<b>Live Webcast:</b> Congress and the Cold War

To watch the live webcast, follow the links in the See Also box to the right of this screen.

5th Floor Conference Room
Woodrow Wilson Center
1300 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20004

Robert David (KC) Johnson, Brooklyn College, City University of New York
David M. Barrett, Villanova University

with commentators:
Congressman John B. Anderson, Professor of Law at Nova Southeastern University and Chair of the Center for Voting and Democracy
Walter Pincus, The Washington Post

Based on new documentary evidence, Robert Davis (KC) Johnson and David M. Barrett have written groundbreaking books--Congress and the Cold War and The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy, respectively--that examine the role Congress played in the Cold War. They challenge the popular image of a weak Cold War Congress, in which the unbalanced relationship between the legislative and executive branches culminated in the escalation of the U.S. commitment in Vietnam.

Robert David Johnson is professor of history at Brooklyn College and the
CUNY Graduate Center, where he specializes in 20th century American politics and foreign policy. He is author of Ernest Gruening and the American Dissenting Tradition (Harvard, 1998) and The Peace Progressives and American Foreign Relations (Harvard, 1995); and is co-editor of four volumes of Lyndon Johnson's presidential recordings (Norton, 2005, 2006).

He has published articles on Congress and U.S. foreign relations in Political Science Quarterly, Diplomatic History, the Journal of Cold War Studies, International History Review, the Journal of Latin American History, Pacific Historical Review, the Journal of American-East Asian Relations, and the Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy.

David M. Barrett is Associate Professor of Political Science at Villanova University. A native of Louisiana, he formerly worked in public broadcasting and ran for a congressional seat in Indiana in 1984. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 1990.

He is author of the book Uncertain Warriors: Lyndon Johnson and His
Vietnam Advisers (1993) and editor of the book Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam Papers (1997). He has published in journals including Intelligence and National Security, Studies in Intelligence, and the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. He spent seven years and visited approximately two dozen archives in researching The CIA and Congress.

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John B. Anderson, who received 6 million votes as an independent United States presidential candidate in 1980, has served as chair of the Center for Voting and Democracy since 1996 after four years as chair of the Center's Advisory Board.

He is an accomplished speaker and his recent media appearances include the BBC, NPR and C-SPAN among others. He is a frequent lecturer and expert commentator on issues of electoral reform, United Nations reform, foreign affairs, American politics, and independent candidacies. He also writes regularly on the role of Congress in both domestic and international affairs. He is president of the World Federalist Association.

Mr. Anderson has taught political science as a visiting professor at numerous universities, including Bryn Mawr College, Brandeis University, Stanford University, Oregon State University, the University of Illinois, the Washington School of Law and Nova Southeastern University. He has taught constitutional law at Nova Southeastern University since the fall of 2001.

Between 1961 and 1981, Mr. Anderson served ten terms as U.S. Representative to Congress from the 16th District of Illinois. He served on the House Rules Committee and for a decade was Chairman of the House Republican Conference.

Walter Pincus is a writer for the national news staff of the Washington Post. At the Post, Pincus has written about a variety of national news subjects including nuclear weapons and arms control, political campaigns, the American hostages in Iran, and investigations of Congress and the Executive Branch. For six years he covered the Iran-Contra affair. He was also a part-time consultant to NBC News and later to CBS News, where he developed, wrote and produced television segments for network evening news, magazine shows and documentaries. Pincus has won several awards including a Pulitzer in 2001, which he shared with others for stories about Osama bin Laden. He was awarded the first Stewart Alsop Award for national security and intelligence reporting by the Association of Foreign Intelligence Officers; the George Polk Award for stories appearing in the Washington Post that exposed the neutron warhead, the Page One Award for magazine reporting in The Reporter, and a television writing Emmy for a one-hour program on CBS.