NP? Benador Associates

[pynchonoid]

http://www.workingforchange.com/printitem.cfm?itemid=13915

10.14.02 - 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. [...] 

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. http://www.bobguzzardi.com/Photos/photo.htm) 

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.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=214635&contrassID=2&subContrassID=5&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y&itemNo=214635)


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. 

©Working Assets Online 








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