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Bios of Speakers at CGS Programs
Kristin Adair serves as Staff Counsel at the National Security Archive. She works principally on the Archive's FOIA litigation and open government advocacy projects. In addition, she tracks international access to information issues and helps to maintain the freedominfo.org website, serving as a liaison to the international community as part of the Freedom of Information Advocates Network. Before joining the Archive staff, Kristin served as a policy assistant and scheduler during the 2004 presidential campaign and also worked as an intern in the Senate, focusing on judiciary and foreign policy issues. She recently completed her graduate work at the George Washington University, where she received her J.D. and her M.A. in International Affairs in May 2006. Her studies focused on constitutional and administrative law, as well as U.S. national security and foreign policy. September 29, 2008.
Steve Aftergood is a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a non-profit national organization of scientists and engineers concerned with issues of science and national security policy that was founded in 1945 by Manhattan Project scientists. He directs the FAS Project on Government Secrecy, which works to reduce the scope of government secrecy and to promote reform of official secrecy practices. An internationally recognized expert on national security classification, he writes Secrecy News, an e-mail newsletter (and blog) that reports on new developments in secrecy policy for more than 10,000 subscribers in media, government, and among the general public. In 1997, Steve was the plaintiff in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency that led to the declassification and publication of the total intelligence budget ($26.6 billion in 1997) for the first time in 50 years. In 2006, he won a FOIA lawsuit against the National Reconnaissance Office for release of unclassified budget records.
Steve is an electrical engineer by training (B.Sc., UCLA, 1977) and has published research in solid state physics. He joined the FAS staff in 1989 and has authored or co-authored papers and essays in Scientific American, Science, New Scientist, Journal of Geophysical Research, Journal of the Electrochemical Society, and Issues in Science and Technology on topics including space nuclear power, atmospheric effects of launch vehicles, and government information policy. From 1992-1998, he served on the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board of the National Research Council. For his work on confronting government secrecy, Steve has received the James Madison Award from the American Library Association (2006), the Public Access to Government Information Award from the American Association of Law Libraries (2006), and the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award from the Playboy Foundation (2004). He also is charter member of CGS's Advisory Board. March 18, 2014; March 18, 2013; January 20, 2011 (co-moderator); January 20, 2010 (moderator); March 16, 2009.
Ali Ahmad is Professional Staff Member for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, where he works for Chairman Darrell lssa and covers a range of transparency issues. He previously worked for both Chairman Issa and former Committee Chairman Tom Davis as a Senior Communications Adviser. He has also worked as an aide in the Virginia State Senate, and as policy adviser to his hometown local government, where his office's records were frequently the subjects of state freedom of information requests. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia. March 18, 2014.
Dan Alcorn is counsel for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit to force the Department of Justice to release the Inspector General's various draft reports on the FBI lab, and underlying working papers and interviews to the American public. He is a partner in the Vienna, Virginia law firm of Fensterwald & Alcorn, where he specializes in Freedom of Information Act and constitutional issues litigation.
He graduated with distinction from the University of Virginia in 1977, and from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1980. He is a member of the Virginia and District of Columbia Bar Associations, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He has also devoted himself to public service in Virginia and the Nation's Capital Area, including service as Special Counsel to the Office of the Attorney General, Commonwealth of Virginia; Director and Vice-Chairman of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority; and a member of the Dulles Corridor Task Force. September 29, 2008.
Ryan Alexander joined Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) as president in November 2006, after serving on the board for more than seven years. Over the past two decades, Ryan has served as a nonprofit advocate, manager, funder, and consultant to TCS. Previously, she served as Executive Director of the Common Cause Education Fund, the research and education affiliate of Common Cause, a consultant to foundations and advocacy organizations, a foundation program officer, and a litigating attorney. She co-founded the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, which she continues to chair, and sits on the board of directors of the Project on Government Oversight. Ryan received a bachelor's degree with honors from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., a law degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and was awarded a National Association for Public Interest Law Equal Justice Fellowship. March 16, 2009.
Jason Allen is a senior research assistant for the Collaboration on Government Secrecy. A third-year student at the Washington College of Law, he now is in his third academic semester of being a vital part of CGS. Jason holds an undergraduate degree in political science from Ohio State University, where he attended on an academic scholarship, and he also works for the National District Attorney's Association. He plans to take the Maryland bar exam and pursue a career in government service upon graduation in May 2010. March 16, 2010.
Scott Amey is the general counsel of the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), where since 2003 he also has directed POGO's Contract Oversight investigations, including reviews of federal spending on goods and services, the responsibility of top federal contractors, and conflicts-of-interest and ethics concerns that have led to questionable contract awards. He has testified before Congress and federal agency panels, submitted public comments on proposed regulations, educated the public by working with the media, and authored reports, alerts, and blogs on contracting issues. Scott previously worked at POGO in the mid-1990s as a Research Associate and was one of its most prolific investigators. One of his most notable projects during that time was an investigation into Area 51 that resulted in the Air Force admitting the facility's existence and submitting to compliance with environmental laws. He also undertook investigations into Boston's Big Dig project and safety concerns at nuclear power plants. Scott left POGO in 1998 to attend law school, after which he clerked for James A. Kenney, III of the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland from 2001-2003. He received a J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Baltimore School of Law in 2001, a B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1993, and he is licensed to practice law in Maryland. September 28, 2011.
Scott Armstrong has been a Washington Post investigative reporter, a member of the board of several non-profits, and the founder of the National Security Archive. He currently is the executive director of the Information Trust and also works closely with the Aspen Institute. After commencing studies at Yale University in philosophy, Scott ended up going to law school and then working on Capitol Hill. While serving as a senior investigator for the Senate Watergate Committee, he conducted the interview with White House staff member Alexander Butterfield that led to the discovery of the President Nixon's White House taping system. Scott later conceived and founded the National Security Archive, a non-profit organization now housed at George Washington University that obtains and publishes declassified documents acquired through the FOIA, and he was one of the most prolific FOIA requesters ever. In 2001, he played an instrumental role in stopping the "Official Secrets Act," a provision that would have criminalized information disclosures by federal employees or whistleblowers for the first time in U.S. history. Together with Bob Woodward, he co-authored The Brethren, a ground-breaking account of the Supreme Court from 1969 through 1976, and he also was the principal researcher on The Final Days by Woodward and Carl Bernstein. March 16, 2009.
Ahilan Arulanantham is the Deputy Legal Director at the ACLU of Southern California. He has successfully litigated several cases to protect the rights of immigrants and minority communities against government enforcement actions in the name of national security, and he is the lead plaintiffs' counsel in the unique FOIA case of Islamic Shura Council v. FBI. In 2007, he was named one of California Lawyer Magazines. Lawyers of the Year for his work at the intersection of immigrants' rights and national security, and in 2007, 2008, and 2009 was named one of the Daily Journal's. Top 100 Lawyers in California. He has served as a Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School, where he taught a course on Preventive Detention, and he recently was awarded the Arthur C. Helton Human Rights Award by the American Immigration Lawyers' Association. Prior to joining the ACLU's Southern California office, he was an Assistant Federal Public Defender in El Paso, Texas for two years, and before that he was a fellow at the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project in New York. Ahilan is a former law clerk on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a graduate of Yale Law School, and a graduate of Oxford University, which he attended as a Marshall Scholar. March 16, 2012.
Gavin Baker is the Open Government Policy Analyst at the Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch). He researches government transparency and public access to information, including e-government, the Freedom of Information Act, information quality issues, and scientific integrity in public policy. Previously, he researched copyright and Internet policy at the American Library Association. He also has served as the assistant editor of Open Access News, a newsletter devoted to raising awareness about the importance of open access to information. His devotion to promoting access to scientific information comes from his time as an outreach fellow at the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. Gavin holds B.A. in political science from the University of Florida, where he was elected to the student government senate, and he currently is studying toward his M.S. in Library and Information Studies at Florida State University. September 27, 2013; March 18, 2013; September 28, 2012; March 16, 2012; January 20, 2012.
Lauren Barlow is legislative counsel to Senator John Cornyn of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who for many years now has worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy on bipartisan oversight and amendment of the FOIA. She graduated from Columbia Law School with a J.D. in May 2013 and during law school interned with the Senate Republic Policy Committee. Before Joining Senator Cornyn's staff, she worked as a legal associate in the Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. She received her B.A. and an M.A. in English Literature from Brigham Young University, where she focused on 20th-Century Jewish-American Literature. March 18, 2014.
Khaliah Barnes, is the Administrative Law Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and Director of its Student Privacy Project. In the latter role, she defends student privacy rights before federal regulatory agencies and federal courts, and she has recently concluded two lawsuits against the Department of Education concerning student privacy. Khaliah has testified before state boards and districts on the need to safeguard student records and is a frequent panelist, commentator, and writer on student data collection. As EPIC's Administrative Law Counsel, she researches proposed federal agency privacy regulations that pertain to government collection, retention, and dissemination of personal information. She has submitted extensive administrative agency comments on a variety of matters, including Privacy Act regulations, Freedom of Information Act regulations, consumer rights, student privacy, air traveler privacy rights, automotive privacy, domestic surveillance, and medical privacy. Khaliah has provided commentary to local and national media, including CBS This Morning, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, Fox Business, CNN, Education Week, POLITICO, USA Today, and Time magazine. She is admitted to practice in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and is a member of the American Bar Association's Administrative Law Section and its Privacy and Information Security Committee. Khaliah graduated from Georgetown University Law Center and holds a Bachelor's Degree in political science, and a French minor, from Emory University. While at Georgetown, she was a student attorney for the Institute for Public Representation's First Amendment and Media Law Project. In 2010, she interned with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. March 18, 2014.
Jason Baron has served as the National Archives and Record Administration's' Director of Litigation since May 2000. In this position, he is responsible for overseeing all litigation-related activities confronting the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), including complex federal court litigation involving access to federal and presidential records in NARA's custody. For the twelve-year period prior to his appointment as Director of Litigation, Jason held successive positions as trial attorney and senior counsel with the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice, where he represented the Archivist and various Executive Office of the President components in Armstrong v. Executive Office of the President (the "PROFS" case) and Public Citizen v. Carlin (the GRS 20 case), and was counsel of record in litigation involving regulation of the Internet. Jason serves as NARA's representative to The Sedona Conference®, where he is a member of the Steering Committee for Working Group 1 on Electronic Document Retention and Production, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of The Sedona Conference Best Practices Commentary on the Use of Search and Information Retrieval in E-Discovery. He is also a founding coordinator of the TREC Legal Track, an international research project organized through the National Institute of Standards and Technology to evaluate search protocols used in e-discovery. Immediately prior to joining the National Archives and Records Administration, Jason spent the Spring 2000 semester as a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies in Vancouver, B.C., where he taught a course on cyberspace law and participated in the InterPARES project. Jason received a B.A. degree magna cum laude in 1977 from Wesleyan University, and a J.D. degree in 1980 from the Boston University School of Law. He has authored many publications and is a frequent public speaker on the subject of the federal government's obligations with respect to the preservation of electronic records. He currently also is an Adjunct Professor in the University of Maryland's Graduate College of Information Studies. March 16, 2009.
Gary Bass is the Founder and Executive Director of OMB Watch. Since founding this advocacy organization in 1983, he has testified before Congress, appeared on national television, addressed groups across the country, and written extensively on federal budgetary, program management, regulatory, and information policy issues. Dr. Bass is well known for assisting nonprofit organizations in better understanding federal rules and policies affecting their organizations and constituencies. He has been selected as one of the Nonprofit Times Power and Influence Top 50 each of the nine years of its existence. In 2006, the award noted: "Nobody is better at divining what legislative fine print means to the charitable sector, getting the translation out to leadership and rallying advocacy. Nothing slips by him. Nothing." In addition to his 20-year leadership in promoting policies that make government information more publicly accessible, he was a prominent voice after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in preserving the public's right to know. As a result of increased secrecy since 2001, Dr. Bass helped form the OpenTheGovernment.org coalition, which brings together the advocacy and journalism communities to defend against the growth of secrecy and to advance open government policies and priorities.
Technology has played an important part in Dr. Bass's career. In 1989, prior to broad use of the Internet, he created RTK NET (the Right-to-Know Network at www.rtknet.org), a free online computer service to provide community groups access to government data about toxic chemicals released by chemical companies. More than 540,000 visitors a year use RTK NET to obtain environmental and health data. In 2006, Dr. Bass oversaw creation of FedSpending.org, a free online database for citizens to find out where more than $12 trillion in federal money goes and who gets it. He also chairs OpenTheGovernment.org, Citizens for Sensible Safeguards, and NonprofitAdvocacy.org. And he has served on many panels and advisory bodies, including as a member of the Advisory Board of the Collaboration on Government Secrecy.
Dr. Bass has served on the faculty of the Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program at the Center for Public & Nonprofit Leadership at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute. He has taught classes at Johns Hopkins University, American University, Wayne State University, and the University of Michigan. Prior to founding OMB Watch, Dr. Bass was President of the Human Services Information Center, where he wrote a book and numerous articles on human services issues and published the Human Services INSIDER, a bi-monthly newsletter on the politics of federal human services programs. He has also served as Director of Liaison for the International Year of Disabled Persons; consultant on several projects in special education and the mental health of children and youth, most notably the preparation of the first annual report to Congress on the implementation of the Education of All Handicapped Children Act (Pub. L. No. 94-142); Special Assistant to Wilbur Cohen, then-chair of the Michigan Governor's Task Force on the Investigation and Prevention of Abuse in Residential Institutions; Program Assistant at the Institute for Behavioral Research; and in research roles in juvenile justice and community corrections. He received a combined doctorate in psychology and education in 1979 from the University of Michigan, along with the University's highest award for graduate student teaching and several awards for academic excellence. He received a Master's (1978) and BA (1975) from the University of Michigan. January 20, 2012; January 20, 2011 (moderator); January 20, 2010 (moderator); March 16, 2009 (moderator); January 29, 2009.
Robert Becker is a solo-practitioner lawyer whose practice includes advising writers, editors, photographers, and others in the news media about access to government proceedings and records, libel, invasion of privacy, and protecting confidentiality. For nine years, he was Assistant Director for Publications and a Staff Attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and before that he was a newspaper reporter and editor. He has been the Society of Professional Journalists' D.C. Pro Chapter First Amendment/FOI Chair for more than 20 years and he also serves as Government Relations Committee Chair and Board Member for the D.C. Coalition on Open Government. He has helped draft major open government legislation for the District, including the 2000 amendments to the D.C. Freedom of Information Act. As the Coalition's government relations chair, he worked on the 2010 Open Government Meetings Act, and bills to strengthen the Open Government Office and the FOI Act. He received the D.C. Pro Chapter's Distinguished Service Award in 2003 and the D.C. Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' Kenneth R. Mundy Lawyer of the Year Award in 2011. He regularly addresses groups of foreign journalists and government officials visiting the United States on access to government information and has undertaken training projects in Ethiopia, Morocco, Argentina, and Uruguay on issues related to press freedom. March 18, 2013.
Amy Bennett joined OpenTheGovernment.org as its Assistant Director upon receiving her Master's in Public Policy (MPP) from the Georgetown Public Policy Institute in May 2008. She received her B.A. from Tufts University in Political Science in 2001. After graduating from Tufts, she worked in the office of Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (May 2002-February 2005). While attending Georgetown, she worked as a Legislative Assistant in the Government Relations Department of Drinker, Biddle & Reath, LLP (March 2006-April 2007), then as a Legislative Aide at Washington Strategic Consulting (May 2007-September 2007), and then she transitioned from government relations to the non-profit world to work as a Program Manager for the Alliance for Plasma Therapies (May 2007-June 2007). January 17, 2013; September 28, 2012; January 20, 2012.
Hannah Bergman is now a Jack Nelson Legal Fellow at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. She recently graduated from American University with a law degree from the Washington College of Law and a master's degree in journalism from AU's School of Communication. Throughout law school she focused on media law, working as a law clerk at Levine, Sullivan, Koch, and Schulz, LLP, at the National Security Archive, and at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center. Additionally, during her third law school year, she worked as a Senior Research Assistant for the Collaboration on Government Secrecy. Prior to law school, she worked as a financial reporter in Washington and briefly for the Associated Press in London. January 29, 2009.
Asheesh Bhalla is a Senior Research Assistant and Webmaster for the Collaboration on Government Secrecy. A third-year student at WCL, he now is in his fifth semester as a CGS Dean's Fellow. Prior to law school, he attended New York University (B.A. '06) and Columbia University (M.P.H. '07), and then worked in Afghanistan, where he founded a local public health NGO. During law school, in addition to working for CGS, Asheesh has served as Symposium Editor for the Business Law Review and as a student attorney in WCL's Community Economic Development Law Clinic. While finishing his last year in school, he currently interns at the Department of the Treasury. March 16, 2012.
Michael Binder is a Supervisory Records Declassification Specialist with the Air Force Declassification Office (AFDO), located at the National Archives at College Park. As a FOIA Program Manager, he supervises AFDO reviewers as they practice their 3 Rs -- Reviewing, Referring, Redaction; as Deputy Air Force Restricted Data/Formerly Restricted Data (RD/FRD) Management Officer, he assists Air Force information access offices worldwide with nuclear weapon questions that frequently involve FOIA Exemption 3. Michael cut his RD/FRD teeth during a 4.5-year stint as a Department of Energy contractor reviewer with DOE's Historical Records Audit Program, also at the National Archives. Prior to his ten years as a government reviewer, he worked as a Cold War military history consultant, participating in historic preservation and environmental remediation projects on current and former military installations across the country. Among his contributions were inputs to the Brookings Institution's Atomic Audit and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' "Where They Were." In his consultant capacity, he was happy to gain access to classified information, be it in documents he requested under the FOIA, or in improperly declassified records held at various government archives. As an Air Force reviewer, he now is required to protect the very same types of classified information he once was delighted to see mistakenly made available to the public. March 14, 2011.
Tom Blanton is Director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington D.C. The Archive won U.S. journalism's George Polk Award in April 2000 for "piercing self-serving veils of government secrecy, guiding journalists in search for the truth, and informing us all." The Los Angeles Times (16 January 2001) described the Archive as "the world's largest nongovernmental library of declassified documents." Tom served as the Archive's first Director of Planning & Research beginning in 1986, became Deputy Director in 1989, and became Director in 1992. He filed his first Freedom of Information Act request in 1976 as a weekly newspaper reporter in Minnesota; and among many hundreds subsequently, he filed the FOIA request and subsequent lawsuit (with Public Citizen Litigation Group) that forced the release of Oliver North's Iran-contra diaries in 1990. His books include White House E-Mail: The Top Secret Computer Messages the Reagan-Bush White House Tried to Destroy (New York: The New Press, 1995, 254 pp. + computer disk), which The New York Times described as "a stream of insights into past American policy, spiced with depictions of White House officials in poses they would never adopt for a formal portrait." He co-authored The Chronology (New York: Warner Books, 1987, 687 pp.) on the Iran-contra affair, and served as a contributing author to three editions of the ACLU's authoritative guide, Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws, and to the Brookings Institution study Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1998, 680 pp.). His articles have appeared in The International Herald-Tribune, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Slate, the Wilson Quarterly, and many other publications. A graduate of Harvard University, where he was an editor of the independent university daily newspaper The Harvard Crimson, he won Harvard's 1979 Newcomen Prize in history. He also received the 1996 American Library Association James Madison Award Citation for "defending the public's right to know." Additionally, Tom is a founding editorial board member of freedominfo.org, the virtual network of international freedom of information advocates; and serves on the editorial board of H-DIPLO, the diplomatic history electronic bulletin board, and on the board of directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, among other professional activities. January 17, 2013 (moderator); September 28, 2012; September 28, 2011; March 16, 2010 (moderator); September 28, 2009; March 16, 2009.
Rick Blum coordinates the Sunshine in Government Initiative, a coalition of media groups promoting open government policies and practices. The coalition actively supported passage of the 2007 amendments to the Freedom of Information Act that created the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), which is the first independent office designed to mediate FOIA disputes and recommend improvements. Rick and the coalition discovered the provision buried in the president's 2009 budget that would have eliminated the ombudsman office before its creation. In the midst of high-profile stories about U.S.-run secret prisons, warrantless surveillance, and federal monitoring of international banking transactions, Rick helped media groups successfully explain why Congress should not write new laws criminalizing reporting based on unauthorized disclosures.
Rick was the founding director of OpenTheGovernment.org, a broad coalition of journalists, labor, and free-speech and environmental advocates. There he launched the Secrecy Report Card, an annual report of quantitative indicators of secrecy and openness in the federal government. As a policy analyst at OMB Watch from 1997 to 2001, he worked with environmental groups, librarians, freedom-of-information advocates, and others in the 1999 fight to maintain public access to chemical accident risk management plans. Rick also has conducted research on the effects of the commercialization of science on environmental and public health protections. He holds a master's degree from Indiana University, where his studies focused on democratization efforts in Russia, and a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley. April 25, 2013; January 17, 2013 (moderator); March 16, 2012; March 14, 2011; January 20, 2010; January 29, 2009; January 16, 2008.
WILLIAM J. (Jay) BOSANKO
Jay Bosanko was appointed as the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) in April of 2008. As such, he is responsible for policy oversight of the Government-wide security classification system and the National Industrial Security Program. ISOO receives its policy and program guidance from the National Security Council and is a component of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). In this capacity, Jay also serves as the Executive Secretary of the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel and the Public Interest Declassification Board and as the Chairman of the National Industrial Security Program Policy Advisory Committee. Jay has more than sixteen years of experience working issues related to the classification, safeguarding, and declassification of classified national security information, more than ten of which have been in positions of increasing responsibility at ISOO. On May 21, 2008, Jay was also appointed as the Director of NARA's Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) Office. In this capacity, Jay carries out the responsibilities of NARA as the Executive Agent under the President's Memorandum of May 9, 2008, "Designation and Sharing of Controlled Unclassified Information." These responsibilities include overseeing and managing the implementation of the CUI Framework as well as serving as the Chairman of the CUI Council, a subcommittee of the Information Sharing Council. Prior to joining ISOO in December of 1998, Jay worked on NARA's Special Access and FOIA Staff and NARA's Records Declassification Division. Jay holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Susquehanna University (Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania). January 20, 2011; March 16, 2010; March 16, 2009.
Nancy Boswell recently joined WCL as an Adjunct Professor, teaching a seminar on anti-corruption law, and she soon will be organizing a summer program at WCL on that subject from the international perspective. From 1994-2011, she served as President and CEO of Transparency International-USA, and she also was a member of the Board of Directors of Transparency International, the leading international non-governmental organization working in over 100 countries with government, international institutions, private sector and non-profit organizations to promote transparency and accountability and reduce bribery and corruption in international business and development. Recognized by Ethisphere on its 2008 "100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics," Professor Boswell is an advisor to the U.S. government, serving on the State Department Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy, USTR Trade & Environment Policy Advisory Committee and the USAID Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid. She serves on the board of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy of Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service and on the advisory board of the Hills Program on Goverance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She is on the Steering Committee of the ABA Section on International Law and Practice Committee on Foreign Corrupt Practices and is a member of the Securities Law Committee of the Federal Bar Association. Her prior experience includes the practice of public international and trade law at Steptoe & Johnson, government relations at the American Association of University Women, and international finance at Citicorp. She received her law degree summa cum laude from WCL. September 28, 2012.
Krista Boyd serves as the Deputy Director of Legislation and Counsel for the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, where she most recently collaborated with the committee's majority staff on critical oversight of the Justice Department's governmentwide role in FOIA administration. Her oversight and legislative responsibilities include issues related to transparency, government operations, and the regulatory process. She assisted with drafting and negotiating legislation to improve the transparency of the federal government including bills strengthening the Freedom of Information Act, improving the transparency of federal advisory committees, improving access to presidential and federal records, and the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, which President Obama signed into law on November 27, 2012. Krista previously served as Counsel for United States Senator Max Cleland. She is a graduate of Emory University School of Law and Florida State University. March 18, 2014; March 18, 2013; March 16, 2012; March 14, 2011.
Since 1993, Danielle Brian has been the Executive Director of the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a nonprofit government watchdog. She frequently testifies before Congress and appears in major national news outlets, including ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, USA TODAY, and National Public Radio. Danielle has led numerous investigations that have exposed wasteful government spending and helped precipitate policy reforms improving government programs. Under her watch, POGO prevailed in a lawsuit against then-Attorney General John Ashcroft for retroactively classifying FBI documents; forced the government to apply environmental standards to the super-secret Area 51 facility; forced the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to back down on its excessive secrecy regarding lax security at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant outside New York City; and has advocated for the rights of whistleblowers and other dissenters to have their voices heard. Before becoming executive director of POGO, Danielle worked as a producer for television documentaries, as a policy analyst at the Arms Control and Foreign Policy Congressional Caucus, and as a research associate at POGO. She earned a master's degree in International Relations from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in 1990. January 20, 2011 (moderator); November 18, 2009; March 16, 2009; January 29, 2009.
Jennifer Brown is a Senior Research Assistant for the Collaboration on Government Secrecy. A fourth-year part-time student at WCL, she now is in her fifth semester as a CGS Dean's Fellow and works full-time for a federal agency as she completes her legal studies. During her time in law school, she has been awarded the Marcy C. Panzer & Manny D. Pokotilow Scholarship, as well as three scholarships from the American Bar Association Joint Committee on Employee Benefits. Prior to attending law school, Jennifer obtained a Master of Science in Law & Society degree (with focus on Jurisprudence) from American University's School of Public Affairs. She holds a double Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminology and Philosophy with minors in Applied Ethics and Religion from the University of Florida. March 18, 2013.
Paul Bugala is the Senior Sustainability Analyst for Extractive Industries at Calvert Investments, Inc. and heads its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) research and advocacy for the oil, gas, and mining industries. He also contributes to Calvert's integration of traditional securities and ESG analysis. In December 2012, he was appointed by the Secretary of the Department of the Interior to the U.S. Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (USEITI) Multi-Stakeholder Group. His publications related to USEITI include the reports "Transparency Begins at Home: An Assessment of United States Revenue Transparency and Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Requirements" (2006 -- Oxfam America/Publish What You Pay) and "Materiality of Disclosure Required by the Energy Security through Transparency Act" (2010, Calvert Investment Management, Inc.). His work has helped Calvert become a leading investor supporter of Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which requires oil, gas, and mining companies registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission to publish their payments to governments as part of their annual disclosures. He is a member of United Nations Principles for Responsible Investing committees on ESG Integration, Carbon Disclosure, and Indigenous Peoples Rights as well as Amnesty International USA's Business and Human Rights Advisory Group. Prior to Calvert, he served in research and advocacy roles in the Extractive Industries Program at Oxfam America. He also has experience as an industry analyst, journalist, and public relations executive. September 27, 2013.
Wayne Moses Burke is the Executive Director of the Open Forum Foundation, a D.C. based non-profit that he founded to improve citizen involvement in government. Growing up with the US Open Government movement as a backdrop, the organization works at the intersection of technology and government culture, with the goal of building trusting relationships between government entities and civil society. Most recently, Wayne has been working with OpenTheGovernment.org to support and evaluate the Obama Administration's implementation of its Open Government Partnership National Action Plan. Wayne grew up in rural Michigan and his past is littered with entrepreneurial experience in technology, citizen advocacy, and manufacturing, along with a B.S. in Engineering from the University of Michigan and an M.S. in International Relations from NYU. September 28, 2012.
David Burnham -- a writer, investigative reporter, and researcher -- is the co-founder and co-director of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). For the last three decades, he has specialized in the critical examination of numerous government enforcement bureaucracies including the New York Police Department, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Environmental Enforcement Agency, the Internal Revenue Service, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Justice Department.
A reporter with The New York Times from 1968 to 1986, Professor Burnham has written several books and numerous magazine articles. In 1989, he became the Washington-based co-director of TRAC, a data-gathering, research and data-distribution organization associated with Syracuse University, as well as an associate research professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. The goal of TRAC is provide the public and members of the oversight community -- reporters, public interest groups, congressional committees, scholars, and others -- with the comprehensive performance data they need to hold federal investigative and regulatory agencies accountable. TRAC has been supported by Syracuse University, the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Knight Foundation, the New York Times Company Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and numerous news organizations, advocacy groups, scholars, and lawyers.
Among the stories Professor Burnham developed while with the Times in New York City was a police corruption series in the early 1970s that ultimately resulted in major governmental reforms and the movie Serpico. As a reporter in the paper's Washington bureau, he focused on privacy issues and the shortcomings of federal regulation, including those of the Atomic Energy/Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Karen Silkwood was on her way to give him information about the manufacture of faulty nuclear fuel rods by the Kerr McGee Corporation when she died in a mysterious car crash.
In August of 1997, The Nation devoted an issue to an article by Professor Burnham that challenged the basic management skills and investigative competence of the FBI. The article was based on comprehensive data obtained from the Justice Department by TRAC under the FOIA. ABC's Nightline broadcast a program on the article and TRAC's findings. His latest book, Above the Law: Secret Deals, Political Fixes, and Other Misadventures of the U.S. Department of Justice, was published in January 1996 by Scribner. His investigative book on the Internal Revenue Service, A Law Unto Itself: Power, Politics and the IRS, was published in 1990. A third book, The Rise of the Computer State, was published in 1984. Over the years, Professor Burnham has received numerous professional honors, including the George Polk Award for Community Service, Long Island University, 1968; the Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship, 1987; the Best Investigative Book of 1990, Investigative Reporters and Editors, 1990; and the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, Bellagio, Italy, 1992. January 17, 2013 (luncheon speaker).
