James Blackwell

James Blackwell returns to the public square after more than 20 years of government work. Dr. Blackwell was a globally recognized military analyst in the 1990s, most notably as CNN’s first full-time on-air military expert during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, then as Fox News Network’s founding military analyst in the late 1990s. Acclaimed by People magazine as “…the man to watch once the tanks got rolling,” Blackwell published the first history of the 1991 Persian Gulf War with Bantam Books’ Thunder in the Desert, acclaimed by Henry Kissinger to be “A highly useful and detailed chronicle of military developments in the Gulf crisis.” His second book, On Brave Old Army Team, published by Presidio Press in 1995, analyzed the nearly forgotten West Point honor scandal of 1951, in which the entire football team was dismissed for cheating on exams. Larry King wrote, “you will not want to put this brilliant slice of history down,” and the Commandant of the Air Force Academy made it mandatory reading for cadets, staff and faculty. Dr. Blackwell then devoted his efforts to sensitive-source studies for the Defense Department, including Andrew Marshall’s Office of Net Assessment, several of the Armed Services, Joint Commands, and the Intelligence Community. Former Defense Secretary and CIA Director James Schlesinger selected Dr. Blackwell to serve as Executive Director for two major investigations that he chaired for the Secretary of Defense – Detention Operations associated with the Abu Ghraib scandal of 2004, and Nuclear Weapons Management, after Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired the Air Force Secretary and the Chief of Staff after serious incidents in 2006 and 2007 resulted from the Air Force’s mishandling of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons-related materiel. In 2008 Dr. Blackwell was appointed to serve as Special Advisor to the Air Force Assistant Chief of Staff for Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration, a position he held for seven years before moving on to work for the Institute for Defense Analyses, a Federally-Funded Research and Development Center. During this time, he was selected to serve as the Executive Director for the congressionally mandated National Commission of the Structure of the Air Force. James Blackwell was a Cold War Army officer, having served in Armored Cavalry and Fast Attack, Motorized Infantry units. He taught American Politics and Government on faculty at West Point, and for the past eleven years has taught a graduate course in Military Strategy and the History of Nations for the Bush School of Government at Texas A&M University. In a narrative style similar to that of his two books, James Blackwell now writes inspiring stories of extraordinary virtue by ordinary people. He posts a weekly blog for the 307th Bombardment Group Association (https://307bg.org/category/Korean-war/) and is working on a book about the Korean War.