Marc Alexander Thiessen is an American author, political appointee, and weekly columnist for The Washington Post. Thiessen served as a speechwriter for United States President George W. Bush from 2004 to 2009 and Secretary of DefenseDonald Rumsfeld from 2001 to 2006. Thiessen's columns have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, National Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, USA Today, and other publications. He has appeared on Fox News, CNN, NPR, and other media outlets. In 2010, he published the book Courting Disaster: How the C.I.A. Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, which defended the use of torture during the George W. Bush administration, and claimed that the Obama administration's rejection of torture might lead to American deaths.
Thiessen has worked in Washington, D.C. for many years, starting with five years at the lobbying firm Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly. From 1995 to 2001, he served on Capitol Hill as spokesman and senior policy advisor to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms. He joined the George W. Bush administration as Chief Speechwriter for Donald Rumsfeld in 2001, and later to Bush's speechwriting team in 2004. In February 2008, he became chief speechwriter when William McGurn resigned. In March 2009, Thiessen and Peter Schweizer founded the communications firm, Oval Office Writers LLC. Since 2009, Thiessen has been a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Thiessen has been a columnist for The Washington Post since March 2010. In his columns, he has criticized the Obama administration and advocated against the Iran nuclear deal. In 2020, he defended President Donald Trump’s decision to assassinate Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, saying it was "defensive, preemptive, and lawful."
Defense of torture
Thiessen's first book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, was published by Regnery Publishing in January 2010. In the book he argued that the CIA's systematic use of enhanced interrogation techniques was effective, lawful, and moral. The book was endorsed by the former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and former Attorney GeneralMichael Mukasey. It reached the No. 9 spot on the New York TimesBest Sellers list for hardcover nonfiction in February 2010. Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side, heavily criticized Courting Disaster in a book review, claiming it is "based on a series of slipshod premises" and that the book was "better at conveying fear than at relaying the facts." In the book, Thiessen writes, "In the decade before the C.I.A. began interrogating captured terrorists, Al Qaeda launched repeated attacks against America. In the eight years since the C.I.A. began interrogating captured terrorists, Al Qaeda has not succeeded in launching one single attack on the homeland or American interests abroad." Mayer wrote, "This is not exactly a textbook demonstration of causality", and noted that Thiessen's claim was false anyway; Al Qaeda had launched numerous attacks targeting Americans since the start of the torture program. Mayer ended her review with a criticism of the Obama administration for not convening a commission on the Bush administration's torture, thus allowing Thiessen and other proponents of torture to "whitewash" history. The 6,700-page Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture found that the CIA's enhanced interrogation program was not an effective method of gathering intelligence. The report was approved with seven Democrats, one Independent, and one Republican voting in favor, and six Republicans voting against. A pseudonymous former military interrogator and author of How to Break a Terrorist, writing for Slate, characterized Thiessen's book as "a literary defense of war criminals" and criticized Thiessen for relying solely on the opinions of CIA interrogators.
