Book Paul Bremer

L. Paul Bremer III is an American diplomat whose foreign affairs career included some of Washington's most demanding postings. He joined the Foreign Service in 1966, with early assignments in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Blantyre, Malawi. From 1972 to 1976 he worked as an assistant to Henry Kissinger, joining his 1973 shuttle diplomacy across Israel, Egypt and Syria. After serving as deputy chief of mission in Oslo, he was promoted in 1981 to run the State Department's executive secretariat and assist Secretary Alexander Haig. Ronald Reagan sent him to the Netherlands as ambassador in 1983, then in 1986 made him the nation's counterterrorism coordinator with ambassador-at-large rank. After a stint in the private sector, he returned to government in 2003 to lead the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004, overseeing elections planning and the transfer of power to Iraqi authorities. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 and wrote about that period in My Year in Iraq (2006). Bremer speaks from deep firsthand experience on counterterrorism, diplomacy, crisis management and leading under intense pressure.