Coordinates	28°36′50″N77°12′32″N
Name	Cynthia
Gender	Female
Meaning	from Mount Cynthus
Origin	Greek
Related names	Cindy, Cyndi

Cynthia is a feminine given name of Greek origin: Κυνθία, Kynthía, "from Mount Cynthus" on Delos island. It can be abbreviated as Cindy. There are various spellings for this name.

Cynthia was originally an epithet of the Greek goddess of the moon, Artemis, who was sometimes called "Cynthia" because, according to legend, the goddess was born on Mount Cynthus.

Cynthia

Notable people with the name Cynthia include:

Cynthia Bremser a long distance runner

Cynthia Deyanira Rodríguez Ruiz a contestant on the reality TV show La Academia

Cynthia Glassman, a commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

Cynthia Gregory, an American ballerina

Cynthia Greiner an American heptathlete and long jumper

Cynthia Herrup an American historian of early modern British law and professor

Cynthia Tse Kimberlin an American ethnomusicologist

Cynthia Lennon the first wife of musician John Lennon

Cynthia McKinney, a former United States Representative and 2008 Green Party nominee for President of the United States

Cynthia Nixon, an American actress

Cynthia Olavarría, an actress, TV host, fashion model, and former Miss Puerto Rico

Cynthia Ozick, a writer

Cynthia Rothrock, an American martial artist and actress

Cynthia Rowley, an American fashion designer

Cynthia Ryder, an American rower

Cynthia Watros, an American actress

Cynthia Weil, an American songwriter

Cynthia Gibb, an American actress

Cynthia Wesley, a victim of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

Fictional characters with this name include:

Cynthia, champion of the Sinnoh region in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl

Cynthia Brisby, a mouse character from The Secret of NIMH. She is the youngest daughter of Mrs. Brisby and has a teal ribbon tied on her waist with a bow on her back.

Cynthia Murdoch, a major character in the Poirot mystery The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Cynthia Brandon, younger mortal sister of Alice Cullen the vampire from New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

Cynthia, Angelica's doll on Rugrats

Cinthia

Cinthia Piñeiro

Cintia

Cintia Dicker, a Brazilian model

Sinthia

Sinthia Richards, aka Cynthia Richards

Synthia

Synthia Schmidt, a comic book character

See also

Cynthia (disambiguation)

Cindy (given name)

Category:Feminine given names

Coordinates	28°36′50″N77°12′32″N
Name	Cynthia McKinney
Image name	Cynthia McKinney.jpg
Office	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia's 11th District
Term start	January 3, 1993
Term end	January 3, 1997
Predecessor	None — district created
Successor	John Linder
Office2	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia's 4th District
Term start2	January 3, 1997
Term end2	January 3, 2003
Predecessor2	John Linder
Successor2	Denise Majette
Term start3	January 3, 2005
Term end3	January 3, 2007
Predecessor3	Denise Majette
Successor3	Hank Johnson
Date of birth	March 17, 1955
Place of birth	Atlanta, Georgia
Party	Democratic (1986-2007) Green Party (2007-present)
Spouse	Coy Grandison (divorced)
Alma mater	University of Southern California
Residence	Lithonia, Georgia
Occupation	high school teacher, college professor

Cynthia Ann McKinney (born March 17, 1955) is a former US Congresswoman and a member of the Green Party since 2007. As a member of the Democratic Party, she served six terms as a member of the United States House of Representatives. In 2008, the Green Party nominated McKinney for President of the United States. She is the first African-American woman to have represented Georgia in the House.

In the 1992 election, McKinney was elected in the newly re-created 11th District, and was re-elected in 1994. When her district was redrawn and renumbered due to the Supreme Court of the United States ruling in Miller v. Johnson, McKinney was easily elected from the new 4th District in the 1996 election, and was re-elected twice without substantive opposition.

McKinney was defeated by Denise Majette in the 2002 Democratic primary. Some people believe she was defeated because of Republican crossover voting in Georgia's open primary election, which permits anyone from any party to vote in any party primary and "usually rewards moderate candidates and penalizes those outside the mainstream." Others believe that her defeat was due to her "her controversial profile, which included support for Arab causes and a suggestion that Bush knew in advance of the September 11 attacks." McKinney was re-elected to the House in November 2004, following her successor's run for Senate. In Congress, she advocated unsealing records pertaining to the CIA's role in assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the murder of Tupac Shakur and continued to criticize the Bush Administration over the 9/11 attacks. She supported anti-war legislation and introduced articles of impeachment against President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

She was defeated by Hank Johnson in the 2006 Democratic primary, after finding herself in the national spotlight again over the March 29, 2006, Capitol Hill police incident, where she pushed a rookie Capitol Hill Police officer for stopping her to ask for identification. McKinney had recently changed her hairstyle and was not wearing her identifying congressional lapel pin. McKinney claimed the events as an example of racial profiling by police officers, but found virtually no support from either her own party or civil rights leaders. She left the Democratic Party in September 2007.

Members of the United States Green Party had attempted to recruit McKinney for their ticket in both 2000 and 2004. She eventually ran as the Green Party nominee in the 2008 presidential election receiving 0.12% of the votes cast.

Early life and political career

Cynthia McKinney was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the daughter of Leola McKinney, a retired nurse, and Billy McKinney, a law enforcement officer and former Georgia State Representative.

.]] McKinney was exposed to the Civil Rights Movement through her father, an activist who regularly participated in demonstrations across the south. As a police officer, he challenged the discriminatory policies of the Atlanta Police Department, publicly protesting in front of the station, often carrying young McKinney on his shoulders. He became a state representative, and McKinney attributes her father's election victory after several failed attempts to the passage of the Voting Rights Act passed by Lyndon B. Johnson.

McKinney earned a B.A. in international relations from the University of Southern California, an M.A. in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She worked as a high school teacher and later as a university professor.

Her political career began in 1986 when her father, a representative in the Georgia House of Representatives, submitted her name as a write-in candidate for the Georgia state house. She got about 40% of the popular vote, despite the fact that she lived in Jamaica at the time with then-husband Coy Grandison (with whom she had a son, Coy McKinney, born in 1985). In 1988, McKinney ran for the same seat and won, making the McKinneys the first father and daughter to simultaneously serve in the Georgia state house.

In 1991, she spoke aggressively against the Gulf War, causing many legislators to walk out in protest of her remarks.

In 2007, McKinney moved from her long time residence in the Atlanta suburb of Stone Mountain to California.

First terms in Congress

In the 1992 election, McKinney was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as the member of Congress from the newly created 11th District, a 64% black district spanning from Atlanta to Savannah. She was the first African American woman to represent Georgia in the House.

Criticism of Al Gore

During the 2000 presidential campaign, McKinney wrote that "Al Gore's Negro tolerance level has never been too high. I've never known him to have more than one black person around him at any given time." Gore's campaign pointed out that its manager, Donna Brazile, was black.

McKinney also chastised Gore for failing to support the U'wa people of Colombia trying to oppose petroleum drilling near them. In a press release issued on February 22, 2000, entitled "No More Blood For Oil" McKinney wrote that "Oil drilling on Uwa land will result in considerable environmental damage and social conflict which will lead to greater militarization of the region as well as an increase in violence." Addressing herself to Gore, she wrote "I am contacting you because you have remained silent on this issue despite your strong financial interests and family ties with Occidental."

September 11 attacks

McKinney gained national attention for remarks she made following the 2001 US attacks, charging that the United States had advance knowledge of the attacks and that US President George W. Bush may have been aware of the incipient attack and allowed them to happen, allegedly due to his father's business interests: "It is known that President Bush's father, through the Carlyle Group, had–at the time of the attacks–joint business interests with the bin Laden construction company and many defense industry holdings, the stocks of which have soared since September 11." McKinney published an open letter to the Saudi Prince, in which she wrote of her disappointment at Giuliani's action and stated, "Let me say that there are a growing number of people in the United States who recognize, like you, that U.S. policy in the Middle East needs serious examination...Your Royal Highness, many of us here in the United States have long been concerned about reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that reveal a pattern of excessive, and often indiscriminate, use of lethal force by Israeli security forces in situations where Palestinian demonstrators were unarmed and posed no threat of death or serious injury to the security forces or to others."

2002 primary defeat

In 2002, McKinney was defeated in the Democratic primary by DeKalb County judge Denise Majette. Majette defeated McKinney with 58% of the vote to McKinney's 42%.

McKinney protested the result in court, claiming that thousands of Republicans, knowing they had no realistic chance of defeating her in the November general election, had voted in the Democratic primary against McKinney in revenge for her anti-Bush administration views and her allegations of voter fraud in Florida in the 2000 presidential election. Like 20 other states, Georgia operates an open primary: voters do not align with a political party when they register to vote and may participate in whichever party's primary election they choose. Thus, relying on the Supreme Court's decision in California Democratic Party v. Jones, which had held that California's blanket primary violated the First Amendment (despite the fact that the Court explicitly differentiated — albeit in dicta — the blanket primary from the open primary in Jones), on McKinney's behalf, five voters claimed that the open primary system was unconstitutional, operating in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the associational right protected by the First Amendment, and various statutory rights protected by § 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The district court dismissed the case, noting that the plaintiffs had presented no evidence in support of the 14th Amendment and Voting Rights Act claims, and lacked standing to bring the First Amendment claim. It interpreted the Supreme Court's Jones ruling to hold that the right to association involved in a dispute over a primary — and thus, standing to sue — belongs to a political party, not an individual voter. On appeal in May 2004, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld this result in Osburn v. Cox, noting that not only were the plaintiffs' claims meritless, but the remedy they requested would likely be unconstitutional under the Supreme Court's decision in Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut. On October 18, 2004, the Supreme Court brought an end to the litigation, denying certiorari without comment.

Other factors in her defeat were her controversial statements regarding Bush's involvement in 9/11, her opposition to aid to Israel, a perceived support of Palestinian and Arab causes, and alleged antisemitism by her supporters. and on the night before the primary election, McKinney's father stated on Atlanta television that "Jews have bought everybody ... J-E-W-S." and commentators such as Alexander Cockburn allege that money from out-of-state Jewish organizations, angered by her stand on Middle East issues, was key in her election defeat. Cockburn also wrote that "Buckets of sewage were poured over McKinney's head in the Washington Post and the Atlanta Constitution." According to the Anti Defamation League, McKinney's use of the New Black Panther Party as security, given that organization's use of antisemitic and racist invective, and her failure to distance herself from that group, are "troubling." Georgia political analyst Bill Shipp addressed McKinney's defeat saying "voters sent a message: 'We're tired of these over-the-top congressmen dealing in great international and national interests. How about somebody looking out for our interests?' "

Between terms

McKinney traveled widely as a public speaker between her terms in office. Throughout 2003 and 2004, McKinney toured the US and much of Europe speaking of her defeat, her opposition to the Iraq War, and the Bush administration. In a January 2004 issue of Jet magazine, McKinney said that the "white, rich Democratic boys club wanted [her] to stay in the back of the bus."

In 2004, McKinney served on the advisory committee for the group 2004 Racism Watch. On September 9, 2004, she was a commissioner in The Citizens' Commission on 9-11. On October 26, 2004, she was among 100 prominent Americans and 40 family members of those who were killed on 9/11 who signed the 9/11 Truth Movement statement, calling for new investigations of what they perceived as unexplained aspects of the 9/11 events.

