Dr Gordon Adams 

Dr. Adams teaches international affairs and national security at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He also directs the Security Policy Studies Program at the Elliott School.  

He was previously Deputy Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, where he participated in management and planning and developed the IISS corporate membership program. Wile at the IISS, he also wrote and spoke widely on defense resource and planning issues, European security problems and the consolidation of the trans-Atlantic and European defense industries. He also managed conferences and seminars on international security issues in Hong Kong, Addis Ababa and Prague. 

Between February 1993 and December 1997 Dr Adams was Associate Director at the Office of Management and Budget, responsible for oversight over all US foreign affairs and national security budgeting for the Executive Office of the President. Working directly under the OMB Director, he supervised a staff of 60 responsible for reviewing the budget plans of the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Agency for International Development, the United States Information Agency, the Treasury Department (international programs), the intelligence community, and a number of smaller agencies. He oversaw the integration of these submissions into the President's budget, as well as the clearance of agency testimony, letters and reports submitted to the Congress. 

As the lead OMB representative in all interagency groups on foreign policy and national security issues, Dr Adams worked with the above agencies, the National Security Council and the White House staff.  He was the principal advisor to the OMB Director on foreign and national security policy issues. He was also responsible for overseeing planning and implementation of agency management initiatives, developed in cooperation with the management organizations at OMB and the National Performance Review of the Office of the Vice President. He was a member of the Secretary of Defense's joint commissions on the Diversification of the Defense Industry (with Russia, Khazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine), the interagency Security Policy Board, and the Committee on National Security of the National Science and Technology Council. 

Before coming to OMB, Dr Adams was founder and Director of the Defense Budget Project, a non­partisan research center in Washington D.C. Between 1983 and 1993 the Project became one of Washington's leading analytical institutions working on the defense budget, defense economics and defense policy issues. During that time, Dr Adams wrote a wide variety of reports and papers on such issues as future defense budgets and force planning, defense burden-sharing, economic adjustment to declining defense budgets, the defense industry, and defense policy-making. He also testified numerous tines on these and related topics before both Senate and House committees on Budget and Armed Services. 

Dr Adams received his Ph.D. in Political Science form Columbia University in 1970, was a Fulbright Fellow at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium 1963-64, and graduated mama cum laude in Political Science and Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University in 1963. He conducted research on economic and security policy issues in Western Europe for four years and speaks excellent French and some German and Spanish. Before founding the Defense Budget Project, Dr Adams carried out defense research as an International Affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations and as a senior staffer of the Council on Economic Priorities in New York. He also taught Political Science at Columbia University and Rutgers University and was a staff associate for European Programs at the Social Science Research Council. 

Dr Adams' publications and studies include major monographs and articles on defense policy, budgeting, economic, and industry issues, as well as a book on the government relations’ practices of tote defense industry. He has also written frequently for the public media, including columns for the financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Defense News.

Dr Adams has made considerable appearances on radio and television as a commentator on defense policy and budget issues, including the major network and public broadcasting news and magazine shows in the US, Canada and the UK. He has also made frequent presentations on national security policy and budgeting before professional, university, research institute and trade association audiences, including, among others, the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Defense Preparedness Association, the Center for International and Strategic Studies, the Brookings Institution, the US Conference of Mayors, and the National Governors Association. 

In 1997, Dr. Adams received the Defense Department's Medal for Distinguished Public Service. He is a member of the Defense Policy Board of the Department of Defense, the Task Force on the Health of the Defense Industry of DOD's Defense Science Board, and is also a member of the Strategic Advisory Board to the Raytheon Company. He is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Council and Foreign Relations. Before entering government, he was a member of the D fen se Trade Advisory Group to the Department of State, the Committee on International Peace and Security of the Social Science Research Council, and a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Nets West in Denver.