Alberto Fernandez

Who is Alberto Fernandez?

Alberto M. Fernandez is the Coordinator for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. CSCC was set up in September 2011 by White House Executive Order 13584 to combat the propaganda of Al-Qaida, its allies and adherents. He previously was US Ambassador to Equatorial Guinea, Africa's third largest oil producer and only Spanish speaking country, from January 2010. Before that he was Chargé d'affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan from 2007 to 2009. In Sudan, he worked to maintain the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Accords between the NCP government and the rebels of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army and to bring humanitarian relief to war-torn Darfur.

Fernandez was the director of the office of press and public diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the United States Department of State from August 2005 to May 2007. As one of the few to speak fluent Arabic at the U.S. State Department, he was the mouthpiece for U.S. policy in the Middle East. A Newsweek profile pegged him as averaging about 200 interviews a year. An example dialogue/interview.