 | Thisbiography of a living personrelies too much onreferences toprimary sources. Please help by addingsecondary or tertiary sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourcedmust be removed immediately, especially if potentiallylibelous or harmful. Find sources: "Karen Kwiatkowski" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Karen Kwiatkowski | |
|---|---|
 Kwiatkowski on her family's Shenandoah County farm | |
| Birth name | Karen Unger |
| Born | (1960-09-24)September 24, 1960 (age 64) |
| Allegiance |  United States of America |
| Service |  United States Air Force |
| Years of service | 1982–2003 |
| Rank | Lieutenant colonel |
| Unit | Near East/South Asia and Special Plans |
| Other work | A Case Study of the Implementation of the Reagan Doctrine. |
Karen U. Kwiatkowski, néeUnger,[1] (born September 24, 1960) is an American activist and commentator. She is a retiredU.S. Air ForceLieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties as aPentagon desk officer and a variety of roles for theNational Security Agency.
Since retiring, she has become a noted critic of the U.S. government's involvement inIraq. Kwiatkowski is primarily known for her insider essays which denounce a corrupting political influence on the course ofmilitary intelligence leading up to theinvasion of Iraq in 2003. In 2012, she challenged incumbentBob Goodlatte, in theRepublicanprimary forVirginia's 6th congressional district seat in theUnited States House of Representatives and garnered 34% of the Republican vote on a constitutional and limited government platform. As of 2024, she is a member ofVeteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
While in the Air Force, she wrote two books about U.S. policy towards Africa:African Crisis Response Initiative: Past Present and Future (US Army Peacekeeping Institute, 2000) andExpeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions (Air University Press, 2001). She contributed toRon Paul: A Life of Ideas, (Variant Press, 2008) andWhy Liberty: Personal Journeys Toward Peace and Freedom, (Cobden Press, 2010). She has been featured in a number of documentaries, including "Why We Fight" in 2005.[2] She has written forLewRockwell.com since 2003.[3]
 | This section of abiography of a living persondoes notinclude anyreferences or sources. Please help by addingreliable sources. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourcedmust be removed immediately. Find sources: "Karen Kwiatkowski" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Born Karen Unger, Kwiatkowski was raised in westernNorth Carolina. She received an master's in government fromHarvard University and an MS in Science Management from theUniversity of Alaska. She has a PhD in World Politics fromThe Catholic University of America; her thesis was on the overt and covert war inAngola,A Case Study of the Implementation of the Reagan Doctrine.
Kwiatkowski began her military career in 1982 as aSecond Lieutenant. She served atEielson Air Force Base inAlaska, providing logistical support to missions along theChinese andRussian coasts. She also served inSpain andItaly. Kwiatkowski was then assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA), eventually becoming a speechwriter for the agency's director. After leaving the NSA in 1998 she became an analyst onsub-Saharan Africa policy for the Pentagon. Kwiatkowski was in her office in the Pentagon when it was attacked onSeptember 11, 2001. From May 2002 to February 2003 she served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia directorate (NESA).[4] While at NESA, she wrote a series of anonymous articles,Insider Notes from the Pentagon which appeared on the website ofDavid Hackworth.[5] Kwiatkowski left NESA in February 2003 and retired from the Air Force the following month.[6]
In April 2003 Kwiatkowski began writing a series of articles for thelibertarian websiteLewRockwell.com. Since February 2004 she has written a biweekly column ("Without Reservations") for the websiteMilitaryWeek.com.
She is currently a Senior Fellow at theEisenhower Media Network,[7][8] a nonprofit group of former military, intelligence and civilian national security officials who described themselves as offering "alternative analyses untainted by Pentagon or defense industry ties" and countering "Washington’s establishment narrative on most national security issues of the day."[9]
She has been critical ofneoconservatism and has advocated for a non-interventionist foreign policy.[10] Her writings on the subject of a corrupting influence of the Pentagon on intelligence analysis leading up to the Iraq War appeared in a series of articles inThe American Conservative magazine in December 2003 and in a March 2004 article onSalon.com. In the latter piece ("The New Pentagon Papers") she wrote:
I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers withinOSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to bothCongress and theexecutive office of the president.[non-primary source needed]
Kwiatkowski described how a clique of officers led by retiredNavy CaptainBill Luti, assistant secretary of defense for NESA and former aide toDick Cheney when the latter wasSecretary of Defense, took control of military intelligence and how the "Office of Special Plans" (OSP) grew and eventually turned into acensorship and disinformation organism controlling the NESA.[11]
Following theAmerican Conservative andSalon articles, Kwiatkowski began to receive criticism from several conservative sources that supportedPresident Bush's policies.Michael Rubin of theNational Review argued she had exaggerated her knowledge of the OSP's workings and claimed she had ties toLyndon LaRouche.[12] Republican U.S. SenatorJon Kyl criticized her in a speech on the Senate floor.[13] On aFox News program, hostJohn Gibson and formerRepublican National Committee communications directorClifford May described her as ananarchist.[14] Kwiatkowski responded by saying, among other points, that she had never supported or dealt with LaRouche.[15]
In addition to her writings Kwiatkowski has appeared as a commentator in the documentariesHijacking Catastrophe,Honor Betrayed,Why We Fight andSuperpower.
Kwiatkowski was raised as a Goldwater Republican, and registered Republican from 1981 until 1994. She joined the U.S.Libertarian Party in 1994 and continued that membership until 2011. She was a speaker on military and foreign policy at the party'snational convention in 2004.[16] She returned to the Republican Party in 2011, and entered politics with the hope of joiningRon Paul,Justin Amash and others in the House Republican Liberty Caucus. She is endorsed by a past Chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, as well as by a range of other fiscal and constitutional conservatives.[citation needed]
A number of Libertarian Party members and supporters have encouraged Kwiatkowski to seek the Party's presidential nomination in the past few election cycles.[17][18] She has thus far declined to do so. On April 15, 2007, Kwiatkowski received the New Hampshire Libertarian Party's 2008vice-presidential nomination, within a couple of weeks she declined the nomination.[19] In 2007, she announced her support forRepublican presidential candidate Ron Paul.[20]
In February 2011, aFederal Election Commission filing declared the Friends of Karen Kwiatkowski weredrafting her to run for theVirginia's 6th districtU.S. congressional seat in the2012 election.[citation needed]
On August 18, 2011, Kwiatkowski formally announced her candidacy for the Republican nomination to challenge incumbent Republican U.S. Representative Bob Goodlatte in the June 12, 2012, primary election.[21] She wrote a variety of opinion pieces geared directly to her 2012 House race, and was interviewed by both local and national media. Her campaign slogan was "Less Government, More Prosperity".[citation needed]
On June 12, 2012, Kwiatkowski lost the nomination bid to Goodlatte who won 66.48% of the vote in the Republican 6th district primary election.[22]
Kwiatkowski lives with her family inMount Jackson in theShenandoah Valley of Virginia and is a farmer and part-time professor. She is married to Hap Kwiatkowski and has four children and seven grandchildren. She is aChristian.[23][24]
Kwiatkowski is a founding member of theVeteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.[25][26]
In September 2015 Kwiatkowski and 27 other members of VIPS steering group wrote a letter to the President challenging a recently published book, that claimed to rebut the report of theUnited States Senate Intelligence Committee on theCentral Intelligence Agency's use of torture.[citation needed]
Most of Kwiatkowski's written work is available online.[3]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
