Richard Miniter (born 1967) 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.
| Richard Miniter | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1967 (age 44–45) New York City, New York, U.S.[1] |
| Occupation | Journalist, author |
| Years active | 1990–present |
| Official website | |
Contents |
Miniter was born in New York City and grew up in Rosendale, New York.[1] Among his siblings are several writers and journalists, including Frank Miniter, executive editor of the National Rifle Association magazine American Hunter.[1]
He studied philosophy at Vassar College, graduating in 1990.[2] He was an editor of the Vassar Spectator, one of the school's student periodicals.[1]
In 1989, he was a summer fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies. He later worked as an environmental policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.[3] From 1992 to 1994, Miniter was an associate producer of the PBS talk show TechnoPolitics.[4][5] 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.[6] He has also been fellow and senior editor of the Hudson Institute.[7][8]
Miniter has been published in a number of newspapers, including The New York Times, Washington Post, The Sunday Times (London), and Australian Financial Review.[9]
Hired by Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley in 2000, Miniter was sent to Brussels as an editorial page writer at The Wall Street Journal Europe and editor of its weekly "Business Europe" column.[10] He also wrote a weekly column, "The Visible Hand", for The Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com.[11]
Shortly after September 11, 2001, Miniter left the Journal to take a position with the The Sunday Times in London. While at the Times, he co-wrote the four-part series, "The Road to Ground Zero."[12] 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.[13]
Miniter was the editorial page editor and Vice President of Opinion at The Washington Times from March[14] until October 2009.[15] Miniter filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 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."[16]
Miniter is a columnist for the Colorado Springs Gazette[17] and national security columnist for Forbes.com.[18][19] He has also served as Washington Editor for Pajamas Media.[20] 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."[21]
Miniter's first book, The Myth of Market Share, was published in 2002 by Crown Publishing, an imprint of Random House. The book asserts that business emphasis on achieving a particular level of market share is wrong-headed and distracts from profit-seeking.[22] 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."[23]
In 2003, Miniter's Losing bin Laden was published. The book is the result of eighteen months of reporting from Khartoum, 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,
Miniter suggests that the appointment of [Richard] Clarke 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."[24]
It became a New York Times bestseller, peaking at number ten in September 2003.[25] Losing bin Laden was cited on NBC's Meet the Press by host Tim Russert in an interview with Madeleine Albright.[26] Steve Forbes praised the book, stating that Miniter "tapped an extraordinary array of sources to piece this sorry tale together."[27] 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."[28]
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.[29] Cressey and Smith characterized four specific allegations in the book as "erroneous," and questioned the veracity of Miniter's sources.[29] Miniter's rejoinder was published with Cressey and Smith's criticism.[30]
Miniter's next book was based on research in Iraq, 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.[31]
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.[32] Among other claims, Miniter asserts in the book that Osama bin Laden was not on dialysis.[32][33]
Miniter edited a 2008 book entitled Jack Bauer for President: Terrorism and Politics in 24. Published by BenBella Books, 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."[34]
Sentinel, a division of Penguin Group, published Miniter's 2011 book Mastermind about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.[35] 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.[36]
See Regnery Publishing#Author royalties
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."[37]
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."[37]
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.[38][39] The authors have subsequently entered into arbitration with the company.[38][40]