McKinney hosted the first delegation of Afro-Latinos from Central and South America and worked with the World Bank and the U.S. State Department to recognize Afro-Latinos. She stood with Aboriginals against Australian mining companies. She was one of the 31 in the House who objected to the official allotment of the electoral votes from Ohio in the United States presidential election, 2004 to incumbent George W. Bush.

9/11 Commission

Initially, McKinney kept a low profile upon her return to Congress. However, on July 22, 2005, the first anniversary of the release of the 9/11 Commission Report, McKinney held a briefing on Capitol Hill to address outstanding issues regarding the 2001 attacks on the US. The day-long briefing featured family members of victims, scholars, former intelligence officers and others who critiqued the 9/11 Commission account of 9/11 and its recommendations. The four morning panels addressed flaws, omissions, and a lack of historical and political analysis in the commission's report. Three afternoon panels critiqued the commission's recommendations in the areas of foreign and domestic policy and intelligence reform. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial maintained that the purpose of the event was to discuss whether or not the Bush administration was involved in the 9/11 attacks, expressing surprise that McKinney was once again taking on the issue that was widely believed to have cost her her House seat. The Journal-Constitution declined to publish McKinney's reply. The 9/11 Commission has sealed all the notes and transcripts of some 2,000 interviews, all the forensic evidence, and both classified and non-classified documents used in compiling its final report until January 2, 2009. McKinney's interest in 9/11 relates specifically to what she expresses as her opposition to excessive government secrecy, which she has challenged with numerous pieces of legislation.

McKinney has said that she "remain[s] hopeful that we will learn the truth" about 9/11 "because more and more people around the world are demanding it."

Hurricane Katrina activism

McKinney has been an advocate for victims of Hurricane Katrina and a critic of the government's response. Over 100,000 evacuees from New Orleans and Mississippi relocated to the Atlanta area, and many have now settled there.

During the Katrina crisis, evacuees were turned away by Arthur Lawson's Gretna police when they attempted to cross the Crescent City Connection Bridge between New Orleans and Gretna, Louisiana. McKinney was the only member of Congress to participate in a march across the Crescent City Connection Bridge on November 7, 2005, to protest what had happened on that bridge in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

In response, McKinney introduced a bill on November 2, 2005, that would temporarily deny federal assistance to the City of Gretna Police Department, Harry Lee's Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, and the Crescent City Connection Police Department, in the state of Louisiana. The bill was referred to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, but was not acted on. However, in August 2006, a grand jury began an investigation of the incident.

McKinney chose to be an active participant in the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina, despite the Democratic Party leadership's call for Democratic members to boycott the committee. She submitted her own 72-page report. She sat as a guest along with only a few other Democrats. In questioning Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, McKinney referred to a news story in which the owners of a nursing home had been charged with negligent homicide for abandoning 34 clients who died in the flood waters. McKinney asked Chertoff: "Mr. Secretary, if the nursing home owners are arrested for negligent homicide, why shouldn't you also be arrested for negligent homicide?"

The Congressional Black Caucus' Omnibus Bill (HR 4197) was introduced on November 2, 2005, to provide a comprehensive response to the Gulf Coast residents affected by Hurricane Katrina. The second title of the bill was submitted by McKinney, seeking a Comprehensive Environmental Sampling and Toxicity Assessment Plan, or CESTAP, to minimize harm to Gulf Coast residents from the toxic releases into the environment caused by the hurricane.

At the request of McKinney, the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina, chaired by Thomas M. Davis, held a previously unscheduled hearing titled "Voices Inside the Storm" on December 6, 2005.

McKinney, along with Rep. Barbara Lee (CA), produced a "Katrina Legislative Summary," a chart summarizing House and Senate bills on Hurricane Katrina. On June 13, 2006, McKinney pointed out on the House floor that only a dozen of the 176 Katrina bills identified on the chart had passed into law, leaving 163 bills stalled in committee.

On August 2, 2007, McKinney participated in a press conference in New Orleans to launch an International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which she described as an effort to seek justice for the victims of those hurricanes and their aftermath.

Department of Defense homicide accusation

On September 28, 2008, at a press conference, McKinney announced that she had spoken with a constituent whose son was a National Guardsman. The constituent claimed her son had disposed of 5,000 bodies for the Department of Defense during the week of Hurricane Katrina. She further believed that there were credible reports that the bodies were prisoners who had all been crushed by tanks, shot in the head, painted blue, and dumped in a Louisiana swamp. McKinney said that the story had been corroborated by anonymous "insider" sources.

Anti-war and human rights legislation

Until 2000, McKinney served on the House International Relations Committee, where she was the highest-ranking Democrat on the Human Rights Subcommittee. McKinney worked on legislation to stop conventional weapons transfers to governments that are undemocratic or fail to respect human rights. Her legislation to end the mining of coltan in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo was mentioned in the United Nations Security Council's "Special Report on Ituri."

On November 18, 2005, McKinney was one of only three House members to vote for H.R. 571, introduced by House Armed Services Committee chairman Duncan Hunter, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, on which McKinney sat. Hunter, a Republican, offered this resolution calling for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces in Iraq in place of John Murtha's H.J.Res. 73, which called for redeployment "at the earliest possible date." In her prepared statement, McKinney accused the Republicans of "trying to set a trap for the Democrats. A 'no' vote for this Resolution will obscure the fact that there is strong support for withdrawal of US forces from Iraq ... In voting for this bill, let me be perfectly clear that I am not saying the United States should exit Iraq without a plan. I agree with Mr. Murtha that security and stability in Iraq should be pursued through diplomacy. I simply want to vote 'yes' to an orderly withdrawal from Iraq."

Articles of impeachment introduced

At the end of the 2006 legislative session, McKinney introduced articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush as (H Res 1106), which made three charges against Bush:

Failure to uphold the constitution, specifically that "George Walker Bush … in preparing the invasion of Iraq, did withhold intelligence from the Congress, by refusing to provide Congress with the full intelligence picture that he was being given, by redacting information … and actively manipulating the intelligence on Iraq’s alleged weapons programs by pressuring the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies.

Abuse of office and executive privilege, "obstructing and hindering the work of Congressional investigative bodies and by seeking to expand the scope of the powers of his office."

Failure to ensure that laws are faithfully executed, specifically by a program of illegal domestic spying and circumvention of the FISA Act.

The second article also made charges against Vice President Dick Cheney alleging he manipulated intelligence in order to justify the Iraq War, and against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice alleging that she knowingly made false statements concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.

Capitol Police incident

On the morning of March 29, 2006, McKinney entered the Longworth House Office Building's southeast entrance and proceeded past the security checkpoint, walking around the metal detector. Members of Congress have identifying lapel pins and are not required to pass through metal detectors. The officers present failed to recognize McKinney as a member of Congress because she was not wearing the appropriate lapel pin and had recently changed her hairstyle. She proceeded westward down the ground floor hallway and about halfway down the hallway was stopped by United States Capitol Police officer Paul McKenna, who states that he had been calling after her: "Ma'am, Ma'am!"; at that time it is reported that McKinney struck the officer. Two days later, Officer McKenna filed a police report claiming that McKinney had struck "his chest with a closed fist."

In the midst of a media frenzy, McKinney made an apology on the floor of the House of Representatives on April 6, 2006, neither admitting to nor denying the charge, stating only that: "There should not have been any physical contact in this incident." Minutes before the Congresswoman's apology, McKinney's security officer made contact with a TV correspondent outside of the U.S. Capitol.

Though not indicted for criminal charges or subjected to disciplinary action by the House, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police said of Officer McKenna, “We're going to make sure the officer won't be harassed. We want the officer to be able talk to experts, who can look at his legal recourses, if he needed to."

Unintentional on-air criticism

In the wake of the March 2006 incident with the Capitol Police officer, Rep. McKinney was in the news, and her office invited the media to attend one of her monthly "District Days," where she spends one full day meeting with constituents to discuss issues of concern. At her April 23, 2006, "District Days" event, Rep. McKinney was being interviewed by WGCL's Renee Starzyk, who repeatedly questioned her about the March 29 scuffle with a Capitol police officer. Frustrated, McKinney stood up and apparently forgot she was still wearing the microphone. Her offscreen comments were captured on tape. She was heard saying, "Oh, crap, now you know what ... they lied to [aide Coz Carson], and Coz is a fool." McKinney returned on screen with the microphone, this time with instructions on what parts of the interview CBS 46 was allowed to use, "anything that is captured by your audio... that is captured while I'm not seated in this chair is off the record and is not permissible to be used... is that understood?" The comments from the interview were subsequently aired on CBS and eventually across the nation.

Other issues

MLK Records Act

McKinney has submitted to Congress two different versions of the same bill, the "MLK Records Act" (one in 2003, the other in 2005), which, if signed into law, would release all currently sealed files concerning the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. These records were sealed in 1978 and are not due to be declassified until the year 2028. The 2005 version of the MLK Records Act, HR 2554 had 67 cosponsors by the time McKinney left office at the end of 2006. A Senate version of the bill (S2499) was introduced by Senator John Kerry and was co-signed by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. The bill has also received numerous endorsements from former members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

Tupac Shakur Records Act

Documents relating to the death of rapper Tupac Shakur, in which McKinney has taken an active interest, would be released under another bill introduced by Rep. McKinney. In a statement, McKinney explained her reason for the bill: "The public has the right to know because he was a well-known figure. There is intense public interest in the life and death of Tupac Shakur." Legislation demanding release of records is a more direct route than the tedious process and limited scope of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

2006 primary and primary runoff

McKinney finished first in the July 18, 2006 Democratic primary, edging DeKalb County Commissioner Hank Johnson 47.1% to 44.4%, with a third candidate receiving 8.5%. However, since McKinney failed to get at least 50% of the vote, she and Johnson were forced into a runoff.

In the runoff of August 8, 2006, although there were about 8,000 more voters than in the primary, McKinney received about the same number of votes as in July. Johnson won with 41,178 votes (59%) to McKinney's 28,832 (41%). McKinney's loss is attributed to a mid-decade redistricting, in which the 4th had absorbed portions of Gwinnett and Rockdale Counties, as well as her highly publicized controversial run-in with a police officer in the March 29, 2006, Capitol Hill police incident.

CNN reported that during her concession speech, McKinney hardly mentioned her opponent but praised the leftist political leaders elected in South America. She also questioned the efficacy of voting machines and criticized the media.

2008 Green Party presidential candidacy

McKinney was a Green Party candidate in the 2008 presidential election. On September 10, in a letter to the Steering Committee of the Green Party of the United States, McKinney stated she would not seek the Green Party nomination for president. However, in early October it appeared that McKinney was making moves toward declaring herself an official Green Party candidate.

On July 9, 2008, she named as her running mate journalist and community activist Rosa Clemente and clinched the party's nomination three days later at the 2008 Green Party National Convention.

On September 10, 2008, McKinney joined a press conference held by third-party and independent candidates, along with Ralph Nader, Chuck Baldwin, and initiator Ron Paul. The participants agreed on four basic principles:

An early end to the Iraq war, and an end to threats of war against other countries including Iran and Russia.

The safeguarding of privacy and civil liberties, including a call for the repeal of the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and FISA legislation

No increase in the National Debt

A "thorough investigation, evaluation and audit of the Federal Reserve System."

On November 4, 2008 McKinney received 161,603 votes.

