Tom Newcomb

Spring 2005

TOM NEWCOMB served as a Special Assistant to the President and the Senior Director for Combating Terrorism in the National Security Council until January 20th of this year. Over the course of a 25-year career in intelligence, Newcomb has served at a Senior-Executive level in all three branches of government: As a legal advisor to the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court; an associate counsel in the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review in the Department of Justice; a subcommittee staff director and counsel to then-Chairman Porter Goss on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; an assistant general counsel for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); and as a CIA case officer and chief of station conducting Cold War, counter-terrorism, and war-zone operations in five CIA stations in Europe and in Africa.

Newcomb has a BA and JD from the University of Minnesota and practiced trial law with Minneapolis-area firms before turning to public service. In between those two degrees, he served in Vietnam as a buck sergeant in the 101st Airborne infantry. Newcomb comes from a long line of preachers and closet phrenologists.

Disclaimer: This information is accurate for the time period that this person was affiliated with the Institute of Politics.

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