Bush appoints Vassar graduate

Katie Paul News Editor

Marc Thiessen ’89 was appointed by President George W. Bush to be Deputy Assistant to the President on Friday, Sept. 1.

According to a White House press release, Thiessen had previously been a Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Speechwriting. Before this, he was the Director of Speechwriting at the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Earlier in his career, Thiessen served as the spokesman for the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Thiessen was the press liaison for Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC). Helms was the chairman of the Committee from 1995 to 2001 and served as a senator for five terms.

Thiessen graduated from Vassar in 1989 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. While at Vassar, he edited The Spectator, a conservative publication that sparked controversy in 1988 when a black Spectator writer was accused by another black Vassar student of being a traitor to his race.

Since graduation, Thiessen has written and spoken about his politics with news organizations such as The National Review, The Weekly Standard, CNN and The Washington Post.

In a December 2000 interview on CNN, Thiessen argued against the ratification of a treaty backing the International Criminal Court, which was designed to enable the United Nations to prosecute crimes against humanity, regardless of the perpetrator’s country of origin.

“This [treaty] opens a wide door for politicized prosecutions of not only American servicemen on the ground, but American officials going up all the way to the secretary of defense, the national security adviser and the President of the United States,” said Thiessen.

Thiessen also remained a staunch supporter of Helms, his former boss, despite widespread accusations of Helms’ racism.

“Over the course of 30 years, hundreds of young conservatives have served in [Helms’s] Senate office and are now deployed across all levels of the U.S. government,” Thiessen wrote in a January 2003 editorial in The Washington Post in the wake of Helms’ retirement. “Yes, Jesse Helms may be gone, but his disciples are not. They will be influencing U.S. policy for decades to come.”