Join us Wednesday, April 2 at 1 PM PT for a webinar examining the challenges and opportunities facing the U.S. Intelligence Community today and their potential for impact on national security and defense strategies. Attendees will hear from Jeff Stein, Founding Editor of Spytalk on Substack, and a former columnist at Newsweek, the Washington Post, and Congressional Quarterly, and Jerrold D. Green, Interim President and CEO of the Pacific Council. 

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT:

• Kash Patel, the recently appointed Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was a controversial pick, with some citing his extreme partisan views and lack of policy experience as making him unfit for leading the FBI. Patel was voted in by a narrow margin of 51 to 49. 
• Other recent nominees including Director of Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe signal a preference for political loyalty over depth of experience and commitment to the community’s output.
• Perceived threats by the “deep state” contributed to an overhaul of the federal workforce, including cuts to CIA and Department of Defense staff. This could impact operational efficiency and increase self-censorship among agency members.     

This event will be recorded/on-the-record. Please feel free to send in questions in advance to events@pacificcouncil.org.

To register for this webinar, visit the Zoom registration page.

Guest Speaker

Jeff Stein is the Founding Editor of the Substack, SpyTalk, and a former Spytalk columnist at Newsweek. Before Newsweek, Jeff wrote for the Washington Post and Congressional Quarterly, where he was the founding Editor of the groundbreaking CQ/Homeland Security. 

Jeff started his career in national security and defense as a case officer with U.S. Army intelligence in Vietnam. In the 1980s, Stein was the Deputy Foreign News Editor at United Press International (UPI). In his current role with SpyTalk, he works with a team of veteran journalists and experts who offer original reporting, scoops, and analysis on national security topics, with an emphasis on U.S. intelligence operations, both foreign and domestic. 

He is the author of three books and freelanced investigative pieces for newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, GQ, Esquire, Playboy, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, Huffington Post, Salon.com, and Foreign Policy. 

Listen to the SpyTalk podcast here. Visit SpyTalk on Substack here.

Moderator

Dr. Jerrold D. Green is the Global Advisor to Cedars-Sinai Hospital, a Los Angeles based healthcare organization and a Senior Fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations. He is also the Interim President and CEO of the Pacific Council on International Policy, a position he previously occupied for 16 years while serving as a Research Professor of Communication, Business, and International Relations at the University of Southern California. Green was a Partner at Best Associates in Dallas, Texas, a merchant banking firm with global operations. He also occupied senior management positions at the RAND Corporation where he was awarded the RAND Medal for Excellence. Dr. Green has a B.A. (summa cum laude) from the University of Massachusetts/Boston, as well as an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago. His academic career began at the University of Michigan and he subsequently joined the University of Arizona where he became a Professor of Political Science and Sociology as well as Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

Green has lived and worked in Egypt, where he was a Fulbright Fellow, Iran, and Israel. He has been a visiting fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Science's West Asian Studies Center in Beijing; a visiting lecturer at the Havana based Center for African and Middle East Studies (CEAMO), a fellow at the Australian Defense College, and delivered papers at conferences sponsored by the Iranian Institute of International Affairs in Tehran. Dr. Green led three U.S. Department of Defense sponsored fact-finding delegations to Afghanistan, one to Iraq, and has served as an observer at the legal proceedings at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense.

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To register for this webinar, visit the Zoom registration page.