Pete Hegseth - Chairman, Vets for Freedom

Captain Pete Hegseth was commissioned into the U.S. Army upon graduation from Princeton University in 2003. A year later, Capt. Hegseth served in Guantanamo Bay for a year on a security mission with his National Guard unit and, upon his return from Cuba, volunteered to join the 3rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division for their deployment to Iraq from 2005-2006. Capt. Hegseth served as an infantry Platoon Leader in Baghdad during the nationwide elections in October and December 2005, and as a Civil-Military Operations officer in Samarra for seven months, a time period which included the bombing of the Golden Mosque.

Capt. Hegseth earned the Combat Infantryman's Badge and Bronze Star Medal for his time in Iraq and continues to serve as an infantry officer in the Fighting 69th Infantry Battalion, New York Army National Guard.

Capt. Hegseth serves as theChairman of Vets for Freedom, an organization dedicated to mobilizing veterans to explain American strategy in Iraq. He also plans to start a masters program at the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in the fall of 2008.

While at Princeton as an undergraduate, Capt. Hegseth was the publisher of The Princeton Tory, the campus political journal, as well as a member of the varsity basketball team. Capt. Hegseth and his wife Meredith are originally from Minnesota, but now reside in New York City.