Richard Miniter
Encyclopedia
Richard Miniter is an investigative journalist and author of two New York Times best-selling books, Losing bin Laden and Shadow War.
He has been published in numerous periodicals in the United States, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Christian Science Monitor, as well as The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, National Review, and Reader's Digest. His articles have also appeared in newspapers in Europe, Asia, and Australia.
. Among his siblings are several writers and journalists, including Frank Miniter
, executive editor of the National Rifle Association magazine American Hunter.
He studied philosophy at Vassar College, graduating in 1990. He was an editor of the Vassar Spectator, one of the school's student periodicals.
. He later worked as an environmental policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute
. From 1992 to 1994, Miniter was an associate producer of the PBS talk show TechnoPolitics. In 1996, he produced a radio series profiling female entrepreneurs, Enterprising Women, that was distributed to more than a hundred radio stations in the United States. He has also been fellow and senior editor of the Hudson Institute
.
, Washington Post, The Sunday Times (London)
, and Australian Financial Review.
as an editorial page writer at The Wall Street Journal Europe and editor of its weekly "Business Europe" column. He also wrote a weekly column, "The Visible Hand", for The Wall Street Journals OpinionJournal.com.
in London. While at the Times, he co-wrote the four-part series, "The Road to Ground Zero." The articles, which were published in January 2002, explored actions by Osama bin Laden and Clinton administration policy in the years leading up to the New York City terrorist attack.
from March until October 2009. Miniter filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
related to his position at the Times. According to the Washington Post,
In September 2010, the case of Miniter v. Moon et al. and the related EEOC complaint was settled. Miniter refused to disclose the terms, but said "I am very, very happy with the equitable and just result."
. In 2007, Miniter wrote for Pajamas Media about his travels to Turkey to investigate the disappearance of Ali-Reza Asgari. He reported that his sources indicated that senior Turkish generals were angry at not being told which ally had taken Asgari, and that the identity of this country was a hot debate among "military, intelligence, and police circles."
. The book asserts that business emphasis on achieving a particular level of market share
is wrong-headed and distracts from profit-seeking. According to a Washington Post review, the book "although at times repetitious... makes it clear why there is zero correlation between profitability and market share."
, Cairo
, Frankfurt
, Hamburg
, London
, Paris
, and Washington, D.C.
. It offers an account of United States policy relating to Al Qaeda and bin Laden during the Clinton
administration. According to George Will
,
It became a New York Times bestseller, peaking at number ten in September 2003. Losing bin Laden was cited on NBC's Meet the Press by host Tim Russert
in an interview with Madeleine Albright
. Steve Forbes
praised the book, stating that Miniter "tapped an extraordinary array of sources to piece this sorry tale together." Miniter appeared on CNN in 2006 and disputed portions of ABC's miniseries The Path to 9/11
, which included a scene depicting Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger
as failing to kill bin Laden when presented with the opportunity to do so. Miniter stated on the Situation Room program that "if people wanted to be critical of the Clinton years there's things they could have said, but the idea that someone had bin Laden in his sights in 1998 or any other time and Sandy Berger refused to pull the trigger, there's zero factual basis for that."
The Washington Times printed a critical reply to the book from Roger Cressey
, a former member of the United States National Security Council
staff during the Clinton administration, and Gayle Smith, who participated in the NSC as a Special Assistant to the President. Cressey and Smith characterized four specific allegations in the book as "erroneous," and questioned the veracity of Miniter's sources. Miniter's rejoinder was published with Cressey and Smith's criticism.
, Kuwait
, Egypt
, Sudan
, Hong Kong
, Singapore
and the Philippines
. Shadow War: The Untold Story of How America is Winning the War on Terror became his second New York Times bestseller, debuting at number seven on the November 7, 2004 edition of the newspaper's non-fiction bestseller list.
was not on dialysis
.
, the volume "addresses how much of the show 24] is realistic and what it has to say about modern politics and foreign policy in America’s fight against terrorism."
, published Miniter's 2011 book Mastermind about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In the book, Miniter examines his subject's childhood in Kuwait and Pakistan and his college education in the United States. He draws conclusions about Mohammed's involvement in such events as the killing of Meir Kahane
, the kidnapping and killing of Daniel Pearl
, and the September 11, 2001 attacks
.
