Kenneth Timmerman is a conservative writer and policy advocate who directs the Foundation
for Democracy in Iran (FDI), which he founded in 1995 with Joshua
Muravchik and Peter Rodman to push hawkish
U.S. policies on Iran. The National Endowment for
Democracy provided the group's start-up funding. Timmerman has also been a member of a number of
neoconservative-led pressure groups, including the Committee
on the Present Danger and the Jewish Institute
for National Security Affairs, both hardline pro-Israel outfits that have supported an expansive "war
on terror" aimed at Islamic countries.
On his personal website, Timmerman describes himself as a "best-selling author [who] has spent
his career investigating the dark side of national security" (see www.kentimmerman.com).
A photo of Timmerman in action, strapped in a "U.S. Customs Police" lifejacket while cruising
on a small outboard motor boat under stormy skies, graced the top of the bio page on his website (as
of December 2007). Similarly, the top section of the website of his Foundation for Democracy in Iran
was reserved (as of December 2007) for publicizing Timmerman's books and his Nobel Peace Prize nomination
in 2006. He was nominated, along with John Bolton,
in a Wall Street Journal op-ed written by former Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Per Ahlmark, a board member of the zealously pro-Israel UN Watch (Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2006).
In his latest book, Shadow Warriors: The Untold Stories of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of
Surrender (2007), Timmerman makes several far-fetched, far-right arguments. For example, according
to the book's publisher, Random House, Shadow Warriors shows that "the CIA and State Department
sabotaged the administration's Iraq War plans from the start—sparking the insurgency in the process," and
that "pre-war intelligence on Iraq was cooked—not by the Bush administration, but by its
opponents" (Random House, "Shadow Warriors"). In a BlogTalkRadio interview, Timmerman
describes Shadow Warriors as being "about the insurgency within the U.S. government against
George W. Bush" (Ed Morrissey, Heading Right Radio, November 13, 2007). He elaborated: "It's
a phenomenon that really involves an underground resistance movement inside the U.S. government that
was formed in the early days of the Bush administration which thrives on a visceral, personal hatred
of George W. Bush, seeks partisan gains at the expense of our national security if need be, or even the
lives of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. I argue in Shadow Warriors that one of the outcomes here was
to transform the liberation of Iraq, which was the plan of the administration, into an occupation, and
thereby spawn the insurgency. ... Didn't have to be that way, wasn't the plan, but it was derailed by the
'shadow warriors.'"
Timmerman has a long background in writing. Houghton Mifflin published Timmerman's Death Lobby:
How the West Armed Iraq, in 1991. (Years earlier Bran's Head Books put out a novel written by Timmerman
called The Wren Hunt.) He wrote several pieces on China in the 1990s for the American Spectator.
Timmerman has said that after that, he had been "fired by Time magazine for investigating
the Clinton sell-off to Communist China of our national strategic technology, and it became increasingly
difficult to get anything in the New York Times or Newsweek or Time or onto ABC,
CNN, those types of places. Since then I've proudly waved my conservative banner" (Ed Morrissey,
Heading Right Radio, November 13, 2007).
The broad focus of Timmerman's writings on the "dark side of national security" has been
Islamic extremists and purported threats emanating from the Middle East region. He wrote an exposé on
Osama bin Laden, published, according to Timmerman's website, "just weeks before [bin Laden] attacked
two U.S. embassies in Africa," and undertook investigations into Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons,
which Timmerman claims "may have contributed to Persian Gulf War Syndrome." Uncovering threats
in Iran, however, seems to be his core raison d'être. His website, for example, contends
that Timmerman "is helping families of the victims of the September 11 attacks prepare a class action
lawsuit against the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, because of its direct, material involvement
in the al-Qaida plot to attack America."
