Condoleezza Rice is an American diplomat and political scientist who is the current director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. A member of the Republican Party,she previously served as the 66th United States secretary of state from 2005 to 2009 and as the 19th U.S. national security advisor from 2001 to 2005. Rice was the first female African-American secretary of state and the first woman to serve as national security advisor. Until the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008,Rice and her predecessor,Colin Powell,were the highest-ranking African Americans in the history of the federal executive branch. At the time of her appointment as Secretary of State,Rice was the highest-ranking woman in the history of the United States to be in the presidential line of succession.
The Hoover Institution is an American public policy think tank which promotes personal and economic liberty,free enterprise,and limited government. While the institution is formally a unit of Stanford University,it maintains an independent board of overseers and relies on its own income and donations. It is a nonpartisan institution and is widely described as conservative although its directors have contested its partisanship.
James Franklin Jeffrey is an American diplomat who served most recently as the United States Special Representative for Syria Engagement and the Special Envoy to the International military intervention against ISIL.
Elliott Abrams is an American politician and lawyer,who has served in foreign policy positions for presidents Ronald Reagan,George W. Bush,and Donald Trump. Abrams is considered to be a neoconservative. He is currently a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as the U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela from 2019 to 2021 and as the U.S. Special Representative for Iran from 2020 to 2021.
William Howard Taft IV is an American diplomat and attorney who has served in the United States government under several Republican administrations. He is a son of William Howard Taft III and a great-grandson of President William Howard Taft.
John Robert Bolton is an American attorney,diplomat,Republican consultant,and political commentator. He served as the 25th United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006,and as the 26th United States National Security Advisor from 2018 to 2019.
Stephen John Hadley is an American attorney and senior government official who served as the 20th United States National Security Advisor from 2005 to 2009. He served under President George W. Bush during the second term of his administration. Hadley was Deputy National Security Advisor during Bush's first term. Before that Hadley served in a variety of capacities in the defense and national security fields. He has also worked as a lawyer and consultant in private practice.
Robert Dean Blackwill is a retired American diplomat,author,senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations,and lobbyist. Blackwill served as the United States Ambassador to India under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003 and as United States National Security Council Deputy for Iraq from 2003 to 2004,where he was a liaison between Paul Bremer and Condoleezza Rice.
Harold Hongju Koh is an American legal scholar who served as the legal adviser of the Department of State in the Obama administration. He was nominated to this position by President Barack Obama on March 23,2009,and confirmed by the Senate on June 25,2009. He left the State Department in January 2013,returning to Yale University as a Sterling Professor of international law. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2007.
Frances M. "Fran" Fragos Townsend is an American lawyer and business executive who served as Homeland Security Advisor to United States President George W. Bush from 2004 to 2007,and was formerly the executive vice president for corporate affairs,corporate secretary,and compliance chief officer for Activision Blizzard,until September of 2022,due to Microsoft acquiring Blizzard for $75 billion. She previously served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism. In 2008,Townsend joined CNN as a contributor,but later switched over to CBS where she is a national security analyst for them. Townsend was president of the Counter Extremism Project.
The United States is not a state party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,which founded the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002.
"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.
Jack Landman Goldsmith III is an American legal scholar. He serves as the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School,where he has written extensively in the fields of international law,civil procedure,federal courts,conflict of laws,and national security law. Writing in The New York Times,Jeffrey Rosen described him as being "widely considered one of the brightest stars in the conservative legal firmament".
Thomas Edward Donilon is an American lawyer,business executive,and former government official who served as the 22nd National Security Advisor in the Obama administration from 2010 to 2013. Donilon also worked in the Carter and Clinton administrations,including as chief of staff of the U.S. State Department. He is now Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute,the firm's global think tank.
Matthew Curtis Waxman is an American law professor at Columbia University and author who held several positions during the George W. Bush administration. He is also currently a Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War,Revolution and Peace.
John Joseph Sullivan is an American attorney and government official who served as the United States Ambassador to Russia from 2020 to 2022,and who previously served as the 19th United States Deputy Secretary of State from 2017 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party,Sullivan served as Acting United States Secretary of State from April 1,2018,to April 26,2018,following President Donald Trump's dismissal of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on March 13,2018,until Tillerson's official successor,Mike Pompeo,was sworn in. Tillerson did not officially leave office until March 31,2018. Sullivan,however,was delegated all responsibilities of the Secretary of State beginning March 13.
Brett H. McGurk is an American diplomat,attorney,and academic who served in senior national security positions under presidents George W. Bush,Barack Obama,and Donald Trump. He currently serves as deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa.
Kiron Kanina Skinner is a former Director of Policy Planning at the United States Department of State in the Trump administration. Skinner is presently the Taube Professor of International Relations and Politics at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy,where she teaches graduate courses in national security and public leadership. Prior to that,she was the Taube Professor of International Relations and Politics at Carnegie Mellon University,and the founding director of the Institute for Politics and Strategy and associated centers at the university. She is also the W. Glenn Campbell Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. After leaving the Department of State,she returned to her position at Carnegie Mellon University until stepping down in 2021.
Curtis Joseph "C.J." Mahoney is an American attorney and a Deputy General Counsel at Microsoft. Previously a partner at Williams &Connolly,Mahoney served as the Deputy United States Trade Representative from 2018 to 2020.
Stephen Edward Biegun is an American businessman and diplomat who served as the United States deputy secretary of state from December 2019 to January 2021 and United States Special Representative for North Korea from August 2018 to January 2021,vice president of international governmental affairs for the Ford Motor Company,staffer on the National Security Council,as well as national security adviser to Senator Bill Frist.
