Winslow Wheeler

27 February 2008

Winslow T. Wheeler is the Director of the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C.

From 1971 to 2002, he worked on national security issues for members of the U.S. Senate and for the US Government Accountability Office (GAO). In the Senate, Wheeler worked for Jacob K. Javits (R. NY), Nancy L. Kassebaum (R, KS), David Pryor (D, AR), and Pete V. Domenici (R, NM). He was the first, and according to Senate records the last, Senate staffer to work simultaneously on the personal staffs of a Republican and a Democrat (Pryor and Kassebaum).

In the Senate staff, Wheeler was heavily involved in legislating the War Powers Act, Pentagon reform legislation, and oversight of the defense budget and weapons programs.

At GAO, he directed comprehensive studies on the 1991 Gulf War air campaign, the US strategic nuclear triad, and Pentagon weapons testing. Each of these studies found prevailing conventional wisdom about weapons to be misinformed.

In 2002 when he worked as the Senior Analyst for National Defense for the Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee, Wheeler authored an essay, under the pseudonym "Spartacus," addressing Congress' reaction to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks ("Mr. Smith Is Dead: No One Stands in the Way as Congress Lards Post-September 11 Defense Bills with Pork"). When senators complained about Wheeler's criticisms, he resigned his position.

Wheeler joined the Center for Defense Information in 2002. There, he wrote "The Wastrels of Defense" (US Naval Institute Press, 2004), which explores Congress' involvement in US national security issues and has been the subject of interviews or reviews on 60 Minutes, C-SPAN's Book Notes, and various newspapers and radio stations.

He has also authored commentaries on Congress and national security, which have appeared in the Washington Post, Proceedings of the Naval Institute, Government Executive, Defense Week, Defense News, Barron's, Army Times, UPI, Mother Jones, Nieman Watchdog, CounterPunch, Politico and elsewhere.

He lives with his wife, Judy, and son, Matthew, in Maryland. Another son, Winslow B., lives in Florida with his wife and their three sons.

Phone: 202.797.5271 | Email: [email protected]