Lee H. Hamilton is president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and director of The Center on Congress at Indiana University. Hamilton represented Indiana’s 9 th congressional district for 34 years beginning January 1965. He served as chairman and ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, chaired the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, the Joint Economic Committee, and the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress. As a member of the House Standards of Official Conduct Committee Hamilton was a primary draftsman of several House ethics reforms.
Hamilton was named co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, a forward looking, bi-partisan assessment of the situation in Iraq, created at the urging of Congress. Hamilton served as Vice-Chair of the 9/11 Commission and co-chaired the 9/11 Public Discourse Project to monitor implementation of the Commission’s recommendations. He is currently a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the President’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, the FBI Director’s Advisory Board, the CIA Director’s Economic Intelligence Advisory Panel, the Defense Secretary’s National Security Study Group, and the US Department of Homeland Security Task Force on Preventing the Entry of Weapons of Mass Effect on American Soil.
Hamilton is a graduate of DePauw University and Indiana University school of law. Before his election to Congress Hamilton practiced law in Chicago, Illinois, and Columbus, Indiana. Hamilton is the author of A Creative Tension – The Foreign Policy Roles of the President and Congress ; How Congress Works and Why You Should Care ; and co-author of Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission.