Kristan Callahan is a Senior Research Assistant for the Collaboration on Government Secrecy. A third-year student at WCL, she now is in her fifth semester as a CGS Dean's Fellow. Prior to law school, she worked for the New York City Bar Association as its Judiciary Committee Assistant after graduating from New York University in 2007. During law school, in addition to working for CGS, Kristan has interned in the local U.S. Attorney's Office and in the General Counsel's Office in the Executive Office of the President. While finishing her last year in school, she currently works at Patton Boggs LLP in its Pro Bono Department. Kristan also is a member of the Mock Trial Honor Society and the Administrative Law Review. Upon graduation this May, she plans to work in litigation and government affairs. January 20, 2012.
Alan Butler is the Appellate Advocacy Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), where he manages EPIC's appellate docket, including its amicus program, and authors briefs in significant privacy, civil liberties, and national security law cases. His recent cases include In re EPIC, United States v. Jones, Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, and Maryland v. King. Alan focuses on a range of privacy law subjects, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), location privacy, and other digital Fourth Amendment issues. His recent articles -- "Standing Up to Clapper: How to Increase Transparency and Oversight of FISA Surveillance" and "When Cyberweapons End Up on Private Networks: Third Amendment Implications for Cybersecurity Policy" -- were published in the New England Law Review and the American University Law Review, respectively. Alan is a graduate of UCLA School of Law and Washington University in St. Louis, where he earned a B.A. in Economics. March 18, 2014.
Mary Ellen Callahan was appointed as the Chief Privacy Officer of the Department of Homeland Security by Secretary Janet A. Napolitano on March 9, 2009. She also is DHS's Chief FOIA Officer, holding direct responsibility for one of the largest FOIA operations in the federal government, and as such is the Obama Administration's highest-ranking political appointee with direct FOIA responsibilities. Before joining DHS, Ms. Callahan specialized in privacy, data security, and consumer protection law as a partner at Hogan & Hartson LLP, where she worked for more than ten years. She was the Co-Chair of Online Privacy Alliance, a self-regulatory group of corporations and associations established to create an environment of trust and foster the protection of individuals' privacy online. Ms. Callahan also served as Vice-Chair of the American Bar Association's Privacy and Information Security Committee of its Antitrust Section. A frequent author and speaker on privacy issues, she was selected in 2008 as a "Band 1" privacy and data security lawyer in the United States by Chambers and Partners. Ms. Callahan holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to law school, she worked at the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress as part of the Special Task Force on the Development of Parliamentary Institutions in Eastern Europe. April 28, 2009 (luncheon speaker).
Michael Camilleri is a human rights specialist and the senior legal advisor to the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Prior to joining the IACHR, Michael was a senior staff attorney at the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), where he served as lead counsel in dozens of matters before the Inter-American Commission and Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Michael received his J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he co-founded Harvard Law Student Advocates for Human Rights and worked with civil society organizations in Guatemala as the recipient of a Henigson Fellowship from the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program. He has lectured and written on human rights issues such as freedom of expression, access to information, and transitional justice, and he has been an adjunct professor at WCL and the University of Baltimore School of Law. September 28, 2011.
Angela Canterbury, Director of Public Policy at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), is an experienced advocate, policy analyst, and public campaign strategist. Angela manages strategic campaigns and advances public policies to combat corruption and to promote openness and accountability in government. She has been engaged in the current effort to reform and re-regulate the financial industry in order to achieve more effective oversight and protections for taxpayers and consumers. She also has been instrumental in advancing improvements in lobbying and congressional ethics rules, whistleblower protections, the Freedom of Information Act, and other open-government initiatives. She has testified before Congress, including on the issue of Securities and Exchange Commission information disclosure in 2010, and has been quoted or appeared in news outlets. Prior to joining POGO, Angela served as the director of advocacy for Public Citizen's Congress Watch division, and before that she worked with the League of Women Voters of the U.S. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics, with honors and distinction. April 25, 2013; March 14, 2011.
Jonathan Cantor joined the Department of Homeland Security as Deputy Chief Privacy Officer in July 2012, and he was the Acting Chief Privacy Officer from August 2012 until October 2013. He advises the DHS leadership on domestic and international privacy laws, policies, and programs. Jonathan previously served as the senior privacy official at both the Department of Commerce and the Social Security Administration. At Commerce, he was the first permanent chief privacy officer charged with developing a departmental program and contributed to the Bush Administration's Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights and other projects involving landmark privacy policy. He received his J.D. from the National Law Center at George Washington University with Honors in 1998 and a B.A. in Political Science and History cum laude from Duke University in 1994. March 18, 2014.
Bobby Chesney is a national security law scholar, with a particular interest in problems associated with terrorism. He is a member of the Advisory Committee of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security, a senior editor for the Journal of National Security Law & Policy, an associate member of the Intelligence Science Board, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the American Law Institute. Professor Chesney has published extensively on topics ranging from detention and prosecution in the counterterrorism context to the states secrets privilege (testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the latter). He has served previously as chair of the Section on National Security Law of the Association of American Law Schools and as editor of the National Security Law Report (published by the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security). His upcoming projects include a book (under contract with Oxford University Press) concerning the evolving judicial role in national security affairs. Professor Chesney recently served in the Justice Department in connection with the Detainee Policy Task Force created by Executive Order 13,493. November 18, 2009.
Pat Clawson is an award-winning investigative reporter and private investigator based in both Washington, D.C. and Flint, Michigan who specializes in probes of financial fraud, organized crime, terrorism, and public corruption. He began his career in 1969 as a reporter with the Flint (Mich.) Journal and his national media credentials includes duty as a Washington, D.C.-based on-air investigative reporter for the original CNN Special Assignments Unit and NBC News; White House correspondent for the Independent TV News Association (Metromedia TV); Capitol Hill correspondent for Independent Network News (Tribune Broadcasting); Washington Bureau Chief of Radio & Records, the newspaper division of the Westwood One Companies; radio talk show host at the Radio America Network, WABC/New York and WRC/Washington; Congressional Editor of Washington Crime News Services; Director of Sales, Marketing & Strategy for the Radio America Network; and President/CEO of TeleGrafix Communications, one of America's first Internet media companies. He is a former elected member of the board of directors of the U.S. Congress Periodical Press Gallery and has served as a judge for several national media award competitions, including those of the National Association of Broadcasters and the Society of Professional Journalists.
In addition, Pat has worked as a private investigator since 1974 on cases involving international financial frauds, Mafia bombings, public corruption, domestic terrorism, and corporate crime. His investigation of Missouri police bribery by private detectives led to the first criminal convictions under the federal Privacy Act. As Executive Director of the Saginaw Valley (Mich.) Crime Commission, he testified in 1980 before a U.S. Senate committee about his investigations of Mafia racketeering and Mexican drug trafficking in Michigan. From 2002 through 2008, was a spokesman and defense investigator for attorneys representing Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, the former government scientist who was wrongfully labeled by Attorney General John Ashcroft as a "person of interest" in the 2001 anthrax terrorism investigation.
Pat has won numerous national journalism awards for his investigations of domestic terrorism, financial crime, the Mafia and public corruption, including a National Emmy Citation for Community Service Broadcasting, the Janus Award for Financial Journalism, the Amos Tuck Financial Journalism Prize, and investigative reporting prizes from the Associated Press and Radio-Television News Directors Association. He was part of a team that won a George Polk Memorial Award for computer-assisted investigations of the administration of justice in a Michigan court. April 28, 2009.
Loren Cochran, from Washington State, serves as the Freedom of Information Service Center Director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. He was a trial attorney with the Seattle-Tacoma law firm of Gordon Thomas Honeywell Malanca Peterson & Daheim, with experience in access litigation and defamation. Prior to his law career, Loren worked as an investigative and special projects producer at television stations in Seattle, Tampa and Boston. His work in broadcast news produced two Emmy awards. Loren earned his law degree from the Boston College Law School and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Washington, where he majored in political science in communications. January 16, 2008.
Wendell Cochran served for many years as head of the Journalism Division of American University's School of Communication (SOC) and now oversees American University's new Investigative Reporting Workshop together with co-founder Charles Lewis. An SOC faculty member since 1992, Professor Cochran has spent more than 40 years practicing and teaching journalism. Along the way he has covered everything from local government to Congress to presidential campaigns. He has bylines from nearly 40 of the 50 states, working as a business reporter, special projects editor, and project director for leading news organizations, including the Kansas City Star, Des Moines Register and Gannett News Service. He has also worked as a contributing editor to Top Producer, a leading agriculture magazine. He spent most of his journalism career as a business reporter and editor, specializing in topics such as agricultural policy, international trade, and banking and finance. His stories have won or shared four national reporting awards, including the Amos Tuck Award for Economic Understanding, the John Hancock Award for Business Reporting, and the National Headliners Award. He has written extensively on the role that nonprofit institutions can play in the emerging media landscape in such venues as Columbia Journalism Review and Nieman Reports. He also has continued his work in journalism as a Freedom Forum Journalist-in-Residence (in 2000) and as a contributor to several professional publications including American Journalism Review; Quill; The Journal of Mass Media Ethics; The Electronic Journal of Communication; American Editor; and the IRE Journal. He also is the co-author of Inside the Beltway: A Guide to Washington Reporting (Second Edition).
Professor Cochran teaches advanced-level journalism courses, including Advanced Reporting, Seminar in Journalism, and Journalism Ethics. Students in his undergraduate Advanced Reporting class frequently have been able to produce stories published by professional news organizations. Graduate students in his Seminar in Journalism have served as research assistants for books, including Inside the Beltway and Buying of the President 2004, a best-selling book by Charles Lewis, founder of the Center for Public Integrity and now a Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence on the SOC faculty. Atop all of that, Professor Cochran's primary area of academic research interest is the administration of the federal Freedom of Information Act. April 28, 2009; January 29, 2009.
Sandra Coliver is the Senior Legal Officer for Freedom of Information and Expression at the Open Society Justice Initiative, based in New York. Previously, she served as the director of the Center for Justice and Accountability in San Francisco, which works to hold human rights abusers legally accountable. For more than two decades, she managed or participated in human rights and rule of law programs, including in Bosnia with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the International Crisis Group and the OSCE. During the time that she served as the first Law Program Director (1990-96) of Article 19, based in London, she coordinated the drafting of the Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression, and Access to Information and wrote a commentary and edited a book on that theme. She was a member of the Faculty of the Summer Program on International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at WCL during 2003-2005. September 28, 2012 (moderator); September 28, 2011.
Ron Collins is a scholar at the Washington, D.C. office of the First Amendment Center of the Freedom Forum at the Newseum. He writes and lectures on freedom of expression and oversees the online library component of the First Amendment Center's Web site. Before coming to the Center, he served as a law clerk to Justice Hans A. Linde on the Oregon Supreme Court and thereafter was a Judicial Fellow under Chief Justice Warren E. Burger at the U.S. Supreme Court. He was elected president of the Supreme Court Fellows Alumni Association in 2008. Ron has taught constitutional law and commercial law at Temple Law School and George Washington University Law School, and he has written constitutional briefs that were submitted to the Supreme Court and various other federal and state high courts. He has also published more than fifty articles in scholarly journals such as the Harvard, Stanford, and Michigan law reviews. His writings on the First Amendment have appeared in Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among other publications.
Ron is co-author (with David Skover) of The Trials of Lenny Bruce (2002) and The Death of Discourse (1996/2nd ed., 2006), and he is the editor of Constitutional Government in America (1981). His next book is Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: A Free Speech Reader (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and after that, Mania: The Madcap Stories of the Lives that Launched a Generation (with David Skover) (2010). His latest scholarly article is "Foreword: To America's Tomorrow Commerce, Communication & the Future of Free Speech," 41 Loyola, Los Angeles, Law Review 1-39 (April 2008). In 2003, he and David Skover successfully petitioned the governor of New York to posthumously pardon Lenny Bruce, for which they received the Hugh Hefner First Amendment Award. In September 2006, Ron conducted a public interview with Anthony Lewis at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, and in February 2008 he interviewed Lewis for C-SPAN's "Book TV." April 28, 2009 (moderator).
James (Jamie) Conrad has practiced law in Washington D.C. for 27 years, helping organizations accomplish their goals in the federal regulatory process. With 14 years of experience at the American Chemistry Council and 13 years practicing privately on his own and at major national law firms, he has a broad and sophisticated perspective on how to achieve results and defend interests in that environment. Mr. Conrad is an expert in the field of environment, health & safety, in which he specializes in how science is used to support regulation and policy. He also focuses on homeland security, particularly in the areas of chemical facility security and information protection. Through the years, he has also worked across a wide range of other administrative law subjects, leading to his becoming Chairman of the Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice of the American Bar Association, and this work has included regulatory compliance counseling; participating in all stages of the rulemaking process; strategic advocacy to shape agency policy; permitting and other governmental approvals; supporting and challenging government actions in federal courts; and negotiating and defending enforcement cases.
Mr. Conrad has a long track record helping private entities engage with government agencies in innovative projects that offer mutual benefits. He also has extensive legislative experience, working with congressional staff to educate them, guide oversight, and draft and negotiate legislative language and legislative history, in both the authorization and appropriations context. He graduated in 1985 with high honors from the National Law Center at George Washington University, where he was a member of the law review and the Order of the Coif. He received his B.A. and the Department Prize in Philosophy from Haverford College in 1981. March 18, 2013 (luncheon speaker).
Steven Croley serves as Special Assistant to the President for Justice and Regulatory Policy at the White House's Domestic Policy Council and has become the Obama Administration's new "transparency czar." A professor on leave from the University of Michigan Law School, he has taught and written in the areas of administrative law, civil procedure, regulation, torts, and related subjects. Professor Croley received an A.B. from the University of Michigan, where he was a James B. Angell Scholar and won the William Jennings Bryan Prize. He earned his J.D. from the Yale Law School, where he was articles editor for the Yale Law Journal, a John M. Olin student fellow, and recipient of the John M. Olin Prize and the Benjamin Scharps Prize. He also earned a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University. Following graduation from law school, he served as a law clerk for Judge Stephen Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Professor Croley began his teaching career at Michigan Law School in 1993 and served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2003 through 2006. From 2006-2010, he served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. His scholarly research appears in, among other places, the Administrative Law Journal, the Chicago Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, and the Harvard Law Review. His recent book, Regulation and Public Interests: The Possibility of Good Regulatory Government, is published by Princeton University Press. He is a member of the Pennsylvania and Michigan Bars, and is an active member of the Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice Section of the American Bar Association. January 20, 2011 (keynote speaker).
Philip J. (P.J.) Crowley is the Omar Bradley Chair of Strategic Leadership at Dickinson College, the Penn State Dickinson School of Law and School of International Affairs, and the Army War College. He is also a Research Professor in Media and Public Affairs and Fellow at The George Washington University Institute of Public Diplomacy and Global Communications. P.J. appears frequently as a national security commentator on national and global television networks, including as a contributor to Al Jazeera English and the BBC. He is also a regular columnist for The Daily Beast. Recent opinion pieces have also been published in The Washington Post and The Guardian.
P.J. was nominated by President Obama as the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs in 2009 and confirmed by the United States Senate. He served as the Assistant Secretary and Spokesman at the Department of State until March 2011. He was the primary U.S. government interlocutor with major media regarding the impact of the release of classified diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks. Before joining the Obama Administration, he was a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, with a particular focus on homeland security in the aftermath of 9/11. He authored several national security studies, including Safe at Home, a detailed homeland security strategy to protect the American homeland, improve national preparedness and rebuild U.S. standing in the world. He remains engaged on these issues as a participant in the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group.
During the Clinton Administration, P.J. was Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs on the staff of the National Security Council. He also served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. He spent 26 years in the Air Force, retiring at the rank of colonel in September 1999. He is a veteran of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. During the Kosovo conflict, he worked under Javier Solana, then-Secretary General of NATO, helping to develop a strategic communication capability in support for the NATO campaign. A native of Massachusetts, P.J. is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross. He is married to Paula E. Kougeas, also a retired Air Force colonel and now a teacher. They have two children and live in Alexandria, Virginia. September 28, 2011.
Lucy Dalglish is the Executive Director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a position she has held since 2000. Prior to that, she was an attorney with a Minneapolis law firm from 1995 to 2000 and worked from 1980-93 as a reporter and editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. As an expert on the effect of government secrecy in the post-Sept. 11 world, she has testified before both state legislatures and congressional committees about access to government information and government secrecy. She has spoken throughout the United States on FOIA issues and serves on the board of directors of the National Freedom of Information Coalition and the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. From 1996 to 2000, Lucy was legal counsel to the Minnesota Library Association. She served three years as national chair of the Society of Professional Journalists Freedom of Information Committee in the early 1990s, and she was awarded the Wells Memorial Key, the highest honor bestowed by the SPJ, in 1995 for her work as chair of the FOI Committee and for service as a national board member. January 20, 2012; January 20, 2010; April 28, 2009 (moderator); January 29, 2009.
John Daly is Deputy General Counsel for Litigation at the Federal Trade Commission, where he focuses on the Commission's appellate and Supreme Court litigation, in both the antitrust and consumer protection areas. Prior to joining the Commission in 1998, he served for many years as a senior attorney in the Civil Division of the Department of Justice, where he specialized in appellate litigation and collaborated with longtime appellate FOIA litigation supervisor Leonard Schaitman on the handling of the Reporters Committee case. His work at both agencies has included the defense of personal privacy interests, in both Reporters Committee and other FOIA privacy cases at the Department of Justice, and in cases that challenged the constitutionality of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the National Do Not Call Registry at the FTC. He previously practiced at the law firm of Wald, Harkrader & Ross, and he began his legal career as a judicial clerk to Circuit Judge John C. Godbold of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. John earned degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University Michigan Law School. April 28, 2009.
Charles Davis is an associate professor at the Missouri School of journalism and Executive Director for the National Freedom of Information Coalition (NFOIC), which now is headquartered there. His scholarly research focuses on access to governmental information and media law. He has published in law reviews and scholarly journals on issues ranging from federal and state freedom of information laws to libel law, privacy and broadcast regulation. He has earned a Sunshine Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for his work in furthering freedom of information and the University of Missouri-Columbia Provost's Award for Outstanding Junior Faculty Teaching, as well as the Faculty-Alumni Award. In 2009, he was named the Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism Teacher of the Year. Most recently, he co-authored a book entitled "The Art of Access: Strategies for Acquiring Public Records" (CQ Press, 2010).
Professor Davis has been a primary investigator for a research grant from the James S. and John L. Knight Foundation for NFOIC and another from the Rockefeller Family Fund for the study of homeland security and freedom of information issues. He was a co-investigator for an award from the Department of State for a curriculum reform project for Moscow State University in Russia. He worked for newspapers and as a national correspondent for Lafferty Publications, a Dublin-based news wire service for financial publications, and reported on banking, e-commerce and regulatory issues for seven years before leaving full-time journalism in 1993. He completed a master's degree from the University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady School of Journalism and Mass Communication and earned a doctorate in mass communication from the University of Florida in 1995. He received his bachelor's degree from North Georgia College. March 16, 2010.
Tom Devine is the Legal Director of the Government Accountability Project (GAP), where he has worked since January 1979. GAP is a non-profit, non-partisan public-interest organization that champions the rights of whistleblowers, employees who exercise freedom of speech to challenge abuses of power that betray the public trust. During his three decades at GAP, he has represented or informally helped more than 4000 whistleblowers to make a difference, such as by stopping nuclear power plants that were accidents waiting to happen and blocking deregulation of meat inspection. He has been a leader in the campaigns to pass or defend nearly all major national or international whistleblower laws, from the breakthrough right to jury trials for corporate whistleblowers in the Sarbanes-Oxley law, to the December 2005 U.N. policy legalizing public freedom of expression for its own whistleblowers. He also has authored or co-authored numerous law review articles and books, including his "lessons learned" manual, Courage Without Martyrdom: The Whistleblower's Survival Guide. January 29, 2009.
John Dickas has worked on the Senate Intelligence Committee for Senator Ron Wyden since 2005. Prior to joining the committee staff, he was a legislative assistant for Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.) with responsibility for foreign affairs, defense, intelligence, and trade issues. Before coming to Capitol Hill, he worked as an open-source analyst for the Pinkerton Global Intelligence firm. He has an M.A. in International Affairs from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and a B.A. in political science and Italian literature from the University of Notre Dame. April 25, 2013.
Chad Dobson founded the Bank Information Center (BIC) in 1987 and was its Executive Director until 1996, returning to it in that capacity in December 2007. He established BIC to encourage transparency and accountability within international financial institutions (IFIs) and to provide support for civil society organizations and accountability advocates working to open political space around development decision-making, in order to ensure that local communities have an important voice in decisions that affect them. BIC has partnered with civil society in developing and transition countries -- as well as the Global North -- to influence the World Bank and other IFIs to promote social and economic justice and ecological sustainability. Chad also founded and directed the Consumers Choice Council to protect labeling systems (organic, fair trade, Marine Stewardship Council, Forest Stewardship Council) during the initial development of the World Trade Organization. At Oxfam America, where he was Director of Policy from 2003-2007, Chad was responsible for developing the organization's Washington presence, and his portfolio included the Fair Trade campaign, extractive industries work, and policy and advocacy activity associated with humanitarian relief. Chad currently serves on the board of the International Relations Center, the Forest People's Programme/World Rainforest Movement, Green Seal, and the Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship. September 28, 2010.
Laura Donohue is a Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School and Director of its Center on National Security and the Law. She writes on the history of national security and counterterrorist law in the United States and the United Kingdom. Her most recent book, The Cost of Counterterrorism: Power, Politics, and Liberty (Cambridge University Press, April 2008), analyzes the impact of American and British counterterrorist law on life, liberty, property, privacy, and free speech. Professor Donohue has held fellowships at Stanford Law School's Center for Constitutional Law, Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, and Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she was a Fellow in the International Security Program as well as in the Executive Session for Domestic Preparedness. In 2001, the Carnegie Corporation named her to its Scholars Program, funding the project Security and Freedom in the Face of Terrorism. She took up the award at Stanford, where she taught in the Departments of History and Political Science and directed a project for the United States Departments of Justice and State (and, later, Homeland Security) on mass-casualty terrorist incidents. During 2008-2009, she clerked for the Hon. John T. Noonan of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Professor Donohue obtained her A.B. in Philosophy (with Honors) from Dartmouth College, her M.A. in Peace Studies (with Distinction) from the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, her J.D. (with Distinction) from Stanford Law School, and her Ph.D. in History from the University of Cambridge, England. She is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. March 18, 2014; April 25, 2013; November 18, 2009.
Rebecca Daugherty currently is the Immediate Past President of the American Society of Access Professionals and has been a leading member of the openness-in-government community for nearly twenty-five years. From 1987 until 2006, she was director of the FOI Service Center, a special project of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, where she was the editor of Tapping Officials' Secrets, a state-by-state guide to open records and open meeting laws, as well as of How to Use the Federal FOI Act, a guide to federal access laws. Additionally, she serves on the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Rebecca is an attorney, has been a reporter and a copy editor for several newspapers, and also was a FOI specialist at the U.S. Department of the Interior. She holds two journalism degrees from the University of Missouri and a law degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. April 28, 2009.
Former Congressman Thomas J. Downey, Chairman of the Downey McGrath Group, Inc., founded this government affairs consulting firm in January, 1993. Downey McGrath is an independent, bipartisan firm. Tom is a hands-on leader who participates in the active management of each client's activities and personally advocates on their behalf. Since 1993 the firm has represented Fortune 500 companies, labor unions, non-profit organizations, trade associations, and coalitions in their dealings with the Federal government. He has worked on a wide variety of issues including taxes, health care, telecommunications, environment, and appropriations on their behalf. Tom and the firm have also successfully represented a number of clients on "transactional" issues with the federal government, such as the mergers of AOL and Time Warner, Chevron and Texaco and Exxon and Mobil.
Tom was elected to Congress in 1974 at the age of 25 (as the youngest Member of the 94th Congress) and served as the Democratic representative of the 2nd District of New York until 1993. He began his service on the Armed Services Committee and was later appointed to the House Budget Committee, and the Ways and Means Committee, where he served for fourteen years. On the Armed Services Committee, Tom was an adviser to both the SALT and START arms negotiations talks, and is a past president of Parliamentarians for Global Action, an international arms control organization. At Ways and Means, Tom championed mortgage revenue bonds, saving the state and local property and income tax deduction, and the earned income tax credit. He also served as the Acting Chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources for five years, where he was the chief House architect of the 1988 welfare reform legislation, the Family Support Act, and of landmark child care legislation. Tom also chaired the Subcommittee on Human Services of the House Select Committee on Aging from 1987 to 1993. In addition, he co-authored the original Superfund legislation, and later led efforts to expand Superfund. As a senior member of the Trade Subcommittee, he sponsored the legislation which created a Free Trade Zone with Israel. He played a critical role in GSP legislation, the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Act, and in the 1984 and 1988 Omnibus Trade Acts, particularly in the area of the intellectual property provisions.
Tom's leadership and record of success didn't end with his departure from Congress. In 1993, he was asked by President Clinton to lead the private-sector effort to build bipartisan Congressional support for the passage of the NAFTA enabling legislation and later was asked to head the bipartisan effort to pass the Uruguay Round GATT legislation. His success on trade matters continues to this day: In 2000 he was one of the leading lobbyists fighting for the passage of Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China. In 1992 Tom headed the HHS, HUD, and VA cluster of the 1992 Presidential transition, and was later appointed to the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform (the Kerrey Commission). During the 1996 and 2000 presidential campaigns, Tom assisted Vice President Al Gore in his debate preparation. Tom serves on the boards of the SEED Foundation, World Hunger Year, Council for A Livable World, the American League of Lobbyists, the Long Island Foreign Affairs Forum, and the Center for Social Gerontology. March 16, 2009.
Michael Doyle covers the U.S. Supreme Court for McClatchy Newspapers and is a Professorial Lecturer at the School of Media and Public Affairs of George Washington University. He writes for the Sacramento, Fresno, and Modesto Bee newspapers, the Merced Sun-Star, and the San Luis Obispo Tribune, and he also writes Suits and Sentences, the McClatchy legal affairs blog. He is a graduate of Oberlin College and earned a master of studies in law from Yale Law School, where he was a Knight Journalism Fellow. He also earned a Master's degree in government from Johns Hopkins University. In 2004, Syracuse University Press published his book "The Forestport Breaks: A Nineteenth Century Conspiracy Along the Black River Canal." He joined the McClatchy Washington Bureau in 1988 and since 2002 has served as a volunteer firefighter/EMT in Arlington County, Virginia. April 27, 2011.
Kevin Dunion, OBE, MA, MSc, FRSA, the Scottish Information Commissioner, is a public official appointed by Her Majesty The Queen on the nomination of the Scottish Parliament. He is responsible for enforcing and promoting Scotland's freedom of information laws and employs a staff of 23 in fulfilling this responsibility. He was appointed as the first Scottish Information Commissioner in February 2003, for a term of five years, before Scotland's Freedom of Information Act (2002) came fully into force on January 1, 2005. In February 2008, he was reappointed for a second and final term, which runs for four years until 2012. In the four years since Scotland's FOIA took effect (in conjunction with the U.K.'s FOIA, with which it partly overlaps), Kevin has taken more than 700 formal decisions in respect of appeals. Some of these decisions have been especially high-profile ones, such as requiring the disclosure of Scottish Parliament Members' expense claims, the publication of surgeons' mortality rates (the first such comprehensive disclosure anywhere in the world), and the release of an entire PFI contract for the building and maintenance of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
Kevin also champions the spirit and principle of freedom of information, and he is frequently asked to speak to and write about the Scottish experience with freedom of information. As well as addressing Scottish audiences, he is keen to engage with international developments and over the past few years he has hosted a visit by the Chief Commissioner for India, worked with the British Council, advised on the Malawi Access to Information Bill, and contributed as an international consultant to The Carter Center's program on access to information in Jamaica. He addressed the 5th International Conference of Information Commissioners (ICIC) in New Zealand in November 2007 and the 2nd International Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data Conference in Mexico City in November 2008. He also spoke at the "FOI Live" transparency conference held in London in June 2009.
Kevin was educated at the University of St. Andrews (MA (Hons) Modern History 1978) and at the University of Edinburgh (MSc (Dist) African Studies 1991). Before becoming the Scottish Information Commissioner, he was for many years a prominent campaigner for freedom of information. With funding from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, he established two research projects that examined the performance of public bodies in Scotland with regard to providing access to information, employed Scotland's only full- time Freedom of Information campaigner, and gave evidence to the Justice Committee scrutinizing the passage of the Bill through the Scottish Parliament. Following stints in the civil service and university administration, Kevin joined Oxfam as Campaigns Manager and then took up the post of Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland. From 1996 to 2000, he also very notably served as Chairman of Friends of the Earth International, heading delegations to the United Nations and the European Commission. It was for this role that he was awarded an OBE in 2000.
Kevin also serves as Co-Director of the Centre for Freedom of Information of Dundee Law School, an academic center established at the University of Dundee in 2009 that, after the Collaboration on Government Secrecy, is now the second such center at any law school in the world. September 28, 2009.
