• Senior Political Analyst of cable news channel MSNBC 
• Frequent liberal panelist on “The McLaughlin Group”  
• A writer and producer of controversial NBC drama series “The West Wing”  
• Former partisan political operative for Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Democratic Chief of Staff of two committees he chaired 
• “It’s not our job to lie about war to make troops feel good. And I don’t care what they feel…. If John Kerry thinks this war is a mistake and if the United States of America elects him president, the troops are going to have to live with that…. I don’t care if they’re demoralized.” --Lawrence O’Donnell, “The McLaughlin Group”

MSNBC political analyst Lawrence Francis O'Donnell, Jr. was born to Irish-American parents in Boston in November 1955. After graduating from Harvard College in 1977, he headed west to pursue a career as a Hollywood screenwriter.

O'Donnell's 1983 nonfiction book Deadly Force was adapted as a CBS television movie, A Case of Deadly Force, in 1986. The book and movie told the "true story" of how a policeman-turned-attorney, Lawrence O'Donnell Sr. (played by Richard Crenna), and his four sons fought successfully to prove the innocence of a black man who had been shot and killed by two white Boston police officers who claimed, falsely, that their victim was a robber. Writer son Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. was played in the movie by actor Tate Donovan.

Despite this flash of Hollywood success, by 1987 O'Donnell admitted that he was "unable to make any kind of living" as a screenwriter and sought financial help from his family back in Boston.

At that time, O'Donnell's cousin Kirk O'Neill was a powerful figure in Washington, DC. Kirk was, along with Chris Matthews and two others, one of the "four horsemen" who controlled the staff of Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives. Thanks to this familial connection, O'Donnell soon found himself on the payroll as Director of Communications for the re-election campaign of U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY).

"I knew absolutely nothing about politics and thought I have absolutely nothing to contribute to this," O'Donnell recalls, "but the way I read New York politics, the guy [Moynihan] doesn't need any help. If I were to occupy a chair in that office, I couldn't do any damage. He ended up winning with 67 percent of the vote in 1988 -- one point higher than what his former Communications Director Tim Russert had gotten him in the previous election."

After Moynihan's reelection, O'Donnell stayed on the senator's payroll as a Senior Adviser (1989-1992), and then was named Democratic Chief of Staff to the two Senate committees which Moynihan chaired -- the Committee on Environment and Public Works (1992) and the powerful Finance Committee (1993-1995).

"I was more than in over my head," O'Donnell reflects. "I was in an absolutely foreign territory. I had no idea how to advise anyone on anything political. But I knew that I had Kirk's phone number."

During his years as a Senate worker, O’Donnell built connections with fellow Democrat operatives like Chris Matthews. He parlayed those connections to become MSNBC’s Senior Political Analyst.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, O'Donnell wrote about politics for New York magazine. (He also has written essays and articles for such publications as The New York Times, New York Magazine, People, Spy, and Boston Magazine.)

Ultimately, politics provided the backdoor through which O'Donnell returned to his first love, Hollywood. As Bill Clinton's administration wound to a close, a group of Democrat Washington insiders gathered in 1999 to create the NBC prime time drama The West Wing, set in a liberal Democratic White House. O'Donnell, along with Jimmy Carter administration pollster Pat Caddell, wrote or contributed to at least nine West Wing episodes during its first two seasons. He also worked as the series' executive story editor and producer, and he acted in one 2001 episode.

O'Donnell thereafter departed to create two short-lived TV series, First Monday and Mr. Sterling (about a U.S. Senator), both of which were set amid the politics and intrigues of Washington, DC.