Free Gaza Movement

Ship Dignity

On December 30, 2008, McKinney was aboard the ship Dignity as it attempted to enter the Gaza Strip, which had its coastal area declared a "closed military zone" by Israel, while on a humanitarian mission by the Free Gaza Movement from Cyprus. Aboard were physicians, medical supplies, and activists, including Caoimhe Butterly. The Israel Navy confronted the ship at night in international waters. Members of the crew claimed that the ship was rammed, gunfire was directed at the water, and the ship was forced to dock in Lebanon after taking on water. Israel officials claimed that the collision was accidental and occurred after the ship was informed they wouldn't be allowed to enter Gaza and tried to outmaneuver the patrol boat; they decried McKinney's actions as being irresponsible and provocative for the sake of propaganda.

Ship Spirit of Humanity

On June 30, 2009, McKinney was aboard the Greek-flagged Free Gaza Movement's ship Spirit of Humanity carrying 21 activists including Irish peace activist Mairead McGuire, medical supplies, a symbolic bag of cement, olive trees and toys, when it was seized by the Israeli Navy off the Gaza coast. It is unclear whether they were in international waters or in Gazan waters, which is subject to the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Although both the Cypriot and Israeli authorities were officially informed the destination was Gaza before the vessel's departure, according to the Cypriot government the ship "was given permission by the competent Authorities of the Republic of Cyprus to sail off the port of Larnaca in Cyprus on the basis of its declaration that its intended destination was the port of Port Said in Egypt." The Israeli government would have released McKinney and her fellow activists immediately had they signed deportation papers; however, McKinney at least initially refused to sign, arguing that she could not be sure of what the papers, written in Hebrew, said, and that the papers would require them to admit that they were in violation of Israel's blockade, which they deny. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Israeli officials stated that the "Palestinian Authority and the rest of the international community had agreed to the off-shore blockade to prevent arms smuggling into Gaza." The Palestinian Chronicle reports that such an agreement to the off-shore blockade never happened. "No Palestinians have agreed nor did the international community agree to a blockade of Gaza by land or Sea." On June 17, 2009, a group of United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) called for an end to Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip.

On July 7, 2009, McKinney was deported to the United States. The Israeli government indicated it will deliver the supplies via land.

McKinney has been featured in a full-length documentary titled American Blackout. On April 14, 2006, she received the key to the city of Sarasota, Florida, and was doubly honored when the city named April 8 as "Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney Day" in Sarasota. On May 1, 2004, during her hiatus from office, McKinney was awarded the fifth annual Backbone Award by the Backbone Campaign "because she was willing to challenge the Bush administration and called for an investigation into 9-11 when few others dared to air their criticism and questions."

On June 14, 2000, a part of Memorial Drive, a major thoroughfare running through her district, was renamed "Cynthia McKinney Parkway," but the naming has come under scrutiny since her primary defeat in 2006. Her father had previously been honored when a portion of Interstate 285 around Atlanta was dedicated as James E. "Billy" McKinney Highway.

Electoral history

References

External links

2008 Presidential Campaign Website

All Things Cynthia McKinney Cynthia McKinney's personal website

Presidential campaign FEC disclosure report

Cynthia McKinney: Live in Brooklyn. Quicktime Video. 11:30 minutes. Directed by Stephen Marshall. Guerrilla News Network. 2003. Retrieved May 12, 2005.

Cynthia McKinney's campaign donor list newsmeat.com

/ Cynthia McKinney on the issues

Category:Cynthia McKinney Category:African American United States presidential candidates Category:African American members of the United States House of Representatives Category:American anti-Iraq War activists

Category:Female members of the United States House of Representatives Category:Female United States presidential candidates Category:Georgia (U.S. state) Democrats Category:Green Party (United States) presidential nominees Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Georgia (U.S. state) Category:People from Atlanta, Georgia Category:Tufts University alumni Category:United States presidential candidates, 2008 Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:University of Southern California alumni Category:Women in Georgia (U.S. state) politics Category:1955 births Category:Living people Category:Youth rights individuals Category:Georgia (U.S. state) Greens

:For the attorney see: William Francis Pepper

Coordinates	28°36′50″N77°12′32″N
Name	William Pepper, M.D.
Birth date	August 21, 1843
Birth place	Philadelphia
Death date	July 28, 1898
Death place	Pleasanton, California
Residence	|citizenship =
Nationality	American
Field	Medicine
Alma mater	University of Pennsylvania
Known for	Neuroblastoma
Author abbrev bot	|author_abbrev_zoo =
Religion	|footnotes = |signature =

William Pepper, Jr., M.D. (August 21, 1843 - July 28, 1898), a American physician, was a leader in medical education in the Nineteenth Century, and a longtime Provost of the University of Pennsylvania.

Parents

He was born in Philadelphia to Dr. William Pepper, Sr. and Sarah Platt Pepper. He married Frances Sergent Perry on June 25, 1873. They were the parents of four sons (William, Thomas, Benjamin, and Oliver Pepper).

Education

He was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating from the college in 1862 and from the medical school in 1864.

Career

In 1868 he became lecturer on morbid anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and in 1870 lecturer on clinical medicine. From 1876 to 1887, he was professor of clinical medicine at Penn and in 1887 succeeded Dr Alfred Still as professor of theory and practice of medicine.

Dr. Pepper founded the Philadelphia Medical Times and was editor of that journal in 1870-71. He was elected provost of the University of Pennsylvania in 1881 and remained in that position until 1894. For his services as medical director of the United States Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876, he was made Knight Commander of Saint Olaf by King Oscar II of Sweden.

Dr. Pepper was known academically for his contributions to the theory and practice of medicine and the System of Medicine that he edited in 1885-86 became one of America's standard medical textbooks. He died July 28, 1898, at Pleasanton, California.

His contributions to the medical and scientific journals of the day Included the following:

Trephining in Cerebral Disease (1871)

Local Treatment in Pulmonary Cavities (1874)

Catarrhal Irrigation (1881)

Epilepsy (1883)

Higher Medical Education: the True Interest of the Public and the Profession.

Free Library of Philadelphia

Dr. Pepper was also the founder of Philadelphia's first free public library, chartered in 1891 through funds provided by the estate of his late uncle, which became the Free Library of Philadelphia, today the city's multi-branch public library system. A commemorative marble statue of Dr. Pepper today sits on the landing of the main staircase of the Central Library at 19th and Vine Streets in Center City Philadelphia.

See also

Ivy League Presidents

References

External links

Category:1843 births Category:1898 deaths Category:People from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Category:University of Pennsylvania alumni Category:American physicians

Coordinates	28°36′50″N77°12′32″N
Name	Larry King
Caption	King in September 2010
Birth name	Lawrence Harvey Zeiger
Birth date	November 19, 1933
Birth place	Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Television/Radio personality
Years active	1957–2010| spouse = Freda Miller (1952–1953)Annette Kaye (1961)Alene Akins (1961–1963)Mickey Sutphin (1963–1967)Alene Akins (1967–1972)Sharon Lepore (1976–1983)Julie Alexander (1989–1992)Shawn Southwick (1997–present)

Lawrence Harvey "Larry" King (born November 19, 1933) is an American television and radio host.

He is recognized in the United States as one of the premier broadcast interviewers. He has won an Emmy Award, two Peabody Awards, and ten Cable ACE Awards.

King began as a local Florida journalist and radio interviewer in the 1950s and 1960s. He became prominent as an all-night national radio broadcaster starting in 1978, and then, in 1985, began hosting the nightly interview TV program Larry King Live on CNN.

On June 29, 2010, it was announced that he would step down as host of the show but would continue to host specials for CNN. In early September, CNN confirmed that he would be replaced by Piers Morgan. King's last show aired on December 16, 2010.

Early life

King was born in Brooklyn, New York City, to Edward Zeiger, a restaurant owner and defense plant worker, and his wife Jennie Gitlitz, a garment worker, who emigrated from Belarus. King grew up in a religious and observant Jewish home, but in adulthood became an agnostic. King's father died at 44 of heart disease, and his mother had to go on welfare to support her two sons. His father's death greatly affected King, and he lost interest in school. After graduating from high school, he worked to help support his mother. From an early age, however, he had wanted to go into radio.

Career

Miami radio and television

A CBS staff announcer, whom King met by chance, told him to go to Florida, a growing media market where openings still existed for inexperienced broadcasters. King rode a bus to Miami. After initial setbacks, King persisted and got his first job in radio. The manager of a small station, WAHR (now WMBM) in Miami Beach, hired him to clean up and perform miscellaneous tasks. When one of their announcers quit, they put King on the air. His first broadcast was on May 1, 1957, when he worked as the disc jockey from 9 a.m. to noon. He also did two afternoon newscasts and a sportscast. He was paid $55 a week. He acquired the name Larry King when the general manager Martial Cemen said that Zeiger was too ethnic and difficult to remember, so Larry chose the surname King, which he got from an ad in The Miami Herald for King's Wholesale Liquor, minutes before air. He started interviewing on a midmorning show for WIOD, at Pumpernik's Restaurant in Miami Beach. He would interview anyone who walked in. His first interview was with a waiter at the restaurant. Two days later, singer Bobby Darin, in Miami for a concert later that day, walked into Pumpernick's as a result of coming across King's show on his radio; Darin became King's first celebrity interview guest.

His Miami radio show launched him to local stardom. A few years later, in May 1960, he hosted Miami Undercover, airing Sunday nights at 11:30 p.m. on WPST-TV Channel 10 (now WPLG). On the show, he moderated debates on important issues of the time. King credits his success on local TV to the assistance of another showbiz legend, comedian Jackie Gleason, whose national TV variety show was being filmed in Miami Beach during this period. "That show really took off because Gleason came to Miami," King said in a 1996 interview he gave when inducted into the Broadcasters' Hall of Fame. "He did that show and stayed all night with me. We stayed till five in the morning. He didn't like the set, so we broke into the general manager's office and changed the set. Gleason changed the set, he changed the lighting, and he became like a mentor of mine." Jackie Gleason was instrumental in getting Larry a hard-to-get on air interview with Frank Sinatra during this time.

During this period, WIOD gave King further exposure as a color commentator for the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League, during their 1970 season and most of their 1971 season. However, he was dismissed by both WIOD and television station WTVJ as a late-night radio host and sports commentator as of December 20, 1971, when he was arrested after being accused of grand larceny by a former business partner. Other staffers covered the Dolphins' games into their 24–3 loss to Dallas in Super Bowl VI. King also lost his weekly column at the Miami Beach Sun newspaper. The charges were dropped on March 10, 1972, and King spent the next several years in reviving his career, including a stint as the color announcer in Louisiana for the Shreveport Steamer of the World Football League in 1974–75. For several years during the 1970s in South Florida, he hosted a sports talk-show called "Sports-a-la-King" that featured guests and callers.

King managed to get back into radio by becoming the color commentator for broadcasts of the Shreveport Steamer of the World Football League on KWKH. Eventually, King was rehired by WIOD in Miami.

National radio

In 1978, he went national, inheriting the nightly talk show slot on the Mutual Broadcasting System, broadcast coast-to-coast, that had been "Long John" Nebel's until his death, and had been pioneered by Herb Jepko. One reason King got the Mutual job is that he had once been an announcer at WGMA-AM in Hollywood, Florida, which was then owned by C. Edward Little. Little went on to become president of Mutual and was the one who hired King when Nebel died. King's Mutual show developed a devoted audience.

