Frank Gaffney - Career

Career

Gaffney began his public service career in the 1970s, working as an aide in the office of Democratic Senator Henry M. Jackson, under Richard Perle. From August 1983 until November 1987, Gaffney held the position of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy in the Reagan Administration, again serving under Perle. In April 1987, Gaffney was nominated to the position of US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy. He served as the acting Assistant Secretary for seven months, though his confirmation was ultimately blocked by the United States Senate. In 1988, Gaffney established the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a conservative national security and defense policy organization.

Gaffney appeared on FahrenHYPE 9/11, the conservative documentary that was intended as a rebuttal to Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11.

Gaffney was an executive producer for the documentary Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center. The documentary was created to air as part of the America at a Crossroads series on PBS, but it has not been shown. PBS claimed that the film failed "to meet their standards, " but Gaffney called the decision "censorship."

He is a founding member of the Set America Free Coalition to reduce dependence on foreign oil and is part of the current iteration of the Committee on the Present Danger.

In November 1992, Gaffney's Center for Security Policy organization released a report detailing voter fraud in Angola's presidential election. Election officials stopped registering voters 40 days before the election. Polling stations had identical voting results. The MPLA retained a monopoly on television election-coverage. CSP also found widespread vote buying by the MPLA, the discarding of as many as 25% of cast ballots, and electricity blackouts during voter counting. United Nations special envoy Margaret Anstee said she "had never witnessed a more unfair election, even in Latin America."

Along with a number of figures who later assumed leading positions in the George W. Bush administration, Gaffney was one of 25 signatories of the June 3, 1997 "Statement of Principles" from the Project for the New American Century, an educational and political advocacy organization whose stated goal was "to promote American global leadership."