Our Team
The ACD matches the appropriate experts with each project at hand. Our international team of experts is available to work on all aspects related to terror financing, radical Islam, terrorism & transnational crime; narcoterrorism, corruption, etc. Our team conducts studies and investigations and provides expertise and training in the above mentioned areas, as well as in good governance, rule of law, and ethics in business.
Director
Dr. Ehrenfeld is the Director of the New York-based American Center for Democracy and the Economic Warfare Institute. She is the author of hunderds of articles, academic publications and three books:
• FUNDING EVIL: HOW TERRORISM IS FINANCED - and HOW to STOP IT (Bonus Books, 2003, 2005)
• EVIL MONEY (HarperCollins, 1992, SPI, 1994)
• NARCOTERRORISM (Basic Books, 1990, 1992)
Along with ACD fellows, Dr. Ehrenfeld is at work on a new book, THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, INC.
Dr. Ehrenfeld is an authority on economic warfare, terrorist financing, the shadowy movement of funds through international banking and money laudering. She has a unique understanding of the challenges of international terrorism to democracy and freedom, and how manipulations of financial markets, Islamic banking, transnational criminal groups, money laundering and political corruption facilitate terror financing and economic terrorism.
An American citizen fluent in several languages, Ehrenfeld has testified before Congressional Committees, as well as the Canadian and European Parliaments, and provided evidence to the British Parliament, and consulted government agencies such as the Department of Defense and Homeland Security. She organized numerous international conferences and with the ACD team served as an election observer in Central Asia, North Africa and Eatsern European countries. She is also a Member of the Board of Directors of the Committee on the Present Danger (http://www.fightingterror.org/) along with former Secretary of State George Schulz and former CIA Director James Woolsey.
She has been a visiting scholar at the Columbia University Institute of War and Peace Studies, a research scholar at the New York University School of Law, and a fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Jesus College at Cambridge University. She has a Ph.D in Criminology from the Hebrew University School of Law.
Her articles have appeared in numerous publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Newsweek, Guardian, Los Angeles Times, The WAshington Times, Huffington Post, and The Jerusalem Post and she is a frequent guest on The O'Reilly Factor, and CNN, NBC, CNBC, FoxNews, FoxBusiness, and other national and international TV and radio programs.
PLEASE NOTE: Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is not a signatory of the 911Truth.org. She has asked several times to have her named removed from the list, but the organization failed to comply.
Contact: ehrenfeld@acdemocracy.org
Associate Director of the Economic Warfare Institute
Kenneth D.M. Jensen, Associate Director of the EWI, is a foreign relations professional based in Washington, D.C. His specialties include Russia and East Europe, as well as the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia.
His interest in economic warfare spans the better part of his career. He has funded (as a grantmaker) or assisted in funding seminal works on narco-terrorism and money laundering, as well as on Middle East politics and Islamic terrorism. Dr. Jensen manages the EWI Blog and produces the daily EWI Digest, available by email.
Dr. Jensen is the author or editor of fourteen books on foreign and public policy, including The Origins of the Cold War: The Novikov, Kennan, and Roberts 'Long Telegrams' of 1946. He served as Director of Grant Programs for the Institute for Educational Affairs in New York, under the direction of former Treasury Secretary Bill Simon and Irving Kristol. There, Dr. Jensen managed programs in public policy, foreign policy, jurisprudence, and the media. Later, he was a founding staff member of the United States Institute of Peace and directed its grants and research programs during his eight-year tenure. He is recently retired from the American Committees on Foreign Relations, where he served as executive director for 15 years.
Dr. Jensen is an alumnus of the University of Colorado, the University of Wisconsin, and Moscow State University (USSR). A veteran of a dozen years of college teaching in History, Political Science, and political philosophy (most lately at Kenyon College), he occasionally teaches American Foreign Policy in the Age of Terrorism at National Defense University.
Dr. Jensen is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Advisory Board of Global Financial Integrity.
Contact: kjensen@acdemocracy.org
Fellows
Col. Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, IDF (Ret.) is the director of research in the Orient Research Group Ltd. and a Board member of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs headed by Dr. Dore Gold. Mr. Halevi consults on Middle East and Arab affairs to the Wall Street Journal and is a special consultant to the Linde vs. Arab Bank lawsuit.
• 1998 - 2002 Head of the Palestinian Research Branch in the IDF Intelligence Unit.
• 2002 - 2003 Head of the Information Branch in the IDF Spokesperson Unit.
• 2003 - 2004 Senior Advisor for policy planning in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Mr. Halevi has written many articles for both Hebrew and English publications including "Al-Qaeda's Intellectual Legacy: New Radical Islamic Thinking Justifying the Genocide of Infidels".
