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Institutional
Affiliations
Southwest
Missouri State University: Professor of Defense and Strategic Studies (1993-2001) (1)
Center for Security Policy: Former Member of Board of
Advisers
(2)
Comparative Strategy:
former member, Editorial Board
(1)
Government Service
Deputy National Security Adviser (January 2005–present) (2)
Ambassador to Romania (May 2004–January 2005) (1)
U.S. Department of Defense: Assistant Secretary for International Security Policy (August 2001–October 2003) (1)
Christian County Sheriff’s Office: Reserve Deputy Sheriff (1)
Multi-County Special Response Team: Member (1)
Sen. Malcolm Wallop: Military Legislative Assistant (1986-1990) (1)
U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency:
Assistant Director for Strategic Programs
(1984-1986) (1)
U.S. Delegation on Nuclear and Space Arms Talks with the Soviet Union: Adviser (2)
Corporate Connections/Business Interests
PalmGear.com: Co-Founder (1)
Education
University of Southern California:
BA , MA , PhD, International Relations
Right Web Connections
Dick Cheney
Henry Cooper
Frank Gaffney
William Graham
Stephen Hadley
Charles Kupperman
Keith Payne
Donald Rumsfeld
William Van Cleave
Malcolm Wallop
Paul Wolfowitz
Ashbrook University
Center for Security Policy
Empower America
High Frontier
National Institute for Public Policy
Commission on the Ballistic Missile Threat
Defense Policy Guidance
Team B |
Highlights
& Quotes
Few appointees in the current administration can boast as diverse a background as J.D. Crouch, the Deputy National Security Adviser. According to a State Department profile, Crouch was once a reserve deputy sheriff in Christian County, Missouri; is a cofounder of PalmGear.com, "the Internet's leading source of Palm OS software"; served as a legislative assistant in the 1980s to the hawkish Sen. Malcolm Wallop, an early proponent of a national missile defense system; was Ambassador to Romania; and is a former professor of strategic studies at Southwest
Missouri State University. (1)
His latest incarnation, as Stephen Hadley's right-hand man in the National Security Council, is actually Crouch's third post under George W. Bush. Before serving as Ambassador to Romania, his previous job, he was an assistant secretary of defense for international security policy. In this role, Crouch served as a point person for Pentagon nuclear weapons programs. In announcing the release of the declassified version of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review in January 2002, Crouch strongly hinted that the administration was considering developing a new generation of nuclear weapons: "We are trying to look at a number of initiatives. One would be to modify an existing weapon, to give it greater capability against . hard and deeply buried targets." (6)
In an article for the Middle East Report, commentator Jim Lobe writes that Crouch's recent appointment under Hadley "constituted a net gain, if not for the neoconservatives, then certainly for their aggressive nationalist and Christian right partners." (3) According to Lobe, Crouch is a longtime nuclear enthusiast, a protégé of Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz (with whom he helped produce the ill-fated 1992 draft Defense Policy Guidance, widely regarded as an early formulation of the policies championed by President Bush after 9/11), and a close associate of William Van Cleave, a leading Cold Warrior in the 1970s and 1980s whose record includes membership on the notorious Team B strategic objectives panel and the U.S. delegation to the START talks.
Before joining the Bush administration, Crouch worked alongside Van Cleave at Southwest Missouri State University's Department of Defense and Strategic Studies. The department's faculty website reads like a who's who of influential hardliners. To name a few: Keith Payne, founder of the National Institute for Public Policy, who is set to replace Van Cleave as department head in 2005; Henry Cooper, a former head of the Strategic Defense Initiative and founder of the pro-missile defense group High Frontier, who worked with Crouch in the mid-1980s as the chief negotiator of the U.S. Delegation on Nuclear and Space Arms Talks with the Soviet Union; William Graham, a former Reagan administration adviser whose record includes membership on Donald Rumsfeld's Commission on the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States and executive of various defense contractors, including R&D Associates and Jaycor; and Charles Kupperman, a former Lockheed executive and director of Empower America. (4)
Crouch has also been-along with most of the men just mentioned-a longtime supporter of Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy, one of the more outspoken and widely publicized hardline policy institutes in Washington. (5)
Crouch has published widely on a number of issues, including both domestic and foreign policy. An example of his trenchant commentary: In a 1999 letter to the Washington Times, Crouch blamed the Columbine High School massacre on "30 years of liberal social policy that has put our children in day care, taken God out of the schools, taken Mom out of the house and banished Dad as an authority figure from the family altogether." (3)
Crouch offered a succinct account of his political views in a 1995 commentary on the 1994 "Republican Revolution" in Congress for the journal On Principle, published by the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashbrook University, another bastion of conservative academics.
With Republicans in control of the congressional agenda, Crouch said they should push an ambitious policy program that, in his words, includes the following agenda items:
- "True welfare reform that prevents people from spending lives and generations on the dole and that does not tear apart the family of its recipients, sending thousands of its progeny into the crime culture.
- "A balanced budget amendment and a line item veto.
- "A slashing of taxes and a revamping of the tax code to eliminate 'progressive' taxation that consumes the incentive to create wealth.
- "A restoration of the strength of and the pride in our armed forces by increasing defense spending, and taking care of the most pressing threats to U.S. national security, in particular the building of an SDI defense of the American homeland.
- "Repealing the trash in the crime bill, especially the limits on the rights of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves, and passing measures that promote strong local law enforcement and the individual's role in preventing crime.
- "Abolishing unneeded agencies and departments of government that are the domain of individuals or local government, such as the Departments of Energy and Education.
- "Above all . passing a federal term limits act that forever eliminates the career politician and reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy, including reducing the size of congressional staffs." (7)
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