Keep America Safe: A Family Affair
It's no coincidence that just as Dick Cheney began his speech Wednesday night slamming President Obama for "dithering" on Afghanistan, a link to his talk shot up on the Web site of a new political advocacy group—the one being run by his daughter, Liz Cheney.
The tie-in illustrates how the two Cheneys are working together to tear down Obama's standing on national-security issues—a goal they view as critical to vindicating the policies of the Bush-Cheney years.
Even as Cheney continues his attacks on Obama on a whole range of issues—including shutting down the Guantánamo Bay detention facility and the Justice Department's investigation of Bush-era torture—Liz Cheney's new group, Keep America Safe, is gearing up to run a series of targeted radio and Web ads hitting the president in the home districts of vulnerable Democratic congressmen, said Michael Goldfarb, a political strategist for the group.
The ads, according to Goldfarb will "drill down" on Guantánamo, highlighting the terrorist background of especially dangerous detainees and suggesting that Obama's policies might result in the accused terrorists being let loose and allowed to walk free in the member of Congress' district.
The theme of the new ad campaign is going to be "Do you really want this guy in the neighborhood?" said Goldfarb, who is an editor at The Weekly Standard magazine and a former spokesman for John McCain's campaign war room.
There are, of course, multiple ironies behind the ad campaign, starting with the fact that McCain also backed shutting down Gitmo. Moreover, Obama administration officials have repeatedly said the only Gitmo detainees they now expect to bring to the U.S. are those who will stand trial in federal courts—or those who will be locked up indefinitely in maximum-security prisons (though even that scenario may not fly with a skittish Congress).
But Keep America Safe leaders, including Liz Cheney and Goldfarb's Weekly Standard boss, William Kristol, are convinced the issue has political traction. The group plans to morph the radio campaign in about six months into higher-profile television ads that will be deisgned keep the issue front and center during next year's congressional races.
All this will raise new questions about who is funding Keep America Safe. The group formally launched last week with a Web video ad soliciting contributions from the public and the group has already "exceeded expectations," Goldfarb said. But Goldfarb and Debra Burlingame, the sister of a 9/11 victim and also a director of the group, told NEWSWEEK that Keep America Safe had also received "seed money" from a small number of major donors—contributions that Goldfarb says has already put the group's finances into the "six figures." (He refused to say how much or who the donors are.) But one GOP fundraising source said there was considerable interest in helping to back the group at a meeting two weeks ago of the Republican Jewish Coalition, an organization that includes a number of wealthy Repubican donors, said Matt Brooks, executive director of the group. Among those who had expressed such interest, said another coalition member who asked not to be identified talking about fundraising matters, was Mel Sembler, President George W. Bush's former ambassador to Italy and a top GOP fundraiser who also served as the executive director of Scooter Libby's defense trust. (Sembler did not return a call seeking comment and Goldfarb said the group has so far not received any money from Sembler.)
No surprise, though, that also appearing at Cheney's speech before the Center for Security Policy was Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff. Despite Cheney's efforts, Libby never received a presidential pardon for his conviction in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case. But the former Cheney staffer did get a consolation prize: the center's Service Before Sel" award—as well as a standing ovation, to boot.
Update: Mel Sembler says he will donate to Keep America Safe.
Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.
Michael Isikoff has been an award-winning investigative correspondent for Newsweek since 2004. He has written extensively on the U.S. government's war on terrorism, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential politics and other national issues. His book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," co-written with David Corn, was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was published in September, 2006. The book was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "fascinating reading" and "the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations" in the run up to the war in Iraq. Since January 2009, Isikoff has been an MSNBC contributor, making regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball w/ Chris Matthews.
Ever since the events of September 11, Isikoff has broken repeated stories about the U.S. government's war on terror and won numerous journalism awards. His blog "DeClassified: Investigative Reporting in Real Time," which appears regularly on Newsweek's Web site and is written with MarkHosenball, has become a must-read for senior U.S. intelligence officials. Isikoff and Hosenball won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online.
Isikoff's June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For that coverage, Isikoff obtained exclusive internal White House, Justice Department and State Department memos showing how decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush administration led to abuses in the interrogation of terror suspects. Isikoff was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, the highest award in magazine journalism, for their coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman." His coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton's impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff's reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine.
Isikoff is the author of "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story and was hailed by a critic for The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times news service as "the absolutely essential narrative of the scandal with revelations that no one would have thought possible." The book, also a New York Times bestseller, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club.
Isikoff came to Newsweek from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America and worked on the Post's financial news desk. Isikoff graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
Comments