Public Interest Declassification
Board
(PIDB) Members
- About the PIDB
- PIDB Board Members
- Meetings & Work Plan
- PIDB By-Laws
- PIDB Enabling Legislation
- PIDB Report to the President "Improving Declassification"
Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) Members
The Board is composed of nine individuals, five appointed by the President and one each by the Speaker and Minority Leader of the House as well as the Majority and Minority Leaders of the Senate. Appointees are to be U.S. citizens who are preeminent in the fields of history, national security, foreign policy, intelligence policy, social science, law, or archives.
The President appointed L. Britt Snider, Martin Faga (Chair), Steven Garfinkel, Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, and Ronald Radosh*, all effective October 4, 2004. On March 7, 2008, the Majority Leader of the Senate appointed Sanford Ungar. On June 6, 2006, the Speaker of the House appointed Admiral William O. Studeman, USN (Ret). On July 16, 2007, the Minority Leader of the House reappointed David Skaggs (Vice Chair).
Appointment is pending from the Minority Leader of the Senate.
*Ronald Radosh was appointed by the President in April of 2007.
Members Biographies
Martin Faga
Martin Faga was appointed to the PIDB for a 4-year term by the President in October 2004. In 2005, he was appointed to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He was president and chief executive officer of the MITRE Corporation from 2000 to 2006 and is currently a member of its board of trustees. Before joining MITRE, Mr. Faga served from 1989 until 1993 as Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space with primary emphasis on policy, strategy, and planning. At the same time, he served as Director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Mr. Faga’s career included service as a staff member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where he headed the program and budget staff; as an engineer at the Central Intelligence Agency; and as a research and development officer in the Air Force. Mr. Faga received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Lehigh University in 1963 and 1964.
Steven Garfinkel
Steven Garfinkel was appointed to the PIDB for a 4-year term by the President in October 2004. He currently teaches government, law, and sociology at Albert Einstein High School in Kensington, MD. He chaired the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) from 2000 to 2006. He previously served as Director of the Information Security Oversight Office from May 1980 through December 2001. In that position, he was responsible to the President for policy oversight of the governmentwide security classification system and the National Industrial Security Program. Mr. Garfinkel also served for almost 10 years in the Office of General Counsel of the General Services Administration. His positions in that office included chief counsel for the National Archives and Records Service, chief counsel for information and privacy, and chief counsel for civil rights. Mr. Garfinkel attended both George Washington University and its Law School as a Trustee Scholar. He received his J.D. (with honors, Law Review) in 1970, 3 years after receiving his B.A. (with distinction, PBK). In 2004, he received a master’s degree in teaching from Towson University.
Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker
Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker was appointed to the PIDB for a 3-year term by the President in October 2004. She joined Pacific McGeorge University as its eighth dean in 2002 from her position as general counsel for the University of Wisconsin system. Previously, she served as general counsel for the CIA; Principal Deputy Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State; general counsel, National Security Agency; and as Acting Assistant Director (Mergers and Acquisitions) at the Federal Trade Commission. In addition to her experience managing government legal offices, Ms. Parker also served as the director of the New Haven Legal Assistance Association, Inc. Early in her career, she gained significant personal experience with a wide variety of complex Federal litigation, raising discrimination and civil liberties issues at all levels of the Federal court system, including two successful arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous arguments before various Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal. She received her law degree from the University of Michigan in 1968. She is a 1965 cum laude graduate of the University of Michigan.
Ronald Radosh
Ronald Radosh was appointed to the PIDB for a 3-year term by the President in April 2007. He is an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. Mr. Radosh is the author, coauthor, or editor of 14 books, including Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left (Encounter Books, 2001); Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War (with Mary Habeck) (Yale University Press, 2001); The Rosenberg File (with Joyce Milton) (Yale University Press, 1997); Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic Party, 1964–1996 (The Free Press, 1996.); and The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism (with Harvey Klehr) (University of North Carolina Press, 1996). His articles have appeared in such publications as Partisan Review, The New Republic, The New Criterion, The New York Times, Times Literary Supplement, The Journal of American History, The Wall Street Journal, and The Weekly Standard. Mr. Radosh has served as a senior research associate for the Center for Communitarian Studies at George Washington University; professor of history in the Graduate Faculty, City University of New York; research director for the United States Information Agency; and associate director of the Office of the President, American Federation of Teachers.
