Benjamin Gilman: “I came to Washington 30 years ago, and I had the honor and privilege to represent our Hudson Valley region of New York…”

“I came to Washington 30 years ago, and I had the honor and privilege to represent our Hudson Valley region of New York, our State, and our Nation during that period of time. That has afforded me the opportunity to witness and to participate in a great number of significant events in our history: from Watergate, the Vietnam war, to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War during the 1980s and 1990s, two Presidential impeachments, the Gulf War, and most recently the World Trade Center attacks and our war on terrorism. I am particularly proud to have been part of reorganizing our State Department, helping to free some political prisoners in Mozambique, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and other nations, fighting our war against drugs, accounting for other MIAs and POWs, working to eliminate world hunger, extraditing criminals from foreign lands, and establishing our international scholarships program.”