Charles Freeman

Charles Freeman is an American diplomat, author, and writer. He has served for the State and Defense Departments in many different capacities in the past thirty years, with the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs calling his career "remarkably varied". 

Charles Freeman holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS. He concentrates on the political economy of China and other parts of East Asia and on U.S.-China relations, particularly trade and economic relations. A second-generation “China hand,” he has lived and worked between Asia and the United States for his entire life. During his government career, he served as assistant U.S. trade representative (USTR) for China affairs. In this capacity, he was the United States’ chief China trade negotiator and played a primary role in shaping overall trade policy with respect to China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and Mongolia. During his tenure as assistant USTR, he oversaw U.S. efforts to integrate China into the global trading architecture of the World Trade Organization. Freeman also served as the United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1989 to 1992, where he dealt with issues related to the Persion Gulf War.  He is a past president of the MiddleEast Policy Council, co-chair of the U.S. China Policy Foundation, and vice-chair of the Atlantic Council.  Earlier in his government career, he served as legislative counsel for international affairs in the Senate.

Outside of government, as a lawyer and business adviser, he has counseled corporations and financial institutions on strategic planning, government relations, market access, mergers and acquisitions, corporate communication, and political and economic risk management in China. He currently is a senior adviser to McLarty Associates, the global strategic advisory firm based in Washington, D.C., and serves on the boards of directors of the National Committee of U.S.-China Relations and the Harding Loevner Funds mutual fund complex.

Freeman received his J.D. from Boston University School of Law, and earned a B.A. from Tufts University in Asian studies, concentrating in economics. He also studied Chinese economic policymaking at Fudan University in Shanghai.

Anthony Shaffer

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer (USAR) currently serves as the Director of External Communications of the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (CADS), and a consultant.  He is a senior operations officer and Military Operations Training Course (MOTC) graduate with over 29 years of field experience. He has held numerous leadership positions, including as commander of Operating Base (OB) Alpha (Defense Intelligence) and as directing Task Force STRATUS IVY - a unit that conducted cutting edge technology and information operations from the mid 90s through the turn of the century. He has played key roles in multiple interagency operations that were conducted with the NSA, CIA and FBI.

Lt. Col. Shaffer has led operations from the tactical level, such as defense source operations to protect REFORGER exercises in the 1980s to strategic level, such as STRATUS IVY's direct support mission for Operation ABLE DANGER in the late 1990s. Prior to the consolidation of all Department of Defense (DoD) Human Intelligence resources and operations under DIA in 1995, he was the chief of Army's controlled HUMINT program - overseeing Army Intelligence and Security Command's global controlled HUMINT efforts. He was responsible for combining cutting-edge technology with traditional military operations and intelligence collection to maximize the Department of Defense's ability to detect, monitor and neutralize emerging threats.

Lt. Col. Shaffer has appeared on Fox News, CNN, and other major TV and radio programs, and has been interviewed by The New York Times and other publications on pre-9/11 operations focused on Al Qaeda. He has testified before Congress on issues relating to 9/11 intelligence and operational failures.

Lt. Col. Shaffer was awarded the Bronze Star for the first of his two combat tours to Afghanistan. He was credited for conducting highly complex operational support to NSA, and for playing a critical role in breaking the back of a Taliban counteroffensive in the fall of 2003. In addition, he was called back to active duty for DESERT STORM/DESTERT SHIELD in 1991 to perform special support to Army Intelligence. He has been deployed to Thailand, Germany and New Zealand to support DoD efforts as an active duty member of the Army in addition to his Afghanistan experience.

He gained some fame with the publication of his book, Operation Dark Heart, which was ultimately heavily censored by the Pentagon.

Lt. Col. Shaffer is a 1986 graduate of Wright State University, where he was awarded a BA in Political Science and Environmental Studies.

Mia Bloom

Dr. Bloom provides an "explanation of the unexplainable," a comprehensive overview of the historical roots and contemporary motivations of suicide terror and the deliberate use of rape during war, a practice termed “Gendercide.” Bloom's historical range is formidable; moving from the Zealots of first-century Judea to the Japanese kamikaze of WWII, Bloom stresses that suicide bombings can only thrive with the implied consent of an aggrieved population, which can be withdrawn: the Omagh bombing of 1998, for example, was a disaster for the IRA. Over and over again—from Chechnya to the West Bank—history teaches that harsh counterterror tactics become part of the cycle, or, part of the contagion of violence. She sees hopeful signs in Turkey's recent measured and partially successful response to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. Also, touching upon suicide terror as practiced by women, especially in Chechnya and Sri Lanka, and how it is viewed, ironically, as a source of female empowerment. Wrapping up with consideration of the possible occurrence of suicide bombing on U.S. territory.

Mia Bloom is the acclaimed author of Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror, a critically acclaimed study on suicide terrorism.  She is currently an associate professor of women's studies and international studies at the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, PA and a fellow at the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Penn State. Previously she was an assistant professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia.

With research specialties in ethnic conflicts, rape in war, and child soldiers, Bloom was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations from 2003-2008.

Bloom has a PhD in political science from Columbia University, a Masters in Arab Studies from Georgetown University and a Bachelors from McGill University in Russian and Middle East Studies. She completed a year in the overseas program at Tel Aviv University and a semester at the Arab Language Institute (ALI) at the American University of Cairo. She has held research or teaching appointments at Rutgers, Princeton, Cornell, Harvard, and McGill Universities and speaks eight languages. She regularly appears on Fox News, CNN, CSPAN, CBC and CTV and has been interviewed by Jim Lehrer for PBS, Ted Koppel for Nightline, and Jesse Pearson for MTV.

She is completing articles on child terrorists, the radicalization of Muslims in Europe, and the 1990 "proxy bombing" campaign in Northern Ireland. Her new book entitled, "Bombshell: The Many Faces of Women Terrorists" will be published by Penguin. Bloom is currently writing a book on the deliberate use of Rape during War tentatively called "Gendercide: the Strategic Logic of Rape During War."