Andrew Ecclestone works on the Policy and Professional Practice team of the Office of the Ombudsmen in New Zealand. His work there has included managing a project to improve the Office's information management, drafting the Office's statement of strategic direction, and undertaking international liaison. In 2007 he was the Organizer of the 5th International Conference of Information Commissioners. He has spoken at workshops and provided advice on FOI to governments, information commissioners, and civil society in Mexico, Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, and Cambodia. He moved to New Zealand from the United Kingdom in 2003 to study for a Master's in Public Policy. Prior to that move, he spent two years on secondment to the UK government to assist its work on implementation of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. During that time he also represented the UK in Council of Europe negotiations to conclude Recommendation 2002(2) on Access to Official Documents, and visited Mexico twice to advise on implementation of the FOI law there. He started his career in FOI at the UK Campaign for Freedom of Information in 1993, working there with Maurice Frankel for eight years to secure improved access to central and local government information. He has an Honours degree in History from the University of Sussex, is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London, and is on the editorial board of the Open Government Journal. September 28, 2007.
Norm Eisen is Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform, a position from which he plays a central role in the development and implementation of transparency policy in the Obama Administration. Previously, he was the Deputy General Counsel of the Presidential Transition Team, holding lead responsibility for ethics matters. Before that he was a partner at Zuckerman Spaeder LLP in Washington D.C., where he served as co-chair of the firm's Public Client Practice and acted as outside counsel to governmental clients in a wide array of matters, including internal investigations and ethics counseling, and handled white-collar, congressional, and other governmental investigations during his 17-plus years at the firm. Norm also was a co-founder of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). He received his bachelor's degree from Brown University in 1985 and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1991. March 16, 2010 (keynote speaker).
Lisa Ellman currently serves as Chief Counselor for the Open Government Partnership at the White House. She previously worked as Senior Counsel in the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice, where she developed and implemented significant policy initiatives of high priority to the Justice Department and the Obama Administration. From January-September 2009, she served as White House Legal Director in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. From November 2008-January 2009, she served as Deputy Agency Review Director for the Obama-Biden Transition Team. From March 2007-November 2008, she worked on the Obama presidential campaign, on the policy and paid media and the polling strategy teams. Ms. Ellman previously practiced law at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP in Washington, D.C., and co-authored a book, Are Judges Political? An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary, published by Brookings Press in 2006 (co-authored with Cass R. Sunstein, David Schkade, and Andres Sawicki). She received her B.A. in History with High Honors from the University of Michigan and her J.D./M.P.P. from the University of Chicago Law School/Harris School of Public Policy Studies. January 17, 2013 (keynote speaker); January 20, 2012 (luncheon speaker).
Roy Englert is a partner in the law firm of Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck, Untereiner & Sauber LLP. An appellate litigator and antitrust lawyer, he served in the Office of the Solicitor General from 1986 to 1989 and more recently was a partner in the Washington office of Mayer, Brown & Platt. He has argued eighteen cases before the United States Supreme Court, including the Reporters Committee case, and numerous cases in the lower appellate courts. Roy's recent appellate litigation has been in such disparate fields as milk regulation, racketeering law (RICO), employment discrimination, bankruptcy, ERISA, regulation of transportation industries, the death penalty, and antitrust. He has written and spoken about techniques of appellate advocacy and about substantive issues of antitrust, bankruptcy, civil procedure, constitutional law, and employment discrimination. Roy received an A.B. in mathematics in 1978 from Princeton University and received a J.D., cum laude, in 1981 from Harvard Law School, where he served as Executive Editor of the Harvard Law Review. Immediately after law school, he was a law clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Roy currently serves as an adjunct professor working with the Appellate Litigation Clinic of the Georgetown University Law Center. April 28, 2009.
Will Ferroggiaro serves as Policy Counsel and Governance Advisor for International Sustainable Systems, a Washington, D.C. consultancy, where he focuses on conflict prevention, government accountability, and citizen participation. He has more than 15 years of expertise as a practitioner and advocate for transparency and good governance. For more than a decade he directed the freedom of information program at the National Security Archive, an award-winning public interest group based at George Washington University. Among other responsibilities, he managed the organization's relations with federal agencies, co-authored two major audits of federal information policy, submitted comments on federal agency regulations and testimony to national commissions, and supervised the FOIA research of Archive staff. He also has served as an expert instructor in the U.S. Department of Justice's Advanced FOIA Seminar and the U.S. Department of State and Department of Energy programs.
Will's open government work has increasingly been focused abroad. In the U.S. he has briefed visiting delegations of the U.S. Department of Defense Partnership for Peace and U.S. Department of State's International Visitor programs and has trained investigative journalists for World Bank Institute seminars. Under the auspices of the U.S. Department of State or local host organizations, he has advocated for access to information and government transparency on four continents, among other activities, training Macedonia's new FOI commission, keynoting Canada's Treasury Board Secretariat access officer's conference, and training Romania's first public information officers. He has twice been elected president of the American Society of Access Professionals, where he coordinated and presented remarks at "'best practice": conferences and seminars, and he is an associate member of the Canadian Access and Privacy Association. Will has spoken at conferences of the Investigative Reporters and Editors, Freedom Forum, among others, and has appeared on programs of C-SPAN, Voice of America, BBC, and CBC television. He holds a B.S. in Political Science and a B.S. in German from Santa Clara University, and an M.A. in International Affairs from American University. March 17, 2008.
Karen Finnegan is the Deputy Director of the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), which is part of the National Archives and Records Administration. The mission of OGIS is to review agency compliance with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), to provide mediation services to resolve FOIA disputes, to recommend policy changes to Congress and the President to improve the administration of FOIA, and to serve as the government-wide FOIA Ombudsman. Prior to serving in this position, Karen served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney assigned to the FOIA Staff of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA), where she represented the government in FOIA lawsuits filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Prior to serving in this capacity, she held the position of Chief, FOIA/PA Branch, Office of Freedom of Information, in the Department of Defense, where she supervised the processing of FOIA and Privacy Act requests seeking access to records maintained by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff. Karen has also served as an Assistant General Counsel in the FOIA Litigation Unit, the Office of the General Counsel, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and as an Attorney-Advisor with the Office of Information and Privacy (OIP) in the Department of Justice, where she also worked as a paralegal before attending law school. She is currently serving as the Treasurer of the American Society of Access Professionals (ASAP), and has served as its President in 2007 and as its Treasurer in 2002, 2003, and 2004. Karen is an instructor in various OGIS, ASAP, and Department of Justice training programs. March 14, 2011.
Lou Fisher is Scholar-in-Residence at the Constitution Project. Previously he worked for four decades at the Library of Congress as Senior Specialist in Separation of Powers (Congressional Research Service, from 1970 to 1996) and Specialist in Constitutional Law (the Law Library, from 2006 to 2010). During his service with CRS he was research director of the House Iran-Contra Committee in 1987, writing major sections of the final report.
His books include President and Congress (1972), Presidential Spending Power (1975), The Constitution Between Friends (1978), The Politics of Shared Power (4th ed. 1998), Constitutional Conflicts Between Congress and the President (5th ed. 2007), Constitutional Dialogues (1988), American Constitutional Law (with Katy J. Harriger, 9th ed. 2011), Presidential War Power (2d ed. 2004), Political Dynamics of Constitutional Law (with Neal Devins, 4th ed. 2006), Congressional Abdication on War and Spending (2000), Religious Liberty in America: Political Safeguards (2002), Nazi Saboteurs on Trial: A Military Tribunal & American Law (2003; 2d ed. 2005), The Politics of Executive Privilege (2004), The Democratic Constitution (with Neal Devins, 2004), Military Tribunals and Presidential Power: American Revolution to the War on Terrorism (2005), In the Name of National Security: Unchecked Presidential Power and the Reynolds Case (2006), The Constitution and 9/11: Recurring Threats to America's Freedoms (2008), The Supreme Court and Congress: Rival Interpretations (2009), and On Appreciating Congress: The People's Branch (2010). His textbook on constitutional law is available in two paperbacks: Constitutional Structures: Separation of Powers and Federalism and Constitutional Rights: Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. With Leonard W. Levy he edited the four-volume Encyclopedia of the American Presidency (1994). He has twice won the Louis Brownlow Book Award (for Presidential Spending Power and Constitutional Dialogues). The encyclopedia he co-edited was awarded the Dartmouth Medal. In 1995 he received the Aaron B. Wildavsky Award "For Lifetime Scholarly Achievement in Public Budgeting" from the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management. In 2006 he received the Neustadt Book Award for Military Tribunals and Presidential Power.
Dr. Fisher received his doctorate in political science from the New School for Social Research (1967) and has taught at Queens College, Georgetown University, American University, Catholic University, Indiana University, Johns Hopkins University, the College of William and Mary law school, and the Catholic University law school. He has been invited to testify before Congress about 50 times on such issues as war powers, state secrets privilege, NSA surveillance, executive spending discretion, presidential reorganization authority, Congress and the Constitution, the legislative veto, the item veto, the Gramm-Rudman deficit control act, executive privilege, executive lobbying, CIA whistleblowing, covert spending, the pocket veto, recess appointments, the budget process, the balanced budget amendment, biennial budgeting, and presidential impoundment powers. He has been active with CEELI (Central and East European Law Initiative) of the American Bar Association, traveling to Bulgaria, Albania, and Hungary to assist constitution-writers, participating in CEELI conferences in Washington, D.C. with delegations from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lithuania, Romania, and Russia, serving on CEELI "working groups" on Armenia and Belarus, and assisting in constitutional amendments for the Kyrgyz Republic. As part of CRS delegations, he traveled to Russia and Ukraine to assist on constitutional questions. For the International Bar Association, he helped analyze the draft constitutions for Swaziland and Zimbabwe. Dr. Fisher's specialties include constitutional law, war powers, budget policy, executive-legislative relations, and judicial-congressional relations. He is the author of more than 400 articles in law reviews, political science journals, encyclopedias, books, magazines, and newspapers. He has been invited to speak in Albania, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Japan, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Oman, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates. April 25, 2013; April 27, 2011; November 18, 2009 (luncheon speaker).
Tom Fitton is the President of Judicial Watch, known as "the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption." Founded in 1994, Judicial Watch seeks to ensure government and judicial officials act ethically and do not abuse the powers entrusted to them by the American public. Judicial Watch uses the open records or freedom of information laws and other tools to investigate and uncover misconduct by government officials and litigation to hold to account politicians and public officials who engage in corrupt activities.
With twenty years' experience in conservative public policy, Mr. Fitton has helped lead Judicial Watch since 1998. He provides strategic guidance and leadership on Judicial Watch's comprehensive efforts to fight government corruption. Under his leadership, Judicial Watch has experienced tremendous growth and success in recent years and was named one of Washington's top ten most effective government watchdog organizations by The Hill newspaper. He is a nationally recognized expert on open government, congressional and judicial ethics, and immigration enforcement. Tom received his bachelor's degree from George Washington University and gained national attention as a political analyst, previously working for America's Voice and National Empowerment Television. He is a former employee of the International Policy Forum, the Leadership Institute, and Accuracy in Media. As a former talk radio and television host and analyst, he is well known as a national spokesperson for the conservative cause. He has been quoted in TIME, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, and most every other major newspaper in the country. He also has appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX News Channel, C-SPAN, and MSNBC. He has authored numerous articles and presently serves as Editor of Judicial Watch's monthly 100,000+ circulation Verdict newsletter. He also oversees the cutting-edge Internet site JudicialWatch.org, which includes the oft-cited Corruption Chronicles blog. January 20, 2012; January 20, 2010.
John Fitzpatrick was appointed as the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), with the approval of the President, on August 1, 2011. He leads ISOO in carrying out the President's programs to improve transparency, openness, and access to information while ensuring that classified national security information is properly protected. These programs include the Controlled Unclassified Information Office, the Public Interest Declassification Board, the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, as well as oversight of the National Industrial Security Program and the program for classified national security information for state, local, tribal, and public-sector entities.
Before joining ISOO, John served as the Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Security, a position in which he was the principal advisor to the Director of National Intelligence on matters regarding the protection of national intelligence and intelligence sources and methods. He also served as the Intelligence Community lead for Executive Branch efforts to transform security clearance processes across the Government. Previously, he served as a member of the Senior Intelligence Service in a range of security and administrative disciplines at the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). John was awarded the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal in December 2011 and the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service in October 2008. He holds a bachelor's degree in Economics and Psychology from the College of William and Mary and is a career member of the Senior Executive Service. March 18, 2014; January 20, 2012.
Michael Fitzpatrick is the Associate Administrator of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), where he helps to lead the Obama Administration's development of regulatory policy and White House review of significant Executive Branch regulatory actions. He serves as the Executive Branch liaison to the ABA's Administrative Law Section and has led several U.S. delegations in meetings with the European Union, both in Europe and the U.S. During the Presidential Transition, Mr. Fitzpatrick served as deputy lead of the Executive Office of the President and Government Operations Agency Review Teams. From 2001 to 2009, he was in the Washington, D.C. office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, where he was a partner in the Litigation Practice Group, specializing in white collar, complex civil, and regulatory matters. Before joining Akin Gump, he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Washington, D.C. and as a Senior Advisor to the Administrator of OIRA during the Clinton Administration. Mr. Fitzpatrick clerked for Circuit Judge William Norris on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit after graduating from Stanford Law School. He received his M.A. in American History from the University of Virginia and his B.A. from Brown University. January 20, 2011 (luncheon speaker).
Arne Fliflet has been the Parliamentary Ombudsman of Norway for nearly two decades, a tenure longer than that of any other current information commissioner worldwide. First appointed by the Storting to this position in 1990, he subsequently has been re-appointed four times. In Norway, the Parliamentary Ombudsman supervises public administration agencies, which is carried out on the basis of complaints from citizens concerning any maladministration or injustice on the part of an agency, including the denial of access to government information. The Parliamentary Ombudsman processes complaints that apply to national government, municipal, or county administrations and also may address issues on his own initiative.
Arne was born in 1946 and received his law degree in 1971. He was a university lecturer in jurisprudence at Oslo University in 1973 and has subsequently lectured on public law at the Universities of Oslo, Bergen, and Tromsø, as well as acting as an examiner in this field. From 1974 to 1975, he was Assistant Judge in Førde in Sunnfjord, and then from 1975 to 1990 he practiced law, both in public administration and in a private practice. From 1976 to 1986, he worked at the office of the Attorney General, interrupted by a study period in London in 1979 and a period as Public Prosecutor at the Eidsivating Public Prosecutor's office during 1980-81. He was granted "right of audience" (advocacy rights) in the Supreme Court in 1978 and was permanent counsel for the defense in Eidsivating Court of Appeal from 1989 to 1990. Over the years, he also has published specialist literature on public law, both in book form as well as articles. In 2009, he led the international transparency community by serving as host of the 6th International Conference of Information Commissioners (ICIC) in Oslo. September 28, 2009.
Sharon Bradford Franklin serves as Executive Director of the President's Privacy and Civil Liberties Advisory Board (PCLOB), an independent agency within the executive branch recently established to advise the President on agency policies and actions related to terrorism. Prior to that, she was Senior Counsel at The Constitution Project, an independent think tank that promotes and defends constitutional safeguards working principally with the Project's bipartisan Liberty and Security Committee, seeking to protect Americans' civil liberties as well as our nation's security post-September 11th. Previously, she served as a Trial Attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice; as a Special Counsel in the Office of General Counsel at the Federal Communications Commission; and as Executive Director of the Washington Council of Lawyers. She graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School. March 18, 2014; April 25, 2013 (moderator); January 20, 2012 (moderator); January 20, 2011; March 16, 2010 (moderator); January 29, 2009; November 18, 2009.
Stu Frisch has been involved in FOIA processing since the 1970s. He is the General Counsel of the Department of Justice's Justice Management Division (JMD), where he has worked since 1986. He is responsible for acting on FOIA requests processed by JMD, a large number of which are for business information submitted to the government by third parties. He has taught classes on FOIA Exemptions 4 and 5 at the Justice Department's National Advocacy Center, and he successfully argued a precedent-setting Exemption 4 FOIA case before the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He is a graduate of Brooklyn College and Harvard Law School. March 14, 2011.
Amanda Frost joined the faculty of WCL in 2004. She specializes in the federal court system and federal jurisdiction, civil procedure, statutory interpretation, and transparency in government. Prior to coming to WCL, Professor Frost was a staff attorney for Public Citizen, where she litigated cases in the federal courts of appeals and the Supreme Court. Professor Frost clerked for Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and she has worked on the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the Fall of 2007, Professor Frost was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. November 18, 2009 (moderator); March 17, 2008.
Meredith Fuchs serves as the General Counsel to the nongovernmental National Security Archive, housed at George Washington University. At the Archive, she oversees Freedom of Information Act and anti-secrecy litigation, advocates for open government, and frequently lectures on access to government information. She has supervised six governmentwide audits of federal agency FOIA performance, including two released in 2007: "40 Years of FOIA, 20 Years of Delay: Oldest Pending FOIA Requests Date Back to the 1980s" and "File Not Found: Ten Years After E-FOIA, Most Agencies are Delinquent." She is the author of "Judging Secrets: The Role Courts Should Play in Preventing Unnecessary Secrecy," 58 Admin. L. Rev. 131 (2006), and co-author of "Greasing the Wheels of Justice: Independent Experts in National Security Cases," 28 Nat'l Sec. L. Rep. 1 (2006). Previously she was a partner at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Wiley Rein & Fielding LLP. Ms. Fuchs served as a law clerk to the Honorable Patricia M. Wald, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and to the Honorable Paul L. Friedman, District Court for the District of Columbia, and she currently holds the position of Secretary of the D.C. Bar. She received her J.D. from the New York University School of Law and her B.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. January 20, 2010 (moderator); January 29, 2009; March 17, 2008 (moderator); January 16, 2008.
Steve Garfinkel enjoyed a highly distinguished career in federal service for more than 30 years, during which he held several leadership positions in the field of transparency and national security classification. From 1980 until his retirement in 2002, he was Director of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), located originally at the General Services Administration, then briefly at the Office of Management and Budget, and most recently at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). (ISOO receives its policy guidance from the National Security Council.) In that capacity, he also served as Executive Secretary of the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), which was created by President Clinton under Executive Order 12,958 in 1995, and he reported to a succession of five presidents. Ancillary to his role as the Director of ISOO, Steve served as Chairman of the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (2000-2006), and subsequent to his retirement he was a presidential appointee to a four-year term (2004-2008) as a Member of the Public Interest Declassification Board.
Prior to his appointment as head of ISOO, Steve served for almost ten years in the Office of General Counsel of the General Services Administration -- as the Chief Counsel for the National Archives and Records Service, Chief Counsel for Information and Privacy, and Chief Counsel for Civil Rights, where he was the lead agency attorney on the precedent-setting case of Fund for Constitutional Government v. National Archives & Records Service, which involved three-quarters of a million pages of Watergate Special Prosecution Force records. During his career he earned more than 25 written commendations or citations from Presidents G.H. Bush, Clinton, G.H.W. Bush, Reagan, Carter, and Ford, including the Presidential Rank Award of Meritorious Federal Executive. Steve also received awards and commendations from many federal departments and agencies, and from non-government professional and service organizations. In 1989, the American Defense Preparedness Association presented him with its first "Security Man of the Year Award," and in 1999 the National Classification Management Society presented him with its "President's Award." Upon his retirement, he was presented with NARA's Lifetime Achievement Award by the Archivist of the United States and with a special Freedom of Information Act award by the Office of Information and Privacy (OIP) at the Department of Justice. Steve holds an A.B. with Distinction (1967) from George Washington University, a J.D. with Honors (1970) from that university's National Law Center (where he was a Trustee Scholar), and an M.A. in Teaching (2004) from Towson University. In his "retirement," he is a full-time teacher of Social Studies, Government Law, and Sociology at Albert Einstein High School in Kensington, Maryland. March 16, 2009.
Gina Genton was appointed as the Assistant Deputy Director for National Intelligence (ADDNI) for Policy at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in October 2008, where she is responsible for leading Intelligence Community policy development on behalf of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). During the previous year, as ADDNI for Strategic Initiatives, she focused on issues of strategic policy significance for the Director of National Intelligence and was the policy lead for revisions to Executive Order 12,333, "U.S. Intelligence Activities." She likewise was heavily involved in the development of the recently issued executive order on national security classification, Executive Order 13,526 (Dec. 29, 2009).
During the previous four years, Ms. Genton served in several senior leadership positions in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). As Director, Office of International Affairs and Policy, she managed NGA's foreign intelligence partnerships and policy portfolios, leading the effort to integrate all of that agency's international activities. Before her appointment to NGA, she served in a number of senior positions throughout the Intelligence Community. As Deputy Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, she was responsible for CIA strategy development, and major program, budget, personnel, and policy issue resolution. She was appointed Associate Executive Director for Intelligence Community Affairs in 1996, where she led the Community Management Staff, the principal source of advice for the Director of Central Intelligence in his capacity as leader of the Intelligence Community. From 1993-1996, she was the Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council, where she developed and coordinated presidential policy directives and executive orders on intelligence priorities, classification of national security information, and commercial imagery, and supported interagency activities concerning covert action. Prior to her appointment in the executive branch, she served for twelve years in the United States Senate in a variety of professional staff positions, including as Budget Director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, originally working as a legislative assistant for Senator Alan Cranston
Ms. Genton is a recipient of the CIA Distinguished Intelligence Medal and the NGA Distinguished Civilian Intelligence Medal. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy in 1980. She is also a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center and a member of the Maryland Bar. She is a member of the Senior Intelligence Service and a career officer at the Central Intelligence Agency. January 20, 2010.
Mike German holds the position of National Security Policy Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. Prior to that, he served for 16 years as a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he specialized in domestic terrorism and covert operations and twice infiltrated right-wing extremist groups, resulting in important criminal convictions in anti-terrorism cases. He left the FBI in 2004, subsequently testifying before Congress that he had been retaliated against for reporting the intentional falsification of records in a counterterrorism investigation. He also has served as a senior fellow at GlobalSecurity.org and as an adjunct professor at the National Defense University. A philosophy graduate of Wake Forest University, he has a law degree from Northwestern University Law School. March 16, 2012 (moderator); January 20, 2011 (co-moderator); March 16, 2010; January 29, 2009.
Josh Gerstein covers the White House, legal and national security issues for POLITICO. He joined the Web-oriented political news outlet just before President Barack Obama's inauguration and has reported extensively on how Obama's pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay prison for war-on-terror captives went awry. Josh's articles have also explored how expectations that the Obama Administration would dramatically reform the legal architecture of the Bush Administration's anti-terrorism strategy have proven to be mistaken. Previously, he was the national reporter for the New York Sun and, earlier, an on-air correspondent for ABC News, where he did tours at the White House and in Beijing. He's maintained a keen, lifelong interest in open government, with particular focus recently on secrecy in the legal system and leaks of classified information. He has pursued dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests, as well as three FOIA lawsuits, pro se. He received his bachelor's degree in government from Harvard and is author of a Massachusetts law requiring college and university police departments to keep a public log of arrests and reported crimes. March 18, 2014; April 25, 2013; January 17, 2013; January 20, 2012; January 20, 2011.
Wendy Ginsberg is an Analyst in American National Government at the Congressional Research Service (CRS). She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania. She has authored several CRS reports on the Freedom of Information Act, government secrecy, and related issues for several years and she frequently appears on C-SPAN to discuss such issues. April 25, 2013.
Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein co-directs the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program, which seeks to advance effective national security policies that respect constitutional values and the rule of law. Before joining the Brennan Center at NYU Law School, Liza served as counsel to Senator Russell Feingold, Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a Trial Attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. She is the lead author of the Brennan Center's report entitled Reducing Overclassification Through Accountability. Her writing has been featured in major newspapers, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as prominent outlets such as Roll Call, the National Law Journal, Salon, POLITICO, Time, and the Huffington Post. She has appeared on national television and radio shows such as the The Rachel Maddow Show, All In with Chris Hayes, Up with Steve Kornacki, PBS NewsHour, and National Public Radio's Morning Edition and On The Media. Liza graduated from Yale Law School in 1998, after which she clerked for the Hon. Michael Daly Hawkins on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She also is the newest member of the Collaboration on Government Secrecy's Advisory Board. March 18, 2014 (moderator); April 25, 2013 (moderator); March 18, 2013; January 20, 2012; November 18, 2009.
Kevin Goldberg is a Special Counsel to Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth, P.L.C. His expertise is in First Amendment issues, especially those relating to newspaper and Internet publishing. He regularly advocates issues involving freedom of speech on behalf of press organizations, including lobbying against a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow criminalization of flag desecration, lobbying in favor of increased access to government records and proceedings, and protecting the rights and privileges of reporters. Kevin also consults regularly with these organizations concerning the continued freedom of speech on the Internet, focusing on issues such as regulation and voluntary implementation of blocking software. He assists newspapers and television and radio stations in prepublication review of stories for possible legal problems.
Kevin's interest in the First Amendment stems from an undergraduate major in communications, with concentrations in TV/Radio and Journalism, at James Madison University, from which he graduated magna cum laude in 1992. After graduating from James Madison, he attended law school at George Washington University, where he graduated with high honors in 1995 and was named to the Order of the Coif. Kevin received the 1995 Imogene Williford Constitutional Law Award for his exemplary achievements in that academic area during his three years of law school. He served as the research assistant to Constitutional Law Professor C. Thomas Dienes, assisting him in updating and editing his books on constitutional law and researching issues concerning access to court proceedings and judicial records for the book Newsgathering and the Law.
Kevin is licensed to practice in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. In addition to his law practice, he is an adjunct professor at George Mason University, where he teaches Journalism Law. He is a member of Board of Directors of the District of Columbia's Public Access Television Corporation and the Advisory Board of the Collaboration on Government Secrecy, as well as the local charity "United for DC," the charitable arm of DC United. He is a member of the Federal Communications Bar Association, the District of Columbia Open Government Coalition, and the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. He has also written several articles on First Amendment and FOI laws, is a regular speaker and panelist on conferences on the subjects in the United States and overseas, and is a frequent media commentator. March 14, 2011; March 16, 2010; September 28, 2009; September 29, 2008; January 16, 2008.
Thomas Golden is a partner in the Litigation Department of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP in New York City. He specializes in media and First Amendment, employment, and securities matters, and he also has significant experience in the areas of corporate governance, governmental investigations, and appellate practice. A graduate of New York University School of Law, he is a member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and its Committee on Federal Courts. He is the principal outside litigation counsel for Bloomberg L.P. March 16, 2010.
Michael Greenberger is the Founder and Director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security (CHHS) at the University of Maryland and a professor at its School of Law. CHHS works on a broad range of homeland security and emergency response issues for federal, state, and local governmental agencies, as well as medical researchers. It has a staff of more than 70 professionals, many of whom are recent graduates of the School of Law. (More information about CHHS can be found at www.mdchhs.com.)
Professor Greenberger designed and teaches two courses focused on counterterrorism and emergency response: "Homeland Security and the Law of Counterterrorism"; and "Law and Policy of Emergency Public Health Response Seminar/Course," which brings students and faculty from the various university professional schools together to study effective governmental policies pertaining to catastrophic public health emergencies. Professor Greenberger also teaches a seminar on Futures, Options and Derivatives at the School of Law.
In 1997, Professor Greenberger left private practice to become the Director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) where he served under CFTC Chairperson Brooksley Born. In that capacity, he was responsible for supervising exchange traded futures and derivatives. He also served on the Steering Committee of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, and as a member of the International Organization of Securities Commissions' Hedge Fund Task Force. Professor Greenberger has frequently been asked to testify before Congressional committees on issues pertaining to dysfunctions within the United States economy caused by complex and unregulated financial derivatives.
In 1999, Professor Greenberger began service as Counselor to the United States Attorney General, and then became the Justice Department's Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General. In the latter capacity, Professor Greenberger assisted the United States Attorney General and Associate Attorney General in supervising the work of the Justice Department's Civil, Civil Rights, Environmental, Antitrust, and Tax Divisions. Also within his portfolio of responsibilities were several counterterrorism projects concerning both law enforcement and public health policy, including organizing a nationwide counterterrorism war game ("TOPOFF I").
Professor Greenberger has recently served as the Technical Advisor to the United Nations Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System and the International Energy Forum's Independent Expert Group on reducing world-wide energy price volatility. He also participated on an expert panel advising The University Center for Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Response at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital on "Best Practices for Explosive/Incendiary Incidents." Professor Greenberger currently serves as the Chair of the Maryland Governor's Emergency Management Advisory Council (GEMAC), and he recently was appointed by President of the American Bar Association to the Advisory Committee of the Standing Committee on Law and National Security.
Prior to entering government service, Professor Greenberger was a partner for over 20 years in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Shea & Gardner, where he served as lead litigation counsel before courts of law nationwide, including the United States Supreme Court. He has recently appeared both in the media and at academic gatherings to discuss financial regulation, including appearances on CNN, ABC's "World News Tonight," the CBS Evening News, the NBC Evening News, CNBC, MSNBC, The Jim Lehrer News Hour, NPR's "Fresh Air," PBS's "Frontline," BBC Radio, and C-SPAN. Professor Greenberger's recent testimony and related media can be found at www.michaelgreenberger.com.
Professor Greenberger is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Lafayette College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Law Review. He is a Life Member of the American Law Institute and he has served on the Board of Governors of the D.C. Bar and as a board member of three nonprofit public interest organizations. Professor Greenberger has also served on the D.C. Circuit Advisory Committee on Procedures and as a mediator for the United States Courts for the District of Columbia. April 27, 2011.
Lydia Griggsby is the Chief Counsel for Privacy and Information Policy for the Senate Judiciary Committee, a unique position that calls for her to provide legal and policy advice to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy on a wide range of legal issues at the intersection of privacy, the Freedom of Information Act, freedom of the press, and civil liberties. Ms. Griggsby negotiated the first major reforms to the FOIA in more than a decade -- the OPEN Government Act of 2007 -- which former President Bush signed into law on December 31, 2007. Recently, she served as the lead Senate counsel on the OPEN FOIA Act reform bill, which President Obama signed into law on October 29, 2009. In addition to her work on the FOIA, Ms. Griggsby provides legal advice to the Senate Judiciary Committee on a broad range of other issues, including freedom of the press, information privacy and security, and cybersecurity.
