RPS as the moment when Cheney’s foreign policy views coalesce into a single overarching framework. A Cheney staffer will say, “It wasn’t an epiphany, it wasn’t a sudden eureka moment; it was an evolution, but it was one that was primed by what he had done and seen in the period during the end of the Cold War.” [New Republic, 11/20/2003]

Entity Tags: Paul Wolfowitz, US Department of Defense, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney

Timeline Tags: US International Relations

October 1995: Right-Wingers Call for Israeli Prime Minister Rabin’s Death, Compare Israeli Government to Nazis

Most Israeli lawmakers and politicians distance themselves from the Jewish extremists calling for the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin over the Oslo peace accords (see September 13, 1993). However, Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu actively curries their favor (see July 1-2, 1994). On the floor of the Knesset, he often attacks Rabin (see September 21, 1993) for giving away “parts of our homeland.” After one particularly fiery speech, thousands of right-wing protesters gather in Jerusalem’s Zion Square, where they put of posters of Rabin wearing a Nazi SS uniform, display banners calling Rabin “Arafat’s Dog,” and chant, “Death to Rabin! Nazis! Judenrat!”—a particularly odious epithet referring to the “Jewish councils” that were forced by the Nazis to expedite the transfer of Jews to concentration camps. Housing Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer is horrified by the frenzy of the mob, and tells Netanyahu, who is orchestrating the demonstration, “You’d better restrain your people. Otherwise it will end in murder. They tried to kill me just now.… Your people are mad. If someone is murdered, the blood will be on your hands.… The settlers have gone crazy, and someone will be murdered here, if not today, then in another week or another month!” Netanyahu ignores the warning, and, basking in the chants of “Bibi! Bibi! Bibi!,” takes the podium, where he is optimistically introduced as the next prime minister of Israel. [Unger, 2007, pp. 139-140]

Entity Tags: Yitzhak Rabin, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, Benjamin Netanyahu

Timeline Tags: US International Relations

November 4, 1995: Israeli Prime Minister Rabin Assassinated

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated at a rally in Tel Aviv. Over 100,000 people have gathered in Kings of Israel Square to support Rabin and the Oslo peace process (see September 13, 1993 and October 6, 1995). The rally is designed to be light-hearted, in contrast with the angry, combative rallies staged by radical conservatives to oppose the peace agreements (see October 1995). Rabin gives a short radio interview before leaving the stage at the rally, and tells listeners, “People have their personal security but they do not have doubts that the path of peace should be pursued.” Rabin’s wife Leah is asked if her husband is wearing a bulletproof vest. “Have you gone crazy?” she replies. “What are we, in Africa?… I don’t understand the ideas you journalists have.” Meanwhile, law student Yigal Amir (see September 13, 1993 and October 6, 1995) is sitting on a concrete flower planter in the parking lot. A guard notices Amir and whispers into his microphone, “For God’s sake. What’s that dark guy doing down there? Is he one of us?” When Rabin walks by Amir to go to his car, Amir pulls out a gun and fires three shots. Two hollow-point bullets strike Rabin in the chest, severing major arteries and destroying his spinal cord. The third strikes Rabin’s bodyguard in the arm. “It’s nothing!” Amir shouts. “It’s just a joke! Blanks, blanks!” Police seize Amir; the wounded bodyguard rushes Rabin to the hospital, where he is pronounced dead 90 minutes later. When the police inform Amir that Rabin has died, he tells them, “Do your work. I’ve done mine.” Turning to an officer, he adds, “Get some wine and cakes. Let’s have a toast.” Someone later goes through Rabin’s pockets and finds a bloodied piece of paper with the lyrics to a popular tune, “The Song of Peace,” copied on it. Rabin had joined in singing the song at the rally. Author Craig Unger later writes that aside from the personal tragedy of the assassination, “In part because of his legacy as a great Israeli military commander, no one in Israel was, or ever could be, a more forceful figure than Rabin in promoting the peace process. As a result, his murder was a devastating blow to the Oslo principle, the principle of land for peace.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 141-143; Knesset Homepage, 2008]

Entity Tags: Craig Unger, Yigal Amir, Yitzhak Rabin, Leah Rabin

Timeline Tags: US International Relations

May 29, 1996: Netanyahu Elected Israel’s Prime Minister; Clinton Administration Dismayed

Right-wing political leader Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu becomes Israel’s new prime minister. When the campaign to replace assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (see November 4, 1995) began in early 1996, even Netanyahu’s fellow Likud leaders did not believe he had a chance of being elected. At at least one rally after Rabin’s death, crowds chanted “Bibi’s a murderer!” accusing Netanyahu of inciting the violence that led to Rabin’s death (see October 1995 and November 4, 1995 and After). Netanyahu’s opponent, Shimon Peres, cast himself as Rabin’s successor, and the Clinton administration tacitly endorsed Peres as the best hope for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But Netanyahu is a polished orator with a strong following among the hardline conservatives and religious fundamentalists both in Israel and the US. He also knows how to appeal to America’s more secular, cosmopolitan Jewish community. He hired Arthur Finkelstein, a prominent Republican political consultant, to run a campaign smearing Peres as a weak, ineffective leader who will betray Israel to the Arabs. Peres was befuddled by Netanyahu’s slick, US-style attack campaign and his ability to secure financial and other support among American Christian fundamentalists. The election hung in the balance when a timely spate of Hamas bombings in February and March, and a Netanyahu ad campaign blaming the attack on Peres’s supposed weakness, gave Netanyahu enough voter support for him to eke out a razor-thin margin of victory. US envoy Dennis Ross, one of the Clinton officials involved in the Oslo peace talks, later recalls that he and his colleagues were horrified at Netanyahu’s victory. “Our collective relief became a collective dread,” he will later write. [Unger, 2007, pp. 143-144]

Entity Tags: Yitzhak Rabin, Arthur Finkelstein, Benjamin Netanyahu, Clinton administration, Dennis Ross, Hamas, Shimon Peres

Timeline Tags: US International Relations

July 8-10, 1996: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu Tells Congress US Must Join Israel in ‘Democratizing’ Middle East

Newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (see May 29, 1996) flies to Washington, DC, to visit one of his strongest political supporters, neoconservative Richard Perle. Perle is the chief author of a new strategy proposal called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Security in the Region” (see July 8, 1996). In essence, Perle’s policy proposal is an update of fellow neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz’s Defense Planning Guide (see February 18, 1992), which had so horrified Clinton and Bush officials. But Netanyahu is clearly pleased with the proposal. After meeting with Perle, Netanyahu addresses the US Congress. Quoting extensively from the proposal, he tells the lawmakers that the US must join Israel in overseeing the “democratization” of the Middle East. War might be a necessity to achieve this goal, he warns. While the “Clean Break” authors are primarily concerned with Iraq and Syria, Netanyahu takes a longer view. “The most dangerous of these regions is Iran,” he says. [Unger, 2007, pp. 145-148]

Entity Tags: Clinton administration, Bush administration (41), Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Benjamin Netanyahu

Timeline Tags: US International Relations

Late Summer 1996: Neoconservatives Push for War with Iraq, Reshaping of Middle East to Favor Israel

After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States (see July 8-10, 1996), US neoconservatives mount an orchestrated push for war against Iraq and an overall reshaping of the Middle East (see July 8, 1996). At first, the offensive takes place in the pages of US newspapers and magazines. William Kristol and Robert Kagan write articles for the magazines Foreign Policy and the Weekly Standard; syndicated columnists Charles Krauthammer and A. M. Rosenthal use their columns to push the idea; Zalmay Khalilzad and Paul Wolfowitz pen op-eds for the Washington Post; “Clean Break” co-author David Wurmser writes op-eds for the Wall Street Journal and publishes a book, Tyranny’s Ally, in which he proposes that the US use its military to literally redraw the map of the Middle East (see Late Summer 1996). Neoconservatives are transforming Christian evangelicals’ argument that Americans are God’s “chosen people” into secular terms, and argue in their op-eds and articles that it is, in author Craig Unger’s words, the US’s “moral duty to project that greatness throughout the world—using American military power, if necessary.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 148-149]

Entity Tags: Robert Kagan, A. M. Rosenthal, Benjamin Netanyahu, David Wurmser, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay M. Khalilzad

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence

1997: Neoconservative Advocates Forcible, Bloody Retaking of Palestinian Land by Israel

Neoconservative Douglas Feith writes a position paper entitled “A Strategy for Israel.” Feith proposes that Israel re-occupy “the areas under Palestinian Authority control” even though “the price in blood would be high.” [Commentary, 9/1997; American Conservative, 3/24/2003; In These Times, 3/13/2007] Feith is the co-author of the 1996 position paper “A Clean Break” (see July 8, 1996), which advocates a similar aggressive posture for Israel. [In These Times, 3/13/2007]

Entity Tags: Douglas Feith

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence

November 12, 1997: Neoconservative Advocates Backing INC in Overthrowing Hussein

David Wurmser, director of the Middle East program at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, writes an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing that the US government should support Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress [INC] and work to foment “an Iraqi insurgency to depose the butcher of Baghdad.” Wurmser writes: “Washington has no choice now but to abandon the coup option and resurrect the INC. An insurgency may be able to defeat Saddam’s weak and demoralized conventional army. But one thing is clear: There is no cost-free way to depose Saddam. He is more resolute, wily and brutal than we. His strength lies in his weapons of terror; that is why he is so attached to them…. Organizing an insurgency to liberate Iraq under the INC may provoke Saddam to use these weapons on the way down. Better that, though, than current policy, which will lead him to use them on his way back up.” [Wall Street Journal, 11/12/1997]

Entity Tags: David Wurmser, Saddam Hussein, Ahmed Chalabi

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

January 26, 1998: Neoconservative Think Tank Urges US to Attack Iraq

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), an influential neoconservative think tank, publishes a letter to President Clinton urging war against Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein because he is a “hazard” to “a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil.” In a foretaste of what eventually happens, the letter calls for the US to go to war alone, attacks the United Nations, and says the US should not be “crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.” The letter is signed by many who will later lead the 2003 Iraq war. 10 of the 18 signatories later join the Bush Administration, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretaries of State Richard Armitage and Robert Zoellick, Undersecretaries of State John Bolton and Paula Dobriansky, presidential adviser for the Middle East Elliott Abrams, Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, and George W. Bush’s special Iraq envoy Zalmay Khalilzad. Other signatories include William Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Peter Rodman, William Schneider, Vin Weber, and James Woolsey. [Project for the New American Century, 1/26/1998; Sunday Herald (Glasgow), 3/16/2003; Unger, 2007, pp. 158] Clinton does heavily bomb Iraq in late 1998, but the bombing doesn’t last long and its long term effect is the break off of United Nations weapons inspections. [New York Times, 3/23/2003] The PNAC neoconservatives do not seriously expect Clinton to attack Iraq in any meaningful sense, author Craig Unger will observe in 2007. Instead, they are positioning themselves for the future. “This was a key moment,” one State Department official will recall. “The neocons were maneuvering to put this issue in play and box Clinton in. Now, they could draw a dichotomy. They could argue to their next candidate, ‘Clinton was weak. You must be strong.’” [Unger, 2007, pp. 158]

Entity Tags: Robert B. Zoellick, Vin Weber, William Kristol, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, William Schneider Jr., Richard Perle, William J. Bennett, Richard Armitage, Robert Kagan, Paula J. Dobriansky, Donald Rumsfeld, Craig Unger, Peter Rodman, Elliott Abrams, John R. Bolton, James Woolsey, Francis Fukuyama, Jeffrey T. Bergner, Paul Wolfowitz

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

February 19, 1998: Neoconservative Group Calls on US to Help Overthrow Hussein

The Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG), a bipartisan group made up largely of foreign policy specialists, sends an “Open Letter to the President” calling for President Clinton to use the US military to help Iraqi opposition groups overthrow Saddam Hussein and replace him with a US-friendly government. US law forbids such an operation. The group is led by, among others, former Representative Stephen Solarz (D-NY) and prominent Bush adviser Richard Perle, a former assistant secretary of defense.

