The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward, A New Approach

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The Iraq Study Group

James A. Baker, III—Co-Chair

One of the central figures of the Bush effort would be James Baker III, Bush's friend of ten years' standing. Baker's power base derived first of all from his family's Houston law firm, Baker & Botts, which was founded just after the end of the Civil War by defeated partisans of the Confederate cause. Judge Peter Gray and Walter Browne Botts established a law partnership in 1866, and this became Baker & Botts during the 1870's when James Baker (the great-grandfather of Bush's Secretary of State) joined the firm.

Baker & Botts founder Peter Gray had been Assistant Treasurer of the Confederate States of America and financial supervisor of the CSA's "Trans-Mississippi Department." Gray, acting on orders of Confederate Secretary of State Robert Toombs, financed the subversive work of Confederate general Albert Pike among the Indian tribes of the southwest. The close of the war in 1865 had found Pike hiding in Canada, and Toombs in exile in England. Pike was excluded from the general US amnesty for rebels because he was thought to have induced Indians to commit massacres and war crimes.

Pike and Toombs re-established the "Southern Jurisdiction" of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, of which Pike had been the leader in the slave states before the war of the rebellion. Pike's deputy, one Phillip C. Tucker, returned from Scottish Rite indoctrination in Great Britain to set up a Scottish rite lodge in Houston in the spring of 1867. Tucker designated Walter Browne Botts and his relative Benjamin Botts as the leaders of this new Scottish Rite lodge. [fn 5]

The policy of the Scottish Rite was to regroup unreconstructed Confederates to secure the disenfranchisement of black citizens and to promote Anglophile domination of finance and business. By the beginning of the twentieth century, there were two great powers dominating Texas: on the one hand, the railroad empire of E.H. Harriman, served by the law firm of Baker & Botts; and on the other, the British-trained political operative Colonel Edward M. House, the controller of President Woodrow Wilson. The close relation between Baker & Botts and the Harriman interests has remained in place down to the present. And since the time that Captain Baker founded the Texas Commerce Bank, the Baker family has helped the London-New York axis run the Texas banking system.

In 1901, the discovery of large oil deposits in Texas offered great promise for the future economic development of the state, but also attracted the Anglo-American oil cartel. The Baker family law firm in Texas, like the Bush and Dulles families in New York, was aligned with the Harriman-Rockefeller cartel. Robert S. Lovett, a Baker & Botts partner from 1882 on, later became the chairman of Harriman's Union Pacific Railroad and chief counsel to E.H. Harriman. The Bakers were prominent in supporting eugenics and utopian-feudalist social engineering.

Captain James A. Baker, so the story goes, the grandfather of the current boss of Foggy Bottom, solved the murder of his client William Marsh Rice and took control of Rice's huge estate. Baker used the money to start Rice University and became the chairman of the school's board of trustees. Baker sought to create a center of diffusion of racist eugenics, and for this purpose brought in Julian Huxley of the infamous British oligarchical family to found the biology program at Rice starting in 1912. [fn 6] Huxley was the vice president of the British Eugenics Society and actually helped to organize "race science" programs for the Nazi Interior Ministry, before becoming the founding Director General of UNESCO in 1946-48.

James A. Baker III was born April 28, 1930, in the fourth generation of his family's wealth. Baker holdings have included Exxon, Mobil, Atlantic Richfield, Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of Indiana, Kerr-McGee, Merck, and Freeport Minerals. Baker also held stock in some large New York banks during the time that he was negotiating the Latin American debt crisis in his capacity as Secretary of the Treasury. [fn 7]

Baker grew up in patrician surroundings. His social profile has been described as "Tex-prep." Like his father, James III attended the Hill School near Philadelphia, and then went on to Princeton, where he was a member of Ivy Club, a traditional preserve of Eastern Anglophile Liberal Establishment oligarchs. Nancy Reagan was enchanted by Baker's sartorial elegance and smooth savoir-faire. Nancy liked Baker far more than she ever did Bush, and this was a key advantage for Bush-Baker during the factional struggles of the Reagan years.

Baker & Botts maintains an "anti-nepotism" policy, so James III became a boss of Houston's Andrews, Kurth, Campbell, & Jones law firm, a satellite of Baker & Botts. Baker's relation to Bush extends across both law firms: in 1977, Baker & Botts partner Blaine Kerr became president of Pennzoil, and in 1979, Baker & Botts partner B. J. Mackin became chairman of Zapata Corporation. Baker & Botts have always represented Zapata, and are often listed as counsel for Schlumberger, the oil services firm. James Baker and his Andrews, Kurth partners were the Houston attorneys for First International Bank of Houston when George Bush was chairman of the bank's executive committee.

During the 1980 campaign, Baker became the chairman of the Reagan-Bush campaign committee, while fellow Texan Bob Strauss was chairman of the Carter-Mondale campaign. But Baker and Strauss were at the very same time business partners in Herman Brothers, one of America's largest beer distributors. Bush Democrat Strauss later went to Moscow as Bush's ambassador to the USSR and later, to Russia.

