Founded by neoconservative journalist Clifford May just after 9/11, the non-profit Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) has emerged as perhaps the most powerful outside influencer of the Trump White House today.
FDD is notorious: a self-styled “non-partisan policy institute,” the non-profit organization is funded primarily by right-wing supporters of Israel, including billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Over the nearly two decades since its founding, FDD has promoted the Iraq War, banged the drum for an attack on Syria, opposed the Obama administration’s nuclear negotiations with Iran, extolled the virtues of Benjamin Netanyahu, and, at the beginning of this decade, launched a crusade that targeted the tiny Persian Gulf country of Qatar where the U.S. maintains an airbase.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-political-forces-behind-rex-tillersons-firing/
