Greg Thielmann

A. Gregory Thielmann is a senior fellow of the Arms Control Association and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He had previously served as a top intelligence official at the U.S. State Department for 25 years until he resigned shortly before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Career
A graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Thielmann worked for U.S. Congressman John Culver before entering the United States Foreign Service where he served for more than 25 years, working in arms control and security issues. He was acting director of the Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Affairs Office in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department at the time of his retirement.

Thielmann criticized the rationale for the Iraq War and the George W. Bush Administration. He criticized the Bush Administration for what he called "faith-based intelligence":


 * "There's plenty of blame to go around. The main problem was that the senior administration officials have what I call faith-based intelligence. They knew what they wanted the intelligence to show. They were really blind and deaf to any kind of countervailing information the intelligence community would produce. I would assign some blame to the intelligence community and most of the blame to the senior administration officials."