Virginia Film Festival: ‘9/11: Inside the President's War Room’

Andrew H. Card Jr. served as chief of staff to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2006, which marked the second longest tenure for a White House of chief of staff. Card also served as the deputy chief of staff and U.S. secretary of transportation to President George H. W. Bush. Under President Ronald Reagan, Card served as special assistant, and later, deputy assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs from 1983 to 1998. Currently, Card is a member of the Board of Directors of Union Pacific, the Business Advisory Board of BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics, Energy Security Partners, and Go Electric. He is also a speaker represented by the Washington Speakers Bureau and has worked as a contributor to NBC News since April 2017.

Ann Compton was the first female reporter for the WDBJ TV, a CBS affiliate in Roanoke, before being hired by ABC news in 1973. By the next year, she became the first woman assigned to cover the White House on a full-time basis by a network television news organization. During her time in the White House, she covered seven different administrations, served on the panel of two presidential debates, and covered both Republican and Democratic National conventions in 1976. Compton was the chief Washington correspondent for ABCNEWS.com, in 2000, where she wrote and anchored a daily political column. On September 10, 2014, Compton retired from ABC News, 41 years to the day after she began at the network. Mrs. Compton has earned the respect of both viewers and peers alike, winning an Emmy, a Peabody, and the Silver Baton from the DuPont awards at Columbia University. She has been inducted into six Halls of Fame and has received five honorary university degrees.

Karl Rove served as senior advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and deputy chief of staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was deputy chief of staff for policy, coordinating the White House policy-making process. Before he became known as “The Architect” of President Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, non-partisan causes, and non-profit groups. He was inducted into the Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame in 2009 and the American Association of Political Consultants Hall of Fame in 2012.

William Antholis serves as director and CEO of the Miller Center. Immediately prior, he was managing director at The Brookings Institution, and from 1995 to 1999 he served in government. At the White House, he was director of international economic affairs on the staff of the National Security Council and National Economic Council, where he served as the chief staff person for the G8 Summits in 1997 and 1998. Antholis is the author of Inside Out India and China: Local Politics Go Global and, with Strobe Talbot, Fast Forward: Ethics and Politics in the Age of Global Warming.