Talking Points Memo

250px Main page of Talking Points Memo as at August 2010
URL	TalkingPointsMemo.com
Commercial?	advertising supported
Type of site	Political blog, news, discussion forum
Registration	for discussion forum
Available language(s)	English
Owner	Joshua Micah Marshall
Created by	Marshall and others
Launched	November 12, 2000
Alexa rank	4,520 (June 2012[update])[1]
Revenue	Not disclosed
Current status	active

Talking Points Memo (or TPM) is a web-based political journalism organization created and run by Josh Marshall, a journalist and historian.^[2] It debuted on November 12, 2000. The name is a reference to the memo (short list) with the issues (points) discussed by one's side in a debate or used to support a position taken on an issue.^[3] By 2007, TPM received an average 400,000 page views every weekday.^[4]

History[link]

During George W. Bush's first term, the blog frequently discussed foreign policy and was especially critical of administration policy towards Iraq and North Korea. After the 2004 election, posts began to focus on the Bush administration's proposal to privatize Social Security. In addition to criticizing the substance of the proposals, Marshall argued that a unified front in the Democratic Party would deny Republicans political cover and force a loss for them on the Social Security issue.

Talking Points Memo closely tracked the positions of members of Congress on the issue throughout 2005. It asked readers to monitor local media for comments from their own members of congress, and public categories were created for politicians on this issue: wavering Democrats were the "Faint-hearted Faction" and Republicans who doubted the President's plan were the "Conscience Caucus." Marshall also coined the term "Bamboozlepalooza", in reference to President Bush's 60-day (it was extended) tour promoting social security privatization. Other terms that Marshall has coined while criticizing the Bush administration include "Up-is-downism" and "Mumbojumbocrats."

Guest bloggers have included Matthew Yglesias, Robert Reich, Dean Baker, Michael Crowley, and, briefly, Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards. Beginning in the summer of 2006, many weekend postings were provided by anonymous blogger DK. On November 11, 2006, DK was revealed to be lawyer David Kurtz, who now openly posts under his name.

On July 10, 2007, the site had a major overhaul, adding much content from its related sites to the main page. It is part of the effort to have more original reporting on the website.

In 2007, TPM won a Polk Award for its coverage of the US Attorney Scandal, becoming the only blog to win the award.^[5]

Related projects[link]

• A "spin-off" blog also created by Josh Marshall is a companion website called TPMCafe, which debuted on May 31, 2005. This site features a collection of blogs about a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues written by academics, journalists and former public officials among others.
• Marshall expanded his operation to a new blog, called TPMmuckraker, where journalists working for the TPM collective, such as Paul Kiel and Justin Rood, investigate political corruption.
• TPMDC - In January 2007, the Horse's Mouth, a blog authored by Greg Sargent with a remit to cover how Washington politics was covered by the major news outlets, moved home from The American Prospect to the TPM Media family.^[6] Sargent had begun writing for TPMCafe in July 2006. In 2008, Sargent stopped posting to the Horse's Mouth blog and began posting to a new blog called TPM Election Central, which focused on covering the 2008 elections. In 2009, TPM Election Central was renamed TPMDC, to cover politics from Washington, D.C., and Marshall hired journalists based in Washington to report for the blog.
• TPMLiveWire - spin-off established in September 2009.
• TPMIdea Lab - blog established in January 2011 to cover Science and technology.
• TPMPollTracker - aggregator of various polls about incumbents taken by polling agencies.

The four blogs (Talking Points Memo, TPMCafe, TPMMuckraker and TPMDC) are published by TPM Media LLC.^[7]

See also[link]

• TPMCafe

References[link]

External links[link]

• Talking Points Memo
• TPM Cafe
• TPM Muckraker
• TPM DC
• TPM PollTracker
• TPMtv's channel on YouTube

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2011)

Zbigniew Brzezinski
December 2010 photo
10th United States National Security Advisor
In office January 20, 1977 – January 20, 1981
President	Jimmy Carter
Deputy	David L. Aaron
Preceded by	Brent Scowcroft
Succeeded by	Richard V. Allen
Personal details
Born	Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski (1928-03-28) March 28, 1928 (age 84) Warsaw, Poland
Political party	Democratic
Alma mater	McGill University Harvard University
Profession	politician, critic

Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski (Polish: Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński, pronounced [ˈzbʲiɡɲiɛf kaˈʑimʲiɛʐ bʐɛˈʑiɲski]; born March 28, 1928) is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.

Major foreign policy events during his term of office included the normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China (and the severing of ties with the Republic of China); the signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II); the brokering of the Camp David Accords; the transition of Iran from an important U.S. client state to an anti-Western Islamic Republic, encouraging dissidents in Eastern Europe and emphasizing certain human rights in order to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union;^[1] the financing of the mujahideen in Afghanistan in response to the Soviet deployment of forces there^[2] and the arming of these rebels to counter the Soviet invasion; and the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties relinquishing overt U.S. control of the Panama Canal after 1999.

Brzezinski is currently Robert E. Osgood Professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of various boards and councils. He appears frequently as an expert on the PBS program The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, ABC News' This Week with Christiane Amanpour, and on MSNBC's Morning Joe, where his daughter, Mika Brzezinski, is co-anchor.

In recent years, he has been a supporter of the Prague Process.^[3]

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Zbigniew Brzezinski was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1928. His family, members of the nobility (or "szlachta" in Polish), bore the Trąby coat of arms and hailed from Brzeżany in Galicia. This town is thought to be the source of the family name. Brzezinski's father was Tadeusz Brzeziński, a Polish diplomat who was posted to Germany from 1931 to 1935; Zbigniew Brzezinski thus spent some of his earliest years witnessing the rise of the Nazis. From 1936 to 1938, Tadeusz Brzeziński was posted to the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.

In 1938, Tadeusz Brzeziński was posted to Canada. In 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was agreed to by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; subsequently the two powers invaded Poland. The 1945 Yalta Conference between the Allies allotted Poland to the Soviet sphere of influence, meaning Brzezinski's family could not safely return to their country.^{[citation needed]} The Second World War had a profound effect on Brzezinski, stating in an interview; "The extraordinary violence that was perpetrated against Poland did effect my perception of the world, and made me much more sensitive to the fact that a great deal of world politics is a fundamental struggle."^[4]

Rising influence[link]

After attending Loyola High School in Montreal – where he met Bora Karaman, one of his lifetime fellows and also mentors -^[5] Brzezinski entered McGill University in 1945 to obtain both his Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees (received in 1949 and 1950 respectively). His Master's thesis focused on the various nationalities within the Soviet Union.^[6] Brzezinski's plan for doing further studies in Great Britain in preparation for a diplomatic career in Canada fell through, principally because he was ruled ineligible for a scholarship he had won that was open to British subjects. Brzezinski then attended Harvard University to work on a doctorate, focusing on the Soviet Union and the relationship between the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin's state, and the actions of Joseph Stalin. He received his doctorate in 1953; the same year, he traveled to Munich and met Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, head of the Polish desk of Radio Free Europe. He later collaborated with Carl J. Friedrich to develop the concept of totalitarianism as a way to more accurately and powerfully characterize and criticize the Soviets in 1956.

As a Harvard professor, he argued against Dwight Eisenhower's and John Foster Dulles's policy of rollback, saying that antagonism would push Eastern Europe further toward the Soviets. The Polish protests followed by Polish October and Hungarian Revolution in 1956 lent some support to Brzezinski's idea that the Eastern Europeans could gradually counter Soviet domination. In 1957, he visited Poland for the first time since he left as a child, and his visit reaffirmed his judgment that splits within the Eastern bloc were profound.

In 1958 he became a United States citizen. Despite his years of residence in Canada and the presence of family members there, he never became a Canadian citizen.

When in 1959 Brzezinski was not granted tenure at Harvard, he moved to New York City to teach at Columbia University.^[7] Here he wrote Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, which focused on Eastern Europe since the beginning of the Cold War. He also became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and attended meetings of the Bilderberg Group.

During the 1960 U.S. presidential elections, Brzezinski was an advisor to the John F. Kennedy campaign, urging a non-antagonistic policy toward Eastern European governments. Seeing the Soviet Union as having entered a period of stagnation, both economic and political, Brzezinski correctly predicted the future breakup of the Soviet Union along lines of nationality (expanding on his master's thesis).^[6]

Brzezinski continued to argue for and support détente for the next few years, publishing "Peaceful Engagement in Eastern Europe" in Foreign Affairs,^[8] and supporting non-antagonistic policies after the Cuban Missile Crisis, on the grounds that such policies might disabuse Eastern European nations of their fear of an aggressive Germany and pacify Western Europeans fearful of a superpower condominium along the lines of the Yalta Conference.

In 1964, Brzezinski supported Lyndon Johnson's presidential campaign and the Great Society and civil rights policies, while on the other hand he saw Soviet leadership as having been purged of any creativity following the ousting of Khrushchev. Through Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, Brzezinski met with Adam Michnik, then a communist party member and future Polish Solidarity activist.

Brzezinski continued to support engagement with Eastern European governments, while warning against De Gaulle's vision of a "Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals." He also supported the Vietnam War. From 1966 to 1968, Brzezinski served as a member of the Policy Planning Council of the U.S. Department of State (President Johnson's October 7, 1966, "Bridge Building" speech was a product of Brzezinski's influence).

