Jim Himes

Jim Himes (born July 5, 1966, in Lima, Peru) is an American politician and former investment banker who has represented Connecticut's 4th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives since 2009 and who serves as ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In June 2026 Himes was named by WIRED among the registrants surfaced in the leak of Dialog, the invitation-only society cofounded by Peter Thiel and Auren Hoffman, where Himes appeared on the same roster as Palantir Technologies cofounder Joe Lonsdale, whose firm contracts with the intelligence agencies Himes oversees.¹²

Early Life, Goldman Sachs, and Entry to Congress

Himes was born in Lima, where his American father worked for the Ford Foundation and UNICEF; he spent his early childhood in Peru and Colombia before the family settled in the United States. He attended Harvard University and won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, where he studied Latin America. He then joined Goldman Sachs, spending roughly twelve years at the bank and rising to vice president, working extensively in Latin America and heading the bank's telecommunications-technology group. After leaving Goldman he ran the New York City branch of the affordable-housing nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners.³

Himes was first elected to Congress in November 2008, unseating the long-serving Republican incumbent Christopher Shays in the Connecticut 4th, a wealthy district anchored by Greenwich and the Fairfield County financial-services corridor. He took office in January 2009 and has been reelected to successive terms, serving on the House Financial Services Committee alongside his intelligence assignment. Within the Democratic Party he has been associated with the centrist, finance-friendly New Democrat Coalition, which he chaired.³

Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee

Himes sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the panel charged with congressional oversight of the U.S. Intelligence Community, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. He became the committee's ranking member, the senior Democrat, giving him access to classified briefings and a formal role in authorizing and reviewing the budgets and operations of the agencies under the committee's jurisdiction.²³

The committee's oversight reach includes federal agencies that contract with Palantir Technologies, the data-analytics firm chaired by Thiel, whose software has been used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Defense. WIRED framed the Dialog roster around exactly this overlap: a sitting member with intelligence oversight authority appearing on an off-the-record membership list beside the cofounder of a company whose principal customers are the agencies that member oversees.¹²

The 2026 Dialog Leak

The June 16, 2026 WIRED report identified Himes on the Dialog roster as "Rep., CT; House Intelligence," placing him among a group of sitting U.S. officials surfaced when the Swiss hacktivist crimew located a member directory embedded in the source code of Dialog's website and a separate source provided the publication with the 222-name registration list for the society's 2026 retreat, scheduled for August 12 through 16 at the Powerscourt Hotel near Dublin. WIRED noted Himes appeared on the list alongside Lonsdale and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll.¹

A representative for Himes responded to the reporting by stating: "Congressman Himes attended one annual conference held by the Dialog group roughly a decade ago. Since then, he has had no affiliation with the group and attended no additional events." The statement placed his single documented attendance around 2016 and disputed any continuing membership, while not contesting that his name was present in the leaked records.⁴