When WikiLeaks published State Department cables, Pyatt became embroiled in controversy because of a May 4, 2007, cable he sent recommending that K.V. Rajan, a secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs and a member of the Prime Minister's National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) visit Washington DC in order to help “feed” U.S. government views on Iran into the Indian system.   read more

While at Washington Mutual, Jewell joined the board of outdoor products retailer REI, the nation’s largest consumer cooperative, in 1996. In 2000, the board hired her to be REI’s chief operating officer, and in 2005 she succeeded Dennis Madsen as chief executive officer. Jewell has promoted green policies at REI, which uses energy-efficient building materials, buys renewable energy, and offsets the carbon emissions from store-sponsored travel-adventure packages.   read more

Weintraub has at times been blunt about the ineffectiveness of the FEC, which is supposed to oversee campaign finance laws, but has been torn by partisan politics. “The notion that we are a fierce investigative agency that people are quaking in their boots about is probably not the case,” she said in May 2011. “Back in ’06 and ’07, they said we were ‘feckless’ and ‘toothless,’ I am not sure what the adjective would be today.”   read more

As a federal judge, he has presided over several high-profile cases, including the perjury and obstruction of justice trial of Vice President Dick Cheney aide Scooter Libby, the perjury trial of pitcher Roger Clemens, and a number of habeas corpus petitions filed by prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.   read more

Mason, who worked on President Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign as a member of its national finance committee and raised funds in Georgia, left private practice to serve as a deputy associate attorney general from April 2009 to February 2012, after which she returned to Alston. In addition to her other specialties, she provided “guidance in government investigations.”   read more

Despite Urrutia’s lack of diplomatic experience, Santos has insisted that his childhood friend is a man “who has all the qualities to represent our country at this special moment” in its relations with the U.S. A wealthy man, Urrutia showed his support for Santos’ 2010 presidential run even before the campaign began. In February 2010 Urrutia organized a fundraiser at the elite Bogotá Club San Andrés, to which the price of admission was between 600,000 and 1,200,000 pesos per person ($310-$620).   read more

During the 1984 restoration of democracy, Pita was elected to Uruguay’s national legislature on the minor party list “Movement for the Fatherland,” part of the right of center coalition known as the National Party. When the National Party pushed through a 1986 amnesty law protecting officials who participated in torture and murder under the military regime, however, Pita formed the People’s Current and joined Uruguay’s left of center political coalition.   read more

In November 2010, Johnny sued the cabinet, permanent secretary and attorney general of St. Lucia over a pay dispute going back to her first tenure as ambassador in Washington. She asked the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court for judicial review of St. Lucia’s decision to refuse her request for payment in lieu of vacation leave to which she was entitled under her employment contract, but the court refused.   read more

In a sign of continuity with the pre-revolutionary regime, President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt last fall appointed a new ambassador to the U.S. who is a career diplomat in the Egyptian Foreign Service going back to 1983. Mohamed M. Tawfik, who presented his credentials to President Barack Obama on September 19, 2012, served previously in the U.S. during the 1980s. A member of the Egyptian Writers Union and PEN International, Tawfik has published three novels and three volumes of short stories   read more

Kaambi was the communications adviser to President Azali Assoumani from 2004 to 2006. An educator, Kaambi taught high school philosophy in Moroni and in Mitsamihouli from 1995 to 2003, and was a law professor at the University of Comoros from 2006 to 2011. Kaambi is concurrently accredited as permanent representative to the United Nations in New York and as ambassador to Canada and to Cuba. Comoros has a population of about 800,000.   read more

First elected to the Parti Lepep Central Committee in 2005, and re-elected in January 2012, from 2007 to mid-2012, Potter was Leader of Government Business in Parliament. She caused a stir in September 2010 when she stated that some members of the Parti Lepep did not have sufficient education or technical knowledge to understand the content and meaning of bills placed before them.   read more

Since February 2009, he has been professor of National Governance at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He published a book in 2008, America: Our Next Chapter: Tough Questions, Straight Answers, in which he called the Iraq War one of the five biggest blunders in U.S. history and criticized George W. Bush's foreign policy as “reckless,” and “a ping pong game with American lives.” Hagel is co-chairman of President Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board.   read more

White returned to Debevoise, specializing in white collar criminal defense and essentially defending the same sort of people from the same sorts of charges as she had been prosecuting the previous decade. Her defense work for several highly placed Wall Street insiders accused of fraud and similar wrongdoing related to the Wall Street meltdown of 2008, like Bank of America’s Ken Lewis and Morgan Stanley’s John Mack, has led many to wonder whether she will coddle white collar criminals.   read more

Four years have made quite a difference for John Brennan. In late 2008, the 25-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was forced to withdraw his name from consideration to be Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) because of his public support of the Bush administration’s program of illegally sending kidnapped terrorism suspects to foreign prisons to be tortured. Shortly after his second inauguration, however, Obama again nominated Brennan to be the next DCI.   read more

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Massachusetts) is President Barack Obama’s choice to succeed current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who will stay on until her successor is confirmed. Kerry seems to have been born for the role, but he has nonetheless worked hard to prepare for it.   read more

Wall Street’s sighs of relief were nearly audible when Obama announced his intent to nominate Jacob “Jack” J. Lew, the current Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), to succeed current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Lew, who worked for Citigroup from 2006 through 2008, is arguably more of a Wall Street insider than was Geithner.   read more