Events in Czechoslovakia further reinforced Brzezinski's criticisms of the right's aggressive stance toward Eastern European governments. His service to the Johnson administration, and his fact-finding trip to Vietnam, made him an enemy of the New Left, despite his advocacy of de-escalation of the United States' involvement in the war.

For the 1968 U.S. presidential campaign, Brzezinski was chairman of the Hubert Humphrey Foreign Policy Task Force. He advised Humphrey to break with several of President Johnson's policies, especially concerning Vietnam, the Middle East, and condominium with the Soviet Union.

Brzezinski called for a pan-European conference, an idea that would eventually find fruition in 1973 as the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe.^[9] Meanwhile he became a leading critic of both the Nixon-Kissinger détente condominium, as well as McGovern's pacifism.^[10]

In his 1970 piece Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, Brzezinski argued that a coordinated policy among developed nations was necessary in order to counter global instability erupting from increasing economic inequality. Out of this thesis, Brzezinski co-founded the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller, serving as director from 1973 to 1976. The Trilateral Commission is a group of prominent political and business leaders and academics primarily from the United States, Western Europe and Japan. Its purpose was to strengthen relations among the three most industrially advanced regions of the capitalist world. Brzezinski selected Georgia governor Jimmy Carter as a member.

Government[link]

Brzezinski during his White House years

Jimmy Carter announced his candidacy for the 1976 presidential campaign to a skeptical media and proclaimed himself an "eager student" of Brzezinski. Brzezinski became Carter's principal foreign policy advisor by late 1975. He became an outspoken critic of the Nixon-Kissinger over-reliance on détente, a situation preferred by the Soviet Union, favoring the Helsinki process instead, which focused on human rights, international law and peaceful engagement in Eastern Europe. Brzezinski has been considered to be the Democrats' response to Republican Henry Kissinger.^[11] Carter engaged Ford in foreign policy debates by contrasting the Trilateral vision with Ford's détente.^[12]

After his victory in 1976, Carter made Brzezinski National Security Advisor. Earlier that year, major labor riots broke out in Poland, laying the foundations for Solidarity. Brzezinski began by emphasizing the "Basket III" human rights in the Helsinki Final Act, which inspired Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia shortly thereafter.^[13]

Brzezinski had a hand in writing parts of Carter's inaugural address, and this served his purpose of sending a positive message to Soviet dissidents.^[14] The Soviet Union and Western European leaders both complained that this kind of rhetoric ran against the "code of détente" that Nixon and Kissinger had established.^[15][16] Brzezinski ran up against members of his own Democratic Party who disagreed with this interpretation of détente, including Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. Vance argued for less emphasis on human rights in order to gain Soviet agreement to Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), whereas Brzezinski favored doing both at the same time. Brzezinski then ordered Radio Free Europe transmitters to increase the power and area of their broadcasts, a provocative reversal of Nixon-Kissinger policies.^[17] West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt objected to Brzezinski's agenda, even calling for the removal of Radio Free Europe from German soil.^[18]

The State Department was alarmed by Brzezinski's support for East German dissidents and objected to his suggestion that Carter's first overseas visit be to Poland. He visited Warsaw, met with Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski (against the objection of the U.S. Ambassador to Poland), recognizing the Roman Catholic Church as the legitimate opposition to Communist rule in Poland.^[19]

By 1978, Brzezinski and Vance were more and more at odds over the direction of Carter's foreign policy. Vance sought to continue the style of détente engineered by Nixon-Kissinger, with a focus on arms control. Brzezinski believed that détente emboldened the Soviets in Angola and the Middle East, and so he argued for increased military strength and an emphasis on human rights. Vance, the State Department, and the media criticized Brzezinski publicly as seeking to revive the Cold War.

Brzezinski advised Carter in 1978 to engage the People's Republic of China and traveled to Beijing to lay the groundwork for the normalization of relations between the two countries. This also resulted in the severing of ties with the United States' longtime anti-Communist ally the Republic of China. Also in 1978, Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyła was elected Pope John Paul II – an event which the Soviets believed Brzezinski orchestrated. President Carter told reporters that the new Pope was a friend of Dr. Brzezinski.^{[citation needed]}

1979 saw two major strategically important events: the overthrow of U.S. ally the Shah of Iran, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Iranian Revolution precipitated the Iran hostage crisis, which would last for the rest of Carter's presidency. Brzezinski anticipated the Soviet invasion, and, with the support of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the People's Republic of China, he created a strategy to undermine the Soviet presence. See below under "Major Policies – Afghanistan."

Using this atmosphere of insecurity, Brzezinski led the United States toward a new arms buildup and the development of the Rapid Deployment Forces – policies that are both more generally associated with Ronald Reagan now. In 1980, Brzezinski planned Operation Eagle Claw, which was meant to free the hostages in Iran using the newly created Delta Force and other Special Forces units. The mission was a failure and led to Secretary Vance's resignation.

Brzezinski was criticized widely in the press and became the least popular member of Carter's administration.^{[citation needed]} Edward Kennedy challenged President Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination, and at the convention, Kennedy's delegates loudly booed Brzezinski.^{[citation needed]} Hurt by internal divisions within his party and a stagnant domestic economy, Carter lost the 1980 presidential election in a landslide.

Brzezinski, acting under a lame duck Carter presidency, but encouraged that Solidarity in Poland had vindicated his style of engagement with Eastern Europe, took a hard-line stance against what seemed like an imminent Soviet invasion of Poland. He even made a midnight phone call to Pope John Paul II – whose visit to Poland in 1979 had foreshadowed the emergence of Solidarity – warning him in advance. The U.S. stance was a significant change from previous reactions to Soviet repression in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

In 1981 President Carter presented Brzezinski with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

After power[link]

Brzezinski left office concerned about the internal division within the Democratic party, arguing that the dovish McGovernite wing would send the Democrats into permanent minority.

He had mixed relations with the Reagan administration. On the one hand, he supported it as an alternative to the Democrats' pacifism^{[clarification needed][citation needed]}, but he also criticized it as seeing foreign policy in overly black-and-white terms.

He remained involved in Polish affairs, critical of the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981, and more so of Western European acquiescence to its imposition in the name of stability. Brzezinski briefed U.S. vice-president George H. W. Bush before his 1987 trip to Poland that aided in the revival of the Solidarity movement.

In 1985, under the Reagan administration, Brzezinski served as a member of the President's Chemical Warfare Commission. From 1987 to 1988, he worked on the U.S. National Security Council–Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy. From 1987 to 1989 he also served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

In 1988, Brzezinski was co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force and endorsed Bush for president, breaking with the Democratic party. Brzezinski published The Grand Failure the same year, predicting the failure of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms and the collapse of the Soviet Union in a few more decades. He said there were five possibilities for the Soviet Union: successful pluralization, protracted crisis, renewed stagnation, coup (by the KGB or Soviet military), or the explicit collapse of the Communist regime. He called collapse "at this stage a much more remote possibility" than protracted crisis. He also predicted that the chance of some form of communism existing in the Soviet Union in 2017 was a little more than 50% and that when the end did come it would be "most likely turbulent". In the event, the Soviet system collapsed totally in 1991 following Moscow's crackdown on Lithuania's attempt to declare independence, the Nagorno-Karabakh War of the late 1980s, and scattered bloodshed in other republics. This was a less violent outcome than Brzezinski and other observers anticipated.

In 1989 the Communists failed to mobilize support in Poland, and Solidarity swept the general elections. Later the same year, Brzezinski toured Russia and visited a memorial to the Katyn Massacre. This served as an opportunity for him to ask the Soviet government to acknowledge the truth about the event, for which he received a standing ovation in the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Ten days later, the Berlin Wall fell, and Soviet-supported governments in Eastern Europe began to totter.

Strobe Talbott, one of Brzezinski's long-time critics, conducted an interview with him for TIME magazine entitled Vindication of a Hardliner.

In 1990 Brzezinski warned against post–Cold War euphoria. He publicly opposed the Gulf War,^{[citation needed]} arguing that the United States would squander the international goodwill it had accumulated by defeating the Soviet Union and that it could trigger wide resentment throughout the Arab world. He expanded upon these views in his 1992 work Out of Control.

However, Brzezinski was prominently critical of the Clinton administration's hesitation to intervene against the Serb forces in the Bosnian war.^[20] He also began to speak out against Russia's First Chechen War, forming the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya. Wary of a move toward the reinvigoration of Russian power, Brzezinski negatively viewed the succession of former KGB agent Vladimir Putin after Boris Yeltsin. In this vein, he became one of the foremost advocates of NATO expansion. He later came out in support of the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo war.^[21]

Present Day[link]

After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Brzezinski was criticized for his role in the formation of the Afghan mujaheddin network. He countered that blame ought to be laid at the feet of the Soviet Union's invasion, which radicalized the relatively stable Muslim society.