Largely Neoconservative in Makeup – Many of its co-signers will become the core of the Bush administration’s neoconservative-driven national security apparatus. These co-signers include Elliott Abrams, Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Stephen Bryen, Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, Fred Ikle, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Bernard Lewis, Peter Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, Gary Schmitt, Max Singer, Casper Weinberger, Paul Wolfowitz, David Wurmser, and Dov Zakheim. [CNN, 2/20/1998; Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] The CPSG is closely affiliated with both the neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC—see June 3, 1997 and January 26, 1998) and the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), both of which boast Perle as a powerful and influential member. Jim Lobe of the Project Against the Present Danger later learns that the CPSG is funded in large part by a sizable grant from the right-wing Bradley Foundation, a key funding source for both the PNAC and the AEI. According to Counterpunch’s Kurt Nimmo, the plan for overthrowing Iraq later adopted by the Bush administration, and currently advocated by the CPSG, will be echoed in the PNAC’s September 2000 document, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (see September 2000). [CounterPunch, 11/19/2002]

Advocates Supporting Iraq-Based Insurgency – The letter reads in part: “Despite his defeat in the Gulf War, continuing sanctions, and the determined effort of UN inspectors to root out and destroy his weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein has been able to develop biological and chemical munitions.… This poses a danger to our friends, our allies, and to our nation.… In view of Saddam Hussein’s refusal to grant UN inspectors the right to conduct unfettered inspections of those sites where he is suspected of storing his still significant arsenal of chemical and biological munitions and his apparent determination never to relinquish his weapons of mass destruction, we call upon President Clinton to adopt and implement a plan of action designed to finally and fully resolve this utterly unacceptable threat to our most vital national interests.” The plan is almost identical to the “End Game” scenario proposed in 1993 (see November 1993) and carried out, without success, in 1995 (see March 1995). It is also virtually identical to the “Downing Plan,” released later in 1998 (see Late 1998). In 2004, then-Defense Intelligence Agency official Patrick Lang will observe, “The letter was remarkable in that it adopted some of the very formulations that would later be used by Vice President [Dick] Cheney and other current administration officials to justify the preventive war in Iraq that commenced on March 20, 2003” (see March 19, 2003). The CPSG advocates:
US support for Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC—see 1992-1996) as the provisional government to replace Hussein’s dictatorship;
Funding the INC with seized Iraqi assets, designating areas in the north and south as INC-controlled zones, and lifting sanctions in those areas;
Providing any ground assault by INC forces (see October 31, 1998) with a “systematic air campaign” by US forces;
Prepositioning US ground force equipment “so that, as a last resort, we have the capacity to protect and assist the anti-Saddam forces in the northern and southern parts of Iraq”;
Bringing Hussein before an international tribunal on war crimes charges.
Carrying out these actions, Solarz says, would completely eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction that he claims Iraq owns. [Abrams et al., 2/19/1998; CNN, 2/20/1998; Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004]

Entity Tags: Richard Burt, Richard Armitage, Richard Perle, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Paula J. Dobriansky, Peter Rosenblatt, Project for the New American Century, Richard V. Allen, Peter Rodman, Robert A. Pastor, Saddam Hussein, Robert Kagan, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, William Kristol, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, William B. Clark, Sven F. Kraemer, Stephen Solarz, Roger Robinson, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Bryen, Robert C. McFarlane, Michael Ledeen, Patrick Lang, Fred C. Ikle, Dov S. Zakheim, Elliott Abrams, Frank Carlucci, Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, Donald Rumsfeld, Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, American Enterprise Institute, Ahmed Chalabi, Max Singer, David Wurmser, Bernard Lewis, Caspar Weinberger, Gary Schmitt, Kurt Nimmo, Leon Wienseltier, Martin Peretz, Joshua Muravchik, Frederick L. Lewis, John R. Bolton, Jeffrey T. Bergner, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Jarvis Lynch, Jeffrey Gedmin, Jim Lobe, Iraqi National Congress

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

May 29, 1998: PNAC Calls on Republican Congressional Leaders to Assert US Interests in Persian Gulf

The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) publishes a letter addressed to Congressman Newt Gingrich and Senator Trent Lott. The letter argues that the Clinton administration has capitulated to Saddam Hussein and calls on the two legislators to lead Congress to “establish and maintain a strong US military presence in the region, and be prepared to use that force to protect [US] vital interests in the Gulf—and, if necessary, to help removed Saddam from power.” [Century, 5/29/1998]

Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Newt Gingrich, US Congress, Project for the New American Century, Trent Lott, Clinton administration

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

July 1998: Rumsfeld Commission Wildly Inflates Threat from Iran, North Korea

The “Team B” intelligence analysis exercise of 1975, which so disastrously overestimated the Soviet threat (see November 1976), returns in the form of the “Rumsfeld Commission,” which issues its report this month. Conservative commentators and former participants have called for a second “Team B”-style competitive intelligence analysis ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall (see 1990, 1994, and 1996). The “Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States” (see July 15, 1998), led by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is packed with conservative and neoconservative hardliners much as the original Team B cadre was; it includes some former Team B members such as former Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz. Like the original Team B, the Rumsfeld Commission challenges CIA estimates of foreign military threats; like the original Team B, the Rumsfeld Commission wildly overestimates the impending threat from countries such as Iran and North Korea, both of which it judges will be capable of striking the US with nuclear weapons in five years or perhaps less. The original Team B findings impelled thirty years of full-bore military spending by the US to counter a Soviet threat that was fading, not growing; the Rumsfeld Commission’s equally alarmist findings impels a new push for spending on the so-called “Star Wars” ballistic missile defense system (see March 23, 1983). Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly will observe that the Rumsfeld Commission’s report “provided Congress with enough talking points to win the argument [on missile defense] both in the strategic arena and in the 20-second soundbite television debates.” Former State Department intelligence analyst Greg Thielmann will later observe, “time has proven Rumsfeld’s predictions dead wrong.” Author and professor Gordon R. Mitchell will write that the second “Team B” exercise shows “that by 1998, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz had honed the art of intelligence manipulation through use of competitive intelligence analysis. Retrospective assessments revealing serious flaws in the Team B work products came long after political officials had already converted the alarmist reports into political support for favored military policies.” [Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ]

Entity Tags: Strategic Defense Initiative, ’Team B’, Central Intelligence Agency, Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, Donald Rumsfeld, Gordon R. Mitchell, Phyllis Schlafly, Paul Wolfowitz, Greg Thielmann

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence

February 1999: David Wurmser Urges US to Support Insurgency in Iraq

In his book, Tyranny’s Ally: America’s Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein, David Wurmser of the American Enterprise Institute urges the US to support an insurgency aimed at toppling the Bath’ist government of Saddam Hussein as part of a broader policy to defeat pan-Arabism in Iraq. In its place, the US should encourage the creation of a “loosely unified Iraqi confederal government, shaped around strong sectarian and provincial entities,” Wurmser argues. [Wurmser, 1999, pp. 136-137] What happens in Iraq is vitally important, Wurmser notes, because the country is of extreme strategic importance. “It is a key transportation route, and it is rich in both geographic endowments and human talent,” he explains. “Its location on pathways between Asia and Europe, Africa and Asia, and Europe and Africa makes it an ideal route for armies, pipelines, and trade from both the eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor to the Persian Gulf. Iraq also has large, proven oil reserves, water, and other important resources. Its geographic centrality and abundance of natural advantages alone make the country a regionally important center.” [Wurmser, 1999, pp. 116-117]

Entity Tags: David Wurmser

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

April-May 1999: ’Realists’ Not Concerned about Neoconservative Influence on Younger Bush

Advisers and colleagues of George H. W. Bush are working alongside a stable of neoconservatives (see April-May 1999) to give Bush’s son, George W., a basic grounding in foreign policies and principles. Though much of the neoconservatives’ teachings conflict with the ideas and interpretations of the elder Bush’s more ‘realist’ advisers, they are not overly concerned about the neoconservatives’ influence on the younger Bush. “The idea that [Paul] Wolfowitz and the neocons represented a great ideological shift from [Brent] Scowcroft’s group of realists was not yet clear,” a knowledgeable State Department source will later note. “Then Wolfowitz and [Condoleezza] Rice [a colleague of Bush adviser Brent Scowcroft with as-yet unsuspected neoconservative leanings] started going down to Austin to tutor Bush in foreign policy (see August 1998). Bush’s grandiose vision emerged out of those tutorials, with Rice tutoring him in global history and Wolfowitz laying out his scheme to remake the world (see February 18, 1992). The whole view of those people was that the next president was not going to be a passive actor, but was to reshape the world to US interests. That was the message that Rice and Wolfowitz were giving to Bush. Rice was the one giving [Bush] the idea that we’re entering some sort of 1947-like transitional period in which the United States could shape the world.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 165-168]

Entity Tags: Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush

Timeline Tags: US International Relations

2000: Michael Ledeen: Leaders May Have to ‘Enter into Evil’ under Certain Circumstances

Michael Ledeen

In his book, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership, neoconservative Michael Ledeen measures modern leaders against Machiavelli’s rules for leadership and concludes that “[e]ven after a half a millennium, Machiavelli’s advice to leaders is as contemporary as tomorrow.” [Ledeen, 2000, pp. 185] He laments that contemporary Western leaders, “like their counterparts in the rest of the world, have fallen short of Machiavelli’s standards.” [Ledeen, 2000, pp. 187] According to Ledeen, “[I]f new and more virtuous leaders do not emerge, it is only a matter of time before we are either dominated by our enemies or sink into a more profound crisis.” [Ledeen, 2000, pp. 187] Such a situation, he explains, would put the US in the “same desperate crisis that drove Machiavelli to call for a new dictator to set things aright.” He adds, “In either case, we need Machiavellian wisdom and leadership.” [Ledeen, 2000, pp. 188] Throughout the book Ledeen highlights certain qualities that he believes make strong leaders. A leader “must be prepared to fight at all times,” he writes, and must be of “manly vigor.” Women, he says, are rarely strong leaders because women generally cannot achieve virtue for they lack the “physical wherewithal and the passionate desire to achieve” military glory. To Ledeen, the ends may justify the means. In some situations, “[i]n order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to ‘enter into evil.’” [Ledeen, 2000, pp. 90] According to Ledeen, the Christian god sanctions this view. Machiavelli, he notes approvingly, wrote: “I believe that the greatest good that one can do, and the most gratifying to God is that which one does for one’s country.” Ledeen thus adds: “Since it is the highest good, the defense of the country is one of those extreme situation in which a leader is justified in committing evil.” [Ledeen, 2000, pp. 117]

Entity Tags: Michael Ledeen

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

September 2000: Neoconservative Think Tank Writes ‘Blueprint’ for ‘Global Pax Americana’

The neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century writes a “blueprint” for the “creation of a ‘global Pax Americana’” (see June 3, 1997). The document, titled Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century, was written for the George W. Bush team even before the 2000 presidential election. It was written for future Vice President Cheney, future Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, future Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Florida Governor and Bush’s brother Jeb Bush, and Cheney’s future chief of staff Lewis Libby. [Project for the New American Century, 9/2000, pp. iv and 51]

Plans to Overthrow Iraqi Government – The report calls itself a “blueprint for maintaining global US preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.” The plan shows that the Bush team intends to take military control of Persian Gulf oil whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power and should retain control of the region even if there is no threat. It says: “The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” The report calls for the control of space through a new “US Space Forces,” the political control of the internet, the subversion of any growth in political power of even close allies, and advocates “regime change” in China, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Iran and other countries. It also mentions that “advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool” (see February 7, 2003). [Project for the New American Century, 9/2000 ; Sunday Herald (Glasgow), 9/7/2002]

Greater Need for US Role in Persian Gulf – PNAC states further: “The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”

‘US Space Forces,’ Control of Internet, Subversion of Allies – PNAC calls for the control of space through a new “US Space Forces,” the political control of the Internet, and the subversion of any growth in political power of even close allies, and advocates “regime change” in China, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Iran, and other countries.

