Speaker biographies

Max Boot is a senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a weekly foreign affairs columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard. His areas of expertise include national security; military technology; military history; U.S. foreign policy; terrorism and guerrilla warfare; terrorism; and the media. Before joining the Council in October 2002, Mr. Boot spent eight years as a writer and editor at the Wall Street Journal, and his last five years there as editorial features editor. From 1992–94, he was an editor and writer at the Christian Science Monitor. His most recent book, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (Basic Books, 2002), was selected as one of the best books of 2002 by the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Christian Science Monitor. It also won the 2003 General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award, given annually by the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation for the best nonfiction book pertaining to Marine Corps history. His next book, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today, will be published in October 2006 by Gotham Books.

Karlyn H. Bowman is a resident fellow at AEI. She joined the Institute in 1979 and was managing editor of Public Opinion magazine until 1990. From 1990 to 1995, she was the editor of The American Enterprise, the Institute’s flagship magazine. In 2002, she inaugurated AEI’s Public Opinion Studies, which include “America after 9/11” and “Attitudes toward Homosexuality and Gay Marriage,” and are available on AEI’s website She contributed a chapter on polling to The Permanent Campaign and Its Future (AEI-Brookings, 2001), and is a contributing author to The Neocon Reader.

Clark Kent Ervin is director of the Aspen Institute’s Homeland Security Initiative. Before joining the institute, he served as the first inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Prior to his service at DHS, he served as the inspector general of the Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors. His service in the current administration is preceded by his service as the associate director of policy in the White House Office of National Service in the administration of President George H. W. Bush. A native Houstonian, he served in the state government of Texas from 1995 to 2001, first as assistant secretary of state and then as a deputy attorney general. He has practiced law twice in the private sector, with the Houston-based firms of Vinson & Elkins, and Locke, Liddell, & Sapp. In addition to his work at the Aspen Institute, Mr. Ervin is an on-air analyst and contributor at CNN, where he focuses on homeland security, national security, and intelligence issues. He is the author of Open Target: Where America Is Vulnerable to Attack (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Mr. Ervin is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Association of Rhodes Scholars.

Bruce Fein is a principal at the Lichfield Group and a former associate deputy attorney general during the Reagan administration. He was also assistant director of the Office of Legal Policy and a legal adviser to the assistant attorney general for antitrust while at the Department of Justice. Mr. Fein was appointed general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, followed by an appointment as research director for the Joint Congressional Committee on Covert Arms Sales to Iran. He has authored several volumes on the United States Supreme Court, the United States Constitution, and international law. Mr. Fein has been an adjunct scholar at AEI, a resident scholar at the Heritage Foundation, a lecturer at the Brookings Institute, and an adjunct professor at George Washington University. He has also been executive editor of World Intelligence Review, a periodical devoted to national security and intelligence issues. At present, he writes a weekly column for the Washington Times devoted to legal and international affairs, guest columns for numerous other newspapers, and articles for professional and lay journals.

Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at AEI. An expert in Middle East affairs, his research has focused since the events of September 11 on Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as on terrorism and intelligence. He is the author of Know Thine Enemy: A Spy’s Journey into Revolutionary Iran (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997) and The Islamic Paradox: Shiite Clerics, Sunni Fundamentalists, and the Coming of Arab Democracy (AEI Press, 2004). He is a contributing editor for The Weekly Standard and a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, as well as a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other publications. Mr. Gerecht formerly held positions as the director of the Middle East Initiative for the Project for the New American Century and as a Middle Eastern specialist in the Central Intelligence Agency.

Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar in defense and security policy studies at AEI.
His book Finding the Target (Encounter Books), an examination of American military transformation, will come out later this year. Previously an associate professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he is the coauthor of While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). A contributing editor at The Weekly Standard, he has also written numerous articles on defense and foreign policy issues for Foreign Affairs, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Policy Review, Commentary, Parameters, and other periodicals.

Stuart Levey is the under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he directs efforts to cut the lines of financial support to international terrorists, and focuses on protecting the integrity of the financial system, fighting financial crime, enforcing economic sanctions against rogue nations, and combating the financial underpinnings of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. He also oversees the Treasury Department’s newly created Office of Intelligence and Analysis, ensuring that actionable intelligence is available to key decision-makers and that the department is fully integrated within the broader intelligence community. Mr. Levey was formerly the principal associate deputy attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, responsible for coordinating the Justice Department’s varied counterterrorism activities, including investigations, intelligence collection, and prosecutions. He also served as the Justice Department’s representative to the interagency Terrorist Financing Policy Coordinating Committee and to the the National Security Council’s Counterterrorism Security Group. He has served as an associate deputy attorney general and as the deputy attorney general’s chief of staff. Prior to joining the Justice Department in 2001, Mr. Levey spent eleven years in private practice at the Washington law firm Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin LLP (which merged into Baker Botts, LLP). From 1999 through 2000, Mr. Levey served as the chief of the Washington office of former Senator Danforth’s special counsel investigation into possible government misconduct related to the standoff at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. He also clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1989 through 1990.

