He graduated from Yale University with a degree in Russian and soon joined the Foreign Service, rising to the rank of one of the top State Department “Kremlinologists.” Palmer worked as sole speechwriter for then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger from 1973-1975 and later drafted some of President Ronald Reagan’s most famous foreign policy addresses. In total, Palmer wrote speeches for three US presidents and six Secretaries of State. He is a co-founder of the CIA-connected National Endowment for Democracy (NED), former Vice Chairman of Freedom House, and a former member of the anti-communist Committee on the Present Danger (CPD). Throughout his career, Palmer supported neoconservative and interventionist US foreign policy to deepen US hegemony, exemplified in his book Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025.
In 2000, Palmer helped launch the nonprofit Friends of Falun Gong (FoFG) in the US. He later lobbied and spoke regularly in Washington in support of Falun Gong and its affiliated organizations. Palmer called Falun Gong “the largest nonviolent movement since Gandhi in India…And like Mahatma Gandhi and Dr King, and Solidarity in Poland and the ANC in South Africa, this just cause will triumph.”