Bioweapons Targeting Specific Genotypes ‘Useful’ – It also mentions that “advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.”

‘A New Pearl Harbor’ – However, PNAC complains that thes changes are likely to take a long time, “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” [Los Angeles Times, 1/12/2003]

Bush Will Claim a ‘Humble’ Foreign Policy Stance – One month later during a presidential debate with Al Gore, Bush will assert that he wants a “humble” foreign policy in the Middle East and says he is against toppling Saddam Hussein in Iraq because it smacks of “nation building” (see October 11, 2000). Around the same time, Cheney will similarly defend Bush’s position of maintaining President Clinton’s policy not to attack Iraq, asserting that the US should not act as though “we were an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world, taking down governments.” [Washington Post, 1/12/2002] Author Craig Unger will later comment, “Only a few people who had read the papers put forth by the Project for a New American Century might have guessed a far more radical policy had been developed.” [Salon, 3/15/2004] A British member of Parliament will later say of the PNAC report, “This is a blueprint for US world domination—a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world.” [Sunday Herald (Glasgow), 9/7/2002] Both PNAC and its strategy plan for Bush are almost virtually ignored by the media until a few weeks before the start of the Iraq war (see February-March 20, 2003).

Entity Tags: Robert Kagan, Robert Martinage, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Robert Killebrew, Peter Rodman, Project for the New American Century, Roger Barnett, Paula J. Dobriansky, Saddam Hussein, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Steve Forbes, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, William J. Bennett, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Vin Weber, Stephen A. Cambone, Steve Rosen, Thomas Donnelly, Norman Podhoretz, Phil Meilinger, Midge Decter, Donald Kagan, Donald Rumsfeld, Dov S. Zakheim, Devon Gaffney Cross, Aaron Friedberg, Abram Shulsky, Michael Vickers, Dan Quayle, Eliot A. Cohen, Dan Goure, Alvin Bernstein, Barry Watts, David Epstein, Elliott Abrams, Frank Gaffney, John Ellis (“Jeb”) Bush, James Lasswell, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Mark P. Lagon, Mackubin Owens, Francis Fukuyama, Henry S. Rowen, Gary Schmitt, Fred C. Ikle, Frederick Kagan, David Fautua, Hasam Amin, George Weigel

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, 9/11 Timeline, Neoconservative Influence

November 1, 2000: David Wurmser Urges US and Israel To ‘Strike Fatally’ Against Arab Radicalism

In an op-ed piece published by the Washington Times, David Wurmser of the American Enterprise Institute calls on the US and Israel to “broaden” the conflict in the Middle East. The US, he says, needs “to strike fatally, not merely disarm, the centers of radicalism in the region—the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Tehran, and Gaza” —in order to “reestablish the recognition that fighting with either the United States or Israel is suicidal.” This is necessary, according to Wurmser, because the policies of the US and Israel during the last decade have strengthened Arab radicalism in the Middle East. Wurmser complains that the two countries have mistakenly identified the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and their own behavior as the primary causes of anti-Israeli and anti-American violence instead of focusing on what he claims are the real sources of resentment among Arab leaders—Israeli and American values. “Few anti-American outbursts or Arab-Israeli confrontations initially have much to do with Israel’s or America’s behavior; they have more to do with what these two countries are: free societies,” Wurmser writes. “These upheavals originate in the conditions of Arab politics, specifically in the requirements of tyrannies to seek external conflict to sustain internal repression.… A regime built on opposition to freedom will view free nations, such as the United States and Israel, as mortal threats.” The US and Israeli failure to grasp this reality, along with the Clinton administration’s reluctance to remove Saddam from power, according to Wurmser, has only empowered Arab radicalism. The answer, he argues, is to forcefully reassert US and Israeli power. [Washington Times, 11/1/2000]

Entity Tags: David Wurmser

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

Late December 2000 and Early January 2001: Bush Transition Teams Install Neoconservatives in Key Offices

The Bush team moves into Washington. Neoconservative Zalmay Khalilzad heads the Pentagon transition team, and he ensures that plenty of his friends and colleagues move into the civilian offices of the Defense Department. Four of the most influential advocates for the US overthrow of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein—Elliott Abrams, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and Abram Shulsky—are waiting to learn where they will serve in the department. But Vice President Cheney is still concerned with ensuring the placement of his own colleagues and cronies who will help him build what many will call the “imperial presidency.” Secretary of State Colin Powell, Cheney’s ideological rival, is working to install his friend and colleague Richard Armitage as deputy secretary of defense. For Cheney, Armitage would be a calamity—although Armitage is sufficiently hardline and in line with conservative foreign policy aims, he is far too centrist for Cheney and the neoconservatives. The neoconservative magazine the Weekly Standard alerts the faithful to the potential problem with an article entitled “The Long Arm of Colin Powell: Will the Next Secretary of State Also Run the Pentagon?” Powell does not get his wish; Armitage eventually becomes deputy secretary of state. Abrams will join the National Security Council; Khalilzad, Feith, and Shulksy will join the Defense Department; and Perle will head the Defense Policy Board, an independent group that advises the Pentagon. [Weekly Standard, 12/25/2000 ; Unger, 2007, pp. 115, 191-192, 204, 249]

Entity Tags: Elliott Abrams, Colin Powell, Bush administration (43), Abram Shulsky, Douglas Feith, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Richard Armitage, US Department of Defense, Richard Perle, Weekly Standard, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, Saddam Hussein

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence

January 2001: Neoconservative Institute Advocates Wide Use of Nuclear Weapons against Non-Nuclear Opponents

The neoconservative National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP) issues a report calling for the increased reliance upon, and the broad potential use of, nuclear weapons in conflicts by the United States. The NIPP is a think tank headed by Keith Payne, who in 1980 coauthored an article arguing that the US could win a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. (Payne wrote that American casualties would be an “acceptable” twenty million or so.) The NIPP report is written by a group of hardline conservatives and neoconservatives, including veterans of the “Team B” exercises (see November 1976). The report advocates the deployment and potential use of nuclear weapons against an array of potential enemies, from geostrategic opponents such as Russia or China, to “rogue” nations such as Iran, Iraq, or North Korea, to non-national enemies such as an array of terrorist organizations. It argues that “low-yield, precision-guided nuclear weapons” be developed “for possible use against select hardened targets such as underground biological weapons facilities,” weapons later nicknamed “bunker-busters.” Nuclear weapons, the report states, can be used not only as deterrents to other nations’ military aggression, but as a means to achieving political and military objectives even against non-nuclear adversaries. President Bush will put Payne in charge of the nation’s Nuclear Posture Review (see December 31, 2001), and, upon its completion, will name Payne assistant secretary of defense for forces policy, in essence putting him in charge of nuclear force planning. Payne’s thinking will inform later nuclear planning (see January 10, 2003 and March 2005). [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 182-183]

Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, ’Team B’, George W. Bush, Keith Payne, National Institute for Public Policy

Timeline Tags: US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence

January 22, 2001 and After: Neoconservatives Begin Push for Invasion of Iraq

An orchestrated push in the media begins to make the case for the need to invade Iraq. The San Diego Union-Tribune reprints a Weekly Standard article by William Kristol and Robert Kagan that tells readers (after comparing President Bush favorably to Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Harry Truman, and lauding Bush’s “steely determination”) that US military action “could well be necessary to bring Saddam down.” They write: “At some point, Bush could well find himself confronted by an Iraq armed with weapons of mass destruction. During these past few years, it was relatively easy for congressional Republicans to call for arming and funding the Iraqi opposition. That remains a good idea. But the more sober of Bush’s advisers, like Robert Zoellick and Paul Wolfowitz (see February 18, 1992 and February 27, 2001), have recognized that this alone will not do the trick. Some use of American military force, both from the air and on the ground, could well be necessary to bring Saddam down, no matter how wonderfully the Iraqi opposition performs. Whether he chooses it or not, Bush may quickly be faced with the same decision his father had to make in 1990. He has in his cabinet at least one person who counseled inaction the last time [referring to Secretary of State Colin Powell]. If the crisis comes, Bush, like his father, will not be able to rely only on the judgment of the men and women around him: He will have to act from his own instincts and his own courage.” [Weekly Standard, 1/22/2001; Unger, 2007, pp. 206] In the coming weeks, an onslaught of print and television op-eds and commentaries, some from Bush administration officials, will advocate the overthrow of Hussein (see February 27, 2001, February 16, 2001, April 9, 2001, and July 30, 2001).

Entity Tags: Robert Kagan, William Kristol

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

January 30, 2001: First National Security Council Meeting Focuses on Iraq and Israel

The Bush White House holds its first National Security Council meeting. The focus is on Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [Bamford, 2004, pp. 261] This meeting sets the tone for how President Bush intends to handle foreign affairs. Counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke wants to focus on the threat from al-Qaeda and Islamist terrorism, especially in light of the recent attack on the USS Cole (see October 12, 2000). But Bush isn’t interested in terrorism. [Unger, 2007, pp. 201]

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict to be ‘Tilted Back Towards Israel’ – Instead, Bush channels his neoconservative advisers, particularly incoming Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz (see February 18, 1992 and April-May 1999), in taking a new approach to Middle East affairs, particularly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Referring to President Clinton’s efforts to make peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Bush declares: “Clinton overreached, and it all fell apart. That’s why we’re in trouble. If the two sides don’t want peace, there’s no way we can force them. I don’t see much we can do over there at this point. I think it’s time to pull out of the situation.… We’re going to correct the imbalance of the previous administration on the Mideast conflict. We’re going to tilt it back towards Israel.” His view is that the Israeli government, currently headed by Ariel Sharon, should be left alone to deal as it sees fit with the Palestinians. “I’m not going to go by past reputations when it comes to Sharon. I’m going to take him at face value. We’ll work on a relationship based on how things go.” Justifying his position, he recalls a recent trip he took to Israel with the Republican Jewish Coalition. “We flew over the Palestinian camps. Looked real bad down there.… I don’t see much we can do over there at this point.” Secretary of State Colin Powell, surprised by Bush’s intended policy towards the 50-year old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, objects. According to Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neil, Powell “stresse[s] that a pullback by the United States would unleash Sharon and the Israeli army.” When Powell warns the president that the “consequences of that [policy] could be dire, especially for the Palestinians,” Bush shrugs. “Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things,” he suggests. [Bamford, 2004, pp. 265-266; Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] In this and subsequent meetings, Bush’s National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, “parrot[s]… the neocon line,” in author Craig Unger’s words, by discussing Iraq. “Iraq might be the key to reshaping the entire region,” she says, clearly alluding to regime change and overthrow in that nation (see March 8, 1992, Autumn 1992, July 8, 1996, Late Summer 1996, Late Summer 1996, 1997-1998, January 26, 1998, February 19, 1998, September 2000, Late December 2000 and Early January 2001, and Shortly after January 20, 2001). [Unger, 2007, pp. 201]

Possible WMD Sites in Iraq Spark Bush to Order Plans for Ground Assaults – The meeting then moves on to the subject of Iraq. Rice begins noting “that Iraq might be the key to reshaping the entire region.” She turns the meeting over to CIA Director George Tenet who summarizes current intelligence on Iraq. He mentions a factory that “might” be producing “either chemical or biological materials for weapons manufacture.” The evidence he provides is a picture of the factory with some truck activity, a water tower, and railroad tracks going into a building. He admits that there is “no confirming intelligence” on just what is going on at these sites. Bush orders Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Hugh Shelton to begin preparing options for the use of US ground forces in Iraq’s northern and southern no-fly zones in support of a native-based insurgency against the Hussein regime. [Bamford, 2004, pp. 267; Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] Author Ron Suskind later sums up the discussion: “Meeting adjourned. Ten days in, and it was about Iraq. Rumsfeld had said little, Cheney nothing at all, though both men clearly had long entertained the idea of overthrowing Saddam.” Defense Intelligence Agency official Patrick Lang later writes: “If this was a decision meeting, it was strange. It ended in a presidential order to prepare contingency plans for war in Iraq.” [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004]

