David Wurmser, a scholar with strong ties to a number of neoconservative policy institutes, served as Mideast adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003 to mid-2007. Previously, Wurmser had worked as an aide to then-Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton. Because of his close association with rightist efforts to push for expanded U.S. intervention in the Middle East, including in Iraq, Wurmser's appointment to the Office of the Vice President, which came as the situation in post-invasion Iraq began to deteriorate, was seen by some observers as a sign that the "neoconservatives remain a formidable force under [President George W.] Bush despite the sharp plunge in public confidence in Bush's handling of post-war Iraq," as the Inter Press Service reported (October 29, 2003).
Wurmser's decision to leave the administration was initially reported by a number of blogs in late July 2007. Writing for the Huffington Post (July 24, 2007), Robert Dreyfuss reported that "multiple sources" confirmed that Wurmser was leaving to start a risk-assessment consulting business. Dreyfuss also observed: "Wurmser's departure is just the latest in a long series of neoconservatives who've bailed out of the Bush administration since 2005, including I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, Robert Joseph, and J.D. Crouch, along with Richard Perle, who earlier resigned under pressure from the Defense Policy Board, and Elizabeth Cheney, the vice president's daughter, who left the State Department's Near East affairs bureau last summer." In his Washington Note blog (July 24, 2007), Steven Clemons, who called Wurmser "one of the Vice President's most dedicated neoconservative spear-carriers," reported: "A close friend of [Wurmser's] who still works for President Bush shared with me that Wurmser has been looking for a new position for quite a while—which is what actually led him to share some of this information that I reported and the New York Times, Time's Joe Klein, and others helped substantiate. Ironically, the New York Times article, according to this source, made it more difficult for a consulting shop or firm to acquire Wurmser."
Clemons was referring to a June 2, 2007, New York Times article titled "Rice Plays Down Hawkish Talk about Iran," which reported on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's efforts "to minimize any sense of division within the Bush administration over Iran after the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency delivered a pointed warning against what he called the 'new crazies' pushing for military action against Tehran." One of the "new crazies" cited by the New York Times article was Wurmser, who the newspaper reported had made several "hawkish statements" about Iran "to outsiders" that had "alarmed European diplomats, some of whom fear that the struggle over Iran's nuclear program may evolve into a decision by the Bush administration to resort to force against Iran."
A pro-Israel ideologue who had long advocated overthrowing the government of Saddam Hussein, Wurmser worked for a number of influential policy outfits before joining the administration, including the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS). Wurmser's spouse, Meyrav Wurmser, is director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the rightist Hudson Institute.
While at IASPS, Wurmser participated in a 1996 study group that produced a report for the incoming Likud-led government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel that urged the country to break off then-ongoing peace initiatives and suggested strategies for reshaping the Middle East. Among its proposals, it argued that "removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq [was] an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right." The report—titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" and coauthored by Feith, Perle, and Meyrav Wurmser—also recommended working closely with "Turkey and Jordan to contain, destabilize, and roll back" regional threats and using "Israeli proxy forces" based in Lebanon for "striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon." If that should "prove insufficient, [Israel should strike] at select targets in Syria proper." Further, "Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, even rolling back Syria." This would create a "natural axis" between Israel, Jordan, a Hashemite Iraq, and Turkey that "would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula," which "could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East, which could threaten Syria's territorial integrity."
In 1999, Wurmser wrote Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein (published by AEI Press), which argued that Clinton policies in Iraq were failing to contain the country. The introduction reads: "Seven years after the [Gulf War], Saddam's regime remains in place. His power is rising. His diplomatic status is improving, as confidence in America's leadership among allies erodes, and respect for its resolve among foes wanes. If they are effective, sanctions can deny Saddam's regime many critical and sensitive technologies and materials, and they can keep his conventional military forces weak. But sanctions leak. Inspections, which are crucial to obstructing Saddam's quest for weapons of mass destruction by exposing and destroying his program, are stymied ... The coalition to contain Saddam is rickety and in danger of scattering. The United States may have won the Persian Gulf War, but we are rapidly losing the larger contest with Saddam." Those whom Wurmser recognizes in his book's acknowledgments include pro-Israel neoconservatives and others: Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, Douglas Feith, James Woolsey, Harold Rhode, and Ahmed Chalabi.
In 2000, Wurmser worked on a strategy document published by Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum and Ziad Abdelnour's U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon that advocated a wider U.S. role in Lebanon. The study, "Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role?" called for the United States to force Syria from Lebanon and to disarm it of its alleged weapons of mass destruction. It also argued that "Syrian rule in Lebanon stands in direct opposition to American ideals" and criticized the United States for engaging rather than confronting the regime. Among the document's signatories were several soon-to-be Bush administration figures, including Elliott Abrams, Feith, Michael Rubin, and Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky. Other signatories included Perle, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ledeen, and Frank Gaffney.
While working for the Bush administration, Wurmser had been connected to a number of controversial policy proposals and activities. According to Newsweek, Wurmser and "veteran policy analyst" Michael Maloof were part of a "Pentagon intelligence unit appointed by Feith after 9/11" that helped produce a top-secret memo lamenting the lack of decent targets in Afghanistan and suggesting looking elsewhere in the world, including in Iraq and Latin America, to bolster the terror target list (Newsweek, August, 9, 2004). According to the 9/11 Commission Report, the memo pushed for "hitting targets outside the Middle East in the initial offensive" or a "non-al-Qaida target like Iraq." Reported Newsweek: "Maloof and Wurmser saw links between international terror groups that the CIA and other intelligence agencies dismissed. They argued that an attack on terrorists in South America—for example, a remote region on the border of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil where intelligence reports said Iranian-backed Hezbollah had a presence—would have ripple effects on other terrorist operations. The proposals were floated to top foreign policy advisers. But White House officials stress they were regarded warily and never adopted."
Wurmser was also one of a passel of neoconservatives in the administration who were questioned by federal investigators during the probe into the leaking of the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame. The Washington Post reported: "Investigators have specifically asked about a group of neoconservatives involved in defense issues, including Feith, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Iraq and Iran specialist Harold Rhode, and others at the Pentagon. FBI agents also have asked current and former officials about Richard Perle of the defense board and David Wurmser, an Iran specialist and principal deputy assistant for national security affairs in Cheney's office, according to sources familiar with or involved in the case" (Washington Post, September 4, 2004).
The only person indicted in connection with the so-called PlameGate scandal as of mid-2007 has been Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, who was convicted in early March 2007 on charges of lying to government investigators probing the leak of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame.
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Affiliations
U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon: Former Board Member
American Enterprise Institute: Former Research Fellow and Director of Middle East Studies Program
Lebanon Study Group Report: Signatory (2000)
Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies: Director of Research in Strategy and Politics Program (1996)
Washington Institute for Near East Policy: Director of Institutional Grants (1994-1996)
Middle East Forum: Member, Lebanon Study Group
Government Service
Office of the Vice President: Former Mideast Adviser (2003-2007)
U.S. State Department: Special Adviser to Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security (2001-2003)
U.S. Institute of Peace: Project Officer (1988-1994)
Education
Johns Hopkins University: B.A., M.A., Ph.D.
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