Frederick H. Fleitz

Fred Fleitz (born 1962) is a Senior Vice President for Policy and Programs with the Center for Security Policy, former CIA analyst, news commentator, and public speaker.

Fleitz writes extensively and does frequent news media interviews, especially on the Fox News Channel, on nuclear proliferation, radical Islam, terrorism, cyber security and other issues. He has been outspoken in condemning the Obama administration’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran.

Government career

Fleitz served in U.S. government national security positions for 25 years with the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of State, and the staff of the U.S. House of Representatives.Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence ^[1]

Central Intelligence Agency

Fleitz spent 19 years with the CIA working on a variety of areas, including the CIA Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center (WINPAC). He used his experiences as a CIA UN analyst to write his 2002 book, "Peacekeeping Fiascoes of the 1990s: Causes Solutions and U.S. Interests."^[2]

Chief of Staff to Under Secretary Bolton

From 2001-2006, CIA loaned Fleitz to the State Department where he served as chief of staff to Undersecretaries of State for Arms Control John Bolton (2001–2005) and Robert Joseph (2005–2006). As Bolton's chief of staff, Fleitz helped shepherd his policies through the State Department, represented Mr. Bolton on arms control delegations, and acquired a reputation for toughness. Arianna Huffington described Fleitz in a 2005 article as “Bolton’s chief enforcer.”^[3]

Fleitz’s name first hit the press in the spring of 2005 during the battle in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to confirm Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Several accounts describe difficult challenges Fleitz faced as Bolton's Chief of Staff, mostly involving conflict over a controversial speech Bolton delivered on a possible Cuban biological weapons program. Most contemporaneous press accounts in 2005 portrayed this matter as a personnel dispute over a disagreement with two intelligence officers over assertions Bolton wanted to make in the speech. In his own testimony, Fleitz said one of analysts had forwarded Bolton's speech for the CIA to review, but attached his own dissenting commentary and then denied doing so. This led to a confrontation and an apology from the analyst's supervisors. Fleitz testified that the other analyst campaigned against the speech after it had been delivered to Congress and the press.^[4][5][6][7]

Two 2007 best-selling books provided more context about this dispute. Investigative reporter Kenneth Timmerman in his 2007 book "Shadow Warriors" (Crown Forum) wrote that controversy over Bolton's 2002 Cuba speech stemmed from heavy pressure from a small number of intelligence officers who favored a softer line on Cuba. Timmerman claims these intelligence analysts politicized Bolton's text and that Fleitz resisted their efforts.^[8] Rowan Scarborough, in his 2007 book "Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA" (Regnery) came to a similar conclusion and wrote that Fleitz paid a professional price for defending Bolton and standing up to political pressure from rogue CIA and State Department intelligence analysts.^[9]

House Intelligence Committee Staff

From 2006-2011, Fleitz was a senior staff member with House Intelligence Committee and a senior adviser to the committee's Ranking Member, Congressman Peter Hoekstra R-Michigan. He was the Republican staff expert on WMD proliferation, especially the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs.^[10] Shortly after he joined the intelligence committee staff in 2006, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern accused Chairman Hoekstra of bringing Fleitz to the committee as a "hired gun" in response to press reports that he was the principal author of a controversial, hard-hitting committee report on the Iranian nuclear weapons program, Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States.^[11]

Post-Government Career

In 2011, Fleitz was hired by Newsmax Media to found the Langley Intelligence Group Network (LIGNET), an online international analysis and forecasting service. He served as the LIGNET Director until 2013 when he was named a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy.^[12] In February 2015, the Center named Fleitz senior vice president for policy and programs. Fleitz has written many articles for the Center on radical Islam, the Middle East, the Iranian nuclear program and intelligence reform.^[13][14][15]

Writing and Media

Fleitz has written extensively on national security issues since he left government on nuclear proliferation, radical Islam, terrorism, cyber security, intelligence reform, the CIA enhanced interrogation program, the Snowden leaks and other issues. His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Investor’s Business Daily, National Review Online, The Washington Times, Newsmax, and other publications.^[16][17][18]

Fleitz is a frequent media commenter on the Fox News Channel^[19][20] and other major US and international media outlets on the Iranian nuclear program, terrorism, the situation in Iraq and Syria, and the Snowden leaks, and other issues.^[21][22][23]

Opposition to Obama Administration's Nuclear Diplomacy With Iran

Fleitz has been outspoken in criticizing the Obama administration's nuclear diplomacy with Iran and the July 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran in his media appearances and op-eds. Fleitz believes the Obama administration's Iran policy is dangerously naïve and has conceded a nuclear weapons capability to Tehran. He believes the nuclear talks with Iran that began in early 2014 were hopelessly flawed and should have been halted. Fleitz favors a nuclear agreement with Iran by a future U.S. administration that halts all Iranian uranium enrichment, requires Iran to send all of its enriched uranium out of the country, permanently halts work on the Arak heavy water reactor, and requires Iran to fully cooperate with the IAEA, including answering all outstanding questions about past nuclear weapons-related work. He co-authored a plan with Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney in September 2015, "Can the Nuclear Deal With Iran Be Fixed?" on how to amend the Iran nuclear deal so it would not endanger Americans and international security.^{[24][25][26][27][28]}

References