Regime Change Intended from the Outset – US Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill, later recalls: “From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go.… From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime. Day one, these things were laid and sealed.” O’Neill will say officials never questioned the logic behind this policy. No one ever asked, “Why Saddam?” and “Why now?” Instead, the issue that needed to be resolved was how this could be accomplished. “It was all about finding a way to do it,” O’Neill will explain. “That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this.’” [CBS News, 1/10/2004; New York Times, 1/12/2004; Guardian, 1/12/2004; Vanity Fair, 5/2004, pp. 234] Another official who attends the meeting will later say that the tone of the meeting implied a policy much more aggressive than that of the previous administration. “The president told his Pentagon officials to explore the military options, including use of ground forces,” the official will tell ABC News. “That went beyond the Clinton administration’s halfhearted attempts to overthrow Hussein without force.” [ABC News, 1/13/2004] Unger later writes, “These were the policies that even the Israeli right had not dared to implement.” One senior administration official says after the meeting, “The Likudniks are really in charge now.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 201]

Funding the Iraqi National Congress – The council does more than just discuss Iraq. It makes a decision to allow the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an Iraqi opposition group, to use $4 million to fund efforts inside Iraq to compile information relating to Baghdad’s war crimes, military operations, and other internal developments. The money had been authorized by Congress in late 2004. The US has not directly funded Iraqi opposition activities inside Iraq itself since 1996. [Guardian, 2/3/2005]

White House Downplays Significance – After Paul O’Neill first provides his account of this meeting in 2004, the White House will attempt to downplay its significance. “The stated policy of my administration toward Saddam Hussein was very clear,” Bush will tell reporters during a visit to Mexico In January 2004. “Like the previous administration, we were for regime change.… And in the initial stages of the administration, as you might remember, we were dealing with desert badger or fly-overs and fly-betweens and looks, and so we were fashioning policy along those lines.” [New York Times, 1/12/2004]

Entity Tags: Richard B. Myers, Hugh Shelton, Paul O’Neill, George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, George J. Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, Craig Unger, Iraqi National Congress

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

March, 2001: Perle Says Hussein Has Weapons of Mass Destruction

Defense Policy Board chairman and prominent neoconservative Richard Perle tells the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “Does Saddam [Hussein] now have weapons of mass destruction? Sure he does. We know he has chemical weapons. We know he has biological weapons…. How far he’s gone on the nuclear-weapons side I don’t think we really know. My guess is it’s further than we think. It’s always further than we think, because we limit ourselves, as we think about this, to what we’re able to prove and demonstrate…. And, unless you believe that we’ve uncovered everything, you have to assume there is more than we’re able to report.” Perle fails to offer any evidence of his claims to the senators, and fails to provide evidence from UN inspectors that shows virtually all of Iraq’s WMD stockpiles and programs have long since been destroyed. [Hersh, 2004, pp. 209-210]

Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Saddam Hussein

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

March 12, 2001: Neoconservative Journalist: US Must Develop Missile Defense System for Offensive Reasons

Neoconservative journalist Lawrence Kaplan argues that the US must withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (see May 26, 1972) and immediately begin development of a new missile defense system (see March 23, 1983 and January 29, 1991). “[M]issile defense is about preserving America’s ability to wield power abroad,” Kaplan writes. “It’s not about defense. It’s about offense. And that’s exactly why we need it.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 176]

Entity Tags: Lawrence F. Kaplan

Timeline Tags: US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence

May 1, 2001: Bush Says US, Allies Must Pursue New Nuclear Policies to Face Threat of Rogue Nations, Groups

President Bush gives a speech at the National Defense University outlining what he calls a “new strategic framework” for the nation’s strategic defense policy. “This afternoon, I want us to think back some 30 years to a far different time in a far different world,” he tells his listeners. “The United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a hostile rivalry.… Our deep differences were expressed in a dangerous military confrontation that resulted in thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at each other on hair-trigger alert. Security of both the United States and the Soviet Union was based on a grim premise: that neither side would fire nuclear weapons at each other, because doing so would mean the end of both nations.” Bush is referring to the concept of “mutual assured destruction,” or MAD, which has driven the policies of the US and the former Soviet Union since the 1950s. “We even went so far as to codify this relationship in a 1972 ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty (see May 26, 1972), based on the doctrine that our very survival would best be insured by leaving both sides completely open and vulnerable to nuclear attack,” he says.

A Different Threat – Times have now changed: “Today, the sun comes up on a vastly different world.… Today’s Russia is not yesterday’s Soviet Union.… Yet, this is still a dangerous world, a less certain, a less predictable one. More nations have nuclear weapons and still more have nuclear aspirations. Many have chemical and biological weapons. Some already have developed… ballistic missile technology.… And a number of these countries are spreading these technologies around the world. Most troubling of all, the list of these countries includes some of the world’s least-responsible states. Unlike the Cold War, today’s most urgent threat stems not from thousands of ballistic missiles in the Soviet hands, but from a small number of missiles in the hands of these states, states for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life.” Bush cites the example of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who, he says, could have forced a very different outcome to the 1991 Gulf War (see January 16, 1991 and After) had he “been able to blackmail with nuclear weapons.” Hussein is an exemplar of today’s hate-driven dictators, Bush asserts: “Like Saddam Hussein, some of today’s tyrants are gripped by an implacable hatred of the United States of America. They hate our friends, they hate our values, they hate democracy and freedom and individual liberty. Many care little for the lives of their own people. In such a world, Cold War deterrence is no longer enough.”

ABM Treaty Now a Hindrance to US Security – “To maintain peace, to protect our own citizens and our own allies and friends, we must seek security based on more than the grim premise that we can destroy those who seek to destroy us,” Bush says. “Today’s world requires a new policy, a broad strategy of active non-proliferation, counter proliferation and defenses.… We need new concepts of deterrence that rely on both offensive and defensive forces. Deterrence can no longer be based solely on the threat of nuclear retaliation.… We need a new framework that allows us to build missile defenses to counter the different threats of today’s world. To do so, we must move beyond the constraints of the 30-year-old ABM Treaty. This treaty does not recognize the present, or point us to the future. It enshrines the past. No treaty that prevents us from addressing today’s threats, that prohibits us from pursuing promising technology to defend ourselves, our friends and our allies is in our interests or in the interests of world peace.… We can, and will, change the size, the composition, the character of our nuclear forces in a way that reflects the reality that the Cold War is over.” Bush is heralding his intention of withdrawing from the 1972 ABM Treaty (see December 13, 2001). Bush says of the treaty: “We should leave behind the constraints of an ABM Treaty that perpetuates a relationship based on distrust and mutual vulnerability. This Treaty ignores the fundamental breakthroughs in technology during the last 30 years. It prohibits us from exploring all options for defending against the threats that face us, our allies and other countries. That’s why we should work together to replace this Treaty with a new framework that reflects a clear and clean break from the past, and especially from the adversarial legacy of the Cold War.” [White House, 5/1/2001; CNN, 5/1/2001; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 171-172]

An Old Response to a New Threat – Author J. Peter Scoblic later calls Bush’s rationale “disingenuous.” He explains: “Conservatives had wanted to field missile defenses ever since the Soviet Union had developed ICBMs.… But somewhat paradoxically, following the collapse of the Soviet Union—and with it the likelihood of of a missile attack—conservative calls for missile defense increased” (see September 27, 1994). [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 171-172] Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace calls Bush’s proposal “tragically mistaken.” [PBS, 5/1/2001] Senator John Kerry (D-MA), an outspoken opponent of Bush’s foreign policies, says: “This is essentially a satisfy-your-base, political announcement. It serves no other purpose.” [New York Times, 5/1/2001]

Entity Tags: George W. Bush, J. Peter Scoblic, John Kerry, Saddam Hussein, Joseph Cirincione

Timeline Tags: US International Relations

August 21, 2001: PNAC Think Tank Leader States US Should Embrace Imperialist Hegemon Role

Thomas Donnelly, deputy executive director of the PNAC, explains to the Washington Post that the US should embrace its role as imperialist hegemon over the world. He says many important politicians privately agree with him. “There’s not all that many people who will talk about it openly,” he says. “It’s discomforting to a lot of Americans. So they use code phrases like ‘America is the sole superpower.’” He also says, “I think Americans have become used to running the world and would be very reluctant to give it up, if they realized there were a serious challenge to it.” [Washington Post, 8/21/2001] Such statements of policy had been publicly denounced by Bush prior to his election, and some claim that the Bush administration only changes its mind toward a more aggressive policy after 9/11. However, this claim is inconsistent with the roles of senior Bush officials such as Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz in formulating the preemptive doctrine in 1992 then pushing for it in PNAC during the Clinton administration. In the summer of 2001, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s office “sponsored a study of ancient empires—Macedonia, Rome, the Mongols—to figure out how they maintained dominance.” [New York Times, 3/5/2003]

Entity Tags: Thomas Donnelly

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

Shortly After September 11, 2001: Perle Says Iraq ‘Has to Pay a Price for’ 9/11

According to a later account provided by CIA Director George Tenet, he bumps into Pentagon adviser Richard Perle in the White House who tells him, “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday, they bear responsibility.” Tenet, recalling his reaction to Perle’s statement, later says, “I’ve got the manifest with me that tells me al-Qaeda did this. Nothing in my head that says there is any Iraqi involvement in this in any way shape or form and I remember thinking to myself, as I’m about to go brief the president, ‘What the hell is he talking about?’” (Note: Tenet says in his book that this incident happened on September 12; however, after Perle insists that he was not in the country that day, Tenet concedes that it may have happened a little later). [Tenet, 2007; CBS News, 4/29/2007; CNN, 4/30/2007] On September 16, 2001, Perle will hint in a CNN interview that Iraq should be punished for the 9/11 attacks (see September 16, 2001).

