Russell E. Travers

Guest Author

Russ Travers retired in July 2020 after a 42-year career in the Intelligence Community. Over the course of four decades, he served in senior positions across multiple intelligence organizations, both in the United States and overseas, and he did two tours on the National Security Council.

Much of his time after 9/11 was spent working counterterrorism, and most recently, he spent three years as either the Acting Director or the Deputy Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. The Center was established in the aftermath of 9/11 to bring together analysts from all relevant U.S. Government organizations to integrate foreign and domestic data and analyze the terrorist threat. He was part of the leadership team that stood up the Center in 2003 and in the early years was responsible for developing and implementing post 9/11 improvements in the realm of information sharing, watchlisting, advanced analytic techniques, tracking terrorist incidents and support to non-Federal partners.

Throughout Travers’ career he held positions that required integration across both the Intelligence Community and whole-of-government. He was a Special Assistant to President Obama, doing two tours at the Senior Director level on the National Security Council – one focused on transnational threat integration and applying lessons learned from CT to other threats, and one that led the USG task force to develop responses to the Wikileaks disclosures. He also did two tours on the National Intelligence Council, one focused on developing National Intelligence Estimates on military force issues during the period marked by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first Iraq war. During his second tour he led the USG effort to analyze the threat posed by Transnational Organized Crime.

His early career was spent in Defense Intelligence and culminated in his selection as the DIA Deputy Director for Policy Support, where he managed intelligence support for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, as well as DIA’s overseas liaison offices and cadre of senior intelligence officers. He spent two years in London, integrated into British Defense Intelligence where he led the US Defense Intelligence liaison staff. And as a Defense Intelligence officer he worked the full range of strategic and crisis intelligence issues – serving both as the senior military analyst for DIA examining future threats, and working current intelligence as the senior civilian in the Headquarters of the Director for Intelligence, J2 on the staff of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He was, and remains, an analyst.

Over the course of his career, he received innumerable awards for his service; most notably, he is a two-time recipient of the Presidential Rank Award which is presented to the top Senior Executive Service officers in the USG.

Academically, he earned his Juris Doctor degree from the National Law Center at George Washington University. He also holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration and has Undergraduate degrees in both Economics and Government from the College of William and Mary.

Travers has published often in professional journals.  Some of his most notable articles are below:

Articles by this author:

Addressing Our Whole-of-Government Deficit in National Security

by

Dec 8th, 2020