William B. Scott serves as a flight -testing and aerospace business-development consultant, and is currently writing fiction and nonfiction books.
He recently retired as the Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief for Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine, based in Colorado Springs, CO. In 22 years with Aviation Week, he also served as Senior National Editor in Washington, and in Avionics and Senior Engineering Editor positions in Los Angeles. He focused primarily on advanced aerospace and weapons technology, business, flight-testing and military operations, wrote more than 2,500 stories for the magazine, and received 17 editorial awards. He is a coauthor of three books: "Space Wars: The First Six Hours of World War III," its sequel, "Counterspace: The Next Hours of World War III," and "Inside the Stealth Bomber: The B-2 Story."
During a nine-year Air Force career, Scott served as aircrew on classified nuclear sampling missions; an electronics engineering officer at the National Security Agency, working space communication security programs; and an instrumentation and flight test engineer. He was also a civilian FTE/program manager and proposal group manager for three aerospace companies: General Dynamics (F-16 Full Scale Development program), Falcon Jet Corp. (Coast Guard HU-25A development and certification), and Tracor Flight Systems Inc. (Canadair Challenger development and certification, plus numerous fighter, transport and helicopter test programs).
Scott is a six-time Royal Aeronautical Society "Journalist of the Year" finalist. He won the Society's 1998 Lockheed Martin Award for the "Best Defense Submission," and received both the 2006 and 2007 Messier-Dowty awards for "Best Airshow Submission." He also was part of an Aviation Week team that won a 2004 Neal Award for its coverage of the space shuttle Columbia tragedy. A Neal award is the business-to-business magazine equivalent of a newspaper Pulitzer Prize.
Scott is a Flight Test Engineer (FTE) graduate of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School (Masters equivalent) and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from California State University-Sacramento.
Robert Zubrin, President of Pioneer Astronautics - aerospace R&D company in Lakewood, Colorado. He is also the founder and President of the Mars Society, an international organization dedicated to furthering the exploration and settlement of Mars by both public and private means. Formerly a Staff Engineer at Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, he holds a Masters degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Washington. Zubrin is the inventor of several unique concepts for space propulsion and exploration, the author of over 200 published technical and non-technical papers in the field, and the inventor of nine US patents. Zubrin is known internationally as one of the most creative engineers working in the aerospace industry today, and he and his work have been subject of much favorable press coverage in The Economist, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the London Times, The Washington Post, Fortune Magazine, Newsweek, Air and Space Smithsonian, Popular Science, Space News, and many other publications, and he has appreared on the Discovery Channel, CNN, NPR, and the BBC. He is a Fellow of the Center for Security Policy and a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society.
In addition to his many technical publications, Dr. Zubrin is the author of eight books, including The Case for Mars: How We Shall Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must, published by Simon and Schuster’s Free Press Division in Oct. 1996, Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization, published by Tarcher Putnam in Aug. 1999, Mars on Earth: Adventures of Space Pioneers in the High Arctic, published by Tarcher Penguin in Sept. 2003, Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil, published by Prometheus Books in November 2007, the humorous How to Live on Mars: A Trusty Guidebook to Surving and Thriving on the Red Planet, published by Random House in December 2008, and Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudoscientsts, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism published by Encounter Books in Febraury 2012. He is a contributing editor to The New Atlantis, and a frequent collumnist writing on space and energy policy in online publications including National Review and Pajamas Media.
Since founding Pioneer Astronautics in January 1996, Dr. Zubrin has served as the Principal Investigator of numerous research and development efforts in areas including spacecraft and launch vehicle propulsion systems, Mars and Lunar in-situ resource utilization technology, EVA life support and propulsion, and robotic exploration systems. He has also demonstrated new methods for producing or using liquid fuels on Earth offering significant potential for enhancing the energy security of the West. In the area of public policy, Zubrin has been very active in promoting programs, such as the Open Fuel Standard that would weaken the power of the Islamist-led OPEC cartel internationally.
Prior to founding his own company, Dr. Zubrin was employed for seven years as a Senior, and then Staff Engineer at Lockheed Martin (formerly Martin Marietta) Astronautics in Denver, working on the design of advanced space transportation and propulsion concepts, small ICBM and missile defense systems, robotic Mars balloon missions, space nuclear power, and the design of aerial-refueled rocketplanes. Still earlier in his career, Zubrin worked in the controlled thermonuclear fusion program, and as a high school science teacher.