Shortly after the release in late 2007 of a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that concluded
Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003, Timmerman said that unnamed sources in Iran told
him the United States had been duped by "a deliberate disinformation campaign," which according
to Timmerman had been "cooked up by the Revolutionary Guards, who laundered fake information and
fed it to the United States through Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers posing as senior diplomats
in Europe" (Newsmax, December 4, 20007). Timmerman also alleged that the NIE had been written by "former
State Department political and intelligence analysts—not by more seasoned members of the U.S. intelligence
community" (Newsmax, December 4, 2007). Thus, Timmerman managed to fit into his diatribe on the
NIE all the usual suspects in neoconservative demonology—Europe, the State Department, diplomats, and
Islamic terrorists.
As far back as 1998, when the government in Tehran was led by reform-minded officials, Timmerman was
warning that Iran posed a serious threat to the U.S. homeland and that it could have been behind the
bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. In an August 1998 article for the Wall Street Journal editorial
page titled "Who Bombed the Embassies?" Timmerman wrote: "No one should forget the Islamic
Republic of Iran, whose rulers may not be so easily cowed as Libya's Col. Moammar Gadhafi. Iran has not
felt the sting of U.S. retaliation since Mr. Reagan sank two-thirds of its navy in 1987 in response to
Iranian attacks on civilian maritime traffic in the Persian Gulf. The Islamic regime still bears a grudge
for the accidental U.S. shooting of an Iran Air jetliner over the Persian Gulf in 1988, which killed
200 Iranians. Tehran still believes the shooting was intentional. Despite the attention given to Iranian
'moderates' and a thawing of U.S.-Iranian relations, it is plausible that Iran could be behind a terrorist
attack on U.S. targets. Indeed, the bombings may be a deliberate attempt by Iran's radical clerics to
reverse the thaw started by President Mohammed Khatami."
In January 2006, Timmerman advocated a naval blockade of Iran if it continued its nuclear program,
along with a strategy of Washington support for Iranian opposition groups. "This regime is not going
to change its behavior," wrote Timmerman, "so we must help Iranians to change the regime" ("Next
Steps on Iran," FrontPageMag.com, January 23, 2006).
Timmerman's FDI aims to "promote democracy and internationally recognized standards of human
rights in Iran." According to Timmerman's website, FDI "has served as a rallying point for
Iranian democrats seeking an end to brutal, clerical rule in Iran, and has helped keep Congress and the
public informed of ongoing repression and support for terrorism." During the George W. Bush presidency,
FDI has been a conduit for bad news on Iran, often criticizing what it sees as the lack of U.S. initiative
in taking aggressive action against Tehran. A November 8, 2007 news bulletin posted on FDI's website
highlighted a New York Sun article in which a former State Department official criticized the
decision to move Iran democracy funding to State. "A recent decision to move the $75 million annual
aid program for Iranian democrats to the State Department's Office
of Iranian Affairs would effectively neuter an initiative the president had intended to spur democracy
inside the Islamic Republic." The official bemoaned, "This pretty much kills the Iran Democracy
Program" (New York Sun, November 8, 2007).
A news blurb from May 4, 2006, posted on the FDI website quoted a Timmerman article published in the
rightist, David Horowitz-associated FrontPageMag.com.
Direct talks with the Tehran regime, wrote Timmerman, "are not just a bad idea. They are a monumentally
bad idea, whose wrong-headedness has been proven time and again over the past 26 years." A few days
earlier, on May 1, 2006, FDI highlighted a Human Events interview with Reza Pahlavi, son of the
late shah of Iran, who said that he hoped to finalize within the next two to three months the organization
of a movement aimed at overthrowing the Islamic regime in Tehran and replacing it with a democratic government.
