About Jim Webb
Jim Webb is descended principally from the Scots-Irish settlers who
came to this country from Northern Ireland in the 18th century and
became pioneers in the Virginia mountains. Through the 1800's and
early 1900's, Mr. Webb's ancestors moved steadily west and south
from Virginia, most often to settlements in North Carolina,
Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas and Missouri. In the mid-1900's many
members of the family joined the westward migration to California,
and the family is now scattered throughout the continental United
States.
Both sides of Mr. Webb's family have a strong citizen-soldier
military tradition that predates the Revolutionary War. Mr. Webb's
father was a career Air Force officer who flew B-17s and B-29s
during World War Two, cargo planes during the Berlin Airlift, and
was a pioneer in the United States missile program. Colonel Webb,
who was the first family member to finish high school and who
graduated from the University of Omaha in 1962 after 26 years of
night school, put the first Atlas missile into place for the Air
Force in the late 1950's, and held an unsurpassed success-rate
record as commander of an Atlas, Thor, and Scout Junior missile
squadron during the early 1960's. During the Vietnam war he served
at Air Force Systems command on sensitive satellite link programs
and as a legislative affairs officer in the Pentagon, leading him to
become a vocal critic of Defense Secretary McNamara's leadership
methods and causing him eventually to retire from the Air Force,
partially in protest of the manner in which the Vietnam War was
being micromanaged by the political process.
Jim Webb grew up on the move, attending more than a dozen different
schools across the U.S. and in England. He graduated from high
school in Bellevue, Nebraska. First attending the University of
Southern California on an NROTC academic scholarship, he left for
the Naval Academy after one year. At the Naval Academy he was a
four-year member of the Brigade Honor Committee, a varsity boxer,
and was one of six finalists in the interviewing process for Brigade
Commander during his senior year. Graduating in 1968 he chose a
commission in the Marine Corps, and was one of 18 in his class of
841 to receive the Superintendent's Commendation for outstanding
leadership contributions while a midshipman. First in his class of
243 at the Marine Corps Officer's Basic School in Quantico,
Virginia, he then served with the Fifth Marine Regiment in Vietnam,
where as a rifle platoon and company commander in the infamous An
Hoa Basin west of Danang he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver
Star Medal, two Bronze Star Medals, and two Purple Hearts. He later
served as a platoon commander and as an instructor in tactics and
weapons at Marine Corps Officer Candidates School, and then as a
member of the Secretary of the Navy's immediate staff, before
leaving the Marine Corps in 1972.
Mr. Webb spent the "Watergate years" as a student at the Georgetown
University Law Center, arriving just after the Watergate break-in in
1972, and receiving his J.D. just after the fall of South Vietnam in
1975. While at Georgetown he began a six-year pro bono
representation of a Marine who had been convicted of war crimes in
Vietnam (finally clearing the man's name in 1978, three years after
his suicide), won the Horan award for excellence in legal writing,
and authored his first book, Micronesia and U.S. Pacific Strategy.
He also worked in Asia as a consultant to the Governor of Guam,
conducting a study of U.S. military land needs in Asia, and their
impact on Guam's political future.
Mr. Webb has written six best-selling novels: Fields of Fire (1978),
considered by many to be the classic novel of the Vietnam war, A
Sense of Honor (1981), A Country Such As This (1983), Something To
Die For (1991), The Emperor's General (1999) and Lost Soldiers
(2001). He taught literature at the Naval Academy as their first
visiting writer, has traveled worldwide as a journalist, and his PBS
coverage of the U.S. Marines in Beirut earned him an Emmy Award from
the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
In government, Mr. Webb served in the U.S. Congress as counsel to
the House Committee on Veterans Affairs from 1977 to 1981, becoming
the first Vietnam veteran to serve as a full committee counsel in
the Congress. During the Reagan Administration he was the first
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs from 1984 to
1987, where he directed considerable research and analysis of the
U.S. military's mobilization capabilities and spent much time with
our NATO allies. In 1987 he became the first Naval Academy graduate
in history to serve in the military and then become Secretary of the
Navy. He resigned from that position in 1988 after refusing to agree
in the reduction of the Navy's force structure during
congressionally-mandated budget cuts.
Among Mr. Webb's many other awards for community service and
professional excellence are the Department of Defense Distinguished
Public Service Medal, the Medal of Honor Society's Patriot Award,
the American Legion National Commander's Public Service Award, the
VFW's Media Service Award, the Marine Corps League's Military Order
of the Iron Mike Award, the John Russell Leader-ship Award, and the
Robert L. Denig Distinguished Service Award. He was a Fall 1992
Fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics.
Mr. Webb travels extensively, particularly in Asia, as a journalist,
business consultant and screenwriter-producer. He speaks Vietnamese
and has done extensive pro bono work with the Vietnamese community
dating from the late 1970's. In 1989 he met with key Japanese
government and industrial officials as a featured guest of the
Japanese Foreign Ministry. He has worked on feature film projects
with many of Hollywood's top producers. His original story Rules of
Engagement, which he also executive-produced, was released in April
2000 and starred Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. It was the
number one film in the US for two weeks.
His fifth novel The Emperor's General was purchased by Paramount pictures as the largest book-to-film deal of 1998. His book Born Fighting, How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, which was his first commercial non-fiction effort, was published in October 2004. It is currently in its 10th printing. He has most recently written a second non-fiction book entitled, "A Time to Fight, Reclaiming a Fair and Just America," which was published by Broadway Books mid-May 2008 to great acclaim.
Mr. Webb is currently the Senior U.S. Senator from Virginia, and
during his first term in office his legislative priorities have been
guided by three themes:
1) reorienting America's national security posture, 2) promoting
economic fairness, and 3) increasing government accountability.
He has successfully supported legislation that reflect these themes
and has also introduced or cosponsored measures focused on:
-developing robust practices
of international diplomacy,
-supporting our troops through responsible deployment cycles,
-providing comprehensive educational benefits for our post-9/11
veterans,
-developing stronger ethics laws and making government more
transparent and accountable to the American taxpayer through greater
oversight over wartime contracts.
Mr. Webb sits on the Senate Committees on Foreign Relations where he serves as chairman of the East Asia & Pacific Affairs Subcommittee, Armed Services where he serves as chairman of the key Personnel Subcommittee, Veterans' Affairs, and the Joint Economic Committee.