In 1990, the New York Times offered a comparison of Bush and Baker, and sought to convey the impression that Baker was the far more devious of the duo:

When you sit across from the President, it is like holding an X-ray plate up to the light. You can see if he feels defensive or annoyed or amused. He is often distracted, toying with something on his desk. His thoughts start and stop and start again, as though he had call-waiting in his brain. There is a spontaneity and warmth about him.

When you sit across from Baker, it is like looking at a length of black silk. There is a stillness, as Baker holds you locked in his gaze and Southern comfort voice, occasionally flashing a rather wintry smile...He has a compelling presence, but he is such a fox that you feel the impulse to check your wallet when you leave his office. [fn 8]

-- "George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography," by Webster Griffin Tarpley and Antony Chaitkin

James A. Baker, III, has served in senior government positions under three United States presidents. He served as the nation’s 61st Secretary of State from January 1989 through August 1992 under President George H. W. Bush. During his tenure at the State Department, Mr. Baker traveled to 90 foreign countries as the United States confronted the unprecedented challenges and opportunities of the post–Cold War era. Mr. Baker’s reflections on those years of revolution, war, and peace—The Politics of Diplomacy—was published in 1995.

Mr. Baker served as the 67th Secretary of the Treasury from 1985 to 1988 under President Ronald Reagan. As Treasury Secretary, he was also Chairman of the President’s Economic Policy Council. From 1981 to 1985, he served as White House Chief of Staff to President Reagan. Mr. Baker’s record of public service began in 1975 as Under Secretary of Commerce to President Gerald Ford. It concluded with his service as White House Chief of Staff and Senior Counselor to President Bush from August 1992 to January 1993.

Long active in American presidential politics, Mr. Baker led presidential campaigns for Presidents Ford, Reagan, and Bush over the course of five consecutive presidential elections from 1976 to 1992.

A native Houstonian, Mr. Baker graduated from Princeton University in 1952. After two years of active duty as a lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, he entered the University of Texas School of Law at Austin. He received his J.D. with honors in 1957 and practiced law with the Houston firm of Andrews and Kurth from 1957 to 1975.

Mr. Baker’s memoir—Work Hard, Study . . . and Keep Out of Politics! Adventures and Lessons from an Unexpected Public Life—was published in October 2006.

Mr. Baker received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991 and has been the recipient of many other awards for distinguished public service, including Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson Award, the American Institute for Public Service’s Jefferson Award, Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government Award, the Hans J. Morgenthau Award, the George F. Kennan Award, the Department of the Treasury’s Alexander Hamilton Award, the Department of State’s Distinguished Service Award, and numerous honorary academic degrees.

Mr. Baker is presently a senior partner in the law firm of Baker Botts. He is Honorary Chairman of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University and serves on the board of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. From 1997 to 2004, Mr. Baker served as the Personal Envoy of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to seek a political solution to the conflict over Western Sahara. In 2003, Mr. Baker was appointed Special Presidential Envoy for President George W. Bush on the issue of Iraqi debt. In 2005, he was co-chair, with former President Jimmy Carter, of the Commission on Federal Election Reform. Since March 2006, Mr. Baker and former U.S. Congressman Lee H. Hamilton have served as the co-chairs of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan blue-ribbon panel on Iraq.

Mr. Baker was born in Houston, Texas, in 1930. He and his wife, the former Susan Garrett, currently reside in Houston, and have eight children and seventeen grandchildren.

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Lee H. Hamilton—Co-Chair

ABLE DANGER: 2.5 TERABYTES OF TREASON: Another important MIHOP issue emerges from these drills. Able Warrior, according to Arkin's listing, would seem to represent the big Special Forces (SOCOM) "anti-terror" defensive drill of each fiscal year. Keeping in mind the military bureaucracy's predilection for naming drills in binary pairs, we might speculate as to the meaning of a drill or activity known as Able Danger. The name would suggest that this might be the simulated attacker paired with the defensive Able Warrior. In other words, Able Danger might represent the case officers and terrorist controllers for a group of government-run terrorists (double agents, plus dupes, fanatics, and criminal energy types) used to play the roles of terrorists in the various anti-terror drills. Does the reader smell a fault?

Such suspicions materialized in August 2005 when Congressman Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania began holding press conferences about Able Danger, which turned out to be a co-production of the Special Forces command with the Defense Intelligence Agency. Weldon's main interest was in the report from a certain Col. Schaffer and a certain Navy Captain Philpott that Able Danger had been well aware of the presence of Mohamed Atta in the United States during the early months of 2000, long before the Kean-Hamilton commission said he had arrived. The Able Danger officers produced detailed accounts of how they told the 9/11 commission investigators all about this, only to see their testimony completely ignored. In a grotesque comedy of errors, Kean, Hamilton and their hack apparatus clumsily denied these allegations, then retracted the denial, then denied them again. The role of Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 commission staff, was especially slimy, which should have come as no surprise to readers of this book. The first by-product of Congressman Weldon's maverick performance was thus to provide an absolutely water-tight case study in how, when dealing with highly material information, the 9/11 commission had suppressed evidence, obstructed justice, and deliberately and systematically lied.

