The Staff

Bill Roggio

Bill is the Managing Editor of The Long War Journal the president of Public Multimedia Inc., a nonprofit media organization with a mission to provide original and accurate reporting and analysis of the Long War, an Adjunct Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and a contributer to the The Weekly Standard. His coverage includes strategic and operational issues relating to the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Lebanon, and more extensively in Iraq, as well as al Qaeda's operations, tactics, and strategy.

Bill has embedded with the US Marine Corps, the US Army, the Iraqi Army, and Iraqi police in Iraq in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008, and with the Canadian Army in Afghanistan in 2006. His articles have been published in The National Review, The New York Post, The Toronto Times, and Die Weltwoche. He also presents regularly at the US Air Force's Contemporary Counterinsurgency Warfare School on the media and embedded reporting. Bill served as a signalman and infantryman in the US Army and the New Jersey National Guard from 1991 to 1997. Bill can be reached at billroggio@gmail.com.

Thomas Joscelyn

Thomas is the Senior Editor of The Long War Journal. He is a terrorism analyst, economist, and writer living in New York. Most of Thomas's research and writing has focused on how al Qaeda and its affiliates operate around the world. He is a regular contributor to the Weekly Standard and its online publications, the Daily Standard and Worldwide Standard. His work has also been published by National Review Online, the New York Post, and other media outlets. Thomas is the author of Iran’s Proxy War Against America, a short book published by the Claremont Institute that details Iran’s decades-long sponsorship of America’s terrorist enemies. He makes regular appearances on radio programs around the country and has appeared on MSNBC.

In 2006 he was named one of the Claremont Institute’s Lincoln Fellows. Thomas served as the senior terrorism adviser for Mayor Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign. In addition to his life as a terrorism analyst, thomas also manages economic research projects. He holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Karen Coulson

Karen is the Editor of The Long War Journal. Married to an Army officer currently serving in Iraq, Karen is dedicated to improving the coverage and quality of reporting on the war on terror. She was the assistant editor of Hematology-Oncology Clinics of North America, Health Law and Policy Issue (2003), the publications editor for the Southern Illinois University Law Journal, and the student editor of Legal Medicine Perspectives Student Case Briefs.

Bill Ardolino is a marketing professional, freelance writer, and Adjunct Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who lives in Washington, D.C. He has maintained INDC Journal since 2004, and written for the Washington Examiner and the Long War Journal. Dissatisfied with the short supply of on-the-ground reporting out of Iraq, Ardolino embedded with the US Marine Corps, the US Army, the Iraqi Army, and the Iraqi police in Fallujah, Habbaniyah and Baghdad in 2006, 2007, and 2008. His reporting focuses on combat operations, the development of Iraqi security forces, civil affairs work and Iraqi politics. He was cited in the 2004 best-seller, "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century" by Thomas Friedman for his "citizen journalism," including work exposing CBS News' fraudulent report on President George W. Bush's Air National Guard service. Bill can be reached at bill.ardolino@gmail.com.

Matt DuPee is an independent Afghan researcher and contributing editor for Afgha.com. He has a film and video production degree from Point Park University and intelligence analyst training from Neumann College. His articles have been published in the Frontier Post, the Middle East Times, e-Ariana, The Center for Conflict and Peace Studies, and others. His work was cited in the Military Review's May-June 2008, in an article titled The Taliban: An Organizational Analysis. He also participated in post-production research for the CBC's documentary, Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear.

DJ Elliott is primary author of the Iraqi Security Forces Order of Battle. He entered active duty in the US Navy, earned an Intelligence Specialist rating in 1981, and retired after 22 years of service. His sea duties have included USS Enterprise , USS LaSalle (Middle East Force staff), USS Coronado (Joint Task Force Middle East/Middle East Force staff ), USS Independence and USS Yorktown. Shore duties have included Naval Liaison Unit, Munich, Germany; US Defense Attache Office, Copenhagen, Denmark; Combined Naval Intelligence Center, Chinhae, Korea; Reserve Intelligence Program Office Area Two, Moffett Field, Calif. (instructor); and Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center, Fallon, Nev. DJ has a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia College and wrote and sold two war game designs while in the service.

Omar Fadhil Al-Nidawi is a Baghdad-trained dentist and a recent graduate student of international affairs at Columbia University in New York City. He is the co-author of the blog Iraq the Model, a two time winner of the Weblog Awards. Until late 2007 Omar was writing on the war in Iraq from Baghdad, Basrah, and other locations in Iraq. Now based in the US, he continues to write about Iraq, the war on terror, and issues in the Middle East. Omar’s work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, and he is a member of the Opinion Journal Federation. In March 2007, PC World magazine chose Omar and his brother and co-blogger Mohammed among "the 50 most important people on the web". Omar is currently a Summer Associate for The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Bill Murray worked as a public radio news director and disc jockey in Alaska for three years and helped run political campaigns in the Seattle area before receiving a graduate degree from Columbia University's School of Journalism in 1999. He went to work for Bloomberg News in Washington D.C. where he covered the U.S. Presidential recount in Florida, Congress and NASA. In 2004 he moved to London with Bloomberg, covering energy markets, OPEC and alternative fuels. Bill served as a combat engineer and bridge crewman for the U.S. Army Reserve in Alaska, Washington State and Virginia from 1996 to 2004. He has had more than 30 by-line articles published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Sun-Times, Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times and the Houston Chronicle, among others, on topics such as energy markets, U.S. congressional hearings and non-fiction book reviews. He has published more than 5,000 stories for the Bloomberg News service.

Jane Novak covers Yemen for The Long War Journal. The author of over 40 articles on Yemeni internal affairs, Jane is well known in Yemen where she has extensive contacts. Jane's website, Armies of Liberation, focused on Yemen, is banned by the Yemeni governmental Internet providers because of her in-depth reporting on sensitive topics. Jane appeared on Al Jazeera as an expert on Yemen. She authors an annual country report and a threat assessment on Yemen as well as an analysis of Yemen's Islamic insurgents. She is a contributing editor at World Press.org, a staff writer for Middle East Transparent, and has been published through out the Middle East and in the US. Jane can be reached at jane.novak@gmail.com.

Christopher Radin tracks the development of the Afghanistan National Security Force and publishes a quarterly status report at The Long War Journal. Christopher has a Bachelor of Science and Masters of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Columbia University and started his career as an engineer at Intel Corporation. He has been a product marketing manager in Silicon Valley, California for the past 15 years. Chris has had a live long interest in politics, international affairs and the military and has been an avid war gamer since 1975.

David Tate, who served in the US Marines from 1985-1988, is a multimedia journalist based in Roanoke, Va. David has worked as a journalist since 1996. He received the Edward R. Murrow award for continuous coverage work in 2001 and established his milblog, A Battlefield Tourist, in 2003. In February 2003, David crossed the Iraq-Turkey border to Salahadin province, Iraq, to cover the Iraqi opposition’s final meeting before the US invasion. In 2004, David spent seven months and more than a dozen embeds covering the war in Afghanistan. His DVD, “An Experiment in Democracy,” chronicles Afghanistan’s bid for its first free presidential election. He became the first journalist to independently embed with the fledgling Afghan National Army. David is a contracted videojournalist for Getty Images. He has contributed to The Long War Journal since August 2007 and embedded with US forces in Baghdad and southern Baghdad province in September 2007. David can be reached at dtate38@cox.net.

Richard Lafayette

Richard provides systems administration for The Long War Journal and its supporting hardware and software systems. Richard has over 15 years in network security and administration. Richard currently works for a private firm with offices in 25 countries providing hardware, software, Internet, and radio communications services.