Hawkish analysts tied to arms industry influenced US-led wars

Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, “a husband-and-wife team of hawkish military analysts,” left their jobs at major conservative and militaristic think tanks in Washington to serve the commander of US-led occupation forces in Afghanistan as top adviser for nearly a year without even getting paid for it, US-based daily The Washington Post reveals in a report on Wednesday.

    Given top-level security clearances, desks and email accounts in US military headquarters in Kabul, the Kagans “pored through classified intelligence reports, participated in senior-level strategy sessions and probed the assessments of field officers in order to advise Petraeus about how to fight the war differently,” the report says.


The Kagans claimed the reason the desired no payment for their work was that they wanted to remain “completely independent.” However, they report adds, “the extraordinary arrangement raises new questions about the access and influence Petraeus accorded to civilian friends while he was running the Afghan war.”

Petraeus was forced to resign as director of the premier US spy agency in November after it was revealed that he had engaged in an extramarital affair with his female biographer, Paula Broadwell, who was also granted unfettered access to him, his military headquarters and his subordinates.

    The report, citing unnamed American military and civilian officials, further entails that the Kagans, who have ties with major US weapon producers and military contractors such as DynCorp International, CACI International and General Dynamics Corporation, used their privileges as senior advisers to Petraeus “to advocate substantive changes in the US war plan, including a harder-edged approach than some US officers advocated in combating the Haqqani network, a Taliban faction in eastern Afghanistan.”


The pro-bono relationship, the daily adds, offered “valuable benefits” to the general ant the two right-wing analysts.

“The Kagans’ proximity to Petraeus, the country’s most-famous living general, provided an incentive for defense contractors to contribute to Kim Kagan’s think tank,” the Institute for the Study of War, “which favors an aggressive US foreign policy.”

For Petraeus, moreover, “embracing two respected national security analysts in GOP circles helped to shore up support for the war among Republican leaders on Capitol Hill.”

Fred Kagan, according to the report, works at the well-known conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, and “was one of the intellectual architects of President George W. Bush’s troop surge in Iraq and has sided with the Republican Party on many national security issues.

The lengthy report further unveils details of how other American civilian analysts with ties to influential conservative think tanks and the nation’s military industry were offered access to secret war data as military advisors by senior US commanders, with the expectation that they would publish articles in major media outlets, supporting and praising the work of the commanders in leading US-led foreign wars.