douglas h paal chinese is vice president for studies at the carnegie endowment for international peace where he directs the endowments asia program he served as the director of the american institute in taiwan from 2002 to 2006 and worked on the national security council staffs of presidents reagan and george h w bush between 1986 and 1993 as director of asian affairs senior director and special assistant to the president he was vice chairman of jpmorgan chase international from 2006 to 2008 he also serves as a member of the board of trustees of the asia foundationpaal founded the asia pacific policy center in the mid1990s a nonprofit research organization hosted conferences and published a few reports on issues related to us policy in asia there were allegations that the organization functioned less like a think tank than a highend consultancy or even a lobbying firm according to former employees the centers work was almost entirely geared to servicing the needs of its governmental and corporate funders the list of clients as they were apparently often called included the government of malaysia which was thought to have given millions of dollars in contributions the abuse of nonprofit status was heavily discussed in the leadup to paals nomination as director of ait and helped to delay his appointmentprior to his service on the national security council paal worked on the us state department policy planning staff and at the us embassies in singapore and beijing he also worked as a senior analyst and deputy national intelligence officer for the cia he served as a us navy officer in vietnam and studied japanese in tokyo after graduating with bachelors and masters degrees in chinese studies and asian history from brown university and a phd in history and east asian languages from harvard universitypaal has written and spoken widely on us policy in asia and asian affairs his articles and interviews being published and broadcast by the new york times wall street journal south china morning post the national interest korea times washington times far eastern economic review ria novosti world politics review cspan bbc pbs and cctv he has also published numerous commentaries and policy papers through the carnegie endowment for international peacepaal resides with his wife betsy a fitzgerald in bethesda maryland they have two daughters alice who served as a peace corps volunteer in mauritania and victoria a lawyer in san francisco