It was broadcast live Monday through Friday from midnight to 5:30 a.m. Eastern Time. King would interview a guest for the first 90 minutes, with callers asking questions that continued the interview for another 90 minutes. At 3 a.m., he would allow callers to discuss any topic they pleased with him, until the end of the program, when he expressed his own political opinions. That segment was called "Open Phone America". Some of the regular callers used the pseudonyms "The Portland Laugher", "The Miami Derelict", "The Todd Cruz Caller", "The Scandal Scooper", "Mr. Radio" and "The Water Is Warm Caller". "Mr. Radio" made over 200 calls to King during Open Phone America. The show was successful, starting with relatively few affiliates and eventually growing to more than 500. It ran until 1994.

For its final year, the show was moved to afternoons, but, because most talk radio stations at the time had an established policy of local origination in the time-slot (3 to 6 p.m. Eastern Time) that Mutual offered the show, a very low percentage of King's overnight affiliates agreed to carry his daytime show and it was unable to generate the same audience size. The afternoon show was eventually given to David Brenner and radio affiliates were given the option of carrying the audio of King's new CNN evening television program. The Westwood One radio simulcast of the CNN show continues.

CNN

He started his Larry King Live CNN show in June 1985, hosting a broad range of guests from controversial figures of UFO conspiracy theories and alleged psychics, to prominent politicians and leading figures in the entertainment industry, often doing their first or only interview on breaking news stories on his show.

program at the Pentagon in Arlington, VA in 2006]]

Unlike many interviewers, King has a direct, non-confrontational approach. His reputation for asking easy, open-ended questions has made him attractive to important figures who want to state their position while avoiding being challenged on contentious topics. His interview style is characteristically frank, but with occasional bursts of irreverence and humor. His approach attracts some guests who would not otherwise appear. King, who is known for his general lack of pre-interview preparation, once bragged that he never read the books of authors before making an appearance on his program.

In a show dedicated to the surviving Beatles, King asked George Harrison's widow about the song "Something", which was written about George Harrison's first wife. He seemed surprised when she did not know very much about the song.

Throughout his career King has interviewed many of the leading figures of his time. CNN claimed during his final episode that he had performed 60,000 interviews in his career.

King also wrote a regular newspaper column in USA Today for almost 20 years, from shortly after that newspaper's origin in 1982 until September 2001. The column consisted of short "plugs, superlatives and dropped names" but was dropped when the newspaper redesigned its "Life" section. The column was resurrected in blog form in November 2008 and on Twitter in April 2009.

Departure

On June 29, 2010, King announced that after 25 years, he would be stepping down from his nightly job hosting Larry King Live. However, he stated that he would remain with CNN to host occasional specials.

On September 8, 2010, CNN confirmed that Morgan would occupy King's 9:00 pm timeslot from January 2011 onward.

The final edition of Larry King Live aired on December 16, 2010.

Heart disease

On February 24, 1987, King suffered a major heart attack and then had quintuple-bypass surgery. King has written two books about living with heart disease. Mr. King, You're Having a Heart Attack: How a Heart Attack and Bypass Surgery Changed My Life (1989, ISBN 0-440-50039-7) was written with New York's Newsday science editor B. D. Colen. Taking On Heart Disease: Famous Personalities Recall How They Triumphed over the Nation's #1 Killer and How You Can, Too (2004, ISBN 1-57954-820-2) features the experience of various celebrities with cardiovascular disease including Peggy Fleming and Regis Philbin.

On February 12, 2010, Larry King revealed that he had undergone surgery 5 weeks earlier to place stents in his coronary artery to remove plaque from his heart. During the segment on Larry King Live which discussed Bill Clinton's similar procedure, King said he was "feeling great" and had been in hospital for just one day.

Charitable works

As a result of heart attacks, he established the Larry King Cardiac Foundation, an organization to which David Letterman, through his American Foundation for Courtesy and Grooming, has also contributed. King gave $1 million to George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs for scholarships to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

On September 3, 2005, following the devastation to the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina, King aired "How You Can Help", a three-hour special designed to provide a forum and information clearinghouse for viewers to understand and join nationwide and global relief efforts. Guest Richard Simmons, a native of New Orleans, told him, "Larry, you don't even know how much money you raised tonight. When we rebuild the city of New Orleans, we're going to name something big after you."

On January 18, 2010, in the wake of the devastation caused by the 2010 Haiti earthquake, King aired "Haiti: How You Can Help", a special two-hour edition designed to show viewers how to take action and be a part of the global outreach.

King serves as a member of the Board of Directors on the Police Athletic League of New York City, a nonprofit youth development agency serving inner-city children and teenagers.

On August 30, 2010, King served as the host of Chabad's 30th annual "To Life" telethon, in Los Angeles.

Controversial positions

On September 10, 1990, while on The Joan Rivers Show, Rivers asked King which contestant in the Miss America pageant was "the ugliest". King responded, "Miss Pennsylvania. She was one of the 10 finalists and she did a great ventriloquist bit [...] The dummy was prettier." King was a judge for the September 8, 1990 pageant. King later sent Miss Pennsylvania, Marla Wynne, a dozen long-stemmed roses and a telegram apologizing for saying she was the ugliest contestant in the pageant that year.

In 1997, King was one of 34 celebrities to sign an open letter to then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, published as a newspaper advertisement in the International Herald Tribune, which protested the treatment of Scientologists in Germany, comparing it to the Nazis' oppression of Jews in the 1930s. Other signatories included Dustin Hoffman and Goldie Hawn. He married high-school sweetheart Freda Miller in 1951 at age 18. King was later briefly married to Annette Kaye Larry Jr. and his wife, Shannon, have three children.

King met businesswoman Julie Alexander in summer 1989, and proposed to her on the couple's first date, on August 1, 1989. Alexander became King's sixth wife on October 7, 1989, when the two were married in Washington, D.C. The couple lived in different cities, however, with Alexander in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and King in Washington, D.C., where he worked. The couple separated in 1990 and divorced in 1992.

He married his seventh wife, Shawn Southwick, born in 1959 a former singer and TV host, in King's Los Angeles, California, hospital room three days before King underwent heart surgery to clear a clogged blood vessel. The couple has two children: Chance, born March 1999, and Cannon, born May 2000. He is stepfather to Danny Southwick. On King and Southwick's 10th anniversary in September 2007, Southwick boasted she was "the only [wife] to have lasted into the two digits". but have since stopped the proceedings, claiming "We love our children, we love each other, we love being a family. That is all that matters to us".

Shawn attempted suicide in May 2010 when she overdosed on prescription pills.

In July 2009, King appeared on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, where he told host O'Brien about his wishes to be cryogenically preserved upon death, as he had revealed in his book My Remarkable Journey.

Awards

King has received many broadcasting awards. He won the Peabody Award for Excellence in broadcasting for both his radio (1982) and television (1992) shows. He has also won 10 CableACE awards for Best Interviewer and for Best Talk Show Series.

In 1989, King was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame, and in 1996 to the Broadcasters' Hall of Fame.

in June 1998, King received an Honorary Degree from Brooklyn College, City University of New York, for his life achievements.

King was given the Golden Mike Award for Lifetime Achievement in January 2009, by the Radio & Television News Association of Southern California.

King is an honorary member of the Rotary Club of Beverly Hills. He is also a recipient of the President's Award honoring his impact on media from the Los Angeles Press Club in 2006.

King is the first recipient of the Arizona State University Hugh Downs Award for Communication Excellence, presented April 11, 2007, via satellite by Downs himself. Downs sported red suspenders for the event and turned the tables on King by asking "very tough questions" about King's best, worst and most influential interviews during King's 50 years in broadcasting.

References

External links

CNN profile

Larry King Cardiac Foundation - Foundation to fund treatments cardiac patients with little or no insurance

Clark lawsuit

Larry King Live - Transcripts of all interviews since 2000

Larry King interviewed by Gianluca D'Agostino

Larry King Archive of American Television video interview

Category:1933 births Category:Living people Category:American actors Category:American agnostics Category:American Jews Category:American talk radio hosts Category:American television talk show hosts Category:American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish agnostics Category:Miami Dolphins broadcasters Category:National Football League announcers Category:People from Brooklyn Category:World Football League announcers

Coordinates	28°36′50″N77°12′32″N
Name	Donald Rumsfeld
Order	13th and 21st
Title	United States Secretary of Defense
Term start	January 20, 2001
Term end	December 18, 2006
Predecessor	William Cohen
Successor	Robert Gates
Term start2	November 20, 1975
Term end2	January 20, 1977
Predecessor2	James R. Schlesinger
Successor2	Harold Brown
State5	Illinois
District5	13th Congressional
Term start5	January 3, 1963
Term end5	March 20, 1969
Predecessor5	Marguerite S. Church
Successor5	Phil Crane
Title3	White House Chief of Staff
Term start3	September 1974
Term end3	November 1975
Predecessor3	Alexander Haig
Order3	6th
Successor3	Dick Cheney
Order4	9th
Title4	United States Permanent Representative to NATO
President4	Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford
Term start4	February 1973
Term end4	September 1974
Predecessor4	David M. Kennedy
Successor4	David K.E. Bruce
Birth date	July 09, 1932
Birth place	Evanston, Illinois, U.S.
Net worth	$57-174 million (USD)
Signature	Donald Rumsfeld Signature.svg
Spouse	Joyce H. Pierson
Children	Valerie J. Rumsfeld RichardMarcy K. Rumsfeld WalczakDonald Nicholas Rumsfeld
Party	Republican
Alma mater	Princeton University
Religion	Presbyterian
President	George W. Bush
President2	Gerald Ford
President3	Gerald Ford
Deputy2	Bill Clements
Deputy	Paul Wolfowitz (2001-2005)Gordon R. England (2005-2006)
Branch	United States Navy
Serviceyears	1954–1989
Rank	Captain
Unit	Navy Reserve (1957–1975)Individual Ready Reserve (1975–1989)

Donald Henry Rumsfeld (born July 9, 1932) is an American statesman and businessman who served as the 13th Secretary of Defense under President Gerald Ford from 1975 to 1977 and as the 21st Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2006. Combined, he was the second longest serving defense secretary behind Robert McNamara.

Rumsfeld was White House Chief of Staff during part of the Ford Administration and also served in various positions in the Nixon Administration. He served four terms in the United States House of Representatives, and served as the United States Permanent Representative to NATO. He was president of G. D. Searle & Company from 1977–1985, CEO of General Instrument from 1990–1993, and chairman of Gilead Sciences from 1997-2001.

Background and family

Youth

Donald Rumsfeld was born on July 9, 1932, in Evanston, Illinois, to George Donald Rumsfeld and Jeannette (née Huster). His great-grandfather, Johann Heinrich Rumsfeld, emigrated from Weyhe near Bremen in Northern Germany in 1876. Growing up in Winnetka, Illinois, Rumsfeld became an Eagle Scout in 1949 and is the recipient of both the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America and its Silver Buffalo Award in 2006. He was a camp counselor at the Northeast Illinois Council's Camp Ma-Ka-Ja-Wan in the late 1940s and a ranger at Philmont Scout Ranch in 1949. Rumsfeld later bought a vacation house west of Philmont at Taos, New Mexico.

Education

Rumsfeld went to Baker Demonstration School, a private middle school, and later graduated from New Trier High School. He attended Princeton University on academic and NROTC partial scholarships (A.B., 1954). In extracurricular activities he was an accomplished amateur wrestler and a member of the Lightweight Football team playing defensive back, and at Princeton he became captain of both the varsity wrestling team and the lightweight football team. While at Princeton he roomed with another future Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci.

His Princeton University senior thesis was titled "The Steel Seizure Case of 1952 and Its Effects on Presidential Powers."

In 1956 he attended Georgetown University Law Center but did not graduate.

