Gregg Rickman

Gregg J. Rickman (born 1964) is an American former Congressional staffer and lobbyist who also served as the inaugural U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism from 2006 to 2009. Prior to his appointment, he was Director of Congressional Affairs at the Republican Jewish Coalition. Later he was the Deputy Director of Policy and Government Affairs at AIPAC. He also served as staffer for Republican U.S. Senators Alphonse D'Amato (New Jersey) In the late 1990s, he was the lead staff member of the U.S. Senate's Swiss bank inquiry.

Early life Rickman was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. His grandfather fled pogroms in Russia. His father-in-law was a Holocaust survivor. He received a bachelor's degree in 1986 and a master's degree in 1988 in Russian and Middle Eastern history from John Carroll University. He completed coursework for a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Miami in 1990. He later completed his dissertation and was awarded a Ph.D. in 2004

Political career Rickman began working at the U.S. Capitol in 1991 as the Legislative Director for U.S. Senator Al D’Amato (R-NY). leading the committee's Swiss bank Inquiry, a 3-year investigation into the disposition of assets of Holocaust victims that had been held by Swiss banks since World War II. These efforts were one of the factors leading to the filing of a major World Jewish Congress lawsuit against the three largest Swiss banks on behalf of Holocaust victims. In 1996, Rickman's team discovered documents in the National Archives relating to Operation Safehaven, a U.S. intelligence operation to prevent Nazi Germany from hiding assets in third countries after the war. William Daroff credited Rickman as "almost single-handedly the one who uncovered the corruption and immorality of the Swiss banks."

After D’Amato lost re-election to Chuck Schumer in 1998, Rickman joined the staff of Sen. Peter Gosselin Fitzgerald.

Rickman stepped down after the election of Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. He was replaced by Hannah Rosenthal.

Later career Rickman was critical of his successor, Hannah Rosenthal, for her criticism of Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren over his snubbing of the liberal Jewish lobby group J-Street in 2009.

After stepping down as Special Envoy at the end of the Bush Administration, Rickman was hired as the Director of Foreign Military Sales for National Air Cargo. In 2010, he became the Deputy Director of Policy and Government Affairs for the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC. He served in this position until 2014.

From 2015 to 2017, Rickman was Legislative Director and Deputy Chief of Staff for Sen. Mike Rounds. In The Public Historian journal, the book was described as a "blow-by-blow account of the story's unfolding." However, in his 2003 book, The Holocaust Industry, the Jewish political scientist Norman Finkelstein questioned the motives behind the restitution efforts and the resulting lawsuit against the Swiss banks. As part of his overall criticism, Finkelstein also took issue with Rickman's characterization of the Swiss, referring to a passage where Rickman opined that a "deeper truth" about the Swiss was that "Down deep, perhaps deeper than they thought, a latent arrogance about themselves and against others existed in their very makeup. Try as they did they could not hide their upbringing".

In 2006, Rickman published Conquest and Redemption, A History of Jewish Assets from the Holocaust, describing how Nazi Germany and other countries delayed Holocaust restitution efforts.