Best-selling author Marc Thiessen will speak at the Thomas Phillips Student Luncheon during CPAC 2010.  This event is open to all students who register at our website and will be held Friday, February 19, 2010 at noon in the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C.  It is one of three exclusive YAF student events during the conference.

Marc Thiessen is a Young America's Foundation alumnus who has gone on to a successful national security career that has taken him from Capitol Hill to the Pentagon and the West Wing, where he served on the White House Senior Staff as chief speechwriter to President George W. Bush.

Since leaving the White House Thiessen has become one of the nation's most prolific authors and commentators, writing regularly for the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, Weekly Standard, Daily Beast, and other publications, and appearing frequently on Fox News, CNN, ABC News, the BBC, and talk radio stations nationwide.  Watch his interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

The Daily Telegraph recently named Thiessen one of the "100 most influential conservatives in America." And in 2009, legendary New York Times columnist William Safire declared Thiessen "the most forceful, serious and articulate new spokesman for hardliners around - one who can back up his opinions with facts that can influence the debate."

Thiessen does exactly that in his new book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack.

Thiessen draws on his experience serving at the highest levels of the White House and the Department of Defense during all eight years of the Bush administration. He was in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and collaborated with Secretary Rumsfeld on all of his major speeches during the first three years of the war on terror.

After moving to the White House, Thiessen worked closely with President George W. Bush on hundreds of speeches - including televised addresses from the Oval Office, and most of the President's major speeches on the war on terror during his second term. He was the lead writer on the President's 2007 and 2008 State of the Union addresses.

Before joining the Bush Administration, Thiessen spent more than six years on Capitol Hill as spokesman and senior policy advisor to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms.

Thiessen is a graduate of Vassar College, and completed additional post-graduate studies at the Naval War College. He lives near Washington, DC, with his wife, Pamela, who works on Capitol Hill. They have four children.