Brzezinski was a leading critic of the George W. Bush administration's "war on terror". In 2004, Brzezinski wrote The Choice, which expanded upon The Grand Chessboard but sharply criticized George W. Bush's foreign policy. He defended the book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy and was an outspoken critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.^[22]

In August 2007, Brzezinski endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. He stated that Obama "recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America's role in the world."^[23] – also saying, "What makes Obama attractive to me is that he understands that we live in a very different world where we have to relate to a variety of cultures and people."^[24] In September 2007 during a speech on the Iraq war, Obama introduced Brzezinski as "one of our most outstanding thinkers," but some pro-Israel commentators questioned his criticism of the Israel lobby in the United States.^[22] In a September 2009 interview with The Daily Beast, Brzezinski replied to a question about how aggressive President Obama should be in insisting Israel not conduct an air strike on Iran, saying: "We are not exactly impotent little babies. They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?"^[25] This was interpreted by some supporters of Israel as supporting the downing of Israeli jets by the United States in order to prevent an attack on Iran.^[26][27] In 2011, Brzezinski supported the NATO intervention against the forces of Muammar Gaddafi in the Libyan civil war, calling non-intervention "morally dubious" and "politically questionable".^[28]

Personal life[link]

Brzezinski is married to Czech-American sculptor Emilie Benes (grand-niece of the second Czechoslovak president, Edvard Beneš), with whom he has three children. His son, Mark Brzezinski (b. 1965), a lawyer who served on President Clinton's National Security Council as an expert on Russia and Southeastern Europe and who was a partner in McGuire Woods LLP, serves as the US ambassador to Sweden. His daughter, Mika Brzezinski (b. 1967), is a television news presenter and co-host of MSNBC's weekday morning program, Morning Joe, where she provides regular commentary and reads the news headlines for the program. His son Ian served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO and was a principal at Booz Allen Hamilton. Ian Brzezinski is a Senior Fellow in the International Security Program and is on the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Advisors Group. Key highlights of his tenure as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO Policy (2001–2005) include the expansion of NATO membership in 2004, the consolidation and reconfiguration of the Alliance’s command structure, the standing up of the NATO Response Force and the coordination of European military contributions to U.S.- and NATO-led operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans.^[29]

As Carter's National Security Advisor[link]

President Carter chose Zbigniew Brzezinski for the position of National Security Adviser (NSA) because he wanted an assertive intellectual at his side to provide him with day-to-day advice and guidance on foreign policy decisions. Brzezinski would preside over a reorganized National Security Council (NSC) structure, fashioned to ensure that the NSA would be only one of many players in the foreign policy process.

Brzezinski's task was complicated by his (hawkish) focus on East-West relations in an administration where many cared a great deal about North-South relations and human rights.

Initially, Carter reduced the NSC staff by one-half and decreased the number of standing NSC committees from eight to two. All issues referred to the NSC were reviewed by one of the two new committees, either the Policy Review Committee (PRC) or the Special Coordinating Committee (SCC). The PRC focused on specific issues, and its chairmanship rotated. The SCC was always chaired by Brzezinski, a circumstance he had to negotiate with Carter to achieve. Carter believed that by making the NSA chairman of only one of the two committees, he would prevent the NSC from being the overwhelming influence on foreign policy decisions it had been under Kissinger's chairmanship during the Nixon administration. The SCC was charged with considering issues that cut across several departments, including oversight of intelligence activities, arms control evaluation, and crisis management. Much of the SCC's time during the Carter years was spent on SALT issues.

The Council held few formal meetings, convening only 10 times, compared with 125 meetings during the 8 years of the Nixon and Ford administrations. Instead, Carter used frequent, informal meetings as a decision-making device, typically his Friday breakfasts, usually attended by the Vice President, the secretaries of State and Defense, Brzezinski, and the chief domestic adviser. No agendas were prepared and no formal records were kept of these meetings, sometimes resulting in differing interpretations of the decisions actually agreed upon. Brzezinski was careful, in managing his own weekly luncheons with secretaries Vance and Brown in preparation for NSC discussions, to maintain a complete set of notes. Brzezinski also sent weekly reports to the President on major foreign policy undertakings and problems, with recommendations for courses of action. President Carter enjoyed these reports and frequently annotated them with his own views. Brzezinski and the NSC used these Presidential notes (159 of them) as the basis for NSC actions.

From the beginning, Brzezinski made sure that the new NSC institutional relationships would assure him a major voice in the shaping of foreign policy. While he knew that Carter would not want him to be another Kissinger, Brzezinski also felt confident that the President did not want Secretary of State Vance to become another Dulles and would want his own input on key foreign policy decisions.

Brzezinski's power gradually expanded into the operational area during the Carter Presidency. He increasingly assumed the role of a Presidential emissary. In 1978, for example, Brzezinski traveled to Beijing to lay the groundwork for normalizing U.S.–PRC relations. Like Kissinger before him, Brzezinski maintained his own personal relationship with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin. Brzezinski had NSC staffers monitor State Department cable traffic through the Situation Room and call back to the State Department if the President preferred to revise or take issue with outgoing State Department instructions. He also appointed his own press spokesman, and his frequent press briefings and appearances on television interview shows made him a prominent public figure, although perhaps not nearly as much as Kissinger had been under Nixon.

The Soviet military invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 significantly damaged the already tenuous relationship between Vance and Brzezinski. Vance felt that Brzezinski's linkage of SALT to other Soviet activities and the MX, together with the growing domestic criticisms in the United States of the SALT II Accord, convinced Brezhnev to decide on military intervention in Afghanistan. Brzezinski, however, later recounted that he advanced proposals to maintain Afghanistan's independence but was frustrated by the Department of State's opposition. An NSC working group on Afghanistan wrote several reports on the deteriorating situation in 1979, but President Carter ignored them until the Soviet intervention destroyed his illusions. Only then did he decide to abandon SALT II ratification and pursue the anti-Soviet policies that Brzezinski proposed.

The Iranian revolution was the last straw for the disintegrating relationship between Vance and Brzezinski. As the upheaval developed, the two advanced fundamentally different positions. Brzezinski wanted to control the revolution and increasingly suggested military action to prevent Ayatollah Khomeini from coming to power, while Vance wanted to come to terms with the new Islamic Republic of Iran. As a consequence, Carter failed to develop a coherent approach to the Iranian situation. In the growing crisis atmosphere of 1979 and 1980 due to the Iranian hostage situation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and a deepening economic crisis, Brzezinski's anti-Soviet views gained influence but could not end the Carter administration's malaise. Vance's resignation following the unsuccessful mission to rescue the American hostages in March 1980, undertaken over his objections, was the final result of the deep disagreement between Brzezinski and Vance.

Major policies[link]

During the 1960s Brzezinski articulated the strategy of peaceful engagement for undermining the Soviet bloc and while serving on the State Department Policy Planning Council, persuaded President Johnson to adopt in October 1966 peaceful engagement as U.S. strategy, placing détente ahead of German reunification and thus reversing prior U.S. priorities.

During the 1970s and 1980s, at the height of his political involvement, Brzezinski participated in the formation of the Trilateral Commission in order to more closely cement U.S.–Japanese–European relations. As the three most economically advanced sectors of the world, the people of the three regions could be brought together in cooperation that would give them a more cohesive stance against the communist world.

While serving in the White House, Brzezinski emphasized the centrality of human rights as a means of placing the Soviet Union on the ideological defensive. With Jimmy Carter in Camp David, he assisted in the attainment of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. He actively supported Polish Solidarity and the Afghan resistance to Soviet invasion, and provided covert support for national independence movements in the Soviet Union. He played a leading role in normalizing U.S.–PRC relations and in the development of joint strategic cooperation, cultivating a relationship with Deng Xiaoping, for which he is thought very highly of in mainland China to this day.

In the 1990s he formulated the strategic case for buttressing the independent statehood of Ukraine, partially as a means to ending a resurgence of the Russian Empire, and to drive Russia toward integration with the West, promoting instead "geopolitical pluralism" in the space of the former Soviet Union. He developed "a plan for Europe" urging the expansion of NATO, making the case for the expansion of NATO to the Baltic states. He also served as William Clinton's emissary to Azerbaijan in order to promote the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline. Subsequently, he became a member of Honorary Council of Advisors of U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (USACC). Further, he led, together with Lane Kirkland, the effort to increase the endowment for the U.S.-sponsored Polish-American Freedom Foundation from the proposed $112 million to an eventual total of well over $200 million.

He has consistently urged a U.S. leadership role in the world, based on established alliances, and warned against unilateralist policies that would destroy U.S. global credibility and precipitate U.S. global isolation.

Afghanistan[link]

Brzezinski, known for his hardline policies on the Soviet Union, initiated in 1979 a campaign supporting mujaheddin in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which were run by Pakistani security services with financial support from the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's MI6. Part of the CIA program was led by its elite Special Activities Division and included the arming, training and leading of Afghanistan's mujahideen.^[30] This policy had the explicit aim of promoting radical Islamist and anti-Communist forces to overthrow the secular communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan government in Afghanistan, which had been destabilized by coup attempts against Hafizullah Amin, the power struggle within the Soviet-supported Parcham faction of the PDPA and a subsequent Soviet military intervention.

