James Woolsey | |
|---|---|
 Woolsey in 2015 | |
| 16thDirector of Central Intelligence | |
| In office February 5, 1993 – January 10, 1995 | |
| President | Bill Clinton |
| Deputy | Bill Studeman |
| Preceded by | Robert Gates |
| Succeeded by | John M. Deutch |
| United States Under Secretary of the Navy | |
| In office March 9, 1977 – December 7, 1979 | |
| President | Jimmy Carter |
| Preceded by | David R. Macdonald |
| Succeeded by | Robert J. Murray |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Robert James Woolsey Jr. (1941-09-21)September 21, 1941 (age 84) Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | Nancye Miller |
| Education | Stanford University (BA) St John's College, Oxford (MA) Yale University (LLB) |
Robert James Woolsey Jr. (born September 21, 1941) is an American lawyer who has served in various senior positions. He headed theCentral Intelligence Agency asDirector of Central Intelligence from February 5, 1993, until January 10, 1995. He held a variety of government positions in the 1970s and 1980s, including asUnited States Under Secretary of the Navy from 1977 to 1979, and was involved in treaty negotiations with theSoviet Union for five years in the 1980s. His career also included time as a professional lawyer, venture capitalist and investor in the private sector.
Woolsey was born inTulsa, Oklahoma, the son of Clyde (Kirby) and Robert James Woolsey Sr.[1] He graduated from Tulsa'sTulsa Central High School. In 1963, he received hisBachelor of Arts fromStanford University with high honors and membership inPhi Beta Kappa, then was awarded aRhodes Scholarship to study in England at theUniversity of Oxford, where (in accordance with common practice for Rhodes Scholars at the time) he studied for and earned a second Bachelor of Arts degree, graduating 1965. In 1968, he received hisBachelor of Laws fromYale Law School.[2]
Woolsey has held important positions in bothDemocratic andRepublican administrations. His influence has been felt during the administrations ofJimmy Carter,Ronald Reagan,George H. W. Bush, andBill Clinton. He has also worked at theShea & Gardner law firm, as Associate (1973–1977) and partner (1979–1989, 1991–1993).
Woolsey has served in theU.S. government as:
As Director of the CIA, Woolsey had limited access to PresidentBill Clinton. According to journalistRichard Miniter:
Never once in his two-year tenure did CIA director James Woolsey ever have a one-on-one meeting with Clinton. Even semi-private 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 ofInsight on the News:
Rememberthe 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 inWar in a Time of Peace that Clinton chose Woolsey for CIA director because the Clinton campaign had courtedneoconservatives leading up to the 1992 election, promising to assist democraticTaiwan,Bosnia inBosnian War, and be tougher onhuman rights violations in China, and it was decided that they ought to give at least one neoconservative a job in the administration.[5]
Woolsey was CIA director whenAldrich Ames was arrested, on February 21, 1994,[6] for treason and spying against the United States. The CIA was criticized for not focusing on Ames sooner, given the obvious increase in Ames' standard of living;[7] and there was a "huge uproar" in Congress when Woolsey decided that no one in the CIA would be dismissed or demoted at the agency. Woolsey declared: "Some have clamored for heads to roll in order that we could say that heads have rolled ... Sorry, that's not my way."[citation needed] Woolsey abruptly resigned on December 28, 1994.[8]
Woolsey joined the board of directors for The Arlington Institute in 1992.[9][10]
He is currently a member of theWashington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) Board of Advisors, Advisor of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, co-founder of the United States Energy Security Council, Founding Member of theSet America Free Coalition, and a senior vice president atBooz Allen Hamilton for Global Strategic Security (since July 15, 2002).[11]
He is a Patron of theHenry Jackson Society, a British think tank. Woolsey has had long-standing contact with Central and Eastern Europe and as a Member of the Board of Advisors for America of theGlobal Panel Foundation[12] based inBerlin,Copenhagen,Prague,Sydney, andToronto. He was formerly chairman of theFreedom House board of trustees. He is a member of the International Advisory Board ofNGO Monitor.[13]
Woolsey is a member of theProject for the New American Century and was one of the signatories to the January 26, 1998, letter sent to President Clinton that called for the removal ofSaddam Hussein.[14] That same year he served on theRumsfeld Commission, which investigated the threat ofballistic missiles for the U.S. Congress.[15]
Woolsey previously served as chairman of theFoundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonprofit, nonpartisan D.C.-based research institute that focuses on foreign policy and national security.