On October 22, 2004, O'Donnell made a joint appearance with John O'Neill, a military veteran and a critic of then-presidential candidate John Kerry, on MSNBC's Scarborough Country. O'Neill was the co-author of Unfit for Command, a book which reflected the views of 264 of Kerry's fellow Swiftboat veterans by publicly challenging the Massachusetts senator's claims of having been a war hero in Vietnam. A raging O'Donnell accused O'Neill of being a "liar" 39 times in the course of their brief interview -- repeatedly interrupting and shouting down O'Neill. Following is an extract of O'Donnell's words, taken from the full interview transcript by James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal:

“It's one of the many lies that the book advances. To me the most interesting lie, John O'Neill, that I would submit to you that you should answer, is, you make a lying claim that John Kerry's antiwar activity prolonged the amount of time that prisoners of war were held in Vietnam. . . . That's a lie, John O'Neill! Keep lying, it's all you do! . . . Lies! . . . Which is not in John O'Neill's book, 'cause it's a lie! . . . That's a lie! It's another lie! That's a lie! Absolute lie! You lie in that book endlessly! . . . You lie about documents endlessly! . . . You're just lying about it! And you lied about Thurlow's Bronze Star! You lied about it as long as you could until the New York Times found the wording of what was on the citation that you as a lying writer refused to put in your pack of lies! . . . Disgusting, lying book! . . . You have no standards, John O'Neill, as an author, and you know it! It's a pack of lies! You are unfit to publish! . . . He just lied to you! He spews out this filth! Point to his name on the report, you liar! Point to his name, you liar! . . . You just spew lies! . . . I just hate the lies of John O'Neill. I hate lies. It's not an argument; they're proven lies. . . . O'Neill's a liar, he's been a liar for 35 years about this, and he's found other liars [unintelligible]. . . . They lied! . . . They're lying somewhere! . . . Lies! Just tell me the initials, you liar! Creepy liar! . . . You are a liar who makes things up! . . . You want the lies! That's how you make your living, on lies!”Days earlier, in his frequent role as a liberal panelist on the syndicated political show The McLaughlin Group, O'Donnell had dismissed questions about whether negative political statements about Iraq were damaging the morale of U.S. troops fighting there."

Commenting on Kerry's then-recent criticisms of the manner in which U.S. troops had conducted themselves and had treated their prisoners during the Iraq War, O'Donnell said: "It's not our job to lie about war to make troops feel good. And I don't care what they feel.... If John Kerry thinks this war is a mistake and if the United States of America elects him president, the troops are going to have to live with that.... I don't care if they're demoralized."

In a July 2005 appearance on The McLaughlin Group, O’Donnell made headlines by announcing that Republican strategist Karl Rove was the person who, two years earlier, had informed journalist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame (wife of U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson) was a covert CIA employee.

In yet another McLaughlin Group appearance -- this one in early December 2007 -- O’Donnell turned to the subject of the Republican Party's then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a practicing Mormon who recently had made a speech defending his religion as "the faith of my fathers." Said O’Donnell:

“[T]he faith of his father is a racist faith. As of 1978, it was an officially racist faith. And for political convenience, in 1978 it switched and it said, ‘Okay, black people can be in this church.’ He believes -- if he believes the faith of his fathers -- that black people are black because in heaven they turned away from God in this demented Scientology-like notion of what was going on in heaven before the creation of the earth.”

A few days later, O’Donnell was interviewed by radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt. During the course of that interview, O’Donnell declared that the Book of Mormon was “an insane document produced by a madman who was a criminal and a rapist” -- a reference to Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. Hewitt then asked O’Donnell, “And ... would you say the same things about [the Islamic Prophet] Mohammed as you just said about Joseph Smith?” To this, O’Donnell replied:

“Oh, well, I’m afraid of what the -- that’s where I’m really afraid. I would like to criticize Islam much more than I do publicly, but I’m afraid for my life if I do. Mormons are the nicest people in the world…. They’ll never take a shot at me. Those other people, I’m not going to say a word about them.”

O’Donnell describes his politics as follows: “I’m a European socialist, believe me -- I’m far to the left. But I understand. I’m a kind of practical socialist. I know we failed. A lot of our ideas have failed, so I’m not with them anymore. I’m willing to take from a grab-bag of stuff that works.”

In addition to his work on The West Wing, O'Donnell plays the character Lee Hatcher, an attorney in the HBO series Big Love, about a polygamous family in Utah.