Speaker biographies

Pete Hoekstra, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence since August 2004, was originally sworn in to the 103rd Congress in 1993. He has served on the committee since Speaker J. Dennis Hastert first appointed him in 2001. As chairman, he leads Congressional oversight on issues relating to the U.S. intelligence community.  Previously, Rep. Hoekstra served as chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations in the 104th, 105th, and 106th sessions of Congress, and authored a variety of studies and reports, including Education at a Crossroads, Crossroads 2000, and the American Worker Project.

Michael A. Ledeen, a resident scholar at AEI, is an expert on U.S. foreign policy. His research areas include state sponsors of terrorism, Iran, the Middle East, Europe (Italy), U.S.-China relations, intelligence, and Africa (Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe). A former consultant to the National Security Council and to the U.S. State and Defense Departments, he has also written on leadership and the use of power. He is the author of The War against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened, Where We Are Now, How We’ll Win (St. Martin’s Press, 2002).

Michael Tanji is a former Defense Intelligence Agency supervisory intelligence officer who worked on issues related to media exploitation, information operations, and cyber threat warning. During his tenure at DIA he served as the lead officer for cyber threat indications and warning issues, and created the defense intelligence community’s first computer forensic and all-source intelligence fusion activity. He has briefed a wide variety of intelligence-related topics to senior members of the Department of Defense, intelligence community, and NATO.

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