Council for the National Interest

The Council for the National Interest ("CNI") is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, non-partisan organization in the United States that works for "Middle East policies that serve the American national interest". It is aligned with The Council for the National Interest Foundation ("CNIF"), an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. CNI was founded in 1989 by former Congressmen Paul Findley (R-IL) and Pete McCloskey (R-CA). Its first executive director was ten-term congressman John B. Anderson (R-Il), who ran as an Independent candidate in the 1980 presidential election.

Other officials involved with CNI over the years include long-time president Eugene Bird, a retired career foreign service officer;Edward Peck, former Chief of Mission to Iraq deputy director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism in the Reagan Administration.; former United States Senator James Abourezk; former CNI Vice-chair David Newton, a former United States Ambassador to Iraq and Yemen, and Richard H. Curtiss, former chief inspector of the United States Information Agency.

Ambassador (ret.) Robert V. Keeley is CNI's chair and Alison Weir is the organization's president. Former Central Intelligence Agency officer Philip Giraldi is its executive director. Giraldi has stated that CNI has 12,000 members.

CNI issues position statements, articles and recommendations on Middle East-related issues and is quoted in mainstream and Middle East media. In 1988 CNI President Eugene Bird wrote about Israel's ignoring United States State Department complaints about detention and possible torture of U.S. citizens. In early 2002, Eugene Bird criticized then-United States President George W. Bush for supporting Ariel Sharon's increased land grabs and de facto conquest of the West Bank.

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