Lee Hamilton

Biography provided by participant

Lee H. Hamilton is president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and director of The Center on Congress at Indiana University. Hamilton represented Indiana's 9th congressional district for 34 years beginning January 1965. He served as chairman and ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, chaired the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, the Joint Economic Committee, and the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress. As a member of the House Standards of Official Conduct Committee Hamilton was a primary draftsman of several House ethics reforms. Hamilton has been appointed to the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. He was appointed to the National War Powers Commission, a private, bipartisan panel led by former Secretaries of State James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher, to examine how the Constitution allocates the powers of beginning, conducting, and ending war. Hamilton served as co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, a forward looking, bi-partisan assessment of the situation in Iraq, created at the urging of Congress. Hamilton served as Vice-Chair of the 9/11 Commission and co-chaired the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, established to monitor implementation of the Commission's recommendations. He is currently a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council, the FBI Director's Advisory Board, the Defense Secretary's National Security Study Group, the US Department of Homeland Security Task Force on Preventing the Entry of Weapons of Mass Effect on American Soil, and co-chair of the National Advisory Committee to the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Hamilton is a graduate of DePauw University and Indiana University school of law. Before his election to Congress Hamilton practiced law in Chicago, Illinois, and Columbus, Indiana. Hamilton is the author of A Creative Tension - The Foreign Policy Roles of the President and Congress; How Congress Works and Why You Should Care; and co-author of Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission andThe Iraq Study Group Report.