Janine Wedel - Shadow Elite - How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market

The roles of the Enterprise players were so improvised and diverse that it is difficult to tease them out of the snarl of camouflaged titles, activities, and events. As Jack Blum, a special counsel leading one of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s investigations, told me: “I can’t even begin to tell you how to categorize those people, because the roles aren’t clean, and they play in and out and off and around each other. And then there are people who are go-betweens.” 53

The players’ elusiveness, of course, facilitated their effectiveness—helping them personalize policy and diplomacy and skirt democratic checks and balances as they capitalized on executive power and the tacit blessing of the chief executive. This might-be-authorized, might-not-be-authorized setup also helped its operatives enfeeble legal repercussions. Ultimately, though, the ability to evade sanction would come with the exercise of executive power by one Enterprise abettor: Bush I. As president, he pardoned those convicted. Thus, while some of the players were slapped on the wrist, involvement in the scandal scarcely hampered their later success. Moreover, some two decades later, in the Bush II administration, key players in Iran-Contra would resurface as key players in the conduct of unofficial, yet-might-be-official American foreign policy. 54

Sidelining Expertise

Another neoconservative, as well as assertive nationalist, cause—ballistic missile defense—would spur innovation in ways and means of influence-wielding to affect U.S. foreign and defense policy. It is logical that ballistic missile defense, commonly and first known as “Star Wars,” would be taken up as a project by neoconservatives—staunch advocates of the use of military force to promote U.S. interests abroad. While missile defense is by no means a cause exclusive to the Neocon core, some of its members and associates have been among its most steadfast influencers. For a quarter of a century, missile defense proponents have sought to keep the project alive. They have done this through thick and thin—and there has been plenty of thick, especially with the elimination of the Soviet threat and the end of the Cold War. 55

Ballistic missile defense made its splash as a signature of the Reagan administration’s strong-on-defense, tough-on-the-Soviets posturing. It was supposed to shield against nuclear attacks on American cities and included both ground-based and spaced-based components. While this might have seemed like a good idea in principle, scientists and investigators have, since the program’s inception, almost uniformly challenged the viability of major aspects of it. Many have also questioned the staggering cost. Yet, while the efficacy of missile defense remains largely undemonstrated to this day and its original raison d’être has been relegated to history books, the program has persisted—morphing variously from the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) into the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), with ever changing government commissions and task forces administering it. What accounts for the longevity of Star Wars? 56

The role of a set of advocates working in venues related to the cause deserves close attention. These key supporters, powered by private organizations, conservative funders, and industry sponsors, have shepherded it through numerous mutations. Eyeing the rosters of names associated with the project shows striking continuity—with certain individuals playing key roles for more than a quarter century, even when those roles shift (say, from undersecretary or deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Defense to a perch in a think tank, academia, or industry—or vice versa). While their organizational venues may change, a constellation of players has, unswervingly, cradled the Star Wars cause.

Although the effort boasts indispensable backers who are not part of the Neocon core, including some who were active in Team B, certain core members also have been crucial players. Recall that it was the issue of missile defense that prompted Albert Wohlstetter to introduce Richard Perle to Senator Jackson in the late 1960s. 57

While Perle championed the project since its inception and Wolfowitz has played a supporting role, Neocon core members Frank Gaffney, Douglas Feith, and R. James Woolsey, Jr.—director of the CIA under Clinton turned vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton—have done more heavy lifting. So have Neocon core allies Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence under Bush II, and Dov Zakheim, missile defense company official turned comptroller of the Department of Defense under Bush II turned U.S. government adviser and vice president at Booz Allen. 58

While Star Wars boosters have used traditional means of wielding influence such as lobbying Congress, they have employed additional approaches including establishing think tanks and foundations, as well as enlisting unofficial diplomats to sway decision makers in foreign lands. Crucially, they also have built on the Team B model. Star Wars advocates primarily have been civilians, according to Pulitzer Prizen–winner Frances Fitzgerald, who writes that civilian promoters of the project have been much more enthusiastic about it than its military custodians. And in the spirit of Team B, they have disparaged the efficacy of U.S. military and intelligence expertise, produced their own assessments, and helped create and staff government commissions to help legitimize those assessments. 59

Beginning in the 1980s, Star Wars proponents set up or mobilized several pressure organizations to influence the opinion of decision makers and the public—and thereby, policy. William D. Hartung, an expert on the economics of the defense industry and arms issues, gives think tanks much of the credit for keeping missile defense alive after the end of the Cold War. While most of these organizations were not Neocon core strongholds, the core-powered Center for Security Policy, founded by Gaffney in 1988, played a “coordinating role” in the effort. Gaffney himself is credited with having pulled off an important feat: He reportedly convinced Dick Armey, the congressman from Texas who served as Republican conference chairman, to include missile defense as the sole plank dealing specifically with foreign policy in the 1994 “Contract with America.” A handful of additional think-tank-style organizations also have buoyed missile defense through the years, their major priority being the production and propagation of expertise. 60

From the point of view of Star Wars’ supporters, the beauty of think tanks and academic institutes is that they provide a veneer of neutrality and objective study. As William Hartung put it, by providing a buffer between industry and public policy, think tanks are “almost like money launderers.” The mega-billion-dollar industry that is missile defense helps keep itself fed by funding these organizations. Industry-underwritten think tanks not only help drum up support for policies (and policy shifts) that benefit their business; they are sometimes drivers of policies that open up new arenas of business. 61

Star Wars advocates have helped engineer into existence, and then filled the ranks of, Team B–type undertakings, this time in the form of government-sponsored commissions. At the urging of such groups as Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA)—a member of Gaffney’s advisory board and chair of the military procurement subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee in the Republican-controlled Congress—introduced an amendment in the Defense Authorization bill of 1997 allocating funds for an independent commission to assess the menace to the United States posed by ballistic missiles. 62

The result led to one commission and eventually to a second, related commission, authorized under a separate amendment. Both were chaired by Donald Rumsfeld, with Stephen Cambone as staff director, and both commissions provided clout and intellectual justification for missile defense. The apparent goal of these commissions, funded by taxpayer dollars, was to compel the administration to beef up the military budget and introduce new weapons programs. 63