An advocate of privacy rights, Leahy has supported information privacy and open government. In 2006, Leahy was one of only 10 senators who voted against the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act, a bill to extend the USA PATRIOT Act. He is also the chief sponsor of the Innocence Protection Act, which addresses flaws in the administration of capital punishment.   read more

Neile L. Miller, who has been the principal deputy administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) since August 2010, will become acting administrator on January 18. 2013. In the private sector, Miller has worked for Cogema, Inc., and as a consultant for clients including DOE, Sandia National Laboratory, and the government of Germany.   read more

Sworn in as a board member on April 7, 2010, he was confirmed by the Senate on June 22, 2010, for a term ending on August 27, 2013. He left for private practice, co-founding the Buffalo, New York, law firm of Creighton, Pearce, Johnsen & Giroux, where he practiced union and plaintiff side labor and employment law from January 2002 to April 2010.   read more

Fowler helped implement Obamacare as Special Assistant to the President for Healthcare and Economic Policy at the National Economic Council. Fowler is now leaving that post to handle global health policy at Johnson & Johnson. Like other companies in the industry, Johnson & Johnson will increase their profits greatly thanks to the fact that Obama’s healthcare reform will provide insurance to tens of millions of Americans who will now being to purchase drugs and use medical devices.   read more

Miller has served most of his 25 years at the IRS, an agency in the Treasury Department, in its Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division (TE/GE). From April to September 2009, Miller served as commissioner of the Large Business and Mid-Size Business Division, leaving that post when he was named deputy commissioner for Services and Enforcement.   read more

Elisse B. Walter is following Mary L. Schapiro again. In the wake of Schapiro’s resignation as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Walter, who has twice taken new jobs in order to follow Schapiro, was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as acting chair, which she also did, albeit briefly, in January 2009.   read more

Only 20 House Republicans are female, five are Latino and one is African-American. By contrast, of the 201 Democrats in the House of Representatives, 61 are women, 42 are African-Americans, 23 are Latinos, 13 are Asian or Pacific Islanders, and four are Arab-Americans.   read more

Feighery was a deputy special master for the Justice Department’s September 11, 2001, Victim Compensation Fund, where he was responsible for assessing claims made by victims of the 9/11 attacks. From July 2004 until his 2011 appointment to the FCSC, Feighery served as an attorney adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the State Department, where he represented U.S. interests in international arbitration and foreign investment disputes.   read more

Morell served as a presidential briefer, i.e., chief of the staff who presents the President’s Daily Brief, for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and he was with President Bush on September 11, 2001. After serving as executive assistant to CIA Director George J. Tenet, from 2003 to 2006, during which time the CIA was engaged in torture, Morell took a secret assignment overseas, including in London, UK.   read more

The Southeast Asian nation of Malaysia has sent a career diplomat to serve as its next ambassador to the United States, replacing a political appointee, Datuk Seri Dr. Jamaluddin Jarjis, who served in Washington for two-and-a-half years.   read more

According to Pope, Helms’s aide Danielle Pletka told him he would not even get a hearing unless he agreed to testify on his advice to Zinni regarding Chalabi. Pope retired from the State Department on October 2, 2000, after 31 years of service rather than expose his confidential advice. Later, during the ramp-up to the U.S. War on Iraq, Chalabi was responsible for supplying the George W. Bush administration much of the false information alleging that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.   read more

From 2006 to 2009, Godec was the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia. According to diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, Godec was quite critical of the regime of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, describing his “sclerotic regime,” as a “police state” mired in corruption, an evaluation that was much-appreciated by pro-democracy forces in Tunisia when it was made public. Godec served as principal deputy coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department from 2009 to 2012.   read more

In July 2009, Cole became director general for European and Economic Affairs, as well as chairman of the Malta Sanctions Monitoring Board, which is responsible for Malta’s participation in international economic sanctions against countries like Iran. He served in both capacities from July 1, 2009 to July 12, 2012.   read more

Highlights of his diplomatic career include service as consul general in New York from 2007 to 2010 and as ambassador of Senegal to South Africa from 2010 to 2012. Niang has also served as diplomatic adviser to the President of Senegal.   read more

While serving as director of the budget development staff, Bergeron was in contact with hedge fund analyst and short-seller Steve Eisman, who complained to Bergeron that the rumored weakening of regulations pertaining to for-profit colleges was driving up stocks in companies that owned such colleges. In 2011, Bergeron was accused of lying about the Department of Education’s awareness of the activities of Eisman and other short-sellers.   read more

Barrera learned English when she started the first grade, at a time when speaking Spanish was forbidden at school. She later recalled that the Spanish ban “probably served to stop a lot of other learning that I could have done, because it brought with it…questions about what was okay to use at home with family and what was not. And never seeing yourself and finding yourselves in the books at school was also probably something that stayed with me for a long time.”   read more