Kenneth Timmerman

Kenneth Timmerman has brought a new awareness to the threats facing our country to millions of readers around the nation. In 1998, he tracked renegade Saudi financier Osama Bin Ladin and his international terrorist network halfway across the globe for Reader’s Digest, publishing his expose on the unknown Saudi just weeks before he attacked two U.S. embassies in Africa. In recent years, he has revealed how failed U.S. policies have helped create new threats to our nation from Russia, China, and Iran.

For his work in exposing the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, he was nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize by former Swedish deputy Prime Minister Per Ahlmark.

His latest book, Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown in Iran, was acclaimed by former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission.

In April 1983, he was the first U.S. correspondent on scene when the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon was blown up by Islamic militants..

During the later half of the 1980s, he covered the Iran-Iraq war, gaining first-hand knowledge of Iraq’s deadly weapons buildup. His third book, The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq (Houghton Mifflin, 1991) was called “our Bible” by Ambassador Rolf Ekeus, chief of the UN Special Commission for the Disarmament of Iraq. After the Gulf War, Ekeus and his weapons inspectors used Timmerman’s information to help locate clandestine Iraqi weapons plants and to identify their foreign suppliers.

A ground-making study on the unconventional weapons programs of Iran, Libya, and Syria, commissioned by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in 1992, won applause from Democrats and Republicans alike.

Simon Wiesenthal Center In presenting the report, famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal told one audience: “I have spent my life tracking down the murderers of yesterday. Mr. Timmerman is tracking down the murderers of tomorrow.”

In recent years, he has assisted veterans group in a class action lawsuit against the German companies who helped build Saddam Hussein’s deadly chemical weapons, which may have contributed to Persian Gulf War Syndrome.

Today, he is helping families of the victims of the September 11 attacks prepare a class action lawsuit against the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, because of its direct, material involvement in the al Qaeda plot to attack America.

And he was worked to strengthen America’s greatest export of all: democracy. In 1995, along with Peter Rodman, Joshua Muravchik, and a group of Iranian patriots, he established the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI). The Foundation has served as a rallying point for Iranian democrats seeking an end to brutal, clerical rule in Iran, and has helped keep Congress and the public informed of ongoing repression and support for terrorism by Iran’s “moderate” new President.

Timmerman’s work as an investigative reporter has won consistent praise for its accuracy and courage. Many of the stories about the Clinton administration’s high-technology giveaway to Communist China started with pieces he wrote for The American Spectator, including an expose of influence peddling in the Pentagon under then Secretary of Defense William Perry.

He has presented his findings before Congress in public testimony and in Special Reports commissioned by various committees.

The blue ribbon Commission To Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States (the Rumsfeld Commission) incorporated many of his suggestions in its final report in April 1998, which concluded it was in America’s interest to deploy a national missile defense.

Since 1987, Timmerman has operated Middle East Data Project, Inc., a small business that has provided investigative support and policy guidance to government agencies and private companies on three continents.

As a contributing editor to Newsmax.com, he examined new security measures at U.S. ports in the fall of 2005.

He and his wife live in Maryland and have five children.