-- "9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA," by Webster Griffin Tarpley

Lee H. Hamilton became Director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in January 1999. Previously, Mr. Hamilton served for thirty-four years as a United States Congressman from Indiana. During his tenure, he served as Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (now the Committee on International Relations) and chaired the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East from the early 1970s until 1993. He was Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran.

Also a leading figure on economic policy and congressional organization, he served as Chair of the Joint Economic Committee as well as the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, and was a member of the House Standards of Official Conduct Committee. In his home state of Indiana, Mr. Hamilton worked hard to improve education, job training, and infrastructure. Currently, Mr. Hamilton serves as Director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University, which seeks to educate citizens on the importance of Congress and on how Congress operates within our government.

Mr. Hamilton remains an important and active voice on matters of international relations and American national security. He served as a Commissioner on the United States Commission on National Security in the 21st Century (better known as the Hart-Rudman Commission), was Co-Chair with former Senator Howard Baker of the Baker-Hamilton Commission to Investigate Certain Security Issues at Los Alamos, and was Vice-Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission), which issued its report in July 2004. He is currently a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the President’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, as well as the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Advisory Board.

Born in Daytona Beach, Florida, Mr. Hamilton relocated with his family to Tennessee and then to Evansville, Indiana. Mr. Hamilton is a graduate of DePauw University and the Indiana University School of Law, and studied for a year at Goethe University in Germany. Before his election to Congress, he practiced law in Chicago and in Columbus, Indiana. A former high school and college basketball star, he has been inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.

Mr. Hamilton’s distinguished service in government has been honored through numerous awards in public service and human rights as well as honorary degrees. He is the author of A Creative Tension—The Foreign Policy Roles of the President and Congress (2002) and How Congress Works and Why You Should Care (2004), and the coauthor of Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission (2006).

Lee and his wife, the former Nancy Ann Nelson, have three children—Tracy Lynn Souza, Deborah Hamilton Kremer, and Douglas Nelson Hamilton—and five grandchildren: Christina, Maria, McLouis and Patricia Souza and Lina Ying Kremer.

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Lawrence S. Eagleburger—Member

A second royal road to high office was to have been an officer of Kissinger Associates, the international consulting firm set up by Bush's lifelong patron, Henry Kissinger. In this category we find Gen. Brent Scowcroft, the former chief of the Kiss Ass Washington office, and Lawrence Eagleburger, the dissipated wreck who was named to the number two post in the State Department, Undersecretary of State. Eagleburger had been the president of Kissinger Associates.

***

One of the defining moments in the first year of the Bush's presidency was his reaction to the Tien An Men massacre of June 4, 1989. No one can forget the magnificent movement of the anti-totalitarian Chinese students who used the occasion of the funeral of Hu Yaobang in the spring of 1989 to launch a movement of protest and reform against the monstrous dictatorship of Deng Xiao-ping, Yang Shankun, and Prime Minister Li Peng. As the portrait of the old butcher Mao Tse-tung looked down from the former imperial palace, the students erected a statue of liberty and filled the square with the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. By the end of May it was clear that the Deng regime was attempting to pull itself together to attempt a convulsive massacre of its political opposition. At this point, it is likely that a pointed and unequivocal public warning from the United States government might have avoided the looming bloody crackdown against the students. Even a warning through secret diplomatic channels might have sufficed. Bush undertook neither, and he must bear responsibility for this blatant omission.

The non-violent protest of the students was then crushed by the martial law troops of the hated and discredited communist regime. Untold thousands of students were killed outright, and thousands more died in the merciless death hunt against political dissidents which followed. Mankind was horrified. For Bush, however, the main considerations were that Deng Xiao-ping was part of his own personal network, with whom Bush had maintained close contact since at least 1975. Bush's devotion to the immoral British doctrine of "geopolitics" further dictated that unless and until the USSS had totally collapsed as a military power, the US alliance with China as the second strongest land power must be maintained at all costs. Additionally, Bush was acutely sensible to the views on China policy held by his mentor, Henry Kissinger, whose paw-prints were still to be found all over US relations with Deng. In the wake of Tien An Men, Kissinger (who had lucrative consulting contracts with the Beijing regime) was exceptionally vocal in condemning any proposed US countermeasures against Deng. These were the decisive factors in Bush's reactions to Tien An Men.

In the pre-1911 imperial court of China, the etiquette of the Forbidden City required that a person approaching the throne of the son of heaven must prostrate himself before that living deity, touching both hands and the forehead to the floor three times. This is the celebrated "kow-tow." And it was "kow-tow" which sprang to the lips and pens of commentators all over the world as they observed Bush's elaborate propitiation of the Deng regime. Even cynics were astounded that Bush could be so deferential to a regime that was obviously so hated by its own population that it had to be considered as being on its last legs; the best estimate was that when octogenarian Deng finally died, the communist regime would pass from the scene with him.

In a press conference held on June 9, in the immediate wake of the massacre, Bush astounded even the meretricious White House press corps by his mild and obsequious tone towards Deng and his cohorts. Bush limited his retaliation to a momentary cutoff of some military sales. That would be all: "I'm one who lived in China; I understand the importance of the relationship with the Chinese people and with the government. It is in the interest of the United States to have good relations..." [fn 17] Would Bush consider further measures, such as the minor step of temporarily recalling the US Ambassador, Bush's CIA crony and fellow patrician James Lilly?

