Showing 1 - 6 of 6 Items
Date: 2010-04-22
Creator: Kelly T Currie
Access: Open access
Biographial Note
Kelly T. Currie was born on September 11, 1963, in Lewistown, Montana, to Edmund and Bette Currie, and grew up in Farmington, Maine. His father was a professor at the University of Maine, Farmington and his mother was a nurse. He attended the University of Virginia and was graduated in 1986, serving a summer internship with Senator Mitchell’s office between his junior and senior year. In the fall of 1986, he worked on Jim Tierney’s Maine gubernatorial campaign. He joined Senator Mitchell’s Senate staff full-time in January of 1987 as a legislative correspondent dealing with finance, defense, and veterans’ affairs issues. He later transitioned to the position of deputy press secretary, focusing on the Maine press and Maine issues. At the time of this interview he was deputy chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the eastern district of New York.
Summary
Interview includes discussion of: childhood and educational background; summer intern in Senator Mitchell’s office; legislative correspondent and issues; deputy press secretary; driving for Mitchell and talking sports; Senate majority leader race; 1992 presidential campaign; extensive description of the Northern Ireland peace process; Iran-Contra; Sharm-el Sheikh; 1988 Senate reelection campaign; the Maine press; and Mitchell’s sense of humor.
Date: 2011-06-06
Creator: George J Mitchell
Access: Open access
Biographial Note
George J. Mitchell was born on August 20, 1933, in Waterville, Maine, to Mary Saad, a factory worker, and George Mitchell, a laborer. Senator Mitchell spent his youth in Waterville. After receiving his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College in 1954, he served as an officer in the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps until 1956. In 1960 he earned a law degree from Georgetown University. Mitchell worked for Senator Edmund S. Muskie as executive assistant and as deputy campaign manager during Muskie's 1972 presidential campaign. He later became U.S. senator (D-Maine) 1980-1995, Senate majority leader 1989-1995, and, upon his retirement from the Senate, special advisor on Northern Ireland 1995-1998. Since 1998, Senator Mitchell has served on many boards and committees and has received high profile appointments including: chairman of the Sharm el-Sheikh International Fact-Finding Committee on the crisis between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (2000); overseer of the Red Cross Liberty Fund (2001); lead investigator into the illegal use of performance enhancing substances in Major League Baseball (2006); and special envoy for Palestinian-Israeli affairs (2009-2011).
Summary
Interview includes discussion of: involvement as a board member and chairman of the board at the Walt Disney Co.; personalities on the board; power, and on advising the powerful; meeting with Maine constituents as a U.S. senator and airing differences of opinion; involvement in the Red Cross 9/11 commission and Mitchell’s role as overseer of the Liberty Fund; being in New York on 9/11, witnessing the collapse of one of the World Trade Center towers, and encountering restrictions on travel into Manhattan; challenges in establishing fair criteria for distributing funds to 9/11 victims and their families when claimants had such disparate circumstances; the formation of and circumstances surrounding the Sharm el-Sheikh International Fact-Finding Committee; working relationships among committee members; travel to Berlin, Germany, years after having served there in Army Intelligence; responsibilities that attach to intelligence work, and similar responsibilities that come with being a judge; the Berlin Wall, its collapse, and the failure of Communism; how walls play a role in warring communities (Berlin, Belfast, Palestine); differences and commonalities among peoples around the world; and America’s success as a meritocracy.
Date: 2009-12-10
Creator: Brendan G Melley
Access: Open access
Biographial Note
Brendan G. Melley was born on July 3, 1963, in Hartford, Connecticut, to Joseph Melley, Jr. and Rita Murphy Melley. He attended Providence College in Rhode Island and was commissioned to the Infantry in the Army upon graduation, where he served seven years active duty. In 1993, he began working for Booz Allen Hamilton in Washington, DC. He worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington and then the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. In 2000, he worked with Mitchell on the Sharm el-Sheikh International Fact-Finding Committee to support peace and stability in the Middle East. At the time of this interview, Melley worked with former Maine Senator Bill Cohen as vice president of the Cohen Group.
Summary
Interview includes discussion of: Melley’s work in Intelligence in the Army; the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; working with Mitchell on the Sharm el-Sheikh International Fact-Finding Committee; Mitchell’s leadership; Senator Warren Rudman; interacting with the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations; Melley’s travel to the Middle East; how Melley’s time on the Sharm el-Sheikh committee was spent; and Mitchell’s reaction to the final report.
