R. James Woolsey, Jr.

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Robert James Woolsey, Jr.


Robert James Woolsey Jr. (born September 21, 1941) is a foreign policy specialist and former Director of Central Intelligence and head of the Central Intelligence Agency (February 5, 1993 - January 10, 1995).

Woolsey was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1941 where he graduated from Tulsa Central High School. In 1963 he received his AB from Stanford University (Phi Beta Kappa), and in 1965 his MA from Oxford University—where he was a Rhodes Scholar—and an LLB from Yale Law School in 1968.

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[edit] Career

Woolsey has been known primarily as a conservative Democrat—hawkish on foreign policy issues but more traditionally Democratic on economic and social issues.[citation needed] He has endorsed Senator John McCain for president and serves as one of McCain's foreign policy advisors.

Woolsey has held important positions in both Democratic and Republican administrations. His influence has been felt during the Carter, Reagan, Bush (elder), and Clinton administrations. Woolsey is known for clearly articulating the national security argument in support of moving away from fossil fuels and towards distributed generation.

Woolsey has served in the U.S. government as:

He is currently a member of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) Board of Advisors, Advisor of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, Founding Member of the Set America Free Coalition, and a Senior Vice President at Booz Allen Hamilton for Global Strategic Security (since July 15, 2002). [1]. He is a Patron of the Henry Jackson Society, a British think tank based in Cambridge. He was formerly chairman of the Freedom House board of trustees.

James Woolsey is also a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signatories to the January 26, 1998, letter sent to President Clinton that called for the removal of Saddam Hussein.[2] That same year he served on the Rumsfeld Commission, which investigated the threat of ballistic missiles for the US Congress.

Within hours of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks upon the United States, Woolsey appeared on television suggesting Iraqi complicity.[1] In July 2006, he called on the US to bomb Syria.

[edit] Relationship with President Clinton

As Director of Central Intelligence, Woolsey is notable for having a very limited relationship with President Bill Clinton. According to journalist Richard Miniter:

Never once in his two-year tenure did CIA director James Woolsey ever have a one-on-one meeting with Clinton. Even semiprivate meetings were rare. They only happened twice. Woolsey told me: "It wasn't that I had a bad relationship with the president. It just didn't exist." [3]

Another quote about his relationship with Clinton, according to Paula Kaufman of Insight Magazine:

Remember the guy who in 1994 crashed his plane onto the White House lawn? That was me trying to get an appointment to see President Clinton. [4]

David Halberstam notes in War in a Time of Peace that Clinton chose Woolsey for CIA director because the Clinton campaign had courted neoconservatives leading up to the 1992 election, promising to be tougher on Taiwan, Bosnia, and human rights in China, and it was decided that they ought to give at least one neoconservative a job in the administration.

[edit] U.S. energy policy

Main article: U.S. Energy Independence

Woolsey was a keynote speaker at the EELPJ symposium on wind and biofuels in Houston, Texas on February 23, 2007, during which he outlined the national security arguments in favor of moving away from fossil fuels.[2] In a July 2007 interview with The Futurist magazine he argued that U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil ranks "very high" as a national security concern.[3]

Woolsey is featured in Thomas Friedman's Discovery Channel documentary Addicted to Oil, and in the 2006 documentary film Who Killed the Electric Car? addressing solutions to oil dependency through the development of the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle and use of biomass fuels such as cellulosic ethanol. He is a founding member of the Set America Free Coalition, dedicated to freeing the United States from oil dependence. He is also on the board of directors for the electric vehicle advocacy group Plug In America.

Woolsey also wrote the foreword to 50 Simple Steps to Save the Earth from Global Warming (Freedom Press, 2008).

[edit] Criticism

Steve Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation think tank, has accused Woolsey of both profiting from and promoting the Iraq War.[4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Former CIA Director Asserts Iraq May be Behind Terrorist Attacks CNN September 12, 2001
  2. ^ EELPJ Symposium February, 2007
  3. ^ Ending the Oil Era The Futurist July, 2007
  4. ^ Woolsey Needs to Make a Choice Between Being a War Profiteer or War Pundit The Washington Note July 10, 2005

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Robert Gates		 Director of Central Intelligence
February 5, 1993 - January 10, 1995		 Succeeded by
John M. Deutch
v • d • e
Directors of Central Intelligence & Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency
DCI Seal of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States
D/CIA