Elliott Abrams

Elliott Abrams (born January 24, 1948), a lawyer of Jewish-American background, is a member of the administration of President George W. Bush, During Bush's first term in office, he was appointed the post of Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs. At the start of the president's second term (February, 2005), Abrams was promoted to be his deputy national security adviser, responsible for advancing Bush's strategy of advancing democracy abroad. A leading neoconservative, Abram's appointment by the White House on December 2, 2002 was considered highly controversial due to his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair, over which he subsequently pleaded guilty to lying to Congress.

Early years

Abrams received his B.A. from Harvard College, a Master's degree in international relations from the London School of Economics, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He practiced in New York and Washington, DC, and spent four years in the 1970s working for the U.S. Senate as special counsel and then as chief of staff to Senator Daniel Moynihan.

Abrams first came to national prominence when he served as Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights in the early 1980s and later as Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs.

Central American atrocities

During this time, Abrams clashed regularly with mainstream church groups and human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, who accused him of covering up atrocities committed by the military forces of U.S.-backed governments, such as those in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, and rebel forces, such as the Contras and Angola's UNITA, while at the same time exaggerating abuses by insurgency groups and governments which the U.S. opposed. Records show, for example, that a special intelligence unit of the Honduran armed forces, Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, including U.S. missionaries. Critics charge that the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, John Negroponte, and the Reagan administration knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with the Honduran military while deceiving Congress.

In early 1982, when reports of the El Mozote massacre -- thought to be the worst atrocity in modern Latin American history -- began appearing in U.S. media, Abrams told a Senate committee that the reports of hundreds of deaths at El Mozote "were not credible," and that "it appears to be an incident that is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas." Abrams implied that reports of a massacre were simply FMLN propaganda. He later claimed Washington's policy in El Salvador a "fabulous achievement."

When Congress stopped shut down funding for the Contras with the 1982 Boland Amendment, the Reagan administration began looking for other avenues for funding the group. As part of this strategy, Abrams flew to London using a fake name to solicit a $10 million contribution from the Sultan of Brunei.

Iran-Contra affair

During the Iran-Contra Affair, Abrams was indicted for giving false testimony about his role in the illicit money-raising schemes by the special prosecutor handling the case, but he pleaded guilty to two lesser offenses of withholding information to Congress in order to avoid a trial and a possible jail term. Quoted in a May 30, 1994 article in Legal Times, Abrams spoke of his prosecutors as "filthy bastards," the proceedings against him "Kafkaesque," and members of the Senate Intelligence Committee "pious clowns" whose raison d'etre was to ask him "abysmally stupid" questions.[1] (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zeroes/Elliot_Abrams2.html) President George H. W. Bush pardoned Abrams along with a number of other Iran-Contra defendants shortly before leaving office in 1992.

In 1993, members of the Salvadoran Truth Commission testified about the El Mozote massacre in a congressional hearing of the House Western Hemisphere subcommittee. Chairman Robert Torricelli, Democratic Senator from New Jersey, vowed to review for possible perjury "every word uttered by every Reagan administration official" in congressional testimony on El Salvador. Abrams denounced Torricelli's words as "McCarthyite crap." Documentation eventually emerged proving that the Reagan administration had known about El Mozote and other human rights violations all along.

The neocons

During the 1990s, Abrams worked for a number of think tanks and eventually became head of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) where he wrote widely on foreign policy issues. He remained an integral part of the tight-knit neoconservative foreign policy community in Washington that revolved around one of his early mentors, Richard Perle, and former United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick at the American Enterprise Institute. Abrams is a member of the staunchly neocononservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signatories of the January 26, 1998, PNAC Letter sent to President Clinton which called for "regime-change" in Iraq. Critics of the Bush administration see the letter as evidence that a second Gulf War was a foregone conclusion.

Like Perle, Abrams favors a Mideast strategy based on the overwhelming military power of both the United States and Israel and on a military alliance between Israel and Turkey against what are considered hostile Arab states, such as Syria and Iran, in order to create a "broader strategic context" that would ensure whatever state might emerge on Palestinian territory would be pro-American. Abrams is a staunch defender of Israel, and has publicly assailed the "land-for-peace" formula that has guided US policy in the Arab-Israeli conflict since the 1967 war.

