Jamestown Foundation

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About JF

From JF's website:

Mission

The Jamestown Foundation’s mission is to inform and educate policy makers and the broader policy community about events and trends in those societies which are strategically or tactically important to the United States and which frequently restrict access to such information. Utilizing indigenous and primary sources, Jamestown’s material is delivered without political bias, filter or agenda. It is often the only source of information which should be, but is not always, available through official or intelligence channels, especially in regard to Eurasia and terrorism.

Origins

Launched in 1984 after Jamestown's late president and founder William Geimer's work with Arkady Shevchenko, the highest-ranking Soviet official ever to defect when he left his position as undersecretary general of the United Nations, the Jamestown Foundation rapidly became the leading source of information about the inner workings of closed totalitarian societies.
Jamestown's work has contributed directly to the spread of democracy and personal freedom in the former Communist Bloc countries. In the 1980s the foundation assisted such key experts as former high-ranking Soviet diplomat Arkady Shevchenko, and former top Romanian intelligence officer Ion Pacepa, whose revelations about their governments -- which then directly challenged the United States -- were unprecedented and singularly important.
Jamestown ensured that both men published their insights and experience in what became bestselling books. Shevchenko's Breaking With Moscow revealed the details of Soviet arms control strategy and tactics, and diplomatic moves, at the height of the Cold War. And even today some credit Pacepa's revelations about Ceacescu in his bestselling book Red Horizons with the fall of that government and the freeing of Romania.
Over the past two decades, Jamestown has developed an extensive global network of such experts -- from the Black Sea to Siberia, from the Persian Gulf to the Pacific. This core of intellectual talent includes former high-ranking government officials and military officers, political scientists, journalists, scholars and economists. Their insight contributes significantly to policymakers engaged in addressing today's new and emerging global threats, including that from international terrorists.

Related Organizations

Publications

Board and Staff

(data updated December 19, 2007)

Board Members (2007)

Fellows (2007)

Staff (2007)

Global Terrorism Analysis

Global Terrorism Analysis is a subset of The Jamestown Foundation which publishes three journals:

  • Terrorism Monitor - a bi-weekly journal on al-Qaeda and the War on Terror
  • Spotlight on Terror - a unscheduled publication of interviews, special features or breaing news
  • Terrorism Focus - bi-weekly offering timely reports on global terrorism including web assessments

The Jamestown Foundation also offers an extensive web accessible archival library of these publications

Global Terrorism Analysts

Other Jamestown Foundation Publications

Analysis

The Jamestown Foundation seems willing to accept sources that are divergent, as well as host events with panel members who hold divergent viewpoints.

In their publication, Terrorism Monitor, Volume 2, Issue 5 (March 11, 2004), in an article title Hizb ut-Tahrir Today, author Igor Rotar interviewed

"Sadykzhan Kamuluddin (Kamalov), president of the Islamic Center of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan and former Mufti and member of the Kyrgyzstans Supreme Council, is one of the most influential religious leaders in Central Asia. Uzbek by descent, Kamuluddin resides in the town of Karasu, located on the border with Uzbekistan and a center of the Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT) movement in Central Asia. Sadykzhan Kamuluddin is famous for his independence from the Kyrgyz authorities. For instance, he does not hide the fact that he has contacts with HuT members, which is prohibited in Kyrgyzstan and which aims to unite all Muslims in the world into a unified Caliphate. The local press often calls him a fundamentalist and an Islamic radical." - [30]

In a recent sponsored event titled Insurgency and Jihad: The Iraqi Theater and Beyond, panel members included - Patrick Lang (US Army-Ret), former head of intelligence for the Defense Intelligence Agency, and often cited critic of the Bush Administration's use of distorted intelligence, as well as Michael Scheuer Former Chief of the Bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center at the CIA, anonymous author of Imperial Hubris.

The Jamestown Foundation Website offers a wealth of articles, although it is not setup well for simple browsing. As written in their Mission Statement, their bias is unabashedly Pro-American, but they are refreshingly without an obvious partisan slant.

Contact

The Jamestown Foundation
4516 43rd Street NW
Washington, DC 20016
(202) 483-8888
www.jamestown.org

Resources and articles

Related Sourcewatch

References

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