Kevin D. Freeman, CFA, Founder and CEO of Freeman Global Holdings, LLC, is considered one of the world’s leading experts on the issues of Economic Warfare and Financial Terrorism. He has consulted for and briefed members of both the U.S. House and Senate, present and past CIA, DIA, FBI, SEC, Homeland Security, the Justice Department, as well as local and state law enforcement. He authored the report Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses under contract with the United States Department of Defense in 2009. He has traveled extensively with research trips to Russia and China and throughout Europe and the Americas. He recently authored the book, Secret Weapon: How Economic Terrorism Brought Down the U.S. Stock Market and Why It Can Happen Again (Regnery, 2012). Prior to establishing his own firm, Mr. Freeman wrote a business plan for Sir John Templeton in 1990 and helped build the Templeton Private Client Group from inception, ultimately leading the firm as Senior Managing Director. Mr. Freeman is a graduate of the University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma (B.S., Business Administration, 1983).
Leslie Lebl is Principal of Lebl Associates, a writer, lecturer and consultant on political, security and military matters. She is a former Foreign Service Officer with particular expertise in European political, defense and counterterrorism issues, radical Islam in Europe, Balkan peacekeeping, and Russian politics and economy. Her publications have appeared in the Policy Analysis series of the Cato Institute, Policy Review, Orbis, City Journal, The Weekly Standard, The Hartford Courant, EuroFuture and Atlantic Perspective. A monograph, Advancing U.S. Interests with the European Union, was published by the Atlantic Council of the United States.
A graduate of Swarthmore College (B.A. in history, 1972), Ms. Lebl received an M.A. in foreign affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in 1979.
Ganesh Sahathevan is a researcher and reporter from Sydney, Australia who focuses on South East Asian business, economic and politics. This work has led him into research of structures that support terrorist and jihadist activities in the region,and their links to similar structures in other parts of the world. Ganesh investigated financial mismanagement in Malaysia prior to the financial crisis in the 1990s. He obtained the degrees Bachelor of Economics (majoring in Accounting), and LLB from Monash University, and LLM from the University of Sydney.
Domagoj Margetic
Independent investigative journalist, publicist, columnist.
Founder and Editor in chief of independent investigative web magazine Necenzurirano.com, Member of The Committee of Concerned Journalists, Internet Freedom, South East European Expert Team for Counterterrorism and fight against organized crime (ATT), and Regional Director for Croatia at the Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS). Since 1997, Mr. Margetic's work focused on analyzing the transitional processes in the Balkans, especially regarding transnational organized crime, privatisation and terrorism.
John Wood is President and CEO of The Playfair Group. He graduated with honors from the University of Bristol, England, with a degree in law. Mr. Wood has 17 years of experience in the intellectual property and intangible assets arena. Previously, he was Director of E-commerce for KPMG. Mr. Wood has testified on intellectual property issues before the U.S. House of Representative’s Judiciary sub-committee on IP and the Courts, as well as the World Intellectual Property Organization. He has made presentations to the American Intellectual Property Lawyers Association and the International Trademark Association. In a public advocacy role, Mr. Wood has represented AOL, BT, Microsoft, NSI, and CSSA on intellectual property-related issues.
As an expert on the Internet, he has provided consulting services to AFN, AT&T, BBC Worldwide Publishing, BT, Cable and Wireless, Glaxo-Wellcome, General Motors, Walt Disney, and Williams Communications. Mr. Wood was featured in and contributed to articles in Advertising Age, Business Week, CNET, Computer Weekly, Financial Times, Interactive Age, Legal Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal, and has made numerous appearances on BBC Radio 4 and MSNBC (Europe). He has been a member of the E-commerce and Intellectual Property Committees of the United States Chamber of International Business, as well as the International Chamber of Commerce.
Lee Kaplan is a senior intelligence analyst and communications director for the Northeast Intelligence Network and other intelligence websites, and an expert on the International Solidarity Movement. He contributes regularly to Front Page Magazine, and is columnist for the Israel National News and Canada Free Press . He heads the organizations Defending America for Knowledge and Action (DAFKA) and Stop the ISM. He has been interviewed on over two hundred nationally and internationally syndicated radio shows and been a guest on Fox Cable TV’s Dayside with Linda Vester and Bill O’Reilly’s The Factor. He is a guest every Tuesday on the Jim Kirkwood Show on Utah's K-Talk Radio am630 and formerly hosted his own show, The Islamic Agenda on Jerusalem Pulse Radio.
Mr. Kaplan Wrote and edited college workbooks to accompany college courses on videotape for Canisius College, Notre Dame, Azusa Pacific College and University of Miami. His B.A. is in Motion Picture/Television from UCLA (1973), with a specialization in writing. He currently writes and does research for Isracampus.org.il.
