Dr. Michael G. Vickers’ career as a special operator, CIA operations officer, national security policymaker and Intelligence Community leader spanned the last two decades of the Cold War through a decade and a half of our war with al-Qa’ida, its allies and its offshoots – service that saw unprecedented senior tenure across Republican and Democratic administrations.
From 2011 to 2015, Dr. Vickers served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, where he led a comprehensive transformation of defense intelligence capabilities. From 2007 to 2011, he served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, Low-Intensity Conflict and Interdependent Capabilities. Dr. Vickers led the largest expansion of Special Operations Forces in our nation’s history and oversaw several other major capability investments, including the B-21 bomber and an expansion of the submarine force.
Throughout his nearly decade-long service as a national security policymaker and Intelligence Community leader, Dr. Vickers was heavily involved in operations. He was a key operational strategist for the campaign to dismantle and defeat core al-Qa’ida, and played a major policy and planning role in the operation that killed Usama bin Ladin.
Earlier in his career, he played central roles in the invasion of Grenada and the covert effort to drive the Red Army out of Afghanistan. As the principal strategist for the multi-billion-dollar Afghanistan covert action program – the largest and most successful covert action program in CIA’s history – Dr. Vickers developed the winning strategy when very few thought it was possible to win.
Dr. Vickers has received the nation’s highest awards in the fields of intelligence and national security, including the Presidential National Security Medal and the OSS Society’s William J. Donovan Award. He holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. from the University of Alabama. He is the author of By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations and Strategy, published by Alfred A. Knopf on June 20, 2023
