Jack WHEELER

Browse to the complete transcript (long!) of the interview with Jack Wheeler in the May 1996 issue of Full Context, or DOWNLOAD 71k PDF file.

 Dr. Wheeler has had two parallel careers for many years: one in the field of adventure and exploration as the owner of Jack Wheeler Expeditions; the other in the field of political freedom and human rights as President of the Freedom Research Foundation. Regarding the first, at age 12 he was honored in the White House by President Eisenhower as the youngest Eagle Scout in the history of the Boy Scouts. He climbed the Matterhorn at age 14, swam the Hellespont (Life Magazine 12/12/60) and lived with Amazon headhunters at 16, hunted a man-eating tiger in Vietnam at 17, started an export business in Vietnam at 19, and wrote The Adventurer's Guide (New York: McKay, 1975), described by Merv Griffin as "the definitive book for anyone wishing to lead a more adventurous and exciting life." He has three "first contacts" with tribes never before contacted by the outside world: a clan of Aushiri Aucas in the Amazon, the Wali-ali-fo in New Guinea, and a band of Bushmen in the Kalahari. He has retraced Hannibal's route over the Alps with elephants; led numerous expeditions in Central Asia, Tibet, Africa, and elsewhere, including 16 expeditions to the North Pole; and has been listed in The Guinness Book of World Records for the first free fall sky-dive in history at the North Pole.

Regarding his second career, Dr. Wheeler received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Southern California, where he has lectured on Aristotelian ethics. Author of numerous articles in political philosophy and geopolitics, he began in the early '80s a series of extensive visits to anti-Soviet guerrilla insurgencies in Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Laos, and Afghanistan, and to democracy movements in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, becoming an unofficial liaison between them and the Reagan White House. Based on this, he developed the strategy for dismantling the Soviet Empire, adopted by the White House, known as the "Reagan Doctrine." It worked. The Freedom Research Foundation, founded by Dr. Wheeler in 1984, continues to provide information to a number of Congressional offices on issues regarding political and economic freedom throughout the world and in the United States. As Contributing Editor to Strategic Investment, one of the world's most influential investment publications, his column "Behind The Lines" has developed an avid international following.

Dr. Wheeler has been called the "real Indiana Jones" by the Wall St. Journal, the "creator of the Reagan Doctrine" by the Washington Post, and an "ideological gangster" by the Soviet press. He has traveled to 180 countries and all seven continents, and leads 3 to 4 expeditions a year. He and his wife, Rebel Holiday, have two sons, Brandon (age 12) and Jackson (age 4). Their home is in Falls Church, Virginia, near Washington, D.C.

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