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Former Secretary of State Colin Powell was sworn in as the 65th Secretary of State in 2001 after unanimous confirmation by the U.S. Senate. He served... in the military for 35 years, and rose to the rank of 4-star General. His last assignment, from October 1989 to September 1993, was as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military position in the Department of Defense. During this time, he oversaw 28 crises, including Operation Desert Storm in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.General Powell earned a Bachelor’s degree in geology from the City College of New York and an MBA degree from George Washington University. He also holds honorary degrees from universities and colleges across the country.The recipient of numerous U.S. and foreign military awards, General Powell has also been recognized with several civilian awards, including two Presidential Medals of Freedom, the President’s Citizens Medal, the Congressional Gold Medal, the Secretary of State Distinguished Service Medal, and the Secretary of Energy Distinguished Service Medal.General Powell was the founding Chairman of America’s Promise, The Alliance for Youth, a national crusade to improve the lives of our nation’s youth. He has also been a member of the Board of Trustees of Howard University and the Board of Directors of the United Negro College Fund. The General also served on the Board of Governors of The Boys & Girls Clubs of America and was a member of the Advisory Board of the Children's Health Fund.General Powell is the author of his best-selling autobiography, My American Journey.
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Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski 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 ; the signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty ; 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; the financing of the mujahideen in Afghanistan in response to the Soviet deployment of forces there 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.
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William Kristol is an American neoconservative political analyst and commentator. He is the founder and editor of the political magazine The Weekly... Standard and a regular commentator on the Fox News Channel. Kristol is associated with a number of prominent conservative think tanks. He was chairman of the New Citizenship Project from 1997 to 2005. In 1997, he co-founded the Project for the New American Century with Robert Kagan. He is a member of the board of trustees for the free-market Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a member of the Policy Advisory Board for the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and a director of the Foreign Policy Initiative. He is also one of the three board members of Keep America Safe, a think tank co-founded by Liz Cheney and Debra Burlingame, and serves on the board of the Emergency Committee for Israel and the Susan B. Anthony List. Kristol was born on December 23, 1952 in New York City into a Jewish family. His father, the late Irving Kristol, served as the managing editor of Commentary magazine and has been described as the "godfather of neoconservatism".
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Larry King is an American television and radio host whose work has been recognized with awards including two Peabodys and ten Cable ACE Awards. He... began as a local Florida journalist and radio interviewer in the 1950s and 1960s and became prominent as an all-night national radio broadcaster starting in 1978. From 1985-2010, he hosted the nightly interview TV program Larry King Live on CNN. King was born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger in Brooklyn, New York City, to an Austrian immigrant Edward Zeiger, a restaurant owner and defense plant worker, and his wife Jennie Gitlitz, a garment worker, who emigrated from Belarus. King grew up in a religiously observant Jewish home, but in adulthood became an agnostic. King's father died at 44 of heart disease, and his mother had to go on welfare to support her two sons. His father's death greatly affected King, and he lost interest in school. After graduating from high school, he worked to help support his mother. From an early age, however, he had wanted to go into radio. King is a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
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William Sebastian Cohen is an author and American politician from the U.S. state of Maine. A Republican, Cohen served as both a member of the United... States House of Representatives and Senate, and as Secretary of Defense under Democratic President Bill Clinton. Cohen was born in Bangor, Maine. His mother, Clara , was of Protestant Irish ancestry, and his father, Reuben Cohen, was a Russian Jewish immigrant; the two owned the Bangor Rye Bread Co. After graduating from Bangor High School in 1958, Cohen attended Bowdoin College, graduating cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Latin in 1962. While in high school and college, Cohen was a basketball player and was named to the Maine all-state high school and college basketball team, and at Bowdoin was inducted into the New England All-Star Hall of Fame. Cohen attended law school at the Boston University School of Law, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws degree cum laude in 1965. After graduating from law school, Cohen earned partnership in a Bangor law firm. He became an assistant county attorney for Penobscot County .
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Alberto R. Gonzales was the 80th, and the first Hispanic United States Attorney General, appointed in February of 2005 by President George W. Bush,... becoming the highest highest-ranking Hispanic in government to date. Prior to his elevation, he was the first Hispanic White House General Counsel, and earlier he had been Bush's General Counsel during his governorship of Texas. In Texas Gonzales had also served as Secretary of State of Texas and then as a Texas Supreme Court Justice. Gonzales's tenure as US Attorney General was marked by several conflicts with Congress. Following bipartisan calls for his removal, Gonzales resigned from the office without explanation. Democrats were particularly opposed to Gonzales for his role in the firing of several US District Attorneys which they believe had politicized his office. Alberto Gonzales was born to a Catholic family in San Antonio, Texas, and raised in Humble, a town outside of Houston. Of Mexican descent, he was the second of eight children born to Pablo and Maria Gonzales. His father, who died in 1982, was a migrant worker and then a construction worker with a second grade education.
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