Constantin Menges

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Person.png Constantin Menges  Rdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
(Spook, Academic)
Constantine Menges.jpg
BornSeptember 1, 1939
Ankara, Turkey
DiedJuly 11, 2004 (Age 64)
NationalityUS
Alma materColumbia University
Member ofLe Cercle

Employment.png Senior fellow

In office
2000 - 2004
EmployerHudson Institute
Also worked there before

Employment.png Special Assistant to the President

In office
1983 - 1986
EmployerNational Security Council
Deeply involved in White House support for the Nicaraguan contras. Attended Le Cercle in 1985

Constantine C. Menges was an American scholar, author, professor, and Latin American specialist for the White House's US National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency.[1][2] Constantin Menges attended Le Cercle in 1985, and possibly on other occasions.

Menges was born in Turkey on September 1, 1939, the son of political refugees from Nazi Germany. His parents sent him to the United States in 1943. Menges attended college in Prague.[3] He earned a bachelor's degree in physics and a doctorate in political science from Columbia University.[4][5] He helped German refugees escape over the Berlin Wall and organized civil resistance after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 during the Prague Spring[6]

Menges worked to ensure equal voting rights in Mississippi and During the Nixon and Ford administrations, he was deputy assistant for civil rights in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.[7]

From 1981 until 1983, he worked for the director of the CIA as the national intelligence officer for Latin America. From 1983 until 1986, he served as special assistant to President Ronald Reagan.[8] He helped plan Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada and supported the Nicaraguan Contras and the Salvadoran rebels. Friends and foes gave him the nickname "Constant Menace".[9] He wrote a critical account of his experiences as a government official in his 1988 book, Inside the National Security Council: The True Story of the Making and Unmaking of Reagan's Foreign Policy

In September 2002, Constantine Menges sent a letter to Olavo de Carvalho in which he agreed with the Brazilian philosopher’s analysis of the current political situation in Brazil.[citation needed][10]

He died of cancer on July 11, 2004, in Washington, D.C., where he had been a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.[11]


 

Event Participated in

EventStartEndLocation(s)Description
Le Cercle/1985 (Washington)7 January 198510 January 1985US
Washington DC
4 day meeting of Le Cercle in Washington exposed after Joel Van der Reijden discovered the attendee list for this conference and published it online in 2011
Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.


References