Truman National Security Project

The Truman National Security Project describes itself as being "dedicated to forging a Democratic foreign policy founded on strength and security, grounded in a strong military and active diplomacy, and committed to furthering the American ideals of freedom, dignity, and opportunity worldwide."

One of its founders, Rachel Kleinfeld, described the impetus for the project as national security as being an asset for the Republicans. "We decided there really was a need to create a movement of Democrats to stand up for these ideas and to really start to think about it, very much as a counterpart to the neoconservatives of the 1970s," she told Forward. The group aims to change the Democratic Party so that national security is seen as a strength rather than as a weakness.

At its 2005 conference one of the panel discussions was on "what Democrats did wrong, Republicans did right, and neo-cons did better" and "the need to increase the size of the deployable military."

About the Principals
Kelley Vlahos comments on the TNSP's principals:
 * One need to go no further to understand the dynamic at work here than the advisory board, on which sits former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who once infamously said while advocating the bombing of Bosnia, "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?" She also said, when asked in a 1996 interview about the estimated half a million children dead due to Clinton's Iraq sanctions, that "we think the price is worth it." She now stewards her own lucrative "global strategy" consulting firm, The Albright Group LLC. Then there's Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which makes him a made man in the purest embodiment of the foreign policy establishment there is. Gelb confessed in 2009 that he supported the Iraq War because the hive made him do it. You may not have heard of Robert Abernethy, head of American Standard Development Co., but he sits on the board and serves as trustee at dozens of schools, associations, colleges and think tanks, including Brookings, the RAND Corporation, CFR, the Pacific Council and Johns Hopkins University. He's also raised some $80,000 in campaign contributions for Democrats since the beginning of 2011 and tens of thousands more over the past decade. He also sits on the Truman board. He joins old Clinton friend and former White house lawyer Greg Craig (who was canned for wanting to close Gitmo; he's since represented Goldman Sachs on their Securities and Exchange Commission issues and former veep candidate John Edwards in court), former Clinton Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, who is now at the conservative Hoover Institution, former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta, who now runs the very successful (and admittedly less hawkish) Center for American Progress, and Will Marshall, head of the Progressive Policy Institute, Clinton's old centrist "idea mill." Also advising is Princeton professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, who recently served as director of policy planning in the State Department. She is widely known in foreign policy circles as a vocal proponent of R2P (responsibility to protect), which has replaced COIN as the new raison d'être for liberal interventions across the globe, hence her recent support for intervening in Libya and now in Syria. In a 2004 article for Foreign Affairs called "A Duty to Prevent," she argued, "the international community has a duty to prevent security disasters as well as humanitarian ones—even at the price of violating sovereignty." The senior fellows list includes a who's who of the foreign policy elite, mingled with active and ex-military, politicians, legislative staff and assorted beltway bandits, not to mention the necessary moneybags. There's bland war supporter Michael O'Hanlon from Brookings, Peter Beinart, who wrote The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again, and Larry Diamond, another conservative from Hoover. There is Janine Davidson, a former Brookings fellow and DoD policy official who was a major player in the now-failed COIN enterprise, and Mark Jacobson, who until 2011 served as a senior U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan. He's also worked at the Pentagon and the Senate Armed Services Committee and is now a defense policy wonk at the German Marshall Fund. The shop is run by President and CEO Rachel Kleinfeld, a super-educated thirty-something who seems to have spent most of her working years building her resume in the hive. She counts President Truman as her chief "political inspiration" and says things like "neoconservatives do care about people in other parts of the world, and they give real weight to ideas, ideologies, and civil society," though they are not as righteous and sensitive as "progressives" in their intentions. Ideals aside, Kleinfeld spends these days shilling for Obama, writing tired op-eds that talk to voters as if they were middle school students. To my mind, this crew is about as "progressive" as a hamster on a wheel — to nowhere.

