Hutton Honors College

The View from the Pentagon:
Making U.S. Defense Policy
Discussion Lunch with
Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense
and CIA Official Mary Beth Long

Tuesday, March 3, 2009 * 12:30-2 p.m. * Harlos House (1331 E. Tenth St.) * SIGN-UP REQUIRED

Appointed as Assistant Secretary of Defense by President Bush in 2007, Mary Beth Long has at various points in her career worked on everything from nuclear policy to counternarcotics, from Africa to Afghanistan. How does one get such assignments? What major would you choose in college to prepare for them?

Join Mary Beth Long, the highest-ranking civilian woman ever to serve in the Department of Defense and a former covert CIA official, for a discussion of how U.S. defense policy is made and executed and what it is like to serve in the federal government.

As Assistant Secretary of Defense, Ms. Long was a principal advisor to the Secretary of Defense on the formulation and coordination of international security strategy and policy for the Middle East and Arabian Gulf (including Iraq), Europe (including NATO in Afghanistan), and Africa. She was also involved in developing NATO's nuclear policy. From 2004 until 2007, she served in other department positions with responsibilities that included Latin America, Asia (including China and India), the Middle East, and the Arabian Gulf, as well as, among other things, POW/MIA issues and global counter-narcotics efforts. She worked for the CIA from 1986 to 1999 in operations, some clandestine, that targeted narcotics, WMDs, and terrorism.

Ms. Long will be delivering a public lecture, "Foreign Policy Challenges for the Obama Administration: The Middle East and Afghanistan," on Tuesday, March 3, at 7 p.m. in the Whittenberger Auditorium, IMU. Ms. Long was brought to campus by the Student Alliance for National Security. For more information, please go here.

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