Conservative Brain Trust

Conservative Brain Trust traces the rise, fall, and rise again of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI). More than that, it is the story of one of Washington's leading think tanks: what it's like to work there, how Washington works, and how AEI influences policy, including policy on the controversial Iraq War. This is a wide-ranging review of the Washington think tank world, focused particularly on AEI. The book is a social science and political study of the role of think tanks in Washington policy-making and, in part, a personal memoir of the author's adventures and perceptions in seeking to link academic research and American foreign policy. What emerges is a portrait of AEI as an influential, but also troubled, think tank with access to the highest levels of the U.S. government. Irreverent as well as analytic, the author recounts his adventures and experiences in the think tank and policy worlds.

Howard Wiarda authors a fascinating evocative memoir as a 'semi-insider' to the Reagan 'Conservative Revolution' in his capacity as director of the Latin American program for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Howard offers a candid and revealing assessment of Washington Think Tanks from his personal diaries and his involvement with the White House and Congress, the Defense and State Departments, and the CIA, blending with these also a description of the programs and individuals with which he dealt during the 1980s., Howard Wiarda's observations on his years at the American Enterprise Institute and his service as key adviser to the Kissinger Commission on Central America provide an invaluable glimpse at the way in which United States foreign policy was formulated and implemented during the Reagan era. Wiarda is a keen observer of the Washington policy scene and a provocative critic of the major players who shaped U.S. policy during the Central American revolutions. This book is essential reading for those who want to understand how Washington really works.

Howard J. Wiarda is Dean Rusk Professor of International Relations at the University of Georgia; professor emeritus of political science and comparative labor relations and the Leonard J. Horwitz Professor of Iberian and Latin American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; and senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.