Thomas R. Pickering
Template:TOCnestleft Thomas R. Pickering is a career diplomat in the United States sympathetic to the Islamic Republic of Iran and an apologist for Muslim terrorism.
Pickering is a member of the advisory board of the pro-Iran Islamist front group known as the National Iranian American Council.[1]
In 2012 then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named Pickering to head a U.S. Department of State “Accountability Review Board” tasked with examining the circumstances surrounding the deaths on Sept. 11, 2012, of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith, and security personnel Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods at the U.S. compound in terrorist-infested Benghazi, Libya.[2]
According to the U.S. Department of State, Pickering "is Vice Chairman of Hills & Company. Ambassador Pickering served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (1997-2000) and as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador; Nigeria, and Jordan. He also was the U.S. Ambassador and Representative to the United Nations in New York, where he led the U.S. effort to build a coalition in the UN Security Council during and after the first Gulf War. He has held additional positions in Tanzania, Geneva, and Washington, including as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Oceans, Environmental and Scientific Affairs and as Special Assistant to Secretaries of State William P. Rogers and Henry A. Kissinger. After retiring from the State Department in 2000, Ambassador Pickering joined The Boeing Company as Senior Vice President, International Relations and member of the Executive Council. He serves on a number not-for-profit boards. He holds degrees from Bowdoin College, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and the University of Melbourne and speaks French, Spanish, and Swahili fluently and also Arabic, Hebrew and Russian." [3]
Islamophobia
Pickering is on record as an opponent of what some call Islamophobia. In a 2012 panel discussion at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., Pickering said Americans’ lack of familiarity with Islam –and not Islamic terrorist attacks on Americans— fuels hostility toward Muslims. “Data shows that those Americans who do not know Muslims, who do not know much about Islam, are the ones who harbor the greatest feelings of prejudice,” he said. There is a “strong, continuing, and perhaps, in an unfortunate way in some areas, growing, prejudice against Muslims and Islam." Because the U.S. has “fought two long, difficult, and fruitless, in my view, wars against countries which are Islamic and in which that particular set of issues contribute to stereotyping, to phobia, to basically loose talk, jokes, and all the things that go to tend to make up bigotry and in a sense authorize it because we were at war, is, in my view, part and parcel of the phenomenon that we see now,” he said. [4][5]
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Pickering was listed as a member of the Science and Security Board for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as at March 4, 2010.[6]