Apply now for PASS:PORT 2013-2014

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The Institute of World Politics is now accepting applications for PASS:PORT 2013-2014. Click here to apply or nominate.

PASS:PORT 2013-2014, starting this October and ending in early June, 2014, will consist of a series of six (6) extended weekend retreats, with all speakers, facilitators, and participants sharing reserved space at one of several DC metro area hotels. Each weekend will begin with a Friday evening seminar and conclude by Sunday noon.

Some of the themes of PASS:PORT 2013-2014 weekend retreats include:

  • Integrated strategy, psychological strategy, and enemy threat doctrine
  • Cyber strategy
  • Intelligence and counterintelligence
  • Homeland Security and homeland defense and
  • Foreign challenges

This website maintains the content from our 2012-2013 program. For information about the nature, scope, and faculty participation from the PASS:PORT 2012-2013 program, click here or browse the site.

Current participants completing the 2012-2013 program can find the 2012-2013 calendar & syllabus, faculty, and readings under the PASS:PORT 2012-2013 page on the far right of the navigation bar.

For more information, contact Ms. Linda Strating, Executive Director of PASS:PORT and VP for Professional Affiliations at IWP, at strating@iwp.edu or (202) 462-2101 ext. 319.

Munro, Wortzel to team on China strategy April 10

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We’ll be treated to an evening April 10, with two of the nation’s top experts on Chinese military strategy.

Our guest speakers have very different backgrounds.

Ross H. Munro is a veteran journalist who lived in China during the transition at and following the end of Chairman Mao Zedong’s rule. He is also a longtime observer of East Asia generally, having served as the Beijing bureau chief of the Toronto Globe and Mail from 1975-77, and as the Bangkok, New Delhi and Hong Kong bureau chief of Time Magazine from 1978-1990.

Larry M. Wortzel served for 32 years in the military, retiring in 1999 as an Army colonel, whose last military position was as director of the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College. He was Assistant Army Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in China, where he witnessed and reported on the Tiananmen Massacre, and later served in at our Beijing embassy as Army Attaché.

Both our speakers have written extensively on Chinese military, security, intelligence, foreign policy, and national strategy, and remain associated with the defense and national security community.

Click here for the readings.

Shawn Brimley, strategic planner from NSC staff, joins us Saturday

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One of the most recent figures to return to private life after serving in the Obama Administration, Shawn Brimley will bring us rare insights into present national grand strategy, having recently been Director of Strategic Planning on the White House National Security Council staff.

Mr Brimley recently agreed to join PASS:PORT. His expertise and experience includes the hot spots of North Africa.

He is a co-founder of the Center for a New American Strategy (CNAS). From 2009-2011 he was Special Advisor to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (and former CNAS president) Michelle Fluornoy. A the Pentagon, he focused on the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, overseas basing and posture, and long-range strategy development.

 

Schedule change: An evening with Richard Haver, intelligence strategist and spy hunter

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DIA Director Mike Flynn had a scheduling conflict for December 12. We’re enthused to announce that the new speaker for that evening will be one of the Defense Department’s most highly decorated civilians, the distinguished intelligence officer Richard L. Haver.

Director Flynn will be with us at the workshop on February 2, 2013.

Richard Haver is a dynamic speaker who brings a vast amount of professional experience in military and civilian intelligence, from the tactical to the national strategic levels in government, as well as the private sector. (Click here for recommended readings.)

His extensive experience includes reconnaissance, anti-submarine warfare, electronic warfare, and counterintelligence. CNN reported that he “investigated three of the 20th century’s most notorious cases of U.S. citizens spying against the United States” – the Aldrich Ames, Jonathan Pollard and Walker family spy cases.

Haver has served as the first ODCI Deputy for Intelligence Community Affairs, and as Chief of Staff of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), National Intelligence Officer for Special Activities, head of the presidential Transition Team for Intelligence after the 2000 election, and Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.

A former Naval aviator who flew reconnaissance missions in the western Pacific during the Vietnam war, Haver subsequently served as a civilian intelligence analyst for the Navy, and rose to become the first civilian Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence. He became one of the most highly decorated civilians in the Department of Defense. In 1989, he was appointed as the first Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Policy, and in 1992 became Executive Director for Intelligence Community Affairs.