David E. Skaggs
David Skaggs was appointed to the PIDB for a 2-year term by the Minority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2005, and reappointed for 2 years in July 2007. He is the executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education. This position follows 8 years as executive director of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the Council for Excellence in Government, counsel to a Washington, DC–based law firm, and 3 years as an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado. He served 12 years in Congress (1987–1999) as the Representative from the 2nd Congressional District in Colorado, including 8 years on the House Appropriations Committee and 6 years on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where he devoted particular attention to classification and information security issues. Mr. Skaggs was a Colorado State Representative (1981–1987), including two terms as Minority Leader, and was chief of staff for Congressman Timothy E. Wirth of Colorado from 1974 to 1977. Before serving in elected office, Mr. Skaggs practiced law in Boulder, CO; as a judge advocate in the United States Marine Corps; and briefly in New York City. He has a B.A. in philosophy from Wesleyan University (1964) and an LL.B from Yale Law School (1967).
L. Britt Snider
L. Britt Snider was appointed to the PIDB for a 4-year term by the President in October 2004. At the same time, the President appointed him to a 2-year term as Chairman of the PIDB. He is currently an adjunct professor in the Security Studies Program, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Mr. Snider has more then 30 years of Federal Government service, split evenly between the executive and legislative branches. In 1995, Mr. Snider became staff director of the Presidential commission (Aspin/Brown) that assessed the roles and capabilities of U.S. intelligence agencies at the end of the Cold War. In 1997, he continued government service as special counsel to Director of the Central Intelligence George J. Tenet. A year later, he was appointed by President Clinton as the second statutory Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency, in which capacity he served for 3 years until his retirement in 2001. Mr. Snider is a graduate of Davidson College and University of Virginia School of Law.
Admiral William O. Studeman, USN (Ret.)
Bill Studeman was appointed to the PIDB for a 3-year term by the Speaker of the House in June 2006. He recently retired from Northrop Grumman Corporation as vice president and deputy general manager of Mission Systems. He holds a B.A. in history from the University of the South in Sewanee, TN; an M.A. in public and international affairs from George Washington University; and several honorary doctorates. He is a distinguished graduate of both the Naval and National War Colleges. As a restricted line naval intelligence officer, Admiral Studeman’s flag tours included OPNAV Director of Long Range Navy Planning; Director of Naval Intelligence; Director, National Security Agency; and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) with two extended periods as Acting Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). As DDCI, he served in both the George H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations under DCIs Bob Gates, Jim Woolsey, and John Deutch. Admiral Studeman retired from the Navy in 1995 after almost 35 years of service. He was recently a commissioner on the Presidential Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction, and is currently serving on the National Advisory Board on Bio-Security. He is a member of the Defense Science Board, as well as DIA JMIC, NRO, national labs, and other advisory boards.
Sanford J. Ungar
Sanford J. Ungar was appointed to the PIDB for a 3-year term by the Majority Leader of the Senate in March 2008. He is the tenth President of Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. Mr. Ungar obtained his B.A. in Government from Harvard College and a Master's degree in International History from the London School of Economics and Political Science. In May 1999 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by Wilkes University in his hometown of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Prior to assuming his position at Goucher, Mr. Ungar was Director of the Voice of America, the U.S. government's principal international broadcasting agency, for two years. From 1986 until 1999, he was Dean of the School of Communication at American University in Washington, DC. The author of many magazine and newspaper articles on topics of political and international interest, Mr. Ungar has spoken frequently around the United States and in other countries on issues of American foreign policy and domestic politics, free expression, human rights, and immigration. Sanford Ungar has been Washington editor of The Atlantic, managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine, and a staff writer for The Washington Post. He was a correspondent for United Press International in Paris and for Newsweek in Nairobi, and for many years contributed to The Economist, as well as The New York Times Magazine.
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