Brendan Melley
Vice President
bmelley@cohengroup.net

Mr. Melley joined The Cohen Group after over 19 years of experience and responsibility on a broad range of national and international security policy issues. Most recently, he served for three years on the National Security Council (NSC) staff in two capacities: as Director for Counterproliferation, Proliferation Strategy, and Homeland Defense, and previously as Director for Intelligence Programs.

Among other responsibilities at the NSC, Mr. Melley managed a broad U.S. Government interagency team from the Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Homeland Security, Treasury, Justice, Energy, as well as the Intelligence Community, to develop and implement all aspects of President Bush's Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a global effort to stop shipments of weapons of mass destruction and related materials. Activities included developing military and law enforcement activities to support PSI, establishing bilateral ship-boarding agreements to combat WMD proliferation, and building strategies to involve the transportation industries.

From 1998 to 2001, he served on the staff of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), where he investigated and analyzed the quality and effectiveness of U.S. foreign intelligence activities in support of the Board's responsibility to the President. During this period, Mr. Melley supported former Senators George Mitchell and Warren Rudman during their appointment by President Clinton to the international five-member Sharm el-Sheikh Fact Finding Committee that examined and made recommendations in 2001 on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has become known as the Mitchell Plan.

In the mid-1990s, Mr. Melley advised and supported the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) on a wide range of intelligence issues affecting deployed U.S. military forces. He was a professional staff member on the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Community, where he focused on military, space policy and imagery intelligence issues. Prior to that, as a senior consultant at Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Inc., he provided technical expertise and analysis on sensitive advanced U.S. Government data processing systems.

Mr. Melley served as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Division (Light), and ended seven years of active duty as an intelligence collection manager for the Combatant Commands at DIA. He graduated from Providence College, Rhode Island, and the Postgraduate Intelligence Program at DIA.