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• Amy Zegart

Amy Zegart

In 2003 she was awarded Public Policy Professor of the Year for excellence in teaching.

Zegart has been featured by The National Journal as one of the ten most influential experts in intelligence reform. She worked on the Clinton Administration’s National Security Council staff in 1993, served as a foreign policy advisor to the Bush-Cheney 2000 presidential campaign, and has testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Her research focuses on the design problems of U.S. national security agencies. She received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University, where she studied under Condoleezza Rice. Her first book, Flawed By Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS and NSC (Stanford University Press, 1999), won the highest national dissertation award in Political Science and has become standard reading for several U.S. military and intelligence training programs. More recently, she has written about adaptation failures in the CIA and FBI, the role of presidential commissions, organizational problems in nonproliferation policy, and port security. Her most recent book, Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11 (Princeton University Press) examines why U.S. intelligence agencies adapted poorly to the rise of terrorism after the Cold War.

Before pursuing an academic career, Zegart spent three years at McKinsey & Company, where she advised senior management in Fortune 100 companies about strategy and organizational effectiveness.

Zegart has served as a national security analyst for CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and National Public Radio. A former Fulbright Scholar, she received a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Harvard University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and lives in Pacific Palisades, California with her husband and three children.