Philip Giraldi

Philip Giraldi is Francis Walsingham Fellow of the American Conservative Defense Alliance, a security consultant with his own firm of San Marco International and a partner of Cannistrano Associates, and an author and commentator. He was a career Central Intelligence Agency officer with assignments including Chief of Base in Barcelona (1989-1992), senior officer for Olympic Games support, and liaison to the Spanish Security and Intelligence services.

He writes the "Smoke and Mirrors" column at AntiWar.com and is a contributing editor on terrorism, intelligence, and security issues for the American Conservative magazine, with a column called “Deep Background”). A keynote speaker at the Petroleum Industry Security Council annual meeting, he spoke twice at the American Conservative Union’s annual Conservative Political Action Convention.

Counterterrorism

Along with W. Patrick Lang, he disapproves of the Obama Administration counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, saying his primary skills are in behind-the-scenes bureaucratic infighting rather than intelligence and counterterrorism.

Middle East

He believes that a document that describes a weapons-specific project in the Iranian nuclear program, a uranium deuteride initiator, is a forgery.

Giraldi has written that J Street, positioned as a "self-proclaimed kindler, gentler alternative" to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), but only differs from AIPAC in "tone, not substance".

Israel is and should be a Jewish state with unlimited right of "return" for Jews from anywhere in the world and no such rights for Christians or Muslims who lived in the country before 1948. A Jewish state, by definition, would have limited rights for the 20% and growing segment of the current Israeli population that is Christian or Muslim. J Street quixotically supports a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, even though it knows that the half million Israeli Jews living in settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank cannot be moved and will make two states impossible.

He supports the presidential campaign of Ron Paul, and argues, citing J Street protest over Paul's call to terminate all foreign aid, "Why should there be a new and powerful lobby in Washington composed of American citizens arguing for a special relationship with any country? Why should the United States be providing unlimited support to a nation that claims to be a democracy but which limits rights based on religion? If J Street truly wants to fix Israel it should be working in Israel, not in the United States, because the settlers and hardline right-wing parties are Israeli problems."

Education

• BA with Honors from the University of Chicago.
• MA and PhD from the University of London in European History
• Languages: Spanish, Italian, German, and Turkish.