Robert Brad Deardorff
Brad Deardorff is a Senior Research Fellow at the George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, specializing in national security matters related to International and Domestic Terrorism, Countering Violent Extremism, and Counterintelligence.
Deardorff has dedicated more than 30 years to protecting the nation’s security interests at home and abroad.
Most recently, Deardorff served as a senior operations and policy advisor for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where he worked with the National Security Council to address complex and evolving security challenges.
Deardorff retired from the FBI after 22 years as the senior FBI leader for national security matters in Washington (state). During his career as an FBI Special Agent, he led national security missions in more than 20 countries and was posted in Washington, DC, Houston, TX, and Seattle, Washington.
Deardorff’s operational experience includes front-line and senior roles related to domestic and international counterterrorism, counterintelligence, intelligence, criminal investigations, and crisis management. He led multiple FBI “major cases” overseas, engaged with foreign security partners, built multi-service teams, developed organizational policy as the senior operations representative to the FBI’s HUMINT Advisory Board, negotiated multi-lateral agreements, and led a senior advisory team to Bangladesh to guide the establishment of its first Counterterrorism and Transnational Crime Unit.
Deardorff began his career as a U.S. Marine Corps officer, with expeditionary and humanitarian service in Southwest Asia and Africa before beginning his career as an FBI Special Agent.
Deardorff a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and a Master of Arts degree in National Security Studies from the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security in Monterey, California.
As a result of his research at CHDS, Deardorff authored The Roots of Our Children’s War: Identity and the War on Terrorism, a comparative policy analysis that assessed European and U.S. counterterrorism strategies through the lens of behavioral sciences. Roots of Our Children’s War was required reading for half a decade at the Center for Homeland Defense and Security.