Well, some have suggested, for example, to show our forcefulness, that I bring the American ambassador back. I disagree with that 180 degrees, and we've seen in the last few days a very good reason to have him there. [...]

What I do want to do is take whatever steps are most likely to demonstrate the concern that America feels. And I think I've done that. I'll be looking for other ways to do it if we possibly can.

This was the wimp with a vengeance, groveling and scraping like Chamberlain before the dictators, but there was more to come. As part of his meek and pathetic response, Bush had pledged to terminate all "high-level exchanges" with the Deng crowd. With this public promise, Bush had cynically lied to the American people. Shortly before Bush's invasion of Panama in December, it became known that Bush had dispatched the two most prominent Kissinger clones in his retinue, NSC chairman Brent Scowcroft and Undersecretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, on a secret mission to Beijing over the July 4 weekend, less than a month after the massacre in Tien An Men. Bush regarded this mission as so sensitive that he reportedly kept it a secret even from White House chief of staff Sununu, who only learned of the trip when two of his aides stumbled across the paper trail of the planning. The story about Scowcroft and Eagleburger, both veterans of Kissinger Associates, spending the glorious Fourth toasting the butchers of Beijing was itself leaked in the wake of a high-profile public mission to China involving the same Kissingerian duo that started December 7, 1989. Bush's cover story for the second trip was that he wanted to get a briefing to Deng on the results of the Bush-Gorbachov Malta summit, which had just concluded. The second trip was supposed to lead to the quick release of Chinese physicist and dissident Fang Lizhi, who had taken refuge in the US Embassy in Beijing during the massacre; this did not occur until some time later.

-- George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, by Webster Griffin Tarpley and Antony Chaitkin

Lawrence S. Eagleburger was sworn in as the 62nd U.S. Secretary of State by President George H. W. Bush on December 8, 1992, and as Deputy Secretary of State on March 20, 1989.

After his entry into the Foreign Service in 1957, Mr. Eagleburger served in the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, in the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, and the U.S. Mission to NATO in Belgium. In1963, after a severe earthquake in Macedonia, he led the U.S. government effort to provide medical and other assistance. He was then assigned to Washington, D.C., where he served on the Secretariat staff and as special assistant to Dean Acheson, advisor to the President on Franco-NATO issues. In August 1966, he became acting director of the Secretariat staff.

In October 1966, Mr. Eagleburger joined the National Security Council staff. In October1967, he was assigned as special assistant to Under Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach. In November 1968, he was appointed Dr. Henry Kissinger’s assistant, and in January 1969, he became executive assistant to Dr. Kissinger at the White House. In September 1969, he was assigned as political advisor and chief of the political section of the U.S. Mission to NATO in Brussels.

Mr. Eagleburger became Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in August 1971. Two years later, he became Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. The same year he returned to the White House as Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Operations. He subsequently followed Dr. Kissinger to the State Department, becoming Executive Assistant to the Secretary of State. In 1975, he was made Deputy Under Secretary of State for Management.

In June 1977, Mr. Eagleburger was appointed Ambassador to Yugoslavia, and in 1981 he was nominated as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs. In February 1982, he was appointed Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

Mr. Eagleburger has received numerous awards, including an honorary knighthood from Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II (1994);

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present Emolument, Office, or Title, or any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

-- The Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9

the Distinguished Service Award (1992), the Wilbur J. Carr Award (1984), and the Distinguished Honor Award (1984) from the Department of State; the Distinguished Civilian Service Medal from the Department of Defense (1978); and the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service (1976).

After retiring from the Department of State in May 1984, Mr. Eagleburger was named president of Kissinger Associates, Inc. Following his resignation as Secretary of State on January 19, 1993, he joined the law firm of Baker, Donelson, Bearman and Caldwell as Senior Foreign Policy Advisor. He joined the boards of Halliburton Company, Phillips Petroleum Company, and Universal Corporation. Mr. Eagleburger currently serves as Chairman of the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims.

He received his B.S. degree in 1952 and his M.S. degree in 1957, both from the University of Wisconsin, and served as first lieutenant in the U.S. Army from 1952 to 1954. Mr. Eagleburger is married to the former Marlene Ann Heinemann. He is the father of three sons, Lawrence Scott, Lawrence Andrew, and Lawrence Jason.

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Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.—Member

A powerful Washington, D.C., law firm with unusually close ties to the White House has earned hefty fees representing controversial Saudi billionaires as well as a Texas-based Islamic charity fingered last week as a terrorist front.

The influential law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld has represented three wealthy Saudi businessmen -- Khalid bin Mahfouz, Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi and Salah Idris -- who have been scrutinized by U.S. authorities for possible involvement in financing Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network. '

In addition, Akin, Gump currently represents the largest Islamic charity in the United States, Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in Richmond, Texas.

