Replies

Michael Hurley
Senior Director of Policy
Michael Hurley, a career CIA officer, has twenty-one years in that organization. He served on the 9/11 Commission’s staff as a senior counsel and director of the counterterrorism policy investigation. In the course of the investigation into the September 11 attacks on the United States, the team he headed interviewed more than 150 officials and reviewed hundreds of thousands of pages of sensitive documents. His team took the lead in organizing the March 2003 public hearings of highest-level officials of the Clinton and Bush administrations, and the early April public hearing of Dr. Condoleezza Rice, President Bush’s national security advisor. His team drafted substantial portions of the policy chapters of the Commission’s final report.

On 9/11 Michael Hurley volunteered to work in CIA’s Counterterrorist Center and to deploy to Afghanistan. He served three tours in Afghanistan post-9/11, leading Agency employees and Special Forces in southeastern Afghanistan. He was one of the Agency’s lead coordinators on the ground of Operation Anaconda, the largest battle against al Qaeda in the campaign in Afghanistan.

From 1998 – 1999, and again in 2000, he was detailed to the National Security Council, where he was director for the Balkans, and advised the national security advisor and the president on Balkans policy. Over the past decade he has been a leader in U.S. interventions in troubled areas: Kosovo (1999 – 2000); Bosnia (1995 – 1996); and Haiti (during the U.S. intervention, 1994 – 1995). Michael Hurley has held a range of management positions at CIA headquarters and served multiple tours of duty in western Europe. He speaks French and Spanish fluently.

Michael Hurley is an attorney. He began his career in Minneapolis as a trial attorney and a specialist in appellate advocacy.