In 2008, Woolsey joinedVantagePoint Venture Partners as a venture partner.[16]
John McCain hired Woolsey as an advisor on energy and climate change issues for his2008 U.S. presidential election campaign.[17]
In April 2011,Lux Capital announced that Woolsey would become a venture partner in the firm.[18]
In July 2011, Woolsey, in cooperation withRobert McFarlane, co-founded the United States Energy Security Council. Woolsey currently sits on the board of advisors for theFuel Freedom Foundation.[19]
He received an honorary doctorate from theInstitute of World Politics inWashington, DC in 2011.[citation needed]
Woolsey was a board member and vice-chairman ofThe Jamestown Foundation,[20] and sits on the advisory board for nonprofitAmerica Abroad Media.[21]
Woolsey currently[when?] sits on the Strategic Advisory Board forGenie Energy withDick Cheney,Rupert Murdoch, and LordJacob Rothschild. Genie is known for discovering a "massive" oil strata in Syria's Golan Heights near Israel.[22]
He serves as Chancellor atThe Institute of World Politics[23] and the independent non-executive director ofImperial Pacific.[24]
Woolsey joined as a senior adviser to Republican presidential candidateDonald Trump in September 2016.[25][26] He resigned on January 5 amid Congressional hearings intocyber attacks and public statements by Donald Trump critical of theUnited States Intelligence Community.[27]
On October 27, 2017, Woolsey's spokesman toldNBC News that Woolsey has cooperated with the investigations of theFBI and that ofSpecial Counsel Robert Mueller into a meeting that then-Donald Trump campaign advisorMichael Flynn held in September 2016.[28] Woolsey alleges that, during the meeting, Flynn offered to help officials ofTurkish government return Turkish dissidentFethullah Gülen toTurkey.[29]
In April 2021, Woolsey was officially banned from entering Russia with the counter sanction set by the Russian government in response to sanctions under the Biden administration.[30] He also accused the Soviet Union of being responsible for theAssassination ofUS President John F. Kennedy in a book published in 2021.[31] According to James Woolsey andIon Mihai Pacepa in their 2021 bookOperation Dragon: Inside the Kremlin's Secret War on America, bothLee Harvey Oswald and his wifeMarina Oswald Porter are Soviet agents.[32]
On July 15, 2023, theWashington Post published an article the Justice Department unsealed its indictment ofGal Luft, a dual Israeli and American citizen who ran a Maryland think tank. The indictment describes what it casts as an effort by Luft and a Chinese oil company representative to “recruit” a “former senior U.S. government official” and get him installed in a position of power inTrump’s orbit, even before his election. The Chinese business executive and the former senior U.S. government official aren’t named in the indictment, but the context indicates they arePatrick Ho (identified as “CC-1”) and former CIA director James Woolsey (identified as “Individual-1”), respectively.[33]
Woolsey has been known primarily as aneoconservativeDemocrat—hawkish onforeign policy issues butliberal on economic and social issues.[34][35] In 2008 he endorsed SenatorJohn McCain for president and served as one of McCain's foreign policy advisors.[36] He has called himself a "Scoop Jackson Democrat" and a "Joe Lieberman Democrat", with "social democratic" domestic views. He regards the label "neoconservative" as a "silly term".[37]
Woolsey was a keynote speaker at the EELPJ symposium onwind energy andbiofuels inHouston, Texas on February 23, 2007, during which he outlined the national security arguments in favor of moving away fromfossil fuels.[38] In a July 2007 interview withThe Futurist magazine he argued that U.S. dependence onMiddle Eastern oil ranks "very high" as a national security concern.[39]
Woolsey is featured inThomas Friedman'sDiscovery Channel documentaryAddicted to Oil,[40] and in the documentary filmWho Killed the Electric Car? (2006), addressing solutions to oil dependency through the development of theplug-in hybrid electric vehicle and use ofbiomass fuels such ascellulosic ethanol. He is a founding member of the Set America Free Coalition, dedicated to freeing the United States from oil dependence. He is on the board of directors for the electric vehicle advocacy groupPlug In America and is an advisor to The Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a think tank focused on energy security.[41][42]
Woolsey serves on the board of directors for Silicon Valley solar energy start-upSiva Power, which claims it can manufacture the lowest-cost solar panels in the world.[43]
Woolsey wrote the foreword to50 Simple Steps to Save the Earth from Global Warming.[44]
Woolsey is known for clearly articulating the national security argument in support of moving away fromfossil fuels and towardsdistributed generation. He has advocated for measures to fightglobal warming.[37]
Woolsey has spoken publicly about the issue ofelection interference, particularly with respect to foreign involvement in American democratic processes. In a 2018 interview with Fox News, Woolsey discussed the historical context of election interference, acknowledging that the United States, as well as other nations, haveinterfered in elections in foreign countries. He remarked that such actions were sometimes undertaken with the belief that they served a beneficial purpose, though he did not provide specific examples or details regarding these operations.[45]