Heather Mac Donald is a John M. Olin fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor to City Journal. She also is a recipient of the 2005 Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement. Heather’s work canvasses a range of topics, including homeland security, immigration, policing, and racial profiling. Ms. Mac Donald’s book The Burden of Bad Ideas details the effects of the sixties’ counterculture’s destructive march through America’s institutions. Her latest book, Are Cops Racist? investigates the workings of the police, the controversy over so-called racial profiling, and the antiprofiling lobbies’ harmful effects on black Americans. A nonpracticing lawyer, Ms. Mac Donald has clerked for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and has been an attorney-advisor in the Office of the General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In 1998, she was appointed to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s task force on the City University of New York. She was presented with the New Jersey State Law Enforcement Officers Association’s Civilian Valor Award in 2004.

Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East (including Iran, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), terrorism, and weapons proliferation. While at AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, a project on democracy for the Arab world, a roundtable of experts to discuss global energy security, and a project to develop bilateral relations between India and the United States. She recently served as a member of the Congressionally mandated Task Force on the United Nations, established by the United States Institute of Peace. Before coming to AEI, she served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Ms. Pletka has also been a journalist based in Washington and the Middle East.

Robert Powell is the Robson Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on war, international conflict, and the politics of weakly institutionalized states, and he is a specialist in game-theoretic approaches to these issues. His published work includes Nuclear Deterrence Theory: The Search for Credibility (Cambridge University Press, 1990), In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics (Princeton University Press, 1999), “Bargaining and Fighting While Learning,” in the American Journal of Political Science (April 2004), and “The Inefficient Use of Power: Costly Conflict with Complete Information), in American Political Science Review (May 2004).

Jeremy Rabkin is a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University, where he teaches American Constitutional law, international law, and the history of political thought. He is also a member of AEI’s Council of Academic Advisers. He is the author of The Case for Sovereignty (AEI Press, 2004) and Law without Nations? (Princeton, 2005). His writings, in both scholarly and journalistic forums, have covered a range of topics affecting civil liberties and national security. He serves on the board of directors of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm in Washington, D.C.

Gary J. Schmitt is a resident scholar and director of AEI’s Program on Advanced Strategic Studies. Prior to coming to AEI, he helped found and served as executive director of the Project for the New American Century. In the early 1980s, Dr. Schmitt was a member of the professional staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and, from 1982–84, served as the committee’s minority staff director. In 1984, he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the post of executive director of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He served in that position until 1988. He has since held visiting fellowships at The National Interest and the Brookings Institution, served as coordinator for the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence’s Working Group on Intelligence Reform, and worked as a consultant to the Department of Defense. In addition, he has been an adjunct professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

Richard H. Shultz Jr., is the director of the International Security Studies Program and associate professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts Univesrity. He has been Olin Distinguished Professor of National Security Studies, U.S. Military Academy; Secretary of the Navy Senior Research Fellow, U.S. Naval War College; and research fellow, Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University. His books include The Soviet Union and Revolutionary Warfare and The Secret War against Hanoi.

Fred Thompson is a former United States senator, prosecutor, and accomplished film and television actor. Senator Thompson’s most recent acting role is as the newly elected district attorney Arthur Branch in the Emmy Award–winning drama series Law & Order. Senator Thompson’s service in the United States Senate was a continuation of a distinguished career across both the public and private arenas. In his first campaign for public office, he was elected by the people of Tennessee in 1994 to the remaining two years of an unexpired Senate term. When he returned for a full term in 1996, he received more votes than any previous candidate for any office in Tennessee history. In 1997, Senator Thompson was elected chairman of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, making him among the most junior senators in history to serve as chairman of a major Senate committee. Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate, Thompson maintained law offices in Nashville and Washington and served as special counsel to both the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Thompson was named an assistant United States attorney and, at the age of 30, was appointed minority counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, where he served in 1973 and 1974. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a visiting fellow at AEI.

John Yoo is a visiting scholar at AEI and a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), where he has taught since 1993. From 2001–03, Mr. Yoo served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on issues involving foreign affairs, national security, and the separation of powers. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 1995–96, where he advised on Constitutional issues and judicial nominations. Mr. Yoo was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal and, after graduating from law school, clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia Circuit. He joined the Boalt faculty in 1993, and then clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Yoo has published articles on foreign affairs, national security, and Constitutional law in a number of the nation’s leading law journals, and is the author of The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11 (University of Chicago Press, 2005) and War by Other Means (Grove/Atlantic Press, forthcoming 2006).

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