Years later, in a 1997 CNN/National Security Archive interview, Brzezinski detailed the strategy taken by the Carter administration against the Soviets in 1979:

We immediately launched a twofold process when we heard that the Soviets had entered Afghanistan. The first involved direct reactions and sanctions focused on the Soviet Union, and both the State Department and the National Security Council prepared long lists of sanctions to be adopted, of steps to be taken to increase the international costs to the Soviet Union of their actions. And the second course of action led to my going to Pakistan a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible; and we engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the British, the Chinese, and we started providing weapons to the Mujaheddin, from various sources again – for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. We even got Soviet arms from the Czechoslovak communist government, since it was obviously susceptible to material incentives; and at some point we started buying arms for the Mujaheddin from the Soviet army in Afghanistan, because that army was increasingly corrupt.^[31]

Milt Bearden wrote in The Main Enemy that Brzezinski, in 1980, secured an agreement from King Khalid of Saudi Arabia to match U.S. contributions to the Afghan effort dollar for dollar and that Bill Casey would keep that agreement going through the Reagan administration.^[32]

According to the "Progressive South Asia Exchange Net," claiming to cite an article in Le Nouvel Observateur, U.S. policy, unbeknownst even to the Mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy of aiming "to induce a Soviet military intervention."^[33] The article includes a brief interview with National Security Advisor Brzezinski, in which he is quoted as saying that the United States provided aid to the mujahideen prior to the Soviet invasion for the deliberate purpose of provoking one. Brzezinski himself has denied the accuracy of the interview.^[34] According to Brzezinski, an NSC working group on Afghanistan wrote several reports on the deteriorating situation in 1979, but President Carter ignored them until the Soviet intervention destroyed his illusions. Brzezinski has stated that the United States provided communications equipment and limited financial aid to the mujahideen prior to the "formal" invasion, but only in response to the Soviet deployment of forces to Afghanistan and the 1978 coup, and with the intention of preventing further Soviet encroachment in the region.^[34] Two declassified documents signed by Carter shortly before the invasion do authorize the provision "unilaterally or through third countries as appropriate support to the Afghan insurgents either in the form of cash or non-military supplies" and the "worldwide" distribution of "non-attributable propaganda" to "expose" the leftist Afghan government as "despotic and subservient to the Soviet Union" and to "publicize the efforts of the Afghan insurgents to regain their country's sovereignty," but the records also show that the provision of arms to the rebels did not begin until 1980.^[35][36]

According to Eric Alterman of The Nation, Cyrus Vance's close aide Marshall Shulman "insists that the State Department worked hard to dissuade the Soviets from invading and would never have undertaken a program to encourage it" and President Carter has said it was definitely "not my intention" to inspire a Soviet invasion but to deter one.^[2]

Bob Gates, in his book Out Of The Shadows, wrote that Pakistan had actually been pressuring the United States for arms to aid the rebels for years, but that the Carter administration refused in the hope of finding a diplomatic solution to avoid war. Brzezinski seemed to have been in favor of the provision of arms to the rebels, while Vance's State Department, seeking a peaceful settlement, publicly accused Brzezinski of seeking to "revive" the Cold War.

In an interview with The Christian Science Monitor, in March 1981, Jimmy Carter's Vice-President Walter Mondale declared: "I cannot understand – it just baffles me – why the Soviets these last few years have behaved as they have. Maybe we have made some mistakes with them. Why did they have to build up all these arms? Why did they have to go into Afghanistan? Why can't they relax just a little bit about Eastern Europe? Why do they try every door to see if it is locked?"^[37]

The Soviet invasion and occupation killed up to 2 million Afghans.^[38] Brzezinski defended the arming of the rebels in response, saying that it "was quite important in hastening the end of the conflict," thereby saving the lives of thousands of Afghans, but "not in deciding the conflict, because actually the fact is that even though we helped the mujaheddin, they would have continued fighting without our help, because they were also getting a lot of money from the Persian Gulf and the Arab states, and they weren't going to quit. They didn't decide to fight because we urged them to. They're fighters, and they prefer to be independent. They just happen to have a curious complex: they don't like foreigners with guns in their country. And they were going to fight the Soviets. Giving them weapons was a very important forward step in defeating the Soviets, and that's all to the good as far as I'm concerned." When he was asked if he thought it was the right decision in retrospect (given the Taliban's subsequent rise to power), he said: "Which decision? For the Soviets to go in? The decision was the Soviets', and they went in. The Afghans would have resisted anyway, and they were resisting. I just told you: in my view, the Afghans would have prevailed in the end anyway, 'cause they had access to money, they had access to weapons, and they had the will to fight." The interviewer then asked: "So US support for the mujaheddin only begins after the Russians invade, not before?" Brzezinski replied: "With arms? Absolutely afterwards. No question about it. Show me some documents to the contrary."^[39] Likewise; Charlie Wilson said: "The U.S. had nothing whatsoever to do with these people's decision to fight ... but we'll be damned by history if we let them fight with stones."^[40]

One of the CIA's longest and most expensive covert operations was the supplying of billions of dollars in arms to the Afghan mujahideen militants.^[41] The CIA provided assistance to the fundamentalist insurgents through the Pakistani secret services, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), in a program called Operation Cyclone. Somewhere between $3–$20 billion in U.S. funds were funneled into the country to train and equip troops with weapons.^[42][43] Together with similar programs by Saudi Arabia, Britain's MI6 and SAS, Egypt, Iran, and the People's Republic of China,^[44] the arms included Stinger missiles, shoulder-fired, antiaircraft weapons that they used against Soviet helicopters and that later were in circulation among terrorists who have fired such weapons at commercial airliners. Osama bin Laden was allegedly among the recipients of U.S. arms, although the US denies this and claims it did not support the "Afghan Arabs".^[41] Pakistan's secret service, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was used as an intermediary for most of these activities to disguise the sources of support for the resistance.

With U.S. and other funding, the ISI armed and trained over 100,000 insurgents. On July 20, 1987, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country was announced pursuant to the negotiations that led to the Geneva Accords of 1988,^[45] with the last Soviets leaving on February 15, 1989.

A 2002 study found that, in the wake of the Iranian Revolution, the United States had sought rapprochement with the Afghan government – a prospect that the Soviet Union found unacceptable (especially as its own leverage over the regime was wearing thin). Thus, the Soviets intervened to preserve their influence in the country.^[46]

The early foundations of al-Qaida were built in part on relationships and weaponry that came from the billions of dollars in U.S. support for the Afghan mujahadin during the war to expel Soviet forces from that country.^[47] However, scholars such as Jason Burke, Steve Coll, Peter Bergen, Christopher Andrew, and Vasily Mitrokhin have argued that Bin Laden was "outside of CIA eyesight" and that there is "no support" in any "reliable source" for "the claim that the CIA funded bin Laden or any of the other Arab volunteers who came to support the mujahideen."^{[48][49][50][51]}

Iran[link]

The Iranian Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, meeting with Arthur Atherton, William H. Sullivan, Cyrus Vance, President Jimmy Carter, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, in 1977

Facing a revolution, the Shah of Iran sought help from the United States. Iran occupied a strategic place in U.S. policy in the Middle East, acting as an important ally and a buffer against Soviet influence in the region. The U.S. ambassador to Iran, William H. Sullivan, recalls that Brzezinski "repeatedly assured Pahlavi that the U.S. backed him fully."^{[citation needed]} These reassurances would not, however, amount to substantive action on the part of the United States. On November 4, 1978, Brzezinski called the Shah to tell him that the United States would "back him to the hilt."^{[citation needed]} At the same time, certain high-level officials in the State Department decided that the Shah had to go, regardless of who replaced him.^{[citation needed]} Brzezinski and U.S. Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger (formerly Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford) continued to advocate that the U.S. support the Shah militarily. Even in the final days of the revolution, when the Shah was considered doomed no matter what the outcome of the revolution, Brzezinski still advocated a U.S. invasion to keep Iran under U.S. influence.^{[citation needed]} President Carter could not decide how to appropriately use force and opposed another U.S.-backed coup d'état. He ordered the aircraft carrier Constellation to the Indian Ocean but ultimately allowed a regime change. A deal was worked out with the Iranian generals to shift support to a moderate government,^{[citation needed]} but this plan fell apart when Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers swept the country, taking power on February 12, 1979.

China[link]

Shortly after taking office in 1977, President Carter again reaffirmed the United States' position of upholding the Shanghai Communique. The United States and People's Republic of China announced on December 15, 1978, that the two governments would establish diplomatic relations on January 1, 1979. This required that the United States sever relations with the Republic of China on Taiwan. Consolidating U.S. gains in befriending communist China was a major priority stressed by Brzezinski during his time as National Security Advisor.

The most important strategic aspect of the new U.S.–Chinese relationship was in its effect on the Cold War. China was no longer considered part of a larger Sino-Soviet bloc but instead a third pole of power due to the Sino-Soviet Split, helping the United States against the Soviet Union.

In the Joint Communique on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations dated January 1, 1979, the United States transferred diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. The United States reiterated the Shanghai Communique's acknowledgment of the PRC position that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of China; Beijing acknowledged that the United States would continue to carry on commercial, cultural, and other unofficial contacts with Taiwan. The Taiwan Relations Act made the necessary changes in U.S. domestic law to permit unofficial relations with Taiwan to continue.

In addition the severing relations with the Republic of China, the Carter administration also agreed to unilaterally pull out of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, withdraw U.S. military personnel from Taiwan, and gradually reduce arms sales to the Republic of China. There was widespread opposition in the U.S. Congress, notably from Republicans, due to the Republic of China's status as an anti-Communist ally in the Cold War. In Goldwater v. Carter, Barry Goldwater made a failed attempt to stop Carter from terminating the mutual defense treaty.