Entity Tags: Richard Perle, George J. Tenet

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

September 15, 2001: President Bush Tells Neoconservative Adviser that US Will Attack Iraq after Afghanistan

During a morning meeting with advisers at Camp David, President Bush indicated that he wanted to focus on attacking Afghanistan first, and then look at the issue of attacking Iraq later (see September 15, 2001). During the lunch break, he sends a message to the neoconservatives in attendance that he does not want to hear any more about Iraq that day. But one of the neoconservatives there is Richard Perle, who holds no government position but heads the Defense Policy Board advising the Pentagon. According to Vanity Fair, Perle will later claim that the morning discussion about Iraq “had planted a seed. Bush told Perle at Camp David that once Afghanistan had been dealt with, it would be Iraq’s turn.” [Vanity Fair, 5/2004]

Entity Tags: Richard Perle, George W. Bush

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence, War in Afghanistan

September 19-20, 2001: Defense Policy Board Discusses Advisability of Attacking Iraq

The Defense Policy Board (DPB) meets in secret in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon conference room on September 19 and 20 for 19 hours to discuss the option of taking military action against Iraq. [New York Times, 10/12/2001] They also discuss how they might overcome some of the diplomatic and political pressures that would likely attempt to impede a policy of regime change in Iraq. [New York Times, 10/12/2001] Among those attending the meeting are Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Princeton academic Bernard Lewis, Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi (see 1992-1996), Chalabi’s aide Francis Brooke, and the 18 members of the DPB. [New York Times, 10/12/2001; Vanity Fair, 5/2004, pp. 236; New Yorker, 6/7/2004] Defense Intelligence Agency official Patrick Lang will later call the DPB “a neocon[servative] sanctuary,” boasting such members as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former CIA Director James Woolsey, former arms control adviser Ken Adelman, former Undersecretary of Defense Fred Ikle, and former Vice President Dan Quayle. [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004]

Powell, State Officials Not Informed of Meeting – Secretary of State Colin Powell and other State Department officials in charge of US policy toward Iraq are not invited and are not informed of the meeting. A source will later tell the New York Times that Powell was irritated about not being briefed on the meeting. [New York Times, 10/12/2001]

Chalabi, Lewis Lead Discussion – During the seminar, two of Richard Perle’s invited guests, Chalabi and Lewis, lead the discussion. Lewis says that the US must encourage democratic reformers in the Middle East, “such as my friend here, Ahmed Chalabi.” Chalabi argues that Iraq is a breeding ground for terrorists and asserts that Saddam Hussein’s regime has weapons of mass destruction. [Vanity Fair, 5/2004, pp. 232; Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] He also asserts “there’d be no resistance” to an attack by the US, “no guerrilla warfare from the Ba’athists, and [it would be] a quick matter of establishing a government.” [New Yorker, 6/7/2004]

Overthrow of Hussein Advocated – Attendees write a letter to President Bush calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein. “[E]ven if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack [of 9/11], any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism,” the letter reads. The letter is published in the Washington Times on September 20 (see September 20, 2001) in the name of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neoconservative think tank that believes the US needs to shoulder the responsibility for maintaining “peace” and “security” in the world by strengthening its global hegemony. [Project for the New American Century, 9/20/2001; Manila Times, 7/19/2003] Bush reportedly rejects the letter’s proposal, as both Vice President Dick Cheney and Powell agree that there is no evidence implicating Saddam Hussein in the 9/11 attacks. [New York Times, 10/12/2001]

Woolsey Sent to Find Evidence of Hussein’s Involvement – As a result of the meeting, Wolfowitz sends Woolsey to London to find evidence that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks and the earlier 1993 attack on the World Trade Center (see Mid-September-October 2001). [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004]

Entity Tags: Newt Gingrich, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Kenneth Adelman, Patrick Lang, Harold Brown, Defense Policy Board, Francis Brooke, Adm. David E. Jeremiah, Fred C. Ikle, Ahmed Chalabi, Dan Quayle, Bernard Lewis, Henry A. Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

September 20, 2001: Neoconservative Think Tank Demands Bush Invade Iraq ‘Even if Evidence Does Not Link Iraq Directly’ to 9/11 Attacks; Also Demand Attacks against Syria, Iran, Hezbollah

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), an influential neoconservative think tank, publishes a letter addressed to President Bush and signed by magazine publisher William Kristol, Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle (see September 16, 2001), and 38 other neoconservatives and hardliners. It is reprinted by Kristol’s Weekly Standard shortly thereafter. The authors threaten to brand Bush as a “wimp,” guilty of “surrender in the war on international terrorism” if he fails to carry out their demand to make “a determined effort” to overthrow Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, “even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [9/11] attack[s].” [Project for the New American Century, 9/20/2001; Rich, 2006, pp. 28] Any failure to attack Iraq, the authors say, “will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.” Invading Iraq is not their only demand. To retain their support, the letter reads, Bush must also target the terror organization Hezbollah for eradication, and retaliate against Syria and Iran if they do not break their ties with Hezbollah. The letter calls Israel “America’s staunchest ally against international terrorism.” Conservative isolationist Pat Buchanan will later write that the real motive for this letter seems to be tied to Israel: “Here was a cabal of intellectuals telling the commander in chief, nine days after an attack on America, that if he did not follow their war plans, he would be charged with surrendering to terror. Yet, Hezbollah had nothing to do with 9/11. What had Hezbollah done? Hezbollah had humiliated Israel by driving its army out of Lebanon. President Bush had been warned. He was to exploit the attack of 9/11 to launch a series of wars on Arab regimes, none of which had attacked us. All, however, were enemies of Israel.… The War Party [Bush administration neoconservatives] seemed desperate to get a Middle East war going before America had second thoughts.” [Project for the New American Century, 9/20/2001; American Conservative, 3/24/2003]

Entity Tags: Patrick Buchanan, William Kristol, Weekly Standard, Project for the New American Century, George W. Bush, Richard Perle

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

September 24, 2001: Neoconservative Columnists Advocate Overthrow of Hussein as Part of a ‘Larger War’ to Reestablish US ‘Dominance’ in Middle East

In an op-ed column for the neoconservative Weekly Standard, writers Thomas Donnelly and Gary Schmitt state that the US’s enemies “want to push the United States out of the Middle East. Our response must be to prevent that.” Donnelly and Schmitt, members of the Project for the New American Century think tank (PNAC—see January 26, 1998 and September 2000), say that such an effort “will require more than a vague, unfocused ‘war on terrorism.‘… Last week’s strikes represent a new and more complex phase of this war. But this is not a new war. This is a ‘theater war’ in the classic sense. Neither [O]sama bin Laden nor Saddam [Hussein] cares much about America’s role in Europe or East Asia. They want us out of their region.”

Reasserting Dominance in Middle East – The US can win this “struggle for power in the Persian Gulf” by “reasserting our role as the region’s dominant power; as the guarantor of regional security; and as the protector of Israel, moderate Arab regimes, and the economic interests of the industrialized world.” Donnelly and Schmitt trace the US’s problems in the region back to the decision not to overthrow Hussein in 1991 (see January 16, 1991 and After). “As Saddam has crawled back from defeat,” they write, “bin Laden has grown increasingly bold. Meanwhile, our regional allies have begun to hedge their bets, not only with the terrorists and Iraq, but with Iran as well.” The US should focus on routing both bin Laden and Hussein from the region, they say. It is unclear if Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks, they say, though they assert that Hussein was “implicated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (see February 26, 1993 and October 2000).… But as with bin Laden, we have long known that Saddam is our enemy, and that he would strike us as hard as he could. And if we have learned anything at all from [the] past week, it is that adopting a defensive posture risks attacks with unacceptable consequences. The only reasonable course when faced with such foes is to preempt and to strike first.” Overthrowing Hussein “is the key to restoring our regional dominance and preventing our enemies from achieving their war aims.… When Bush administration officials speak of ‘ending’ regimes that participate in the war against America, they must mean Saddam Hussein’s Iraq” (see Before January 20, 2001).

Cowing Other Nations, Restoring ‘Global Credibility’ – Overthrowing the Iraqi government will also cow Iran, Syria, and other regional threats, the authors say, and “will restore the global credibility tarnished in the Clinton years. Both our friends and our enemies will be watching to see if we pass this test.” Although attacking Afghanistan is not necessary, toppling the Saddam regime will not be difficult in a military sense, and “the larger challenge will be occupying Iraq after the fighting is over.”

Surpluses Will Pay for Effort – The so-called “lockboxes”—Social Security funds and others—previously kept from being spent on other government programs are, the authors write, “yesterday’s news,” but the sharp increases in defense spending that this war effort will require will not be difficult to fund: “given the surpluses that exist, there is no impediment to such increases.” [Weekly Standard, 9/24/2001]

Entity Tags: Thomas Donnelly, Gary Schmitt, Weekly Standard, Project for the New American Century

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

September 25-26, 2001: Neoconservative Commentator Kristol Advocates Regime Change in Iraq, Slams Powell

Neoconservative commentator and publisher William Kristol writes that the US must implement “regime change where possible” throughout the Middle East, and especially in Iraq. He excoriates Secretary of State Colin Powell for being against such an aggressive policy. The next day, the Washington Times, a right-wing newspaper, prints an editorial agreeing with Kristol about the need for regime change, and adds its voice to Kristol’s in criticizing Powell. [Unger, 2007, pp. 217]

Entity Tags: Washington Times, Colin Powell, William Kristol

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

October 29, 2001: Neoconservative Scholar: ‘This Is Total War’

Michael Ledeen, speaking at an event sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), states: “No stages. This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq… this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war… our children will sing great songs about us years from now.” [Institute, 10/29/2001; Village Voice, 11/21/2001] Interestingly, several sources credit fellow AEI neoconservative Richard Perle, and not Ledeen, with the quote, including John Pilger’s book The New Rulers of the World [Pilger, 2002, pp. 10] and former State Department and USAID official William Fisher. [Informed Comment, 2/1/2005] Perle is the moderator of the AEI event where Ledeen speaks. [Institute, 10/29/2001; Village Voice, 11/21/2001]

Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

November 14, 2001: Neoconservative Foreign Policy Adviser Perle Says Iraq War Should Alert Other Nations: ‘You’re Next’

Neoconservative Richard Perle, the chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, says during remarks at the Foreign Policy Research Institute that the proposed invasion of Iraq is merely the first step in a much larger military strategy that should encompass most of the Middle East and other states which, in Perle’s view, pose threats to the US. “Those who think Iraq should not be next may want to think about Syria or Iran or Sudan or Yemen or Somalia or North Korea or Lebanon or the Palestinian Authority,” Perle says. “These are all institutions, governments for the most part, that permit acts of terror to take place, that sponsor terrorists, that give them refuge, give them sanctuary, and very often much more help than that. When I recite this list, people typically say ‘Well, are we going to go to war against a dozen countries?’ And I think the answer to that is that, if we do it right with respect to one or two, we’ve got a reasonable chance of persuading the others that they should get out of the business of supporting terrorism. If we destroy the Taliban in Afghanistan, and I’m confident we will, and we then go on to destroy the regime of Saddam Hussein, and we certainly could if we chose to do so, I think we would have an impressive case to make to the Syrians, the Somalis, and others. We could deliver a short message, a two-word message: ‘You’re next. You’re next unless you stop the practice of supporting terrorism.’ Given the fact that until now there has been no cost attached to supporting terror, I think there’s a reasonable prospect that looking at the costs on the one side—that is, that those regimes will be brought to an end—and the benefits on the other—they will decide to get out of the terrorist business. It seems to me a reasonable gamble in any event.” [Foreign Policy Research Institute, 11/14/2001]

Entity Tags: Defense Policy Board, US Department of Defense, Saddam Hussein, Richard Perle

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence

November 18-19, 2001: Perle: US to ‘Absolutely’ Go After Iraq for 9/11

Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, discussing the US’s planned reaction to the 9/11 attacks, says that Iraq is next on the US’s military strike list. CNN anchor John King asks, “Next phase Saddam Hussein?” and Perle replies, “Absolutely.” The day before, on ABC, Perle explained why the US had to make such a move: “Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein, plus his known contact with terrorists, including al-Qaeda terrorists, is simply a threat too large to continue to tolerate.” And what would the upshot of such an invasion be? Perle tells his CNN listeners, “We would be seen as liberators in Iraq.” [PBS, 4/25/2007]

Entity Tags: ABC News, Richard Perle, CNN, Al-Qaeda

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

November 20, 2001: Neoconservative: US Must Realize It Is Involved in ‘World War IV’

Neoconservative professor Eliot Cohen writes that the Afghan war is misnamed. It should be, he says, the latest salvo in “World War IV,” the US-led fight against Islamist terrorism. In agreement with other neoconservatives (see 1992, February 2002, April 3, 2003, and Spring 2007), Cohen says that World War III was the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. Like the Cold War, this “world war” against militant Islam “is, in fact, global;… will involve a mixture of violent and nonviolent efforts;… will require mobilization of skill, expertise and resources, if not of vast numbers of soldiers;… may go on for a long time; and… has ideological roots.” Afghanistan is “just one front in World War IV,” Cohen asserts, and after the US destroys al-Qaeda and kills its leadership, including, presumably, Osama bin Laden, it must then engage in new battles. Cohen recommends that the US ally itself with secular democracies in the Muslim world, and actively target Islamic regimes that sponsor terrorism, including Iraq (which he calls “the obvious candidate,” as it “not only helped al-Qaeda, but attacked Americans directly… and developed weapons of mass destruction”). After overthrowing the Iraqi regime, he counsels the US to “mobilize in earnest.” [Wall Street Journal, 11/20/2001]

