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Eleana Benador is Peruvian-born public relations entrepreneur whose firm Benador Associates helped publicize the work of neoconservatives and hawkish policy wonks during the George W. Bush presidency.[1] Benador now directs Benador Public Relations, the successor to her Benador Associates.

A former publicist for Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum and associate of the hawkish U.S. Committee to Free Lebanon,[2] Benador once claimed credit for the rise of neoconservatism in the United States in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Her firm’s website used to boast, “European educated, and a polio survivor, Ms. Benador has been the mastermind behind Benador Associates, which became the centerpiece of the neoconservative movement in the United States and the West in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11.”[3]

During its heyday as a neocon publicist, Benador Associates clients included some of the more hardline proponents of the invasion of Iraq and an expansive “war on terror,” such as Rachel Ehrenfeld, Hillel Fradkin, Charles Krauthammer, Richard Pipes, Dennis Prager, James Woolsey, and Meyrav Wurmser.

In a 2006 expose about Benador, the New York-based magazine Bidoun reported: "Founded, with what Mrs. Benador calls 'serendipity,' on September 10, 2001, Benador Associates has ridden the rising demand for such strident voices. If you read something that advocates regime change in the New York Post, or if you see a 'political adviser' on Fox News suggesting that Israel hasn't gone far enough in its attacks on Hizbullah, there's a good possibility that the appearance has been engineered by Mrs. Benador. She arranges speaking events for her clients, places articles in newspapers for them, and helps them address problems with their public image. Which is good for them, as Mrs. Benador's fifty-plus clients are hardly a lovable bunch. Benador Associates' first member was the late A.M. Rosenthal, an executive editor at the New York Times, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who, in the wake of the attacks on September 11, called for the bombing of the capital cities of Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Sudan."[4]

According to Jim Lobe of the Inter Press Service: "When historians look back on the United States war in Iraq, they will almost certainly be struck by how a small group of mainly neoconservative analysts and activists outside the administration were able to shape the U.S. media debate in ways that made the drive to war so much easier than it might have been. ... But historians would be negligent if they ignored the day-to-day work of one person who, as much as anyone outside the administration, made their media ubiquity possible. Meet Eleana Benador, the Peruvian-born publicist for Perle, Woolsey, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney, and a dozen other prominent neoconservatives whose hawkish opinions proved very hard to avoid for anyone who watched news talk shows or read the op-ed pages of major newspapers over the past 20 months."[5]

By early 2006, Benador began expanding the range of her public relations work to include individuals not involved in national security issues. According to a January 2006 press release, Benador Associates intended to diversify “into other fields of activities, enlarging the scope of its initial and successful areas in the world of politics, Middle East, national security, foreign policy, terrorism, relations with Islam and the Muslim world.”[6]

In late 2007, Benador announced the creation of an new firm, Benador Public Relations (BPR), whose “areas of expertise—with absolute exclusion of politics—will include: international finance, with investment banking and infrastructure projects as the main chapters in that field; international real estate; science and culture.” According to a BPR statement, "Ms. Benador announced that in view of the uncertain political situation in America, she is to devote her undivided attention to her new public relations outfit.”[7] Despite the firm’s expressed desire to distance itself from politics, shortly after its launch it posted on its website a picture gallery featuring photos of Benador with figures like Perle, Gaffney, and Ledeen.

According to her biography on the BPR website, “Ms Benador has been a keynote speaker at leading international events and has been interviewed for publications such as Asia Times, Die Welt, the Gulf News, Bidoun, Lifestyles, among others. Ms Benador has developed an international media relations network that expands from Australia, Kazakhstan, Singapore, Japan, the Middle East and Europe, in a variety of fields. Her contact database includes presidents, prime ministers, and decision makers from around the world. She has provided public relations services, among others, to the Arab Broadcasting Forum, the Young Arab Leaders, the Arab Strategy Forum, the Coptic Association, and has been advisor to a variety of politicians and business leaders worldwide.”[8]

Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.