FORDHAM ALUMNI

John O. Brennan comes to the Center on National Security after 33 years of government service. He served as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama from 2013 to 2017. Before becoming Director, Mr. Brennan served at the White House for four years as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.

Mr. Brennan began his service in government at the CIA, where he worked from 1980 to 2005. He spent most of his early career in the Agency’s main analytic arm, the Directorate of Analysis, specializing in the Near East and South Asia before directing counterterrorism analysis in the early 1990s. In 1994 and 1995 he was the Agency’s intelligence briefer to President Bill Clinton. After an assignment as a Chief of Station in the Middle East, Mr. Brennan served from 1999 to 2001 as Chief of Staff to George Tenet, who was the Director of Central Intelligence. Mr. Brennan next worked as Deputy Executive Director of the CIA until 2003, when he began leading a multi-agency effort to establish the National Counterterrorism Center. In 2004, he became the Center’s Interim Director.

Mr. Brennan graduated from Fordham University in 1977 with a bachelor’s degree in political science.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, FLS '78

AFFILIATED EVENTS:

IN CONVERSATION:

Former CIA Director, John O. Brennan, FCRH’77 and

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, FLS’78, Ranking Member, House Judiciary Committee

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Congressman Jerrold Nadler serves New York’s 10th congressional district and is Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. On this committee, he has served as Ranking Member of its Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties for 13 years and also served as the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet. He is also a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where he serves on the Subcommittees on Highways and Transit as well as Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials. He founded and chaired the Assembly Subcommittee on Mass Transit and Rail Freight. He was a member of the New York State Assembly from 1977 to 1992, during which he obtained his Fordham Law degree in 1978.

Michel Paradis, FLS’04

CNS Legal Fellow

AFFILIATED EVENTS:

TODAY’S MILITARY COMMISSIONS

Carol Rosenberg, Michel Paradis, John Ryan, James Harrington, and Wells Dixon

Moderated by Karen J. Greenberg

Thursday, February 21st, 2019

Michel Paradis currently serves as a senior attorney in the U.S. Department of Defense, Military Commissions Defense Organization. In that role, he is regularly appointed to represent detainees held at the U.S. Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He has argued numerous cases before the nation’s highest courts and written scholarly publications on the subjects of international humanitarian law, terrorism, and legal theory. He received his bachelor and law degrees from Fordham and his doctorate from Oxford. He teaches courses on the law of war at Georgetown and Columbia Law Schools. He is the author of a forthcoming book on war crimes trials in the Pacific during World War II, due out from Simon & Schuster in 2018.