Speaker Biographies
January 30, 2006
Thomas Donnelly is a resident fellow in defense and security policy studies at AEI and editor of Armed Forces Journal. He is the author of The Military We Need: The Defense Requirements of the Bush Doctrine (AEI Press, 2005), Operation Iraqi Freedom: A Strategic Assessment (AEI Press, 2004), and AEI’s monthly National Security Outlook. In February 2005, he was appointed by Senator Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) to a two-year term on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Before coming to AEI, he served as the director of strategic communications and initiatives at Lockheed Martin and as deputy executive director of the Project for the New American Century. From 1995 to 1999, he was the policy group director, as well as a professional staff member, for the Committee on National Security (now the Committee on Armed Services) in the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. Donnelly has also been the executive director of The National Interest, editor of the Army Times, and deputy editor of Defense News.
Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow studying Middle East affairs at AEI. Since 9/11, he has focused 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.
James K. Glassman is a resident fellow at AEI, where he specializes in issues involving economics and financial markets. In addition, he is host and co-founder of TechCentralStation.com, a for-profit website that concentrates on matters of technology and public policy. In September 2004, Mr. Glassman launched a new organization, Investors Action, for which he serves as chairman. Investors Action aims to educate America’s 90 million investors and represent their interests in the public-policy arena. Mr. Glassman also writes a weekly op-ed column on economic and political topics for the Scripps Howard News Service, and a monthly column on investing for Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. His most recent book, The Secret Code of the Superior Investor (Crown, 2002) was named one of the top ten investing books of 2002 by Barron’s. Between July 1993 and July 2004, Mr. Glassman wrote an internationally syndicated weekly column on investing for the Washington Post. From 1987 to 1993, he was editor and part-owner of Roll Call, the twice-weekly newspaper that covers Congress. Prior to that, he had a long career in magazine publishing—as president of the Atlantic Monthly, executive vice president of U.S. News & World Report, and publisher of The New Republic. In 1972, he started Figaro, a New Orleans weekly newspaper, which he sold in 1979. He served as executive editor of Washingtonian magazine from 1979 to 1981.
Kevin A. Hassett is the director of economic policy studies and a resident scholar at AEI. He is also a weekly columnist for Bloomberg. Before joining AEI, Mr. Hassett was a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and an associate professor of economics and finance at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. He was an economic adviser to the George W. Bush campaign in the 2004 presidential election and was the chief economic adviser to Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the 2000 primaries. He has also served as a policy consultant to the U.S. Department of the Treasury during both the former Bush and Clinton administrations. Mr. Hassett is a member of the Joint Committee on Taxation’s Dynamic Scoring Advisory Panel. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of six books on economics and economic policy, including the AEI book on tax reform, Toward Fundamental Tax Reform (2005). He has published scholarly articles in The American Economic Review, The Economic Journal, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, The Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Public Economics, and many other professional journals. His popular writings have been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic Monthly, USA Today, the Washington Post, and numerous other outlets. His economic commentaries are regularly aired on radio and television, including recent appearances on the Today Show, CBS’s Morning Show, Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Hardball, Moneyline, and Power Lunch.
Roger F. Noriega is a visiting fellow coordinating AEI’s program on Western Hemisphere issues. Twice appointed by President George W. Bush (and confirmed by the U.S. Senate) and with ten-year career on Capitol Hill, Mr. Noriega’s breadth of experience and contacts offers strategic vision and practical insight on the Americas. As assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Mr. Noriega managed a 3,000-person team of professionals in Washington and fifty diplomatic posts to design and implement political and economic strategies in Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean. As U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, Mr. Noriega coordinated complex and sensitive multilateral diplomacy in a thirty-four-member international organization to bolster OAS efforts to promote trade, fight illicit drugs, and defend democracy. Mr. Noriega has held various other positions as well: senior policy advisor with the U.S. Mission to the OAS; various program management and public affairs positions with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of State; press secretary and foreign policy advisor for U.S. Representative Robert Whittaker (R-Kansas); and research assistant for the secretary of state of Kansas.
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.
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.
Gary Schmitt is a resident scholar at AEI and he is also the 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, a Washington-based foreign and defense policy think tank. In the early 1980s, Dr. Schmitt was a member of the professional staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and, from 1982 to 1984, served as the committee's minority staff director. In 1984, he was appointed by President Reagan to the post of executive director of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board at the White House. He served in that position until 1988. Since then, he has held visiting fellowships at the National Interest, a foreign policy journal, 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.
Phillip L. Swagel is a resident scholar at AEI. Before joining AEI in March 2005, he was the chief of staff of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. He has previously been a senior economist at the Council, a visiting assistant professor at Northwestern University, and an economist at the Federal Reserve Board and the International Monetary Fund. He has written on international trade policy, the political economy of the welfare state, and most recently on Social Security.
