Michael A. Ledeen, a "Freedom Scholar" at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a vociferous and often rancorous proponent of U.S. interventionism in foreign affairs. He has supported everything from the U.S.-backed Contra wars in Central America during the 1980s to an expansive post-9/11 "war on terror" aimed at reshaping the Middle East. A core representative of the neoconservative political faction, Ledeen calls himself a "democratic revolutionary" and lambastes leftist "reactionaries," who he claims "have lost the right to describe themselves as people of the left" (Larissa Alexandrovna, "Conversation with Machiavelli's Ghost").
A longtime Washington insider who has frequently shifted between media, government, and think tank positions since the 1970s, Ledeen's influence within the George W. Bush administration was highlighted by the Washington Post in March 2003, when it cited him as one of several elites consulted by powerful White House adviser Karl Rove. Reported the Post: "The two met after Bush's election. He said, 'Anytime you have a good idea, tell me,' Ledeen said. Every month or six weeks, Ledeen will offer Rove 'something you should be thinking about.' More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas, faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric."
Like his AEI cohorts, Ledeen has frequently attacked officials who have attempted to push forward a diplomatic track in Mideast policy. Commenting on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's efforts in early 2007 to arrange meetings with Iranian officials, Ledeen wrote in an April 2007 National Review article: "The delusion that one can settle our little disagreements with the Islamic Republic, if only the right people sit around the right conference table, has seized every administration since Jimmy Carter. Every president has sent emissaries to talk, and every administration has made demarches to Tehran. To date, the net result is hundreds of dead Americans. And yet the delusion persists. Each time it fails, the deep thinkers at Foggy Bottom manage to convince the Secretary of State of the moment that we are just one small concession away from success, and by and large the secretary goes for it, just as Secretary Rice has."
An outspoken proponent of taking military action against Iran, which he calls "the mother of modern terrorism," Ledeen has made a career of popularizing alarmist and often misleading charges about terrorism threats dating back to the late 1970s, when he served as a consultant to the Italian military intelligence. He went onto become a consultant and special adviser for the U.S. State Department and the National Security Council shortly after the election of Ronald Reagan. From this perch, Ledeen championed the idea, initially promoted in Claire Sterling's 1981 best-selling book The Terror Network, that Moscow was behind worldwide terrorism acts, including the discredited allegation that the KGB helped orchestrate the 1981 assassination attempt of Pope John Paul II (Inter Press Service, June 26, 2003).
Ledeen's views at the time, however, conflicted with those of the CIA, which contended that Moscow had little or nothing to do with the global "terror network." Said Ledeen in an interview for the 2005 BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares: "The CIA denied it. They tried to convince people that we were really crazy. I mean, they never believed that the Soviet Union was a driving force in the international terror network. They always wanted to believe that terrorist organizations were just what they said they were: local groups trying to avenge terrible evils done to them, or trying to rectify terrible social conditions, and things like that."
Responding to Ledeen's claims in the BBC documentary, Melvin Goodman, an intelligence scholar who served as head of Soviet affairs at the CIA at that time, said: "When we looked through the book [The Terror Network], we found very clear episodes where CIA black propaganda—clandestine information that was designed under a covert action plan to be planted in European newspapers—were picked up and put in this book. A lot of it was made up. It was made up out of whole cloth."
Since 9/11, Ledeen has focused his ideas on global terrorism on the Middle East, arguing that "Islamofascists" in countries like Iran are heading a new terror network. In his 2002 book The War Against the Terror Masters, Ledeen writes: "The main part of the [war on terrorism]—the campaign against terror masters who rule countries hostile to us—is a very old kind of war. It is a revolutionary war, right out of the 18th century, the very kind of war that gave our national identity. While we will have to act against secret terrorist organizations and kamikaze fighters, our ultimate targets are tyrannical regimes. We will require different strategies in each case. We will need one method and set of tools to bring down Saddam Hussein, another strategy to break the Assad family dictatorship in Syria, a very different approach to end the religious tyranny in Iran, and yet another to deal with Saudi Arabia's active support for fundamentalist Islam and the terror network. But the mission is the same in each case: Bring down the terror masters" (p. xxii).
Ledeen repeated this motif in a March 2003 BBC interview, during which he claimed: "As soon as we land in Iraq, we're going to face the whole terrorist network. Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia are the big four, and then there's Libya." He added: "You can't solve all problems, I grant that. I mean, I wrote a book about Machiavelli, and I know the struggle against evil is going to go forever" (quoted in Inter Press Service, June 26, 2003).
To promote his vision of the war on terror, Ledeen has supported a passel of letterhead groups that, since 9/11, have emerged to promote toppling various regimes in the Middle East. Together with Morris Amitay, a former lobbyist for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Ledeen created in 2003 the Coalition for Democracy in Iran (CDI), which until it disbanded in 2005 supported regime-change efforts in Iran and pushed a number of legislative proposals aimed at isolating it. Among CDI's influential members and supporters were Frank Gaffney, head of the hardline Center for Security Policy; Joshua Muravchik, a Ledeen colleague at AEI who has been an important shaper of the neoconservative agenda; and former CIA director James Woolsey, a promoter of the notion that the war on terror is really World War IV.
Ledeen has been a supporter of the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon, an organization created by U.S.-based Lebanese banker Ziad Abdelnour that has pushed a hardline stance on Syria. He has also served on the board of advisers of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, which promotes a Likud Party-line on Middle East peace issues, in part by building contacts between military officers in Israel and the United States.
