Constantine Menges

Who is Constantine Menges?

Constantine Menges was an American scholar, author, professor, and Latin American specialist for the CIA.

Menges was born in Turkey on September 1, 1939, the day that Germany invaded Poland to start World War II. His parents sent him to the United States in 1943. Menges attended college in Prague. He earned a bachelor's degree in physics and a doctorate in political science from Columbia University. He helped German refugees escape over the Berlin Wall and organized civil resistance after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Menges worked to ensue equal voting rights in Mississippi and marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. During the Nixon and Ford administrations, he was as deputy assistant for civil rights in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

From 1981 until 1983, he worked for the director of the CIA as the national intelligence officer for Latin America. From 1983 until 1986, he served as special assistant to President Ronald Reagan. He helped plan the liberation of Grenada and supported the Nicaraguan Contras and the Salvadoran rebels. Friends and foes gave him the nickname "Constant Menace".

He died of cancer on July 11, 2004, in Washington, D.C., where he had been a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.