Richard A. Clarke, the first “Terrorism Czar” of the United States, who served on the National Security Council for the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations; officially selected as the country’s crisis manager to shut the United States down and alert American defenses on September 11, 2001; best-selling author of The Scorpion’s Gate, 2005; and Against All Enemies, 2004.

Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, published in April 2004; former Managing Editor of The Washington Post.

Christopher Hitchens, among the most controversial and outspoken proponents for the 2003 invasion of Iraq; best-selling author of Love, Poverty and War (2005); columnist for Slate and Vanity Fair.

Samantha Power, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, 2003; lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government; named to Time Magazine’s list of the World’s 100 Most Influential People in 2004.

Peter Bergen, author of The Osama Bin Laden That I Know, 2006; Holy War Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden, 2001; CNN terrorism expert; one of only a handful of journalists to interview bin Laden in Afghanistan before the September 11th attacks.

Tariq Ali, author of Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq, 2004, and The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihad and Modernity, 2002; originally from Lahore, Pakistan, Ali is the editor of the London-based The New Left Review and an outspoken critic of both Islamic extremism and American foreign policy.

Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin, Senior Director and Director on the National Security Council for Counter-Terrorism in the Clinton Administration through the end of 2000; co-authors of The Next Attack, 2005, and The Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam’s War Against America, 2003.

Joseph Nye, University Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University and former dean of the Kennedy School of Government; p reviously served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Chair of the National Intelligence Council, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology. Author of Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, Understanding International Conflict, 2004.

Lawrence Rinder, curator of a major exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art in late 2003 called The American Effect, depicting international perspectives on America from 1990 through 2003 through the visual arts (paintings, installations, sculptures, experimental films, etc).

David Frum, neoconservative speechwriter for President George W. Bush, who coined the phrase “axis of evil” in President Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Address; co-author (with Richard Perle) of An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, 2003.

Hamid Dabashi, outspoken chair of Columbia University’s Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department; a native of Iran and leading expert on Iranian culture and cinema, Dabashi was controversially placed on neoconservative writer Daniel Pipes’ Campus Watch list of Islamic professors to “monitor” in 2003.

Kenneth Pollack, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution based in Washington, DC; leading expert on the Middle East; author of The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America, 2004; and The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, 2002.

Eric S. Margolis, best-selling author of War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet, 2000; award-winning foreign correspondent and television commentator on foreign affairs who has covered 14 separate wars.

Elizabeth Rubin, senior writer for The New York Times who has covered many theaters of conflict, including Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, the 2001 War in Afghanistan and most recently the 2003 War in Iraq and its aftermath.

Noah Feldman, Islamic Studies professor at New York University; author of What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building, 2005; and After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy, 2003.

Jessica Stern, author of Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill, 2003 and The Ultimate Terrorists, 1999; lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

David Cross, outspoken comedian whose stand-up routine includes biting reflections on the absurdity of American culture after September 11th and the Bush Administration’s handling of the War on Terrorism.

Bernard Haykel, Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at New York University; author of Revival and Reform in Islam, 2003.

Chalmers Johnson, best-selling author of Blowback, 1999, and The Sorrows of Empire, 2003.

Craig Unger, best-selling author of House of Bush, House of Saud, 2004.

Paul Berman, best-selling author of Terror & Liberalism, 2003.

Noam Chomsky, world-famous linguist and critic of American foreign policy, author of Hegemony or Survival, 2004.

Andrew Kohut, President of the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press in Washington, D.C.

Stephen Schwartz, author of The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa’ud from Tradition to Terror, 2003.

John Parachini, terrorism expert and director of RAND Intelligence Policy Center.

William Rosenau, terrorism expert for RAND Corp; professor of Security Studies for Georgetown University.

Robert Zelnick, Chairman of the Journalism Department at Boston University; journalist for ABC News for 21 years.

Uwe Gielen, founder of the Institute for International and Cross-Cultural Psychology at St. Francis College in New York City; editor-in chief of the International Journal of Group Tensions.

Michael Levi, Weapons of Mass Destruction Expert at Brookings Institution.