Jed Babbin

Jed Babbin, "author of Inside the Asylum, was a deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of President George H.W. Bush and a member of the Pentagon military analyst program. He writes a weekly column, "Loose Canons", as  a contributing editor of The American Spectator Magazine and is a contributor to National Review Online."

Background
Babbin served as deputy undersecretary of defense under George H.W. Bush (1990-1991). He is a contributing editor of The American Spectator magazine, where he writes the "Saloon" series, and the author of the "Loose Cannons" column for TAS Online. He is a retired air force officer who often appears as a military expert on conservative-leaning cable news programs such as "The O'Reilly Factor", "Fox and Friends", and "Scarborough Country". He served as the designated guest host of Oliver North's "Common Sense Radio" for nearly four years. He has also subbed for conservative radio hosts Laura Ingraham, Hugh Hewitt and Greg Garrison, and can often be heard as a guest host on WMET AM 1160 Talk Radio in Washington, DC.

He has traveled to the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Babbin is an alumnus of Stevens Institute of Technology (B.E. 1970), Cumberland School of Law (J.D. 1973) and the Georgetown University Law School (LL.M. 1978).

The Pentagon's military analyst program
In April 2008 documents obtained by New York Times reporter David Barstow revealed that Babbin had been recruited as one of over 75 retired military officers involved in the Pentagon military analyst program. Participants appeared on television and radio news shows as military analysts, and/or penned newspaper op/ed columns. The program was launched in early 2002 by then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke. The idea was to recruit "key influentials" to help sell a wary public on "a possible Iraq invasion."

Books

 * Legacy of Valor, Pentland Press, 2000. {This is a "military adventure novel")
 * "Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe are Worse than You Think" (Regnery 2004).

SourceWatch resources

 * Covert propaganda
 * Donald H. Rumsfeld
 * Psyops
 * Regnery Publishing
 * U.S. Department of Defense
 * Victoria Clarke

Articles

 * Jed Babbin, "The CIA Disinformation Campaign," The American Spectator, November 8, 2005.
 * Daniel Haack, "Jed Babbin: The Pentagon's Most Prolific Pundit," PR Watch, August 19, 2008.