Theft of Neo-Con I.D. Cards Alarms Beltway Insiders

FBI Seeks to Interview Leo Strauss at University of Chicago

The apparent theft of several hundred blank identity cards for the Society of Neo-Conservatives is sending a shudder through the upper levels of the Bush Administration and conservative Beltway insiders. So far, an FBI investigation has turned up no promising leads in either recovering the cards or apprehending the culprits.

The fear is that the blank cards could be used to produce authentic looking Society of Neo-Conservatives credentials and gain interlopers access to the Society's secret meetings. The gatherings are held weekly amid high security at undisclosed locations in the Washington area, though always inside the Beltway, the interstate highway that rings the District of Columbia.

There was a time, perhaps midway through the Clinton Administration, when the number of Neo-cons was so small that they all knew one another and the need for identity cards would have seemed silly. Their secret handshake was enough.

But then George W. Bush became president and a cabal of Neo-Cons effectively seized control of his administration, or at least gained control of the national security, defense policymaking, and tax-cutting appartus.

Beltway insiders, like cicadas at a garden party, just naturally gravitate toward power. Some estimates are that the Society now boasts several hundred members. Others place the number above 1,000.

The Neo-Cons have become famous, or infamous, as the architects of the Iraq war, both for the justification of the war and then its execution. They are also credited for the tax-cutting strategy that has pushed the Federal deficit to new levels.

The most prominent Neo-Con icons include Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and several members of Rumsfeld's senior staff, including his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. Not on the Federal payroll but deeply embedded in the Administration are Richard Perle, former chairman of the civilian Defense Policy Board and Grover Norquist, the tax-cutting guru.

"I think their overriding fear is the 'Emperor Has No Clothes Syndrome', that someone could use a fake I.D. to get into their meetings and discover that the Neo-Cons don't know how to get out of the mess they've gotten into," said Blinkey Davies, who runs a Web site that tracks the Neo-Cons. "I've begun to hear Neo-Con whispers that suggest people are running in circles at the weekly meetings, wringing their hands and biting their tails about what to do now, and a lot of finger pointing."

Davies said another concern is that a cadre of Neo-Con infiltrators wouldn't reveal the group's activities, but instead would seek to undermine the Neo-Cons from within.

"If I were doing it, I'd get inside the Neo-Cons and influence their thinking," said a political operative, who spoke on the condition that neither his or her name or political inclination be revealed. "I'd tell them to pull up their socks, ignore the liberal chattering class and stay the course. I'd tell them to just keep plowing on in Iraq, keep cutting taxes and don't worry about the deficit or unemployment. Everything will be fine."

A spokesperson for the FBI declined to discuss the investigation of the identity card theft, or even confirm there had been a theft.

But at the University of Chicago, faculty members in the Philosophy Department confirmed that FBI agents had interviewed several people about stolen society identity cards. The faculty members said that the agents were particularly interested in talking to Leo Strauss, who they described as a philosophy faculty member.

"I told them they were too late," one professor said. "I told them that Leo was, indeed, a faculty member, but that they were 30 years too late, that he died in 1973. They were rather taken aback to hear that."

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