Clifford May

Clifford D. May (born 1951) is an American journalist, editor, political activist, and podcast host.

He is the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank created shortly after the 9/11 attacks, where he hosts the podcast Foreign Podicy.

He is the weekly "Foreign Desk" columnist for The Washington Times.

May previously served as commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission that makes policy recommendations concerning international religious freedom, as well as the Chairman of the Policy Committee department within the Committee on the Present Danger.

May was also previously a weekly columnist for Scripps Howard News Service and National Review Online.

May has been widely published, including in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, Commentary, USA Today, and The Atlantic.

He has served as a reporter, a foreign correspondent, and a newspaper/magazine editor, working notably for Newsweek in the 1970s and for The New York Times in the 1980s.

May is also a member of the Henry Jackson Society.

May earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York in 1973.

He then earned master's degrees from both Columbia University's School of Public and International Affairs and its School of Journalism.

In addition, he holds a certificate in Russian language and literature from Leningrad University.

May worked as an associate editor of Newsweek from 1975 to 1978.

He then became a foreign correspondent for Hearst newspapers and worked for CBS Radio News and Bill Moyers' Journal on PBS as well.

For all three outlets, he covered the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

Returning to the U.S., he became senior editor of Geo Magazine.

May then spent about a decade with The New York Times serving as an editor of the Sunday magazine, a New York City and Washington reporter and as a foreign correspondent.

He opened the Times' West Africa bureau and worked as its chief.

He then moved to Denver, Colorado to be associate editor of the Rocky Mountain News.

He started writing a weekly political and social criticism column that was distributed nationally by Scripps Howard News Service.

He also hosted two weekly television programs and a talk radio show around this time.

May served as the Director of Communications for the Republican National Committee from 1997 to 2001.

In his position, he oversaw activities such as strategic planning, press, radio, television, online services, speech writing, and advertising.

He worked as the editor of Rising Tide, the official Republican Party magazine.

He also was Vice Chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

After leaving the RNC, he became a director in the Washington, D.C. office of BSMG Worldwide, a public affairs and public relations company.

May supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq as well as the Iraq War troop surge of 2007.

In an April 2004 interview with Tavis Smiley, who alleged that George W. Bush had decided to invade Iraq before the 9/11 attacks and manipulated the intelligence links on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, May argued that Bush had been continuing the policy of the Bill Clinton-era Iraq Liberation Act and that Bush had pushed the CIA for accurate information.

In 2006, he was appointed an adviser to the Iraq Study Group.

He strongly dissented from the recommendations that the group came to, and he then worked with various groups to oppose the policies.

In October 2007, The Daily Telegraph named May number 94 in its list of the "100 most influential conservatives in America", identifying him as a neo-conservative within the Republican Party.

In October 2007, The Daily Telegraph named May number 94 in its list of the "100 most influential conservatives in America", and labeled him "an outspoken proponent of the need to achieve victory in Iraq and the broader war against Muslim extremism".

It also described him as a "nimble" Republican Party activist in the American media.

May supports the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, other than waterboarding, against those captured by the United States in what he calls the war on terror, so long as they are used as a "last resort"; he views them as fundamentally different from torture.

He also opposes regarding those captured as either criminal defendants or prisoners of war.

On July 11, 2008, May was nominated by President George W. Bush to be a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors for a term expiring August 13, 2009.

"In this very challenging period of history, it is vital that the United States communicates with audiences abroad clearly and creatively,” May said, “I will be honored and privileged if I can assist with this mission.”

May is an International Patron of the Henry Jackson Society.

In March 2008, he wrote for the National Review Online that "[w]hat one can not say is that regime change in Iraq was unjustified: Not if you know Saddam's record, his clearly stated intentions, and his ties to international terrorists—including, as a new Pentagon report reveals, a group headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, now al Qaeda’s second-in-command."

On April 23, 2009, May appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart discussing the subject of torture, and he and Stewart engaged in a rather heated yet cordial debate on the subject.

Jacob Gershman of New York later highlighted the exchange as one of the clearest discussions about the issue in the news media.