Leslie H. Gelb

Leslie Howard "Les" Gelb (born March 4, 1937) is a former correspondent and columnist for The New York Times, a former senior Defense and State Department official, and is currently President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy published in March 2009.

Leslie Gelb was born in New Rochelle, New York in 1937. He received a B.A. from Tufts University in 1959, and an M.A. in 1961 and Ph.D. in 1964 from Harvard University. From 1964–1967 he was Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University. He married Judith Cohen on 2 August 1959 and lives in New York City. They have three children. He received the Father of the Year award in 1993.

Dr. Gelb was Executive Assistant for Senator Jacob Javits from 1966 to 1967. He was director of Policy Planning and Arms Control for International Security Affairs at the Department of Defense from 1967 to 1969, winning the Pentagon's highest award, the Distinguished Service Medal. Robert McNamara appointed Dr. Gelb as director of the project that produced the controversial Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War. From 1969–1973, Dr. Gelb was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

He was diplomatic correspondent at The New York Times from 1973 to 1977.

He served as an Assistant Secretary of State in the Carter Administration from 1977 to 1979, serving as director of the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs and winning the Distinguished Honor Award, the highest award of the US State Department. In 1980 he co-authored The Irony of Vietnam which won the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Book Award in 1981. From 1980–1981, he was also a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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