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Dan Senor is an investment banker and neoconservative pundit who made his name serving as spokesman for the coalition authority in Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, gaining a reputation as “the spinmeister responsible for selling the early years of the occupation … as a rosy time—even as bombs exploded daily and sectarian violence ripped apart the country.”[1] After leaving government service, Senor, who is the husband of CNN anchorwoman Campbell Brown, became a guest commentator on foreign policy issues for Fox News and a private equity executive, cofounding the investment firm Rosemont Capital LLC.[2] Senor is also cofounder—with William Kristol and Robert Kagan—of the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), viewed by some as a reincarnation of the now-defunct Project for a New American Century (PNAC).[3]

In February 2010, a number of sources reported that Senor was considering running for the New York Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton when she became secretary of state in the Barack Obama administration. Reported the New York Post, “Senor has been meeting with people [in] recent weeks around the state—including ‘political people and money types,’ said one source.”[4] After weeks of speculation, Senor announced in late March 2010 that he was not a candidate, saying in a statement that it “wasn’t the right time in my family and business life for me to run.”[5]

An author and opinion writer, Senor has written for the neoconservative-influenced Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Weekly Standard, as well as for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Post.[6] Senor is also coauthor of the 2009 book, Start Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, written with his brother-in-law Saul Singer, the editor of the conservative Jerusalem Post.[7] According to Gal Beckerman of Forward, “Start-up Nation presents Israel in an extremely positive light as a bastion of entrepreneurial spirit and technological achievement. It skirts a discussion of the conflict with the Palestinians, or even the wealth inequality within Israel, thereby dovetailing nicely with recent public relations efforts by Israel to shift attention away from its problems and toward its achievements.”[8]

Senor got his start in politics working as an intern for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in 1993. He was once quoted on AIPAC’s website, saying of his experience at the “pro-Israel” lobby, “Whether I was learning the ins and outs of Washington with my fellow interns or attending briefings on Capitol Hill, my internship at AIPAC prepared me for my work in politics.”[9]

Senor burnished his rightwing “pro-Israel” credentials in 2009, when he cofounded with two leading neoconservative figures, William Kristol and Robert Kagan, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a pressure group promoting U.S. military intervention. Quipped blogger Matthew Yglesias, “Senor’s inclusion is especially interesting, since neocons of the Kristol/Kagan ilk ostensibly now believe that the early years of the [Iraq] war were catastrophically mismanaged. And yet here they are with the public face of the mismanagement as their partner in warmongering.”[10]

At FPI’s first public event, a March 2009 conference titled “Afghanistan: Planning For Success,” Senor spoke on panels along with Lt. Gen. David Barno, a retired former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan; Frederick Kagan, brother of Robert and coauthor of a study that reportedly served as a blueprint for the “surge” in Iraq; and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff who was convicted on charges stemming from the PlameGate affair. Other speakers included John Nagl of the liberal-interventionist think tank Center for a New American Security, and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

Liberal blogger Matt Duss wrote of the conference, “[G]iven the heavy representation of Iraq war advocates, I think a far better title would be ‘Afghanistan: ‘Dealing With the Huge Problems Created by Many of The People on This Very Stage.’ … It’s deeply absurd that some of the people most responsible for the crisis in Afghanistan would now presume to tell us how to deal with it.”[11]

Some 20 years younger than his FPI colleagues Kristol and Kagan, Senor spent most of the 1990s working as a foreign policy staffer for then-Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-MI), a founder of the rightist Federalist Society. After getting a Harvard MBA, Senor “then led—and loved—the cushy life of a venture capitalist,” according to the New York Times.[12] From 2001 to 2003, he worked for the Carlyle Group, an investment firm with major defense industry holdings and ties to the Bush family.[13]

In early 2003, Senor joined the Bush administration as deputy to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. But within a few months, he accepted a post in the Iraq “theater.”[14] From 2003 to 2004, according to his CFR bio, Senor served “as a Pentagon and White House adviser based in Doha, Qatar, at U.S. Central Command Forward, and later based in Kuwait and Iraq.“[15]

In Iraq, he advised Ambassador Paul Bremer and acted as chief spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).[16] Although only “in country” for 15 months, Senor was one of the longest serving civilians in Iraq. According to a speaker’s bureau that books his appearances, Senor “worked closely with the Bush Administration’s national security team, including Secretaries Rice and Rumsfeld and Generals Abizaid and Sanchez, as well as senior officials throughout the administration’s foreign policy apparatus.” Despite his association with the controversial Bremer, notorious for his decision to disband the Iraqi army,[17] Senor was awarded the Defense Department’s Distinguished Civilian Service Award, one of the Pentagon’s highest civilian honors.[18]

