Ronald A. Marks

Ronald Anthony Marks is a former senior CIA official and Capitol Hill Staffer. He is an advocate for the use of Open Source Intelligence within the US Intelligence Community and an expert on Homeland Security intelligence.

Personal

Marks was born in Portland, Oregon to Nathan and Margaret Marks. He was raised in Gresham. He graduated from Gresham High School in 1974. Marks received his Bachelors in Business Administration and Economics with honors from Lewis & Clark College in 1978. Marks went on to the study at the Northwestern School of Law (1978-79) and took his Masters in Economics at the University of Oregon in 1982. He lives with his wife of 25 years in McLean, Virginia.

Career

Starting in 1983, Marks spent 16 years with the CIA. During that time he occupied a number of increasingly senior positions including two years (1995-96) as Intelligence Counsel to former U.S. Senator Bob Dole and U.S. Senator Trent Lott.

Since 2005, Marks has served as Senior Vice President and Director of Washington, D.C. operations for Oxford Analytica http://www.oxan.com/, an international risk analysis firm focused on geopolitics and economics, based in Oxford, U.K.

Marks has been a Senior Fellow at the George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) since 2005.

Marks is an Adjunct Professor for Intelligence and National Security at the National Defense University's College of International Security Affairs. Beginning in the Fall of 2010, Marks will be an Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC). Since 1999, Marks has also been a member of the Senior Steering Committee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Transnational Threats Project focusing on the application of open source intelligence against international organized crime and Islamic terrorism.

Marks has written a book on Domestic Intelligence entitled "Spying in America in the Post 9/11 World: Domestic Threat and the Need for Change," to be published by Praeger Publishing in October 2010. Marks has written on evolving national security and intelligence issues for the academic journals Washington Quarterly, "The Uses and Limits of U.S. Intelligence" (Winter 2002) and the Cambridge University International Review, "Defining America's Brave New World" (July 2002).

Marks also testified in February 2008 before the U.S. Senate's Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs supporting government wide Intelligence Community management reform and strengthened oversight.

Additionally, Marks also wrote a four part series of editorials in late 2004-05 for the Washington Times focusing on U.S. intelligence reform, looking at implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 and WMD Commissions such as the creation of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the founding of a U.S. Intelligence Community Open Source Center.

Since 2009, Mr. Marks has served as National Security commentator for the National Journal.com's National Security Blog. He has also been a National Security Commentator for the Fox News Channel since 2003. Marks has been featured commenting on intelligence related issues on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal , NPR and Public Radio International. Marks has also provided analytical insights since 2001 on Homeland and National Security issues to The Christian Science Monitor, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The National Journal, Government Executive, and the Newhouse Newspapers Syndicate.

Open Source Intelligence

In June 2005, Marks founded the Open Source Intelligence Forum. http://www.osif.us/ As its current director, he leads a group of former Federal government and private sector executives in a series of forums advocating more effective exploitation of open source intelligence (OSINT) by the U.S. Intelligence and National Security Communities. In 2007, Marks was selected by the Director of National Intelligence's Open Source office to plan and participate in the first DNI Open Source Conference.

Affiliations

Marks is a member of the Cosmos Club. He is also a member of the International Institute for Strategics Studies (IISS), an international think tank based in London, U.K.