Ari Fleischer

Lawrence Ari Fleischer (born October 13, 1960) is an American media consultant and political aide who served as the 23rd White House Press Secretary, for President George W. Bush, from January 2001 to July 2003.

As press secretary in the Bush administration, Fleischer was a prominent advocate for the invasion of Iraq.

Since leaving the White House, he has worked as a media consultant and commentator.

Fleischer was born in 1960 in New York City, the son of Martha and Alan A. Fleischer.

His mother was a database coordinator and his father was owner of an executive recruiting company.

His parents were Jewish; his mother is a Hungarian immigrant who lost much of her family in the Holocaust.

He graduated from Fox Lane High School in Bedford, New York, in 1978, and graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont in 1982.

Upon his graduation from Middlebury, Fleischer worked as press secretary for Jon S. Fossel, a Republican candidate for a New York congressional seat.

Later Fleischer worked as press secretary for Norman Lent.

From 1985 to 1988, he was field director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

He went back to being a press secretary in 1988, working for congressman Joseph DioGuardi.

Fleischer served as U.S. Senator Pete Domenici's press secretary from 1989 to 1994 and as spokesman for the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee for five years.

He worked as deputy communications director for George H. W. Bush's 1992 reelection campaign.

Although Fleischer served as communications director for Elizabeth Dole during her presidential run in the 2000 election campaign, he joined George W. Bush's presidential campaign after Dole dropped out of the race.

When Bush became President in 2001, he tapped Fleischer to become his press secretary.

Fleischer is credited with introducing the phrase "homicide bombing" to describe what has also been called suicide bombing, in April 2002, to emphasize the tactic's terrorist connotations:

"The president ... convened a meeting of the National Security Council, at which point, in the middle of the meeting, the president was informed about this morning's homicide bombing in Jerusalem ... The Saudi telethon, as they have told it to us, is to provide assistance to the Palestinian people, and that isn't – no money is going to go to provide the homicide bombers with any assistance from the Saudi government."

- Ari Fleischer, "White House Regular Briefing," Federal News Service, April 12, 2002

Both parents were Democrats who were "horrified" when Fleischer became a Republican, he told an interviewer in 2003: "While I lived at home and when I started college, I was a liberal Democrat. In a sense, it was President Carter who drove me out of the Democratic Party and it was President Reagan who welcomed me into the Republican Party."

On May 19, 2003, he announced that he would resign during the summer, citing a desire to spend more time with his wife and to work in the private sector.

He was replaced by deputy press secretary Scott McClellan on July 15, 2003.

As press secretary in the Bush administration, Fleischer was a prominent advocate for the invasion of Iraq.

He made numerous exaggerated and misleading claims about Iraq in the lead-up to the Iraq War, in particular about Iraq's purported WMD program (it did not have one) and the Saddam Hussein regime's purported relationship with al-Qaeda (they did not have an operational relationship).

In January 2003, after UN weapons inspectors said they had "not found any smoking gun" evidence of an active WMD program, Fleischer said, "The problem with guns that are hidden is you can't see their smoke... We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

(there were not) On the issue of whether the Saddam Hussein regime had sought to obtain uranium from Niger, Fleischer said that it was "an issue that very well may be true. We don’t know if it’s true—but nobody, but nobody, can say it is wrong."

In his press conferences, he repeatedly insisted that the burden of proof for the non-existence of the Hussein regime's WMD program fell on Saddam Hussein, not on the Bush administration to prove that he did have an active WMD program.

On one occasion Fleischer said that Hussein "has to indicate whether or not he has weapons. . . . If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world... If Saddam Hussein indicates that he has weapons of mass destruction and that he is violating United Nations resolutions, then we will know that Saddam Hussein again deceived the world."

In 2003, Fleischer said, "The standard for any type of interrogation of somebody in American custody is to be humane and to follow all international laws and accords dealing with this type subject. That is precisely what has been happening and exactly what will happen."

The administration used waterboarding, sleep deprivation and forced nudity against suspected combatants and suspected terrorists.

Fleischer was an important figure in the Plame affair, which revolved around journalist Robert Novak's public identification of Valerie Plame as a covert CIA officer in 2003.

"Operation Avarice", a covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation to buy up WMD's in Iraq, did secure over 400 missiles and rockets containing chemical weapons, mostly Sarin nerve-gas, between 2005 and 2006.

In some cases the missile's toxicity was over 25%, much higher than expected.

In 2009, when the Department of Justice of the Obama administration launched a probe into alleged CIA interrogation abuses, Fleischer described the decision as "disgusting."

Fleischer said if he were subpoenaed in an investigation of alleged interrogation abuses, "I'll be proud to testify... I'm proud of what we did to protect this country."

Some details of the classified operation were revealed by The New York Times in 2015.

Additionally, hundreds and possibly thousands of US troops were exposed to various chemical weapons during cleanup operations when about 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs were located and demolished in Iraq.

Some of the cases of exposure were hushed up at the time, as the military did not want to reveal that there were chemical agents around lest they be used by terrorists in conjunction with IEDs.

He joined Fox News as a contributor in July 2017.

In 2019, Fleischer said, "It’s a myth that Bush lied" about Iraq, resulting in a backlash.

Fleischer claimed that he and Bush "faithfully and accurately reported" the assessments of the Intelligence community.