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JOHN R. BOLTON

John R. Bolton was appointed as United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations on August 1, 2005 and served until his resignation in December 2006. Prior to his appointment, Bolton served as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security from May 2001 to May 2005.

Throughout his distinguished career, Bolton has been a staunch defender of American interests. While Under Secretary, he repeatedly advocated tough measures against the nuclear weapons programs of both Iran and North Korea, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction generally. He led negotiations for America to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty so that the Bush Administration could proceed with a national missile-defense program.

During his tenure at the United Nations, he was a leading voice on the need for the Security Council to take strong and meaningful action against international proliferation and terrorism. Along with France’s ambassador, Bolton led the Security Council to approve a unanimous resolution to end the summer 2006 Hezbollah war on Israel, to authorize U.N. peacekeepers and to create an arms embargo against Hezbollah. He also assembled an international coalition that blocked the bid of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's Marxist strongman, to join the Security Council.

Bolton was also an advocate for human rights while serving at the UN. He arranged the Security Council's first deliberations on Burma's human rights abuses. He invited actor George Clooney and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel to brief the Security Council in September 2006 on the Khartoum regime's mass-murder of non-Arabs in Darfur, Sudan. “Every day we delay only adds to the suffering of the Sudanese people and extends the genocide,” Bolton said. He engineered the Security Council's approval of 22,500 U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur. Bolton worked to pressure Sudan's government to accept these personnel atop the 7,000 African Union soldiers already on site.

Bolton has spent many years of his career in public service. Previous positions he has held include assistant secretary for International Organization Affairs at the Department of State, 1989-1993; assistant attorney general, Department of Justice, 1985-1989; assistant administrator for Program and Policy Coordination, U.S. Agency for International Development, 1982-1983 and general counsel, U.S. Agency for International Development, 1981-1982.

Bolton is also an attorney. Currently, he is of counsel at Kirkland & Ellis LLC with a focus on counseling clients on domestic and international issues in complex corporate, litigation, internal investigations, regulatory and competition matters. From 1974- 1981, he was an associate at the Washington office of Covington & Burling, where he returned as a partner in the firm from 1983-1985.

Bolton is the author of Surrender is Not an Option: Defending America at the U.N. and Abroad, published by Simon and Shuster (November 2007) and How Barack Obama is Endangering our National Sovereignty, published by Encounter Books (April 2010).

Bolton currently serves as a foreign policy senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a contributor to FOX News Channel and his op-ed articles are regularly featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Times. AEI is a nonprofit public policy center dedicated to preserving and strengthening the foundations of freedom through research education and open debate.

Bolton was born in Baltimore, MD. He graduated with a B.A., summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from and received his J.D. in 1974. He currently resides in Maryland with his wife, Gretchen. He has one daughter, Jennifer Sarah, who is attending business and engineering graduate school. DICK CAVETT

Known best as the host of on ABC, PBS, USA, HBO, and CNBC, DICK CAVETT has been nominated for 11 Emmy awards -- the most recent in 2012 for an HBO special with -- and has won three. A frequent guest on interview shows, including HuffPost Live, Late Night with , The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and Imus in the Morning, Cavett has written four books including Brief Encounters in 2014, based on the online opinion columns he writes for the New York Times. He has appeared in movies, TV specials, TV commercials, and several Broadway plays. He starred in 2014 in an off-Broadway play, "Hellman v. McCarthy" with the Abingdon Theatre Company.

In 1968, ABC signed DICK CAVETT as the host of a morning , which eventually led ABC to give Cavett his own late night program opposite . Cavett was the host of The Dick Cavett Show, which won three Emmys and aired on ABC from 1968 to 1975 and on PBS from 1977 to 1982. He also hosted talk shows on the USA, HBO, and CNBC cable networks. The Dick Cavett Show aired for six seasons on CNBC. He hosted many additional shows including Faces of Japan -- a series for PBS, as well as two HBO specials on magic, and three HBO series: "Time Was," Yesteryear," and also "Remember When." He appears frequently on Imus in the Morning, HuffPost Live, and other interview programs including Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and The Dave Hill Explosion; he was nominated for his eleventh Emmy Award in 2012 for the HBO comedy special "Mel Brooks and Dick Cavett Together Again."

Cavett was born in Kearney, Nebraska in 1936. Growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska, Cavett won national fame as a trophy-winning teenage magician and was a state champion in gymnastics on the pommel horse. In 1954, he earned a scholarship to Yale University where he majored in English and Drama. At Yale he appeared in numerous radio and stage productions, while spending his summers working at the Oregon and Stratford, (Connecticut), Shakespeare Festivals and the Williamstown (Massachusetts) Theatre Festival.