In 1995, after the revelation that CIA officer Aldrich Ames had been a spy for the Soviet Union, Haver led the Ames Damage Assessment team. He was also on the assessment teams on the Pollard and Walker spy cases.

He was appointed the National Intelligence Officer for Special Activities.  In June 1998, he served as the Chief of Staff of the National Intelligence Council and Special Adviser to the Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production.

In 1999, Haver retired after 34 years of government service to become Vice President and Director for Intelligence Programs at TRW Systems & Information Technology Group, returning to government service as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

In 2003 he became Vice President for Intelligence Programs at Northrop Grumman Corporation. He is now on the board of PASSUR Aerospace, a business intelligence company that specializes in predictive analytics for the aviation industry.

Update: DIA Director Flynn joins us February 2

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PASS:PORT participants will be spending part of February 2 with Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

Director Flynn was slated to be with us on December 12, but a subsequent scheduling conflict prompted the change in date.

Appointed by President Barack Obama in April 2012 to be the 18th DIA director, LTG Flynn is noted as a rigorous and outspoken advocate for intelligence community reform, and for improving the military’s cultural knowledge. His military career has been distinguished by his longtime operational work.

The topic on February 2 will relate to intelligence strategy and the integration of intelligence missions.

LTG Flynn graduated from the University of Rhode Island in 1981 and entered the Army through the Reserve Officers Training Corps. He deployed for Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada in 1983, and Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti in 1994-95; and served in senior intelligence posts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He was assistant chief of staff, G2, of the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg in 2001-2002, and was director of intelligence for Joint Task Force 180 in Afghanistan until July 2002. He then commanded the 111th Military Intelligence Brigade until 2004, becoming director of intelligence for the Joint Special Operations Command until 2007, serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. He served as CENTCOM’s director of intelligence from 2007-2008, director of intelligence on the Joint Staff from 2008-2009, and director of intelligence for International Security Assistance Forces in Afghanistan from 2009-2010. He then commanded the Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (JSCC-ISR) until being appointed Assistant Director of National Intelligence, before becoming DIA Director.

His operations-centered military career led him to become an outspoken advocate for the expansion of cultural knowledge and information and intelligence sharing throughout the military and intelligence communities. He was senior intelligence officer for the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), at which time he was credited with innovations in interrogation and operations-intelligence fusion center; in early 2010 he produced a landmark report, Fixing Intelligence in Afghanistan, published by the Center for a New American Security.

Former CIA director Hayden joins PASS:PORT

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Former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, who ranks among the top terrorist-hunters of our time, will be a trainer in the PASS:PORT program. The retired Air Force four-star general, who also served as director of the National Security Agency (NSA), will be part of our three-day integrative workshop on February 1-3, 2013. We aren’t disclosing the date and time of his appearance that weekend, but General Hayden promises PASS:PORT participants a hands-on experience based on his service as a military intelligence officer, including his job to reinvigorate the NSA and his tenure as NSA chief immediately before, during and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

General Hayden’s senior intelligence positions were:

  • Commander of the Air Intelligence Agency (1996-1997);
  • Director of the National Security Agency (1999-2005);
  • Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence (2005-2006);
  • Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (2006-2009).

General Hayden’s appearance will be exclusive to PASS:PORT and will not be open to the public. As with the entire PASS:PORT program, all discussions will be on a not-for-attribution basis.

Counterintel innovator Van Cleave here 11/16

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Is counterintelligence a defensive, fly-swatting measure to unmask spies once they have infiltrated our society?  Not to Michelle Van Cleave, who has made her mark on counterintelligence more than just about any other individual. To her, counterintelligence has an offensive, strategic role to play, by taking the counterspy war directly into the intelligence services of the adversary, and attacking the adversary’s intelligence organization from within.

Van Cleave and her team put her ideas into action after 9/11, when President George W. Bush named her as the nation’s first National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX).

As the head of U.S. counterintelligence, she was responsible for providing strategic direction to and ensuring the integration of counterintelligence activities across the federal government. She previously held senior staff positions in Congress, the Pentagon and the White House.

Even though she led the US government effort to coordinate counterintelligence in a post-9/11 world, Van Cleave has not lost sight of traditional adversaries. Last April, she warned in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Russian spies haven’t gone away.”

PASS:PORT participants will spend a private evening November 16 with Michelle Van Cleave, in a closed-door, not-for-attribution discussion about strategic counterintelligence and what it means for every national security professional.