In the book Reporting Iraq: An Oral History of the War by the Journalists Who Covered It, Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran recalled that as CPA spokesman, Senor once told reporters, “Paris is burning—but on the record, security and stability are returning to Iraq.”[19]

In addition, according to the Washington Post: “In September 2004, the White House controversially employed Senor to coach and ghostwrite the speeches of Iraq's interim prime minister Iyad Allawi during his visit to the U.S., in an effort to enhance the Bush reelection campaign. At the same time, Senor appeared on cable news programs claiming that Allawi's positive remarks (vetted by Senor) supported the Bush Administration's rosy view of the Iraq occupation.”[20]

In 2006, Senor and Kristol were both advisors to the pro-Iraq war Vets for Freedom, which was closely tied to the right-wing advocacy group, Freedom’s Watch. That year, one of Vets for Freedom’s main objectives was boosting the neoconservative-aligned Sen. Joe Lieberman’s efforts to win re-election in Connecticut as an independent through an ad campaign, canvassing, and a public rally.[21] The Wall Street Journal quoted Senor as saying, “'These vets are grateful to Sen. Lieberman for not letting politics compromise his positions, and they wanted to express that.”[22]

In May 2009, Senor participated in a Hudson Institute symposium on controversial ex-Pentagon official Douglas Feith’s book, War and Decision. During the symposium, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz conceded that he and others “were clueless on counterinsurgency.” In his blog, veteran Inter Press Service reporter Jim Lobe pointed out that although this admission was undoubtedly the event’s headline, also striking was Dan Senor’s public disagreement with these icons of neoconservatism. A transcript of the Hudson event would be “worth reviewing,” Lobe told his readers, “for the ease with which Senor takes apart virtually every point made by Wolfowitz and Feith and the apparent inability of Wolfowitz or Feith to rebut him. While Senor never suggests that he thinks the original decision to invade Iraq was a mistake, it’s pretty clear that he thought the decision was not very well thought out by its principal advocates at the Pentagon.”[23]

Despite their early support for some Obama administration policies, in particular the military escalation in Afghanistan, Senor and FPI eagerly joined a chorus of right-wing attacks on Obama for his reaction to the post-election tumult in Iran in June 2009. On June 17, five days after Iran’s election, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed written by Senor and Christian Whiton, an FPI “policy advisor,” titled “Five Ways Obama Could Promote Freedom in Iran.”[24] Among their suggestions: Obama should appropriate funds to boost U.S.-sponsored radio broadcasts into Iran and help dissidents skirt Iranian restrictions on cell phones and Internet access. Like clockwork, a week later Sens. Joe Lieberman, Lindsay Graham, and John McCain introduced a bill to fund these very activities.

On June 24, USA Today reported that “Obama's comment on Tuesday [June 23] that he would monitor events and ‘see how this plays itself out’ drew a rebuke from Daniel Senor, a foreign policy adviser to President George W. Bush and now a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. Senor lauded Obama's ‘stronger language,’ but said he should ‘seize the moment instead of observing it.’”[25]

A few weeks later, Senor participated in a debate of the proposition, "Diplomacy with Iran Is Going Nowhere," which was broadcast nationwide on public radio. Senor and Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney and cofounder of another neocon pressure group called Keep America Safe, argued in favor of the motion; retired diplomat R. Nicholas Burns and foreign policy analyst Kenneth Pollack argued against it. Before the debate, 34 percent of the audience agreed with the motion, 33 percent disagreed, and 35 percent were undecided. After the debate, 59 percent of the audience opposed the motion, 35 percent agreed with it, and only six percent were undecided.[26]

In May 2009, a day after Dick Cheney gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute defending the Bush administration’s harsh interrogation techniques and attacking President Obama’s plan to close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, the New York Times reported, “Though the White House denies that Mr. Cheney's campaign of some weeks to influence the national security debate has played a role, Mr. Cheney's supporters point to Mr. Obama's reversal of a decision to release photographs documenting abuse of American-held detainees as evidence that the former vice president is having an impact. ‘Cheney is seriously the only person who's gotten the White House to change its policy,'’ said Dan Senor, a former foreign policy adviser in the Bush administration who remains friendly with Mr. Cheney's daughter Liz.”[27]

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