In 2007 Miniter and five other conservative authors sued Regnery Press and its parent company Eagle Publishing, claiming that the publisher had sold their books at a steep discount to book club subsidiaries owned by the same parent company, thus depriving the authors of royalties. According to Miniter, "The difference between 10 cents and $4.25 is pretty large when you multiply it by 20,000 to 30,000 books.... It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance."
An attorney representing Eagle and Regnery countered that, "No publisher in America has a more acute marketing sense or successful track record at building promotional platforms for books than Regnery Publishing. These disgruntled authors object to marketing strategies used by all major book publishers that have proved successful time and again as witnessed by dozens of Regnery bestsellers."
On January 30, 2008, a federal judge granted Eagle Publishing's motion to dismiss. The written opinion granting defendant's motion stated that plaintiffs could not join
a necessary party, the Regnery subsidiary, because their contracts with Regnery contained mandatory arbitration provisions. The authors have subsequently entered into arbitration with the company.
He has been published in numerous periodicals in the United States, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Christian Science Monitor, as well as The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, National Review, and Reader's Digest. His articles have also appeared in newspapers in Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Family and education
Miniter was born in New York City and grew up in Rosendale, New YorkRosendale, New York
Rosendale is a town in the center of Ulster County, New York, United States. It once contained a village of the same name, which was dissolved through a vote. The population was 6,075 at the 2010 census.- History :...
. Among his siblings are several writers and journalists, including Frank Miniter
Frank Miniter
Frank Miniter is the executive editor of American Hunter magazine and the author of three books. His first book was The Politically Incorrect Guide to Hunting , his second book, The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide , was a New York Times bestseller...
, executive editor of the National Rifle Association magazine American Hunter.
He studied philosophy at Vassar College, graduating in 1990. He was an editor of the Vassar Spectator, one of the school's student periodicals.
Policy and early media work
In 1989, he was a summer fellow at the Institute for Humane StudiesInstitute for Humane Studies
The Institute for Humane Studies is a classical liberal non-profit organization whose stated mission is “to support the achievement of a freer society by discovering and facilitating the development of talented students, scholars, and other intellectuals who share an interest in liberty and in...
. He later worked as an environmental policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute
Competitive Enterprise Institute
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit think tank founded on March 9, 1984 in Washington, D.C. by lobbyist Fred L. Smith, Jr to advance economic liberty and fight over-regulation by big government...
. From 1992 to 1994, Miniter was an associate producer of the PBS talk show TechnoPolitics. In 1996, he produced a radio series profiling female entrepreneurs, Enterprising Women, that was distributed to more than a hundred radio stations in the United States. He has also been fellow and senior editor of the Hudson Institute
Hudson Institute
The Hudson Institute is an American think tank founded in 1961, in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, by futurist, military strategist, and systems theorist Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the RAND Corporation...
.
Career in journalism
Miniter has been published in a number of newspapers, including The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Washington Post, The Sunday Times (London)
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
, and Australian Financial Review.
Wall Street Journal Europe
Hired by Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley in 2000, Miniter was sent to BrusselsBrussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
as an editorial page writer at The Wall Street Journal Europe and editor of its weekly "Business Europe" column. He also wrote a weekly column, "The Visible Hand", for The Wall Street Journals OpinionJournal.com.
Sunday Times (London)
Shortly after September 11, 2001, Miniter left the Journal to take a position with the The Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
in London. While at the Times, he co-wrote the four-part series, "The Road to Ground Zero." The articles, which were published in January 2002, explored actions by Osama bin Laden and Clinton administration policy in the years leading up to the New York City terrorist attack.
The Washington Times
Miniter was the editorial page editor and Vice President of Opinion at The Washington TimesThe Washington Times
The Washington Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was founded in 1982 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, and until 2010 was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate associated with the...
from March until October 2009. Miniter filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is an independent federal law enforcement agency that enforces laws against workplace discrimination. The EEOC investigates discrimination complaints based on an individual's race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, perceived intelligence,...
related to his position at the Times. According to the Washington Post,
The former editorial page editor of the Washington Times has filed a discrimination complaint against the paper, saying he was "coerced" into attending a Unification Church religious ceremony that culminated in a mass wedding conducted by the church's leader, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.... [Miniter] said in an interview that he "was made to feel there was no choice" but to attend the ceremony if he wanted to keep his job, and that executives "gave me examples of people whose careers at the Times had grown after they converted" to the Unification Church.
