Philip Zelikow

Philip David Zelikow (born 21 September 1954) is a U.S. diplomat, academic, and author.

He has worked as the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, and counselor of the United States Department of State.

After practicing law in the early 1980s, Zelikow turned toward the field of national security.

He was adjunct professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California in 1984–1985.

He joined the United States Department of State through the standard examination process for the foreign service as a career civil servant.

As a foreign service officer, he served overseas at the U.S. mission to the conventional arms control talks in Vienna, at the State Department's 24-hour crisis center, and on the secretariat staff for Secretary of State George P. Shultz, during the second Reagan administration (1985–1989).

In 1989, in the George H. W. Bush administration, Zelikow was detailed to the National Security Council, where he was involved as a senior White House staffer in the diplomacy surrounding the German reunification and the diplomatic settlements accompanying the end of the Cold War in Europe.

During the first Gulf War, he aided President Bush, National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, and Secretary of State James Baker in diplomatic affairs related to the coalition.

In 1991, Zelikow left the NSC to go to Harvard University.

From 1991 to 1998, he was Associate Professor of Public Policy and co-director of Harvard's Intelligence and Policy Program, at Harvard Kennedy School.

He co-authored, with Condoleezza Rice, the book Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (1995), an academic study of the politics of reunification.

In 1998, Zelikow moved to the University of Virginia, where until February 2005 he directed the nation's largest center on the American presidency.

He served as director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs and, as White Burkett Miller Professor of History, held an endowed chair.

The Center launched a project to transcribe and annotate the previously secret tapes made during the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon presidencies.

In a presidential oral history project headed by James Sterling Young, it systematically gathers additional information on the presidencies of Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton.

In November 1998, Zelikow co-authored, "Catastrophic Terrorism: Tackling the New Danger" for Foreign Affairs magazine.

He wrote, "Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects, and the use of deadly force. More violence could follow either future terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently."

In late 2000 and early 2001, Zelikow served on President Bush's transition team.

After George W. Bush took office, Zelikow was named to a position on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board [PFIAB], and worked on other task forces and commissions as well.

He directed the bipartisan National Commission on Federal Election Reform, created after the 2000 election and chaired by former presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, along with Lloyd Cutler and Bob Michel.

Zelikow was appointed executive director of the 9/11 Commission (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States), whose work included examination of the conduct of presidents Clinton and George W. Bush and their administrations prior to and on September 11, 2001.

Zelikow's prior involvement with the administration of George W. Bush led to opposition from the 9/11 Family Steering Committee, citing the obvious conflict of interest of having previously worked on the Bush transition team.

The Commission's Republican chair and Democratic vice-chair strongly defended Zelikow, both at the time and later.

In response to the concerns, Zelikow had agreed to recuse himself from any investigation matters pertaining to the National Security Council's transition from the Clinton to Bush administrations, which Zelikow had helped manage.

After being informed of the Department of Defense's Able Danger project by U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer, he failed to have the 9/11 Commission investigate, despite the promise that the Commission would investigate all 9/11 related topics.

In September 2002, a year after 9/11, Zelikow authored, "The National Security Strategy of The United States of America".

Outlining the U.S. pre-emptive war doctrine that 6 months later in contravention of U.N. Resolution 1441 would be used against Iraq in an illegal war lasting nearly nine years.

This Commission's recommendations led directly to congressional consideration and enactment into law of the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

In 2002, Zelikow became the executive director of the Markle Task Force on National Security in the Information Age.

The Task Force comprises a diverse and bipartisan group of experienced policymakers, senior executives from the information technology industry, public interest advocates, and experts in privacy, intelligence, and national security.

The Markle Task Force seeks to inform the policy judgments and investments of the federal, state and local governments in the collection and use of information as it relates to national security.

In January 2003, Zelikow was appointed executive director of "The 9/11 Commission Report", replacing Henry Kissinger.

The Task Force's reports and recommendations have been codified through two laws (IRPTA 2004 and the Implementing 9/11 Commission Report Act 2007) and several presidential directives.

Following an appointment at the Department of State from 2005 to 2007 during the Bush administration, Zelikow returned to academics at the University of Virginia.

He is the White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia and in the fall of 2009 was American Academy in Berlin Axel Springer Fellow.

Zelikow received a BA in history and political science from the University of Redlands, a JD from the University of Houston Law Center (where he was an editor of the law review), and a MALD and PhD in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

In 2011, he was appointed Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

He has been instrumental in restructuring the College of Arts & Sciences.

Also in 2011, Zelikow was appointed by President Barack Obama to the President's Intelligence Advisory Board.

Since 2019 he has been Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.