PRC Vice-premier Deng Xiaoping's January 1979 visit to Washington, D.C., initiated a series of high-level exchanges, which continued until the Tiananmen Square massacre, when they were briefly interrupted. This resulted in many bilateral agreements, especially in the fields of scientific, technological, and cultural interchange and trade relations. Since early 1979, the United States and the PRC have initiated hundreds of joint research projects and cooperative programs under the Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology, the largest bilateral program.

On March 1, 1979, the United States and People's Republic of China formally established embassies in Beijing and Washington. During 1979, outstanding private claims were resolved, and a bilateral trade agreement was concluded. U.S. vice-president Walter Mondale reciprocated vice-premier Deng's visit with an August 1979 trip to China. This visit led to agreements in September 1980 on maritime affairs, civil aviation links, and textile matters, as well as a bilateral consular convention.

As a consequence of high-level and working-level contacts initiated in 1980, U.S. dialogue with China broadened to cover a wide range of issues, including global and regional strategic problems, political-military questions – including arms control, UN and other multilateral organization affairs, and international narcotics matters.

Arab-Israeli conflict[link]

On October 10, 2007, Brzezinski along with other influential signatories sent a letter to President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice titled 'Failure Risks Devastating Consequences'. The letter was partly an advice and a warning of the failure of an upcoming^[52] U.S.-sponsored Middle East conference scheduled for November 2007 between representatives of Israelis and Palestinians. The letter also suggested to engage in "a genuine dialogue with Hamas" rather than to isolate it further.^[53]

U.S. President Jimmy Carter with Brzezinski and Cyrus Vance at Camp David in 1977

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin engages Brzezinski in a game of chess at Camp David

Ending détente[link]

This section requires expansion.

Presidential Directive 18 on U.S. National Security, signed early in Carter's term, signaled a fundamental reassessment of the value of détente, and set the United States on a course to quietly end Kissinger's strategy.^[54]

Nuclear strategy[link]

Presidential Directive 59, "Nuclear Employment Policy", dramatically changed U.S. targeting of nuclear weapons aimed at the Soviet Union. Implemented with the aid of Defense Secretary Harold Brown, this directive officially set the United States on a countervailing strategy^{[clarification needed]}.^[55]

Arms control[link]

President Jimmy Carter and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) treaty, June 16, 1979, in Washington D.C. Zbigniew Brzezinski is directly behind President Carter.

Academia[link]

Brzezinski was on the faculty of Harvard University from 1953 to 1960, and of Columbia University from 1960 to 1989 where he headed the Institute on Communist Affairs. He is currently a professor of foreign policy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.

As a scholar he has developed his thoughts over the years, fashioning fundamental theories on international relations and geostrategy. During the 1950s he worked on the theory of totalitarianism. His thought in the 1960s focused on wider Western understanding of disunity in the Soviet Bloc, as well as developing the thesis of intensified degeneration of the Soviet Union. During the 1970s he propounded the proposition that the Soviet system was incapable of evolving beyond the industrial phase into the "technetronic" age.

By the 1980s, Brzezinski argued that the general crisis of the Soviet Union foreshadowed communism's end.

Public life[link]

Brzezinski is a past member of the board of directors of Amnesty International^{[citation needed]}, the Atlantic Council, and the National Endowment for Democracy^{[citation needed]}. He is a current member of the Council on Foreign Relations.^[56]

Quotes[link]

• "The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities." – Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, 1970

• "Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat."

• "I once put it rather pungently, and I was flattered that the British Foreign Secretary repeated this, as follows: ... namely, in early times, it was easier to control a million people, literally it was easier to control a million people than physically to kill a million people. Today, it is infinitely easier to kill a million people than to control a million people. It is easier to kill than to control...."

• "The mistakes of the Iraq war are not only tactical and strategic, but historical. It is essentially a war of colonialism, attempted in the post-colonial age." – The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, January 11, 2007.

• "[President George W. Bush] has a vision which can be described with two other words: Manichaean paranoia ... the notion that he is leading the forces of good against the empire of evil, that in that setting, the fact that we are morally superior justifies us committing immoral acts. And that is a very dangerous posture for the country that is the number one global power. ... The fact is he squandered our credibility, our legitimacy, and even respect for our power." – The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, March 14, 2007.

• "I think on the domestic front, there's one issue that is dear to my heart because it is related to foreign policy, though it may not strike you as necessary as the most important. In terms of socioeconomic conditions, it may not be the most important. And that is education, public education about the world. The fact is we are a democracy. We can only conduct a foreign policy that the public supports. The public in America is woefully ignorant about the world. And our educational system has failed to correct that, and I have to say that in recent years our presidents have not done what is needed," - The Morning Joe, January 24, 2012.

• Benchmarks are targets that have to be fulfilled. They cannot be fulfilled in an indefinite period of time, so there are timetables in benchmarks.^[57]

• "This will require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid, and, alas, a decision that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our non-proliferation policy."
  • Memo to President Carter following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979)

• "It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization."
  • The Grand Chessboard (1997)

• "A real cool cat."
  • describing Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev.^[58]

• "I personally view with great skepticism all this talk about us creating an Iraqi national army, creating a nation, nation-building and so forth. The problem is we have smashed the state; we have given an enormous opportunity for narrow sectarian interests and passions to rise." – 2007 testimony to Senate Foreign Relations Committee

• "Is Taliban a terrorism organization, or is it an ugly, medieval-type throwback of a purely local character?...Now, the Taliban does terrible things. I was talking to someone about this last night at dinner. And this person said 'yeah, but what about the horrible things they do to women,' and so forth. That's the painful part – but the same things happen in some other parts of the world. Are we going to go everywhere and tell them how to structure their social questions?" -On MSNBC's Morning Joe^[59]

Film appearance[link]

Brzezinski appears as himself in the 2009 documentary film Back Door Channels: The Price of Peace.^[60]

He also appears as himself in the 1997 documentary Eternal Memory: Voices from the Great Terror, a film on the Stalinist purges directed by David Pultz and narrated by American actress Meryl Streep.

Bibliography[link]

Major works by Brzezinski[link]

• The Permanent Purge: Politics in Soviet Totalitarianism. Harvard University Press. 1956. 
• Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict. Harvard University Press. 1967. ISBN 978-0-674-82545-1. 
• Between Two Ages : America's Role in the Technetronic Era. Viking Press. 1970. ISBN 978-0-313-23498-9. 
• Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981. Farrar, Strauss, Giroux. 1983. ISBN 978-0-374-23663-2. 
• Game Plan: A Geostrategic Framework for the Conduct of the U.S.-Soviet Contest. Atlantic Monthly Press. 1986. ISBN 978-0-87113-084-6. 
• Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century. Collier Books. 1990. ISBN 978-0-02-030730-3. 
• Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century. Collier Books. 1993. ISBN 978-0-684-82636-3. 
• The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. Basic Books. 1997. ISBN 978-0-465-02726-2.  Subsequently translated and published in nineteen languages.
• The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership. Basic Books. 2004. ISBN 978-0-465-00800-1. 
• Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower. Basic Books. 2007. ISBN 978-0-465-00252-8. 
• America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy. Basic Books. 2008. ISBN 978-0-465-01501-6. 
• Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power. Basic Books. 2012. ISBN 978-0-465-02954-9. 

Other books and monographs[link]

• Russo-Soviet Nationalism, M.A. Thesis, McGill University (1950)
• Political Control in the Soviet Army: A Study on Reports by Former Soviet Officers, New York, Research Program on the U.S.S.R (1954)
• with Carl J. Friedrich, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1956)
• Ideology and Power in Soviet Politics, New York: Praeger (1962)
• with Samuel Huntington, Political Power: USA/USSR, New York: Viking Press (April 1963), ISBN 0-670-56318-8
• Alternative to Partition: For a Broader Conception of America's Role in Europe, Atlantic Policy Studies, New York: McGraw-Hill (1965)
• The Implications of Change for United States Foreign Policy, Department of State (1967)
• International Politics in the Technetronic Era, Sofia University Press (1971)
• The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan, New York: Harper and Row (1972), ISBN 0-06-010468-6
• with P. Edward Haley, American Security in an Interdependent World, Rowman & Littlefield (September 1988), ISBN 0-8191-7084-4
• with Marin Strmecki, In Quest of National Security, Boulder: Westview Press (September 1988), ISBN 0-8133-0575-6
• The Soviet Political System: Transformation or Degeneration, Irvington Publishers (August 1993), ISBN 0-8290-3572-9
• with Paige Sullivan, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States: Documents, Data, and Analysis, Armonk: M. E. Sharpe (1996), ISBN 1-56324-637-6
• The Geostrategic Triad : Living with China, Europe, and Russia, Center for Strategic & International Studies (December 2000), ISBN 0-89206-384-X

Selected essays and reports[link]

• with David Owen, Michael Stewart, Carol Hansen, and Saburo Okita, Democracy Must Work: A Trilateral Agenda for the Decade, Trilateral Commission (June 1984), ISBN 0-8147-6161-5
• with Brent Scowcroft and Richard W. Murphy, Differentiated Containment: U.S. Policy Toward Iran and Iraq, Council on Foreign Relations Press (July 1997), ISBN 0-87609-202-4
• U.S. Policy Toward Northeastern Europe: Report of an Independent Task Force, Council on Foreign Relations Press (July 1999), ISBN 0-87609-259-8
• with Anthony Lake, F. Gregory, and III Gause, The United States and the Persian Gulf, Council on Foreign Relations Press (December 2001), ISBN 0-87609-291-1
• with Robert M. Gates, Iran: Time for a New Approach, Council on Foreign Relations Press (February 2003), ISBN 0-87609-345-4
• Balancing the East, Upgrading the West; U.S. Grand Strategy in an Age of Upheaval by January/February 2012 Foreign Affairs

