Abram Shulsky

Abram Shulsky (born August 15, 1942) is a neoconservative scholar who has worked for U.S. government, RAND Corporation, and the Hudson Institute. Shulsky served as Director of the Office of Special Plans, a unit whose function has been compared to the 1970s Team B exercise. In the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Shulsky approved OSP memos with talking points about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. Shulsky is critical of the traditional intelligence analysis, which is based upon the social-scientific method, and of independent intelligence agencies. Shulsky favors a military intelligence model which can be used support policy as, in Shulsky's words, "truth is not the goal" of intelligence operations, but "victory". Shulsky signed a letter to the Clinton White House on Iraq.

Shulsky received his B.A. in mathematics from Cornell University and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in political science from the University of Chicago. At Cornell and Chicago, he roomed with Paul Wolfowitz, who he met in their time as members and residents of the Cornell Branch of the Telluride Association. Shulsky earned his doctorate under political philosopher Leo Strauss. He is a neoconservative scholar and Straussian.

Shulsky served as staff for the Senate Intelligence Committee in the early 1980s. He worked under Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle during the Reagan Administration and later worked for the RAND Corporation. He worked as a consultant for the Office of Net Assessment, a Pentagon think-tank. In the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Shulsky was the Director of the Office of Special Plans (OSP), which served as a source of intelligence. He was hired and overseen by Douglas Feith and William Luti, but Shulsky's "real boss" may have been higher up than Feith.Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz advocated the creation of the pro-war OSP as he "was impatient with the C.I.A." Gordon R. Mitchell, writing in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, stated,