Speaker biographies

Clifford D. May is the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and is the chairman of the policy committee of the Committee on the Present Danger. In 2006, he was appointed to the Iraq Study Group at the United States Institute of Peace. Mr. May has worked in the fields of international relations, journalism, communications, and politics, holding positions such as associate editor for international news at Newsweek; senior editor of Geo Magazine; foreign correspondent at the New York Times, where he established the Times’ West Africa bureau and, as bureau chief, covered more than twenty African nations; associate editor of the Rocky Mountain News; director of communications for the Republican National Committee and editor of the official Republican magazine, Rising Tide; and senior managing director in the Washington, D.C., office of BSMG Worldwide, a public relations firm. Mr. May has also provided commentary for CBS Radio News, Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, and the nationally distributed TCI cable television series Race for the Presidency.

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, Italy, U.S.-Chinese 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 Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction (St. Martin’s Press, 2007) and The War against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened, Where We Are Now, How We’ll Win (St. Martin’s Press, 2002).

R. James Woolsey, director of the CIA from 1993–95, has been a vice president in Booz Allen Hamilton’s energy practice since 2002. He is currently co-chairman, with former secretary of state George Shultz, of the Committee on the Present Danger. Previously, Woolsey was a partner at the law firm of Shea & Gardner in Washington, D.C., where he practiced for twenty-two years in the fields of civil litigation and alternative dispute resolution. During the twelve years he served in the U.S. government, he held numerous positions, including posts as ambassador to the Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) in Vienna, 1989–91; under secretary of the Navy, 1977–79; and general counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, 1970–73. He was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as delegate at large to the U.S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) and the Nuclear and Space Arms Talks (NST); he served in that capacity on a part-time basis in Geneva from 1983–86. As an officer in the U.S. Army, he was an adviser on the U.S. Delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) in Helsinki and Vienna from 1969–70.

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