Peter Van Buren

Peter Van Buren is a 24-year retired veteran of the State Department. He served primarily as a Consular Officer in Taipei, London, Seoul, Osaka, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Iraq, and Washington. He speaks Japanese and some Chinese Mandarin.

Following his first book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People (Metropolitan, 2011), the Department of State began judicial proceedings against Van Buren, falsely claiming he exposed classified material. Through the efforts of the Government Accountability Project and the ACLU, Van Buren instead retired from the State Department on his own terms.

Van Buren’s second book, Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent (Luminis, 2014), traces the rise of the working poor and the destruction of the middle class. The novel tells the story of one Midwestern blue collar family across three generations. The book predicted the rise of forces that led in large part to the election of Donald Trump in 2016. His third book, Hooper's War (Luminis, 2018), is a novel set in WWII Japan dealing with moral injury.

Peter’s commentary has been featured in The New York Times, Reuters, Salon, NPR, Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, The Nation, TomDispatch.com, Antiwar.com, Mother Jones, Le Monde, Asia Times, The Guardian, and others. He has appeared on the BBC, All Things Considered and Fresh Air, Fox News, VICE, Japanese NHK, Democracy Now!, Voice of America, and more. He currently writes a weekly column for The American Conservative.