Woolsey has also raised concerns about the increasing sophistication of election interference techniques, particularly with the advent of cyber warfare. He has advocated for enhanced cybersecurity measures to safeguard electoral integrity, emphasizing the importance of protecting democratic institutions from foreign influence.[46]
Within hours of theSeptember 11 attacks, Woolsey appeared on television suggestingIraqi complicity.[47] In September 2002, as Congress was deliberating authorizing President Bush to use force against Iraq, Woolsey toldThe Wall Street Journal that he believed that Iraq was also connected to the1995 bombing of theAlfred P. Murrah Federal Building and thebombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.[48]
In 2005,Steve Clemons, a senior fellow at theNew America Foundationthink tank, accused Woolsey of both profiting from and promoting theIraq War.[49] Melvin A. Goodman, senior fellow at theCenter for International Policy and formerCIA division chief, toldThe Washington Post that "Woolsey was a disaster as CIA director in the 1990s and is now running around this country calling for a World War IV to deal with the Islamic problem".[50][51]
During a January 14, 2009, interview byPeter Robinson onUncommon Knowledge, Woolsey described the CIA's intelligence aboutalleged Iraqi chemical and biological weapons as a "failure" before the2003 invasion of Iraq. He criticized theBush administration for lumping together many different materials with different capabilities under the broad category ofweapons of mass destruction. He also stated that the Iraqis engaged in "red on red deception" in which Generals were led to falsely believe that their rival Generals had weapons, and he described the American intelligence failure as a reasonable mistake rather than an act of incompetence.[37]
Along with six other former directors, Woolsey was one of the signatories to the letter of September 18, 2009, sent to PresidentBarack Obama urging him to exercise authority to reverse Attorney GeneralEric Holder's decision on August 24 to reopen the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations.[52]
In 2010, Woolsey supportedOklahoma SQ 755, forbidding courts from considering or usingSharia, recording a message aired for thousands of Oklahomans.[53] Woolsey, along with co-authors such as former DeputyUnder Secretary of Defense for IntelligenceWilliam G. Boykin and activistFrank Gaffney, released a book entitledShariah: The Threat To America, published by theCenter for Security Policy.[54] The book "describes what its authors call a 'stealthjihad' that must be thwarted before it's too late", and argues: "Most mosques in the United States already have been radicalized, that most Muslim social organizations are fronts for violent jihadists and that Muslims who practice sharia law seek to impose it in this country".[citation needed]
Woolsey was supportive of formerCIA DirectorLeon Panetta, whom he has compared toKennedy-era CIA headJohn McCone.[37]
Woolsey believes thatEdward Snowden's disclosure of classified intelligence methods has done grave damage to the security of western nations. During an interview withFox News on December 17, 2013, discussing the idea of granting Snowdenamnesty, Woolsey stated, "I think giving him amnesty is idiotic. ... He should be prosecuted fortreason. If convicted by a jury of his peers, he should behanged by his neck until he is dead".[55] In a CNN interview, Woolsey said "the blood of a lot of these French young people is on [Snowden's] hands."[56]
In a letter to the editor published in the July 5, 2012,The Wall Street Journal, Woolsey wrote that he supported the release ofJonathan Pollard, citing the passage of time: "When I recommended against clemency, Pollard had been in prison less than a decade. Today he has been incarcerated for over a quarter of a century under his life sentence." He pointed out that of the more than 50 recently convictedSoviet and Chinese spies, only two received life sentences, and two-thirds were sentenced to less time than Pollard has served so far. He further stated that "Pollard has cooperated fully with the U.S. government, pledged not to profit from his crime (e.g., from book sales), and has many times expressed remorse for what he did." Woolsey expressed his belief that Pollard is still imprisoned only because he is Jewish. He said, "anti-Semitism played a role in the continued detention of Pollard ... For those hung up for some reason on the fact that he's an American Jew, pretend he's a Greek- or Korean- or Filipino-American and free him."[57][58]
Woolsey was interviewed inBoris Malagurski's documentary filmThe Weight of Chains 2 (2014), in which he said that the "United States and the CIA made mistakes and make mistakes all the time".[59]
In April 2021, Woolsey claimed that the Soviet Union ordered theassassination of John F. Kennedy, in an interview promoting his book,Operation Dragon: Inside the Kremlin's Secret War on America.[60]
Woolsey is a member of theAmerican Committee for Peace in Chechnya.[61]
Woolsey was married to Suzanne Haley Woolsey, but they divorced after 48 years. He married Nancye Miller, who was aregistered foreign agent. She died of cancer in March 2019.[62][63]
Woolsey is a descendant of George (Joris) Woolsey, one of the earliest settlers ofNew Amsterdam, andThomas Cornell.[64][65]
According to the website Benzinga.com, James Woolsey's net worth was estimated to be more than $7 million as of 2024.[66]
{{cite web}}:Missing or empty|title= (help)[permanent dead link]| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Undersecretary of the Navy 1977–1979 | Succeeded by |
| Government offices | ||
| Preceded by | Director of Central Intelligence 1993–1995 | Succeeded by |
