Daniel Samuel "Dan" Senor - Foreign Policy Initiative

Daniel Samuel “Dan” Senor is former chief spokesman for Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and senior foreign policy adviser to U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney during the 2012 election campaign. He was born on November 6th, 1971. During his life, he worked as a columnist, writer, and political adviser. He also appeared on Fox News as a commentator and was a contributor to the Wall Street Journal. He is the co-author of the book called Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. Dan Senor is married to TV personality Campbell Brown.

Early life and education

Daniel Samuel “Dan” Senor was born in Utica but grew up in Toronto, Ontario. He is the youngest of his family’s four children. He is the son of Jim Senor, who worked for Israel Bonds. His mother was Helen Senor who came to Canada from Kosice (Slovakia). Helen, together with her mother, hid in this Slovakian city from Nazis during the Holocaust. The grandfather of Dan Senor, from mother’s side, was murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp. After the war, Helen moved to Paris, and afterward via New York to Montreal. Dan often spoke about how his mother’s “Holocaust trauma” was hard on family during his childhood.

Dan Senor graduated from Forest Hill Collegiate Institute and earned a B.A. in History at the University of Western Ontario in 1994. After that he attended Hebrew University in Jerusalem, only to receive an MBA from Harvard in 2001.

Daniel Samuel “Dan” Senor Career

During the 1990s Senor worked as a staffer at Spencer Abraham’s campaign for Senate and later in his office at Capitol Hill. After that, he worked at AIPAC and for Senator Connie Mack. While at AIPAC he was spotted by William Kristol who was an editor at Weekly Standard. Kristol was the one who introduced Senor to neoconservative group that had an affiliation with George W. Bush. The period from 2001 to 2003 saw Dan working as an investment banker at Carlyle Group.

Iraq

When the U.S. invasion of Iraq started in 2003, Senor was White House adviser in Doha, Qatar. Later he was moved to Kuwait as the part of U.S. Central Command. There he worked under general Jay Garner. The author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, stated that Dan Senor was the one who put the “good face” on the catastrophe that was Iraq War which did not end until 2011. His press statements didn’t describe the exact situation in Baghdad.

Daniel Samuel “Dan” Senor was transferred to Iraqi capital on April 20th, 2003 and was one of the first civilians to enter this city after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Dan was a Chief Spokesperson for the CPA, and a Senior Advisor to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, Senor was the one to report from the location and was regularly on television. Because of this, many regarded him as “the face of the Bush Administration’s efforts in Iraq.”

His service in Iraq ended in 2004 after he became one of the longest-serving civilians during the invasion and it earned him Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award, one of the Pentagon’s highest civilian honors.

Other professional activities

* Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations
* Writer for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Post, and The Weekly Standard.
* Established think tank Foreign Policy Initiative.
* Currently serves on advisory board for nonprofit America Abroad Media.

Role in the Romney campaign

In 2012 Daniel Samuel “Dan” Senor started working as a foreign policy adviser to U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney. What Dan bought to the campaign were close ties to Israel through his sister Wendy Singer who works at the Jerusalem office of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He was the leading man behind Romney’s campaign. Many analysts considered that if Romney managed to win the elections, there was a place reserved for Dan Senor in the West Wing.