Date: 2008-05-14
Creator: Laurence 'Larry' E Pope
Access: Open access
Biographial Note
Laurence E. “Larry” Pope was born on September 24, 1945, in New Haven, Connecticut, and grew up in Braintree, Massachusetts. He attended Bowdoin College; upon graduating in 1967, he entered the Peace Corps and then the foreign service in 1969. He spent thirty-one years as a diplomat, serving as ambassador to Chad and as a political advisor to General Tony Zinni. He was the original staff director for the Sharm el-Sheikh International Fact-Finding Committee chaired by Senator George J. Mitchell.
Summary
Interview includes discussion of: Braintree, Massachusetts, during the 1950s; interest in the Foreign Service; Bowdoin College; events surrounding the Iraq Liberation Act and Pope’s nomination to become ambassador to Kuwait; the Sharm el-Sheikh International Fact-Finding Committee; the fact-finding process with Israelis and Palestinians; Pope’s resignation from the commission; selecting Fred Hof as deputy staff director and later director; Senator Warren Rudman; and appointment of Khai Eide as Czar of International Reconstruction Efforts in Afghanistan.
Date: 2009-03-24
Creator: Frederic 'Fred' C Hof
Access: Open access
Biographial Note
Frederic C. Hof was born on July 14, 1947, to Alice and Frederic Hof in Brooklyn, New York. Before he was school-age his family moved to Port Washington, New York, on Long Island. In the summer of 1964, after his junior year of high school, he participated in an exchange program and went to Damascus, Syria. He completed high school in Port Washington and then attended the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. At Georgetown he participated in ROTC and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army. He spent 1970 in Vietnam with the 101st Air Mobile Division (now the 101st Airborne), and returned to teach in the Civil Affairs School. He then entered the Foreign Area Officer Program to specialize in the Middle East, and as part of that program he attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, and the Foreign Service Institute in Tunis to learn Arabic. He served as the Army attaché in Beirut, Lebanon, and in 1982 he was wounded while crossing the Green Line and was awarded a Purple Heart. He worked in the office of the secretary of defense in the International Security Affairs office. He retired from the Army and took a position at the State Department. He and Richard Armitage opened Armitage Associates, LLC in 1993. In late 2000, he was asked to join the Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee and served on that committee from January 2001 until it completed its report the following May.
Summary
Interview includes discussion of: Hof’s education; Hof’s exchange program experience in Damascus, Syria; relations between Americans and Syrians; Hof’s military career in Vietnam, teaching in the Civil Affairs School, the Foreign Area Officer Program, and Lebanon; the role of the Defense Language Institute; working in the office of the secretary of defense; getting wounded in Lebanon and receiving the Purple Heart; working on the commission to investigate the bombing of the barracks in Beirut; working for the State Department under Secretary Baker and Richard Armitage; the effects of transitioning from the first Bush administration to the Clinton administration, and to the second Bush administration in 2001; opening Armitage Associates, LLC; being asked by Laurence Pope to join the Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee; Pope’s reasons for leaving the project; the goals of the fact-finding committee; Hof’s role in the fact-finding committee, the relationship among the members and Mitchell’s role; working with the Israeli government and the change in that relationship when Sharon succeeded Barak; the approach that the working group took to meeting with principal people on both sides; setting up the committee’s visit; Hof’s contact with the Office of the Vice President; security in Gaza; the atmosphere of the visit; writing the Mitchell report; Mitchell’s ability to reconcile different views within the report and achieve a consensus within the group; a sense of a lost opportunity when there was little follow-through on the committee’s recommendations; Mitchell’s appointment to be special envoy to the Middle East; the prospects of a two-state solution and America’s role in it; and Mitchell’s political skill and optimism and how that can be brought to bear in international peacemaking.
Date: 2010-06-02
Creator: Warren B Rudman
Access: Open access
Biographial Note
Warren B. Rudman was born on May 18, 1930, and served as a Republican in the U.S. Senate from 1980-1993 representing New Hampshire. He worked with George Mitchell on the Iran-Contra and Sharm el-Sheikh committees, but they had known each other earlier through their respective legal careers. He was appointed by President Clinton to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and served from 1993-2001.
Summary
Interview includes discussion of: legal careers; Iran-Contra; position of Senate majority leader; Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee; Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act to balance the budget; relationships between senators; and changes in the Senate over the years.