(Lawrence J. Korb and Brian Katulis, Strategic Redeployment: A Progressive Plan for Iraq and the Struggle Against Violent Extremists, Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, October 2005.)
* The Shadow Party's leading policy organization and spin machine
* Run by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta
* Helped launch "Media Matters for America" - a media ethics watchdog group run by David Brock, who has publicly confessed to writing false, political hatchet jobs for pay
* Key players: Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Morton Halperin, Harold Ickes, John Podesta
Inside sources have described the Center for American Progress (CAP) as "the official Hillary Clinton think tank" - a platform designed to highlight Hillary's policies and to enhance her prestige as a potential presidential candidate.
On its Web site, CAP describes itself as, "a nonpartisan research and educational institute" aimed at "developing a long-term vision of a progressive America" and "providing a forum to generate new progressive ideas and policy proposals."
CAP is one of the Seven Sister organizations forming the administrative core of the Democrat Shadow Party. The other Seven Sisters constituent groups are America Coming Together, America Votes, Joint Victory Campaign 2004, The Media Fund, Moveon, and The Thunder Road Group.
Among CAP's expert commentators are Eric Alterman - who claims expertise on the subjects of media and democracy - and Morton J. Halperin, who offers to speak on national security. For more, see the "American Progress experts directory."
History
The Center for American Progress (CAP) was the brainchild of George Soros and Morton H. Halperin, the latter a veteran leftist critic of national security policies. Robert Dreyfuss reports in the March 1, 2004 edition of The Nation:
"The idea for the Center began with discussions in 2002 between [Morton] Halperin and George Soros, the billionaire investor. … Halperin, who heads the office of Soros' Open Society Institute, brought [former Clinton chief of staff John] Podesta into the discussion, and beginning in late 2002 Halperin and Podesta circulated a series of papers to funders."
Soros and Halperin reportedly recruited Harold Ickes - chief fundraiser and former deputy chief of staff for the Clinton White House - to help organize the Center. It was launched on July 7, 2003 as the American Majority Institute. The name was changed to Center for American Progress (CAP) on September 1, 2003.
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Regarding the new think tank proposed by Soros and Halperin, Hillary Clinton told Matt Bai of The New York Times Magazine on October 12, 2003, "We need some new intellectual capital. There has to be some thought given as to how we build the 21st-century policies that reflect the Democrat Party's values."
Expanding on this theme, Hillary later told The Nation's Robert Dreyfuss, "We've had the challenge of filling a void on our side of the ledger for a long time, while the other side created an infrastructure that has come to dominate political discourse. The center is a welcome effort to fill that void.
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Hillary Clinton tries to minimize the depth of her involvement with the Center for American Progress (CAP) - as indeed she does habitually in all matters connected with the Shadow Party. Beltway insiders are not fooled, however. Persistent press leaks confirm that Hillary calls the shots at CAP - not John Podesta.
"It's the official Hillary Clinton think tank," an inside source confided to Christian Bourge of United Press International.
Many ideological purists on the Left dismiss the Center as a platform for Hillary's presidential ambitions. And, of course, they are right.
As Robert Dreyfuss notes in The Nation, "In looking at Podesta's center, there's no escaping the imprint of the Clintons. It's not completely wrong to see it as a shadow government, a kind of Clinton White-House-in-exile - or a White House staff in readiness for President Hillary Clinton."
Dreyfuss notes the abundance of Clintonites on the Center's staff, among them Clinton's national security speechwriter Robert Boorstin; Democratic Leadership Council staffer and former head of Clinton's National Economic Council Gene Sperling; former senior advisor to Clinton's Office of Management and Budget Matt Miller; and so on. Dreyfuss writes:
"[T]he center's kickoff conference on national security in October [2003], co-organized with The American Prospect and the Century Foundation, looked like a Clinton reunion, featuring Robert Rubin, Clinton's Treasury Secretary; William Perry, his Defense Secretary; Sandy Berger, his National Security Adviser; Richard Holbrooke and Susan Rice, both Clinton-era Assistant Secretaries of State; Rodney Slater, his Transportation Secretary; and Carol Browner, his EPA administrator, who serves on the center's board of directors."
Naturally, Hillary Clinton also attended the event, Dreyfuss reports.
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On May 3, 2004, CAP helped launch David Brock's Media Matters for America - a 501(c)(03) public charity (EIN 47-0928008), better known for its Web site MediaMatters.org. Inasmuch as Media Matters claims to serve as a "watchdog" organization, monitoring "rightwing" media for ethics and accuracy, it is revealing that David Brock - a self-confessed liar who admits to having fabricated evidence while writing journalistic hatchet jobs for pay - has been appointed its President and CEO.
According to The New York Times - which announced Brock's grand opening with a 1,025-word feature on May 3, 2004 - Brock conferred with Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Tom Daschle and former Vice President Al Gore about Media Matters before embarking on the project.
"Mr. Brock's project was developed with help from the newly formed Center for American Progress," notes The Times, and CAP president John Podesta "introduced [Brock] to potential donors."
Brock reportedly received $2 million for the start-up. The New York Times states that his donors include Hillary friend Susie Tompkins Buell, co-founder of the fashion company Esprit; former Global Crossing CEO Leo Hindery Jr.; and San Francisco philanthropist James C. Hormel - an enthusiastic promoter of the "gay lifetstyle" - whom Clinton appointed ambassador to Luxembourg in the 1990s.
Media Matters provides "rapid response" rebuttals to any and all conservative viewpoints which happen to find their way into mainstream media. In its short life, Media Matters has already acquired a reputation for virulent partisanship and reckless disregard for the truth.
http://tinyurl.com/h4zz7