From Iran-contra to Iraq battle WMD lies to Trumpism, this right-wing pundit stored subverting democracy.
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Michael Ledeen, a key determine in launching the sale of US-made weapons to Iran, is pictured in his Chevy Chase, Maryland, house, August 13, 1987.
(Scott Stewart / AP Photograph)
I realized what a liar Michael Ledeen was in 2004 once I cowrote a profile of him for The Boston Globe. In an e-mail interview with Ledeen, I discovered him to be remarkably modest in his claims for himself, which might have been charming if it weren’t considered one of his many manipulative lies. Requested about his politics, Ledeen replied, “I consider myself as a reasonably typical American. I hate tyranny…I really like liberty.” Ledeen additionally wrote to me claiming “I’ve at all times considered myself as a ‘liberal democrat’ within the sense that Walter Lippmann used the phrase.”
In actuality, there was nothing “typical” about Ledeen, who died at age 83 on Might 17. He was a historian of fascism who got here to emulate the right-wing authoritarianism he studied. For many years, he repeatedly participated in dirty-tricks campaigns and the outright subversion of democracy—most famously as one of many instigators of the Iran-contra scheme. His nefarious actions introduced him into contact with many criminals: disinformation specialists, arms sellers, and coup plotters. Most significantly, he had long-standing ties with seedy operatives of the Italian intelligence company SISMI. Though he himself evaded prison expenses, he was at all times collaborating with outlaws, often with a purpose of undermining the rule of legislation and democracy. His uncanny means to be on the scene of key historic junctures made him the Forrest Gump of American fascism.
Ledeen was born in 1941 to a middle-class household, the kid of an engineer and faculty instructor. Rising up Jewish amid the Second World Struggle and its aftermath, he was, like many in his era, fascinated by the historic downside of fascism: How might European civilization within the early twentieth century so shortly descend into authoritarian barbarism? To resolve this downside, Ledeen accomplished a doctorate in historical past in 1969 on the College of Wisconsin beneath the supervision of one of many best students of fascism, the German-American refugee George Mosse. As towards earlier historians who noticed fascism in purely political phrases, Mosse centered on the cultural dimensions of authoritarian mass actions, paying attention to their use of symbols, myths, and media manipulation. This was the strategy Ledeen adopted in his first e book, Common Fascism (1972), which handled the ardent youth motion in Italy that felt Mussolini didn’t go far sufficient. An analogous cultural strategy to historical past is present in Ledeen’s liveliest and most essential scholarly e book, The First Duce (1977), a sympathetic examine of Gabrielle D’Annunzio, the Italian poet and adventurer who in 1919 led a small military that briefly seized management of the town of Fiume and ran it as an unbiased republic.
Mosse was solidly a person of the left, a socialist and internationalist. For a time, it appeared like his scholar was the identical. Ledeen opposed the Vietnam Struggle and voted for George McGovern in 1972. However even in these years when he was on the left, it was not onerous to detect an essential distinction between Mosse and Ledeen. Mosse had nothing however contempt for the tradition of fascism, notably its strains of nationalism, militarism, and xenophobia. Against this, Ledeen’s histories are energized by a covert admiration for what he noticed because the élan of fascism, its disruptive pressure and talent to mobilize the lots. What Mosse studied as a warning, Ledeen thought to be a how-to information.
In 1973, Ledeen’s tutorial profession ended when he was denied tenure at Washington College in St. Louis. He was dogged by rumors of plagiarism, which he at all times denied—though he acknowledged that there had been questions on footnotes in an essay he wrote.
The top of Ledeen’s profession as a tenure-track tutorial spurred him to reinvent himself as a public mental and ideological adventurer with ties to spy companies and highly effective politicians. He taught on the College of Rome from 1973 to 1977, and it was probably throughout these years that he made contact with the Italian spy company SISMI, which might play an essential half in his profession.
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Throughout this era, he additionally swung politically from the left to the best, motivated by an intense anti-communism. This was a typical trajectory within the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies when neoconservativism coalesced as an essential mental faction. Like different neocons, Ledeen specialised in repurposing the left-wing language of internationalism and human rights for the service of American empire.