Holy Land's assets were frozen by the Treasury Department last week as government investigators probe its ties to Hamas, the militant Palestinian group blamed for suicide attacks against Israelis. Partners at Akin, Gump include one of President Bush's closest Texas friends, James C. Langdon, and George R. Salem, a Bush fund-raiser who chaired his 2000 campaign's outreach to Arab-Americans.

In addition to the royal family, the firm's Saudi clients have included bin Mahfouz, who hired Akin, Gump when he was indicted in the BCCI banking scandal in the early 1990s. In 1999, the Saudi's placed bin Mahfouz under house arrest after reportedly discovering that the bank he controlled, National Commercial Bank in Saudi Arabia, funneled millions to charities believed to be serving as bin Laden fronts.

A bin Mahfouz business partner, Al-Amoudi, was also represented by Akin, Gump. When it was reported in 1999 that U.S. authorities were also investigating Al-Amoudi's Capitol Trust Bank, Akin, Gump released a statement on behalf of their client denying any connections to terrorism. One year earlier, the firm had co-sponsored an investment conference in Ethiopia with Al-Amoudi.

Akin, Gump partner and Bush fund-raiser Salem led the legal team that defended Idris, a banking protege of bin Mahfouz and the owner of El-Shifa, the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant destroyed by U.S. cruise missiles in August 1998.

The plant was targeted days after terrorists - allegedly on the orders of bin Laden - bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa. The U.S. Treasury Department also froze $ 24 million of Idris' assets, but Akin, Gump filed a lawsuit and the government later chose to release the money rather than go to court. Idris, who insists he has no connection whatsoever to bin Laden or terrorism, is now pursuing a second lawsuit with different attorneys seeking $ 50 million in damages from the United States.

Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C.-based non-partisan political watchdog group, said Akin, Gump's willingness to represent Saudi power-brokers probed for links to terrorism presents a unique ethical concern since partners at the firm are so close to the president.

The concern is more acute now, Lewis said, because Bush has faced stiff resistance from the kingdom in his repeated requests to freeze suspected terrorist bank accounts.

"The conduct of the Saudis is just unacceptable by international standards, especially if they are supposed to be one of our closest allies," Lewis said.

Speaking of Akin, Gump partner Kress' office in the White House, Lewis added: "That's not appropriate and frankly it's potentially troublesome because there is a real possibility of a conflict of interest. Basically you have a partner for Akin, Gump . . . inside the hen house."

But another longtime Washington political observer, Vincent Cannistraro, the former chief of counter-intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency, said the political influence a firm like Akin, Gump has is precisely why clients like the Saudis hire them.

"These are cozy political relationships . . . If you have a problem in Washington, there are only a few firms to go to and Akin, Gump is one of them," Cannistraro said.

Cannistraro pointed out that Idris hired Akin, Gump during the Clinton presidency, when Clinton confidante Vernon Jordan was a partner at the firm. "He hired them because Vernon Jordan had influence . . . that's a normal political exercise where you are buying influence," he said.

-- Slick Deals: Bush Advisers Cashed in On Saudi Gravy Train, by Maggie Mulvihill, Jack Meyers and Jonathan Wells

Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., is a Senior Managing Director of Lazard Frères & Co, LLC in New York. He works with a diverse group of clients across a broad range of industries.

Prior to joining Lazard, Mr. Jordan was a Senior Executive Partner with the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP, where he remains Senior Counsel. While there Mr. Jordan practiced general, corporate, legislative, and international law in Washington, D.C.

Before Akin Gump, Mr. Jordan held the following positions: President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Urban League, Inc.; Executive Director of the United Negro College Fund, Inc.; Director of the Voter Education Project of the Southern Regional Council; Attorney-Consultant, U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity; Assistant to the Executive Director of the Southern Regional Council; Georgia Field Director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; and an attorney in private practice in Arkansas and Georgia.

Mr. Jordan’s presidential appointments include the President’s Advisory Committee for the Points of Light Initiative Foundation, the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on South Africa, the Advisory Council on Social Security, the Presidential Clemency Board, the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, the National Advisory Committee on Selective Service, and the Council of the White House Conference “To Fulfill These Rights.” In 1992, Mr. Jordan served as the Chairman of the Clinton Presidential Transition Team.

Mr. Jordan’s corporate and other directorships include American Express Company; Asbury Automotive Group, Inc.; Howard University (Trustee); J. C. Penney Company, Inc.; Lazard Ltd.; Xerox Corporation; and the International Advisory Board of Barrick Gold.

Mr. Jordan is a graduate of DePauw University and the Howard University Law School. He holds honorary degrees from more than 60 colleges and universities in America. He is a member of the bars of Arkansas, the District of Columbia, Georgia, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a member of the American Bar Association, the National Bar Association, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Bilderberg Meetings and he is President of the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. Mr. Jordan is the author of Vernon Can Read! A Memoir (Public Affairs, 2001).

