Hull, Edmund J.
EDMUND J. HULL was a career Foreign Service officer fluent in Arabic whose 30-year service included posts in Jerusalem, Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen. From 1999 to 2001, he was deputy then acting coordinator for counterterrorism in the State Department, for which he received the CIA’s George H. W. Bush Award for Excellence in Counterterrorism. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, he was sent as ambassador to Yemen (2001–4), for which he received a Presidential Meritorious Service Award. In retirement, he was Princeton University’s first diplomat-in residence. He currently consults for the U.S. military and resides in Washington, D.C.
Since its inception, al Qaeda has aspired to create a safe haven in Yemen, where it has operated against U.S. and Yemeni interests. From 2001 to 2004, when Edmund Hull was U.S. ambassador to Yemen, U.S. and Yemeni counterterrorism efforts successfully seized the initiative against al Qaeda, severely degrading its...