[3] Other officials involved with CNI over the years include long-time president Eugene Bird, a retired career foreign service officer;[4] Edward Peck, former Chief of Mission to Iraq deputy director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism in the Reagan Administration.
[21][22] CNI representatives have signed on to joint initiatives, as Eugene Bird did to the 2004 letter by 60 former U.S. diplomats who distributed a letter critical of President George W. Bush's "endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral plan to reject the rights of three million Palestinians, to deny the right of refugees to return to their homeland, and to retain five large illegal settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank", reversing "long-standing American policy in the Middle East".
[26] In 2007 CNI joined 30 other groups calling for the U.S. government to obtain detailed site information on Israel's cluster bomb strikes in Lebanon during its 2006 attacks on that nation.
[30] A mid-2004 Zogby poll found that half of all likely American voters agreed that Democratic Party presidential candidate John Kerry "should adopt an entirely new policy, different from the present administration, toward Israel.
[citation needed] In 2008 CNI sponsored a hearing on the dangers of United States' uncritical support for Israel which featured professor John Mearsheimer.
[43] In 2013 CNI paid for ten billboard advertisements in Atlanta, Georgia, and six more nationwide protesting United States government's "blank check" funding for Israel.
These have included Hezbollah's Naim Qassim, Nawaf Ammar and Ibrahim Mousawi and Lebanon's Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, Michel Aoun, Walid Jumblatt and Sheik Abed al Karem Obeid.
[citation needed] In Spring 2006, CNI members, including Edward Peck, conducted a fact-finding tour of the Middle East region, meeting with heads of state and acting as international observers in the Palestinian election process.
[citation needed] In preparation for the November 2007 Annapolis Conference to discuss a two-state solution for the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, CNI funded a 2007 trip by six representatives, including Ambassador Robert V. Keeley and Daniel Lieberman.
[49] The tour of Gaza, Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon was led by Harriet Mayor Fulbright, wife of the late U.S.
She later wrote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking her to urge Israel to allow freer movement in and out of Gaza and to allow U.S. diplomats to meet with Hamas and Hezbollah officials.
[50] In 2010, a delegation of politicians, academics and members of the Council for the National Interest met with Gaza Strip Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
[51][52] Executive director of CNI, Philip Giraldi, is also the author of a regular column at The Unz Review, a far right online publication known to publish advocacy for Holocaust denial and justifications for anti-semitism.
[54][55] Abdurahman Alamoudi, a member of the CNI board of directors, stated at a rally on October 28, 2000, against Israel in Lafayette Park, across from the White House: "'Hear that, Bill Clinton!
[61] On May 4, 2004, Eugene Bird was interviewed by Neil Macdonald on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC) National News and commented, "We know that the Israeli intelligence was operating in Baghdad after the war was over.
[65] In 2006, the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington cancelled a poetry reading by the Partners for Peace group because it rented office space from CNI.