Albert Wohlstetter

Albert Wohlstetter (born 1913, died 10 January, 1997) was a neo-conservative ideologue and long time director of the Rand Corporation. He and his wife Roberta Wohlstetter, an historian and intelligence expert, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan on November 7, 1985. He was one of the inspirations for the film Dr. Strangelove.

Career

A native of New York, New York, Wohlstetter earned degrees from the City College of New York and Columbia University in the 1930s. During the 1940s, he worked with the War Production Board, at Atlas Aircraft Products Company and, after World War II, at the General Panel Corporation of California.

From 1951 to 1963, he served first as a consultant and later as a senior policy analyst for the RAND Corporation, and maintained his affiliation with RAND for years afterward. He and his wife also advised both Democratic and Republican administrations, including President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. On February 25, 1963, the Wohlstetters published "Studies for a Post-Communist Cuba."

During his long career, Wohlstetter also taught at UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1960s. From 1964 to 1980, he taught in the political science department of the University of Chicago, and chaired the dissertation committees of Paul Wolfowitz and Zalmay Khalilzad. He is often credited with influencing a number of prominent members of the neoconservative movement, including Richard Perle (who, as a teenager, dated Wohlstetter's daughter).

The Iraq deception

Wohlstetter was a significant actor in the deception leading to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. According to Alex Abella's book on the RAND corporation:

Ahmed Chalabi's rise to prominence in Washington circles came at the instigation of Albert Wohlstetter, who met Chalabi in Paul Wolfowitz's office. Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis, a friend of Wolfowitz and Wohlstetter, had already talked up the exile to both men, knowing they would see the value of Chalabi's acquaintance. Wolfowitz, Wohlstetter, and Lewis shared similar values and background; each of them secular Jews, defenders of Israel, devoted to reason and to the spread of American values. Wohlstetter and Lewis shared a common fascination with how Kemal Atatürk created the modern, secular Turkish state -- seeing it as a model for the new Iraq Chalabi would lead. Wohlstetter and Lewis expected that after the depredations of Saddam Hussein, Chalabi and his exile organization, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), could restore the cradle of civilization to her proper place in the world, with a secular government that would make peace with Israel, serve as an example to the Arab "street" -- and never wage war on the United States.

As the record shows, these expectations proved to be wholly without foundation.

Through the good offices of Wohlstetter and Richard Perle, Chalabi soon had the ear of Republican Senate leader Trent Lott and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, as well as that of two powerful former secretaries of defense, Halliburton president Dick Cheney and RAND board of trustees chairman Donald Rumsfeld. He also worked closely with former CIA director James D. Woolsey and with General Wayne Downing (who would serve in the National Security Council under President George H. W. Bush) formulating plans to overthrow Hussein militarily. Their vehicle for convincing the public that regime change in Iraq was in America's best interests was an organization founded in 1997 and similar in scope to the Reagan-era Committee on the Present Danger: the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), similarly boasting of several RAND luminaries as founding members.

Resources, Links, References

Further Reading

• Abella, Alex. Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire (Harcourt, 2008). ISBN 978-0-15-101081-3.

External links

• Online library of Wohlstetter's works at the RAND Corporation
• Writings of Albert Wohlstetter, RAND Corporation.
• Albert Wohlstetter Dot Com, a website that details the careers and writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter.
• Aspin, Woolsey, Join Center in Honoring Albert Wohlstetter, Winner of 1993 'Freedom Flame', Center for Security Policy, September 21, 1993.
• Bob Djurdjevic, The Hidden Truth About Gorazde, Bosnia. Fishing for Bodies in the Drina, Truth in Media, August 1, 1994.
• Wohlstetter--The Ultimate Pocket-Book Election Issue: Clinton Is Inviting Costly International Conflicts, Center for Security Policy, October 2, 1996.
• Albert Wohlstetter, R.I.P., Polyconomics, January 16, 1997.
• Jude Wanniski, Tribute to Albert Wohlstetter, Voice of America, January 21, 1997.
• Marshall Freeman Harris and Stephen Walker, Remembering Albert Wohlstetter, Bosnian Report/Bosnian Institute, February-May 1997.
• Jason Vest, Darth Rumsfeld, The American Prospect, February 26, 2001.
• Richard Perle: Dead Man Walking. Memo To: Henry Kissinger Re: Richard Perle, GSE&IS website, September 18, 2001.
• Jude Wanniski, Fire Paul Wolfowitz. Memo to Donald Rumsfeld Re: "The Monkeys on your Back", informationclearinghouse, October 9, 2001. Memo discusses role of Wohlstetter.
• Khurram Husain, American Dreams: Intellectual Roots of Neo-conservative Thinking, Studien von Zeitfragen, 2003.
• Elizabeth Drew, The Neocons in Power, The New York Review of Books, January 12, 2003.
• Neil Swidey, The Analyst, Boston Globe, May 18, 2003: "Albert Wohlstetter". Also here.
• Alain Frachon and Daniel Vernet; translated by Norman Madarasz, The Strategist and the Philosopher, CounterPunch, June 2, 2003.
• Robert L. Bartley, Joining LaRouche In the Fever Swamps. The New York Times and The New Yorker go off the deep end, Opinion Journal, June 9, 2003.
• Khurram Husain, "Neocons: The men behind the curtain", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 2003.
• Tom Barry, A History of Threat Escalation. Remembering Team B, RightWeb Analysis, February 12, 2004: "Wohlstetter, who had left his full-time position at RAND to become a professor at the University of Chicago, organized an informal study group that included younger neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz and longtime hawks like Paul H. Nitze."