Source description last updated: 11 July 2019

In brief: The Jamestown Foundation is a Washington, D.C.-based information platform providing media and monitoring reports aimed at informing and educating policy makers and the broader policy community about events and trends in societies that are strategically or tactically important to the United States and in which public access to such information is often restricted.

Coverage on ecoi.net:

Eurasia Daily Monitor (EDM), Terrorism Monitor (TM), other reports

EDM covered daily on ecoi.net, TM bi-weekly, other reports monthly, for countries of priorities A-C.

Mission/Mandate/Objectives:

The Jamestown Foundation was founded in 1984 by William Geimer (The Jamestown Foundation: About Us, undated), a former US official, to help Soviet defectors (New York Times, 15 July 1988). Its mission is to inform “policy makers and the broader community about events and trends in those societies which are strategically or tactically important to the United States and which frequently restrict access to such information” (The Jamestown Foundation: About Us, undated).

Current board members of the Jamestown Foundation include former US defence and intelligence officials (including a former CIA director), business leaders, academics, a retired US Navy admiral, a former US diplomat and a journalist. (The Jamestown Foundation: Board Members, undated).

The foundation relies on a “global network of experts” for its analytical reporting (The Jamestown Foundation: About Us, undated).

Funding:

The Jamestown Foundation is a registered US public charity and receives financial contributions “from corporations, foundations and individuals” (The Jamestown Foundation: Support Jamestown, undated).

Scope of reporting:

Geographic focus: Africa, Central Asia, China and the Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, South Asia, the Caucasus, Russia, Turkey

Thematic focus: security issues, terrorism, militant groups, foreign policy and military interventions

Methodology:

The “monitor” reports are often authored by analysts based in institutions external to the foundation. While they may be US-based, they often hail from and/or are based in the regions they work on (see, for example, the list of analysts contributing to the EDM (The Jamestown Foundation: About Eurasia Daily Monitor, undated) and the TM (The Jamestown Foundation: About Jamestown’s Terrorism Program, undated)). They include “former high-ranking government officials and military officers, political scientists, journalists, scholars and economists” (The Jamestown Foundation: About Us, undated) who provide analytical articles based on their expertise and their monitoring of local coverage of relevant issues. The publications contain references to public sources such as media reports including reports written in the local languages (see, for example, The Jamestown Foundation: One More Standoff in Kuropaty: Slow-Motion Social ‘Civil War’ Rages on in Belarus, 8 April 2019; The Jamestown Foundation: Asset or Victims: A Portrait of Women Within al-Shabaab, 25 March 2019; The Jamestown Foundation: Artillery Wars in Donbas Enter a New Stage, 18 March 2019; The Jamestown Foundation: Internal Threats to Tunisian Security–From the Borders to the Cities, 1 March 2019).

Language(s) of publications:

English

Further reading / links:

On the Jamestown Foundation’s founder William Geimer, a speech by US Republican Representative Frank R. Wolf:

 

On Jamestown Foundation & Soviet defectors:

 

A description of Jamestown Foundation by Right Web, a project focusing on prominent organisations or individuals who “promote militarist U.S. foreign and defense policies” (PBS Frontline, 8 November 2010), based at the progressive think-tank Institute for Policy Studies (Right Web, undated):

 

All links accessed 11 July 2019