David Wurmser

David Wurmser replaced Eric Edelman as Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs in the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney in early September 2003, after Edelman was named Ambassador to Turkey. 

Wurmser, a neo-conservative, previously served as a "special assistant" to John R. Bolton at the State Department and was a former research fellow on the Middle East at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). 

Longtime supporter of Chalabi's Iraq National Congress
Wurmser has long called for the United States and Israel to work together to roll back the Ba'ath-led government in Syria. For the latter part of the 1990s, he wrote frequently to support a joint U.S.-Israeli effort to undermine then-President Hafez el-Assad in hopes of destroying Ba'athist rule and hastening the creation of a new order in the Levant to be dominated by "tribal, familial and clan unions under limited governments".

Indeed, it was precisely because of the strategic importance of the Levant that Wurmser advocated overthrowing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in favor of an Iraqi National Congress (INC) closely tied to the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan.

"Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically," he wrote in one 1996 paper for the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS). 

Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest, in a January 2004 article in Mother Jones, report that shortly after September 11, 2001, Douglas Feith and Harold Rhode had recruited David Wurmser to be a member of a unit in the Pentagon "which would be the nucleus of the Defense Department's Iraq disinformation campaign that was established within weeks of the attacks in New York and Washington." 

They noted that in 1997, Wurmser penned a column in the Wall Street Journal called "Iraq Needs a Revolution". "A weak and demoralized army is vulnerable to an organized and internationally supported insurgency, especially one that operates from territory in Iraq free of Saddam's control, such as the northern safe haven. At one point, the United States supported such an insurgency, called the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmad Chalabi," he wrote.

"Washington has no choice now but to abandon the coup option and resurrect the INC. An insurgency may be able to defeat Saddam's weak and demoralized conventional army. But one thing is clear: there is no cost-free way to depose Saddam. He is more resolute, wily, and brutal than we. His strength lies in his weapons of terror; that is why he is so attached to them. The week-long interruption in U.N. inspections gave him ample time to prepare his biological capability for use. Organizing an insurgency to liberate Iraq under the INC may provoke Saddam to use his weapons on the way down. Better that, though, than current policy, which will lead him to use them on his way back up,"he concluded. 

The following year he co-signed a letter with Perle promoting an insurgency in Iraq and support for the Ahmad Chalabi-led Iraqi National Congress (INC).

Allegations of Espionage
On September 4, 2004, the Washington Post reported that FBI counterintelligence investigators had questioned David Wurmser, along with Harold Rhode, Paul Dundes Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith about their involvement in passing classified information to Ahmad Chalabi and/or the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Background
Wurmser has written extensively (books and articles) on the Middle East. His credits include: Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal Europe, Washington Times, the Weekly Standard, New Republic, SAIS Review, Middle East Quarterly, Perspectives on Political Science, Strategic Review, Jobs & Capital, and The World and I.

David Wurmser is married to Israeli-born Meyrav Wurmser, who co-authored a 1996 report by a task force convened by the IASPS and headed by Perle, called the 'Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000'.

The paper, called A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, was directed to incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

It featured a series of recommendations designed to end the process of Israel trading 'land for peace' by transforming the 'balance of power' in the Middle East in favor of an axis consisting of Israel, Turkey and Jordan.

To do so, it called for ousting Saddam Hussein and installing a Hashemite leader in Baghdad. From that point, the strategy would be largely focused on Syria and, at the least, to reducing its influence in Lebanon.

Among other steps, the report called for Israeli sponsorship of attacks on Syrian territory by "Israeli proxy forces" based in Lebanon and "striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper". 

Wurmser is a close friend and political ally at the AEI with Richard N. Perle. Perle wrote the introduction to Wurmser's book "Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein." 

Affiliations

 * Fellow, American Enterprise Institute (emeritus)
 * "Golden Circle" Member, United States Committee for a Free Lebanon (USCFL)
 * Director of Research in Strategy and Politics Program, Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (Jerusalem) (1996)
 * Director of Institutional Grants, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1994-96)
 * Project Officer, United States Institute of Peace (1988-94)

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Eleana Benador
 * Michael Rubin
 * Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000
 * think tank

Articles by David Wurmser

 * Middle East Forum articles.
 * American Enterprise Institute publications.
 * "Iraq Needs a Revolution", Wall Street Journal, November 12, 1997.
 * "America Attacked: The Middle East," Washington Post, September 21, 2001.

Undated

 * David Wurmser, Neocon Europe.
 * Ira Chernus, (Professor of Religious Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder), ":U.S. Arms Control Hypocrisy is the Real Threat to Security", undated.

1998

 * Seth Gitell, Free Iraqi Resistance Calling on Jewry For Support in Quest to Depose Saddam. Allies of Chalabi Meet Ambassador Gold, Warn of White House Folly, Forward, July 31, 1998: "An adviser to INC chairman Ahmad Chalabi, Francis Brooke, and a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, David Wurmser, met with Israel's permanent representative to the United Nations, Dore Gold, last Friday to begin the process of getting Israel to back the" Iraqi National Congress (INC).

2001

 * America Attacked: The Middle East. With David Wurmser, Director of Middle East studies for the American Enterprise Institute, Live Online Interview with The Washington Post, September 24, 2001.

2002

 * Brian Whitaker, "US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy," Salon, August 19, 2002.
 * Jill Junnola, "Campus Watch: Perspective: Who funds whom?", Energy Compass, October 4, 2002.

2003

 * Jim Lobe, "Familiar hawks take aim," Asia Times, April 17, 2003.
 * Jim Lobe, "New Cheney Adviser Sets Syria In His Sights," antiwar.com, October 21, 2003: "David Wurmser, who had been working for Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, joined Cheney's staff under its powerful national security director, I. Lewis Libby, in mid-September [2003], according to Cheney's office."

2004

 * Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest, "The Lie Factory, Mother Jones, January 26, 2004.
 * Maggie Mitchell-Salem, "The devil and David Wurmser," Lebanonwire, February 4, 2004.
 * Kathleen Christison and Bill Christison, "Dual Loyalties. The Bush Neocons and Israel," CounterPunch, September 6, 2004.
 * Anonymous, "The State Department's extreme makeover," Salon, October 4, 2004.

2007

 * "The Architects of War: Where Are They Now?" Think Progress, July 2007.
 * Jim Lobe, "Likudnik Hawks Work to Undermine Annapolis," Inter Press Service (Antiwar.com), November 22, 2007.