Robert V. Keeley

Keeley was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1929,[2] where his late father, American diplomat James Hugh Keeley, Jr., was serving as the American Consul. Keeley was educated in Canada, Greece, Belgium, and the United States. He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1951, with a major in English literature under the Special Program in the Humanities. His senior thesis was a novel with a critical preface, the first such "creative writing" undergraduate dissertation authorized. His brother Edmund Keeley also graduated from Princeton. Robert continued with graduate work at Princeton in English, and later, while in the Foreign Service, he held graduate fellowships at Stanford and at Princeton in public and international affairs. He did his military service in the U.S. Coast Guard during the Korean War (1953–55) as commanding officer of an 83-foot patrol boat.

Keeley is married to the former Louise Benedict Schoonmaker and they have two children. They were married June 23, 1951 in Kingston, New York. His daughter, Michal Mathilde, a graduate of Princeton, is a retired editor. His son, Christopher John (Chris), earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in photography from the Corcoran School of Art in 1988 and a Master's in Social Work from Catholic University in 1997, and is an artist and licensed social worker working for the D.C. Government in child welfare services while also engaged in drug abuse counseling. His wife is the niece of Louise Burt Schoonmaker, who married William Edwin Chilton, the son of United States Senator from West Virginia William E. Chilton.

Keeley's current affiliations are: the Cosmos Club of Washington, the American Foreign Service Association, Diplomatic and Consular Officers Retired, the Princeton Club of Washington, the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, the Literary Society, and the American Academy of Diplomacy.

Currently, Keeley is Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Council for the National Interest. In addition he works as a free-lance writer, lecturer, and consultant, based in Washington. His interests are not confined to foreign affairs, but extend to issues of domestic politics, economics, and social policy. He has written two memoirs covering portions of his career: Uganda under the rule of Idi Amin Dada (1971–73), and Greece under "the Colonels" (1966–68), both of which remain mostly unpublished because of sensitivity concerns. One chapter of the Uganda book has been published in Embassies Under Siege: Personal Accounts by Diplomats on the Front Line (Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University, Brassey's, 1995) entitled "Crisis Avoidance: Shutting Down Embassy Kampala, 1973."

In 1995 Ambassador Keeley founded the Five and Ten Press Inc., a publishing company whose purpose is to publish in inexpensive format (booklets and pamphlets) original articles, essays, and other short works of fiction and non-fiction rejected or ignored by the media and mainstream publishers. The press was incorporated in the District of Columbia in February 1996. The name comes from the intention to price the products of the press at between five and ten dollars a copy. The press's first publication was a pamphlet entitled D.C. Governance: It's Always Been a Matter of Race and Money, issued in December 1995, and the second was a booklet with the title Annals of Investing: Steve Forbes vs. Warren Buffett, published in March 1996. A third, The File: A Princeton Memoir, was published in May 1996. All three have the same author: the publisher, whose business card identifies his profession as "Consulting Iconoclast." As of October 1996 the Press began to sell its publications on a subscription basis, and also through the Internet. Subscribers have now received 12 new titles. The Press currently has more than 200 subscribers, and nearly breaks even financially.

In 2000 Keeley contributed a chapter on CIA-Foreign Service Relations to the book, National Insecurity-U.S. Intelligence After the Cold War, a work recommending reforms of the CIA, published by Temple University Press for the Center for International Policy. Also in 2000 Keeley edited a book for the American Academy of Diplomacy entitled First Line of Defense-Ambassadors, Embassies and American Interests Abroad that advocates greater reliance on and better funding for American diplomacy in conflict resolution and protecting our national security. Keeley also edited two yearbooks for the 50th reunion of Princeton's Class of 1951 in the year 2001. In 2010 Keeley published the book The Colonels' Coup and the American Embassy: A Diplomat's View of the Breakdown of Democracy in Cold War Greece.[3] Keeley died after an apparent stroke in January 2015.[4]

In 2004, Keeley was among 27 retired diplomats and military commanders who publicly said the administration of President George W. Bush did not understand the world and was unable to handle "in either style or substance" the responsibilities of global leadership.[5] On June 16, 2004 the Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change issued a statement against the Iraq War.[6]

• Appearances on C-SPAN
• http://www.cnionline.org/cni-board-of-directors/