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

While the director of central intelligence initially took issue with the conclusions of the report generated by the first commission, more than a year later, in September 1999, the CIA issued a new National Intelligence Estimate that was notably more “alarmist” than its earlier NIE. Weldon expressed pleasure with the new threat assessment, calling it “the largest turnaround ever in the history of the [intelligence] agency.” Said Weldon, a main sponsor of the Rumsfeld commission, “I was part of making it happen.” The recommendations of the second commission, released in January 2001, on the military uses of outer space, also had an effect on policy outcomes. 64

When Rumsfeld became secretary of defense in the Bush II administration, missile defense got a boost via at least two developments. The first was bringing into the Pentagon members and others involved in the Rumsfeld commissions, including Wolfowitz as deputy secretary of defense, Feith as undersecretary of defense for policy, Cambone as undersecretary of defense for intelligence (a position created for him by Rumsfeld), and Zakheim as comptroller general, as well as Woolsey and other Neocon core allies as members of the Defense Policy Board chaired by Perle. 65

The second development, an initiative set up explicitly to enable the circumvention of bureaucracy, could not have been friendlier to the antibureaucracy Neocon core. Dubbed the “Freedom to Manage” initiative, the program exempts missile defense programs from standard checks and balances, that is, regulations pertaining to system requirements, timelines, costs, and independent assessments by the Pentagon’s testing office. Rumsfeld justified his action with this statement: “The special nature of missile defense development, operations, and support calls for nonstandard approaches to both acquisition and requirements generation.” 66

Although much has changed over the past quarter century, including the names of the Star Wars program, the geopolitical context in which it is promoted, and the organizations and commissions involved in it, the movers and shakers behind it are strikingly constant. So is their skepticism of U.S. intelligence expertise. A 2007 symposium I attended on “Ballistic Missile Defense: Where We Are and Where We Need to Be” summed up this sentiment. It was sponsored by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a Neocon core–associated think tank (paying special attention to missile defense), with representatives of the defense industry in the audience. One of the speakers said: “I don’t put much stock in what the NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] says.” 67

This distrust of government expertise and intelligence assessments—and the players’ countermeasures to them, such as their sponsorship of industry-supported pressure groups to promulgate “independent” assessments, and their promotion of alternative government findings—would again be reflected in the Neocon core’s signature effort to date: the toppling of Saddam Hussein. 68

Pursuing Personalized Policy

By the time George W. Bush entered office in January 2001 and the Neocon players maneuvered themselves into roles of influence, both within and outside of formal positions in the administration, they had spent the better part of a decade advocating the overthrow of Hussein. Wolfowitz and others had long maintained that the elder Bush had made a grave mistake by not unseating the dictator during the first Gulf War in 1991. Brick by brick members of the Neocon core put together the building blocks that would attempt to correct that mistake and reorder the Middle East according to their own vision. They spawned a proliferation of initiatives and organizations underpinned by collections of roughly the same set of players.

In 1996, during the Clinton years, Perle chaired a study group that issued a report aimed at balancing power in the Middle East in Israel’s favor. Neocon core member David Wurmser, husband of Meyrav Wurmser, directed the effort from a Jerusalem-based think tank, with the involvement of his wife, Feith, and others. 69The report, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm , called for “removing Saddam Hussein from power,” among other prescriptions to rearrange the region. Intended to influence the policies of the new Likud-led government, Perle delivered the report personally to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 70

Before long, Perle and other members of the Neocon core were pressing the Clinton administration to pursue the same objectives. In 1998, in an effort known as the Project for the New American Century, core members Perle, Wolfowitz, Woolsey, and Elliott Abrams (who would serve Bush II as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy, and additionally as Middle East adviser), as well as core ally John Bolton (who would serve as undersecretary of state for arms control), were among the signatories of a letter to President Clinton calling for the removal of Hussein. Clinton sought regime change in Iraq, mostly through sanctions imposed by the United Nations. But the neoconservatives considered sanctions ineffective. Signatories of these two documents would later overhaul this approach from their posts in the Bush II administration. 71

Familial NGOs

To move the U.S. government to undertake policies its members did consider effective, the Neocon core worked through a host of organizations, many of which it created in the 1990s and after 9/11, to further its agenda in the Middle East. In the process, members of the core and their allies were at the forefront of a trend in American governing: the uptick in politicized think-tank-type organizations, as described in Chapter 4. Moreover, they added their own organizational innovation: the steel-girded framework of their network, which bolstered their capacity for coordination of resources and influence.

Members of the core started and were prime movers in a series of organizations of influence variously pegged as think tanks, educational associations, policy conveyors, and the like—including Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy and JINSA. They also populated the decades-old American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which has long served as a primary launching and landing pad for members of the core and other neoconservatives. This is the think tank where Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, and David Wurmser hang (or have hung) one of their hats, and where Wolfowitz and Bolton landed after their Bush II administration gigs.

In addition, members of the Neocon core were instigators and signatories of “letterhead organizations” (LHOs), albeit influential and landmark ones such as the Project for the New American Century, as well as the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, and the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon, among others. Although letterhead organizations may sound inconsequential, in fact their significance is often in their founding and the buzz their founders create. A series of LHOs enables the same collection of individuals to appear under different guises and to create the impression that their reach is ever widening—bolstering the impact of truthiness. For, as Jim Lobe assesses, these organizations function as “a vast echo chamber for one another and for the media.” 72This same set of individuals also played lesser roles in small, but often well-endowed shops of wider (or somewhat different) circles set up for similar purposes. 73These organizations support the core’s activities in, among other efforts, drafting policy papers and publicizing them, raising money and media attention, and lobbying policymakers and members of Congress.

These inbred organizations are a different animal from think tanks (in the model of the Brookings Institution or the Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS), from foundations (in the mold of Ford or Rockefeller), and from lobbying organizations (such as the National Organization for Women or the National Rifle Association). The Neocon-associated organizations are anchored in the network. They have drawn on or been energized by a handful of participants—participants who, for the most part, had a past with each other and were already connected via other endeavors. Douglas Feith, for example, is a founding member of the Center for Security Policy’s board of advisers and former chairman of its board of directors. 74