Michael Ledeen
Michael Arthur Ledeen was an American scholar and neoconservative foreign policy analyst. He was a consultant to the United States National Security Council, the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Department of Defense. He held the Freedom Scholar chair at the American Enterprise Institute where he was a scholar for 20 years, and also held the similarly named chair at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He was very close to Italian politician Antonio Martino. Ledeen was also noted to have done work for Italian intelligence agency SISMI, having received over $100,000 in payment to offshore bank accounts for services including but not limited to training Italian intelligence operatives. Ledeen denied these allegations but admitted that he did do work for SISMI and was paid for it.
Academic career
Ledeen earned a bachelor's in history from Pomona College in 1962 and a doctorate in history and philosophy from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1969, where he studied under the historian George Mosse. His doctoral dissertation eventually became Universal Fascism: The Theory and Practice of the Fascist International, 1928–1936, first published in 1972, which explored Italian leader Benito Mussolini's efforts to create a Fascist international in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Ledeen taught at Washington University in St. Louis but left after being denied tenure. Some faculty indicated that questions about the "quality of his scholarship" and about whether or not Ledeen had "used the work of somebody else without proper credit" were issues, although some also noted that "the 'quasi-irregularity' at issue didn't warrant the negative vote on tenure."Ledeen subsequently moved to Rome, where he was hired as the Rome correspondent for The New Republic and was named a visiting professor at the University of Rome for two years until 1977. In Rome, Ledeen worked with Italian historian Renzo De Felice, who greatly influenced Ledeen, drawing a distinction between "fascism-regime" and "fascism-movement." Ledeen's political views developed to stress "the urgency of combating centralized state power and the centrality of human freedom" Ledeen continued his studies in Italian Fascism with a study of the takeover of Fiume by Italian irredentist forces under Gabriele d'Annunzio, who Ledeen argued was the prototype for Mussolini.
Billygate
In the 1980 lead up to the US presidential election, Ledeen, along with Arnaud de Borchgrave, wrote a series of articles published in The New Republic and elsewhere about Jimmy Carter's brother, Billy Carter's contacts with the Muammar al-Gaddafi regime in Libya. Ledeen testified before a Senate subcommittee that he believed that Billy Carter had met with and been paid off by Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization.Five years later, in 1985, a Wall Street Journal investigation suggested that the series of Billygate articles written by Ledeen were part of a larger disinformation campaign intended to influence the outcome of that year's presidential election. According to the reporting, Francesco Pazienza, an officer of the Italian intelligence agency SISMI, alleged that Ledeen was paid $120,000 for his work on Billygate and other projects. Pazienza and Ledeen were very active in disinformation efforts. At SISMI, Pazienza stated, Ledeen warranted a coded identification: Z-3. Pazienza was later tried and convicted in absentia for using "extortion and fraud to obtain embarrassing facts about Billy Carter".
Bulgarian connection theory
Ledeen worked for the Italian military intelligence agency SISMI in 1980, providing "risk assessment" and consulting on extradition matters between Italy and the United States. During his time in Italy, Ledeen endorsed the "Bulgarian connection" conspiracy theory concerning Grey Wolves member Mehmet Ali Ağca's 1981 attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II. The theory has since been attacked by various authors and journalists, including Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs, who initially believed the story as well. The theory was adopted in 2005 by the Italian Mitrokhin Commission. According to Craig Unger, "With Ronald Reagan newly installed in the White House, the so-called Bulgarian Connection made perfect Cold War propaganda. Michael Ledeen was one of its most vocal proponents, promoting it on TV and in newspapers all over the world."Work in the United States
In the early 1980s, Ledeen appeared before the newly established Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism alongside former CIA director William Colby, author Claire Sterling, and former Newsweek editor Arnaud de Borchgrave. Both Ledeen and de Borchgrave worked for the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University at the time. All four testified that they believed the Soviet Union had provided material support, training and inspiration for various terrorist groupings.Ledeen was involved in the Iran–Contra affair as a consultant to National Security Advisor Robert C. McFarlane. Ledeen met with Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres, officials of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and the CIA to arrange meetings with high-ranking Iranian officials, whereby Iranians supported by the US would be given weapons by Israel, and would proceed to negotiate with Hizbollah for the release of hostages in Lebanon. Ledeen's own version of the events is published in his book, Perilous Statecraft.
Ledeen vouched for Iranian intermediary Manucher Ghorbanifar. According to Adnan Khashoggi in 1985, Ghorbanifar was the head of Iranian Prime Minister Mir Hussein Mousavi's European intelligence and Ledeen was aware of this. In one interview after the scandal broke, Ledeen stated that he initially had "profound reservations" about Ghorbanifar, but that he proved himself to be reliable by opening a channel to Iranian leaders. In another report in which he was described as "perhaps the only person on the US side of the affair to defend Ghorbanifar", he said that he considered Ghorbanifar to be a friend.