James Zogby, the director of the Arab-American Institute (AAI), said Abrams' appointment sent "a very dangerous message to the Arab world" and adds to the "lock that the neocon set now has on all the major instruments of decision-making except for the State Department."

In 1997, Abrams published a book, Faith or Fear, which warned American Jews that assimilating within the secular US culture posed the danger of a gradual loss of Jewish identity.

2002 Venezuelan coup

As Bush's deputy national security adviser, Abrams is said to have been involved in the Venezuelan coup attempt of 2002 against Hugo Chávez. After the aborted putsch, it emerged that Abrams had supervised the planning of the operation. He and Otto Reich, interim Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere in the Bush administration, were not only aware the coup was about to take place, but had sanctioned it and discussed it in some detail, right down to its timing and chances of success, which were deemed to be excellent. [2] (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,688071,00.html) [3] (http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=21723)

Affiliation History

Institutional Affiliations

• Council on Foreign Relations: Member
• Beliefnet: Columnist
• American Committee for Peace in Chechnya: Member
• Ethics and Public Policy Center: President, 1996-2002
• Middle East Forum: Signatory of 2000 report urging military action against Syria
• Project for the New American Century: Signatory of 1997 Statement of Principles and various other statements
• American Jewish Committee: Former member, National Advisory Council
• Hudson Institute: Senior Fellow, 1990-96
• Center for Security Policy: Former member, National Security Advisory Council
• Francisco Marroquin Foundation: Former chairman
• Nicaraguan Resistance Foundation: Former chairman
• Social Democrats, USA: Former member
• Committee for the Free World: Member of 1985 conference on Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting in Geneva
• Heritage Foundation: Alumnus of Heritage Foundation Resource Bank
• National Review: Former contributing editor

Government Service

• National Security Council: Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs, 2002-present
• National Security Council: Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations, 2001-02
• U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom: Chairman, 2000-2001; Commissioner, 1999-2001
• Inter-American Foundation: nominated as member of Board of Directors for the 1985-90 term
• Department of State: Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, 1985-89
• Department of State: Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, 1981-85
• Department of State: Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, 1981
• Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan: Chief of Staff, Special Counsel, 1977-79
• Sen. Henry M. Jackson: Staffer/Special Counsel, 1975-76
• Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations: Assistant Counsel, 1975

Corporate Connections/Business Interests

• Verner, Lipfert, Bernhard and McPherson: Associate, 1979-81
• Breed, Abbott and Morgan: Attorney, 1973-75

Education

• Harvard University: B.A., 1969
• London School of Economics: M.Sc., 1970
• Harvard Law School: J.D., 1973

Books

• Democracy How Direct?: Views from the Founding Era and the Polling Era 2002 ISBN 0742523187
• The Influence of Faith 2001 ISBN 0742507629
• International Religious Freedom (2001): Annual Report: Submitted by the U.S. Department of State editor 2001 ISBN 0756713382
• Secularism, Spirituality, and the Future of American Jewry 1999 ISBN 0896331903
• Close Calls: Intervention, Terrorism, Missile Defense, and 'Just War' Today 1998 ISBN 0896331873
• Undue Process A Story of How Political Differences are Turned into Crimes 1998 ISBN 0029001676
• Honor Among Nations: Intangible Interests and Foreign Policy 1998 ISBN 0896331881
• Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America 1997 ISBN 0684825112
• Security and Sacrifice: Isolation, Intervention, and American Foreign Policy 1995 ISBN 1558130497
• Shield and Sword 1995 ISBN 002900165X

External links

• National Security Council website (http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/nsc.htm)
• "Elliott Abrams Is Back" (http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14720) (December 9, 2002, Alternet.org)
• "Public Serpent: Iran-contra villain Elliott Abrams is back in action" (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zeroes/Elliot_Abrams2.html) (from In These Times)