Freedom's Watch

Freedom's Watch registered September 17, 2007, with the Secretary of the U.S. Senate as a non-profit lobbying organization. Lobbyists listed for Freedom's Watch are Bradley A. Blakeman (identified as having served within the past two years as "Deputy Assistant to the President, Presidential Appointee to the US Holocaust Museum") (Blakeman stepped down as Freedom's Watch president in March 2008 amid reported "internal dysfunction" within the group ) ; Michael Leavitt (identifed as having served within the past two years as "Staff Asst & Regional Rep, [NC State] Senator [John] Snow"); and Matt David (identified as having served within the past two years as "Director of Rapid Response; White House Special Asst. to Director of Policy, Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance").

Carl Forti joined Freedom's Watch on March 26, 2008. He is a former communications director at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) who worked for Republican Mitt Romney's 2008 presidential campaign team. . Chris Cillizza commented that "Forti's hiring should quiet some nerves among Republican strategists who saw Freedom's Watch as largely without a clear mission with just eight months until the 2008 general election. The departure of former president Bradley Blakeman earlier this month was a clear sign of the discontent among donors and others affiliated with the group. (The group has not yet filled Blakeman's vacancy.)"

Freedom's Watch has been described by critics as a front group for White House policy and a "neo-conservative 'slush fund' supporting the views of Vice President Dick Cheney", "came out of" a December 2006 "event" at the American Enterprise Institute when retired Gen. Jack Keane and AEI scholar Frederick W. Kagan "talk[ed] about the need for a troop increase in Iraq, "a plan adopted by" President George W. Bush in January 2007.

Freedom's Watch, the "$200 million mouthpiece for military action", was "hatched" in March 2007 at the "winter meeting" of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) in Manalapan, Fla., where keynote speaker Vice President Dick Cheney "accused the Democrat-led House of Representatives of not supporting troops in Iraq and of sending a message to terrorists that America will retreat in the face danger." The RJC was described in 2005 as "a big money pro-Israel lobby group linking Jewish-American neoconservatives to the Christian Right and Israel's Likud government."

Freedom's Watch "denies coordinating its activities with the White House", Don Van Natta Jr. wrote September 30, 2007, in the New York Times, although "many donors and organizers, including Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary, are well-connected" to the Bush administration. It should also be noted that in November 1998 the Republican Jewish Coalition took then-Texas Governor George W. Bush on his first tour of Israel, with "the 43rd president [emerging] as one of the most pro-Israel figures in American political history."

In fact, "it is the link with Cheney that is the strongest, leading to the widespread view that the organisation is in effect his own creature", as, in September 2007, "it emerged that Cheney had asked a number of right-wing think tanks to start building the case for war against Iran."

The Freedom's Watch "inner circle of strategists and donors are close to Vice President Dick Cheney or held high posts at the White House," the Associated Press's Jim Kuhnhenn wrote September 28, 2007. Bradley A. Blakeman, president of Freedom's Watch, is a former deputy assistant to President George W. Bush. Fleischer is a Freedom's Watch co-founder and spokesman. During summer 2007, Mary Matalin "brainstormed" with Blakeman, Kuhnhenn wrote. Matalin formerly served as an assistant to President Bush and as a counselor to Cheney, is a member of the Legal Defense Fund Advisory Board for I. Lewis Scooter Libby, who was a former Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to Cheney (2001-2005), and is a lead publicist for Republican 2008 presidential hopeful Fred Thompson.

Freedom's Watch is not the first propaganda group created by the Bush administration, as we are reminded of the White House Iraq Group formed in 2003 by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card to sell the war in Iraq. WHIG also included Matalin and Scooter Libby.

Comparing Republican Freedom's Watch to MoveOn.org, "the progressive electronic advocacy group opposing both the Iraq buildup and any military action in Iran", Matalin said "We were ahead of the Democrats on think tanks and white paper operations that feed the Congress and are the source of new ideas based on conservative principles, ... Where they jumped ahead of us was by adding the communications arm to that."

"But, as Eli Pariser, the executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action, argues that Freedom's Watch may have money, but it doesn't have a base of support. ... 'The main difference is that MoveOn is a group of 3.3 million,' he said. 'Freedom's Watch is a few mega millionaires.'"

"Ideologically," Fleischer stated, Freedom's Watch was "inspired by much of Ronald Reagan's thinking: peace through strength, protect and defend America, and prosperity through free enterprise."

Freedom's Watch has been described as "a covert 'cut-out' organization" and an "outfit dedicated to keeping the war industry thriving"; a "sort of shadow White House communications shop [that] has emerged to help the beleaguered president sell his unpopular war to the American people"; and the "Swift Boaters for War", although none of the millions in "swiftboat" money like that contributed by Bob Perry in 2004 or to the Economic Freedom Fund in 2006 has surfaced ... yet.

