Political Finance Podcasts

Major General Timothy M. Haake retired from the United States Army Reserve on May 11, 2006 after more than 35 years of service. He formerly served as the Deputy Commander, Mobilization and Reserve Affairs, United States Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. Prior to that assignment, he served as Director of Legislative Affairs, United States Special Operations Command, Washington, D.C. General Haake was born in Schenectady, New York. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy (1969) from Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio; a Law Degree (1973) from Syracuse University College of Law, Syracuse, New York; and Master of Laws Degree (LL.M.) in Taxation (1978) from Georgetown University Law Center, Washington D.C. He completed the Judge Advocate Generalâs Officer Basic Course in 1978; the Judge Advocate Generalâs Advanced Officer Course in 1982; Civil Affairs Officer Advanced Course in 1985; Command and General Staff College in 1987; and the Army War College in 1994. General Haake served in the Army National Guard as an enlisted member from 1970 through 1976, where he completed the Special Forces Qualifications Course in 1973. He then served in the Army Reserve from 1976 through 1978 and received a direct commission October, 1978. In 1978, General Haake served as the Staff Judge Advocate for Headquarters, 11th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Meade, Maryland. In 1982, he became the Legal Officer for the 450th Civil Affairs Company in Riverdale, Maryland. In 1984, he returned to the 11th Special Forces Group to serve once again as their Staff Judge Advocate. In 1992, he became the Legal Advisor (IMA) for the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Concurrently, beginning in 1995 he assumed command of the 157th IMA Detachment for the Army Reserve in Washington, D.C. General Haakeâs awards include the: Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal (one oak leaf cluster), Legion of Merit, Defense Meritorious Service Medal (one oak leaf cluster); Army Meritorious Service Medal; Joint Service Commendation Medal; Army Commendation Medal; Joint Service Achievement Medal; Army Reserve Components Achievement Medal (silver oak leaf cluster); National Defense Service Medal ( two bronze service stars); Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal; Global War on Terrorism Service Medal; Armed Forces Reserve Medal (silver hourglass); Army Service Ribbon and Army Reserve Components Overseas Training Ribbon. He is a Master Parachutist, Special Forces Military Free Fall Parachutist, and holds German, Italian, and British military parachutist badges. Mr. Haake is a legislative consultant and lawyer and the owner of Haake & Associates. His specialties include tax, energy, trade, health, and defense issues. He held several administrative, legal, and Congressional positions prior to starting his own firm. At the Internal Revenue Service, he served in a professional legal capacity where he drafted private rulings, issued advisory opinions to field offices, and drafted broadly applicable rulings. For the next five years, Mr. Haake served as Counsel to members of the United States Senate Committee on Finance and the United States House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means, advising Members of Congress on all issues coming before the Committees, including matters of tax, trade, and health policy. He assisted in formulating legislative initiatives and guiding them through the legislative process to enactment. He was later head of the tax department in the Washington office of O'Connor & Hannan, a law firm based in Minneapolis. Mr. Haake holds a Master of Law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, a Juris Doctor degree from Syracuse University College of Law, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Antioch College. He is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia. Mr. Haake is a contributor to Fox News, Nightline and CNN as an expert on foreign affairs, military and political issues. He is married and has three children ages fourteen, seventeen and twenty. Jim Sciutto is ABC Newsâ Senior Foreign correspondent, based in London. Since moving overseas in 2002, he has reported from more than 40 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, where heâs completed more than 100 assignments. His globe-trotting role for ABC News has put him on multiple trips to war-zones from Iraq to Afghanistan to Israel-Palestine, undercover in Zimbabwe and Myanmar, under fire in Beslan, Russia, and on frenetic cross-country tours of China and India for special, multi-part ABC series. When he was named senior foreign correspondent in 2006, he was the first person to carry the title since Peter Jennings and Pierre Salinger. Sciutto won the 2007 George Polk Award for television for his undercover reporting in Myanmar during the military regimeâs brutal crackdown on peaceful demonstrations in October 2007. He won Emmy awards in 2004 and 2005 for best story in a regularly scheduled newscast, covering northern Iraq for âIraq: Where Things Stand.â He was nominated for other Emmys in 2005 for outstanding coverage of a breaking news story for âCrisis in Beslanâ and in 2007 for his contribution from Cambodia for Good Morning Americaâs âAround the Worldâ series. Sciutto was the only western reporter to make his way inside Myanmar during the 2007 crackdown, the first television reporter to interview Saudi Arabiaâs King Abdullah and one of a handful of journalists allowed inside an Iranian nuclear plant in 2005. During the Iraq war, Sciutto was the only reporter embedded with the U.S. Special Forces. Prior to joining ABC News in 1998, Sciutto was Hong Kong correspondent for Asia Business News, an Asia-wide TV network owned by Dow Jones. For ABN, he covered Hong Kongâs return to China in 1997, and reported on every country in the region, including assignments to China, Mongolia, Laos, Vietnam, Singapore and South Korea. Sciuttoâs first job in television was as moderator and producer of âThe Student Press,â a weekly public affairs talk show for U.S. and Canadian college students broadcast on PBS. Sciutto earned a degree in history from Yale University in 1992. He was a Fulbright Fellow in Hong Kong from 1993 to 1994. In 2008, he was selected as a lifetime member of the Council of Foreign Relations. In 2002, he was appointed Associate Fellow of Pierson College at Yale. He lives in London with his wife, Gloria Riviera, also a London-based correspondent for ABC News.A foreign correspondent for ABC News, Sciutto examines and explains the increasingly negative attitudes toward the United States among citizens of Muslim and Arab countries in this deeply insightful book. Structured around interviews conducted in the Middle East and the U.K., the book offers ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that anti-American sentimentâonce the province of fringe groupsâhas gone mainstream, becoming in effect, a form of Middle Eastern nationalism, uniting moderates and radicals, Muslims and Christians for whom freedom implies the freedom from American interference. Sciutto weaves together interviews with historical background, poll data and personal experience in this consistently informative and captivating account. In the strongest interviews, including one with a young, reform-minded Iranian activist and another with an Iraqi doctor, the book sets intense, sometimes horrifying experiences against a complicated and changing political backdrop. The author makes a few amorphous foreign policy recommendations on the basis of his research, but the book is less interesting for what it reveals about American policy than for its empathetic and candid depiction of its subjects and their lives. read less