He enjoyed making numerous appearances with his fellow Nebraskan and friend on The Tonight Show, where he started as a joke writer for . Twice the host of , he was also twice on Kraft comedy specials with George Burns and , and over the years he has made guest appearances on such television programs as The Odd Couple, , Kate & Allie, Kraft Music Hall, , The Carol Burnett Show, The Dean Martin Show, The Bob Hope Show, , All My Children, The Edge of Night, HBO’s , and TBS’s Are We There Yet?. He is renowned for his success on game shows in their golden age. He was the host of the highly controversial "VD Blues" in the early '70s on PBS. He has appeared in a dozen feature films including and . More recently, he has appeared on many of the current radio and television interview shows, and is frequently sought for voice-over and emcee work. On the stage, Cavett made his Broadway debut in 1977 playing the leading role in Otherwise Engaged, a British comedy by Simon Gray. Cavett returned to Broadway in 1988 in the role of the narrator in ’s . From October 2000 through January of 2002 Cavett appeared as the narrator in the Broadway production of The Rocky Horror Show. He starred in an off-Broadway production of Hellman v. McCarthy in 2014.

In addition to his performing career, Cavett has -- in collaboration with Christopher Porterfield -- written two books: Cavett (1974) and Eye on Cavett (1983). In 2010 he published Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets. His latest book (2014) is Brief Encounters: Conversations, Magic Moments, and Assorted Hijinks. His work has been widely published in The New Yorker, TV Guide, Vanity Fair, and elsewhere. Cavett has written an online opinion column for the New York Times since 2007.

Mr. Cavett lives in and Montauk, New York with his wife Martha Rogers, Ph.D. and his adorable shelter dog Riley.

CAPTAIN RICHARD PHILLIPS

For five days in April 2009, the world was glued to their TV screens as Captain Richard Phillips became the center of an extraordinary international drama when he was captured by Somali pirates who hijacked his ship, the first hijacking of a U.S. ship in more than 200 years. The hostage drama began on Wednesday, April 8th when a small band of pirates swung grappling hooks and climbed ropes from their skiff onto the Maersk Alabama, a container ship ferrying food aid to East Africa. Firing into the air as they leapt aboard the ship, many of the crew members scrambled into a designated safe room aboard the vessel. On the bridge, the pirates held four sailors at gunpoint, but the crew of 20 outnumbered the four attackers. They managed to wound the apparent leader of the pirates in the hand with an ice pick and regain control. The crew demanded the other pirates leave the ship, but the pirates had scuttled their own small boat. They demanded an escape boat, fuel and food. To protect his crew, Captain Phillips made a conscious decision to put himself directly in harm's way, knowing full well that he might pay the ultimate price for his decision. Amid the standoff, he offered himself as a hostage. Once the pirates settled into one of the ship's covered lifeboats, the crew attempted to trade the pirate they had captured for Captain Phillips. After they released their captive, the pirates refused to honor the agreement and fled with nine days of food rations and Captain Phillips. Held hostage as a human shield in a small lifeboat with three pirates, he had little to hope for or cling to — except the knowledge that he had done absolutely everything he could to save the lives of the 20 sailors aboard his ship. The U.S. Navy responded to the scene, and negotiations were ongoing between the pirates and the captain of the USS Bainbridge. On Friday April 10th, Captain Phillips jumped out of the lifeboat and managed to swim a few yards toward the nearby destroyer, but the pirates went in after him and managed to haul him back in. The standoff dragged on until April 12th, when Navy SEAL snipers saw one of the pirates aim his AK-47 machine gun at Capt. Richard Phillips's back and concluded he was in “imminent danger.” President Barack Obama, who spoke with Captain Phillips by phone after he was freed, said, "I share the country's admiration for the bravery of Captain Phillips and his selfless concern for his crew. His courage is a model for all Americans." Captain Richard Phillips is the author of A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea, about his experience and his remarkable rescue. This dramatic story is also heading to the big screen courtesy of Columbia Pictures. Captain Phillips is a graduate of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy a member of the International Organization of Masters, Mates & Pilots Union, and a licensed American merchant mariner. He became Captain of the MV Maersk Alabama in 2009. Captain Phillips married Andrea Coggio in 1987. They have two children, Mariah and Danny and reside in Underhill, Vermont.