Devon Gaffney Cross

Devon Gaffney Cross is a longtime philanthropist associated with various rightist foundations who also served on a Pentagon advisory board during the George W. Bush presidency. Her brother, Frank Gaffney, runs the Center for Security Policy, and her spouse, Jay Cross, is president of the New York Jets.

Cross frequently works with groups that aim to influence overseas debate and promote positive opinions on U.S. foreign policy, including the “war on terror.” These organizations include the Lincoln Group, the Case for Freedom, and the London-based Policy Forum for International Security Affairs, which has received funding from the U.S. Department of Defense.1

Promoting the “War on Terror” Abroad

The Lincoln Group, a Washington, DC-based “strategic communication management service”2 that Cross advises, was awarded a Pentagon contract for work in Iraq in 2004, “after military officials concluded that the United States was failing to win over Muslim public opinion.”3 In late 2005, the “multimillion-dollar covert campaign to plant paid propaganda in the Iraqi news media and pay friendly Iraqi journalists monthly stipends” was revealed. According to the New York Times, Lincoln Group’s role was “to translate the articles into Arabic and submit them to Iraqi newspapers or advertising agencies without revealing the Pentagon's role.” Many were outraged that the United States would subsidize “journalism” practices anathema to the American tradition of an independent press, but American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Rubin justified the planting of stories, saying, "Informational operations are a part of any military campaign. Especially in an atmosphere where terrorists and insurgents—replete with oil boom cash—do the same. We need an even playing field, but cannot fight with both hands tied behind our backs."4 (When commenting to the Times Rubin failed to disclose that he himself had reviewed propaganda articles for Lincoln.)

Policy Forum also seeks to improve the U.S. image abroad. The group says it was formed because “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.”

In mid-2007, Policy Forum received a small ($79,416) no-bid contract to undertake media outreach on behalf of the Pentagon; the check was made out to Cross.5 The contract was “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.”6

The contract was awarded by the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman, who advised Vice President Dick Cheney in the run-up to the Iraq War. Cross’s exact position with the Policy Forum (which also refers to itself as “Policy Forum for International Affairs,” dropping the “security”) is not clear, and the organization’s website (as of April 2008) provides no details about its principal employees.7 Policy Forum is pro-war on terror, and it says its aim “is to create an open channel of dialogue between those who create the international news and those who report it, in an effort to articulate more clearly and accurately the animating forces behind American foreign policy.” Perhaps not surprisingly for such an organization, all of the viewpoints espoused in the “Opinions & Analysis” section of its website originate from right-wing U.S. media sources. (However, since Policy Forum does not cite its sources, this is not clear to visitors.)  For example, Policy Forum posted a piece it entitled “There’s no Arguing with Iran,” which excerpted part of an article by Kathryn Jean Lopez called “Iranian Hostage Crisis,” written for the National Review Online. Other unattributed excerpts posted by Policy Forum originate from sources such as NewsMax.com, the Wall Street Journal opinion page, and columnist Dennis Prager at Townhall.com.8

Cross has also served on the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, a government-appointed advisory panel that provides supposedly objective advice to the Defense Department. Cross’s term on the board was to last from August 2001 to January 2008. Others members of the board, which was chaired by Richard Perle until questions of conflict of interest spurred him to step down in 2003, included Newt Gingrich, Eliot Cohen, Richard Allen, Martin Anderson, Henry Kissinger, Ruth Wedgwood, Christopher Williams, and Pete Wilson.9 Because the Policy Forum contract was awarded while Cross served on the Defense Policy Board, some observers have questioned whether it could be considered a conflict of interest.10

Other Activities

Cross participated in the June 2007 Democracy and Security Conference in Prague,11 an event whose primary agenda seemed to be to promote the neoconservatives’ Mideast agenda among political groups overseas. Sponsored by the Prague Security Studies Institute, the Jerusalem-based Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies (funded by Sheldon Adelson), and Spain’s Foundation for Social Analysis and Studies, the conference’s featured speaker was President George W. Bush, who compared the “war on terror” to the Cold War. He said, “The most powerful weapon in the struggle against extremism is not bullets or bombs—it is the universal appeal of freedom. Freedom is the design of our Maker, and the longing of every soul.”12

