W. Patrick Lang, Jr

Retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces (The Green Berets).

W. Patrick Lang, Jr. is a retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces (The Green Berets). He served in the Department of Defense both as a serving officer and then as a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service for many years. He is a highly decorated veteran of several U.S. overseas conflicts including Vietnam. He was trained and educated as a specialist in the Middle East by the U.S. Army and served in that region for many years. In 1979, he was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a, Yemen as the Defense and Army Attaché, and in 1985 he served in the same capacity at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, with duties encompassing Saudi Arabia and other states of the Arab Peninsula. Mr. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. At the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), he was the Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism, and later the first Director of the Defense Human Service. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive—the U.S. equivalent of a British knighthood.

Mr. Lang received a B.A. in English Literature from the Virginia Military Institute in 1962. He earned his M.A. in Middle East Studies (concentration in Arabic) in 1976 from the University of Utah’s Middle East Institute. Mr. Lang is also a graduate of the Armed Forces Staff College (1973), the U.S. Army General Command and Staff College (1973), and the Army War College (1985). He is a member of Phi Kappa Phi and speaks Arabic, French, and Spanish fluently. He is currently an analyst consultant for many television and radio broadcasts.

Mr. Lang hails from Virginia; he and his wife currently reside in Alexandria, Virginia.