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Karen Kwiatkowski
Karen U. Kwiatkowski, née Unger, (born September 24, 1960) is an American activist and commentator. She is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties as a Pentagon desk officer and a variety of roles for the National Security Agency.
Since retiring, she has become a noted critic of the U.S. government's involvement in Iraq. Kwiatkowski is primarily known for her insider essays which denounce a corrupting political influence on the course of military intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Her initial op-ed, published in the Akron Beacon, was "In 2012, she challenged incumbent Bob Goodlatte, in the Republican primary for Virginia's 6th congressional district seat in the United States House of Representatives and garnered 34% of the Republican vote on a constitutional and limited government platform. She is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and received the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence Integrity Award in 2018.
While serving on the Air Staff, and in OSD, she wrote two books about U.S. policy towards Africa: African Crisis Response Initiative: Past Present and Future (US Army Peacekeeping Institute, 2000) and Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions (Air University Press, 2001). She contributed to Ron Paul: A Life of Ideas, (Variant Press, 2008) and Why Liberty: Personal Journeys Toward Peace and Freedom, (Cobden Press, 2010). She has been featured in a number of documentaries, including "Why We Fight" in 2005. She has written for LewRockwell.com since 2003.
Kwiatkowski grew up in western North Carolina. She holds advanced degrees from Harvard University and the University of Alaska, and a Ph.D. in world politics from The Catholic University of America. Her thesis was on The overt/covert war in Angola: a case study of the implementation of the Reagan doctrine.
Kwiatkowski began her military career in 1982 as a Second Lieutenant. She served at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, providing logistical support to missions along the Chinese and Russian coasts. She also served in Spain and Italy. Kwiatkowski was then assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA), eventually becoming a speechwriter for the agency's director. After leaving the NSA in 1998 she became an analyst on sub-Saharan Africa policy for the Pentagon. Kwiatkowski was in her office in the Pentagon when it was attacked on September 11, 2001. From May 2002 to February 2003 she served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia directorate (NESA) as the North Africa Desk officer.. While at NESA, she wrote a series of anonymous articles, Insider Notes from the Pentagon which appeared on the website of David Hackworth. Kwiatkowski left NESA in February 2003 and retired from the Air Force the following month.
In April 2003 Kwiatkowski began writing a series of articles for the libertarian website LewRockwell.com. All her essays can be found here https://www.lewrockwell.com/author/karen-kwiatkowski/ In February 2004 for several years she wrote a biweekly column ("Without Reservations") for the website MilitaryWeek.com.
She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network, a nonprofit group of former military, intelligence and civilian national security officials who described themselves as offering "alternative analyses untainted by Pentagon or defense industry ties" and countering "Washington’s establishment narrative on most national security issues of the day."
She has been critical of neoconservatism and has advocated for a non-interventionist foreign policy. Her writings on the subject of a corrupting influence of the Pentagon on intelligence analysis leading up to the Iraq War appeared in a series of articles in The American Conservative magazine in December 2003 and in a March 2004 article on Salon.com. The former is a three piece series which constitute the core of the story. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/in-rumsfelds-shop/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/conscientious-objector/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/open-door-policy/In the latter piece ("The New Pentagon Papers") she wrote:
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Karen Kwiatkowski
Karen U. Kwiatkowski, née Unger, (born September 24, 1960) is an American activist and commentator. She is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties as a Pentagon desk officer and a variety of roles for the National Security Agency.
Since retiring, she has become a noted critic of the U.S. government's involvement in Iraq. Kwiatkowski is primarily known for her insider essays which denounce a corrupting political influence on the course of military intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Her initial op-ed, published in the Akron Beacon, was "In 2012, she challenged incumbent Bob Goodlatte, in the Republican primary for Virginia's 6th congressional district seat in the United States House of Representatives and garnered 34% of the Republican vote on a constitutional and limited government platform. She is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and received the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence Integrity Award in 2018.
While serving on the Air Staff, and in OSD, she wrote two books about U.S. policy towards Africa: African Crisis Response Initiative: Past Present and Future (US Army Peacekeeping Institute, 2000) and Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions (Air University Press, 2001). She contributed to Ron Paul: A Life of Ideas, (Variant Press, 2008) and Why Liberty: Personal Journeys Toward Peace and Freedom, (Cobden Press, 2010). She has been featured in a number of documentaries, including "Why We Fight" in 2005. She has written for LewRockwell.com since 2003.
Kwiatkowski grew up in western North Carolina. She holds advanced degrees from Harvard University and the University of Alaska, and a Ph.D. in world politics from The Catholic University of America. Her thesis was on The overt/covert war in Angola: a case study of the implementation of the Reagan doctrine.
Kwiatkowski began her military career in 1982 as a Second Lieutenant. She served at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, providing logistical support to missions along the Chinese and Russian coasts. She also served in Spain and Italy. Kwiatkowski was then assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA), eventually becoming a speechwriter for the agency's director. After leaving the NSA in 1998 she became an analyst on sub-Saharan Africa policy for the Pentagon. Kwiatkowski was in her office in the Pentagon when it was attacked on September 11, 2001. From May 2002 to February 2003 she served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia directorate (NESA) as the North Africa Desk officer.. While at NESA, she wrote a series of anonymous articles, Insider Notes from the Pentagon which appeared on the website of David Hackworth. Kwiatkowski left NESA in February 2003 and retired from the Air Force the following month.
In April 2003 Kwiatkowski began writing a series of articles for the libertarian website LewRockwell.com. All her essays can be found here https://www.lewrockwell.com/author/karen-kwiatkowski/ In February 2004 for several years she wrote a biweekly column ("Without Reservations") for the website MilitaryWeek.com.
She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network, a nonprofit group of former military, intelligence and civilian national security officials who described themselves as offering "alternative analyses untainted by Pentagon or defense industry ties" and countering "Washington’s establishment narrative on most national security issues of the day."
She has been critical of neoconservatism and has advocated for a non-interventionist foreign policy. Her writings on the subject of a corrupting influence of the Pentagon on intelligence analysis leading up to the Iraq War appeared in a series of articles in The American Conservative magazine in December 2003 and in a March 2004 article on Salon.com. The former is a three piece series which constitute the core of the story. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/in-rumsfelds-shop/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/conscientious-objector/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/open-door-policy/In the latter piece ("The New Pentagon Papers") she wrote:
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