What "outsiders"?
Pointing to the names of those cited in Kuhnhenn's September 28, 2007, Associated Press article as "outsiders", Elizabeth Ferrari commented October 1, 2007, in OpEdNews:


 * The "roster of PNACers involved in this project – L. Scooter Libby, Mary Maitlan [sic], consultants from the so called 'think tank' The American Enterprise Institute, as well as former White House officials Ari Fleisher [sic] and Bradley Blakeman, begs the question in what sense can this group be called 'outsiders'. Outside of the West wing or, outside of the Bush Cabinet? Or, maybe only outside of public view?"

About those first ad buys (and RJC PAC campaign contributions)
On August 22, 2007, Freedom's Watch began a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign "to urge members of Congress who may be wavering in their support for the war in Iraq not to 'cut and run'."

It should be noted that among those targeted in the first ad buy was Norman Coleman, one of only three Republican Jewish members in Congress "who has had a long association" with the Republican Jewish Coalition. The RJC's political action committee funded several trips for Coleman, including a $7,175.00 5-day trip to Israel in August 2005.

It should also be noted that in the 2007-2008 election cycle, as of October 1, 2007, the Republican Jewish Coalition's political action committee has contributed $16,000.00 to Republican candidates. The sum of $10,000.00 went to Norman Coleman and $5,000.00 to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Me.), another candidate targeted in Freedom's Watch's ads.

Neither Coleman or Collins received any PAC funds from the Republican Jewish Coalition in the 2005-2006 campaign cycle. Curiously, Coleman did not receive any RJC PAC funds in the 2003-2004 campaign cycle either, although he was quoted in September 2004 as declaring "I wouldn't be in the United States Senate without the strong support of the Republican Jewish Coalition."

"By the way, Freedom's Watch has ducked real scrutiny (or fact-checking) on their ads to date but the higher profile they build, the more likely the scrutiny will come. They got fairly little grief for linking Iraq and 9/11 in their first TV ads," Delmonico Montanaro commented October 1, 2007, at MSNBC's First Read.

Jamestown Associates
"The controversial ads are the handiwork of Jamestown Associates, whose client list also includes the Republican Jewish Council [sic] and Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of Israel's Likud Party," David McKee wrote September 13, 2007, for Las Vegas CityLife. Freedom's Watch funder Sheldon Adelson's "Israeli newspaper, the free daily Yisrael Hayom, launched [in August 2007], is perceived in media circles as a mouthpiece for Netanyahu. And five board members of the Republican Jewish Council [sic] -- including Adelson, Fleischer, (Lewis) Libby Legal Defense Trust chair Mel Sembler -- turn up in the directorate or on the donor roll of Freedom's Watch," McKee wrote.

About the organization: founders, funders and key personnel
"The group is organized under section 501(c)4 of the tax code, meaning that it can lobby on issues but cannot expressly advocate for specific candidates. Its stated mission is 'to ensure a strong national defense and a powerful effort to confront and defeat global terrorism'," Mike Allen wrote August 22, 2007, in The Politico.

Affiliated organizations
"Working behind the scenes through most of" summer 2007, Freedom's Watch president Bradley A. Blakeman "assembled big-dollar donors and quietly helped pro-war groups ranging from the American Legion to Rolling Thunder make a case for Bush's war strategy. Freedom's Watch also formed partnerships with other groups backing the war, such as Families United, Vets for Freedom and the Veterans of Foreign Wars," Jim Kuhnhenn reported September 28, 2007.

"pro-victory" rationale
Freedom's Watch qualifies for the Kevin Drum label "Chaos Hawk", which applies to the rationale it and other self-proclaimed "pro-victory" groups apply to staying the course in Iraq:


 * "Having admitted, however, that the odds of a military success in Iraq are almost impossibly long, Chaos Hawks nonetheless insist that the U.S. military needs to stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Why? Because if we leave the entire Middle East will become a bloodbath. Sunni and Shiite will engage in mutual genocide, oil fields will go up in flames, fundamentalist parties will take over, and al-Qaeda will have a safe haven bigger than the entire continent of Europe."

"I have been struck by the use of the word 'victory' by the right wing, especially by its propaganda arm, Freedom's Watch. Usually, 'victory' is used in reference to a war between countries over territory, where there is a definable enemy. That is not the case in Iraq, where we have for four years had an occupation, not a 'war,' and there has been no clear enemy. We have mostly been fighting Iraqis we were supposed to be rescuing. 'Victory' makes no sense for such an occupation. And even Petraeus has said that only a political, not a military, settlement is possible. In what sense can keeping troops there for 9 or 10 years or longer, as Petraeus has suggested, be a 'victory'?", George Lakoff of the Rockridge Institute wrote September 19, 2007, in BuzzFlash.

