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Obama's New ISIS Czar is a 'Trusted' But Controversial Pick
President Obama has a new weapon in the fight against terror: a longtime security adviser he has promoted to be his new ISIS czar.National Security Adviser Susan Rice refers to Rob Malley as one of her "most trusted advisers" and "one of our country's most respected experts on the Middle East." He helped broker the historic Iran nuclear deal and, years before that, helped President Clinton try to bridge the divide between Israelis and Palestinians. While Malley has almost two decades of experience in national security, he has seen his share of controversies. Malley's career in the White House started under the Clinton administration, first as executive assistant to the national security adviser in 1996 and then as Special Assistant to the President for Arab-Israeli Affairs. He ran into his first firestorm in 2001 when he co-wrote an article about a Camp David summit on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which had ended in failure the year prior. In the article, Malley said it was unfair to blame only Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat — who most observers argued was the reason the talks fell apart — and pushed for "a more nuanced and realistic" analysis showing Israeli leader Ehud Barak was partially responsible, too. His next run-in with critics came during a casual return to politics in 2008, when he was an informal foreign policy adviser for Obama's presidential campaign. He was forced to sever ties with the campaign when news outlets reported he had met with members of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that the State Department classifies as a terrorist organization. Malley acknowledged the meetings, saying they were necessary for his work with his non-profit, which focuses on conflict resolution. "I have never hidden the fact that I had meetings with Hamas," Malley wrote in a letter to The New York Times in May 2008 in in his defense. "I do this as part of my job as Middle East program director at the International Crisis Group." Still, he decided to stop working with the Obama campaign "to avoid any misperception — misrepresentation being the more accurate word — about the candidate's position regarding the Islamist movement," he said. Joost Hiltermann, Malley's successor as Middle East and North Africa program director at the International Crisis Group, has known Malley for 20 years. He brushed off the controversies. "A person in his position is going to draw fire from one side or the other," he added. "Working on the Middle East in particular is going to make some people upset and other people happy, maybe more than any other place." Still, Malley's past has haunted him. When he returned to the White House last year as a senior director at the National Security Council, administration officials responded to mentions of his history by highlighting the strong relationships Malley has throughout the Middle East, including with members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. Posted by: Pappy 2015-12-04 |
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