Robert Ames AldenRobert Ames Alden retired from the Washington Post in 2000 after more than 48 years as an editor, making him the longest-serving editor in the paper’s history.  As night news editor in 1963, he put together the Post's first extra edition since Pearl Harbor to cover the assassination of President Kennedy.  For more than 40 years, he was a key news editor at the Post, putting together countless newspapers on historic days from the beginning of the 1960s through the end of the 1990s -- including wars, riots, assassinations, natural disasters, elections, massive demonstrations, and many other memorable events. 

As world news editor in 1974, he was the principal architect of the Post for the historic edition on the resignation of President Nixon.  Culminating a personal seven-year effort in 1975, he was the principal founder of the National Press Foundation and served four terms as the Foundation's first president.  He spearheaded the Foundation's efforts to improve journalism education.  In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was the leading male advocate for the admission of women into the National Press Club, where he served as president in 1976.  The first native Washingtonian to lead the Press Club, he began his career as a sportswriter for the Cleveland Press in 1947.  He helped innovate the use of more statistics in baseball coverage and was an award-winning writer. 

He was a visionary community leader in planning a green, central park, library, outdoor stage, community center and theater for McLean, VA, whose Robert Ames Alden Theater carries his name.  A half century ago, he proposed to state and local officials naming McLean's main street "Dolley Madison Boulevard."  The purpose was to honor the First Lady who saved from the White House the Stuart portrat of Washington, an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, and other treasures at risk when the British invaded Washington and burned the White House and most public buildings.  She fled to what is now McLean over the route that bears her name, eventually meeting President James Madison in McLean.  

Alden has been deeply involved in history, music and drama organizations locally and nationally.  He holds bachelor and master’s degrees from the George Washington University, where he won the university's top history award as a student for 17 years in the 1950s and 1960s.  In 2005, university officials bestowing a distinguished alumnus award described Alden as “a living legend” in Washington journalism.

   
J. Ronald FisherJames Ronald Fisher is an honors graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, a retired Navy captain, and the founder and executive director of WeThePeopleNow.org.  Additionally, he is an engineer, businessman, church and community leader, and civil rights advocate.  Fisher’s 30 years of military service includes 15 nuclear submarine patrols during the Cold and Vietnam Wars.  Also, he managed the overhaul and repair of nuclear submarines and inspections of almost every major naval command as the assistant Naval inspector general for logistics on the staff of the Secretary of the Navy/Chief of Naval Operations.  His Navy work also included collateral duties as a prosecutor, defense counsel and summary court martial officer.  His Navy awards include the Legion of Merit.  As a civilian, he worked at two engineering services firms.  He founded and led the Defense Fire Protection Association to improve the safety and survivability of U.S. military forces.  Also, he founded and led the Veterans Sales and Services Corporation (VetSS), which specialized in hiring disabled veterans.  His web site has, among other things, plans to end United States wars and occupation, put more Americans to work and reform financial systems.  In politics, he was chairman of the Northern Virginia Presidential primary campaign for his classmate John McCain in 2000, and held the same post in 2008 for Dennis Kucinich.  He was first in his class in Submarine, Nuclear Power and Basic Engineering Duty Officer Schools and is the author of numerous research papers.
   

John Edward Hurley is Chairman of the McClendon Group, which is named for the legendary White House correspondent Sarah McClendon and meets in the McClendon Room at the National Press Club.  His career in the journalism and non-profit world has included his work with the major media as a White House correspondent, as a commentator on News Talk America, and as a member of the Public Information Committee of the National Academy of Sciences. 
 
In addition to his work with the major media, he is the Commander of the National Press Club American Legion Post; developed the public relations program that brought together the various breed registries that comprise the American Horse Council; was a long-time sponsor of the Rappahannock Hunt; and is a patron of the Thornton Hill Hounds.  He also is President and Chairman of the Confederate Memorial Association's museum and library, the historian for the John Barry Division of the Hibernians, and a co-founder of the Capitol Hill Civil War Roundtable. Throughout his career, he has had a special interest in the integrity of the court system and has hosted several news events on the subject, with the latest covered by C-SPAN from the National Press Club.
   

John Kelly directs John Kelly & Associates Public Relations.  Previous employers have included NBC News, CBS News, the State of New York and the Central Intelligence Agency.  His news topics have included cutting-edge stories on the 1960 Kennedy Presidential campaign, Cape Canaveral space launches, the historic 1961 integration of University of Georgia at Athens, and flying to Washington to witness the Kennedy Inauguration and, from a nearby camera platform, hearing the words, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."  He reported exclusives about Albert "The Boston Strangler" DeSalvo, Cuban militants planning Castro's overthrow, Soviet espionage, Mafia crime, the Vietnam War and Watergate.  Kelly interrupted his reporting career, leaving his post as an editor at NBC News at its Rockefeller Center headquarters in New York, to become a CIA covert action officer serving in Vietnam during the war, among other duties. Later, he returned to reporting.  Afterward, he was appointed by New York Governor Hugh L. Carey to serve as a Director and Deputy Commissioner of the State Department of Taxation and Finance.

Kelly's career began as a high-school copyboy for the New York Journal-American.  While participating in a training program and riding with a reporter and photographer team, one night he met famed columnist and fellow ambulance-chaser Walter Winchell sitting in a street.  Winchell, a pioneering columnist and radio reporter beginning in the Roaring Twenties, was cradling in his lap the head of a car accident victim, who was gushing, "Walter! Walter!" in happiness over his brush with fame.

After a stint with a New Haven newspaper and television station Kelly returned to New York to report for United Press Movietone Television News on national assignments.  His coverage of the Kennedy 1960 campaign included responsibilities as the pool reporter on Election Night at Kennedy's home in Hyannis, Massachusetts.  In February 1965, he obtained an exclusive interview for NBC with Malcom X in which the black leader correctly predicted that he would not make it through the weekend without assassination. Kelly's other work in the 1960s included first-hand reports of astronaut John Glenn's lift-off, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's iconic speech at the United Nations banging his shoe on a desktop for emphasis.  As night editor of NBC's headquarters news desk, Kelly obtained permission from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover for exclusive arrest footage of 13 Ku Klux Klan members for the infamous "Mississippi Burning" murders of two civil rights activists whose bodies were dumped in a swamp.  Kelly was covering the United Nations Security Council when U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge removing a secret microphone from artwork installed in the Moscow embassy.  Soviets had given the embassy a decorative U.S. seal, but with a microphone in the eagle's beak.

Read more: John Kelly

   

Andrew KreigJustice Integrity Project Executive Director Andrew Kreig has two decades experience as an attorney and non-profit executive in Washington, DC.  An author and longtime investigative reporter, his primary focus since 2008 has been exploring allegations of official corruption and other misconduct in federal agencies.  Also, he has been a consultant and volunteer leader in advising several non-profit groups fostering cutting-edge applications within the communications industries.  In 2008, he became a senior fellow with the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University and an affiliated research fellow with the Information Economy Project at George Mason University School of Law.  As president and CEO of the Wireless Communications Association International (WCAI) from 1996 until 2008, Kreig led its worldwide advocacy that helped create the broadband wireless industry.  Previously, he was WCAI vice president and general counsel, an associate at Latham & Watkins, law clerk to a federal judge, author of the book Spiked about the newspaper business and a longtime reporter for the Hartford Courant. A description of Spiked is here. Listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World from the mid-1990s and currently, he holds law degrees from the University of Chicago School of Law and from Yale Law School.  His undergraduate degree is from Cornell University.

   

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