"If you believe some Republicans and a new non-profit called Freedom's Watch, it's simple," Stephen Silver of the North Star Writers Group said in his September 10, 2007, article "Vanquishing Al Qaeda Doesn’t Mean We Win in Iraq": "It's us against the terrorists, we're starting to win and the choice is between 'victory' and the 'surrender' favored by the Democrats. Republican presidential candidates, including John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, discuss Iraq with the circular argument that we're going to win because we have to win, and we have to win because we're going to win.

"Freedom's Watch also touts a survey arguing that 49 percent of Americans now believe that 'the surge is working' while 45 percent believe it isn't, as though the perceptions of people half a world away have any bearing on the fact of whether it is or not," Silver wrote.

"There are, indeed, all manner of perfectly reasonable, rational arguments for why we should never have gone into Iraq in the first place. There are even more perfectly rational, reasonable arguments for why, having gone there, we should now get the hell out with even more speed than we went in," Michael of Musing's musings Blog wrote September 17, 2007.

"All of that means bupkes to the Republicans, who have somehow morphed Iraq into a national test of machismo such that if we leave, we'll show the world we're a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys wimps, and so pretty soon the terrrrrists we aren't fighting over there will be showing up on our lawns. A slightly different but related spin is the one the ludicrously named 'Freedom's Watch' is trying to put out in its not-exactly-accurate slew of ads demanding that Congress accede to the president's intent to ram his war down the throat of the next president because otherwise the sacrifices we have already made will have been in vain.

"I hate to be the one to break the news, sweeties, but there is literally nothing that your man in the White House, anybody in Congress, the entire Orcosphere, or even Superman could do that would prevent those sacrifices from being in vain. They were in vain, they will always have been in vain, and that should have been obvious to any reasonably sentient being with three or more functioning brain cells as long ago as March 2003," Michael of Musing's musings wrote.

Promoting an endless string of Friedmans
"Organizations like the Victory Caucus and Freedom's Watch [are] succeeding in creating a situation where few Republicans dare mount even token levels of opposition to Bush's war policy and essentially nobody is prepared to break with the administration on it in a way that matters. Their fate has really become inextricably tied to that of the war -- the real war in the real world, and not a PR war about the surge or anything else. Six months from now, Republicans are going to ask for six months' more time, and then six months after that they'll be heading into an election asking for . . . six months more time. And this'll be 24 months after Republicans first started losing seats because people had had enough of this," Matthew Yglesias wrote September 21, 2007, in The Atlantic Online.

Assault on the "truth"
"Another assault on the truth comes from former presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer, now a leader of Freedom's Watch, which is airing commercials on television and radio that support the Iraq War. That's fine in a country with freedom of speech, but the commercials again link the events of 9/11 with Iraq. They state we are fighting the terrorists in Iraq because 'they attacked us, and will do so again,'" Michael Goodson of Chicago's Post-Tribune wrote September 13, 2007.

"This was reminiscent of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon warning that we had to stop the Communists in Asia so they wouldn't attack us here, or Ronald Reagan's suggestion that the leftists in Central America had to be stopped from coming north across the United States border. Fleischer and his group are delivering the same kind of dire warnings to spread fear and encourage an overly simplistic 'us vs. them' approach to terrorism that smacks of xenophobia. Despite the fact that all investigations have shown that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, many Americans continue to believe in the linkage, thanks to spurious propaganda like this," John Isaacs wrote September 19, 2007.

"Excuse me, but the facts show most 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, and none from Iraq. They were led by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi in Afghanistan. We have found no link between al-Qaida and Iraq before 9/11.

"Now these commercials appear, again preying on the patriotism (or gullibility) of Americans, and the creators are thinking, 'We fooled them once; how about again?'," Goodson wrote.

Orwellian "Ministry of Peace"
The Armchair Generalist compares Freedom's Watch to George Orwell's Ministry of Peace:


 * "In George Orwell's 1984, there was an organization known as the Ministry of Peace, whose purpose was to promote perpetual war. The Wiki definition explains that 'If the citizens of Oceania have a well-defined enemy, Eastasia or Eurasia, then they know whom they hate, and constant homeland propaganda helps to convince them to vent all their unconscious rage for their own country against the opposing one. Since that means the balance of the country rests in the war, the Ministry of Peace is in charge of fighting the war (mostly centered around Africa and India), but making sure to never tip the scales, in case the war should become one-sided.'


