Fred C. Iklé

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Fred C. Iklé  link Sourcewatch (Deep state operative)
File:Fred C. Iklé.jpg
Born	21 August 1924 Samedan, Switzerland.
Died	10 November 2011
Nationality	US
Alma mater	University of Zurich,University of Chicago
Interests	Mujahedin,Operation Cyclone,Psyops,Polwar
US deep state operative in the Reagan Administration, where he was proponent of psyops and supporting insurgencies. Attended Le Cercle RAND Corporation, Smith Richardson Foundation, National Endowment for Democracy, Center for Strategic and International Studies...

Fred C. Iklé was US Deep state operative. He was employed as Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Reagan Administration.

Background

Iklé was born in Samedan, Switzerland. He moved to the United States in 1946. In addition to positions at the Rand Corp., Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he worked in the Nixon and Ford administrations as director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Reagan Administration

According to Frances Fitzgerald, Caspar Weinberger's lack of experience in the portfolio meant that the appointments to the Department of Defense were heavily influenced by Senate Republicans and conservative campaign advisors. Iklé's appointment was one product of this, as were the appointments of John Lehman, Jr. and Richard Perle. All three had been allies in the seventies and involved with the Committee on the Present Danger.

Iklé complained about the CIA's Office of Soviet Analysis after it revised down its estimate of Soviet military spending in 1983.

SDI

In 1985, Iklé told the Senate Armed Services Committee: "The Strategic Defense Initiative is not an optional program, at the margin of the defense effort. It's central, at the very core of our long term policy for reducing the risk of nuclear war." In April 1985, after a Pentagon report raised doubts about the admissibility of SDI under the ABM Treaty, Iklé and Perle hired Philip Kunsberg, a New York lawyer with no experience of arms control, who reached a contrary opinion.

Afghanistan

From early 1985, Iklé was an influential member of the Policy Review Group which controlled US covert action in Afghanistan. At one meeting that spring he suggested that US planes should drop weapons into Afghanistan by parachute.

Someone asked: What if the Russians begin shooting down the U.S. planes and ignite World War III? "Hmmm," Iklé answered, according to Thomas Twetten, a senior officer in the CIA's clandestine service. "World War III. That's not such a bad idea." If he said such a thing , Ikle said later, he must have been kidding. But Twetten remembered "a roomful of dumbstruck people."

Iklé and Michael Pillsbury visited Islamabad on 30 April 1985 to brief ISI chief General Akhtar Abdur Rahman on the planned expansion of US covert action in Afghanistan.

Iklé was also involved in the Contras in Nicaragua.

Psychological operations

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“Approximate military parity between the superpowers enhances the importance of PSYOP and POLWAR [Political Warfare]. Major adversaries equally armed and equally capable of destroying each other must turn away from shooting wars to settle their genuine conflicts. POLWAR and PSYOP pose a lower risk of escalation. Our era has become the age of terrorism, insurgency, and limited war because each of these is an essentially political method of struggle. In this era of superpower confrontation, it is no longer facetious to set Clausewitz' dictum, "War is the continuation of politics by other means," on its head. In our modern world, international politics is the continuation of war by other means.”
Fred Iklé (1986) 

Affiliations

• RAND Corporation
• U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency - Director 1973-1977
• Republican National Committee - Chairman of Advisory Council on International Security, 1977-1978
• Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy - Co-chair 1987
• Center for Strategic and International Studies - Distinguished Scholar
• Defense Policy Board - Member
• Smith Richardson Foundation - Governor
• U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea - Director
• Center for Security Policy - Advisory board member
• CMC Energy Services - chairman
• National Endowment for Democracy - Former director
• National Commission on Terrorism - Commissioner 1999-2000
• Telos Corporation - Former director and chairman
• Zurich Financial Services - Former Director of the Advisory Board

References