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Edwin Meese III—Member

The official terrorist plague peaked in 1985, when Mid-East terrorism was selected as the lead story of the year in an AP poll of editors. The worst single terrorist act of that year in the Middle East was a car-bombing in Beirut that killed 80 people and wounded 256. The target was the Shi'ite leader Sheikh Fadlallah, who escaped unharmed. The attack was organized by the CIA and its Saudi clients with Lebanese and British assistance, and specifically authorized by CIA director William Casey, according to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's book on Casey. That was not the worst terrorist act of the year, however. The prize was taken by the blowing up of an Air India flight, killing 329 people -- the worst terrorist air attack ever. It was traced to a paramilitary camp in Alabama where terrorists were trained for actions in Central America and elsewhere. On a visit to India, Attorney-General Edwin Meese tacitly conceded that the operation originated in a US terrorist training camp.19 Little further is known; such incidents do not fall within the canon, according to the reigning Orwellian doctrine, and therefore merit little attention.

-- "No Longer Safe," by Noam Chomsky

Edwin Meese III holds the Ronald Reagan Chair in Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.–based public policy research and education institution. He is also the Chairman of Heritage’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. In addition, Meese lectures, writes, and consults throughout the United States on a variety of subjects.

Meese is the author of With Reagan: The Inside Story, which was published by Regnery Gateway in June 1992; co-editor of Making America Safer, published in 1997 by the Heritage Foundation; and coauthor of Leadership, Ethics and Policing, published by Prentice Hall in 2004.

Meese served as the 75th Attorney General of the United States from February 1985 to August 1988. As the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, he directed the Department of Justice and led international efforts to combat terrorism, drug trafficking, and organized crime. In 1985 he received Government Executive magazine’s annual award for excellence in management.

From January 1981 to February 1985, Meese held the position of Counsellor to the President, the senior position on the White House staff, where he functioned as the President’s chief policy advisor. As Attorney General and as Counsellor, Meese was a member of the President’s cabinet and the National Security Council. He served as Chairman of the Domestic Policy Council and of the National Drug Policy Board. Meese headed the President-elect’s transition effort following the November 1980 election. During the presidential campaign, he served as chief of staff and senior issues advisor for the Reagan-Bush Committee.

Formerly, Meese served as Governor Reagan’s executive assistant and chief of staff in California from 1969 through 1974 and as legal affairs secretary from 1967 through 1968. Before joining Governor Reagan’s staff in 1967, Meese served as deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California. From 1977 to 1981, Meese was a professor of law at the University of San Diego, where he also was Director of the Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Management.

In addition to his background as a lawyer, educator, and public official, Meese has been a business executive in the aerospace and transportation industry, serving as vice president for administration of Rohr Industries, Inc., in Chula Vista, California. He left Rohr to return to the practice of law, engaging in corporate and general legal work in San Diego County.

Meese is a graduate of Yale University, Class of 1953, and holds a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a retired colonel in the United States Army Reserve. He is active in numerous civic and educational organizations. Meese is married, has two grown children, and resides in McLean, Virginia.

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Sandra Day O’Connor—Member

Dinh's reputation as affable, bright and politically astute would follow him through Harvard University and Harvard Law School, which he attended with the aid of scholarships and graduated magna cum laude, and to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

”He was a wonderful law clerk,“ O'Connor recalled recently. ”I was so fascinated by his background and the fact that he had arrived on our shores with nothing but the clothes on his back, yet somehow he had persevered.“

-- Meet Ashcroft Protege Viet Dinh, Author of the Patriot Act, by Charles Carreon

Sandra Day O’Connor was nominated by President Reagan as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court on July 7, 1981, and took the oath of office on September 25. O’Connor previously served on the Arizona Court of Appeals (1979–81) and as judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix, Arizona (1975–79). She was appointed as Arizona state senator in 1969 and was subsequently elected to two two-year terms from 1969 to 1975. During her tenure, she was Arizona Senate Majority Leader and Chairman of the State, County, and Municipal Affairs Committee, and she served on the Legislative Council, on the Probate Code Commission, and on the Arizona Advisory Council on Intergovernmental Relations.

From 1965 to 1969, O’Connor was assistant attorney general in Arizona. She practiced law at a private firm in Maryvale, Arizona, from 1958 to 1960 and prior to that was civilian attorney for Quartermaster Market Center in Frankfurt, Germany (1954–57), and deputy county attorney in San Mateo County, California (1952–53)

She was previously Chairman of the Arizona Supreme Court Committee to Reorganize Lower Courts (1974–75), Vice Chairman of the Arizona Select Law Enforcement Review Commission (1979–80), and, in Maricopa County, Chairman of the Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service (1960–62), the Juvenile Detention Home Visiting Board (1963–64), and the Superior Court Judges’ Training and Education Committee (1977–79) and a member of the Board of Adjustments and Appeals (1963–64).

O’Connor currently serves as Chancellor of the College of William and Mary and on the Board of Trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Executive Board of the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative, the Advisory Board of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and the Advisory Committee of the American Society of International Law, Judicial. She is an honorary member of the Advisory Committee for the Judiciary Leadership Development Council, an honorary chair of America’s 400th Anniversary: Jamestown 2007, a co-chair of the National Advisory Council of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, a member of the Selection Committee of the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Stanford Center on Ethics. She also serves on several bodies of the American Bar Association, including the Museum of Law Executive Committee, the Commission on Civic Education and Separation of Powers, and the Advisory Commission of the Standing Committee on the Law Library of Congress.

