Danielle Pletka

Danielle Pletka (born 1963 in Melbourne, Australia) is the vice-president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Biography

Pletka was editorial assistant with the Los Angeles Times and Reuters, working in Jerusalem from 1984 to 1985.

From 1987 to 1992, she was a staff writer for Insight on the News.^{[citation needed]}

Pletka was a senior professional staff member for Near East and South Asia with the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1992 to 2002.

Pletka was a strong supporter of Iraqi opposition leader, Ahmed Chalabi, even after it emerged he was being investigated by the US authorities as an Iranian spy. Pletka defended Mr Chalabi saying that he had been "shoddily" treated and that CIA and US State Department personnel had been fighting "a rear guard" action against him.^[1]

Pletka researches topics related to the Middle East, South Asia, terrorism, and weapons proliferation, and is an AEI expert on Iraq. Pletka is also involved in various other projects such as the Committee on the Present Danger.

On the use of torture, she told the BBC:

“

I'm not a big fan of torture. Unfortunately, there are times in war when it is necessary to do things in a way that is absolutely and completely abhorrent to most good, decent people. I don't want to say that the United States has engaged routinely in such practices, because I don't think that it is routine by any standard. But that said, if it is absolutely imperative to find something out at that moment, then it is imperative to find something out at that moment, and Club Med is not the place to do it.[2]

”

Pletka is married to Stephen Rademaker, who in the George W. Bush presidential administration, was the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Arms Control. ^[3]. The couple has three children.

In an interview on the BBC's Radio 4 10 O'Clock News on December 7 2010, she defended the reported choice of Visa to withdraw payment facilities from Wikileaks by saying she hoped that there had been political pressure on the company to do so, and that she believed it was right that the company should not support the activities of an alleged rapist. (Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had earlier been detained by UK police on a European Arrest Warrant on charges made in Sweden.)

Notes and references

References

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ [2]
3. ^ "The Washington Note," May 2005 http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2005/05/

External links

• Bio from the American Enterprise Institute, with list of articles published by Pletka
• BBC Article on Rendition

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Name	Pletka, Danielle
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Date of birth	1963
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