Ms. Griggsby has been a government attorney throughout most of her legal career, serving six years as an Assistant United States Attorney with the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia and three years with the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice. Prior to her appointment to the Department of Justice, she was an associate with the law firm of DLA Piper. She is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Pennsylvania. March 16, 2012; March 14, 2011; January 20, 2010; January 29, 2009; March 17, 2008.
Laia Grino is Senior Manager of Transparency, Accountability, and Results at InterAction. She leads InterAction's work on transparency -- focused on both InterAction members and the U.S. government -- and is responsible for data quality and standards for NGO Aid Map. This "who is doing what where" initiative aims to map InterAction member projects around the world in order to help improve coordination and collaboration, facilitate partnerships, inform advocacy, and promote transparency and accountability within the NGO sector. She also manages InterAction's Evaluation and Program Effectiveness Working Group (EPEWG), which seeks to improve the capacity of InterAction members, measure and demonstrate their effectiveness, and inform donors' evaluation policies and practices. With InterAction since 2007, Laia has also worked on issues related to aid effectiveness, USAID procurement policies, and private development assistance. She holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California and a Masters of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) with a concentration in international development from Georgetown University. September 27, 2013.
Claudio Grossman is Professor of Law and Dean of American University Washington College of Law (WCL) and the Raymond Geraldson Scholar for International and Humanitarian Law. Since his appointment as dean in 1995, WCL has further developed its intellectual creativity, pursuing numerous and exciting initiatives. More than 50 full-time faculty members have been hired, dramatically improving the law school's student-faculty ratio and expanding and enhancing scholarship, teaching and service. A variety of WCL programs have been developed during Dean Grossman's tenure including: dual J.D. Programs with universities in Canada, France and Australia, the LL.M. in Law and Government Program, the L.L.M. in Advocacy, the Supervised Externship Program, the S.J.D. Program, a dual LL.M./MBA, LL.M. specializations in Gender and the Law and in Free Trade Agreements and Regional Integration, and specialized summer programs in human rights and humanitarian law, international commercial arbitration, health law, intellectual property, law and government, international organizations, law and diplomacy, environmental law, and legal English. Also during Dean Grossman's leadership WCL has developed and expanded summer abroad programs in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, numerous semester abroad programs, the International Commercial Arbitration Center, the Intellectual Property (IP) Program, clinics in IP, Disability Rights Law, Immigrant Justice, and an evening section of the General Practice Clinic and integrated sections in the first year so as to promote interconnectedness among the different law courses.
Dean Grossman was unanimously reelected in May 2012 to a third term as Chair of the United Nations Committee against Torture, a position he has held since April 2008, and has been a Committee member following his November 2003 election to that body. On May 20, 2013, Dean Grossman was elected chair of the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies for a one-year term. In May 2009, he was named to the judging panel for the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights, and in May 2010 he was elected to the Center's board of directors. Dean Grossman has served on the governing board for the International Association of Law Schools since 2008 and was reelected in 2010 for a three-year term. Since early 2014, Dean Grossman has served as President of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, following three years on its Board of Directors. He is also a member of numerous associations including the American Law Institute.
Dean Grossman previously served as President of the College of the Americas (COLAM), an organization of approximately 400 colleges and universities in the Western Hemisphere (November 2003-November 2007). He also served as Chair of the Committee on International Cooperation of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) (November 2005-November 2009) and as a member of the Commission for the Control of Interpol's Files (February 2005-March 2011). In addition, he was a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) from 1993-2001. He was twice elected its President, first in 1996 and again in 2001. He also served twice as the IACHR's First Vice President (2000-2001, 1995-1996) and Second Vice President (1999-2000). He was the IACHR's first Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women (1996-2000), as well as its Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Populations (2000-2001) and its Observer of the AMIA Trial (2001-2005). Representing the IACHR, Dean Grossman participated in missions to Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru, among others. On behalf of international and non-governmental organizations, he has also chaired or participated in missions to observe elections in Nepal, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Romania, Surinam, and the Middle East.
Dean Grossman is the author of numerous publications regarding international law and human rights. He has also received numerous awards for his work with human rights and international law, including the René Cassin Award from B'nai B'rith International in Chile and the Harry LeRoy Jones Award from the Washington Foreign Law Society. In October 2000, Dean Grossman was named Outstanding Dean of the Year by the National Association of Public Interest Law (now known as Equal Justice Works). In addition, the Inter American Press Association named Dean Grossman as the recipient of the Chapultepec Grand Prize 2002 for his achievements in the field of human rights and his work and commitment to promoting and protecting the freedom of expression and of the press for all people. In 2007, Dean Grossman received the Simón Bolívar Award from the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in recognition of his lifetime achievements in promoting human rights, and the Charles Norberg International Lawyer of the Year Award from the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Inter-American Bar Association. In 2009, the government of the Netherlands awarded Dean Grossman the decoration of Orange Nassau in the grade of "Commendeur." In 2010, Dean Grossman received the Henry W. Edgerton Civil Liberties Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of the National Capital Area in recognition of exceptional lifetime achievements related to the advancement and defense of human rights and civil liberties. In 2011, he was awarded the decoration of "Orden de la Justicia" from the government of Colombia in recognition of his career. In 2012, Dean Grossman received the Deborah L. Rhode Award from the AALS Section on Pro Bono and Public Service Opportunities for his work on behalf of pro bono and public interest programs throughout the country, a Doctor Honoris Causa honorary degree from the Universidad de San Martin de Porres for his outstanding academic and professional trajectory in defending human rights, the Lifetime Leadership Award from the Hispanic National Bar Foundation, and the Leadership Award from the Maryland Hispanic Bar Association. March 18, 2014; March 16, 2010.
Ken Gude is the Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress (CAP). Prior to joining CAP, he was a policy analyst at the Center for National Security Studies, where he focused on post-September 11 civil liberties issues. He also had stints at the Council on Foreign Relations and with the British Labour Party in the U.K., where he served as a policy officer working the campaign against the privatization of British Rail. He has been published in the Los Angeles Times and contributed to the book, Protecting Democracy: International Responses. November 18, 2009.
Nathan Hallford serves as Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee to Ranking Member Charles E. Grassley. Prior to his work for Sen. Grassley, he served as a law clerk to United States Bankruptcy Judge Thomas Bennett in Birmingham, Alabama, and before that as Counsel to Senator Jeff Sessions on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts. March 18, 2014; March 18, 2013.
Morton Halperin is Senior Advisor to the Open Society Institute and Open Society Policy Center. Dr. Halperin served in the federal government in the Clinton, Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy Administrations. From December 1998 to January 2001, he was Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State. From February 1994 to March 1996, he was a Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy at the National Security Council. In 1993, he was a consultant to the Secretary of Defense and the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and was nominated by the President for the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Democracy and Peacekeeping. In 1969, he was a Senior Staff member of the National Security Council staff with responsibility for National Security Planning. From July 1966 to January 1969, he worked in the Department of Defense, where he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), responsible for political-military planning and arms control. From 1961 to 1966 he was a consultant in the office of Assistant Secretary of Defense (OSI).
Dr. Halperin worked for many years for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He served as Director of the Center for National Security Studies from 1975 to 1992, focusing on issues affecting both civil liberties and national security, such as the proper role of intelligence agencies and government secrecy, and had much involvement with the Freedom of Information Act. From 1984 to 1992, he was also the Director of the Washington Office of the ACLU, with responsibility for the ACLU's national legislative program as well as the activities of the ACLU Foundation based in the Washington Office. He has testified before congressional committees more than 50 times on issues related to civil liberties.
Dr. Halperin has also been associated with a number of think tanks. He was a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress from June 2003 to December 2009. He was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations from March 1996 to December 1998 and again from January 2001 to June 2003. From July 1997 through December 1998, he was Senior Vice President of The Century Foundation/Twentieth Century Fund. From November 1992 to February 1994, Dr. Halperin was a Senior Associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 1974, he directed a project on government secrecy for the Twentieth Century Fund. From September 1969 to December 1973, he was a Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies of the Brookings Institution. From 1960 to 1966, Dr. Halperin was associated with Harvard University, where he was an Assistant Professor of Government and a Research Associate of the Center for International Affairs. Dr. Halperin has taught as a visiting professor at a number of universities, including Columbia, Harvard, MIT, George Washington, Johns Hopkins, and Yale. He has taught courses on bureaucratic politics and foreign policy, human rights policy, arms control, and Congress and foreign policy.
Dr. Halperin has authored, co-authored and edited more than two dozen books, including The Lawless State (1976) and Self-Determination in the New World Order (1992). He has also contributed articles to a number of newspapers, magazines, and journals, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Harpers, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, on subjects including national security and civil liberties, bureaucratic politics, and democracy.
Dr. Halperin was a MacArthur Foundation Fellow from 1985 to 1990 and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Secretary of Defense Meritorious Civilian Service Medal, the Wilbur Cross Medal awarded by the Yale Graduate Alumni Association, the John Jay Award given by Columbia College, and the Public Service Award of the Federation of American Scientists. He is a member of the boards of ONE and ONE Action, and a member of the Boards of Disability Rights International, The Constitution Project, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Partnership for a Secure America (PSA). He is the chair of the Advisory Board of the Center for National Security Studies. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1938, Dr. Halperin received a B.A. from Columbia College in 1958 and a Ph.D. in International Relations from Yale University in 1961. He is a member the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Civil Liberties Union and is married to WCL Professor Diane Orentlicher. September 28, 2012; September 28, 2011 (keynote speaker).
Harry Hammitt is editor/publisher of Access Reports, a biweekly newsletter on the Freedom of Information Act and open government laws and policies. He also is the primary editor of Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). Harry became editor of Access Reports in 1985 and became publisher in 1989. He has written and lectured extensively on access and privacy issues in both the United States and Canada. He is a past president of the American Society of Access Professionals and has conducted that organization's annual seminar on business information issues for more than ten years. He was inducted into the FOI Hall of Fame at the Freedom Forum in Arlington, Virginia, in 2001. He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1975. He holds an M.A. in journalism from the University of Missouri and a J.D. from George Washington University Law School. Harry has worked as an information specialist for the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and for FOI Services, a third-party requesting company that deals primarily with businesses in the food and drug industry. Since 2009, he also has been working as a contractor/consultant with the Department of State, working on a variety of FOIA and information policy issues. March 14, 2011.
As Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, Jim Harper focuses on the difficult problems of adapting law and policy to the unique problems of the information age. Jim is a member of the Department of Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. His work has been cited by USA Today, the Associated Press, and Reuters. He has appeared on Fox News Channel, CBS, and MSNBC, and other media. His scholarly articles have appeared in the Administrative Law Review, the Minnesota Law Review, and the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly. Recently, he wrote the book Identity Crisis: How Identification Is Overused and Misunderstood. Jim also is the editor of Privacilla.org, a Web-based think tank devoted exclusively to privacy, and he maintains the online federal spending resource WashingtonWatch.com. He holds a J.D. from UC Hastings College of Law. April 28, 2009.
Lauren Harper is a research assistant with the National Security Archive, where she specializes in audits of agency FOIA practices, among other things. Most recently, together with her colleague Nate Jones, she conducted a comprehensive audit of agency implementation (or not) of the provisions of the 2007 FOIA Amendments through necessary updating of their FOIA regulations. Entitled "Outdated Agency Regs Undermine Freedom of Information," this governmentwide study showed that more than half of all federal agencies still had not updated their FOIA regulations since 2007 (including the Department of Justice) and that very few more of them had done so since the issuance of the Holder FOIA Memorandum in March 2009. Lauren also supplemented this research with two follow-up publications in December 2012. January 17, 2013.
Nathaniel Heller is Managing Director of Global Integrity, an off-shoot of the Center for Public Integrity that tracks governance and corruption trends around the world. He joined the Center for Public Integrity in 1999, handling both public service and government accountability issues. His work was covered by the Associated Press, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Moscow Times, The Guardian (London), and Newsweek. In 2002, he joined the State Department, focusing on European security and transatlantic relations. He later served as a foreign policy fellow to Senator Edward Kennedy in 2004. In 2005, Nathaniel returned to stand up Global Integrity as an independent international organization and has led the group since then. He holds a Master's of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and a Bachelors of International Relations and Spanish Literature from the University of Delaware. September 28, 2012 (keynote speaker); September 29, 2008; March 17, 2008.
Clint Hendler covers government access and information issues for the Columbia Journalism Review, known as the nation's leading magazine of ideas and reporting on the media. A former staffer at The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, he has had his writing published by Mother Jones, The Nation, and The New York Times. He is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and Dartmouth College, where he was editor-in-chief of the Dartmouth Free Press. His reporting on transparency issues, which has become increasingly prominent in recent years, has been supported by the Sunlight Foundation and The Nation Institute. January 20, 2010.
Kevin Herms is a policy analyst in the Information Policy Branch of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He is the OIRA lead for privacy, helping to develop federal privacy policies and oversee implementation of the Privacy Act of 1974 by federal agencies. In addition to his work on privacy, Kevin also reviews regulations and information collections for the Social Security Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Office of Government Ethics, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and several other agencies. Kevin received a B.A. in philosophy, politics, and economics from Pomona College and a J.D. and M.P.P. from the University of Michigan. March 18, 2014.
Hudson Hollister is Counsel for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He joined the committee staff in October 2009. In the 111th Congress, Hudson focused on issues related to financial regulation and government transparency. He produced an investigative report on management challenges at the Securities and Exchange Commission and worked on technology and transparency legislation. Prior to joining the committee, Hudson was an Attorney Fellow at the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he served on the staff of the 21st Century Disclosure Initiative. Before joining the Commission's staff, he was an attorney with Latham & Watkins, LLP in Chicago, where he represented clients in civil commercial and securities matters. Hudson is licensed to practice law in Illinois and the District of Columbia. He is a graduate of Northwestern University School of Law (J.D. 2005) and the University of St. Francis (B.A., Political Science and Mass Communication, 2002). March 14, 2011.
Sarah Holsen is the Access to Information Research Fellow with the Department of Political Science's Constitution Unit at University College London (UCL), which specializes in freedom of information and information-policy research and policy development. She joined UCL in 2004 after completing a Master's degree in Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and a Masters in Latin American Studies at the University of California, San Diego, and she soon will be pursuing a Ph.D. at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration in Lausanne, Switzerland. Having worked on several projects relating to freedom of information issues in the U.S. and Canada, Sarah has a background in comparative access to information research. She also has worked with local government officials both in the U.S. and Japan and in the human rights field in Ecuador. September 28, 2007.
James Holzer is currently the Senior Director for FOIA Operations with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), specializing in both the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act. He serves as an expert point of contact for both DHS Headquarters and DHS subcomponents. In addition, he oversees the collection, organization, and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data needed for annual reporting, the development of policies, procedures, and rules to ensure continuing compliance with existing guidance. Prior to joining DHS, James served in the U.S. Air Force, separating after 13 years on active duty. He deployed to Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 and to Afghanistan in 2007, participating in ground convoys for intel/fact-finding to remote villages, researching and writing analytical assessments related to improving DoD understanding of terrorist activities, motivations, and organizational associations. James also recently completed the requirements for his Doctorate of Management at the University of Maryland, University College. His dissertation examined strategy formulation in three federal agencies, providing preliminary insight into a range of behavioral strategies in the federal sector. He also holds a Master of Human Relations degree from the University of Oklahoma and a B.S. in Business from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. January 17, 2013.
Bill Holzerland serves in the key role of Associate Director, Disclosure Policy & FOIA Program Development for the Department of Homeland Security. He originally joined DHS in November 2003 with the Transportation Security Administration's Office of Security, Freedom of Information Act/Privacy Act Division. He currently focuses on DHS Freedom of Information Act policy, conducts FOIA training, and works with DHS components to improve FOIA-related processes and procedures. He also serves as the DHS FOIA Public Liaison, pursuant to E.O. 13,392 and the OPEN Government Act of 2007. His last appointment prior to joining the DHS Privacy Office in November 2006 was with the DHS Office of Inspector General, Office of Counsel. A Buffalo, New York native, Bill earned a dual Bachelor of Arts in Journalism/Mass Communications and History from St. Bonaventure University, and he presently is a J.D. candidate at the University of Baltimore School of Law. April 27, 2011.
Jamie Horsley is Deputy Director of the China Law Center, and also holds the dual positions of Senior Research Scholar and Lecturer in Law, at Yale Law School. Her academic subjects are the law of China and Chinese legal reform, and her project work revolves primary around issues of administrative law and regulatory reform, including promoting government transparency, public participation, improved dispute resolution, and government accountability. Prior to joining Yale, she was a partner in the international law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Commercial Attaché in the U.S. Embassies in Beijing and Manila; Vice President of Motorola International, Inc. and Director of Government Relations for China for Motorola, Inc.; and a consultant to The Carter Center on village elections in China. She is the author, most recently, of "Public Participation in the People's Republic: Developing a More Participatory Governance Model in China," "China Adopts First Nationwide Open Government Information Regulations," and "China's Quest for Rule of Law Under One-Party Rule," and she is the premier U.S. expert on the relatively recent emergence of transparency in that nation. She has a B.A. from Stanford, an M.A. (Chinese Studies) from the University of Michigan, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a Diploma in Chinese Law from the University of East Asia. September 28, 2009.
Dick Huff, as a member of the Senior Executive Service, served as one of two co-directors of the Department of Justice's Office of Information and Privacy (OIP) from the Office's creation in 1981 until his retirement in 2005. He was the official designated by the Attorney General to act on all administrative appeals from denials under the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act of 1974 by Justice Department components. (The Department averaged over 3000 such administrative appeals each year.) He litigated and supervised FOIA cases at the district court and appellate court levels and has testified before Congress at the subcommittee level on the implementation of the 1996 Electronic FOIA Amendments and at the full committee level on the interface between the FOIA and the Privacy Act. For 23 years, he jointly oversaw the development of the "Freedom of Information Act Guide & Privacy Act Overview" into an 1100-page treatise that was updated and distributed every other year to more than 22,000 recipients. He has also published several legal articles, including "A Preliminary Analysis of the Implementation of the Freedom of Information Reform Act."
Dick came to the Department of Justice in 1976 after serving seven years on active duty in the Army; during his last reserve assignment, he was assigned to the Army Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School, where he taught FOIA and Privacy Act subjects to military graduate students. He is now a retired colonel in the Army Reserve. Since retiring, he has made one-, two-, and three-day training presentations to the Departments of Justice, the Army, Commerce, and Homeland Security, as well as to the Graduate School (formerly the Graduate School of the United States Department of Agriculture) and the American Society of Access Professionals, which he currently serves as a Member of its Board of Directors. He received a B.A. from Stanford, an M.A. from St. Mary's University of Texas, a J.D. from Hastings College of the Law, and an LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center. March 16, 2012 (luncheon speaker); January 20, 2010.
Alex Hunt is a Branch Chief in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). As Chief of OIRA's Information Policy Branch, Mr. Hunt is responsible for the development and oversight of the federal government's policies and practices relating to open government, privacy, records management, regulatory standards, and related information issues. Previously, Mr. Hunt was involved in OIRA's oversight of regulatory and information policies of various federal agencies, including the Departments of Transportation, Homeland Security, State, and the Treasury. Mr. Hunt is a also a member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's Regulatory Policy Committee and has made presentations on U.S. regulatory policy before international audiences in Washington, D.C., Vancouver, London, Mexico City, Paris, Rabat, Rotterdam, Seoul, Stockholm, and Dubai. From August 2004 to December 2004, he served as a senior policy advisor in the Regulatory Impact Unit within the U.K. Cabinet Office. Prior to joining OMB, he worked as a research associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He received a bachelor's degree in international relations with honors from Occidental College and earned a master degree in public administration from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, where he was also an International Fellow. January 20, 2010.
David Hunter is Professor of Law and Director of the International Legal Studies Program at WCL. He teaches U.S. Environmental Law, International Environmental Law, Comparative Environmental Law, and the Law of Torts. Professor Hunter was the former Executive Director of the Center for International Environmental Law, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to protecting the global environment through the use of international law. He also is President of Peregrine Environmental Consulting and was formerly an environmental consultant to the Czech and Slovak environmental ministries, an environmental associate at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and executive director of WaterWatch of Oregon, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving western water laws. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide-U.S. (chair), EarthRights International, the Project On Government Oversight (chair), the Bank Information Center, Protimus Educational Trust (chair), and Greenpeace USA, Inc. He is a 1983 graduate of the University of Michigan with majors in economics and political science and a 1986 graduate of the Harvard Law School. Professor Hunter is author of many articles on international environmental law, and is co-author of the leading textbook in the field: International Environmental Law and Policy (Foundation Press: 2001). September 28, 2011.
Joey Hutcherson currently is Deputy Director of Open Government at the Department of Commerce, where among other things he has most recently worked extensively in support of the development of FOIAonline in coordination with the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) and the Environmental Protection Agency. He is the lead for Data.gov at Commerce and has developed the Department's internal processes for publishing information within the Open Government's Data.gov environment. In addition, he is working with multiple agencies at the departmental and bureau levels to improve information dissemination about Data.gov and the Open Government Initiatives, including building best practices and improving agency/sub-agency coordination. Previously, Joey served as Branch Chief of the Project Management Office, Office of the Chief Technology Officer, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, U.S. Department of State, where he was responsible for supervision and management of project managers who managed IT projects for the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. He has served as Senior Project Manager and Test Director at Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command within the Defense Personal Property Service Program Office, which was responsible for applications development and deployment worldwide. He also worked with the Intelligence Communities at USFK-J2, Seoul, Korea, and EUCOM-J2, RAF Molesworth, U.K., and has earned the following certifications: Telecommunications Project Management (TPM) and Project Management Professional (PMP). He served in the United States Navy from 1975 to 1985. January 17, 2013.
Sarah Hutchison holds the title of Head of Policy and Information in the Office of the Scottish Information Commissioner, located in St. Andrews, Scotland. She heads up Commissioner Kevin Dunion's Policy and Information Team, which is responsible for developing the organisation's external communications on all freedom of information issues, for press and media relations, and for managing the enquiries service and publication schemes approval process. Sarah also advises the Commissioner on a variety of policy-related issues, whilst liaising with senior officials in public bodies and their policy and legal advisers. September 28, 2010.
John Irons joined the Economic Policy Institute in 2007. His areas of research include the U.S. economy and economic policy, with an emphasis on federal tax and budget policy. He previously worked as the Director of Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress (2004-2007) and as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Economics at Amherst College (1999-2003). He has also worked for the Brookings Institution (1995) and at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (1992-1994). His academic publications have appeared in several journals including the Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, and the Review of Financial Economics. He is also co-editor of Testing Exogeneity, published by Oxford University Press. He has won several awards for his economics Web sites, including top-5 awards from The Economist and Forbes. He currently serves on the Committee on Electronic Publishing for the American Economic Association, and on the Board of Governors of the National Economists Club. March 16, 2009.
Mike Isikoff has been the National Investigative Correspondent for NBC News since July 2010. Prior to that, he worked for Newsweek as an Investigative Correspondent for 16 years (during which time he also was a regular contributor to MSNBC, most particularly "The Rachel Maddow Show") and for The Washington Post for more than a dozen years. He has written extensively on the federal government's war on terrorism, the Abu Ghraib scandal, campaign-finance and congressional ethics abuses, presidential politics, and other national issues. His book Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, co-written with David Corn, was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was published in September 2006. The book was hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "fascinating reading" and "the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations" in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Ever since the events of September 11, Mike has repeatedly broken stories about the U.S. government's war on terror and has won numerous journalism awards. His weekly online column "Terror Watch," co-written with Mark Hosenball, became a "must read" for senior U.S. intelligence officials and won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online. His June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9/11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors' top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He also was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For that coverage, he obtained exclusive internal White House, Justice Department, and State Department memos showing how decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush Administration led to abuses in the interrogation of terror suspects. He was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, the highest award in magazine journalism, for its coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Mike's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on "The Late Show with David Letterman." His coverage of the events that led to President Bill Clinton's impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. His reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association, and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, he was named on a list of "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian Magazine, and he also is the author of "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story and was hailed by a critic for The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times news service as "the absolutely essential narrative of the scandal with revelations that no one would have thought possible." That book, also a New York Times bestseller, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book-of-the-Month Club.
Mike went to Newsweek in 1994 from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America, and worked on the Post's financial news desk. Before joining the Post, he was a reporter with the now-defunct Washington Star. Mike graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Master's in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976. March 18, 2014; January 20, 2012; January 20, 2010 (luncheon speaker); March 16, 2009.
George Jameson is a private attorney and Principal at Jameson Consulting, a firm that advises on national and international security matters, governance, and compliance, and that provides educational services. He also is Chairman of the Council on Intelligence Issues, a non-profit organization he co-founded to help educate the public about intelligence and national security issues and challenges and to provide information about legal services for intelligence officers who may need assistance. He is an Adjunct Staff member at the RAND Corporation, and he lectures at the Intelligence & Security Academy and at the university level.
George served for more than 30 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Intelligence Community -- as the first Director of the CIA's policy and coordination office, managing legislative affairs in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and as an attorney for most of his career in the CIA's Office of General Counsel. His responsibilities included reviewing the legality and propriety of clandestine intelligence operations, handling litigation, legislation, war crimes issues, information management, privacy, and intelligence community policy and reform. George also serves on the Advisory Committee for the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security and on the Steering Group for the Bar Association of D.C.'s Committee on National Security Law, Policy & Practice. He is a graduate of Harvard College and William & Mary Law School, and he a member of the D.C. and Virginia bars. April 25, 2013; September 28, 2012.
Matt Johnson is Chief Counsel to Senator John Cornyn for the Senate Judiciary Committee and has worked on Senate Judiciary Committee issues such as judicial nominations, immigration, and intellectual property for several years. In 2007, he was most heavily involved in the bi-partisan efforts of Senator Cornyn and Senator Patrick Leahy that led to enactment of the 2007 FOIA Amendments. He holds a J.D. from Notre Dame Law School, where he was on the law review, and he received his B.A. in 1999 from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. March 16, 2012; March 16, 2010; March 17, 2008; January 16, 2008.
Nate Jones is the Freedom of Information Act Coordinator for the National Security Archive. He oversees the thousands of FOIA and Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) requests and hundreds of FOIA and MDR appeals that the National Security Archive submits each year. He acts as liaison between Archive analysts and government FOIA officers, and he serves as the Archive's FOIA counselor to the public. He also is the editor of the Archive's blog and manages its social media. Nate authored the Archive's 2010 and 2011 FOIA Audits, Sunshine and Shadows: The Clear Obama Message for Freedom of Information Meets Mixes Results and Glass Half Full: But Many Federal Agencies Lag in Fulfilling Obama's Openness Pledge. He earned his M.A. in Cold War History from The George Washington University, where he wrote his thesis on -- and submitted FOIA requests about -- the 1983 "Able Archer" nuclear war scare. September 27, 2013; January 17, 2013; January 20, 2012.
Will Kammer has been working with the Freedom of Information Act and declassification fields since 1991. He has served in various management assignments with the Office of Freedom of Information (OFOI), Department of Defense, since October 1998, was selected as Chief of OFOI in August 2005, and was named Chief of the Defense Freedom of Information Policy Office in January 2006. He has taught courses on the FOIA for the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and other government agencies, and for the American Society of Access Professionals. He was given the annual Outstanding FOIA Officer Award by the Department of Justice's Office of Information and Privacy (OIP) in March 2006.
Prior to joining OFOI, Will served as a FOIA action officer in the Joint Staff from 1991-1995 and was responsible for developing and implementing the Joint Staff Automatic Declassification plan in 1996. He was the principal declassifying official for the Joint Staff Automatic Declassification program from 1996-1998. Will began his career with the Department of Defense in 1984, serving as an Ammunition Surveillance Specialist with the Department of the Army and as an Investigator with the Defense Investigative Service prior to joining the Joint Staff in 1991. March 18, 2013; March 14, 2011 (moderator); March 16, 2010; March 17, 2008.
Brett Kaufman is the National Security Fellow in the ACLU's National Security Project. He is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of Texas School of Law, where he was Book Review Editor of the Texas Law Review and a Human Rights Scholar at the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. After graduation from law school, he spent one year in Israel, serving first as a foreign law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Asher Dan Grunis and then as a volunteer attorney at Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement. He next completed two clerkships in New York City -- with the Hon. Robert D. Sack of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and with Judge Richard J. Holwell and (after Judge Holwell's resignation) Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. April 25, 2013.
Jane Kirtley has been the Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota since August 1999. She was named Director of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law in 2000 and also holds a joint appointment at the university's law school. Prior to that, she was Executive Director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press for fourteen years. Before joining the Reporters Committee, she was an attorney for five years with the law firm of Nixon, Hargrave, Devans & Doyle in Rochester, New York and Washington D.C. She is a member of the New York, District of Columbia, and Virginia bars. Jane also worked as a reporter for the Evansville (Indiana) Press and The Oak Ridger and Nashville Banner (Tennessee). April 28, 2009 (keynote speaker).
Professor Jonathan Klaaren, B.A. (Harvard), M.A. (Cape Town), J.D. (Columbia), LLB (Witwatersrand), and Ph.D. (Yale, Sociology), was named Head of the University of Witwatersrand School of Law in August of this year. He is a former Director of the Mandela Institute of the Witwatersrand Law School (mid-2005 to end-2007) and has served as Co-Director of the school's Winter Law School (2007-2009). He has served on numerous university committees and is currently appointed by the Minister of Home Affairs to serve on the Immigration Advisory Board.