Among the other items prominently featured on the FDI website as of December 2007 was a January 2007
article written by Timmerman for FrontPageMag.com titled "How to Topple the Mullahs," which
harshly criticized the Baker-Hamilton Study Group Report. Responding to the study group's conclusion
that the United States should pursue negotiations with Iran and Syria to help stabilize Iraq, Timmerman
wrote: "For now, the nutty recommendation of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group that the United
States should engage in direct talks with Syria and Iran appears to have been mooted by events on the
ground. U.S. military forces have caught Iran red-handed—twice—over the past few weeks in Iraq. No one
can possibly doubt any longer what I and many others have been saying for some time: that Iran is involved
on the ground in Iraq and is aiding both Sunni and Shia insurgents in an effort to blow that country
apart. ... It is regrettable and truly astonishing that President Bush has not applied to Iran and to
Syria the same global vision he has so eloquently displayed in regards to Iraq and other fronts in the
global war against the Islamic jihad. Because there is a clear alternative to the capitulation offered
by Baker, Hamilton, and their advisers."
Timmerman has some experience working on Capitol Hill. According to Timmerman's bio on the website
of the International Intelligence Summit,
where Timmerman is listed as a former speaker: "In January 1993, Timmerman was approached by Democratic
Congressman Tom Lantos of California, to head up a small investigative team at the House Foreign Affairs
subcommittee on International Security, International Organizations, and Human Rights, to explore missile
and nuclear proliferation. While on the Hill, Timmerman produced a staff report published by the Government
Printing Office in October 1993, Iraq Rebuilds its Military Industries. He also prepared reports
on Chinese missile proliferation, Iranian WMD programs, and was responsible for coining the term 'rogue
regimes,' which has since become the term of art for referring to Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and North
Korea." Timmerman also ran for office in Maryland in 2000, hoping to challenge incumbent Democratic
Sen. Paul Sarbanes, but lost the Republican nomination.
In 1998 Timmerman offered testimony to the Rumsfeld
Missile Commission, addressing the issue of "Rogue States and Ballistic Missiles" (see
Kenneth Timmerman, "Rogue States and Ballistic Missiles: Lessons and Prospects," April 1998).
In his testimony, Timmerman repeated his claim to coining the term "rogue state." He said: "I
confess a modicum of responsibility for coining this term while working on the professional staff of
the House Foreign Relations Committee in 1993, when we did a series of hearings on Iran (1), Iraq (2),
and North Korea. Some have objected that the term 'rogue regime' is too lapidary, in that each of the
five countries normally referred to (Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Cuba) present dramatically different
realities. However, I still believe that from a proliferation standpoint, the term is useful because
many of the problems non-proliferators face with these regimes are remarkably similar."
Timmerman is the author of a number of books, including Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear
Showdown with Iran (2005), Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War against America (2003),
and The French Betrayal of America (2004). Timmerman also contributed to War Footing: 10 Steps
America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World (Naval Institute, November 2005), a book
edited by Frank Gaffney, founder and president
of the Center for Security Policy. He also
contributes frequently to the rightist Washington Times.
Timmerman's work sometimes focuses on domestic politics in the United States, including his best-selling
2002 book Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson, which was published by the right-wing Regnery
publishing house. Reviewing the book in the Nation, Patricia Williams wrote: "In Timmerman's
rendition, [Jackson] is a bloated monster of evil impulses and global appetites, a 'dangerous fool,'
'a David Duke in black skin' who 'drifts off into mumbo-jumbo' 'like a Halloween ghoul' while 'mau-mauing'
corporations that 'think it is cheaper to buy protection' from the 'race industry' he has purportedly
milked dry. The distance between the real Jackson and Timmerman's gargoyle is inhabited by myth, stereotype,
unsubstantiated accusation, illogic, and careless innuendo."
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Affiliations
Foundation for Democracy in Iran: Executive Director
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs: Advisory Board Member
Committee on the Present Danger: Member
Intelligence Summit: Former Speaker
Middle East Data Project: Director (1987-)
Simon Wiesenthal Center: Commissioned Report, 1992
Reader's Digest: Former Contributor
Front Page Magazine: Weekly Columnist
NewsMax: Correspondent
Government Service
House Foreign Affairs Committee: Staff, 1993
Education
Goddard College: B.A., 1973
Brown University: M.A., 1976
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