In September 2010, the case of Miniter v. Moon et al. and the related EEOC complaint was settled. Miniter refused to disclose the terms, but said "I am very, very happy with the equitable and just result."
Columnist and investigative journalist
Miniter is a columnist for the Colorado Springs Gazette and national security columnist for Forbes.com. He has also served as Washington Editor for Pajamas MediaPajamas Media
PJ Media is a media company that uses the Internet to present and comment on the news.Founded in 2004 by a network primarily, but not exclusively, made up of conservatives and libertarians led by mystery writer, screenwriter, and blogger Roger L...
. In 2007, Miniter wrote for Pajamas Media about his travels to Turkey to investigate the disappearance of Ali-Reza Asgari. He reported that his sources indicated that senior Turkish generals were angry at not being told which ally had taken Asgari, and that the identity of this country was a hot debate among "military, intelligence, and police circles."
The Myth of Market Share
Miniter's first book, The Myth of Market Share, was published in 2002 by Crown Publishing, an imprint of Random HouseRandom House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
. The book asserts that business emphasis on achieving a particular level of market share
Market share
Market share is the percentage of a market accounted for by a specific entity. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 67 percent responded that they found the "dollar market share" metric very useful, while 61% found "unit market share" very useful.Marketers need to be able to...
is wrong-headed and distracts from profit-seeking. According to a Washington Post review, the book "although at times repetitious... makes it clear why there is zero correlation between profitability and market share."
Losing bin Laden
In 2003, Miniter's Losing bin Laden was published. The book is the result of eighteen months of reporting from KhartoumKhartoum
Khartoum is the capital and largest city of Sudan and of Khartoum State. It is located at the confluence of the White Nile flowing north from Lake Victoria, and the Blue Nile flowing west from Ethiopia. The location where the two Niles meet is known as "al-Mogran"...
, Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
, Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
, Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
. It offers an account of United States policy relating to Al Qaeda and bin Laden during the Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
administration. According to George Will
George Will
George Frederick Will is an American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winner best known for his conservative commentary on politics...
,
Miniter suggests that the appointment of [Richard] ClarkeRichard A. ClarkeRichard Alan Clarke was a U.S. government employee for 30 years, 1973–2003. He worked for the State Department during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush appointed him to chair the Counter-terrorism Security Group and to a seat on the United States National...
on May 22, 1998, as the government's first coordinator of the counterterrorism efforts that were dispersed to 40 agencies, "could have been the beginning of the end of al Qaeda. But the lack of presidential leadership, government inertia and bureaucratic squabbling often got in the way."
It became a New York Times bestseller, peaking at number ten in September 2003. Losing bin Laden was cited on NBC's Meet the Press by host Tim Russert
Tim Russert
Timothy John "Tim" Russert was an American television journalist and lawyer who appeared for more than 16 years as the longest-serving moderator of NBC's Meet the Press. He was a senior vice president at NBC News, Washington bureau chief and also hosted the eponymous CNBC/MSNBC weekend interview...
in an interview with Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Korbelová Albright is the first woman to become a United States Secretary of State. She was appointed by U.S. President Bill Clinton on December 5, 1996, and was unanimously confirmed by a U.S. Senate vote of 99–0...
. Steve Forbes
Steve Forbes
Malcolm Stevenson "Steve" Forbes, Jr. is an American editor, publisher, and businessman. He is the editor-in-chief of business magazine Forbes as well as president and chief executive officer of its publisher, Forbes Inc. He was a Republican candidate in the U.S. Presidential primaries in 1996...
praised the book, stating that Miniter "tapped an extraordinary array of sources to piece this sorry tale together." Miniter appeared on CNN in 2006 and disputed portions of ABC's miniseries The Path to 9/11
The Path to 9/11
The Path to 9/11 was a two-part miniseries that aired in the United States on ABC television from September 10 – 11, 2006, and also in other countries. The film dramatizes the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City and the events leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks.The film...
, which included a scene depicting Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger
Sandy Berger
Samuel Richard "Sandy" Berger was United States National Security Advisor, under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001. In his position, he helped to formulate the foreign policy of the Clinton Administration...
as failing to kill bin Laden when presented with the opportunity to do so. Miniter stated on the Situation Room program that "if people wanted to be critical of the Clinton years there's things they could have said, but the idea that someone had bin Laden in his sights in 1998 or any other time and Sandy Berger refused to pull the trigger, there's zero factual basis for that."