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Avner, Yehuda, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, The Toby Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1-59264-278-6
• Gerry Argyris Andrianopoulos, Kissinger and Brzezinski: The NSC and the Struggle for Control of U.S. National Security Policy, Palgrave Macmillan (June 1991), ISBN 0-312-05743-1
• Patrick Vaughan (1999) "Beyond Benign Neglect: Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Polish Crisis of 1980." Polish Review (1): 3–28
• Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm: Dreams and Reality, Toronto 1984, ISBN 0-9691756-0-4
• Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm: Kanada, Kanada, Warszawa 1986, ISBN 83-7021-006-6
• Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm: Korzenie sa polskie, Warszawa 1992, ISBN 83-7066-406-7
• Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm: The Roots Are Polish, Toronto 2004, ISBN 0-920517-05-6
• Andrzej Bernat, Pawel Kozlowski: Zycie z Polska, Warszawa 2004, ISBN 83-7386-084-3

External links[link]

This section may contain lists of external links, quotations or related pages discouraged by Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Please help integrate this content into the body of the article using in-text citations.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Zbigniew Brzezinski

• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Zbigniew Brzezinski on Charlie Rose
• Zbigniew Brzezinski at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Zbigniew Brzezinski in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Zbigniew Brzezinski collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Zbigniew Brzezinski at the Notable Names Database
• Zbigniew Brzezinski Interviewed about USSR - U.S. Summit from the Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives
• Brzezinski at Center for Strategic International Studies
• Brzezinski^{[dead link]} at Jamestown
• Brzezinski^{[not in citation given]} at the Trilateral Commission
• The Modern History Project: Zbigniew Brzezinski
• CNN Cold War – Profile: Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski^{[dead link]}
• Interview about US relations with China^{[dead link]} for the WGBH series, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age
• Profile: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Johns Hopkins University
• Booknotes interview with Brzezinski on The Grand Failure, April 2, 1989.
• Cold War: interview with Brzezinski, The National Security Archive, June 13, 1997.
• Zbigniew Brzezinski. A geostrategy for Eurasia, Foreign Affairs, The Council on Foreign Relations, September 1997.
• Brzezinski: NATO enlargement is central to secure Euro-Atlantic alliance, United States Information Service, October 10, 1997.
• Brzezinski: How Jimmy Carter and I started the Mujahedeen, CounterPunch.
• Kissinger & Brzezinski discuss the surveillance plane standoff with China, The NewsHour, Public Broadcasting Service, April 4, 2001.
• Geopolitically Speaking: Brzezinski on Eurasia Azerbaijan International, Winter 1995 (3.4).
• Geopolitically Speaking: Brzezinski on the Caucasus Azerbaijan International, Summer 1997 (5.2).
• Zbigniew Brzezinski. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy in Eurasia
• Zbigniew Brzezinski. Confronting Anti-American Grievances, New York Times, September 1, 2002.
• Neal Conan. Brzezinski discusses his participation in the 1978 Camp David, Talk of The Nation, National Public Radio, September 16, 2003.
• Zbigniew Brzezinski. We are going to live in an insecure world, October 28, 2003.
• Brzezinski on repercussions for diplomacy and the war on terror, The NewsHour, Public Broadcasting Service, March 19, 2004.
• History Makers Series: Conversation with Brzezinski, The Council on Foreign Relations, March 24, 2004.
• Zbigniew Brzezinski. Speaker's notes: Threats, Dangers, and Uncertainties, Johns Hopkins University. October 12, 2004.
• Marie-Laure Germon. Brzezinski: "The Neo-Conservative Formula Doesn't Work", Le Figaro, October 18, 2004.
• Brzezinski to chair RAND center for Middle East public policy advisory board^{[not in citation given]}, RAND Military Corporation, December 8, 2005.
• Air Strike on Iran Could ‘Merit the Impeachment of the President’, April 26, 2006.
• Former National Security Advisors Clash on Iraq Policy, The NewsHour, Public Broadcasting Service, February 1, 2007.
• Brzezinski's Testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, February 1, 2007
• A road map out of Iraq, LA Times, February 11, 2007
• Terrorized by 'War on Terror', Washington Post, March 25, 2007.
• C-SPAN Q&A interview with Brzezinski, April 8, 2007
• Brzezinski: U.S. in danger of 'stampeding' to war with Iran, CNN, September 24, 2007
• Jimmy Carter Library & Museum
• The Afghan War and The Grand Chessboard Three-part interview on The Real News (TRNN), January 13–17, 2010

v t e Cabinet of President Jimmy Carter (1977–1981)   Cabinet Secretary of State Cyrus Vance (1977–1980) Edmund Muskie (1980–1981) Secretary of the Treasury W. Michael Blumenthal (1977–1979) G. William Miller (1979–1981) Secretary of Defense Harold Brown (1977–1981) Attorney General Griffin Bell (1977–1979) Benjamin Civiletti (1979–1981) Secretary of the Interior Cecil D. Andrus (1977–1981) Secretary of Agriculture Robert Bergland (1977–1981) Secretary of Commerce Juanita M. Kreps (1977–1980) Philip Klutznick (1980–1981) Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall (1977–1981) Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Joseph A. Califano, Jr. (1977–1979) Patricia Roberts Harris (1979–1979) Secretary of Health and Human Services Patricia Roberts Harris (1979–1981) Secretary of Education Shirley M. Hufstedler (1979–1981) Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Patricia Roberts Harris (1977–1979) Maurice "Moon" Landrieu (1979–1981) Secretary of Transportation Brock Adams (1977–1979) Neil Goldschmidt (1979–1981) Secretary of Energy James R. Schlesinger (1977–1979) Charles Duncan, Jr. (1979–1981)   Cabinet-level Vice President Walter Mondale (1977–1981) Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young (1977 – 1979) Donald McHenry (1979 – 1981) Director of the Office of Management and Budget Thomas "Bert" Lance (1977) James T. McIntyre (1978 – 1981) Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Charles Schultze (1977 – 1981) Advisor to the President on National Security Affairs Zbigniew Brzezinski (1977 – 1981)

v t e National Security Advisors of the United States Cutler • Anderson • Jackson • Cutler • Gray • Bundy • Rostow • Kissinger • Scowcroft • Brzezinski • Allen • Clark • McFarlane • Poindexter • Carlucci • Powell • Scowcroft • Lake • Berger • Rice • Hadley • Jones • Donilon

Al Franken
United States Senator from Minnesota
Incumbent
Assumed office July 7, 2009[1] Serving with Amy Klobuchar
Preceded by	Norm Coleman
Personal details
Born	Alan Stuart Franken (1951-05-21) May 21, 1951 (age 61) New York City, New York
Nationality	American
Political party	Democratic–Farmer–Labor
Spouse(s)	Franni Bryson Franken
Children	Thomasin Joe
Residence	Minneapolis, Minnesota
Alma mater	Harvard College (A.B.)
Occupation	U.S. Senator, comedian, actor, author, screenwriter, political commentator, politician, and radio host
Religion	Judaism
Signature
Website	franken.senate.gov Campaign website

Alan Stuart "Al" Franken (born May 21, 1951) is the junior United States Senator from Minnesota. He is a member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, which affiliates with the national Democratic Party.

Franken achieved note as a writer and performer for the television show Saturday Night Live from its conception in 1975 before moving to writing and acting in films and television shows. He then became a political commentator, author of five books and host of a nationally syndicated radio show on the Air America Radio network.

In 2008, Franken narrowly defeated incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman, by 312 votes, after a mandatory statewide manual recount. Coleman contested the outcome in court,^[2] but the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously upheld Franken's victory on June 30, 2009.^[3] Franken was sworn in to the Senate on July 7, 2009.^[4][5]

Early life and family[link]

Franken was born in New York City. His mother, Phoebe G. (née Kunst), was a homemaker and real estate agent, and his father, Joseph P. Franken, was a printing salesman. The family later moved to St. Louis Park, a suburb near Minneapolis.^[6] Franken had a Jewish upbringing.^[7] His paternal grandparents were immigrants from Germany, and his mother's family was from Russia.^[8] His older brother Owen is a photojournalist; MSNBC's Bob Franken is his cousin.^[9] Franken graduated in 1969 from The Blake School, where he was on the wrestling team. He attended Harvard College and graduated with an A.B. cum laude in 1973 in political science.^[10]

Franken met his wife, Franni Bryson, in his first year of college. In 2005, they moved back to Minnesota and reside in Minneapolis.^[11] They have two children: daughter Thomasin (born 1981) has degrees from Harvard and the French Culinary Institute and is a former elementary school teacher turned "food educator and private chef";^[12] son Joe (born 1984) holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton.