In 1977 he delivered a speech on human rights and democracy that was reprinted within the journal of Social Democrats USA—an ostensibly socialist group that was a breeding floor for neoconservatism. In that speech, he rejected the concept of democracy in a single nation and insisted that America’s revolutionary beliefs demanded by their very nature to be “exported.” The concept of a worldwide democratic revolution has a noble ring to it, however in follow Ledeen merely used such rhetoric to justify the crudest type of imperialism. In 2005, Jeffrey Goldberg, Ledeen’s fellow neocon and Iraq battle supporter, coined what he known as the “Ledeen doctrine”: “Each ten years or so, the USA wants to select up some small crappy little nation and throw it towards the wall, simply to point out the world we imply enterprise.” In accordance with Goldberg this paraphrase got here “roughly” Ledeen’s personal phrases and Ledeen himself reportedly acknowledged the quote.
Past his assist for imperialism and militarism, Ledeen’s purported dedication to democracy is belied by his repeated involvement in disinformation campaigns.
In 1980, Ledeen teamed up with Arnaud de Borchgrave, a fellow overseas coverage hawk and former Newsweek reporter, to write an article for The New Republic alleging that Jimmy Carter’s overseas coverage was influenced by the antics of his brother, Billy, who was being paid by the Libyan authorities. (TNR, beneath writer Marty Peretz, was in that period at all times keen to advertise right-wing smears).
In 1987, The Washington Put up known as consideration to Ledeen’s connections with Francesco Pazienza, a senior SISMI official. In accordance with the Put up:
Pazienza was a deputy to the chief of Italian navy intelligence and a number one member of a clandestine group known as P-2, a parallel hierarchy of right-wing generals, colonels and politicians, which tried to stage what the Italian press has known as “a silent coup” by way of “a method of stress.” When the affect of P-2 was uncovered in 1981, the Christian Democratic authorities fell. Indictments charged P-2 members with crimes that included “subversive affiliation with the intention of terrorism” and its cover-up.
In 1980, right-wing terrorists bombed a practice station in Bologna, killing 80 folks and injured over 200. In 1995, Pazienza was convicted of collaborating in a cover-up that tried in charge the bombing on a left-wing group.
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Pazienza’s prison actions additionally introduced him into contact with Ledeen. As The Wall Avenue Journal reported in 1985:
Mr. Pazienza already has been convicted, in absentia, of some expenses. Amongst them: that he abused his intelligence job through the use of extortion and fraud to acquire embarrassing info about Billygate, and that he obtained the info “in collaboration with” Michael Ledeen.…
Mr. Pazienza says that Mr. Ledeen generally labored for Italian intelligence and acquired not less than $120,000 from SISMI, plus bills, in 1980 or 1981. A minimum of a few of the cash was paid right into a Bermuda checking account, Mr. Pazienza says. At SISMI, Mr. Pazienza says, Mr. Ledeen warranted a coded identification: Z-3.
Mr. Ledeen says he was by no means known as Z3 “that I can bear in mind.” He says a consulting agency he owned, ISI, undertook work for SISMI both late in 1980 or early in 1981 and the value “could properly have been $100,000, I can’t bear in mind.” SISMI could have paid one other payment for different work in 1980, Mr. Ledeen says. He says his journey bills had been additionally paid. And he says, “I had, I feel, for a interval of some months, a private account in Bermuda.” He declines to debate additional “any of my private funds.”
Panzienza additionally organized one other disinformation marketing campaign blaming the Soviet Union and Bulgaria for the 1981 tried assassination of Pope John Paul II by the Turkish rightist Mehmet Ali Agca. Ledeen additionally helped unfold this lie.
Even after Panzienza was in jail, Ledeen continued to have ties with SISMI. In 2003, SISMI solid paperwork that purported to point out that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was making an attempt to purchase uranium from Niger. Ledeen was an essential conduit for bringing these solid paperwork to the George W. Bush administration, which used them as a part of the “weapons of mass destruction” lie that helped promote the Iraq battle.
The New York Occasions obituary for Ledeen subtly whitewashes his actions as an agent of disinformation:
Among the theories that Mr. Ledeen espoused in his books and articles had been later discredited, amongst them that Iraq had sought to buy yellowcake uranium powder from Niger as a part of a nuclear arms program; that the tried assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981 in Vatican Metropolis was orchestrated by Moscow; and that President Jimmy Carter’s brother, Billy, had influenced the president on behalf of Libya.
