Constantin Menges

Constantin Menges   (Spook, Academic)
Born	September 1, 1939 Ankara, Turkey
Died	July 11, 2004 (Age 64)
Nationality	US
Alma mater	Columbia University
Parents	Karl Heinrich Menges
Member of	Le Cercle
Senior fellow In office 2000 - 2004 Employer Hudson Institute Also worked there before  Director of the Program on Transitions to Democracy In office 1990 - 2000 Employer George Washington University  Special Assistant to the President In office 1983 - 1986 Employer National Security Council Deeply involved in White House support for the Nicaraguan contras. Attended Le Cercle in 1985  National Intelligence Officer for Latin American affairs In office 1981 - 1983 Employer CIA Deeply involved in White House support for the Nicaraguan contras and counterinsurgencies in Latin America

Constantine C. Menges was an American professor, and Latin American specialist for the White House's US National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. He suggested the invasion of Grenada in 1983, and very involved in the covert support for the Nicaraguan contras and the counterinsurgencies in the region, Constantin Menges attended Le Cercle in 1985, and possibly on other occasions.

Friends and foes gave him the nickname "Constant Menace and "Menges Khan".

At Rand, he wrote the papers that gave an intellectual basis to what would become known as the Reagan Doctrine. These included "Democratic Revolutionary Insurgency as an Alternative Strategy," which argued that "communist regimes are very vulnerable to a democratic national revolution that is conducted with skill and the determination to succeed."

"He believed that the United States should compete with the Soviets in sponsorship of 'national liberation movements' in Third World nations,"

Family Background

Menges was born in Turkey on September 1, 1939, the son of Karl Heinrich and Valeska Menges, political refugees from Nazi Germany. Karl Heinrich was a linguist known for his expertise on Altaic languages. He was quoted variously as saying he spoke between 24 and "over 50" languages, and said that when he came to the United States he was the only person in the country who could speak Uzbek.

After Menges was arrested because of his contacts in the Soviet Union, released again, but probably continued to be spied on and repeatedly interrogated and had to testify in a trial against a group of Berlin communists, he left Germany in December 1936, fleeing first to Czechoslovakia, then Turkey. Menges taught at Columbia University in New York for 36 years, from 1940 to 1976.

Career

Menges received a bachelor's degree in physics from Columbia College and a doctorate in political science from Columbia University. He taught political science at the University of Wisconsin before joining the deep state military think tank Rand Corp.

Menges attended college in Prague, where helped individuals escape communist East Berlin in 1961, and in 1963, he worked in Mississippi as a volunteer for equal voting rights. Given the rest of his career, he was most likely an infiltrator in the movement.

During the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford administrations, he was deputy assistant for civil rights in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

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. He helped plan Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada and supported the Nicaraguan Contras and the counterinsurgency against the Salvadoran rebels.

"Blocking a new axis of evil"

An obituary written by Michael Fumento mentioned that "Menges’ other accomplishments are far too numerous to list here, and many no doubt continue to bear a 'top secret' stamp. We can only judge by the tip of the iceberg what lies beneath", but takes as one example that "Menges and others" did "desperate behind-the-scenes work" to subvert the 2003 El Salvador elections, where the country "might have elected a communist government. Instead, it remains a pro-American democracy."

In 2002, Menges wrote an op-ed "Blocking a new axis of evil" claiming that the Social Democrat Brazilian presidential candidate Lula da Silva was a terrorist threat:

A new terrorist and nuclear weapons/ballistic missile threat may well come from an axis including Cuba’s Fidel Castro, the Chavez regime in Venezuela and a newly elected radical president of Brazil, all with links to Iraq, Iran and China."...

Why can’t the Bush administration act before 20 years of democratic gains in Latin America were allowed to be reversed? Why can’t anything be done before a vast new southern flank is opened up in the terrorist threat and our nation menaced by one more radical anti-American regime intent on acquiring nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles?

This disaster for U.S. national security and for the people of Latin America must and can be averted if our policy makers act quickly and decisively, but they must do so now. Timely political attention and actions by the United States and other democracies should include encouragement for the pro-democratic parties in Brazil to unify behind an honest, capable political leader who can represent the hopes of the majority of Brazilians for genuine democracy and who has the resources to mount an effective national campaign.

Menges died of cancer on July 11, 2004, inWashington, D.C., where he had been a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Le Cercle/1985 (Washington)	7 January 1985	10 January 1985	US 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

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