Ex-CIA director named to Imperial Pacific’s new advisory committee

Robert James Woolsey

Investment giant Imperial Pacific International Holdings, Ltd. the mother company of Best Sunshine International, Ltd., announced in a May 16 filing that former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Robert James Woolsey has been appointed independent non-executive director.

Woolsey served as CIA director between 1993 and 1995 under the administration of President Bill Clinton.

Last month Imperial Pacific announced it had established a three-member advisory committee to provide its management with “sound strategic and tactical advice.” The Hong Kong-listed company named three high-profile individuals in the United States’ political scene: Former Pennsylvania governor Edward Rendell; former New York governor David Paterson; and former Federal Bureau of Investigation director Louis Freeh.

In addition to heading the CIA and the intelligence community, Woolsey has held presidential appointments in two Republican and two Democratic administrations

He was ambassador to the Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe from 1989 to 1991, under-secretary of the Navy from 1977 to 1979, and general counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services from 1970 to 1973.

He was appointed by the president to serve in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1983 to 1986 as delegate-at-large to the U.S. Soviet Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) and Nuclear and Space Arms Talks (NST). As an officer in the U.S. Army, he was an adviser on the U.S. Delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I), in Helsinki and Vienna, from 1969 to 1970.

He has served on numerous government and non-profit advisory boards such as the National Commission on Energy Policy and chaired the Clean Fuels Foundation and the New Uses Council. He also served as a Trustee of Stanford University and chaired the Executive Committee of the Board of Regents of The Smithsonian Institution. He has been a member of the National Commission on Terrorism, the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the U.S., the President’s Commission on Federal Ethics Law Reform, the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management, and the President’s Commission on Strategic Forces.

In 2009, he was the Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; Woolsey received his B.A. degree from Stanford University, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa; an M.A. from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and an LL.B from Yale Law School, where he was managing editor of the Yale Law Journal.