[casi] ] Iraq war PR conspirators

["Rania Masri" <rania@DELETETHISnc.rr.com>]

Good work Casi! Casi (and Drew Hamre) are listed in this article

-Rania

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Representing the Right

By Bill Berkowitz, WorkingForChange.com
October 14, 2002

Today we're going to talk some inside baseball. Not to worry, this
column is
not about America's "national pastime"; "inside baseball" is just an
expression. This column actually is about the work of Eleana Benador.
She is
one of those influential public relations folks who work behind the
scenes,
managing and massaging the media.

Eleana Benador runs a high-powered media relations and international
Speakers
bureau called Benador Associates. With offices in New York City, Paris,
London, Madrid, and Geneva, she is a woman on a mission. The last time,
and I
must confess the first time, I heard about her activities was when Brian

Whittaker, writing for Britain's The Guardian ("US think tanks give
lessons
in foreign policy"), described Benador's work promoting a gaggle of
spokespeople that support Israel's objectives in the Middle East.

Whitaker's article painstakingly described the coterie of Middle East
"experts" -- nurtured by several right-wing, and mostly Washington,
DC-based
think tanks -- who have come to dominate the public discourse over
Middle
East policy. (For more, see "Richard Perle's posse".)

This domination has been aided and abetted by the work of Ms. Benador.

An expert booking agent, Ms. Benador succeeds with remarkable ease in
getting
her clients maximum exposure on cable's talking-head television
programs, and
in placing their op-ed pieces in a number of the nation's major
newspapers.

Ms. Benador represents a constellation of right-wing politicos and
conservative think tankers including: Alexander M. Haig, Jr., -- former
Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan who currently runs Worldwide
Associates, Inc., a company that assists "corporations around the world
in
providing strategic advice on global political, economic, commercial and

security matters"; James Woolsey -- former Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency for two years under Bill Clinton and one of the
earliest
of drum beaters for taking out Saddam Hussein; Richard Perle -- the
neoconservative icon who is one of the chief architects of Bush's Middle
East
policy; Charles Krauthammer -- a regular columnist with the Washington
Post
who is a "hawk's hawk"; Michael Ledeen -- currently occupying the
Freedom
Chair at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.; Frank
Gaffney
-- founder and president of the Washington, DC-based Center for Security

Policy and columnist with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times;
and
Arnaud de Borchgrave -- Senior Adviser and Director of the Center for
Strategic and International Studies and former editor-in-chief of the
Washington Times.

Dr. Khidir Hamza

One of Benador's bright new stars is Dr. Khidhir Hamza, the dissident
Iraqi
nuclear scientist who recently charged that Iraq could have a nuclear
bomb
within months. According to an article in Britain's The Times (September
16),
Dr. Hamza, who was science adviser to the Atomic Energy Establishment
and
later helped to start and direct Iraq's nuclear bomb program before his
1994
defection, claimed "that Saddam [Hussein] could be in a position to make

three nuclear weapons within the next few months, if he has not already
done
so."

The Times: "Dr. Hamza gave warning that UN inspectors would be useless
because even if they were given 'unfettered access' they would find it
far
more difficult than before to detect the nuclear assembly line. 'The
beauty
of the present system is that the units are each very small and in the
four
years since the inspectors left they will have been concealed
underground or
in basements or buildings that outwardly seem normal,' Dr. Hamza said."

Dr. Hamza testified before Senator Joe Biden's Senate Foreign Relations
Committee hearings on Iraq in Washington last August, "but it was only
after
the recent International Institute for Strategic Studies report on the
threat
from Saddam," reports The Times, "that he became aware of the West's
imperfect understanding of the urgency of the situation."

That's where Eleana Benador comes in. Over the past several months Dr.
Hamza
has been interviewed by the New York Times, Tom Brokaw, Nightly News, 60

Minutes II, PBS Frontline, NPR: All things Considered, and the Morning
Show
with Bob Edwards.

Interlocking clients

The website run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq recently
linked to
photos of Benador that, said website contributor Drew Hamre, were
"apparently
taken at a meeting that included: US Senator Joseph Lieberman...
anti-Arab
ideologue Daniel Pipes [director of the Philadelphia-based Middle East
Forum], and -- inexplicably -- Reza Pahlavi, the former Crown Prince of
Iran.
Adding absurdity to inexplicability," Hamre added, "the photos are
posted on
the vanity website of a Philadelphia-area realtor active in Middle East
politics." (View the photos here.)

Since the beginning of August, Michael Ledeen, one of Benador's clients,
has
written 6 columns in the National Review about Iran -- most of them
urging
the Bush Administration to rally around the opposition forces and add
Iran to
the list of future (not too distant) targets.

In a September 1, 2002, piece for the Wall Street Journal titled "The
War on
Terror Won't End in Baghdad," Ledeen threw Iran into the preemptive
strike
mix, writing: "this is not just a war against Iraq, it is a war against
terrorist organizations and against the regimes that foster, support,
arm,
train, indoctrinate and command the terrorist legions who are clamoring
for
our destruction. There are four such regimes: in Iran, Iraq, Syria and
Saudi
Arabia."

Ms. Benador, along with several of her clients, are listed as "Core
Activists
and Supporters" of the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon
(USCFL) at
its website. According to the Guardian's Brian Whittaker, the USCFL
publishes
the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin jointly with the Pipes' Middle
East
Forum. The Bulletin, which "is sent out by email free of charge -- but
can
never-the-less afford to pay its contributors," reports Whittaker,
"specializes in covering the seamy side of Lebanese and Syrian
politics."

In June 2000, the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum issued a 48-page
study, titled "Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role."
According to a press release announcing its publication, the report
called
for the U.S. to "demand a Syrian withdrawal and restore Lebanon's
sovereignty," and it "suggests a range of specific policy
recommendations,
from issuing a clear statement of policy ('All Syrian forces must leave
Lebanon') to putting serious pressure on Syria." The media contact?
Eleana
Benador.

A recent article in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz will give you an idea
of
how incredibly tangled-up these people and issues are. Akiva Eldar's
piece,
"Perles of wisdom for the Feithful," reports that in 1996, Richard Perle

(Benador client) and Doug Feith, currently the deputy defense minister
and
according to Eldar "the No. 3 person in the Pentagon's hierarchy," met
at the
request of Benjamin Netanyahu who was then taking "his first steps as
prime
minister." They prepared a report for the Institute for Advanced
Strategic
and Political Studies, a think tank with offices in Washington, DC and
Jerusalem.

Perle, Feith and several others "could not have known that four years
later... the working paper they prepared, including plans for Israel to
help
restore the Hashemite throne in Iraq, would shed light on the current
policies of the only superpower in the world," Eldar writes. The paper's

major theme was assuring the security of Israel. One scenario advanced
was to
encourage "investment in Jordan [in order] to shift structurally
Jordan's
economy away from dependence on Iraq; and diverting Syria's attention by

using Lebanese opposition elements to destabilize Syrian control of
Lebanon."
(For more on this, see here.)

Grand conspiracy? No. Megalomaniacal vision of unleashed U.S. power? You
bet.
Helping these Dr. Strangelovian characters get their message out? Ms.
Eleana
Benador of Benador Associates -- priceless.


Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His
WorkingForChange column Conservative Watch documents the strategies,
players,
institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right.

Reproduction of material from any AlterNet.org pages without written
permission is strictly prohibited.
C 2002 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.






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