Ledeen has often been invited to share his views with Congress. In March 2006, Ledeen testified before the House Committee on International Relations, recommending a policy of regime change and revolution in Iran. He argued that the U.S. government has "yet to fight back" against the so-called terror masters there, who he argued "have waged unholy war against us" since 1979. "They created Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, and they support most all the others, from Hamas and al-Qaida to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command. Iran's proxies range from Shiites to Sunnis to Marxists, all cannon fodder for the overriding objective to dominate or destroy us. ... I am opposed to sanctions; I am generally opposed to military strikes, and I fully endorse support for revolution." He added: "The first step in crafting a suitable policy toward Iran is to abandon the pretense that we can arrive at a negotiated settlement."
For Ledeen, those who oppose his take on Mideast issues are "appeasers," a frequent neoconservative refrain that gained cachet during the late 1960s when the likes of Norman Podhoretz, a neocon trailblazer who served as editor of Commentary magazine for several decades, began using the World War II-inspired label to criticize anti-war protestors. Writing in 2003, Ledeen said that the so-called appeasers in Congress and the State Department "don't want to know about Iran, because if they did, they would be driven to take actions that they do not want to take. They would have to support democratic revolution in Iran, and they prefer to schmooze with the mullahs." He concluded: "I guess some top official will have to die at the hands of (obviously) Iranian-supported terrorists before the Pentagon is permitted to work on the subject" (National Review Online , November 3, 2003).
Similarly, Ledeen abhors what he sees as weakness in foreign affairs policymaking and promotes a Machiavellian ethos. He once wrote: "Whenever I hear policymakers talk about the wonders of 'stability,' I get the heebie-jeebies. That is for tired old Europeans and nervous Asians, not for us" (quoted in Inter Press Service, March 14, 2003). In his 2000 book Machiavelli on Modern Leadership, Ledeen argued that war "provides a real test of character" and "creates a pool of leaders for the nation." Conversely, "peace increases our peril, by making discipline less urgent" and "encouraging some of our worst instincts" (quoted in Nation, June 12, 2006).
Despite his frequent congressional appearances and influence within policy circles, Ledeen's critics have denounced his ideas and qualifications. For example, Brown University Professor William Beeman once said: "Michael Ledeen has never been to Iran; he speaks no Persian. He has minimal credibility in assessing the Iranian elections, or evaluating the political situation there" (Inter Press Service, June 20, 2005).
He has also repeatedly been accused of having double standards. At the same time he was a consultant to Italian military intelligence on terrorism issues in the late 1970s, Ledeen was allegedly tied to the Italian P2 Masonic Lodge, a violent right-wing group involved in terrorist attacks in Italy in the 1970s and 80s. As a consultant to the National Security Council in the 1980s, Ledeen acted as a go-between for Oliver North in the early stages of the Iran-Contra affair, working with the Israeli spy David Kimche to gain the release of U.S. hostages in Beirut through an Iranian arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar. According to congressional testimony by then-National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, Ledeen introduced the original Israeli proposal to trade arms for hostages that led to the scandal. (For more on Ledeen's track record, see Jim Lobe, "Veteran Neocon Adviser Moves on Iran," Asia Times, June 26, 2003; and Anthony Gancarski, "Michael Ledeen on the Run," Antiwar.com, August 22, 2003.)
According to press reports, Ledeen allegedly tried to revive the Ghorbanifar connection in support of the war on terror. The Sydney Morning Herald reported (August 9, 2003) that Ledeen worked with Pentagon staffers to redevelop the channel to arms dealer Ghorbanifar in support of resistance efforts in Iran. Reported the Herald: "[Harold] Rhode recently acted as a liaison between [Douglas] Feith's office, which drafted much of the administration's post-Iraq planning, and Ahmed Chalabi, a former Iraqi exile groomed for leadership by the Pentagon. Mr. Rhode is a protégé of Michael Ledeen, who was a National Security Council consultant in the mid-1980s when he introduced Mr. Ghorbanifar to Oliver North, a NSC aide, and others in the opening stages of the Iran-Contra affair. It is understood Mr. Ledeen reopened the Ghorbanifar channel with Mr. Feith's staff."
Ledeen is also a former commissioner for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (commonly called the U.S.-China Commission), having served from February 2001 to 2004.
In addition to his contributions to the National Review Online and other media outlets, Ledeen has been a fairly prolific book writer. The title of his forthcoming (September 2007) book speaks for itself—The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction . His other books include Perilous Statecraft: An Insider's Account of the Iran-Contra Affair (1988), Freedom Betrayed: How America Led a Global Democratic Revolution, Won the Cold War, and Walked Away (1996), Machiavelli on Modern Leadership (1999), Tocqueville on American Character (2000), and The War Against the Terror Masters (2002).
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Affiliations
American Enterprise Institute: Freedom Scholar
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs: Member, Board of Advisers
Coalition for Democracy in Iran: Cofounder
Wall Street Journal: Regular Contributor
The New Republic: Rome Correspondent (1975-1977)
Washington Quarterly: Founding Editor
National Review Online: Contributing Editor
U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon: Golden Circle Supporter
Benador Associates: Listed Speaker
Center for Strategic and International Studies: Senior Fellow (1982-1986); Senior Staff Member (1977-1981)
University of Rome, Italy: Visiting Professor of History (1975-1977)
Washington University: Instructor and Assistant Professor of History (1967-1974)
American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus: Member
Government Service
U.S.-China Commission: Commissioner, Vice Chair (2001-2004)
Department of State: Consultant, Under Secretary of Political Affairs (1982-1986)
Department of Defense: Consultant, Office of the Secretary (1982-1986)
White House: Consultant, National Security Adviser to the President (1982-1986)
Department of State: Special Adviser to the Secretary (1981-1982)
Education
University of Wisconsin: Ph.D., History and Philosophy
University of Wisconsin: M.A., History and Philosophy
Pomona College: B.A.
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