Domestic life

Rumsfeld married Joyce H. Pierson on December 27, 1954. They have three children and six grandchildren.

Rumsfeld lives in St. Michaels, Maryland, in a former plantation house, site of Frederick Douglass's breaking by Edward Covey.

Early career (1954–1976)

Military service

Rumsfeld served in the United States Navy during peacetime, from 1954 to 1957, as a naval aviator and flight instructor. His initial training was in the North American SNJ Texan basic trainer after which he transitioned to flying the Grumman F9F Panther fighter. In 1957, he transferred to the Naval Reserve and continued his naval service in flying and administrative assignments as a drilling reservist until 1975. He transferred to the Individual Ready Reserve when he became Secretary of Defense in 1975 and retired with the rank of captain in 1989.

Early civilian career

In 1957, during the Eisenhower administration, he served as Administrative Assistant to David S. Dennison, Jr., a Congressman representing the 11th district of Ohio. In 1959, Rumsfeld then moved on to become a staff assistant to Congressman Robert P. Griffin of Michigan.

He then did a two-year stint with investment banking firm A. G. Becker from 1960 to 1962.

Member of Congress

Rumsfeld was elected to the United States House of Representatives for Illinois' 13th congressional district in 1962, at the age of 30, and was re-elected by large majorities in 1964, 1966, and 1968.

In the Congress, he served on the Joint Economic Committee, the Committee on Science and Aeronautics, and the Government Operations Committee, as well as on the Subcommittees on Military and Foreign Operations. He was also a co-founder of the Japanese-American Inter-Parliamentary Council.

As a young Congressman, Rumsfeld attended seminars at the University of Chicago, an experience he credits with introducing him to the idea of an all volunteer military, and to the economist Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. He would later take part in Friedman's PBS series Free to Choose.

Nixon Administration

Rumsfeld resigned from Congress in 1969 — his fourth term — to serve in the Nixon administration as Director of the United States Office of Economic Opportunity, Assistant to the President, and a member of the President's Cabinet (1969–1970); named Counselor to the President in December 1970, Director of the Economic Stabilization Program; and member of the President's Cabinet (1971–1972).

In 1971 Nixon was recorded saying about Rumsfeld "at least Rummy is tough enough" and "He's a ruthless little bastard. You can be sure of that."

In February 1973, Rumsfeld left Washington to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, Belgium. He served as the United States' Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council and the Defense Planning Committee, and the Nuclear Planning Group. In this capacity, he represented the United States in wide-ranging military and diplomatic matters.

Ford Administration

(right) meeting with President Gerald Ford, April 1975.]]

In August 1974, he was called back to Washington to serve as transition chairman for the new president, Gerald R. Ford. He had been Ford's confidant since their days in the House when Ford was House minority leader. Later in Ford's presidency, Rumsfeld became White House Chief of Staff, where he served from 1974 to 1975. In October 1975, Ford reshuffled his cabinet in the Halloween Massacre. He named Rumsfeld to become the 13th U.S. Secretary of Defense; George H. W. Bush became Director of Central Intelligence. According to Bob Woodward's 2002 book Bush at War, a rivalry developed between the two men and "Bush senior was convinced that Rumsfeld was pushing him out to the CIA to end his political career."

At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld oversaw the transition to an all-volunteer military. He sought to reverse the gradual decline in the defense budget and to build up U.S. strategic and conventional forces, skillfully undermining Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the SALT talks. He asserted, along with Team B (which he helped to set up), that trends in comparative U.S.-Soviet military strength had not favored the United States for 15 to 20 years and that, if continued, they "would have the effect of injecting a fundamental instability in the world." Kissinger, his bureaucratic adversary, would later pay him a different sort of compliment, pronouncing him}}

Private career (1977–2000)

Academia

In early 1977 Rumsfeld briefly lectured at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School and Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, located in Chicago, Illinois near his home town of Evanston.

Business

From 1977 to 1985 Rumsfeld served as Chief Executive Officer, President, and then Chairman of G. D. Searle & Company, a worldwide pharmaceutical company based in Skokie, Illinois. During his tenure at Searle, Rumsfeld led the company's financial turnaround, thereby earning awards as the Outstanding Chief Executive Officer in the Pharmaceutical Industry from the Wall Street Transcript (1980) and Financial World (1981). In 1985, Searle was sold to Monsanto Company. Rumsfeld is believed to have earned around $12 million from this sale.

Rumsfeld served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of General Instrument Corporation from 1990 to 1993. A leader in broadband transmission, distribution, and access control technologies for cable, satellite and terrestrial broadcasting applications, the company pioneered the development of the first all-digital high-definition television (HDTV) technology. After taking the company public and returning it to profitability, Rumsfeld returned to private business in late 1993.

From January 1997 until being sworn in as the 21st Secretary of Defense in January 2001, Rumsfeld served as Chairman of Gilead Sciences, Inc. Gilead Sciences is the developer of Tamiflu (Oseltamivir), which is used in the treatment of bird flu. As a result, Rumsfeld's holdings in the company grew significantly when avian flu became a subject of popular anxiety during his later term as Secretary of Defense. Following standard practice, Rumsfeld recused himself from any decisions involving Gilead, and he directed the Pentagon's General Counsel to issue instructions outlining what he could and could not be involved in if there were an avian flu pandemic and the Pentagon had to respond.

Continued part-time public service

During his business career, Rumsfeld continued public service in various posts, including:

Member of the President's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control—Reagan Administration (1982–1986);

President Reagan's Special Envoy on the Law of the Sea Treaty (1982–1983);

Senior Advisor to President Reagan's Panel on Strategic Systems (1983–1984);

Member of the U.S. Joint Advisory Commission on U.S./Japan Relations—Reagan Administration (1983–1984);

President Reagan's Special Envoy to the Middle East (1983–1984);

Member of the National Commission on the Public Service (1987–1990);

Member of the National Economic Commission (1988–1989);

Member of the Board of Visitors of the National Defense University (1988–1992);

Chairman Emeritus, Defense Contractor, Carlyle Group (1989–2005);

Member of the Commission on U.S./Japan Relations (1989–1991);

Member of the Board of Directors for ABB Ltd. (1990–2001);

FCC's High Definition Television Advisory Committee (1992–1993);

Chairman, Commission on the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States (1998–1999);

Member of the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission (1999–2000);

Member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR);

Chairman of the U.S. Commission to Assess National Security Space Management and Organization (2000);

Honorary Vice-Chancellor of Yale University (2001), honoring Rumsfeld's U.S. foreign policy work.

Rumsfeld served as United Way Inter-governmental Affairs Director in Washington, D.C. from 1986 to 1989. He was asked to serve the U.S. State Department as a "foreign policy consultant," a role he held from 1990 to 1993. He was also a board member of the RAND Corporation.

ABB and North Korea

Rumsfeld sat on ABB's board from 1990 to 2001. ABB—based in Zürich, Switzerland—is a European engineering giant formed through the merger between ASEA of Sweden and Brown Boveri of Switzerland. In 2000 this company sold two light-water nuclear reactors to KEDO for installation in North Korea, as part of the 1994 agreed framework reached under President Bill Clinton.

The sale of the nuclear technology was a high-profile contract. ABB's then chief executive, Göran Lindahl, visited North Korea in November 1999 to announce ABB's "wide-ranging, long-term cooperation agreement" with the communist government. Rumsfeld's office said that the Secretary of Defense did not "recall it being brought before the board at any time." But ABB spokesman Björn Edlund told Fortune that "board members were informed about this project."

Special Envoy to the Middle East

's then-special envoy to the Middle East, meeting with Saddam Hussein during a visit to Baghdad, Iraq in December 1983, during the Iran–Iraq War. In later years, this footage was downplayed by Rumsfeld and highlighted by his opponents as relations with Hussein's regime deteriorated]] He served as Reagan's Special Envoy to the Middle East (November 1983–May 1984) at a time Iraq was fighting Iran in the Iran–Iraq War, which the U.S. sought to end. When Rumsfeld visited Baghdad on December 19–December 20, 1983, he and Saddam Hussein had a 90-minute discussion. They largely agreed on opposing Syria's occupation of Lebanon; preventing Syrian and Iranian expansion; preventing arms sales to Iran. Rumsfeld suggested that if U.S.-Iraq relations could improve the U.S. might support a new oil pipeline across Jordan, which Iraq had opposed but was now willing to reconsider. Rumsfeld also informed Tariq Aziz (Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister) that: "Our efforts to assist were inhibited by certain things that made it difficult for us ... citing the use of chemical weapons." Rumsfeld brought many gifts from the Reagan administration to Saddam Hussein. These gifts included pistols, medieval spiked hammers and a pair of golden cowboy spurs. Until the 1991 Gulf War, these were all displayed at Saddam Hussein's Victory Museum in Baghdad which held all the gifts bestowed on Saddam by friendly national leaders.

During his brief bid for the 1988 Republican nomination, Rumsfeld stated that restoring full relations with Iraq was one of his best achievements. This was not a particularly controversial position at a time when U.S. policy considered a totalitarian yet secular Iraq to be an effective bulwark against the expansion of Iranian revolutionary Islamist influence.

George H. W. Bush and Clinton years

Rumsfeld was a member of the National Academy of Public Administration and a member of the boards of trustees of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the National Park Foundation. He was also a member of the U.S./Russia Business Forum and Chairman of the Congressional Leadership's National Security Advisory Group.

During the 1996 presidential election, Rumsfeld served as national chairman to the campaign of Bob Dole.

Rumsfeld was a founder and active member of the Project for the New American Century, a neo-conservative think-tank dedicated to maintaining U.S. Primacy. On January 29, 1998, he signed a PNAC letter calling for President Bill Clinton to implement "regime change" in Iraq.

From January to July 1998 Rumsfeld chaired the nine-member Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States. They concluded that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea could develop intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities in five to ten years and that U.S. intelligence would have little warning before such systems were deployed.

Presidential and Vice Presidential aspirations

During 1976 Republican National Convention, Rumsfeld received one vote for Vice President of the United States, although he did not seek the office, and the nomination was easily won by Ford's choice, Senator Bob Dole. During the 1980 Republican National Convention he also received one vote for V.P. Economist Milton Friedman said that he regarded Reagan's pick of Bush as "the worst decision not only of his campaign but of his presidency," and that Rumsfeld was his preference. "Had he been chosen," Friedman noted, "I believe he would have succeeded Reagan as president and the sorry Bush-Clinton period would never have occurred."

Rumsfeld briefly sought the Presidential nomination in 1988, but withdrew from the race before primaries began.

During the 1996 election he initially formed a presidential exploratory committee, but declined to formally enter the race.

Return to government (2001–2006)

, 2001]] Rumsfeld was named Defense Secretary soon after President George W. Bush took office in 2001. He immediately announced a series of sweeping reviews intended to transform the U.S. military into a lighter force. These studies were led by Pentagon analyst Andrew Marshall.

.]] Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Rumsfeld led the military planning and execution of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Rumsfeld pushed hard to send as small a force as possible to both conflicts, a concept codified as the Rumsfeld Doctrine.

Rumsfeld's plan resulted in a lightning invasion that took Baghdad in well under a month with very few American casualties. Many government buildings, plus major museums, electrical generation infrastructure, and even oil equipment were looted and vandalized during the transition from the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime to the establishment of the Coalition Provisional Authority. A violent insurrection began shortly after the military operation started.

