Reuel Marc Gerecht, who was most recently the director of the Middle East Initiative at the Project for the New American Century, has joined AEI as a resident fellow. Gerecht has been an analyst on the Middle East for the Central Intelligence Agency and CBS News, as well as a political officer for the Department of State. His book Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey into Revolutionary Iran appeared in 1997, and he is completing his next book, a history of the CIA from the Reagan administration to the present.

Resident Fellow William Schneider

John R. Lott Jr. offered suggestions in the September 28 Wall Street Journal for tightening airline security in the wake of terrorist attacks: "There are about 600,000 active state and local law enforcement officers in the U.S. today. They are currently forbidden from bringing their guns on airplanes. That should change. They should even be given discount fares if they fly with their guns. Most pilots have also had military experience. The request of their union to arm pilots should be granted; this is what [Israeli airline] El Al has done for a long time. Fears of having guns on planes are misplaced. The special, high-velocity handgun ammunition used on planes packs quite a wallop but is designed not to penetrate the aluminum skin of the plane. Even with regular bullets, the worst-case outcome would simply be to force the plane to fly at a lower altitude, where the air pressure is higher."

In September, Robert W. Hahn and Randall Lutter offered congressional testimony on proposals to elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to cabinet status. They recommend that Congress have the EPA do four things if such measures are enacted: "Make regulatory information readily available on the Internet in a timely manner; write a clear regulatory impact summary for important regulations; create a policy office that would do all policy analyses of significant regulations; [and] follow established principles of economic analysis when doing regulatory analyses." In addition, they recommend "that Congress shift scientific peer review of key studies to an independent body, such as the National Academy of Sciences" and "that Congress fund the independent regulatory oversight body that was created by the Truth in Regulating Act of 2000."

Jeffrey Gedmin

"As we fight the war against terrorists, the Bush administration should already be considering crucial ancillary outcomes," writes Jeffrey Gedmin in the October–November issue of Policy Review. "The United States has the chance now to revive U.S. relations with the moderate Arab world and drive radical regimes into a corner; to put U.S.-Russian relations, for the first time, on a stable and positive footing; and to reverse the sharp decline in U.S.-European relations of the past decade. Forming coalitions and reviving alliances cannot be the primary goal of American foreign policy, of course. Nor should the United States accept any unreasonable constraints imposed by international coalitions. But in the near term, alliances will serve America, at times in critical ways, in its sustained and far-reaching anti-terror campaign. In the long term, nothing could be more conducive to advancing American interests and promoting global security than to reestablish the credibility of a united West under American leadership."