Founded around the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks by Eleana
Benador, Benador Associates is a speakers bureau-cum-public relations firm whose core clientele
consisted of neoconservatives and other proponents of an aggressive "war on terror." Among
the firm's more well known speakers have been Frank
Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy,
former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, Michael
Ledeen and Michael Rubin of the American
Enterprise Institute, and former CIA director James
Woolsey.
Benador (who sometimes spells her first name "Eliana"), announced in 2007 that Benador Associates
would be scaled back in "winter 2007" so that she could focus her efforts on a new endeavor,
Benador Public Relations. Benador Associates " will become an independent intellectual platform
that will continue posting writings by American and Western thinkers as well as thinkers and writers
from other parts of the world, such as the Middle East, Asia, Southeast Asia, etc., while at the same
time it will continue to facilitate the access to experts associated in one way or another with Benador
Associates" (PR Newswire, November 19, 2007).
In a 2006 expose about Benador, a Swiss-American originally from Peru who had served as director of Daniel
Pipes' Middle East Forum, the New York-based
magazine Bidoun reported: "Founded, with what Mrs. Benador calls 'serendipity,' on September
10, 2001, Benador Associates has ridden the rising demand for such strident voices. If you read something
that advocates regime change in the New York Post, or if you see a 'political adviser' on Fox
News suggesting that Israel hasn't gone far enough in its attacks on Hizbullah, there's a good possibility
that the appearance has been engineered by Mrs. Benador. She arranges speaking events for her clients,
places articles in newspapers for them, and helps them address problems with their public image. Which
is good for them, as Mrs. Benador's fifty-plus clients are hardly a lovable bunch. Benador Associates'
first member was the late A.M. Rosenthal, an executive editor at the New York Times, and a Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist, who, in the wake of the attacks on September 11, called for the bombing of
the capital cities of Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Sudan."
Other commentators have remarked on Eleana Benador's important role in promoting neoconservatives.
Wrote Jim Lobe of the Inter Press Service (Asia Times, August 15, 2003): "When historians
look back on the United States war in Iraq, they will almost certainly be struck by how a small group
of mainly neoconservative analysts and activists outside the administration were able to shape the U.S.
media debate in ways that made the drive to war so much easier than it might have been. ... But historians
would be negligent if they ignored the day-to-day work of one person who, as much as anyone outside the
administration, made their media ubiquity possible. Meet Eleana Benador, the Peruvian-born publicist
for Perle, Woolsey, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney, and a dozen other prominent neoconservatives whose
hawkish opinions proved very hard to avoid for anyone who watched news talk shows or read the op-ed pages
of major newspapers over the past 20 months."
Indeed, in a 2007 press release Benador characterized herself and her firm thusly: "Ms. Benador
has been the mastermind behind Benador Associates, which became the centerpiece of the neoconservative
movement in the United States and the West in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11" (see "Announcing
the Creation ...," Benador Public Relations).
Benador Associates' expert speakers have included Max
Boot, Rachel Ehrenfeld, Hillel
Fradkin, Charles Krauthammer, Richard
Pipes, Dennis Prager, Paul
Vallely, and Meyrav Wurmser. One controversial
Benador client was Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi nuclear scientist who fled to the United States in the early
1990s, where he wrote a book claiming that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear bomb. When pressed on the issue,
he denied saying that Iraq had a bomb, despite the fact that he says exactly that in his book's opening
pages (see Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 2001). Said Benador of Hamza and Iraqi
National Congress figure Kanan Makiya in 2003: "[They are] really my most powerful voices right
now" (Asia Times, August 15, 2003).
Explaining Benador's decision to found a new, supposedly non-political firm, a press release said
that "Ms. Benador announced that in view of the uncertain political situation in America, she is
to devote her undivided attention to her new public relations outfit" (see "Announcing the
Creation ...," Benador Public Relations). The new Benador Public Relations, "whose areas of expertise—with
absolute exclusion of politics—will include: international finance, with investment banking and infrastructure
projects as the main chapters in that field; international real estate; science and culture," features
photos of Benador with Gaffney and Perle.
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Contact Information
Benador Associates
Office Telephone: (212) 717-9966
Direct Line: (917) 626-1266
Email: eb@benadorassociates.com
Web: www.benadorassociates.com
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