Marc Thiessen

Name	Marc Thiessen
Image
Caption	Thiessen in 2007
Office	White House Director of Speechwriting
President	George W. Bush
Term Start	December 14, 2007
Term End	January 20, 2009
Predecessor	William McGurn
Successor	Jon Favreau
Birth Name	Marc Alexander Thiessen
Birth Date	1967-1-13
Birth Place	Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
Spouse	Pamela Thiessen
Children	4
Party	Republican
Education	Vassar College (AB) Naval War College

Early life and education

Thiessen was born on January 13, 1967. He grew up on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, where both his parents were doctors and "left-of-center liberal Democrat types". His mother grew up in Poland and fought as a teenager in the Warsaw Uprising, a military struggle in which his grandfather died.

Thiessen is a graduate of the Taft School (1985), a private prep school in Watertown, Connecticut. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Vassar College in 1989 and has done graduate studies at the Naval War College.

Career

Book

In 2010, he published the book Courting Disaster: How the C.I.A. Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, which defended the use of the torture technique waterboarding during the George W. Bush administration, arguing that it was not torture. He also wrote that the Obama administration's rejection of torture might lead to American deaths.

Thiessen's first book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, was published by Regnery Publishing in January 2010. In the book he argued that the CIA's systematic use of enhanced interrogation techniques was effective, lawful, and moral. The book was endorsed by the former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey. It reached the No. 9 spot on the New York Times Best Sellers list for hardcover nonfiction in February 2010.

Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side, heavily criticized Courting Disaster; in a book review in the New Yorker, Mayer wrote that Thiessen's book was "based on a series of slipshod premises" and was "better at conveying fear than at relaying the facts." In the book, Thiessen writes, "In the decade before the C.I.A. began interrogating captured terrorists, Al-Qaeda launched repeated attacks against America. In the eight years since the C.I.A. began interrogating captured terrorists, Al-Qaeda has not succeeded in launching one single attack on the homeland or American interests abroad." Mayer wrote, "This is not exactly a textbook demonstration of causality", and noted that Thiessen's claim was false anyway; Al-Qaeda had launched numerous attacks targeting Americans since the start of the torture program. Mayer ended her review with a criticism of the Obama administration for not convening a commission on the Bush administration's torture, thus allowing Thiessen and other proponents of torture to whitewash history.

The 6,700-page Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture found that the CIA's enhanced interrogation program was not an effective method of gathering intelligence. The report was approved with seven Democrats, one Independent, and one Republican voting in favor, and six Republicans voting against.

A pseudonymous former military interrogator and author of How to Break a Terrorist, writing for Slate, characterized Thiessen's book as "a literary defense of war criminals" and criticized Thiessen for relying solely on the opinions of CIA interrogators.

Personal life

Thiessen lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with his wife Pamela, who is the staff director of the United States Senate Republican Policy Committee. They have four children. He is a Catholic.

References

• Marc A. Thiessen - Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, December 15, 2018
• Heard But Not Seen, Tom, Frank, Taft School, Taft School Bulletin, Summer 2005, July 23, 2011, 22–25
• Brannen, Kate, 2017-10-30, A Timeline of Paul Manafort's Relationship with the Trump World, 2023-01-18, Just Security, en-US
• Marc A. Thiessen, Oval Office Writers, LLC, 2010-01-23, 2019-01-29, dead
• Saletan, William, Weld vs. Helms, Slate, August 8, 1997, June 22, 2018
• President Bush Thanks Bill McGurn, Announces Marc Thiessen as New Assistant to the President for Speechwriting, Press Release, George W. Bush White House, December 14, 2007
• Suite Talk March 25, 2009: Speechwriters Open New Outlet, Ariel, Alexovich, Jacqueline, Klingebiel, Politico, March 25, 2009, October 25, 2019
• Marc A. Thiessen - Enhanced Interrogations Worked, Thiessen, Marc A., The Washington Post, April 21, 2009, September 29, 2017, 0190-8286
• Bush apologist fails up: Washington Post's Marc Thiessen has some thoughts on Iran, March 17, 2015, Salon, en, January 12, 2020
• War With Iran Is Nothing To Worry About, Say Men Who Launched Iraq War, Schulberg, Jessica, January 8, 2020, Huffington Post, en, January 12, 2020
• 2022-11-09, Marc Thiessen, 2022-11-09, Fox News, en-US
• Oppenheimer, Mark, February 26, 2010, Marc Thiessen Gets an Earful for Waterboarding Views, January 12, 2020, The New York Times, en-US, 0362-4331
• Book details: Courting Disaster, Regnery, October 25, 2019
• Marc, Thiessen, Mukasey Calls Courting Disaster 'Absolutely Superb', National Review, January 20, 2010, October 25, 2019
• Hardcover Nonfiction Books - Best Sellers - February 14, 2010, February 14, 2010, The New York Times, October 25, 2019
• Counterfactual: A curious history of the C.I.A., Jane, Mayer, Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, March 29, 2010, October 25, 2019
• New Yorker Whomps Marc Thiessen, Fisher, Max, March 22, 2010, The Atlantic, en-US, January 12, 2020
• Panel Faults C.I.A. Over Brutality and Deceit in Terrorism Interrogations, Mazzetti, Mark, December 9, 2014, The New York Times, January 12, 2020, en-US, 0362-4331
• Courting Fear, Matthew, Alexander, Slate, March 3, 2010, October 25, 2019
• Marc Thiessen Biography, MarcThiessen.com, May 13, 2018
• Thiessen, Marc, 2019-03-05, Marc Thiessen: This Lent, don't give Catholic bishops a dime, 2020-10-02, The Washington Post, en-US

External links

• Op-eds for The Washington Post
• Blog posts at The Washington Posts website