Professor Klaaren's research interests are in four broad areas and include international and comparative public law and human rights, citizenship and migration law, transnational regulation (including trade and investment law), and socio-legal studies (including legal history and the legal profession). He has co-authored two books on South African administrative and access to information law and co-edited two books on South African refugee law. He organized the Law and Society Association Summer Institute in 2006, was a founding member of WISER from 2001-2002, and received the University of the Witwatersrand Young Researchers Award (Friedel Sellschop Award) in 1998. He also served as a law clerk to Third Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. from 1991-1992 and as an intern at the Legal Resources Centre in Cape Town in 1989. He has served on the Editorial Committee of the South African Journal on Human Rights and on the Editorial Board of Law & Society Review, and he currently serves on the Editorial Board of Law & Policy. Professor Klaaren's most recent research output is a co-edited special issue of the South African Journal on Human Rights on public interest litigation in South Africa. September 28, 2011.
Linda Koontz recently joined the MITRE Corporation as its Principal Information Systems Engineer for Privacy at its Center for Enterprise Modernization. In this role, she assists federal agencies in building strong privacy programs and is currently working on health care issues. Prior to joining MITRE, Linda worked for the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) as Director, Information Management Issues, on GAO's Information Technology team, a Senior Executive Service-level position. In this role, she directed audits and studies for Congress on matters including the Freedom of Information Act, privacy, records management, and information access and dissemination. She developed numerous reports on these subjects and testified frequently as an expert witness before congressional committees. Linda earned a Bachelors of Arts degree in accounting from Michigan State University. She is a Certified Information Privacy Professional/Government and a Certified Government Financial Manager. January 29, 2009 (keynote speaker).
John Koppel is an attorney on the Appellate Staff of the Department of Justice's Civil Division. He joined the Department through the Honors Program in October 1981 and has spent his entire career in "Civil Appellate," arguing well in excess of 100 cases and appearing on multiple occasions in every federal circuit. He has worked extensively with Appellate Staff FOIA expert Leonard Schaitman and has litigated roughly a score of FOIA cases concerning various exemptions, especially the Act's personal privacy exemptions. In recent years, Mr. Koppel has also been heavily involved in intellectual property litigation, and in December 2010 he received a special commendation from Civil Division Assistant Attorney General Tony West for outstanding service in connection with Golan v. Holder, in which the Tenth Circuit reversed a district court ruling holding unconstitutional Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, on First Amendment grounds. Mr. Koppel received his B.A. with Honors from Swarthmore College in 1978 and his J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1981. March 14, 2011.
Rosa M. Koppel has been the Solicitor of the Federal Labor Relations Authority since April of 2008. As the Solicitor, she serves as the FLRA's chief litigator, legal advisor, Designated Agency Ethics Official, and, of particular note, its Chief FOIA Officer, in which capacity she has participated in the recent development of FOIAonline, together with the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS). Before becoming the FLRA's Solicitor, Rosa was the Deputy General Counsel of the Merit Systems Protection Board and, before that, Assistant Director of Litigation at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. In these agencies, she was responsible for FOIA appeals and defending FOIA litigation. She is a graduate of New York University's Washington Square College and its School of Law. (And she also is the spouse of previous CGS speaker John Koppel.) January 17, 2013.
Matt Kronisch has been the Associate General Counsel for Intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security since 2006. He also is Co-Chair for the Presidential Interagency Task Force on Controlled Unclassified Information. Prior to his current positions, he also served as the Assistant for Inspections to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight and as a legal advisor, trial counsel, and appellate counsel while an Officer in the U.S. Navy. A graduate of Georgetown Law Center, he also has been an Assistant General Counsel at Tyco Telecommunications and is a Member of the Board of Governors of the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. March 16, 2010.
John Kropf is Deputy Chief Privacy Officer and Senior Adviser for International Privacy Policy in the Privacy Office of the Department of Homeland Security. He serves as the Privacy Office's chief operating officer and policy strategist, as well as a key adviser to DHS leadership officials on issues related to compliance with privacy laws and with DHS policies, programs, and agreements that adhere to fair information principles. John also oversees the Privacy Office's international privacy work and has represented DHS on U.S. delegations to negotiations with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and the Development and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and he has served as an adviser in other international negotiations as well. Before joining DHS, he worked for ten years as an international lawyer in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the Department of State, where he held primary responsibility for overseeing legal aspects of the State Department's FOIA activities. John also spent two years at the American Embassy in Turkmenistan, where he served as Country Director for USAID. He began his federal career as an attorney in the Department of Justice's Honors Program and earned both his law degree and a Master's of Public and International Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a member of bars of Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia and has published numerous articles on global privacy issues. April 28, 2009.
JENNIFER LaFLEUR
Jennifer LaFleur is ProPublica's director of computer-assisted reporting (CAR). She was the CAR editor starting in 2003 for The Dallas Morning News, where she worked on the investigative team. She has directed CAR at the San Jose Mercury News and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and was the first training director for the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE). She has won awards for her coverage of disability, legal, and open government issues. Jennifer also is the co-author of IRE's Mapping for Stories: A Computer-Assisted Reporting Guide. March 18, 2013; March 16, 2012.
Anna Laitin is a professional staff member for the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform under Chairman Henry A. Waxman. She has worked for Representative Waxman since 2003. Anna's legislative and oversight responsibilities include issues related to government secrecy, public access to government information, and the preservation of government records. Anna is a graduate of Brown University and received a Master's in Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Prior to joining the Committee staff, she worked at the D.C. Appleseed Center, a nonprofit organization focused on improving the operations of the District of Columbia government. March 17, 2008.
Royce C. Lamberth was appointed United States District Judge for the District of Columbia on November 16, 1987, and entered on duty on the same date. A native of San Antonio, Texas, Judge Lamberth graduated from the University of Texas, receiving a B.A. degree in 1966, and from the University of Texas School of Law, receiving an LL.B. degree in 1967. He served as a Captain in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the United States Army from 1968 to 1974. After service at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and in Vietnam, Judge Lamberth served in the Litigation Division of the Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Army at the Pentagon from 1971-1974. Judge Lamberth served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1974 to 1987 and was Chief of the Civil Division of the United States Attorney's Office from 1978 to 1987. During 1977-1978, he served as Attorney General Griffin Bell's representative to the President's Reorganization Project, Federal Legal Representation Study.
Judge Lamberth is married to the former Janis K. Jost of San Antonio. He is former Chairman of the Federal Litigation Section of the Federal Bar Association, and a member of the American Bar Association and the Bar Association of the District of Columbia, the District of Columbia Bar, and the State Bar of Texas. He is also former Chairman of the Professional Ethics Committee of the Federal Bar Association. The Federal Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct for Federal Lawyers, finally approved in October, 1990, were drafted by Judge Lamberth's Committee. Judge Lamberth was appointed by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist to be the Presiding Judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on May 19, 1995. His appointment ended May 19, 2002. March 17, 2008 (keynote speaker).
Born in Montpelier, raised across the street from the Statehouse, and educated in Montpelier and Colchester, Patrick Leahy has spent most of his adult life working for Vermonters. After graduating from Saint Michael's College in 1961, he earned his Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center in 1964. He then returned to Vermont to the private practice of law and then, for the next eight years, served as the State's Attorney in Chittenden County, where he gained a national reputation for his law enforcement work. In 1974, at the age of 34, he became the first Democrat who Vermonters have ever elected to the United States Senate, where he now ranks fourth in seniority. He serves as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee. He also serves on the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee and on the Appropriations Committee, where he is a member of the Defense, Interior, Homeland Security, VA-HUD, and Commerce-Justice-State subcommittees.
As a senior member of the Agriculture Committee, Senator Leahy played instrumental roles in creating the Farmland Protection Program and the Milk Income Loss Compensation (MILC) program, and in extending the Conservation Reserve Program. He has been a long-time supporter of the organic movement and is often called the "father of organics." He helped Vermont's and the nation's organic industry grow from near obscurity when he wrote and passed the Organic Foods Production Act in 1990. The Leahy charter for organic agriculture has helped it grow into an $11 billion-a-year sector of the American economy. As the Chairman of the Agriculture Committee's Subcommittee on Research, Nutrition, and General Legislation, Senator Leahy champions effective child nutrition programs. He has developed bipartisan support for addressing the nation's obesity crisis and led efforts to implement hands-on nutrition education programs in our schools. He also reached across the aisle to coauthor legislation that would enable the Secretary of Agriculture to more efficiently control the sale of junk food and soft drinks in schools that participate in the federal School Lunch Program.
As the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy has authored, advocated, and enacted a wide range of anti-crime and anti-drug initiatives. He wrote the charter for the current federal grant program for the nation's first-responders, and Pat Leahy's all-state minimum for the program's formula has brought millions of federal equipment dollars to Vermont's police, fire, and EMS units. In his Judiciary Committee role, Senator Leahy also gives Vermonters a leading voice in confirming nominations to the federal courts. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution gave the Senate an important role to play in ensuring that the federal bench would not simply be an arm of the Executive Branch, and Senator Leahy has consistently fought to keep the courts from becoming an extension of either political party. He points out that our independent federal judiciary is the envy of the world, and he fights to keep it independent.
Senator Leahy also is the co-chair of the Senate's 85-member National Guard Caucus. He has fought to improve access to health care, education, and retirement benefits for Vermont's citizen-soldiers and to make sure that they are treated equally with the active forces. In recognition of his service to our men and women in uniform, he has been awarded the George Washington Freedom Award from the Adjutants General of the U.S. Association, the Eagle Award from the Enlisted National Guard Association, and the Harry S. Truman Award for "sustained contributions of exceptional and far-reaching magnitude to the defense and security of the United States in a manner worthy of recognition at the national level."
Sometimes referred to as the "cyber senator," Senator Leahy was the second senator to post an official homepage on the Internet. Since its creation in 1995, the Leahy Senate website has often won awards as one of the Senate's best. His interest in technology also led him to co-found the Congressional Internet Caucus, which he co-chairs, and to spearhead efforts to expand broadband access to Vermont. Mindful of new hazards presented by the Internet, he is also a leader in the effort to protect intellectual property rights and privacy. Senator Leahy is widely known as having been the leading champion of freedom of information in Congress over the past three decades, a vital role that he has played through both legislative reform and keen congressional oversight. Among his many honors and distinctions in that and other areas of public policy and law, he is the recipient of the Collaboration on Government Secrecy's 2009 Robert Vaughn FOIA Legend Award. March 16, 2010; March 16, 2009 (keynote speaker).
Bill Leary serves as Special Adviser to the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director, Records and Access Management, for the National Security Council (NSC), with responsibility for maintenance, retrieval, disposition, declassification, and controlling access for all NSC records. He also holds the positions of Chair of the Interagency Policy Coordinating Committee on Records Access and Information Security and Chair of the Information Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), the latter of which is a presidential appointment. Bill holds B.A., M.A., and A.B.D. degrees in history from the University of Virginia, and during the late 1960s and early 1970s he taught history there, as well as at the College of William & Mary and the University of South Alabama. The author of several publications, he also is a former member (1987-1993) of the City Council of Tacoma Park. Most recently, he was the designated author of the detailed entry on "The White House Blog" that announced the issuance of President Obama's new executive order on national security classification, Executive Order 13,526. April 27, 2011; January 20, 2010; January 29, 2009; March 17, 2008.
Gregg Leslie is the Legal Defense Director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and has worked for it since the early 1990s. He also serves as editor of the Reporters Committee's news publications and guides. Gregg came to Washington to attend Georgetown University and after graduating he wrote for several publications and worked as a writer and research director for Regardie's, a local business and political magazine. He continued working as a journalist while attending Georgetown University Law Center. After law school, Gregg worked for the Reporters Committee for a year as a legal fellow. He then worked briefly for the Clinton campaign and transition team, and later continued to work as a freelance writer before rejoining the Reporters Committee. April 25, 2013 (luncheon speaker).
Bill Leonard retired in 2008 from federal government service after 34 years. In his last position, as the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), he was responsible for policy oversight of the executive branch's national security information classification system. Before that appointment, he served in the Department of Defense as the deputy assistant secretary of defense (security and information operations). In 2002, the president conferred upon him the rank of meritorious executive. Bill holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from St. John's University in New York City and a Master of Arts degree in international relations from Boston University. He currently is the Chief Operating Officer of the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, D.C. September 28, 2012; January 20, 2010; January 29, 2009.
Carol Leonnig is a National Staff Writer for The Washington Post. Her first reporting job was in1989 at The Philadelphia Inquirer, where she worked in its South Jersey bureau. After that, she became a staff writer for The Charlotte Observer. Having covered the Bush Administration extensively from the Post's federal courts beat, she now writes for its National Desk as part of a team examining federal agencies and government accountability. She has done numerous television interviews, including The News House With Jim Lehrer and MSNBC, and her coverage of the Bush Administration has been cited in many books on the subject. In 2005, she was part of a seven-person team that won the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting given by the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of California for a series of articles that uncovered unhealthy levels of lead in drinking water in Washington, D.C. and problems with reporting water quality across the U.S. She is also a former Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow. January 20, 2011.
Anne-Marie Leroy, a French national, was appointed Senior Vice President and General Counsel for the World Bank Group (WBG) on March 9, 2009. Prior to joining the WBG, she was a partner of the Paris Office of Denton Wilde Sapte LLP since 2005, where she was in charge of its Department of Public Law. A graduate of both the Paris Institute for Political Science and the National School for Public Administration, with a graduate degree in the Sociology of Organizations, Anne-Marie joined the Council of State (Conseil d'Etat), the highest court in France for public and administrative law, in 1986, where she worked as a judge for five years.
In 1991, Anne-Marie was appointed to the Ministry of National Education, as a director of legal and international affairs, managing the ministry's representation in courts and providing legal advice to the Minister and ministry units, and bilateral relations with partner countries in the field of education. Her work included technical assistance projects in developing countries, as well as in multilateral institutions, especially the European Union and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). From January 1995 to May 1998, she served in the World Bank, MENA region as a senior public-sector specialist, working on public management issues, especially in Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia. Returning to Paris in 1998 to take up the position of Department Head in charge of Governance and Civil Society issues in the Public Management Service of the OECD, she was soon appointed as Senior Advisor to the Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, in charge of government reform. Following the presidential election of 2002, she returned to the Council of State and her functions as a judge. In 2003, she was also appointed by the Board of Executive Directors of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) as a judge with the IDB's Administrative Tribunal. September 28, 2010.
Dubbed "America's chief whistle-blower" on state and local economic development subsidies, Greg LeRoy directs Good Jobs First, a national resource center promoting corporate and government accountability in economic development and smart growth for working families. With more than 25 years' experience, he is the author of The Great American Jobs Scam: Corporate Tax Dodging and the Myth of Job Creation (2005) and No More Candy Store: States and Cities Making Job Subsidies Accountable, and he was the 1998 winner of the Public Interest Pioneer Award. Good Jobs First (GLF) serves constituency-based groups and policymakers with research, training, consulting and testimony. GJF also includes Good Jobs New York (www.goodjobsny.org), Good Jobs First-Illinois, and the Corporate Research Project (www.corp-research.org). March 16, 2009.
Doug Letter earned a B.A. in American History from Columbia University in 1975, and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall in 1978. He joined the Department of Justice's Civil Division under the Attorney General's Honors Program in 1978, was selected to serve on an Assistant Attorney General's advisory committee of young Civil Division attorneys in 1979, and entered the Senior Executive Service in 1992. During 1994-95, Doug served in the White House as an Associate Counsel to the President. In addition, in 1999, he was a Deputy Associate Attorney General. He is now Appellate Litigation Counsel in the Civil Division at the Department of Justice and also was appointed in March 2002 as the Terrorism Litigation Counsel.
Doug has represented the United States in courts around the country in numerous significant cases. He has presented oral argument for the federal government in the Supreme Court and in all of the federal courts of appeals, as well as in various district courts, and he will be presenting an en banc oral argument before the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the state secrets case of Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan next month. His primary areas of expertise are antiterrorism, separation of powers and Presidential authority, national security and foreign affairs litigation, constitutional takings issues, First Amendment free speech claims, administrative law, False Claims Act enforcement, and criminal and civil enforcement of consumer protection laws.
In 1987, Doug was appointed by the D.C. Circuit to its Advisory Committee on Procedures, and he acted for six years as the Chairman of that committee. He currently serves as the Department of Justice representative on the Judicial Conference's federal Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules. In June 2000, he was elected to the D.C. Bar Board of Governors, and was reelected in 2003. The Attorney General presented him with the John Marshall Award for Appellate Advocacy in 1988, and he received another Marshall Award in 2004 for his work in successfully defending the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act. He also was given the Younger Federal Lawyer Award by the Federal Bar Association in 1984, and he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Public Service Award in 2007. He also earned a Presidential Meritorious Rank Award in 2003. Doug has spoken and lectured extensively, both within and outside the government, on appellate advocacy and on the role of the government lawyer. He currently teaches a course on national security law as an adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School. November 18, 2009.
Rachel Levinson-Waldman serves as Counsel to the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program, which seeks to advance effective national security policies that respect constitutional values and the rule of law. Most recently, she authored a Brennan Center report, What the Government Does with Americans' Data, on the federal government's use, sharing, and retention of non-criminal information about Americans for law enforcement and national security purposes. She regularly comments for both television and print media on issues relating to national security, privacy, and data retention. Her writing has been featured in such publications as the Huffington Post, Bloomberg View, the National Law Journal, the New Republic, and Wired. Prior to joining the Brennan Center at NYU School of Law, Rachel served as counsel to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), focusing particularly on matters related to academic freedom and the First Amendment. Previously, she served as a Trial Attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, litigating matters under the Fair Housing Act. She is a graduate of Williams College and the University of Chicago Law School, and she clerked for the Hon. M. Margaret McKeown of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. March 18, 2014.
Jeff Light has a solo legal practice in Washington, D.C., where he focuses on criminal appeals and also handles FOIA litigation. His volunteer work for the National Lawyers Guild has recently included representation of "Occupy D.C." protesters. Jeff holds a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and Master's and Bachelor's of Science degrees from Brandeis University in Biochemistry. March 16, 2012.
Freddi Lipstein served as the federal government's principal litigator of state secrets privilege cases for more than twenty years. An honors graduate of the University of Southern California Law School, she joined the Justice Department in 1976 as an Honors Program attorney in the former Appellate Section of its Civil Division and became an Appellate Staff Senior Counsel in 1986. From 1982 until her retirement in September 2003, she was the Civil Division's appellate expert on state secrets litigation, guiding the development of the privilege through several presidential administrations. March 17, 2008.
Robert S. Litt was confirmed by unanimous consent by the Senate to serve as the second General Counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on June 25, 2009. Before joining the ODNI, he was a partner with the law firm of Arnold and Porter LLP, since 1999. He served as a member of the governing body of the American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Section and as a member of the Advisory Committee to the ABA's Standing Committee on Law and National Security. From 1994 to 1999, Mr. Litt worked at the Department of Justice, where he served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division and then as the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General. His duties at the Justice Department included FISA applications, covert action reviews, computer security, and other national security matters.
Mr. Litt started his legal career as a clerk for Judge Edward Weinfeld of the Southern District of New York and Justice Potter Stewart of the United States Supreme Court. From 1978 to 1984, he was an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He also spent one year as a special advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs. He holds a B.A. from Harvard College and an M.A. and J.D. from Yale University. March 18, 2014 (luncheon speaker).
Professor Liu is an associate professor at Jinan University Law School, in the Guangzhou Province of the People's Republic of China. She holds an S.J.D. degree and during the 2008-2009 academic year is a Fulbright Research Scholar at the Washington College of Law. Among her areas of research specialization is a comparative study of freedom of information in the United States in relation to the emerging transparency movement in China. September 29, 2008.
Professor Susan Long is a faculty member at Syracuse University in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, and co-founder and co-director of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) -- a joint center of the Whitman School and the Newhouse School of Public Communications. In addition to her faculty role teaching managerial statistics and research methods at Syracuse, she has spent much of her professional career "in the trenches" using the FOIA to provide public access to electronic records and administrative database systems to assess government performance.
Her active work on freedom of information matters began in 1970 when she and her husband, the late Phil Long, began a decade-long FOIA effort to reform entrenched secrecy practices at the Internal Revenue Service. In the first-ever successful lawsuits brought against the IRS under the FOIA (conducted pro se before the 1974 FOIA Amendments allowed for attorney fees), the couple forced the IRS to release for the first time its internal revenue manuals containing the agency's official compilation of policies and procedures, as well as reams of internal enforcement statistics. Much of what is now publicly available on the frequency and results of IRS audits --high-income versus low-income families, large versus small corporations, California versus New York taxpayers, etc. -- became public as a direct result of court orders through this litigation. There were twelve FOIA lawsuits during the seventies for IRS records -- all largely successful. One secured a key appellate ruling on the FOIA's application to electronic records (computer data tapes), in Long v. IRS, 596 F.2d 362 (9th Cir. 1979), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 917 (1980), which was far ahead of its time. During the 1980s, her FOIA work continued when she became director of the Center for Tax Studies at Syracuse University.
In 1989, with David Burnham, Professor Long founded TRAC in order to make available comprehensive information on federal enforcement, staffing, and spending. The information -- much of it obtained through the FOIA -- comes from massive internal government database systems used by agencies to monitor their own day-to-day activities. TRAC analyzes this information and makes it public through its reports and data-access tools at http://trac.syr.edu. In 2011, TRAC launched http://FOIAProject.org -- an ambitious initiative aimed to eventually put case-by-case details on all agency FOIA decisions on the Web, fully indexed and searchable, to allow the public to monitor actual agency performance under the law and to spotlight egregious withholding.
Professor Long earned a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Washington with a dual major in statistics and criminology, and she completed post-doctoral work in statistics at Princeton University. Her current research focuses upon data architecture, reliability, and validity issues in database systems, and the design of data-mining and analysis tools for nonstatisticians. She is the fifth recipient of the "Robert Vaughn FOIA Legend Award" from CGS (in 2012) and was inducted into the First Amendment Center's National Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame in 2006. March 16, 2012 (keynote speaker).
Jeff Lubbers is a Professor of Practice in Administrative Law at WCL and is also active in its Law and Government Program. He holds expertise in administrative law; government structure and procedures; and regulatory policy and procedures. In addition to teaching Administrative Law, he also teaches the Washington Lawyer Seminar, the one required course in the LLM in Law and Government Program. He also serves as WCL's liaison to Japanese Law Schools, having taught at WCL's "sister school," Ritsumeikan University School of Law in Kyoto, for five summers. From 1982-1995, Professor Lubbers was the research director of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), and he now serves as Special Counsel at ACUS as recently reconstituted. He has published two books: A Guide to Federal Agency Rulemaking (4th ed., ABA Press, 2006), and Federal Administrative Procedure Sourcebook (4th ed., ABA Press, 2008). He is also the editor of the ABA's Developments in Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice (10 vols., 1998-2008). April 27, 2011.
Marianne Manheim is the FOIA Program Manager at the Department of State, where she is responsible for developing and implementing FOIA policies, FOIA training, and FOIA reporting, as well as for continuously evaluating the State Department's FOIA process to make improvements. Since August 2011, she has also served as the agency's FOIA Public Liaison and is responsible for assisting requesters with any concerns about the processing of their FOIA requests. Prior to serving at the Department of State, Marianne worked at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where she was responsible for privacy, data breach, and controlled unclassified information, and at Peace Corps Headquarters, where she served as the FOIA and Privacy Act Officer for the agency. She holds a J.D. from Valparaiso University School of Law and a B.A. from the University of Idaho and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cote d'Ivoire. March 16, 2012.
Sharon Mar is a policy analyst in the Information Policy branch of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). She is the OIRA lead for the Department of Education, Corporation for National Community Service, National Science Foundation, and Economic Development Administration. Her responsibilities include reviewing major regulatory actions and information collection requests by these agencies. She also works with senior OMB officials to help develop and coordinate OMB's policies related to issues ranging from grants, FOIA and privacy. Sharon holds a Master's of Science degree in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. March 16, 2010.
Dan Marcus joined the faculty of WCL in 2004. Previously, he was General Counsel of the 9-11 Commission. He was for many years a partner in the Washington law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. During the Carter Administration, he was Deputy General Counsel of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and General Counsel of the Department of Agriculture. He returned to government service in 1998 as Senior Counsel in the White House Counsel's Office. From 1999 to 2001, he held several senior positions at the Department of Justice, including Associate Attorney General. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. He was a law clerk for Judge Harold Leventhal of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. March 18, 2014; April 25, 2013 (moderator); April 27, 2011; November 18, 2009 (moderator).
Kate Martin joined the Center for National Security Studies in 1988 and has served as its Director since 1992. The Center is a think tank and advocacy organization working to protect civil liberties and human rights. Kate and the Center were awarded the 2005 Eugene S. Pulliam First Amendment Award by the Society for Professional Journalists.
Kate has taught National Security Law as a Professorial Lecturer at George Washington University Law School and has taught Strategic Intelligence and Public Policy at Georgetown University Law School. She also served as general counsel to the National Security Archive, a research library located at George Washington University, from 1995 to 2001. She was co-director with Andrzej Rzeplinski of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Warsaw of a project on "Security Services in a Constitutional Democracy" in twelve former communist countries in Europe.
She frequently testifies before the United States Congress, including the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, on issues relating to secrecy and classification of national security information, government surveillance, and congressional access to intelligence information. Her research and policy analyses have led to significant legal and regulatory changes on classification standards, protection of whistleblower disclosures concerning intelligence abuses, and release of classified information concerning human rights abuses in Guatemala and Chile. She has worked with NGOs and government officials in both Eastern Europe and Latin America on access to information issues, including working on drafting Freedom of Information laws for Guatemala and Mexico. She also participated in the drafting of the Johannesburg Principles on National Security and Freedom of Expression.
Kate also is a frequent commentator in the media and legal scholarship. Among her many publications are Safeguarding Liberty: National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information: United States of America with Paul Hoffman, published in Secrecy and Liberty, ed. Coliver, et al. (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1999); "Enemy Combatants, the Constitution and the Administration's War on Terror," with Joseph Onek, American Constitution Society (August 2004); and Domestic Intelligence and Civil Liberties, SAIS Review of International Affairs (Winter-Spring 2004). Previously, she was a partner with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Nussbaum, Owen & Webster. She graduated from the University of Virginia Law School, where she was a member of the Law Review, and from Pomona College cum laude. April 27, 2011.
Grace Mastalli is the president of Ethos International, Inc., which she co-founded in 2007 following an extensive federal career, primarily at the Department of Justice. During her federal service, she had the distinction of serving under six Attorneys General and of becoming one of the highest-ranking career officials not only of the Justice Department but also of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). At the Justice Department, she held three of the most senior positions available to non-political appointees -- Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Associate Deputy Attorney General, and Deputy Associate Attorney General – and had responsibility for the development of policy on the handling of "worst case scenario" information, the precursor to "sensitive homeland security information." She served at the Department of Homeland Security from 2003-2007, where as the highest-ranking career official in the Office of the General Counsel she helped manage the work of the more than 1700 lawyers serving that new 180,000-person agency. At DHS, she had substantive responsibilities in ethics, privacy, intelligence, national security, immigration, procurement, and regulatory matters, among others. As Director of the DHS Information and Collaboration Office, she chaired the Interagency Working Group on Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) Information and developed comprehensive recommendations for sweeping reform of federal policy with regard to what then became known as "controlled unclassified information." She attended Reed College, the University of Denver, University of Maryland College of Law, and Georgetown University Graduate School of Government. She is a member of the D.C. bar and also has been an adjunct professor at American University's School of Public Affairs, specializing in Public Policy and American Legal Culture. March 16, 2010.
Caroline P. Mauldin joined the Obama Administration in September 2009. She leads the policy work of the Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs on a range of issues, including economic security, financial inclusion, innovation, and global partnerships. She is also the Under Secretary's lead speechwriter. Prior to joining the State Department, she worked for global microfinance leader ACCION International and was on the founding team of the affiliated think tank, the Center for Financial Inclusion. She has also worked on international trade justice at the international development NGO, Oxfam America, and on public health issues at President Jimmy Carter's organization, The Carter Center, in Atlanta, Georgia. Originally from South Carolina, Caroline has worked and traveled throughout Latin America and Africa. She is fluent in Spanish and holds a degree with honors in International Relations and Latin American Studies from Tufts University. September 28, 2011.
GINGER P. McCALL
Ginger McCall is Associate Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). She works on a variety of issues at EPIC, including consumer protection, open government requests, amicus curiae briefs, and national security matters. She litigates EPIC's Freedom of Information Act lawsuits and is a co-editor of Litigation Under the Federal Government Laws 2010. Ginger has co-authored several amicus curiae briefs on privacy issues filed in the Supreme Court of the United States. She has been invited to speak on privacy and open government issues in a variety of academic and conference venues, including the 2009 Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference; the Internet Governance Forum USA 2009 Conference; and the New England Consortium of State Labor Relations Agencies' 11th Annual Conference. She also has provided expert commentary for local, national, and international media, including NPR, MSNBC, and Al Jazeera. Ginger is a graduate of Cornell Law School and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh with a B.A. in English Literature. While in law school, she interned at the American Civil Liberties Union in Pittsburgh and at EPIC. She also was president of the Cornell Law School National Lawyers Guild and was awarded Cornell's Freeman Prize for Civil and Human Rights. March 18, 2014 (moderator); March 18, 2013; March 16, 2012; March 14, 2011.
