February 15, 2005
Speaker Biographies
Lee Hamilton, vice chair of the Board of the 9-11 Public Discourse Project, is president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Prior to becoming director of the Woodrow Wilson Center in 1999, Hamilton served for thirty-four years in Congress, representing Indiana's ninth district. During his tenure, he served as chairman and ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (now the Committee on International Relations), chaired the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East from the early 1970s until 1993, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran. Hamilton also served as chair of the Joint Economic Committee, working to promote long-term economic growth and development. As chairman of the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress and a member of the House Standards of Official Conduct Committee, he was a primary drafter of several House ethics reforms. Since leaving the House, Mr. Hamilton has served as a commissioner on the influential United States Commission on National Security in the Twenty-First Century (the Hart-Rudman Commission), and was co-chair with former senator Howard Baker of the Baker-Hamilton Commission to Investigate Certain Security Issues at Los Alamos. He is currently a member of the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council. Before his election to Congress, Mr. Hamilton practiced law in Chicago, Illinois and Columbus, Indiana.
Edwin Meese, former U.S. Attorney General, was among President Ronald Reagan's most important advisors. As chairman of the Domestic Policy Council, the National Drug Policy Board, and as a member of the National Security Council, he played a key role in the development and execution of domestic and foreign policy. During the 1970s, Mr. Meese was director of the Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Management and a professor of law at the University of San Diego. He earlier served as chief of staff for then-governor Reagan and was a local prosecutor in California. Mr. Meese is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a distinguished senior fellow at the Institute of United States Studies, University of London.
Thomas Mann is one of the country's leading authorities on the American presidency and on contemporary American politics. Mr. Mann currently is the W. Averell Harriman Senior Fellow in American Governance at the Brookings Institution. From 1987 to 1999, he served as the director of the Governmental Studies Program at Brookings. He previously served as the executive director of the American Political Science Association. A frequent lecturer both in the United States and abroad, he is currently working on projects addressing campaign finance reform, the transition from campaigning to governing, and the future of Internet voting. He is the author or co-author of a number of recent books including: Intensive Care: How Congress Shapes Health Policy; Campaign Finance Reform: A Sourcebook; and Congress, the Press, and the Public.
Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI. He also serves as an election analyst for CBS News. Mr. Ornstein writes regularly for USA Today as a member of its Board of Contributors, and writes a column called "Congress Inside Out" for Roll Call. In 1997-1998, he was co-chair, with Leslie Moonves, president of CBS Television, of the President's Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. He is currently leading a coalition of scholars and others in a major effort to reform the campaign financing system. He is also co-directing a multi-year effort, called the Transition to Governing Project, to create a better climate for governing in the era of the permanent campaign. He is a member of the board of Directors of the Public Broadcasting System, and of the board of trustees of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society.
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