A. Gregory Thielmann '72, Doctor of Laws

A. Gregory Thielmann '72 received an honorary Doctor of Laws at Grinnell College Commencement 2009.

It takes great courage and strength of character for a career public servant to publicly oppose senior government officials. When A. Gregory Thielmann '72, a career State Department officer, spoke out publicly about what he called the Bush administration's "gross distortion" of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq War, he demonstrated such courage.

"There is no higher crime in a democracy than to deceive the people about reasons for going to war," Thielmann told The Grinnell Magazine in 2004. "A lot of Americans were going to die as a consequence."

After his 2002 retirement from the State Department, Thielmann publicly challenged the Bush administration's interpretation of the intelligence. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof quoted Thielmann in May 2003, stating that the Bush administration was misrepresenting the intelligence about the immediate security threats Iraq could pose to the United States, particularly regarding weapons of mass destruction. He also appeared on CBS' 60 Minutes II, PBS' Now with Bill Moyers, and in the pages of The New Yorker and The New Republic.

Educated at Grinnell College and later at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Thielmann built a successful and productive career at the State Department spanning a quarter of a century. He joined in 1977 with what he calls a "deep patriotic motive" to pursue public service. Thielmann dedicated most of his career at the State Department to work on security issues such as arms control. He was part of several major breakthroughs, including the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which eliminated an entire category of nuclear weapons. His work earned significant recognition, including a U.S. Intelligence Community award for work on the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research's Soviet Coup Task Force in 1991.

Like other Grinnellians before him — perhaps most notably Joseph Welch 1914, who publicly stood up to communist witch-hunter Senator Joseph McCarthy — Greg Thielmann has demonstrated the moral courage and leadership to speak truth to power. Grinnell College is proud to honor him.