Douglas J. Feith

ABOUT DOUGLAS J. FEITH

Douglas J. Feith is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for National Security Strategies at the Hudson Institute. He is also a Belfer Center Visiting Scholar at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Mr. Feith is the author of War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism, published in April 2008 by HarperCollins.

As Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from July 2001 until August 2005, he helped devise the U.S. government's strategy for the war on terrorism and contributed to policy making for the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns.

Mr. Feith's duties included managing the Defense Department's international relations and representing the Department in interagency policy making.

Mr. Feith helped plan the worldwide changes in the U.S. defense posture, develop new U.S. strategic partnerships with India and Pakistan, promote NATO enlargement and reform and craft U.S. policy toward China. Mr. Feith advised President Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld on the range of national security issues, including the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, the counter-insurgency in Colombia and Palestinian-Israeli peace diplomacy.

Farewell Ceremony for
Douglas J. Feith, August 8, 2005.
Remarks as Delivered by:

Secretary of Defense
Donald H. Rumsfeld

Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General
Peter Pace

Under Secretary of Defense
Douglas J. Feith

Before President Bush appointed him in July 2001, Mr. Feith was for fifteen years the managing attorney of the Washington, D.C. law firm Feith & Zell, P.C.

In the Reagan Administration, Mr. Feith worked at the White House as a Middle East specialist for the National Security Council and then served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy.

After each of his Pentagon tours, Mr. Feith received the Distinguished Public Service Medal, the Defense Department's highest civilian award.

Mr. Feith's writings on foreign and defense affairs have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Commentary, The New Republic and elsewhere. He has contributed chapters to a number of books, including James W. Muller, ed., Churchill as Peacemaker; Douglas J. Feith, et al., Israel's Legitimacy in Law and History; and Uri Ra'anan, et al., eds., Hydra of Carnage: International Linkages of Terrorism.

Mr. Feith holds a J.D. (magna cum laude) from the Georgetown University Law Center and an A.B. (magna cum laude) from Harvard College.