{"id":4605,"date":"2008-08-25T19:31:47","date_gmt":"2008-08-26T02:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=4605"},"modified":"2008-08-25T19:31:47","modified_gmt":"2008-08-26T02:31:47","slug":"the-ledeen-move","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/25\/the-ledeen-move\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ledeen Move"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was really surprised by the news, first reported by Laura Rozen<\/a> on her blog on Mother Jones<\/em>, that Michael Ledeen, who had been under Richard Perle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wing at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) for some 20 years, has moved to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) and taken his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Freedom\u00e2\u20ac\u009d chair with him. I have no inside information on the reasons for the move (I was declared persona non grata at AEI five years ago and told I shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t try to attend any of its events) , and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t buy his own explanation<\/a>, although his reference to a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153rising\u00e2\u20ac\u009d FDD suggests his association there might be more lucrative, particularly as FDD, which earlier this year suffered major Democratic defections, is competing strongly for Sheldon Adelson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s largess<\/a>. (And I have no doubt at all that Ledeen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s obsession with Iran would definitely appeal to the multi-billionaire casino magnate who reportedly shares that obsession). <\/p>\n

One possible explanation is that the AEI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s incoming president (as of Jan. 1), Syracuse University Prof. Arthur Brooks, is hoping that AEI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s public image on foreign policy \u00e2\u20ac\u201d dominated as it has been for so long by hard-line neo-cons like Perle \u00e2\u20ac\u201d might be softened somewhat. But, while Ledeen clearly belongs on the radical fringe (just read his latest article<\/a> in the National Review Online<\/em> (NRO) on how Russia has joined the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153terror masters\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in Tehran and Damascus and how China is about to invade Taiwan), he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s certainly not nearly as visible as someone like former UN Amb. John Bolton, a bona fide extremist (albeit more nationalist than neo-con). On the other hand, Bolton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s frequent op-eds in the Wall Street Journal<\/em> and the Telegraph<\/em>, if not his cachet as a Bush alumnus willing to denounce his former boss as an appeaser to the mainstream press, no doubt raises a lot more money for AEI. By contrast, Ledeen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s relative obscurity probably attracts only a few grateful donors. <\/p>\n

Indeed, apart from National Review Online<\/em>, on which he appears to be publishing less and less, Ledeen has become lincreasingly invisible over the last couple of years, rarely participating even in AEI forums, so his departure may be due to the fact that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s simply not producing enough. (I understand that his colleague, Joshua Muravchik, has recently been complaining worryingly to friends that AEI management has been pressing him to publish more.) In fact, a quick review of Nexis over the past three years shows that his annual article output for NRO has fallen quite sharply from more than 40 in the Aug 2005-06 period to just 18 in the last Aug 2007-08 period, which is particularly remarkable given all the speculation over the past year about attacking Iran. His television appearances also declined over the past two years, while his latest book, The Iranian Time Bomb<\/a><\/em> (Sept 2007), was all but ignored by the major newspapers (with the exception of the New York Times<\/em> which predictably panned it).<\/p>\n

I would think that FDD, while certainly part of the same Likudist network as AEI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Middle East cadre, marks a major comedown in prestige and power for Ledeen, and I have a hard time believing that he would go there willingly unless he were offered significantly more money than he is able to earn from his AEI perch. In Time Bomb<\/em>, Ledeen stressed what a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153singular blessing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d it has been to work at AEI \u00e2\u20ac\u0153where I can find out most anything I need to know by walking down the hall and asking some brilliant and collegial person.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And he singled out for praise the outgoing DeMuth who, he noted, has \u00e2\u20ac\u0153always supported my work\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d So, was he pushed, or did he jump? Either way, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an intriguing development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was really surprised by the news, first reported by Laura Rozen on her blog on Mother Jones, that Michael Ledeen, who had been under Richard Perle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wing at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) for some 20 years, has moved to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) and taken his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Freedom\u00e2\u20ac\u009d chair with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4606,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605\/revisions\/4606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4605"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}