KELLY B. McCLANAHAN
Kel McClanahan is an attorney specializing in national security law and information and privacy law. He received his Master of Arts cum laude in Security Studies from the Georgetown University Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, his J.D. from the Washington College of Law, and his Master of Laws in National Security Law from the Georgetown University Law Center. Before chartering National Security Counselors with his fellow directors, he was Director of FOIA Operations for the James Madison Project and Of Counsel to the Law Office of Mark S. Zaid, P.C. In addition to his work with National Security Counselors, he is Of Counsel to the law firm of Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, LLP, and he teaches National Security Law at the University of the District of Columbia and Point Park University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He also sits on the Board of Directors of the National Military Intelligence Association and serves as Associate Editor for the American Intelligence Journal. Kel is admitted to the bars of New York, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Supreme Court, and several other federal courts. March 16, 2012.
PATRICE McDERMOTT
Patrice McDermott is Executive Director of OpenTheGovernment.org, a coalition of more than seventy consumer and good government groups, environmentalists, journalists, library groups, labor, and others united to make the federal government a more open place in order to make the public safer, strengthen public trust in government, and support our democratic principles. The coalition and its staff have played an instrumental role in every positive change of the past several years for government openness. OpenTheGovernment.org promotes and amplifies the change by serving as informal advisors to the White House and to several agencies on issues of concern to our community and the public (such as the Open Government Directive and the high-value data sets on Data.gov, the Executive Order on Classified National Security Information, the initiatives of the White House related to "sensitive but unclassified" information, implementation of the 2007 FOIA amendments, and issues of electronic records management).
Dr. McDermott joined OpenTheGovernment.org as Director in July 2006, after more than four years as the Deputy Director of the Office of Government Relations at the American Library Association Washington Office. At the ALA, she was the lead lobbyist on the USA PATRIOT Act, federal privacy issues, and issues of access to government information, particularly in the post-September 11th environment. She joined ALA in December 2001, after having served for eight years as the senior information policy analyst for OMB Watch. While at OMB Watch during the 1990s, her work included co-authoring two studies of the implementation of the Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments of 1996 and coordination of the non-profit openness community's efforts in stopping the enactment of what would have been the equivalent of an official secrets act in the U.S. Previously, she worked for the National Archives and Records Administration.
Dr. McDermott is the author of Who Needs to Know? The State of Public Access to Federal Information. On March 16, 2011, she received the James Madison Award from the American Library Association in recognition of her work to champion, protect, and promote public access to government information and the public's right to know. She was inducted into the Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame in 2001, is a frequent speaker on public access and e-government issues, and has testified at congressional hearings on these issues and others. She was awarded her doctorate from the University of Arizona in political science, an M.A. in political science from Brown University, and she received an M.Ln. in library and information management from Emory University. September 27, 2013 (moderator); January 17, 2013; January 20, 2012 (moderator); September 28, 2011 (moderator); January 20, 2011; January 20, 2010; January 29, 2009; January 16, 2008.
KATHERINE McFATE
Katherine McFate became the President and CEO of OMB Watch in July 2011. Before taking the helm at OMB Watch, she was a Program Officer at the Ford Foundation, where she developed and led a grantmaking program on Transparent, Effective, and Accountable Government. In this capacity, she supported efforts in the U.S. and globally to create new standards, rules, and practices to make government more open and accountable to the needs and priorities of ordinary people and bring excluded and disenfranchised communities into the political process.
Previously, as a Deputy Director of domestic programs at the Rockefeller Foundation, Katherine directed a research and policy program to strengthen the economic resiliency of American workers in the face of globalization, outsourcing, and the contracting out of public services. In this capacity, and also at the Ford Foundation, she supported networks of state and local organizations across the country working to promote a more equitable, inclusive, and democratic America. Throughout her work, she has been involved in communications initiatives to understand public attitudes toward government and increase public understanding of and support for the public sector. She has extensive experience with survey research and strategic communications.
Prior to her career in philanthropy, Katherine directed social policy programs for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, authoring a number of reports on U.S. welfare, urban, and employment policies, as well as editing a comparative policy book, Poverty, Inequality and the Future of Social Policy: Western States in the New World Order. Before coming to Washington, she lectured at Yale University, where she took her graduate degrees and was a Special Advisor to the City of New Haven on its youth employment programs and anti-poverty policies. She grew up in Columbia, Missouri. September 28, 2011.
TOBY McINTOSH
Toby McIntosh, a former White House correspondent for the Bureau of National Affairs, was the longtime managing editor of BNA's flagship Daily Report for Executives and now is its Director of Editorial Quality. An expert in transparency at international governing bodies and multi-national financial institutions, he also is Steering Committee Coordinator of the Global Transparency Initiative and recently took on the responsibility of Managing Editor of freedominfo.org, an online network of international freedom of information advocates, which has involved extensive coverage of the Open Government Partnership. Over the course of his career as a reporter, he has covered antitrust, consumer protection, the Office of Management and Budget, information policy, the relationship between emerging technologies and government, Senate "holds," and regulatory reform. During the 1980s and early 1990s, he covered the Reagan and Bush 41 Administrations as a member of the White House Press Corps, then spent 15 years at the helm of Daily Report for Executives, also editing four other publications during those years. Toby received the Joseph Brechner Freedom of Information Award in 1990 for groundbreaking articles on the then-enormous roadblocks to obtaining access to electronic records, is the recipient of 1992 awards from the National Press Association and the Newsletter Publishers Foundation for an article on Senate "holds," and also has won awards from the American Library Association, the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, and the business Council for the Reduction of Paperwork. Most recently, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Washington, D.C. Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Government from Oberlin College. September 28, 2012; September 28, 2011; September 28, 2010; September 28, 2009.
JANET M. McLEAN
Janet McLean holds the position of Professor of Law and Governance at Dundee Law School, University of Dundee, in Dundee, Scotland. Prior to 2006, she was an Associate Professor at the University of Auckland Faculty of Law, where she also served as Deputy Dean during 1999-2001. She has held visiting fellowships at the Australian National University (2001), at the University of Dundee (2005), at Princeton University (2010), and she was the George P. Smith Distinguished Visiting Professor at Indiana University at Bloomington in 2003. She has acted as an advisor to the New Zealand government on numerous occasions, serving on the Legislation Advisory Committee and on a ministerial inquiry into Human Rights Protection in New Zealand (2000), and she has also contributed to the work of the World Health Organisation in the Western Pacific. Professor McLean is widely published across public law topics, including in human rights, the organisation of health services, the nature of the executive, privatisation, judicial review, and the effect of international law in domestic courts. She holds an LL.B degree (Hons.) from Victoria University of Wellington, an LL.M degree from the University of Michigan, and is enrolled as a barrister and solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand. September 28, 2010.
Lydia Medland has been with Access Info Europe since September 2008. She works as a researcher and campaigner and coordinates the Freedom of Information Advocates Network, as well as other initiatives and projects. With Access Info, she has researched and published four reports, on aid transparency, civil liberties, and anti-corruption: Not Available! Not Accessible!; The Right to Know: Europe and the Police; The Anti-Corruption Transparency Monitoring Methodology; and Rendition on Record. Lydia has been involved in Access Info's work with the Coalición pro Acceso, the campaign for an Access to Information law in Spain. She also has developed campaign and outreach strategies for several of Access Info's projects such as its project for journalists and its work on civil liberties. Lydia's current areas of research are the relationship between access to information and public participation and decisionmaking, as well as the relationship between access to information and anti-corruption mechanisms such as the UN Convention Against Corruption. Based in Madrid, Lydia has also worked on other civil society campaigns. She coordinated the Spanish premiere of the hit film about climate change, The Age of Stupid, an event that took place in 69 countries worldwide. Lydia has a first-class honours degree in International Relations from the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. Her native language is English and she is fluent in Spanish. September 28, 2012.
Dan Metcalfe joined the faculty of the Washington College of Law in 2007 as a Faculty Fellow in Law and Government upon retiring from a career in government service that began at the Department of Justice more than 40 years ago. He now is both an adjunct professor at WCL and executive director of the school's Collaboration on Government Secrecy, which was founded as the first academic center of its kind in 2007. A 1976 graduate of the National Law Center at George Washington University, where he was a law review editor and attended on a full academic scholarship, he worked at the Justice Department both as a teenage intern during college and as a law clerk in the Office of the Attorney General during law school. In 1981, after a federal judicial clerkship and serving as a Justice Department trial attorney, he was appointed to the position of founding director of the Department's Office of Information and Privacy (OIP). For more than a quarter-century in that position, he guided all federal agencies on the governmentwide administration of the Freedom of Information Act, directly supervised the defense of more than 500 FOIA and Privacy Act lawsuits in district and appellate courts, testified before Congress and authored Attorney General FOIA memoranda for successive presidential administrations, and met with representatives of nearly 100 nations and international governing bodies as they considered the development and implementation of their own government transparency laws. He became a career member of the Senior Executive Service in 1984, the youngest Justice Department attorney then and since to hold such a position, and he is the author of several publications, most recently Amending the FOIA: Is it Time for a Real Exemption 10?, 37 Admin. & Reg. L. News 16 (Summer 2012); From FOIA Service to Lip Service: The Unexpected Story of White House Visitor Logs, 36 Admin. & Reg. L. News 3 (Spring 2011); The Nature of Government Secrecy, 26 Gov't Info. Quarterly 305 (2009); and Sunshine Not So Bright: FOIA Implementation Lags Behind, 34 Admin. & Reg. L. News 5 (Summer 2009).
In 2010, he was appointed as a member of the World Bank's Access to Information Appeals Board, an independent tribunal empowered to make final decisions on appeals taken under the Bank's new worldwide information disclosure policy, together with board members from India and France holding final authority to order the public disclosure of World Bank records. In 2009, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Inaugural Sino-American Dialogue on Rule of Law and Human Rights in China (followed by further dialogues in Xiemen and Beijing in 2010 and New York in 2011), and he has given dozens of presentations on international transparency around the world. He also holds positions as an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London, as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), and as a contributing editor of the Administrative Law & Regulatory News publication of the American Bar Association's Section of Administrative Law. On behalf of CGS, he has testified before both the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Senate Judiciary Committee as an expert in governmentwide FOIA administration and the proper implementation of new FOIA policy. Most recently, he was elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and successfully litigated a Privacy Act lawsuit on behalf of Department of Justice Honor's Program applicants who were subjected to a corrupt political screening process during the tenure of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, resulting in the payment of damages, attorney fees, and costs totaling more than a half-million dollars.
Tegan Millspaw is a Professional Staff Member for Chairman Issa on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. She joined the Committee in January 2011 and works on transparency policy, federal financial management, and government organization. She formerly served as FOIA Program Manager at Judicial Watch. Tegan is a graduate of George Washington University (M.P.S., Legislative Affairs, 2011) and Allegheny College (B.A., Music and History, 2007). March 18, 2013; March 16, 2012.
Matt Miner is the Senate Judiciary Committee's chief minority counsel for crime, terrorism and oversight. During his time with the Committee, he has handled Senator Arlen Specter's hearings and legislation relating to detainees, interrogation, state secrets, and habeas corpus. Prior to his work with the Senate, Matt was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Middle District of Alabama, where he served as Corporate Fraud Coordinator and managed the largest corporate fraud investigation in the district's history. Matt is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati and the University of Michigan Law School, where he was elected to Order of the Coif. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Richard W. Vollmer, Jr., United States District Judge for the Southern District of Alabama. March 17, 2008.
Kirsten Mitchell is a facilitator with the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), the FOIA Ombudsman's office located at the National Archives and Records Administration. Before joining OGIS in 2010, she spent two years at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and a year at the Sunshine in Government Initiative, a coalition of media groups that worked to gain passage of the OPEN Government Act of 2007, which amended the FOIA and created OGIS. A former journalist, most recently with the New York Times Co., Kirsten frequently used state and federal records to shine a light on how government operates. Her involvement in a federal press freedom case in the late 1990s fueled her interest in government transparency issues. Kirsten earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Mary Washington College and her Master of Arts degree in journalism and public affairs from American University. She earned a certificate in federal workplace mediation in 2011 from Northern Virginia Mediation Service, an affiliate of the George Mason University School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, and she is a member of the American Society of Access Professionals. January 17, 2013; March 16, 2012.
Alan Morrison is the Lerner Family Associate Dean for Public Interest & Public Service Law, and also holds the title of Professorial Lecturer in Law, at George Washington University Law School. He received his undergraduate degree from Yale College in 1959 and his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1966. In between his studies, he served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy. His early legal career includes working as an attorney at Cleary Gottlieb and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York. In 1972, Dean Morrison teamed up with Ralph Nader to found and direct the Public Citizen Litigation Group, the litigating arm of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, which became the premier public interest organization advocating for greater government openness. For several decades, he mentored and led a generation of public interest lawyers who aggressively used FOIA litigation as means of obtaining vital information from the government for public interest purposes.
Over the span of his career, Dean Morrison has argued twenty cases before the United States Supreme Court. One of his more well-known cases is Immigration & Naturalization Service v. Chadha (1983), where he fought for a client with no real nationality to not face deportation from the United States. The attorney general had suspended proceedings, but the House of Representatives created a resolution that ordered the man deported. Dean Morrison persuaded the High Court that the legislative veto was unconstitutional -- a holding that affected separation of powers and constitutional law and was just as ground-breaking in administrative and public interest law. In 2004, he retired from Public Citizen to work at Stanford Law School as a senior lecturer on administrative and public interest law. He has taught at several law schools, including Harvard, Georgetown, New York University, Tulane University, China's Fudan University, and the Washington College of Law. March 16, 2012; March 14, 2011 (keynote speaker).
Sean Moulton is the Director of Information Policy at OMB Watch, where he focuses on increasing government transparency with special attention to environmental information and right-to-know issues. One of his first jobs was as Environmental Researcher and Data Manager for the Council on Economic Priorities (CEP), manipulating and analyzing environmental information that is disseminated under the policies he now advocates. Prior to joining OMB Watch, Sean honed his lobbying and policy analysis skills as the Tax Policy Analyst at Friends of the Earth. His work experience also includes several years as a research fellow with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Industry Sector Policy Division. Recent priority work at OMB Watch for Sean has included coordinating nationwide opposition to EPA's cutbacks to the Toxic Release Inventory and overseeing the development of FedSpending.org, a groundbreaking new Web site that allows users to easily search and browse trillions of dollars in federal spending. For years, OMB Watch has also operated the Right-to-Know Network (RTK NET), a Web site that provides public access to almost a dozen environmental databases. Sean will be helping to bring lessons learned from FedSpending.org to a redesign of the environmental database functions on RTK NET. He received a Master's of Public Policy degree from the University of Maryland and has a B.A. in Economics and English. March 18, 2013 (moderator); January 17, 2013 (moderator); January 20, 2012 (moderator); January 20, 2011; January 20, 2010; November 18, 2009; March 16, 2009; March 17, 2008.
Isabel Munilla is the Director of the U.S. chapter of Publish What You Pay (PWYP), a global civil society coalition of over 600 faith-based, human rights, anti-poverty, anti-corruption, and development organizations working in nearly 70 countries to push for transparency in the payments made by the oil, gas, and mining sectors to governments. Last year, PWYP was the winner of the Commitment to Development Ideas in Action Award given jointly by the Center for Global Development and Foreign Policy magazine. Isabel joined PWYP US in January 2010 to lead and coordinate the coalition's advocacy for improved policies within the U.S. government, multinational companies, and international financial institutions, and to support its work on the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI). Most notably, Isabel led the PWYP US campaign's 2010 drive to pass Section 1504 of the U.S. Dodd-Frank Act, which requires oil, gas, and mining companies registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission to publish their payments to governments as part of their annual reports to the Commission. Most recently she worked to ensure that the U.S. government featured a commitment to domestic EITI implementation as part of their Open Government Partnership. Previously, Isabel worked for nine years at the World Resources Institute, conducting research with civil society partners on the social and environmental impacts and benefits of natural resource extraction. She was the principal author of People, Power, and Pipelines: Lessons from Peru in the Governance of Gas Production Revenues and co-authored Breaking Ground: Engaging Communities in Extractives and Infrastructure Projects. She has worked with civil society coalitions in the Amazon region, Indonesia, Russia, and Central Africa to examine the governance challenges inherent in extractive industries and the forestry sector, and the associated role of corporations and international financial institutions in influencing national and private systems of risk mitigation and management in these sectors. She holds degrees in French and Journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park. September 28, 2011.
Sylvester Murray is Professor of Government and Public Administration at Savannah State University, where he also is Coordinator of the Master of Public Administration program. Additionally, he is Professor Emeritus at Cleveland State University in Ohio, where he concentrated on city management teaching, collaborations, and consulting. Before becoming a professor, he was a senior consulting associate with Coopers and Lybrand. For a combined total of eighteen years prior to that, he served as city manager for the cities of Inkster (Michigan), Ann Arbor, Cincinnati, and San Diego.
Professor Murray has published research articles on city management in Public Administration Review, Journal of Public Management and Social Policy, On-line Minowbrook Three, and a book chapter in Justice for All: Promoting Social Equity in Public Administration. He participates annually in international research on comparative public administration and policy studies, and for ten years chaired the International Conference on Public Management, Policy, and Development (CIMPAD). He has a B.A. from Lincoln University, a Master's Degree in Local and State Governmental Administration from the Fels Institute of the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.A. in Economics from Eastern Michigan University. He graduated in Class 15 of the Federal Executive Institute. Professor Murray has served as President of the International City/County Management Association, President of the American Society for Public Administration, President of the National Conference of Minority Public Administrators, and Board Member of the National Forum for Black Public Administrators. He also is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, currently is Chair of its Africa Working Group, and chaired The World Bank Diaspora Governance Group. September 28, 2011.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler represents New York's Eighth Congressional District, one of the most diverse districts in the nation, which includes Manhattan's West Side below 89th Street, Lower Manhattan, and areas of Brooklyn such as Borough Park, Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Sea Gate, Bay Ridge, and Bensonhurst. Congressman Nadler was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1992 after serving for sixteen years in the New York State Assembly. Throughout his career, he has championed civil rights, civil liberties, efficient transportation, and a host of progressive issues such as access to health care, support for the arts, and protection of the Social Security system. He is considered an unapologetic defender of those who might otherwise be forgotten by American law or the economy, and he is respected specifically for his creative and pragmatic legislative approaches.
In his roles as an Assistant Whip and a senior member of both the House Judiciary Committee and the House Transportation Committee, Congressman Nadler has the opportunity on a daily basis to craft and shape the major laws that govern our country. As Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, he has introduced and advanced legislation aimed at reforming the state secrets privilege. From his leadership in response to the September 11th terrorist attacks on his district, to his insight and policymaking prominence on issues facing Israel and the Middle East, Congressman Nadler has constantly sought to be steadfast and responsive in his service to New York and the nation. November 18, 2009 (keynote speaker).
Oksana Nesterenko is an Associate Professor of Law in the Department of Ukrainian Constitutional Law at the National Law Academy of Ukraine, where she teaches constitutional law and media law, among other subjects. A leading expert on the Ukrainian freedom of information law, Professor Nesterenko serves as head of the Access to Information Committee of the Ukrainian Parliament and as an advisor to its commissioner for human rights. She is the author of numerous publications and was instrumental in the Ukrainian FOIA's enactment in 2011. September 27, 2013
Laura Neuman is Manager of The Carter Center's Access to Information Project and Associate Director of the Americas Program. She directs and implements all Carter Center transparency projects, including projects in Latin America, Africa, and China. She most recently organized and managed the International Conference on the Right to Public Information, convening more than 125 participants from 40 countries, and the follow-on Americas Conference and African Regional Conference on the Right of Access to Information. Laura edited six widely distributed guidebooks on fostering transparency and preventing corruption and has presented at numerous international seminars relating to Access to Information legislation and implementation. Her book and article publications include Enforcement Models: Content and Context; Making the Access to Information Law Work: Challenges of Implementation; Access to Information, A Key to Democracy; Using Freedom of Information Laws to Enforce Welfare Benefits Rights in the United States; and Compelling Disclosure of Campaign Contributions through Access to Information Laws: The South African Experience and Relevance for the Americas. She also has led and participated in international election monitoring missions throughout the Western hemisphere.
Laura has served as a member of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue task force on transparency; as a board member of the Center for Transparency and Access to Information Studies, Mexico; as a consultant to the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and a number of governments; and as an International Associate to the Open Democracy Advice Center, South Africa. As part of her transparency work, she also served as Executive Secretary for The Carter Center's Council for Ethical Business Practices. Prior to joining The Carter Center in August 1999, she was senior staff attorney for Senior Law at Legal Action of Wisconsin, and she is a 1993 graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School. September 28, 2010 (keynote speaker); March 17, 2008.
From March 2005 until January 2009, Carl Nichols worked as a political appointee at the Department of Justice, first as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division's Federal Programs Branch and then as the Justice Department's Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General. Prior to joining the Justice Department, he was a partner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner, where he litigated complex commercial cases at the trial and appellate levels, with an emphasis on class actions, antitrust, and international arbitrations. As the Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General, he advised the Associate Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, and the Attorney General on a wide range of legislative, regulatory, policy, and litigation matters; assisted the Associate Attorney General in overseeing thirteen Justice Department components with approximately 2000 lawyers, including five litigating divisions (Antitrust, Civil, Civil Rights, Environment and Natural Resources, and Tax) and the Office of Information and Privacy (OIP); participated actively in the litigation of the United States' most important and high-profile civil cases, including those involving the invocation of the state secrets privilege; and presented congressional testimony on the subject of the state secrets privilege in 2008. During his Justice Department tenure, he also served as the government's lead counsel in a number of landmark lawsuits, including the House Judiciary Committee's lawsuit seeking to enforce subpoenas issued to senior White House officials (House Judiciary Comm. v. Miers), various suits filed against telecommunications companies following public disclosure of the initial form of the Terrorist Surveillance Program (In re Nat'l Security Agency Telecommunications Records Litig.), and several suits filed by the federal government to enjoin state investigations into alleged activities of the National Security Agency.
Carl received his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1996 (with high honors), and his B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1992 (with high honors in Philosophy). Following law school, he clerked for Circuit Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States. After spending the first six months of 2009 in Argentina with his wife and three children, he now lives in Washington, D.C. November 18, 2009.
MIRIAM McINTIRE NISBET
Miriam Nisbet returned from Paris in 2009 to accept a career Senior Executive Service appointment as Founding Director of the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the FOIA ombudsman and governmentwide policy office created by the 2007 FOIA Amendments. During the two previous years, she was Director of the Information Society Division of UNESCO in Paris, and she also served on the Obama Transition Team. Prior to that, she was Legislative Counsel at the American Library Association from 1999 to 2007, where she was a member of the U.S. Delegation to the Hague Conference on Private International Law representing libraries, and she worked at NARA from 1993 to 1999, where she first occupied the post of Special Assistant to the Archivist of the United States and then Special Counsel for Information Policy. She was a staff attorney at the National Association of Attorneys General during 1977-1978, before joining the Department of Justice, where she worked from 1978 to 1993.
At the Justice Department, Miriam served for nearly a dozen years as the Deputy Director of the Office of Information and Privacy (OIP), in connection with which she also held a senior leadership position as part of the national continuity-of-government team for several years. She is a member of the American Bar Association and of the American Law Institute, and she also is a long-time member of the American Society of Access Professionals, serving as its President and as a member of its Board of Directors. Representing libraries, she was President of the Americans For Fair Electronic Commerce Transactions (AFFECT). In her capacity as Director of OGIS, she represented the United States at the Seventh International Conference of Information Commissioners held in Ottawa in 2011 and at the Eighth International Conference of Information Commissioners held in Berlin in 2013. She also serves as Chairperson of the Committee on Collaborative Governance of the Administrative Conference of the U.S. (ACUS) and has testified before congressional oversight committees on governmentwide FOIA administration on behalf of the Obama Administration in both the Senate and the House several times, most recently before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 2014. March 18, 2014; January 17, 2013; March 16, 2012; September 28, 2011; March 14, 2011 (luncheon speaker); January 20, 2011; January 20, 2010; September 28, 2009; September 28, 2007.
Tolulope Odukoya was born in Nigeria, where she graduated from law school and practiced law before coming to WCL to receive an LL.M degree in Law and Government. In Nigeria, she worked as a legal advisor in the Nigerian National Assembly, where she became familiar with Nigeria's new freedom of information law. She also worked as the legal officer of an NGO and concurrently managed her own law firm, primarily focusing in corporate law and contracts. September 27, 2013.
Jim O'Reilly has taught at the University of Cincinnati College of Law since 1980 and has authored more than thirty-five textbooks and 165 articles on aspects of regulation and liability. In March 2000, his treatise on food and drug law was quoted by the U.S. Supreme Court with the words, "The experts have written." In 2007, he completed a term as Assistant Chief Reporter for the European Union-funded Project on EU Administrative Law. His treatise and article work have been adopted favorably by the D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Courts of Wisconsin and Maine, among others. His articles have appeared in the Cornell Law Review, the Vanderbilt Law Review, and in law reviews at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Penn, and other institutions. He serves as treasurer of the 164-year-old Cincinnati Law Library Association and was a candidate for the Ohio Court of Appeals in 2006.
Professor O'Reilly has been a consultant to the U.S. Senate on the Congressional Accountability Act implementation and to the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission on improvement of FTC Freedom of Information Act practices. He has advised numerous federal and state agencies. In 2006, he was the keynote speaker at the Food & Drug Administration's 100th anniversary celebration for the FDA Midwest Region. He serves as an expert witness and adviser on numerous litigation and counseling projects. He is also vice mayor of the city of Wyoming, Ohio, treasurer of the First Suburbs Coalition, member of the Intermodal Coordinating Committee for transportation in the region, and a trustee of the Ohio Kentucky Indiana Regional Council of Governments. April 27, 2011 (luncheon speaker).
Maria Otero was sworn in as Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs on August 10, 2009. She oversees and coordinates U.S. foreign relations on a variety of global issues, including democracy, human rights, and labor; environment, oceans, health, and science; population, refugees, and migration; and monitoring and combating trafficking in persons. She also serves as the Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues. Ms. Otero was formerly the president and CEO of ACCION International, a pioneer and leader in microfinance working in 25 countries around the globe. During Ms. Otero's tenure as CEO, ACCION's network of microfinance institutions expanded its reach from serving 460,000 people to over 3.7 million, through a combined portfolio that grew from $274 million to nearly $3.6 billion. She is a leading voice on sustainable microfinance, publishing extensively on the subject and speaking throughout the world on microfinance, women's issues, and poverty alleviation. Prior to ACCION, Ms. Otero was the Economist for Latin America for the Women in Development office of USAID. She also served for five years at the Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA).
In June 2006, Ms. Otero was appointed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the UN Advisors Group on Inclusive Financial Sectors. She has chaired the board of Bread for the World, and also served on the boards of the Calvert Foundation, Public Welfare Foundation, the Inter-American Foundation, and BRAC Holding of Bangladesh. Born in La Paz, Bolivia, Ms. Otero is currently the highest-ranking Hispanic official at the State Department and the first Latina Under Secretary in its history.
Ms. Otero is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She was named by Newsweek as one of the United States' 20 most influential women in October 2005 and was one of Hispanic Business Magazine's "Elite Women of 2007." Notre Dame University honored her with the Distinguished Service in Latin America Award, and she has also received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. Ms. Otero holds an M.A. in literature from the University of Maryland, an M.A. in international relations from Johns Hopkins' Nitze School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C., and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Dartmouth College. From 1997 to 2009, she also served as an adjunct professor at SAIS. September 28, 2011.
James F. Peterson, an attorney with broad experience in complex litigation, is a senior member of Judicial Watch's legal team. His breadth of knowledge and experience have contributed greatly to Judicial Watch's success as he has played a key role in some of Judicial Watch's most significant cases. These include Judicial Watch's case before the Supreme Court concerning Vice President Cheney Energy Task Force documents (Judicial Watch v. Nat'l Energy Policy Dev. Group) and many of Judicial Watch's groundbreaking lawsuits seeking to compel the enforcement of the nation's immigration laws. Most recently, he has worked closely with the Arizona State Legislature in its legal defense of Arizona's "S.B. 1070" immigration enforcement law. Prior to joining Judicial Watch in 2002, Mr. Peterson was a member of the litigation practice of a large national law firm in Washington, D.C., representing business clients in federal and state courts and administrative proceedings. He also was in the litigation department of a major national trade association, representing the industry in complex tax and administrative litigation. Mr. Peterson is a graduate of the George Mason University School of Law, where he was the Articles Editor of the school's Civil Rights Law Journal, and he received his undergraduate degree from Kent State University in Ohio. He is an active member of the Federalist Society and other conservative organizations, as well as a member of the bars of the District of Columbia, Virginia, and numerous federal courts, including the Supreme Court. March 18, 2013.
Celisse Pinkney is a senior research assistant for the Collaboration on Government Secrecy. A third-year student at the Washington College of Law, she now is in her fourth academic semester of being a vital part of CGS. She holds an undergraduate degree in politics and history from Occidental College, where she also gained the experience in conducting political and public policy surveys that she applied to development of both the on-site and electronic versions of the survey used for this program. She plans to take the California bar exam and to practice law in the public sector upon graduation in May 2009. January 29, 2009.
