Laurence Silberman

From his perch as a federal judge, Silberman gained a reputation for his rightist outlook on many hot-button social issues, including gun control, and for his support of agendas pushed by right-wing and neoconservative activists. He also was known for his service as an informal adviser to conservatives. During the 1990s, Silberman reportedly advised activists on how to pursue allegations of sexual misconduct by then-President Bill Clinton, whom Silberman once accused of "declaring war on the United States" for permitting his aides to criticize independent counsel Kenneth Starr during the investigation of the Whitewater case (Inter Press Service, February 6, 2004). He also has advised those controlling the Wall Street Journal editorial page, a key outlet of neoconservative opinion. According to David Brock, an erstwhile right-wing pundit who has had an adversarial relationship with Silberman: "He was a behind-the-scenes adviser to the conservative editors of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and he delighted his conservative audiences with his acid critiques of the liberal press" (quoted in Inter Press Service, February 6, 2004).

More controversially, Silberman has been accused of having played a key role while assisting the Ronald Reagan presidential campaign in 1980 in setting up secret contacts between the Reagan campaign team and the Islamic government in Iran, in what became known as the "October Surprise." The purpose of these meetings has been widely disputed, but many observers have argued that they were aimed at convincing Iran not to make a deal with then-President Jimmy Carter to release U.S. Embassy hostages until after the November presidential elections. Said National Public Radio commentator Kevin Phillips: "Silberman has been more involved with cover-ups in the Middle East than with any attempts to unravel them [including] the October Surprise episode in 1980 in which the Republicans were later accused of colluding with the revolutionary government of Iran to keep 52 American hostages confined in Iran so that they could not be freed by the Jimmy Carter administration in time to influence the 1980 presidential election ... [I]n 1980 as part of that year's Republican campaign, he attended at least one of the October Surprise meetings where an Iranian representative discussed what Iran would want in exchange for keeping the hostages" (quoted in "Laurence Silberman, the Right Man or the Right's Man?" People for the American Way, Press Release, February 13, 2007).

After his appointment to the federal bench in the mid-1980s, according to the Inter Press Service, Silberman allegedly " passed along his Iranian contacts to Michael Ledeen, a close associate of Richard Perle at the American Enterprise Institute, who played a key role with [Robert] McFarlane in the transfer of U.S. weapons to Tehran in the deal that gave rise to the Iran-Contra scandal." Silberman later cast the deciding vote in the decision to dismiss the convictions of John Poindexter and Oliver North for lying to Congress in connection with the scandal (Inter Press Service, February 6, 2004).

More recently, Silberman was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2004 to co-chair the purportedly bipartisan Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. The other co-chair was former Sen. Charles Robb (D-VA), a conservative Democrat associated with the Democratic Leadership Council. The appointment spurred charges from critics that the president intended to stock the commission with like-minded individuals who would pursue a narrow agenda that would ignore allegations regarding the alleged politicization of intel produced during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Opined the liberal People for the American Way: "Is retired federal judge Laurence Silberman the right person to co-chair the Iraq intelligence commission? Those who know him ... raise serious concerns about Silberman's past activities, his temperament, his judgment, and his unyielding commitment to right-wing orthodoxy. After reviewing this criticism, along with Silberman's own statements, it becomes clear that Silberman is ill suited for a role on the intelligence commission."

People for the American Way added: "For additional insights into Silberman's political philosophy, one need look no further than his involvement with the Federalist Society, the right-wing group that screens President Bush's judicial nominees. Silberman is a member and a frequent guest speaker at Society events. At an April 2002 event, Silberman advised Bush judicial nominees to avoid questions posed to them regarding their ideology or controversial issues. In fact, he took credit for stealthily guiding Justice [Antonin] Scalia through the confirmation process by avoiding such issues. Can a man who urges secrecy to protect his ideological compatriots be expected to uncover secrets as co-chair of the intelligence commission?"

In his 2006 book State of Denial, Bob Woodward recounts how it was Vice President Cheney who personally asked Silberman to chair the commission. Reported Woodward: "'We want to have a commission to look at the intelligence community,' Cheney told Silberman on the phone, 'to determine whether the intelligence community properly evaluated the question of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.'"

At first Silberman demurred, saying he needed to think about it and consult his wife, Ricky, who Woodward reports "had worked with the vice president's wife, Lynne Cheney, on the Independent Women's Forum, a group of conservative women who had supported Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court nomination."

Silberman told Woodward: "It was clear and understood that we would not be asked to evaluate the administration's use of the intelligence ... And frankly, if that had been the charge I wouldn't have wanted the position. It was too political. Everybody knew what the president and the vice president had said about the intelligence. They can make their own judgment as to whether that was appropriate or fair or whatever."

However, it was precisely the commission's judgment that there was "no political pressure to influence the Intelligence Community's pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programs" that drove criticism of its final report, released in 2005. Wrote Joe Conason in an article for Salon.com: " By now, of course, Americans who obtain their information from sources other than Fox News know that all the warnings about Saddam Hussein's fearsome weapons were 'dead wrong,' as the commission noted in transmitting its report to the president. Indeed, the world has known for many months that all of the confident assertions from the White House about mushroom clouds, aluminum tubes, uranium shipments, mobile biowarfare laboratories, flying drones, and stockpiles of poison gas were mythological. To blame the intelligence community for those blatant falsehoods is to absolve the rest of the Bush administration of any responsibility for the disasters that followed. Appointed a year ago by Bush, the intelligence panel's conclusions were hardly unexpected. Unlike the 9/11 Commission, this panel was a creature of the president rather than Congress. It was placed under the control of Judge Laurence H. Silberman, a reliable, aggressive, and determined Bush advocate."

Government Service

Education

GroupWatch Profile: National Strategy Information Center, http://rightweb.irc-online.org/gw/2806.

"Laurence Silberman, the Right Man or the Right's Man?" People for the American Way, Press Release, February 13, 2007.

Jim Lobe, " Co-Chair of Bush Panel Part of Far Right Network," Inter Press Service, February 6, 2004.

Bob Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), pp. 283-284.

Joe Conason, "It's All the CIA's Fault," Salon.com, April 2, 2005.

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