[edit] Saturday Night Live

Franken began his performing career in high school at The Blake School, where he and long-time writing partner Tom Davis were known for their humor. Franken honed his writing and performing skills at Minneapolis' Dudley Riggs' Brave New Workshop theater, specializing in political satire. He and Davis soon found themselves in "a life of near-total failure on the fringes of show business in Los Angeles."^[13]

Franken and Davis were recruited as two of the original writers (and occasional performers) on Saturday Night Live (1975–1980, 1985–1995). In the latter period, only Franken returned as a performer, while Davis usually stayed behind the camera.

In Season 1 of SNL, as apprentice writers, the two shared a salary of $350 per week. Franken, who received seven Emmy nominations and three Emmy Awards for his television writing and producing, created such characters as self-help guru Stuart Smalley and such routines as proclaiming the 1980s to be the "Al Franken Decade." Franken was associated with SNL for over 15 years and, in 2002, interviewed former Vice President Al Gore while in character as Smalley. Franken and Davis wrote the script to the 1986 comedy film One More Saturday Night, appearing in it as rock singers in a band called "Bad Mouth". They also appeared in cameo roles in The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash and in the Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd film Trading Places.

Franken's most notorious SNL performance may have been "A Limo for the Lame-O," a commentary he delivered near the end of the 1979–80 season during a Weekend Update segment. Franken mocked controversial NBC president Fred Silverman as "a total unequivocal failure" and displayed a chart showing the poor ratings of NBC programs. Franken proclaimed that Silverman did not deserve a limousine. As a result of this sketch, Silverman refused Lorne Michaels' request that Franken succeed him as SNL's head producer, prompting Franken to leave the show when Michaels did, at the end of the 1979–80 season.^[14] Franken later returned to the show in 1985, mostly as a writer, but also as an occasional performer best known for the Stuart Smalley character. He acknowledged using cocaine while working for Saturday Night Live but says he no longer uses any illegal drugs.^[15] Franken left the show in 1995 in protest over losing the role of Weekend Update anchor to Norm Macdonald.^[16]

[edit] Post-SNL

Franken is the author of five New York Times best-selling books, three of which reached #1, including Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations.

USO service[link]

Franken entertaining at Ramstein Air Base, December 2000

Franken has served as a volunteer with the United Service Organizations since he first visited Kosovo in 1999. Franken has conducted several overseas tours to both Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to participating in numerous celebrity handshake tours at military hospitals to visit wounded soldiers. He has done seven USO tours, four of which were to Iraq.^[17] His readiness to perform on USO tours was noted favorably by fellow USO performer Wayne Newton.^[18] On March 25, 2009, Franken was presented with the USO's Merit Award for his 10 years of service to the organization through visiting injured and deployed servicemembers.^[19]

Fox News lawsuit[link]

In 2003, Penguin Books published Franken's book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, which included a cover photo of Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly and a chapter accusing O'Reilly of lying. In August of that year, Fox News sued, claiming infringement of its registered trademark phrase "Fair and Balanced".^[20] A federal judge found the lawsuit to be "wholly without merit". The incident with Fox focused media attention on Franken's book and, according to Franken, greatly increased its sales (see Streisand effect).^[21][22]

Radio show[link]

Franken signed a one-year contract in early 2004 to host a talk show for Air America Radio's flagship program with co-host Katherine Lanpher, who remained with the show until October 2005. The network was launched March 31, 2004. Originally named The O'Franken Factor but renamed The Al Franken Show on July 12, 2004, the show aired three hours a day, five days a week for three years. The stated goal of the show was to provide the public airwaves with more progressive views to counter what Franken perceived to be the dominance of conservative syndicated commentary on the radio. "I'm doing this because I want to use my energies to get Bush unelected," he told a New York Times reporter in 2004.^[23]

Franken is a Grateful Dead fan, and he used their songs as bumper music on his radio show.^{[citation needed]} Franken's last radio show on Air America Radio was on February 14, 2007, at the end of which Franken announced his candidacy for the United States Senate.

Other projects[link]

Franken wrote the original screenplay and starred in the film Stuart Saves His Family,^[24] which was panned by critics (receiving a rating of 29% on the website Rottentomatoes.com). He also co-wrote the film When a Man Loves a Woman. He co-created and starred in the NBC sitcom LateLine until it was canceled in Season 2. He appeared in the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate.

In 2003, Franken served as a Fellow with Harvard's Kennedy School of Government at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

Since 2005, Franken has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post. His most recent book, The Truth (With Jokes), was released in 2005.

Franken has long been associated with the International Order of Odd Fellows (Manchester Unity),^[25] but in September 2009, his spokesperson said he is not a member.^[26]

Political activism prior to 2008[link]

Franken giving a political speech

According to an article by Richard Corliss published in Time, "In a way, Franken has been running for office since the late '70s." Corliss also hinted at Franken's "possibly ironic role as a relentless self-promoter" in proclaiming the 1980s "the Al Franken Decade" and saying, "Vote for me, Al Franken. You'll be glad you did!"^[27] In 1999, Franken released a parody book, Why Not Me?, detailing his campaign for the Presidency in 2000. He had been a strong supporter of Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone and was deeply affected by the senator's death in a plane crash shortly before the 2002 Senate election. After the funeral, Rush Limbaugh and several other commentators identified by Franken as "rightwing bloggers" and "Republicans"^[28] accused the organizers and participants of Wellstone's remembrance ceremony of using the tragedy for political purposes. Conservative columnists Peggy Noonan and Chris Caldwell asserted that 20,000 people booed Trent Lott. Franken, who attended, denied there was widespread jeering: "Along with everyone else, I cried, I laughed, I cheered. It was, to my mind, a beautiful four-hour memorial. I didn't boo. Neither did 22,800 of the some 23,000 people there."^[28] In Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Franken wrote that Noonan and Caldwell had later told him that they had not personally been at the memorial service.^[29] Franken felt that "the right wing line on the Wellstone Memorial" was accepted by some "mainstream" journalists such as Howard Kurtz.^[28]

Franken said he learned that 21% of Americans received most of their news from talk radio, then an almost exclusively conservative medium.^[27] Said Franken, "I didn't want to sit on the sidelines, and I believed Air America could make a difference."^[27] In November 2003, Franken talked about moving to his home state of Minnesota to run for the Senate. The seat once held by Wellstone, then occupied by Republican Norm Coleman, was to be contested in the 2008 election. In 2005, Franken announced his move to Minnesota: "I can tell you honestly, I don't know if I'm going to run, but I'm doing the stuff I need to do in order to do it."^[30] He said that he would run as a Democrat.

In late 2005, Franken started his own political action committee, called Midwest Values PAC. By early 2007, the PAC had raised more than $1 million.^[31][32]

Franken was the subject of the 2006 documentary film Al Franken: God Spoke, which premiered in April 2006 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. It was released nationally on September 13 of that year.^[33]

Tax issues[link]

During the 2008 election, New York state officials asserted that Al Franken Inc. had failed to carry required workers' compensation insurance for employees who assisted him with his comedy and public speaking from 2002 to 2005. Franken paid the $25,000 fine to the state of New York upon being advised his corporation was out of compliance with the state's workers' compensation laws.^[34][35] At the same time, the California Franchise Tax Board reported that the same corporation owed more than $4,743.40 in taxes, fines, and associated penalties in the state of California for 2003 through 2007 because the corporation did not file tax returns in the state for those years.^[36] A Franken representative said that it followed the advice of an accountant who believed when the corporation stopped doing business in California that no further filing was required.^[34][37] Subsequently, Franken paid $70,000 in back income taxes in 17 states dating to 2003 mostly from Franken's speeches and other paid appearances. Franken said he paid the income tax in his state of residence, and he will seek retroactive credit for paying the taxes in the wrong states.^[38]

Views[link]

Franken had initially supported the Iraq War but opposed the 2007 troop surge. In an interview with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough,^[39] Franken said that he "believed Colin Powell", whose presentation at the United Nations convinced him that the war was necessary. However, since then he had come to believe that "we were misled into the war" and urged the Democratically-controlled Congress to refuse to pass appropriations bills to fund the war if they don't include timetables for leaving Iraq. In an interview with Josh Marshall, Franken said of the Democrats, "I think we've gotta make [President George W. Bush] say, 'OK, I'm cutting off funding because I won't agree to a timetable.'"^[40]

Franken favors transitioning to a universal health care system, with the provision that every child in America should receive health care coverage, immediately. He has spoken in favor of protecting private pensions and Social Security.^[41] He has also advocated cutting subsidies for oil companies, increasing money available for college students, and cutting interest rates on student loans.^[42][43]

U.S. Senate[link]

Sen. Franken meeting with Vice President Biden

2008 election[link]

Franken in 2008

On January 29, 2007, Al Franken announced his departure from Air America Radio.^[44] On the day of his final show, February 14, Franken formally announced that he would run for the United States Senate from Minnesota in 2008.^[45][46] Challenging him for the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party endorsement was Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, a professor, author, and activist. Other candidates were trial lawyer Mike Ciresi, and Jim Cohen, an attorney and human rights activist who had dropped out of the race earlier.^[47][48]

On April 13, 2007, Franken's campaign filed a campaign finance report. He raised $1.35 million in the first quarter of 2007. The incumbent Senator, Norm Coleman, raised $1.53 million.^[49] On July 8, 2007, the Franken campaign stated that it expected to announce that Franken had raised more money than Coleman during the second quarter of the year, taking in $1.9 million to Coleman's $1.6 million,^[50][51] although as of early July 2007, Coleman's $3.8 million cash on hand exceeded Franken's $2 million.^[51]

In late May 2008, the Minnesota Republican Party released a letter regarding an article Franken had written for Playboy in 2000 entitled "Porn-O-Rama!" The letter, signed by six prominent GOP women, including a state senator and state representative, called on Franken to apologize for what they referred to as a "demeaning and degrading" article.^[52] Several DFL leaders expressed personal and political discomfort with the article as well.^[53] A Franken campaign spokesman responded that, "Al had a long career as a satirist. But he understands the difference between what you say as a satirist and what you do as a senator. And as a senator, Norm Coleman has disrespected the people of Minnesota by putting the Exxons and Halliburtons ahead of working families. And there’s nothing funny about that."^[52]

Franken campaigning for U.S. Senate

On June 7, 2008, Franken was endorsed at the DFL convention. In a July 2008 interview with CNN, Franken was endorsed by Ben Stein, the noted entertainer, speechwriter, lawyer and author who is known for his conservative views and generally supports Republican candidates.^[54] Stein said of Franken, "He is my pal, and he is a really, really capable smart guy. I don't agree with all of his positions, but he is a very impressive guy, and I think he should be in the Senate."