O’Connor previously served as a member of the Anglo-American Exchange (1980); the State Bar of Arizona Committees on Legal Aid, Public Relations, Lower Court Reorganization, and Continuing Legal Education; the National Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (1974–76); the Arizona State Personnel Commission (1968–69); the Arizona Criminal Code Commission (1974–76); and the Cathedral Chapter of the Washington National Cathedral (1991–99).

O’Connor is a member of the American Bar Association, the State Bar of Arizona, the State Bar of California, the Maricopa County Bar Association, the Arizona Judges’ Association, the National Association of Women Judges, and the Arizona Women Lawyers’ Association. She holds a B.A. (with Great Distinction) and an LL.B. (Order of the Coif) from Stanford University, where she was also a member of the board of editors of the Stanford Law Review.

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Leon E. Panetta—Member

Leon E. Panetta currently co-directs the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy, a nonpartisan study center for the advancement of public policy based at California State University, Monterey Bay. He serves as distinguished scholar to the chancellor of the California State University system, teaches a Master’s in Public Policy course at the Panetta Institute, is a presidential professor at Santa Clara University, and created the Leon Panetta Lecture Series.

Panetta first went to Washington in 1966, when he served as a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Thomas H. Kuchel of California. In 1969, he became Special Assistant to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and then Director of the U.S. Office for Civil Rights. His book Bring Us Together (published in 1971) is an account of that experience. In 1970, he went to New York City, where he served as Executive Assistant to Mayor John Lindsay. Then, in 1971, Panetta returned to California, where he practiced law in the Monterey firm of Panetta, Thompson & Panetta until he was elected to Congress in 1976.

Panetta was a U.S. Representative from California’s 16th (now 17th) district from 1977 to1993. He authored the Hunger Prevention Act of 1988, the Fair Employment Practices Resolution, legislation that established Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement for hospice care for the terminally ill, and other legislation on a variety of education, health, agriculture, and defense issues.

From 1989 to 1993, Panetta was Chairman of the House Committee on the Budget. He also served on that committee from 1979 to 1985. He chaired the House Agriculture Committee’s Subcommittee on Domestic Marketing, Consumer Relations and Nutrition; the House Administration Committee’s Subcommittee on Personnel and Police; and the Select Committee on Hunger’s Task Force on Domestic Hunger. He also served as Vice Chairman of the Caucus of Vietnam Era Veterans in Congress and as a member of the President’s Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies.

Panetta left Congress in 1993 to become Director of the Office of Management and Budget for the incoming Clinton administration. Panetta was appointed Chief of Staff to the President of the United States on July 17, 1994, and served in that position until January 20, 1997.

In addition, Panetta served a six-year term on the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange beginning in 1997. He currently serves on many public policy and organizational boards, including as Chair of the Pew Oceans Commission and Co-Chair of the California Council on Base Support and Retention

Panetta has received many awards and honors, including the Smithsonian Paul Peck Award for Service to the Presidency, the John H. Chafee Coastal Stewardship Award, the Julius A. Stratton Award for Coastal Leadership, and the Distinguished Public Service Medal from the Center for the Study of the Presidency.

He earned a B.A. magna cum laude from Santa Clara University in 1960, and in 1963 received his J.D. from Santa Clara University Law School, where he was an editor of the Santa Clara Law Review. He served as a first lieutenant in the Army from 1964 to 1966 and received the Army Commendation Medal. Panetta is married to the former Sylvia Marie Varni. They have three grown sons and five grandchildren.

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William J. Perry—Member

William Perry is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor at Stanford University, with a joint appointment at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the School of Engineering. He is a senior fellow at FSI and serves as co-director of the Preventive Defense Project, a research collaboration of Stanford and Harvard universities.

Perry was the 19th Secretary of Defense of the United States, serving from February 1994 to January 1997. He previously served as Deputy Secretary of Defense (1993–94) and as UnderSecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (1977–81). He is on the board of directors of several emerging high-tech companies and is Chairman of Global Technology Partners.

His previous business experience includes serving as a laboratory director for General Telephone and Electronics (1954–64) and as founder and president of ESL Inc. (1964–77), executive vice president of Hambrecht & Quist Inc. (1981–85), and founder and chairman of Technology Strategies & Alliances (1985–93). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

From 1946 to 1947, Perry was an enlisted man in the Army Corps of Engineers, and served in the Army of Occupation in Japan. He joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps in 1948 and was a second lieutenant in the Army Reserves from 1950 to 1955. He has received a number of awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1997), the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal (1980 and 1981), and Outstanding Civilian Service Medals from the Army (1962 and 1997), the Air Force (1997), the Navy (1997), the Defense Intelligence Agency (1977 and 1997), NASA (1981), and the Coast Guard (1997). He received the American Electronic Association’s Medal of Achievement (1980), the Eisenhower Award (1996), the Marshall Award (1997), the Forrestal Medal (1994), and the Henry Stimson Medal (1994). The National Academy of Engineering selected him for the Arthur Bueche Medal in1996. He has received awards from the enlisted personnel of the Army, Navy, and the Air Force.