The Washington Times printed a critical reply to the book from Roger Cressey
Roger Cressey
Roger W. Cressey is a former member of the United States National Security Council staff, where he held the position of Director for Transnational Threats from November 1999 through November 2001. He was until recently the president of the Good Harbor consulting group, and an adjunct Professor of ...
, a former member of the United States National Security Council
United States National Security Council
The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...
staff during the Clinton administration, and Gayle Smith, who participated in the NSC as a Special Assistant to the President. Cressey and Smith characterized four specific allegations in the book as "erroneous," and questioned the veracity of Miniter's sources. Miniter's rejoinder was published with Cressey and Smith's criticism.
Shadow War
Miniter's next book was based on research in IraqIraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
, Kuwait
Kuwait
The State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the...
, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
, Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
and the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
. Shadow War: The Untold Story of How America is Winning the War on Terror became his second New York Times bestseller, debuting at number seven on the November 7, 2004 edition of the newspaper's non-fiction bestseller list.
Disinformation
Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror was published by Regnery in 2005. Miniter traveled to Egypt, Sudan and corresponded with sources in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan while working on the book. Among other claims, Miniter asserts in the book that Osama bin LadenOsama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
was not on dialysis
Dialysis
In medicine, dialysis is a process for removing waste and excess water from the blood, and is primarily used to provide an artificial replacement for lost kidney function in people with renal failure...
.
Jack Bauer for President
Miniter edited a 2008 book entitled Jack Bauer for President: Terrorism and Politics in 24. Published by BenBella BooksBenBella Books
BenBella Books is an independent publishing house based in Dallas, Texas. Founded by Glenn Yeffeth in 2001, BenBella specializes in non-fiction books on popular culture, health, and nutrition, along with books on science, politics, psychology, and other topics....
, the volume "addresses how much of the show 24] is realistic and what it has to say about modern politics and foreign policy in America’s fight against terrorism."
Mastermind
Sentinel, a division of Penguin GroupPenguin Group
The Penguin Group is a trade book publisher, the largest in the world , having overtaken Random House in 2009. The Penguin Group is the name of the incorporated division of parent Pearson PLC that oversees these publishing operations...
, published Miniter's 2011 book Mastermind about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In the book, Miniter examines his subject's childhood in Kuwait and Pakistan and his college education in the United States. He draws conclusions about Mohammed's involvement in such events as the killing of Meir Kahane
Meir Kahane
Martin David Kahane , also known as Meir Kahane , was an American-Israeli rabbi and ultra-nationalist writer and political figure. He was an ordained Orthodox rabbi and later served as a member of the Israeli Knesset...
, the kidnapping and killing of Daniel Pearl
Daniel Pearl
Daniel Pearl was an American journalist who was kidnapped and killed by Al-Qaeda.At the time of his kidnapping, Pearl served as the South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal, and was based in Mumbai, India. He went to Pakistan as part of an investigation into the alleged links between...
, and the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
.
Dispute with Eagle Publishing
See Regnery Publishing#Author royaltiesIn 2007 Miniter and five other conservative authors sued Regnery Press and its parent company Eagle Publishing, claiming that the publisher had sold their books at a steep discount to book club subsidiaries owned by the same parent company, thus depriving the authors of royalties. According to Miniter, "The difference between 10 cents and $4.25 is pretty large when you multiply it by 20,000 to 30,000 books.... It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance."
An attorney representing Eagle and Regnery countered that, "No publisher in America has a more acute marketing sense or successful track record at building promotional platforms for books than Regnery Publishing. These disgruntled authors object to marketing strategies used by all major book publishers that have proved successful time and again as witnessed by dozens of Regnery bestsellers."
On January 30, 2008, a federal judge granted Eagle Publishing's motion to dismiss. The written opinion granting defendant's motion stated that plaintiffs could not join
Joinder
Joinder is a legal term, which refers to the process of joining two or more legal issues together to be heard in one hearing or trial. It is done when the issues or parties involved overlap sufficiently to make the process more efficient or more fair...
a necessary party, the Regnery subsidiary, because their contracts with Regnery contained mandatory arbitration provisions. The authors have subsequently entered into arbitration with the company.