The Hawk

Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense

Dec 22, 1943 Born in New York City to statistician/information theorist Jacob Wolfowitz.

1965 Receives an A.B. degree in mathematics and chemistry from Cornell University.

1972 Receives a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in political science and economics during the tenure of Leo Strauss. Wolfowitz becomes and remains a "Straussian," a philosophy that decries the weakness of democratic "egalitarianism," and advocates the right of the power elite to lie "nobly" to keep the ignorant masses in line.

1973-1977 Holds a variety of positions in the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency including Special Assistant to the Director for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.

1977-1980 Serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Regional Programs where he helps create what later becomes the U. S. Central Command and initiates Maritime Pre-positioning Ships, the backbone of U.S. military deployment twelve years later in Operation Desert Shield.

1982-1986 During the Reagan years he serves as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

1986-1989 Serves as the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia.

1989-1993 Appointed Under Secretary of Defense for Policy responsible to Secretary of Defense Cheney. During this period Wolfowitz and his staff have major responsibilities for reshaping U.S. global military strategy and force posture at the end of the Cold War. Under his leadership, the policy staff also plays a major role in structuring and executing plans for the Gulf War.

May 24, 1992 The New York Times leaks a Pentagon memo crafted by Wolfowitz and his team which outlines plans to preserve American global supremacy by thwarting the rise of any potential rival superpower. The document argues for expanding existing American military commitments and for resisting efforts by allies to provide their own defense. Among other things, the plan would require maintenance of a constant military force of at least 1.6 million active duty troops.

1997 Becomes a leading participant in the Project for the New American Century, a right-wing think tank which advocates a new foreign policy with regard to Iraq and other "potential aggressor states" favoring "preemptive strikes" over "containment." Other members include Cheney, Rumsfeld and Jeb Bush.

January 26, 1998 With other neoconservatives like Rumsfeld, James Woolsey and Richard Perle, he sends a letter to President Bill Clinton which calls for a policy of pre-emptive action against "rogue" nations. First target: Saddam Hussein. Clinton rejects the proposal as too radical.

March 2, 2001 Is sworn in as George W. Bush's Deputy Secretary of Defense.

September 15, 2001 In an emergency meeting of Bush's top security advisers which has been called to develop a plan to retaliate for the 9/11 attacks, Wolfowitz states that a war in Afghanistan has the makings of a quagmire and that Saddam Hussein is not only a bigger threat to American security than Osama BinLaden but also an easier target. Although Wolfowitz's proposal is rejected by most of the other advisers, Bush privately tells him to draw up a plan for invading Iraq.

2001-present According to former CIA Director George Tenet, Wolfowitz and other high-profile hawks rewrite the CIA's intelligence on Iraq to help Bush build a case for war. They knowingly use suspect intelligence from Iraqi defectors including Ahmed Chalabi. Although funded for years by the Pentagon to gather intelligence on Iraq, Chalabi's claims had previously been dismissed by the CIA as nothing but thinly veiled propaganda. He has since been disowned by the Bush administration. Once the intelligence is rewritten, it becomes incorporated into speeches before the U.N. by Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell who use it as factual documentation justifying a preemptive invasion of Iraq.