Personal life
Latimer married Anna (née Sproul) in 2012. Sproul is a literary agent and graduate of Columbia University and the University of Oxford. [5] [16]
Matt Latimer | |
|---|---|
| White House Deputy Director of Speechwriting | |
| In office March 20, 2007 –October 2008 | |
| President | George W. Bush |
| Leader | William McGurn |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Matthew N. Latimer Flint,Michigan,U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Alma mater | University of Michigan (BA,JD) Columbia University (MA) |
Matthew N. Latimer is an American attorney,businessman,and former political speechwriter. Latimer is a founding partner of Javelin,a literary and creative agency located in Alexandria,Virginia,that offers representation,digital,and public relations services. [1] [2] He also served in a variety of appointments during George W. Bush administration.
Latimer was born and raised in Flint,Michigan. [3] [4] His parents were both educators. [5] He earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan,Master of Arts from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism,and a Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School. [6]
Latimer began his career as a Special Assistant to Senator Spencer Abraham,(R-MI). During his serving working Abraham's office,Latimer was a coworker of Ann Coulter. He then served as Press Secretary to U.S. Rep Nick Smith (R-MI) before moving on to become a spokesman for Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) from 2001 to 2004. He then became a speechwriter for Donald Rumsfeld at the Department of Defense. [6] [7] [8]
In 2006,Latimer was identified by the Washington Post as "director of the Pentagon writers group" and as the principal author of a 2006 Department of Defense document entitled "Ten facts about Guantanamo". [9] [10]
On March 20,2007,President George W. Bush announced the appointment of Latimer as Special Assistant to the President for Speechwriting. [11] Latimer resigned in October 2008. [12]
In September 2009, GQ magazine's October edition published lengthy excerpts from Latimer's book about his time as Bush's speechwriter,Speech-Less:Tales of a White House Survivor. Titled "Me Talk Presidential One Day",the article recounts Latimer's befuddlement at what he saw as incompetent and uninformed decision-making during the economic crisis of 2008 on the part of Bush and Bush's staff,particularly Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson. [8] The book cites Latimer's interpretations of Bush's remarks and comments made to his staff about political figures such as Nancy Pelosi,Hillary Clinton,John McCain,Barack Obama,Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. [8] [13]
In a September 22,2009 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "When Speechwriters Kiss and Tell," Latimer's former White House boss,William McGurn,questions Latimer's motives and challenges many of the claims made in the book. [14]
After leaving the Bush administration,Latimer has worked as a literary agent and co-founded Javelin,a literary and creative agency. Latimer worked as the agent for the anonymous author of a Trump administration insider's exposé, A Warning ,released in November 2019. [15]
Latimer married Anna (née Sproul) in 2012. Sproul is a literary agent and graduate of Columbia University and the University of Oxford. [5] [16]
Donald Henry Rumsfeld was an American politician, government official and businessman who served as secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and again from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He was both the youngest and the oldest secretary of defense. Additionally, Rumsfeld was a four-term U.S. Congressman from Illinois (1963–1969), director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (1969–1970), counselor to the president (1969–1973), the U.S. Representative to NATO (1973–1974), and the White House Chief of Staff (1974–1975). Between his terms as secretary of defense, he served as the CEO and chairman of several companies.
In the United States, a designated survivor is a person in the presidential line of succession who is kept distant from others in the line when they are gathered together, to reduce the chance that everyone in the line will be unable to take over the presidency in a catastrophic or mass-casualty event. The person is chosen to stay at an undisclosed secure location, away from such events such as State of the Union addresses and presidential inaugurations. The designation of a survivor is intended to prevent the decapitation of the government and to safeguard continuity in the presidency if the president, the vice president, and others in the presidential line of succession die. The procedure began in the 1950s, during the Cold War, with the idea that nuclear attack could kill government officials and the United States government would collapse.
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A speechwriter is a person who is hired to prepare and write speeches that will be delivered by another person. Speechwriters are employed by many senior-level elected officials and executives in the government and private sectors. They can also be employed to write for weddings and other social occasions.
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Politico, known originally as The Politico, is an American political digital newspaper company. Founded by American banker and media executive Robert Allbritton in 2007, it covers politics and policy in the United States and internationally, with publications dedicated to politics in the U.S., European Union, United Kingdom and Canada, among others. Primarily providing distributed news, analysis and opinion online, it also produces printed newspapers, radio, and podcasts. Its coverage focuses on topics such as the federal government, lobbying and the media.
"Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" was a program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces at remote sites around the world—including Bagram, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bucharest—authorized by officials of the George W. Bush administration. Methods used included beating, binding in contorted stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep disruption, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food, drink, and medical care for wounds, as well as waterboarding, walling, sexual humiliation, rape, sexual assault, subjection to extreme heat or extreme cold, and confinement in small coffin-like boxes. A Guantanamo inmate's drawings of some of these tortures, to which he himself was subjected, were published in The New York Times. Some of these techniques fall under the category known as "white room torture". Several detainees endured medically unnecessary "rectal rehydration", "rectal fluid resuscitation", and "rectal feeding". In addition to brutalizing detainees, there were threats to their families such as threats to harm children, and threats to sexually abuse or to cut the throat of detainees' mothers.
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