Conference participants included: Sheldon Adelson of the Sands Corporation and Freedom’s Watch; Peter Ackerman of Freedom House; former Spanish Prime Minister José Aznar; Anne Bayefsky of the Hudson Institute; Jeffrey Gedmin of Radio Free Europe; Reuel Marc Gerecht, Joshua Muravchik, Michael Rubin, Michael Novak, and Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI); Farid Ghadry of the U.S.-based Reform Party of Syria; former Czech President Vaclav Havel; Bruce Jackson of the Project on Transitional Democracies; Josef Joffe of Germany’s Die Zeit; Garry Kasparov, the famous chess player and member of the Russian opposition party United Civil Front; Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT); Tod Lindberg of the Hoover Institution; Herb London of the Hudson Institute; Clifford May and Walid Phares of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; Harold Rhode, a Pentagon employee close to many core neoconservatives like David Wurmser; and Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident and chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies.13

Cross attended the conference as a representative of an organization called Case for Freedom; the other Case for Freedom member at the conference was David Goder, who has written for One Jerusalem,14 a staunchly Likudnik group chaired by Sharansky. Like Policy Forum, Case for Freedom maintains an extremely low profile, declining to post any useful information on its website, which, as of March 2008, provided no details about the organization’s personnel or funding sources. According to a summary of its guiding principles and mission: “Those who cherish the values of classical liberalism and the cause of freedom must take this often times systematic assault on freedom seriously. We must express solidarity with these courageous freedom-fighters and help gain international recognition and support for their struggles. CaseForFreedom.org mobilizes support for freedom advocates everywhere, by providing them with an international platform to report their experiences and for people around the globe to learn about and support their efforts.”15

Despite styling itself as a forum for dissidents, as of April 2008, Case for Freedom had only five registered users (visitors must register to participate) who all told had written two posts.16

In an investigative report, Jim Lobe of the Inter Press Service reported on connections between Case for Freedom (CFF), Policy Forum, and One Jerusalem, which apparently share the same ISP address. Lobe reported, “Experts I’ve spoken to insist that all of these sites are almost certainly managed, hosted and owned by the same organization or individual which, we believe, must be onejerusalem. (It was the first to register the domain, back in 2000.) One Jerusalem was the only one of the three sites that listed an actual phone number on its registration, and, when we called it, the receptionist answered, ‘Allen Roth’s office,’ presumably the same Allen Roth who … was listed as One Jerusalem’s president nine months ago. This would add to the impression that we first gained last June: that the CFF and Cross’ [Policy Forum] work very closely with and may well be fronts for One Jerusalem.”17

Cross has supported the work of a number of policy and advocacy organizations. She is a former director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and participated in the PNAC study group that produced the 2000 publication Rebuilding America’s Defenses, which was meant to serve as a blueprint of security priorities for the incoming administration.18 Cross is an adviser to her brother Frank’s hawkish policy outfit the Center for Security Policy, and she is a board member, along with former CIA director James Woolsey, of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.19

Cross has served as an officer at a number of rightist philanthropies, including the Smith Richardson Foundation.20 Cross also heads the Donors Forum on International Affairs; the Donor Forum’s 2005 Form 990 tax form listed Cross as the only employee. It provided and received no grants that year, and it listed “public policy promotion” as its reason for tax-exempt status.21 The forum was funded by the John Olin Foundation and may have ceased functioning after Olin closed up shop in 2005.22

In an article on philanthropy’s role in shaping policy co-written by Devon Gaffney Cross and Frank Gaffney, the brother and sister criticized various liberal-minded foundations such as Rockefeller and MacArthur for their “ironic vision of international orderliness,” which they said “must be contrasted with the world as it actually is.” The authors wrote, “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.’”23

Affiliations 24

Government Service

Education 25