Frederick H. Fleitz

Frederick H. Fleitz, Jr. (born 1962) is Chief Analyst and founder of LIGNET.com, an acronym for the Langley Intelligence Group Network, Newsmax Media's global forecasting and intelligence website. He began this project in May 2011 after a 25-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of State, and the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Fleitz spent 19 years with the CIA working on a variety of areas, including the CIA Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center (WINPAC). From 2001-2005, CIA loaned Fleitz to the State Department where he served as chief of staff to Undersecretaries of State for Arms Control John Bolton (2001–2005) and Robert Joseph (2005–2006). Fleitz specialized in WMD proliferation for the House Intelligence Committee, especially the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs. He also was a senior adviser to the committee's Ranking Member, Congressman Peter Hoekstra R-Michigan.

Fleitz spent much of his career working on multilateral diplomacy. He has been a delegate to many international conferences dealing with WMD proliferation, including the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, and the Biological Weapons Convention Review Conference. He wrote several well-received unclassified research aids on UN peacekeeping for the CIA during the 1990s. In 2002, he published "Peacekeeping Fiascoes of the 1990s: Causes, Solutions, and US Interests" (Praeger) This book received several good reviews and went into a second printing. It also received endorsements from former UN Ambassadors Jeane Kirkpatrick and Charles Lichenstein.

Fleitz's name hit the press in the spring of 2005 during the battle in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to confirm Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Several accounts describe difficult challenges Fleitz faced as Bolton's Chief of Staff, mostly involving conflict over a controversial speech Bolton delivered on a possible Cuban biological weapons program. Most contemporaneous press accounts in 2005 portrayed this matter as a personnel dispute over a disagreement with two intelligence officers over assertions Bolton wanted to make in the speech. In his own testimony, Fleitz said one of analysts had forwarded Bolton's speech for the CIA to review, but attached his own dissenting commentary and then denied doing so. This led to a confrontation and an apology from the analyst's supervisors. Fleitz testified that the other analyst campaigned against the speech after it had been delivered to Congress and the press.

Two 2007 best selling books provided more context about this dispute. Investigative reporter Kenneth Timmerman in his 2007 book "Shadow Warriors" (Crown Forum) wrote that controversy over Bolton's 2002 Cuba speech stemmed from heavy pressure from a small number of intelligence officers who favored a softer line on Cuba. Timmerman claims these intelligence analysts politicized Bolton's text and that Fleitz resisted their efforts. Rowan Scarborough, in his 2007 book "Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA" (Regnery) came to a similar conclusion and wrote that Fleitz paid a professional price for defending Bolton and standing up to political pressure from rogue CIA and State Department intelligence analysts.