After the German and French governments voiced opposition to invading Iraq, Rumsfeld labeled these countries as part of "Old Europe", implying that countries that supported the war were part of a newer, modern Europe.

at the Kremlin in November 2001.]] Bush retained Rumsfeld after his 2004 presidential re-election. In December 2004, Rumsfeld came under fire after a "town-hall" meeting with U.S. troops where he responded to a soldier's comments about inferior military equipment by saying "As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."

September 11, 2001

Mayor Rudy Giuliani speak at the site of the World Trade Center disaster in Lower Manhattan, on November 14, 2001.]]

Rumsfeld's activities during the September 11, 2001 attacks were outlined in a Pentagon press briefing on September 15, 2001. Within three hours of the start of the first hijacking and two hours after American Airlines Flight 11 striking the World Trade Center, Rumsfeld raised the defense condition signaling of the United States offensive readiness to DEFCON 3; the highest it had been since the Arab-Israeli war in 1973.

Margaret Thatcher alongside the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace.]]

On the morning of 9/11, Rumsfeld spoke at a Pentagon breakfast meeting, where he stated "sometime in the next two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve months there would be an event that would occur in the world that would be sufficiently shocking that it would remind people again how important it is to have a strong healthy defense department that contributes to... that underpins peace and stability in our world. And that is what underpins peace and stability."

After the strike on the Pentagon by American Airlines Flight 77, Rumsfeld went out to the parking lot to assist with rescue efforts. He stated; "I wanted to see what had happened. I wanted to see if people needed help. I went downstairs and helped for a bit with some people on stretchers. Then I came back up here and started -- I realized I had to get back up here and get at it."

Military decisions

Rumsfeld stirred controversy by quarreling for months with the CIA over who had the authority to fire Hellfire missiles from Predator drones, although according to The 9/11 Commission Report, the armed Predator was not ready for deployment until early 2002.

Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon note:

Following September 11, 2001, Rumsfeld was in a meeting whose subject was the review of the Department of Defense's (Contingency) Plan in the event of a war with Iraq (U.S. Central Command OPLAN 1003-98). The plan (as it was then conceived) contemplated troop levels of up to 500,000, which Rumsfeld opined was far too many. Gordon and Trainor wrote:

In a September 2007 interview with The Daily Telegraph, General Mike Jackson, the head of the British army during the invasion, criticised Rumsfeld's plans for the occupation as "intellectually bankrupt," adding that Rumsfeld is "one of those most responsible for the current situation in Iraq," and that he felt that "the US approach to combating global terrorism is 'inadequate' and too focused on military might rather than nation-building and diplomacy."

In Rumsfeld's final television interview as Secretary of Defense, he responded to a question by Brit Hume as to whether he pressed General Tommy Franks to lower his request for 400,000 troops for the war by stating:

. This town is filled with this kind of nonsense. The people who decide the levels of forces on the ground are not the Secretary of Defense or the President. We hear recommendations, but the recommendations are made by the combatant commanders and by members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and there hasn't been a minute in the last six years when we have not had the number of troops that the combatant commanders have requested.}}

Rumsfeld told Hume that Franks ultimately decided against such a troop level.

Role in U.S. public relations effort

An April 2006 memo lists instructions to Pentagon staff including:

As Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld was deliberate in crafting the public message from the Department of Defense. People will "rally" to the word "sacrifice", Rumsfeld noted after a meeting. "They are looking for leadership. Sacrifice = Victory." In May 2004, Rumsfeld considered whether to redefine the war on terrorism as a fight against "worldwide insurgency." He advised aides "to test what the results could be" if the war on terrorism were renamed. Rumsfeld also ordered specific public Pentagon attacks on and responses to U.S. newspaper columns that reported the negative aspects of the war, which he often personally reviewed before they were sent.

Prisoner torture and abuse

Department of Defense's (DOD) preliminary concerns for holding, housing, and interrogating captured prisoners on the battlefield were raised during the military build-up to the Iraq War. Due to the history with Saddam’s military forces surrendering when faced with military action, many within the DOD including Rumsfeld and United States Central Command General Tommy Franks decided it was in the best interest of all to hand these prisoners over to their respective countries. Additionally, it was determined that maintaining a large holding facility was unrealistic at the time. However, the use of many facilities such as Abu Ghraib would be utilized to house prisoners prior to handing them over. However, Rumsfeld defended the Bush administration's decision to detain enemy combatants without protection under the Third Geneva Convention. There was therefore a large amount of pressure from many American organizations and international bodies to enforce the Geneva Conventions. Because of this, critics (including the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee 11-08 Executive Summary, vote 17-0) would hold Rumsfeld personally responsible for the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal. Rumsfeld himself said: "These events occurred on my watch as Secretary of Defense. I am accountable for them."

In November 2006, the former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, in charge of Abu Ghraib prison until early 2004, told Spain's El Pais newspaper she had seen a letter apparently signed by Rumsfeld that allowed civilian contractors to use techniques such as sleep deprivation during interrogation. "The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation ... playing music at full volume, having to sit in uncomfortably ... Rumsfeld authorised these specific techniques." She said that this was contrary to the Geneva Convention and quoted from the same "Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind." According to Karpinski, the handwritten signature was above his printed name and in the same handwriting in the margin was written: "Make sure this is accomplished."

There have been no comments from either the Pentagon or U.S. Army spokespeople in Iraq on Karpinski's accusations.

In a memo read by Rumsfeld detailing how Guantanamo interrogators would induce stress in prisoners by forcing them to remain standing in one position for a maximum of 4 hours, Rumsfeld scrolled a handwritten note in the margin reading: "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing [by prisoners] limited to four hours? D.R.". This memo was later declassified and the The Economist, on its May 2004 issue, published a demand for Rumsfelds resignation.

Manfred Nowak, the special representative on torture at the UN Commission on Human Rights, stated in January 2009 that Rumsfeld and others should be prosecuted for war crimes because of their approval of the interrogation methods used on prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Baghdad Museum actions

After the Iraq invasion in 2003, U.S. troops, the sole power in the city at the time, were intensely criticized for not protecting the historical artifacts and treasures located at the museum and other cultural institutions like the national library and the Saddam Art Center, a museum of modern Iraqi art.

When asked at the time why U.S. troops did not actively seek to stop the lawlessness, Rumsfeld infamously replied: "Stuff happens ... and it's untidy and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here." He further commented that: "The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, "My goodness, were there that many vases?" (Laughter.) "Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?" eight retired generals and admirals called for Rumsfeld to resign in early 2006 in what was called the "Generals Revolt," accusing him of "abysmal" military planning and lack of strategic competence. Rumsfeld rebuffed these criticisms, stating that "out of thousands and thousands of admirals and generals, if every time two or three people disagreed we changed the secretary of defense of the United States, it would be like a merry-go-round." Commentator Pat Buchanan reported at the time that "Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who travels often to Iraq and supports the war, says that the generals' and admirals' views mirror those of 75 percent of the officers in the field, and probably more." Bush responded to the criticism by stating that Rumsfeld is "exactly what is needed", and also defended him in his controversial decider remark.

Resignation

On November 1, 2006, President Bush stated he would stand by Rumsfeld as defense secretary for the length of his term as president. Rumsfeld wrote a resignation letter dated November 6, and, per the stamp on the letter, Bush saw it on Election Day, November 7. In the elections, the House and the Senate shifted to Democratic control. After the elections, on November 8, Bush announced Rumsfeld would resign his position as Secretary of Defense. Many Republicans were unhappy with the delay, believing they would have won more votes if voters had known Rumsfeld was resigning. At a press conference announcing the resignation of Rumsfeld and the nomination of Gates, Bush remarked, "America is safer and the world is more secure because of the service and the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld."

On December 18, 2006, Rumsfeld's resignation took effect and Gates was sworn in as his successor. One of his last actions as defense secretary was to pay a surprise visit to Iraq on December 10, 2006, to bid farewell to the United States military serving in Iraq.

Including his time serving as the 13th Secretary of Defense under President Ford from 1975 to 1977, Rumsfeld is the second-longest-serving Secretary of Defense in history, falling nine days short of the term of the longest-serving Pentagon chief, the Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara.

In a farewell ceremony on December 16, 2006, Rumsfeld's long-time political ally Vice President Dick Cheney, who worked with him in the Ford administration and who also had served as a secretary of defense, called the secretary "the finest secretary of defense this nation has ever had."

Private career (2006–)

In the months after his resignation, Rumsfeld toured the New York publishing houses in preparation for a potential memoir. After receiving what one industry source labeled "big bids", he reached an agreement with the Penguin Group to publish the book under its Sentinel HC imprint. Rumsfeld declined to accept an advance and has decided to donate any proceeds from the work to a charitable foundation he established to promote public service among "promising young individuals."

In September 2007, Rumsfeld received a one-year appointment as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, joining (among others) retired Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and fellow conservatives George Shultz and Newt Gingrich. He will participate in the institution's new taskforce studying post-September 11 ideology and non-state terror.

Additional information

Rumsfeld is famous in popular culture as the originator of the much-quoted phrase "unknown unknowns", which he used at a press conference while Secretary of Defense in the George W. Bush administration. Rumsfeld's quote is a paraphrasing of the Confucius quote recited by Henry David Thoreau in his famous book Walden of "To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." According to Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer, advisers and staffers to Donald Rumsfeld had to persuade him not to edit his own entry on Wikipedia, which he referred to as "Wika-wakka."

Electoral history

Awards

The Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ford (1977)

From 1977 to 1985 Rumsfeld served as Chief Executive Officer, President, and then Chairman of G.D. Searle & Co., a worldwide pharmaceutical company. The successful turnaround there earned him awards as the Outstanding Chief Executive Officer in the Pharmaceutical Industry from the Wall Street Transcript (1980) and Financial World (1981).

Royal Order of the Intare by King Kigeli V of Rwanda.

George C. Marshall Medal by the U.S. Army Association (1984)

Woodrow Wilson Medal by Princeton University (1985)

Dwight D. Eisenhower Medal (1993)

Lone Sailor Award by the U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation (2002)

Statesmanship Award by the U.S. Assoc of Former Members of Congress (2003)

James H. Doolittle Award by the Hudson Institute (2003)

Gerald R. Ford Medal presented by President Ford and the Ford Foundation (2004)

Distinguished Eagle Scout Award by the Boy Scouts of America

Union League of Philadelphia Gold Medal for Citizenship (2006)

Claremont Institute Statesmanship Award (2007)

Victory of Freedom Award presented by the Richard Nixon Foundation (2010)

Rumsfeld has been awarded 11 honorary degrees.

Affiliation history

Institutional affiliations

Center for Security Policy: Longtime associate; winner of the CSP's 1998 "Keeper of the Flame" award (5)

Hoover Institution: Member, board of trustees

Project for the New American Century: Signed PNAC's founding statement of principles as well as two policy letters on Iraq

Freedom House: Board member

RAND Corporation: Board member

Committee for the Free World: Former chairman

Bohemian Club: Member

Government posts, panels, and commissions

Secretary of Defense (2001–06)

U.S. Commission to Assess National Security Space Management and Organization: Chairman (2000)

U.S. Ballistic Missile Threat Commission: Chairman (1998)

Secretary of Defense (1975–77)

White House Chief of Staff in Ford administration (1974–75)

U.S. Ambassador to NATO (1973–74)

U.S. Congress: Representative from Illinois (1962–69)

United States Navy: Various posts, including aviator (1954–57); reserves (1957–1975) Retired as a Navy Captain (1989)

Corporate connections and business interests

Gilead Sciences: joined Gilead as a director in 1988 Chairman (1997–2001)

General Instrument Corporation: Chairman and CEO (1990–93)

G.D. Searle pharmaceutical company: CEO/Chairman/President (1977–1985)

Bechtel Corporation: Was involved in Iraq-Bechtel negotiations in the 1980s on a pipeline project

Gulfstream Aerospace: Former director

Tribune Company: Former director

Metricom, Inc.: Former director

Sears, Roebuck and Co.: Former director

ABB AB: Former director

Kellogg Company: director 1985–199? while Carlos Gutierrez (x Cuba 1960) president CEO and chairman Kellogg until named Secretary Commerce under Bush from 2005

RAND Corporation: Chairman of Board from 1981–1986; 1995–1996

Bilderberg Group: Member

Amylin Pharmaceuticals: Former director

Education

Princeton University: A.B. (1954)

Intellectual heritage

John Boyd of OODA Loop fame.