Suzanne Piotrowski is Associate Professor of Public Affairs and administration at Rutgers University-Newark. For the 2009/2010 academic year she held the position of Faculty Fellow in the Office of the Chancellor. Dr. Piotrowski is the chair of the American Society for Public Administration's Ethics section. She founded and moderates the International Transparency and Secrecy Research Network listserv. She served as the conference chair of the 1st Global Conference on Transparency Research that took place at Rutgers University-Newark in May 2011. She has consulted with the World Bank Institute on an evaluation of Thailand's Official Information Act and with the Carter Center on a project assessing how access to information differentially affects women. Her research focuses on nonmission-based values in public administration, including administrative transparency and ethics. She authored the book Governmental Transparency in the Path of Administrative Reform, the State of University of New York Press (2007). In 2010, Lexington Books published her latest volume, Governmental Transparency and Secrecy: Linking Literature and Contemporary Debate.
Dr. Piotrowski has written widely on public management, accountability, and transparency issues including book chapters, journal articles, case studies, and encyclopedia articles. Her work is published in Public Administration Review, the American Review of Public Administration, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Government Information Quarterly, Pubic Administration Quarterly, Public Administration and Management, Chinese Public Administration Review, the Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce, Open Government: a journal on Freedom of Information, Transparencia y Privacidad, Revista Mexicana de Acceso a la Información y Protección de Datos, the Journal of Cooperative Education, and the Journal of Public Works Management and Policy. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from American University and an M.P.A. from the University of Delaware. September 27, 2013 (keynote speaker).
Harvey Pitt is the Chief Executive Officer of the global business consulting firm Kalorama Partners, LLC, and its law firm affiliate, Kalorama Legal Services, PLLC. Prior to founding the two Kalorama firms, Mr. Pitt served as the twenty-sixth Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. In that role, from 2001 until 2003, Mr. Pitt was responsible, among other things, for overseeing the SEC's response to the market disruptions resulting from the terrorist attacks of 9/11, for creating the SEC's "real time enforcement" program, and for leading the Commission's adoption of dozens of rules in response to the corporate and accounting crises generated by the excesses of the 1990s. For nearly a quarter of a century before becoming the SEC's Chairman, Mr. Pitt was a senior corporate partner in the international law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. He was a founding trustee and the first President of the SEC Historical Society, and participates in a wide variety of bar and continuing legal education activities to further public consideration of significant corporate and securities law issues. Mr. Pitt served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center (1975-84), George Washington University Law School (1974-82), the University of Pennsylvania School of Law (1983-84), and Yale Law School (2007).
Former Chairman Pitt served previously with the SEC, from 1968 until 1978, including three years as the Commission's General Counsel (1975-78). He received a J.D. degree from St. John's University School of Law (1968) and his B.A. from the City University of New York (Brooklyn College) (1965). He was awarded an honorary LL.D. by St. John's University in June 2002, and was given the Brooklyn College President's Medal of Distinction in 2003. Mr. Pitt is currently a Director of GWU Medical Faculty Associates, Inc., a section 501(c)(3) corporation that provides comprehensive medical care to residents of the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, and serves on its Audit Committee. He is a member of the Global Advisory Forum of the CQS Hedge Fund and a member of the Regulatory and Compliance Advisory Council of Millennium Management LLC. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Paulson & Co., Inc. He previously served for three years on the National Cathedral School's Board of Trustees, where he was at various times Board Vice-Chair, Co-Chair of the Board's Governance Committee, and Chair of the Audit and Compensation Committees. Mr. Pitt previously served as a Director of Approva Corporation and was a member of its Audit Committee. March 14, 2011.
John Podesta is the President and CEO of the Center for American Progress, which under his leadership has become a notable leader in the development of and advocacy for progressive policy. Prior to founding the Center in 2003, Mr. Podesta served as White House Chief of Staff to President William J. Clinton. He served in the president's cabinet and as a principal on the National Security Council. While in the White House, he also served as both an assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff, as well as staff secretary and a senior policy advisor on government information, privacy, telecommunications security, and regulatory policy. Most recently, Mr. Podesta served as co-chair of President Obama's transition team, where he coordinated the priorities of the incoming Administration's agenda, oversaw the development of its policies, and spearheaded its appointments of major cabinet secretaries and political appointees.
Additionally, Mr. Podesta has held numerous positions on Capitol Hill, including counselor to Democratic Leader Senator Thomas A. Daschle (1995-1996); chief counsel for the Senate Agriculture Committee (1987-1988); and chief minority counsel for the Senate Judiciary Subcommittees on Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks, on Security and Terrorism, and on Regulatory Reform. A Chicago native, he is a graduate of Knox College and Georgetown University Law Center, where he currently is a visiting professor of law. He also authored The Power of Progress: How America's Progressives Can (Once Again) Save Our Economy, Our Climate, and Our Country. March 14, 2011; March 16, 2010 (keynote speaker).
David Pozen joined the faculty of Columbia Law School in July 2012 as associate professor of law, with research interests in several areas of public law and in non-profit organizations. From 2010 to 2012, he served as special advisor to the Department of State's Legal Adviser, Harold Hongju Koh. Previously, he clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court (2009-2010) and for Judge Merrick B. Garland on the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (2008-2009). From 2007 to 2008, he served as special assistant to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee. While at Yale Law School, he was a book reviews editor of the Yale Law Journal and an Olin Fellow in Law, Economics, and Public Policy. He was awarded the Scharps Prize for best paper by a third-year student (2007), the Townsend Prize for best paper by a second-year student (2006), the Cohen Prize for best paper on a subject related to literature and the law (2007), and the Gherini Prize for best paper on international law or conflict of laws (2006). In addition to his law degree from Yale, he holds an M.Sc. in Comparative Social Policy (distinction from Oxford University and a B.A. in Economics (summa cum laude) from Yale College. He is a member of the District of Columbia and Massachusetts bars. In 2013, the Columbia Society of International Law recognized Professor Pozen with its Faculty Honors Award. April 25, 2013 (keynote speaker).
Pam Bartlett Quintanilla is a researcher and project coordinator who has worked with the Access Info team since February 2010. Her specialist interests include transparency of international organisations and business transparency. Pam coordinates research, partner networking, and advocacy on European Union Transparency, including work on Access Info's Court Case against the Council of the European Union, the revision of the EU Regulation on access to official documents, improvement of the Parliament and Commission's joint Transparency Register, and coordination of the EU Citizens project. She represents Access Info Europe on the steering committee of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation, and she also is engaged in the European Coalition for Corporate Justice. Additionally, Pam is involved in Access Info's civil liberties projects, in www.AsktheEU.org, and in the promotion of an access to information law in Spain via the 100 Question Campaign. She also coordinates the Access Info Europe Help Desk. Pam has a postgraduate degree from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) in Inequality, Cooperation, and Development (Desigualdad, Cooperación y Desarrollo), and she holds a degree in Politics and Sociology (MA Hons.) from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland (UK), which included a year studying in Grenoble, France. Now based in Madrid, she works in English, Spanish, and French. September 28, 2012.
Kathy Ray has served as the Department of Transportation's FOIA Officer since 2003. As Departmental FOIA Officer, Kathy provides leadership and direction to the Department's 12 components, develops formal and informal FOIA guidance, conducts monthly meetings with DOT-wide administrative and legal FOIA contacts, and oversees preparation of the FOIA annual report and the Chief FOIA Officer's report. She conducts reviews of the components' FOIA programs, makes recommendations for improvement, and monitors implementation activity. Kathy also serves as the FOIA Officer for the Office of the Secretary for Transportation; in this capacity, she oversees the work of a FOIA team and personally handles some of the more complex, controversial, and sensitive requests. Prior to her current position, Kathy managed the FOIA programs in two components within the Department of Transportation -- the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (2001-2003) and the Federal Highway Administration (1999-2001). January 17, 2013.
Frank Reeder writes about, consults on, and teaches leadership, information policy, and public management after a career of more than 35 years in public service. Frank served at the Office of Management and Budget for two stints totaling more than 20 years between 1970 and 1995, where he was chief of Information Policy, Deputy Associate Director for Veterans Affairs and Personnel, and Assistant Director for General Management. Among his accomplishments while a member of the information policy staff and later as its chief, is that he represented the Ford and Reagan Administrations in negotiating and securing enactment of the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Computer Security Act of 1987 and wrote the OMB guidelines on implementing the Privacy Act. While at OMB, he was the U.S. Delegate to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Public Management Committee (OECD/PUMA) from 1992-1995 and he chaired that committee from 1993-1995. From 1977-1980, he was Deputy Director of the House Information Systems, the computers and telecommunications support arm of the House of Representatives. From 1995-1997, he served as Director of the Office of Administration of the Executive Office of the President. From 2004-2010, he served as a coach in the Council for Excellence in Government/Partnership for Public Service excellence in the government leadership fellows program. In 2008 he was a senior member of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team, serving on the OMB and White House agency review teams and also the technology innovation and government reform team, with particular emphasis on the performance and accountability agenda.
Frank is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and served on its board of directors from 2003-2009. He is a member of the Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency, the Arlington County Virginia Information Technology Advisory Commission, the Social Security Commissioner's advisory panel on Future Systems Technology and the boards of the Collaborative Governance Research Institute and the Center for Internet Security, which he co-founded. He recently helped found and chairs the council of directors of the National Board of Information Security Examiners. His most recent publication, "A Human Capital Crisis in Cybersecurity," a white paper of the Cybersecurity Commission co-authored with Karen Evans, was released in November of 2010. He also teaches in the executive master's program at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy. January 20, 2012 (keynote speaker); January 29, 2009.
Hal Relyea was a specialist in American national government with the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress from 1971 until retiring in January 2009. In that capacity, he produced numerous major studies for Congress, including analyses of the office and powers of the president, executive branch organization and management, congressional oversight, and various aspects of government information policy and practice. He has testified before congressional panels on various occasions, and also recently appeared before a committee of the European Parliament. In addition to his CRS duties, Dr. Relies has authored numerous articles for scholarly and professional publications in the United States and abroad. He is currently preparing a book on national emergency powers. His recently published titles include Silencing Science: National Security Controls and Scientific Communication (1994), Federal Information Policies in the 1990s (1996), The Executive Office of the President (1997), and United States Government Information: Policies and Sources (2002). He has served on the editorial board of Government Information Quarterly since its founding in 1984, and he has held similar positions with several other journals in the past. An undergraduate of Drew University, he received his doctoral degree in government from American University. March 16, 2009 (luncheon speaker).
Jim Rettig currently is president-elect of the American Library Association and a member of the board of the Freedom to Read Foundation. He previously served on the ALA's executive board and in a variety of elected and appointed positions in the association. He has worked in academic libraries in Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, and Virginia, and he currently is university librarian at the University of Richmond. The University of Wisconsin School of Library and Information Studies presented him with its Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2006. March 17, 2008.
Catalina Reyes is the U.S. Advocacy Officer for Publish What You Fund, an international organization that campaigns for aid transparency -- more and better information about aid -- by governments and private-sector donors alike. Catalina monitors Publish What You Fund's World Bank and U.S. foreign assistance and aid transparency while directly engaging with its counterparts who work on aid reform and aid effectiveness. Her background includes education reform and human rights advocacy in the nonprofit sector. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from Arizona State University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Catholic University in Washington, D.C. After fourteen years in the U.S., Catalina moved to London and joined Publish What You Fund in August 2009. September 28, 2011.
Michelle Richardson is a Legislative Counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington Legislative Office, focusing on national security and government transparency. She monitors and analyzes legislation and executive branch policy concerning the USA PATRIOT Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, cybersecurity, state secrets, whistleblower protection, and the Freedom of Information Act. Michelle is responsible for drafting legislative proposals, crafting the ACLU's congressional testimony and other formal communications to Congress and the Administration, and representing and advocating for the ACLU's position in regular meetings and communications with Members of Congress, the Administration, and their staffs. She also plays a key role in the design of lobbying, grassroots, and messaging strategies for ACLU members and activists and for legislative coalitions. She has provided legislative and political analysis and commentary to media outlets, blogs, and trade publications such as AP, UPI, The Washington Post, C-SPAN, CBS News, Time, CQ, Politico, Al Jazeera, NPR, Wired, Democracy Now, Talking Points Memo, and the Huffington Post. Before joining the ACLU in 2006, Michelle served for three years as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, where she specialized in national security, civil rights, and constitutional issues for Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI). Her work included drafting legislation and committee reports and conducting oversight of the Department of Justice's post-9/11 anti-terrorism policies. She is a graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder and received her law degree at WCL. January 20, 2012.
Fabiola Rivas is a third-year student at WCL, where she now is in her fourth semester as a Dean's Fellow for CGS. Born in Mexico, she is an alumna of the University of California at Berkeley and has also studied law at the University of Bologna, Italy. Between college and law school, she gained experience in the fields of communications, media, and intellectual property while working at JumpTV in San Francisco, where she drafted and negotiated licensing and distribution agreements for Internet and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) rights to soccer teams and TV channels around the world in Spanish, Italian, and English. During law school, in addition to working for CGS, Fabiola has interned at the Broadcasting Board of Governors and at the Federal Communications Commission. This past summer, she held a prestigious Google Policy Fellowship at the National Hispanic Media Coalition, where she worked on current Internet privacy and opt-out tracking policies, as well as the AT&T/T-Mobile Merger. Upon graduation, Fabiola hopes to expand her skills into the world of intellectual property law and move to San Francisco. September 28, 2011.
Kent Roach is a Professor of Law at the University of Toronto, where he holds the Prichard-Wilson Chair in Law and Public Policy. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and Yale and a former law clerk to Justice Bertha Wilson of the Supreme Court of Canada. His books include Constitutional Remedies in Canada (winner of the 1997 Owen Prize for best law book), Due Process and Victims' Rights: The New Law and Politics of Criminal Justice (short-listed for the 1999 Donner Prize for best public policy book), The Supreme Court on Trial: Judicial Activism or Democratic Dialogue (short-listed for the 2001 Donner Prize), September 11: Consequences for Canada (named one of the five most significant books of 2003 by the Literary Review of Canada), and (with Robert J. Sharpe) Brian Dickson: A Judge's Journey (winner of the 2004 J.W. Dafoe Prize for best contribution to the understanding of Canada). Professor Roach's most recent books are Criminal Law 4th and (with Robert J. Sharpe) The Charter of Rights and Freedoms 4th edition, both published in 2009.
Since 1998, Professor Roach has been editor-in-chief of the Criminal Law Quarterly. He has appeared as counsel before the Supreme Court of Canada, including in landmark cases such as Latimer, Stillman, and Sauve. Much of his current research is devoted to the study of comparative anti-terrorism law, and his work on that subject has been published in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He served on the research advisory committee of the Commission of Inquiry into the Activities of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar and as research director (legal studies) to the Inquiry into the Bombing of Air India Flight 182. He has also testified before Canadian Parliamentary and American congressional committees on terrorism related subjects. November 18, 2009.
Alasdair Roberts is the Jerome L. Rappaport Professor of Law and Public Policy at Suffolk University Law School. He writes extensively on problems of governance, law, and public policy. His next book, Disciplined Democracies: Global Capitalism and the New Architecture of Government, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2010. His last book, The Collapse of Fortress Bush: The Crisis of Authority in American Government, was published by New York University Press in 2008. Kirkus Reviews called it "a trenchant analysis of the last eight years of American political history." A previous book, Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age, received the 2006 Brownlow Book Award from the National Academy of Public Administration and three other academic book awards. He has also won several awards for his journal articles.
Professor Roberts was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration in 2007. He is also an Honorary Senior Research Fellow of the School of Public Policy, University College London. Previously he has had fellowships with the Open Society Institute and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is co-editor of the journal Governance and also on the editorial boards of several other journals in the field of public administration.
Before joining Suffolk Law, Professor Roberts was a professor of public administration in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and an associate professor of public administration at Queen's University, Canada. He received a J.D. from the University of Toronto in 1984, a Master's Degree in Public Policy from Harvard University in 1986, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University in 1994. His web address is www.aroberts.us. September 28, 2009 (keynote speaker).
Adina Rosenbaum is Director of the Freedom of Information Clearinghouse at the Public Citizen Litigation Group, in Washington, D.C., where she has practiced since September 2004. Adina received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude in 1998 and earning membership in Phi Beta Kappa. In 2003, she graduated from the New York University School of Law, where she was a member of the Order of the Coif and an editor of the New York University Law Review. Following law school, Adina clerked for the Honorable Martha Craig Daughtrey of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Her practice areas at the litigation group include general appellate litigation, open government, consumer safety, and first amendment issues. Many of her cases involve access to records under the Freedom of Information Act. Adina is admitted to the District of Columbia and New York bars, is an inactive member of the Massachusetts bar, and is admitted to practice before numerous federal courts. March 16, 2012; March 14, 2011; March 16, 2010; March 16, 2009.
Marc Rotenberg is Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, D.C. He teaches information privacy law at Georgetown University Law Center and has testified before Congress on many issues, including access to information, encryption policy, consumer protection, computer security, and communications privacy. He testified before the 9/11 Commission on "Security and Liberty: Protecting Privacy, Preventing Terrorism." Marc has served on several national and international advisory panels, including the expert panels on Cryptography Policy and Computer Security for the OECD, the Legal Experts on Cyberspace Law for UNESCO, and the Countering Spam program of the ITU. He currently chairs the ABA Committee on Privacy and Information Protection and he is the former Chair of the Public Interest Registry, which manages the .ORG domain. He also is editor of Privacy and Human Rights and The Privacy Law Sourcebook, and co-editor (with Daniel J. Solove and Paul Schwartz) of Information Privacy Law (Aspen Publishing 2007). A graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School, he served as Counsel to Senator Patrick J. Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee after graduation from law school. He is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the recipient of several awards, including the World Technology Award in Law. A tournament chess player, Marc won the 2007 and 2008 Washington, D.C. Chess Championships. March 16, 2010; April 28, 2009.
Tonda Rush is president of American PressWorks in Arlington, Va., and the former CEO of the National Newspaper Association and associate general counsel of the American Newspaper Publishers Association. American PressWorks represents the National Newspaper Association and manages its Washington office. She is an attorney, consultant, lecturer, and writer on issues involving the First Amendment, media law, and the newspaper business. Tonda began her career managing a small newspaper in Kansas and working as a reporter and editor in that region. She has been involved in First Amendment and open-access matters on behalf of the press since her days as director of the Freedom of Information Center of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in the early 1980s. She has taught media law as adjunct faculty at the American University School of Communication in Washington and the College of Journalism of the University of Maryland in College Park, Md. Tonda presently serves on the advisory board of the William Allen White Foundation and is on the boards of directors of the Student Press Law Center and the Virginia Coalition of Open Government. She is a graduate of the University of Kansas School of Law and the William Allen White School of Journalism. April 28, 2009.
John Sanet served as the Privacy Act Advisor for the Office of Workforce Information at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for nearly 30 years, from 1976 until his retirement in 2005. In that position, he was the principal advisor and policy developer for OPM with respect to the implementation and regulation of the Privacy Act, which required that his Privacy Act expertise be governmentwide in scope. He issued decisions on both access and amendment requests at both the initial level and the final administrative appeal stage, and he authored OPM's regulations implementing the Privacy Act within that agency as well as regulations concerning the policies on maintenance of the major governmentwide records systems under OPM's control. John also established and served as Secretary to OPM's Data Integrity Board, where he was instrumental in establishing computer matches in order to stop waste, fraud, and abuse in many government programs. He has lectured widely on all aspects of the Privacy Act for both federal agencies and organizations such as the American Society of Access Professionals (ASAP), the Department of Justice's Legal Education Institute, the Department of Energy, the Department of Labor, and the Social Security Administration. Since his retirement, John has served as a Privacy Act consultant for companies supporting projects at the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of the Navy, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as well as directly advising private-sector corporations and acting as an expert witness in a Privacy Act lawsuit. He received a B.A. from George Washington University and his J.D. from the University of Florida College of Law. March 18, 2014.
Heather Sawyer is majority counsel for the House Committee on the Judiciary's Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, chaired by Congressman Jerrold Nadler, where her recent work has focused on many of the key national security and civil rights issues that have arisen in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks -- including extraordinary rendition, torture, military commissions, and the state secrets privilege. She is lead Judiciary Committee counsel on Chairman Nadler's State Secret Protection Act (H.R. 984 in the 111th Congress; approved by the House Judiciary Committee on Nov. 5, 2009), and she was lead Judiciary Committee counsel for the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Before joining the House Judiciary Committee staff in 2007, she was a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center from 2005-2007 and served as Senior Counsel for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund from 1996-2005. A graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Chicago Law School, she has received awards for her civil rights work from the ACLU of Illinois, the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago, The Names Project Foundation, and the Howard Brown Health Center. November 18, 2009.
Leonard Schaitman joined the Appellate Section (now Appellate Staff) of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice in 1966, shortly after the FOIA was enacted. He became a supervisory attorney (Assistant Director) in that office in 1973 and has served continuously in that capacity ever since. A graduate of Columbia Law School, he clerked on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and was an associate at a New York City law firm for several years prior to joining the Justice Department. At the Justice Department, Mr. Schaitman has personally handled, reviewed, and consulted on hundreds of FOIA cases over the course of the past four decades. His focus has been on litigation in the courts of appeals and the Supreme Court. In addition, he served on the Justice Department's Freedom of Information Act Committee, which gave advice to agencies on the proper administration of the Act during its earliest years. He received the Attorney General's Award for Outstanding Service in Freedom of Information Act Administration in 2004. March 18, 2013 (keynote speaker).
Fred Schulte is a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, most recently in 2007 for a series on Baltimore's arcane ground rent system. His other Pulitzer-nominated projects exposed excessive heart surgery death rates in veterans' hospitals, substandard care by health insurance plans treating low-income people, and the hidden dangers of cosmetic surgery in medical offices. He spent much of his career at the Baltimore Sun and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Mr. Schulte has received the George Polk Award, two Investigative Reporters and Editors awards, three Gerald Loeb Awards for business writing, and two Worth Bingham Prizes for investigative reporting. A University of Virginia graduate, he also is the author of Fleeced!, an exposé of telemarketing scams. January 20, 2012.
David Schulz is a partner in the law firm of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz in New York City, where he has defended the rights of journalists and news organizations for the past quarter of a century. He has litigated libel, privacy, access, and newsgathering claims in the trial courts of more than twenty states and regularly represents news organizations on appeals before both state and federal tribunals. Among other significant cases, he successfully prosecuted access litigation by the Hartford Courant to compel the disclosure of sealed dockets in cases being secretly litigated in Connecticut's state courts, and the challenge by seventeen media organizations to the closure of jury selection in the Martha Stewart criminal prosecution. He successfully defended against invasion of privacy claims brought by Navy SEALS whose photos with injured Iraqi prisoners were discovered online by a reporter, and he has prevailed in Freedom of Information Act litigation pursued by The Associated Press to compel the release of files relating to detainees held by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay and to records of the military service of President George W. Bush.
Mr. Schulz is described as an "incredibly skilled" litigation strategist and a "walking encyclopedia" of media law by Chambers USA (Chambers & Partners, 2006), and he is recognized as one of the nation's premier First Amendment lawyers by The Best Lawyers in America (Woodward/White, 2005). Concentrating in media law, First Amendment, and intellectual property, he has represented a broad range of media clients, including international newswire services, national and local newspapers, television networks and station owners, magazine and book publishers, cable news networks, and Internet content providers. He has served as chair of the Communications and Media Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, as a member of the Governing Board of the American Bar Association's Forum on Communications Law, and as President of the Defense Counsel Section of the Media Law Resource Center. For more than a decade he was a member of the New York Committee on Open Government, the state agency responsible for overseeing the enforcement of the open meetings, freedom of information, and personal privacy laws in New York.
A Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School, Mr. Schulz regularly writes and speaks on media law issues. For many years he co-chaired a biennial conference on "Newsgathering and Libel Litigation," sponsored by the Practicing Law Institute, and he served as a member of the Sedona Conference Working Group on Protective Orders, Confidentiality & Public Access. He is the author of numerous articles and reports, including Judicial Regulation of the Press? Revisiting the Limited Jurisdiction of Federal Courts and the Scope of Constitutional Protection for Newsgathering, 2002 LDRC Bulletin 121 (April 2002); Internet Jurisdiction, Choice of Law Issues, ISP Immunity and Anonymous On-Line Speech, 2 Internet Law & Business 997 (Oct. 2001) (with M. Schachter), and Newsgathering as a Protected Activity, in Freedom of Information and Freedom of Expression: Essays in Honour of Sir David William (J. Beatson & Y. Cripps eds., Oxford University Press 2000). He received a B.A., magna cum laude, from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he has served for more than twenty years on the Board of Trustees. He received his law degree from Yale Law School and holds a Master's degree in economics from Yale University. April 28, 2009.
Daniel Schuman is the Sunlight Foundation's policy counsel and director of the Advisory Committee on Transparency. He works to develop policies that further Sunlight's mission of catalyzing greater government openness and transparency. An expert on the U.S. Congress, Daniel regularly works with congressional and executive branch staff to craft transparency and ethics legislation and policies. He directs the Advisory Committee on Transparency, a project of the Sunlight Foundation that educates policymakers on transparency-related issues, problems, and solutions, and he shares ideas with members of the Congressional Transparency Caucus. Daniel has served on many task forces, notably including the American Bar Association Administrative Law Section's Lobbying Reform Task Force. He regularly speaks and writes about transparency and technology issues, has appeared on NPR and C-SPAN, and has been cited by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other media outlets. Daniel graduated cum laude from Emory University School of Law and has worked for Congress as a Legislative Attorney for the Congressional Research Service, as well as for a variety of nonprofits as both counsel and director of communications. January 17, 2013; January 20, 2012.
Ari Schwartz is Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), where his work focuses on increasing individual control over personal and public information. He promotes privacy protections in the digital age and expanding access to government information via the Internet, and he regularly testifies before Congress and agencies of the Executive Branch on these issues. Ari also leads the Anti-Spyware Coalition (ASV) of anti-spyware software companies, academics, and public interest groups dedicated to defeating spyware. In 2006, he won the RSA award for Excellence in Public Policy for his work building the ASC and other efforts against spyware. He was also named one of the Top 5 influential IT security thinkers of 2007 by Secure Computing Magazine. He currently serves as a member of the Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board and the State of Ohio Chief Privacy Officer Advisory Committee. April 28, 2009.
Drew Shenkman, an associate in Holland & Knight's Litigation Section and on the firm's National Media Practice Team, counsels clients on a wide variety of litigation issues. He advises media clients on all aspects of content and newsgathering, with a special focus on digital media issues, social media, and online content protection. His practice includes defending the media's First Amendment rights, including defamation and invasion of privacy torts, ensuring access to public information under state law and the Freedom of Information Act, and protecting content under copyright and trademark law. Prior to joining Holland & Knight, Drew completed a joint degree at the University of Florida, obtaining his J.D. from the Levin College of Law and a Master's of Arts in Mass Communications from the College of Journalism and Communications. As part of this joint-degree program, he conducted legal research on privacy law issues, the Internet and new media's relationship with the First Amendment, copyright law, and telecommunications regulation. He also was a member of the University of Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy. Drew previously served as a law clerk at the National Association of Broadcasters, working on telecommunications matters. March 16, 2012.
David Sobel is Senior Counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Washington, D.C. office, where he directs its FOIA Litigation for Accountable Government (FLAG) Project. He has handled numerous cases seeking the disclosure of government documents on privacy policy, including electronic surveillance, encryption controls, and airline passenger screening initiatives. He served as co-counsel in the challenge to government secrecy concerning post-September 11 detentions and participated in the submission of a civil liberties amicus brief in the first-ever proceeding of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. David is co-editor of the 2002 and 2004 editions of Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws. He is a recipient of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award (2003) and the American Library Association's James Madison Award (2004). David formerly was counsel to the nonprofit National Security Archive, and in 1994 he co-founded the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), where he directed FOIA litigation and focused on government surveillance and the collection of personal information. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Florida College of Law. March 18, 2014; March 18, 2013; January 20, 2011; January 20, 2010; March 16, 2009.
David Sohn joined the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) in 2005. He is Senior Policy Counsel and Director of CDT's Project on Intellectual Property and Technology, which promotes reasonable pro-consumer approaches to copyright and related policy issues raised by the emergence of the Internet, new digital media, and digital rights management (DRM) technology. Prior to joining the Center for Democracy and Technology, he worked for nearly five years as Commerce Counsel for Senator Ron Wyden, where he advised the Senator on technology and telecommunications issues coming before the Senate Commerce Committee. In that capacity, he worked on legislation relating to such matters as spyware, digital copyright, and online privacy, and he played a major role in the enactment of the first federal anti-spam law. Before joining Senator Wyden's office, he practiced law in Washington, D.C., at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, with a focus on telecommunications law and regulation. David received his B.A. degree from Amherst College (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and his J.D. from Stanford Law School. He also holds an M.Sc. degree from the London School of Economics. January 29, 2009.
Suzanne Spaulding has been Deputy Undersecretary for National Protection and Programs Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security for the past year. In that position, she oversees Infrastructure Protection, US-VISIT, the Federal Protective Service, and Risk Management and Analysis, with a mission to reduce the risk to, and enhance the resiliency of, critical infrastructure, to secure federal facilities, and to advance identity management and verification. Ms. Spaulding has spent nearly 25 years working on national security issues for both Republican and Democratic administrations and on both sides of the aisle of Congress. She was most recently a principal in the Bingham Consulting Group and of Counsel for Bingham McCutchen LLP in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining the private sector, she served as the minority staff director for the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for Ranking Member Jane Harman (D-CA) and as general counsel for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. She also spent six years at the Central Intelligence Agency and served as senior counsel and legislative director for Senator Arlen Specter. In 2002, she was appointed by Virginia Gov. Mark Warner to the Secure Commonwealth Panel, established after the attacks of September 11 to advise the governor and the legislature regarding preparedness issues in the commonwealth of Virginia. After 9/11, Ms. Spaulding also worked with key critical Infrastructure sectors, including the nuclear power, electricity, and chemical sectors, and served as Security Counsel for the Business Roundtable.