Staff (2009)
Accessed January 2009:


 * Rachel Kleinfeld - Executive Director
 * Sarah Lassner - Director of Development
 * Michael Moschella - Director of Outreach
 * Melissa Skorka - Membership Director
 * Frankie Sturm - Communications Director
 * Tabitha Whissemore - Office Manager

Board
Accessed July 2012:


 * John P. Driscoll, Chairman - President, New Markets, Medco Health Solutions
 * Stephen Bailey - Founder & CEO, ExecOnline - Chairman, Truman National Security Institute
 * R. Hunter Biden - Partner, Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC
 * Pierre Chao - Managing Partner, Renaissance Advisors
 * Ron Klain - President, Case Holdings
 * Sally Painter - BlueStar Strategies
 * Lukas Haynes - Vice President, Mertz Gilmore Foundation
 * Michael Signer - Managing Principal, Madison Law & Strategy Group PLLC

Board (2009)
Accessed January 2009:


 * Stephen Bailey - Senior Vice President, Frontier Strategy Group
 * Pierre Chao - Managing Partner, Renaissance Strategic Advisors
 * Derek Chollet - Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security
 * Joy Drucker - Senior Vice President, Glover Park Group
 * Rachel Kleinfeld - President and Executive Director, Truman National Security Project
 * Sally Painter - Principal, Dutko Worldwide
 * Matthew Spence - Co-Founder and Director, Truman National Security Project

Advisory Board
Accessed July 2012:


 * Robert Abernethy - President, American Standard Development
 * Madeleine K. Albright - Principal, Albright Stonebridge Group
 * Coit Blacker - Director, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University
 * Gregory Craig - Partner, Skadden, Arps
 * Leslie H. Gelb - President Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations
 * Gary Hart - Scholar in Residence, University of Colorado
 * Donald L. Kerrick - US Army & Former Deputy National Security Advisor
 * William Marshall - President, Progressive Policy Institute
 * William J. Perry - Senior Fellow, Stanford University
 * John D. Podesta - Chair & Counselor, Center for American Progress
 * Anne-Marie Slaughter - Bert G. Kerstetter ‘66 University Professor, Princeton University

Advisory Board (2009)
Accessed January 2009:


 * Madeleine K. Albright - Principal, The Albright Group LLC
 * Kurt M. Campbell - CEO and Co-Founder, Center for a New American Security
 * Gregory B. Craig - Partner, Williams and Connolly LLP
 * Leslie H. Gelb - President Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations
 * William Marshall - President, Progressive Policy Institute
 * William J. Perry - Professor and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University
 * John D. Podesta - President and CEO, Center for American Progress
 * Wendy R. Sherman - Principal, The Albright Group LLC
 * Anne-Marie Slaughter - Dean, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University

Senior Advisors and Trustees
Accessed July 2012:


 * Sara Abbasi, Wendy Anderson, Scott Bates, Peter Beinart, Haim Bodek, Janet Breslin-Smith, Elwyn Berlekamp, Rachel Bronson, Bill Budinger, Andrei Cherny, Paul Clarke, Jack Cogan, Christopher Coons, Nelson Cunningham, William Danvers, Scott Delman, Laura Dempsey, Randeep Dhillon, Larry Diamond, William Dobson, Mitch Draizin, Carl Ferenbach, Donnie Fowler, Gail Harris, Chris Howard, Mark Jacobson, Eleanor Glynn Kjellman, Paul Klingenstein, Pascal Levensohn, Mark Levine, James Marvin, Nion McEvoy, Mark Medish, Reuben Munger, Suzanne Nossel, Michael O'Hanlon, Jay M. Parker, Joe Rice, David Rose, Elihu Rose, Jeremy Rosner, Kathryn Roth-Douquet, David Rothkopf, David Samuels, Deane Shatz, Paul Shatz, Peter W. Singer, Larry Stupski, Christopher Taylor, Christopher Tucker, Kenneth Wollack

Contact details

 * Truman National Security Project
 * One Massachusetts Ave. Suite 333
 * Washington, D.C., 20001
 * Web: www.trumanproject.org

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