William Blum

Jewish-American writer and critic of US foreign policy. William Blum got wide media coverage when his book "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" was recommended by Osama Bin Laden in a speech. William Blum left the State Department in 1967, abandoning his aspiration of becoming a Foreign Service Officer because of his opposition to what the United States was doing in Vietnam. He then became one of the founders and editors of the Washington Free Press, the first “alternative” newspaper in the capital. Blum had been a freelance journalist in the United States, Europe, and South America.

In 1969, Blum wrote and published an exposé of the Central Intelligence Agency in which were revealed the names and addresses of more than 200 CIA employees. He worked as a freelance journalist in the United States, Europe, and South America. In 1972–1973, Blum worked as a journalist in Chile, where he reported on the Allende government's "socialist experiment" before the U.S backed coup and the regime of Augusto Pinochet In the mid-1970s, he worked in London with ex-CIA officer Phillip Agee and his associates "on their project of exposing CIA personnel and their misdeeds." He supported himself with his writing and speaking engagements on college campuses. One of Blum's stories on Iraq was listed by Project Censored as one of "The Top Ten Censored Stories of 1998"