On September 9, 2008, Franken won the Democratic primary for the Senate seat.^[55]

During his campaign for the Senate, Franken was criticized for advising SNL creator Lorne Michaels on a political sketch ridiculing Senator John McCain's ads attacking Barack Obama.^[56] Coleman's campaign reacted, saying, "Once again, he proves he's more interested in entertainment than service, and ridiculing those with whom he disagrees."^[57]

Preliminary reports on election night November 4 had Coleman ahead by over 700 votes; but the official results certified on by November 18, 2008, had Coleman leading by only 215 votes. As the two candidates were separated by less than 0.5 percent, the Secretary of State of Minnesota, Mark Ritchie, authorized the automatic recount stipulated in Minnesota election law. In the recount, ballots and certifying materials were examined by hand, and candidates could file challenges to the legality of ballots or materials for inclusion or exclusion with regard to the recount. On January 5, 2009, the Minnesota State Canvassing Board certified the recounted vote totals, with Franken ahead by 225 votes.^[58]

On January 6, 2009, Coleman's campaign filed an election contest, which led to a trial before a three-judge panel.^[59] The trial ended on April 7, when the panel ruled that 351 of 387 disputed absentee ballots were incorrectly rejected and ordered them counted. Counting those ballots raised Franken's lead to 312 votes. Coleman appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court on April 20.^[2][60][61] On April 24, the Minnesota Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.^[62] and oral arguments were conducted on June 1.^[63]

On June 30, 2009, the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously rejected Coleman's appeal and said that Franken was entitled to be certified as the winner. Shortly after the court's decision, Coleman conceded.^[64] Governor Tim Pawlenty signed Franken’s election certificate that same evening.^[65] Franken was sworn in to the Senate on July 7, 2009, using the Bible of late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone.^[66]

Tenure[link]

Franken in 2009

Franken was sworn in to the Senate on July 7, 2009, 246 days after the November 2008 election.^[4][67] He became the fifth senator to be sworn in since the class of 2008 was sworn in January 2009.^[4][5] The desk where he sat was the same desk that Paul Wellstone used, and had been kept open for him by Senate leaders.^[68]

On August 6, 2009, Franken presided over the confirmation vote of Sonia Sotomayor to be an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.^[69][70] A year later on August 5, 2010, Franken presided over the confirmation vote of Elena Kagan. His first piece of legislation was the Service Dogs for Veterans Act (S. 1495), which he wrote jointly with Sen. Johnny Isakson (R). The bill, which passed the Senate via unanimous consent, established a program with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs to pair disabled veterans with service dogs.^[71]

A video began circulating on the Internet of Franken at the Minnesota State Fair on September 2, 2009, engaging in a discussion with a group of Tea Party protesters on health care reform, and soon found itself going viral.^[72][73][74] The discussion was noted for its civility, in contrast to the explosive character of several other similar discussions between members of the 111th Congress and their constituents that had occurred over the summer.^[72][75][76]

Citing the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, Franken offered an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR "if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court." It passed the U.S. Senate, 68 to 30, in a roll-call vote.^[77]

In May 2010 Franken proposed a financial reform legislation amendment which would create a board to select which credit rating agency would evaluate a given security; currently any companies issuing a security may select which company evaluates the security.^[78] The amendment was passed; however, the financial industry lobbied to have Franken's amendment removed from the final bill.^[79] Negotiations between the Senate and House of Representatives, whose version of financial reform did not include such a provision,^[80] resulted in the amendment's being watered down to require only a series of studies being done upon the issue for two years.^[81] After the studies, if the SEC has not implemented another solution to the conflict of interest problem, Franken's solution will go into effect.^[82][83]

A March 2010 poll taken by conservative Rasmussen Reports placed Franken's approval rating at 50% with Minnesotans, with 46% disapproving.^[84]

In August 2010, Franken made faces and hand gestures and rolled his eyes while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered a speech in opposition to the confirmation of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court.^{[85] [86][87]} Franken's actions prompted McConnell to remark, "This isn't 'Saturday Night Live', Al."^[87] Following Kagan's confirmation, Franken delivered a handwritten apology to McConnell and issued a public statement saying that McConnell had a right "to give his speech with the presiding officer just listening respectfully."^[85]

Committee assignments[link]

• Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
  • Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety
  • Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging
• Committee on the Judiciary
  • Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights
  • Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law
  • Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law (Chair)
  • Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts
• Committee on Indian Affairs
• Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
• Special Committee on Aging

Bibliography[link]

Books[link]

• I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!: Daily Affirmations with Stuart Smalley (Dell Books, 1992) ISBN 0-440-50470-8
• Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations (Delacorte Press, 1996) ISBN 0-385-31474-4
• Why Not Me? (Delacorte Press, 1999) a parody-journal of the fictional “Franken campaign” for President ISBN 0-385-31809-X
• Oh, the Things I Know! A Guide to Success, or Failing That, Happiness (Plume Books, 2003) ISBN 0-452-28450-3
• Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right (Dutton Books, 2003) ISBN 0-525-94764-7
• The Truth (With Jokes) (Dutton Books, 2005) ISBN 0-525-94906-2

CDs and compilations[link]

• The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Truth About Corporate Cons, Globalization, and High-Finance Fraudsters with Greg Palast (2004)
• The O'Franken Factor Factor — The Best of the O'Franken Factor
• The Al Franken Show Party Album

Filmography[link]

As performer[link]

• Saturday Night Live (1975–1995) (TV)
• Franken and Davis at Stockton State (1984) (TV)
• Tunnel Vision (1976)
• The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (1978) (TV)
• Grateful Dead: Dead Ahead (1980)
• Trading Places (1983)
• One More Saturday Night (1986)
• Stuart Saves His Family (1995)
• The Larry Sanders Show (episode "The Roast") (1997)
• LateLine (1998) (TV)
• From the Earth to the Moon (1998) (TV)
• Harvard Man (2001)
• Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (2004)
• The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
• Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable (2004) HBO documentary (TV)
• The Al Franken Show (2004) (TV)
• Tanner on Tanner (2004) (TV)
• Al Franken: God Spoke (2006)

As writer[link]

• Saturday Night Live (1975–1995) (TV)
• The Paul Simon Special (1977) (TV)
• Steve Martin's Best Show Ever (1981) (TV)
• Bob and Ray, Jane, Laraine and Gilda (1981) (TV)
• The Coneheads (with Tom Davis) (1981) (TV)
• Franken and Davis at Stockton State (1984) (TV)
• The New Show (1984) (TV)
• One More Saturday Night (with Tom Davis) (1986)
• When a Man Loves a Woman (with Ron Bass) (1994)
• Stuart Saves His Family (1995)
• Lateline (1998) (Creator) (TV)
• The Al Franken Show (2004) (TV)

As self[link]

• Hot Coffee (2011) documentary

Electoral history[link]

Wikinews has related news: Minnesota court declares Franken winner; Coleman considers appeal

See also[link]

• Saturday Night Live cast

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Al Franken

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Al Franken

• Senator Al Franken official U.S. Senate site
• Al Franken for Congress official campaign site
• Biography at WhoRunsGov.com at The Washington Post
• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Voting record maintained by The Washington Post
• Biography, voting record, and interest group ratings at Project Vote Smart
• Congressional profile at GovTrack
• Congressional profile at OpenCongress
• Issue positions and quotes at On the Issues
• Financial information at OpenSecrets.org
• Staff salaries, trips and personal finance at LegiStorm.com
• Campaign finance reports and data at the Federal Election Commission
• Appearances on C-SPAN programs
• Collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Al Franken on National Public Radio in 2002
• Al Franken on National Public Radio in 2003
• Al Franken on National Public Radio in 2004
• Al Franken profile in Moment Magazine in 2005
• Al Franken at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Al Franken in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

v t e Al Franken Bibliography I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me! · Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations · Why Not Me? · Oh, the Things I Know! · Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them · The Truth (With Jokes) Political career Midwest Values PAC · United States Senate election in Minnesota, 2008 · Employee Free Choice Act See also The Al Franken Show · Saturday Night Live · Stuart Smalley · Stuart Saves His Family