See also

Agathidium rumsfeldi — a slime-mold beetle named after Rumsfeld

U.S. Congressional Delegations from Illinois

Old Europe — comment by Rumsfeld regarding Iraq-war participation

Winkler v. Rumsfeld

Hamdi v. Rumsfeld

Rasul v. Rumsfeld

List of US Cabinet Secretaries who have held multiple cabinet positions

Hillbilly armor — Rumsfeld questioned by a soldier about the use of "ad hoc" armor

'Known knowns' - quotation

References

External links

Works

U.S. Secretary of Defense official transcripts archive

Rumsfeld's Rules advice on government, business and life, January 29, 2001

Strategic Imperatives in East Asia by Donald Rumsfeld (Heritage Foundation, 1998)

Donald Rumsfeld's Project Syndicate op/eds

Biographies

White House Biography

Department of Defense Biography

By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld by Bradley Graham (PublicAffairs, 2009) ISBN 978-1-58648-421-7

Rumsfeld's War: The Untold Story of America's Anti-Terrorist Commander by Rowan Scarborough (Regnery Publishing, 2004) ISBN 0-89526-069-7

Rumsfeld: A Personal Portrait by Midge Decter (Regan Books, 2003) ISBN 0-06-056091-6

The Rumsfeld Way: The Leadership Wisdom of a Battle-Hardened Maverick by Jeffrey A. Krames (McGraw-Hill, 2002) ISBN 0-07-140641-7

Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy by Andrew Cockburn (Scribners, 2007) ISBN 1-4165-3574-8

Documentary video

PBS Frontline — Rumsfeld's War October 2004 documentary

Video clip of Rumsfeld (as special U.S. envoy to Middle East) meeting Hussein

Articles profiling Rumsfeld

The Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld, PBS

Washington Post — Rumsfeld's War archives 2001–2004

Close-Up: Young Rumsfeld, James Mann, The Atlantic Monthly, November 2003

The Donald Rumsfeld Library of Quotations, BBC Radio 4

Biographer Andrew Cockburn on Rumsfeld at London Frontline Club May 2007.

Category:1932 births Category:American chief executives Category:American Presbyterians Category:Businesspeople in the pharmaceutical industry Category:Conservatism in the United States Category:George W. Bush Administration cabinet members Category:Gilead Sciences Category:Living people Category:American people of German descent Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Illinois Category:United States naval aviators Category:New Trier High School alumni Category:People from Evanston, Illinois Category:People from Winnetka, Illinois Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:Princeton University alumni Category:United States Navy officers Category:United States presidential candidates, 1988 Category:United States Secretaries of Defense Category:White House Chiefs of Staff Category:Permanent Representatives of the United States to NATO Category:Distinguished Eagle Scouts

Coordinates	28°36′50″N77°12′32″N
Name	Cynthia Nixon
Caption	Nixon at the 2009 premiere of An Englishman in New York
Birth date	April 09, 1966
Birth name	Cynthia Ellen Nixon
Birth place	New York City, New York, United States
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1978–present
Partner	Danny Mozes (1988–2003) Christine Marinoni (2004–present)

Cynthia Ellen Nixon (born April 9, 1966) is an American actress, known for her portrayal of Miranda Hobbes in the HBO series Sex and the City (1998–2004). She is an Emmy-, Tony- and Grammy Award-winning actress.

Early life and career

Nixon was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of Anne Knoll, an actress from Chicago, and Walter E. Nixon, a Texas-born radio journalist. Her first onscreen appearance was as an imposter on To Tell the Truth, where her mother worked. She began acting at age 12 as the object of a wealthy schoolmate's crush in The Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid, a 1979 ABC Afterschool Special. She made her feature debut co-starring with Kristy McNichol and Tatum O'Neal in Little Darlings (1980). She made her Broadway debut as Dinah Lord in a 1980 revival of The Philadelphia Story. Alternating between film, TV and stage she did projects like the 1982 ABC-movie My Body, My Child, the features Prince of the City (1981) and I Am the Cheese (1983) and the 1982 off-Broadway productions of John Guare's Lydie Breeze. In 1985 she appeared alongside Jeff Daniels in Lanford Wilson's Lemon Sky at Second Stage Theatre.

Nixon graduated from Hunter College High School, and made theatrical history while a freshman at Barnard College in 1984, simultaneously appearing in two hit Broadway plays directed by Mike Nichols. These were The Real Thing, where Nixon played the daughter of Jeremy Irons and Christine Baranski; and Hurlyburly, where she played a young woman who encounters sleazy Hollywood executives. The two theaters were just two blocks apart and Nixon's roles were both short, so she could run from one to the other.

She landed her first major supporting part in a movie as an intelligent teenager who aids her boyfriend (Christopher Collet) in building a nuclear bomb in Marshall Brickman's The Manhattan Project (1986). Nixon was part of the cast of the NBC miniseries The Murder of Mary Phagan (NBC, 1988) starring Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey and portrayed the daughter of a presidential candidate (Michael Murphy) in Tanner '88 (also 1988), Robert Altman's political satire for HBO. She reprised the role for the 2004 sequel Tanner on Tanner.

1990s

, 2008.]] On stage, Nixon portrayed Juliet in a 1988 New York Shakespeare Festival production of Romeo and Juliet and acted in the workshop production of Wendy Wasserstein's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Heidi Chronicles, playing several characters after it came to Broadway in 1989. She was the guest star in the second episode of the long running NBC television series Law & Order. She replaced Marcia Gay Harden as Harper Pitt in Tony Kushner's Angels in America (1994), received a Tony nomination for her performance in Indiscretions (Les Parents Terribles) (1996, her sixth Broadway show) and, though she originally lost the part to another actress, eventually took over the role of Lala Levy in the Tony-winning The Last Night of Ballyhoo (1997).

Nixon was a founding member of the theatrical troupe The Drama Dept., which included Sarah Jessica Parker, Dylan Baker, John Cameron Mitchell and Billy Crudup among its actors, appearing in the group's productions of Kingdom on Earth (1996), June Moon and As Bees in Honey Drown (both 1997), Hope is the Thing with Feathers (1998), and The Country Club (1999).

Nixon has contributed supporting performances to Addams Family Values (1993), Baby's Day Out (1994), Marvin's Room (1996) and The Out-of-Towners (1999)

Stardom

She raised her profile significantly as one of the four regulars of HBO's successful comedy Sex and the City (1998–2004), as the lawyer Miranda Hobbes. After Emmy nominations as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2002 and 2003, Nixon took home the trophy in 2004 for the series' final season.

and Swoosie Kurtz at the premiere of An Englishman in New York.]] The immense popularity of the series led Nixon to enjoy her first leading role in a feature, playing a video artist who falls in love, despite her best efforts to avoid commitment, with a bisexual actor who just happens to be dating a gay man (her best friend) in Advice From a Caterpillar (2000), as well as starring opposite Scott Bakula in the holiday telepic Papa's Angels (2000). In 2002 she also landed a role in the indie comedy Igby Goes Down, and her turn in the theatrical production of Clare Booth Luce's play The Women was captured for PBS' Stage On Screen series.

Post-Sex in the City, Nixon did a guest stint on ER in 2005 as a mother who undergoes a tricky procedure to lessen the effects of a debilitating stroke. She followed up with a turn as Eleanor Roosevelt for HBO's Warm Springs (2005), which chronicled Franklin Delano Roosevelt's quest for a miracle cure for his polio. Nixon earned an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her performance. In December 2005, she appeared in the Fox TV series House in the episode "Deception", as a patient who suffers a seizure.

In 2006, Nixon won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Play) for David Lindsay-Abaire's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Rabbit Hole. This part was later played by Nicole Kidman in the movie adaptation of the play. In 2008, she revived her role as Miranda Hobbes in the Sex and the City feature film, directed by HBO executive producer Michael Patrick King and co-starring the cast of the original series. Also in 2008, she won an Emmy for her guest appearance in an episode of , portraying a woman with dissociative identity disorder.

In 2009, Nixon won the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album along with Beau Bridges and Blair Underwood for the album An Inconvenient Truth (Al Gore), making her the 14th person to win an Emmy, a Tony, and a Grammy.

It was announced in June 2010 that Nixon will appear in four episodes of Showtime's series The Big C.

Personal life

Nixon has two children, daughter Samantha (b. 1995) and son Charles Ezekiel (b. 2002), with Danny Mozes, an English professor, with whom she was in a relationship from 1988 to 2003.

Nixon began dating education activist Christine Marinoni in January 2004. Media reports of the relationship started surfacing in September of the same year. In February 2005, the New York Post and other sources reported that Nixon had moved to Brooklyn to live with Marinoni. However, Nixon told The New York Times in January 2006 that she had not moved and that keeping her kids in their Manhattan public schools took priority. Discussing her relationship in an interview in New York Magazine in 2006, Nixon stated that she never felt any struggle with her sexuality: "I never felt like there was an unconscious part of me around that woke up or that came out of the closet; there wasn't a struggle, there wasn't an attempt to suppress. I met this woman, I fell in love with her, and I'm a public figure." In an interview in May 2007, she said: In March 2008, Fox News reported that Nixon has been in a relationship with Marinoni since 2003, and quoted Nixon as saying, "I'm in a fantastic relationship. It's been about four years." In April 2008, she received an award from the Point Foundation, which provides scholarships to gay students in the U.S., for being a role model for young gay people. At a rally in support of same-sex marriage on May 17, 2009, Nixon announced that she and Marinoni had become engaged the month before. Nixon made the announcement during the Love, Peace and Marriage Equality rally in New York. She told the crowd there that she would soon walk down the aisle with Marinoni, reports Contactmusic. Nixon’s Sex and the City co-star Kristin Davis, who also lent her support to the gay rights event, was also there when the announcement was made.

Breast cancer

In an interview with Good Morning America that aired on April 15, 2008, Nixon announced that she battled breast cancer, after being diagnosed during a routine mammogram in October 2006. Initially she did not go public because of the stigma involved, but since then, she not only has openly admitted that she had cancer, she has become a breast cancer activist, and was able to convince the head of NBC to air her breast cancer special in a prime time program.

Activism

On April 1, 2010, Nixon joined Cyndi Lauper in the launch of her Give a Damn campaign to bring a wider awareness of discrimination of the GLBT community as part of her True Colors Fund. The campaign is to bring straight people to stand up with the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered community and stop the discrimination. Other names included in the campaign are Whoopi Goldberg, Jason Mraz, Elton John, Judith Light, Kim Kardashian, Clay Aiken, Sharon Osbourne and Kelly Osbourne. Anna Paquin is also part of the campaign and came out as bisexual. This news clogged the Give A Damn website. On September 6, 2010, Nixon cosigned a letter supporting Israeli actors who declared they would refuse to appear in the Israeli settlement of Ariel due to their opposition to Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank.

