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

NEOCON CORE 1

Players’ Interconnections Through Organizations 2

(Ideological and Think-Tank Only)

1 This graphic provides a sampling of organizations (circa 1979 to 2008) empowered–and mostly set up by–members of the Neocon core. The list is not comprehensive.

2 This graphic includes membership only; it does not capture other forms of involvement. Players were not always involved in these organizations at the same time.

* John Bolton comes from a different rightwing tradition than do neoconservatives, but is closely allied to the Neocon core.

Many members of the Neocon flex net have moved and shaken several of the handful of organizations they created. Here the intricate spine of their exclusive, intertwined network (flex net feature one) is especially in evidence. In addition to their many other roles vis-à-vis each other in and around government, business, and community, members of the core connect with each other through leadership in these entities, as illustrated on page 172. A sociologist who conducted a network analysis of memberships in neoconservative-associated organizations found that “the activities of fourteen organizations were coordinated by individuals who comprised a web of interlocking memberships.” For instance, the Center for Security Policy had twelve membership links to the Project for the New American Century, seven to the Defense Policy Board, six to JINSA, four to the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, and five to the American Enterprise Institute, among others. 75As a consequence, their network configurations resemble the Chubais-Harvard set explicated in Chapter 5.

NEOCON CORE

Official Positions in Government and Governmental Boards/Commissions

(Administration of George W. Bush)

CTEG -- Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group

OSP -- Office of Special Plans

NSC -- National Security Council

* John Bolton comes from a different rightwing tradition than do neoconservatlves, but is closely allied to the Neocon core.

As well, the Neocon core organizations are not so very different from the NGOs of transitional eastern Europe that emerged from the understructure of communism as it became undone. The first prerequisite to belonging to such an NGO—and belonging is an apt term—was already to be in the network. Typically, only those with common social background, pedigree, and shared experience could qualify. (The paradox for building civil society, however, is that it needs to attract members based on common interests.) Likewise, the Neocon core–established organizations are loyalty- and network-based associations with an extended-family flavor. 76

Of course, these organizations are powered by fierce ideological commitment, the quality of throwing oneself into goals deemed almost as crucial as survival itself. In terms of organization, committedness, and “us versus them,” this quality recalls early Communist Party cells and the Trotskyist past of the neoconservative founding fathers. Both these aspects—a resilient network and do-or-die commitment—fortify them in and against an American environment in which the prevailing attitude often is “I’ll go with whoever pays me the most.”

FORMING AN INTRICATE SPINE and employing shared conviction and action (the first two features of flex nets) rendered the Neocon core a formidable force in empowering pressure organizations and publicizing their cause. But it would not be enough to achieve the core’s goal of overthrowing Hussein. The chief decider would have to be on board: The core could scarcely have attained its goal without a presidency favorably disposed toward parts of its agenda. It was also crucial to have core members in key government posts vis-à-vis U.S. policy toward the Middle East. Richard Perle said as much to journalist George Packer when Packer interviewed Perle for his book The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq . Perle observed, “If Bush had staffed his administration with a group of people selected by Brent Scowcroft and Jim Baker . . . which might well have happened, then it could have been different, because they would not have carried into it the ideas that the people who wound up in important positions brought to it.” 77

Further, to achieve their longstanding goals once in those positions, members of the Neocon core would have to put their modus operandi to work: to form a resource pool and forge a hybrid habitat— the third and fourth features of flex nets. This time, they could capitalize on their most hospitable environment to date, one shaped by trends such as the explosion of private entities filling in for Swiss-cheese government; the rising number and influence of government advisory boards, think-tank styled organizations, and personal envoys helping to create and carrying out public policy; and the drift of governmental authority, legitimacy, expertise, and prestige to private partners (consistent with the general loss of exclusive claim to expertise by traditional institutions) that would help them do so. Still, members of the Neocon core would need to reorganize relevant governing structures and processes, infusing them with their own personalistic, network-based ones, in order to manufacture and market their own intelligence assessments to decision makers and the media. They would need to override reservations from relevant communities in government, including some within intelligence units and the State Department. Their strategic alliances with assertive nationalists and the Christian Right would also serve their cause.

All these were necessary, but not sufficient, conditions to get American troops to Baghdad. The environment would have to be receptive. September 11, 2001, helped create that receptivity. Without the emergency atmosphere it generated—a shaken population and a government lacking experience with demonstrated threats to its own shores—it would have been much more difficult, perhaps even impossible, for the Neocon core to achieve its objective during the Bush II years. This crisis atmosphere, friendly to urgent measures and improvisation writ large, helped push along the intensification of executive power, the upswing in contracting out of government functions, and the greater number of political appointees in management positions, among other measures.

Perle’s Homemade Policy

In The Assassins’ Gate , Packer recounts that, “When I half jokingly suggested that the Iraq War began in Scoop Jackson’s office, Perle said, ‘There’s an element of that.’” Packer calls Perle the “impresario” of the Iraq war, “with one degree of separation from everyone who mattered.” 78

In the run-up to and after the invasion of Iraq, numerous private meetings reportedly took place, some of them in Perle’s home, in which both Iraq policy and media messages were discussed and even coordinated. These meetings included Neocon core members in formal government, as well as some outside it such as think-tankers and pundits. While details of these meetings are not available (and, of course, core members deny any hint of collaboration), the neoconservatives’ massive and concerted public relations operations around the war effort are clear, with obvious coordination of information, judging from the match of message and vocabulary. Also revealing is the fact that the same neoconservative-oriented public relations firm, Benador Associates, founded in the aftermath of 9/11, helped coordinate the media relations for Neocon core members Perle, Gaffney, Ledeen, and Woolsey, as well as neoconservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer and other first-rank neoconservative players and proselytizers. New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who would emerge at the very least as an enabler of the Neocon screed, at most a propagandist, was also a client. The firm is run by Eleana Benador, a “Swiss-American publicist,” who served as an adviser to the Middle East Forum, a neoconservative-associated Philadelphia think tank. While many people helped to disseminate the rush-to-war message, the core was crucial in creating, organizing, and providing the raw materials for it. So were Neocon core–nourished brokers. 79