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Dan Senor
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Dan Senor
Daniel Samuel Senor (/ˈsiːnər/; born November 6, 1971) is an American columnist, writer, and political adviser. He was chief spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and senior foreign policy adviser to U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney during the 2012 election campaign. A frequent news commentator and contributor to The Wall Street Journal, he is co-author of the book Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle (2009) and The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World (2023).
Senor was born in Utica, New York, and grew up in Toronto, Ontario, the youngest of four children. His father, Jim, worked for Israel Bonds; his mother, Helen, was from Košice, now in Slovakia, where she and her mother hid from the Slovak Nazi collaborators during the Holocaust. Helen Senor's father was murdered at the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the war, Helen and her mother fled to Paris, then via New York to Montreal. Senor said that his mother's post-Holocaust trauma "was very heavy for us growing up". Senor graduated from Forest Hill Collegiate Institute and then studied at the University of Western Ontario before moving onto Hebrew University and Harvard Business School.
Senor spent much of the 1990s working as a staffer on Spencer Abraham's (R-MI) 1994 Senate campaign and then in his Capitol Hill office. He later worked for Senator Connie Mack III (R-FL) and at AIPAC. During that time, he caught the attention of Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, who introduced him to the neoconservative group affiliated with George W. Bush.
From 2001 to 2003, he was an investment banker at the Carlyle Group.
In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and during the fighting, Senor was a Pentagon and White House adviser based in Doha, Qatar, at U.S. Central Command Forward; he was subsequently based in Kuwait, working with General Jay Garner during the final days of the invasion and was in southern Iraq when the Saddam Hussein regime fell.
According to Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Senor was known for the zealous spin that put a good face on the disaster unfolding in Baghdad (the Iraq War did not end until December 2011). Some statements he made to the press did not reflect the actual situation in the city. Wrote Maureen Dowd, "As the spokesman for Paul Bremer during the Iraq occupation, Mr. Senor helped perpetrate one of the biggest foreign policy bungles in U.S. history. The clueless desert viceroys summarily disbanded the Iraqi Army, forced de-Baathification, stood frozen in denial as thugs looted ministries and museums, deluded themselves about the growing insurgency and misled reporters with their Panglossian scenarios of progress. 'Off the record, Paris is burning,' Mr. Senor told a group of reporters a year into the war. 'On the record, security and stability are returning to Iraq.'"
Senor formally re-located to Baghdad on April 20, 2003. He traveled with General Garner's team in the first American post-war civilian protection unit, becoming one of the first American civilians to enter Baghdad after the fall of the regime. In Iraq, Senor served as Chief Spokesperson for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), as Senior Advisor to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, and as adviser to the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. In the U.S., he was "a regular television fixture in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 Iraq invasion", thus becoming "the face of the Bush Administration's efforts in Iraq".
Senor remained in Iraq until the summer of 2004. His 15 months working for the CPA from Baghdad made him one of the longest-serving American civilians in Iraq at the time. For his service, he was awarded the Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award, one of the Pentagon's highest civilian honors.
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Dan Senor
Daniel Samuel Senor (/ˈsiːnər/; born November 6, 1971) is an American columnist, writer, and political adviser. He was chief spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and senior foreign policy adviser to U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney during the 2012 election campaign. A frequent news commentator and contributor to The Wall Street Journal, he is co-author of the book Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle (2009) and The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World (2023).
Senor was born in Utica, New York, and grew up in Toronto, Ontario, the youngest of four children. His father, Jim, worked for Israel Bonds; his mother, Helen, was from Košice, now in Slovakia, where she and her mother hid from the Slovak Nazi collaborators during the Holocaust. Helen Senor's father was murdered at the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the war, Helen and her mother fled to Paris, then via New York to Montreal. Senor said that his mother's post-Holocaust trauma "was very heavy for us growing up". Senor graduated from Forest Hill Collegiate Institute and then studied at the University of Western Ontario before moving onto Hebrew University and Harvard Business School.
Senor spent much of the 1990s working as a staffer on Spencer Abraham's (R-MI) 1994 Senate campaign and then in his Capitol Hill office. He later worked for Senator Connie Mack III (R-FL) and at AIPAC. During that time, he caught the attention of Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, who introduced him to the neoconservative group affiliated with George W. Bush.
From 2001 to 2003, he was an investment banker at the Carlyle Group.
In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and during the fighting, Senor was a Pentagon and White House adviser based in Doha, Qatar, at U.S. Central Command Forward; he was subsequently based in Kuwait, working with General Jay Garner during the final days of the invasion and was in southern Iraq when the Saddam Hussein regime fell.
According to Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Senor was known for the zealous spin that put a good face on the disaster unfolding in Baghdad (the Iraq War did not end until December 2011). Some statements he made to the press did not reflect the actual situation in the city. Wrote Maureen Dowd, "As the spokesman for Paul Bremer during the Iraq occupation, Mr. Senor helped perpetrate one of the biggest foreign policy bungles in U.S. history. The clueless desert viceroys summarily disbanded the Iraqi Army, forced de-Baathification, stood frozen in denial as thugs looted ministries and museums, deluded themselves about the growing insurgency and misled reporters with their Panglossian scenarios of progress. 'Off the record, Paris is burning,' Mr. Senor told a group of reporters a year into the war. 'On the record, security and stability are returning to Iraq.'"
Senor formally re-located to Baghdad on April 20, 2003. He traveled with General Garner's team in the first American post-war civilian protection unit, becoming one of the first American civilians to enter Baghdad after the fall of the regime. In Iraq, Senor served as Chief Spokesperson for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), as Senior Advisor to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, and as adviser to the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. In the U.S., he was "a regular television fixture in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 Iraq invasion", thus becoming "the face of the Bush Administration's efforts in Iraq".
Senor remained in Iraq until the summer of 2004. His 15 months working for the CPA from Baghdad made him one of the longest-serving American civilians in Iraq at the time. For his service, he was awarded the Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award, one of the Pentagon's highest civilian honors.
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