He has received decorations from the governments of Albania, Bahrain, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Korea, Poland, Slovenia, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. He received a B.S. and M.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from Penn State, all in mathematics.

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Charles S. Robb—Member

Charles S. Robb joined the faculty of George Mason University as a Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy in 2001. Previously he served as Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, from 1978 to 1982; as Virginia’s 64th Governor, from 1982 to 1986; and as a United States Senator, from 1989 to 2001.

While in the Senate he became the only member ever to serve simultaneously on all three national security committees (Intelligence, Armed Services, and Foreign Relations). He also served on the Finance, Commerce, and Budget committees.

Before becoming a member of Congress he chaired the Southern Governors’ Association, the Democratic Governors’ Association, the Education Commission of the States, the Democratic Leadership Council, Jobs for America’s Graduates, the National Conference of Lieutenant Governors, and the Virginia Forum on Education, and was President of the Council of State Governments.

During the 1960s he served on active duty with the United States Marine Corps, retiring from the Marine Corps Reserve in 1991. He began as the Class Honor Graduate from Marine Officers Basic School in 1961 and ended up as head of the principal recruiting program for Marine officers in 1970. In between, he served in both the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions and his assignments included duty as a Military Social Aide at the White House and command of an infantry company in combat in Vietnam.

He received his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1973, clerked for Judge John D. Butzner, Jr., on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and practiced law with Williams and Connolly prior to his election to state office. Between his state and federal service he was a partner at Hunton and Williams.

Since leaving the Senate in 2001 he has served as Chairman of the Board of Visitors at the United States Naval Academy, Co-Chairman (with Senior Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit) of the President’s Commission on Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Co-Chairman (with former Governor Linwood Holton) of a major landowner’s alliance that created a special tax district to finance the extension of Metrorail to Tyson’s Corner, Reston, and Dulles Airport. He has also been a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard and at the Marshall Wythe School of Law at William and Mary.

He is currently on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board (Chairman of the WMD-Terrorism Task Force),t he FBI Director’s Advisory Board, the National Intelligence Council’s Strategic Analysis Advisory Board, the Iraq Study Group, and the MITRE Corp. Board of Trustees (Vice Chairman). He also serves on the boards of the Space Foundation, the Thomas Jefferson Program in Public Policy, the Concord Coalition, the National Museum of Americans at War, Strategic Partnerships LLC, and the Center for the Study of the Presidency—and he works on occasional projects with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is married to Lynda Johnson Robb and they have three grown daughters and one granddaughter.

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Alan K. Simpson—Member

Alan K. Simpson served from 1979 to 1997 as a United States Senator from Wyoming. Following his first term in the Senate, Al was elected by his peers to the position of the Assistant Majority Leader in 1984—and served in that capacity until 1994. He completed his final term on January 3, 1997.

Simpson is currently a partner in the Cody firm of Simpson, Kepler and Edwards, the Cody division of the Denver firm of Burg Simpson Eldredge, Hersh and Jardine, and also a consultant in the Washington, D.C., government relations firm The Tongour, Simpson, Holsclaw Group. He continues to serve on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards and travels the country giving speeches. His book published by William Morrow Company, Right in the Old Gazoo: A Lifetime of Scrapping with the Press (1997), chronicles his personal experiences and views of the Fourth Estate.

From January of 1997 until June of 2000, Simpson was a Visiting Lecturer and for two years the Director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. During the fall of 2000 he returned to his alma mater, the University of Wyoming, as a Visiting Lecturer in the Political Science Department and he continues to team teach a class part-time with his brother, Peter, titled “Wyoming’s Political Identity: Its History and Its Politics,” which is proving to be one of the most popular classes offered at UW.

A member of a political family—his father served both as Governor of Wyoming from 1954 to 1958 and as United States Senator from Wyoming from 1962 to 1966—Al chose to follow in his father’s footsteps and began his own political career in 1964 when he was elected to the Wyoming State Legislature as a state representative of his native Park County. He served for the next thirteen years in the Wyoming House of Representatives, holding the offices of Majority Whip, Majority Floor Leader, and Speaker Pro-Tem. His only brother, Peter, also served as a member of the Wyoming State Legislature.

Prior to entering politics, Simpson was admitted to the Wyoming bar and the United States District Court in 1958 and served for a short time as a Wyoming assistant attorney general. Simpson then joined his father, Milward L. Simpson, and later Charles G. Kepler in the law firm of Simpson, Kepler and Simpson in his hometown of Cody. He would practice law there for the next eighteen years. During that time, Simpson was very active in all civic, community, and state activities. He also served ten years as City Attorney.

Simpson earned a B.S. in law from the University of Wyoming in 1954. Upon graduation from college, he joined the Army, serving overseas in the 5th Infantry Division and in the 2nd Armored Division in the final months of the Army of Occupation in Germany. Following his honorable discharge in 1956, Simpson returned to the University of Wyoming to complete his study of law, earning his J.D. degree in 1958. He and his wife Ann have three children and six grandchildren, who all reside in Cody, Wyoming.