In addition, Ms. Spaulding served as the executive director of two congressionally mandated commissions -- the National Commission on Terrorism, chaired by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, and the Commission to Assess the Organization of the Federal Government to Combat the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, chaired by former CIA Director John Deutch. She was an assistant general counsel at CIA, served as legal adviser to the Nonproliferation Center, and also spent several years in private practice. Ms. Spaulding also was a Senior Fellow at the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. She is the former Chair of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security and founder of the Cybersecurity Legal Task Force, and she earned both her law degree and undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia. September 28, 2012 (luncheon speaker).
Andrea Stephenson is a Senior Research Assistant for the Collaboration on Government Secrecy. A third-year student at the Washington College of Law, she now is in her second academic semester of being a vital part of CGS. Andrea holds an undergraduate degree in psychology from Georgia Southern University, where she graduated with honors from the University Honors Program. She also is the Publications Editor of the American University International Law Review. Prior to law school, Andrea worked for five years in the general corporate and transactional law department of a mid-sized law firm, and she plans to put her skills to use in a career in either corporate law or government upon graduation in May 2011. January 20, 2011; September 28, 2010.
Carl Stern is the J.B. & Maurice C. Shapiro Professor Emeritus of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University and the former Director of the Office of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice, where he worked with Attorney General Janet Reno to promote more effective use of the Freedom of Information Act. Prior to that, he served for 26 years as the law correspondent for NBC News, covering the Supreme Court and the Justice Department and many of the nation's most newsworthy trials. Professor Stern had been a member of the Ohio and D.C. bars for almost 50 years. He was a founding member of the Forum Committee on Communications Law of the American Bar Association and served on several other ABA committees. In 1975, the ABA honored him as the first fulltime broadcast network reporter covering legal affairs. He is the recipient of the Justice Department's highest honor, the Edmund J. Randolph Award, and broadcasting's Peabody Award for "exceptional journalistic enterprise" in connection with his coverage of Watergate and his use of the FOIA to uncover the FBI's secret COINTELPRO actions to harass, neutralize, and destroy organizations and individuals it regarded as politically pernicious. Professor Stern has B.A. and M.S. (Journalism) degrees from Columbia University and a J.D. magna cum laude from Cleveland State University. He also has been a member of the Collaboration on Government Secrecy's Advisory Board since its inception in August 2007. March 18, 2014 (keynote speaker).
Gary Stern has been the General Counsel of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) since 1998, and he is a career member of the Senior Executive Service. He earned his law degree in 1987 from Yale Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Yale Journal of International Law, and he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College in 1983, where he majored in Ancient Greek. For the three years before becoming NARA's General Counsel, Gary worked for the U.S. Department of Energy, where he was a senior advisor to the Secretary of Energy, a special assistant to the General Counsel, and assistant general counsel for contractor litigation. In 1994-1995, Gary worked as a senior policy and research analyst for the Federal Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. Before then, Gary worked as a staff attorney for the Washington Office of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he specialized in national security, classification, and information law issues. There, he participated as a plaintiff in Armstrong v. Executive Office of the President, involving White House e-mail recordkeeping practices, and also served as legal consultant to the National Academy of Science's Committee on Declassification of Information for the Environmental Remediation and Related Programs of the Department of Energy. January 29, 2009 (luncheon speaker); January 16, 2008.
Eric Struening is a Senior Research Assistant and Web Editor for the Collaboration on Government Secrecy. A third-year student at WCL, he is now in his fifth semester as a CGS Dean's Fellow. During law school, in addition to working for CGS, Eric has interned at the Department of the Interior's Office of Inspector General and at the General Counsel's Office of the National Security Agency (where he believes he had his own phone line). He also serves a team member and Secretary of the Moot Court Honor Society and as Senior Articles Editor for the National Security Law Brief. Eric is a graduate of George Washington University, where he majored in Political Science, minored in History, and interned at The Constitution Project. Upon graduation, he hopes to work on issues of national security or constitutional law. March 18, 2014
Robynn Sturm is the Assistant Deputy Chief Technology Officer and the Deputy Director of the White House's Open Government Initiative (see http://www.whitehouse.gov/open) in the Executive Office of the President, which places her at the center of the development and implementation of Obama Administration transparency policies. She has worked in that position, as principal deputy to White House Open Government Initiative Director Beth Noveck, since joining the Obama Administration in February 2009. Prior to that, she held positions as Deputy Chair of the Clinton Global Initiative Education Working Group, as Interim Executive Director of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, at the New America Foundation, and at Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA). She worked in India with YUVA and the Self Employed Women's Association to develop advocacy agendas on local and national government policies there, and she also worked for Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, during law school. Robynn holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Political Science from Yale University and she received her J.D. from Yale Law School. January 20, 2010 (keynote speaker).
Tom Susman is Director of the Governmental Affairs Office of the American Bar Association in Washington, D.C. Before accepting that position in 2008, he was a partner in the Washington Office of Ropes & Gray LLP, where his work included counseling, litigation, and lobbying on access to government information and privacy, in addition to his general legislative and regulatory practice. Tom has testified frequently on FOIA reform before Congress and authored a number of works on information and privacy. He advised Shanghai and other Chinese jurisdictions on open government information, wrote a chapter on Access to Documents in the European Union for an ABA publication, co-authored a BNA portfolio on business information, and taught classes and courses on the FOIA to government lawyers, government access professionals, journalists, and law students. He has also been involved in a number of freedom of information cases at the state and federal levels and before foreign tribunals. A former Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Judicial College and President of the District of Columbia Public Library Foundation, he is Founding President of the D.C. Open Government Coalition, a Life Member of the American Law Institute, on the Board of the National Conference on Citizenship, and on the steering committee of OpenTheGovernment.org.
Before joining Ropes & Gray, Tom served on Capitol Hill as general counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and various subcommittees; prior to that he worked in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He graduated from Yale University and received his J.D. from the University of Texas Law School. Among his many honors and distinctions, including receipt of the American Library Association's James Madison Award and membership in the First Amendment Center's Freedom of Information Hall of Fame, perhaps foremost is his receipt of the Collaboration on Government Secrecy's inaugural "Robert Vaughn FOIA Legend Award" at CGS's First Annual Freedom of Information Day Celebration in March 2008. March 18, 2014 (moderator); March 18, 2013 (moderator); September 28, 2012 (moderator); March 16, 2012 (moderator); September 28, 2011 (moderator); March 14, 2011 (moderator); September 28, 2010; January 20, 2010 (moderator); March 16, 2009 (moderator); January 29, 2009 (moderator); September 29, 2008; March 17, 2008 (moderator).
Julia Svintsova is a third-year student at WCL, where she now is in her fourth semester as a Dean's Fellow for CGS. Born in Russia, she is an alumna of N.I. Lobachevsky State University, where she majored in International Law, and N.A. Dobrolyubov State University, where she majored in French and English Translation. Prior to attending WCL, she gained international trade litigation experience with a concentration on intellectual property litigation at the international trade boutique law firm of Adduci, Mastriani & Schaumberg, LLP. During law school, in addition to working for CGS, Julia is a technical editor of the American University Business Law Review. She also served as a research assistant to WCL Professor Ira P. Robbins. Upon graduation, she hopes to focus on intellectual property and trade litigation. September 27, 2013; September 28, 2012.
Mark Tapscott is the Executive Editor of The Washington Examiner and a member of The Examiner Newspapers' national editorial board. He also is proprietor of Tapscott's Copy Desk blog, author of the long-running "Behind the Wheel" automotive column, and proprietor of the Tapscott Behind the Wheel blog. Before joining The Examiner in 2006, he was director of the Center for Media and Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., where he worked from October 1999 and founded the foundation's widely praised Database 101/201 Computer-Assisted Research and Reporting Boot Camps at the National Press Club. More than 200 editors, reporters, producers, and researchers representing virtually every major news organization have graduated from the CARR boot camps since 2000. He continues serving as Visiting Journalism Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and was voted Conservative Journalist of the Year for 2008 by the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Mr. Tapscott also was inducted into the National Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame in Mach 2006 and has been recognized by the National Press Foundation for his contributions to journalism education. He has testified before committees of the Senate and House of Representatives on FOIA and other transparency-in-government issues, and he has appeared on FOX News and CNN on these issues and others as well. He is a Member of the Board of Directors of the Media Bloggers Association and an advisor to NewsTrust.net. He has been recognized by the National Press Foundation for his contributions to journalism education.
Prior to his Heritage Foundation tenure, Mr. Tapscott was a managing editor for The Journal Newspapers from 1995 until 1999. Before that, he was Washington editor of Defense Electronics from 1991 to 1994. His journalism career began as a general assignment reporter at The Washington Times in 1985, where he ultimately advanced to business editor, national editor, and, finally, assistant managing editor for night news. He started writing the Behind the Wheel column at The Washington Times in 1985 and was a founding member of the Washington Automotive Press Association that year. Before his journalism career, Mr. Tapscott was Assistant Director for Public Affairs of the Office of Personnel Management and publications director at the Republican National Committee during the Reagan Administration, following his work in the Reagan-Bush presidential campaign of 1980. A 1972 graduate of Oklahoma State University, he was also press secretary to a U.S. senator and two U.S. congressmen between 1977 and 1980. January 17, 2013; March 16, 2010.
Hugo Teufel was appointed Chief Privacy Officer of the Department of Homeland Security by Secretary Michael Chertoff on July 23, 2006. In this capacity and pursuant to Section 222 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, Hugo holds primary responsibility for privacy policy at the Department, which includes: ensuring that the technologies used by the Department to protect the United States sustain, and do not erode, privacy protections relating to the use, collection, and disclosure of personal information; ensuring that the Department complies with fair information practices as set out in the Privacy Act of 1974; conducting privacy impact assessments of proposed rules at the Department; evaluating legislative and regulatory proposals involving collection, use, and disclosure of personal information by the federal government; and preparing an annual report to Congress on the activities of the Department that affect privacy. Further, he serves as the Department's Chief Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Officer. His responsibilities as Chief FOIA Officer include ensuring consistent and appropriate Department-wide statutory compliance and harmonized program and policy implementation.
Before joining the Privacy Office, Hugo served as the first Associate General Counsel for General Law at the Department of Homeland Security. Previously, he served as the Associate Solicitor for General Law at the Department of the Interior. In each position, he oversaw the provision of legal advice and counsel to a cabinet-level agency on privacy and FOIA matters. Before joining the Bush Administration, he practiced law at Hall and Evans, in Denver, Colorado; served as Deputy Solicitor General for the State of Colorado; was an associate at McKenna & Cuneo, in Denver, Colorado; and was a clerk to Chief Judge Loren A. Smith of the U.S. Claims Court. Hugo graduated from American University Washington College of Law and was the Senior Articles Editor of the Administrative Law Journal. He currently is pursuing a master's degree in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College. A member of the bars of Colorado and Maryland (inactive), he is married and has a daughter. September 29, 2008.
Claudia Trotch is a Dean's Fellow/research assistant for the Collaboration on Government Secrecy who even though only a 2L at WCL is now serving for her third semester in that capacity. She also is a junior staffer on the Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law, as well as a Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Law Fellow. Prior to law school, she gained extensive experience in the publishing world and also worked for two years as Placement Director for a company in San Francisco. Claudia holds a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley. January 17, 2013.
During his career at WCL, Robert Vaughn has been Scholar-in-Residence with the law faculty of King's College of the University of London, a visiting professor at the University of San Diego School of Law and a visiting professor at Ritsumeikan University School of Law in Kyoto, Japan. He has also served as a faculty member in summer programs in Santiago, Chile and Istanbul, Turkey. At WCL, he has received eight awards for outstanding teaching and in 1983 was selected as American University's Teacher/Scholar of the Year, the university's highest faculty award. During his visit at the University of San Diego School of Law, the student body there elected him Professor of the Year.
Professor Vaughn has published on a variety of topics regarding public information law, public employment law, consumer law, and whistleblower protection. He is the author of a book on federal open government laws in the United States, the editor of a book on freedom of information, and the author of several articles addressing public information law. He has written several books on public employment law, including ones on civil service reform, principles of civil service law, conflict of interest regulation in the federal government, and the Merit Systems Protection Board. His public employment law articles address topics, such as, the right to disobey illegal orders, ethics in government, the Hatch Act, the role of public employment laws in the transition to democracy, and British regulation of public service ethics. He is the author of a book and related articles on consumer protection laws in South America. His articles on whistleblower protection address important statutes, such as the whistleblower provision of the Civil Service Reform Act, the whistleblower provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, state whistleblower laws, and the model law to implement the Inter-American Convention Against Corruption. He is also the author of a book and articles on civil procedure, judicial reform, and the federal courts.
Among his consulting positions have been ones with the Treasury and Civil Service Committee of the House of Commons, the World Bank, and the Office of Legal Cooperation of the Organization of American States. He has testified several times before Congress on civil service reform, the federal Freedom of Information Act, and whistleblower protection. He was the plaintiff in the landmark case of Vaughn v. Rosen, which in 1973 established the evidentiary mechanism used since then for the adjudication of nearly all cases litigated under the Freedom of Information Act, universally referred to as a "Vaughn Declaration." September 27, 2013; April 27, 2011; September 29, 2008; March 17, 2008 (keynote speaker).
John Verdi is Senior Counsel and Director of the Open Government Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). His work focuses on legal issues relating to open government, consumer privacy, and digital security. He litigates EPIC's freedom of information lawsuits against federal agencies and state governments. He is co-author of several federal amicus curiae briefs concerning electronic privacy, is co-editor of Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws 2008, and speaks on consumer privacy issues in a variety of venues, including academic conferences and in the media. Prior to joining EPIC, John was a civil litigation associate in Washington, D.C. His litigation experience includes matters relating to federal and state open records statutes, Administrative Procedure Act claims regarding federal oversight, and tort cases involving digital information misappropriation and misuse. Prior to his career as a lawyer, John worked as a computer programmer on a variety of projects, including several applications involving secure financial data. He also advised the National Hockey League on a host of technology issues, including data collection as it relates to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and earned his B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Law at Binghamton University. John is a member of the District of Columbia and New Jersey bars. September 28, 2009.
Don Verrilli serves as Associate Deputy Attorney General in the Department of Justice, where he is the Department's key official for the development of policies and procedures on the invocation of the state secrets privilege. Before joining the Justice Department in February 2009, he was Chair of the Appellate & Supreme Court Practice area at Jenner & Block and was a longtime member of its governing Policy Committee. He has argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court, including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., where he successfully argued that companies that build businesses on the illegal distribution of copyrighted material are liable for copyright infringement. He also successfully argued General Dynamics Land Systems v. Cline, a case in which the Court ruled that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act does not authorize "reverse discrimination" suits; FCC v. Next Wave Personal Communications, a case in which the Court returned to NextWave billions of dollars' worth of wireless phone spectrum licenses that the FCC had sought to repossess from NextWave while it was in bankruptcy; and Verizon Communications v. FCC, the most important case arising out of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Mr. Verrilli also has argued numerous cases before state and federal appellate courts throughout the country.
Mr. Verrilli has been repeatedly recognized by Chambers, Best Lawyers, and Super Lawyers as among the top attorneys in the country and he also has maintained an active pro bono practice throughout his career. In 2006, he was honored for his contributions to the equal justice community with the Equal Justice Award from the Southern Center for Human Rights, and in 2004 he received the Arthur von Briesen Award from the National Legal Aid and Defender Association for his volunteer contributions to the equal justice community. Mr. Verrilli received his J.D. with honors from Columbia University in 1983, where he was a James Kent Scholar and served as editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review. He received his B.A. cum laude with a Distinction in History from Yale University in 1979. He clerked for Associate Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge J. Skelly Wright of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. November 18, 2009.
Pat Viscuso is the Associate Director of the Controlled Unclassified Information Office at the National Archives and Records Administration. He has eighteen years of experience working at all levels of government security, oversight, and policy organizations with an expertise in the major security disciplines related to the protection of national security information. Dr. Viscuso joined the Information Security Oversight Office in October, 2005 as a senior program analyst with responsibilities in the Department of Defense sector and has undertaken special projects dealing with Sensitive But Unclassified information, classified information sharing, information systems, and industrial security. Additionally, he co-chaired working groups whose memberships consisted of federal and non-federal participants. His work included lead responsibility for meetings of the National Industrial Security Program Policy Advisory Committee. Dr. Viscuso has a bachelor's degree from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (Georgetown University), a master's degree from Holy Cross (Brookline, MA), and a doctoral degree from The Catholic University of America (Washington, D.C.). In addition to his national security expertise, he is an internationally recognized scholar of Ancient Greek. January 20, 2012; January 20, 2011; March 16, 2009.
Steve Vladeck is a Professor of Law and the Associate Dean for Scholarship at WCL, where his dynamic teaching and research focus on federal jurisdiction, national security law, constitutional law (especially the separation of powers), and international criminal law. A nationally recognized expert on the role of the federal courts in the war on terrorism, he was part of the legal team that successfully challenged the Bush Administration's use of military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006), and has co-authored amicus briefs in a host of other lawsuits challenging the U.S. government's surveillance and detention of terrorism suspects. He has also drafted reports on related issues for a number of organizations, including the First Amendment Center, the Constitution Project, and the ABA's Standing Committee on Law and National Security, and he is a senior editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of National Security Law and Policy.Steve graduated from Yale Law School in 2004, after which he clerked for the Hon. Marsha S. Berzon on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Hon. Rosemary Barkett on the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. While a law student, he was Executive Editor of the Yale Law Journal and also the Student Director of the Balancing Civil Liberties and National Security Post-9/11 Litigation Project, and he was awarded the Potter Stewart Prize for Best Team Performance in Moot Court and the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for Outstanding Moot Court Oralist. He earned his B.A. summa cum laude in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001, where he wrote his senior thesis on "Leipzig's Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present." Among numerous other ongoing projects, Steve is a regular contributor to PrawfsBlawg and National Security Advisors and he served as chairperson of the Association of American Law Schools' Sections on National Security Law and on New Law Professors. He is admitted to practice law in the State of New York. March 18, 2014 (moderator); April 27, 2011 (moderator); November 18, 2009 (moderator).
Ken Wainstein is a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, where he is Chair of the firm's Business Fraud Group and focuses his practice on corporate internal investigations and civil and criminal enforcement proceedings. In 2008, after serving at the Department of Justice in a series of increasingly senior positions for 19 years, he was named Homeland Security Advisor by President George W. Bush. In this capacity, he coordinated the nation's counterterrorism, homeland security, infrastructure protection, and disaster response and recovery efforts. He advised the President, convened and chaired meetings of the Cabinet Officers on the Homeland Security Council, and oversaw the inter-agency coordination process for homeland security and counterterrorism programs.
Prior to his White House service, Ken was twice nominated and confirmed for leadership positions in the Justice Department. In 2006, the Senate confirmed him as the first Assistant Attorney General for National Security. In that position, he established and led the new National Security Division, which consolidated the Justice Department's law enforcement and intelligence activities on counterterrorism and counterintelligence matters, and he also oversaw the Department's role in regulatory mechanisms such as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. He led several national security initiatives, including the launch of the national, inter-agency Export Control Enforcement Initiative targeting illegal exports of sensitive technology and weapons components.
In 2004, Ken was appointed, and later confirmed as, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, where he oversaw the investigation and prosecution of high-profile white-collar and public corruption cases, including the case against Riggs Bank for Bank Secrecy Act violations and the prosecution of the MZM Chief Executive Officer for paying bribes to former Congressman Randall "Duke" Cunningham. Prior to that, he served as General Counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and then as Chief of Staff to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller. At the FBI, he was involved in myriad sensitive national security and criminal enforcement matters, as well as a variety of civil litigation, managerial, and congressional oversight issues. In 2001, Ken was appointed Director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, where he provided oversight and support to the 94 U.S. Attorneys' Offices. From 1989 to 2001, he served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in both the Southern District of New York and the District of Columbia, where he handled numerous criminal trials and appellate arguments.
Ken's work has been recognized with the Edmund J. Randolph Award for Outstanding Service to the Department of Justice, the Department of Justice Director's Award for Superior Performance, and the Lawyer of the Year Award from the Bar Association of the District of Columbia, and he was recently named as a top national security lawyer by Washingtonian magazine. He has served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center since 2009, teaching National Security Investigations and Litigation. He is a member of the Director's Advisory Board of the National Counterterrorism Center; a member of the Public Interest Declassification Board; a member of the CIA General Counsel's External Advisory Board; a member of the Webster Commission on the FBI, Counterterrorism Intelligence, and the Fort Hood Shootings; the Co-Chair of the Committee on National Security Law, Policy & Practice of the District of Columbia Bar Association; a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; a member of the steering committee of the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute; and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Former United States Attorneys. Ken earned his B.A. from the University of Virginia, with high distinction and Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a moot court board member and the Note and Comment Editor of the California Law Review. Following law school, Ken served as law clerk to the Hon. Thomas Penfield Jackson of the District Court for the District of Columbia. March 18, 2014.
Anne Weismann currently works as chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a non-profit, non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to promoting ethics and accountability in government, using the law as a tool to force officials to act ethically and lawfully and to bring unethical conduct to the public's attention. As chief counsel, Anne has been responsible for many precedent-setting cases on behalf of CREW, focusing particularly on transparency in government. Prior to joining CREW, she served as deputy chief of the Enforcement Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission, where she had responsibility for all of the Enforcement Bureau's telecommunications matters. Before that, she worked in the of the Department of Justice, where for many years she served as an assistant branch director with supervisory responsibility over banking litigation, housing litigation, and from 1995 through 2002 all government information litigation. Prior to that, she worked in the Solicitor's Office of the Department of Labor. Anne is the recipient of the American Library Association's James Madison Award and also has been inducted into the Freedom of Information Hall of Fame. March 18, 2014; April 25, 2013; March 18, 2013 (moderator); January 17, 2013; January 20, 2011.
Pete Weitzel is the freedom of information coordinator for the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government (CJOG), based in Washington, D.C. He is a former managing editor of The Miami Herald, where he worked as a reporter and editor for nearly 40 years. He helped found the Florida First Amendment Foundation, serving as its president from 1985 to 1995, where he remains on the Board. He also helped launch the National Freedom of Information Coalition and served as its second president. After retiring from The Miami Herald in 1995, he taught at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and then at the University of North Carolina journalism school and Duke Law School. He also served as executive director of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence, an organization that investigates cases of possible wrongful conviction. In January 2004, he became coordinator for CJOG, an alliance of 30 journalism-related organizations working together on open-government issues. January 16, 2008.
Steve Wermiel is a Fellow in Law and Government and associate director of the Summer Institute on Law and Government at American University Washington College of Law. He remains involved with and served previously as associate director of the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, a 10-year-old program in which Washington College of Law students teach constitutional law in the public high schools of Washington, D.C. Professor Wermiel holds expertise in the U.S. Supreme Court, having covered the court for the Wall Street Journal from 1979 until 1991. During his 12-year tenure at the Journal, he covered and interpreted more than 1,300 Supreme Court decisions and analyzed trends on a broad array of legal issues. He teaches Constitutional Law, First Amendment, Media Law, and a seminar on the workings of the Supreme Court, and he is an expert on the life and career of Justice William J. Brennan. Earlier in his career, he was a Washington correspondent for the Boston Globe. He has also served on the board of directors and on the legal committee of the ACLU of Georgia. He is currently chairman of the editorial board of Human Rights, the magazine of the American Bar Association's Individual Rights & Responsibilities Section, and a member of the editorial board of Communications Lawyer, the journal of the ABA's Forum on Communications Law. He is also co-chair of the Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section's First Amendment Committee. April 27, 2011.
Nate Wessler is a staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, where he handles cases involving both free speech and privacy issues, including FOIA suits. He previously served as a legal fellow in the ACLU's National Security Project, where he was involved in litigation seeking transparency and accountability for targeted killing and challenging unlawful detention at the U.S. prisons in Bagram and Guantanamo. Nate is a graduate of Swarthmore College and New York University School of Law, where he was a Root-Tilden-Kern scholar. Following law school, he served as a law clerk to the Hon. Helene N. White, United States Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. March 18, 2013.
Henry Whitaker is an appellate litigator in the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. He has handled a wide range of appellate matters and is collaborating with longtime FOIA litigation attorney Leonard Schaitman on the pending AT&T v. FCC case, which raises the question of whether corporations have "personal privacy" rights under the FOIA. He previously practiced at the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and clerked both for Chief Judge David B. Sentelle of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. Henry has a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School and a B.A., magna cum laude, with distinction in philosophy, from Yale College. March 16, 2010.
Joe Whitley is the Chair of the Atlanta White Collar Practice Group of Greenberg Traurig. Joe had a wide-ranging career in the Department of Justice. In the George H.W. Bush Administration, he served as the Acting Associate Attorney General, the third-ranking position in the Department of Justice. He was appointed by Presidents Reagan and Bush, respectively, to serve as the United States Attorney in the Middle (Macon) and Northern (Atlanta) Federal Districts of Georgia. Throughout his career, Joe served under five United States Attorneys General in a number of key operational and policy positions. Earlier in his career, he served as an Assistant District Attorney in the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit in Columbus, Georgia.
In 2003, Joe was appointed by President George W. Bush as the first General Counsel of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the highest-ranking legal official in DHS. He held that position for two years, working for Secretary Tom Ridge and Secretary Michael Chertoff, before his departure and return to private practice. Joe has represented numerous individuals and corporations in major government investigations throughout the United States and internationally. He is a frequent speaker and lecturer on white-collar, compliance, and corporate governance issues. Joe has been listed in Best Lawyers in America from 2001-2010 and he was selected by Super Lawyers Magazine and Georgia Super Lawyers magazine, 2010. He is also listed as one of "Georgia's Legal Elite" in Georgia Trend, 2008-2009. April 27, 2011 (keynote speaker).
Burt Wides has worked on national security policy issues for more than four decades, serving as chief counsel to Senator Philip Hart, Senator Edward Kennedy, and Senator Paul Sarbanes; as Special Counsel to President Jimmy Carter; and as senior counsel to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers. Among other responsibilities held during that time, he was chief of investigations for the Church Committee, which set the standard for modern-day oversight of the intelligence community, and then was director of the President's Intelligence Oversight Board. He began his government career by working on strategic weapons planning in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during the Kennedy Administration, and he also has represented a variety of high-profile clients on controversial matters as an attorney in private practice. January 20, 2010.
Ben Wizner has been a staff attorney at the ACLU since 2001, specializing in national security, human rights, and first amendment issues. He has litigated several post-9/11 civil liberties cases in which the government has invoked the state secrets privilege, including El-Masri v. United States (a challenge to the CIA's abduction, detention, and torture of an innocent German citizen); Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. (a suit against a private aviation services company for facilitating the CIA's rendition to torture of five Muslim men); and Edmonds v. Department of Justice (a whistleblower retaliation suit on behalf of an FBI translator fired for reporting serious misconduct). Ben was a law clerk to the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and will be presenting an en banc oral argument before that court in Jeppesen next month. He is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law. November 18, 2009.
John Wonderlich is the Policy Director for the Sunlight Foundation and one of the nation's foremost advocates for open government. He spearheads the Sunlight Foundation's goal of changing the government by opening up key data sources and information, to make government more accountable to citizens. He is one of the foremost authorities on transparency policy, from legislation and accountability in Congress to ethics and information policy in the executive branch. January 20, 2012; January 20, 2011.
Tony Yang holds the position of Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States, in which capacity he participates in preparing the petitions, briefs, and other papers filed by the federal government in the Supreme Court. He has argued more than 25 cases before that Court and the courts of appeals, including the precedent-setting case of Milner v. Department of the Navy. Before joining the Office of the Solicitor General, he served as an appellate lawyer in the Department of Justice's Civil Division, where he distinguished himself as an expert on litigation under the Privacy Act of 1974. He is a graduate of Yale Law School, where he was selected as a Luce Scholar, and he served as law clerk to Judge M. Blane Michael on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. April 27, 2011.
Bill Yeomans joined the faculty at WCL in 2009. From 2006 until 2009, he served as Senator Edward M. Kennedy's Chief Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He also has been Legal Director of the Alliance for Justice and the first Director of Programs for the American Constitution Society, where he spearheaded the launch of its two publications: the Harvard Law and Policy Review and Advance. Prior to that, he spent 26 years at the Department of Justice, where he litigated and supervised civil rights cases in the federal courts involving voting rights, school desegregation, discrimination, housing discrimination, hate crimes, police misconduct, abortion clinic violence, and human trafficking. He served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Chief of Staff, and Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. November 18, 2009 (moderator).
Corinna Zarek is the staff attorney for the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), which assists Freedom of Information Act requesters and agencies with resolving disputes, reviews agencies' FOIA compliance, and serves as a general FOIA ombudsman. Previously, she was the Freedom of Information Director at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, where she assisted journalists with open records and open meetings issues at the federal and state levels and wrote about those issues for the organization's publications. Corinna also practiced with a law firm in Washington, D.C. specializing in administrative law and previously wrote for The Des Moines Register. She received her B.A. and J.D. from the University of Iowa. Corinna sits on the board of directors for the D.C. Open Government Coalition and Iowa Watch, an Iowa-based investigative reporting organization. She also teaches a media law class at the American University School of Communication and the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism. January 17, 2013; March 14, 2011.