Clifford May: How Think Tanks Influence Policy in Washington, D.C.

Clifford May, founder and head of The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), spoke to a July 25^th Middle East Forum Webinar (video) about the importance of a think tank’s impact on policies that strengthen U.S. national security.

May’s career as a political consultant in Washington DC shifted after his momentous meeting with former Congressman and Cabinet Official Jack Kemp, and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick, just prior to 9/11. Kemp and Kirkpatrick charged May with developing an organization to research the ideology, ignored by the media, behind the multiple deadly attacks against American targets between 1983 and 2000.

May recalled their conversation with him at that fateful meeting. "... [I]t’s our conviction that the United States is taking a holiday from history ... a premature peace dividend. People think that because the Soviet Union is collapsed, because the Berlin wall is no more, we have no enemies.” Kemp and Kirkpatrick had been equally disturbed the Palestinian intifada that had begun in the late eighties and that unleashed suicide bombers targeting Israel’s civilian population. The two surmised that the grievances terrorizing America’s strategic ally in the Mideast could soon spread across the Muslim world and set its sights on the U.S.

Kemp and Kirkpatrick understood how the lack of public awareness of, and dearth of information on, the Islamist jihadi ideology behind the first World Trade Center attack, the bombings of the Khobar Towers and the U.S.S. Cole, and attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa, put America at risk. Tragically, the 9/11attack occurred within a week of May’s meeting. He became committed to their vision and went on to establish the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, educating policymakers, legislators, and the public regarding the terrorist threat.

May’s background as a foreign correspondent covering the Iranian revolution in 1979 enabled him to understand that the uprising in Tehran was an “Islamic revolution ... meant to be global.” Ayatollah Khomeini had been writing about that very aim since the 1940s, and the ripple effect of the Shia mullah’s apocalyptic vision of Iran’s “first modern nation state, committed to a jihad against the West,” caught fire in the Sunni world. May said, “I would argue that from that seed, al-Qaeda was born.”

May said another event in 1979 “got less media attention” but was just as pivotal. Islamic radicals launched a siege of Mecca in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), which ended only when the royals called in French special forces. Not to be outdone, the Kingdom chose to establish its legitimacy as sponsors of the Wahhabi sect of Islam by committing to fund “billions of dollars [for] madrassas in Pakistan” to inculcate students in the jihadi ideology. May said the Saudis have since eschewed that strategy, with one Saudi telling him, “We created a Frankenstein monster which was al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups. And that monster attacked you on 9/11 and has attacked us since.”

May’s point of pride is that FDD “has never taken any foreign money,” whereas countries like Qatar have spent “a huge amount of money” with the intent of buying influence with other important think tanks in Washington. Foreign money spent on campuses to endow chairs influence the professors hired and, in turn, the students they teach. He said, “We have enemies on the field that we have to fight. They’re going into congressional offices [and] to policymakers with very different messages than we are. They’re talking about Islamophobia.” Worse still, he said, is how the U.N. has become “de-facto, the enemy of the state of Israel.” By labeling the Jewish state “apartheid,” the state’s very existence is called into question, thereby justifying “any means ... used to destroy you.”

Groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which echo the “apartheid” calumny against Israel, receive vast amounts of funding to further their antisemitism. May said, “The goal of ... the most vicious twentieth century antisemitism was a Europe that would be cleansed of all Jews. And the Holocaust ... [destroyed] the Jewish communities of Europe. The goal of twenty-first century antisemitism ... is a Middle East without the sole surviving and thriving Jewish community that exists; and that’s Israel.” Accusations of apartheid are particularly specious given that “twenty percent of Israelis are [minorities],” and that Israel’s Arab Muslim’s legally entitled to “more rights than the Arabs and Muslims in the twenty Arab countries, or more than fifty countries that are part of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.”

In the two decades since its founding, FDD has expanded its initial focus on terrorism to a wide range of policy issues covering Arab politics, biodefense, domestic extremism, China, and the Iran nuclear deal. The organization has grown to over sixty employees that include former deputy national security advisors, and to three centers researching economic power, military power, and cyber power and security. May said that in FDD’s first six months, it had more than two thousand “research requests” from a variety of sources, including the government and media. He describes FDD’s output as “demand side” research for “congressional offices” in finding out “what they need and doing the research ... more accurately, more [reliably] than they could get” from government sources which are saddled with inherent problems.

Recently, FDD expanded its role as a 501(c)3 research organization limited in its lobbying, to its new initiative, FDD Action, a 501(c)4 with dedicated funding that enables the think tank to expand its lobbying in specific ways. May explained that lobbying is far more than advocating for specific bills or laws with members of Congress. FDD Action puts the think tank’s researchers at the disposal of congressmen with limited staff who want assistance crafting legislative bills on key issues. One example is the organization’s pro-sanctions position on Iran. FDD Action can “prepare a sanctions package” specifying the industry and company because there are team members who worked at the Treasury Department and understand the process.

As well as its support of the sanctions imposed on Iran, FDD’s list of policy issues enhancing national security include America’s presence in Syria, and the organization’s program in support of the surge in Iraq, which resulted in decisive gains for the U.S. under General Petraeus. May said FDD had “a lot of influence” under the Trump and Bush 41 administrations, but less influence during the Obama and Biden administrations. “I do think we have some influence on policy. That’s what think tanks are meant to do. ... I tell our supporters ... if we fight and we [are] very smart and we work really hard, we may not win the battles, but if we don’t fight ... and we leave the field to our enemies, we will definitely not win.”