Steve R. Pieczenik () (born December 7, 1943) is a Cuban-American psychiatrist, author, publisher, and conspiracy theorist,. He is a former consultant of the United States Department of State. Pieczenik has made several appearances on InfoWars. He also claimed that the September 11 Attacks and the Sandy Hook Shooting were false flag operations. Early life and education Pieczenik was born in Havana, Cuba on December 7, 1943, to Russian-Polish parents, and spent his early childhood in France. His father, a doctor from Dombrovicz who studied and worked in Toulouse, France, fled to Poland before World War II. His mother, a Russian Jew from Białystok, Poland, fled Europe after much of her family was killed. The couple met in Portugal and relocated to Toulouse, France. After living in Toulouse for six years, Pieczenik's family migrated to Cuba, where Pieczenik was born, and then to the United States, where they settled in Harlem, New York City. At the age of 16, Pieczenik received a scholarship to Cornell University, where he graduated with a BA degree in pre-medicine and psychology in 1964. He later received his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College. He earned a PhD in international relations from MIT while studying at Harvard Medical School. During his psychiatry residency at Harvard, Pieczenik was awarded the Harry E. Solomon award for his paper "The hierarchy of ego-defence mechanisms in foreign policy decision making". Pieczenik is fluent in five languages, including Russian, Spanish and French. Career Civil service In 1974, Pieczenik joined the United States Department of State as a consultant assisting in the restructuring of the Office for the Prevention of Terrorism. In 1976, he was made Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance and James Baker. He also served the presidential administrations of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush in this role. At the Department of State, Pieczenik served as a "specialist on hostage taking". He was credited with devising successful negotiating strategies and tactics, which were used in several high-profile hostage situations, such as the 1976 TWA Flight 355 hostage situation and the 1977 kidnapping of the son of Cyprus's president. Pieczenik also worked "side by side" with Police Chief Maurice J. Cullinane in the Washington, D.C. command center of Mayor Walter Washington during the 1977 Hanafi Siege. On March 16, 1978, Pieczenik was a special envoy in Italy for President Carter