CNI Authors
Philip Giraldi
Philip Giraldi is the executive director of the Council for the National Interest and a recognized authority on international security and counterterrorism issues. He is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served eighteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was Chief of Base in Barcelona from 1989 to 1992 designated as the Agency’s senior officer for Olympic Games support. Since 1992 he consulted for a number of Fortune 500 corporate clients.
Mr. Giraldi was awarded an MA and PhD from the University of London in European History and holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from the University of Chicago. He speaks Spanish, Italian, German, and Turkish.
His columns on terrorism, intelligence, and security issues regularly appear in The American Conservative magazine, Huffington Post, and antiwar.com. He has written op-ed pieces for the Hearst Newspaper chain, has appeared on “Good Morning America,” MSNBC, National Public Radio, and local affiliates of ABC television. He has been a keynote speaker at the Petroleum Industry Security Council annual meeting, has spoken twice at the American Conservative Union’s annual CPAC convention in Washington, and has addressed several World Affairs Council affiliates. He has been interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the British Broadcasting Corporation, Britain’s Independent Television Network, FOX News, Polish National Television, Croatian National Television, al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya, 60 Minutes, and other international and domestic broadcasters.
Benjamin Franklin once observed that those who would trade their liberties for security will wind up losing both. James Madison stated that no nation can preserve freedom in the midst of perpetual warfare. Few can question that America’s Founding Fathers epitomize true conservatism. There is something seriously wrong in America today precisely because the elites from both political parties have forgotten about Franklin and Madison and ignored their wise counsel.
Alison Weir
Alison Weir is the president of the Council for the National Interest, a former journalist and the founder of If Americans Knew, a nonprofit organization that focuses on the Israel-Palestine conflict, specializing in statistical analysis. Weir writes and speaks widely about Israel-Palestine, with particular focus on media coverage. Her articles on the subject have been published in anthologies both in the U.S. and abroad and in diverse online and print publications.
Ms. Weir has given talks at numerous universities, including Harvard Law School, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Yale, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and the Naval Postgraduate Institute; four times at the Asia Media Summit in Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, and has twice given briefings on Capitol Hill.
Former U.S. Congressman Tom Campbell (R-CA) said of her presentation: “Ms. Weir presents a powerful, well documented view of the Middle East today. She is intelligent, careful, and critical. American policy makers would benefit greatly from hearing her first-hand observations and attempting to answer the questions she poses.”
The New York Times reported of her lecture in Greenwich, Connecticut: “When the speech ended, Ms. Weir was met with thunderous applause, and across the room there was a widespread sense of satisfaction that someone was saying what needed to be said.”
In 2004 she was inducted into honorary membership of Phi Alpha Literary Society, founded in 1845 at Illinois College. The award cited her as a: “Courageous journalist-lecturer on behalf of human rights. The first woman to receive an honorary membership in Phi Alpha history.”
Gaza (CNN) -- Eleven Palestinians were killed and at least four critically injured Friday and early Saturday after a series of Israeli airstrikes targeted suspected militants across Gaza, according to Palestinian medical officials. [First-hand account of airstrikes below]
Paul Findley
Author, speaker and pundit Paul Findley served in the United States Congress for 22 years representing central Illinois. Before his Congressional service, Mr. Findley served as a Naval officer with the Seabees in the Pacific in World War II, followed by work as a newspaper editor in Jacksonville, Illinois.
Mr. Findley is the author of the best-selling book They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby, first published in 1985 and most recently updated in 2003. This was the first book to expose the power of the Israel Lobby throughout the United States: in Congress, academia, and the press. A reviewer noted:
“Because he questioned blind American support of Israel, the lobby deprived a conscientious Illinois congressman of the seat he occupied for 22 years. In doing so, it freed Paul Findley to write the most powerful expose to date of Israel’s abuse of American trust, a book which may prove Admiral Moorer’s prediction to him that ‘the American people would be goddam mad if they knew what goes on.’”
Mr. Findley is also the author of Deliberate Deceptions: Facing the Facts About the U.S.-Israeli Relationship. Richard Curtiss, Executive Editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and a former career Foreign Service Officer, called the book: a “treasure trove of information about Palestine, Israel, and the latter’s relationship with the U.S.”
Curtiss went on to state: “All Americans who are serious about tipping U.S. policy back toward even-handedness in the Middle East will find this book useful, in fact essential…. Use of Findley’s clearly organized and carefully indexed facts will make readers highly effective in convincing their countrymen that, collectively, Americans have been too gullible for too long.”
Mr. Findley is also the author of A. Lincoln, the Crucible of Congress, Silent No More: Confronting America’s False Images of Islam, and The Federal Farm Table.
Mr. Findley has received numerous distinctions, among them:
1942 election to Phi Beta Kappa, Illinois College; 1972 Logan Hay Award; Abraham Lincoln Association; the 1976 Estes Kefauver Memorial Award; the 1977 Elijah Lovejoy Award; the 1978 Commander’s Cross, Order of Merit, highest civilian award of the Federal Republic of Germany; 1980 Laureate of Lincoln Academy, State of Illinois, 1986 human understanding award by EAFORD; Honorary doctorate degrees—1969 Lindenwood College, 1973 Illinois College, 1988 Lincoln University, 1997 MacMurray College.
by former Congressman Paul Findley, co-founder of CNI
The acts of war ordered by President Barack Obama against the government of Libya violated provisions of the U.S. Constitution and the War Powers Resolution of 1973. He also exceeded his authority by pledging U.S. combat support to the United Nations Security Council and to NATO for military measures against Libya. The United States may soon find itself entrapped in a costly civil war in that North African nation.
Congress is complicit in creating this mess, because it failed to demand presidential compliance with the Constitution and public law and neglected its own explicit constitutional duty in the exercise of war powers.
John Whitbeck
John Whitbeck is a member of the board of CNI and an international lawyer who writes frequently about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, often from Palestinian viewpoint, and has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel. Since 1988, his articles on behalf of Middle East peace have been published more than 600 times in more than 80 Arab, Israeli and international newspapers, magazines, journals and books.
In 1993,his “Two States, One Holy Land” framework for peace was the subject of a three-day conference in Cairo, attended by 24 prominent Israelis and Palestinians, including four Knesset members, under the sponsorship of The Middle East Institute (Washington), and his “condominium solution” for sharing Jerusalem in a context of peace and reconciliation has been published more than 50 times in various lengths and languages.
A graduate of Harvard College (1968) and Harvard Law School (1973), he left the United States in 1976 and has since lived and practiced law in Paris, London and Jeddah.
James Abourezk
Senator James Abourezk is a member of the board of the Council for the National Interest Foundation, he served South Dakota in the U.S. Senate between 1973-1979. Notably he was the first Arab-American to become a Senator. He also served South Dakota’s second district in the House of Representatives between 1971 and 1973. Currently he is a senior partner in Abourezk Law Offices, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
One of the most vivid memories I have of my service in the U.S. Senate was of an early Democratic caucus. It was in January of 1973, not long after President Richard Nixon and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, had ordered the carpet bombing of Hanoi in an effort to strong arm the Vietnamese into surrendering. It was a horrendous and savage attack on a nation of peasants who chose to try to expel an army of foreigners from their land.
