The Resurrection

With full-page ads in the Washington Post and the New York Times, and a sparkling new multi-media website flashing photos of recent terror attacks in India and Indonesia, the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) re-launched itself with a bang last month, proclaiming its new mission to be "dedicated to winning the war on terror."

What it didn't say is that the billionaire philanthropists behind the CPD intend to broaden this "war on terror" beyond al-Qaeda to focus on all militant jihadist groups, including Israel's perceived enemies.

Writing in the July 20 edition of the Washington Post, Committee honorary co-chairs Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) described the focus of this new, third incarnation of the Committee as "international terrorism from Islamic extremists and the outlaw states that either harbor or support them." They write:

"The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks awoke (sic) all Americans to the capabilities and brutality of our new enemy, but today too many people are insufficiently aware of our enemy's evil worldwide designs, which include waging jihad against all Americans and reestablishing a totalitarian religious empire in the Middle East... True to its history, the reborn Committee on the Present Danger will advocate strong policies both against international terrorists and their sponsors and in favor of freedom and security.

Our mission is to educate the American people about the threat posed by a global Islamist terror movement; to counsel against appeasement and accommodation with terrorists; and to build support for a strategy of decisive victory against this menace not only to the United States, but to democracy and freedom everywhere."

On the Committee's web site, one of its members, Frank J. Gaffney Jr., who heads the Center for Security Policy, sums up the reason for the resurrection thus: "The CPD brilliantly waged a 'war of ideas' against an earlier, hostile ideology with global ambitions – Soviet Communism. Now it must help defeat today's ideological threat: Islamofascism."

The Players

Chaired by former CIA director James Woolsey, the reborn Committee has 49 members in all, including many well known hawks and neoconservatives affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute (Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Danielle Pletka, Joshua Muravchik, Laurie Mylroie, Newt Gingrich, Michael Rubin), former Attorney General Edwin Meese, Victor Davis Hanson of Stanford's Hoover Institution, Norm Podhoretz of Commentary fame, Charles Kupperman of Boeing Missile Defense Systems, former Reagan official Jack Kemp, former Congressional staffer-turned-lobbyist and Project for the New American Century board member Randy Scheunemann; and several anti-arms control hawks – Henry Cooper, Jim Woolsey himself, Kenneth Adelman, Max Kampelman [founder of the Committee's 1976 iteration] – reminiscent of the Committee's earlier two incarnations.

[A 50th CPD member, Peter Hannaford, a former Reagan PR official, was asked to step down as managing director of the CPD after this reporter revealed on her weblog "War and Piece" his past paid lobbying for the Nazi-sympathetic Austrian Freedom Party and its leader Joerg Haider. But a recent interview with the CPD's acting managing director, Clifford May, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee, reveals that Hannaford is currently still serving as a "senior consultant" to the CPD, and may indeed have just been moved to the background.]

For all the flashy public relations launch of the reborn Committee, some of its members seem a bit taken by surprise when a reporter calls asking, "What's this all about?"

CPD member Mark Palmer, a former US ambassador to Hungary, author of Breaking the Real Axis of Evil, and board member of Freedom House, says he hasn't attended any meetings and doesn't really know what the group will do. "The reason I joined is I think there is a present danger," says Palmer. "And I think it's good to have a citizen's lobby that is focused on it. I frankly also joined because I believe there is a nexis and an axis between dictators and terrorism. And this is another vehicle for me to promote my view."