William Henry Blum (/bluːm/;[1] March 6, 1933 – December 9, 2018) was an American author and journalist and a critic of United States foreign policy.

He had the ambition of becoming a foreign service officer to, as he explained, "take part in the great anti-Communist crusade" but was later disillusioned by the Vietnam War.

[1] By then he had already taken part in anti-war protests and become a founder and editor of the Washington Free Press, an alternative bi-weekly newspaper.

In 1972–1973, Blum worked as a journalist in Chile where he reported on the Allende government's "socialist experiment" before the U.S backed coup and the regime of Augusto Pinochet.

In the mid-1970s, he worked in London with ex-CIA officer Philip Agee and his associates "on their project of exposing CIA personnel and their misdeeds".

"[6] In an interview with C-SPAN in 2006, Blum stated: "Speaking about U.S. foreign policy, which is my specialty, the authors I would most recommend would be Michael Parenti and Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman and Howard Zinn and Alexander Cockburn.

"[14] In a May 22, 2006, article entitled "Come Out of the White House With Your Hands Up", Blum wrote: "Since the bin Laden recommendation, January 19, I have not been offered a single speaking engagement on any campus.

"[15] Blum died on December 9, 2018, in Arlington, Virginia, from kidney failure at the age of 85 following a fall in his apartment two months earlier.