 * "That definition has come into fruition with Ari Fleischer's 'Freedom's Watch' organization. While not a government agency per say [sic], certainly it is doing the White House's bidding by overtly connecting the war in Iraq to 9/11 in an attempt to influence the American public into 'staying the course'," the Armchair Generalist states.

Demonization of the electorate
"This is Cheney / Bush, playing hardball against its own party," Jemand von Niemand wrote at TPM Cafe.

Appearing August 24, 2007, on PBS's The News Hour, Bradley A. Blakeman, "the public face of 'Freedom’s Watch', referred to antiwar critics (in particular, MoveOn.org) as 'the enemy' to TNH's Judy Woodruff: 'Well, Judy, the enemy, our opposition, has told you that there's going to be an Iraqi summer… There hasn't been the opposition they threatened.'

"That campaign will, as Cheney / Bush have done so many times before, treat the American People as if they were stupid – as irritants. Americans are fit only to act with loyalty to the Leader – otherwise, they're traitors, and spokespersons for the antiwar sentiment in America will be marginalized by the smiling snark of commentators like Bill Kristol, and otherwise ignored by the corporate media. It's the same strategy as selling the invasion of Iraq in 2003," von Niemand wrote.

Reality check
"The bottom line is that no matter how the PR campaign plays out, the public has already made its mind up about the war," DemFromCT wrote September 6, 2007, at The Next Hurrah Blog. "Hard core Republicans still support it ...but they don't represent a majority. So here's the new Conventional Wisdom, via Carl Leubsdorf writing [September 6, 2007,] in the Dallas Morning News (and acknowledging the [August 16, 2007,] CNN poll )."


 * "Meanwhile, the administration's effort to turn glimmers of progress into a steady light at the end of the tunnel faces the reality checks of independent observers. For example, though officials claim progress on half of the 18 benchmarks Congress set, the independent Government Accountability Office this week reached a far more pessimistic conclusion. It said the Baghdad government has met only three of the 18 with partial progress on four others.


 * "In the end, the spate of claims and counterclaims about conditions in Iraq may offset one another, creating public confusion and leaving Congress and the public in a stalemate about the war. Public attitudes, after all, have been relatively unchanged for years.


 * "But unless Mr. Bush and his supporters can succeed in changing the prevailing majority view that favors ending the war as soon as possible, even his ability to stage upbeat events in Iraq and win periodic fights in Congress won't give Republicans a positive terrain on which to fight the 2008 campaign."

Contact information
Contact: Jerry Mullins (Weber Merritt LLC) URL: http://www.freedomswatch.org/ YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Freedomswatch

"Legal Disclaimers" and "Privacy Policy"
Curiously, when clicking on "Legal Disclaimers" at the bottom of the Freedom's Watch web page, one arrives at a User Log-in page which asks for a "User Name" and "Password" or "Registration". The same applies when attempting to access Freedom's Watch's "Privacy Policy". Required fields on the "Registration" are first and last name, email address, full address, as well as selection of a user name and password. The question is why are Freedom's Watch's legal disclaimers and privacy policy password protected?

About this Freedom's Watch
As far as is known at this time, Freedom's Watch is not the same as nor related to the Freedom Watch Blogspot (web), which is the official weblog of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility. It is not affiliated with FREEDOM Watch, a "service of the office of US Representative Ron Paul for regular visitors to Project FREEDOM." It is also not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense's Pentagon Channel online video programs Freedom Watch Afghanistan and Freedom Watch Iraq.

Contact information
The following is according to Freedom's Watch's September 17, 2007, lobbying registration with the Secretary of the U.S. Senate:

401 9th Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 2004 Phone: 202 286-3261 Contact: Ryan Teague

External articles
Due to the rapid pace at which this article has grown, the chronological listing of articles dating from August 22, 2007 to March, 2008 has been subdivided.


 * August 2007
 * September 2007
 * October 2007
 * November and December 2007
 * January to March 2008


 * Bill Berkowitz, Freedom's Watch smearing Democratic Congressional candidates with false robo-calls: 'Shady soft money group' going after Senate and House seats, Media Transparency, September 3, 2008
 * Molly Ball, "Freedom's Watch effort winding down: Conservative group's future undecided", 'Las Vegas Review-Journal'', November 24, 2008.

External resources

 * Profile: Freedom's Watch, Right Web, last updated August 30, 2007.
 * Profile: Freedom's Watch, NNDB.com.
 * Freedom's Watch in the Wikipedia.
 * Ari's Freedom Switch Blogspot.