George J. Mitchell

George Mitchell GBE
United States Senator from Maine
In office May 17, 1980 – January 3, 1995
Preceded by	Edmund Muskie
Succeeded by	Olympia Snowe
Senate Majority Leader
In office January 3, 1989 – January 3, 1995
Deputy	Alan Cranston (1989-1991) Wendell H. Ford (1991-1995)
Preceded by	Robert Byrd
Succeeded by	Bob Dole
2nd Deputy President pro tempore of the United States Senate
In office January 3, 1987 – January 3, 1989
President	John C. Stennis
Leader	Robert Byrd
Preceded by	Hubert Humphrey (1978)
Succeeded by	Vacant
United States Special Envoy for Middle East Peace
In office January 22, 2009 – May 13, 2011
Preceded by	None
Succeeded by	David Hale
U.S. Special Envoy for Northern Ireland
In office January 3, 1995 – January 20, 2001
Preceded by	None
Succeeded by	Richard N. Haass
Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Maine
In office October 5, 1979 – May 16, 1980
Nominated by	Jimmy Carter
Preceded by	New seat
Succeeded by	Conrad Keefe Cyr
Chancellor of Queen's University Belfast
In office 1999–2009
Preceded by	Sir David Orr
Succeeded by	Kamalesh Sharma
Personal details
Born	George John Mitchell, Jr. (1933-08-20)August 20, 1933 Waterville, Maine, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Sally Heath ​ ​ (m. 1961; div. 1987)​ Heather MacLachlan ​ (m. 1994)​
Children	3
Alma mater	Bowdoin College Georgetown University Law Center
Profession	Lawyer
Military service
Branch/service	United States Army Counterintelligence Corps
Years of service	1954-1956
Rank	First Lieutenant

George John Mitchell Jr. GBE (born August 20, 1933) is an American lawyer, businessman and politician. He is a Democrat. Mitchell served as a United States Senator from Maine from 1980 to 1995 and as Senate Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995.

Early life

Mitchell was born in Waterville, Maine. His father, George John Mitchell, Sr. (born Joseph Kilroy), was of ethnic Irish descent but was adopted by a Lebanese family when he was orphaned.

Political career

In 1980, he was elected to the United States Senate. He became Senate Majority Leader in 1989. He briefly was a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Maine from 1979 to 1980.

Since retiring from the Senate in 1995, he had a key role in peace talks in Northern Ireland and the Middle East. He appointed United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland (1995–2001) by President Clinton and as United States Special Envoy for Middle East Peace (2009–2011) by President Barack Obama.

He was a primary architect of the 1996 Mitchell Principles and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, and was the main investigator in two "Mitchell Reports", one on the Arab–Israeli conflict (2001) and one on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball (2007).

Post Senate career

Mitchell was chairman of The Walt Disney Company from March 2004 until January 2007, and later as chairman of the international law firm DLA Piper. He was the Chancellor of Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, from 1999 to 2009.

Mitchell also was a co-chair of the Housing Commission at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

In 2015, unsealed court documents showed Mitchell's possible involvement with the Jeffrey Epstein child trafficking ring.

Health

Mitchell was diagnosed with a "small, low grade, and localized" prostate cancer in 2007.

In August 2020, he was diagnosed with leukemia.

Other websites

• Quotations related to George Mitchell at Wikiquote
• Media related to George J. Mitchell at Wikimedia Commons
• United States Congress. "George J. Mitchell (id: M000811)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• George John Mitchell at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• George J. Mitchell on IMDb 
• "George J. Mitchell collected news and commentary". The Guardian.
• George J. Mitchell collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Works by or about George J. Mitchell in libraries (WorldCat catalog)