Entity Tags: Eliot A. Cohen

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence, Domestic Propaganda, War in Afghanistan

November 29-30, 2001: Neoconservative Group Encourages Bush Administration to Invade Iraq as First Step to Dominating Middle East

Christopher DeMuth

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz arranges for Christopher DeMuth, president of the neoconservative think tank The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), to create a group to strategize about the war on terrorism. The group DeMuth creates is called Bletchley II, named after a team of strategists in World War II. The dozen members of this secret group include:
Bernard Lewis, a professor arguing that the US is facing a clash of civilizations with the Islamic world.
Fareed Zakaria, a Newsweek editor and columnist.
Mark Palmer, a former US ambassador to Hungary.
Fouad Ajami, director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
James Wilson, a professor and specialist in human morality and crime.
Ruel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Middle East expert.
Steve Herbits, a close consultant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
According to journalist Bob Woodward, the group comes to quick agreement after just two days of discussions and a report is made from their conclusions. They agree it will take two generations for the US to defeat radical Islam. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are the keys to the problems of the Middle East, but the problems there are too intractable. Iran is similarly difficult. But Iraq is weak and vulnerable. DeMuth will later comment: “We concluded that a confrontation with Saddam [Hussein] was inevitable. He was a gathering threat – the most menacing, active, and unavoidable threat. We agreed that Saddam would have to leave the scene before the problem would be addressed.” That is the key to transform the region. Vice President Dick Cheney is reportedly pleased with their report. So is National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who finds it “very, very persuasive.” It is said to have a strong impact on President Bush as well. Woodward later notes the group’s conclusions are “straight from the neoconservative playbook.” [Woodward, 2006, pp. 83-85]

Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Steve Herbits, Paul Wolfowitz, Fareed Zakaria, Fouad Ajami, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Mark Palmer, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Bernard Lewis, Christopher DeMuth, James Wilson

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

December 7, 2001: Neoconservative Michael Ledeen Argues in Favor of Perpetual War against the Muslim World

Michael Ledeen, an avid admirer of Machiavelli, argues in a piece published by National Review Online that the US must be “imperious, ruthless, and relentless” against the Muslim world until there has been “total surrender.” Any attempt on the part of the US to be “reasonable” or “evenhanded” will only empower Islamic militants, he asserts. He writes: “We will not be sated until we have had the blood of every miserable little tyrant in the Middle East, until every leader of every cell of the terror network is dead or locked securely away, and every last drooling anti-Semitic and anti-American mullah, imam, sheikh, and ayatollah is either singing the praises of the United States of America, or pumping gasoline, for a dime a gallon, on an American military base near the Arctic Circle.” [National Review, 12/7/2001] The piece is republished in the Jewish World Review four days later. [Jewish World Review, 12/11/2001]

Entity Tags: Michael Ledeen

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

February 2002: Neoconservative: Bush Must Attack Numerous Arab Nations to Fight, Win ‘World War IV’ against Terrorism

Norman Podhoretz, the editor of the neoconservative magazine Commentary, writes a call to arms called “How to Win World War IV.” For Podhoretz, the US has already won World War III—the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Now, he asserts, it is time to win the war against Islamist terrorism. The US must embrace this war against civilizations, and President Bush must accept that it is his mission “to fight World War IV—the war against militant Islam.” To win this war, Podhoretz writes, the nations of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea must be overthrown, but also Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority. Bush must reject the “timorous counsels” of the “incorrigibly cautious Colin Powell [and] find the stomach to impose a new political culture on the defeated” Islamic world. The 9/11 attacks caused the US to destroy the Afghan Taliban in the process of battling al-Qaeda, Podhoretz writes: “We may willy-nilly find ourselves forced… to topple five or six or seven more tyrannies in the Islamic world (including that other sponsor of terrorism, Yasir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority). I can even [imagine] the turmoil of this war leading to some new species of an imperial mission for America, whose purpose would be to oversee the emergence of successor governments in the region more amenable to reform and modernization than the despotisms now in place.… I can also envisage the establishment of some kind of American protectorate over the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, as we more and more come to wonder why 7,000 princes should go on being permitted to exert so much leverage over us and everyone else.” A year later, conservative pundit Pat Buchanan will explain why Podhoretz wants to so drastically remake the map of the Middle East: “[O]ne nation, one leader, one party. Israel, [Ariel] Sharon, Likud.” [Commentary, 2/2002; American Conservative, 3/24/2003]

Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Ariel Sharon, Likud, Patrick Buchanan, Taliban, Norman Podhoretz, Al-Qaeda

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence

April 2002: Neoconservatives Say War against Iraq Is about Redrawing ‘Geopolitical Map of the Middle East’

According to Arnaud de Borchgrave, the editor-at-large of the Washington Times, he learns in April 2002 from neoconservatives that the planned war against Iraq is not about WMD, but about reshaping the Middle East. In a February 2004 op-ed, he writes: “WMDs were not the principal reason for going to war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq; they were the pretext.… When this writer first heard from prominent neoconservatives in April 2002 that war was no longer a question of ‘if’ but ‘when,’ the casus belli had little to do with WMDs. The Bush administration, they explained, starkly and simply, had decided to redraw the geopolitical map of the Middle East. The Bush Doctrine of preemption had become the vehicle for driving axis-of-evil practitioners out of power.” [Washington Times, 2/10/2004]

Entity Tags: Arnaud de Borchgrave

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

April 23, 2002: Neoconservative: US Should ‘Pick Up Some Small, Crappy Little Country and Throw It against the Wall’

In a column for the National Review advocating the immediate overthrow of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, neoconservative Jonah Goldberg praises his fellow neoconservative Michael Ledeen and urges the US to implement what he calls the “Ledeen Doctrine,” which he paraphrases as: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small, crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” Goldberg says that he heard Ledeen make this statement in an early 1990s speech. [National Review, 4/23/2002; Unger, 2007, pp. 149]

Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Michael Ledeen, Jonah Goldberg

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence

May 2002: Wilson Breaks Decade-Long Silence to Speak out against Iraq War

Former ambassador Joseph Wilson participates in the annual conference of the American Turkish Council. One of the keynote speakers is Richard Perle, the neoconservative head of the Defense Policy Board and the chief author of the 1996 position paper “A Clean Break,” which argued for the forcible redrawing of the political map of the Middle East (see July 8, 1996). In 1996, Perle had called for the overthrow of the Iraqi government. At the conference, Perle makes the same call. Wilson will later recall being deeply troubled by Perle’s “fire and brimstone” speech. The next afternoon, when Wilson is scheduled to speak, he voices his concerns over Perle’s position. Although he had journeyed to Niger to learn the truth or falsity about the Iraq-Niger uranium claims (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), he has not spoken publicly about Iraq in over a decade. He does so because he urgently feels that Perle’s views need to be countered. “No decision is more important than that to send a nation’s sons and daughters to a foreign land in order to kill and perhaps die for their country,” he will write. “As a democracy, we are all participants in that decision. Not to speak out would amount to complicity in whatever decision was taken.” Wilson tells the assemblage that “if we were prepared to entertain the possibility that in coming year Iraq might be reduced to a chemical, biological, and nuclear wasteland, then we should march in lockstep to the martial music played by Perle; if not, we should think about alternatives to war.” His partner at the podium, former Turkish military commander Cevik Bir, is, Wilson will recall, “even more strident than me in his opposition to military action.” The audience, “largely American and Turkish businessmen, [largely] agreed with us,” Wilson will recall. For his part, Perle has long since departed the conference. Wilson will later write: “As I discovered while debating the issue, the prowar advocates were little inclined to listen to the views of others. They had made up their minds long ago, and now it was a matter of ramming their agenda through the decision-making process.” [Wilson, 2004, pp. 291-292]

Entity Tags: Richard Perle, American Turkish Council, Joseph C. Wilson, Cevik Bir

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

August 6, 2002: Prominent Neoconservative Wants to Turn Middle East into ‘Cauldron’ of Violence

On August 4, 2002, retired Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft said that if the US invades Iraq: “I think we could have an explosion in the Middle East. It could turn the whole region into a cauldron and destroy the War on Terror” (see October 16, 2001, March 2002, and August 4, 2002). On August 6, prominent neoconservative author and sometime intelligence agent Michael Ledeen, who is an informal White House adviser and a sometimes-vituperative advocate for the US invasion of Iraq, mocks Scowcroft. Writing in his weekly column for the National Review, Ledeen says: “It’s always reassuring to hear Brent Scowcroft attack one’s cherished convictions; it makes one cherish them all the more.… One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today. If we wage the war effectively, we will bring down the terror regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and either bring down the Saudi monarchy or force it to abandon its global assembly line to indoctrinate young terrorists. That’s our mission in the war against terror.” [National Review, 8/6/2002; Unger, 2007, pp. 231] Author Craig Unger will later comment: “‘Faster, please,’ became [Ledeen’s] mantra, repeated incessantly in his National Review columns. Rhapsodizing about war week after week, in the aftermath of 9/11, seemingly intoxicated by the grandiosity of his fury, Ledeen became the chief rhetorician for neoconservative visionaries who wanted to remake the Middle East.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 231]

Entity Tags: Brent Scowcroft, Michael Ledeen, Craig Unger

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

August 16, 2002: Perle: Bush’s War Rhetoric Makes Invasion Necessary

Neoconservative Richard Perle, the head of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, says that the Bush administration has expended so much time and effort in making its case for war against Iraq that it has no other choice except to invade. He says, “The failure to take on Saddam [Hussein]… would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism.” [New York Times, 8/16/2002] In 2006, author Frank Rich interprets Perle’s words, writing: “If Bush didn’t get rid of Saddam after all this saber rattling, he will look like the biggest wimp since—well, his father. If he didn’t do it soon, after all these months of swagger, he would destroy his credibility and hurt the country’s.” [Rich, 2006, pp. 62]

Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Bush administration (43), Defense Policy Board, Frank Rich, George Herbert Walker Bush, George W. Bush, US Department of Defense

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

September 4, 2002: Neoconservative Michael Ledeen Advocates Overthrow of Iraqi, Iranian, Syrian, and Saudi Arabian Governments

Neoconservative Michael Ledeen argues in a piece published by the Wall Street Journal that the US must not limit the next military strike to Iraq alone. Rather, according to Ledeen, the US “should instead be talking about using all our political, moral, and military genius to support a vast democratic revolution to liberate all the peoples of the Middle East from tyranny.” In addition to Iraq, he says, the governments of Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia must also be overthrown. “Stability is an unworthy American mission, and a misleading concept to boot. We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia; we want things to change. The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize.” [Wall Street Journal, 9/4/2002]

Entity Tags: Michael Ledeen

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

November 2002-December 2002: Abrams Leads Secretive Neocon Planning Group for Iraq Occupation

Elliott Abrams, a well-known neoconservative and former Iran-Contra figure, leads one of a dozen Bush administration working groups charged with drafting post-invasion plans. Involved in his group are adamant neoconservatives Joe Collins, a deputy assistant secretary at the Pentagon, and Robin Cleveland, a former aide to Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. His working group is supposed to draft plans for rapid humanitarian planning. But critics in the State Department complain that it involves itself in the issue of post-Saddam politics and economic reconstruction. Abrams’ group is backed by Paul Wolfowitz and the vice president’s office. An ally of Secretary of State Colin Powell tells Insight magazine, “This is a case of stealthy micromanagement by the Wolfowitz hawks—they use what bureaucratic vehicles are available to make their imprint on policy.” Additionally the group is very secretive. It refuses “to brief not only top State Department officials but also aides of Gen. Tommy Franks, the commanding officer of the US Central Command [CENTCOM], about what it is doing.” Instead it stovepipes its work to its contacts in the White House. Sources in the State Department and CIA believe that one of the group’s apparent aims is reducing the influence of the State Department, CIA and the United Nations in post-Saddam Iraq. These critics also question “why a convicted felon [Abrams], pardoned or not, is being allowed to help shape policy.” Within the Pentagon, there is also resentment of Abrams’ group. An unnamed Pentagon source says General Tommy Franks is being “left out of the loop.” A Defense official says, “CENTCOM is for the most part unaware of what Abrams is doing, but friction is developing and the military end of the equation feels that they are being mislead.” [Insight, 11/26/2002; Insight, 12/28/2002]