This account makes no point out of the function of SISMI in forging this disinformation and means that Ledeen was solely responsible of sloppiness in having “theories” that had been “discredited.” In actuality, Ledeen was an lively participant in propaganda campaigns primarily based on forgeries created by a sinister spy company.
The Washington Put up obituary for Ledeen was equally inclined to whitewashing. The headline for the Put up obituary learn “Reagan adviser in early Iran-contra outreach, dies at 83.” It’s unusual to make use of the phrase “outreach” to explain Iran-contra (which was actually a prison enterprise and a constitutional disaster). Within the physique of the textual content, the obituary was extra sincere, describing Ledeen as “a Reagan-era adviser (who) helped open channels for the unlawful covert arms offers referred to as Iran-contra.”
Neither the Occasions nor the Put up confront the truth that Ledeen was an authoritarian who can pretty be characterised as a fascist.
Ledeen’s function as an instigator of Iran-contra clarifies his hostility to democracy. The entire scheme originated in an try by the Reagan administration to bypass a congressional ban on funding the contra guerrillas in Nicaragua, on the time devices in an American proxy battle. Below the Structure, one of many main checks on presidential energy is the management Congress has over the purse strings. The guts of the scandal was the try by the Reagan administration to covertly violate that constitutional provision by elevating cash by way of a secret arms deal. In accordance with a 2017 Senate report, Ledeen “seems to have performed a key function within the preliminary contacts between the U.S. and Israel vis-à-vis Iran.” In contrast to different gamers within the scandal, Ledeen was cagey sufficient to get out of the loop after his authentic instigation, so he prevented any prison expenses.
In distinction to neoconservatives reminiscent of David Frum and William Kristol, Ledeen didn’t balk on the rise of Donald Trump. As an alternative, Ledeen, alongside along with his second spouse, Barbara, embraced Trumpism and have become lively allies of figures reminiscent of Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon. In 2019, Ledeen and Flynn cowrote The Subject of Combat: How We Can Win the International Struggle In opposition to Radical Islam and its Allies. The e book advocates Ledeen’s main political obsession of latest a long time, regime change in Iran.
Ledeen’s claims to being a champion of democracy and a “liberal democrat” had been additionally repeatedly contradicted by his bloodcurdling advocacy of authoritarian repression. In an unpublished article from 1987 written for Partisan Evaluation, Ledeen lambasted the “pseudo-democratic idea based on which everyone seems to be entitled to a say in coverage, no matter his or her {qualifications}.” He additionally falsely claimed that solely the president is “constitutionally charged with duty for overseas coverage” and cited with approval the concept “breaking the legislation every now and then” is important.
Writing within the scholarly journal Society in 1999, Ledeen argued, “New leaders with an iron will are required to root out the corruption and both reestablish a virtuous state, or to institute a brand new one…. If we delight in false safety and drop our guard, the rot spreads, corrupting the whole society. As soon as that occurs, solely violent and very disagreeable strategies can carry us again to advantage.”
The identical yr, in his e book Machiavelli On Fashionable Management, Ledeen supplied this recommendation: “To be an efficient chief, essentially the most prudent technique is to make sure that your individuals are afraid of you. To instill that worry, you need to display that those that assault you’ll not survive.”
In a 2003 speech to the American Enterprise Institute, Ledeen mentioned, “All the good students who’ve studied American character have come to the conclusion that we’re a warlike folks and that we love battle.”
There isn’t any mistaking the thrust of Ledeen’s discuss of “iron will” and “worry” in addition to his exaltation of battle. That is the language of fascism. Fittingly, Israel’s authoritarian Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a protracted eulogy praising Ledeen as a “nice scholar.” Netanyahu exalted specifically Ledeen’s efforts pushing for regime change in Iran, a long-standing venture of his personal that is still an actual risk if the present push for diplomacy by the Trump administration fails.
Donald Trump is usually offered as an anomaly breaking from the stolid conservatism of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Ledeen’s profession reveals that no such break has occurred. The roots of the present authoritarianism are deep inside the latest historical past of the GOP.
Jeet Heer
Jeet Heer is a nationwide affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He additionally pens the month-to-month column “Morbid Signs.” The writer of In Love with Artwork: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Artwork Spiegelman (2013) and Candy Lechery: Evaluations, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for quite a few publications, together with The New Yorker, The Paris Evaluation, Virginia Quarterly Evaluation, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.
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