Midcoast Forum on Foreign Relations

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Meet our Next Speaker

Thomas Blanton

October 9, 2023

Topic: The Downsides of Government Secrecy

Tom Blanton is the director since 1992 of the independent non-governmental National Security Archive at George Washington University.  He won the 2004 Emmy Award for individual achievement in news and documentary research, and on behalf of the Archive received the George Polk Award in 2000 for “piercing self-serving veils of government secrecy.”  His books have been awarded the 2011 Link-Kuehl Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, selection by Choice magazine as “Outstanding Academic Title 2017,” and the American Library Association’s James Madison Award Citation in 1996, among other honors.  The National Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame elected him a member in 2006, and Tufts University presented him the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award in 2011 for “decades of demystifying and exposing the underworld of global diplomacy.” His articles have appeared in Diplomatic History, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, and the Washington Post, among many other journals; and he is series co-editor for the National Security Archive’s online and book publications of more than a million pages of declassified U.S. government documents obtained through the Archive’s more than 60,000 Freedom of Information Act requests.

Meetings open to members and members’ guests only.  Unless otherwise noted, all meetings take place at Elk Hall, 210 Rankin Street in Rockland.  Please plan on arriving by 11:30 AM for noon meetings.  The speaker begins promptly at noon and lunch is served from 1 PM.

Audios of Past Presentations

Listed below are links to recent presentations. Click to listen:

• Shanthi Kalathil: Challenges to Democracy in the Age of Misinformation
• Ambassador Charles Ray: Why Africa Matters
• Tom Ricks: First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country
• Amna Nawaz: On the Frontlines: Reporting Overseas and Here at Home
• Christopher Costa: Counterterrorism and the Future Terrorism Threat
• Susan Landau: The Reality of Cyberwar — In Ukraine and Elsewhere
• Jon Wolfsthal: ​Is a New Era of Nuclear Danger Upon Us?
• Amb. Derek Mitchell: Democracy and International Security
• Admiral Michael Rogers: Russia and Ukraine
• Daniel Golden: Ransomware, a Global Challenge
• Ambassador Steven Pifer: Putin’s War: Ramifications and Response
• Christopher Miller: Warnings about America’s most important enemies
• John Sopko: Afghanistan, Lessons Unlearned
• Paul Bodnar: Financing the Low-Carbon Future
• Stacia George: Winning Without Weapons
• Amb. Laura Kennedy: Central Asia (unedited audio)
• David Cooper: Between Disarmament and Armageddon
• Steven Simon: The US and the Middle East: What Went Wrong?
• Jok Madut-Jok: US Military Miltary in Africa: A Source of Influence or a National Security Risk?    Download Slides
• Gordon Adams: A new approach to formulating foreign policy
• Richard Kessler: The Effect of Congressional Polarization on Foreign Affairs
• Mitchell Zuckoff: 9/11 and its Aftermath
• Sean McFate: The Future of War

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The Mid-Coast Forum on Foreign Relations
PO Box 41
Rockport, ME 04856
207-236-8288

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