Devon Cross

Devon Cross, better known as Devon Gaffney Cross, heads the Policy Forum on International Security Affairs and is associated with two other hardline Neocon/Zionist outfits Case for Freedom and One Jerusalem. She is the sister of the neocon hawk Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy (CSP). She has worked for a number of staunchly conservative foundations, including the Smith Richardson Foundation; she is a former president of the Donor’s Forum on International Affairs and is associated with various neoconservative outfits such as CSP. She was a director of Project for the New American Century. She is also a member of the Defense Policy Board, the Pentagon’s in-house think tank, which has been heavily criticized because of the potential conflicts of interests of many of its members and for its stilted ideological profile (nearly a third of the board members come from the staunchly conservative Hoover Institution). She is married to New York Jets president Jay Cross.

As of 2018 she was also listed on the board of directors of Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA)

Donner Foundation

The Donner Foundation became a major funder of right-wing thought in Canada after Cross took it over:

Traditionally, its $98 -million endowment fund has been spent on issues like national unity.

Now it's got Devon Cross at the helm - a thirtysomething American expatriate who convened last year's meeting of the new right, and who took Coyne's idea of a magazine to heart. The Donner is the well poised to become a branch - plant Canadian version of the U.S.'s Madison and Olin foundations, whose deep pockets fuelled the neoconservative resurgence of the late eighties.

Cross was one of a number of people invited by David Frum to a Canadian conservative convention in 1996.

Project for a New American Century

While Cross was a director of The Project for The New American Century they created documents detailing plans to begin the war in Iraq even before George Bush was president. The documents dated September 2000 stated:

"The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

Selling the Iraq War to the UK and Europe

Devon Cross worked to sell the Iraq War to the UK and Europe by lobbying through the Policy Forum. The reason for this is stated on their website:

"American foreign policy and its goals and motivations in undertaking the War on Terror were increasingly subject to caricature and worse in the European media, and to outright misrepresentation in the broader public debate".

The Policy Forum claims success in selling U.S. foreign policy to the British media:

"The media response, has been both prompt and enthusiastic, editors of The Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, The London Times, The Economist, The Sun and The Spectator have all participated in our discussions".

For these lobbying efforts, at the end of 2007, the US Department of Defence paid the Policy Forum around $80,000 which was paid to Devon Cross. The contract awarded to the policy forum was for the following services:

"This procurement is for technical support and consulting services for public liaison and media outreach services in support of the diplomacy mission including addressing and informing European and Middle Eastern audiences on the challenges facing U.S. National Security policies. The awardee will engage London based European and Arab media in candid discussions on a wide variety of national security issues of interest to senior Department of Defense (DoD) officials"

William Shawcross described his experience of Cross's role as follows:

She is a member of the Defence Policy Board and during the last four years she has been a magnificent unofficial representative of the US in Europe. She has done a terrific job in setting up meetings between US policymakers and European journalists and writers. (She has been far more effective than the State Department in making sure that US policies since 9/11 have been well explained.)

Amongst the many meetings she has arranged in London have been ones with Gen. Petraeus, Rumsfeld, Kissinger, Gen. Jim Jones, Eric Edelman, Gen. Jack Keane...and Peter Rodman. I liked him very much.

Iraq Propaganda

Devon Cross served as an advisor to a Washington based PR firm the Lincoln Group who used Iraqi newspapers to plant pro-American stories. These stories were "part of a multimillion-dollar covert campaign to plant paid propaganda in the Iraqi news media and pay friendly Iraqi journalists monthly stipends.

Unipolarist Ideology

Devon Cross along with many of the signatories of the Project for a New American Century, subscribes to a unipolarist ideology.The purpose of this Unipolarist Ideology is defined by Charles Krauthammer as follows:

"America's purpose should be to steer the world away from its coming multipolar future toward a qualitatively new outcome--a unipolar world whose center is a confederated West." Elsewhere he explained that unipolarism refers to "a single pole of world power that consists of the United States at the apex of the industrial West."

Attack on Philanthropy

In an article on philanthropy’s role in shaping policy, which she co-wrote with her brother, Cross criticized various liberal-minded foundations such as Rockefeller and MacArthur for their “ironic vision of international orderliness,” which she said “must be contrasted with the world as it actually is.” The authors write: “And then there is private philanthropy, among the least recognized forces in the shaping of United States security policy. Specifically, the leading funders in international security programs at U.S. think-tanks, academic institutions, and grassroots groups are generously underwriting an ambitious and highly politicized agenda. Today, as in the past, arms control and other international legal endeavors are the organizing principle behind much of what the Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund calls the ‘One World Program.’ The operative premise has been described by syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer as ‘a world imagined [where] laws, treaties and binding international agreements can domesticate the international arena.’

UN Debate

Cross spoke at an Intelligence Squared debate on the United Nations on 21 April 2004. Along with John O'Sullivan and Dimitri K. Simes, she spoke in favour of the motion that "World Affairs are Too Important to be Decided by the UN".

Affiliations

• Policy Forum on International Security Affairs | Donors' Forum on International Affairs - President | Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments | Center for Security Policy | a member of the Council on Foreign Relations | Democracy & Security International Conference attendee. | Lincoln Group | Project for the New American Century - Collaborated on the PNAC’s “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” report | Case for Freedom | Defense Policy Board

Other Institutional Affiliations

• Gilder Foundation - Executive Director | Donner Canadian Foundation | Smith Richardson Foundation | Washington Quarterly - Senior Associate Editor | Donor's Forum on International Affairs - President | School of Advanced International Studies - Alumna | International Security Studies Program, Woodrow Wilson Center

Related Articles

• Rightweb Profile

Resources

Project for the New American Century, Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century, September-2000, Accessed 08-April-2009