May 4, 2005

Speaker Biographies

Tom Corcoran is the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's senior policy advisor. He is the primary advisor to the Committee's chairman and staff director on foreign policy and on intelligence oversight and reform issues. He also served as one of two principal investigators on the Committee’s review of pre-war intelligence concerning Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs. Mr. Corcoran served as an intelligence officer from 1992–1999 for the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with service in Somalia in 1993. He is also a Navy Reserve intelligence officer with service in Bosnia from 2000–2001 and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002.

Lindsay Moran was a case officer with the Central Intelligence Agency from 1998–2003. She resigned in 2003 to pursue freelance writing. Her memoir, Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy and Other Misadventures (2004), has received critical acclaim and was on the Washington-area bestseller list for five weeks. Ms. Moran’s articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Washingtonian, and various other publications. Ms. Moran was an English Literature teacher and a Fulbright Scholar prior to the beginning of her duty with the C.I.A.

Judge Richard Posner is a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. He has written extensively on issues of public policy. His latest books are Catastrophe: Risk and Response (2004), and Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11 (2005). In recent months, he has lectured and written on developments in intelligence reform since the completion of Preventing Surprise Attacks.

Judge Laurence Silberman served as co-chairman of the President's Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. Judge Silberman was commissioned to the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, in 1985. Judge Silberman, as part of his long career of government service, served as ambassador to Yugoslavia (1975–77); deputy attorney general of the United States (1974–75); U.S. undersecretary of labor (1970–73); and solicitor of labor in the U.S. Department of Labor (1969–70). In addition, Judge Silberman was a member of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court of Review (1996–2003); vice chairman of the State Department’s Commission on Security and Economic Assistance (1983–84); member of the Defense Policy Board (1981–85); and general advisor to the Commission on Arms Control and Disarmament (1981–85). Judge Silberman has practiced law in the private sector as managing partner of Morrison & Foerster (1978–79, 83–85) and at Steptoe & Johnson (1973–74), and he has held professorships at the law schools of Georgetown University, New York University, and Harvard University. Judge Silberman was a senior fellow at AEI from 1977–78 and a visiting fellow from 1978–85. He is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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