Sidney Blumenthal life and biography

Sidney Blumenthal is a former aide to President of the United States Bill Clinton and a widely published American journalist, especially on American politics and foreign policy.

Born in Chicago, he earned a BA in sociology from Brandeis University in 1969 and started his career in Boston as a journalist who wrote for The New Republic. Over a career of twenty years, he became editor of several departments and wrote for several publications including The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker. During the '00s, he published several essays critical of the administration of then-President George W. Bush.

Following the end of the Clinton presidency, Blumenthal subsequently wrote a book titled The Clinton Wars published in 2003. The book includes a small biography of Blumenthal, but focuses on his years with the Clintons and in the White House. Other books by Blumenthal include The Permanent Campaign, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment, Pledging Allegiance: The Last Campaign of the Cold War, and How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime.

Blumenthal was recently the Washington bureau chief for Salon.com, for which he has written over 1800 pieces online. He is also a regular contributor to openDemocracy.net, as well as being a regular columnist for the UK newspaper, The Guardian. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife; they have two sons, one of whom is journalist Max Blumenthal. He is currently a senior fellow for the New York University Center on Law and Security.

Blumenthal joined the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign as a "senior advisor" in November 2007.

While on a trip to advise Hillary Rodham Clinton on her Presidential campaign, Blumenthal was arrested for driving while intoxicated in Nashua, New Hampshire on January 7, 2008. Blumenthal pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor DWI charge.

After her appointment as Secretary of State, Clinton wanted to hire Blumenthal. However, it was reported that White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel blocked his selection due to lingering anger among Obama aides over Blumenthal's role in promoting negative stories about Obama during the Democratic primary.

Blumenthal was the executive producer of the documentary, "Taxi to the Dark Side," directed by Alex Gibney, that won the Oscar for best documentary of 2007 at the Academy Awards. He was also the associate producer of the 2002 film Max, directed by Menno Meyjes and starring John Cusack, about the early political rise of Adolf Hitler and the aesthetics of Nazism.

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