Filmography

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%;" border="2" cellpadding="4" background: #f9f9f9; |- align="center" ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Year ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Film ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Role ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Notes |- | 1980 | Little Darlings | Sunshine | |- | 1981 | Prince of the City | Jeannie | |- | 1982 | My Body, My Child | Nancy | TV movie |- | 1983 | I Am the Cheese | Amy Hertz | |- | 1984 | Amadeus | Lorl | |- | 1986 | Manhattan Project | Jenny Anderman | Nominated for a Young Artist Award |- | 1987 | O.C. and Stiggs | Michelle | |- |rowspan=2 | 1988 | Tanner '88 | Alexandra (Alex) | TV series |- | The Murder of Mary Phagan | Doreen | |- | 1989 | Let It Ride | Evangeline | |- | 1990 | Law & Order | Laura di Biasi | TV - Episode: Subterranean homeboy blues |- | 1991 | Love, Lies and Murder | Donna | TV |- |rowspan=4 | 1993 | The Pelican Brief | Alice Stark | |- | Murder She Wrote | | TV - Episode: Threshold of Fear |- | Addams Family Values | Heather | |- | Through an Open Window | | Short |- | 1994 | Baby's Day Out | Gilbertine | |- | 1996 | Marvin's Room | Retirement Home Director | |- | 1999 | The Outer Limits | Trudy | TV - Episode: Alien Radio |- | 2000 | Papa's Angels | Sharon Jenkins | |- | 2001 | Advice From a Caterpillar | Missy | |- |rowspan=2 | 2002 | Igby Goes Down | Mrs. Piggee | |- | Kiss Kiss, Dahlings/The Last Mile | | |- | 1998–2004 | Sex and the City | Miranda Hobbes | Women in Film lucy Award (shared with cast)Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series (2001) Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series (2003) Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress – Comedy Series (2004) Nominated - Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress – Comedy Series (2002) Nominated - Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress – Comedy Series (2003) Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film (1999) Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film (2000) Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film (2002) Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film (2003) Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series (2000) Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series (2002) Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series (2004) Nominated - Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress – Television Series (2002) |- |rowspan=5 | 2005 | Rabbit Hole | Becca | 2006 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play |- | Warm Springs | Eleanor Roosevelt | Nominated - Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress – Miniseries or a Movie |- | ER | A stroke victim | TV |- | House | Anica | TV - Episode: Deception (House) |- | Little Manhattan | Leslie | |- | 2006 | One Last Thing... | Carol | |- |rowspan=2 | 2007 | The Babysitters | Gail Beltran | |- | | Janice | 2008 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress – Drama Series |- | 2008 | | Miranda Hobbes | |- |rowspan=2 | 2009 | Lymelife | Melissa Bragg | |- | An Englishman in New York | Penny Arcade | |- |2010 | Sex and the City 2 | Miranda Hobbes |ShoWest Ensemble AwardNominated - People's Choice Awards For Favorite Cast |- |2010–present |The Big C |Rebecca |TV |- |2011 |Rampart |TBA |filming |}

Further reading

The Advocate: Cynthia Nixon is More Than Just Sex

AP: Former 'Sex' star Nixon switches roles. Emmy winning actress reportedly in relationship with a woman

NY Daily News: For Cynthia, romance is academic

NYT: A Career After 'Sex,' but Still in the City

Bgay.com - Cynthia Nixon Talks About Her Love for Another Woman

References

External links

Interview with Nixon on educational advocacy

Cynthia Nixon - Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing.org

Category:1966 births Category:Actors from New York City Category:American child actors Category:American film actors Category:American television actors Category:Barnard College alumni Category:Bisexual actors Category:LGBT parents Category:Breast cancer survivors Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Grammy Award winners Category:LGBT people from the United States Category:LGBT television personalities Category:Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:People from New York City Category:Living people Category:Tony Award winners

Coordinates	28°36′50″N77°12′32″N
Name	Cynthia Clawson
Background	solo_singer
Born	October 11, 1948
Origin	Austin, Texas, USA
Genre	CCM, worship, gospel
Occupation	Musician, songwriter, composer
Years active	1970s–present
Associated acts	Bill and Gloria Gaither
Url	www.cynthiaclawson.com

Cynthia Clawson (born October 11, 1948 in Austin, Texas) is a Grammy Award-winning American gospel singer. She has been called "The most awesome voice in gospel music" by Billboard Magazine, and has received five Dove Awards, 15 Dove Award nominations, and a Grammy for her work.

Biographical information

Cynthia was three years old when her father asked her to sing in the small church he pastored. From that time, she sang in local neighborhood churches, and Robert Schuller's The Hour of Power.

Cynthia graduated from Howard Payne University with a major in vocal performance and a minor in piano. She won the Arthur Godfrey Talent Show her senior year in college.

Career

Cynthia was spotted by a CBS television producer who signed her to headline a summer replacement for The Carol Burnett Show called the CBS Newcomers. That show led her to a recording contract with record producer Buryl Red. Around that time, Buryl was writing a new musical with Ragan Courtney titled Celebrate Life; Cynthia was invited to record the solos for the original cast album.

Ragan Courtney and Cynthia Clawson were married within six months and began a creative collaboration.

In 1981, her recording of "The Lord's Prayer" with Andrae Crouch, The Archers (Janice Archer, Steve Archer, Tim Archer), B.J. Thomas, Dony McGuire, Reba Rambo, Tramaine Hawkins & Walter Hawkins won the Grammy Award for the Best Gospel Performance, Contemporary Or Inspirational category. She performed on the Grammy show that year.

In 1985, Cynthia's rendition of "Softly and Tenderly" was included in the soundtrack of the Academy Award winning movie The Trip to Bountiful.

In later years, Cynthia became closely associated with Bill and Gloria Gaither, and frequently sang with them. She has sung in a variety of prestigious venues, including a concert at London's Wembley Stadium.

She was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Houston Baptist University in 1995.

Current life and family

Cynthia Clawson Courtney and Ragan Courtney are currently co-pastors of The Sanctuary in Austin, Texas where they design worship services using theatre and music as a means of religious expression.

Cynthia has a son, Will, and a daughter, Lily. Lily graduated from The University of Texas with a degree in Religious Studies and works for the family-owned music production company. Will and Lily have released their own Indie rock CD called Brothers and Sisters.

Discography

In The Garden (1974)

A Private Showing (1975)

The Way I Feel (1977, reissue 2005))

It Was His Love (1979)

You're Welcome Here (1981, reissue 2005)

Finest Hour (1982, reissue 2005)

Forever (1983 resissue 2005)

Immortal (1986, reissue 2005)

Hymnsinger (1988)

Carolsinger (1989)

Words Will Never Do (1990)

Cynthia's Greatest Hits (1991)

Blessed Assurance: Songs My Grandmother Taught Me (1993)

River of Memories (1994)

Prayers and Plainsong (1995)

Smoke on the Mountain (1998)

Broken: Healing the Heart (1999)

Carols and Chant (2005)

See Me, God (2006)

Episodes (2008)

Always (2009)

Awards

1980 Dove award Female Vocalist of the Year

1981 Dove award Female Vocalist of the Year

1981 Dove Award Inspirational Album of the Year--You're Welcome Here;

1981 Dove Award Recorded Music Packaging of the Year--You're Welcome Here

1981 Grammy Award Best Gospel Performance, Contemporary Or Inspirational--"The Lord's Prayer"

1982 Dove Award Recorded Music Packaging of the Year--Finest Hour

2005 Texas Gospel Music Hall of Fame (July 2005)

References

External links

Cynthia Clawson's Official Site

Category:1948 births Category:Living people Category:Performers of Christian music Category:People from Austin, Texas Category:Grammy Award winners

Cynthia Lynn Breazeal (born November 15, 1967 in Albuquerque, New Mexico) is an Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is the director of the Personal Robots Group (formerly the Robotic Life Group) at the MIT Media Laboratory. She is best known for her work in robotics where she is recognized as a pioneer of Social Robotics and Human Robot Interaction.

Biography

Cynthia Breazeal received her B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1989, her S.M. in 1993 and her Sc.D. in 2000 in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, both from MIT.

She developed the robot Kismet as a doctoral thesis looking into expressive social exchange between humans and humanoid robots. Kismet is internationally recognized, and is one of the best known robots developed to explore social and emotional aspects of human-robot interaction. Now you can see Kismet at the MIT Museum where you can find some of the other robots Breazeal co-developed while a graduate student at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. Notable examples include the upper torso humanoid robot Cog and the insect-like robot Hannibal.

At the Media Lab, Breazeal continues to work on social interaction and socially situated learning between people and robots. Leonardo is another globally recognized robot (co-developed with Stan Winston Studio) that was developed as a successor to Kismet (recognized in 2006 by Wired Magazine as one of the "50 Best Robots Ever"). Leonardo was also used to investigate social cognition and Theory of Mind abilities on robots with application to human-robot collaboration, in addition to developing social learning abilities for robots such as imitation, tutelage, and social referencing. Nexi is the most recent robot in this tradition (awarded a TIME Magazine 50 Best Inventions of 2008). Nexi is a MDS robot (Mobile, Dexterous, Social) that combines rich social communication abilities with mobile dexterity to investigate more complex forms of human-robot teaming.

Other social robots developed in Breazeal's Personal Robots Group include Autom, a robot diet and exercise coach (the PhD thesis of Cory Kidd). It was found to be more effective than a computer counterpart in sustaining engagement and building trust and a working alliance with users. Autom is in the process of being commercialized (see Intuitive Automata). Breazeal's group has also explored expressive remote presence robots (for example, MeBot and Huggable). The physical social embodiment of the MeBot was found to elicit greater psychological involvement, engagement, and desire to cooperate over purely screen based video conferencing or a mobile screen.

Breazeal's Personal Robots Group has also done a number of design projects. See Cyberflora that was exhibited at the 2003 National Design Triennial at the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Breazeal is recognized as a designer and innovator on the national and global stage. She received the Gilbreth Lectures Award by the National Academy of Engineering in 2008. She has spoken at a number of prominent global events including the World Science Festival, the World Economic Forum, and TEDWomen. Breazeal is a featured scientist in the Women's Adventures in Science series (sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences). In 2003, Breazeal was recognized as a Finalist in the National Design Awards in Communication at the White House.

She is an Overseer at the Museum of Science in Boston, and she is on the Board of Advisors of the Science Channel.

She also has a prominent role as a virtual participant in a popular exhibit on robots with the traveling exhibit, , interacting with a real C-3PO (voiced by Anthony Daniels as she spoke to the audience through a pre-recorded message displayed on a large plasma flat-screen display.

Selected works

Books

See also

Rodney Brooks

Cyberflora

References

Further reading

External links

Home page

Personal Robots Group MIT Media Lab.

Association for Computing Machinery Video Interviews with Cynthia Breazeal

"Profile: Cynthia Breazeal", PBS NOVA scienceNOW TV series, November 21, 2006.

iWASwondering.org - National Academy of Sciences sponsored website. Cynthia Breazeal featured on kids Website encouraging young people to pursue science.

"A Conversation with Cynthia Breazeal", Scientific American Frontiers, PBS TV program, March 1, 2005.

"50 Best Robots Ever", Wired Magazine, January 2006.

"50 Best Inventions of 2008", TIME Magazine, 2008.

Category:Roboticists Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Category:University of California, Santa Barbara alumni Category:Women engineers Category:1967 births Category:Living people