Yellowcake forgery allegations
During the summer of 2001, and others with France's DGSE investigated an alleged deal known later as Nigergate in which Iraq was trying to obtain yellowcake from a country in Africa and, by May and June 2002, they were investigating any connection with Niger, but found that the rumors were entirely false. Furthermore, in July 2002 the Italian SISMI and the CIA were informed by the French DGSE that Rocco Martino, a former Italian intelligence agent, was trying to pass fake documents about Iraq obtaining yellowcake from Niger. However, the SISMI reported that a woman, controlled by SISMI's Antonio Nucera, presented the fake documents in July 2002 at the Niger embassy at Rome. Later, in March 2003 George Tenet incorrectly stated that Iraq, which had large quantities of yellowcake, was obtaining yellowcake from Niger.According to a September 2004 article by Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Paul Glastris in Washington Monthly: "The first meeting occurred in Rome in December, 2001. It included Franklin, Rhode, and another American, the neoconservative writer and operative Michael Ledeen, who organized the meeting. Also in attendance was Ghorbanifar and a number of other Iranians."
Colleagues Andrew McCarthy and Mark R. Levin have defended Ledeen, writing: "Up until now, the fiction recklessly spewed by disgruntled intelligence-community retirees and their media enablers—some of whom have conceded that the claim is based on zero evidence—has been that Michael had something to do with the forged Italian documents that, according to the Left's narrative, were the basis for President Bush's "lie" in the 2003 State of the Union Address that Saddam Hussein had obtained yellowcake uranium in Africa."
Iraq War advocacy
During the 1990s, Ledeen was active in supporting the ousting of Saddam Hussein from Iraq. He was known as one of The Vulcans who also included John Bolton, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and David Wurmser who signed "An Open Letter to the President" to lobby Bill Clinton to remove Hussein from office.Regarding the "pre-emptive" invasion of Iraq, in 2002 Ledeen criticized the views of former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, writing:
Prior to the start of the Iraq war, Ledeen called it a "desperately needed and long overdue war against Saddam Hussein" and that there was a "dire need to invade Iraq". This caused Glenn Greenwald to condemn a later statement by Ledeen that he had "opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place" as an "outright lie". Ledeen maintained that his statements were nonetheless consistent, noting that "I opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place and I advocated—as I still do—support for political revolution in Iran as the logical and necessary first step in the war against the terror masters."
Views on Iran
Ledeen was a long-time foe of the Islamic regime of Iran. He believed that invading the country and regime change in Iran should have been the first priority in the "war on terror" in 2003 rather than Iraq. He believed that "everything traces back to Tehran" and that Iran manipulates both sides of the Shi'ite-Sunni conflict, leading reviewer Peter Beinart to note that his "effort to lay virtually every attack by Muslims against Americans at Tehran's feet takes him into rather bizarre territory." The New York Times describes Ledeen's views as "everything traces back to Tehran". Ledeen's phrase, "faster, please" has become a signature meme in his writings and is often referenced by neoconservative writers advocating a more forceful and broader "war on terror". In 1979, Ledeen was one of the first Western writers to argue that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was a "clerical fascist", and that while it was legitimate to criticize the Shah's regime, if Khomeini seized power in Iran the Iranian people would suffer an even greater loss of freedom and women would be deprived of political and social rights. He believed that "No one in the West has yet supported Iranian democratic organizations" and that "aggressive support for those Iranians who wish to be free" would most likely work in ending the clerical government.According to Justin Raimondo, Ledeen "holds up Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright as patsies for Khomeini—who supposedly believed that the Ayatollah overthrew Shah Reza Pahlavi because the Iranian government was 'excessively repressive and intolerant.' While it would not do to come right out and deny the savagery of the Shah's legendary SAVAK secret police, Ledeen informs us that, under the monarch's beneficent rule, 'Iran had become too modern, too tolerant—especially of women and of other religious faiths—and too self-indulgent. The shah had Westernized Iran'—except, perhaps, in his prisons, where the ancient methods of torture were routinely employed on dissidents of all sorts."
Ledeen was at the time of his death against both an invasion of Iran or air-strikes within the country. He argued that the latter may eventually become necessary if negotiations with the Iranian government fail, but it would only be the least bad option of many options and it would lead to many negative unforeseen consequences. The New York Times called Ledeen's skepticism towards military action against Iran surprising given his opposition to the regime.
In July 2016 Ledeen co-authored with Lt. General Michael T. Flynn, at the time Donald Trump's national-security adviser, The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies. Flynn and Ledeen constructed a narrative in which the world was at war with a "great evil" and Iran was the central player on the enemy side.