American Center for Democracy

The American Center for Democracy (ACD) is a right-wing zionist pressure group focusing on "corruption" and "Preserving National Security, Democracy and Freedom". While their stated goals deal with meritorious issues such as "corruption, including investigations, good governance, rule of law, ethics in business, training," in reality their activities are ideologically motivated and narrow in scope. As the "About Us" section reveals, the focus of their efforts: to block funding going to "terrorists" (loosely defined). The project is mostly run by Rachel Ehrenfeld.

From ACD's website:

The American Center for Democracy is dedicated to exposing the enemies of Freedom and Democracy and their Modus Operandi, and exploring pragmatic ways to defeat them while promoting standards of national and international integrity.

The Center for The Study of Corruption & the Rule of Law and American Center for Democracy are dedicated to exposing the enemies of freedom and democracy and their modus operandi, and exploring pragmatic ways to defeat them while promoting standards of national and international integrity.
The Center for The Study of Corruption (CSC) was established in 2001 and was expanded to include the American Center for Democracy (ACD) in 2003. The ultimate objective of the the Center for the Study of Corruption and the Rule of Law (CSC), and the American Center for Democracy is to promote standards of national and international integrity. The CSC and ACD are set to conduct comprehensive evaluations of national and international corruption practices and their effect on national security. for the development of an annual Integrity Index. This Index provides a comparative measure on a country-by-country basis of corruption and anti-corruption measures and the effectiveness of their implementation on the stability and national security of each country. The Integrity Index is designed to be a unique resource for governments, multinational corporations, and others interested in making policies concerning the rule of law and the implementation and monitoring of those policies and ethical business practices, as well the measures to fight terror financing. Thus, The Center will issue policy proposals for national and international legislation/sanctions, focusing on countries identified as poor performers.

From the RightWeb (IRC) profile:

The Manhattan-based American Center for Democracy (ACD) describes itself as being "dedicated to exposing the enemies of Freedom and Democracy and their Modus Operandi and exploring pragmatic ways to defeat them while promoting standards of national and international integrity." It was founded in 2003 by Rachel Ehrenfeld as an offshoot of the Center for the Study of Corruption and the Rule of Law (CSC), which Ehrenfeld founded in 2001. Ehrenfeld, who speaks nationally on terrorism issues, is included in the speakers' bureaus of the American Enterprise Institute and of Benador Associates.
According to the center, the CSC "provides a variety of anti-corruption programs, from systematic analysis and developing strategies for monitoring and enforcement, to training, conferences, and conducting (real) case studies. The center performs fact-based systemic and systematic analyses of existing laws, with focus on their implementation." The working assumption that underlies ACD's analysis of terrorism is that private and public corruption permits international organized crime to flourish and provides a nesting place for terrorist networks. In its effort to "preserve national security, democracy, and freedom," ACD states that "corruption subverts democratic institutions, destroys the free market system, and helps terrorist organizations/states."
The ACD focuses largely on Islamic terrorism. According to the center, "Radical Muslims are waging economic and financial jihad against the United States and the West." One of ACD's research projects focuses on "Radical Muslims' investments in strategically vital industries, such as high tech, the media, and others."
After the summer 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict, ACD Director Ehrenfeld appeared on Fox News to make the case that Hezbollah had South American coffers. "A lot of money is finding its way from Hezbollah in the tri-border region [where Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina meet] in Latin America and also in Panama to Lebanon—to Hezbollah in Lebanon," Ehrenfeld said (August 6, 2006).

Comment about the organization

The main output of ACD at present are press releases and op-ed articles which are invariably published in the Washington Times (Unification Church owned) or FrontPage magazine (David Horowitz's smearing operation and host to articles of right-wing zionists). ACD aims to stop funding to "terror" groups by blocking certain organizations from receiving funds, by challenging the charity status of organizations, and by lobbying the US government to stop other countries from funding target groups. Some of its team members have been involved in lawsuits against banks and the one trillion dollar lawsuit brought against Saudi Arabia.

The stated mission of ACD could easily have been performed in one of the numerous existing neocon organizations. There are several reasons why setting up a panoply of organizations instead of a single uber-organization, and these are:

1. The foundation of organizations like ACD has much to do with creating the impression that there are many lobbying groups for a given topic so that when concerted action is needed (e.g., to lobby Congress, or press action from corporations) many signatories or lobbyists can be found.
2. The assorted right-wing organizations provide sinecure for out-of-office politicians, or politicians or lobbyists who have performed valuable tasks for any of the assorted organizations. Witness the retired US Generals on the board, or the former Spanish Foreign minister, their sinecure positions have much to do with keeping these "friendly" politicians or military officers in the public eye or ripe for future appointments.
3. ACD is also a likely platform for well known zionist-hasbara hacks to pursue their activities under a "respectable" cover; Alyssa Lappen is an example of this aspect of the organization.
4. Creating a panoply of organizations like ACD avoids having all their activities concentrated in one very visible – and thus vulnerable – organization. If one of the activities of the small organizations were to cause problems, then it would be easy to fold the organization and subsume its activities elsewhere.

During the 1950s and 1960s one sure way to appreciate the nature of a group or to determine if it was a front-group was to find the word "Liberty" in its title. In the new century, the new key word is "democracy", and it is usually associated with dubious groups engaging in anything-but promotion of democracy.

Principals

Advisory Board

• Thomas McInerney (US Lt. Gen.-Ret.)
• Ana Palacio
• Richard Perle
• Dmitry Radyshevsky
• Nina Rosenwald
• Leonard P. Shaykin
• Harvey M. Stone
• Paul E. Vallely (US Maj. Gen.-Ret.)
• William R. Van Cleave
• R. James Woolsey

Team

• Rachel Ehrenfeld – Founder and Director

Fellows

• Jonathan Dahoah Halevi (IDF Col.-Ret.)
• Alyssa A. Lappen
• Marc Schulman
• Ilan Weinglass
• John Wood

Affiliations

• Center for The Study of Corruption – parent organization
• Committee on the Present Danger

ACD links page

The ACD links page certainly contains the following selection of favourite websites:

The Terror Finance Blog	Ariel Center for Policy Research (Contributing Experts)	The Center for Advanced Middle East Studies (CAMES)
Crusade Media	David Frankfurter	Gerard Group International
The Intelligence Summit	International Compliance Association (ICA)	Islam Quest Blog
Jihad Watch	Little Green Footballs	One Jerusalem
The Reality Show	Thieme Works

Resources

ACD articles

A long list of ACD articles appearing in the media appear here

• Rachel Ehrenfeld, Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed, and How To Stop It (The book the Saudis don't want you to read) - Expanded Edition.
• Profile: American Center for Democracy, Right Web (last updated 14 Sept 2006).

Contact

• Website: www.public-integrity.org