Constantine C. Menges (September 1, 1939 – July 11, 2004) was an American scholar, author, professor, and Latin American specialist for the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...

US National Security Council The United States National Security Council (NSC) is the national security council used by the president of the United States for consideration of national security, military, and foreign policy matters. Based in the White House, it is part ...

and the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

. Menges was born in Turkey on September 1, 1939, the day that Germany invaded Poland to start World War II. His parents sent him to the United States in 1943. Menges attended college in Prague. He earned a bachelor's degree in physics and a doctorate in political science from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. He helped German refugees escape over the

Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (, ) was a guarded concrete Separation barrier, barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and the East Germany, German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany). Construction of the B ...

and organized civil resistance after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 during the

Prague Spring The Prague Spring (; ) was a period of liberalization, political liberalization and mass protest in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected Secretary (title), First Secre ...

Menges worked to ensure equal voting rights in Mississippi and During the Nixon and Ford administrations, he was deputy assistant for civil rights in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. From 1981 until 1983, he worked for the director of the CIA as the national intelligence officer for Latin America. From 1983 until 1986, he served as special assistant to President

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was a member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party a ...

. He helped plan

Operation Urgent Fury The United States and a coalition of Caribbean countries invaded the small island nation of Grenada, north of Venezuela, at dawn on 25 October 1983. Codenamed Operation Urgent Fury by the U.S. military, it resulted in military occupation with ...

in Grenada and supported the Nicaraguan Contras and the Salvadoran rebels. Friends and foes gave him the nickname "Constant Menace". He wrote a critical account of his experiences as a government official in his 1988 book, Inside the National Security Council: The True Story of the Making and Unmaking of Reagan's Foreign Policy In September 2002, Constantine Menges sent a letter to

Olavo de Carvalho Olavo Luiz Pimentel de Carvalho (; 29 April 1947 – 24 January 2022) was a Brazilian self-proclaimed philosopher, political pundit, former astrologer, journalist, and far-right conspiracy theorist. While publishing about politics, literatur ...

in which he agreed with the Brazilian philosopher's analysis of the current political situation in

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

. He died of cancer on July 11, 2004, in Washington, D.C., where he had been a senior fellow at the

Hudson Institute Hudson Institute is an American Conservatism in the United States, conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1961 in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, by futurist Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the RAND Corporation. Kahn ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Menges, Constantine 1939 births 2004 deaths Turkish refugees Turkish expatriates in the United States Turkish human rights activists Turkish political scientists Deaths from cancer in Washington, D.C. Columbia College (New York) alumni Turkish anti-communists New Right (United States) United States National Security Council staffers 20th-century American political scientists