Benador Associates

Yesterday, I credited Laurie Mylroie's publicist for earning whatever was paid. So today, I decided to find out more about her representation.

It turns out that Mylroie is represented by Benador Associates.

Eleana Benador, founder, President and CEO of that company, has attracted a who's who of neocon clients. She's typically mentioned as a "theatrical agent."

I'm winnowing the following list of Benador's clients to people who figured prominently in the Iraq and Afghan war debates:

Max Boot -- was Wall Street Journal, now Weekly Standard
Frank Gaffney Jr. -- now Washington Times was Reagan-era DoD guy
Khidhir Hamza -- Saddam's ex nuclear scientist/defector
Charles Krauthammer -- widely syndicated columnist
Michael A. Ledeen -- AEI and National Review online
Laurie Mylroie -- you know about her
Richard Perle -- AEI, chaired Bush's Defense Policy Board
Michael Rubin -- AEI, now Pentagon Iraq advisor
Ruth Wedgwood -- Yale Law Professor
James Woolsey -- former CIA director who helps promote Mylroie's ideas

Quite a few of Benador's other clients also write for the National Review (John O'Sullivan) or its online edition (Victor Davis Hanson) or the New York Post (Amir Taheri). Plus she represents some foreign journalists and scholars and Richard Pipes of Harvard. Benador even counts someone from the Iraqi National Congress (Kanan Makiya) as a client.

She's no longer listed by Benador, but Judith Miller of the New York Times apparently also used to be a client -- and she coauthored a book with Mylroie on the first Gulf War. FYI, it was a NYT #1 bestseller.

Hmmm, I should point everyone to the bad notices Miller has been getting for inflating threats about Iraqi WMD. Editor & Publisher has certainly staked out a strong postion. This past Tuesday (9/23/03), they posted this article "Miller's Latest Tale Questioned; Jackson: When Will 'NY Times' Get Her off WMD Trail?" The article does a good job of detailing Miller's horrible stories of the past 2 years reporting Iraq WMD tales that have subsequenly proven false. Apparently, Miller relied greatly on wild stories from Iraqi defectors...much like some of the neocons in the Pentagon.

Anyway, the Benador networking possibilities are quite interesting here. Indeed, The Guardian had an interesting article on many of Benador's clients back in August 2002. The author points out how difficult it is to get op-ed pieces accepted at newspapers (but failure is undoubtedly motivator for bloggers!); yet, Benador's clients succeed again and again and again.

Does anyone know of an agent on the left with a similar track record?

If so, can I send along some of my writing?