Entity Tags: Joe Collins, Elliott Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, American Enterprise Institute

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iran-Contra Affair, Neoconservative Influence

November 12, 2002: Neoconservative Writer Recommends US Invade Iran First

Neoconservative Michael Ledeen recommends that the US invade Iraq—but only after invading Iran and overthrowing that nation’s government. Ledeen claims that the sporadic demonstrations by Iranian dissidents prove that the entire nation is just waiting for someone like the US to come in and get rid of the theocratic Iranian “mullahcracy” and replace it with a Western-style democracy. Ledeen writes: “This is yet another test of the courage and coherence of American leaders. President Bush has been outstanding in endorsing the calls for freedom in Iran, as has Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. It would be nice if Secretary of State Powell added his own eloquence to the chorus, especially because many Iranians fear that the State Department is still trying to cut a deal with the mullahs. I have long argued that it would be better to liberate Iran before Iraq, and events may soon give us that opportunity. Let’s hope our national security team recognizes how wonderful an opportunity it is, and therefore gives the Iranian freedom fighters the assistance they so richly deserve. Faster, please. Opportunity is knocking at our door.” [National Review, 11/12/2002]

Entity Tags: Michael Ledeen

Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran, Iraq under US Occupation, Neoconservative Influence

November 20, 2002: Perle: UN Won’t Find Iraqi Weapons Because They Are So Well Hidden; US Will Attack Even If No Weapons Found

Richard Perle, a member of the Defense Policy Board, attends a meeting on global security with members of the British Parliament. At one point he argues that the weapons inspection team might be unable to find Saddam’s arsenal of banned weapons because they are so well hidden. According to the London Mirror, he then states that the US would “attack Iraq even if UN inspectors fail to find weapons.” [Mirror, 11/21/2002] Peter Kilfoyle, a former defense minister and Labour backbencher, tells the Mirror: “America is duping the world into believing it supports these inspections. President Bush intends to go to war even if inspectors find nothing. This make a mockery of the whole process and exposes America’s real determination to bomb Iraq.” [Mirror, 11/21/2002]

Entity Tags: Peter Kilfoyle, Richard Perle, George W. Bush

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

January 9, 2003: US Rejects British Suggestions to Put Off Iraq War

US officials and advisers reject British suggestions—revealed the previous day—that the war be put off (see January 8, 2003). Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, says that the Bush administration is under no obligation to abandon its war plans on account of opposition from the UN Security Council. He says, “I’m assuming that we will not get a consensus on the Security Council but it may be possible to get it… It would be a great mistake to become dependent on it and take the view that we can’t act separately… That would be an abrogation of the president’s responsibility… If there’s no change in Saddam’s attitude I think there’ll be a reluctance to continue this without a clear indication that our patience will be rewarded by a UN Security Council consensus… A consensus would be a useful thing and I think we’d be willing to wait a little longer to get it but not a long time… We might be acting without a resolution from the UN authorizing it but I think the administration can make a strong case that Saddam’s defiance of a variety of resolutions passed previously could be understood to justify military action.” [Daily Telegraph, 1/10/2003] And John Negroponte, the US Ambassador to the UN, also dismisses widespread objections to US aggression, asserting that any instances of Iraqi non-cooperation will “constitute further material breach,” regardless of what the UN ultimately decides. [Associated Press, 1/9/2003; London Times, 1/10/2003]

Entity Tags: John Negroponte, Richard Perle

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

February 2003: Prominent Neoconservatives Argue Iraq War Is Really about US World Dominance

Prominent neoconservatives William Kristol and Lawrence F. Kaplan publish the book The War Over Iraq advocating a US invasion of that country. In the book’s introduction, they assert: “We stand at the cusp of a new historical era.… This is a decisive moment.… The decision about what course to take in dealing with Iraq is particularly significant because it is so clearly about more than Iraq. It is about more even than the future of the Middle East and the war on terror. It is about what sort of role the United States intends to play in the world in the twenty-first century.” [Kristol and Kaplan, 2003, pp. vii-viii]

Entity Tags: William Kristol, Lawrence F. Kaplan

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

February 13, 2003: Neoconservative Ledeen Says Iraq Invasion Could Be ‘War to Remake the World’

At a press conference, neoconservative author and academic Michael Ledeen celebrates the imminent Iraq war, saying that now is the time for the US to “destroy [its enemies] to advance our historic mission.… I think we are going to be obliged to fight a regional war, whether we want to or not. It may turn out to be a war to remake the world.” [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 336, 367; Unger, 2007, pp. 290]

Entity Tags: Michael Ledeen

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

February 25, 2003: Neoconservative Foreign Policy Adviser Says UN Weapons Inspectors Being ‘Seriously Deceived’ by Iraqis

Neoconservative Richard Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, has a simple explanation as to why UN inspectors are not finding WMD in Iraq (see February 8, 2003): skullduggery. “UN weapons inspectors are being seriously deceived,” he declares in an essay published on the American Enterprise Institute’s Web site entitled “Take Out Saddam—It’s the Only Way.” Perle’s contentions are similar to those he has extolled in the past (see March, 2001 and November 20, 2002). This time he escalates the rhetoric even farther: “It reminds me of the way Nazis hoodwinked Red Cross officials inspecting the concentration camp at Theresienstadt in 1944.” [American Enterprise Institute, 2/25/2003; Unger, 2007, pp. 289]

Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Defense Policy Board

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

March 19, 2003: Neoconservative: ‘Iraq Is a Battle, Not a War’

Neoconservative Michael Ledeen, in an op-ed entitled “One Battle in a Wider War,” echoes the thinking of other neoconservatives when he writes that other Middle Eastern countries, specifically Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, must also be invaded by the US. “Once upon a time, it might have been possible to deal with Iraq alone, without having to face the murderous forces of the other terror masters in Tehran, Damascus, and [Riyadh], but that time has passed,” he writes. “Iraq is a battle, not a war. We have to win the war, and the only way to do that is to bring down the terror masters, and spread freedom throughout the region.” [New York Sun, 3/19/2003]

Entity Tags: Michael Ledeen

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence, Domestic Propaganda

March 27, 2003: Accused of Profiteering, Perle Resigns from Pentagon Advisory Panel Chairmanship

Embroiled in controversy over multiple conflicts of interests, Richard Perle resigns his position as chairman of the Defense Advisory Panel (DAP). [CNN, 3/28/2003] His resignation is the result of criticism of his mix of business activities as an investor, consultant, lobbyist, and political advocacy as an adviser to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In the weeks prior to his resignation, the New Yorker revealed that Perle’s venture capital firm, Trireme Partners LP, solicited funds from Saudi financiers, despite Perle’s vociferous criticisms of the Saudi government (see March 17, 2003). (Perle had notably invited a RAND Corp. analyst to give the DAP a briefing advocating the overthrow of the Saudi regime.) In the New Yorker article, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, said, “Here he is, on the one hand, trying to make a hundred-million-dollar deal, and, on the other hand, there were elements of the appearance of blackmail—‘If we get in business, he’ll back off on Saudi Arabia’—as I have been informed by participants in the meeting.” [New Yorker, 3/17/2003; Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 5/2003; Washington Post, 7/24/2004]

Entity Tags: Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, Bandar bin Sultan, Trireme Partners LP

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence

December 19, 2003: Neocon Says Bush Administration Should Work for Regime Change in Iran

Neoconservative Michael Ledeen, in an op-ed piece published by the Wall Street Journal, makes numerous charges against the Iranian government, saying it supports terrorism and is on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon. He asserts that the Bush administration must therefore act soon against Iran. He says Iran is the “ultimate litmus test of the seriousness of the Bush administration” and that the administration’s “ability to conduct an effective campaign against the mullahs in Tehran will determine the outcome of the war against the terror masters.” Ledeen asserts that the US does not need to invade Iran to “liberate it,” rather it only needs to support the “enthusiastically pro-American” people, as the US did the “Serbs against Slobodan Milosovic, the Filipinos against the Marcoses, the Poles against Soviet Communism.” [Wall Street Journal, 12/19/2003]

Entity Tags: Michael Ledeen, Bush administration (43)

Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran, Neoconservative Influence

January 24, 2004: Perle Takes Part in Rally for Iran; Denies Knowledge of Connections to MEK

Pentagon adviser Richard N. Perle speaks at a charity event whose stated purpose is to express “solidarity with Iran” and raise money for Iran earthquake victims. During the event, statements are made in support of “regime change in Iran.” The event is attended by FBI agents because of suspicions that the event has connections to the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), a militant Iranian opposition group that is included on the state department’s list terrorist organizations. The US Treasury Department will freeze the assets of the event’s prime organizer, the Iranian-American Community of Northern Virginia, two days later (see January 26, 2004). Perle tells the Washington Post that he was unaware of possible connections to MEK. [Washington Post, 1/29/2004]

Entity Tags: People’s Mujahedin of Iran, Richard Perle

Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

October 28, 2005: Analysis: Libby Involved in Many Aspects of Bush Administration Foreign Policy

In light of the indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see October 28, 2005), the Center for American Progress (CAP) puts out an analysis of Libby’s role as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, and the impact Libby has had on Bush administration policies. Libby, a powerful and influential neoconservative, “has been one of the most important men pulling the levers behind the Bush administration,” the article finds. “From the very beginning of the administration, Libby has essentially been Dick Cheney’s Dick Cheney.” But, the article goes on to note: “[w]hat few have realized at this historic moment is that for the past four and a half years, Libby has been ‘scooting’ from scandal to scandal. Libby has been at center stage for the other major national security scandals of the Bush administration, including the Iraq intelligence debacle, the secret meetings about Halliburton contracts, and doubtless others we have not heard of yet. It was Libby—along with Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and a handful of other top aides at the Pentagon and White House—who convinced the president that the US should go to war in Iraq. It was Libby who pushed Cheney to publicly argue that Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaeda and 9/11. It was also Libby who prodded former Secretary of State Colin Powell to include specious reports about an alleged meeting between 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence official in Powell’s February 2003 speech to the United Nations” (see February 5, 2003). Libby co-authored the controversial Defense Planning Guidance document of 1988 (see February 18, 1992) that called on the US to essentially transform itself into an aggressive empire, using its military to stretch its power around the world. “This Planning Guidance document went a long way toward endearing Libby to Cheney,” the CAP article reads. There is also evidence that Libby helped steer no-bid Iraqi reconstruction contracts to Cheney’s former firm, Halliburton. The article concludes, “Given the depth of his influence in shaping the White House agenda over the past four and a half years, losing Libby today is not only a huge blow to the vice president, but to the entire Bush administration.” [Center for American Progress, 10/28/2005]

Entity Tags: Bush administration (43), US Department of Defense, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Center for American Progress

Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

March 2007: Journalist Calls Neocon Policy Paper ‘A Playbook for US-Israel Foreign Policy During Bush-Cheney Era’

Craig Unger

Author and journalist Craig Unger writes that the 1996 Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies policy paper, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” (see July 8, 1996), was “the kernel of a breathtakingly radical vision for a new Middle East. By waging wars against Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, the paper asserted, Israel and the US could stabilize the region. Later, the neoconservatives argued that this policy could democratize the Middle East.” Unger’s thoughts are echoed by neoconservative Meyrav Wurmser, an Israeli-American policy expert who co-signed the paper with her husband, David Wurmser, now a top Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mrs. Wurmser (see March 2007) calls the policy paper “the seeds of a new vision.” While many of the paper’s authors eventually became powerful advisers and officials within the Bush administration, and implemented the policies advocated in the paper in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the paper’s focus on Iran has been somewhat less noticed. Former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom the paper was written, has observed, “The most dangerous of these regimes [Iran, Syria, and Iraq] is Iran.” Unger writes, “Ten years later, ‘A Clean Break’ looks like nothing less than a playbook for US-Israeli foreign policy during the Bush-Cheney era. Many of the initiatives outlined in the paper have been implemented—removing Saddam [Hussein] from power, setting aside the ‘land for peace’ formula to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon—all with disastrous results.” [Vanity Fair, 3/2007]

Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, David Wurmser, Craig Unger, Saddam Hussein, Bush administration (43), Hezbollah, Meyrav Wurmser, Benjamin Netanyahu, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, US International Relations, Iraq under US Occupation, Neoconservative Influence

September 24, 2007: Gingrich: Blow Up Iran’s Gas Refinery

Newt Gingrich

Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich says that the US should sabotage Iran’s gasoline refinery as part of its efforts to bring down the Iranian government. Gingrich also is harshly critical of the Bush administration for its failure to deal more strongly with Iraq, saying, “I can’t imagine why they put up with this. I mean, either General Petraeus is wrong and the military spokesman’s wrong, or the current policies we have are stunningly ineffective.” He then gives his own prescription for regime change in Iran: “We should finance the students. We should finance a Radio Free Iran. We should covertly sabotage the only gasoline refinery in the country. We should be prepared, once the gasoline refinery is down, to stop all of the gasoline tankers and communicate to the Iranian government that if they want to move equipment into Iran—into Iraq, they’re going to have to walk.” Gingrich adds, “I think we are currently so timid and our bureaucracies are so risk-avoiding—it took enormous leadership by President Reagan and by Bill Casey to reenergize the CIA in the early ‘80s. And we’ve now been through a long period of beating up the intelligence community and having lawyers say, You can’t do this, you can’t do that.” [Fox News, 9/25/2007]

Entity Tags: Newt Gingrich, Fox News

Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran, Neoconservative Influence

October 28, 2007: Presidential Candidate Giuliani’s Foreign Policy Adviser Says US Must Bomb Iran; Would Take ‘Five Minutes’

Neoconservative founder Norman Podhoretz, a senior foreign adviser to Republican presidential frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani, says the US has no other choice than to bomb Iran. Podhoretz says heavy and immediate strikes against Iran are necessary to prevent that country from developing nuclear weapons. “None of the alternatives to military action—negotiations, sanctions, provoking an internal insurrection—can possibly work,” Podhoretz says. “They’re all ways of evading the terrible choice we have to make which is to either let them get the bomb or to bomb them.” Podhoretz says that such strikes would be effective: “People I’ve talked to have no doubt we could set [Iran’s nuclear program] five or 10 years. There are those who believe we can get the underground facilities as well with these highly sophisticated bunker-busting munitions.” (Podhoretz does not identify the people he has “talked to.”) “I would say it would take five minutes. You’d wake up one morning and the strikes would have been ordered and carried out during the night. All the president has to do is say go.” Giuliani has echoed Podhoretz’s belligerence towards Iran; last month, Giuliani told a London audience that Iran should be given “an absolute assurance that, if they get to the point that they are going to become a nuclear power, we will prevent them or we will set them back five or 10 years.” Podhoretz says he was pleasantly surprised to hear Giuliani make such assertions: “I was even surprised he went that far. I’m sure some of his political people were telling him to go slow…. I wouldn’t advise any candidate to come out and say we have to bomb—it’s not a prudent thing to say at this stage of the campaign.” Podhoretz has given President Bush much the same advice (see Spring 2007).

‘Irrational’ ‘Insanity’ – Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel blasts the “immorality and illegality” of Podhoretz’s “death wish,” and notes that such “military action would be irrational for both sides. The US military is already stretched to the breaking point. We’d witness unprecedented pandemonium in oil markets. Our troops in Iraq would be endangered.” Vanden Heuvel cites the failure to destroy Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles during six weeks of bombings in 1991 (see January 16, 1991 and After), and the failure of the Israeli bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor (see June 7, 1981) to curb “regional [nuclear] proliferation.” She concludes, “Podhoretz and his insanity will embolden Iranian hardliners, plunge the region into even greater and darker instability and undermine our security.” [Nation, 10/28/2007]

Giuliani’s Stable of Neocons – Since July 2007, Giuliani has surrounded himself with a group of outspoken hardline and neoconservative foreign policy advisers (see Mid-July 2007).

Entity Tags: Norman Podhoretz, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush, Rudolph (“Rudy”) Giuliani

Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran, Neoconservative Influence

February 19, 2009: Perle Denies Any Neoconservative Influence in Bush Administration

In a speech at the Nixon Center, neoconservative guru Richard Perle (see 1965 and Early 1970s) attempts to drastically rewrite the history of the Bush administration and his role in the invasion of Iraq. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank writes that listening to Perle gave him “a sense of falling down the rabbit hole.” Milbank notes: “In real life, Perle was the ideological architect of the Iraq war and of the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack (see 1987-2004, Late December 2000 and Early January 2001, March, 2001, Shortly After September 11, 2001, September 15, 2001, September 19-20, 2001, November 14, 2001, November 14, 2001, November 18-19, 2001, May 2002, August 16, 2002, November 20, 2002, January 9, 2003, February 25, 2003, and March 27, 2003). But at yesterday’s forum of foreign policy intellectuals, he created a fantastic world in which:
Perle is not a neoconservative.
Neoconservatives do not exist.
Even if neoconservatives did exist, they certainly couldn’t be blamed for the disasters of the past eight years.” [Washington Post, 2/20/2009]
Perle had previously advanced his arguments in an article for National Interest magazine. [National Interest, 1/21/2009]

‘No Such Thing as a Neoconservative Foreign Policy’ – Perle tells the gathering, hosted by National Interest: “There is no such thing as a neoconservative foreign policy. It is a left critique of what is believed by the commentator to be a right-wing policy.” Perle has shaped the nation’s foreign policy since 1974 (see August 15, 1974, Early 1976, 1976, and Early 1981). He was a key player in the Reagan administration’s early attempts to foment a nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union (see Early 1981 and After, 1981 and Beyond, September 1981 through November 1983, May 1982 and After, and October 11-12, 1986). Perle denies any real involvement with the 1996 “Clean Break” document, which Milbank notes “is widely seen as the cornerstone of neoconservative foreign policy” (see July 8, 1996 and March 2007). Perle explains: “My name was on it because I signed up for the study group. I didn’t approve it. I didn’t read it.” In reality, Perle wrote the bulk of the “Clean Break” report. Perle sidesteps questions about the letters he wrote (or helped write) to Presidents Clinton and Bush demanding the overthrow of Saddam Hussein (see January 26, 1998, February 19, 1998, and September 20, 2001), saying, “I don’t have the letters in front of me.” He denies having any influence on President Bush’s National Security Strategy, which, as Milbank notes, “enshrin[ed] the neoconservative themes of preemptive war and using American power to spread freedom” (see May 1, 2001), saying: “I don’t know whether President Bush ever read any of those statements [he wrote]. My guess is he didn’t.” Instead, as Perle tells the audience: “I see a number of people here who believe and have expressed themselves abundantly that there is a neoconservative foreign policy and it was the policy that dominated the Bush administration, and they ascribe to it responsibility for the deplorable state of the world. None of that is true, of course.” Bush’s foreign policy had “no philosophical underpinnings and certainly nothing like the demonic influence of neoconservatives that is alleged.” And Perle claims that no neoconservative ever insisted that the US military should be used to spread democratic values (see 1965, Early 1970s, Summer 1972 and After, August 15, 1974, 1976, November 1976, Late November, 1976, 1977-1981, 1981 and Beyond, 1984, Late March 1989 and After, 1991-1997, March 8, 1992, July 1992, Autumn 1992, July 8, 1996, Late Summer 1996, Late Summer 1996, 1997, November 12, 1997, January 26, 1998, February 19, 1998, May 29, 1998, July 1998, February 1999, 2000, September 2000, November 1, 2000, January 2001, January 22, 2001 and After, March 12, 2001, Shortly After September 11, 2001, September 20, 2001, September 20, 2001, September 20, 2001, September 24, 2001, September 25-26, 2001, October 29, 2001, October 29, 2001, November 14, 2001, November 20, 2001, November 29-30, 2001, December 7, 2001, February 2002, April 2002, April 23, 2002, August 6, 2002, September 4, 2002, November 2002-December 2002, November 12, 2002, February 2003, February 13, 2003, March 19, 2003, December 19, 2003, March 2007, September 24, 2007, and October 28, 2007), saying, “I can’t find a single example of a neoconservative supposed to have influence over the Bush administration arguing that we should impose democracy by force.” His strident calls for forcible regime change in Iran were not what they seemed, he says: “I’ve never advocated attacking Iran. Regime change does not imply military force, at least not when I use the term” (see July 8-10, 1996, Late Summer 1996, November 14, 2001, and January 24, 2004).

Challenged by Skeptics – Former Reagan administration official Richard Burt (see Early 1981 and After and May 1982 and After), who challenged Perle during his time in Washington, takes issue with what he calls the “argument that neoconservatism maybe actually doesn’t exist.” He reminds Perle of the longtime rift between foreign policy realists and neoconservative interventionists, and argues, “You’ve got to kind of acknowledge there is a neoconservative school of thought.” Perle replies, “I don’t accept the approach, not at all.” National Interest’s Jacob Heilbrunn asks Perle to justify his current position with the title of his 2003 book An End to Evil. Perle claims: “We had a publisher who chose the title. There’s hardly an ideology in that book.” (Milbank provides an excerpt from the book that reads: “There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust. This book is a manual for victory.”) Perle blames the news media for “propagat[ing] this myth of neoconservative influence,” and says the term “neoconservative” itself is sometimes little more than an anti-Semitic slur. After the session, the moderator asks Perle how successful he has been in making his points. “I don’t know that I persuaded anyone,” he concedes. [Washington Post, 2/20/2009]

‘Richard Perle Is a Liar’ – Harvard professor Stephen Walt, a regular columnist for Foreign Policy magazine, writes flatly, “Richard Perle is a liar.” He continues: “[K]ey neoconservatives like Douglas Feith, I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and others [were] openly calling for regime change in Iraq since the late 1990s and… used their positions in the Bush administration to make the case for war after 9/11, aided by a chorus of sympathetic pundits at places like the American Enterprise Institute, and the Weekly Standard. The neocons were hardly some secret cabal or conspiracy, as they were making their case loudly and in public, and no serious scholar claims that they ‘bamboozled’ Bush and Cheney into a war. Rather, numerous accounts have documented that they had been openly pushing for war since 1998 and they continued to do so after 9/11.… The bottom line is simple: Richard Perle is lying. What is disturbing about this case is not that a former official is trying to falsify the record in such a brazen fashion; Perle is hardly the first policymaker to kick up dust about his record and he certainly won’t be the last. The real cause for concern is that there are hardly any consequences for the critical role that Perle and the neoconservatives played for their pivotal role in causing one of the great foreign policy disasters in American history. If somebody can help engineer a foolish war and remain a respected Washington insider—as is the case with Perle—what harm is likely to befall them if they lie about it later?” [Foreign Policy, 2/23/2009]

Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Jacob Heilbrunn, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, George W. Bush, Douglas Feith, Dana Milbank, Bush administration (43), Stephen Walt, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Burt

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

July 21, 2012 Posted by aletho | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Albert Wohlstetter, Benjamin Netanyahu, Cold War, Henry M. Jackson, Iran, Iraq, Irving Kristol, Israel, Lebanon, Leo Strauss, Middle East, New York Times, Pakistan, Palestine, Paul Wolfowitz, RAND Corporation, Richard Perle, Sanctions against Iran, Soviet Union, Stanley Kubrick, United States, Zalmay Khalilzad, Zionism | Leave a comment