Eugene G. Windchy

Eugene G. Windchy in 1967 left his position as the U.S. Information Agency's Assistant Science Adviser to investigate the forgotten Tonkin Gulf naval incidents of 1964. He then wrote a book, Tonkin Gulf, which was reviewed in the New York Times as "superb investigative reporting" (September 26, 1971).

Windchy wrote the New Republic's analysis of the Pentagon Papers (August 7, 1971) and has written other articles for the Nation, Saturday Review, Atlantic, and the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings.

Another New Republic article (January 29, 1972) contested the settled academic opinion, among both historians and political scientists, that the president has constitutional authority to initiate armed conflict in the absence of the nation's being attacked. In that article Windchy drew upon James Madison's notes concerning the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He also debunked a State Department document which purported to show that on 125 occasions presidents had exercised the war power on their own initiative. These were insignificant incidents that often involved pirates, and on one listed occasion the U.S. Navy actually fired on a U.S. Consulate.

After the 1983 shootdown of the Korean Airliner 007, Windchy wrote for the Washington Post an op-ed (October 19, 1983) that disputed the explanation that was accepted by the major American media and Seymour Hersh's book based on interviews with high Soviet officials. According to that explanation, the Soviets mistook the Boeing airliner for an Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance plane. Windchy's op-ed gave reasons for why the Soviets must have known the target was a commercial airliner, and years later this opinion was justified when an interview with the attacking pilot appeared in the New York Times.

When in Japan with the U.S. Information Agency, Windchy wrote a booklet on atomic energy that sold one million copies. Later he assisted Ambassador Edwin O. Reischauer in his relations with left wing magazines and often placed in them articles by the ambassador. In Washington he served as the USIA's Assistant Science Adviser stationed at NASA headquarters. Since 1993 he in private life has engaged in the study of evolutionary biology.

Windchy is a graduate of the University of Illinois and a veteran of U.S. Army service in Korea, where he was stationed with the British Commonwealth Division ("a Kiplingesque experience"). He resides with his wife in Alexandria, Virginia. A daughter lives with her family in Berkeley, California.