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Dr. Steve Pieczenik explains "Al Qaeda is a mercenary force".
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Original Message
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[link to en.wikipedia.org]
A mercenary[1] is a person who takes part in an armed conflict, who is not a national or a party to the conflict and is "motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party"
[link to en.wikipedia.org]
Pieczenik was deputy assistant secretary of state under Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance and James Baker.[3] His expertise includes foreign policy, international crisis management and psychological warfare.[7] He served the presidential administrations of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in the capacity of deputy assistant secretary.[8]
In 1974, Pieczenik joined the U.S. State Department as a consultant to restructure its Office for the Prevention of Terrorism.[2]
In 1976, Pieczenik was made deputy assistant secretary of state for management.[2][5][9][10]
At the State Department, he served as a "specialist on hostage taking."[11] He has been credited with devising successful negotiating strategies and tactics used in several high profile hostage situations including the 1976 TWA Flight 355 hostage situation and the 1977 kidnapping of the son of Cyprus' president.[2] He was involved in negotiations for the release of Aldo Moro after Moro was kidnapped.[12] As a renowned psychiatrist, he was utilized as a press source for early information on the mental state of the hostages involved in the Iranian Hostage Crisis after they were freed.[13] In 1977, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Mary McGrory described Stephen Pieczenik as "one of the most 'brilliantly competent' men in the field of terrorism."[14] He worked "side by side" with Police Chief Maurice J. Cullinane in the Washington, D.C. command center of Mayor Walter Washington during the 1977 Hanafi Siege.[15] In 1978, Pieczenik was known as "a psychiatrist and political scientist in the U.S. State Department whose credentials and experiences are probably unique among officials handling terrorist situations."[2]
On September 17, 1978 the Camp David Accords were signed. Pieczenik was at the secret Camp David negotiations leading up to the signing of the Accords. He worked out strategy and tactics based on psychopolitical dynamics. He correctly predicted that, given their common backgrounds, Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin would get along.[3]
In 1979, he resigned as deputy assistant secretary of state over the handling of the Iranian hostage crisis.[4]
In the early 1980s, Pieczenik wrote an article for The Washington Post in which he claims to have heard a senior U.S. official in the State Department Operations Center give permission for the attack that led to the death of U.S. Ambassador Adolph Dubs in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1979.[16]
Pieczenik got to know Syrian President Hafez Assad well during his 20 years in the US State Department.[3]
In 1982, Pieczenik was mentioned in a New York Times article as "a psychiatrist who has treated C.I.A. employees".[17]
In 2001, Pieczenik operated as chief executive officer of Strategic Intelligence Associates, a consulting firm.[18]
Pieczenik has been affiliated in a professional capacity as a psychiatrist with the National Institute of Mental Health.[19]
Pieczenik has consulted with the United States Institute of Peace and the RAND Corporation [20]
As recently as October 6, 2012, Pieczenik was listed as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.[21] According to Internet Archive, his name was removed from the CFR roster sometime between October 6 and November 18, 2012.[22] Publicly, Pieczenik no longer appears as a member of the CFR.[23]
Pieczenik is fluent in five languages including Russian, Spanish and French.[2][3][4]
Pieczenik has lectured at the National Defense University.[7]
Pieczenik has made a number of ventures into fiction, as an author (of State of Emergency and a number of other books)[24] and as a business partner of Tom Clancy for several series of novels.[25]
He studied medicine and writing, beginning with drama and poetry. But eventually "I turned to fiction because it allows me to address reality as it is or could be."[3]
Pieczenik received a listed credit as "co-creator" for both Tom Clancy's Op-Center and Tom Clancy's Net Force, two best-selling series of novels, as a result of a business relationship with Tom Clancy. He was not directly involved in writing books in these series, but "assembled a team" including the ghost-writer who did author the novels, and someone to handle the "packaging" of the novels.[25][26] The Op-Center series alone had grossed more than 28 million dollars in net profit for the partnership by 2003.[25]
Books he has authored include: novel Mind Palace (1985), novel Blood Heat (1989), self-help My Life Is Great! (1990) and paper-back edition Hidden Passions (1991), novel Maximum Vigilance (1993), novel Pax Pacifica (1995), novel State Of Emergency (1999), novel My Beloved Talleyrand (2005).[27] He's also credited under the pseudonym Alexander Court for writing the novels Active Measures (2001), and Active Pursuit (2002).[28]
Pieczenik has had at least two articles published in the American Intelligence Journal, a peer-reviewed journal published by the National Military Intelligence Association.[29]
In September 2010, John Neustadt was recognized by Elsevier as being one of the Top Ten Cited Authors in 2007 & 2008 for his article, "Mitochondrial dysfunction and molecular pathways of disease." This article was co-authored with Pieczenik.[30]
Pieczenik is the co-author of the published textbook, Foundations and Applications of Medical Biochemistry in Clinical Practice.
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