Michael Ledeen

News of the death on Sunday of Michael Ledeen is received with sadness here at The New York Sun. Ledeen was a friend and contributing editor of the Sun. He wrote signed columns for us and also shared his learning in countless conversations about editorials in formation. He was a heroic figure in the struggles against fascism and communism and against the enemies of Zion and America. He will be sorely missed.We first met Ledeen in the spring of 1981, shortly after we began writing editorials for the Wall Street Journal. The paper’s editor, Robert Bartley, suggested we go to Washington for a few days with an eye to getting to know three rising figures — a young fiscal maven in the White House, Larry Kudlow; a starting congressman from Georgia named Newt Gingrich; and Ledeen, a foreign policy expert advising the new administration.The columns of Messrs. Kudlow and Gingrich still appear in the Sun and those of Michael Ledeen would be appearing, too, save for the fact that in recent seasons he was too ill to write. How we missed him. Once, when we were editing the Forward, Ledeen told us that behind the King David Hotel at Jerusalem there is a monument to the former head of counterintelligence of the CIA, James Jesus Angleton.Angleton had, among other things, helped bring Jewish refugees to Israel from Europe. So we invited Ledeen to write a novel that would begin and end at the monument to Angleton. And so he did — cranking out chapters to the novel, which ran weekly in the Forward for more than a year. Ledeen also had a great appreciation for the heroism of the free trade union movement in the long, twilight struggle against communism.Ledeen often extolled the vision of labor leaders like Lane Kirkland, Tom Donohue, and Irving Brown of the AFL-CIO. They were veterans of the struggle against Eurocommunism, in, among other countries, Italy, where Ledeen lived for some years. He wrote important works on fascism. Ledeen loved the warm spirit of Italy — and its cuisine, which starred as Ledeen and his wife Barbara filled their home at Washington with children and friends.Our erstwhile colleague, Eli Lake, writes that Ledeen had “a gift for friendship” and notes that Ledeen “played bridge with Omar Sharif” and “discussed Italian fascism” with Angleton. Ledeen was friends with such disparate figures as Secretary of State Kissinger, the University of Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight, and the Los Angeles Dodgers’s manager, Tommy Lasorda. Ledeen never backed away from friends caught up in controversy.As Ledeen lay dying at home in Texas, his wife and family updated his extensive circle of friends. Barbara and their three children — two veterans of the Marines, Gabriel and Daniel, and a daughter, Simone, who served the American government in Afghanistan and Iraq — were all with Ledeen when he died. May they be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem — with a grand Italian meal to follow.

Michael Ledeen

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